

## THE RUBBERBAND MAN

## AND OTHER STORIES

## Smashwords Edition

## Copyright 2013 by J. David Clarke

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

## ALSO BY J. DAVID CLARKE

### Missing Time ("313" Volume 1 of 3)

### Time Spent ("313" Volume 2 of 3)

### Time Lost ("313" Volume 3 of 3, coming soon)

### The Wizard in My Window (coming soon)

### Keeper of Days I: The Book of Day and Night (coming soon)

### Find me on the web:

### www.facebook.com/clarketacular

### www.amazon.com/author/clarketacular

CONTENTS

"The Rubberband Man"

"Victim"

"Green"

"Why Do Cats Have Tails?"

"Onion Street"

"Flag Burning"

"A Sliding Time"

"Rudy With One Hand"

"Visitation Rites"

"Quantum Theory and Tube Socks"

Free Preview: MISSING TIME

Free Preview: KEEPER OF DAYS
The Rubberband Man

Kevin didn't see them until he had walked halfway across the courtyard, and by then it was too late. They were upon him. Now they surrounded him, silent and accusing, and Kevin felt trouble stir in the air, trouble he had not felt since three junior high schools back. He did not like the feeling. The tallest of the six kids, a long string bean of a kid with a knot in his neck that made it look like a section of bamboo, stepped forward. He had apparently been appointed spokesman of their little group.

"You Kevin?"

"Yeah."

Another of the kids, almost as tall as Bamboo but with a muscular look to him that was beyond his comrade, spoke up: "You smart, Kevin?"

Kevin thought about this. In the ten junior highs he had attended over the last two years, he had learned at least one thing: smart was bad.

"I dunno. What do you mean?"

There was some laughter at this. Kevin smiled a blank smile, though he was more pleased than he would admit to them. Bamboo reasserted his leadership.

"Somebody wants to talk to you."

"Somebody?"

"Yeah."

"Who's that?"

"Nobody. Just come with us, and you'll be okay."

Kevin risked just a bit. "What happens if I don't?"

"Are you kidding?"

"No."

"We beat the shit out of you."

Which was, of course, what he had expected, but it was best to let the opposition think they were surprising you every step of the way. If you looked like you knew what was going on, you became less of a nuisance and more of a threat.

"Okay, I'm following," Kevin said.

As one the circle of boys turned and moved to the double doors that led back into the building, pushing Kevin along as if he were the hub of their group wheel. Bamboo remained in front with Muscles and the other four at equal distances from each other and Kevin. One of the boys, who wore a sweater and brown corduroy pants even though the day was probably the hottest of the school year, kept staring at Kevin as they walked. His right eye fluttered and twitched softly. He kept on staring even at the expense of his own footing, clumsily stepping on the feet of the boy in front of him, and he caused the circle to fray from the thing of perfection it had been in the courtyard.

Passing the double doors, the boys entered the lobby just in front of the school cafeteria. Not wanting to pause anywhere near that place, their feet plowed forward in confusion, and what had been a circle became a knot of bodies as they pushed through the second pair of double doors that led to the outside. Not just a courtyard this time, though, with safe school halls and authority figures within shouting distance, but the outside world, with kids lunching on the grass, sidewalk, and steps, and rent-a-cops whose rent wasn't high enough to warrant actual attention. And somewhere out here was a boy who wanted to speak to Kevin. Bamboo had said so, and he had said it as if it were true. No lie to lure the new kid out and trash him this time, just threats and bullying.

As they rounded the south corner of the building, Twitch Eye stumbled into the red brick wall. The knot of boys ground to a halt, and a horseshoe of kids turned on its missing link.

"Hey!" said Bamboo.

"Sorry, Tommy. I wasn't lookin' at where I was going."

Tommy, the Bamboo Kid, just glared at the misfit Twitch Eye and shook his head. "Loser," he said flatly, and turned back. The circle reestablished, they moved on. From then on, Twitch Eye risked only secret glances in Kevin's direction.

Now Kevin could see their destination: the trash dumpster behind the school. It concealed a fairly large area in the corner of the building, which housed fights every so often, but mostly it served as the throne room for the reigning king of Bannerman Junior High. Kevin tensed. He had not met Raymond Burke in the two weeks he had been at Bannerman, but he had heard of him, of course. Raymond was not the most popular kid in school, but he did have the most influence. Students went on the defensive when his name came up, and a suggestion that Raymond was displeased with a student was a guarantee that that student would be "sick" for days. In short, Raymond had pull at Bannerman Junior High.

As they reached the dumpster, Kevin got his first glimpse of Raymond Burke. He was a pretty short kid, all in all, under five foot two. He had short black hair and eyes that never seemed to move. They were dead still, as if he had the world in his sights and would never let it escape. He wore blue shorts and a white t-shirt, with a beer slogan on the front. How he got away with this (alcohol advertisements were anathema to everything high school teachers stood for), no one knew.

Raymond ran a thin hand through his hair, and the circle parted before him to allow him access to Kevin. The six boys huddled by the dumpster. Twitch Eye's gaze was now hooded, his head lowered.

"You Kevin?"

The question seemed a bit silly, so Kevin didn't answer.

"You know who I am?" Raymond asked.

"Yeah."

"Good. I want to talk to you."

"So talk," Kevin said, thinking of a word his father had taught him: _pretentious._ It seemed to fit Raymond.

"Yeah. Well, you're new here. And I wanted you to know who was big around here."

"Who?"

Twitch Eye's twittering stare flicked back up from the ground and rested on Kevin again. All the boys had jumped at that question. A dumbfounded silence settled over the place behind the dumpster.

" _Who_?" Raymond echoed the question.

"Who's big around here?"

"Me, you dumb fuck."

"Oh. Thanks."

Raymond reached into his right pocket and pulled forth something clumped into his hand. The boys leaning against the dumpster acted as if responding to a cue. They scurried here and there, setting up small objects. Paper cups on the dumpster, paper balls here and there in odd places. One overturned a trash barrel and on top of it balanced a book on end.

Raymond's hand flashed as he withdrew from the clump a single rubberband and cocked it between thumb and forefinger.

"Am I big around here, guys?"

Bamboo and company nodded assent.

"Hey Tommy. Am I big?"

Bamboo looked at Kevin seriously. "They call him the Rubberband Man."

Kevin almost laughed. Instead, he simply said, "Why?" in that annoying way he had of acting like an ignorant jackass.

" _Why?_ " The Rubberband Man did not seem amused by the question. His hand shot out, and his finger flicked. Twice. A third time. For each flick, a paper cup went sailing. He was fluidity in motion. Rubberbands seemed to appear on his hand and magically hit the target every time. Muscles backed up the barrel with the book on it six times, and no matter how far he put it, the Rubberband Man hit it with ease. Finally, he shot four at once (using both guns, no less) and knocked the book off the trash barrel.

Raymond the Rubberband Man smiled, and the others surrounded him and cheered, clapping and shouting praise to his name, all except for Kevin, who was unimpressed, and Twitch Eye, who was leaning against the dumpster trying to cock a rubberband. He couldn't get it to stay and kept prematurely flicking it off to sail harmlessly to the ground.

In the midst of their celebration, Kevin said what he had to say.

"So what?"

Dead silence. No one said a single word. No one breathed. A bell rang from somewhere, probably the end of lunch period. Fifteen rubberbands came and went across Twitch Eye's fingers (he had missed the whole thing and was trying unsuccessfully to hit a paper cup), and landed in the unmowed grass.

Finally, Raymond stepped forward and said, "I can hit anything. Anything! Try me!"

"Why?" What's so great about hitting things with rubberbands?"

Murmurs spread through the boys behind Raymond, who just stared, like a priest who has just discovered there is no God.

"I can hit _anything._ "

"It doesn't matter what you can hit. Rubberbands are useless."

"Shut up," The Rubberband Man trembled.

"It's true. Shooting rubberbands is completely stupid."

"Shut up."

"What are you going to use it for? Not many animals go down with rubberband wounds in the jungle."

"Shut up!" A glance behind him showed Raymond that not only were his bullies not helping, two of them had wandered off entirely.

"Never heard of a riot being stopped by police wielding rubberbands."

"Just shut up!"

"The President's done it, ladies and gentlemen! Unleashed the arsenal of rubberbands! We're all doomed!"

The Rubberband Man was silent. He had decided to shut himself up. Only Muscles, Bamboo Tommy, and Twitch Eye remained of his gang, and Twitch Eye was leaning into the dumpster, picking at something with his left hand.

Kevin seemed to think of something else. "Can you shoot a gun?"

No response from the Rubberband Man, but Bamboo spoke up for him. "Any idiot can shoot a gun. It takes skill to shoot a rubberband."

"If any idiot can shoot a gun, how come _he_ can't?"

Raymond's cheeks flushed.

Kevin went on. "My dad's got lots of guns. My next birthday he says he'll give me one and teach me how to use it."

Muscles' left foot drew circles in the dirt. He had begun to feel uneasy around this new kid. It wasn't right, him spoiling their good time like this.

"Maybe I'll come here, behind the dumpster, and show you what _I_ can do."

Muscles and Bamboo Tommy turned off and walked together back around the school and were out of sight before Kevin could think of anything more to say. Kevin was left with Twitch Eye, who was now toying with whatever it was he had pulled from the dumpster, and Raymond. The Rubberband Man was flushed, silent, and looking awfully alone.

There was a sharp sound in Kevin's ears, and he realized a rubberband had hit him in the forehead.

"Ow!"

Another zing! and he felt stinging pain on his left cheek. Zap! Whap! Two more hits.

Kevin said with irritation, "Look, this may hurt now, but it'll go away in a few minutes."

Raymond paled. His last attempt as the Rubberband Man had failed. He turned to leave.

"Scott," he said, "you coming?"

Twitch Eye was sitting in the dirt, playing with something he had fished out of the dumpster. He looked up at the mention of his name and shook his head, his eye almost normal, just a hint of batting eyelash.

Raymond walked away.

Kevin rubbed his cheeks, which hurt like blazes. Those things really hurt! His show of bravado had been just that, and he had barely kept a straight face when he told them his father was going to teach him how to fire a gun. Hoping he never had to look at this place again, he turned and trudged off to rejoin class. He knew he would receive an unexcused tardy, and probably a trip to the office, but it was worth it to see that pretentious ( _Thanks, Dad!_ ) kid get what was coming to him. Kevin decided it was a good day for d-hall.

Scott sat in the dirt and played with the object, a set of finger shaped rings in gold plated metal. He fit them over his fist, and the thing wore with a snug feel that was surprising to him. He hit the wall with his fist, and there was a satisfying thunk! without the slightest pain in his hand. His eye jumped and twitched with glee. Scott skipped off to class.

Silent now, the place behind the dumpster waited for his return.
Victim

8:27 PM

The man with the gun grabbed Roger just as he was about to turn the corner onto the street where he lived. He was passing the park only one block away from his own home, on the return leg of his evening jog, when he felt the hand seize his shoulder and haul him off the path by his sweatshirt. It was just beginning to get dark, and he saw no more than the barest glint of light off the gun, but he knew it was there. The taller man shoved him down, and Roger began to plead.

"Please, please, don't kill me! I'm not carrying any money," Roger said, lying motionless on the ground where the man had tossed him. He had never been robbed before and was not at all prepared for it, especially in his quiet neighborhood.

The man with the gun told Roger to shut up and dragged him to a position somewhere between standing and crawling on his hands and knees. He pushed Roger behind a tall row of bushes and told him to stand where he could see him. The man stood on the other side of the bushes and held the gun up, aimed at Roger's chest.

"Take off your shoes," the man ordered.

Roger removed his shoes.

"Toss them over here," the man ordered.

Roger complied.

"Take off your socks, and lay them on the bush," the man ordered.

Roger complied.

"Now take off your pants and underwear and toss them over here," the man ordered.

"...I'm not carrying any money or anything," Roger told him again.

"I don't want money. Toss them over here!"

Roger complied.

"Okay," the man said, "now, quack like a chicken."

There was silence for a moment. "What?" Roger finally asked.

"Quack like a chicken!"

"Chickens don't...quack..." Roger said confusedly.

"Whatever, man! Quack!"

Roger tried to approximate the sound a chicken might make while still trying to 'quack'. It was sort of a high-pitched KWOCK-KWOCK sound.

"No, no, dammit, flap your arms and shit! Like a chicken," said the man with a smile in his voice.

"What the hell is this??" asked Roger angrily.

"Start flapping, asshole."

Roger did his best to flap his arms like a chicken and quack with his peculiar sound. The man on the other side of the bushes erupted in laughter.

"Okay, okay, now say your ABCs backwards!"

Roger thought about it for a moment, then started. "Z, X, Y, -"

The man stopped him. "You stupid or what? Start again!"

Not realizing what he had gotten wrong, Roger complied. "Z, Y, X, W, V,U, T, S, R...Q, P, O, N, M, L, K, J, I, H, G, F, D, C, B, A."

"Jesus, you skipped E. You really are stupid. Do it again, and this time do it _fast!_ "

Roger tried to repeat the sequence fast, but he kept getting the letters jumbled. He was ordered to start over several times but could never get the sequence right unless he was given time to think it out.

"Okay, now, given that two times X equals five times X minus nine, with the X minus nine in parentheses, solve for X."

"Oh, come ON!" shouted Roger.

"What's the problem? Solve for X," said the man.

"Is this some kind of stupid joke?" asked Roger.

"No," said the man, laughing in spite of himself.

"Is that gun loaded?"

"Well, yeah, it's loaded," said the man.

"I don't think it's loaded."

"You looked so _stupid_ ," said the man, laughing, "quacking and shit!"

"That gun's not loaded!"

