 
### INFERNO, PURGATORIO, PARADISO

A Short Story by Jeff Vrolyks

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 Jeff Vrolyks

I had no idea where I was. Worse is I had no idea who I am. But that started coming back to me piece by piece, and once it did I had a sneaking suspicion of where I might be, and that scared the hell out of me.

It was as though someone had clubbed me over the head and transported my unconscious body to the middle of nowhere, left me to find my way back or rot under the blistering sun—with rotting under the sun the far more likely of the two. It was a vast dirt and rock valley with absolutely no signs of life, vegetation or otherwise. Death Valley would have been more aptly named here. It was the kind of heat that you only read about, and ponder about while viewing images of the sand dunes of the Sahara. So hot that when I looked up I expected to see a sun so enormous and near that I could reach up and touch it. But there was no sun. Surely there was but I couldn't find it through the gray sky. Low hanging clouds were more like mist than any clouds I had ever seen, and there were no breaks in it. A monochromatically gray sky. The rock I sat upon was darker gray, pitted and abrasive like lava rock, and there were formations of these massive things everywhere. Even the fucking dirt was gray. It was like being in a black and white film.

I'm Jeff, that's who I am. It came to me at once. With marginal effort I came up with the rest: Jeffrey Jay Jacobs. Though I couldn't begin to tell you who my parents are, I can state the obvious: they had an affinity for the letter J.

I felt my head for injury and found none. I kind of wish I had, because that would have answered the how? and left me to wonder why? Why the hell am I out in the middle of fucking nowhere and how do I have no recollection of it? Jeffrey Jay Jacobs, Jeffrey Jay Jacobs... I live... I couldn't recall it by name but I visualized a house and sensed it was mine. The more I concentrated on this blurry image of a house, the sharper it became, as if I were looking at it through a camera lens that was slowly focusing on it. A 19th century (perhaps older) white two-story house, with many gables and a high vaulted roof. I could see the covered porch, the wrought iron bench, and there was a wooden swing that I could hear if only in my mind, squeaking as it swayed in rhythm with the wind. There were potted plants placed about, and one such plant was against the home's edifice and tall enough to partially obscure the black iron decorative address. It could have fully obscured the address and I'd still be able to tell you that the number was 1571; the street I couldn't begin to guess at. It looked like one of those houses you might imagine Thomas Jefferson or George Washington once living in, and because of that I was inclined to guess Virginia.

"Hello!" I bellowed as loudly as I could. There was no echo, which seemed strange considering the plentitude of rock. "Can anyone hear me?"

The idea that someone else was out here was almost as ludicrous as the idea of me being out here. This wasn't a place for life, it was a place for death. But that didn't mean there weren't people in this valley; this low basin baking like an oven. I think what I smelled in the air was sulfur. Some of the rock formations were large enough that they could conceal something as large as a passenger jet from my view. One cluster of rocks was so massive that a small village could have been on the other side. I stood and began walking toward it. With some careful climbing I would be able to reach its apex, and from there I'd get a better idea of my greater environment, perhaps spot a distant road or interstate.

It was a ten minute walk to my destination. I traversed it in body only—my mind was working hard on remembrance. Jeffrey Jay Jacobs, I live at 1571 something street... Virginia? Bits and pieces is how I said my memory was returning, but some things came in chunks. I was midway to the rock when my most substantial recollection occurred. So abrupt and profound was this recollection that it impacted my heart to the degree that I feared collapsing. So crystal clear was this revelation of memory that it was like watching a movie at the theater, in 3D IMAX.

I worked at home. I was a writer, perhaps an editor. I had just taken a break from work to go for a jog, as was my routine. I could see my office with as much detail as I could see the barren wasteland before me now. There was only one picture on my desk, and it was of a young woman whom I could not recall. The frame was real silver, old, and expensive enough that I deduced that this young woman once possessed a great deal of my heart. Or perhaps still did, if I could only remember her. I was dressed in sweat pants and a tank top, a pair of running shoes was beside the front door of the house. After lacing them up I stretched my quads for the run. Did I live here alone? I wondered. There was only one set of keys on the rack so either I was a bachelor or my wife was at work, or running errands.

I stepped outside and locked the door behind me. I bent forward to stretch my hamstrings. The wind was at my face; the love-swing swayed with each gust, metal grating against wood, chirping and squeaking. I looked upstreet, then downstreet. The properties were large, houses spaced widely apart. The road was paved and curbed, but all the driveways I could see were dirt—save for my own. Oak trees lined both sides of the street, their leaves clapping in harmony with the wind. It was mid-afternoon, which was ostensibly the reason why there were few cars parked on driveways, and not a single vehicle was parked on the street.

I began jogging. Before reaching the street to cut north, I glanced south and perceived something on the road in the great distance. The black asphalt had been lightened with age, giving stark contrast to a figure in black. It was no more than a hazy black smudge, but had the basic shape of a person. I disregarded it and put to the street, due north.

The birds were singing. The distant hum of an engine might have been a tractor. A woman in a broad-rimmed straw hat was on all fours pulling weeds out of a flower bed near the street. She looked up and smiled at me, waved.

"Afternoon, Claire," I said.

"Good afternoon, Jeff."

I ran past her, turned off of Manchester (Ah yes, Manchester Lane is my street of residence) onto Lincoln Drive. One doesn't tend to appreciate the sweet chorus of the bird, as it is something we take for granted, but it is so lovely and I had been cognizant of it as I reached the next intersection of Grant Drive. It dawned on me that they had ceased singing. I could hear only the distant hum of a tractor motor, whining as it dropped into a lower gear. I glanced south crossing the intersection and saw the distant black figure once again. Same image, different street. I stopped, breathing heavily and just beginning to perspire. I squinted at it to better account for what I was seeing. But as before, I couldn't make it out. It stood center street. I couldn't be sure it was a person, but I thought it was. Who would dress in all black? I couldn't even see the flesh color of his or her face. It was a peculiar thing, but I made nothing of it and recommenced my brisk pace.

How far or where I ran from there I could not say. It must not have made an impact on me because my subsequent recollection was of the following day—at least I sensed it was the following day; it could have been days.

There I was, lacing up my shoes (Reeboks they were, I could identify the insignia on the heel) and stretching for my run. The house phone began ringing but I didn't answer it. I now wished I had answered it, and asked the caller no small number of questions such as do you know what the hell happened to me? Am I missing person? Of course nothing the hell had happened to me at the time, and a missing person I was not. I let the machine pick up the call as I stepped out the front door and locked it. I bent forward to stretch my hamstrings; a gust of wind pushed the swing much as it did yesterday. The birds were quiet today, leaving the only sound to the squeaking of metal inside wood. The air smelled sweet from the springtime bounty of flowers. I inhaled deeply through my nose and took to a jog. I didn't look south down Manchester this time, but if I had I suspect I would have seen it again. It. Claire wasn't in her flowerbed as I dashed by her house. I turned east onto Lincoln and padded along.

When I reached Grant Drive, a pickup truck was crossing the intersection northbound. As I crossed, I stole a glance south from whence the truck had come. There it was. That damned black smudge in the distance. But it wasn't the same as it was yesterday. It was... maybe a trifle larger? Closer, that's what it was. Not much, but enough to notice. And if I were a betting man, my money would be on it being a person. A man clad in full black standing in the middle of the street. Odd?—yes. But that wasn't all that was odd about it. I stopped after I crossed the intersection and fixed on it. Yesterday it had been on Manchester before I found it on Grant. Had it ran east parallel with me only to stop in the middle of the subsequent road at the very moment I glanced down at it? And again today? How absurd a thought is that? My curiosity piqued.

I raised an arm and waved in broad friendly strokes. It didn't react to my gesture. Being that it was slightly closer than it had been yesterday, there was a distinction now available for me to observe, and that was its face. A face with color, albeit not quite flesh colored. It was gray, or grayish, and some of that had to do with the sun being at its back, contributing to a shadowy visage. I had a hunch that it was a mask he wore over his face. Why else would his face be gray?

I closed the door on this intrigue by turning away and retaking my swift pace.

My next memory was early that same evening. The sun was below the horizon, the sky pink and orange. I was walking to the street from my front door with the taste of beer in my mouth. Behind me was a broken Miller Lite bottle and a small puddle of beer. I ascertained that I had dropped it, and why I dropped it was evident: the black figure south on Manchester. Closer it had become, almost imperceptibly closer. A station wagon drove past me, heading in its direction. I watched raptly as the vehicle barreled down toward it. I anticipated seeing brake lights, for the driver would strike the man had he maintained his course. But the vehicle didn't slow down, and the driver didn't strike the figure. It was damned close, inches from impact, and I'd be surprised if the side-view-mirror didn't clip its black-sleeved arm. I waved at the interloper. It was staring at me, I was sure of it. It was completely still and might have been a statue donned in a black robe.

I had arrived at trepidation, heart thumping in my chest.

The following day I headed out for my afternoon jog. There was something in my pocket. I couldn't say what it was, but it was bulky and I think it may have been a Buck knife. I didn't stretch on the porch today. I ambled down the two steps onto the walkway, peering down the street at the source of my torment. Closer yet. Yes it was wearing a mask, I could see that now, though it remained inscrutable due to the distance separating us. I began my approach toward it, tentatively. With each step my heartbeat increased. Every fiber of my being was warning me that I'd find trouble if I persevered. My mind still had domain over my body, so my footfalls continued, small as they were. Soon it wasn't my mind but my body that was the governing force of my being, and thus I came to a stop. I would have felt silly waving at it yet again if I wasn't so wrapped up in my consternation. This man was trouble. I decided against running today, hastily returned home, locked the deadbolt behind me.

That night I stepped out onto my porch with a highball glass in hand: scotch on the rocks. My patio light was bright, bringing daylight to the immediate area, and pitch blackness beyond. Was he down there? Maybe, maybe not. My heart seemed to think he was. It was beating no less than had I just gotten home from running a marathon. I turned the lights off, had another gander down Manchester. My sight improved, but being that there are no street lamps, nothing short of the headlights of a passing vehicle would evince this man's presence, or lack thereof. I resolved to wait for precisely that. Manchester was far from being a busy street, but it had some traffic. I had only to wait a few minutes before a sedan approached from the north. I sipped my scotch, taking a few wary steps nearer the street, fixed on where I estimated the man to be, and waited for the headlights to unveil the mystery.

Before that came to pass, the front door of a house across the street opened, a teenaged boy stepped outside. Marshall was his name. His gait was purposeful, his direction was north up Manchester.

"Hey, Marshall!" I called out.

"Hey. How are you doing, Mister Jacobs?"

I gestured him to hush for a second as I watched the headlights of the sedan wash over the dark man in the street. The motorist was apparently indifferent to him, and that was as alarming as anything. It narrowly avoided clipping him as it passed, and once again the mysterious man returned to the shadows of deep night.

I turned my attention to the boy. "Marshall. Would you come here a minute? Please?"

He nodded and hustled over. I believe he was a sophomore in high school, and damned if he hadn't grown six inches over the last year. At fifteen he was as tall as me.

"What can I do for you?" he asked in transit.

I directed my eyes toward the invisible figure and said, "What's the deal with that guy in the street?"

"Guy?" He followed my gaze. "What guy?"

"There's been a guy in a black friggin' robe standing in the street these last few days. Don't tell me you haven't seen him."

He scratched his cheek pensively. "Who is it?"

"Hell if I know. You haven't seen him?"

"No."

"Are you in a hurry? Could you hang out for a minute or two, until another car passes by so you can take a look for yourself?"

Marshall asked if everything was all right. In his tone was skepticism and concern. He thought I was loony, and maybe I was.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. Just stick around for a minute, okay?"

He nodded and watched the road with me.

It was several long minutes before another vehicle happened by. I was relieved because the kid was looking quite impatient. I told him to keep his eyes on the road, about fifty yards out. He nodded. Heading south was an old Cadillac belonging to a couple seniors who lived only a few houses down from me. Because of that, the beaten track of its headlights never fully reached the man in black before turning onto the dirt driveway of their residence. It did, however, create enough light that I could see the damned thing's silhouette. Marshall had to have seen it. The eyes of a young man like Marshall were surely superior to my own.

"Well...?" I said impatiently.

"Well what?"

I didn't need to ask him what he thought because his tone said it all: he saw nothing. I implored him to wait here just a moment, and rushed to the house for my car keys.

"Mister Jacobs," he said after me, "I really ought to be going. My friend is expecting me."

"Please," I said over my shoulder, "I'll make it worth your while."

I didn't see him nod as I entered the house. Seconds later, keys in hand, I headed toward my driveway, waved Marshall over. I unlocked the doors of my Explorer and groped out my wallet before taking a seat.

"Here, for your trouble," I said and offered him a twenty-dollar-bill. "It will only be a minute. I'll even drive you to your friend's afterward."

"All right, cool." He pocketed the cash.

I started the car and activated the headlights, rolled forward.

Something peculiar happened when I pulled off the driveway onto Manchester, south. My foot hovering over the gas pedal was hell bent on drifting over to the brake pedal. I fought my own damned leg's will, forcing it to accelerate me down the road: the vehicle sputtered and surged with a surprised moan before cruising idly from a release of the pedal. I could feel the boy's judging eyes upon me.

"Sorry," I said sheepishly. "Car's been having issues lately. Keep your eyes on the road. He's just up there."

I gave it some more gas and moved along ten, twenty yards before losing complete control of my leg. It stamped down on the brake, and there wasn't a damned thing I could do about it. It put us at a dead stop in the middle of the road. When I flicked the lever of the lights to high beams, I gasped at what I saw. It was him, and the distance that I had closed between us, scant as it may have been, was enough to reveal a whole new level of distinction. His shape, his hooded head, his mask. The son of a bitch would scare the piss out of me on Halloween wearing something like that. And here we were in the spring, calendar pages away from masquerading goblins, demons, death and devils.

The boy was leaning forward in his seat, squinting. My sharp gasp had gotten him to take my enterprise seriously, though his wasn't the countenance of fear as was mine. Because he exhibited no signs of fear, I was forced to accept the impossibility that Marshall was blind to what was so clear to me.

"How could you not see that, Marshall? How's your vision?"

"It's good. Sorry, man, I just don't see what you want me to see."

I nodded, feigned some degree of apathy toward this shocking turn of events, lest he tell his folks that neighbor Jeff is nuttier than a Payday. I apologized for wasting his time. I had no trouble throwing the car into reverse and applying ample pressure to the gas pedal. That my body was in full agreement with its operator.

"Where's your friend live? I'll give you a lift."

The next two days I didn't leave my house.

On the third day I desperately needed to visit the market. I wasn't the type of shopper who bought for a week or two at a time. Due to my impulsive nature, I shopped several times a week, buying whatever struck my fancy. At the moment, I wished I was the former rather than the latter kind of shopper. Grudgingly I decided to head out for groceries, and did so at nightfall. I normally would have turned left out of my driveway, as the market is south-east of my home, but today I turned right and would take the long way to the store. Without rhyme or reason I drove a few blocks north before turning east at the first intersection possessing a stop light. I found comfort in there being cars both ahead and behind me. Safety in numbers.

Longview Avenue was the street the market was located. I turned southbound onto it. I was behind an old beater of a coupe, cruising at the speed limit of thirty-five. I took a deep, uneasy breath, and considered a medical explanation for my woes, such as bad wiring in the eyes. Bad wiring in the eyes is preferable to bad wiring in the brain, and a hell of a lot more correctable and agreeable to live with.

I was debating whether or not I should make an appointment with a doctor, when the headlights of the beater coupe in front of me illuminated a dark figure, center street.

"No... don't do that. Why?"

I had a decision to make and it needed to be made immediately. It was made in favor of continuing on, and as a reward for my bravery I was granting my disquieted soul a reprieve from seeing the man by closing my eyes as I motored past him. That was the plan, at least. I squinted shut my eyes, touched my forehead to my steering-wheel-clutching hands, hating my cowardice in contention with my newfound corrupted sanity—or eyes; let's not forget that bad wiring in the eyes might be responsible.

A car honked, which instilled in me hope. Hope that someone other than me was included in this mess and wanted this man in black to get the hell out of the road, and out of our lives. But that wasn't the case. The petulant man or woman tapping the horn was behind me, and did so because Jeffrey Jay Jacobs had decided to hit the brakes and put a halt to southbound traffic on Longview Avenue.

