Looks Like Rain

On the plane, I look up at the wrong time and he spots my face. He drops a shoulder into the sluggish passengers ahead of him, those hoisting luggage and those schmoozing with new acquaintances, and moves them aside with a grin. Mostly nobody notices but a few, little old women and men who plant themselves in front of the news every night, a few of these recognize him, at least enough to turn to one another and speak. Even here, in Reno.

Weatherman Mark Malone, and if I don’t already know, here he comes to rectify that.

He was watching me when I boarded, and I can always tell. Every time I looked over he flicked his eyes away and pretended to be interested in anything else - his shoelace, a smudge on his finger, the back of a paperback he’d just bought at the Hudson News. Then he would lean forward and  put his head into his hands and smile. His lips moved with self talk, and I can almost hear the words - she’s mine, she’s mine if I do this right.

The open seating policy means I can choose whichever seat and so I took the window in the last row. I buckled in and opened SkyMall. A minute or so later is when I look up. Oh no.

Now he’s dropping his big butt into the seat beside me (what about the aisle seat I want to know) and he’s all teeth. Then his bloated hand is doing things above him, manipulating his night bag in the overhead storage bin from an angle that can’t be comfortable. When he breathes it sounds like the seams in his stuffed-animal body are about to tear. He’s talking to himself again, only it’s not to himself anymore, not now that he’s here with me, “Twenty-eight years in the business and they treat me like this,” is not some mantra, it’s an invitation for me to care. It doesn’t work, but guys like Malone don’t give up. He’s a Weatherman. A whether-or-not man.

“That’s what you get for being the meteorologist at a major news network,” he says, and now I’m supposed to turn and relax my face, let my jaw go slack to let him know that I’m desperate enough to care about his minor achievements in what a pretty girl like me might consider “show business,” but all I do is turn the page. Hello Slanket for 37.99, you look warm and tacky and here he goes again -

“I tell you,” he says, turning to me, “Don’t ever go into meteorology.”

“I’ll try to avoid it,” I say. And the damage is done. The ice is broken. A stuffed animal hand makes its way toward my left breast, and I have to intercept it and endure the shake.

“Mark Malone.”

“Hi.”

He raises an eyebrow. I turn back to SkyMall.

“Listen,” he says, groping for a name I haven’t given him. “Listen…would you like to know a secret?”

I really wouldn’t. I’m about to say this - I’ve had enough of Mark Malone already, he was at least odorless on screen - but he doesn’t wait.

“Most weathermen. Aren’t built for the job. They’re handsome and they know how to read a teleprompter. There aren’t any real naturals left in the business. Weathermen.” He pauses, perhaps for effect, because I’ve got a feeling he’s practiced. “I go outside in the morning and do you know what I see?” He waits again.

“Your newspaper?”

“The future. Not a blue sky or a cloudy one, not wind blowing leaves off trees or frost on grass - I see tomorrow. I’m never wrong. Twenty-eight years and I’ve never been wrong.” I want so badly to goad him, to ask him if the foresight only happens before breakfast, or if he knows where this interaction isn’t going to lead. Instead:

“What did you see this morning?”

He licks his lips and his eyes bulge at the chance to come up with something sensational, something I’ll believe but won’t expect.

“Tornadoes. More of them than this part of the country has ever seen. Wipe out whole towns. Cities! That’s why I’m on my way out. You’re just lucky to be along for the ride, aren’t you? What are you going out to California for? Acting? A pretty girl like you could do well for herself with the right connections, and believe me, I have connections.”

Milk that undersized sprinkle of glitz and glam - connections. And how about that - tornadoes. Not a chance. Not in Nevada. I want to tell him there’s only ever been two injuries due to tornado in this state, that the biggest twister on record is an F2 from 1949. But then he’d want to know why I know. So:

“Not acting, but it’s an in-front-of-the-camera sort of thing.”

“Oh? What kind? Do I want to know?” He winks at me. Until now I’ve been planning on keeping my mouth shut, but something in me finds a knob and twists it. The knob is Mark Malone.

“I’m actually being moved to San Francisco by Channel 7.”

Malone’s eyes widen. “You’ll be working for - with me, then! Are you a field reporter, or…”

“I’m the new weatherman.”

The plane lifts into the air.

Time Consuming Lester Battle

One of the most disappointing features of Lester Battle’s poverty is his inability to hold onto loose change. Yesterday, at the Ogilvie Metra station, it took the turning out of all six pockets to turn up the nickel needed for the 2.35 fare. When he wakes up this morning he’ll roll off the mattress and realize the same thing he realized last night, before he chewed his nails in the dark and listened to his belly, wondering if fingernail was good for any sort of sustenance. What he will realize once more is this: he doesn’t have two dollars for today’s commute downtown. That he doesn’t have two dollars anywhere. His change sock is limp and is colored with a green patina left by absent pennies. He’ll check it anyway, in the bottom drawer of his desk, and his hand will come away greasy and smelling like metallic fabric-softener along with faint traces of fungus and sweat.

He won’t wake for seven minutes. Let’s allow him that block of peace, at least.

Yesterday, Lester Battle removed a twenty dollar bill from an ATM machine. Inadvertantly his finger touched YES on the keypad. He began to sweat, and the soup in his gut churned like it had when he’d gotten his grades at DePaul. He’d told a machine that he wanted a piece of paper that would have printed on it several numbers. Numbers he’d avoided looking at for almost three months.

He looked at them. The numbers told him he had seventeen cents left in his checking account. He’d never kept any in his savings. The twenty dollar bill in his hand was the last bit of money he had. His only hope was if he got the job.

After yesterday’s interview the three men had looked at him, told him they’d enjoyed his presentation as always, and that they’d like him to return for another interview today.

”Go out and tell Jim we’re ready for him.”

The job was for a creative engineering opening with a company called LPaso, which was out of Texas. The opening had appeared when the engineer filling its position had somehow coerced his body into throwing itself into the third rail of an elevated train. Lester heard about this from a friend, one of the four or five people in Chicago he had any kind of relationship with.

That man’s name was Jim, and he’d been interviewing for the same position every day, excluding weekends, alongside Lester. The controlling interest in the firm, three creative engineers themselves, had pared the field down to two in a weeklong process, one that had Lester feeling close to victory, and some sort of stability. That had been five months ago.

Lester left the interview room exhausted and demoralized. It was a state he’d grown used to. He’d worked up a sweat again, trying this time to perfect his words with a pinwheel of activity. He smiled in what he hoped was a contagious way, but the three men watched impassively. He threw his arms along with his enunciations, swirling them into motions meant to illustrate and then persuade. The routine was so familiar he put all of it at the front of his brain while he receded behind to watch. He was a television show that had been recorded long ago, and his body was the screen. Sitting quietly in the back of his mind while his body gesticulated he had pondered two pigeons he’d seen at the Clyborn Metra stop, as sleepy travelers boarded. The pigeons lived atop the roof of a building, one of them elevated on a bit of duct work. The other one paced back and forth in front of it, pleading.

-Come down, won’t you?
-I have business up here. I’m closer to the sky. The world isn’t so gray.
-Don’t you love me anymore?

The banter went on. By and by his body stopped its enunciating, and the interview was over once again. He stopped watching the pigeons and retook control of his body. The three men were staring at him impassively.

”We enjoyed your presentation as always, Mr. Battle. Go out and tell Jim we’re ready for him.”

Jim was sitting alone in the waiting room. The waiting room was a small cube of white with one black chair and three doors. The chair sat against the only empty wall, and sitting in it one could imagine his future through any of the three symbols of opportunity, as long as one of the futures involved vomiting to death in a toilet. The room became a part of you after a while. Sometimes when Lester receded into the back of his mind he sat in the room, but never while he was physically present. It was the same with Jim - who had told him of a dream he’d had about the toilet door, which sat opposite the chair.

”I’m sitting there,” he’d said, and this had been in the first month of interviews, when both of them had still been young and optimistic, “I’m sitting in that room in my dream and the door across from me opens and a man dressed as a nurse comes out and says, ‘Hello Jim, the doctor will see you now.’ He goes back through the door and I get up, realizing there must be something wrong with me that I’m at a doctor’s office, and I follow him. Inside the room is the toilet from LPaso. It’s wearing a stethoscope.” The two men rarely told stories anymore.

Yesterday, in the waiting room, Lester nodded at Jim, and the other man - who was wearing a tweed suit that had been patched several times and whose face was obscured by a cyclone of beard - nodded back.

”Go for a beer after?” Jim said.

They often went for a beer after. Whoever got out first met the other across the street, at a bar called the Thirsty Genius. Now, in the waiting room, it was just another routine. In the back of his mind he was contemplating the last twenty, which had been pared to eighteen during his commute as the conductor swept through the car, furiously punching holes in differently colored pieces of rail currency. That eighteen would be cut in half after the beer (this would be Lester’s turn to pick up the tab), and he’d lose another 2.35 on the trip back. Stop this, he yelled to the screen, but the man in the rerun nodded again and walked forward, pulling the opposite door open.

Outside, the sky was dark and swirling, rain brewing in the bellies of incorporeal monsters. It started to pour, and umbrellas opened like flowers to sunlight. Lester kept his head down and sprinted across the street, feeling the water already leaking up through the holes in his shoe-bottoms. He waited for several important-looking women on cell phones to pass and then he pulled open the door to the Genius and was breathed inside.

The Thirsty Genius is a themed bar, with a reading room occupied by six large leather reading chairs and a bookcase filled with literature. Most of the bar’s flooring is tile, but the reading room is carpeted a dark red. There were three men in there, all of them dressed in suits and sipping whiskey in the leather chairs. Lester sat on a stool at the bar.

