Yesterday, she was doing it again, soaring above my head during her regular shift. She flits around on her broom above the sleeping cities, wearing espadrilles and doling out flour to the people down below.

Bake when words fail you, she says, sending little pouches of flour — taut in a cellophane wrapper — spiraling down through the chimneys, in through the open windows.

The ribbon coiled around the pouch glimmers in the moonlight and momentarily turns gold as it cuts through the cone of light from the streetlights.

Silent or foul-mouthed, just bake, the bread muse says.

When the morning swings its celestial gates open, forget the slippers, forget the Hail Marys or looking for the keys. Instead, take some flour and some water and mix it up in a bowl.

Speak your passing troubles aloud and watch them swirl right in and leaven the dough.

Draw an egg with your finger on the fogged-up bathroom mirror and hold out your hand — you’ll discover the jittery orange yolk in your palm. It’s got to be mixed in, too, and stirred well.

And bake pies, my friend, make waffles, fry pancakes, whip up the flaky pastries, she says.

If it seems too late, bake. If your partner draws the curtains shut to block out the sunlight sifting through, then bake in the dark.

Call in sick, and bake.

Don’t walk the dog first, just bake.

If you don’t know how, do it anyhow. If you’ve resigned to the idea that chopping and stirring and wishing leads to disillusionment so why even try, then grab yourself a bowl and start mixing.

Soon, when the dough starts to rise and crawl over the edges of the bowl, it’s time to roll it out on a smooth surface.

Knead it into shape with your fingers, with your fists, with your pounding, with as much salt as you can set loose from your eyes.

Permit the warmth of the oven door to tickle your knees and make your nose itch. The process has begun.

She’s no magician, that bread muse. She’s no fairy godmother. She just does her thing: deliver flour to the sleeping people who’ve left their window open and their chimney free to look up to the sky.

When the baking’s all done, eat the entire loaf, right then. Nobody else needs to have this, the bread muse says. Not the housemate, not even the dearest, sickest friend. None should have a piece, but you. This is your sustenance for the day.

Eat it all.

Well, almost all.

When you’re satiated and light-headed from the all the labor and the eating, save the last bit, she says. Bundle this piece back in the cellophane wrapper and rest it by your pillow at night.

The next morning, you will find a brand new pouch of fresh flour, delivered by the bread muse.

Start baking all over again that morning.

And the following morning.

And the one after that.

One day, surely, there will be dancing, and succulent rye loaves to feed a village; there will be singing and the giving of thanks; there will be dawn with its tantalizing dew and those butterflies, that hunger for all things; there will be fluffy scones for teatime and raspberry cream cakes for weddings.

All this will be, in due time.

But tonight, just save a little bit of bread crust next to your pillow.

         To Whom It May Concern:
         I just didn’t want to go to work today.
         —Me

The scribbled note lay haphazardly on the freshly made Pottery Barn ensemble. Her body sprawled unnaturally at the foot of the bed with scattered yellow and pink and white pills littering the raw linen coverlet.

The multitudinous silk throw pillows sat untouched and nicely fluffed at the top.

She was very dead.

Snapdragons were her favorite flowers and a freshly arranged pot of them in yellow and pink and white tones cried in the corner.

“She was such a happy girl.”

“We never knew.”

“She never said anything.”

“She arranged us with such precision, such care.”

“She didn’t seem crazy.”

“I need more water.”

The silent room waited for decomposition. Her body unfortunately emptied itself and slowly seeped, embedding her urine in the mattress. The bed didn’t mind, per se. It knew her.

Yet the lonely pillows only knew her smell, and longed for other heads and bodies to wrap themselves around their downy fillings.

Megan had longed for the same. She often complained to the listening air about her lonely vagina and listed her wants in a mate.

More than sex, she desperately wanted someone to hold through the night. She wanted to nuzzle her nose in his neck and enwrap him in her arms. She wanted to laugh out loud.

“He has to be funny. He has to get my brand of humor. He has to like bacon.”

Her list was short; she didn’t demand much, but they never fulfilled. She knew she could have sex with most men, but craved respect.

She never brought them back to her pristine haven if she questioned their accountability. She didn’t like washing her 400 thread-count sheets more than once a week. She worried about breaking down the fibers — and it’s practically impossible to get semen out of silk.

The pillows thankfully agreed.

Sunlight poured through the puffy window swag and bathed her dead body in striated magical light. She almost looked alive. She would not be discovered for three days.

Three days later, thoughts burbled up from the cubical walls as her coworkers gossiped about the event that would be forgotten in less than a month; no one cried at the office.

“She was such a happy girl.”

“We never knew.”

“She never said anything.”

“She worked with such precision, such care.”

“She didn’t seem crazy.”

“I need more water.”

Gopher heads popped up above their shortened walls among the buzzing computers and plastic flowers.

“Did she say anything Friday?”

“Did she eat lunch alone?”

“Someone must know something.”

“She liked Pottery Barn catalogues and read them in the break room over lunch.”

“Alone?”

“She was always alone, by choice.”

“Never went out to happy hour.”

“Weird. Did anyone see the signs?”

Megan left no signs. She worked diligently and refused to call attention to herself at the office. Work was work. Work was for money. She derived no joy from numbers and phone calls and angry cat ladies yelling about “full coverage.”

Megan’s real life was secret, and she needed grand separation between work and play.

She purposely made sure no one knew her and flew silently under the radar.

Megan liked drugs.

“Dani trabajo aqui?” She ran from shop to shop in Mexico looking for the infamous Dani.

She heard from a guy at the taco shop that he was willing to sell Oxys and Flexural and Ritalin and Aderol and maybe a spot of coke and Valium for a buck a pill.

Oxys were significantly more expensive, but worth the drive across the border.

Megan was a mule.

Taking orders for all, she ran down to TJ once a month in pants without pockets, two pair of underwear and clean American smile. The border guards never suspected the bouncy little redhead held hundreds of little yellow and pink and white pills rolled in plastic baggies discretely tucked between undies.

They were never looking for her. The guards had their eyes on shifty men with baggy pants or fakely pregnant women hiding kilos of coke under flowered mumus. Cute, thirtysomething, obvious Americans weren’t on the manifest; she slid through unscathed every time.

Roaming in and out of sterile mirrored pharmacies desperately seeking Dani, Megan played her part. She was a darling, white-toothed American girl looking for a few recreational drugs.

Her favorite former pharmacist disappointed the last three trips. She crossed the border with a belly full of churros and no pills. Customers disappointedly looked elsewhere and Meg didn’t get to drink whisky at her favorite bar that week.

This monetary side project was necessary to support her secret rock-and-roll life style. Project Management just didn’t pay, and the commission checks were light this quarter.

She was looking for a new pharmaceutical safe zone, and the bald, heavily tattooed Mexican with the 42 emblazoned on his lower lip seemed trustworthy. She liked the number 42 and trusted the Virgin Mary colorfully marking the side of his head.

He would know where to get drugs.

She flittered up with hands clasped behind her back batting lashes coquettishly: “Hey, do you know which pharmacy will sell me some Ritalin without a prescription?”

“Que?”

“I’m looking for drugs.” Her eyes gleamed and cheeks crunched with genuine smile.

A dangerous grin split his face as he flipped open a cell phone and made a call. Megan knew no Spanish, but intently attempted to decipher. She heard “bonita” and “loco” and “puta.”

Pretty. Crazy. Whore.

Megan was not offended. He was finding her drugs.

“You’re looking for Dani. Go to Revolucíon, right side. About three blocks in. Ask for Dani. Dani trabajo aqui? Can you remember? Please repeat.”

“Dani trabajo aqui?”

“Bueno.”

“Gracias, señor.”

He turned back to his tattooed brethren in baggy pants.

Finding things was easy for Megan. No one expects the tiny redhead to be involved in underhanded dealings. No one suspects the little smiling sweetheart.

An astute actor and a pathological liar, she went pro on the Imposter Circuit in 1998.

She made her way down the busy street past the zebrafied donkey and 2 x 1 margarita specials. She easily passed kissy-faced men peddling their overpriced Mexican silver, and refused the urchin offers for Chiclets and hair braiding.

Megan was not a tourist; she was on a mission.

Seven pharmacies later, Megan found no elusive “Dani.” He did not seem to “trabajo” anywhere, and her thoughts began drifting into churros.

Sweet crunchy deep fried churros might be her only souvenir, again.

Her once-productive side business would be closing its doors forever with her inventory and supply cut off. She damned the “Homeland Security” tightening rules and cursed at a skittering cockroach.

This would be her last effort.

“Dani trabajo aqui?” She questioned half heartedly. Her cheeks hurt from smiling. Her act slipped. She meant to wink and smile and bounce, but could no longer hold the charade.

“No, no Dani. What do you need?”

He opened the door.

“Ritalin and Valium?”

“I don’t trust you, American.”

“I don’t trust you, Mexican.”

He tentatively pressed his hand into hers and shook. “We don’t trust each other. How many?”

She smiled genuine, and pulled a folded paper from her pocket. He smiled genuine, as his family would be eating well for the next month.

Megan found it best not to tell everyone everything. Withheld truth is not lying.

She practiced avoidance and mastered silence. She didn’t care if people labeled her smug. She wasn’t a quiet person, but it’s best to be wordless if faced with the necessity to lie.

Megan had a lot to hide. Double life can be rough on the soul.

Remembering what you said to who, contemplating how much to reveal to which individuals, knowing who to trust and how far — these concepts rolled about in her brain, clanging on the edges of sanity.

Megan was plagued with headaches. The white pills helped significantly.

She tried not to indulge in her own pills; drug addicts make bad business people, and this was a business. Megan supplied happy pills to a small contingency for money, and dipping into her stash cut profits significantly. She had other habits to attend to.

She liked to joke about whores and the dog track, claiming she would give them up for Lent, but it was whisky (not whores) and horses (not dogs) that plagued her thinning Brighton pocketbook.

She slept with her two favorite boyfriends, Jim and Mark, bottled next to the bed. Jim Beam was the only man who truly understood her and had no qualms about a threesome with Maker’s Mark. They got along famously with the other men in her life, Johnny and Jack (Walker and Daniels, respectively), and made Megan feel warm and loved inside.

They snuggled her nightly and didn’t douse the bed with unwanted man juice or errant pubic hair.

Megan liked to keep things clean, and liked to keep her life in separate boxes. She liked to know where her tax return from 1998 was filed. She liked her buttons stapled to paper and alphabetized. She had no junk drawer. Organized to a fault, Megan believed every item had a specific home.

Megan knew she had a problem when she started betting over televised races.

Initially, she claimed to enjoy the smell of the track; she liked to look at the horses and judge by the musculature she pretended to understand from her days collecting plastic horses.

She always loved horses. Her parents promised to buy her one when they moved far from the city. They took away her friends and her life and her stability in exchange for a promise.

She agreed, they moved, but the promised horse never arrived. She kneeled bedside, pretending to pray to an invisible god she didn’t believe in loudly enough for her parents to hear.

“Please God, let my parents not be liars. Let them buy me a horse.”

She watched “International Velvet” every weekend. She hung around Joe’s Feed and Tack Barn looking at pictures and pulling flyers to send to her parents in the mail without signature or return address.

Her obsession grew daily. She named her plastic horses and lined them up on self-built shelving around her room. She drew exquisite horses on the wall by amber night light after bedtime.

Pushing her bed from the wall, she sat cross-legged with markers in hand, flowing detailed colors into hindquarter muscles and shimmering waves into manes and tails.

Her lack of sleep evident, she napped and drooled over horse doodles in class.

She needed her horse; it never came.

Megan wore hats at the races. She stood along the rail and yelled at the horses and tiny jockeys in bright satin garb.

She often picked winners based on the colors alone; Megan was partial to yellow and pink and white and often matched her hats to the colors that felt lucky for the day.

She loved the adrenalin force as they took the back stretch, knowing that she could win or lose. That feeling was worth more than money to Megan. She felt alive.

Megan was lucky, in the beginning. She couldn’t lose.

Picking numbers from tarot cards or street signs that popped out on the way to the track or dreams or the color of the man’s shirt three rows back, Megan’s system of no system won her money. Money made her momentarily happy as she ticked items off her list of wants:

• Down comforter
• Silk window treatments
• Cashmere Pashmina throw
• Matching Tiffany-style lamps
• Hand-woven wool rug from Pakistan
• Pottery Barn bathroom vanity collection in white
• Set of eight matching tea cups with saucers
• Silver Tiffany bracelet
• New laptop
• 50-inch HDTV
• Yellow KitchenAid mixer
• Pink bathrobe
• White 400 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets
• Boyfriend

“Why am I still on the list?” her never-boyfriend whispered from the note.

“Because you hate me,” answered Megan. “I have too many secrets and can’t buy you in a store.”

She pinned him to her bathroom mirror and re-read him every morning. She added one thing to him every time stuff was crossed off.

Things and stuff were important to Megan; she had little else to fill time with. She was lonely but surrounded by things — expensive things. Stuff to build pride from.

No one ever saw her prized things; she never invited men in to see her stuff.

Megan liked men. Actually, she loved them. She had all their greatest hits, including “You’re too Crazy for Me” and “Why Won’t You Just Shut Up and Suck my Dick.”

They took her home from bars, many men, and she held and loved them as long as they would let her. They never called. They were transient things, stuff to hold onto for a little while, but she smashed them into crystal bits and cut her feet walking to her car the next morning.

She never stayed for orange juice.

She refused to count her number. She figured it over 40, possibly into the 60 range, maybe over 100.

She always used protection and was free of disease. Megan liked things clean; she always fucked on top to avoid whomever’s droplets of sweat.

Megan rarely had orgasms. Too distracted by errant body hair or unbalanced items in single men’s rooms, she often rearranged furniture before she slunk out the front door into the grey morning.