I looked over my shoulder. There were two pairs of headlights. Two cars that were disadvantaged by the road's solitary lane and crazed motorists parking where they damn well wanted to.

A longer honk.

There were no cars currently headed north in the opposing lane, so I surrendered to my panic and cranked the wheel, gassed it, made a U-turn. In my mind I took a quick inventory of non-perishable food in my pantry. I wondered how long I could get by on Top Ramen and cans of corn.

Back in the here-and-now I had arrived at the rock formation. Was it lava rock? I'm pretty sure it was. Sure was a lot of it considering there are no volcanoes in... well, I didn't know where I was, but I had never lived near a volcano. Not that I recall, anyway.

What the hell was that black thing?

My throat was parched. If I had a wallet full of hundreds I'd have given it all for a glass of water. That gave me an idea. I felt my back pocket for a wallet. At least I'd know what state I lived in—and my age, for that matter. But there was no wallet. There was nothing in my pockets. My jeans were old and dirty, white tee-shirt sweaty and dirt-stained. I wore a wristwatch. The funny thing is, it was a calculator watch. A small LCD screen reading the time digitally, and a dozen tiny numbered buttons on a panel below it. It was straight out of the 80's. I reflected back to my jogs, stretching there on the porch, and could see my left wrist. There was indeed a watch, but it wasn't this one. It was a nice analogue watch. Why the hell was I wearing this thing now? More vexing was that it made me feel funny looking at it, butterflies in my stomach. If it was accurate, it was 3:36 P.M. With the press of a button I saw that it was Tuesday, November 3rd. Because it said November and not March, I believe the watch was broken. Then again, how did I know it wasn't November? Because my recent memory had me jogging in early spring? Maybe it wasn't as recent a memory as I thought.

I made my way up the rocks. The smell of sulfur was becoming less, which I attributed to having been breathing it continually for a prolonged period. The top rock was a little tricky getting to. I had to scale vertically eight feet, and if I lost my footing it would be bad, broken-bone bad. Maybe worse. I swallowed dryly as I looked down—it burned, felt like I swallowed a hot cinder. I took extra caution climbing, slowly made my way to the top. Just before declaring victory over this jumble of rock, my left foot slipped off its narrow grooved ledge and I gasped. I gripped the rock with all my might to avoid falling, brought my foot back up to the ledge. I felt a sting on the side of my calf. I had hitched my pant leg on the falter and scraped my leg on the ruthlessly abrasive rock.

I made it to the top. Victory! I rolled onto my back to catch my breath before utilizing my new vantage point. The clouds weren't moving at all. There was no wind, not even a breath of air, which explained the still clouds. The damned things were acting as a blanket, trapping the hot sulfuric air below it.

Breath sufficiently caught, I stood up and had a gander. The valley was oblong, shaped somewhat like a football, with one end higher in elevation than the other. The ridge environing the valley was (you guessed it) more of this damned gray lava rock. I was disheartened to find no roads, and petrified to find no water. I'd die here if I didn't find something to drink. That was the cold hard truth of it all. I wanted answers to my many questions, but none of that amounted to shit if I died here of dehydration.

I turned and turned, evaluated each region of the valley. Each survey taken of vast arid nothingness was a nail in the coffin; there was no way out of this. Sure I could hike across the valley and over the nearest ridge, but then what would I find? If there's salvation just over a ridge, which one would it be? I could just as easily be distancing myself from salvation as headed toward it. And that's assuming I didn't die of thirst in the endeavor.

I turned around and saw something. Like on my jogs, I spied a little smudge miles away. Maybe not miles, but still pretty far. It wasn't black, but white. It was the first example of color other than gray since I came through here, with the exception of my cruddy jeans and disgusting white tee-shirt. I waved my arms overhead.

"Please be a person and not an illusion." I shouted hello at him or her or it. It wasn't moving. I shouted again, louder this time, wreaking havoc upon my already abused throat. I sighed frustratedly, contemplated a course of action. Staying put wouldn't help anything, so that meant I needed to get a move on. And which direction I put to wasn't something to put much thought into, because any direction had just as good a chance being the wrong way as it had the right way. So why not head in the direction of the person in white? God I hoped it was a person. If it were a person, he or she would likely be dead, just as I would be if I didn't find water.

As I climbed down the rocks I considered what I'd do if it were a dead person. To be honest, it was my body bringing up the subject, not my mind. My thirst was asking me this question. Salvation could lie beyond any of these ridges, but the chance of making it over without drink was slim to none. Humans are somewhat of a canteen, are they not? Blood is very drinkable. I dismissed the idea as an impossibility, taboo, but my body didn't. I think it had its own plans for me; it would get a drink if one presented itself by any number of unthinkable means. Ironically as I yearned to put liquid in my body, my body was having a heyday pushing liquid out of it, sweating profusely. My shirt clung to me like paste. Even if I did give in to my need of drinking by harvesting liquid (blood) from a corpse, wouldn't the corpse have to be somewhat fresh? Does that kind of thing matter? Does it evaporate from a body rotting under the sun? I never would have guessed in a million years that I'd be having a discussion with myself about this very issue.

Now at the bottom I headed in the direction of the white smudge. I couldn't see it from down here. Maybe I did see it, it was hard to say. It was just a little dot, and I did see something kind of like that, but it might have been light catching the edge of a rock. As I made my way there, I recalled more of that memory at my residence on Manchester Lane.

I had all the blinds closed, windows and doors locked. It was the morning after my attempt to buy groceries that I made a phone call to my niece Emmy. Emmy is the daughter of my sister Liz. Liz and her newest husband (third time's a charm) recently moved to the west coast. Emmy stayed behind, as she was enrolled in college as a freshman at Virginia Tech. She's my favorite niece, and I suspect even if she wasn't my only niece she'd still be my favorite. And she loved her uncle Jeff. I liked taking her out to spoil her when she was younger, and now that she's eighteen we're more like friends than uncle-niece. I try to give her boy advice from time to time. I'm only sixteen years older than her, so it's not like I'm telling her how I used to walk uphill both ways to work in three feet of snow. And I'm twelve years younger than Emmy's mother Liz, putting me between their generations.

Emmy picked up the phone on the second ring with a cheerful, "Uncle Jeff! How's it going?"

"Great," I lied. "You really don't have to call me uncle. Jeff is fine."

"I know, I know. It's a hard habit to break."

I asked her how classes were going and felt ashamed that I didn't pay attention to her response. From her tone I surmised they were going well. Typically I genuinely care about her state of affairs, but it wasn't happening today. I wanted her to finish talking about herself so we could move on to me. Uncle Jeff the self centered, pleased to meet you.

"How about yourself?" she finally asked.

"Well, Emmy, things are a little strange these days. I'd really love it if you could stop by and hang out for a little while, so we can talk about it. Do you have classes today?"

"Yes, but I'll be done by three. Want me to come over after that?"

"Would you mind? It would mean a lot to me."

"Is everything okay, Unc... I mean Jeff?"

"I'm not sure. I want to say yes, but I fear it isn't."

There was silence on the other end of the phone before she said, "Are you sick? Is something wrong?"

"No, nothing like that. I'd rather tell you in person. Show you in person, if that's possible."

"You got me worried. I can't wait till three to find out what's wrong. Can't you tell me?"

"It's nothing serious, don't worry yourself over it."

I suppose she heard it as a lie, because it was.

"My first class isn't for an hour and a half, so I'm coming over now. Okay?"

"If that suits you better."

"I'll be there in ten minutes."

"Great. Just come—" I almost said come right in, the door will be unlocked, but I knew the door wouldn't be, because I had no plans of unlocking it till she knocked and I saw her face through the peephole. "I'll see you then. Drive safe."

Ten minutes is what I had before she arrived, more than enough time to change into something nice. I was inclined to want to wear a suit. Even amid my torment, my vanity shone through. I liked to dress successfully around my relatives, and Emmy was no exception. In an eight-hundred-dollar suit and three-hundred-dollar Prada loafers, sipping fifty-year-old scotch in a crystal glass poured from a crystal decanter, I would sit cross-legged in my leather office chair and tell Emmy that she could really be something in life if she stuck to her goals, applied herself. Her uncle Jeff had worked two jobs while taking night classes at a community college before getting excepted into Brown University and attaining a master's degree in literature, and now edits a great many books that can not only be found in bookstores but on book shelves at the local market. Big named authors. Anyone could do it if they applied themselves, especially ones as bright as Emmy. God I hoped she would take a different path than her mother and aunt, who possessed the smarts for success but had chosen to be housewives for rich assholes. They were a lot alike, my sisters Liz and Jane, and had little in common with their younger brother Jeff.

I rebuked the idea of dressing up. Shorts and a tee-shirt were good enough before I decided to invite Emmy over, so they were good enough for her visit. It was early, too early for scotch, so I poured myself two fingers of it instead of three and planned on sipping it but instead pounded it. I stared at the closed slats of the Venetian blinds covering my office window. Framing the blinds was a thin band of daylight shining though the gap. I was compelled to look outside. Marshall's folks Steve and Cathy lived in the house across the street from me, and that was my view. Perhaps I could have been more successful, as I could think of a great many better views than Steve's fat wife Cathy. Did I just call that nice woman fat? She really was pleasant, and I was fond of her. But if she gained any more weight they'd need to expand the doors of their home to accommodate her. A doctor would call her morbidly obese. But I'd take that view (cordial Steve and heifer Cathy) over the man in a black any day and twice on Sunday, as the expression goes.

I poured the finger of scotch that I had withheld seconds ago and didn't stop at one finger but added two more, and took the glass in hand, stepped in front of the window and held my breath as I pried open two slats with a thumb and forefinger. My eyes were unaccustomed to daylight after two days of solitary confinement in a house closed off to the outside world, so I squinted at it. I inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly, felt some tension dissipate from my neck. There was my neighbor's house. And though Cathy wasn't outside, had she been I'd have greeted her with a candid smile through the gap in the blinds. Was I expecting to come face to face with the masked tormentor? I kind of was. This man or woman or thing or entity or whatever the hell it was, was doing a splendid job at fraying the last ends of my sanity. I looked south but could see no farther than the Dugan house, which neighbored Steve and Cathy's. Still, let's not discount that so hastily; it was a victory nonetheless. Small victories are still victories.

I released the slats and sat in my office chair brooding. What if Emmy can't see the thing? What if she can? Which did I prefer? Did it matter which I preferred? That question I did have an answer to and it was no. She either saw it or didn't, and no amount of hope would change that. What would it mean if she did see it? A better question is what would it mean if she didn't. That I'm insane, no doubt. People who see things that others do not are insane. I see dead people, that kid said in Sixth Sense. Him and nobody else saw them. What he had was a gift; what I have feels like a curse. Look at me, talking about that little actor boy like he was real.

I snatched the framed picture off the desk and looked at it, took a sip of scotch. My heart panged. Anna Macintyre was her name. Is her name. My high school sweetheart. That's what she was, though she never knew it. I was her best friend, not her boyfriend, and she was my girlfriend if only in my mind. God how I loved her. I mean really loved her, not infatuated or wanted to get in her pants or anything like that. It was Anna who suggested that I follow my passion of literature and become a writer. I'm not an author, but an editor is a writer, too. When I consider my success in the industry, I credit her, because she was quite persuasive in her encouragements.

"Anna, Anna, Anna..." I wonder where you are today? Married with a couple sticky-fingered brats, most likely.

I hated myself every time I remembered the several instances where I almost told her how I felt about her but retracted my already-in-the-works admission, changed the subject, told her it was nothing really, just forget it. Was it possible that she knew how I felt, but since she didn't reciprocate that love she pretended to be oblivious of it? I'm sure that's exactly how it was. Why must I be so shy and awkward around women? For four years Anna was my world, and at eighteen when she got accepted into LSU and I was enrolling in community college a thousand miles from LSU, we said our goodbyes and promised to keep in touch. We did keep in touch, at first. But as it always goes, when that great a distance separates two people, keeping in touch becomes less and less, before finally dying altogether. I blame myself. She called me and wrote me letters regularly enough, but it was I who got lazy in our correspondence and I'll never forgive myself for it. Nor will I forgive Mary for it. It was Mary whom I began dating during that time. And because I was focused on her, infatuated with the woman to whom I had lost my virginity, I had neglected my dear friendship with Anna. It is because I ruined my relationship with Anna that her picture remains on my office desk. A reminder of where I went wrong in life. I went right in life by most accounts, but not this one. How poetic and chivalrous it would be for me to say I'd trade it all away for another day with Anna, but would I? Would I really? My heart said yes but my mind said no.

The doorbell rang.

I replaced the picture and left my office. Through the peephole I saw the concerned eyes of Emmy. They were the pretty blue eyes of her mother and grandma—I had gotten my father's brown eyes. I unlocked the deadbolt and opened the door, stood aside as to not look directly outside, let my niece in and wasted no time locking the deadbolt behind her.

Was she wondering why I wasn't dressed in a suit today? Had she ever seen me dressed in anything other than a suit? I couldn't recall, but I doubt she had. There goes my vanity once again, in full bore. We hugged.

"Can I get you something to drink or eat?" I thought about that and amended, "Well I don't have much to eat, but how about some juice? Or... you're in college now, I'm sure you go to parties and drink; would you care for a glass of scotch? I don't have any beer."

I hated my fool mouth. Was I really offering my eighteen-year-old niece alcohol? Boy, if Liz were here she'd lay into me. And she'd have every right to.

Emmy's already troubled eyes became more pensive. "No, thank you. I have classes, remember?"

"So you do drink," I said, and damned if I know why I said such an abominable thing. "I'm sorry, you don't have to answer that. Let's go have a seat in the living room."

She followed me. We sat partially facing each other on the couch.

"I see you've been drinking," she said with a hint of a smile. "Or smell, is the better word."

"I normally don't drink this early. The reason why I have is the same reason why you're here now, and I thank you for coming over." Impulsively I went to take a sip of my scotch and realized I had left it on the desk of my office.

"What's wrong, Jeff?"

"Did you see anything on your drive over by chance? Here on Manchester? A guy in a black robe?"

"No. Why?"

I had no immediate reply to that. Did I want Emmy to think I'm nuts? My vanity was as such that I grudgingly abstained from wearing a suit for her arrival, and now I was positioning myself to intimate to her that I'm losing my mind.

"I... I..." God, what do I say? Just be honest, old Jeffrey old chap, old bean. Pip Pip! Tell the lass the ripping good yarn of a man in black who haunts you.

Emmy leaned forward and put a hand on my own, peered sympathetically into my eyes, conveying to me that I could say anything to her and she'd be just fine with it; go ahead and tell me you're gay, Uncle Jeff, I won't judge you; thirty four is a little old to have no prospects of a wife, isn't it? Tell me you have pancreatic cancer and caught it too late and your days are numbered, I'll be here for you. Tell me you struck and killed a vagrant with your car on a dark stormy night and instead of reporting it to the cops you buried him in the hills, to preserve your good name. There's nothing you cannot confide in me, Uncle Jeff.

That endearing gesture works like gangbusters in the movies, but it doesn't do shit in the real world. Truth be known, it made me wish I was wearing a suit and I don't know why. God bless her heart for the thought, but what I needed wasn't her sympathetic blue eyes reaching into mine, but a few more fingers of that damned scotch. It's easier to confide in Johnny Walker than Emmy Jacobs—no offense, Emmers.

"Just a second," I said and left the couch.

I returned a minute later with two stout glasses of scotch; one quite heavier than the other. I retook my seat and proffered the lighter glass to Emmy. I wouldn't take no for an answer. I didn't need to take no for an answer. She accepted the glass, drank the scotch with me staring pie-eyed at her, placed the empty glass on the coffee table.

"Now tell me!" she said with a faint grin.

I stared obliquely at her undecidedly as I took a sip of my own.

"You better not tell mom I just drank that," she said.

That little interaction was far more endearing than what she had done with the hand and sympathetic eyes. It wasn't show, it was real. She just confided in me that she does indeed drink, if only for sport or socializing or whatever may be the case. And I'll tell you something else, she didn't have a whisky face when she swallowed it. You know, the ugly wrenching of the face that comes from swallowing such an intense flavor. Apparently she had inherited her uncle's tolerance for scotch—tolerance, ha! I cherished scotch.

"Have I ever told your mother anything that you've confided in me? We're friends, Emmy. Friends first, a confidant first, and uncle-niece a distant second. I'm sorry for forcing that drink on you. I just... well, I worry what you'll think of me after you hear what I have to say. It'll be easier for me to say after a drink, and figured it would be easier for you to hear after one, too."