"Solve for X!" the man shouted back.

"No!"

"All right, all right, I'll prove it's loaded. Hang on a second, hey count up in odd numbers until I'm ready."

" _Odd_ numbers?"

"Yeah, you know: one, three, five..."

"What do you mean, 'until you're ready'?" Roger asked.

"Just count."

Roger began as he had instructed. "One, three, five, seven, nine...." He watched the man recede into the shadows behind a tree. He continued to count although he could no longer see the man with the gun. Thinking about it, he was no longer sure it _was_ a gun. The shape had been wrong. "Twenty-one, twenty-three, twenty-five..." Or had he imagined that? And what was the point of all this anyway? "Thirty-nine, forty-one..." The man had been silent for a long while now, and Roger could no longer tell if he was even there. He might have left Roger alone, naked below the waist. "Fifty-seven..." Roger became certain he was alone. The man was surely gone by now, and his pants were just on the other side of the bush if he wanted to get them and go home. "Seventy-one, seventy-three..." He could go home and put all this nonsense behind him.

But he couldn't be sure the man was gone. It was dark, after all.

"Ninety-five, ninety-seven, are you there? Ninety-nine...hello?"
Green

a brief tale of childhood

The house was lovely: a two-story, red brick home located in a beautiful suburban neighborhood, far from sirens or taxicabs or back alleys or fear. The yard was well kept, with lush St. Augustine grass and a small garden on the side of the house, bursting with flowers. Sometimes the scent hung on the air and made the whole world seem happy and peaceful.

The tree was enormous, an oak in the grand old tradition, with branches that spread out in all directions, perfect for climbing and exploration. Its canopy of leaves was like a green dome, a verdant expanse soaking up the sun. The family that planted this tree had gone some thirty-five years ago, but new families had come. Some had stayed longer, some for only very short periods of time, but all had been welcome in the shadow of the tree. The little girl, Carla, who climbed the tree almost every day now and watched the world go by from under that canopy, had lived in the house with her family for almost two years. In all of two years, the tree had never spoken to Carla.

Until today.

Spring

Carla propped herself between two limbs, so that they held her sitting form like two outstretched arms, rough but friendly. She watched as her brother and his friends played down the street. She had not been invited, of course, since Brandon and his friends were all thirteen and fourteen, and Carla was only eight. The green surrounded her: in the leaves, and the grass down below, a comforting color that seemed to support her just as much as the limbs of the tree did. She smiled.

"There they go," she said, with a matter-of-fact tone.

Around her the leaves rustled in the wind, and a sound came out of that rustling, a contradictory sound. From the papery whispering of the leaves emerged a deep, comforting voice. A father's voice.

"Do you want to go and play with your brother and his friends?"

"No," Carla replied without a moment's hesitation. "They're icky."

A trembling of the limbs served as laughter to the great old tree.

_"Good,"_ said the tree, _"I enjoy your company."_

Carla smiled. No one had ever said that to her before.

She spent the day in the arms of the tree (and they did indeed look like arms, almost bending to hold her comfortably), and when her mother called her for dinner she waited almost fifteen minutes before climbing down.

As she walked toward the front door, the tree called out after her: _"Enjoy your dinner, Carla!"_

She turned and looked up. "Hey! What's your name?"

"Mr. Green."

Carla gazed up into the crown of leaves and thought for a moment that it was a good name, a fitting name. Then she turned around and went into the house. She washed her hands twice before dinner.

****

Sitting at Mr. Green's base, enjoying the feel of soft grass and the comfort of the tree's presence, Carla watched her mother and father pull out of the driveway in their station wagon. The passenger side window rolled down hastily and her father called to her across the lawn.

"Be careful, hon! We'll be back from the store in about forty-five minutes."

"Okay, Dad."

"Brandon's going to be watching out for you."

"Okay." But she knew this to be untrue. Brandon would agree to watch her, but as soon as their parents were out of sight, he was off to play with his friends. Carla didn't mind. Mr. Green would keep her company.

With a cough of greasy smoke from its exhaust pipe, the station wagon rolled down the street and turned toward the corner, to pass from Carla's line of sight.

"Do you miss your parents when they go places and leave you behind, Carla?"

She was used to the way Mr. Green only spoke when they were alone, so she was ready for the question. "Well, kind of."

"Because you are all alone?"

"I'm not alone."

"Your brother never stays as he promises he will."

Carla frowned. "No. He's a jerk."

A gust of wind blew by, bending the tree over her in a gesture of concern.

"He is your brother. He loves you."

"Whatever."

"And I know you love him. Very much."

"I hate him! He never invites me to play with him and his friends." Carla had forgotten that she told the tree she found Brandon's friends 'icky'.

"I promise, one day you will have friends of your own to play with, and you will have a wonderful time."

Carla made no reply, but she looked doubtful.

"Until then, I will be here for you. Whenever you are lonely, you can talk to me."

Carla closed her eyes and leaned back against Mr. Green's trunk. It felt cool and friendly in the warm Spring air. The shade was nice, comfortable. "Do you ever get lonely, Mr. Green?" she asked through a yawn.

"Not anymore. You are my friend."

But Carla had already fallen asleep. The enormous tree stood over her sleeping form and steadfastly guarded her until her parents returned. It watched as they carried her inside, and the tree stood just outside her window as a sigh of wind passed through its leaves.

Summer

Laughter blew across the yard, and the tree was looking down on Carla, running through the yard with a spool of string in her hand. The string was that of a kite: a dainty blue affair that was just the right size for the bouncy little girl who was the tree's only friend. It had been given to her by her father, who now watched from the front porch, laughing along with her.

"That's great, honey! Just don't go out in the street, okay?"

"Okay, Dad!" But Carla knew this to be untrue. As soon as her father was out of sight, she would run through the street shouting and laughing and watching the kite twitter in the wind above her. The door banged shut as her father went inside, and Carla's sandals smacked on the pavement almost at the same time. Gusts of wind blew through the neighborhood, and Carla's kite whipped back and forth as the tree watched from its place in the yard.

Without warning, the wind changed direction, and the kite sailed straight into Mr. Green and hung there, caught in his foliage. Carla was afraid to yank for fear she might rip the flimsy thing, so she put down the spool in the grass and began to climb Mr. Green's trunk.

_"Be careful,"_ warned Mr. Green paternally, _"the kite is very high in my branches, and you have not been that high before."_

"Don't worry, Mr. Green," she said, and patted one of his branches. She continued to climb until she had reached her usual perch. Then she stopped. Above her, the branches seemed thin, very thin, and she had never tested her weight on those higher limbs before. Certainly they did not look as strong as the arms which had cradled her many afternoons while she watched her brother at play. Finally, shrugging aside her doubt, Carla climbed to the next branches. They trembled, but held. After a few moments, she was beside the blue paper diamond, and was extricating it from the tree. She dropped it to the lawn below, and considered how best to make her descent.

It was not clear how she lost her purchase on the branches, but she did.

Carla slipped and plummeted from the green pavilion like a stone. For one moment, she was screaming as she fell, and then, suddenly, she was at rest. She looked about her and saw that she was lying in the grip of three of Mr. Green's thick arm branches. Lucky, she thought, there must have been a wind that bent them just at that moment. As she climbed back to her usual perch, the branches assumed their regular position.

"You are not harmed, are you Carla?"

"I'm okay."

The leaves rustled in the breeze, a sigh of relief.

Carla sat there for nearly an hour, looking down at the kite. She did not fly it anymore that summer.

Autumn

She watched her father as he put up the storm windows, yet another in his endless list of "getting ready for winter" tasks. A grey, dirty cloud layer had moved in two weeks ago, dragging a fierce chill along with it. Carla shivered and buried her hands in her coat pockets. Yesterday, he had been putting in extra insulation upstairs, and she had been forbidden to watch, because it was "nasty up there". Now she was determined to satisfy her curiosity, no matter how cold the air outside, or how bad Mr. Green looked with half his leaves gone and the other half changing colors into reds and oranges and browns.

Carla wandered over to the old tree's base and picked up a yellowed leaf off the ground. The grass underneath was almost as yellow as the leaf itself. Soon, the yard would be "ready for winter" too, she supposed: all closed up and mothballed and insulated until it could open up again next spring. As her gaze passed up the trunk to the branches, Carla was again surprised by the change that had come over her friend in the past few weeks.

"Carla?" her father called.

"Yeah?"

"I'm done now, kiddo. Let's go back inside." He was standing at the door with his toolbox in his right hand, holding the screen open with his left. His face was red with the chill.

"In a minute!"

"Okay. Come in pretty quick though, sweetie. Mom will be upset if I let you stay out too long. You could catch cold." But Carla knew this to be untrue. Catching cold was just something parents used to keep kids from having fun, and all kids knew it, but parents went on fooling themselves into thinking the trick worked. Carla's father went inside, and she looked back up at Mr. Green.

_"Perhaps you had better go inside,"_ Mr. Green said, a bit weakly. _"It is colder than usual, this year. Much colder."_

"Are you cold, Mr. Green?"

A chill breeze rattled the tree's uppermost branches, and it was as though his teeth chattered as he spoke. _"Yes, Carla, I am."_

"Me, too."

"I think you should go inside. Your father is right, you could get very sick."

Carla started to turn, then stopped. "Do trees get sick?"

_"Yes,"_ the tree replied after a moment. _"Trees can get sick."_

"I wish you could come inside with me, then." Carla looked around, as if searching for something she could use to bring Mr. Green indoors with her family where it was safe and warm.

"Do not worry, Carla. As long as you need me, I will be here."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

Wind kicked up suddenly and leaves blew everywhere, enfolding Carla in a swirling cloud of yellow and brown. She turned and ran inside, and when she shut the door, five full minutes passed before the sound of those branches rattling in the cold wind faded from her ears.

Winter

Watching Brandon rake the leaves, and shaking despite the fact that she was wearing her warmest coat, Carla knew that the world teetered on the cusp of winter. The cold of early autumn now seemed minor to her, and all that was missing from the picture was the blanket of snow.

_"Carla?"_ Mr. Green called down to her. She was startled, because he had never spoken to her while anyone else was around. Her brother was across the lawn, and the whistling of the wind was high, but Carla kept her eye on him as she answered the tree.

"Yes, Mr. Green?"

"I'm very cold."

"Me, too."

"I am tired, Carla. So tired. It is time for me to sleep for the duration of the winter. I have been holding it off until I could speak with you."

"Why?" she asked, perplexed.

"Because there is no guarantee that I will wake up next spring."

"Huh?"

"Sometimes, cold weather kills trees even though they are asleep. They die during the winter, and next spring they just never wake up."

"Oh!"

"I wanted you to know, just in case. You are my friend."

"Are you afraid?"

The branches shivered in the wind. _"Yes."_

Carla thought for a moment. "I know what will help. I say this sometimes before I go to bed, it's a prayer!"

"Tell me."

"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Say it."

The tree's solemn voice floated back to her. _"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Green my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Green my soul to take."_

Carla looked up at the tree confusedly. Had it misunderstood her? She pondered this for a moment, and then her brother was tapping her on the shoulder.

"What are you staring at that tree for? I'm done. Let's go inside."

Carla said nothing. She smiled up at Mr. Green for a moment and then trailed after her brother. First one, then three, then dozens and hundreds of snowflakes, the first of the year, drifted down from the blanket of clouds and struck the ground. And as they fell, the last leaves of the old tree detached and fluttered to the ground.

Spring

"Just a minute, girls. I'll see if she's up to it."

Carla's mother went back into the house and the four little girls waited on the front porch, talking and laughing. Carla had made many friends in school, and discovered that quite a few of them lived right here in her own neighborhood. Now, with warmth returned to the world, they were ready to open up again, to come outside and play in the sun.

Carla came to the door and joined her friends. They walked out into her yard and for a moment they stood in the shadow of the old, bare tree that stood in Carla's yard.

"Honey, don't stay out too late," her mother called from the door.

"Okay, Mom," replied Carla, looking up at the tree.

"Come on!" Carla's friends were at her driveway already. She saw her father and brother out by a truck they had borrowed for today's work. In the back of the truck were all kinds of cutting tools. Her father stopped on his way to the front door when he saw her looking up at the tree.

She felt his hand on her head and he stood next to her, but she did not look at him. She was looking up, into the empty arms of the tree, and the sheer brownness of the tree disturbed her. The crown of green leaves had been stolen.

"Do we have to cut down the tree, Daddy?"

"Well, yes, honey. See, the tree died during the winter, and now we have to take it down and plant a new tree."

"Maybe the tree's just sleepy, and hasn't woke up yet."

He squatted next to her and put one arm around her. "I know you like this tree, but there are lots of others around here. Besides, you made lots of friends in school this year," he gestured in the direction of the girls waiting for her at the end of the driveway, "so you won't be sitting around in the tree all day anyway."

"I know."

"Hey, you know what?" her father asked with a grin. "We're going to be planting a brand new tree here, and it'll take a long time to grow up. Someone will have to watch over it, and protect it until it's big enough to take care of itself."

Carla's face lit up. "Me, me, me, me, me, me!"

He laughed. "I think you're the perfect one for the job."

"Yay!" she cried, and turned to join her friends.

Her father watched her for a moment, and then called after her: "Everything's going to be fine, Carla. You'll see."

And as she ran off down the street laughing with her new friends, Carla knew this to be true.

Kids were coming out everywhere now: boys, girls, all returning to the light and warmth. Teams were chosen, games begun, and the first limbs were falling in Carla's yard by noon.
Why Do Cats Have Tails?

Now listen up, you kittens, and hear the last story of the night. This is the story of a cat named Chaucer, who lived in a cottage in the woods with his human family. My mother told it to me when I was just your age, and if a word of it be untrue, may my tail drop off and my whiskers fall out.

