Jake

The dirt was rough and inconsistent under his bare feet. He was used to the comfort his work boots tended to provide, but every other step would be met with an unnaturally sharp pebble or upturned wood chip, eliciting pain but no blood or splinters. The air of the dream hung low over him, making his eyesight hazy and fractured, causing his vision to skip a step or two at a time and the sounds to distort lightly in his ears, like he was hearing them through a filter. He was dimly aware of the fact that he was naked, the cool air of the forest making his body hair stand on end, and the legs of the blackflies tickled his skin, where they bit but left no marks before flying away. She was ahead of him, just barely out of sight, as nude as himself and reaching one bronzed arm out, encouraging him to follow.

His foot snagged a root and he fell forward, instinctively sticking his hands out and feeling them push into the soft dirt. When he pulled them back, he saw the grains of rice wriggling in his hands, curling and uncurling. His dream-addled brain told him to eat, and he raised one hand to his mouth before stopping and blinking sluggishly, realizing they were maggots. He murmured something he couldn’t hear, the sound of his own voice spiraling into the wooden void all around him. The sound looped, circling over his head like a hawk before doubling back towards him, becoming unbearable and making his temples throb. He could barely make out one syllable—the letter e, stretched out into a drone—and then Aaron’s eyes flickered open and he felt his pillow leave his cheek as he pressed himself upwards, squinting in the morning light.

He groaned and turned on his back, careful not to accidentally nudge his wife. He considered writing down the dream, still half-stuck in his mind, to tell her later, but something inside him decided against it. They liked to tell each other when they had interesting dreams, but this didn’t feel worth it. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and lumbered to the bathroom.

He finished with the toilet and moved to wash his hands. As he lathered them with soap, he looked up at himself and checked his chin to see if he needed to shave. He blinked at himself as he ran his soaped hand over his stubbly cheeks, a thick-necked man with graying hair that was starting to run thin over his forehead. Aaron decided that there was nothing worth shaving and dropped his hands to the sink’s bowl.

As he reached for the handle with his left hand, it suddenly did two strange things: it twitched, and it grabbed for nothing. Aaron looked down at it, clenched around an invisible object roughly the size of a racquet handle. He tried to unstick his fingers, but they remained curled around the unseen cylinder. He took a deep breath and forced it to open, and it did, falling back to his side. Aaron blinked at his hand, now still, and turned the faucet on with it.

“So, what’d you dream about last night?” he asked Sam as they trudged through the forest in their orange vests, two specks in the sea of green and brown that surrounded them, their opposing skin tones providing contrast.

“Dunno.” Sam shrugged. “I don’t remember any of my dreams. Why’d you ask?”

Aaron shrugged. “I had a dream about…something last night. I can’t remember it. This one’s good.” He cut himself off as they reached a thick-trunked tree. He took a roll of measuring tape from the pocket of his belt and held it out for Sam to take the end of, which he did, wrapping it around the trunk and meeting Aaron at the point where he started.

“What’ve we got?”

“I’d say a good…” Sam blinked at the instrument. “Sixty-five inches.”

Aaron unclipped the can of spray paint from its holster on his belt and sprayed a red X on one side of the tree before walking around to the other and repeating the action. He rolled the tape up and slid it neatly back into his belt along with the can.

“You remember anything about it? Anything at all?” Sam asked as they resumed walking.

Aaron thought about this for a moment. He remembered a sense of familiarity and the smell of earth, but nothing else. “It was really green,” he murmured, unsure why that was what came to mind.

“Green? Like…the color?”

“No, Green, the band. Yeah, the color.” He smiled a little as they started to walk down a hill, eyes on their feet to avoid tripping over any roots. He had done that twice in his life, once sober, once buzzed, and he would rather not go for a third. “What’s the last dream you remember?”

Sam blew air out of his nostrils as he pondered this question. “I think it might’ve been…maybe eleven, twelve years ago. I must’ve been fifteen.”

“How have you not remembered a dream since then?”

He shrugged. “Dunno. It’s not like I’m writing them down.”

“You should. It’s supposed to be good for you, or something.”

“‘Or something.’ You want me to tell you about my dream, or not?”

Aaron looked up at the sky, blue but cloudy, then back down at the endless stretch of trees before them. “Yeah. Go ahead.”

“So I think I was…” Sam, like Aaron, gazed out ahead of him at the void surrounding them. “At my grandfather’s house, down south in Olympia. And it must’ve been night, because the sky was…brown, for some reason. Dark brown. And there were…dogs, dogs everywhere. Big ones. They didn’t have any kind of shape, they were just…big dogs, big black furry blobs that were running around and barking. I tried to open grandpa’s door because the lights were on, but it was locked. I didn’t knock. I don’t know why.”

Aaron, listening attentively, passed by a tree that had a trunk so wide that even he could squeeze inside it, and nudged Sam’s shoulder to call his attention to it. Sam plucked the tape off of Aaron’s belt and continued his story as he started to roll it out.

“And I turned around, and, uh…” he thought to himself as he circled the tree. “Did you ever watch Rocky and Bullwinkle when you were younger? You’re, what, sixty-five? Seventy-five.”

“Fuck off. I’m not that old.”

“No, I mean the tree’s seventy-five around.” They both grinned, and Aaron chucked the can at Sam, who caught it with one hand. “That’s the hardest you can throw? Maybe you are seventy-five.” He sprayed another X on the tree and passed the can back to Aaron.

“I haven’t seen the show. Why?”

“Well, my dad used to put it on for me. It’s about this, like, squirrel and moose, and the squirrel could fly for some reason.”

“Was it a flying squirrel?”

“Those are real?”

“Yeah, but they don’t have wings, they just glide.”

“Huh. Anyway, they would go on adventures, and there were these white Russian people—like, really white—and they would always be trying to kill them for some reason. Anyway, I turned around, and the moose—Bullwinkle—was…there. Just right there. Looking at me. And he didn’t have arms, he had big hammers. Like, hammers instead of arms. He yelled something at me and started swinging his hammers around, so I ran off and started going for this big drainage pipe that I knew was around there somewhere. And I could hear Bullwinkle behind me, trying to get me, and then I just…woke up before I could find the pipe to hide in.”

Aaron looked at him for a moment, then snorted with laughter. “You were being chased by a cartoon moose? And was this, like, a nightmare?”

Sam was grinning as he shook his head. “I don’t know, man. It was just weird. Just really weird.”

They walked in silence for a bit longer until Sam noticed a tree even bigger than the other two, and so they walked towards it to get its measurements.

“How many did you get today?” Bobby called out to them as they trudged towards the sawmill.

“I don’t know, boss. Like, eighty?” Sam shrugged as he started to remove the vest.

“Only eighty? You guys usually find a hundred.”

“Trees weren’t biting, I guess.” He grinned as he passed by Bobby, who gave him a clap on the back as he entered the mill, leaving him alone with Aaron.

“Seriously, what kept you from getting more?” Bobby raised an eyebrow at him, always the most commanding man in the room despite the three inches and hundred and twenty pounds Aaron had on him.

“I don’t know. Slow day.”

“Hmmm.” Bobby paused for a moment and then spat upon the ground. “Well, get more tomorrow, and maybe I’ll be fully sober when I come over for dinner.” The two men looked and grinned at each other before Aaron followed Sam inside, and came out a moment later sans vest and belt. He walked down the wooden steps of the mill and his boots hit the dirt, feeling the wood chips crunch beneath his feet as he started the half hour trek home. He inhaled the spring air and smiled, liking how he could smell the pine needles.