"You're gay, is that it?" she said with a sober face. I was stunned by her supposition. She erupted in laughter. I then laughed, too.

"I wish it were that simple. Here's the thing, Emmy."

I proceeded to tell her of the figure in black. I told her that apparently I was the only one who could see him, or it. I related the trip to the market where I found him all the way out on Longview Avenue. I said he was getting nearer and nearer every time I encountered him, and what could that possibly mean? I said I hadn't left the house these last two days, hadn't so much as looked outside until five minutes ago when I peeked through the blinds, and I didn't see him then, so that was a good sign, was it not?

I took a deep breath and awaited her response.

"Well...?" she said. "Are you going to tell me or what?"

Okay, so I didn't tell her anything, but I said it all in my head and I sounded like a lunatic even to myself.

Notwithstanding, I told her everything, only the subject matter wasn't the man in black but of my high school sweetheart Anna Macintyre. I told her how I never really got over her, how much she meant to me. I laid it all out on the table, all right. I was misty-eyed toward the end. It was the first time I had ever confessed my love for her to anyone, and damned if it didn't feel therapeutic to do so. But I was wasting Emmy's time. I didn't need advice about Anna, I needed it about the man in black. But I came to the conclusion that I was too chickenshit to admit to her that I was seeing things.

"Uncle Jeff," she said exasperatedly, "why did you want me to come over, really? To tell me about Anna? What was your purpose in asking me if I saw a man in a black robe? That's what this is all about, isn't it?"

"I don't know, Em. Maybe I just needed some company, and I miss you. We don't spend as much time together as we once did. It's great to see you. I still can't get over how you're a woman now. No more cute little Emmers in pig tails, lapping up a Flinstones push-pop." She smiled. "You look a lot like your mother did at your age. Very pretty."

Her cheeks flushed. "Stop changing the subject. Is there a man stalking you or something?"

"I doubt it. Yeah, there is a man in a black robe, and I've been seeing him around lately, but I don't think... it's not a big—"

"If it's not a big deal, why did you invite me over, and don't give me that bullshit that you miss me." She grinned disarmingly to counter the harshness of her question.

I stared into her pretty innocent eyes for a moment before mindlessly saying, "Ever think about your mortality?"

"My mortality?" Her brow arched. "I suppose."

Have you ever noticed that when you write—or sometimes it happens when you talk to someone about your personal thoughts—you begin to learn things about yourself? Or things start to make more sense? It happens often with me, and it did just then.

"Yeah, mortality. We're all going to die someday, and I'm sure it won't happen to you for eighty years, but still, it's going to happen to us all. We each owe God a death, and He is the only one who knows when that day will come. For the sake of my argument let's just say that I know my day is forty years from now, to the day. In forty years I'll die. I picture a guillotine, the slanted sharp edge of a guillotine blade miles and miles above me; heck thousands of miles above me. It is falling now, you see. Eventually it will enter the earth's atmosphere and eventually it will chop through the clouds and fall, fall, fall down to Manchester Lane where it will reach the soft flesh of my neck, and end my existence. Obviously that's not how I'll die, but you can see what I'm saying, right? Maybe I'll die of a heart attack—I do have high blood pressure and cholesterol—but a death is a death. That blade is descending upon every single person on earth. For you that blade is eighty or ninety years above you, but it'll find you one day. When you see an old man at the hospital, that blade is so very near. I've often thought it would be wonderful to know what day that blade will arrive so I could make the most out of life before then. But then again, knowing that date would be all-consuming. It would be more of a detriment than a benefit. Maybe it's best we don't know."

"Is that the scotch talking?" she said with a sidelong grin.

"Maybe it is," I said and matched her expression. "This guy in the black robe just reminded me of that concept, of the guillotine, because the couple times I've seen him he's been a little closer from the last time. Encroaching. Maybe he's just a stalker; more than likely I have some bad wiring in my eyes and what I'm seeing is just a shadow. I guess the impact it's had on me is the idea of my mortality."

"How's your health, other than high cholesterol and blood pressure? You look to be in good health."

"Yeah, I'm fine. I don't mean to tell you that I think I'm dying. I don't know what I'm saying. I'm scared." That last tidbit snuck by my filter. I didn't want to alarm poor Emmers. "I shouldn't be, but it is what it is."

"Where's the last place you saw him?"

"In the middle of the road, just outside here."

She patted my knee and stood up. "Come on. We're going outside. I'm going to show you that you have nothing to be worried about, Unc—Jeff."

"Nah, I'd rather not, if you don't mind."

She took me by the hand and pulled me off the couch.

"You're an awful lot like your mother," I said. "Do you know that?"

She shushed me. My prescription sunglasses were on the table; I took them before Emmy pulled me away from them in her haste.

"You don't need sunglasses, it isn't that bright out."

"They're prescription: I don't have my contacts in."

"Okay. Let's do it."

I felt like a delinquent child being pulled grudgingly along by the hand. I tried to free myself of her grip but to no avail. She was intent on holding my hand through this. I think it was a gesture of solidarity, that we were in this together. Bless her heart for thinking so, because it definitely wasn't the case. I was to suffer this nightmare alone, and the enormity of Emmy's heart couldn't change that.

She unlocked and opened the door. Together we stepped along the porch. A UPS truck was across the street. Cathy was signing for a package. Strength in numbers. And she was at least two people, more like three. She saw me and the pretty young girl attached to me at the hand and probably thought some shenanigans were happening over at the Jacob's residence. She waved at me: I waved my free hand back at her.

I saw Emmy's Honda Accord in the driveway parked behind my Explorer. I continued looking at it as we traversed the walkway. There was a sticker on the back window, a rainbow with glittery words below it that I couldn't determine. Rainbows... how simple her life must be. She was free to dance and prance under rainbows with her guillotine blade light years over her head, as I was walking through the valley of the shadow of death, the guillotine not light years over my head but something much less. How much less only God knew, and He can keep a secret.

I thought her palm felt sweaty. On second thought, it was my own palm that was sweaty. The slack between our conjoined arms tightened and she said, "Come on, mister. No dallying."

"Yes, mother."

We stopped at the curb.

"There, you see? There's no bogeyman. No stalker. It's just you, me, the UPS driver," she lowered her voice to a whisper, "and that morbidly obese lady across the street."

I would have chuckled over her choice of words had we been in another circumstance. Morbidly obese is what she was, but I thought it was cute that she chose such a diplomatic pair of adjectives to describe what most kids her age would have used. Something like disgusting fatty, or fat bitch, heifer, etcetera etcetera.

"I guess so," I replied. "Maybe I just needed my contacts in after all."

She was smiling broadly, though I wasn't looking at it. "Good. I'm happy for you, Uncle Jeff."

"Let's go back inside."

"Wait a minute... you don't see him, do you?"

"I don't see him."

"Swear to me you don't. Swear to me on my life."

"Emmy, I swear to you on your soul I do not see him."

She released my hand and hugged me. I'm sure the disgusting fatty across the street was thinking I was a pervert right about now. Emmy's lank blonde hair smelled delightful. I think it was Herbal Essences I smelled. When she lathered it into her hair so recently ago that it was still damp against my cheek, she was probably singing a song, mirthful, wondering which boy in science class might have had a crush on her and which party she should attend this Friday evening. She wasn't worrying about when she might encounter that damned man in black next time, or where exactly that guillotine blade might be today. She was the sweetest thing, Emmers, and I was lucky to have her in my family.

She took me by the hand once again and led me back to the house. I found it peculiar that she did so. Once inside I closed the door and removed my glasses.

"Thanks for coming over, Emmy. It means the world to me."

"I hope you can confide in me more often. I'm here for you if you need me. Always, okay?"

"Thank you."

"I should be on my way. I have a big exam in History. I didn't study as much as I should have, so wish me luck."

"Consider your luck wished. Take care, and drive safe."

She smiled at me, gave me a brief hug and headed for the door. She opened it, took a step out and looked back at me.

"I believed you when you swore on my soul that you didn't see it."

"As well you should."

"But I have a feeling if I re-worded it to are you looking at it, my soul might not have been so sworn upon. Prescription sunglasses, huh? I really do hope your eyes were open, Uncle Jeff. I love you. Call me soon, I mean it."

"I will."

She even inherited her mother's smarts. She was right. Had she said, "Your eyes are open and you don't see him, right? Swear on my life, Uncle Jeff," I would not have sworn upon it.

Well I'll be damned! It was a person! In the here-and-now I increased my pace to a jog at the woman (yes, she was wearing a dress) in white. White, yes, but it was as filthy as the tee-shirt clinging to my sweaty torso. And it was much too small for her. Too short. The hem was well above her knees and currently hiked up to her hips from her posture. She was sitting on the gray dirt, her arms folded together on her knees, head inside the nook. Her hair was brown and disheveled. She heard my approaching footfalls and looked up fearfully, gasped. She sprang to her feet and rounded on her heels, began to run.

"Wait!" I shouted. "Don't run! I mean you no harm!"

She ran anyway, looking over her shoulder as she went.

"Please! Please don't run! I'm lost and need help!"

She looked more keenly at me, brow knitted together, and slowed her pace before stopping altogether. I continued jogging toward her. The closer I got, the more incredulous I became. Hair a crow's nest, dress dirty, pallid skin blotched with dirt, but she possessed the face of an angel. Pretty, yes, but more than that, she was... sweet looking. The girl next door. The girl you leer at in church while secretly wondering how much better you'd have to be in every aspect of life to land a girl like that. My incredulity was in that an example like her was in a place like this.

"Hi," I said upon my arrival, panting. I stopped just before her. "Sorry to scare you like that. I cannot believe I found someone out here. I'm Jeff." I extended a hand.

"Hi." She accepted it tentatively and shook it. I sensed she wanted to say more, but didn't.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"I... I'd rather not say."

"You'd rather not say, or you can't remember?"

Her eyes widened just enough that I knew I was right.

"Don't be embarrassed about it," I said. "I couldn't recall my own name, either. Any idea why you're out here? Or how you got here?"

She shook her head. Her eyes were raking over me curiously.

"Well that makes two of us," I said. "How long have you been here?"

"I'm not sure. A couple hours maybe. I saw something—"

"I'm glad I found you, I thought I was losing my mind. Maybe I still am. I can't make any sense of it all. Who would abduct me and dump me out in the middle of nowhere, huh? And you, I guess."

"I don't think this is real," she said.

"Don't think this is real?" I pondered that. I guess I wasn't so sure, either. "Like I'm dreaming?"

"No, like I'm dreaming." she said.

"Where does that leave me? I'm part of your dream? I don't really exist? Gosh, I hope that isn't the case." It was my attempt at bringing levity to the situation. Perhaps it was ill-conceived.

"I'll wake up soon," she said flatly.

"That you think this is a dream, doesn't that hint that it isn't? When we're dreaming we don't know we're dreaming."

She frowned at that. "I have amnesia."

"It'll come back to you. I only woke up a half hour ago or so..." I checked my calculator wrist-watch. "3:01?" I reflected back to when I checked it last. It had been 3:36. "Unless time's moving backward, my watch is busted." I looked at her large brown eyes, the whites clear and pearlescent, beautiful. "Or whomever this watch belongs to. It isn't mine. Strange, huh?"

"This dress," she said solemnly. "I didn't think it was mine, either. At first. But you see this?"

She lifted the hem of the dress up to show me something, indifferent to the fact that she was exposing her underwear, which was white with pink polka-dots, something a girl much younger might wear. I leaned closer and saw a little discoloration near the hem of her dress. It was brown, sort of, but not like dirt. Like dried blood. Just beside it the fabric was torn.

"It struck a chord in me," she said and released hold of the dress. "Made me feel... funny. Like remembering something you thought you'd never think of again. I remembered crashing on a bicycle when I was a little girl, and I hurt my knee. This is blood."

"So you're wearing a dress from your childhood?"

"It appears so."

"You can recall a biking accident but not your name?"

"I guess seeing it is why I remembered it. You don't happen to know where we can find water, do you? I'm really thirsty."

"As am I. No, I'm sorry. I'm also sorry for interrupting you earlier; what were you going to say? You saw something?"

"Yes, that's why I know this is a dream."

"What was it?"

She shook her head.

"Come on, tell me."

"It was bad, Jeff. Something like that doesn't exist in reality."

"Okay then this is a dream, and because it is a dream you can tell me what your imagination conceived earlier when you saw it. Was it a man in black? With a mask?"

Her brow furrowed. "No. Why do you say that?"

"Never mind. Tell me, what was it?"

"It was an animal, I think. It was sort of far, so I'm not sure. It moved like an ape, using its arms as it went. It was olive green, hairless. I think it was coming from me; it was the first thing I saw when I woke up. It was running away from me."

I hummed meditatively. "You think it brought you here?"

"It wasn't very big." She shrugged. "Would have had to be strong."

"A green hairless ape," I mused, then chuckled, which offended my new friend.

"That amuses you, does it? Well I'm happy for you."

"No, it's just... well I don't know what else to do but laugh at this situation. It's a nightmare, I think we can both agree, but I don't know what else to do but laugh at it all. The more I think about it, the more I'm leaning toward dream as well. I'd guess that you didn't save that dress from your childhood only to wear decades later upon your abduction."

"Decades? Am I that old?"

"Don't you know how—" I guess she wouldn't know how old she is, being that she couldn't even recall her name. I didn't know my own age until I began recollecting the past recently. Emmy is eighteen and I'm sixteen years her senior, putting me at thirty four. "I guess you don't. No you're not old, I shouldn't have said decades. You're probably younger than me. I'm thirty-four, I think. Want to hear something strange? I have no idea what I look like. None whatsoever. I wish I had a mirror."

She cracked a grin. "Me too."

"I can tell you this: you're very pretty."

"You ain't so bad yourself." She sighed and scanned our environment. "What should we do?"

"No clue. What direction was that thing headed in?"

She pointed.

"Well I'm under the impression that an animal in this heat wouldn't stray too far from water, so if we can find where it went maybe we'll find something to drink. And if nothing else, if we find it and it's dead, we can still have a drink." Under my breath I muttered, "Even if it's not yet dead."

She looked sharply at me. "I couldn't do that."

"I think you could if you'd die otherwise. I know I sure would. Let's get a move on."

We began our long and arduous journey across the barren wasteland in the direction she had pointed. Something she had said reverberated in my mind, and that was this being a dream; chiefly, why she had thought that. The old dress from her childhood. My jeans and tee-shirt were too ordinary to spark any recollection in me, but the watch had evoked a strange feeling in me earlier: was there a reason for that? I studied it as we walked. It was familiar, all right. I couldn't attach a memory to it, but that didn't mean it wasn't from my past, my childhood. If it was, what does all this mean? Why were we stuck in a nightmare with hooks into our past? If it were a dream, it was she who didn't exist, not myself. She who was a figment of my imagination, not vice versa. Her only chance at existence is in this being real. And I have to say, if this is real, that sneaking suspicion of where I might be that I had earlier mentioned—it is difficult for me to just come out and say it—if this is real, I think I might be in hell.

We were quiet for some time. It gave me more time for remembrance.

She broke the silence with, "Why did you ask me if what I saw was a masked man in black? Is that what you saw?"

"Funny you should mention that, I was just thinking of it. No, not here I didn't see him. It was one of the first memories I had."

I commenced to tell her every detail pertinent to the ordeal. She only spoke once during it, and simply said, "Emmy..." as if it meant something to her. But she let me continue my story.

It had lifted my spirits, Emmy's visit. Her smile was brighter than the darkness of my imagination. I sat on the couch, kicked my feet up on the coffee table and sighed greatly. I really needed to finish up the piece of shit novel that some hack with minimal talent had written. It would have been more properly edited by throwing it in the trashcan. But contracts are what they are, and income is what it is. I had a few more days before the deadline, anyway, which was probably more than I needed. I only had two chapters to go, then a quick re-read to catch any errors I may have missed on the first go-round.

I was hungry and not in the mood for macaroni and cheese or soup. And besides, without milk or butter, mac and cheese is pretty terrible. I had exhausted all the good stuff in the fridge and freezer. What sounded good was pizza, and that could be delivered. I should have thought of that before now. A made a quick call to Pizza Hut and put in an order. It would be a half hour before it arrived, so I figured I'd work on the novel.

"Emmy," my female companion in the here-and-now said again, interrupting me this time.