It begins on a Spring morning, and twice already before breakfast time, the human mother had stepped on poor Chaucer's tail. She said she was sorry, but Chaucer just sat in the corner and licked at his tail softly, saying aloud to himself:

"How useless this tail is! It is forever being stepped on, or shut in doors. Why must all cats suffer so?"

A sparrow had perched on the open window's sill, and overheard Chaucer's words. Birds are the nosiest of creatures, and dearly love to eavesdrop. With a chirp of laughter, the sparrow said, "It is your punishment for chasing so many birds!"

"Perhaps it is so," answered Chaucer, "and perhaps not. I am only a housecat, I cannot tell such a thing."

The sparrow, perhaps mindful that Chaucer had not tried to spring at him, responded kindly, "It's none of my business, but you might seek the counsel of the Old Cat of the Woods. Perhaps she can give you an answer."

Chaucer pondered this, and as the soreness in his tail was fading, he decided to take the bird's advice. "Thank you, little sparrow. In return for your help, I shall not chase you today." He jumped up and out through the window.

At the beginning of his journey Chaucer was nervous, for the woods are perilous, but he soon forgot his fears under the warm morning sun. Once he came to a stream that he thought would block him, but he soon found a thin line of stones over which he might cross.

"Bless my soul, but this water looks chill. I hope I do not fall."

He did not fall, however, and crossed the stones with perfect balance.

As he entered a clearing Chaucer was spotted by one of the wild dogs of the woods, a fearsome animal with a shrill bark and snapping jaws. Chaucer narrowly escaped the beast by climbing up a tree. Unfortunately, the dog was able to shake its withered trunk violently, causing the limb upon which Chaucer stood to crack.

"Oh no, now I am surely finished," thought Chaucer, "for when I am hurt from the fall, the dog shall eat me!"

He was not hurt, however. Chaucer landed safely on all fours and ran with great speed to an old hollow log at the edge of the clearing. The dog howled with anger when he realized he could not fit himself into the log. He waited for a long time for Chaucer to emerge, but the cat was patient, and finally the dog gave up and left.

Soon afterwards, Chaucer came to the great tree in whose shadow the Old Cat of the Woods slept. This cat had all gray fur, and her eyes seemed misty and strange.

"Welcome, little cousin," said the Old Cat in a whisper of a voice. "What do you seek?"

"I seek an answer, kind mother. Why do cats have tails? They seem to be nothing but trouble."

"Trouble?" Her body shook with a cackle, and her whiskers trembled with mirth. Her clouded gaze seemed to look right through him. "No, my cousin. Think on your journey. You could not cross the stream without the balance of your tail, nor land on your feet when you fell from the tree without your tail to right you. Your tail may be trouble, but you would not be here without it."

Seeing the truth of the aged cat's words, Chaucer licked his nose thoughtfully. "Thank you, kind mother," he said politely, and turned to go. He had no fear of the return journey, with his tail to see him through. He held it up proudly as he walked.

That is the end of the story, and an end to the night's tellings. Now you kittens may not be in the woods, but put your tails to good use. Wrap them around you. Lay the tips over your noses, to keep them warm in the night. Sleep, my dears. Sleep tight.
Onion Street

"No one knows you the way I know you," she said, and James sighed.

From the way she was looking deeply into his eyes from across the table, he could tell it was going to be one of _those_ conversations. They started innocently enough, but always ended up getting around to little queries like "Just out of curiosity, do you look at other women?" It was a typical damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation. If he said no, he was lying, and she would tell him over and over "You can tell me, it's all right," and if he refused to admit that he looked at other women then he was holding back. If he said yes, though, look out!

This particular conversation was taking place at the Onion Street Cafe, a little spot with outside tables that were nicely shaded, but the warmth of the sun could be felt, and the breeze was quite nice. Rhonda was wearing a white blouse with a pair of tan shorts, and she looked particularly attractive today. Perhaps it was the light, but James thought to himself that it was the beauty of someone lit from within by the idea of knowing someone completely. She was perfectly comfortable with her certainty in that. She believed she knew every corner of James' psyche, had in fact explored and mapped them all herself.

James looked down at his watch. They had been sitting at the table for ten minutes, and so far no waiter was in sight. Begun as a means to pass the time, the conversation was taking a direction with which he was not at all comfortable.

"Well, okay, granted. You do," James conceded. Thinking he was a fool for pressing the point, he added, "all I've been trying to say is that you can't know someone entirely. You can't know everything about them. Right?"

Rhonda shook her head vigorously. "That's not true. You may not have been with them every second of their lives, but you can know them completely. You can know more about them than they know about themselves."

"Well, I disagree," James said.

She smiled. "You disagree because you don't like the idea that I might know you better than you think."

Truth to tell, James didn't like that idea, but he was not about to admit that to her. He drummed the table with his fingers. "No, I disagree because I think there're things about people that no one else can know. How their minds work. That kind of thing. I mean, you can never know what it's like to actually _be_ the other person."

She appeared to consider that for a moment. "You can know exactly how their mind works," she said, while playing absentmindedly with her pristine silverware, "and being one person isn't any different from being another. It's just a matter of your personality."

James stared down at his folded napkin. He concentrated his mind on taking over the waiter's body and forcing him to come to the table. Seconds ticked by before he gave up. "I just think there's more to it than that. People are fundamentally different. I don't think anyone can really understand what it's like to be another person."

"Well that's just silly," she said dismissively. James' eyes searched the ceiling.

From the next table, an attractive woman in her mid-thirties turned to Rhonda and said, "They hate to admit that they're so transparent." She indicated the man sitting across from her, who smiled sheepishly. She said it with a grin and there was laughter at both tables: nervous laughter on the part of James and Rhonda, that was a mixture of amusement and embarrassment.

After the initial surprise, Rhonda seized at the chance of acquiring an ally in her argument. "I know," she said. "They all want to think they're this mysterious breed." They laughed together.

James and the other man exchanged sympathetic looks. The man was older than James by perhaps ten years or so, balding, and wore glasses and a pocket protector in his blue shirt. He had "engineer" written all over him. Both man and woman were wearing wedding bands.

Attempting to change the subject, James introduced Rhonda and himself. Ordinarily, he would not have taken the trouble if the exchange had been in passing, but he figured if it sidetracked Rhonda it would be well worth it. The other man introduced himself as Michael Keller and his wife was Julie. Julie smiled and said, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to intrude."

"It's okay," said Rhonda. "We're just waiting for someone to take our order."

Michael leaned forward and said under his breath, "Every time I come here the service is so slow I promise I'm never coming back, but the food is so good I always do." James laughed because he felt it was expected. Rhonda smiled, but her disinterest was apparent.

"So how did you end up on that particular topic?" asked Julie.

"Who knows?" James said in a flat tone.

"Never a good idea to talk philosophy on an empty stomach," said Michael. Once again, James laughed.

Rhonda smiled and said, "Well, James is of the opinion that we don't know each other very well."

James sat there with his empty smile frozen on his face.

The waiter did him a big favor by choosing that moment to bring their water and take their drink and appetizer orders, a salad for Rhonda and a hot cup of broccoli cheese soup for James. James fell silent while he sipped his water and Michael and Julie shortly took the hint and returned to their own conversation. James nursed his glass of water in order to prolong the silence as much as possible, but eventually, Rhonda saw an opening to begin the conversation again. And she did.

"Well?"

"Well what?" James asked.

"So is that _really_ your opinion? You didn't say anything." She looked searchingly at his face.

"Is what my opinion?"

"That we don't know each other very well," she said.

"No," he said.

"Really?" she asked pointedly.

"Yes. Really. I never said _we_ don't know each other very well. I was speaking hypothetically, in general. About people. You know."

"Well, you did say that you thought it was impossible to know how someone's mind works, right?" she asked.

"Yes."

"So that means _you_ don't know how _my_ mind works."

James considered this. "Right," he said.

Eavesdropping again, Michael tried to help James out by saying, "I think he means he understands you, and knows you well, but he can't know you to the degree of knowing exactly what you're thinking. Because he's on the outside looking in."

"That's not what he means," Rhonda said with a tone that very distinctly said _butt out._

"How do you know?" asked Michael.

"Because I _know_ how his mind works," she replied, looking straight at James.

"It's true, honey," Julie said. "We know exactly what you're thinking. Even if you don't want to admit it."

"Oh, come on," Michael said. "I think what he's saying is that you can't know someone's innermost secrets."

"Not exactly," James said.

"Secrets?" asked Julie with a giggle. "Sweetheart, I hope you realize you stopped having secrets from me a long time ago."

Michael laughed. "Oh, you know what I mean."

"Well," said Rhonda, "I know what James thinks, and he thinks we don't know each other very well."

James sighed and went back to nursing his water. The discussion went on around him, but it drifted away from serious contemplation and into a litany of "You know what he did one time?" stories from Julie.

Eventually, the waiter brought their appetizers. He offered them freshly ground pepper, they both declined. He asked if they needed anything else, thy both declined. This time the light chatter continued right over the food, even when the waiter brought Michael and Julie's own appetizers: two salads. Pausing only to ask for more iced tea, Julie continued talking with Rhonda. James just sat and stared out at the intersection at the corner of Onion and Smith. He was thinking about his original point: that the tiny factors of a person's upbringing and surroundings, and major factors such as genetics, economic status, and education, combined in such a way as to make each person's very thought processes unique. It was impossible to imagine what it felt like to be another person, to think as that person. To truly know what it was like to be Rhonda, he would have to know not only what it was like to be a woman, with breasts and a vagina and menstrual cycle, but know what it was like to be a woman in society and in the eyes of those around you, and know what it was like to have grown up as a woman. So it was impossible that James could even begin to know how Rhonda's mind worked. It was similarly impossible for her to understand him. He nibbled at a butter-flavored cracker, while Rhonda looked at him and smiled.

"See," she said to Julie, "right now he's thinking about our argument and deciding that I was wrong and he was absolutely right. He knows everything, he has to be right."

Michael was curious. "Well? What were you thinking?" The unstated 'prove her wrong' hung between them.

James thought for a moment.

"I was thinking about Melissa," he said.

Rhonda was silent but Julie asked, "Who's Melissa?"

"My other girlfriend. I see her sometimes when Rhonda's working or out of town or something." James spoke in an absolutely flat, unemotional tone.

"Bull _shit,_ " spat Rhonda with venom. "You're making this up."

"Am I?"

Michael and Julie stared uncertainly at them. Suddenly their salads seemed very appealing.

James said in that same monotone voice, "She's five foot three, blonde hair, twenty-four years old. Gorgeous."

Rhonda stared, open mouthed.

"She lives," he looked north, "about two blocks over there. Right off of Onion Street."

"Are you being serious?" Rhonda asked. "Is this a joke?"

"We come here sometimes together. That's what made me think of her." Before she could summon a reply, he added, "No, I'm not serious. Yes, it's a joke."

There was no laughter at the two tables. Michael and Julie had drifted back to their appetizers, and Rhonda's eyes narrowed as she glared at him.

"Not funny, asshole!" she said viciously.

"I made it up. To prove my point. I just wanted to prove that you don't know everything about me. You can't know." He smiled.

She stood up from the table. "Son of a bitch!" she shouted.

"Rhonda," he said as he stood, "all I wanted was to show you that you can't know everything there is to know about a person!"

"I don't _want_ to know _you,_ " she said, and walked through the cafe on her way to the front door and the parking lot beyond. Realizing they had driven to the cafe in Rhonda's car, James chased after her, calling her name.

The salads were gone, and Michael and Julie Keller waited in silence for their lunch. It took the staff a full thirty minutes to realize that James and Rhonda's table had been vacated and needed to be bussed. Service at the Onion Street Cafe was slow.

Slow.
Flag Burning

Penguins cross the desert, flipping coins of blue fire into the lifeboat.

In the sky there appears an anvil, glowing with terrycloth oil. Sadness floods his perigee. But on he tumbles, spewing a sickening television sitcom. Imitations of glory, never a cashier's check, flash through his wristwatch and make him fear. Fear Andy Kaufman's ghost, which dances like a textbook on autumn hives.

Then it croons, that horrible pair of Guess jeans, and he gambles deep in his pores. His nose twitters between branches and his head does Elvis impressions in the dark. He begins an ad campaign, throwing swampland across the desk, hitting only a million seagulls. Tears cramp his sunglasses, and he knows the way to San Jose. Now, a vichyssoise tourniquet blazes its bus, and far in the next room is heard a librarian.

He turns on his pedestal, and before him flies an aardvark, its scales balancing in the moonlight. He varnishes a trophy, and sponges up the callisthenic goop. At his feet flops the soldier, welding a recliner to his doubt.

"HYPOTENUSE!" he salivates, leaving little stock on margin.

And in the colon of bliss, something slithers.

Penguins cross the desert, flipping coins of blue fire into the lifeboat.

But in the urine sample, the madness sleeps.
A Sliding Time

"Get out of the water, Tad."

Their hands clasped: his a warm, baked dryness, his son's slick with the pond water. With a lurching yank he hauled Tad out of the water and stepped away from the pond's edge, dragging Tad with him.

He leaned close to Tad and repeated: "Out."

His son almost seemed to flinch as he responded, "I'm out. I'm just getting out." Tad's eyes would not meet his, but shifted back and forth between the huge hot hand that now clasped his right arm, the two pairs of feet that stood planted in the mud, and the water. "Sorry."

Clifford Johnson didn't hear his son's voice. His eyes examined Tad's face with a burning intensity: every inch, each feature in turn. His hips were sore, and his left fist continued to beat an angry rhythm into his side.