Pushing sofas on angles, re-stacking bookshelves, straitening rugs, folding laundry, she usually took out old newspapers to the recycle bin.

She attributed their not calling to her strange post-coital behaviors; if they’d let her fold laundry before sex, she might have cum.

It took her less than thirty-three seconds when alone.

“You got my fucking drugs or what?”

She quizzically squenched her face, “Not if you talk to me like that.”

“I want my drugs!”

“It’s good to want things, dear. Builds character.”

Megan became very calm when verbally attacked; she learned this technique through years of customer service. She ran the angry phone gauntlet daily and knew how to deal with the crazy, enraged souls crackling on the other end of the line.

Gerry taunted Meg for weeks about his stash. She made a judgment call in cutting him off. He took too many, re-ordered too often.

She would supply for recreation, but refused to play party to his suicide.

She was a good drug dealer: no kids, no addicts, no pregnant ladies. She had rules and boundaries, limits and structure, holding fast to her ambiguous moral compass.

“Seriously. I need that shit, Penny.”

Megan used pseudonyms with her clients. She answered to Jenny, Penny, Peggy, Pammy, Cammy and Sue. She liked names ending in “Y.” They bounced off the tongue and made her sound younger and cuter than she believed herself to be.

She had a different cell phone number with separate bill for her dealings. She carefully marked her profits and knew the expense of her business. She never dealt from her home.

Megan was clean and careful. Work was work. Business was business. Sex was sex. Bars were bars. Betting was betting. Every detail stapled to a small cardboard backing, buttons color coded and lined in a box just so.

Her mother collected buttons.

At approximately three years of age, at approximately three in the afternoon, little Meggy Poo Poo sat in the center of the floor surrounded by yellow and pink and white buttons.

Cardboard backing littering the floor around her chubby baby legs, she tossed the buttons into the air and laughed and cackled and giggled and shook her little red curls playfully.

Her mother turned the corner down the stairs. Screaming, she tossed little Meggy across the room and attended to her beloved buttons.

“How could you? You filthy brat! Look!”

*slap

*cries

“You want something to cry about?! I’ll give you something to cry about!”

*slap

Little Meggy Poo Poo stopped crying. She never cried again.

Not when her mother hovered over her feet with a hammer screaming about buttons and slamming toenails into floors, or threw hot potatoes at her head during dinner because she brought her favorite pink little pony to the table. Not even when her mother put dirty dishes in Megan’s bed or threw her clothing out the second story window into the pond.

Megan learned not to cry. She learned to compartmentalize feelings and ideas. She learned that being quiet is better than talking. She learned how to lie to herself.

“Mother, I’d like to take my horses.”

“You can’t. I threw them away when you left for college.”

“You what?” Megan almost started crying. She recently completed the shelving units to house her collection in the new apartment. “Mother, I collected those for years. They were very important to me.”

She became very calm as the onslaught began.

“You fucking little freak. Horses? Horses! That’s what you care about? You called about those stupid plastic horses? What about me? Did you want to talk to your mother? Did you want to ask me how I’m doing? It’s been three years! Three God-damn years and the first thing you say is ‘I’d like to take my fucking horses.’ You ungrateful piece of shit. Stick your fucking horses up your ass and don’t call again. You got my fucking drugs or what? ”

The receiver clicked and she spoke calmly to the tone, “Not if you talk to me like that.”

Her mother used a cocktail of yellow and pink and white pills and washed them down with Vodka or gin. She liked her pills colorful and alcohol clear.

She was terribly kind and sweet to the neighbors, bringing casseroles and lasagna over when babies were born, baking cakes with homemade buttercream frosting for school cake walks, she played well with others, but never with Megan.

She never counted her pills.

Megan stashed a few every week and amassed a rainbow of drugs. She never knew which were which and chose based on color alone. She was very lucky. Smart enough not to mix colors, she took only one at a time. She was careful and organized; Megan was clean.

“What did you know about Penny?”

“Who the fuck is Penny?”

“What did you call her?”

“Pammy. My dealer’s name was Pammy.”

“Short? Red? Smiley?”

“I’d describe her as bouncy, but yes, that’s Pammy.”

“Damn. What a waste. Where do we get our drugs now?”

Their concern lasted mere seconds as they discussed her death. They would have to find a new source. This suicide was very distressing and would ruin their weekend plans.

“Did you hear she was in there for three days?”

“The neighbor noticed the smell. They thought it was a dead rat, opened the door and, you know, dead lady.”

“Gross. How’d she do it?”

“There were yellow and pink and white pills all over the bed.”

“What … Flexural, Diazapam, Vicodin? Quite a mix. I thought she didn’t do drugs.”

“Dude, we didn’t even know her name. I bet she did a lot of things no one knew about.”

The doorbell rang unexpectantly. No one knew where Megan lived: not workmates, not clients, not fuck buddies, no one.

She crept beneath the view of the convex peek hole in case whoever was out there was watching.

Crawling up to the closed white wooden shutters with yellow-silk roman shades pulled half way up, she peaked between the slats to see the tapping toe of a familiar red Anne Klein pump. Her mother rang the doorbell repeatedly and began to bang on the door.

“I found you, you little whore.”

Her singsong voice wouldn’t upset the neighbors. She banged again with a hollow pink object. The empty shelving units shuddered with the incessant pounding.

“I know you’re in there. I saw something move in the peep hole and you’re larger than and allergic to cats. Fucking let me in before I start to scream.” She continued on with light and happy tone.

Megan knew she was smiling without expression. She’d been using Botox for years now, smoothing her forehead to match her marble heart.

“I’ve got some things you might want in exchange for some stuff I need.”

Megan saw the nondescript paper bags lining the porch beneath flower boxes filled with yellow and pink and white pansies and snapdragons and baby roses.

Her mother continued to pound the door with the disembodied head of a vintage My Little Pony. The fuschia-plastic mane fluttered and peeked between the fingers of her French manicure as she rapped on the door. “I know you want them.”

Megan breathed deeply with back pressed against the bottom of the window sill. She would not cry; she was an adult now. They would make a business agreement. Megan didn’t do business from the house, but she would make an exception for those bags of horses.

She would do it to reclaim her childhood.

She would make a deal for Sunshine and Sandy and Silver Moon and Take No Prisoners. She would open the door to kiss Gilbert and Secret Boyfriend and Takes the Cake. She would get her horses; they were worth the painful interaction to come.

“Let me in, little whore.” She sang menacingly.

Megan stayed in her hiding place but reached a bare foot to unlock the latch and throw the toggle down on the door. She remained huddled, arms around knees, as the red shoes stepped confidently onto her Italian rolled marble entry.

“What a dump!”

“Mother, wonderful to see you. What do you need?”

Her head remained buried tightly in knees, but Megan’s voice sang confidence.

“Yellow mostly.”

“You know I don’t do business from here. How did you find me?”

“You send in the mail. I have Internet. You have phone. I’m a smart woman, child. I have your precious horses.”

“How many do you want?”

“As many as you got. Mama’s out.”

“Bathroom. Medicine cabinet. Third bottle. Third shelf. Take it. Leave the horses. Leave.”

Megan’s head remained glued to her knees. She needed to shave; the bristles of hair tickled her nose.

Her mother rifled through cabinets knocking down plastic bottles that bounced and rattled on the imported marble. “Wow, I’m taking some pink too. You’ve got great stock, but this place looks like poop, Meggy Poo-Poo. What kind of towels are these? Not nearly fluffy enough. Try Polo next time. Fifty bucks a piece at Macy’s. You never could shop worth a shit.”

She kicked the brown paper bags into the center of the living room and slammed the front door closed.

Megan refused to move for thirty-three minutes, frozen in fear and plagued by past.

Finally, she stretched legs across Berber carpet, raising her head and creaking neck to creep toward her beloved horses.

On hands and knees, she crawled across the floor to the spilled bags cradling her childhood friends.

They weren’t talking.

Megan began to sob.

Horse manes mutilated, plastic flesh scorched and melted, the smell of death and sight of crinkled destruction, My Little Ponies and plastic horses without heads and broken legs littered the living room. Megan sat centered in the pile of past and reached for a scrawled note inside the third bag.

“Now you understand the buttons — Mommy.”

She collapsed upon the carcasses of her dreams. Her business would suffer the loss.

Megan showered and exfoliated with Bed Bath & Beyond’s excellent Lavender Oatmeal scrub, picked out her favorite yellow sweater set with pearl buttons, clasped her Tiffany pearl necklace around her neck, and tilted her favorite yellow hat jauntily upon her head.

She lined her eyes and powdered her nose with MAC cosmetics and buried her toes into her favorite white Anne Klein sandals.

Heading to the track with three thousand dollars spread her lips to a grimacing smile. She took three shots of Oban Scotch, filled her flask with the remainder of the bottle and placed it gently in her pink and yellow Coach purse.

She would not win.

After the three thousand disappeared on “Mommy’s Best Girl” (the third horse in the third race), Megan sold her Coach bag to a woman in the bathroom for three hundred dollars.

Worth significantly more, the woman readily handed over the cash.

After the three hundred disappeared on “Mexican Night” (wearing yellow and pink satins in the seventh), Megan ran around barefoot.

Her size seven sandals went for thirty-three dollars to a woman in the stands.

After the thirty-three disappeared on “Penny Lane” (the third horse in the eighth race), she slammed the rest of her flask and made out with a janitor behind the bar for three dollars.

Megan missed the last race of the night. She didn’t place bets as she passed out with sweater back to garbage can as white slips of lost bets littered her shoeless feet and fluttered into her lap. Dead butterflies of hope covered her body.

Someone stole her hat.

“Megan? Is that you?”

A gentle hand shook her shoulder.

Megan threw up on Paul. He sat behind her at the office. Mortified, she tried to stand, but crumpled into his puke ridden arms. He lifted her off the ground and carried her to her car.

“Let me take you home.”

“No, no, I’m drive. I can fine.” She slurred and jumbled words, eyes tracking dangerously, missing the keyhole and running long scratches down her yellow BMW.

“I’ll follow you home.”

“No, no. I’m private. I don’t want to tell you where I live. I deal drugs from my house. Shhhhhh, it’s a secret.”

“Right. You’re drunk. Sleep it off, love. I’ll see you Monday at the office; I’m taking a long weekend. Maybe you should too?”

Megan came to as the cop rapped on the window.

“You gotta go. Gates closing.”

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry sir.”

Darkness bathed the empty parking lot; Megan started home sans winnings, hat, shoes, purse and dignity.

It was over. Paul saw her; he knew.

Her past had found her. She told him about the drugs. She blew her safety wad at the track. Her mother stole her pre-paid stash. They would be coming demanding their drugs, and she would have to explain her life.

She refused to explain anything to anyone. She could no longer hold on to the lies; it was time to die.

“Hey Jim. Let’s you and me have a good fuck.”

Megan swallowed him with thre bottles of pills while crafting the clearly printed note.

“I’ve always loved you,” Jim whispered as he slid down her throat.

“You’ve been a good friend,” the Beam bottle cried from the recycling bin.

“The sun will always shine on your face,” the snapdragons sang in high pitched chorus from their arrangement on the table.

“We looovvveee youuuuu!” the horse ghosts screamed from their twisted mass grave.

Megan fell asleep staring at her only family photograph; her father held her tight in his arms of safety.

         To Whom It May Concern:
         I just didn’t want to go to work today.
         —Me
Pam Benjamin is a writer living in San Francisco. Awarded an MA in Fiction from San Francisco State University in 2010, she is also working on her MFA in Poetry because pieces of paper look nice framed. Ink. published “The Pigeon Chronicles or Bike Messenger Assassins” in Summer 2010. She is the co-host of “Common Threads” on the PCR Collective in San Francisco. Her poetry has appeared in several literary journals. Pam also really likes to bake cookies.

Jamie saved up her babysitting money for the tattoo. It hadn’t taken long, her dad liberal with his guilt money. He paid her well to handle his responsibilities — Jamie’s twin half-brothers — while he wined and dined his new wife.

They left for the city at seven in the morning, Sean driving his mother’s black SUV slowly in the rain, the windshield a tablet of liquid gray the wipers pushed about uselessly.

His mother, like Jamie’s, thought they were taking their SATs.

“I feel a little guilty, lying. She left me a good luck note with the keys,” Sean said.

An image of Jamie’s mother flashed into her mind. “No tattoos!” she’d said. “They’re permanent, Jamie.” Something else her mother didn’t know. Nothing was permanent these days.
 
 

Getting the teal-colored dragon inked on her upper arm didn’t hurt the way Jamie had anticipated. What she didn’t expect was the ache in her bicep, long after the scabbing was gone.

But each day at school Sean inspected the tattoo and pronounced it fine.

Over time the ache lessened but the tattoo kept Jamie awake at night. Or rather, it woke her.

Dreams.

The dragon left his roost on her arm and towered above her, stared her down with glittering, garnet eyes displaying an emotion she couldn’t identify. Something the creature had drained like osmosis from her body. She always woke before she discovered the dragon’s intentions.
 
 

Jamie first saw the fire one night when, fresh from the shower, she was toweling dry. A scarlet-colored cloud roiling from the dragon’s nostrils. She ran her fingers over it.

It couldn’t be infection — the fire was as well defined as if it had been inked there. She pulled on her nightgown and called Sean. They agreed to meet by the tennis courts before school in the morning.

In Jamie’s dream that night the dragon was immense, spewing a dense blue smoke that paralyzed her. The swirling smoke pulled apart in patches to reveal the twins’ cribs. Jamie woke sweating, her nightgown plastered to her chest.

Heart pounding, she carefully pushed up her sleeve. The flames were now a deep magenta.