"Yes?"

"I... I think that's my name."

"Your name is Emmy?"

"I don't know. It might be. It kind of feels like it is."

"It'll come to you in time. I think."

When I opened the door for the pizza guy, I was wearing sunglasses. I didn't want him to see me actively avoiding the porch behind him, and my eyes were all but shut as I gave him twenty (keep the change) and closed the door.

I devoured the entire thing. I was so full that it hurt to take a deep breath. But it had tasted so divine that it was impossible to eat sparingly; and besides, another pizza would be just a phone call away.

I was at my office desk, reading the drivel that passes for literature these days, and found myself re-reading sentences. I was preoccupied hating myself. Hating myself for squandering my earlier opportunity to see the man in black with the comfort of my niece at my side. Comfort was a strong word. But more comforting with her than without. Whatever it was, it wouldn't engage me with Emmy at my side. I don't know why I thought that, but I did. The thing wanted me, not her. Not anyone but me. Emmy was all that was righteous and pure in the world, and with her by my side perhaps it would repel him like kryptonite to Superman. It was a dumb thought, but it recycled in my mind.

I got out of my chair and looked through the blind slats with an air of bravery. I was rewarded by seeing wonderful nothingness. Steve's house, the road, the northern half of my yard, and a big oak tree centering my yard. From my view I couldn't see too southerly, but from what I could see there was no ominous presence, no robed man. It galvanized me to some degree, in that I should confront this thing head on. It wasn't real, I knew that. It couldn't be. If it were, others would have seen it.

Not being quite as brave as I made myself out to be, I took another drink of scotch before doing what I had long been debating: confronting this thing.

I plucked the cellphone off the desk and went to the door, calling Emmy on my way. I didn't know what I was going to say to her until I actually began speaking. I looked out the peephole as the phone rang. Through the fish-eye I saw light and nothing suspicious. I was gaining confidence.

"Yes?" Emmy said in a quiet voice.

"Sorry, did I catch you at a bad time?" I was still looking through the peephole. "Oh, you're in class, aren't you?"

"I am. Class doesn't start for a few more minutes. What's up?"

"I confess that I had my eyes shut earlier. I'm sorry."

"I figured. Jeff, you really need to—"

"I know. I'm doing it now. I wanted you on the phone as I did it. I can't do it without you."

"Class is about to start, so make it quick. I can't stay on the line once it begins."

"Okay." I unlocked the door. My heart hammered as I opened it. In my mind I had seen it standing before me, just as the pizza guy stood in that spot a short while ago, but nothing was there. "Okay, so far so good. I'm going outside now."

"Nothing is there, I promise. Take a look around."

I stepped outside. My eyes were not wanting to direct south. They preferred north. I was looking around a bush at my Ford Explorer.

"Well? Is it all clear or what?"

"I guess so," I replied, and just then I glanced left, to the oak tree on my front yard. In the shade of the oak, just south of it, there he stood, facing me. I didn't get a good look at it because I slammed shut my eyes, dropped the phone, dashed inside the house and closed the door, locked it.

"Fuck!"

I was hyperventilating. My rapid pulse thundered in my eyes, ears and throat. It felt as though the walls were closing in on me. I paced around the house, flailing for ideas of what to do and for understanding. Glorious understanding. I contemplated calling a head doctor, and once the idea landed it stuck; I couldn't get the idea out of my head that someone else needed to be inside of my head. That's what I needed, a therapist. One who makes house calls. I was too chickenshit to go outside for my cellphone so I used the home phone and leafed through the Yellow Pages. There were plenty of shrinks listed so I started at the top. Secretary after damned secretary I got the same bad news, that I'd have to make an appointment and nothing was available for today. It took half a dozen calls to find one who would take me in this week, but even she wouldn't come to my house. I gave up on the idea after it was abundantly clear that nobody would help me on my terms, which were right here right now.

I drank more scotch, and that did seem to help calm my nerves. It was the scotch's sagely wisdom that reiterated that the man in black isn't real. That if nobody could see him but me, he wasn't real. And if he wasn't real, he can't harm me. And if he can't harm me, I'm worrying for nothing. Third-grade logic tastes a lot like comfort food at times.

Medicine is a wonderful thing—it was the scotch talking again—a pill a day keeps the crazies away. I'd get through this, even if it meant being on prescribed drugs.

For the hell of it, I went online and Googled any number of things, using words such as black apparition, black-robed man, man in black with mask, man in black stalking me, man in black invisible to everyone but me, et cetera. It was a waste of time. I spent a half hour on this endeavor and yielded no results pertaining to my crisis.

There was a sharp knock at the front door. Then again.

"Jeff? Uncle Jeff? Open the door!"

Never had a voice sounded so heavenly to my ears. My precious Emmy. I opened the door and she stormed in. I closed and locked the door behind her.

"What happened!"

I looked away from her as I admitted to seeing it on my lawn.

She folded her arms under her chest (my cell phone was in her hand) and looked both disturbed and irritable. "You need help."

"I know I do."

"Will you call for a doctor? Or should I do it for you?"

"I already did. Nobody will see me today. And nobody makes house calls. None that I found, anyway."

"Make one for as soon as possible then!" I had never heard her angry before, but she was pretty pissed. "If they won't come here, I'll take you to them. Okay?"

I nodded, shamefaced.

"I should tell mom," she said inwardly.

"No, don't tell her."

"You're scaring me, Uncle Jeff. How am I supposed to sit there in class and take a test after that?"

"I'm sorry." I felt like I was the child and she was the parent.

"You know that a man isn't there, don't you?"

"Yes."

Maybe I didn't sound convincing enough.

"Leave your damned glasses there, and come outside with me. Now."

"No, I don't—"

She inhaled sharply, which cut me off. She wasn't going to have it any other way. So I relented with a nod.

She handed me my phone, grabbed me by the wrist this time (I had preferred the hand) and pulled me along to the front door. She unlocked the door and opened it.

It was as though something had reached inside my chest, gripped my heart, and squeezed the holy hell out of it. The blood drained out of my head and down I went, unconscious. It was standing in the doorway.

* * *

I awoke on the couch. Emmy was sitting in a chair facing me. She was on the phone.

"He just woke up," she said. "Okay, I will. I love you too, Mom. Bye."

I sat up, rubbed my eyes.

"Don't be mad that I called my mom. I was scared. I almost called nine-one-one, but called her first. I told her everything and she didn't think you need to go to a hospital, but a shrink. How do you feel?"

"All right, I guess." I then recalled what had happened to cause me to pass out. "How long have I been out?"

"Five minutes, maybe a little longer."

"I saw it in on the porch."

"Yeah, I figured. Listen, Uncle Jeff, you really need to see a psychiatrist, and I know you know that now, but I think you need something for right now. Like Valium. Do you have any? Or Xanax?"

"I don't have any drugs, no."

She considered for a moment before saying, "I might be able to help you. I swear if you tell Mom about this, I'll never speak to you again."

"You can trust me."

"I know a guy. Well, I don't really know him, but a guy I dated does. I met him a couple times. He's a little creepy, a little weird, but he might be what we need right now. He's into that spiritualistic holistic stuff. Smokes a lot of pot. He used to sell it to the guy I dated. Don't judge me."

"I'm not judging."

"I'm sure he could give me something like Valium. Maybe it would be more natural, like herbs or something, I don't know. He was selling peyote and mushrooms, too. He doesn't live far. I don't know his number but I know where he lives. Maybe I should pay him a visit to see if he has anything to sedate you. And I'll work on getting you an appointment for a real doctor as soon as possible. Okay?"

"Emmy, I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with you leaving right now."

"I can't stay here forever. I have to leave sometime."

"I know."

"Why don't you go lie down in bed. I'll be back as soon as I can."

"Please don't go."

She stared at me silently. "I guess I can call Jason, as much as I hate the idea. He'll know that guy's number. Maybe he'll come over here."

"That would be great, thank you."

"Go lie down in bed."

"I'd rather sit in my office." In my office is where I felt most control. It was in there that I turned good stories into masterful stories, where I turned duds into best sellers. My office is where I felt at my best.

I left her to make phone calls as I sat in my plush leather chair, stared at Anna Macintyre in her frame.

In the here-and-now, the girl at my side gasped. "Anna Macintyre!"

"What about her?"

"That's who I am! I'm Anna Macintyre!"

I was about to tell her that she isn't Anna, but then considered there were more than one Anna Macintyre in the world. Highly doubtful she was one of them. And only moments ago she thought she was Emmy. She seemed to want to be anyone I mentioned. But she shocked the hell out of me by what she said next.

"Wait..." She stopped and stared vacantly at the ground before her. "I'm not Anna. I'm... Julie Macintyre. That's who I am."

"Oh my God." It had to be a coincidence still. "Do you have a sister named Anna?" I knew Anna had a sister named Julie, and I had met her before, though she was only eleven or twelve at the time and looked nothing like the woman beside me; although it was reasonable to estimate that an eleven year old could have grown up to look just like her.

"I think so," she said noncommittally. "Damnit, not remembering is vexing."

As is being stuck in the middle of nowhere left to die, but I didn't say that.

Funny how memory works. Just then I recalled being at Anna's all those years ago, sitting on the bench outside of her parents' house beside the girl I was secretly in love with, chatting about God-knows-what, and a little girl comes riding up on a pink bicycle with one of those banana seats, wide handlebars with billowing white and red streamers. That was Julie. When she rode past us she squeezed the little clown horn attached to the bars making a wha-ooga wha-ooga sound. Was she wearing a white dress? I don't believe she was.

"That bike you crashed, giving you that cut knee and blood on your dress... do you recall the bike?"

"Uh... no."

"Was it pink? Banana seat? Streamers? A horn that when you squeezed it went—"

And she mimicked the exact tone it made with wide eyes. "How do you know?" she asked.

"Because I've met you. You are indeed Julie Macintyre. I was close friends with your sister."

"Anna," she mused.

"Yes, Anna. Small world, I guess."

"Really small at the moment. It seems as if we're the only two people on earth."

Or in hell, I thought.

"It feels good to remember something. Really good."

"More will come to you, you'll see. I'd ask you how Anna has been these ten or so years, but I don't think I'd get much of an answer." I grinned at her.

"Yeah, sorry. Go on with your story. What happened with the hippie guy?"

Emmy was in the office with me, swiveling back and forth in the chair before my desk. Don't think any less of her, because she really is a good girl, but she had a little glass of scotch with me. I don't blame her one bit: I was putting her nerves through hell. I kind of wished she didn't keep a straight face when she swallowed it. I'd have preferred a whisky face. I hoped she wouldn't become close friends with Johnny Walker like I had become. He was my best friend, though I'm inclined to say Emmy was right up there, making progress to soon surpass good ol' Johnny at the head of my rankings.

She told me about a guy she liked. Adam. He was in her Anthropology class. They had studied together a few times outside of school, and she really wanted to tell him she liked him but had been too cowardly to do so. I told her she's crazy, that he probably had a thing for her but was too shy to admit it. She wondered why I thought that, and I felt a little awkward admitting how pretty she was. True it's a little tough to judge the allure of a relative, but any guy should want to be her boyfriend, I thought. Personality and beauty, what's not to like? I told her that and she blushed, and thanked me. She said Adam was shy, and maybe I was right.

"I'm glad you brought this up to me, Emmers." I tended to call her Emmers more than Emmy the more scotch I consumed—I had been calling her Emmers a lot lately. "Allow me to give you advice. Wisdom comes from age, and even though I'm not a lot older than you, I'm old enough to have gone through what you're talking about." I turned the frame around on my desk so that she could see Anna. "Mine was Anna, yours is Adam. Heck, they even both start with the letter A."

"She's pretty. That's the girl you were talking about earlier?"

"Yes. She was everything to me. My best friend of about four years. All through high school. I was secretly in love with her. I don't know if she felt that way about me; she was equally shy. I guess she didn't or somehow maybe I'd have known. But what haunts me to this day"—well, the other thing that haunts me to this day—"is that I never told her how I felt about her. What might have happened if I did? Maybe she wouldn't have gone to college in Louisiana but instead went to school out here. Or maybe I'd have moved down there with her. Maybe she'd be my wife and we'd have our own little Emmers and Adams capering about. It was a life lesson, I suppose. I regret it wholeheartedly, not confessing my love for her. I know what you and Adam have is new, and not love, but it's something. If you think you like him more than a friend, promise me that you'll open your heart to him, let him know how you feel."

She nodded.

"No, that's not a promise. Promise me."

"I promise."

"I don't want you going through what I went through."

The doorbell rang. I stayed put as Emmy fetched him. A moment later a strange man in every sense of the word took the other chair before my desk, resting his leather doctor's bag on his lap. He introduced himself as Ernest and offered his hand. I shook it over the table.

"Ernest," I said musingly. "One doesn't hear that name too often these days."

"No, one doesn't," he said with a charming smile. Awfully charming considering the middle-aged man soliciting it looked like a burned-out hippie straight out of a Make Love Not War protest rally.

"I'm a Hemingway fan," I said.

"Hemingway? Never heard of him." He chuckled.

"What do you got in the bag?" I asked.

"Precisely what it is that you need."

"And what is that?"

"That is for me to soon find out."

"Are you a doctor of sorts?" I knew he wasn't, but he had the air of one, if you discount his long hair tied into a ponytail, scruffy face, and faded Phish tee-shirt.

"No, thank God. The world has enough doctors. Holism, that's my field."

And selling pot and mushrooms to innocent kids, I thought.

"Tell me, Jeff, what seems to be plaguing your mind?"

I had difficulty uncorking it. I couldn't stop looking over at precious Emmy. I didn't like that she had a connection to Ernest. The guy peddled psychedelic drugs, for chrissake. But she was probably right in that I needed a sedative to see me through this until a real doctor could be provided.

"Emmy, would you mind leaving us alone for a while? It's nothing personal, I just feel more comfortable talking to Ernest about this in private."

"You already told me everything, but if it makes you more comfortable, I'll leave."

"I told you most everything, yes. I'm sorry, sweetheart."

She smiled primly and left the office stating that she'd try to find me an appointment to see a shrink, closing the door on her way out. I snatched my cellphone off the desk and told Ernest one moment, and texted her: Sorry, Emmers. Don't you be leaving me. This guy might roll me up and smoke me.

I set the phone down and told the guy everything, beginning at the small black smudge in the distance, up till the large black figure on my porch. It was the abridged version, but he got the gist of it. The guy surprised me by what he then said.

"I wish I'd have brought Anthony along. He's an expert on demon affairs."

"Demon affairs?" It felt silly saying.

"Yes. The occult. We aren't alone, Jeff."

"You think the thing is real?"

"Who could say? I believe you think it is real. It just might be. Like I said, Anthony would have more to say on the subject than I. It seems you might be having hallucinations."

Gee, did you come up with that all on your own?

"The sensation originates in your mind and radiates outward, affecting your body and thus eyes, so you see things that aren't there. I'd judge that if you reached out to this man, you'd touch him, as well."

What a moron. "I don't care to put that to the test," I said.

"How's your medical history? Is your health sound, for the most part? Strokes, anything like that?"

"I'm thirty-four: no I haven't had a stroke. Yes, I'm healthy." I didn't think it was pertinent to mention that I had high blood pressure and cholesterol.

"Physically, yes. Because I am here suggests that you are less than healthy spiritually. Emmy was hoping I could provide you with a sedative. Something to keep your mind at peace until you see a counselor. Is that your wish as well?"

"Yes. I do need something other than scotch to get me through this."

My phone chimed. Emmy texted: He's probably worried you'll put him a scotch glass and drink him. I chuckled and set the phone down.

"All right, Jeff. I think I know just the thing for you." He unzipped his black leather bag and sorted through the clutter. He removed a corded metal teapot-looking thing and set in on my desk, then put a couple small Ziploc baggies plump with herbs beside it. "Do you have an outlet nearby that I could use?"

"Right over there," I said and pointed.

He withdrew a bottle of mineral water and poured it into the teapot, then went to the other side of the room and plugged in the gadget. When he flipped the light switch to off, I had a problem with that.

"Turn it back on, please."

"Trust me, Jeff. I've been doing this a long time."

The room was dark, but I could still see. The scant light around the blinds was all that kept me from being in utter darkness. He removed something else from his bag, pushed a button and I almost laughed out loud when I heard one of those nature tapes being played. We were at the ocean now, waves sighing and crashing, gulls cawing. What a quack. I wondered what he was going to charge me for this. I wished he'd just hand over a few Valium and be on his way.