The scent of well-cooked meat—steak, possibly, his favorite—emanated from the cabin as he walked towards it, a stout, five room space that had stood sturdy for two and a half decades.

He pushed open the door to find Melissa curled up in the corner of the living room, turning the pages of The Color Purple. “How many times are you gonna read that?” Aaron asked, his boots clomping on the dustless floor as he leaned down and kissed her forehead, putting one hand on her shoulder.

“It’s that time of year again. What can I say? Dinner’s still cooling—literally just came out of the oven.” She looked up at him as he put his other hand on her shoulder, making her dark hair spill down the back of the seat.

“Did I mess up your reading time?”

“You did, but I’ll be able to forgive you someday.” She sighed exaggeratedly, then smiled and put her hand on his. “Go wash up. You smell like dirt.”

“Yeah, guess where I was all day?” He grinned down at her, and she gave him a smack on the arm as he turned on his heel and headed for the bathroom.

When he came out, the steak was waiting for him, as was Melissa, scooping a side of green beans and browned cauliflower onto their plates. He gave her a kiss on the lips for good measure and sat down, starting to cut into the meat. “What’d you do today?”

She shrugged as she cut her own pieces. “Same old. You?”

He mirrored her movement. “Same old.” He felt her socked foot press onto the top of his boot and he smiled around a mouthful of steak. “You know, I heard about a pretty weird dream today.”

She gave him a look as if to say “go on,” so he started to gesture with his hands as he spoke, making his utensils clink against the plate. “Did you ever watch, ummm…there was this show that was on a while ago about a squirrel and moose?”

“Rocky and Bullwinkle?”

“Yeah, that.” He recounted the story to Melissa, who, as always, was his perfect audience as he was hers, laughing audibly at the reveal of Bullwinkle.

“And he never got where he needed to go. Was there some sort of…meaning he got from it?” Melissa was still laughing.

“Nope. He didn’t tell me if he did.”

“Mmm.” She gently cracked her knuckles and grinned. “How do you think Freud would interpret that?”

“Are you reading about him again?”

She shrugged. “Can’t help it. He’s too funny. Did you know that, according to him, women know how to knit because cavewomen would braid their pubic hair to hide the fact that they didn’t have dicks?”

“No no, come on.” He was trying to restrain his laughter, rather wanting to avoid killing the moment by spraying steak chunks everywhere. “You’re messing with me.”

“I can show you the passage I read it from.”

They grinned at each other and fell into silence as he turned his attention to the vegetables. “Have they always been like that?”

Melissa looked up from her food. “Hmm?”

Aaron blinked at his plate. “The green beans. Have they always been…green like that?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Have…green beans always been…green?”

They looked at each other for a second before she grinned again. “Yeah, alright.”

He skewered one on his fork and looked at it, at the way it was still dripping with water that reflected the light of the setting sun. After a moment, he blinked rapidly and popped the green bean in his mouth.

“Wait!” he shouted, his voice echoing in the void again as he jogged after the woman, not caring about his nudity and how it may look to a passerby. Who else would be here? It was just him and the woman, out in the woods.

He felt a power he had not felt for at least two decades in his limbs as he followed her, a part of him aware of the fact that he was young again. His body hair was prominent but lesser, and when he looked down, his stomach was flat and taut with muscle. When he looked up, he saw her take one step, two, and then leap into the air, somehow stepping up on nothing and rising. He watched as she took step after step and ascended with each one, slowing as she went towards the sun, the light glimmering off of her caramel skin. She took one last jump and disappeared into the treetops, into the green.

“Green,” he murmured softly with something like reverence, and the word followed the mystery woman into the sky, so present and solid that he could practically see his voice leave his body. “Green,” the forest repeated back to him, and he suddenly realized that there were so many trees around him. “Green,” they whispered, as he turned one way and the trees behind him would suddenly appear closer when he turned back, making a circle of wood.

“Yes!” he suddenly shouted, feeling invigorated, feeling as young as he looked. “Yes, come to–” he started to say something, but all sound suddenly cut as though the world had become intertwined with the vacuum of space. He continued talking, his mouth not caught up with his brain as he continued to shout for the trees, for the wood.

Aaron woke with a start this time, his eyes practically prying themselves open and adjusting to the moonlight instantly. He slid the covers off as Melissa’s arm slid off of his chest, and he pushed his feet into his boots. It was a beautiful night out, and he wanted to see the stars. Melissa stirred lightly as his boots didn’t bother to hide his movement, but she did not wake as he made his way outside, walking around to the back of the house where he cut firewood on the weekends. He looked around at the leftover dust on the ground, the dust that he would wipe off his pants and shirt so as not to annoy Melissa by tracking it all over the cabin. Green.

He sank to his knees and scooped up a handful, holding it up to the moonlight, where he realized that it looked like rice—like the brown rice that Melissa would make on Tuesdays. Unaware that his eyes were wet, Aaron opened his mouth and poured the handful of sawdust inside, feeling the earthy taste of it invade his senses. He coughed sharply, his body trying to reject what he was putting into it, but he resisted and inhaled deeply, wanting to feel the dust everywhere. Once he was satisfied, he scooped up another handful and opened his mouth again.

“Morning.” Aaron waved to his coworkers as he passed them, noticing their orange vests as they returned the gesture. He frowned to himself and walked towards Bobby’s office, a tight cube devoid of anything of note except a desk and three chairs. Bobby himself had his legs draped over the top of the desk as Aaron walked in—most employees had to knock, but he was an exception.

“Aaron!” Bobby grinned widely at him, and right away Aaron knew he was drunk. “What’s going on?!”

Aaron stifled a sigh and forced himself to return the grin. “Not much, buddy. Came to say hi, make sure you were still coming over tonight.” Bobby shot him a thumbs up and another big smile. “Hey, that’s great. I saw that Davis and Cokely were on tagging today? I thought you wanted me and Sam to do it.”

Bobby flopped his hand around dismissively and made a psssh sound. “Nahhhh. Don’t worry about that. You and Tommy should go strip the logs today. Sam’ll…Sam can go tag with someone else.” He punctuated this statement with a small burp.

“Alright, boss. I’ll go take care of it.” Aaron turned on his heel when he heard the chair scream with effort, and he turned around to see Bobby stagger towards him. He stumbled as he reached out for Aaron, who caught the man’s lean but well-built frame and pulled him back up to his feet.

“You’re my…you’re my best friend, Aaron. I love you.” Bobby murmured, and Aaron forced another smile. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah, Bobby. I know. Just sit and cool off, alright?” He steered Bobby back towards his chair and sat him down, where he rested his head on the back of the chair and groaned. As Aaron left the room, he thought he heard Bobby murmur something, but he wasn’t sure what it was.

As he left the office, he saw Tommy’s pale, slight figure enter the mill. “Tommy!” he called, and the man’s head whipped towards him, his reflexes as quick as usual. “You’re with me today. Log stripping.” Tommy jogged towards him, already slightly out of breath as he reached Aaron.

“I was supposed to limb today.”

“Yeah, well, Bobby’s…Bobby today.”

Tommy frowned. “Is it bad?”

“Not as bad as December. Tame, honestly.” They headed outside towards the edger, both pulling work gloves from their pockets and sliding them on.

As they squatted and each grabbed one side of a bark covered plank, they nodded at each other in rhythm before counting to three and lifting. They dropped the plank on the edger and Aaron noticed that Tommy’s eyes were following something behind him. He turned to see Sam walking with a wiry man named Schweikart, wearing their orange vests and belts as they headed into the woods.

“You guys doing okay?” Aaron asked, looking at Sam’s retreating back before turning back around to face Tommy.