In the morning Sean walked her to the nurse’s office. The school nurse called Jamie’s mother herself, reporting that though Jamie didn’t have a fever, she’d come down with something; her face was pasty white.

At home, Jamie slept all afternoon — no dreams.

That night she was wide awake; she sat in her desk chair looking out the window upon the silvery lawn, the maple tree a solemn sentinel. The stillness held something.

By daylight the dragon breathed purple. Jamie went to her mother, shook her shoulder, and announced that she was still sick. Her mother’s sleep-puffed face tugged at Jamie. She wanted to climb in beside her, nest into her mother’s side. Her mother sat up and pressed the alarm button off with a short capable finger.

“Go back to bed,” she said, swinging her feet to the floor. “I’ll see if I can get you into the doctor’s today.”

Jamie dragged her leaden body back to her room, tunneled under the covers she knew offered no protection. Soon her mother appeared bearing tea and toast on a tray. Food was her mother’s answer to everything. “I got you an appointment for ten.”
 
 

Doctor Snedden found nothing wrong. Did Jamie have something on her mind? A lot of teens went to counselors. She wrote down a name and handed Jamie the slip of paper.

Her mother dropped Jamie at home, saying she needed to go into the office for the afternoon. Jamie should get caught up on her homework, prepare to return to school tomorrow. “Warm up some soup for lunch,” she said.
 
 

“Jamie?” Her mother, from the foyer.

“Out here.” Jamie slid her sleeve down over the dragon whose fire was now blue, orange, chartreuse. The dragon’s belly had transformed: carnation pink, parrot yellow.

“I stopped on the way home.” Her mother placed a pizza box on the counter and opened it to show Jamie. “Vegetarian. Black olives, too.”

Her mother’s dimpling face, its eager expression filled Jamie with a vicious rage. “Can’t you think of anything but food?” Her arm jumped, swiped the pizza to the floor. Sauce splattered across the tile.

For a moment they stood together silently. Then her mother sighed and took up the roll of paper towels.

Because she didn’t know what to do, because she hated her mother on her knees, hated herself for putting her mother there, Jamie spun and punched the arm through the window.

It didn’t hurt.

Blood streamed from her cut hand down to her elbow, leaking off onto the floor.

Her mother’s face was white as she wrapped a dish towel around Jamie’s hand, squeezing pressure to the cuts. With her other hand, she moved a wad of paper towels up Jamie’s arm, mopping blood. Then she saw the dragon appear from under the sleeve.

Jamie watched her mother’s face. Then she, too, looked. The fire was gone. The tiny teal-colored dragon sat placidly, almost comically.

Her mother licked a finger, rubbed the ink. “It’s permanent?”

Peg Alford Pursell is a National Endowment for the Humanities Independent Study Fellow and the founder of the Creative Writing Program at the Charleston School of the Arts. She teaches classes on fiction writing in the San Francisco Bay Area, received the South Carolina State Fiction Award, and is an American Fiction Award finalist.

It’s not like a usual Hog to make a journal, but my Hog-brothers have, for as long as I can remember, considered me a cut above the rest. I leave this to any future Hog who may figure out how to read it.

The day I was born, I couldn’t see anything. I suppose I was born blind. But as I grew into a little piglet, as they ushered me into better-lit areas, my eyes opened and I began to discern my family.

This exciting new world around me was comprised of other Hogs. Soon, though, this was not such a good thing.

The first thing I noticed was the incredible stench. Hogs are used to stenches — but real Hogs, dare I say free Hogs, should be born in the Mud.

Let me explain.

There was a legend among those of our Hog-people who kept the snortal traditions: Some said Mud was a place we went when we were ushered down the final metal ramp to our death.

Some called it nothing but a rumor to assuage the fears that eroded our minds due to forced proximity to the psychotic ones.

As a Keeper, I suggest that Mud is a great place, and it makes my Hog-sons and Hog-daughters happy for a while, before the Hog shit flies in their faces again.

You never get used to that.

I am one of the Keepers, you see. One of the Keepers who was taught to think, who was not spared sentience with our process of Cleansing.

It falls on my shoulders to pass this down to the next piglets that come through. Should I fail, our species’ sentience — dwindling as it is — will be doomed.

It also falls on me, as a Keeper, to do the Cleansing.

My first Cleansing was done at the behest of Hog-father Hair — our people are named after things within the Shed, because we only know of areas outside the Shed through snortal tradition.

(This is why Keepers have always been so important, and why smart Keepers must be selected before each slaughter-cycle so they can migrate to other Hog populations and propagate the information.)

But I digress, because Cleansing is painful, and I don’t want to talk about it.

Prior to my first Cleansing, I had been briefed on what to expect by my Hog-father, a title for our eldest Keeper.

“You’re doing a good thing for the Hog-nation,” he excused, “because sentience breeds torment. We chose you as one of a very long line of heroic Keepers to represent us. You have the intelligence to get loose and infiltrate other populations. It is up to you to constantly escape the clutches of the Tormentors. But it is also up to you to Cleanse.”

“What is Cleansing, Hog-father?”

“Little Fence,” he told me, using my given name with compassion, “you may have already seen it. The violent Hogs. The insane Hogs. The claustrophobic ones. The depressive ones.”

“Yes, Hog-father,” I said, nudging up against his belly with my snout in reverence.

Personal space was not an idea Hogs had conceived of in recent generations. Only the Keepers were allowed to escape the slaughter pens, and then until they grew so old they drew attention.

There was little light in my pen, then, just the scraps that dropped through the slats.

Sometimes, depressed Hogs just collapse and drown in the filth.

An observation: For the duration of my existence, every time I have arrived at a new Shed, it has been, if not as dark, then darker than the last. It is almost as if the humans keeping us in these pens want to conceal our condition.

I digress again. It is easy to become distracted with all the bodies bumping against me, and all the grief built up inside from my attempts at coping.

But I must remain calm, and tell my story in this new way with as much truth as I can, so that our history will pass on.

It is our most important task, and I have finally developed a written Hog language to carry it. This is my contribution to Keeperhood.

“A Cleansing, son,” the Hog-father said gravely, “is a psychological process by which we rob incoming piglets of their sentience so that they have no sense of self on which to inflict the pain that their life shall be. We have developed it over thousands of generations; it is sentience-suicide. But it must needs be assisted by generating improper stimulus/response pairings for the young Hoglet, and as a result it is a difficult process for our compassionate souls to inflict.”

The conversation took place amidst much jostling and pressing, and the Hog-father had to stop many times; sometimes he was out of breath, and sometimes because offal had covered his snout and tongue.

It took us a long time to converse because of the stops and starts, and we found it hard to concentrate. The humans seemed to do it so much more easily.

“Better insanity, however,” the elder Keeper continued, “and a breaking of the mind, than live shoulder to shoulder your entire life, contemplating what things might be like outside of the Shed. Thus is the wisdom handed down through the ages. The more self we are allowed to have, the greater our suffering. Keepers are accorded respect by other Keepers, and it is we who may never let Hogs lose our spark. Our journey is to learn the human language such that we may plead with them to stop. The original Keepers, they grew very angry. Over time, we have developed solutions.”

He described the Cleansing to me, and the theories surrounding it.

Now that it’s my turn to pass it on, I know that I have lost some of the groundwork theory, but it is more important that I get the Cleansing right, isn’t it?

It is a Keeper’s Duty, a Keeper’s Purpose to pass on the Cleansing.

When I first performed the rite, it felt devastatingly like the torment we witnessed daily. The Hogs had to be young enough to still get themselves confused with other Hogs, just like I’d seen a human baby do one time between Sheds.

But the end of Cleansing justified the means; an insane Hog could not be tormented. They may have acted strangely, but they were capable of pleasure of a sort.

Perhaps some day our brains might adapt to cope better with our Hellish conditions. It is a Keeper hope.

But not yet. The Keepers are forbidden from doing anything but replace themselves.

If Keepers were to breed on a large scale, our torment — as a species — would magnify. And it is a Keeper’s Creed: the greater good for the greater number.

Better insane Hogs who don’t understand their torment than tormented Hogs who contemplate what a life free of torment may look like.

That job is for the Keepers.

That, and attempting to learn human. The plea is already written on our Keeper snortal tradition, handed down among many generations, and it is to be used as soon as one of us figures out how to say it.

Since I developed written snortal, it is now written in manure on one of the guard rails that keeps us in.

(I may not be able to escape this time.)

Anyway, our note to humanity:

“Humans; we understand why you’ve kept us. You didn’t think we had an I. Now that we’ve written this note, can we have a bigger Shed?”

I can only hope their linguists know we’re trying to communicate.

When I was a kid, there were no canals, no vaporettos, no peacekeepers.

That San Francisco seems exotically technicolor to me now, like one of those planets the Enterprise visits that seems just like Earth but isn’t Earth at all, for reasons that are never explained — like that one when Kirk lands on the planet of children where disease kills all the adults.

I guess I was about ten when I realized that I, and everyone around me, had gotten on an Enterprise that took us from one Earth to another.

For a long time, everything was weirdly wrong, like the water on the streets and the bodies in the water. The adults were scared of the water and the bodies, but we kids loved the way things fell apart and turned the whole city into a playground.

But then we got old and the new San Francisco became home and the old one seemed to glow just a bit in our memories, and everything that had been strange got dull.

I keep searching for strangeness. I guess that’s why I played the game. They say it’s an escape, but I think in gamespace, where we strip away the meat, you can see what people really are.

He came over the foothills like a monument to himself: eyes the color of ambergris, skin of brass, tall as an adolescent elephant. Centaurs were rare that year; none of us had ever seen a creature as beautiful.

His name was Nessos.

He brought treasure — silver coins and gold chalices, glimmering gems and singing seashells — carried in twin parfleche panniers slung across his back. His only other dress was a cuirass and a feather-lined scabbard, from which sprang the gold pommel of a broadsword.

I need a clan, he said. Yours will have to do.

Across the granite slab at the center of our encampment he spread his loot, and offered his sword in our service.

We talked it over in the bark-covered longhouse.

He’s pretty, said Panpipe, one of two griffins in Chancre Clan.

He’s rich, said Oropher, an elf, and our chief.

He’ll be good in a fight, said Cray, who was, for some reason, human.

I had to pee. I had thought before about keeping a jar by the desk, but I didn’t want my mom to find it.

Jin, you there?

Why does he want to join us?

I turned down the intensity of the wajang and the world seeped in past the gamespace. In the distance I heard a vaporetto chug down the canal. My stomach growled. I still had to pee.

I was still capped, still half in the gamespace; overlaying the sight and stench of my bedroom, I could smell the bark and feel the close, humid air of the longhouse.

In retrospect it’s obvious we shouldn’t have taken him in, but at the time it seemed like a good idea.

Truth is, we hadn’t won a battle in thirty days, and thieves and raiders were nipping at what treasure horde we still had. All we could do was man the earthworks, spears in hands and claws, and hope the gods would be kind that night. We needed new blood and a new sword.

As we voted to invite Nessos to join us, Golub raised the alarm. We raced from the longhouse where we’d been meeting, Nessos falling in behind.

We saw in a moment that a huge pack of human nomads were streaming into the valley like hairy, two-legged ants.

You’re in, Oropher told Nessos over his shoulder.

Just in time, I see, said Nessos.

We braced ourselves at the ramparts for the assault, staring down into the yellows of a hundred wild eyes, but Nessos didn’t wait. With a roar, he charged over the earthwork and thrust his sword through the lead raider’s lungs.

The next raider jabbed at Nessos with a spear while a third, scimitar held high, looped around to his rear.

Nessos kicked back and sent the third man flying into the air and over the earthworks, his neck broken and his ears bleeding.

The spear nicked a foreleg, but Nessos was already pushing backward, sword slashing down. His well-muscled, brassy reach was longer than the spear’s, and the man fell to the ground with his skull split and spilling brains.

We shouted and cheered and charged over the earthworks, taking the fight to the nomads.

Sure, it was lousy tactics. We were outnumbered. We should have dug in and let the raiders wear themselves out on assaults.

But we were sick of hiding behind piles of dirt and though he’d only just joined our clan, Nessos seemed to sense our mood.

Cutting and stabbing and slashing, blood and brains and bowels: it’d been many months since we’d had so much reckless fun in a fight.

In ten minutes the nomads were retreating into the foothills, harried by our arrows. Swords aloft, we jeered at their backsides and Nessos pranced at the center of our little mob, metal flanks shimmering with sweat, grey eyes haughty and fierce.

Take a look at the bookie sites.

My mom is calling. Gotta uncap.

I took the glasses off and uncapped. My mom really was calling.

And now I really was hungry. Starving.

I delicately took my coffee cup down from my shelf, careful not to slosh the amber liquid; I took it across the hall to the bathroom and dumped it in the toilet.

Downstairs, Mom was in the kitchen burning water. She was wearing the sleeveless housedress that made her look like a bag lady.

“Hello dear,” she said. “Playing your game?”

“Yep. We won a match.”

“That’s good,” she said. “You know, Janis says that the government is holding social security this month.”

“Hmmm.”

“So we’ll need the money, sweetheart.”

“OK.” I took a seat at the table and read the back of a cereal box.

Win a free trip to the moon! it said. Send us 1,370,000 boxtops and we’ll send you and a friend to Moonbase Alpha!!!!

“I wish you’d bring some of your game friends to the house.”

“Most of them live in China or Korea. Gaming is bigger there.”

“I don’t see how you can let all those little robots into your brain.” Mom took a bowl of green beans out of the microwave. “Isn’t it uncomfortable?”

“Mom, you don’t feel the nanobots. I do get a little tingle when I cap and enter gamespace. No big deal.”

“What about all that fighting? I watch your games on the screen. It looks like you get hurt.”