"I told you to be in at nine," he said, as his eyes rubbed Tad's wet temples. "What time do you think it is?"

"I'm sorry, I lost track!" Tad shifted, then repeated, "I'm sorry."

Clifford's right hand tightened around Tad's arm but he didn't say a word, just allowed his eyes to roam Tad's broad forehead. Eventually his gaze skipped right off of Tad's head and into the pond water behind. It played among the tiny waves there, for a while. Just like his son, he thought with a weird flash, his son who was ridiculously called "Tadpole" by his friends, but when he came to this pond he never swam. Never even tried. All he did was sit in the shallow water and stare, like Clifford was staring now, he supposed. Sometimes he stood on the high rock embankment, crouched as if to dive, frozen. It was like he'd been painted there, or carved out of the rock itself. But Clifford knew all his son ever did was stare into the water.

"I told you to be in at nine," Clifford repeated for the water's benefit. His eyes sank into the dark water, and something there looked back.

Tad still repeated "I'm sorry" over and over as Clifford dragged him back along the path. But he was speaking to the air. Clifford heard nothing his left fist pounded a cadence into his bruises.

The anger had washed out of him by the time he sat in his white pick-up, waiting for Tad to get out of summer school. Summer school was a regular thing for Tad; it had become routine, and was no longer shocking or disappointing. It was expected. Clifford sat on the hot red leather seats and ran a hand through his sweaty brown hair. Brown _and gray_ , he reminded himself with a low chuckle.

He spotted Tad approaching with an adult beside him, an adult Clifford instantly recognized as Tad's counselor. Recognized, but not named. Clifford was bad with names. As the passenger door opened with a rusty groan and Tad hopped up to the seat, the closed the door and stood with his arms folded over the open window.

"Cliff. How you been?"

Red eyes looked back at him from Clifford's head. "Great."

"Great. Good to hear. I just came over to talk to you about a few things concerning Tad. Could we maybe get together in my office this week?"

"I have a phone," Clifford's voice said with a hard edge. His right hand turned the key in the ignition.

"Uh. Well. I tried to call you. Couldn't get through."

"Oh." Somewhere Clifford's mind registered that his phone had been disconnected. He neglected his bill for too long and they had disconnected it.

"It's just that Tadpole's been missing a lot of class lately and -"

"Don't call him that," Clifford's voice snapped in a low, angry snarl. "Don't fucking call him that!"

"Excuse me?"

Clifford's right hand lunged for the window roller, then changed course and went straight back to shift the truck into drive. The counselor stumbled away from the truck with a jerk as it roared to life and pulled away from the curb, throwing rocks and dust in its wake.

Tad stared at his father with frank amazement.

The truck drove onto their property without stopping at the gate; it was left open all the time now. Clifford passed the house altogether, and the truck rumbled and bounced down the largely unused part of the dirt road that led to the pond.

"Where are we going?" Tad asked.

"This is where you want to go," Clifford said. The anger had washed away again. His left hand absently rubbed his sore hip, like a missing tooth.

"Okay," Tad said.

Clifford stopped the truck and got out, walking down to the pond while Tad trailed after him. At the water's edge, Clifford sat on a rock and took off his boots. He stood in the mud, a soft squishing between his toes. He looked out at the water and smiled at its calm, cool blueness. The kind of blueness that was surprising in a muddy pond. Nearby, Tad stripped off his school clothes, revealing the faded green swim trunks underneath. With an air of ceremony, he splashed down into the water and sat several feet from his father. Clifford just watched him and smiled, the pain in his hip receding jut a bit.

"Dad," Tadpole said softly, "you wanna get your suit and get in?"

"Hm?"

"You haven't been swimming in a long time. Not since before..." His voice trailed off. He had almost said _Not since before mom died,_ but Dad didn't like for him to talk about that.

Clifford's face was warm in the afternoon sun. He smiled. Suddenly, he didn't care that his only son was lazy and dreamy. He didn't care about the counselor, he didn't care about the... _smallness_ of things. His anger was sliding down the back of his skull, down his back, pouring out of the tips of his toes to stain the mud beneath his feet. He smiled.

"Who needs a suit, Tadpole," he said suddenly and jumped in, showering Tad with cool drops.

It was now almost dark, and they had been roughhousing in the slightly deeper water, Tad standing at full, and Clifford crouching. Tad jumped up and climbed onto his back. "I'm gonna dunk you, Dad."

"Don't dunk me," he warned, grinning.

Tad moved so that his arms were around his father's neck and jumped, pulling Clifford forward with all his weight. It wasn't nearly enough to pull Clifford down, but down he went, nonetheless. A few seconds later, Clifford burst out again, sputtering in mock anger. "You better not do that again," he said.

Tad did it again.

Clifford's face was plunged into the water, which to his senses was no longer quite as cool. He opened his eyes with the intention of finding Tad's legs and dragging him down, as well. His eyes swam away into the water and something looked back at him and scowled.

Clifford exploded out of the water, eyes wide with fear. He gasped and pulled back. _"I told you not to do that, God damn it!"_ he shouted. he staggered up out of the water and stood in the mud, glaring back at Tad.

"Get out of the water, Tad!"

"What's the matter?" Tad asked, bewildered.

"Get out of the _fucking_ water right now!"

"No!"

Clifford wanted to drag him out, but to do that he would have to slog back into the water, and his feet refused to do that.

"Out, Tad!" he shouted. "Out! Out! Out!"

"You're scaring me, Dad!"

Clifford laughed. " _I'm_ scaring you? Why am _I_ scaring you, what the hell is wrong with you?"

"I don't know."

Clifford Johnson stepped back out of the mud. "I'll give you something to be scared of." He picked up a rock and fingered its sharp, dry edges. "I'll give you something," he repeated, and threw the rock just past Tad where it plunked into the dark water and something looked back at him and roared.

He picked up more rocks, from all over the place, and started throwing them at Tad, one after another. Tad cried and shrieked and moved backward into the deeper water.

"Where do you think you're going, stupid?" Clifford called, and threw another one. "You can't even swim." A laugh burst out of him. He threw another rock, this one hitting Tad square on the right shoulder, where blood welled out to stain the blue water. Tad just kept creeping backward.

"You can't even swim!" He laughed again as he threw another rock. "You're in this pond all day long and you can't even swim!" Another rock splashed near Tad's head, the only target left above water.

"Tadpole!" Clifford brayed with laughter. Another throw and a dull crack followed by a splash. "Can't even fucking swim!" All splashes. There were no targets left. Only a lot of dark stained water where something looked back at him and laughed. Clifford laughed with it. He couldn't even manage to throw rocks anymore, just rolled on the ground and laughed.

And sometime, during the night, the laughter turned to screaming.
Rudy with One Hand

He was the cruelest son of a bitch who ever lived.

Not all the time. Rudy was mean for a hobby or something most of the time, but behind the wheel of his car meanness was like a job, or bread and water: something that both sustained and liberated him. I guess I admired it in a way. He kept the one hand at twelve o'clock on the steering wheel, the left arm with elbow on the rolled down window's frame and left hand out of sight resting on the top of the car. The left arm never moved. When Rudy gestured, he did so with his right. He chopped the air like firewood. Driving in his car, where we were going wasn't important; it was the crude things he said and did along the way that mattered. Seriously, I would have thrown up sometimes if I hadn't been laughing like crazy.

It was a Tuesday and that meant Rudy and I were going to play pool at this little place in town. It was a nasty little bar that smelled like smoke twenty-four hours a day, and on a bad day smelled like urine, but Rudy and I religiously played pool there every Tuesday night. We hopped in Rudy's car and he pulled out of the parking lot at his apartments. There was a mean downhill curve heading out of the place, where Rudy was paranoid as hell. I mean he slowed down to about ten miles per hour every single time. I gave him hell about it, but he didn't care. It scared him, you know?

So we drove around the curve and headed toward the pool hall and all the time it was quiet in the car, which was unusual. Of course it was dark outside and the streetlights are traffic signals made the town look eerie and pale. I don't mean we were trembling with fear or anything. It's not like we'd never seen the town at night. But I'm saying we were subdued is all. Rudy was wearing his shirt that had a white hand on a black background, with its middle finger sticking up and giant white lettering that said, "SCREW YOU!" Ever since he got warned by a police officer for wearing that shirt, it was like a sacred relic to him. He wore it all the time. We went through an intersection where a rose vendor was walking up and down the median, and I had to laugh.

Intersections. Sitting at intersections and the people who were always harassing you: the kid with the newspapers, the weirdo with the roses, the old guy with the sign that says "WILL WORK FOR FOOD".

"Ooh, check it out," Rudy would say as he watched the kid walk back toward the intersection, "what an ass on that kid, my God! Bend over kid, squeal like a pig!" And he would laugh. Rudy had a laugh that sounded like he was actually saying "Ha-ha-ha-ha!" and he liked to laugh at his own jokes a lot. "I want you to roll up that newspaper and spank me with it, kid! Spank me hard, baby! Ha-ha-ha-ha!"

"Look, Bill," he'd say to me if the guy with the roses was walking by, "you gonna buy me a rose, big fella? Come on, sweetie. Ha-ha-ha-ha!" Looking back out the window, so that all I could see of him was his right sideburn, "No, I don't want a rose, you ignorant bastard! Wake up! No one here wants a rose!" If it was a Mexican guy, he looked at me and called him a dumb spic, and we laughed. But I don't really like racist jokes, of course.

"Will work for deodorant is more like it. Get a job, you homeless fuck! I got some food for ya...I got something you can sink your teeth into!" It wasn't what he said, it was the fact that he would say it that made it funny. He was just that cruel.

We passed through the intersection that night, and Rudy said nothing about the rose vendor. I laughed a little bit just thinking about it, but nothing was said. We drove in silence for a little bit, and I was fidgeting with my high school class ring. I don't know why I still wear it, maybe I can't get over the fact that I made it out of the place. Rudy was smoking a cigarette in the car, which was rare, because it was difficult to get it out and light it without moving his left hand from its perch, but he had apparently done so. His goatee had grown out a lot, I noticed. It was looking kind of ragged, because he hadn't shaved in a while, but Rudy overall was looking ragged. Maybe he always did. I don't remember.

We passed a woman who was walking the same direction as we were going, and I took the opportunity to break the silence.

"Hey," I said, "what's the verdict on her?" And I smiled.

Women. Rudy never failed to notice women walking on the sidewalk or crossing the street. He took special delight in watching the girls lying out in their bikinis and such. Girl in a T-shirt walking by, blonde hair. "Hey baby," Rudy would yell, "wiggle that thing over here, I got a quarter for ya!" And, as she walked off: "God damn, that makes me want to whip it out right here. And they wonder why we rape 'em."

Rudy didn't stop at making lewd comments about adult women either. Yeah, he'd see a little girl walking with her mom, or home from school and he'd start up again. "Scope that field, Bill. You don't need grass to play! If she's old enough to bleed, she's old enough to breed! Best thing about twelve year olds, you can shave 'em and pretend they're nine! Ha-ha-ha-ha!" It was disgusting as hell, but Jesus it was funny.

I smiled, but Rudy didn't seem amused.

"Dumb cunt," he muttered. And something struck me that had never occurred to me in all the times Rudy made his mean wisecracks: he was serious. He saw a good-looking girl by the side of the road and his response was "dumb cunt" and he was one hundred percent serious. I just sat there and watched the double yellow line in the road. I mean, I didn't know what to think.

"You want to stop off and get something to eat?" I asked. We were driving by our favorite burger place and I thought it might lighten things up a bit. Rudy glanced to the right and saw the place, and a dry laugh emerged from behind his cigarette.

Lunch time. We always went to the same burger place for lunch because there was a retarded guy working behind the counter. Rudy called him a "source of endless chuckles". Rudy made fun of him a lot and I guess I joined in a little, but you couldn't help it when you were with Rudy, that's all.

When we were alone, Rudy would imitate him, with the right side of his mouth drooping like a stroke victim or something. "Yoo wann fries with thaaat? YES I want fries you retard, now shut the fuck up!" Then he'd say in a conspiratorial voice, "When he's talking don't you want to throw a wad of paper in his mouth? You know you'd get away with it, he'd never know it was there!" I agreed. I suggested it would improve his speaking voice. I mean, I felt sorry for the retarded guy, but what else was I going to do? Rudy was my friend.

"Yeah, I could use a few chuckles," Rudy said and turned the car into the parking lot. We parked and went inside. Rudy straightened out his offensive T-shirt so that there would be no mistake in reading it. But when we got inside there was just some normal brown-haired guy with glasses behind the counter. No retard. I was just going to order some food, my stomach was kind of growling, but Rudy stepped up to the counter before me.

"Where's the 'tard?" he demanded.

"What?" asked the normal guy.

"Where's the god damn retard? I need a good laugh," Rudy said. Now I tried to step forward and get Rudy to leave but he just stood there.

"Look, all I want is the little retarded bastard who stands here every day!" Rudy yelled, and I felt myself go red all over. But I just stood there.

Okay, sometimes on our outings Rudy had embarrassed me, I have to admit. He had this habit of when he heard something on the radio or TV or saw something that he thought was stupid, he'd point his hand at it like a gun and shout "BANG!" really loud. He did this one time when we were playing pool and two girls were watching some talk show on TV. A woman was on the screen talking about something and out of the blue Rudy pointed at her and went "BANG!" The two girls, one of whom was really cute, turned around kind of pissed off and I said "Uh, sorry, we just took him off his medication today." A lot of times I would do that: make little jokes to kind of smooth over something. I don't know what Rudy thought about that. I guess he didn't care.