Tommy shrugged. “I guess. I think.” He stared at Sam for a moment. “Do you ever get the feeling like…you’re not doing enough?” He paused for a moment as Aaron switched the edger on, the loud whir of the blades and shearing sound of the wood eclipsing any sound they could have made. The wood came out the other side, now significantly smoother, cleaner.

“Sometimes. Why, you think you aren’t?” They picked up the edged plank and carried it to the trimming table, picking up the saws that waited for them.

“I don’t know.” Tommy murmured as he started to saw off the excess wood on one end while Aaron did the other. “Sam seems happy lately. Really happy, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m just…fucking it up somehow.”

He noticed that Tommy looked a little unfocused—he tended to do this, and he would rather his friend be fully there when using a saw. “Hey, let’s talk about something else. How’s your sister’s wedding coming?”

He saw Tommy blink himself back to reality and nod. “Going good. Glad we won’t have to go too far. Why she wants to get settled down in Salem, I have no idea.”

“Salem?” They finished sawing off the edges and set it down in the pile of wood to be dried before going back to get another unedged plank. “What’s there to do in Salem?”

Tommy laughed. “Seriously! And everyone’s trying to talk her out of it, but I guess she just…really loves him. She’ll go wherever he wants to go.”

“Salem.” Aaron repeated as they dropped another plank on the edger and turned it on, waiting for it to finish.

“Where’d you get married?” Tommy asked.

“In the church across from my high school.”

“No shit? You didn’t go anywhere?”

Aaron shrugged as they grabbed the saws again. “Nope. No interest. I don’t know if either of us have ever left the state, except when we flew out to Cleveland for Melissa’s brother’s wedding. How about you?”

“Never been out. I think that’s gonna change soon.” He suddenly looked significantly more cheerful—wistful, even.

“Yeah? Where?”

“Don’t know. We’ll figure it out.”

Aaron found himself smiling. “Hey, that’s all green.”

“What’d you say?”

Aaron blinked at Tommy. “‘That’s all good.’ What did you think I said?”

They looked at each other before he shrugged. “Maybe I just misheard you.”

As the day drew to a close and the planks had been taken for drying and planing, Aaron and Tommy watched as two orange vests emerged from the forest, their neon components exemplified by the setting sun. Sam broke away, and Aaron gave Tommy a clap on the shoulder as a form of goodbye before letting them be alone by heading back into the mill. “Bobby!” he called, hoping that he would be cleaned up.

And there Bobby was, his eyes a little red-rimmed but almost entirely there, waving at Aaron and smiling. “I’m gonna go wash up. Meet me out front.” he called, and Aaron nodded as he walked back outside.

His boot crunched on a sheared-off piece of bark on the ground and he looked at it, crouching down and picking it up, feeling its roughness between his fingers. He felt the wood brush against his skin, felt its age, its biological power. He wanted it.

So, as though he was enjoying some of the bacon strips Melissa would cook for them on weekends, he bit into the bark and chewed on it, feeling it grind against his teeth as he masticated it into half-solid pulp and swallowed. Before he could reach down and get another one, he heard Bobby’s boots clomp down the steps behind him and rose to his feet.

“Who’s the vagrant?” Melissa grinned at Aaron and Bobby as they stepped through the doorway.

“Believe it or not, your husband has some shreds of good inside of him and invited me over to dinner.” Bobby reached over and gave her a one-armed hug.

“News to me. Both of you wash up.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Aaron smiled as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and kissed her temple.

“Hey, guys–” Bobby murmured. “I’m a little…eh in the memory department today. Where’s your bathroom? Here?” He started walking towards the door in the back left of the living room, causing both Aaron and Melissa to say “not there” at the same time. Bobby turned around and blinked at them. “What, that’s where you keep the bodies?”

Melissa forced a grin, and Aaron felt his arm tighten slightly around her shoulders. “Go through our room,” she corrected.

Bobby made an affirmative noise with his tongue and went the other way. As he left, Aaron dropped his arm and ran the sink, avoiding looking at his wife, who, though he couldn’t see it, was doing the same.

“Remember that time my brother almost caught us?” Melissa laughed as she scooped the pork scrapings from their plates into the trash, the cabin now illuminated by an occasionally flickering lightbulb.

“Caught you…” Bobby gestured with his hands.

“Not that. Get your mind out of the gutter, Robert.” Melissa mimed chucking a plate at him, and he threw his hands up in exaggerated surrender. “Aaron’s better at telling this than I am.”

Aaron shrugged and grunted lightly, suddenly feeling very fatigued. “Nah. This one here had me doing heavy labor all day.”

“Too tired to talk, Ritter?” Bobby leaned back in his chair and raised an eyebrow.

“Not all of us can work on the place’s finances all day,” he shot back with a half grin.

“I’ll tell it then, if doing your job gets you down that much.” Melissa leaned over and mussed up Aaron’s remaining hair. “So we’re at my place and we’re, you know, doing teenager things, and we hear the front door open and my brother’s calling out to see if anyone’s home. And being the idiot I am, I instinctively call out that I am home, so he starts walking to my room to say hi. Now, Aaron wasn’t mister Small Town Wide Receiver Hero yet, he was just a fifteen year old with half-developed muscles and my brother doesn’t even know that I have a boyfriend yet, so he’d probably smash Aaron through the floor if he found him. So Aaron shoots off my bed, lays on the floor, and rolls under. Doesn’t crawl under it—literally rolls on his stomach, then back, then stomach. So my brother’s asking me how my day is and there’s Aaron, just hanging out under my bed and hoping he won’t notice.”

“You forgot one thing.” Aaron murmured, now grinning slightly.

“What’s that?”

“He told me at our wedding that he could tell someone else was there. You were reading Catcher in the Rye upside down when he came in and he just didn’t want to embarrass you.” Bobby started to laugh loudly as Melissa went red, and despite this feeling of sluggishness, Aaron laughed too.

“This is why we stuck to Aaron's house, because there weren’t any brothers or sisters to interrupt us.”

“We still had a good time at your house, right?” They smiled at each other from across the table. “Really green over there.”

Bobby, still laughing, seemed not to notice, nor did Aaron, but Melissa stopped smiling and gave him a puzzled look. She opened her mouth to say something, only to be interrupted. “God, it’s been, what, thirty years for you guys?”

“Thirty-five next fall.” Aaron affirmed, returning Melissa’s look with a perplexed look of his own, unsure why she was looking at him like that.

As Bobby thanked Melissa for dinner and told Aaron he would see him tomorrow, Aaron gave him a wave and headed inside. As he took his shirt off, ready to go to bed, he felt a hand on his back.

“Are you feeling okay?” He turned to see Melissa looking at him with vague concern.

“What do you mean?”

“You seemed tired earlier. And you said that thing about…green?”

He blinked. “Thing about green?”

“Yeah. You said that…my house was ‘really green’ or something.”

He blinked again, this time in succession, trying to process this information. “I don’t know what you mean.”

She reached up and put her fingertips to his forehead. “You should rest tomorrow. No firewood for you. Take the weekend off.”

“Melissa, seriously, I’m fine.” He put his hand on hers, creating an awkward visual of him trapping her hand between his and his forehead.

“Alright, but if I see anything else weird, you take Monday off.”

He blew air out of his nostrils and released her hand. “Fine. But only because I love you.”

“That’s better. Bed?” She offered her hand to him, and he took it.

The woman stopped, so suddenly that he almost crashed into her as he skidded to a stop himself. He watched as she carefully, almost methodically, sank to her knees. Acting on pure instinct and dream logic, he gently took her left arm in his hand, and sighed with relief when she didn’t run, either vertically or horizontally, relieving tension he didn’t know he was carrying.