“Nah,” I said. “You feel the blows, but even the bad ones are no worse than a slap.”

“Well, better that fake fighting than the real thing. I’m just glad you were never drafted, sweetheart.”

“I was too fat to take.” She knew that, of course, but I always felt this weird compulsion to say it aloud.

“More of you to love,” Mom said, and winked, which for no reason irritated me. She dished sausages onto a plate.

We repelled another raid, then two. We fought a larger neighboring encampment to a standstill, just on a wager.

We accepted two new members, a human archer named Ash and a gigantic carnivorous rabbit named Henry.

Feeling safer and stronger and braver, we ventured out to the Bastinado Archipelago on a quest for a set of bronze pannikins that would fill with any liquid the owner requested, strictly to enhance our reputation.

We formed a party of six, including Nessos, and set out for the island of the owner of the pannikins, a wizard called Dingledoom.

In the fight up to the top of the wizard’s tower, all of us were slain by orcs save Nessos.

The tale of his victory over Dingledoom became the stuff of gamespace legend.

In the center of Dingledoom’s lair there sat a cast-iron caldron into which the wizard could look and see the future. Rather than fight the wizard and orcs head on, Nessos offered to allow the wizard to turn his brass body into a statue if the wizard looked into the caldron and saw the centaur beheaded. If he saw Nessos intact, Chancre Clan would get the tower.

Oh, oh, oh, said Dingledoom, a malevolent gleam in his eye. I get it. A paradox. If I see you headless, you win, and you respawn elsewhere and still get my tower. You’ll probably cut your own head off, you yellow four-legged fiend. Well, I’ll take that wager, centaur!

With a shout of triumph, the wizard cast his most powerful protection spell across the room and over Nessos, who crackled with supernatural glamour.

Ha, ha! cried the wizard. That spell is so strong, you can’t even cut your own head off. Soon you’ll sit outside my door, a doom-laden forewarning to any cretins who’d dare steal from Dingledoom! Orcs, seize him, but harm not one hair on his yellow head!

As the pack of surviving orcs rushed into the lair, Dingledoom leaned eagerly over the caldron. Everyone watching the match saw a scarlet mist rise and we knew an image was forming. We saw the eyes of the wizard widen.

Nessos crouched backward on his hind legs and pushed off. He flew, magnificent, brass flanks shimmering, across the lair and over the caldron, so fast that the wizard hand’t time to lift his eyes. Nessos’s broadsword flashed out. The wizard’s head, mouth agape and eyes alarmed, flopped off the neck and into the caldron’s hellbroth.

Nessos landed on a cherrywood table littered with beakers and goblets, which he completely flattened. The pack of twenty orcs, green and grunting, circled him, but Nessos, cloaked by the wizard’s protection spell, made short work of the lot of them; the audience only saw his sword rising and falling around a bubbling sea of helms and spearpoints.

Soon, the wizard’s lair was painted black with orc gore, limbs and torsos and ugly green heads gloriously scattered across the floor.

Nessos raised his own sword to his neck. The protection spell had been worn down from the orcs’ blows and was now insufficient to protect Nessos from himself.

He whirled around, body curved, hooves at a gallop, and with one quick clanging stroke, he took his own head off. There was no blood; Nessos was fashioned of solid brass.

At that very moment Dingledoom stumbled back into the lair, having respawned (we later learned over ale) at the other side of the archipelago and flown as fast as his magic could carry him back to his tower.

Argh! he cried out, seeing Nessos’s brass head rolling on the ground. Ach!

Nessos wasn’t there to enjoy the wizard’s agony, having respawned at the other side of the continent. He’d sacrificed himself, if only for a moment, for the good of the clan.

And that’s how Chancre Clan, having set out to steal a few magic cups, gained a wizard’s tower and all its treasures.

And we owed our victory to Nessos, the centaur in brass.

If some had doubted him, they wouldn’t anymore.

“Mom, we won a big match.”

“Oh, I know dear. I placed a bet on your little group.”

“What?! Oh mom, you’re family. That’s not legal.”

She looked hurt, her lower lip sticking out. “I placed the bet under Nancy’s name.”

“If the gamemasters find out, I’ll never make the next level!”

“Sweetie, you’re twenty-five years old. Time to grow up. Everyone cheats once in a while.”

We broke camp and moved the entire clan to the wizard’s keep, re-dubbed Chancre Tower.

It turned out to be a damp, dim, and dirty residence, but we didn’t care. Though the victory over Dingledoom had been a kind of mishap, it puffed us up and raised our sights.

More creatures came from across the continent, coming at a rate of one a day on coracles and rowboats, petitioning for membership.

We started getting choosy.

Did everyone see the write-up in the Sing Tao Hourly?

Very cool.

In no time we were planning a raid on a sandstone castle in Hruba Skala, where, it was rumored, a baldanders kept a magical book that Columbine Clan needed to complete a quest.

We’d get the book and sell it to Columbine Clan, who said they’d swap it for a team of fighting pachyderms they’d won in a parlay.

We fancied we’d need a team of fighting pachyderms, though we didn’t give much thought as to how we’d feed them on a desolate islet, or even get them over the water.

We met on the black pebbly beach, since there was no space in the tower large enough to accommodate us all at once.

What’s a baldanders? asked Ash, leaning on his bow.

A monster whose name means ‘suddenly different,’ or somesuch, replied Oropher. You never know what form a baldanders may take. Have any among us encountered a baldanders?

None had.

I deem this a job for a team of two thieves, said Oropher, who always favored stealth.

Nay! Turl said. The goblin tells us that a spell protects the castle from thievery. If we know nothing of a baldanders, we should go in strength, and take its castle by force of arms!

Why can’t Columbine get the scroll themselves? asked Nessos.

Oropher smiled. They tried already and they were beaten, he said.

If we could win this island, Nessos said, we can win a mere book.

We debated and in the end agreed we could do better than Columbine Clan, which had a reputation for choking in the breech. As night fell we haggled and planned and drew straws.

The next morning, thirteen of us set out to cross the gamespace to Hruba Skala.

On the way our little band was ambushed once in Brownhills by brigands and once on Mount Fasnacht by the dragon Winifred, but we slew all the brigands and we bought off the dreaded Winifred with a lindy hop performed by Turl and Cray.

That was humiliating. I can hear the gamemasters laughing at us.

Get yer gamefaces on. Here comes the rock city.

The castle was carved from one of the sandstone columns, taller than Chancre tower. It appeared to be abandoned, the windowless holes dim and lifeless, the crenellated peak empty of guards. The cold wind blew and leaves swirled around our legs.

We smelled something burning, far away.

Let’s charge it, said Cray, waving Turl’s dirk.

Oropher scratched his delicate chin. I don’t know. I’m not sure that I like the looks of this.

Oropher, you must be bold, said Nessos.

We’d noticed Nessos testing Oropher is niggling ways; many of us had guessed that Nessos would soon challenge Oropher for leadership of the clan.

You go first, said Oropher. Come back and tell us what glamour guards this castle.

Nessos snorted and rode up to the oak door at the base of the castle. He drew his broadsword and used the pommel to knock heavily at the door.

We waited.

No answer, said Cray. No magic.

Not yet, said Oropher.

Nessos swung the unlocked door wide, and was the first to step in.

You two stay outside, Oropher said to Pythy and Panpipe. When we reach the roof, we’ll fire an arrow into the air. When you see that, come up. In the meantime, keep watch and stay alert.

The rest of us followed Nessos, swords drawn. We filed into a stone-walled anteroom draped in rotting tapestries, with sticks of furniture scattered across the stone floor.

A black spider sat in the corner, spinning a silver web.

Cray prodded the spider with the dirk; the spider skittered to the center of the web.

Spider, he said, does a baldanders live here?

A baldanders? squeeked the spider. What’s a baldanders?

Don’t play with me, arachnid. Cray wiggled the tip of the dirk.

Don’t hurt me! cried the spider. I’m just a little spider.

Oropher slapped Cray’s shoulder. The spider can’t help, he said.

If there’s no baldanders here, said Cray, this insect should know!

He snatched at the spider and caught her in his hand.

Ouch! he cried, hand flying open. The spider flipped to the floor and scampered into the folds of tapestry. That little beasty bit me!

Serves you right, Oropher said. Nessos, you’re still on point. Why don’t you climb the stairs?

Gladly, said Nessos. He trotted to the steps, carved from the very stone. The rest of us followed.

Oropher released a will-o-the-wisp from one of Dingledoom’s scrolls, and it cast a soft green light up the stairwell.

I don’t feel so good, Cray said.

You can be in the middle, Oropher said. I’ll take up the rear.

We fell in single file and Cray took a place between Golub and Henry.

The stairwell was steep, dark, and twisty; moment to moment we could see only the comrade on either side.

The stone glowed green in the light of the wisp and our faces took on the pallor of frogs’ bellies.

I don’t like this, Cray said in the darkness.

You were only too ready to charge in a moment ago, said Golub, whose glowing plate-sized emerald eyes could see in the dark.

I don’t feel … hey! Golub, you’re turning into an orc … Golub’s gone! Watch out!

Cray, what are you …

We heard a sword slash chain mail and suddenly Golub cried out and gurgled. He fell backwards into Ash.

Another orc, another orc! shouted Cray. He put one foot on Golub’s stomach and pulled the dirk out of the dead creature’s chest; with his free hand he drew his sword.

Cray, stop! cried Oropher, pushing his way up the stairs.

Ash raised his bow to deflect Cray’s blade, but Cray split the bow in two and drove his sword into Ash’s throat, both his hands pushing on the pommel.

As Ash slumped to the wall, Cray straightened and gasped. Blood flowed from his mouth. He tumbled on top of Ash, a dagger in his back.

Henry stood over the bodies, his pink ears drooping in the green light.

And our will-o-the-wisp flared, and blew out.

What the fuck?

Put your guard up, guys. We’re in another room.

Mom knocked on my door. I chinned out of the call and turned the wajang down low. The darkness of the stairwell lifted to reveal my bedroom.

“Come in,” I said.

Mom walked in, wearing the pink housedress.

“Sweetie, I thought I should let you know.”

“Know what?”

“Well, I put a lot of money on this match.”

“Mom!”

“Your group is doing so well.”

“Jeez, mom. Jeez.”

“Just try not to lose, OK, sweetie? We need the money.”

Grab the hand of the man in front of you! shouted Oropher. Keep your weapons ready and keep walking. When we get to the next room, I’ll spark a torch.

We ascended in total darkness. The steps ended; the floor leveled and we felt a breeze and we heard our footfalls echo.

I’m lighting a torch, said Oropher.

We saw a spark, two, a short torch flared. Two torches.

And each of us was suddenly two.

Oropher stood beside his double, which held a second torch. Each of the rest of us — Pliny and Henry, Flay and Krake, Harald and Rebus — faced his twin.

Henry confronted a second carnivorous rabbit, its left fang nicked in the same place; Pliny faced another dwarf who raised his axe at the instant Pliny raised his.

They’re Fetches! cried one of the two Krakes.

What’s a Fetch?

And women.

I fought one once on Mount Fasnacht.

We’ve got no choice. Kill the Fetch before he kills you.

When the hacking and slashing and stabbing had ended, the stone floor was slippery with gore and littered with limbs.

Oropher’s torch lay flickering on the ground near Henry’s right arm, and the matted fur started to smolder.

Nessos still stood, and so did Oropher. The rest were dead.

How do I know you’re not the Fetch? Nessos said to Oropher.

You don’t.

We understand each other, Nessos said. He picked up the hem of Krake’s cloak with the tip of his sword, grabbed it with his other hand, and proceeded to wipe the blade clean.

Oropher’s for real — I’m him — but I don’t know about Nessos.

Too bad we look like idiots.

Oropher and Nessos started again up the stairs, led by the torch.

They crossed two more rooms. One was filled with more rotting furniture and tapestries; the second was an armory of doubtful usefulness.

Back in the stairwell, light grew and shadows formed and sharpened, and soon the two stepped out onto a garden on the top of the castle.

The ground was covered with a layer of thick, black dirt, from which grew foul-smelling plants, some white, some black. The plants thickened and clustered around a statue that stood in the middle of the courtyard, carved from rain-worn sandstone.

It had the head of a satyr, the torso of a man, the wings of an eagle, and the tail of a fish. A stone book grew directly from its hand.

From a barely perceptible belt hung a sword. It stood on a mound of masks carved from sandstone, each of the faces individual.

Most of the faces appeared to be terrified.

Though the space was, like the other rooms they had visited, only as wide as six men laid end to end, the walls reached just as high.

A gangway built of wooden staves ran around the wall near the top, with crenels carved into the walls.

These are mandrakes, Oropher said, peering at a black-leafed plant. Crush them and they start screaming. The scream drives you mad.

Perhaps the book is kept in the room we left, Nessos said.

We need assistance, Oropher said. He pulled his bow off his shoulder and drew an arrow. I’ll call the griffins.

He released the arrow over the wall and into the air. They waited.

No one comes, Nessos said.

Oropher shot another arrow.

The wind blew keenly through the crenels, as if the castle were a giant whistling through his teeth.

Oropher crossed the courtyard and started to climb the mound of masks. The statue holds a book, he said. It’s stone, but maybe it’s the one we’re looking for …

He laid his hand on the brown skirt of the statue.

There was a groaning, which came from deep inside the stone.

The horned head of the statue moved and looked down; its hand went to the sword at its side.

Oropher tumbled back down the mound into a plot of mandrakes. The leaves of the plants shivered and screeched.

We have a problem.

Somebody tell the gamemasters …

The baldanders — for now we knew, this was the creature that guarded the book — drew the sword from its stone scabbard, the blade gleaming with sinister glamour.