"As the water boils, I want you to close your eyes and clear your mind, as much as you can. Imagine being on a tiny raft in the middle of the ocean during sunset. A red sun low over the Pacific horizon. Smell the tangy saltwater. Hear the flapping of a seagull's wings as it flies over you. The water rolls mildly, like a baby in a crib you are being lulled toward sleep in your one-man raft."

I humored him by closing my eyes. I actually did imagine what he suggested, and it wasn't as bad as I had thought. Maybe it was his nature tape.

"The sun is low, low, and dips into the ocean. Now it is gone. Nothing but the serenity of vast open ocean in every direction. Not a soul for hundreds of miles. Lean back in that raft, stare up at the lavender sky. There is but one star, and it is tiny, but you can see it. Focus on that solitary star, as you listen to the rolling water lap up at your raft. Do you see it? Can you smell the ocean? Do you feel the raft listing up and down with the undulating waves?"

"Mhmm."

I really did. I was at peace.

"The star is becoming brighter and brighter. Slowly you are drifting up into space toward it." His voice was on the other side of the room now, though I was hardly aware of it. He was putting herbs in the teapot. "You're floating into space, reaching for that star that is growing, growing. You are all who exists in the universe now. You and only you. Peaceful, sublime, serene, vast openness."

He didn't speak again for some unknown amount of time.

"Here, Jeff. Drink this."

I squinted open my eyes enough to see a little ceramic cup being handed to me. I accepted it, sipped it. It was delicious, actually. A little too hot to drink all at once, so I drank it in installments. After finishing, I put the cup on the table and leaned back in my chair, closed my eyes. I heard more rustling in his leather bag, more water being poured into the pot.

"Feel free to linger in space as long as you wish. Enjoy yourself. Let the tonic untangle your nerves. The next one will be even better. The last one was for the nerves, this one will be for the mind."

"Great," I said. Actually, nothing came out, but that's what I meant to say. I was feeling much better already. God bless you, Emmy, for all you've done for me, Ernest included.

My extremities tingled as though they were falling asleep, but less annoying than that sensation. This was a welcomed one. I allowed myself to float up in the raft, and together it and I were gliding up into space, toward that big beautiful blue-white star. Even the raft was comforting. It was yellow and inflatable, and I squeezed it with either hand, tension dissipating with each squeeze.

I'm not sure how long it was before Ernest spoke next. Maybe a minute, maybe fifteen.

"Here you go, buddy," he said. "Drink up."

I didn't open my eyes this time. I felt for the cup, didn't test the liquid but instead drank it in a few big gulps. It wasn't as hot as the last one. Either he cooled it by pouring water in the cup or it didn't seem as hot because the previous tonic was dampening things, my senses.

Upward I floated. The waves below me rolled on, and I heard them through Ernest's tape. The seagull cawing was miles below me.

"I have one last tonic, and it is mostly an antioxidant. It will be ready shortly."

"Mhmm."

My stomach tickled a little. It was a new sensation, from the new tonic. The star directly above me was growing ever nearer. It wasn't blue-white anymore, but simply white. Bone white and lustrous, like the moon. I could see dark spots on it that didn't seem appropriate for a star. A couple of them. Maybe two side by side, with a little blemish below them. My stomach tickled a lot. The star grew and grew as I floated up and up. I closed my eyes and smiled in my space raft. A severe cramp struck me in the stomach at all once. I opened my eyes, but not in the office. I was in the raft, and the star was bigger yet. I could clearly see the dark blemishes on the star, and what they were were the eye-sockets of a skull, the bony grin of a skull.

I screamed and bolted upright in my office chair. My stomach was wrenching, hurt like a bastard, pain emanating from stomach outward to my extremities. Strangely even my arms hurt. My heart was galloping like a fucking race horse.

"Whoa, whoa, calm down, Jeff. Return to you seat. You were having a bad dream is all."

I groaned. "What was that stuff? Oh my God... my stomach."

"Are you having an allergic reaction to it?"

It was too dark to see the dumb look on Ernest's face, but I'm sure it was there. The fucker had forgotten to ask me if I was allergic to anything.

The door opened swiftly, pouring light into the dark dungeon that was my office. My eyes had so adjusted to the darkness that the hallway light was blinding me. I shaded them as Emmy entered.

"What happened?" she said with alarm.

"A bad dream," Ernest said. "We'll be fine."

"No. No we won't be fine," I said, and collapsed back down into my seat, wincing as it felt like I was being stabbed in the stomach with an ice pick. Still shading my eyes I asked Emmy to close the door. She did.

"What should I do?" Emmy asked.

"I don't know." I hissed. "Maybe... maybe I should go to the hospital. Something's wrong."

"Let's do," she agreed.

"The doctor's," Ernest mocked. "Yeah, they have all the solutions."

"Thanks for stopping by," Emmy said to the man, "but I think we're done here. How much do I owe you?"

Just as I uncovered my eyes, Emmy flipped the lights back on.

For a split second my brain processed a coat rack in the corner of the office, south. A large black trench coat draped over it. I looked at it and that's when everything turned to shit. It was as black as a shadow in the night, save for its face. It wasn't a mask, it was part of the entity, the only part exposed. A mishmash of bone, tendon, muscle tissue, and lidless eyes with large black irises, scarcely visible under its low hanging hood. It was smiling at me, but it wasn't smiling. It was a skeletal grin.

My horrific reaction to it was as such that both Ernest and Emmy flinched as they turned to face whatever I gaped at.

I screamed and screamed and screamed. It didn't move as everything around me faded to black, as the invisible blade of the guillotine reached my neck. Those big protuberant eyes boring into my own, clear to the foundation of my soul, were the last things I saw.

We continued along the barren wasteland. There was silence now. Julie was deep in thought beside me.

"When did this happen?" she finally asked.

"I don't know, but it's the last thing I remember."

She stopped walking. I then stopped, looked at her.

"That's... that scares me," she said. And she was scared, I could hear it in her voice.

"It scares you? You should have seen it, Julie. It was the most repugnant thing imaginable. Something so repulsive that when viewing it your body thinks it best to just shut down, lose consciousness."

"That's not what scares me."

Yeah, that's not what scared me, either. Presently, at least. What scared her is what it all meant, and why was that the last thing I remembered. And how that fits in to where we are now. She was having less luck recalling her past, so she was left to make theories based on my own. And it all pointed to one thing, that of which I had already mentioned and am loath to repeat. This wasn't exactly heaven. Not to say that we had died, but if we had, might it be so different? I didn't feel dead. How absurd is that statement? How is being dead supposed to feel?

"And you know what else?" I said evenly. "The pain wasn't in my arms, plural. It was in my arm. My left arm."

She gave me a look conveying that she knew exactly what that pointed to: a heart attack.

"I'm sorry, Julie, for disquieting your mind."

She nodded and retook her pace along the dirt and rock hardpan with me close at her side. She surprised me by taking my hand in hers. With her eyes she asked if it was okay: I nodded my consent. Truth was, I wanted it too. The comfort of being touched. We were in this together, whatever it was. Wherever it was. Have you ever noticed that oftentimes people enter or re-enter our lives when we need them most? Emmy back then, Julie now. It's as though fate or Ka or God knows that we can't do it alone, and provides us companionship.

"I could offer you some optimism, if you'd like," I said.

She grinned feebly. "Yes, please."

"If we're dead, we can't die of thirst."

She found no humor in it. Of course she didn't. It was tasteless. "We're not dead," she said adamantly. "We aren't."

I nodded in agreement, though I was far from convinced.

"If we were dead we'd be in heaven or hell," she said. "This sure isn't heaven."

"I was just thinking that."

"Leaving hell as the alternative. If this were hell, don't you think there would be more people than just you and I?"

"Absolutely there would." I found comfort in that. "Maybe you're right, then."

"Mabel Street," she said.

"Mabel?"

"Yes. Does that mean anything to you?"

"Actually... actually it does. Mabel Street. Anna lived on Mabel! Which would mean you lived on Mabel!"

"I think I remember the house I grew up in. The one on Mabel."

"Good for you," I encouraged. "Keep remembering. Fill me in on anything you come up with. I'd love to know what happened leading up to you arriving here. And anything you could tell me of Anna would be great. I bet she has a husband and kids."

She nodded.

"She does? She does have a husband and kids?"

"Oh I don't know, I was just nodding out of politeness."

We continued along. I looked up at the sky in every direction, hoping to spot the sun. There needed to be a sun. A sun would make this place more like a locality on earth and less like one in hell. Nothing had changed with the cloud cover.

"I can think of a lot worse people to be alone here with," she muttered.

It touched me, irrationally so. I smiled sincerely at her; she reciprocated a lesser one, but a smile nonetheless.

I spotted something in the distance, shooting out from behind a rock formation. I nudged Julie and pointed. It was what she had earlier described to me. A sickly green simian-looking thing, only hairless. A biped utilizing its arms in its gait. It was exceedingly fast and running laterally to us. Then another came into view from behind the rocks, and it was a trifle larger, putting chase to the other. If it weren't for their tails, I'd have considered them to be more human than ape. They were demonic. Their presence uprooted what little optimism I maintained. Nothing like this existed on earth.

The one being chased shrieked, and there are no words to properly convey their register. High-pitched and wavering, almost as if it were giggling and screaming in tandem. The pursuer responded with a shriek of its own, and it registered lower. A male chasing a female was my guess. The male quickly caught the female and pounced on her. I thought they were playing at first, maybe a mating ritual, but the larger put its hands around the smaller's neck and throttled it, eliciting a more shrill ejaculation than before; begging for her life, she was.

The smaller quieted, stilled. The larger then sat beside her lifeless body and took her hand in his, brought it to his mouth and began chewing on one of her fingers.

I was aghast and my expression surely mirrored that emotion.

"What?" Julie cried. "What do you see?"

I looked at her, confounded. "What do I see? What do I see? Don't tell me that—" I looked back to the demons and was thunderstruck to find nothing there. Vanished they had. "They're... gone."

"What was it?"

"What you had earlier described to me."

"The ape-like thing?"

"Yes. Two of them."

She hummed meditatively. "I wonder if I had described it differently, if you'd have seen it that way instead."

"You think I hallucinated it?"

"Well you did."

We continued along silently. My calf had been starting to burn some time ago, and when it began to itch as well, I stopped to have a look at my scrape. I knelt down and hiked up a pant leg.

" _Oooo,"_ she crooned and positioned herself to better see the injury.

It was worse than I had imagined. Several inches long and a couple inches wide; the top couple layers of flesh had been scraped off, and it was red and scabbing over already. I touched it and consequently hissed. There was a little flake of a scab at the top of the wound. I dug a fingernail under it and peeled it off. Below it was darker red, blood-colored, but there was no blood. I stood up and regained my pace.

We directed toward the spot I had hallucinated the demons. I wished to see if there were any traces of them, such as footprints in the dirt.

As we strolled along, we were both remembering the same afternoon without knowing it. She'd tell me soon enough what she had remembered, but for the meantime I was sitting on that wooden bench on the front porch of the Macintyre's. For having issues with my memory, the ones I did possess sure were clear. Crystal clear. It might have been just this afternoon that I sat beside Anna on that bench. She wore a summer dress, light pink with big white flowers. So clear was this image that I could see the peach bra-straps to the side of the pink straps of her dress. It was before either of us had a license to drive, putting us at about fifteen years old. She had been working diligently on growing boobs that summer, and I was appreciative of her efforts. When she leaned forward to open her purse between our feet and extract Chapstick, the front of her dress bloused from her chest, affording me a clear view of her boobs (albeit they were in a bra; frowny face). In my memory I was trying to see her breasts, but the fifteen-year-old Jeffrey had looked away from them. How about that? I had morals. But I did wish to see them, even back then. More than that I wished she'd want me to see them, and not for the reward that is actively staring at her breasts: I wanted her to want me to see them.

It wasn't then that I had decided I was in love with her—her boobs had nothing to do with it. I had decided that a long time before that afternoon, but it was then that I resolved to confess my love to her. I never went through with it though, as you well know. The closest I came was just after she applied Chapstick to her lips and straightened her posture, smiled over at me for no reason at all, and that's when smiles are the prettiest.

Anna's kid sister zipped by us on the sidewalk riding her pink bike with an exaggeratedly long banana seat, honking her wha-ooga wha-ooga horn as she passed. And she was wearing that same white dress, and it fitted her young body much better than it did currently. She disappeared behind the tall hedge of the neighboring house.

"Are there any boys you like at school?" I asked her. Nervous sweat dotted my brow.

She grinned wryly. "Why, would you be jealous?" She was playing with me, but now that I think about it, I think she was fishing for the truth. It had been lost on me back then.

"Just wondering," I replied. "Jacob can't be the only one chasing after you."

Jacob was a boy our age, and overtly enamored with Anna. Whenever I hung out with Anna (which was most of the time) I could always spot Jacob somewhere not too far away. He liked to follow her around. He had some nerve, too, initiating conversation with her and inviting her to every dance that was on the horizon, no matter how distant and unlikely. Even Sadie Hawkins, the dance where the girl is supposed to invite the guy, Jacob had proposed that she go with him even then. She turned him down time and time again, but he never gave up. I thought Jacob was a good looking boy, too. And if he couldn't win her over with that coupling of looks and persistency, what chance did I have with her? But I had the great advantage of being her best friend. Maybe there would be no dating between us, no taking her to the big dance, but in a way what I had was better than that. More than just an fleeting encounter with her before saying our goodbyes. What I had was her daily affection, her utmost devotion as my dearest friend. And though it was strictly platonic, she loved me. She had once told me that, and did so when I needed to hear it most: when I was crying from having just been beaten up by a bully not for my lunch money, but for shits and giggles. I thought something was wrong with me, that I must have been a real putz to be picked on and beaten up purely for sport. She assured me I wasn't a putz, that she wouldn't love a putz like she loved me. That shut off the tears, all right. It was then that I knew she loved me, though her degree of love couldn't have matched the intensity of my own. But some love was a heck of a lot better than no love at all.

"Jacob is one persistent booger, huh?" Anna had said. "I swear, I should just go out with him once to give him the worst date of his life. Maybe then he'll leave me alone."

"You don't think he's cute at all?"

"If I did I wouldn't have turned him down all one-million times. My heart doesn't belong to that Jacob. Hey, it's my birthday in a week. What did you get me?" She smiled playfully at me.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait just a damned minute. Walking silently beside Julie, I got a hell of a lot more serious in my remembrance. I sought to replay what Anna had said, slower, and dissected it like a science project. "If I did I wouldn't have turned him down all one-million times." This is where I really focused: "My heart doesn't belong to that Jacob." She then changed the subject, did she not? Yes, to her approaching birthday. Was that intentional? I wondered. More important was the single word she inserted in that prodigious statement: that. My heart doesn't belong to that Jacob. True some people will say that before a name, such as "How about that Jacob? Crazy kid, huh?" But I'm not so sure she meant it that way. Her heart doesn't belong to that Jacob, meaning it might belong to another Jacob. And I didn't know of any other Jacob's, unless... unless you considered Jeffrey Jay Jacobs. How did I not pick up on that all those years ago? Oh how frustrating!

Playing around with what if's will drive you crazy. That doesn't stop us from doing it, though. What if I had responded differently than, "Yeah, next week you turn sixteen. Any plans?" What if I had said, "Your heart doesn't belong to that Jacob. Does it belong to this one?" God how I wished I had said that. What is worse is she may have said that purposely, so I might respond how she had hoped I'd respond. She gave me an opening into the topic and I squandered it. More like missed it altogether. Maybe she read into it, put all her eggs in that basket, and when I didn't capitalize on her ambiguous statement, it could only mean one thing to her: I didn't feel the same way about her. How wrong she would have been if that was the case! Oh my, how stupid am I? Or was. I've grown less stupid over the years with much work. Maybe it took a lot of courage for her to say what she did, being as shy as me, and she interpreted my response to her words as rejection, and decided then and there that she'd never broach the subject again.

It was that afternoon that cute little Julie Macintyre (and she really was a cute little bugger) had an oops-a-daisy on her bike. We were still on the bench chatting idly when it happened. We didn't see it happen, but the crying adolescent came alongside her bicycle into view, pushing it in lieu of riding it, and there was blood running down her shin. Together Anna and I rushed to her aid.