The bartender, whose name was Adam, glanced at him, and nodded. Lester nodded at the nod. This was the currency of male interaction. It was the signal that more varied and interesting conversation was not needed, that all of the usual things were a given. It’s a hard life, and we’re all in this together, and one of us may be in a better place than the other right now but that can change, will inevitably change, and back again, and all we need to do at this moment is acknowledge the existence of the other. Adam brought him a beer glass, empty, and looked at Lester. Lester nodded. He would drink, though it meant he might not eat.

The glass filled. Lester unfilled it.

Twenty-five minutes went by before Jim walked into the place. He sat to the left of Lester, and nodded at the bartender.

”You get the job?” Lester said.
”I got the job.” Jim said. It was a joyless monotone, and another routine they had with one another. How much of his life had become routine? How much of his existence was habit, and when was the last time he’d chosen to break it? Lester hated himself. He went on with it all unthinking, the same day over and over again with different labels painted on each.

”I’m not doing this tomorrow,” Jim said. This, finally, something new.
”What? The beer?”
”This.”
”The job?”
”I’m not coming in. Or if I am, it’s to tell them it’s over.”
”Oh.” Lester didn’t know what to do, none of this had happened before. What did it mean? Would he get the job if he did his dance for one more day?
”I ran out of money a month ago, Les. I’ve been going on credit. I had three hundred left before my limit, and now I’ve gone through that. All I’ve got is some cash.”
”I know.”
”You too? Christ, Les. They’ve been stringing us along for five months. And who’s been doing the work? That guy is dead, isn’t he? I feel like they’ve got him still somehow, and he works around the clock because he doesn’t have any obligations anymore. They’re keeping us around for fun.”
”That’s ridiculous,”
”It’s irrelevant. I can’t do it anymore and I’m going to use the rest of my money to buy some thermal underwear and a tent. I’ve got till the end of the month to get out of my apartment and then I’ll be homeless. I want to do it right.”
They sat quietly for several minutes, and then Lester paid for the two beers and left. Jim watched him go.

On the Metra, Lester found a spot on the upper level on a seat that folded down from the wall next to a skateboarding youth and a fat man reading a book in cyrillic. When he levered the seat down there was considerable resistance, unlike a movie theater seat or a pew kneeler. He wondered if he were to lay across four or five seats if they would push him back up into the cold metal and pinch his face against the glass. Lester could ride like that, he’d decided. Something about the position seemed appropriate. But all these were occupied. He’d have to wait for another opportunity.

The fat man laughed, a kind of choking sniffle that kicked his skin into a bodywide ripple. Lester wondered what, in cyrillic, could be so funny. He leaned forward and squinted at the cover of it, which was a painting of a dog wearing a bowtie. There was no title. Some things, Lester had learned, had no name but were still very important. And then there were people like him.

Fourteen minutes later he was at the counter of the CVS at Lawrence and Damen. He’d decided on two packs of Ramen noodles (.40), a bag of peanut M&M’s (1.59), and a small pouch of beef jerky for dinner (2.29) This came to 4.48, tax included, and from a five he’d received two quarters and two pennies.

”If you’d had our card,” the woman behind the counter said, and she was attractive except for a very large mole just  above and to the right of her lip, “You could have gotten another beef jerky, it was two for one.” Lester shrugged it off and took his bag, but inside he was raging at himself. For months he’d declined a card, doubting that he’d be back enough to use it, yet every time he stepped inside the pharmacy slash everything store he’d thought to himself, here I am again. How much more could he have saved, or eaten?

He walked home. The cable had been turned off. In his room, he put his head under his pillow and willed himself to sleep. Around nine he woke up, feeding himself M&M’s one after the other in steady rhythm like a slots player with a cup of nickels. He dropped a yellow one and it rolled.

At three in the morning the screams of a small girl woke him. She lived in the bedroom above his. The screams descended into a flurry of pounding feet and terrible sobs. He watched the ceiling, hoping cracks would open up and she’d drop through. He’d save her, though he was in no position for it. He’d save her. The sobs went on for half an hour and still he lay still. His heart was pounding, and there was anger there too. I’d go to her, I’d soothe her back to sleep. Her parents didn’t do this. He knew why, or supposed he did. In his first month of living in the apartment he’d made the trip upstairs twice. The first time her father had opened the door, a small Eastern European man with angry eyebrows. Lester had stood under his stare for a full thirty seconds. Behind the little man the sobs of a small child continued.

”I live in the apartment below yours,” he’d finally said. “And I have work in the morning. Can’t you do something about…can you make your daughter stop crying?”

The man blinked. Another thirty seconds went by, and Lester began to get the feeling he was the one being asked to keep the noise down.

”Well. I’m sure you’ll do your best. Sorry to bother you.” The little man closed the door. The little girl kept crying. Lester went downstairs and brewed himself a pot of coffee.

Two nights later he’d found himself knocking on that door again. He’d worked himself up to have words with the man, the man who took so much offense at being bothered early in the morning while allowing his daughter to wake up the rest of the building. But the little eastern european man didn’t open the door this time. Instead it was a little eastern european woman. She had red eyes, and looked up at him hopefully.

He’d cleared his throat.

”Sorry to bother you so early. My name is Lester Battle, and I live in the -”

”You are of the downstairs.” Her voice was tired. The little girl sobbed behind her. “You come to see why I not fix the noise.”

”Yes.”

”We not go to her when she cry. We want it, but she not let us.”

”She doesn’t let you comfort her?”

”She cry for the suffering of all world. Say we must leave her. I am sorry to you.”

For three months he had let her wake him, had thought about that conversation. The suffering of all world. What had he to complain about? Not getting the job he wanted?

Last night, the girl cried until she stopped, and Lester let himself back under the warm eyelid of sleep.

Watch, the alarm on his phone is about to go off. His brain will be roused from its fantasies and he’ll mouth swear words into the sunlight.

See, it happens just that way. His mouth tastes horrible. His eyes are hard and sticky. Lester gropes for the change sock.

In the shower he considers the bank receipt. There were seventeen cents left. With his fifty-two cents that would give him sixty-nine. He gets dressed and steps outside, where the first nibbles of autumn find his cheeks. It is four blocks to the bank, and once he’s there he plays the coming moment in his head. He’ll go in, stand in line, pull up to the first available teller and pass a withdrawal slip across the table. 0000.17, he’ll have written there, along with his name and his account number. He or she will look at the number and assume he’d made a mistake, might even say something like “Sir, did you mean to withdraw seventeen dollars?” and he’ll shake his head and say, too quiet to hear at first, “No, cents,” until she makes him say it again, louder, and everyone will look over, wondering just what kind of poor this man was that he is even bothering.

He steps away from the bank and looked around. There are several cars parked along the street here, several very expensive looking high-rolling banker type cars. All parked at meters. Lester considers his own attire.

”Excuse me,” he says to a passing woman. “I’m short a quarter for the meter.” He waved at one of the cars, a deep black Saab. “Do you happen to have one?”

”Oh, I’m sure I must. Here.” She stops and drops a hand into a round purse, digging. It’s a quarter she pulls out. He feigns putting it into the meter, palming it instead. The woman doesn’t look back. He waits, and here come some more.

In five minutes Lester has enough for the Metra.

The waiting room at LPaso is empty. He knocks on the door to the interview room and then opens it. The three men are sitting there. Lester is late, had to be late. Jim hasn’t come at all.

He takes his place in front of the room.

”So, you all know my qualifications.”

They don’t nod. Lester doesn’t move. Doesn’t recede into the back of his mind, doesn’t start his body on its daily excercise. Instead, he bows.

”Thank you. I hope to hear from you soon.” He goes to the door and opens it, and leaves. None of the three men says a thing.

There is something inside of him, a sharp cube of something that is threatening to poke its corners out. His ribs sting. There is an ocean behind his eyes, and Jim is gone. At the Genius he sits alone, and Adam buys him a drink, able to see that this man is in no position to be sober. At the base of Lester’s throat a soft clicking begins, like a windup clock.

Miles away, behind a box of books and electrical cords, ants bore holes into the shell of a yellow peanut M&M and begin their harvest of its meat.