He felt the sudden urge to see her face, a necessity that ran so deep that he could feel it permeating his skin. He walked around to her front—and as he made a half circle around the woman, her head turned smoothly around, now looking directly behind her, her hair spilling over her breasts and touching her navel. He blinked, deeply confused, at the image of the woman with her head on the wrong way, and walked around her again in an attempt to see her face.

Again, her head swiveled on an axis in her neck, her hair once more draped over her shoulder blades. He walked circles around her, trying to see her face as her head continued to turn. He broke into a jog, trying to outrun her turning head, jolting to a stop to try and trick it out, but it never slowed, never lost its pace. At her front again, he stared at the back of her head intensely, then reached out and grabbed it, twisting it to the right as hard as he could and making her head turn to face him.

His mind caught up with his hands a moment later, suddenly overcome with horror as he realized what he had done—but her neck made no noise that indicated breakage, and she stayed perfectly upright when he let go—and then he looked into her face.

She had none. The space where her face was supposed to be was empty, and instead, a terrifyingly brilliant green light blazed from it, brighter than anything he had ever seen. Instead of closing his eyes or looking away, he stared right at it, lifting his left arm and sinking it through her face and into the light, feeling it suddenly slide into her void. He reached his other arm through and leaned forward, his face merging with hers, with the green of her very being. He gave himself over to it and felt the light flood him, make him part of it. He opened his mouth and nothing came out.

As Aaron approached the mill, he noticed that all the lights were off. He looked at the sun and realized that it was still rising, the sky a gentle orange instead of the bright blue he usually walked to work under. Aaron blinked rapidly, confused as to why he had come in early—he usually wasn’t here for another two hours.

He turned on his heel, trying to figure out where he came from when he heard the rumble of a car motor, and a white Highlander stumbled out of the woods, shaking slightly in the little potholes formed by the dirt. It slowed to a stop but no one got out, so Aaron started walking towards it to see who would bother driving out here, realizing Sam was in the driver’s seat as he got closer. The window rolled down and Sam stuck his arm out, giving him a wave. “The hell’re you doing here so early?”

Aaron fought the sudden, intense impulse to affirm Sam that he was here so early because of “green” and instead took a moment before responding “felt like it. I could ask the same thing of you.”

“Just taking a last look.” Aaron raised an eyebrow and walked a little further to see that Tommy was in the passenger’s seat, leaning forward to give Aaron a wave himself. “Well, not a literal last look. We’re giving Bobby notice today.”

“You’re…you’re what?”

“We’re quitting, genius. We wanted to give it one last discussion before we decided.” Sam chuckled.

“Quitting.” Aaron murmured, blinking rapidly. “Quitting?”

“You gonna be okay without us?” Sam’s grin widened. “I don’t think he’s going to be okay without us.” He directed the last part at Tommy, who put his hand over Sam’s.

“Yeah, I guess.” Aaron said quietly, looking between the two of them with vacancy. “Why are you leaving?”

“We wanna go somewhere else,” Tommy spoke up. “We both grew up here—now we want to see more. California first. Hey, maybe we’ll go to Cleveland, right? We’ll have time.”

Aaron smiled dimly, knowing that a part of him recognized what Tommy was referencing. “Guess you do.” He inhaled deeply, breathing in the scent of cut wood. “I’m gonna let you guys do your thing, alright?”

“Get well soon.” Sam smiled earnestly at him despite his jocular tone, and Aaron did his best to return the smile as he walked back into the woods, glancing behind him to see Sam rest his head on Tommy’s shoulder and gesture with his hands, clearly talking about something.

As the car faded from view, his hand twitched and he felt the skin on it crawl—not uncommon, sometimes he got light shivers—and he looked down to see it was actually crawling. Something was moving inside him. Little button-sized bumps were making their way up from his fingers to his arms, and his breathing hitched lightly as more and more started to stream up from his nails. He could feel the legs of woodlice. He had always liked them, seeing the little black shapes scurry out from under a piece of bark when he picked one up, and he remembered what their legs felt like when he let them run across the palm of his hand once.

Aaron didn’t scream—merely let the lice run up and down his arms, making his way to his shoulders and going lower, down to the skin of his chest. He sat down beneath a pine tree and started to unbutton his shirt, wanting to see his moving skin. Peering down at his chest, he indeed saw it, small inconsistencies across his body that he could feel going down to his groin. Aaron closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, the sun was setting and he could make out a burly figure topped with a thick patch of blonde hair—Cokely—leaving the mill. “Fuuuuck.” Aaron groaned, pressing his palms into his eyes. Did he miss work? He remembered going to bed with Melissa—so how did he get here, and why was it already so late? He staggered to his feet, his disorientation fading but still present, and began to limp towards the mill as Cokely walked towards him.

“Christ. Where’ve you been?” Cokely asked as he passed by, and Aaron blinked at him.

“What happened today?”

“You missed work for the first time in…I don’t know. Longer than I’ve been here, at least. Bobby called your wife.”

“Shit.” Aaron rubbed his face again. “Where’s Bobby? I gotta apologize.”

“For what?” Cokely shrugged. “You put too much into this job anyway. Everyone thinks so. And Bobby’s really Bobby right now, so maybe it’s best that you don’t.”

“I’ve got it. I’ll talk to him anyway.”

“You sure?” He raised an eyebrow. “It’s bad in there. December bad.”

Aaron huffed, curling and uncurling his fingers. “Yeah, I’ve got it. Night, Cokely.”

“Night, Ritter.” Cokely walked west, following the receding sun, and Aaron watched him go before turning back and entering the mill.

He could hear Bobby’s murmuring as he approached his office, the only currently lit place in the building, and decided it would be best to knock on the closed door.

“Whozat?” Bobby slurred from the other side of the door.

“It’s Aaron. Can I come in?”

He heard the inconsistent pattern of drunken footsteps, and then the door opened and there was Bobby, his brown-gray hair more frayed and unkempt than normal. He thought he saw a look of disgust on Bobby’s face for a second before the man turned around and clumsily waved his hand, silently inviting him in. His desk had three whiskey bottles, one empty, one full, and one in between, lining it.

“Siddown.” Bobby grunted as he took up his own request, practically collapsing into his chair and looking at the ceiling.

“What’s wrong, boss? What happened?”

“Iwanngohome.”

“What?”

“I wann’ sell this place. Get ridda it.”

“What?” Aaron leaned forward. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Done’ wanna do this anymore. Please, no more.” Bobby hiccuped and reached for the half empty bottle, and Aaron put a gentle hand on his wrist. Bobby stared at him blankly, and his eyes started to well in that blankness, as if to replace all the emotion he could and couldn’t feel. As Aaron looked into his friend’s eyes, a blackfly landed on the other man’s forehead soundlessly, making no hum or buzz, just skittering around before stopping abruptly. Bobby sat back in his chair, and several more blackflies landed on his face, sweaty undershirt, and arms. He seemed to take no notice.

“Didyou know I was married?” He looked at Aaron directly when he said this, something he rarely did when intoxicated.

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“We were together fer…twenty…twenty something. We had kids.” The flies were increasing in number, covering Bobby’s shirt completely, as though he was wearing living chainmail. “Good kids. Three girls.” Aaron said nothing, hearing Bobby but keeping his eyes on the bugs crawling up and down his body.

“I have a son now.” Tears started to spill out of his eyes. “My youngest…he’s my son now. I was looking at my wife’s Facebook page and he’s getting married to a beautiful woman. I always wanted a son.”