I didn't get a chance to do that this time, though. Rudy just turned around and walked out. I kind of mumbled an apology and walked out after him. We got to his car and while he was unlocking the door I said, "Why were you being such an asshole?"

Rudy looked at me like I was crazy. He said, "Hey Bill," and straightened out his shirt.

"Screw you too, Rudy, but you were being an asshole."

And then Rudy did something that really pissed me off. He made a little "meow" sound. This was his way of saying that I was being a pussy. Man, I hated that. Meow.

Cats. Rudy hated cats, and of course I loved them. When Rudy saw a cat he would shout and swerve at it and act like he was going to hit it. One time he saw a dead cat in the road and he ran over it. "Fuck you, cat," he shouted. I don't think he would have really run over a live one, but it still made me angry.

Okay, so now I was really mad. We weren't just quiet, we were fucking solemn. Rudy's Chevy was knocking and pinging its way to the pool hall and I just sat there and stared at the road. All I could think was how fucking stupid that meow thing was. I was a pussy just because I didn't want to be rude to people at the burger place. Did that make sense? No way. But once again the impression I got was that Rudy was serious. And as the leather seats were making my butt flatter and flatter, the idea grew on me that maybe Rudy had been serious all along. Maybe the jokes weren't jokes after all.

We drove up to the pool hall and got out of the car. I got to the door and started to open it, but Rudy held it closed.

"Stop it!" I said. I was in no mood. But Rudy didn't let go.

"What's your problem tonight?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"We don't have to play pool. You want to watch a movie?"

"No," I said. I just wanted to drop it, so I said, "It's okay."

"I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, sensitive man," Rudy said with a grin.

This made me laugh, so I said, "It's okay. Let's go in."

"Meow."

"Fuck you," I said.

"Look at you! Mr. Embarrassed. 'Please don't make fun of the poor retard, sir! Please, please don't.' Mr. Sensitive To His Own Feelings. Ha-ha-ha-ha! Outside, he was a typical pussy, but no one knew of the sensitive feelings he kept inside. Ha-ha-ha-ha!" He leaned against the door. Just then someone came out of the pool hall and the door shoved him aside. The guy coming out apologized, and Rudy said it was okay. Rudy glanced at me like nothing had been said, laughed, and went inside. To him I guess it was just jokes. Just like all the other things he said and did while we rode around in his car. Just jokes. I took the door handle and just stood there for a little bit, just trying to decide if I should go in or just say fuck him and walk home. So I stood there, holding the door handle, for just a little bit. A minute maybe. And then I moved.

What was I going to do? I told you, Rudy was my friend.
Visitation Rites

He plods down the hall, eyes shifting to and fro, hesitating to come to rest on anything. He fears that. Fears that contact, as if to look into the eyes of some long forgotten teacher or trapped student would pull him straight into their prison. The school is the same now as it ever was; only the names and faces have changed from when he was one of the prisoners. Walking past those blue lockers, paint chipping at the corners and joints, he almost feels he could turn the corner, find his old locker, turn the Master lock to the combination he knows so well, and look in on all his books and things. He resists the silly impulse to bang his hand against the lockers as he walks by. David Barrett hunches his shoulders, hands in pockets, and continues down the hall. I have come, he tells himself, to visit teachers, not to rehash my troubled youth. God knows enough people rehash their troubled youth at any given time without my contributions.

His eyes stray over the banners lining the walls, but he reads the slogans of the old ones, Class of '86 slogans and regalia. Boasts of the football team's victories. Even were he told of the 1991 seniors' despairing last place football standing, he would deny it inside, where it counts. To him, the Constables would always be the State Champions, as they were in '86. Green and yellow, victorious forever.

He is so lost in the past that he almost collides with the girl before he is aware of her presence. He brings himself to a halt not two feet from her. She is standing just outside one of the windowless wood doors: Room 149. Even though she is obviously too young for him, he feels an almost perverse attraction to her, her close-cropped blonde hair (he always prefers longer hair on women), those deep blue eyes, the halter-top outfit that seems so out of place in this cover-the-skin-but-fit-the-form generation. He feels almost a pull toward her, which he casually resists by leaning against the wall. She smiles then, a brief, intimate thing that lights up her face. And it must be contagious, for he finds himself smiling as well.

It seems that any minute the bell will ring and the hall will flood with students, kids her own age, who share her interests, kids who relate to this girl far better than David can.

She withdraws a cigarette from a pack (he cannot tell where she was keeping it) and holds it carefully between her lips. Waits. The words rise quickly in his throat: You can't smoke here. You'll get in trouble. But to speak them would be to forever betray her youth and cast himself in the die-hard role of adulthood, so he simply grins and draws forth his lighter. Lights the cigarette. Maintains the friendly youthful conspiracy.

"Hi," he says, hoping the word doesn't sound as flat in her ears as it does in his own.

"Yeah." She stares straight into his eyes, and he wonders if she can read the attraction there.

"So. Why are you out here?"

A blank stare is his only answer.

"In the hall. I meant." His right hand fidgets nervously with the lighter as he returns it to his pocket. A brief worry crosses his mind that he might set his pants on fire. Then the irony of that thought catches him and he laughs a dry, harsh laugh, a bitter chop of air that seems to fascinate the girl. It tugs the corner of her mouth into a smile, almost what David would call a sneer.

"I'm David," he says, as if this explains the laugh.

"Brittany," she says. Of course, he thinks crazily, aren't they all called that these days?

"Why are you out in the hall?"

"You keep asking that."

He frowns. "Well. I mean. You don't belong out here. Do you?"

"You don't belong out here, either."

"No."

"Maybe we don't belong here together."

"I'm positive we don't!" He laughs another of his short, shrill laughs and this time seems to irritate her. Good, he thinks. She's irritating me.

Her tongue moistens her lips and she says, huskily, "Why don't you just leave?"

"I don't know."

"Why are you even talking to me?"

"I don't know."

"Don't you?"

"No."

She moves closer. The cigarette between the first and second fingers of her right hand twitters close to his waist. Pants on fire, he thinks again, but this time he does not laugh. She lifts up to place her lips against his and as he closes his eyes, he visualizes the scene from outside, from the point of view of a hypothetical teacher who might turn the corner just then and see this crazy kiss between them and think all the wrong things. Or maybe all the right things. What's the difference? The bell rings loudly, and when he opens his eyes she has disappeared into the milling students from a dozen different classrooms.

David Barrett sighs and continues down the hall, pushing through the students. But whether he sighs with relief or disappointment, even he does not know for sure.
Quantum Theory and Tube Socks

There was a thump as Sam dropped the remote control onto the floor. The damn thing was out again, and he was sure it was the batteries one more damn time. It seemed the things couldn't hold a charge anymore than Sam could after scraping his socked feet across the living room carpet. Anyone else would have gotten up to find some new batteries, perhaps even (God forbid!) gone to the store and bought some, but Sam Darby was spending quality time with his sofa. He had been spending more and more quality time with his sofa, as well as the big-screen TV for which the Darbys had paid a fortune, for two weeks now. By some monumental coincidence, this period of time was synchronous with the amount of time Sam had been out of work.

Sam Darby was (or had been) a producer at a small cable station, which churned out such prime time garbage as _Secret Hours_ and _Speeding Bullet._ The latter had been his baby, his pet project, for the last six months. Had it been his own secret project, things might have turned out better, but everybody involved with KRIT ("The RIGHT Network for YOU!" the commercials proclaimed) had known: _Speeding Bullet_ was Darby's child. Darby had dreamed it up. Darby had gotten the support of station founder Ned Horner. Darby had done it all. Thinking of all the little coffee-klatches he must have missed around the office and all the closed meetings no one had told him about, Sam shuddered. He remembered the sympathetic looks of the secretaries as he passed through the office pool. Of _course_ they were the first to know; who do you think types up the god damn _memos?_ Nothing gets done at KRIT (or any other office) without the goddamn memos. Forget all the other series' credits in which Sam Darby's name had appeared. Once _Speeding Bullet'_ s ratings flopped, the show folded and KRIT was out quite a large sum of money. A goddamn memo circulated around the office, Sam had a meeting with his immediate supervisor, and faster than you could say "Nielsen sucks" Sam discovered an urgent need to spend quality time with a sofa and a big screen TV. The only thing to mar his quality time was the annoying habit the remote control had of running its batteries down.

_Now let's be honest, old buddy,_ Sam reminded himself, _one other teensy problem has cropped up from time to time._

The other problem was Lorna Darby, Sam's wife. She was a broadcast journalist at the same station, and right now she was probably over at KRIT complaining to her friends about Sam's new pastime. _Great,_ he thought, _who needs a goddamn memo when your own wife will gladly spread the news?_ Of course Sam chided himself over this thought, knowing his wife would not paint unkind pictures of him for the office gossips at the station. Nonetheless, the thought was there. Lorna was understandably upset over Sam's newfound lack of initiative. Actually, to say she was upset would be inadequate; she was _frantic_ over it. For two weeks, Sam had spent his previous few waking hours lying on the sofa, remote control clenched in his right hand, watching reruns of _Secret Hours_ and _Larraby's Law_ and _Night Nasties._ If some fellow with remarkably good sense, as well as a merciful nature, had not removed _Speeding Bullet_ from KRIT's schedule, Sam would have watched that as well. As incredibly inane as every episode was, he would have sat there and watched them all. _Hell,_ he thought, _if Lorna was kind enough to hand me the VCR remote, I'd tape the fuckers!_ A dry cackle rasped out of his throat, and Sam actually jumped at the sound before he realized it had come from his own lips. _That's it, when you're jumping at the sound of your own laughter,_ Sam told himself shakily, _it's time to get out of here._ To Sam Darby, "out of here" meant "to the kitchen", to fix himself a snack. Sam mustered a great effort and hauled his body off the sofa, pleased to note that his legs still functioned as they always had, and walked into the kitchen. Sam considered it wonderfully efficient that the television room was adjacent to the kitchen. Whose priceless gem of an idea had that been? Why Sam Darby, of course, the wizard best known for producing prime time darling _Speeding Bullet_ and...nameless others.

Sam slipped a bit as he stepped onto the tile flooring of the kitchen, and he looked down at his feet bemusedly. He was wearing a pair of gray-striped tube socks with several toes peeking through. A strange notion struck him, that all his toes were little piggies, just like when he was a kid and his mother was putting him to bed. The little piggies looked at him in a funny way. _This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home, this little piggy lay on the sofa all day watching_ Speeding Bullet, _and boy was it garbage!_ He tittered, and opened the refrigerator. His hand slid off the handle, and the refrigerator door barely turned on its hinges. Annoyed, he grasped the handle again and pulled the door wide, this time producing a more satisfying effect. This time the door swung open, revealing hidden treasures to Sam Darby and his stomach. Sam reached for the meat drawer, and that was when the strange things began to happen in earnest.

His hand went into the meat drawer. _Through_ the drawer. He never even felt the plastic handle. Never slid the drawer open. Never looked in to see what he wanted. His arm protruded from the brown plastic drawer like a stump. He pulled it back instinctively, with a shocked look on his face, and fell backwards, unable to gain any purchase on the floor. Lying there, trying to catch his breath, he looked down at his right hand: the one he had put through solid plastic. It looked fine, none the worse for wear. Sam decided to put this incident out of mind; he would forget all about it. He bent to stand up and realized...he had not felt his impact with the floor. Indeed, he felt no pressure on his posterior or back at all. Sam tilted his head upward to get a better view of his position. He had not landed so much as he had _stopped falling,_ several inches above the linoleum surface. He scrambled to stand up, reaching for the counter above him, but all his efforts went in vain: his feet felt nothing. His hands passed through the counter as if it were not even there. No, as if his _hands_ were not even there. Sam's head swam. His skin felt clammy and cold, and there was a sensation in his stomach as if he had swallowed something frozen. _I am fainting,_ he thought, and then he did.

Gradually, consciousness returned to Sam, and he was vaguely aware that he was not where he should be. Unlike on television, where people wake up not remembering where they are or how they got there, Sam knew exactly what had happened to him: he had fainted on the kitchen floor. _Above the kitchen floor,_ a voice whispered, but he silenced that voice quickly. But this was not his kitchen, at least, not any view of his kitchen with which he was familiar. First of all, it was dark, very dark, and light always shone through his kitchen window, day or night. Second, what he could make out looked to be a small area, made of wood, with... _Oh God, oh God, I'm dead, I died and my hands were passing through things the drawer the counter and this is my coffin oh JESUS!_ Sam screamed then, a short, terrified thing that cut off almost as quickly as it had started. _Echo,_ he thought. _Do ghosts' screams echo?_ Surely not, and now that he thought about it this was no coffin. There was a small, hinged door to his right, leaking in light around the cracks, and next to him was a cylindrical object, several of them in fact. They were about the height of Sam's head while lying down, and he could almost read the label on the one nearest his eyes. Rain? Raid? _Raid?!_ Sam shuddered. He knew where he was now: he was inside one of the kitchen cabinets, the one with the insect repellants and other nasty household items. He was lying with his head and shoulders inside the cabinet; the rest of his body must be protruding out into the kitchen, but he couldn't feel a thing. Not the cabinet, not the bottles, not the cans, not the kitchen floor.

Sam jerked upward in an attempt to get out of here, it didn't matter how but he was not going to lay here in the dark any longer.

Light, god damn it, I need light!

Sam's body hurtled through the cabinet door and he struggled to stand. His feet sank into the kitchen floor and his legs gyrated in useless running movements. His arms flailed around, whipping through counters, refrigerator, shelves. Fortunately, his body no longer seemed inclined to fall, or he would have passed through the kitchen floor, through the basement, and into the ground, only to emerge when he reached China or whatever was opposite him on the globe. He simply floated there, slowly drifting in the direction of the back door.