The Five Trillion Faces of Television

Television came as close to being a man as did all of his brothers and cousins. He had arms and legs and a face that was flat and bright and capable of putting forth any possible combination of 307,200 pixels, which happened to be a lot, since each pixel had the potential of being any one of 16,581,375 different colors at any time. (His friend Calculator might have told him that the total number of possible faces Television could make was 5,093,798,400,000, but Calculator was dead. He’d been impaled by a herd of charging gazelles on a Safari trip to Africa the summer before.) In fact, he was much luckier than most of his relatives, since the men in Television’s family had a problem nobody seemed to understand. They kept themselves in seclusion and had to turn themselves sideways to get through doorways. Some of the unluckier of them, like his oldest brother Peter, spent all day with their faces to the ground, unable to move because their heads were so heavy. Television’s head was just right, and while felt guilty for not having High Definition Deficit Disorder, he was grateful that his head was light enough to keep on his shoulders. And people would kill to have his face. He could show any image, reduced to a native resolution of 640x480, in full color. If he’d done any thinking about what a blessing this was, he might have been a very rich and powerful man. Instead, Television took what was given him. He made tenuous connections with other people, like those he worked with at the storage building. He made terse conversation with a woman called Lamp who was always his cashier at Capital Video. The face he most often made was a neutral kind of  gray, much the same as when he slept. This is what he did mostly, because it was cheaper than going out and he saved on electricity. When Television slept, he dreamed of many things - foremost of which seemed always to be making it with Lamp, even though the only time he was ever particularly attracted to her was in the dream. When he saw her at the video store, with her knobby knees and flat chest, he found himself wanting very much to display a picture of disgust (the one he’d chosen was of a particularly old and warty looking man who had his finger down his throat, eyes bulging with tears) and look away, pretending he’d done so because her face gave off too many Watts. Another thing he dreamed about was the perfect combination. It wasn’t something he understood fully, because when he woke up his head was all muzzy and there was a kind of static charge built up between his speaker and his buttons that would shock him when he adjusted his antenna. He never truly remembered dreams, and that was why when he saw Lamp he never got the same chubby or felt the same kind of lust like when his unconsciousness witnessed the escape of her oily tits from their electrical tape prison. If he had remembered his dreams about the perfect combination, it’s possible that he would have messed around trying to find it, and might have been doing that instead of going to the Post Office on Thursday afternoon. He was mailing the woman of his dreams, a beautiful big-bodied black nymphette named Refrigerator, a love letter. He wasn’t sure what kind of love letters Refrigerator liked, because she’d never responded to any of his previous attempts. Television wasn’t even sure she remembered him from High School, but he had a good feeling about this next letter. Here is what it said: “My dearest Refrigerator, I hope this letter finds you well and in good health. Since my last letter I have been very lucky, and I think this means someone is trying to tell me something about my life. On Monday I woke up and found a newspaper on my doorstep, even though I don’t get the newspaper. It was the Sun Times. This was ironic to me because just the day before I had been downtown and there was a tall man wearing a full-bodied bib and yelling, ‘Sun Time! Sun Time! Sun Time man, Sun Time son!’ and I considered giving him the fifty cents for one of them. Lucky that I did not. On Tuesday my gas was supposed to be shut off, but they must not have noticed, because it wasn’t until last night that I couldn’t draw a warm bath. I think the luckiest I’ve been so far, however, is me right now, writing these words. I am imagining you reading them, smiling, perhaps even going between your plump thighs for a quick tickle. But I am not writing to be presumptuous. I am writing, my glad lass, because today I love you. Again. Yours, Television.” On the back of the single sheet of triple-folded paper inside of the envelope was a list of all of the ways Television had been lucky since his last letter. The last item on the list was, ‘Lucky to mail this letter to such a splendid gal.’ And so Television walked to the Post Office, which was fairly well occupied, especially with men in business suits who all seemed to have some variation of facsimile device resting on their shoulders. Television didn’t usually get along well with these types, and so he kept to the back of the line and tried not to display any face that was too distracting. He kept it a neutral gray, and clutched his letter patiently to him. There were boxes to drop them in, but he needed a stamp, and he only had a plastic card to pay with instead of the coins he needed for the slot machines. He didn’t like putting coins in the machines anyway, because it felt dirty. He was waiting like this when the door busted open and a thick muscular sort of man came through, waving what looked like a gun in the air. His head was an elongated type of radio with two large speakers on either side. He’d pulled over his head a very thinly stretched light brown stocking, the kind used by women who wore dresses. Or by transvestites. A transvestite was a man who dressed and acted like a woman. “GET ON THE FLOOR AND PUT YOUR MONEY ON THE COUNTER,” the man with the boom box face boomed. His speakers pulsed behind the pantyhose and he looked angry. He had no screen, and Television supposed that being given only one way to look had simply forced the man to adopt the personality others must always have assumed he had. It was rather sad. The other people in the bank began to drop, trying to comply with the boom box’s nonsensical demands. They began pulling money from their pockets. Television, however, simply stood. “Do you mean, instead,” he began to say, “That we should put our money on the counter and then get on the floor?” The robber seemed confused, and stepped forward as if to strike Television. Television sat down, his arms up in an obsequious fashion. The robber looked to the others. “DO WHAT HE SAID. GET UP - SLOWLY - AND PUT YOUR MONEY ON THE COUNTER. THEN GET DOWN AND PUT YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR BACK WHERE I CAN SEE THEM.” Television got up again, slowly. For a moment he was the only one standing, and the robber eyed him warily. Television wasn’t sure what he was thinking about the situation, except for that he was slightly annoyed that he might not get to mail his letter. Postal employees had the rest of the day off after a robbery, didn’t they? He would have to wait another whole day. What if more lucky things happened? He could just see himself opening the envelope and having to rewrite it all to include the day’s events. His only hope was if he could get a stamp and drop it in the blue box before the mail truck left. “Excuse me,” he said to the robber, “Do you have a stamp? I simply need a stamp for this letter.” The robber backed away, still waving his pistol. “YOU THERE, WITH THE GLOWING FACE. STOP TALKING TO ME. I HAVE THE GUN. NO STAMP.” Television displayed consternation (which happened to be a frame from the movie Forrest Gump, which is about an idiot that learns how to run in Alabama and in other places too), and took a step forward. “Sir, since you have the gun and most clearly hold the power over all of us, could you ask and see if anyone else here has a stamp I could borrow?” The robber shook his head slowly, his angry expression made one of incredulity by its movement. “SOMEONE WITH A STAMP, GIVE THIS MAN A STAMP SO HE WILL SHUT UP. THEN PUT YOUR MONEY ON THE COUNTER AND GET BACK ON THE GROUND.” Before he could move, stamps were being stuffed into Television’s hand, all kinds. The facsimile men were mildly frightened, and showed this by rattling the phones on their heads and making their buttons buzz. Some ejaculated heated paper bits that had writing on them. “Please don’t shoot,” some said, and others, “I have a job.” None of the men had families. They shuffled toward the counter after delivering the stamps to Television, and began dumping piles of cash and coins there. The Postal Workers did the same, calling back for more when the collection appeared meager. Mail bags were brought forward, envelopes were ripped open, and money rained down. Television stood where he was. The robber watched all of this and then turned to Television, motioning with his gun that he’d like the man to do the same: go to the counter and drop some money. “Oh, I don’t carry cash.”He pulled out the plastic card, which made the boom box man jump,  and held it out. “I only debit. I can tell you my PIN number so you can get to my bank account. I think there’s fourteen or fifteen dollars in there.” The robber seemed to spend more time thinking. Then he waved his gun dismissively. “KEEP THE CARD.” Television put it back into his pocket. “Oh, thank you.” The others had gotten back onto the floor, and were crossing their arms behind their backs. The robber stepped forward and collected his bags of money. These he put by the door. Then he turned back to the shuddering mass and Television. “I’M GOING TO KILL ONE OF YOU BEFORE I GO, JUST SO THAT NEXT TIME I COME HERE I GET THE RESPECT I DESERVE. DOES ANY OF YOU WANT TO VOLUNTEER?” None of the other men raised a hand, and neither did Television. However, what was working against him was the fact that he had never sat down after getting up. He was standing. The robber walked over to him and put the gun to his screen. “HOW NICE OF YOU,” the boom box boomed. The barrel of the gun touched Television’s glass and he felt it make a tiny scratch. He almost protested, but then he realized something. Something that seemed very important, even in relation to the fact that he hadn’t yet chosen even one of the stamps in his hand to peel off and stick onto his envelope to Refrigerator. The realization was this: he was about to die. The pictures he displayed then were random, a compilation of all those faces he was saving up to use someday. A small girl on a swingset. A tree being sawed apart. Seven men jumping in the air all at the same time. A box with a latch on it. While he made these faces his mind tried to bring him back to his dream about the perfect combination, and being so flustered as he was with the realization that his letter might not get to Refrigerator and that even if it did he would be dead and couldn’t enjoy her assumed reception of it, he listened to what it said. Here is what Television’s mind said: “There is a combination of pixels so perfect that will make this man want to keep us alive instead of killing us.” As soon as that thought crossed through Television’s mind, he knew it was true. Since he’d never spent time trying to concoct the perfect combination, he was in a bad place. He’d have to throw something together quickly, and hope. However, Television was optimistic. “Would you wait one moment, sir?” The robber cocked his gun. Television took this as a once for yes and twice for no situation, and peeled a stamp apart.  He affixed it to the corner of the envelope containing his love letter. All the while he had been imagining different combinations of pixels. Finally he chose one, just as the man was about to pull the trigger. “I’M ABOUT TO PULL THE TRIGGER,” the robber said. His booming was hard to hear over the clacking and chattering of phones in carriages and buttons from the facsimile men. The face Television made was a woman’s torso, completely naked except for a pair of bright pink underwear. “If you delay your putting a hole in my head,” Television said, “I can pull give you a peek at what goes on beneath the underwear.” He was stalling, had in fact not been able to come up with any combination of pixels he would have considered perfect. This seemed to be working, but an even bigger problem approached. The robber stepped back. “YES I WOULD LIKE TO SEE UNDER THE PANTS.” The bigger problem was this: Television didn’t know what went on beneath the underwear. He’d never been lucky enough to catch a glimpse of it. On his face, the underwear came off, but instead of whatever the robber had been expecting was a large blurry ball. “If you delay your putting a hole in my head for just a little longer, I will unblur the ball.” The robber nodded. “YES YES UNBLUR THE BALL I WANT TO SEE.” Television considered. He could perhaps buy himself a little more time, just a few more seconds to make sure that the perfect combination was extra perfect. So he unblurred the ball. He displayed what he’d always imagined the female genitalia to look like - a dark pit surrounded by lots of squirming versions of his own apparatus. Just a couple more seconds and he’d show the perfect combination. The robber paused, as if in arousal, and then brought up the gun. POP. Television’s face shot outward, covering the robber in tiny shards of glass and drops of color. The facsimile men rang, pitches shrill, hands reaching frantically to answer their own calls. He fell to his knees, the letter to Refrigerator slipping from his limp right hand. As he died, he thought again of rewriting the letter. Instead of adding to all the lucky bits, he would just tear it up and start new. The new letter, the one Television would never write, went like this: “My dearest Refrigerator, I hope this finds you well. It is regrettable that I won’t be able to join you for our eventual first date. You see, I made it look too much like a squid.”