The flies were all over his arms now, making their way up his neck. “I’ve got my son now and he doesn’t ever want to see me again and my girls don’t and Gia doesn’t.” He was just a big black blob now, completely covered with the silent flies. One broke away from the mass and landed on Aaron’s cheek.

“I never hit ‘em. Never. I just…I wasn’t a good father. I don’t think I was a good father.” He put his hands over his face, unknowingly wiping dozens of flies away, which all made for Aaron’s face and started to crawl for his mouth, the first fly slipping past his lips and crawling down his throat.

“I was only good when I was using this shit.” His voice became vehemently poisonous, his now uncovered eyes glaring with mistrust and fear at the bottles. “I can’t–” he hiccuped again as the flies swarmed off of him in a large black cloud, all hovering before Aaron, waiting their turn to enter. “I can’t fucking beat it, Aaron. I’m scared.”

Aaron wanted to say something reassuring, but there were too many flies blocking his throat, not cutting off his air, but preventing him from saying what he wanted to say. “God, I’m scared.”

The two sat in silence as the flies practically marched down Aaron’s throat, while Bobby stared off into space, dead-eyed.

The stars shone overhead as Aaron walked towards the cabin, the lights all on. His instincts told him that Melissa should be asleep by now—perhaps she just wanted him to come home to something welcoming. He pushed open the door and found her waiting for him, turning her head up towards his face as he entered.

“Hey.” He managed to smile fully at her.

“Hey.” There was a long pause before she spoke again. “Bobby called and said you didn’t come to work today.”

“Yeah, I just…lost track of time.” He rubbed his neck.

“You know that I would never rag you for skipping a day.” She kept her eyes fixed on his. “I’ve been telling you to take a day off for years, and you’re obviously not required to spend it with me if you do. But…” Melissa folded her hands, unfolded them. “You’ve been acting strange lately. And I saw something this morning. I woke up early and you weren’t in bed, and I…looked outside. And I saw you eating bark.”

“I…I was?” Aaron stared at her, genuinely confounded as to what she was talking about. “I don’t remember that.”

“I saw it, Aaron. And when I went outside to say something to you, you were…gone. You were acting so strange last night at dinner, and I woke up a couple nights ago to find you twitching and muttering ‘green’ in your sleep.” She stood and walked to him, taking his hand in hers. “Is this because of…” she looked to the right, away from him, not wanting to meet his eyes. “The anniversary of the first one?”

Aaron’s hand tightened and he felt her trying to pull away for a moment, and so he loosened his grip as she spoke again. “I know. I know how long it’s been. I want you to sit down with me.” She led him to the table and sat, and he sat with her. “Can I tell you something?” He looked at her and slowly shifted his eyes over to the fifth room in the house, the one that Bobby tried to enter, before looking back at Melissa and nodding.

She swallowed audibly. “I know that we…got distant. After we lost the second one.” His eyes left hers and turned down to their hands, sitting next to each other on the table but not touching. “And I wish we didn’t. I…didn’t eat for three days, once. I couldn’t. And I never told you about it—I don’t know why.”

Her hand left the table and she put them in her lap, both of them looking away from each other. “I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to feel like…that we can’t be honest with each other about things like this. So I want to ask you again—what’s been going on, and why?”

Aaron looked back up at her and Melissa put her hand on the table, and, after a moment of hesitation, he took it in his. They looked at each other for what felt like a long time before he broke eye contact. “There’s nothing going on. I’m sorry.” Her grip loosened. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, looking up to meet her eyes again and finding that she was already looking away.

Aaron’s eyes opened.

He was in bed and Melissa was sleeping next to him, facing away instead of towards him. He had a temptation to look over and see her face, reaching for her shoulder, but he withdrew his hand after a moment of contemplation and instead put his feet on the floor, forgoing his boots. He removed his undershirt and then his boxers, leaving him completely naked as he walked through the kitchen and down the steps of the cabin, his foot landing painfully on a wood chip that dug into his sole.

The dirt was rough and inconsistent under Aaron’s bare feet. He carried with him a spray can taken from the mill, and his eyes scanned the woods for what he was actually looking for. He dimly remembered that he ran through here once, looking for someone, but now he couldn’t remember why, or who it was. Blackflies nipped his exposed flesh and it hurt, but he paid them no mind.

He was looking to his left and right so frequently that he almost walked right into the perfect tree, a massive oak, almost a hundred around. He walked a circle around it and smiled his first earnest smile in two days when he realized that there was a large hole at the bottom, one he could fit inside. He shook the spray can hard and sprayed a red X above the hole, walked around to the other side, sprayed another X, then came full circle at the hole again. Aaron threw the spray can as hard as he could, watching it fly away and crash into the dirt.

He dropped to his knees, hunched his shoulders, and crawled into the tree.

He was in a tunnel. Light shone from both ends, both of them beckoning him to come towards them, but he kept crawling forward, knowing that there was an end he had yet to reach. The tunnel, made of wood of every texture and color, scraped his skin, left splinters along his legs, his shoulders, his naked body. He ignored them. The light got brighter, so bright that he couldn’t tell what color it was—green? Brown?

And then he was out, and the sky was blue and cloudless, and it was very beautiful out. He stood up fully, realizing that he was slim and youthful again as he felt up his toned stomach and powerful arms. He heard laughter coming from somewhere in the woods and followed it, attracted to the jovial sound, eager to hear more and maybe even see the source. He blinked dimly when the cabin came into view. But it was larger, wasn’t it? Since when did it have a second floor? The woman was on the front porch, her back to him as she cooked from a grill, smoke that smelled like steak rising into the air. “Hello?” he called in his younger voice, and she turned around.

“Aaron.” She smiled, seeming relieved to see him. “Where’d you go?”

“I…” he stared at her blankly, and she started to walk towards him. As she did, her face grew slightly more hardened, her hair rapidly shortened as it did when she cut it the week after they got married, then grew out again. Her skin solidified, suddenly becoming sleek, shiny, like polished teak wood. Her skin was polished teak wood.

“We missed you.” Melissa smiled, taking his hand in hers, and he looked down to see that his hand was hickory, and that his stomach was once again the size he had become accustomed to in his forties and fifties. “Your brother’s going to be over any minute, silly. Go get ready. Your son’s too busy roughhousing to bother setting the table.”

As she said this, two young men, wrestling and laughing loudly, crashed around the front of the house. The shorter, slimmer one was made of ash, the taller one was mahogany. “HEY! Will you two quit that and come help?” Melissa raised her voice, and they broke apart instantly, out of breath but grinning at each other.

“Yes, Mrs. R.,” the darker man responded, and the lighter one kicked him, making him snicker as they headed inside.

Aaron watched them go, feeling his vacancy start to fade, realizing where he was, what was happening. “Hey.” Melissa put her hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

He looked down at her, feeling the sudden compulsion to tell her that he was more than okay, but he instead leaned down and kissed her passionately. She made a noise of surprise and wrapped her arms around his back as he lifted her a couple of inches off the ground. He pulled away and looked into her wooden eyes, wanting to tell her that he was green, but he realized that that would sound stupid, so he kissed her again.

Kyle was not a stranger to vomiting. He had spent many an evening in Rochester bouncing around house parties with his friends, drinking himself stupid and ending the night with the contents of his stomach in the bushes, or in one case, on the tank top of the girl who sat two seats behind him in Sociology. His continuous consumption of ramen and Red Bull did not help his puking problem when he moved into his apartment, and he could be found kneeling over the toilet at least three times a week. He had stared into re-liquified eggs, decaying, microwave-heated vegetables, and the dark water that came from a day of combining energy drinks with alcohol, like the mixture that was coursing through him now.