With the sound of stone breaking, its feet — one a goat’s foot and one a vulture’s claw — left the mound of masks, and the baldanders advanced on Oropher, who thrashed among the screaming mandrakes.

Oropher clapped his graceful hands to his ears and turned his face to the baldanders, who descended like a landslide.

Nessos galloped across the courtyard, sword held high, and he dashed up the pile of masks, flakes of sandstone flying away from his hooves. He reached the baldanders just as it stepped into the mandrakes, crushing one flat. The pitch of the screaming rose. Oropher dropped his hands, teeth clenched, and plucked one of Dingledoom’s scrolls from his belt. He started to read the spell and glamour gathered around him like smoke.

Nessos rammed the baldanders head on, heedless; his blade snapped into three pieces against the sandstone.

He rebounded away and into the mandrakes, falling on top of Oropher.

Now Oropher screamed, his mouth a knife wound, the scroll flipping into dirt, but the mandrakes drowned out his voice.

The blade of the baldanders sheared the air and cut flesh and brass with a single stroke.

That’s it. Match over.

Guys …

I stripped off the glasses and uncapped. I looked at my hands.

Shit.

I turned them around and laid them down on the wajang. It was a white dome, no wider than a plate, with three cables and a wire snaking out, the EEG skullcap lying where I had placed it.

Ugly on the outside, pretty on the inside. I lived half my life inside.

Outside it was night. Rain clattered against the window. I wondered what was in that damn book that the baldanders carried. Maybe it was a probability-generating AI like Dingledoom’s caldron, which told the entire story of the game, from its very beginning to the very end, when the players were all uncapped and the servers were shut off.

Anyone who had that book would know the future of gamespace: who to rob, what to say, where to go. They’d make a killing in meatspace. They’d be richer than Gates.

I stood up and stretched. My back was killing me from sitting for so long.

I heard the telltale floorboard creak outside my door.

“You can come in, Mom,” I said.

The door opened. I could see her hand on the doorknob but the arm disappeared into the shadow of the hall.

“I’m really sorry,” I said.

“I’m … I’m not sure what we’re going to do, sweetie.” Her voice seemed heavy.

“I think the clan is breaking up.”

“What will we do?”

“I’ll probably buy a new gameface, maybe a human this time, and he’ll enter some tournaments. That’ll make me a little bit of yuan.”

“No, honey. What are we going to do? I needed you to keep winning.”

“Did you lose a lot of money?”

She didn’t answer and raindrops slapped the window. Then the door opened and she shuffled in.

“Maybe you should look for a real job … ” she said, not looking at me.

I felt smaller. A lot smaller.

“Gaming is a real job!” I shouted, and we both jumped, both scared.

I stood up and grabbed my coat from the bed. I turned to the desk, got my glasses, and put them on.

I felt the tingle and my icons popped up in front of me. “I’m going out. Don’t wait up.”

Outside on the stoop it was cold as well as raining.

I zipped up the coat and stepped onto the sidewalk. All the houses were dark; only about half of them were inhabited. Our neighbors had been moving away for years, even before the war.

I still got emails from Jorge, who’d moved to Vancouver. He had a good job as a bioprogrammer. He had friends and a girlfriend.

I walked down Cortland to the Mission Canal and waited for the vaporetto. In the shelter I studied a Sony Wajang ad, with a picture of Kai Wing giving the thumbs up and saying, When I play, I play Sony. Wing was a top-level player in a game called Star Destroyer.

I’d never played it, but I did see a couple of his matches. How much did Wing make for an ad like that? I looked it up on my glasses. Two million. What would I do with two million? Move to Canada, probably. Hang out with Jorge.

Across the canal I saw a squad of Korean peacekeepers, their blue helmets and slickers gleaming in the rain.

They smoked and didn’t talk to each other, not seeming to care how wet they got.

I took the vaporetto into the Mission and transferred at the 24th St. Pier to the forty-eight bus.

We groaned up to Twin Peaks, past the game bangs, with hapa teenagers smoking outside, and the dim bars and pawn shops.

When we crossed Castro the shops and restaurants brightened; there were more people on the streets and no peacekeepers.

I saw one bombed out Victorian, probably hit by a mortar, but otherwise all was intact.

I got off on Grandview and found that the rain had stopped. It was bright and clear, the way it can be after rain, when the moon is full.

In the space between two houses I could see the canals of San Francisco stained by streetlights and the island neighborhoods sitting like shipwrecks on the water. I could even spot the ruins of the Bay Bridge and I remembered Sundays when I was a kid, when we went to Fruitvale for brunch at Aunt Katie’s place.

I checked my glasses for the address Jin had found in the gamemaster system, and slowly walked up the wet street, peering through the dark at the numbers on the houses. I quickly found it, huge and white.

A single window on the second floor was lit yellow; the rest of the windows were dark.

I looked around. It was a rich person’s neighborhood — no one lived in a cooperative here — but even so, a quarter of the houses looked abandoned. I noted that the house directly across the street was one of the empty ones, its windows boarded up, weeds growing in the narrow lawn. There was no one else on the street.

Trying to look casual, I walked across the Takahashi lawn and around the back of the house. No light snapped on, no alarm went off. In the back yard I found a rock garden, with a few short, twisted trees, two benches, and a patio set. I walked up to the sliding glass doors and peered into the living room.

All the furniture was as white as the house and covered with plastic, with an ancient plasma screen filling up half a wall. I tried the door; it was locked, of course.

As I walked back over the rocks, now less careful, I saw a garden gnome sitting under one of the short trees.

I detoured and picked it up and tucked it under my arm. I left the yard and walked down the street back towards the bus.

I admit it: I started watching the house.

The Takahashi family consisted of a handsome middle-aged Japanese guy, a slutty looking blonde, and their hapa daughter, whom I pegged as Kirsty.

She was slim, eighteen or nineteen, with bright eyes and dark hair. I once caught her in the window of her bedroom in her bra, for about twenty seconds before she drew the blinds.

I recorded the image in my glasses. That kept me going for days. Sometimes, it still does.

Kirsty didn’t go to school and didn’t go to a job. She spent most of her time in the house, venturing out to meet friends in the Castro and on 24th St., where they did lunch and shopped.

All of her friends looked just like her: Hapa, pretty, slim, rich, with expensive AI glasses.

I followed her every day for a week.

On the last day I followed Kirsty to a bookstore on the Market canal. When she went inside, I sat on a bench in front of a cafe half a block away. I bought a bagel and fed most of it to the ducks that gathered on the banks of the canal and left white duckshit all over the parapet.

The sky was the color of slate. Vaporettos chugged by, people leaning on the rails. I watched part of a Swords of Blakmar match on my glasses.

After a half hour I realized that Kirsty hadn’t come out. I admit I was a little bit concerned; I had been watching her so much that I’d started to feel protective of Kirsty. I turned off the glasses, threw the rest of the bagel to the ducks and went inside.

I strolled between the shelves, stopping to browse the science-fiction section; I picked up the 45th book of the Wheel of Time series, which had just come out. I kept moving to the rear of the store, keeping one eye on the entrance.

I got to the back and turned around.

When I rounded the corner into the self-help section, I almost walked over Kirsty, who was crouching on the floor. She yelped and jumped up; I stumbled back a few steps.

“Why are you following me?” she said, looking straight at me, fists clenched at her hips.

“What? I’m not … ” I said, not able to meet her eyes.

“You’ve been following me. I want to know why.”

“I, uh, do you play Swords of Blakmar?” I said. I thought: way to go, jerk.

“What? What did you say?”

“You know, the game. Swords of Blakmar? I play in the lower levels, but I’m working my way up. You might have heard of my clan … we got a write-up in Sing Tao … ”

“Do you even know how creepy you are?” Her voice shook and rose. “Do you?”

I could feel the other customers looking at us. I felt really hot.

“Listen, I just want to ask you … ” I raised my hand.

“Don’t fucking touch me!” she screamed.

Now I saw a clerk coming down the aisle behind her.

“I’m not … hey, at least I’m honest, I don’t cheat … ” I said.

“Are you OK?” The clerk asked Kirsty, standing just behind her.

She blinked at him, but didn’t respond.

The three of us stood there, Kirsty lowering her eyes to the floor.

Then she looked up again and she didn’t look angry or afraid.

“I got banned, you know,” she said to me. “From the game.”

“You broke the rules,” I said. “And our clan really tried. We were doing really good.”

The clerk shrugged and walked back up the aisle.

“Only because of me,” she said. “Do you know how hard I worked to build that gameface?”

“It’s true,” I admitted. “The centaur was cool. The baldanders might have been even cooler. It was really scary.”

“Thanks.”

She seemed almost shy as she said this, turning her eyes to the shelf, picking at a book.

“You were good at the game. You could have made plenty of money without cheating. Why didn’t you just fight your way through the levels like everyone else?”

“Because I’m not like everyone else,” she said. “I’m better.”

She turned and walked away.

It made me mad, the way she just walked away.

“I stole the gnome out of your garden!” I bawled at her back. “I gave it to my mom.”

“You keep it,” she said, turning her head in profile. “I hated that creepy thing. Besides, it looks like you.”

Things got bad after that, I guess.

I was too discouraged to game for money — you could say I was depressed — and the government stopped sending social security checks.

Within a year, mom and I lost our house.

We spent a few scary nights sleeping on the banks of the Market canal, me hugging the wajang close under a wool blanket, until the city assigned us temporary housing in the Mission.

I applied for a job-training gameface, and they gave me one.

Pretty soon I was interning for the water department gamespace in risk management, helping figure out all the horrible shit that could go wrong in the city: earthquakes, flood, terrorist attacks, another invasion, thieves, a thousand different kinds of breakdowns.

I imagined each threat as a brass centaur, and I never dropped my guard.

You know what? I turned out to be good at the job. I got promoted from intern to assistant; a year after that, I was running my own risk scenarios in the municipal gamespace.

The pay was fine, and we were able to join a cooperative apartment complex on Corona Island, and Mom got so involved with the neighbors that she mostly left me alone.

When my risk unit came up with a proposal for neighborhood aquaponic greenhouses as a solution to the city’s water and food distribution problems, the department assigned me to launch a meatspace pilot project on Corona.

Pretty soon I was spending only half the day in the municipal gamespace; most of the time I was working with neighbors to build the greenhouse.

I learned how to use a hammer and screwdriver; I lost weight.

The first time we ate fish from the greenhouse tank in the coop kitchen, I looked around at my neighbors and realized that maybe I was helping make things a little bit better.

Which was weird.

I never went back to playing Swords of Blakmar. But sometimes I’d dream I was Oropher.

I was Oropher but I wasn’t in the gamespace; I was here at home on Corona, but bearing a shield and carrying a sword, brave and strange.

I did see Kirsty one more time, five years after the Nessos debacle.

I was at Dolores Park with my mom. It was sunny and dry, for once, and we spread a blanket out on the grass in front of the lake and ate pickles and sandwiches.

Mom wore her bright flower-print housedress and a straw hat. After lunch she lay down and fell asleep spread-eagled.

I finished the new Dune novel I was reading on my glasses (Sandfleas of Dune, which in my opinion wasn’t as good as the last one) and got up to pee.

As I walked back to our spot I saw her, sitting on the bench at the top of the ridge that forms the southwest corner of the park.

Kirsty wore white shorts and a yellow T-shirt, pretty as she had been five years before, and she was looking at something far away, shielding her eyes with both hands.

She was incandescent with sunlight, sitting perfectly still, and of course I thought of the centaur and imagined Kirsty as a solid brass monument to herself.

At that moment I wanted so badly to see Nessos step into the muddy park, kicking up tufts of dirt and grass, sword drawn and gleaming in the sun.

The sunbathers would scream and scatter like the orcs and trolls they really are, scared and suspicious, and Nessos would rear and gallop and sweep through the park like a cold wind and cut them down with his sword and the grass would turn black with blood.

It’d be awful to see and I wanted to see it so badly.

Why shouldn’t something so beautiful and magical have the right to do anything it wanted?

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him . . .
—William Shakespeare

To the outside world Jerry Farelli appeared to have everything life could offer: good looks, excellent health, and substantial wealth (albeit derived from a number of dubious enterprises).

Yet happiness still eluded him, because his prized collection of celebrity skulls lacked the cranium of his favorite actor—Telly Savalas.

While he did own, at considerable expense, a lollipop once licked by the thespian during an early episode of “Kojak,” without the mandible that had held it in place, it only served as a bitter reminder of the significant hole in his cache of trophies and thus in his life.

Ultimately, he regarded it as an orphaned artifact, referring to it as “pop-prop” during bouts of gloom over his failure to crown his extensive trove of noggins.

Surrounding the felt-lined space he had set aside (in vain) for the Savalas skull were the domes of several other television luminaries, which were the envy of many collectors.

Looking at the orbs of stars from one-time shows such as “Hollywood Squares,” “Fantasy Island,” “Three’s Company,” and a dozen others, helped ease his melancholy to some degree, and the head of champion yodeler Gaston Plantiff, the 2019 winner of “American Idolatry,” who had died of a drug overdose a week after his amazing ascent to world fame, really ramped up his spirits.

But his joy was short-lived when his eyes fell on the hollow reserved for Savalas.

From an early age, Jerry had been a great admirer of the bald actor, watching endless reruns of his popular detective show on the Felony Channel, and downloading the actor’s movies. Among his favorite Savalas film roles were Archer Maggott in “The Dirty Dozen” and Sergeant Tibbs in “McKenna’s Gold.”

He had watched both movies countless times, and they had greatly fanned his desire to acquire the actor’s head. Yet this had seemed an impossible dream to Jerry until, one day, a dealer informed him that the skull had been placed on the market by the actor’s estate.