"I remember you," Julie said in the here-and-now. "I remember you. I was thinking about this dress, about the blood stain, and how that came to be, crashing on my bike. It was you and Anna who came to help me right after it happened."

That she was thinking of the same thing as me just then didn't strike me as uncanny or a great coincidence. It was too much of a coincidence for it to be a coincidence. It braced my theory that she didn't exist, that this wasn't real, that she was a figment of my imagination, no less than were the two simian things I had recently discerned; no less than was the man in black encroaching ever nearer until he was upon me, shutting off my lights and sending me here—here, which was all in my mind. Maybe it wasn't hell after all. Or maybe hell is being damned to relive our worst memories, such as missing the cue to ask the girl I love if she loved me too, if that Jacob was this Jacob.

"And Jeffie," Julie said at my side, "you know what else?" She clasped my wrist and brought it before her eyes. "So weird..." she said in a whisper. "I don't know what's weirder, that you were wearing this same watch that day, or that I remember it so clearly."

"You do? Are you sure? Because I don't."

"I positively do, Jeffie."

It was a moment for epiphanies, because I just had another one. Two, actually. First, it was a week before Anna's birthday, and I do recall her birthday—when you are madly in love with someone, there is little you don't take to heart about them—it was the tenth of November. November 10th was when she was turning sixteen. A week before her birthday was the day we sat there, the day Julie scraped her knee, making that November 3rd, give or take a day or two. My money was on November 3rd precisely. And why do I think that? When Julie released my wrist I depressed the button on the side of my watch and there it was: November 3rd. And although it didn't show what year it was (the good people at Casio possessed faith enough in their customers that they should at least know what year it was) I'd bet it would read 1997. Because that's what year it had been.

The second epiphany was in this being real. Sure as shit, we were walking here, not dreaming it. Julie wasn't in my head, she was walking beside me in the flesh. She had remembered my watch being worn by me that day, not I. I still don't recall it, but I trust that she recalls it correctly. If this hell were all inside my head, I wouldn't be able to produce memories not my own. I suspect I could ask her things I could in no way know, and she'd be able to answer some of them, and answer them accurately. Because she was real, with a mind of her own and memories of her own.

"Why do you keep calling me Jeffie all of a sudden?" I asked Julie.

"I'm starting to remember a lot of things," she replied. "Why do you suppose we have these ties into that day?"

"The million dollar question," I replied. "I have no clue."

Julie was more like me than I thought. We were on the same wavelength. "Tell me something I don't know about Anna," she said.

She was questioning this being a dream as well. She wanted me to provide some kind of proof that I had knowledge independent of her own. "Okay. Did you know she had a boy following her around named Jacob? He was infatuated with her, but she didn't feel the same way about him."

"No, I didn't know that. She never told me. Of course she wouldn't be infatuated with him: she loved Jeffie. Didn't she?"

Oh my aching heart. I wished she didn't just say that. "Please be assuming this and not saying it out of knowledge."

She studied my expression and grinned a little from it. "I see. It's like that, is it?"

I nodded.

"You never told her?"

"To my everlasting regret," I said softly, "I did not."

We strode along for a moment before she came out with it. "If you prefer, I'll say that I'm assuming it."

I closed my eyes and muttered, "Damnit. Damnit all."

"Sorry. I used to tease her about it: Anna and Jeffie sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. You want to marry and make babies with Jeffie, don't you. She hated that. Because it was true."

I sighed a great big one. "I'd prefer thinking she didn't like me."

"That's what you get for having a crush on someone and not telling them."

"It wasn't a crush. I was in love with her. Madly in love."

"Then you won't like hearing this. I remember her wedding."

"It's okay, I figured she'd be married by now."

We arrived at the location of the simian things. We were between where they had originated from and where they struggled before the bigger killed the smaller. I scanned the dirt as we crossed it, looking for signs that it was real and not imagined. Foot prints. But there weren't any, and it didn't weigh so heavily upon my mind; new things had replaced it. New torments were in the works. It was still hell, only the demons were now internal instead of external.

Julie gasped sharply. I looked around: there was nothing to alarm over. I then considered it was a gasp of recollection, and it was. Her eyes were wide and penetrating my own. She then looked to the ground before her with a troubled brow, retook my hand in hers and palmed her forehead with the other. I said nothing, let her speak when she was ready.

"Oh no," she said on the verge of tears. "Oh nooo."

"What?"

She looked up at me, then returned her vacant gaze at the ground shaking her head. "I prayed to God, I believed in God—believe in God—so why should I be in hell? Was I that bad of a Christian?" she said inwardly.

"So you do think we're in hell."

She nodded gravely.

"Great," I said sarcastically. "Fantastic."

"That or we're in heaven." She looked around. "This isn't heaven."

"We're dead." It was half question, half statement.

"I remember, Jeffrey. Leading up to here, I now remember." She emitted an anguished moan and threw her head back. "Why... why did I do it?"

"Do what?"

"Oh my, even the damned bridge was named Devil's Crossing. How horribly ironic is that?"

"Tell me."

She was now crying and in no hurry to tell me. But we had a long walk to wherever we were headed, so it would come out eventually. And it didn't take long.

"My boyfriend's name is Chris. Oh man... he must be so devastated, feel so guilty. It was his idea."

"What was?"

"We were at Lake Matthews for the day. Me, Chris, Alex, and Jenn. We hiked up to where the river flowed into the lake. There is a trail that goes alongside it. It starts getting steep, real steep, as you hike up it. The river is between two steep cliffs. There's a bridge from one side to the other: Devil's Crossing. Two different paths converge there, and continue on the other side of the bridge. It's a rickety old thing, bounces when you walk across it. Wooden planks connected by some cable, ropes to hold on to as you go. The river was pretty far down below it, maybe fifty feet. Chris was crossing it on the outside of the bridge, holding on to the rope as he went. He egged me on to do it with him, called me a pussy when I wouldn't. We had been drinking beer and I was feeling pretty confident, and didn't like his calling me a pussy for not doing it. So I went along the outside, too. Alex and Jenn were getting pretty upset with the both of us, urged us to stop."

"You fell off."

She looked over at me with wide brooding eyes. "I did. I did fall off. I remember losing my footing and falling, but not impacting. That's where my memory stops. I'm not sure how deep the water is, I think it's pretty deep. But there are rocks down there. Lots of them, sticking out of the water."

"I don't suppose it matters. We're here, aren't we?"

"I want so much for this to be a dream, Jeffrey. I want a re-do. I want to tell Chris to walk across the damned bridge by himself if that's how he wants to do it. I can't believe I did it! I can't believe I did it and what happened because of it! I can't believe I'm...!"

I put her in my arms and hugged her. She wept on my disgusting tee-shirt. I rested my cheek on the top of her disheveled brown hair. I wondered why we were the only two people here. Probably there were others, many others, somewhere. Pursuing our course seemed pretty irrelevant now.

"What should we do?" she said as she let go of my embrace.

"I don't know."

"Let's walk over there." She pointed to the ridge nearest us, which was a twenty minute walk at least. "I want to see what's on the other side. Maybe we'll find others."

I nodded, took her hand, and together we changed our direction to the nearest ridge.

"I don't know how I'd endure this alone," she said. "Thank God for you."

"Yes, thank God. Thank God I am in hell with you."

"I didn't mean it like—"

"It's okay, I know. It's ironic, though. Isn't it?"

"That I'm thanking God for you being in hell with me?"

"No, that you have the good mind to thank God. Was that a mindless remark or were you truly thanking God? You do believe in Him, don't you?"

"I do. And I was. I'm not the best Christian, but I believe in the Lord Jesus, and that He is our savior."

"I just don't get it. Maybe I deserve to be in hell, but why are you here? You belong in heaven, if I do say so myself."

She raised her brow at me, and optimistically said, "Well... we don't know that this is hell for sure, do we?"

"I don't know anything for certain."

"I do know that what happened on the bridge caused me to be here; that means I didn't survive the fall. And because of that, I suspect you probably died of a heart attack or something there in your office."

"Yes, I believe you're right."

"Maybe this is heaven, and we're just working our way to the pearly gates." Her grin, meager as it was, was endearing. "And that you're with me in heaven, maybe you'll be my husband here."

I laughed. "Are you proposing to me?"

"No, that's your job."

"Things just turned silly."

"I know. Might as well make the most of our situation, huh?"

My calf was both burning and itching, so I paused to give it some attention. I raised my pant leg and scratched at my wound. My nails scraped away some of the scab inadvertently. I had peeled scabs prematurely before, and wounds always bleed as a result of it. But here there was no blood. It puzzled me. I then tinkered with a scab that had roots deep in my flesh. I felt the pain of it, but there was no blood.

"What are you doing to yourself?" she asked.

Instead of replying, I squeezed my wound, to invoke bleeding. I then scratched at it ruthlessly. Still nothing. I put a nail inside the pink tissue and pushed deeply. It stung like a bastard.

"I can't bleed!"

She swooned. I saw her eyes roll up just as she began to fall. I lunged at her and caught her, lowered her unconscious body to the ground.

"Julie? Are you all right? Julie?"

I knelt beside her, combed the hair out of her face. Why did she lose consciousness? I really doubt it had anything to do with watching me abuse my wound a little. It wasn't that disgusting.

I sat there at her side staring off into the distance as she slept. I put her hand in mine on my lap, laced my fingers through hers. She had said poor Chris. Yeah, poor Chris indeed. I wondered what this Chris guy might be doing now. Perhaps he was at her funeral this very moment, hating himself for instigating this tragedy. How could he live with himself knowing that she died because of him? I don't think I could live with that degree of guilt.

I reflected back to when Anna was a freshman at LSU. I had begun dating Mary shortly after she moved away. I was writing letters to Anna before that, but they pretty much stopped altogether after Mary stole my heart. I did call her a couple times, but most of the calls were from Anna's end. I remembered one such call. The reason why I remembered this particular call I couldn't say. At first. But sure enough there was a reason for it, and it would give me more heartache as I relived the memory.

"Well hello there, Mister Jeffrey Jay Jacobs!" Anna said when I answered the phone.

"Hey, Anna. What's up?"

"Just taking a break from studying for my English exam. It made me think of you, you know, studying literature. How are your classes going?"

"Eh, not bad."

She must have sensed that my mind was preoccupied. "So, have you met anyone in school yet? Any girls?"

"Yeah, one."

"Oh? What's her name?"

"Mary."

"Mary Mary quite contrary. Are you two dating?"

"Yep, we're kind of seeing each other."

"Really," she said, feigning happiness for me. "Good for you. I'm happy for you."

"Thanks. How about you? Meet anyone yet?"

"Nah. Well I've met some guys, but nothing like you and Mary. You're so shy, I bet she asked you out, didn't she?"

"Actually, she did. It was indirect, but yeah, she kind of paved the way for me."

"What's she like?"

"I don't know. Just a normal girl."

"I bet she's really pretty." (I imagined Anna looking in the mirror just then).

I wondered why she thought that. Mary wasn't that pretty, but she was all right. I didn't say anything though.

"And smart," Anna added. "Probably doesn't have freckles and I bet she doesn't stutter."

Okay, that was a little odd. Anna did have freckles, though they were scant and didn't diminish her beauty whatsoever. If anything, they were a boon to her allure. And stutter? What was that about? Anna didn't stutter.

"No, she doesn't stutter. Why do you say that?"

"You're so sweet. You don't have it in you to hurt my feelings."

"What are you talking about?"

"I sometimes stutter."

"Bullshit. I've never heard you stutter."

"It's kind of rare, but I do. You've heard it."

"Anyway, I should probably get in the shower. We're going to see a movie."

Silence on her end. Then, "I hope you'll still write me. And call me. Will you?"

"Of course."

"Good. I miss you, Jeffie. I mean Jeffrey. Sorry. I mean it, I miss you."

"I miss you, too." I put zero emotion in that sentiment and currently hated myself for it.

Another pause before she ended the conversation with, "I love you. Take care, Jeffrey." She hung up.

I looked at the phone a little thrown off by that, then hung up.

How could this not be hell? Remembering these things was torture. How could I not see things back then that are so clear to me now? She was contrasting Mary to herself, to see why I would choose a girl like Mary instead of her. Perhaps because of the freckles and stutter. It was heart wrenching. I had totally forgotten that Anna had said I love you at the end of that phone call. And the take care, Jeffrey, that was an almost farewell-sounding thing to say. And true enough, after that phone call, correspondence between us only grew rarer and rarer. It was I who killed our friendship, there are no two ways about it.

It's a hell of a lot easier to hate someone else than it is to hate yourself. Sitting there beside the sister of she who once possessed my heart (and let's face it, still does), I utterly hated myself. I deserved to be here. This poor girl at my side didn't, though. I had never been more sure of anything.

I checked the time on my watch: 2:15 PM. I wished time really was moving backwards. I'd give anything for a re-do (as Julie had so eloquently put it) on the bench outside of the Macintyre's that long ago autumn afternoon.

All at once I felt tired. Maybe it had been cumulative, but I just noticed it. I laid down beside Julie with her hand in mine, staring up at the gray clouds. My eyes became too heavy to keep open. I didn't fight it. I allowed myself to slip into unconsciousness.

I didn't dream. I was awakened by a mouth upon mine. I opened my eyes to see Julie's open eyes, bleary and sedate, smiling at mine. I tried to speak but her mouth was against mine. I turned my head and asked why she was kissing me. My words were slurred, as if I had a reunion with my old pal Johnny Walker.

"Good morning, sweetie," she said, words also slurred. She moaned and sought purchase on my lips again.

"Don't. Wait, Julie."

She made a game out of it, trying to catch my mouth with hers.

"Stop!"

She did take that to heart. She backed off of me.

"Why are you kissing me?"

"Sorry. I didn't think you'd mind. Oouu... I feel good."

I knew exactly what she was talking about, because I felt it too. "How long have we been here?"

"How should I know?"

I looked at my watch: 1:50 PM. If my watch was accurate (in its backward keeping of time) it had been about twenty minutes.

"May I kiss you again?" she asked.

"No! Why do you want to kiss me?"

"It helps. I'm not thirsty anymore."

Nor was I. "Kissing me made you not thirsty anymore?"

She nodded and waggled her brow devilishly.

"That can't be." I sat up. "I'm not thirsty, though. How about that? I feel... drunk."

"Me too!" She lunged playfully at me, put her arms behind my head and kissed my mouth. I kissed her back, and kind of expected a flow of liquid to pour into my mouth and satiate me. But that didn't happen, and her tongue possessed no distinction of taste. Her flavor was neutral.

I'd be lying if I said kissing her wasn't enjoyable. Joy didn't come cheap lately, milk it for all you can. It grew more passionate. I believe that it very easily could have escalated into sex. I had an idea that if we did have sex, that the sensation of being inside her would be neutral, just as her tongue's flavor was neutral. That truly is hell, when sex produces no feeling.

I pulled away from her mouth and said, "Let's think this through. Stop, please. Why did you pass out earlier, do you remember?"

"I don't." She leaned in for another kiss: I put my hands on her upper chest and pushed her away. "Aww, don't do that."

"I feel drunk, too," I said. "And I'm not thirsty. What happened while we were asleep?"

She shrugged, big cheese eating grin on her face.

I got up and offered my hand, pulled her up. I began breasting the hill, Julie close at my side, saying silly things. She was having all kinds of memories of her past, and felt it imperative to enlighten me of every single one of them. I was growing annoyed, chose to ignore most of it. Where the dirt ended, rock replaced, steep and growing steeper. We cut diagonally to lessen the angle.

"I couldn't believe he said that to me! Can you?"

I said nothing to her, was panting pretty hard. She wasn't even winded yet.

There had been no shift in the daylight since my arrival. It was growing later, contrary to what my watch would have you believe, but nothing had changed with the diffused light of the invisible sun through the cloud layer.

I yearned to stop for a break before reaching the top, but was resolute in my pace, in my purpose. I wanted to reach the top to look over. If it was more of the same on the other side, I didn't know what I'd do. What if this was all there ever was? Me and her, for an eternity, in this wasteland. It wouldn't have seemed like such a bad thing earlier, but damn she was getting on my nerves lately. She wouldn't shut up. She was drunk or high. I felt buzzed at the bottom of the ridge but that pleasantry was gone. Bloody distant. I had never been more sober. And my ambition of seeing over this hill was my saving grace. It fueled me as I went, even as this bumbling fool was like an anchor being dragged behind me.