Looking into the brown-green regurgitation that laid in the stagnant waters of his toilet, his eyes refocused and he noticed the tooth.

Without a second thought, Kyle pushed the tips of his fingers into the human algae and extracted the jagged, yellowish monument, narrowing his eyes as he held it up, still processing what he had just grabbed as a stream of vomit ran down his fingers and pooled between his second and third knuckle. Thinking carefully, as though his train of thought could disappear down the toilet as easily as his puke would if he bothered to flush it, Kyle ran his thumb down the uneven grooves of the tooth before setting it down on the ground. He put his fingers in his mouth, creeping over his equally disfigured rows of teeth until his second finger slipped into a crevice and made him wince as he touched sore, exposed gum.

Still only half getting it, he picked the tooth back up from the brown floor spot and pressed it into his mouth. It fit, but at an awkward angle that made him wince again. After prodding it into his flesh a few more times, Kyle flipped it and tried again, finding it fitting without (much) discomfort.

He took his tooth back out and again stared at it, this time with dim understanding and significant confusion. He gripped it tightly, feeling the tallest part of the tooth, an enamel stalactite, dig into his middle finger. After a moment more of concentration, he closed his fist around it and exited the bathroom.

Kyle bit his lip to prevent groaning from the joint pain as he crouched down. He was fishing around in his “kitchen,” which consisted of a microwave that sat on the floor, three plates that sat on the floor, a glass that sat on the floor, and a sink that had a habit of sputtering loudly for several seconds before belching out metallic water. He picked up the glass and dropped his tooth in with an echoing clink.

“Come on, you little bastard,” Kyle murmured to no one, his eyes narrowing so intensely that they could be what popped out next. He was hunched over his bulky, outdated laptop, the machine’s fan going full blast and dispersing the smell of sodium and citric acid throughout the two-room apartment. The heat from his computer always made him sweat, so he sat shirtless in an old pair of athletic shorts, forgoing underwear in favor of the shorts’ liner.

He mumbled Kanye lyrics under his breath as he stared intensely at his poker hand on the screen—three sixes, the absentee being the hearts, plus a king of diamonds and spades. “Got you now.” He grinned, his tongue pressing into the gap in his teeth. One player had bought in with fifty dollars, and had gone all in. “Money in the fucking bank!” Kyle shouted, his voice scratchy as it always was when he raised it. “In the fucking bank!” he repeated, pounding his flimsy plastic desk with each word.

A player had folded, and the last one bet a safe ten. “Sixty big ones,” Kyle laughed to himself, flexing his fingers and feeling them crack, before betting all forty of his entered dollars and smirking. “Got you now.”

Ten Dollars flipped over two fives, a six, an eight, and a two. Kyle laughed. Fifty Dollars flipped over four aces and a joker. Kyle blinked.

No. No, no no no no. “Had a full house,” he rasped, bug-eyed, slack-jawed, a trickle of saliva dropping from his lips and splashing on his knee as he watched Fifty Dollars become One Hundred. “Had a full fucking house!” he howled, hurling his open container of ramen across the room, where it splattered against his wall and the juices left yet another stain. “FUCK!” Kyle screamed, kicking the leg of his desk and making it wobble precariously. He slammed his laptop shut and stormed in circles, flickering his tongue against the empty pocket in his mouth, interspersing murmurs of “full fucking house” with “ball so hard motherfuckers wanna find me.”

He stayed like that for several minutes, gesticulating his rage and animal confoundment with his clicking fingers and aching hands until he slowed down, stomping his feet in an uneven pattern while the timing of his breaths became farther between. After a long enough time had passed, he reopened his laptop. As he tapped the power button and sat back in his chair, he watched himself reflected in the darkness of the screen, a scraggly, pale, wide-eyed man with hair that ran loosely across his shoulders. He blinked owlishly as the light from his display blinded him for a moment, before fading to the lush green of the computerized poker table, a message explaining that he had been kicked from the game for his absence.

He growled when he remembered the loss of his precious forty, jamming his palms against his shut eyelids and massaging them, trying to clear the shame of his failure and get back in the game. Kyle unclenched his hands and set them on his mouse and keyboard, flexing his fingers one more time and hearing them pop again, before opening the waiting room to enter a new game and quickly being added to one.

The rest of the game went alright. He had won back thirty of his forty dollars after an hour more of games, his loss easier to stomach now, and while Kyle didn’t feel he deserved a reward for his efforts, he also didn’t feel that he deserved to go hungry.

He grabbed a cup of ramen from the large pack he left on the counter and took a bottle of water from a corner of the floor. His sink was more a portal to the sewer lines than something that gave him water he would consider drinkable, so he would buy a pack of water bottles monthly and use them for his ramen. Kyle had managed to develop a perfect system in which he could perfectly wet five cups with just one water bottle, and he was a little proud of himself for that.

He popped the top of his ramen and poured the perfect amount of water inside before screwing the cap back on. Grabbing a large roll of paper towels, (also from the same corner as the water bottles) he tore one off and draped it over top of the ramen before sticking it in the microwave and sitting down, feeling his knees click and making him wince.

He watched as the dirty machine spun his food around and hummed erratically, bathing the now dark apartment with faded, yellowing light. It beeped obnoxiously and he quickly shut it off, opening it up and feeling it steam in his hands. After waiting a few minutes for it to cool, he gingerly scooped up the noodles and shoveled them into his mouth while tilting the cup so he could catch the liquid and mix the two ingredients in his mouth. He had become a master in eating ramen as well as making it and could eat a full cup in a little over a minute if he was trying, and he was. He burped and dropped the cup into the garbage bag he took out to the dumpster in the back of his building every two months.

Two hours later, he felt something furry under his foot while he walked to his chair to sit down in it. His first thought was I don’t have a rug, right? until he looked down and saw his feet were rubbing up against loose strands of brown hair.

He blinked his eyes rapidly. He did not get haircuts anymore, opting to shave his head bald twice a year, so what was this? Kyle crouched down and ran his fingers through the strands, perplexed. Unable to come to a conclusion, he left the hair on the floor and sat down in his chair.

Kyle spent the next day on more games, winning back his full forty as well as fifty more to cover a quarter month’s rent, the extra going to more ramen and energy drinks. As he watched the spoils of his victory roll into his PayPal, he sagged back into his office chair and it screamed rustily as he put his full weight (which, luckily for the chair, didn’t amount to much) into it. He had found it while out grocery shopping and had dragged it home by the back, which had been sliced open at the bottom and had all its stuffing removed.

“Job well done, old man.” Kyle murmured to himself, eyes turning up to the browned ceiling as he laughed throatily. “Job well fucking done.”

His hands moved downward to remove his pants. He was ready to, as he affectionately referred to it, “reward” himself. Kyle’s eyes narrowed as he clicked around on his most beloved websites and found a new video by a woman he rather admired—black-haired, of course, his favorite—and turned the volume on his computer up. He had long since abandoned the idea of shame in what he pleasured himself to. The couples on either side of him often had loud sex, the straight one to his left almost always fornicating following an intense fight. On the whole, he liked the gay one to his right much more, because they were quiet outside the bedroom. He figured neither of them would mind if they heard his choice of entertainment through their walls.

The black-haired woman (he had forgotten her name again) began speaking, her voice filling his ears and causing his eyes to shut for a solid five seconds before opening. He had already begun, and he stared at her nude form on the screen as, in contrast to when she first spoke, his eyes had widened so intensely that they were almost all white and no dim brown. “Y-yeah,” he grunted, responding to the verbal challenge she issued. “I like that.”