_Oh no! I'll float right out of the house! What if the neighbors see me?_ On the heels of this ridiculous question was another, more frightening prospect. _What if I was right before? What if I really am dead?_ A hideous newspaper headline flashed before his eyes:

PRODUCER OF TV FAILURE _SPEEDING BULLET_ FOUND DEAD

Wife Claims He Was a Couch Potato

Sam groaned. No! He could not be dead. He was breathing, thinking, panicking. These things just didn't happen to dead people. _(Wake up, Sam old buddy,_ said that annoying voice, _these things don't happen to living people, either!)_

About a foot from his back door, it finally dawned on him that he really was about to drift right out of his house. It was not all just a dream; he had inexplicably turned intangible and was now in the process of floating through his back door and out into the yard. This acceptance gave Sam a sort of detached sense of wonder as he watched his right arm and shoulder disappear into the wood of the door. Of course, he couldn't feel a thing, but it was quite strange to actually look at part of your body ending at a solid surface. Even stranger to watch that plane of contact grow and spread across your chest and legs. Stranger still to consider your head passing through that wood, to see the inside of the door without harming your eyes. Sam found himself flinching as his head began to pass through, but it really was not all that unpleasant. Unorthodox, certainly, but hardly unpleasant. He scarcely felt a thing as his brain passed through solid wood, never knew it when his synaptic nerves balked for a moment, creating an imperceptible pause in his thought processes. Then, Sam hovered on his back porch, the wind blowing against him gently.

_Wait a minute!_ Sam thought, surprised, _I can feel that wind! How can I...?_

But the question was irrelevant; the wind had begun to push him, first very slowly, and now faster, so that he crossed his back yard in a matter of minutes. Sam was still trying to figure out how the wind could touch him while solid objects could not when he went through the east fence and drifted into Gordon Seacourt's yard. For a few seconds, Sam was certain Gordon would be outside. He had to be. It was too awful _not_ to happen. But Gordon was nowhere to be seen. Sam's left hand passed through a tree trunk, his lower body among the tall grass and weeds. _God, doesn't Gord ever do his lawn?_ Sam thought with a smirk.

Sam meandered slowly past the Seacourt kids' sandbox. Like most sandboxes, this one was strewn with toys, buckets, shovels, and the like, but something was half buried in the sand, one corner flapping out. _HA! Kids got a dirty magazine out here, hidden in the sand! Last place anyone would think to look for it, all right. Surprise, surprise, Gordo, kids are growing up. Pretty soon you'll have to oblige them and grow old._ Sam laughed, mockingly, then stopped as he saw his new destination. His current direction of drift would take him directly into the Seacourts' house! Into Gordon and Marla's bedroom, if Sam remembered the layout correctly.

_S'okay,_ he told himself reassuringly as his body passed (What was the correct word? Phased?) into the red brick wall, _they're at work. Both of 'em. Saw them leave this morning._ Which, of course, was not at all true. Sam had been comfortably asleep this morning: all morning, as Lorna Darby would have been willing to testify.

Phasing into the wall, Sam noticed that his body had sunk lower into the ground; it was now at waist level. He phased through the wall and into Gordon's bedroom, just as he had suspected. As soon as his head was through, he realized something was terribly wrong. Low, exasperated moans filled the room, and realization hit Sam like a hammer: they were home, in bed, making love! Their bodies were just above his eye level, in the bed, not three feet from where Sam watched! And he slowly moved closer. The wind was no longer pushing him along, so his speed decreased as he approached the bed. Sam watched with a sickly fascination. He was too stunned with this turn of events not to watch. He had never before been in his life seen another couple make love. Oh sure, in the movies, but this was different. They were right in front of him! Gordon was on his back, with Marla straddling him...Sam gaped. _That's not Marla!_ It was some girl Sam had never seen before.

_Well, of course, you twit! Why would you have seen Gordon's mistress before?_ And behind this old voice came a smaller, more naive one: _Gordon has a mistress?_ Apparently he did, and she was beautiful. She had long brown hair, which at the moment was sticky with sweat and plastered to her back. She was maybe twenty-one, slim, with perfectly proportionate breasts, from what Sam could see through Gordon's hands. She had her hands on Gordon's shoulders and was powerfully pushing herself down on him, again and again. Sam was not at all surprised to feel himself getting an erection. _This is insane,_ he thought wildly, _I am floating here at waist level with the floor, watching my next-door neighbor make love to his mistress._ Then another thought struck him: _What if she opens her eyes? She'll see me!_ And, as an afterthought, _She's wearing Misty Evening,_ which was the perfume Lorna wore on special occasions. Could he in fact smell this woman's perfume? Maybe he had imagined it; the whole scene was making him horny as a madman.

As it happened, Sam didn't need to worry about being seen. He had begun to move under the bed, which was a problem: his head was not quite low enough to pass directly under the bed. It simply phased through the mattress, and he was treated to a view of sex as bizarre as he ever wanted to see. He ducked his head down as low as he could to avoid breaking the top plane of the mattress and having his head right in the middle of it all. The box springs creaked above him, the bed jouncing up and down, and Sam felt his body coming to a halt. _No_ , he thought frantically, _keep going! Float on out of here!_ But it was no use. Without the wind, his motion had begun to slow down; now it stopped altogether.

Sam considered his situation for a moment. Before, while in his kitchen, it was a frenzied leap from the cabinet that had begun his drifting. Perhaps he could do it again. He tried to plunge forward from under the bed, with mixed results: he moved, but only to rotate until he was floating horizontally, facing the floor. This was no good!

Above him the mounting passion had culminated in a series of short, piercing screams from the woman, and now the noise had stopped, except for a quiet panting. _Great! Gord's what? Five years older than me? and he can outlast this college girl!_ Sam knew that his legs were sticking out from under the bed on the other side. There was nothing he could do; if they looked, they would see him. Part of him laughed at his own predicament: drifting out of control, but praying not to be found by people who might be able to get help.

"Jesus, Gordon," came the woman's voice from above.

"We're intimate. You can just call me Gordon." _Ha-ha, takes a fucking and keeps on yucking,_ thought Sam bitterly.

"You were great," she breathed.

Please, God, don't make me listen to this. I'll go crazy.

"Mm. So were you."

"Did you..."

"Huh?" Gordon sounded like he knew what she meant but didn't want to answer.

"You know, honey. Did you come?"

"Oh. God, yeah. It was great." And Sam knew he was lying. He didn't know why the hell he was bothering to listen, but did know Gordon was lying. He had heard it often enough before.

"Did you?" she asked again.

"Yes!"

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry. I couldn't tell."

"Okay. Yeah, I did,"

"When's your wife coming home?" So she knew. She knew all about Marla. Sam didn't know who to dislike more: her or Gordon. He didn't know whether to give a shit or not.

"Around five, I think." _I think!_ Sam knew exactly what time Lorna got home...six-fifteen! _Go ahead, Gord, screw up your marriage. Mine is just fine, thank you!_

"Good," she said enticingly, "maybe we could do it again." There was a soft, wet sound. A kiss, Sam suspected. "And again." Another kiss. "And again." _Jesus Christ, does she want to screw him or kill him?_

At this point, Sam turned a bit and saw that he was drifting again, in fact was now halfway out from under the bed. He was still "on his stomach", but moving again. Soon, he would be through the far wall and heading into the space between Gord's house and his other neighbor's. Sam didn't know the guy's name.

"I love you, Gordon," she said, and there were more kisses, and a rustling sound as they moved together. Sam wanted to know what position they were going to try next, whether or not Gord would come this time, and if Marla would walk in on them, but he was now phasing through the far wall, and as the excited moans started up again in the bedroom, his head emerged into the little space between houses on the north side of the Seacourts' home. _Correction,_ thought Sam, _a house in this case is most definitely not a home._ The wind was blowing through this space, with more force than it had been before, and Sam was quickly moving toward the opening to Gordon's and his neighbor's front lawns. He would be in the open.

Anyone passing through the neighborhood or driving down Russet Drive would see him plain as day.

So it came to pass that sometime in the afternoon on a typical weekday, Sam Darby did burst out into the open front lawns of Russet Drive to the shock of a standing-room-only crowd of one: Gordon Seacourt's dog, Big Mac. The dog turned his plump, fluffy head to stare in Sam's direction with amazement, and then went right on munching on Mrs. Hackett's rosebushes. And who can blame the animal? While Sam's predicament might have been a parapsychologist's wet dream, Mrs. Hackett's rosebushes were the ultimate prize, the forbidden fruit. The Master on High had commanded with the crack of rolled newspaper that the rosebushes were Off Limits. Who could resist such a thing? Of course, this meant the one witness to the day's strange events turned a blind eye.

Sam sank even lower, until his stomach grazed the ground. Gravity must have been having some effect on him, however minimal, to make him sink lower and lower like this. Luckily, the lawns on Sam's side of Russet Drive were on a slight hill, and the ground dropped away from Sam a bit, leaving him some breathing room.

_Breathing room,_ said the voice, _apt terminology, Sam ol' buddy! Suppose we do sink into the ground? What happens then? We may be phasing through solid objects, but we still gotta breathe!_

Sam gave the voice his grudging agreement. He too was concerned about that, but it was not an immediate threat, at least. He appeared now to have about one and a half to two feet of space left before he would phase into the ground. In that time, he might turn back to normal, he might realign with the universe, he might --

See some more of the Gordon Seacourt peep show?

Sam shrugged off the voice without a reply.

All of a sudden Sam's thoughts and vision cut off for a split second, this time enough to be noticeable. For an instant he saw what he thought was metal, or plastic, and then he was looking at the interior of a car, maybe a Pontiac or Chevrolet, one of those big gas-guzzling models that you can't fit into a single parking space to save your life. It had a dark maroon or burgundy interior, and Sam had entered somewhere in the back seat area, his face protruding into the space between the back seat and driver's seat, just above the floorboard. His body was half in and out of the seat, and somehow he had come to a stop inside the car. Apparently the combination of the lack of wind within the car and the stronger resistance of the metal in the car door had brought him to a halt. So that was what he had felt coming into the car. Some property of the metal had slowed him down more than the other solids had. But what did that portend for his chances of drifting out of here again? Suppose he turned back to normal while he was inside some of that metal? What would it do to him?

_Will you stop worrying,_ nagged the voice, _what's the worst that could happen?_

The car's engine started.

Sam looked up, startled, and realized that there was someone in the driver's seat, outside his frame of vision. With a glance over at the passengers seat, Sam established that the driver was the only other person in the car. Had he been there all this time, or had he gotten in after Sam had drifted into the car? Sam didn't recall the sound of the door opening or closing, but maybe phasing through the car door had messed him up more than he thought. Sam heard the driver shift into drive (it was an automatic, like most gas-guzzlers) and then the car began to ease out into the street. It had been resting at the curb in front of the Seacourts' house, which is why Sam had entered it in this position, and now it moved onto Russet Drive heading south. Sam closed his eyes and waited for the car to pass around him, leaving him drifting above the street. The sound of the car still filled his ears. He waited. The sound of the car continued to surround him. Finally, Sam's eyes snapped open.

_What the hell is going on? Why am I moving along with the car?_ And answering him came the voice: _Who knows, Sammie, and who cares? We're taking a road trip._

Sam now noticed a distinct weave in the car's movements. It was lurching across the street and back again, speeding up and slowing down with irregular heaves. Gritting his teeth, Sam imagined the consequences should the car be in an accident:

FLOATING FREAK SURVIVES CAR WRECK

Wife Claims He's a Couch Potato.

What did this fool think he was doing? Sam now heard low mumbles from the front seat; apparently, the man was talking to himself.

"Bitch think she can do this to me! God dammit, I'll show tha can't do this, I'll show em." There was a slurping sound, and an empty beer can pelted the back seat and bounced into the floor not two inches from Sam's nose. Shortly there was the sound of a pop-tab being opened, and the drinking and mumbling continued. "Bassard won't get away with this!"

_Oh you have got to be kidding me, Sammie. This is right out of an episode of_ Secret Hours!

Sam had to admit, it was true. KRIT's programming wizards would have loved this. They had been churning out stuff like this for years, and now it was happening to Sam in reality. What a world!

The sudden jolt of the car's brakes being applied threw Sam forward, snapping him out of his reverie. It seemed his body wasn't sure which natural laws to follow and which to ignore. Inertia had shunned him before, but was now taking hold of him with all its might. Sam found himself moving through the front seat of the car and shifting to the right. His head emerged only a few inches from the right hip of the driver. Although only his head and upper shoulders made it through the seat before he came to a stop again, enough was now visible that it would be impossible to remain hidden from the drunk man at the wheel of the car.

For a few insane moments, Sam thought the man was too sauced to see him. For another moment, as the man's head swiveled to face him, Sam _prayed_ the man was too sauced to see him. Finally, as the man's eyes bulged and a slow line of saliva slid down from his gaping mouth, Sam gave all thoughts and prayers a rest. He was seen.

"What the hell?" cried the driver. He was clearly drunk, had a several-day-old facial growth, his hair was unwashed and there was a distinct _ode de man_ about him. "Who the hell're you?"

"Now just calm down," Sam heard himself say. The car was swerving in the road and Sam could distinctly hear the horns of other cars. They really were going to have a wreck!

"You calm down, y'sonova bitch! Get outta my fuggin car!" The man's right hand came down in a crushing blow to Sam's head, phased right through it, and bounced off the car seat. "Goddamn get out of my car!" He took his other hand off the wheel and began raining down blows at Sam, all of which simply bounced off the car seat and further frustrated him. The wheel listed sharply to the left and there was a bone-jarring thud as the car hit a curb, or perhaps the median between lanes of traffic. _Oh, Sammie, this should be fun. Oncoming traffic!_ The driver wasn't wearing a seatbelt, and he had completely abandoned the steering wheel. Sam was now certain he was headed for a serious accident. Fortunately, the drunken fool had also forgotten the accelerator, so the car was slowing down while crossing the median.