Rola’a Under Siege (Chapter 1, Part 1 of 2)

Deep inside the planet’s belly he’d been forged and pieced together, a child of La’a herself. The first in eleven centuries. From his chest grew a ball of living metal, scooped from La’a’s outer core to fuse with bone and muscle. His skin was hairless and without pigment, the glow from his cooling heart only slightly dampened by his body’s translucence as he came up through her crust in a network of rapid underground currents where only blind fish swam. His blood ran dark and cold, giving the tunnel walls a bluish cast as he passed. Finally Mother La’a gave him up with with a watery burp and he flowed naked into the river La’am, his newborn body facing yellowsky for the first time.

——-

Hunla came out of her dwelling and joined several others already gathered near the ledge facing out into the canyon. They were all looking down, at the river. When she saw what they saw, that the water level had risen several bodylengths, she let out a sigh. There would be no fleen Harvest. The trees were underwater, and the plump fruits that grew ripe only for a handful of daycycles would be plucked off and sent with the current. She noticed the bitterness on the others’ faces, and some of the women seemed about to cry.

“It’s a shame. No fleenfruit this year. But we will figure it out.”

One of the women turned toward her, incredulous. Her name was Graspa, one of a younger generation, as her skin was redder than Hunla’s humble orange. “We will starve without the fleen harvest!”

“Hardly.”

They all turned toward her now, and Hunla realized she might have kept her mouth shut. Grell wouldn’t be happy if she told about the store - he had always hoarded the good news. She hastened to cover.

“I simply mean that when the river goes back down, there will be fish and fleen to gather. As well as sap from the trees.”

It might have satisfied them. “But why did it have to happen now,” Graspa said. “The Harvest was only two daycycles away. And how long until it goes down?”

“La’an only knows.”

The women turned back to their depressive watch. Hunla turned and walked back to her dwelling, thoughtful. A whole grove of fleen trees, picked clean. And the river La’andam hadn’t risen the whole time she’d lived in Yuuka with Marg. The Fleen Harvest was something the people here took for granted. And truthfully, she had begun to as well. She would miss it. The taste of the fruit was like nothing she’d experienced - it was truly a wonder. The Harvest was a time of wealth and merriment, as the people gorged on fleen and fleenwine and fleenjelly on bread. The binge was the only way, because three daycycles after Harvest the fleen would rot. If one had eaten enough, one could fast for nearly a month, surviving only on handfuls of water from the river. If anyone tried to go down there now, however, they’d be swept away. The architects of Yuuka had been wise to keep the dwellings well above the river, allowing only ladder shafts to reach that far down. Ladder shafts that were halfway filled with water now.

In her dwelling, which was dug out from the wall of her level’s common area in much the same way as all of the levels had been carved out from the wall of the canyon, on both sides, Hunla put a hand to a particularly dark spot on her floor and closed her eyes. Then she Listened. Her touch on the dark rock, which was called La’anite, gave her passive access to every other instance of La’anite throughout Yuuka and the surrounding area, though her range was limited. She’d occasionally been able to connect to her uncle in the mountain fortress of Roll, but only because he was of an earlier generation and had greater range, and only because he’d wished to connect to her. But the rock was prevalent even here, and had its uses. For the most part, La’anite was an igneous rock, and rather porous. Whole clumps of it lay underground and were useless for Listening - Hunla could connect to them but all she would learn about their surroundings was that it was dark and quiet. Over the years in Yuuka she had been able to memorize where the relevant La’anite was, and spent little time eavesdropping when she knew who she wanted to find. She worked quickly through all of the dwellings, and finally came to the surface. The plains, above the canyon. La’anite was prevalent there, as the embedded rocks were uncovered by wind and time. New relevant Listening posts were appearing all the time, and old ones being covered up. She finally heard Marg’s voice, along with many of the Yuukan warriors, atop the grainfields. That’s where she would find him.

Each level she climbed she found the same kind of grouping near the ledge - mostly women lamenting the loss of their Harvest. The men were less sentimental, but even so she could tell they were melancholy too. There seemed to be less men milling about than usual, however. On the fifth level, where meals were prepared and served, nobody gathered. That was odd, because even when it wasn’t mealtime there would be conversation and table games taking place. It was where most social interaction between levels happened, as you were always likely to see someone you knew well. Hunla kept climbing. There were twelve levels in all in Yuuka, and they housed nearly five thousand people. An equal amount lived across the bridges, on the other side of the canyon. Visits across the bridges were less common and hardly ever scheduled, as the canyon was often too windy to travel. The bridges were rope and wood, although plans had been in the works for a long time to find something stronger to connect the communities. As it was, only small groups of people travelled across, and these were usually those that had relatives on the other side. Some had grown up on one half of Yuuka without ever visiting the other, but this was more from lazyness than from legitimate hindrance.

On the surface, she found Marg engaged in a sparring session with a much larger Yuukan warrior. She waited patiently for him to dispatch the man, although her patience wasn’t much required.  Marg stepped forward, parrying a spearthrust as he swept a brown-skinned leg under the other man, bringing him to the ground. His spearblade rested an inch from the other’s throat, and the warrior dropped his spear in defeat.

“Best seven out of thirteen,” the man on the ground said, but Marg had spotted Hunla and simply shook his head.

“No, Stregg, I’ve already beaten you six out of eleven.”

“How’s a man to better himself if he can’t win once?”

Marg pulled him to his feet. “Spar another one of your warriors. I have news to speak to my partner.”

Stregg walked away muttering. Hunla imagined it might be because Stregg was the strongest and most talented of any of the Yuuka warriors, and Marg was a Thra’an. One of the last remaining on the planet, after the Chyla’an race had all but wiped them from the face of La’a. Thra’a had been known for its warriors, and they had enough of them to keep a standing army of peacekeepers in each of the three main regions - Thra’a to the West, Chyla’a to the North, and Rola’a to the south. Until something had happened in Chyla’a. And the Reapers had come.

Now Thra was no more. Three centuries had passed since the Chyla’an Reapers had removed the Thra’ans, and those living in Rol’a had hope that the Reapers would leave them alone. Grell was the champion of this kind of thought, and he was the current elected leader of Yuuka. Only, recently, cities to the North but still a part of Rol had begun to fall. Survivors had been scarce, and none of them had been able to say if it had been Reapers who’d been responsible. The last time she’d connected with her uncle through the La’anite he’d been full of tension, wary that the time of the Rola’ans was coming to a swift end. And if the Thra’ans hadn’t been able to stop the Chyla’ans…

Marg came to her, meeting her eyes. She nodded back.

“It seems the river has flooded, and taken our Harvest from us.”

He nodded. “It may not have mattered anyway. I fear…another of our cities has fallen, and this time, we have evidence from one of the surviving Runners. It was Reapers.” Hunla shivered.

Reapers were monstrous-looking men who had been bred for stupidity and strength. They flew through the air on balls of metal, and were bearers of weapons that shot electricity. There was no fighting them - the Thra’an army had been trained soldiers, the best in all of La’an, but even they were no match for flying machines.

“Which city?” She asked. It mattered little. Yuuka was far to the North of the Rola’an territories, and there were precious few cities between them and the mountain range that stood between Rola’a and Chyla’a.

“Grob.” His voice was dark. Grob was the closest city to Yuuka, about a day’s walk North, and well-hidden. Its people lived underground, in a massive network of tunnels.

“My La’an. Have you told Grell?”

Marg nodded again. “He doesn’t care for the things I tell him. Half of the time I’m just a rumor-mongering Thra’an. The other half of the time he tells me there’s nothing we can do about any of it.”

“Did you tell him we need to evacuate? To go South?”

“I did. But in his mind, we’d be helpless in the plains, and then the desert. The Reapers would have no trouble finding us, and with the Greensky a week away, the Dust…”

“What chance do we have here?”

“None. But Grell is more interested in the loss of fleen Harvest. That’s his favorite time of year. He’s got men out hunting for pig, so we can all eat.”

So that’s why the levels and Meal Hall were so empty.

“We’ll have to organize a revolt,” Hunla said.
“There may not be time. The Reapers could be here tonight, at Redsky.”
“Still, we can’t leave everyone here to die.”

Marg looked away.

“No. Even if the Reapers are to find us all eventually…and Chyla’a takes over La’an…I won’t let my people die again. And these are my people now.”

The partners walked toward the cliff, hand in hand. Hunla looked down at the rushing waters.

“Organize a meeting in the Meal Hall. Tonight. Get the word out, and make it urgent. Even if the people only think of the lost Harvest. I will try to find a Listener on the other side of the canyon who can do the same.”

“We have to keep Grell out of things. Tie him up, if need be. Take him by force.”

“To Roll?”

“There is nowhere else larger or safer than your uncle’s mountain keep.”

She nodded. The escape plan had always involved Roll. Her home. She tried to catch Marg’s eye, but her husband was looking down. Not idly, as she’d been, but with a squint. He was rapt.

“There, in the river…do you see that? It’s moving.” He pointed.

She looked. To her, everything was moving. But there was something working against the current, flailing.

“It’s a man!” she said. Marg grunted, his suspicion founded. He left her side then, running along the cliff’s edge and upriver, looking down every few steps to judge the placement of the floundering man. Then, before Hunla even realized he’d been thinking of it, Marg launched himself into the air and leapt into the canyon.

Hunla cursed his Thra’an upbringing, and then ran to the surface entrance to Yuuka.

DWOM - ending

It weighed more already, and seemed to be growing moment by moment, but too slow to catch by looking. He wouldn’t make it if he tried walking, would most likely topple somewhere along the way as he tried to keep his balance with the toddler and his cane. Driving, then.

He hadn’t driven the car in almost four years - Rebecca was in charge of groceries, and took him to all of his appointments. Gray had a scare one night, when he’d mistaken a green light for a yellow, and slowed down enough so that a truck behind him had to jam its brakes and ended up swerving into the oncoming lane of traffic. There was a crash, a lot of yelling and thank the Lord everyone was all right, but Gray knew it had been his fault. His eyesight was no longer what it was. He didn’t trust himself behind the wheel.