He was finished two minutes later, his hearing fuzzy from the aftershock as he closed his laptop. Kyle uncurled his toes and firmly planted both feet on the ground to steady himself, and that was when he felt the pain in his right foot.

He shouted at the surprise—he was okay with pain when he could see it coming, but this was not the case—and held his foot up, hopping backwards and away from the source of his unexpected agony. “Shit!” he murmured, falling on his bare ass as he grabbed his stinging sole. “Shit, shit, shit.”

His fingers groped around on his dusty hardwood floor, and he saw the fingernail just as he saw the second fingernail on his right hand was missing.

The flesh under his nail was red and angry, having not been fully exposed to the open air in twenty-four years since he was born, the fact that it was the stale, recycled air of Kyle’s apartment not helping as the shock of his self-pleasure washed away and the dull throb of his naked finger hit him. Kyle murmured something that he himself could not comprehend, and his vision went unfocused as he continued to stare. There was no blood pouring from his newly opened wound as it did when he stuck his little finger in a manual pencil sharpener in first grade with a morbid curiosity, just flesh that pulsed almost accusatorily as he held it up to the light of his window.

There was no period of dim recognition this time, just the feeling of the keratin shell clasped between the finger that once held it and his thumb. Kyle blew air out of his nostrils and limped over to the kitchen, where he dropped the nail into the cup with his tooth before going over to the desk to put his pants back on.

The two missing fingernails (he had started thinking of the woman again at two in the morning) of Kyle’s right hand throbbed lowly as he pushed the door of his apartment complex open with one hand. The building was located in one of the city’s worst neighborhoods, so Kyle did not bother to explore the area. He was not the young man with delusions of grandeur that he once was, no longer dreaming of being James Caan stalking the streets and blasting anyone that got in his way. (Preferably having Tuesday Weld with darker hair on his arm.) He was not ready to die yet, as he had more games to win and more food to buy, more videos to watch.

The corner store that he bought his food and drink from shone in the 4 AM darkness. He stumbled drunkenly towards it, grinning widely and feeling the chill of the November air touch his tongue through the fresh gap in his teeth. He used his shoulder to push the door open this time instead of his sore hand. Kyle liked this store in particular because they would play the uncensored versions of what he liked to call “real” music over the low quality speakers, (only three of the five in the store worked anyway) “Pepper” currently being filtered scratchily through them. Kyle did not look at the usual night clerk, a short, bespectacled man that looked as though he had been on the job for half his eighty years of life, instead limping straight for the ramen while mumbling the song’s lyrics.

“I don’t mind the sun sometimes, the images it shows…” he hummed to himself as he crouched down, again wincing from his aching legs to grab three twelve-packs. “I can taste you on my lips, and smell you in my clothes…”

“...never know just how you look through other people’s eyes.” Kyle finished twenty seconds later, dropping several cans of Monster into the flimsy, fraying plastic bag he had been using to carry his drinks since he moved in. He paid the clerk without a word between them and lurched outside, where he dropped to his knees and threw up in the street.

Kyle did not like being outside and around other people, and the alcohol he had drunk to cope with the loss of his second fingernail accentuated this dislike. He had not eaten in almost sixteen hours and his vomit was mostly liquid, and it was because of the state of his vomit that he heard the clacking of another tooth hitting the pavement. He did a quick search of his mouth using his tongue—this one was up top, way in the back—and stared at his reflection in the watery contents of his body. His hair hung before his eyes and shrouded the liquid version of his face in shadow. “What color are my eyes again?” Kyle muttered to himself, too intoxicated and disoriented to remember. Instead of contemplating this idea, Kyle pulled the tooth from the puddle and pocketed it in his sweatpants, the dripping brown water wetting the pocket as he walked home.

He was listening to what he called his “thinking music” (Death Grips and Slipknot) while he ate his ramen through his two teeth. He had one in the back left corner of his mouth and his right front tooth, but it wasn’t like he needed to chew the noodles that much anyway. If he found a big one, he would take it between his raw, open fingers and pull it apart, strand by strand.

Despite his choice of songs, Kyle didn’t have much to think about. It had been at least two weeks—maybe a month—since his first tooth fell out. Now they were all in the glass, yellowing, decaying, and so were his nails, stacked neatly like human Pringles but still cracking, slowly but surely. His hair littered the floor. Every other day, he would ask himself if he had a cat, then realize he did not and quickly forgot about it.

Kyle’s phone buzzed on the floor, vibrating the wood and making the hair clumps nearest to it jump and shiver in time. He had ignored the message that auto-sent at six in the morning, excitedly informing him of his twenty-fifth birthday and telling him that he should celebrate.

His phone now read “Kailee”, displayed in big block text. He let it go to voicemail and watched his screen light up when the message was left. Kyle gripped the phone between his throbbing hands and stood, his feet pulsing in tandem, missing six of their toenails. He hesitated briefly before tapping on it.

“Hey, Kyle. Just wanted to wish you a happy birthday.” A female voice was speaking. She sighed. “I hope you talk to me soon.”

“I always knew it would end this way.” Duke mused, his back pressed against the wall, three bullets in his chest as he reached his hand out in a futile attempt to stop this. He looked like a wounded imitation of Adam and Michael was his God, His divine finger the gun ready to throw His creation out of the Garden.

“Nah, Duke.” Michael sneered. “That’s your problem. You didn’t know enough.”

TO BE CONTINUED, Ben Sampson typed in big block letters, depressing his caps lock and centering the text, bolding it for that finishing touch that he had found himself craving to experience over the past two months. He collapsed back in his chair, feeling the plastic frame bend under his full weight. He insisted on using the most uncomfortable chair he could stand. “It keeps me from getting distracted,” he would tell his overly concerned mother when she first saw it.

He had done it. He had done it! He had finished The Road to Chicagoan Hell: A Duke Dickinson Story, the first of what he hoped would be many books following its titular character, a stone wall of a private eye who did not treat hardasses with kindness. Ben had spent years developing the idea, from when he was living in his prison cell of a Chicago apartment, nearly going blind from sodium overload fueled by his endless stream of cup noodles, to now, eating semi-healthy in his single-floor suburban. It was his dream. It was why he became a writer in the first place, the idea of Duke standing tall with a sawed-off slung over his shoulder, rain lightly beating down the tip of his fedora coming to him when he was fourteen during Mr. King’s history class, his adolescent brain jacked up on visions of Heat and Goodfellas.

And yet–

He stood from his chair (a move his ass and back silently thanked him for) and wandered to the corner of his room, kneeling down to thumb through the books on the bottom of the small bookshelf that was dutifully stationed there, as if they kept guard over him while he slept. He pulled out the book farthest to the left, a slim volume that was wider than it was tall and had a cover (designed by his ex) that displayed an impossibly large rooster pecking at the grass beneath its feet. Despite the size, its beak had its sharp edges softened to make a smooth yellow triangle, its eyes were white with wide brown pupils, and its feathers were more like fur, as if it were a household pet. “ROCKY THE ROOSTER” was emboldened in big brown letters under the illustration, and further below were the words “A story by BENNY BARNES”.

Ben sighed with an emotion he couldn’t place, turning the book over to read the cheery summary he, like his Rocky pseudonym, had written with the help of his publisher. He shelved it and then pulled out the follow-up, Rocky the Rooster and the Big Race, with a cover that showed Rocky driving a car. He had written a birthday-themed one, a Christmas one, a Thanksgiving one, a St. Patrick’s Day one for good measure. Ben chuckled lowly at the absurdity of some of the books that had been made and some that hadn’t—he had gotten into a shouting match with his publisher about writing one that sent Rocky to the Moon, and had managed to work it down to merely learning about the solar system–and he sighed again, a mix of catharsis and quiet regret as he held the final chapter in his hands.