Its sudden availability surprised Jerry, since his frequent inquiries about it over the years had always led nowhere, but his excitement about its possible acquisition overrode his wariness.

He was well aware of the black market in celebrity skulls, and had used it for other things, but when it came to his special collection of bones he had intentionally avoided illegal purchases — though he had been tempted on more than one occasion.

As much as he had wanted the Savalas skull, he had steered clear of underground head hawkers as a matter of principle. His collection was the one area in his life that he insisted on total legitimacy and integrity.

Now a familiar vendor of solid reputation had offered the skull to Jerry and his mood was quickly transformed by the prospect of finally adding it to his already formidable holdings. It represented the diamond in the tiara of his beloved display, and he was already planning a party to commemorate its installation.

By the time the news about the Savalas skull made its way to the Celebrity Memorabilia Channel, Jerry had purchased it for a sum that even he momentarily balked at.

Yet he had to have it, at any cost, and now it would be his.

He made arrangements to have it delivered to his house in Bel Air the next day, then spent the remainder of the afternoon and evening twitting and skekking his friends about the banner acquisition, and talking with the caterer about the food and drink for the celebration two days hence.

His girlfriend was still away in the Honduras on a spelunking vacation with her women’s group, so she would miss the gala event, which Jerry did not want to delay until her return.

That night the excitement over the Savalas head kept him awake until sunrise, at which point he arose and sat before the space that would soon be occupied by one of his greatest television and film heroes.

The time moved slowly until the hour the dealer was expected arrived and then passed. Jerry waited 15 minutes before texting the dealer but there was no response.

After three more text messages the dealer responded, informing Jerry that he had decided against selling the Savalas skull until he felt the seller was getting the most he could for it.

“Selling it now may be a bit premature, and I have an obligation to the sellers to get the most for them. I hope you understand,” he explained to Jerry, who was not having any of it.

He immediately doubled his already exorbitant offer but it was to no avail; he felt duped, it incensed him, and he threatened legal action against the dealer, who reminded him that no contract had been signed and no money had exchanged hands.

Jerry’s mood darkened as he contemplated the embarrassment of having to call off the party after having declared to everyone that he possessed the coveted skull — a singular triumph in his exclusive circle of aficionados.

The longer he thought about his situation, the more angry and distraught he became. It was in this overwrought state that Jerry decided to take action into his own hands.

He made a call to a certain someone — an expert in problem resolution, is how Jerry thought of him.

He would have the dealer beheaded and the fleshy member dipped in an acid bath to remove everything from the skeleton. He would then place the skull in the space reserved for Savalas in time for the gathering. That way he would save face, even though the dealer would lose his, chuckled Jerry, musing that the dealer even looked like the actor.

It all seemed like poetic justice.

By noon the next day the dealer’s skull was duly delivered to Jerry, and he quickly placed it in the awaiting space, inserting the sucker between its jaws. No one would be the wiser, he thought, as he stood back and surveyed the display.

After the party he would make every effort to obtain the actual Savalas skull, and he would do so even if it meant lopping off a few more heads. He would not be denied this prize, whatever it cost, as he could not abide the false skull in his collection for very long.

By 8 PM the following evening more than one hundred people, among them some of the foremost collectors in the region, filled Jerry’s skultorium as he unveiled the main attraction to loud applause and cheers.

While the crowd ogled the actor’s would be skull, Jerry’s girlfriend, Jenna, suddenly appeared two days ahead of her scheduled return. This delighted Jerry and he and the crowd redirected their attention to her.

“The trip ended early, and here I am,” she announced and then handed Jerry a box covered in wrapping paper and bows.

“What’s this?” asked Jerry taking the box from her.

“A surprise. Something I know you wanted big time,” she answered, as he torn open the brightly decorated package.

Inside was a skull, which Jerry held in his hand for everyone to see.

“Guess who it is,” asked his girlfriend.

“Well, it’s not Telly Savalas, because he’s over there,” replied Jerry joking and nodding in the direction of the display.

After a long perplexed silence, Jerry’s girlfriend spoke. “Actually, it is Telly Savalas. I bought it for you from the dealer.

“That can’t be. He said he wasn’t selling . . .,” replied Jerry, catching himself too late and knowing he had let the cat out of the bag–and thus raised the suspicion of his fellow collectors.

“Because I told him I wanted to buy it for you as a belated birthday present. I contacted all the dealers a while back to tell me if the skull became available and he forgot until after he talked to you. Then he called me and we made up the story about his not wanting to sell it,” said Jenna looking at the cranium in the area reserved for the Savalas piece. “So whose skull is that?”

“Yeah, Jerry, what skull is that?’ repeated several people at the gathering.

“You trying to pull something over on us?” chimed others.

“Don’t be ridiculous. There has to be some mistake,” replied Jerry defensively. “Look, let’s call it a night and let me get to the bottom of this.”

When Jerry and his girlfriend were alone, he asked for more details about the purchase, which revealed she had, indeed, acquired the skull from the dealer whose head now graced his display.

“What’s going on?” Jenna asked and Jerry claimed he was as confused as she was.

When they were in bed, she tried to interest Jerry in lovemaking, but he was unresponsive, claiming an upset stomach.

His thoughts were focused on the calamity of the last few hours and he lay awake for several hours until the doorbell rang. Greeting him were several police officers who arrested him on the spot for the murder of the dealer.

His hired hit man had been stopped for driving under the influence and the murder weapons were found in his car. In his inebriated state he had made a full confession.

“That’s crazy!” protested Jerry as he was led away.

“You got that right,’ buddy,” replied the cop escorting him to the waiting cruiser.

The Internet was soon filled with the sordid details of the notorious crime for which Jerry was sentenced to 40 years in the state penitentiary. His infamy grew as speculation about the origins of his other skulls came into question, and the irony was not lost on Jerry since it was the one area of his life he had kept uncorrupted.

He was soon labeled the “Bel Air Decapitator” by the media and NBC’s “Deathline” (formerly “Dateline”) devoted an entire two-hour episode to his case further fanning his notoriety.

Five years into his sentence, Jerry was slain by a fellow inmate and his body was buried in the prison cemetery, though without its head. By this point the market for skulls of famous criminals had exploded and Jerry’s skull fetched an impressive sum. The prominent collector who purchased it proudly placed it between his skulls of Jeffrey Dalmer and John Wayne Gacy.

The head of Telly Savalas was returned to his estate, which claimed it had never authorized its sale, although given its tremendously increased value it was now considering doing so to fund a planned Las Vegas museum devoted to the renowned performer.

Michael C. Keith is the author of several books, articles, and stories. He teaches Communication at Boston College.

I had lost track of the days. The first hint that I was near my destination was the glimmer of the plastic sheets flapping in the desert breeze. It was still early — I tried to do most of my walking in the small hours, and sleep through the burning heat of the afternoon.

I first heard about the colony some years back. In fact, I had been at Christchurch College, Oxford, with the founder, Tom Novak. He had been a physicist in those days, whilst I was studying medicine.

Both of us had squandered our early promise. I had simply refused to ascend the career ladder, knocking around various physician jobs on cruise ships and in hotels.

Novak, meanwhile, had left England for the United States after graduating. He finished his PhD. at UCLA in two years and took up a research post in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Soon after, during at a conference at the Excalibur Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, he walked out one night and vanished into the Nevada Desert.

My alumni magazine even ran an obituary a few months before he re-surfaced as the leader of a newly formed cult.

Novak’s group rejected anything that ran on electricity. Their literature consisted of hand-written leaflets on thick, homemade paper. They had a surprisingly wide circle of sympathizers who would distribute them in Las Vegas, beneath placemats in restaurants, under hotel pillows and so forth. From Las Vegas, the leaflets found their way into the wider world, and hence onto the Internet.

Novak attracted some attention, most of it derisory: Of all the unusual beliefs held by cults, opposing electricity was one of the most ridiculous. People would have understood Novak’s point of view if it had been five years ago, when everyone was worried about the amount of coal and oil and gas we had left to burn, and what the byproducts were doing to the atmosphere.

But to object to electricity just at the point when we were about to get a limitless source of clean, wireless energy was just perverse.

Gleam was a technology developed by a private multinational corporation. It promised to make our old system of cables and plug sockets as antiquated as dial-up. It involved two major breakthroughs.

The first was a method for generating power from hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor. The second was a way of transmitting this power, wirelessly, across vast distances. The technology was safe, clean and durable; the manufacturers estimated that once an ocean station was set up, it could run for over fifty years with minimal maintenance.

Like everyone else, I was initially skeptical of Gleam. It seemed like a distraction from the real issue: How were we going to manage what we had? Chasing after another version of cold fusion or the perpetual motion machine struck me as a frivolous distraction at best, or downright obstructive at worst.

But then, who was I to complain? I was happily installed as the hotel medic for 2525, a new casino on the Las Vegas strip with a kitschy 1950s futuristic theme. My employer was running up some of the biggest electricity bills on in town, against some pretty stiff competition.

The first tests of Gleam exceeded expectations, and soon the industrialized nations agreed to pay a massive lump sum to install and operate Gleam across the globe.

The advantages were obvious; it would solve climate change with no need for anyone to alter their lifestyle. Gleam-driven desalination plants would solve the water crisis. Old power stations could be shut down, kept as tourist attractions perhaps, like the stately homes of England.

Traditional cars were scrapped, and sales of new-build Gleam vehicles provided a much-needed shot in the arm for the automobile industry. Cable-free electrical items became common in the shops.

Within a couple of years, the world had entirely switched over to Gleam, and luddites like Novak, stuck out in the desert with his pitiful colony of cranks, were entirely forgotten about.

Everyone has a story about where they were when Gleam went wrong. This is mine.

I had been working late in my office, inputting body mass indices, smoking status, alcohol intake and so on into my computer. I finished at last, rubbed my eyes, and turned off my desk lamp.

I say I turned it off; what actually happened was that I flicked the switch on my desk lamp, and it stayed on.

I made a mental note to get it fixed the next day. Then I shut down my computer. The screen darkened and the fans clicked to a halt; there was less than a second’s pause before the machine made a soft ping and started up again.

Annoyed with myself for pressing restart, I tried again, making sure this time that I hit the “shut down” button.

This time, it didn’t shut down at all. I decided to leave it, like the lamp, for tomorrow. After all, it could hardly do any damage to leave things switched on these days. I put on my jacket, went to the door and touched the light switch. The light didn’t go out. I added it to my ‘to do’ list.

I made my way back to my room. 2525 was like all Vegas hotels — to get anywhere, you had to go via the casino floor. It was around eight o’clock at night, but it could have been eight o’clock in the morning, or any time in between.

There was no natural light; neon and lasers provided a constantly changing display, bouncing off the chrome surfaces. Waitresses in short metallic skirts, see-through plastic tops and silver wigs carried drinks from table to table. They had to shout to make themselves heard over the din of conversation and pumping electronic music, punctuated by the occasional downpour of coins from the mouths of the slot machines.

I caught sight of Mary, someone I’d been involved with in an on-off Vegas way for a few weeks. She pulled a plastic ray gun from her holster, pointed it at me and pulled the trigger theatrically, mouthing the word “pow.”

I didn’t know what that meant, and I wasn’t in the mood to find out. I was still irritated by the problems I’d had with the electrics in my office. Gleam had made me take technology for granted; everything had become so reliable you almost stopped noticing it was there. A glitch like this was unsettling.

I gave a quick wave and a complicated shrug that indicated I had somewhere to go, and walked swiftly between the machines, tables and tourists, away from the cacophony.

The night before I reached Novak’s colony, I had become aware of a flickering, ghostly light behind a ridge up ahead. As I approached, I heard what sounded like a babble of voices, music, white noise, all competing with one another, like a party before you find your friends and tune into a single conversation.

When I traversed the ridge, I found a large stack of television sets, all switched on and flipping themselves rapidly through the channels. I moved closer, to see if I could find one broadcasting anything useful. It was impossible to distinguish any individual voice, and in any case, the channels were changing every couple of seconds.

My room in 2525 was on the ground floor. Casino medics pooled their evening duties, and it was one of my nights off. I decided that I would have a quiet night in, ask the kitchen to send me a pizza, and watch a couple of movies on TV. I swiped my card in the lock, and the green light flashed.

I walked in. All of the lights were on, in both the main room and the bathroom. So was the TV.

This had happened before. The chambermaids had plenty of rooms to get through, and they tended to neglect the ones occupied by staff. It wasn’t unusual, in fact, for me to come back and find more evidence of a coffee break taking place in my room than of any actual cleaning.

I pressed “mute” on the remote control, walked across to the bathroom, and slid my finger over the touch-sensitive pad that controlled the light. The light stayed on. I wondered if there was a manufacturing fault with the switches in the hotel, causing them to all pack in at the same time. And what was wrong with an old-fashioned rocker switch, anyway?

The television suddenly burst into life.

“ — electrical fault affecting some rooms. Engineers have been called and are trying to resolve the problem as soon as possible. Meanwhile, why not unwind with the Rockettes in our Launch Pad Lounge …”

It was the hotel TV channel, presented live from the casino floor by an actor who had played Flash Gordon or possibly Buck Rogers in a re-vamped show that lasted about six episodes ten years ago. I opened up a beer from my fridge, slipped off my shoes and sat down on my bed.

There was a crumpling sound as I reclined against my pillows: I lifted them, and found a thick, brownish piece of paper, foolscap size, inked in neatly printed black letters:

“GLEAM: SOMETHING FOR NOTHING? THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS!”

It was another leaflet from Novak. I skimmed through it and put it in the bin.

“— other hotels on the strip may be affected by this problem, which we expect to be fixed within the next hour or two,” the television said.

I flicked it over to a movie that looked like it didn’t require too much attention. I called for my pizza, and opened another bottle of beer.