The demon child fed off his anxiety, redoubling its growth as Gray looked for the keys. He tried to calm himself down. They were there, on the rack. His wife was steady with her patterns, and this time he was grateful.

Behind the wheel he drowsed, nauseous. He put the sedan in gear and pulled out of the driveway, trying not to kick the pedals too hard. He successfully avoided a cyclist, who flipped him off anyway, and then dropped his foot to the floor. He was at the train station in less than four minutes, and already the toddler had grown to the size of a six-year-old.  Its skin was changing color as well, from the porcelain white it had been when he’d pulled it from the package to a Mediterranean olive-like color. Gray didn’t have the energy to think about it. He staggered out of the door and into the train station, where several people didn’t bother glancing at him. He was jogging, or trying to, afraid that if he kept to walking he would simply collapse. He got to the bench where he liked to sit and fought the urge to take a break. If he rested now he would die.

At the wall he saw something he’d never seen before . An inner part of him had been hoping for it, that he’d be able to see the slot, or the door to the other side. It was small and square, probably only three and a half feet tall. At the top was a rectangular slot, and below that was a round hole. He lurched to the wall and plunged his hand into the hole. There was a bar inside, and he grappled with it, pulling. The door began to open, but it was held in place by an immense amount of friction. Sweat poured from Gray like a wrung-out rag, and the child clung to him ever-tighter. Finally it came open. Gray crouched, wondering if he’d ever be able to stand again.

“That guy’s got a naked kid!”

He looked back, weary. A man in a white button-down shirt and tie was pointing at him.

“That old black guy’s stealing someone’s kid!”

Security guards charged him, keys jangling at their waists. “We’ve got an abduction at Mercy Station,” one of them shouted into his walkie. Another one pulled something from his belt. Not a gun. A taser.

Gray raised his hands. “It’s not me! You know me!”

“Get the sick fuck!”

Were he alone, Gray might have forgotten all about the door, and given in to the panic he felt. But the child had already been reaching back into the doorway and with an immense show of strength, tossed the old black man into the darkness.

They fell. Gray screamed, and the child grew larger. There was no light, and Gray knew that he shouldn’t be able to see anything, but he could. He twisted around, rotating his shoulders first and then his hips, so he was no longer falling backwards. If the landing came now he would break both of his legs. The walls rushing past him made up some kind of chute - a package chute. His brain sent signals to his arms, and he flailed them wildly, grabbing at any hold they might find. But the chute was opening outward, and there was nothing to touch. Gray tugged at the boy clinging to him, but the demon thing only gripped tighter. All of the strength went out of the old man, and he passed out.

Next he was being stabbed. In the back, just beneath his shoulder blade. He felt the air go out of his chest, and came awake all at once, howling in pain. The hook came out, and Gray opened his eyes. He was no longer falling - he and the child were resting in the midst of a writhing pile of packages, just like the one he’d opened. Gray didn’t question that he could see any of this - his eyes were obviously tuned to the energies of the under layer. The child was still nuzzled to him, now the approximation of a twelve-year-old boy entering puberty. Its skin was even darker. Beyond them was a platform, on which one of the bright-colored little men stood, holding a long stick with a curved pointed end. The end was dripping blood.

It hurt to breathe, and Gray realized one of his lungs was probably punctured. He raised a hand to the little man, and tried to speak.

“I need help. I opened a package and there was a baby inside. And it was killing my wife. It’s killing me.”

The little man stared impassively. Then he turned around and walked away, leaving Gray and the child in the writhing pile. The platform was empty, and Gray knew he was about to die. If not from the child, then from the blood he was losing. A moment later the bright little man was back, this time with a taller, skinnier man. This one was all dressed in green, and its hair was a deep aqua. Its skin pulsated with an aura of purply blue light.

“Who are you?” It said.

Gray groaned. This was all taking too long.  “Ken. Grayson. It doesn’t matter - I need your help.”

“It’s clear to me that you need help,” the tall cool-pallette said. “But it’s not mine you need. It’s not anyone’s you can get. And there’s nothing so wrong with death, not at your age. Not with the kind of foolish life you’ve lived.”

The packages around him were exited, rocking him as though he rode a wave as they jittered in their trans-dimensional way. The child was fourteen, fifteen.

“What was it, your life? Valor? Hard work? Curiosity? It doesn’t much matter now. You’re here, and you’ve doomed even us. No use talking about it.”

“What do you mean? What is it - what did I do?”

The green man waved a hand dismissively. “You birthed one of the souls not meant for yours or any world. They’re harvested at conception and sent here. For holding. It’s my job to see they stay, and to patch any of them that might be deteriorating. To keep them from hatching. Worlds have found their end many ways, and it is my task to keep any from ending in this particular one. However, it seems you’ve rendered my responsibility meaningless. There’s nothing any of us can do.”

Gray felt himself dimming. The green man was far away. The child was growing facial hair.

“I just want to go home. To my wife.”

“You and me both, Mister Grayson. I will, you see. There is no better way to spend the end of things than with a loved one. And you might, after a fashion. Let me know just one thing before you go, would you? Why did you open it?”

“Had to know what was inside.”

“And now you know. Tell me, how does it feel?”

“Like Hell.”

—-

Rebecca awoke feeling feeling sweaty and disoriented. It was dark somehow - had she slept so little? Her bones ached. She sat up, and even that was a struggle. Gray’s spot was cold and empty. She was confused, and a slight tremor made its way into her normally steady heartbeat.

“Kenny?”

She got up and started toward the bathroom. Used to travelling the short distance in the dark, she held her arm out only as a force of habit. When it found that space occupied also by what felt like warm skin, she started.

“Oh!” She felt out for it again, and felt the strong biceps of her husband.  “You scared me, Kenny. Oh dear, you’re shivering. Come to bed, would you? It’s all right about earlier. I’m not mad, I just want you to hold me.” She led her him to bed and got in. She kissed him. He didn’t say anything, and as much as she wanted to believe everything was all right, she worried. She touched a switch on the bedside lamp, and turned over. Her husband had his eyes closed already, and his breathing was deep. He held something out to her, which she took. It was a package, rectangular in shape and about the size of two shoeboxes. It was covered in brown paper and kept tied with twine.

“A present?” Her husband nodded into her arm. “Oh, you didn’t have to. It was just a little disagreement. I shouldn’t have been so hard on you - I know how much you love sitting at that station. I just feel like you forget who your wife is every once in a while.”

She looked at the package again, and wondered what might be inside.

“Oh, what’s the use in waiting? I’ll open it now.” She got up for the scissors, which she kept in the kitchen drawer under the phone. On her way out of the bedroom, she took one last look at Gray, bathed in the yellow light of the bedside lamp. He looks like he did ten years ago. So young. Later, as she cut the strings off, she couldn’t imagine why he hadn’t opened his eyes to see her unwrap his present.

Still, didn’t it feel like he was watching?

Cannibal

Gambol had no interest in children. In Bulgaria, he sighed with disgust as a sack-toting bogey limped out of the forest near a sparsely-populated village. It sang to itself softly, and lamented the death of its maker, Baba Yaga. Too many of them had traits he didn’t need. This one was just another child-scaring bogey. None of the adults in the village paid it any mind, and some of the adolescents spit and threw rocks as it passed.

Pathetic.

“Goodbye, Torbalan.” Gambol pulled open a trapdoor in the dirt and dropped through it. He fell into a great wind, one that pulled at his skin flaps. The tunnel opened up and beneath him was the Earth, big and blue and green. He pointed his being toward Poland, and landed in a murky stream near a cobbled bridge. It was faster to travel this way, through trapdoors, though the falling had put him off at first.

A baby began to cry. Gambol pulled his skin up and walked down the stream toward the bridge.

“Hello Bubak.”

The crying stopped. From the shadows under the bridge drifted a form wreathed in rotten burlap. Its skull was painted with old blood, brown and black with time. It lifted an axe, and Gambol stepped forward. He grappled with it, and with the practiced fingers of his free hand he began to tear its skin, stripping the ragged flesh like bark from a tree. Bubak went limp, and Gambol stitched the skin onto his forearm, where it made a sleeve.

He was bits Japanese Namahage, Finnish Groke, and Pugot Mamu from the Phillipines. Mamu had been his favorite, a headless shapeshifter who’d ground men into sausage as it fed them into it’s neck hole. Gambol had stitched them all into himself, trophies and bearers of power. They would start to fear him now, the others - especially those with something to give.

He pulled a trapdoor through the streambottom and dropped in, water following. Below him the Earth turned, and somewhere it would rain for a few seconds. He guided his being toward Texas, and landed in a farmyard. He dragged his skin behind a bale of hay and slept.

Gambol was the first and only American bogey, truth be told.

One genuine, gosh-to-golly, spirits-be-praised, melting pot.

Bertumirtha

My name is Gordon Brick, and I am a writer.

A writer is just what we call those of us who go around pretending we don’t matter while secretly believing the opposite: that nobody matters aside from us. Take myself, for instance. What incredible ego must I have to take it upon myself to create people and places that don’t already exist? Presumably, were these people meant to exist, they would. I am not doing the universe any kind of service.

But let’s say the worlds and characters I create exist in some other dimension. Were we to accept that an infinite number of parallel realities coincide directly with ours, then - wouldn’t we have to assume that in one of these there is a living breathing animal with the name of Bertumirtha Robinson? I just made her up, you see. Upon having imagined Bertumirtha, who is a sixteen-year-old girl (as well as every other age she could possibly be) I have hypothesized a universe where she exists. And if an infinite number of universes exist, then so must she. What if that one universe in which she exists is this very one?

Therefore, if you’ve been following this logic, I am God.