"Do you think when Chris dies, he'll be here too? Is that wrong of me to wish he will be? That would be great if there were more than just you and I, wouldn't it?"

"Could you please stop talking, Julie? Please? I get it, you feel good and want to share it with me. But for the love of God, please give it a rest."

She giggled. "For the love of God. If you had love for God maybe you wouldn't be here."

What could I say to that? She had a point and I had no retort. My plea didn't go unheeded, though, because she did tone it down for a while. She kept grabbing at my hand, couldn't stand to not be holding hands. I needed my arms for balance and told her that. She huffed and folded her arms under her breasts to punish me. Punished me by not allowing me access to hold her hand. She was out there, all right. It wouldn't be a full minute later before she tried holding my hand again, and when I refused her she asked if I'd kiss her. I was starting to hate her. It wasn't her fault, but still. Something had happened back there to cause her to be this way. I had felt some of it too, but it had passed. I hoped it would pass with her before I throttled her to... well you can't die twice. That made me wonder. If I killed her where would she go? What a dark thought. I chastened myself for entertaining the thought. She was a pleasant girl when she was sober.

We were getting close and I was getting excited. I accepted that it wouldn't be paradise on the other side; no oasis and old friends toasting champagne and yucking it up. I'd settle for any view other than what was behind me. Perhaps just one other person. Someone else because I was beginning to feel lonely even with Julie in my company.

She had been silent for a while. I guessed her high was waning. Hoped it was waning.

"How you doing?" I asked her.

"Getting tired."

And she was, I heard it in her voice. Not sleepy, but exhausted.

"We're almost there."

"What do you think is on the other side?" she asked.

"No clue."

"I think there will be people. A lot of them. Maybe far off, but we'll see signs of them."

"I guess it will be almost exactly like what's behind us," I said. "No people."

The top of the ridge was too steep to climb. We had to walk laterally along it until we found a rock with wide enough grooves to make steps of. She wasn't thrilled with letting me go first, but I wanted to help her up so she wouldn't fall. She made me promise I wouldn't look without her.

True to my word I made it to the top and avoided looking down the other side. I laid on my stomach and reached down to her hand, pulled as she climbed. Finally we had made it.

At the top we walked toward the opposing side of the ridge. With each step the valley on the other side presented itself greater. We stopped at the precipice, which was steeper on this side, more treacherous.

More God-forsaken nothing. Dirt, rock, vast open hell. A more empty feeling there was none.

I looked over at her. Her eyes were sober and glassy, a solemn expression stole over her angelic face. Her gaze swept the valley, which was larger than our previous. A tear rolled down her cheek.

"I'm sorry, Julie. I wanted to find others, too."

"Why do you suppose your leg wouldn't bleed?" she said distantly. "Because the dead don't bleed. Just as the dead don't die."

When her gaze directed down the steep cliff, I knew what she was preparing to do, and only had time to call her name before she leapt over the edge. I reached out for her but couldn't save her in time.

She tumbled head over foot, again and again, and I turned away from it.

I backed away from the precipice, dropped to my knees and wept. If there was any justice in this universe, her passing from here would bring her to where she belonged: heaven. Her being here was a mistake.

Alone again. I missed Emmy. I wondered how she was getting along having just endured the death of her uncle. She had witnessed me die. Poor thing. I suspect I died of a massive coronary. A heart attack caused from seeing that hellish thing. It's easy to blame that thing, but how was my health really? High blood pressure and high cholesterol: yes and yes. A diet of processed foods and scotch. I had quit smoking, at least, but several years of that probably didn't unclog my arteries like so much Drano. It was also possible that I had died of an allergic reaction to that tonic Ernest fed me. God I hoped that wasn't the case. Emmy would feel responsible for my death if it was. Poor thing. As I wept there, alone in my misery, I pined to tell Emmy how I loved her, that this wasn't her fault, and that I was sorry for putting her through this.

I laid down on the rock and cried myself to sleep. A deep sleep. When I'd wake up nothing would be the same.

* * *

When I awoke I hadn't the slightest notion where I was. I sat bolt upright and looked around. I was in hell, that much I remembered, but my environment had changed drastically. I was in the same spot (I think) on the damned sharp rock, but my visibility was hindered by mist. Thick gray mist with water-weight attached to it. As if the dark clouds had dropped and enveloped me. Coupled with the intense heat, it was like being in a steam room. It didn't seem to be any later in the day. I checked my watch and couldn't read the time. My automatic response was to push the little button on the top left and damned if it didn't illuminate the screen. This was the watch from my childhood, though I still couldn't recall it. I remembered its functions oddly enough. It was 8:20AM. I had slept for five hours.

Fortunately my thirst was quenched, still. Somehow. Had it not, I'd be working on harvesting some of the moisture in the air, perhaps with my shirt, and sucking it out. That was one problem I no longer faced. Nor was keeping company. I had wished that annoying bitch would shut up, and now she would never make a sound again. Jeffrey Jay Jacobs the Self Centered, I believe we met earlier.

It was going to be rough getting a move on with no visibility, but I needed to be actively engaged in some mission, to maintain my sanity. The subsequent ridge recalled from recent memory (and now obscured by clouds) was a great deal away. Many hours of traveling it would take. I'd make my way there and take a look over that ridge. And then the next. And then the next, until something changed. Or until I found another partner, and next time I'd see to it that our friendship stuck. How shitty must my friendship be that my companionship drives people to throw themselves off cliffs?

It was deathly quiet. I wished Julie was here if for no other reason than to have another pair of ears to listen to my rantings. I wasn't fond of remembering my past, how I fucked my life up, and dwelling on it would just usher in greater despair. So I'd sing. My voice wasn't all that bad, and I'd be the only one who heard it anyway.

It was going to be real tricky descending this ridge, with or without proper visibility. I had all the time in the world so I'd spend copious amounts of it gingerly climbing down this cliff, taking breaks often.

The problem with singing is most of the songs I knew the lyrics to were love songs, and they would just make me more miserable. So I sang Oh My Darlin' Clementine. Emmy used to sing it when she was a kid, and she was cute as a hamster's nose as she did so. Facing the steep rock I slowly backed my way down the hill.

It was twenty minutes (I judged) and I had made little progress. Maybe, I couldn't be sure. I couldn't fucking see. But suddenly I saw something, just as my foot brushed up against it: Julie's white dress. She wasn't inside it. When I picked it up, it fell apart like a thousand-year-old piece of delicate fabric. I sat on my haunches, scanned the area for signs of her body. I knew I wouldn't find it, but it was an impulsive action. Could what have happened been what I had hoped for, that she was delivered to her rightful place? Heaven?

"Please be the case. God, if you exist, please accept Julie into your kingdom." Maybe her purpose was to provide me company for a short while before ascending to Paradise.

I continued down the hillside. The lower I got, the darker it became. The more layers of cloud that separated me from light. It got to be that I could scarcely see my own shoes.

I had reached the bottom. The tricky thing was going to be keeping a straight trajectory. There would be no way to achieve that. I sensed I should be hungry. Famished, even. I possessed no physical wants. I settled into a healthy pace along the dirt hardpan. I wouldn't be surprised if I walked smack into a rock formation eventually, if the cloud cover didn't relent. It was of little concern as I made my way.

There was a distant yowl of an animal. Or demon. Unlike the simian shriek. It bristled every fine hair on my body. It came from my left. Another entity answered the previous, and to my dismay it originated from my right. I increased my pace.

"Though in life I used to love her, now in death I'll draw the line. Oh my darlin', oh my darlin', oh my da-aarlin' Clementine."

There was a snort. A low deep guttural chuff. A beastly ejaculation that painted the most horrific image in my imagination. The damned thing was I couldn't pinpoint its location. It was as though sound got all twisted and tangled up in this oppressive mist and I couldn't make heads or tails of its proximity or direction, like I had with the previous occurrence.

"Ruby lips above the water, blowing bubbles soft and fine. But alas I was no swimmer so I lost my Clementine. Oh my darlin', Oh my—"

Another chuff, this one behind me and very near. I ran. There was a bat-like screech overhead. It wasn't near, but its subsequent screech was. I was at a full sprint when I tripped over a rock and fell flat on my face. I stood up and waited a moment before I'd continue. Listened. There was a plentitude of sounds, an array, most low and distant, but not all of them. New sounds were originating, alien sounds. When I felt something tap my left calf I cried out and ran again. Blindly ran like holy hell.

There was laughter from an omnipresent voice, like God in so many movies and shows, its origin all around me. A maniacal laughter that instilled the most fatal dread I'd ever known. As if it sensed my dread, its laughter grew more maniacal, and louder, more foreboding.

As I ran I perceived arcs of black like passing shadows through the mist. They were all in my head, I consoled myself. Maybe the mist wasn't so bad: I didn't want to discern what I perceived. At my right flank appeared the simian thing, pacing itself alongside me as if for sport. So close was it that I could distinguish its particulars even through this weather. Sickly green with a ghastly demonic face, fanged teeth and large protuberant eyes. Reflexively I backhanded it, striking it in the face. It shrieked and stopped, then cackled in a register redolent of humor.

If ever was an occasion suitable for a heart attack it was now. My heart was beating like a jackhammer, exploding in my chest, pushed to the limit. The encounter with the simian thing ratcheted up my pace to impossible speeds. I began faltering, damn near tripping over myself as I went. What stopped me were two piercing red dots dead ahead. I skidded to a stop and began treading backward even before my forward progression had ended. They were canine in nature, like red wolf eyes. What or who they were attached to was lost in the haze, but their nature was evident. They were rapacious, evil eyes.

"What do you want," I said in no more than a whisper. It was all I could produce.

The eyes bobbed up and down almost imperceptibly as it stepped toward me. I turned and took but one step when I encountered something I can only describe as an imp. A spritely little demon with a wide toothy grin and yellow reptilian eyes. Then another. And another. They were diminutive in stature, and thus I plowed between the lot of them and took to a sprint. Something hooked on to my ankle mid-stride, sending me to my face once again. I heard the padded footfalls of he who possessed the red eyes, and it was then that I surrendered to the moment, to my assailants. What could I do against them? The many scores of them, in all their corrupted breeds and perversions.

The thought I then clung to was I am already in hell, what could they possibly do to me? I was already dead, they couldn't kill me again. I rolled over on my back and sat up, anticipated the worst. And the worst came. The beasts and demons and ghouls and imps environing me lunged and pounced and pummeled me; bit and clawed and trampled me. Devoured me as I screamed at the top of my lungs. Into the black I went.

* * *

The alarm went off at seven AM and I rolled out of bed. I could smell the hickory aroma of bacon coming from downstairs. I loved it when I smelled bacon, and not because I loved eating it so much: it meant Mom was also cooking pancakes, and I loved pancakes. I looked out my bedroom window and it was dark. Low-hanging rain clouds permeated the sky. I took a quick shower, dressed, snatched the backpack from my desk and jaunted down the stairs, entered the aromatic kitchen. With bed hair and armed with a spatula, Mom was flapping Jacks.

"Morning, Jeffrey."

"Hey."

"Are you coming straight home after school today?"

"I was going to go to Anna's after school. Why?"

"I need you to help me clean the house. Your sister Liz is coming over for dinner tonight and has big news. I have a feeling she's pregnant."

"Really? That would be cool. I'd be an uncle."

"And I'd be a grandma."

"Do you really need me to help?" I was whining, a desperate plea in my tone. "I had plans with Anna tonight, important ones." It was a lie, but I wanted to see her. And didn't want to clean the dang house.

She looked over at me with a sidelong grin. "You really like Anna, don't you?"

"Not like that," I lied again. "She's cool. Like one of the guys. That's all. If she was a dude I'd like her just as much."

"Uh huh." She wasn't convinced. In fact, the twinkle in her eye said that she knew damn well what was going on in my head. My first crush. She wasn't my first crush but was by far the most crushed upon in my fifteen semi-agreeable years. She exaggerated a sigh and said, "Go ahead. I'll clean house by myself. If it rains, don't stay out in it."

"I won't."

Sure as shit it began raining. I was getting soaked at the bus stop. I jostled my way to the front of the line when the bus pulled up, and took a seat in the back-back, procured the spot beside me for Anna, who would be picked up two stops later.

At the stop before that five kids entered the bus, squeaking in their galoshes and rubbers. I was hoping Gwen would take the seat directly in front of me, and when she didn't I then hoped Tony would take it. Anyone but Jacob, who was at the back of the procession and not nearly as dumb as he looked. He knew where Anna would be sitting (beside me) and was surely licking his chops at the prospect of sitting so near her. I fist pumped and cheered silently when Andrew took the seat in mention; Jacob was doomed to take a seat several rows ahead of me.

When Anna boarded the big yellow Twinkie, my breath caught. Not because she was any prettier than was her usual, but because my breath always caught when I first encountered her after any stretch of separation. I smiled internally when she looked the other way as she passed Jacob.

"Hi, Anna," Jacob said.

Anna muttered something that might have been a greeting, but probably wasn't. Her eyes met mine and bunched up in an eye-smile. Say cheeese, pretty blue eyes. I scooted to the window and let her have the spot that my butt had warmed if only for a few minutes. That she sat in the exact spot I had just one second ago occupied was an intrigue not lost on me. Had I still been there and it was possible for two people to share the same space, our guts and organs and blood and skin and brains would be inside one another's at that moment. So creepy and so mystifying the thought was. Maybe it was more symbolic than anything: I wanted her inside me and me inside her, not physically but something more. Something better. I'm a bonafide nut-job, admittedly.

"Sup, Anna," I said apathetically. I was a real cool customer, all right.

"Hi, Jeffrey. How about the rain, huh? It was supposed to be sunny today."

"Yeah, I know. Hopefully it clears up. Want to hang out after school?"

"Sure. At my place, though. My mom made me promise I'd help her put together Julie's new bike. Can you believe that? A bike you have to assemble? I thought they all came put together, but I guess not these days. Knowing my mom, she probably bought it disassembled to save a few bucks."

"Why doesn't your dad put it together?"

"He isn't back from California yet. Should be by the weekend, though."

"That's cool. I can help put it together, if you'd like."

"That would be awesome. Thank you, Jeffrey. You're a sweetheart, you know that?"

"I do know that." I smiled playfully at her.

It began clearing up by noon. By the time school got out, the few remaining clouds were on the horizon. Being that my sixth period class was at the other end of campus, it was Anna's turn to save my spot on the bus. As I hulked toward her in the aisle, I glimpsed Jacob sitting on the bench opposite her. He was as close to her as he could be; any closer and he'd fall off the bench into the aisle. Anna was as far from him as possible, pressed against the side of the bus, her head against the windowpane.

"Hey, Jeff," Jacob said. He had been pursing a friendship with me for as long as I could remember. I suppose he figured the easiest way into her life was through me, since I had already proven myself capable of weaseling my way into it. I was indifferent to him. I refused the many invitations he had thrown my way in the realm of extra-curricular activities such as basketball, birthday parties, catching a movie, shooting pellet guns.

"Sup, Jacob."

I slid along the vinyl seat and butted up against Anna. She smiled and it tickled in my chest. I told her she was looking rather smart this fine afternoon. She said I wasn't looking so dumb myself.

"I almost forgot that tomorrow we have a minimum day," I said. "I love minimum days. Hey, maybe we could go fishing tomorrow afternoon. Scott told me of a really good place up at Kelley's."

"Yeah, sure. I almost forgot it was a minimum day myself. In a couple weeks we get a four day weekend. Can't wait."

"Yep, Thanksgiving."

I carried her books to her house. Anna is the only girl I know who doesn't use a backpack. And I have a sneaking suspicion why that is. More often than not I go to her house after school, and I always carry her books for her. Kids aren't stupid, they see this kind of stuff. They can put two and two together (most of them, at least). They see me carrying the beautiful Anna's books and assume we kind of have a thing going on. How I wished they were right. But I suppose I was like a front for her. A decoy. A useful idiot. Jacob wasn't the only boy who wanted her, and all those who were likeminded would see me carrying her books and assume the worst, and find a new girl to fall in love with. Yes, it is my theory that Anna didn't use a backpack just so I would have to carry her books home. Do you think I minded doing it? Heck no! I'd move heaven and hell for her if I only knew how. And I sure got a kick out of people glancing at the boy and girl walking together, and assuming I was her boyfriend. How I wished it was less assuming and more knowing. It was pretty ridiculous that I couldn't tell Anna how I felt about her. I kind of felt resentful toward her for not picking up on it—how unfair, I know. Any other boy would have whined by now after carrying her heavy stack of books day after day. They'd say, "Damnit Anna, why don't you get a friggin backpack already? I'm not your packhorse." But not this guy. I just smiled at her when she handed her books over, no matter how tall the stack might be. My arms were getting pretty strong by it. If she lived another mile away from the bus stop I'd probably look like that Incredible Hulk guy, Lou Ferrigno.