I fell asleep before the end of the film, and woke up to find the TV still on. It was a little after seven. The noise was competing with a news report coming out of my clock radio. I tried to switch off the TV, failed, and then attempted to mute it. The sound cut out for just a second before coming back on.

I tried to hear what the man on the radio was saying. His voice sounded serious and urgent. I threw my duvet over the television, muffling it.

“— affecting not just Las Vegas, but cities across Nevada,” the radio said.

It was difficult to judge distance in the desert, and my initial burst of energy on seeing Novak’s settlement soon dwindled. By the time I reached the first huts, I was exhausted and thirsty, and my head was pounding. I had not taken enough water when I started my expedition, and I was running seriously low. In the previous twenty-four hours, my sole intake had consisted of a mouthful of lukewarm, plasticky water, washing down a melted chocolate bar.

There were no signs outside the encampment, no gates, no guards. I counted around two-dozen huts and a couple of caravans. The majority looked new and clean: evidently the size of Novak’s camp had swelled significantly over the past couple of months.

A woman dressed in a blue pinafore was playing with a small child in the dusty yard around the front of one of the cabins. I waved at her. She looked up, squinting into the light, and adjusted her red headscarf.

“Hello!” I said.

“There’s no need to shout,” she replied, primly.

Had I been shouting? I supposed I must have got used to raising my voice before I left the city.

The sole distinction in my medical career is probably this: I treated one of the first casualties of Gleam.

I was listening to the news report, which continued to say not very much, when my phone rang. Someone hurt in room 401, blood loss, ambulance dispatched but I was needed to hold the fort until it arrived.

This wasn’t the kind of thing I was used to as a hotel doctor. The majority of the work involved treating emphysema and heart failure in the numerous elderly patients who used the cheap room rates, plentiful food, daytime activities, and ever-present company to turn the casino into a viable alternative to an old folks’ home.

I grabbed the orange emergency holdall and hurried out of my room.

The casino floor was filled with people milling around in last night’s makeup and yesterday’s clothes, smelling of stale alcohol, their faces vague and distant as if they weren’t fully aware of their surroundings.

In other words, things were still normal.

I headed for the lifts. There was, however, a crowd around the doors, and as I watched, the chrome dial indicating the floor the lift was on flipped back and forth like a Geiger counter.

I took the stairs at speed, the bag getting heavier on my shoulder as I approached the fourth floor. Fortunately, 401 was situated near the stairwell, and there was a steward standing in the corridor to point me to the room in question.

I hastened in and threw the bag down. A middle-aged man, dressed in a bathrobe, lay flat out on a bright red rug; a darker, brownish puddle of red was welling up over his right shoulder.

There was a tang of cordite in the air, and a substantial dent in the metal cabinet that the television rested on. The television itself was still on.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I couldn’t turn off the damn TV,” he yelled, “so I decided to shoot it out!”

This was, I would soon discover, a typical reaction to Gleam’s malfunction.

The woman in the pinafore directed me to a large, silver caravan in the centre of the settlement. I walked up the steps and banged on the door. I rested my hand on the metal; it was warm to the touch.

The door opened to reveal a man in his early thirties. His blonde hair was long, with streaks of silver; he brushed it away from his face, revealing a pair of thick glasses fixed and fixed again with duct tape. He was wearing navy polka-dot pajamas and a tartan dressing gown.

“Nick?” he exclaimed, and extended his hand. I shook it; in the years since we had last met, it had become rough and calloused.

“Two Englishmen far from home,” he said.

By the end of that first day when nothing would switch off, Gleam had malfunctioned across the whole of North America. The rest of the world soon followed.

2525 responded with a special announcement, made by ex-Flash/Buck. It played end-to-end on the hotel channel. Guests were reassured that the government and the Gleam Corporation were working to resolve the problem. Guests were advised not to try deactivating hotel electrical items themselves; management would remove these on request.

These arrangements broke down after about a week. Staff were becoming exhausted constantly shifting television sets and light bulbs back and forth; the lifts had been forcibly stopped in a daring rescue mission by the fire service and were beyond repair; and there were hints that the Gleam problem was getting worse.

The air conditioning was now being driven full blast, so that people were either walking around clad in blankets or breaking windows to let in some warmth.

The infrared-controlled taps in the washrooms were permanently on, and there were worries about a potential drought.

All airplanes were grounded, and cars were beginning to have problems with their electrical systems.

Everyone was going to have to stay in Vegas, at least until Gleam was fixed.

Novak opened a hatch set into the base of his caravan, and pulled out a thick glass pitcher, with large droplets of moisture running down the sides.

“Iced tea?” he asked, then added, apologetically, “Well, not iced, but cool at least.”

He poured me a glass of the brown, clear liquid. I drunk it greedily, savoring the taste of citrus and tannins.

“It took me a long time to devise a way to cool tea to just the right temperature,” he said, “but isn’t that the way it should be?”

“I read your leaflets,” I said.

“It made everything too easy,” he said, “electricity.”

It was as if he was talking to himself. He scrutinized me. “You used to wear glasses.”

“I had my eyes lasered.”

“You see what I mean,” he said, “it makes things too easy. Things are meant to be difficult sometimes. We need to make choices – so much effort for so much reward.”

“Are you talking about Gleam?”

“No. Not specifically. Gleam was just the latest example. The idea that everything in life should be easy. It’s like being addicted to a drug.” Novak got up and drew back the curtain over the main window. The morning light shimmered off his glasses. “Right now, everyone is going through withdrawal.”

The hotel tried to run a new system of “on” and “off” suites: you would have two sets of rooms, one with everything plugged in and switched on, the other with everything removed.

Soon the news came that a flotilla of Navy submarines sent to destroy Gleam installations had been lost without trace.

I reckoned things wouldn’t get back to normal, not for a long time, perhaps not ever.

I cleared a space on the table amongst the papers and candles, and put down my glass.

“What happened to you, Novak?” I asked, ‘“why did you come out here all those years ago?”

“I had an evening off at the conference. I played the slots.”

“Seriously?”

“I put in one dollar, and I made one hundred.”

“And?”

Novak topped up my glass with the rest of the iced tea.

“I thought,” he said, “what if everyone in this casino could do what I just did? What if everyone could make a hundred dollars that easily?”

“It couldn’t be done,” I said.

“Now you say that.”

I stood on the strip, and looked at the city for the last time. Arcs of lightning fired between the pylons, and the air hummed and tingled against my skin.

The street was deserted apart from a few people; looking closer, I saw that they walked with the awkward, silent-movie jerk that indicated their nervous systems were now under the control of Gleam.

I could smell something acrid and synthetic, like melting tires. The sky was a burnt orange colour, and the stars were invisible.

I hitched my rucksack onto my back, and walked out into the desert.

Niall Boyce lives and works in London. His stories are gathered at his website, Strange Powers.

In the very long, long ago, (or maybe in the soon, soon to be), there lived a curious creature whose name was Mawulf.

Now Mawulf was curious in two ways. First, he was very curious looking. He had two tiny black eyes (good for seeing in the dark), two tiny hands with four sharp claws each (good for digging holes and tunnels) and a tiny body covered with soft brown fur, good for keeping him warm wherever he might go.

The second way he was curious was … well, just that: He was very, very curious. He wanted to see everything there was to see and go everywhere there was to go. When he was young he would use his sharp claws to tunnel right underneath the back garden fence to explore the green fields and hills that lay beyond.

His mother used to call for him: “Mawulf? Oh, Mawulf? Where ARE you NOW?!”

(c) Adam Myers

And Mawulf would poke his head out of a tunnel, a tunnel he had dug to the top of a hill on the other side of their valley, and call back, “I am way over here, Mama, don’t worry, I’ll come back soon.”

But his Mother did worry, for everyday Mawulf went further and further away from home.

One morning, at breakfast, she said to him, “I worry about you, my young explorer. Everyday you dig your holes far and far and then far some more. I fear one day you may dig so far that you will dig your way completely through this world and fall right off.”

“Don’t be silly, Mama,” said Mawulf, “There is plenty of world to dig and I want explore. I want to burrow to strange new places and meet strange new people. They will tell me of the life of them and I will tell them of the life of me. I will tell them of the newness of our land. I will tell them about the stars in our sky. And, of course, I will tell them all about the many delicious types of Breakfast Cereal we may choose to eat in the morning-time.”

You see, children, this may seem strange to you, but in Mawulf’s land breakfast was taken very seriously, being regarded as the most important meal of the day. Also, they were accustomed to a choice when it came to the cereal one ate in the morning — and Mawulf’s people were very proud of their cereals. There were cereals made of wheat and corn and oats, cereals that tasted sweet and savory and of fruit and chocolate, cereals of all colors and cereals of all shapes. Hundreds of combinations available each and every sun-blessed morning …

The sky was bright with smiling clouds on the day Mawulf left to explore the world. To dig his way to all the wonderful places he had longed to see ever since he was young.

“So, I am off to see the world Mama,” said Mawulf. “Wish me well.”

“I do wish you well,” said his Mother, “But always remember, when you meet new people be sure to be polite. Tell them of our cereal, but also, ask them of their cereal. Give them stories of our Pops and Crispies, of our Chockula and Wheat Frosties but make sure you hear their stories, as well, because sharing is just as important as digging, you know.”

His Mother reached across the breakfast table and held his tiny claws in hers, “Be careful, my young explorer, she said, “You are wise for one so young but the world is both a very big and a very small place. Dig both deep and shallow and always remember the difference between the two.”

“Oh Mama, you worry so,” laughed Mawulf. “The world awaits and there is so much to know. I will tunnel far and far and far again. In the Land of After-Sea, I will ask of Mirrors. In the Island Kingdoms, I will ask of Origins. In the Giant Land, I will ask of many things …of Clocks and Stones and Colors and Faces. On the Mountain Top-ness, I will ask of Done-ness and When-ness and Now-ness. When I find the Oldest Orchard, I will ask of Me. Wish me luck, Mama. Good-by!”

And with a final wave, Mawulf burrowed into the ground to find the world.

And Mawulf did find the world. He dug his way to many bizarre and wonderful places. He also met many bizarre and wonderful people. It seemed that every time he popped his head up from the ground in some strange new land he would make a new friend.

One day he met a small dog.

“Good morning, new friend Dog,” said Mawulf with a polite bow, “I come from a land where we have many delicious types of Breakfast Cereal to choose from. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

“Good morning and a pleasant bark to you, new friend,” said the Dog. “It is a pleasure to meet you, too. In my land we have many delicious types of cheese and meat and rolls and bacon. Although breakfast is a very fine meal indeed, we prefer lunch.”

“Thank you for telling me of your home and food,” replied Mawulf, “But there is much to see so I must dig again now and be on my way. Good-by, friend Dog.”

And with that Mawulf tunneled away.

One day he met a small cat.

“Good morning, new friend Cat,” said Mawulf with a polite bow, “I come from a land where we have many delicious types of Breakfast Cereal to choose from. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

“Good morning and a pleasant meow to you, new friend,” said the Cat. “It is a pleasure to meet you, too. In my land we have many delicious types of bread and sauce and wine and noodles. Although breakfast is a very fine meal indeed, we prefer dinner.”

“Thank you for telling me of your home and food,” replied Mawulf, “But there is much to see so I must dig again now and be on my way. Good-by, friend Cat.”

And with that Mawulf tunneled away.

And so it went. Mawulf had many fine adventures and met many new friends.

Mawulf was so excited and so happy with his exploring that began to dig faster and faster. He wanted to see everything, everything, everything there was to see.

He became so worried that he wouldn’t be able to see it all that he tunneled quicker, quicker, quicker and went farther, farther, farther.

Faster and faster and faster he dug and dug and dug, until …

Well, this is when our story gets a bit sad, children. So if you need to stop reading, do it now.

As we all know, Moon hides underneath the horizon of Earth when Sun comes up to play. Moon nestles up to Earth, hugging the rim, waiting for the night.

And that’s where Moon was, snuggling Earth all cozy, on that fateful day when Mawulf did what his Mother had warned him about so many years ago. He tunneled his way right through the world and popped out the other side!

He would have fallen right off, too, into outer space, just like his Mama said, if Moon wasn’t there, snug against the Earth.

But he was digging so fast that he didn’t even realize he had left Earth and was really digging through Moon instead. Eventually, he dug right through Moon as well!

Mawulf poked out his head. There were absolutely no people anywhere, nothing but a starry, starry sky. He was very confused.

“Where is everyone?” Mawulf called, echoingly. “Hello? Would anyone like to chat about Breakfast Cereals? Hello?” Puzzled, he went back the way he came, through his tunnel and popped his head out. But strangely, there were no people to be found there, either.

“Hello? Hello,” he called. But no one called back.

You see, it was late: Moon had already moved towards Night and was high in the sky. All the people that Mawulf knew were far, far away on the world below.

“Where is everyone?” he echoed. “Hello? I come from the land of a tasty and nutritious breakfast? Hello?”

He was quite perplexed.

You must understand, children, that Mawulf never realized he was actually on Moon. He reckoned he had only dug too far in this world, to some strange and barren place. He tried digging new tunnels, desperate to get home, but every time he poked his head out he seemed no closer to where he needed to be.

Faster and faster he dug. Faster and faster.

He dug so many tunnels that Moon, being so full of holes, began to disappear.

First a quarter of Moon went away … then a half … then almost all … until … there was nothing left of Moon but one big hole in the sky.

Now as sad and lonely as Mawulf was, he still remembered what his Mother always said about being polite, no matter where you go. Mawulf figured that even though there were no people to complain, it would be very rude to leave nothing but one gigantic hole, no matter where one may be.

So he began to fill the holes back in. First a quarter was filled up, then half, then … after some time, Moon was all back again.