Understand - I label myself not this word in an effort to change your personal beliefs. Perhaps your God and myself are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps we can both exist at the same time - if not in this world then surely in another. Also, do not mistake me. I did not make you. Some other version of me in another universe has most obviously hypothesized a character with your name, effectively creating the need for your existence. Simply by typing a few sentences about your facial structure, demeanor, and the type of clothes you wear, they’ve ensured that somewhere, sometime, you exist. Lucky for you that time is now. The God you pray to only exists in another version of this reality - he or she can’t hear you. But I can.

Isn’t that what’s important - A God that listens?

Listen: While I typed those words, a message box opened up, and thinking I must know the person who messaged me, (because who besides people I know would bother?) I responded. In responding I found out that the name of the person on the other end of the message was Bertumirtha Robinson, a sixteen-year-old girl. When I asked her what universe she came from, she seemed to be confused. She said “Atlanta.”

Why has she messaged me? Bertumirtha says she has found my name on a list with a plethora of contact information. She’s been compelled to contact me. She does not know anything about me. I find all of this rather suspicious.

At first I wonder if I am simply the victim of a very clever prank, meant to strike fear into my blaspheming heart. I can imagine a person doing such a thing - thinking these very words as he portrays himself as a sixteen-year-old girl with a horrendous name I am responsible for: “He wants to play God, does he? Then we’ll let him play God. See how he likes it.” The idea being that playing God is not a very fun game.

I find myself agreeing with this prankster. What fun is it to be the creator of anything if all that thing wanted to do was find and bother you with its tiny problems?

So I ignore Bertumirtha at first.

Time passes. Etcetera.

Bertumirtha tells me she loves me. We have been talking for several months, and I have not yet told her that it is possible that I am her Creator.  That she appeared to me moments after I hypothesized her existence. I tell her I love her too, because she is very pretty, and if I am her Creator I don’t want to be apathetic about it. I wonder if it is because she only says things I would have made her say. I have friends who would be interested in this relationship, because it all seems rather masturbatory.

Tomorrow I am traveling to Atlanta to meet with my creation. She says she will be wearing a red dress.

I am not sure what to wear. Behind my eyes, in the front part of my brain, there is a dull throb of surety. I will arrive, and she will not. She cannot, because she cannot exist. If she does, then I will be pleasant with her, and put my lips to hers. She is only sixteen because I made her that way - she is no girl.

What was it like when God came down from a mountain as a burning tumbleweed?

Was he nervous?

We meet at a church. The reason doesn’t matter - by now I’m convinced it is because a church is the optimal setting for a meeting between a character and its creator. I might have joked it was my house, but it’s a Greek Orthodox church, which I’m not even sure is a real thing. Walking through the doors and looking around, I am more and more convinced the place is made out of papier mache.

She looks how I imagined her. Same almond skin, deep brown eyes, soft lips. If I’m not her creator, someone else thought my thought before I ever did. She’s sitting in a pew, and some other people are too. Pews are a sort of really long bench, and these ones are heavily-glazed cherry. Maybe when the carpenter was putting on all those coats of lacquer, the place really stunk, and the really long benches got named. I slide in next to her, and it’s easy because I’m wearing a white fleece jogging outfit (accented with orange vertical bands) and I think I could slip down the whole length of one if I had a step or two to get up to speed.

“Bertumirtha,” I say. She looks at me like she knows me, because I sent her a picture. In the picture I’m jogging.

“You’re wearing that same outfit.”

“I thought I should wear something recognizable. Also, whenever I drive more than two hours I wear the fleece.” I don’t tell her why, because it’s not in her character to be interested in boring details like it’s how I keep the odors in.

“We’re in a church.”

“Good setting, right?”

“I’d rather go somewhere we can talk.” She looks at me and I can see she doesn’t mean talk. All of a sudden I realize a church is a terrible setting, and my fleece starts to itch. I lick my lips, wondering if I shaved.

“Let’s take a walk.”

In front of the Chorus Members Only room (which I misread as Chosen Members Only the first and second times) there is a velvet rope and a carved out cylinder of stone wherein two people can be safely hidden until the noises they make are heard by wandering men of God.

Bertumirtha and I are in this cylinder. She smells how I wrote that she did, like pomegranate and salt. She moves to kiss me and I wonder if I imagined that part of her, the mouth part, too big. Our teeth clank. Outside of our cylinder, a man says, “But who would steal anything? Inside a church?” The word church, given such emphasis, tickles me. Bertumirtha gets better accustomed to the unusual shape of my mouth, and I hear this: “Hard to imagine anyone doing anything like that inside a church.” I am still kissing her but now I am laughing too. This is a mistake. It’s in Bertumirtha’s character to respond to any sort of laughter with a raucous brand of her own, often ending in fits of snorting. She does so.

Moments later a man’s giant head pokes into the cylinder. It is like some deep sea creature. A jellyfish, or an octopus. Some of it is glowing. Its eyes (does it have eyes?) are dark and bulging, and veins all over it are standing out. I think it might pop.

“What are you doing in here,” it seethes. The head tries to get more of itself into the opening, but it’s too big. It pulls a foot-long stick from the robes it flies around in and waves it at us.

“Are you having sex?” It is in Bertumirtha’s character to respond to accusations regarding her coital status by widening her eyes and opening her mouth. It’s a stock expression of fear, and I’m a lazy writer. The way my face works itself up at the giant head is as if to say, “No, we’re not having sex you jolly fat idiot,” but my mouth doesn’t say this at all. My mouth says this:

“Not yet.”

The eyes bulge, the veins tighten.

“You’re in a church!” the head hollers. I giggle. Bertumirtha sobs. “You’re having sex in a church?” That word again, like it’s supposed to mean something extra when it’s said all sideways like that. Is a church ever more or less a church?

“Get out of my church right now! I’m going to call the police, and they’re going to-” He stabs his little stick at us, his magic wand of religion. I have never seen the owner of a church so angry, but perhaps that’s a commonality among such men, as I’ve only encountered the one.

“IN A CHURCH?”

I once wrote a story about a man who devoted his life to coming up with phrases that people would attribute to him after he died. Every night he would come home from work and put down in his journal something he’d thought of during the day. “A fool and a genius should each be paid - the genius for his thoughts, and the fool to keep out of them.” “Constant scrubbing doesn’t stop the child from walking through mud.” Little gems of wisdom like that. He made sure to say one or more of his favorites every time he was at a social gathering or work function - so they might catch on. They never did. One day, he rushed to the toilet in his office and just managed to sit down before the worst of runs came out of him. The noise was awful - the smell stripped paint. He put his head between his knees. “Oh Christ,” he said, “Better to shit down than sit up.” Someone started laughing - a coworker had been in the stall next door, listening to it all. My writer of sayings died soon after, as characters are wont to do, and what do you think I made his friends and family put on his tombstone?

Outside, in the grass, I tell this to Bertumirtha, and then explain that the thing we’ve just encountered will have a similar tombstone. This man’s epitaph would read, “IN A CHURCH?” She is still crying, not audibly, but in kind of wheezing gasps, the kind I am proud of because any writer can make a character’s eyes get red and have water come out. Then I start laughing, because she’ll have to, and soon she is laughing and gasping and wheezing and it’s all my fault.

“I have to go,” I say, pulling her head toward my head so they touch, our forehead greases mixing.

“I have a secret,” she says. “I created you.”

“What now?” This is certainly not in her character. Stealing my secret and saying it’s hers, because I didn’t create her to be rude.

“I imagined a writer,” she says, “Named Gordon Brick, for a story assignment at school. I made up a character sheet. Even drew him. A week later I typed the name into Google. You were real.”

I hadn’t written any characters to think they’d created me, because that wouldn’t make any sense. Bertumirtha has taken on a mind of her own. I scrunch up my eyes and make them as narrow as they get. This is how you look at people you were just kissing inside of a church but for certain reasons no longer trust.

“I wrote a story about your character from your point of view, and had him think himself God, had him imagine a random name, which was mine, had him immediately confronted with the possibility of his creation.”

“Oh. But. You’re sixteen.” There is something I am trying to get at here, a kind of proof of denial. Sixteen wasn’t enough years to imagine all of mine, all of my books. I’ve written hundreds of them.

“You’re forty, and yet nothing about the idea of making out with a sixteen-year-old girl in a church bothers you. I made you that way. You only remember having written books, not writing them. The story about the man of quotations I made up for my assignment as an allegory for you.”

“How’s that?” My head feels muzzy. I really should have left when I said I was. All the extra listening is making me nauseous.

“You’re a man who thinks he’s God, thinks he’s been given proof of that fact, only to find out that he’s less real than anyone else, and that a sixteen year old girl-“

“Uh huh.” I didn’t remember making her character this long-winded, but if she could be trusted (and I’d really stopped trusting her right after she’d gone out of character - maybe this wasn’t Bertumirtha at all, but a decoy) then I was a fabrication, not her. I giggle at the absurdity.

“-actually is God. Irony. Only it would be, if it were in your character to believe unbelievable things people you think you’ve made up say to you in person once you’ve met them.”

I’m turning to leave. I’m walking across the parking lot. I’m in my car. Bertumirtha is standing in the grass, no longer crying, no longer laughing. She has her hands on her hips. I roll down my window as I go by, and say this:

“What happened at the end of your story assignment?”

She says some nonsense, and I drive home.

Two More for Hemmelhaut

When I have headaches, Petitioning pretty much breaks me. It’s not that it isn’t the most rewarding job I’ve ever had, because it is. It’s not that the headaches are particularly bad either, because they aren’t - when I was growing up I used to have some whoppers, and none of these are anything like that. It’s just kind of that the two don’t mix well, and I do things I shouldn’t.

It’s not even that, because I do those things with regularity, but when I’m in my right head I have a sense of guilt about them. But then, with the headaches. The headaches encourage a state of apathy. Sometimes I don’t even care to stop.