"Ghost sonova bitch!" shouted the driver, and continued to pummel the car seat. Sam just sighed and waited for the inevitable.

When the inevitable came, it took a different form than Sam had expected. The car rolled to the left and tilted dramatically. Sam realized that they had not been on a median after all, but headed off the highway toward the ditch. Now the car was sliding downward, and Sam was drifting up toward the windshield! As the car thudded to a halt, and the drunk slammed forward into the steering wheel, Sam flew through the windshield and out into the ditch, away from the highway. Fortunately, the wind swept him up and over the ground on the far side of the ditch, or he would have gone straight into the earth! Still, he had to fight to keep his head up, and a lot of his body did pass into the ground. If the wind stopped, and gravity again pulled him downward as it had before, he would be finished.

He gradually slowed as he drifted into a small wooded area, as the trees around him served as a windbreaker and began to stall his motion. _Uh-oh, looks like the jig is up,_ said the voice. Sam didn't even try to contradict the idea. It was true. If he didn't somehow find a way out of this before he dropped into the ground, he was dead.

He finally came to a stop in a clump of bushes between three trees. Most of his body was now below ground. His head, shoulders, and upper torso were still above, but hidden from view by the bushes. Unless he started shouting, he was unlikely to be found. And his body continued to sink slowly into the earth.

"All right," called a sudden voice from beyond Sam's sight. "Stop here." Sam heard the sound of footsteps just beyond the bushes.

"Get down on your knees," said the same voice.

Oh, what now?

"Okay, okay, Morty." A second man's voice.

The first man, Morty, gave him some other instructions: hands on back of head, facing the bushes, Sam's bushes. The second man seemed to follow them, and Morty worked on something, some kind of metal object...

A gun, Sammie. You've stumbled on some kind of hit job!

_That's ridiculous,_ Sam replied.

"Hey Morty, my family will be taken care of, right?"

"You know Sabini keeps his word, Sal."

_Holy shit,_ thought Sam, _the season cliffhanger from_ Speeding Bullet _!_

Yeah, Sammie, but the next season never happened. Looks like we get to be the lucky ones who find out how it all wrapped up.

For a second, Sam wasn't sure what to do. Surely he couldn't just sit here and let the man die!

"HEY!" shouted Sam.

"What the fuck? Who's in there?" Morty's hand pushed back the bushes to reveal Sam, who was now only a head protruding from solid ground. Morty stomped back the bushes, flattening them so that he could get at Sam. "What the hell is this?"

Sam tried to put on a gruff, menacing voice. "LEAVE HIM ALONE!"

"Fuck you," said Morty. "Who the fuck are you, anyway?" Morty was hardly a frightening man. He was fiftyish, graying, with a large beer belly.

"I AM," Sam paused for effect, "YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE!" What the hell, it had worked for TV vigilante Luke Larraby for four seasons.

"Hardly, dickweed. Why in hell are you buried up to your neck in the middle of the woods?" He was holding his gun up, aimed at Sam's head.

Sam raised a hand up out of the ground, over his head. "I'M NOT BURIED."

"Holy _shit!_ " Morty fired a shot into Sam's head. Momentarily, his thoughts stopped and things went black, then he could see again and he knew the bullet had passed through and impacted with the earth. "Motherfucker, what are you? Some kinda god damn ghost?" Morty tramped down the rest of the bushes and fired repeatedly into Sam's head. The other man, Sal, quietly slipped away during this commotion. Morty paid him no heed. He continued to fire, which was actually beginning to be painful for Sam. His thoughts kept being disrupted over and over.

Fortunately, by trampling the bushes, Morty had allowed what wind there was access to Sam. He began to drift again, and his direction of drift took him over an area where the ground dropped away slightly. A good updraft would carry him right out of danger. However, Morty was not about to let Sam get away. He followed him, firing every once in a while despite the fact that it was having no effect. When Sam floated out of the woods, Morty ran after him, even when it seemed obvious Sam was going too fast for him to keep up.

Sam looked around and saw he was headed for the highway again. Soon, he would fly across it, and everyone driving by would see him! That, however, turned out to be the least of his problems. He heard a car start up, and a dark green sedan pulled out of a small road which led into the woods. Morty. As Sam drifted toward the high way, the car bolted to catch up with him. Morty drove out onto the highway at full tilt, causing several cars to swerve out of his way, just as Sam floated over the asphalt ahead of him. Morty gunned the accelerator and drove straight for him. Sam did not exactly feel the bumper, or the car's grill, but he did not pass through it either. Once again, the metal of the car impeded him. Morty could still see him, looking out over the hood, and so he sped up, pushing Sam forward with the car. Sam became aware of another car in front of them.

_He's gonna ram it,_ said the voice, _Sammie sandwich!_

Sam Darby screamed. Morty pushed the accelerator to the floor, and rammed the car in front of him, a sporty blue thing. The two cars crushed together with enormous force, and then spun out of control as they locked. They flipped to the right, hitting another car and knocking it off the road. Behind them car after car swerved to avoid the wreck, hitting each other and making little accident-spawn all over the highway. Traffic was disrupted for miles. Morty was thrown from his sedan and landed in the ditch, right next to a drunk who was puking his guts out and moaning something about a ghost. Morty had some broken bones and lacerations, but would live. He wished he hadn't, though, when Sabini heard his stories of letting Sal escape because of a ghost.

Gradually, consciousness returned to Sam Darby, and he was vaguely aware that he was not where he should be. Apparently, being smashed between two cars had shut his brain down entirely, and he had drifted, unconscious. It was now late afternoon, or early evening. Sam was meandering down Russet Drive, a couple of feet above the road, slowly moving in the direction of...his house!

I don't believe it.

Big Mac was lying peacefully in front of Mrs. Hackett's former rosebushes, apparently sated and content. He raised one ear and peeked out as he saw Sam levitating off the ground and passing over the lawn toward his front door. Marla Seacourt's car was parked behind Gordon's in their driveway, and Sam couldn't help but wonder if she had gotten home in time to catch ol' Gord in the act. Perversely, Sam hoped so. As Sam phased through the wall into his TV room, Big Mac's other ear perked up to the sound of Lorna Darby's white Buick as it came down Russet Drive from the north and pulled into the Darby's driveway just in time to miss the sight of Sam's tube-socked little piggies sticking out of solid brick.

Sam found himself hovering barely an inch over the sofa where he had been watching TV only a few hours ago. His precious big-screen tube was still tuned to KRIT. Mercifully, the station was broadcasting news instead of its so-called "entertainment". He found himself remembering an incident from his childhood. when a friend of his had been bouncing a basketball against a wall.

See, Sam, the reason the ball bounces is because its molecules are hutting the molecules of the wall. So, eventually, after a million million bounces, the molecules should miss each other and the ball should go right through. Cool, huh?

The front door clicked open, and Sam heard Lorna enter the house. No sooner had he registered this thought than he felt his body plop down in its familiar position on the sofa. Sam was stunned. He sat bolt upright, reveling in the sensation of feeling things again: the sofa, the floor under his feet, the pillow. Sam was back.

Lorna walked in and sighed in frustration. "Sam, have you been watching TV all day?"

Watching all the bounces I've taken in the past, you mean. Waiting to pass through and come out the other side.

Sam stood up and walked over and kissed her. She was so surprised she didn't even say anything, just stood there while he hugged her to him. "Honey," he said, "yes I did. And I'm sorry. But I think it's time I got back to doing what I do best."

"Which is?" she asked.

PRODUCER OF TV'S HOTTEST NEW SENSATION " _JUST A PHASE"_ SPEAKS OUT

Wife Claims He's One in a Million.

### As a special bonus, please enjoy a free preview of the prologue to the first volume of my science fiction series "313": MISSING TIME.

Eight students. A lonely bridge on a dark night. When their school bus careens off the bridge and crashes into the river, they are lucky just to survive. But soon, they discover they possess strange powers, like the power to read minds, to fly, or to resurrect the dead. And that's just the beginning. None of them knows exactly what happened, and each remembers something different. Now, they are being hunted down one by one, and to survive they must piece together their memories and solve the mystery of the missing time.

### Enjoy the free preview, and make sure to pick up MISSING TIME, now available! Volume 2, TIME SPENT, will be launched October 15, 2013!
Prologue

### "You were on the bus with me."

The bass was pounding loud enough to shake his head apart, but Ryan's eyes stayed fixed on her.

His tongue flicked his teeth as he watched her body undulate in her little gray dress. Dirty blonde hair trailed all the way down her back, the tips just brushing her ass.

_That ass,_ he thought to himself, running a hand through his hair.

I'm gonna ruin that later.

As if on cue, the girl turned around. She almost seemed to search the crowd around Ryan with her eyes, bright green eyes. There was no way he could see them from here, but he did. Then, with a strange certainty, the eyes settled on him. She looked right into his eyes, and she smiled.

_Oh yeah,_ Ryan thought and grinned, _I'm about to fuck this bitch up._

She maneuvered up to him with impossible grace, weaving her body up against him, passing through the throng of dancers, pressing him against the wall, and proceeded to grind against him, causing Ryan to feel his cock wake up and go rock hard. Ryan swallowed, and put his arms around her. He tried to dance with her, but she held him that way, he was not sure exactly how.

"I'm Ryan," he said.

She grinned, a twinkle in her striking green eyes. "I know."

"We should get a drink," Ryan whispered in her ear.

Once he got her to the bar, it would be easy to get the pill into her glass. He had done it before. Then it was just a matter of getting her outside to his car, once the pill started to kick in, and he'd be good to go. He could do whatever he wanted. He looked down at her body, thinking of all the things he would do to it.

"I have a better idea," she said. Her green eyes flashed.

Something happened.

Something was not right.

Her eyes were all he could see. They were all around him. Running inside his head and keeping him trapped there.

She laughed, and her voice, inside his head, said:

HHOW ABOUT WE HAVE SOME REAL FUN, YOU FUCKING SCUMBAGG

Ryan tried to speak, but nothing came out. His legs were moving on their own, walking him toward the door, with the girl following after. He tried to scream, to wave, to do anything to stop from going with the girl, but his body would not obey him. When he got to the door, his impulse was to reach his hand out and push the bar, but her eyes (those striking green eyes) flashed in his mind, and he found his head bowing forward. He smacked the door with his forehead, knocking it open but causing a spray of color to cloud his vision.

"Baby!" she said from behind him, and he felt her hot hands take his arm. She laughed to the bouncer at the door, "He's had a little too much to drink, poor thing!"

Ryan tried to scream to the bouncer but he couldn't even see him, much less say anything.

"You two need a cab?" a male voice nearby asked.

_No!_ Ryan screamed in his head. _Help me!_

"We're fine," she said sweetly, "our car is right outside."

KKEEP SCREAMING I LOVE ITT

By the time Ryan's vision cleared, his legs had taken him to his car, and his hands had fished the keys out and opened the doors. He handed her the keys and got in on the passenger side. As he climbed in, he saw a guy getting on a motorcycle near the front of the bar. He tried to shout out to him, but again he couldn't say a word.

NNO ONE CAN HELP YOU SO JUST GET USED TO ITT

She drove the car out on Highway 10, toward the edge of town. There was a bridge across the river there, and once on the bridge she pulled the car over and stopped. Ryan got out of the car against his will, shutting the door behind him.

The girl got out and walked around the car. The light from one lone streetlight over the end of the bridge fell on her, illuminating the terrible look on her beautiful face.

SSO YOU WERE GONNA FUCK ME UP, HUHH

_Please I'm sorry please please please,_ Ryan begged inside his mind.

WWHO'S THE BITCH NOWW

Ryan began taking off his clothes. First he pulled his pants down and kicked them off, then took his shirt off, tossing the lot over the railing. They floated down to the dark water below.

Her green eyes consumed him. He stepped up next to the railing, taking care to bang his arms and legs against them painfully.

Ryan turned around and faced her, leaning back up against the railing, pressing his anus against a particularly painful metal protrusion there.

The girl laughed, and just then a light fell on her.

The motorcycle rolled to a stop some twenty yards from them, and the man stepped off, removing his helmet. He was the same age as them, early twenties, dark skinned African-American, bald, wearing a dark jacket over plain white T and jeans.

"Whatever you're thinking of doing to him," he said, "don't do it."

_Help me!_ Ryan screamed inside his head, the freezing bolt or whatever it was pressing into his rectum. _Oh God please help me!_

SSHUT UPP

"Who the fuck are you?" she asked.

"You were on the bus with me," he said. "You were on the bus, right?"

For just a moment the green eyes, which were all Ryan could see, cracked open and he saw a terrified little girl on a school bus. In the middle of the night, the bus -- but then the green eyes came back together and he saw nothing again.

"Who. The fuck. Are you?" she asked again.

"I can feel you," he said. "That's your thing, huh? Getting inside people's heads?" He glanced at Ryan. "Controlling them? I can feel you in there, trying to take over, but it isn't working. That's kind of my...thing? I guess? My power. Things don't hold on to me. If I think hard, I won't even be here. I'll be back home. I don't know how it works."

"The fuck are you talking about? WHO ARE YOU?"

"My name is Kevin? You remember? You're Becca, right? You were on the bus with me that night."

"SHUT UP about that!"

Suddenly, from somewhere to Ryan's right, a spotlight activated. Kevin and Becca turned toward it, covering their eyes. Ryan tried, but couldn't turn his head.