Little Julie Macintyre had arrived home before us, as middle school has an earlier quitting time than does high school. She was on the porch waiting for her sister. She was antsy, all right. She wanted that bike put together this instant.

"Mom isn't home for another hour," Anna said, "so you're going to have to wait."

"Nah, it's okay," I said to Anna. "I'll put it together, remember? Shouldn't be too hard."

Julie hopped up and down in her excitement. "I could put it together if I wanted to," Julie assured her two elders, "but just to make sure it's perfect I'd rather you guys do it. Be sure to do it right, please. Don't break it."

"We won't," I said. She sure was a cutie, especially when she got excited. She had that kind of face that if you stumble upon its equal on the back of a milk carton, you just feel sick to death. Throw some wings on her (she was already wearing a white dress) and passers-by might nudge their spouses and say, "Holy crap, look at that! An angel!"

Over the next hour we were in the garage with the door open. I had the two lovely ladies handing me tools that I asked for. That's right, I was calling the shots around here. I was tempted to have them bake me cookies. For this being a joint effort, it sure seemed like I was doing all the work. Julie kept making bets with her big sister: "I bet you can't do a handstand for as long as I can." "I bet you can't skip rope twice in one jump." Anna wasn't very competitive in nature, but she liked to amuse her kid sister and was a good sport about it.

I had just put the finishing touches on the bike, tightening all the hardware extra tight. I could just picture Julie crashing minutes after riding it, and it would be from some defect in the assembly of the bike: human error. Jeffrey Jay Jacobs the guilty party. I wouldn't have much shared culpability, either, being that this whole mess was saddled on my shoulders as the girls enjoyed one another's company.

Julie was eager to rip the bike out of my clutches and sail it off into oblivion. I was grateful that Anna refused to let her ride it until she gave it a good once-over. There would be shared culpability after all. Anna went as far as getting on it and taking it for a test drive, and there were severe consequences for that little act of mischief. Julie hollered after her, "Get off my bike! You're ruining it! You have your own bike, why do you need mine! You're such a bully!"

Anna told her to can it. A minute later ownership of the bike was transfered, and Julie had a smile too wide for her face as she rode it away. I was grinning as I watched it all happen. It feels good to make people happy. I felt pretty good about myself. I felt a whole lot better when Anna closed our gap and hugged me. Oh how I loved the smell of her hair. It was Pantene. The first time I smelled the scent I committed it to memory. When I was at Target some days later I smelled all the shampoos until I found Anna's scent: Pantene. From then on I washed my own hair with Pantene. I lied to my mom and said it was the only stuff that didn't make my head itch. But it smelled a little different on her than it did on me. Conditioner, probably. That and it was Anna. Anna breathed life into the unliving. If she wore gray, I suspect it would turn yellow. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but you get my drift.

"Thank you for doing that for me," Julie said. "You're the best."

"Was my pleasure."

She let go of me and let her eyes linger on mine a little. It was both a wretched feeling and a wonderful feeling being her best friend. I need not say why it is wonderful, but the wretched part is in that I am more like a brother to her than anything. I honestly wouldn't be that surprised if while hanging out together in her bedroom, door closed, if she got undressed and changed into something more comfortable with me sitting there thunderstruck on the bed. To her I'd be like a cat or dog there on the bed, indifferent to her bare body. Or worse, she'd cover her body up to spare me the indignity of having to view my best friend's naked body. Oh how horrible that would be! I was benign Jeffrey. Good ol' dependable, reliable, Jeffrey. Standing there in her panties and a bra, she might say, "Do you think this bra is the same color as these panties? My mom says they are but I swear the bra is more cream-colored than white. And look at my butt, does it seem to be getting a little fatter? I keep telling mom to buy non-fat milk but she keeps buying that damned 2% stuff."

I sighed.

She asked me to sit on the bench and keep an eye out for Julie zipping by, in case there was an issue with the bike, like something needed to be tightened or adjusted, while she went inside and got a big ass cup of iced tea. It was always just one big ass cup of iced tea because we shared it. Sure it probably would have worked out just fine with our own cups, but we never did it that way, and after you do something enough times it becomes how it's supposed to be.

I was sitting on the bench when the screen door creaked open and she came out looking like a million bucks. She had changed into a summer dress, light pink with big white flowers. I wondered why she changed out of jeans and a shirt into this. More comfortable, I guess. It made her even more beautiful, if that was possible. A dizzying concept. She sat down, dropped her purse between our feet and patted my knee, offered me some of the communal tea. It worked out great that we liked minimal sugar and a wedge of lemon not squeezed. I sipped it and returned it. I pretended to stare at some flowers in a nearby flowerbed, but really I was checking out Anna. I had gotten pretty good at pretending to study things near Anna. I never got tired of imbibing her sight. I could get lost in her looks for an eternity, and was working hard at putting in just those kind of hours doing so.

When she leaned forward to open her purse and extract Chapstick, the front of her dress bloused from her chest, affording me a clear view of her boobs. I had dreamed of this very thing for years, and now that it was happening I didn't know what to do. I sort of panicked. I looked away from her boobs. I was afraid she was testing me, and if she had caught me looking at them I'd have been busted, and that would be the end of our friendship. That was much too steep a price to pay to see her glorious cleavage.

But maybe she wanted me to see them. Nah, she isn't that kind of girl. But still, she couldn't be entirely ignorant of the collar of her dress being a good eight inches away from her chest, just hanging down there. I bet her boobs caught some of the breeze, in fact. And she was kind of facing me. Nah, she didn't do it on purpose. But if she did, God bless her enormous heart. That is charity for the ages, right there. She would do it, too, I decided. If I requested in earnest to see her boobs—the reason being that I am curious how boobs look and want to know first-hand—she'd take me to her bedroom, close the door, and show me her boobs, happy to be of help. I really don't think it would be sexual to her, but instead more like science class. She'd do that for me because I was her best friend, and she was mine. We'd do most anything for the other, happily. Gosh I love Anna. I really do. It isn't just an empty remark, no sirree Bob. I love Anna Macintyre. And if feels great to admit it, if only to myself.

It was then that I resolved to confess my love to her. A bold move it would be. But it needed to be done. Why should I be the only one who knows that I love her? She had a right to know. She applied Chapstick to her lips and straightened her posture, smiled over at me for no reason at all, and that's when smiles are their prettiest. Julie zipped by on the sidewalk honking her wha-ooga wha-ooga horn as she passed. She disappeared behind the tall hedge of the neighboring house.

"Are there any boys you like at school?" I asked her. My heart raced.

She grinned wryly. "Why, would you be jealous?"

"Just wondering. Jacob can't be the only one chasing after you."

"That Jacob is one persistent booger, huh? I swear, I should just go out with him once to give him the worst date of his life. Maybe then he'll leave me alone."

"You don't think he's cute at all?"

"If I did I wouldn't have turned him down all one-million times. My heart doesn't belong to that Jacob. Hey, it's my birthday in a week. What did you get me?" She smiled playfully at me.

"I got you a can of don't-change-the-subject-on-me."

She giggled.

There was something just then that I felt, like how you feel electricity in the air before lightning. It was beyond my conscious mind, but a kind of instinct. Or maybe it was because she so quickly changed the subject, which meant that she had something to hide. Heck, I played that same card with my mom countless times, and it worked more times than not. But it felt heavy, a kind of gravity of situation that was new to me. It was opportunity. I just couldn't put my finger on why exactly I thought that.

"So are there?" I pursued.

"Are there what?"

"Any boys you like at school."

The corners of her mouth upturned. "Why the sudden interest?"

"I'm just curious. We never talk about it."

She shrugged, looked away.

"There is someone," I said confidently. "Who? Do I know him? Come on, how long have we been best friends? Tell me. I'll keep your secret." I wished it was me. My how I wished it was me.

I was squandering my chance to confess my love for her. And what better timing than now? Now that we were on the subject of who loves who. She'd tell me she loves some athlete and I'd tell her I love her. Heck, half of us would be in love with the right people.

"Nobody," she said quietly.

Then it came to me so suddenly and fiercely that I actually stood up from the bench seat and took a deep breath. Yes! How could I have missed it!

"Your heart doesn't belong to that Jacob," I said.

She looked up at me with a puzzled expression.

"Don't give me that look. You said it, not me." Her face was a blank slate. I was getting no help there. "Anna, do you have a thing for another Jacob?"

"Why do you care so much?"

It was admission.

"Because. Because I just do. Do you have a thing for another Jacob?"

"For another Jacob? No." My how she looked nervous.

I sat back down and put my hand on hers. It would be the defining moment of my life, when either everything sank down into an abyss of crap, or rose above and became the first true day of my life, from which all other days were built upon; the foundation for a life of bliss, and that could only be a life shared with my sweet Anna.

I waited till her eyes were penetrating mine like my eyes were penetrating hers and said, "Does your heart belong to... Jacobs?"

She didn't respond, and I sensed if I waited too long the moment would slip away and I'd be forever reaching out to grab it but it would always be just out of reach. Yes, I could be a little melodramatic, but I can't help what I feel in my heart of hearts.

I couldn't believe I was about to say this. "Because if it does, Anna, mine belongs to you, too."

Her eyes widened and became glassy at once. That she was on the verge of crying filled my heart with joy. I hugged her tightly. Now that I knew she felt the same way, my confidence bound and I said something else. "I've loved you for years, I just couldn't get myself to tell you." And with that she actually wept.

" _Ooouuuu!"_ Little Julie Macintyre said as she ripped by us. "Jeffie Jeffie, kiss me kiss me!" She intoned as her sister.

We ignored her and continued our embrace. I could have held her forever. Turns out we'd be consoling a crying little Julie in a few minutes, scraped knee and all. She would admit that it was her own fault she crashed, not the improper assembly of the bike.

* * *

There was a knock at the door and I knew who it was. I stepped around my office desk and made haste to the door. Through the peephole I saw the concerned eyes of Emmy. They were the pretty blue eyes of her mother and grandma. I unlocked the deadbolt and opened the door, stood aside as to not look directly outside. I let my niece inside, wasted no time in re-locking the deadbolt.

Was she wondering why I wasn't dressed in a suit today? Had she ever seen me dressed in anything other than a suit? I couldn't recall, but I doubt she had. There's goes my vanity once again, in full bore. We hugged.

"What is it, Uncle Jeff. You have me worried."

"Can I get you something to drink? I don't have any beer, but there's some scotch."

"Scotch? I thought you said you quit drinking?"

"I did," I said shamefully. "I had a lot going on, a lot of deadlines to meet, and it just went easier with a little drink. That's the damn thing about drinking. How easy it is to fall off the wagon, but damn it's hard to get back on once you do."

"Is Aunt Anna okay with it?"

"She doesn't know, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell her."

"Anyway, what's this about? What's the matter?"

I exhaled slowly. "I've been seeing this man in a black robe lately. It appears that nobody else can see him. I had Anna look square in his direction and she saw nothing. I downplayed it in front of her, but she's more than a little worried for me. I told her I haven't seen it since. But I have. And it's been getting closer and closer to me. I'm scared, Emmers. I'm petrified."

"Nobody sees him but you," she mused. "How are your eyes?"

"Hopefully bad. But I fear they're fine." I stared at her a moment before saying, "Ever think about your mortality?"

Anna came home from work that evening, changed into something more comfortable, grabbed her car keys and asked if I wanted to go to the market with her. And if not, was there anything I wanted her to pick up for me. I told her I'd like a word with her before she left. Her eyes conveyed her worry.

"You're seeing it again," she said.

I sat down and waited for her to take a seat before confessing that I had seen it. "I see it every time I look down the street. And not just this street. South along any street. Baby, I..." It was hard for me to admit it to her. I always wanted to be strong for her, but the time had come to drop the pretenses. "I'm scared. It's getting closer and... I just don't know."

"Jeff, you know nothing is there," she said with candid sympathy. "It's all in your head, honey. I'm making an appointment for you to see a doctor."

"Yes, that will be fine."

She lowered her head and shook it in her hand.

"I'm sorry, Anna. I get the feeling that it's..."

"That it's...?"

"Death."

Her jaw slackened. "You think Death is coming for you?" There was raw wet emotion in her voice.

"I do."

"But you aren't ill! You're perfectly healthy!"

"Yeah, for the most part. I haven't exactly been doing everything I'm supposed to do, though. Like the pills for blood pressure and cholesterol."

Her eyes widened with anger. "Jeffrey Jay Jacobs! Why would you—"

"Because you can't mix those with alcohol."

The anger dissipated. Pain replaced it. We were back there again, alcoholism. That she wasn't angry touched me. There was nothing but compassion and worry in her eyes.

"Sweetheart," I said, "I'm going to stop. I swear. Do you believe me?"

She was crying. She nodded.

"I'll start taking them again. And I'll stop drinking, and stop eating all the shit. Anna, I have this recurring image of a guillotine. The blade is up in the sky, and is descending upon me, falling and falling. I didn't put much stock into it before I began seeing the man in black, but now I draw parallels. Like death is drawing ever nearer. The blade isn't too far away, that is what I fear, Anna. I should have told you this a couple days ago. I'm really sorry."

"I'm calling a doctor and I'm going with you. You aren't going to leave me here. I can't live without you."

"I swear things will be different from now on. Things will get better."

* * *

Chris was the first to reach the bridge named Devil's Crossing. With a slight slur in his voice he dared Alex to cross it along the outside with him. Alex called him a lunatic and said it would be a cold day in hell before he did anything so stupid as that. Jenn wouldn't even let Chris proposition her: she said she'd be taking the traditional way across, thank you very much.

That left Julie.

"Come on, babe. Don't be a pussy. Just hold on to the rope."

"Chris, you're drunk," Julie said. "Don't do that. Please?"

"Ah, I'm not that drunk. I've done it before. Come on!"

Chris swung a leg over the rope, then the other. He began side-stepping across the great divide. Below him white water rushed over and through a great many boulders. Julie caught up with him, but on the inside of the ropes, put her head inches from his and smelt the sour scent of beer.

"Honey, take a look down there," Julie said. "If you fall, you're dead. Get back over here this instant."

"You get back over here this instant!" he said and chuckled, side-stepped again.

"I'm only going to tell you once, Chris. Either you get over here and cross the bridge correctly, or this evening I pack my things and move out of your apartment. Your choice. I'm not playing, either."

"Jesus," he said with a screwed up face. "What crawled up your ass today?"

He threw one leg over, then the other, and together the four crossed the bridge.

### Epilogue

Julie awoke to the sound of knocking on the apartment door. She mumbled to Chris to get the damn door. He ignored her. The knocking continued. She got out of bed a little pissed off and put a robe on, looked through the peephole and was surprised to see her brother-in-law standing there. She opened the door.

"Jeff. What brings you by? What time is it?"

"It's like six in the morning," I said. "May we talk?"

"Six in the morning? Holy cow! I didn't know there was a six in the morning."

"Is Chris inside? Sleeping?"

"Yeah, of course he's sleeping," she said. "It's six."

"Look, there's something I need to talk to you about. Last night Anna told me that you were going to Lake Matthews today. Are you?"

"Yes."

"I'm glad I caught you before you left. Listen, Julie, don't bother asking me why I think this, I just do. Okay?"

"What? What?"

"I have this memory, or idea, or presentiment, or I don't know what it is. But I feel it, Julie, with every fiber of my being. I don't want to scare you more than you need to be scared, but know this: if there is a bridge named Devil's Crossing, and Chris tries to get you to cross on the outside of it, don't do it. Don't do it!"

"Devil's Crossing," she said knowingly. "Yeah, I know that bridge." She nodded at me. "I won't cross on the outside, got it."

### Afterword

The title Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, was conceived from the three parts of Dante's Inferno: Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. In Dante's Inferno, Dante travels through hell, into purgatory, and finally into heaven. This story is but a product of that idea, a trip from the hell of Jeffrey's one true love slipping away, into the Purgatory of reflection, and finally to the heaven that is redemption, of second chances.