Just today, for instance. A heterosexual couple approaches me, preceded by a single fat male, probably drunk, and an old woman, probably liberal. I’ve found it’s always best to go for the couples, anyway. Favorable power dynamics.

“A simple question, ma’am, sir. Are you registered Autocrats in the state of New Kentucky?”

“Yes,” the man says, and they continue on. I follow, dropping into pace behind them. They think they’re clever, the men, answering the question asked as if that were all. As if I were conducting a poll of various yes or no questions and marking down affirmative or negative and bringing the results to my supervisor at the end of shift.

“Would either of you have a moment to lend a drop of your blood to a very important cause?” The man, as always, waves his hand and continues to walk. The woman, as always, slows down, interested in the prospect of a cause worthy enough for her. She will probably still say no thank you, and continue, but at least she appreciates the attention.

“The group I’m volunteering for is trying to get their man Harvey Blondstein into the Hall of Representation.” I say this conversationally, but it is rapid-fire, because hesitation means no sale. Empty pricks are bad for the volunteering organization, especially when said organization is paying you under the table, because your work ethic and on-the-job-expertise make you indispensable to whichever cause they’ve chosen to back.

“All I need from you is a drop of blood,” I say, “to get Mr. Blondstein on the ballot. New faces, new faces on the ballot.”

She’s turned now. I have her.

“It’s not a vote, it’s in no way a vote, just need five thousand drops of blood to get ole’ Blondo on the ballot.”

“Everyone deserves a chance,” she says. “Right in here,” I say holding up the prick. She dips her finger in, and the bubble turns dark red.

Her husband looks annoyed, but he’s stopped too.

“Sir? Like to help keep the cogs of Autocracy in place? You are for Autocracy, aren’t you?”

“Oh, come on, Steven. We’ve a play to get to. Put your finger in the prick.”

I have two drops of blood. They go into my sack and I forget about them. I feel slightly guilty that the drops are going for Guenther Hemmelhaut, Blondstein’s opponent. But then, the woman had said that everyone deserved a chance, and my headache was coming on.

“Hans!” I shout, and my brother Hans turns from his post. He has been Petitioning a small old man with white facial hair. He looked flustered, and I could tell the aged one has been asking for Specifics. They always do that, need to know everything about everything, so afraid they’d put their drop of wrinkly blood in the wrong vial. As if he’s got a bunch more years to lament the consequences.

I shoo the old man away. He stands defiant for a moment, so I wonk him on the back of the head with my clipboard until he staggers off. He had the limp to begin with, I’m pretty sure.

“Hans,” I say, “What have I told you? Couples, large groups with stragglers, and single women. You are better looking than me, they should be flocking to you, fingers poised for the pricking.”

Hans doesn’t say anything. I am Hans’ favorite brother ever since Jorgen died showing off against a bear on a camping trip our father took us on three summers ago. Hans and my mother and father say he died a hero, but I know all he really did was distract the animal for almost an hour with his meat.

I would have done it too, if I’d have thought of it.

Hans is not very good at Petitioning. He should be, because he stands wide and his chin is almost a perfect circle. I think maybe he wants a different career, like Canning.  He won’t admit to it, but sometimes late at night I catch him bending long strips of pounded metal into rough cylinders with his teeth.

A group of women with stragglers come from our left. I wonk Hans on the back of the head and get him started, and then stand aside so I can listen to his pitch. Sometimes I just help, because Petitioning isn’t something you can pick up and learn in a minute. It takes skill. Poise.

“Are you all, is there any of you who has a drop of blood to spare,” hesitation, “A good cause!” I shake my head.

Hans is hopeless. I have to keep myself from speaking up, saving him from the laughter of the women and the piteous glances from their trailing servant men. They’re gone, and I’m about to wonk Hans again, but a heterosexual couple is coming from my direction.

Couples are my specialty.

“A simple question, ma’am, sir. Are you registered Autocrats in the state of New Kentucky?”

“No, sorry, we’re from New Tennessee.” They mean old Michigan, but that only changed last year and the new name is one I’m slowly getting used to. I turn my head away and lift my nose.

“So sorry,” they say again, “But our drops of blood wouldn’t even count for your Petition. We’re not even registered here.” So happy to find themselves in the position of being unable to help. They saunter off, telling each other they would have loved to help, wouldn’t they have, if they’d only been able. Yes, of course.

I let the next few go by, and Hans makes half-attempts at engaging with them. I don’t bother with singles, men or women. Ninety percent of them are going to say no, and so you’d have to Petition a hundred to get ten drops of blood. Couples stop more than thirty percent of the time, and then you have two filled pricks. Petition even twenty-five couples, that’s fifteen drops of blood. Large groups are even better, when they pan out. More often you’re left Petitioning one or two while the rest filter into a bar. Then you return to Hans with your teeth set and your head throbbing, wishing you had tied some weights to the clipboard so that the wonking you’re giving him did something more than just take him down.

The clipboard is useless for anything but wonking, really. They say in the old days Petitioners used the boards persuade people to fill tiny rectangles with ink patterns, but if it happened, it wasn’t long before they figured out that blood was far superior to ink. You can’t even trace ink. Still, they make us carry around the boards as a kind of totem of profession. I have to get a new one every month or so, because they don’t hold up too well over time against old men and women asking for Specifics. And I guess Hans is partway responsible, but if I had another Petitioner at my post I’d probably think they were just as responsible as Hans is.

The headache is starting to annoy me, and I do something I don’t normally do. I smile at a pretty woman who is dressed in an animal-skin singlet and spring-coil shoes. Her hair is draped over her head like a curtain.

“Hello,” I say, “Would you be interesting in lending a drop of blood to the cause of the extinct cat?”

“The cat?” She stops, intrigued. The word cat is an old one, and isn’t heard very often anymore.

“With just a drop of your blood you will be adding your name to a petition to bring the cat out of extinction.”

“Oh, wonderful. Cats.” She extends her finger, and I hold up my prick.

“One last thing, however, ma’am. Are you a registered Autocrat in the state of New Kentucky?” She thinks a moment, and then nods. I motion to the prick, and she touches it.

She walks off smiling, because there is a drop of drug that replaces the drop of blood and tricks the head into thinking the pain was pleasure.

I don’t even feel bad, not even for a moment, and it’s because of my headache. There may well be a Petitioner working for the Cat Extinction Reversal Coalition, but he isn’t me. I don’t see what’s wrong with the animals we’ve got that we need to bring back the ones we got rid of before.

“Hans,” I shout, and he turns from his post. He has been Petitioning a small old woman, one who is hard of hearing. He is trying to get her to put her finger in the prick, but she doesn’t understand. I walk over and wonk her on the head and she bumbles off, muttering. The muttering is shrill and voluminous, and I have to plug my ears.

“How many drops do you have, Hans?” He looks in his sack and counts off on his fingers.

“Fourteen.” It’s not a bad number for half-an-hour, but we’ve been on this corner for three. In my own sack I have something nearing ninety drops. I do some quick math, and figure I can spare a few.

“Here,” I say, “Hold out your sack.” He does, and I drop a handful of drops into it. Then I wonk him over the head.

A couple comes by, both tall and thin with corrected eyesight. Either they’ve lived together so long they’ve begun to adopt the other’s look, or they’re brother and sister, father and daughter, or son and mother. They might also be cousins.

“Would either of you be interested in dropping your blood for Foot Fungus Research?”

The man waves his hand, but the woman slows.

“Foot fungus is no longer just a foot fungus,” I say, “but a sneaky menace that infests pits and joints, as well as other moist orifices.” I nod my head suggestively, and hold up a prick.

The woman bobs over, nodding. “There has to be some recourse against that fungus.”

“With cancer out of the way,” I say, “and the thwarting of human-to-human sexual transmissible infections, foot fungus has become the greatest threat to public and private health. Won’t you lend a drop?” I pull a second prick out and point it at the man.

He sighs and readies his finger. “One last thing,” I say, “Are both of you registered Autocrats in the state of New Kentucky?”

The woman nods but the man is confused. “Now why would a foot fungus Petitioner need to know that?”

“It could be,” I say, “That the foot fungus Petitioner is merely curious.” I shake the prick at him. “Prick,” I encourage.

He pricks.

My head throbs, and my mouth itches to lie some more. Hans is Petitioning another old man. I go over to help, but first I put the foot fungus blood in my sack.

Two more for Hemmelhaut.

Like a Roach

Every time the wood flooring creaked, Raymond winced. Sorry, sorry, he whispered to himself, half hoping the woman in the other room was still awake. At least then she wouldn’t come alive with fright, which seemed to be the only way she was wound. It was always “Oh! you scared me,” every time he came home, or “Oh! I didn’t know you were here.”

Raymond never thought of himself as a very frightening figure. He was, by most accounts, rather timid. He wasn’t a small man, but his tucked shoulders and slippery eye contact had become habits that kept him from relationships and gainful employment. He was the sort who felt out of place even in bed. And when the floor squeaked, Raymond had a hard time convincing himself he wasn’t an intruder in his own apartment. His bare feet didn’t help the racket, as he’d hoped, but instead slowed him in the dark, as he was afraid of stubbing a toe on a piece of living room furniture. The languid steps he took, then, only seemed to prolong the creaks. If it were up to him, he’d stay in his room.

But his gut, that bottomless pit!

Finally he got to the kitchen. With his right hand he fingered an electrical socket, then climbed the wall until he found the switch.

The first things he noticed were two shiny black beads resting on the tiny throw rug just in front of the refrigerator. They were each about an inch and more in length, and situated at perpendicular angles.

One ran at him, antennae waving boldly, and stopped three feet from him in the center of a white square of the chess-checkered linoleum.