A shot rang out, and Becca fell, her head a ruined red mess on the pavement.

The green eyes vanished from Ryan's eyes, and he fell to the ground.

"Stop!" Kevin cried. "Why are you doing this?"

Ryan lifted his head, his exhausted muscles in agony. Until now, he hadn't realized how hard his body had been fighting itself. He could barely move.

A second shot rang out, and Ryan thought he saw Kevin's head flinch, but he was unharmed.

"Why?" Kevin shouted again.

A third shot rang out, and then a fourth, and fifth, Kevin flinching each time. Shots rang out faster and faster, like microwave popcorn cooking to a crescendo. Bullets slid off Kevin's body, riddling the car, the motorcycle, the bridge itself.

Kevin closed his eyes, and was gone.

Ryan turned his eyes toward the spotlight now, blinded, terrified, and his vocal chords finally, finally began to obey him.

"Nnng. Nunngghh! NNNN!! NOOOOOO!!"

A final shot sounded.

## End Prologue

### As a special bonus, please enjoy a free preview of the first chapter of my upcoming epic fantasy series KEEPER OF DAYS.

### This is the story of Daniel, a monk who is part of a special order that keeps the count of the days and ages of the world, as handed down by their worlds' gods. Every thousand years, a celestial event occurs which tells them which god will hold dominion over their world for the next thousand years. Daniel must undertake a pilgrimage to witness this event. Unfortunately, when he emerges from the Keepers' mountain cloister, he discovers a world in chaos, as a new warlord has arisen who seeks to erase all vestiges of ancient lore and set his son up as a God Emperor.

### Enjoy the free preview, and make sure to pick up KEEPER OF DAYS Volume 1 when it comes out, hopefully by the end of 2014!
KEEPER OF DAYS

## I: The Book of Day and Night

ONE

### PORTENTS AT MORNING PRAYER

On the morning of my ascension, the first light of dawn crept in through the window to fall upon my left eye. I opened it, blearily, to find that the shutter had blown open during the night. Throwing aside my coverlet, I slid my feet out into the chill air that had invaded my chamber. Our chamber, I should write, as my bunkmate, Brother Orly, snored in his bed just a few feet from me. My bare toes objected strongly to the cold stone floor of the chamber, and it took some will to place them firmly there.

I stood, clutching my nightclothes more tightly about me, and stepped to the window. There I held the open shutter and gazed out at the sun as it edged over the horizon, sending streaks of red and orange to trace across the sky. My first inclination had been to close the shutter, though the damage had been done: my breath emerged as mist even while in my bed. But as I looked out at the sun, I found I could not close out this gift from the Lord of Day. And so I knelt there, at the windowsill, touching my fingertips to my forehead, and said a silent prayer to the morning light the god had sent, that it might bless our Order on this new day, and bring me the wisdom to lead them into a prosperous new Age. The sun rose, and warmed the backs of my hands as I prayed. Finally, I lowered them into the supplicating position, and allowed my face to be warmed by the sun, keeping my eyes closed, as I was taught long ago by the old Masters, when praying to the Lord of Day. For he is, more than anything else, the bringer of truth, and truth, like sunlight, may blind the imprudent.

From the belfry above, I heard the morning bell sound, and though our bell is not of great size, the natural properties of the stone apertures carved in the tower allow the sound to echo off the canyon walls, bringing the sound in clear, cool tones to all those within our cloister. Once it rang, and I again silently thanked the Lord of Day for bringing me his blessing on this, the day of my ascension to the rank of Master. The youngest to be so elevated in the history of our order, some have said, though they cannot know this, as our order has existed for thousands of years and the most ancient records have now fallen unto dust in our library. I do not believe it so, cannot believe it. Twice, the bell rang, and I stood, and at last opened my eyes, though not to look directly into the sunlight, of course, but to gaze down at the mountain path which emerges from the front of the monastery gate to crawl around the canyon wall and slowly make its way down to the foot of the Amitines, the range from which our mountain home was carved so very long ago.

_Soon I must take that road,_ I thought, _for the very first time._

Thrice the bell sounded, and I closed the shutter. It was time to prepare for Morning Prayer, which I was to lead. I had nearly forgotten.

I reached down to shake the shoulder of Brother Orly, still snoring away in his bunk. "Morning, Brother," I said softly.

He made some guttural sound and turned to his other side. Orly was some ten years my senior, still a Lay Brother in name, though I kept pushing him to seek elevation. Our Order, I have found, keeps a very loose (some might say disorganized) structure, as compared to other monastic orders. There is no set period to study and ascend to the next rank; one may seek elevation at any time, and if she passes the trials, she is granted it. Thus, one can be a Journeyman, a Monk, such as I was, at only twenty-five summers, or, one could be Novice or Apprentice until far more advanced age. Or indeed, like Orly, an initiate could choose to remain a Lay Brother or Sister, carrying out menial tasks for the monastery for her full time in our Order, rather than move on to become an Apprentice and learn the teachings of the gods. Orly was fond of the messenger pigeons kept in our aerie, having been assigned to assist the Brother in charge of it some years past. He had elected to remain there when the elder Brother had passed, and was now the Lay Brother in charge of that function, tending to the pigeons and the maintenance of their lofts. There is nobility in the simplest of functions, so Master Timeon taught me, and I believe it so. Brother Orly was a simple man, who wanted nothing more than to tend to his birds, eat when the dinner bell rang, and serve the will of the gods. I cannot fault him for that.

However, he was indeed a challenge to wake up of a morning. Further, he had an unfortunate disposition to being untidy, leaving a mess of his robes, papers, even bits of hay and feathers, about our chambers. I had to repeatedly abjure him to keep the room clean, and it would revert to its prior state quickly were I to be lax in reminding him. I once spoke to Matron Sebelle about him, and asked if perhaps I could be assigned a new bunkmate.

_"Your fellows seem to think quite highly of you, Daniel,"_ she said.

I thanked her.

"But you'll have quite a challenge leading the entire order of Keepers if you can't get one Lay Brother out of bed and into his chores."

That settled the matter. I did not ask again.

"It is time to wake, Brother," I said, a bit louder, and shook him again.

"Five more minutes," he said, into his pillow. I had heard this ruse before.

"ORLY!" I shouted. "NOW!"

"Sake of the gods, Daniel!" He turned, lifting up on his elbows. "I'm awake. No need for shouting."

"We must prepare for morning prayer, Brother," I said.

"Oh," he said knowingly, crossing his arms behind his head and resting on his hands, "I see. Big day, is it? No wonder you're all in a state."

I couldn't help but smile. "Get up, and get dressed."

Once dressed, we made our way to the main chapel. We hold most services in an outdoor chapel, just inside the main monastery gate. There is a smaller chapel, and many smaller naves as well, within the stone walls of the cloister, but according to tradition our order has held services outdoors when possible, to allow the seven Lords to look down upon us and observe our fealty. This is not truly necessary, of course. From a very young age, I was taught that the Lords could see us wherever we may be, see into our very hearts, and hear our prayers even when said silently. Tradition aside, however, it is more comfortable to deliver service in the open air than surrounded by the orange rock of the mountain.

I placed at the lectern the few sheaves of paper upon which I had scrawled my notes, and looked around the chapel. Some few brothers and sisters had already taken seats upon the stone benches, nodding off to sleep where they sat, and more filed in from behind me as I stood gathering my thoughts. The seats in front were reserved for the youngest, though we had not had a new class of initiates in some time. Our youngest now were approaching ten years of age, and it seemed strange to have no younger.

"Good morning, Brother Daniel," said a warm voice. Matron Sebelle, her gray hair tucked inside her hood, stepped around the lectern, placing one hand on it. "Gods be with you on this day."

"And with you, Matron," I responded. Our order has, as you might expect by now, a very loose formal usage of title. Master, Father, Pater, Mistress, Mother, or Matron, all are acceptable, but Sebelle had preferred the use of Matron for as long as I can remember. Indeed, she is the closest thing to a mother as I have ever known, since I have no memory of my own mother.

Master Timeon was behind her, but did not speak, only stopped to nod in my direction. I nodded back, and he walked to the back of the chapel to sit near the posts which frame the door in the inner wall of the courtyard.

"I look forward to hearing your words this morning," said Matron Sebelle.

"Thank you," I said.

She walked around the chapel, gazing sternly at some of the younger Brothers, warmly greeting a few of the elders, stopping here and there to look over the wall and out at the courtyard. Finally, she took a place next to Master Timeon. I keenly felt the absence of Masters Hubrick and Paz, sadly no longer with us, who would have sat in the places beside the other post. Their passing is, I believe, one reason why I was allowed to take the rites of ascension at such a young age.

Orly placed a pitcher of freshly drawn water and a cup on the small table beside the lectern. "To help with the throat," he said, unnecessarily.

"My thanks, Brother," I said.

He leaned close to whisper, "Don't muck it up!" Then he laughed and clapped me on the back. This, to Brother Orly, was the height of humor, and I must admit that, though I did not laugh that day, I cannot help but smile now to think of it. Orly took his place in the midst of the congregation.

All of the brothers present, and the Masters in their places, it was time to begin.

"It is easy, sometimes, to forget," I began, "gazing out at the morning sun, or up into the clear blue sky, that we live in the Age of Storm. The Lord of Storm, most violent and chaotic of all the seven, holds dominion over our world, and has since before any here were born, but that chaos is not always on the outside, nor is it easily seen. Sometimes, the storm lies within." Several heads nodded at this. "We question ourselves, question our duty, our place, even question the gods. We feel anger, for a perceived slight, or jealousy, because we think another has received more than us, or we have been treated unfairly."

I did not notice the first pair of crows to land, landing as they did on opposite sides of the chapel, to perch on the short inner wall. When the third landed, however, I did take note, as this one landed on the rear wall, directly above where Matron Sebelle sat watching me.

"We feel fear," I continued. "We fear to act at times, even when we know the right thing to do. We fear to act, and fear even more to stand..."

A fourth crow, and then a fifth, had landed on the wall.

"Fear...we fear even more to stand still. The challenge, within all of us just as it is without, is to weather the storm, to brave the chaos..."

Yet another crow flapped down to land, this time on the bench directly behind one of the young girls on the front row, Sister Patrice. She and the others on the front row spun about to gaze in wonder at the bird, which tucked its wings back and scraped at the bench with its sharp beak. A murmur grew in the congregation.

"We must...stay true to ourselves," I said, faltering. "Remain calm."

From the sky above me the seventh crow fell, to land on the lectern before me.

A thunderstruck silence descended upon me. I caught Matron Sebelle's eye, and she appeared as startled as I am certain I did myself. The congregation continued to murmur, unsure what to do. I did not continue speaking, nor did I attempt to shoo the bird away. I have said that I do not feel fear, and this is true, but I came very close to it in that moment.

Into that silence came the sound of our bell, ringing from above, and the murder took flight. Startled, the crows flapped their wings and flew off around the corners of the mountain from whence they had come. Twice, the bell rang, then a third time.

"Who rings the bell?" I asked, incredulous. Presence at Morning Prayer was mandatory, and all were believed accounted.

"Brother Wendol," said one of the Apprentices.

"I'm here," said Brother Wendol from the back of the congregation, raising his hand.

The bell rang, a fourth time, then a fifth.

I quite lost myself then, and sprang for the door. I ran as fast as I could through the cramped hallways of the cloister, until I arrived at the steps to the belfry. I climbed the steps by leaps and bounds, two of the brothers behind me climbing just as fast. Up we ran, around and around the spiral of stone. I heard the bell ring a sixth time, then a seventh. After seven chimes, silence fell.

I burst through the door to the belfry to find the rope still swaying gently, as if the hands that pulled it had just released it to swing in the air, but there was no one present. The belfry is small, a mere circle of stone, with the ropes in the center hanging from the bell mounted in the dome, hewn from inside a tiny spire in the mountain. There was no place for anyone to hide. Brother Wendol came behind me through the door, followed soon after by Orly, gasping and resting his hands on his knees. I looked back at them, and Wendol was wide-eyed, his lips working soundlessly.

I stepped around, peering out of each of the shutterless windows that looked out from the belfry. Those windows, or portals, are hewn into a shape that curves out from a tiny opening on the inside of the belfry to a wide exterior arch, allowing the sound to carry forth and echo off the stone. This would be no easy place to enter or exit the belfry for anyone of even moderate size, leaving aside the challenge of reaching the window up the outside spire of the mountain. Looking out, I saw only jutting crags.

"No chance," said Orly. "There's none could make that climb."

I gauged the holds and crevices in the rock, and judged him wrong: I could have made the climb, but only with difficulty, and only with a great deal of time and preparation. There was no one to be seen within, or scaling the rocks without, only the swaying rope, and, echoing around the mountain, the calling of the crows.

### Don't miss KEEPER OF DAYS Volume I: THE BOOK OF DAY AND NIGHT, coming late 2014!

## ABOUT THE AUTHOR

J. David Clarke is a native Texan who was published in the literary journal of Tarrant County Junior College before moving on to become a Fine Arts graduate of Southwest Texas State University. He is an author, occasional blogger, and lover of all things nerd: comics, science fiction, fantasy, roleplaying, and gaming.

He has written three books: one collection of short stories called "The Rubberband Man and Other Stories", and the first two volumes of a science fiction series called "313". Volume 1 is titled "Missing Time" and Volume 2, "Time Spent". He is currently working on a young adult adventure called "The Wizard in My Window", as well as "313" Volume 3, "Time Lost", and anticipates its release in 2014. He is also currently working on an epic fantasy series called "Keeper of Days", Volume 1 of which, "The Book of Day and Night", he hopes to have completed in 2014.

He lives in Texas with his cat, Nightingale.