Hard work it was, it took him a whole month. When he was finished, Mawulf looked around and called out, “Hello, hello?”

But still, he could see no people.

“Fiddlesticks,” he sighed, “I guess I dug the wrong way. I suppose I shall have to start again. Maybe this time I will find my way home.” Once again he dug and dug and dug until there was no more Moon left in the sky. And once again … he filled it all back up.

“Hello, hello?”

But he was still no closer to home.

“Fiddlesticks, I guess I must try again.”

So it goes, children, even to this day, every month Mawulf digs away Moon, then fills it all in again, looking for home.

But don’t be sad, children, for Mawulf made many new friends on his journey. They all miss him dearly and want to help him find his way back.

So if you ever hear a dog howling at the moon (“Maaawuuulwoooooooof!!”) or a cat screeching at midnight (“Meeeowulfrreeeech!!”) … don’t be scared.

It’s only Mawulf’s friends calling out to him up in the sky, trying to guide him home.

And if you listen very carefully, you may even hear his Mother’s voice riding on the nighttime wind:

“Mawulf? Oh, Mawulf? Where ARE you NOW?!”

Adam Myers is an artist, writer and educator based in Seoul, South Korea, and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Story and art copyright (c) 2009 by Adam Myers.

The Creature has a purpose
and his eyes are bright with it.
— John Keats

Turtles communicate mostly by grunting, and what they have to say is amazing. I know because one has spoken to me since I was nine.

At first I didn’t understand it, but as the fire incinerated its prehistoric flesh and turned it to ash, what it was conveying became perfectly clear, and even though the giant Chelydra serpentina (its technical name) has been dead for nearly twenty years, it only stopped talking to me recently.

It all began when I was tossing around a football with my best friend, Dennis, and some older kids emerged from behind the cluster of trees concealing a tiny stream in back of the elementary school we attended.

They were carrying a large object to a barrel used by the school’s janitor, Mr. Johnson, to burn trash. When they reached it, they lowered it into the rusty metal container letting it drop the last couple of feet with a loud thud.

“What do you think they’re doing?” I asked Dennis, who suggested we go see.

Another boy approached carrying a small tin can.

“Here’s the kerosene,” he announced and poured it into the barrel.

Dennis braved the question about what they were up to and was told they were going to set fire to a turtle.

“Why?” I inquired incredulously, and the boy with the fuel can answered that they were burning it as an experiment.

“We want to see what it does. See if its shell keeps it from melting. Besides, it’s just a nasty old snapper. No good for nothing.” he added, tossing the empty container to the ground a few feet from where we stood.

“Okay, here goes,” announced another kid, striking a wooden match and dropping it into the barrel.

Flames leapt up instantly, and everyone took a few steps back in awe. In the whoosh of the flames I heard a squealing sound, but Dennis claimed he didn’t. When the flames settled down after a few minutes, everyone closed in on the barrel except me.

“Come on, let’s look,” said Dennis excitedly.

“That’s wrong!” I replied, but he ignored my protest and joined the boys peering into the barrel.

“You shouldn’t do that,” I shouted but no one paid attention to me.

Again, I heard a squeal emanate from the barrel, but this time it was followed by a series of sharp grunts that mixed with the crackling and snapping of the flames that spewed embers into the air.

“It’s suffering,” I protested, and was told to shut up by the oldest of the boys, who was probing the depths of the barrel with a stick.

“It’s still moving,” he announced ecstatically, and everyone, including Dennis, eagerly took a turn poking at the baking terrapin.

“I’m going to tell,” I warned, and the big kid, who obviously was the leader of the group, said if I did I’d be sorry.

“Well, I am getting the police,” I threatened, and he waved his clenched fist at me menacingly.

That was when the turtle first spoke to me.

“They know not what they do, so leave them to their senseless deed,” it said.

More than a little startled I probed the expressions of the other boys to see if they, too, had heard the words of the dying reptile. It was clear they had not, because they continued to behave with gleeful abandon as they stared into the barrel.

“I think it’s dead,” claimed one of the boys.

“No, it’s still moving,” responded another.

“It’s roasted,” observed yet another. “No way it can be alive.”

But it was alive, because it kept speaking.

“Nothing ever really perishes,” it declared, adding, “Things become something else, but they continue to exist. So don’t fret, young man. You are good to care for me and see the wrong in what they do, but there is nothing more you can do. You have done what any decent and noble living thing should. You have opposed cruelty, and I commend you for doing so.”

Still, I wanted to beat up the boys for killing the turtle, and I was mad at Dennis for going along with them and not joining me in trying to prevent their malicious act.

After about a half hour, the oldest boy pronounced the turtle officially dead and the others, including Dennis, agreed, each carefully examining the barrel’s depths.

By that time, I had retreated to the edge of the field, and when Dennis waved at me, I turned and ran for home.

“It’s dead! It’s dead!” they sang out and began marching around the smoldering tomb as if engaged in some primitive ritual.

I told no one about the turtle talking to me that day, and although it has spoken to me ever since, I have not dared to reveal this fearing I would be thought crazy, even by those closest to me.

“Kids can be so cruel,” commented my mother when I told my parents what happened.

“Well, it was only a turtle,” replied my father, folding the day’s newspaper in half and placing it on the coffee table.

“Still, that’s not a very kind thing to do,” said my mother shaking her head in disapproval.

“People make soup of those things, you know,” added my father. “It’s not like they’re human.”

“But burning it to death. That’s just wrong,” I chimed in.

“It is wrong,” agreed my mother. “The poor thing. It deserved better.”

“You two are just like each other,” snapped my father, and I nodded in happy agreement as he lifted the paper from the coffee table and began reading it again.

After the grim episode of that day, I stopped hanging out with Dennis, and a year later my family moved to another part of town.

A decade passed before I saw him again. We bumped into each other in a bookstore. We were both attending college, and he was there looking for a title he needed in a course, and I was there scanning the mythology section, a subject that came to interest me greatly.

Despite my continuing dialogue with the turtle, which remained very secretive about itself, I began to study up on reptiles and the myths that different cultures ascribe to them.

The one I liked best claimed that turtles possessed the wisdom of the world. That was certainly true of the one that had befriended me and imbued my thoughts with its sage insights and perspectives on the meaning and purpose of existence.

At first my conversation with Dennis was a bit awkward, but then we both seemed to relax a little over a cup of coffee. He was majoring in business and already was engaged to someone he had dated throughout high school. He was impressed when I told him I was in pre-med with plans to attend veterinary school.

“You always were kind of a brain,” he replied, “and a little weird, too, but in a good way,” he added with a slight chuckle.

It took some gumption for me to ask if he remembered the burning turtle incident, but it was something I felt compelled to do. I had never reconciled how my best friend could go along with such a heinous act.

“What?” Say that again,” he replied in a perplexed tone.

“You know, when those older boys put a turtle in a barrel and burned it to death,” I pressed.

“Man, I don’t remember that at all,” he answered looking like he’d just caught a whiff of something rancid.

“Come on, ” I protested, “You couldn’t have forgotten that.”

“Well, if it happened, I sure don’t remember it. Kids do a lot of weird things. You can’t remember all of them. What’s the big deal anyway? It was just a turtle. Not like someone was killed.”

I could feel the blood rush into my cheeks and my body tense up. How could he forget such a horrible thing, I wondered? Was he just pretending not to recall what was one of the most disturbing and altering experiences of my life? It was then that I lost it.

“You creep! It was a helpless creature you helped kill, and it was so much more than that . . . more than you could ever know!”

With those words I stormed out of the bookstore’s cafe before giving in to the urge to clobber him. In the years since, thanks to the wisdom of the burning turtle, I have come to better understand people like Dennis and those who act with such utter disregard for life. From it I also learned forgiveness. It was the hardest lesson of all but the one that rewarded me most.

“Let go resentment for it sours the soul and blocks the path to true fulfillment. Do good to those who hate you. It will disarm them swifter than any other act. Remember, you alone are responsible for what you feel and who you become, so choose wisely,” it advised, and I did.

The turtle had enhanced every aspect of my life and I felt blessed that it had chosen to guide me through the challenges and travails that confronted me as I made my way through the years. My relations with all living things transcended the commonplace because of its devoted tutelage.

It was not long after my son entered the world that the voice of the turtle went silent, and I knew with complete certainty that it had migrated into my newborn. No parent could have been happier or wish for anything more for their child. At his christening the minister chose to read a verse from the Bible that meant more to me than he could ever imagine.

Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away
For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the
singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is
heard in our land.

Michael C. Keith (mckradio AT comcast.net) is the author of several books, including a critically acclaimed memoir published by Algonquin Books in 2003. He teaches Communication at Boston College.

My good friend Marianne once asked me, “What is your definition of a perfect day?”

She was flipping through one of those women’s magazines, reading the questions of some quiz out loud. Kicked back on the couch, her bare feet dangling from the edge, me cross-legged on the floor.

It was one of those long weekends. We were just hanging out on a lazy afternoon, goofing off.

I looked up from my drawing. “My perfect day, huh?”

I thought for a moment and, with a very serious face, told her, “Well, my perfect day would consist of a Star Trek marathon, an enormous bottle of wine and a gorgeous chick beside me who just happens to love comic books.”

She laughed, told me I was a dork and laughed again. She knew all about my nerdy past: X-men T-shirts, favorite movie “Excalibur,” middle school Dungeons & Dragons tournaments.

For Christ’s sake. She knew all about me. We were very good friends and I will never forget her laugh.

But all these years later I remember that moment and think to myself, what would my perfect day be?

If I could tell her now, it would go something like this.

My perfect day:

Wake up and watch the sunrise. Then drink a Mimosa and hang-glide to the moon.

Paint the world’s most beautiful picture, compose the world’s most enchanting love song and write the world’s saddest, yet uplifting poem.

Then fly back to Earth and wait for God to show up at my dinner party.

Later that evening, at the party, I get God really drunk. Not just buzzed. I get God falling down, pig-shit, wasted.

By 10 p.m. the party is going full force. All my friends are there and God is shit faced.

He has already knocked over several liquor bottles on the buffet table, while raving about omnipotence. He is in the kitchen, slouched against the stove yelling at anyone who will listen. Bowls of pretzels are overturned while He is shouting about angels and pins.

People try to shy away from this loudmouth who keeps ranting about wrath and redemption. Some move into the front rooms to avoid God, some try to squeeze past Him, looking for the back door, to join the party in the courtyard.

But no matter how many people try to steer clear of God, the kitchen is always full. He has positioned Himself right between the snack table and the booze table. So … if you want more hummus or another glass of wine, ya gotta talk to God.

This goes on for quite some time, God stumbling every time He tries to lift himself from his chair to make another grand point. Many of the things He says seem quite profound, but it’s hard to tell. His topics of conversation are all over the board and he keeps repeating himself. He contradicts Himself frequently, as well.

God has just spilt red wine down the front of some girl’s white blouse while shouting about free will. It was an accident but this chick’s boyfriend is sooo ready to kick God’s ass.

“God” I say, ”come on, you’re drunk. Let me give you a hand.”

I put His arm over my shoulder and walk Him down the hall to my room. I plunk Him down in the chair next to the computer and I sit on the edge of my bed.

“So what’s up, God?” I say. “You have some explaining to do.”

“ Oh … ” God slurs. “Sorry about knocking those bottles over, I’ll clean it up.”

“No, not that,” I say. “I mean everything. You know. I mean like what’s up with war and famine and death? All this pain and suffering. Why do bad things happen to good people? I mean, what’s it all for?”

“What exactly do you mean, Adam?” God says quietly, sitting in the swivel office chair. He suddenly seems very sober.

I continue with my questions. “What’s it about. ‘The Meaning of Life.’ All that. I need to know that it isn’t all just pointless.” I try another angle. “We’re supposed to be friends, right? You are the ‘Compassionate God,’ the ‘Loving God.’ I need you to tell me the truth.”

God gives me a funny look. “Truth is, Adam, I know what you say about me when you think I’m not listening.”

I gasp, “What?? No, I would never say anything bad about you, God. We’re pals. Buddies.”

“Look,” God says, “hanging out with you is cool and all, but you are always giving me a bad rap behind my back. At the gallery thing the other month you basically told everyone I was just some lame-ass wallflower, kind of there in the background but never making a real impact on anything. After that poetry reading, last week, you went on and on about how I was, at best, a shoulder to cry on. Hell, just last Tuesday you said I didn’t even exist. Come on!”

I plead: “I just need to know what happens when we die. I just need to know what’s really going on.”

God stands up. He seems as powerful and glorious as I always imagined him in Sunday School. “The One True God.” “The One With The Answers.”

I look at him with child eyes.

“Adam, Adam, Adam,” God says, as He put his hands gently on my shoulders. “You want to know what’s really going on? Here’s what’s going on.”

He seems to glow with a divine light.

“Adam,” God says, as His face becomes almost too beautiful to look at, surrounded by a nimbus of Heavenly fire.

“Adam,” God says, as He looks into my soul.

“Adam,” God says, ”I’ve got another party to go to. It’s just up the road. I’ll catch you later, man.”

With that God walks out of my room and proceeds to stumble down the stairs to the front door. He manages to knock over two bicycles that are parked in the hallway and accidentally kicks over a half-empty beer bottle that someone had left on the bottom step.

As drunk as God is, though, he doesn’t slam the door. He closes it with a careful, quiet click. From my bedroom window I watch God stagger away up the street.

This dinner party did not go as planned. They never do.

They never do, when you try to plan them. When you try to think about it too much.…

My good friend Marianne once asked me, “What is your definition of a perfect day?”

If you can hear me Marianne …

My perfect day:

Was just hanging out on a lazy afternoon, goofing off.