Raymond stepped back. He’d gotten used to the ants in the apartment, but only because they were so small you could squint and they wouldn’t be there anymore. A sandwich tasted just as good squinting. But a cockroach? Two?

The other one hadn’t moved from its guard position in front of the refridgerator. It seemed obvious to Raymond that he’d discovered some kind of plot, interrupted a mission. That one was the brains, and this one - this one that had run at him was the muscle.

“You tell him to back off, all right?” he whispered. “You tell him I’m not going for the fridge anymore. I’m just going back to bed. I’ll forget I saw you.”

Neither of them moved, and Raymond was struck by a flash of anger. He was bigger, wasn’t he? They should be more afraid of him!

He took two loud but shortened steps toward the warrior bug, expecting the thing to dart off in the direction of the other one, but it didn’t move. Of course it hadn’t. Now Raymond was standing mere inches from its body, with bare feet. A wave of grotesque fear drove him back again just as the cockroach lunged.

Once again he found himself in a Mexican standoff with the already much larger-seeming creature. The other one watched, calm. Raymond found himself wondering what harm could come to him, realistically. Did the things bite? He thought of his own current set of bug bites. One on his left bicep, on his back just above his right buttock, on his left wrist, and just behind his right calf. All of them had been especially bulbous and had oozed bloody pus when he’d itched them. He’d supposed they were spider bites, but that was what he always supposed when he woke up with itchy stab wounds. Now, with Bonnie and Clyde staring him in the face, he wasn’t so sure. If it was them, then they knew where he slept.

No more sleeping naked, no matter how comfortable. He’d be dressing in long-johns from now on. It felt good to make a decision, but then he imagined Clyde crawling up the inside of his pantleg and going on a rampage down there, waking Raymond with his explorations. What would he do, then? There would be no brushing the roach off, no. He would find himself beating at the cotton, trying to smash the crunchy bug against his own skin. Just thinking about the potential panic of it made him nauseous.

And still the roaches hadn’t moved. There was a phonebook on top of the fridge, but even if he could get past the warrior roach, he’d only be able to drop it on one of them. And the noise it would make! No, he wasn’t going to try and kill them. The other thing he didn’t want to do was turn and creak back to his room. Not in the dark. Not if he could imagine them following. He tried again to get in Bonnie’s good graces.

“Listen. Maybe you like me, maybe I taste good. I don’t know. Thing is, there’s someone who tastes even better, and she lives just across the hall from me. Always leaves her door open. Sleeps on the floor. With her mouth open.” Raymond didn’t know if this was true, but he figured it couldn’t hurt to artificially sweeten the deal. “If you’ll just…get your friend to back up, I’ll take you over there.”

Bonnie by the refridgerator started for him, and Raymond thought for a second he’d done it wrong. That he’d said something out of place. Maybe it wasn’t proper etiquette among cockroaches to try and sell your freedom for another.

But then she’d stopped, and she was waving her antennae. Clyde took note, and started backing up. One step at a time, never taking his wary bug eyes off Raymond.

They had a deal. He turned the kitchen light off.

When they came to the bathroom, he crouched and pointed into MaryAnne’s room. Like he’d promised, the door was open a sliver.

“In there.”

Raymond ducked into his own room and shut his door, but not before catching a glimpse of the two racing each other into his fearful housemate’s room. He could no longer tell which one was Bonnie and which Clyde, because they’d ceased to look like anything but black beads again in the dark.

He pushed a towel under his door and hoped they’d forgive him his paranoia. In bed, he wore just a t-shirt and a pair of boxer briefs. A happy medium. The air conditioner thrummed, and outside he could hear rain beating a rhythm through the trees.

Untitled Future Freezy Novel

This one strikes a nerve.

A guy tries to hire me to whack his brother. I’m supposed to meet him in an alley behind a hospital. I’m careful. And since I’m careful, I got rules. First rule - be there early. Second rule - look like you belong. So when the guy comes by and I ask him for a buck, he tells me to get lost. Tells me I’m screwing with his day. I tell him to sit down if he wants to talk business, and I say it in my uncle’s voice. Just one of the things about me that I can’t help but hate. Guy looks at me like he’s seeing me for the first time. I’m not a bum after all. The novelty wears off a little slow for my taste, but finally he sits down. Tall guy in a business suit, slicked hair, talking to a homeless man in an alley. Nothing about that seems odd, does it? After he sits down I check him for bugs. People hear things, talk to cops, you never know when it’s gonna be hot. Might always be hot, might never be. So you have to treat each rich prick like he might be the fuzz. Of course, when they’re smart they remember to check you out too, but usally they’re calmed by your your paranoia. This guy doesn’t bother.

He pulls out a picture of himself, tells me this is the hit. His twin brother.

My gut goes numb. It’s not anger there, because anger is something I can control. My whole body vibrates for want of ending this man. I don’t know if I can wait. I don’t know if a bum goes to jail for strangling a businessman outside of a hospital. What would I tell Rebecca? A minute goes by and I’m clenching my teeth together. The guy is still talking.

“Make it look casual. Like a drive-by, or a mugging. I can’t have anyone looking at me, wanting to know if I wanted him dead.”

“Why do you?”

He sighs, and looks down. “No, that’s fair. I uh…my brother’s the reason my life isn’t what it should be. I don’t want to go into it.”

It’s about a girl. It’s about money. I don’t care - I tell him my price. It’s too high on purpose. I don’t want him to accept the deal. On this one, I’m going to play for two. He’s not happy with the price. I can tell I’d be cutting pretty large into his savings. He knows he can get the job done for less, somewhere else. So he cuts the meeting short. He goes his way, I amble home to change.

He’s easier to follow than I would have guessed. The guy is an idiot. I see him outside of a cafe just three blocks from the hospital, talking to a bald man in sunglasses. I don’t look like I did before - he woudln’t recognize me if I walked up and said hello. Still, I’m surprised by his bold brainlessness. The kind of single-minded power hungry personality that would have found itself a throne a few hundred years back. Right before it found the guillotine.

They shake hands. It’s going down.

The brother lives alone, and that’s ideal. Means I’ll have time to clean up. Fourth floor apartment, two entrances. Fire exit access, and a balcony overlooking a major street. Not a big deal.

The other guy, the hitman, is harder. I always felt worse about taking care of them, since any good hitman is really only a tool for someone who wants someone dead. Hitmen don’t kill people, people kill people. So I tend to think of what I do as gun control.

What I’m saying is, it’s easier to feel sorry for the gun. Still, when you choose to be something, you have to take what comes with that. Rotten jobs, bad pay, cops. Me.

Today it’s me.

Of course, I don’t have to go to him, if I know where he’s going to be. The brother lives across town in a house on a hill. Wife, two kids. All of this is too much for me. Too similar.

The gun parks his car at the end of the street. Usually I like to get something out of them. Ask them a few things. Not tonight. Tonight he doesn’t even see me. Steps out of his car and I put him back in with a bullet to the temple. Thwip! He ducks in gracefully, almost as if he forgot something in the glovebox. The door stays open. I don’t bother to clean up. The less I touch, the better.

At the other place I’m careful no one sees me. I don’t go through the fire escape - I already have an in.

“Who is it,” he says through the intercom.

“We talked about a thing today. I have some news for you.”

“What do you - oh. Oh, okay, just a minute.”

He buzzes me in.

In the hallway I pull on my new face. Dark red spandex, just thin enough to see through and just thick enough to keep anyone from seeing in, especially in low light. No holes.

When he sees it, he looks confused. “What are you doing here?” He thinks I am the other one, the man he succeeded in paying.

“Let me in, so we can talk.”

We sit on the couch. Before the talk starts I paralyze him. His eyes bulge, his tongue hangs from his mouth.

“There’s something I want to tell you about, sir.”

I pull snips from my bag and pinch his right thumb off. I put it in his mouth.

“And I want you to listen. No interruptions.”

He’s trying to scream. The silence in the apartment is so complete I can almost taste it. I hadn’t planned on giving a speech, but now that I have his attention - the feeling in my chest is like he’s finally in front of me. My uncle. I got him.

“When I was thirteen you killed my father.”

The man’s eyes widen. I can tell he’s trying to shake his head. It’s almost funny. But it’s not, because this has already stopped being an idiot who wants to kill his brother.

“We didn’t know it right away, but that was only because your planning was superb. See, my father never talked much about you, and when he did, he got real faraway in his eyes and quiet. Never told my sister and I you were his twin. It was a fact it seemed you both kept secret. And, since you’d started killing the cops in your unit, having a secret like that was an incredibly useful thing. The detectives assigned to the serial killer case started looking in your direction, and you made your move. You arranged a meeting with my father. A truce meeting. The last “business trip” he’d ever go on. Only instead of forgiving each other for whatever had estranged you in the first place, you dressed my dad up in your uniform and cut his head off.

You dropped it on your desk, along with a note. “Not him. Try harder.”

When you got back from my father’s business trip, my sister and I knew right away something was different. You looked at her and my mom with a wolf’s eyes. You looked at me like I was something you’d left in the toilet.”

I take my cap off, so he can see me.

“I tried to kill you then, to put a bullet in your heart while you slept, with one of your own guns. I carried you off into the woods and dropped you down a well. I told my mother I did’nt know where you’d gone, but I told my sister everything. The next day I rode the bus home from school and they were gone. On the table, you left another note. You and your notes. “Follow us and I’ll fuck Jessica in half.”

The illusion of my uncle started to wear off. This guy was just an asshole. Greedy, sure. But not diabolically evil. Not the kind that kept coming back. I sighed, not caring to finish my diatribe. I was boring myself.

“Never mind. When I catch you, it won’t matter what I say. You’ll just smile at me, because you won. No matter what I do, you’ve already won.”

I leaned forward and pushed the thumb down his throat. While he choked on it I went to the kitchen for some knives and garbage bags.