Rocky the Rooster Says Goodbye had been published two weeks prior, and he still didn’t know how he felt about it. His mind drifted back to two months ago, where he would write and rewrite the very simple story for hours at a time before taking a break to go work on Chicagoan Hell, which he found came much easier. But he finished, and once he got it back with illustrations included, he had properly vetted it, finding himself much less picky about which drawings stayed and which had to be redone. Ben flipped it over, then back on its front as he stared at the cover, which depicted Rocky walking across a flat plain with the sun hanging low, followed by fellow Rocky characters Sam Squirrel, Fiona Fish and Rick Raccoon.

He hummed to himself and walked a circle around his room, the final book now in one hand, his other running a thumb over the plastic blade-guard of the paper cutter that Mo Willems had sent to him after the third Rocky book had been published. “Us bird-men have gotta stick together” the note attached had read.

“So, are you really going away forever?” Sarah asked, as Rocky kneeled down and let them jump off his back.

“Maybe I won’t be, but I don’t know.” Rocky said sadly, knowing that he wasn’t telling the truth. “But if I never see you again…” he looked at Sarah, then David. “...you two were the best friends I ever had. Goodbye.”

And with that, Rocky turned around and walked across the field, the kids waving goodbye to him as he left. And just before he went out of sight, he turned around, tilted his head to the sky, and let out one last–

Ben almost choked on his own rather undignified rooster sound, a staple of the Rocky books, and he narrowly avoided the gag that so often hit him when he practiced the noise alone. And with that, he folded the book’s cover closed and flipped it so it sat right side up on his lap.

“Does anyone have any questions for Mr. Barnes?” The teacher asked her first graders, twenty or so of them all sitting on the school library’s floor.

Most of them raised their hands, and the teacher gave Ben a “go on” look.

Ben looked at the sea of raised hands and asked “does anyone have a question not about why this is the last Rocky book?”

All but one of the children put their hands down. “Well, Rocky’s done a lot of things, right?” The kids murmured agreement with this. “How much more can he do? I mean, he’s won the Big Race, watched a rocket launch at NASA, he’s…” Ben trailed off, drawing a complete blank on the subject of Rocky’s various exploits.

“Saved Christmas?” One exceptionally short and skinny kid piped up.

“Yes.” Ben gave the kid a thumbs up, and continued. “He could do more, but he would have to run out of things eventually, right?” He got another murmur of agreement, but this time more hesitant, and he felt a pang of guilt for letting not just his creation, but their fictional friend, die like this. “So maybe it’s time for Rocky to do his own thing. Yes?” He directed the last part at a kid in a polo shirt with his hand still straight up in the air, having not bothered to put it down while Ben was talking.

“What’s Rocky doing now?”

Ben considered this. “I think whatever he’s doing, he’s happy. I’m sure it’s something he’s always wanted, and now he has time.”

“No, of course this is a good idea.” Ben affirmed, his neck wedging his phone tight in his shoulder blade. “It's what I want. I’ve already done what I need.”

His publisher was arguing with him, insisting that he could get Ben to change his mind if he just listened, if he stopped being so stubborn. Ben stopped himself from shouting by tapping his foot. He liked his publisher—well, kind of—but the man had the potential to get on his nerves easily, and his ability to tap into that potential was excellent.

“Can I—hey, I’m—listen!” He shouted, feeling his cheeks glow with effort and anger. “I’m trying to explain myself, god dammit! Haven’t I done enough? Haven’t we done enough? I’ve ea–” the car jolted. “Shit. I think I just hit something, call back.” He hung up as his publisher said something about “if it’s a kid, I’m not associated with you!”

He pulled over onto the shoulder and turned the car off, sighing with relief when he saw his accidental victim was small and fur-covered. He crept towards it, as though the twitching huddle would leap up and attack at a moment’s notice for his sin. As Ben got closer to the animal, he recognized it as a squirrel, a small one that was making little choking noises as blood streamed from its side.

Ben felt his throat tighten with sympathy. “Ah, jeez,” he murmured to the dying animal. “Sorry, little guy.”

The squirrel blinked back at him, its dark eyes glittering with an emotion he couldn’t place, as if it was asking him why before it stopped breathing. “Sorry.” He repeated sheepishly, before searching the side of the road for a stick to move it out of the way with.

Bang.

The front door jolted, its hinges screaming with counter effort. Ben’s eyes dimly flickered open and he groaned, pushing his head into the couch’s pillow as if this was just the couple two doors from his old apartment throwing things at each other again.

BANG.

Ben clumsily rolled off the couch, blinking sleep out of his eyes as they readjusted to the moonlight streaming through his window. What was making that sound? Did she throw a lamp at him, or–

The door exploded inward, blasting off its hinges with a loud shriek, landing at Ben’s feet. He jolted fully awake, springing to his feet and slamming his back against the wall. He barely had time to mutter a confused curse before a shadow appeared in the doorway, a massive one that eclipsed much of the light that created it.

“Beck-beck-beck.”

Ben froze.

“Beck-beck-beck.”

The shadow was making a noise. It was clucking. It wasn’t the type of clucking one would hear from a chicken or rooster, the noises they made on his grandparents’ farm being one of the many things that inspired Ben to write the Rocky books, but it was more like a human’s laugh filtered through a crushed throat. The floorboards groaned as the shadow stepped forward, becoming solid, real, as it stepped over the threshold. His common sense coming back to him, Ben slowly walked backwards towards his bedroom, his human mind telling him to make as little noise as possible, his writer’s mind wanting to get a look at whatever had come knocking.

It stepped into the moonlight, and Ben got his wish.

It was a rooster, one the size of a two-seater. Its eyes were a bleeding amber, flecks of brown penetrating the jet-black pupils. As it stared Ben down, he noticed that only the left one blinked, the right gummed with pinkish pus that had hardened into a half shell. It was not the regal blue and red that his favorite rooster from the farm had been, instead a vomit-grey, tainted with flecks of black and rust along its weathered coat where feathers hung loose and left a trail behind it with each step. The legs had retained their yolk yellow hue, but were skinnier, spindlier, its six toes now sharp-looking claws that glinted in the light. Its comb was mottled, turning from red to pink from the bottom up. The beak was almost as sharp as its toes, and it too reflected the moonbeams, a glaring spot of white gliding down its beak like a drop of water as it moved towards Ben.

He knew what it was, who it was, but he didn’t dare say it out loud because then it would be real, and something like this couldn’t be real.

Ben broke the moment by dashing for his bedroom. The rooster let out a buzzing scream and thundered towards him, its massive frame slamming against the door as Ben shut it. He hurried across the room, grabbed his uncomfortable chair, and pressed it against the door. Ben muttered another curse and whirled around, looking for something, anything to keep him alive. The door rattled before suddenly going still, and it, like his front door, exploded as the rooster towered over it, every sharp and evil thing on its body reflecting the natural light.

“Stay back.” Ben murmured, before raising his voice. “Stay back!” he shouted, his breathing ragged as it took a step towards him, digging into the wood with its talons. “Stay back, you f–”

The talons came up and slashed his arm, narrowly missing his throat by virtue of Ben falling on his ass. He groaned in pain as he dimly felt the cut, already bleeding profusely. The rooster raised one talon again, standing over him and holding it at an angle as Ben put his good arm out, as if to say “wait.” It swiped its head down and he felt the beak close around his ankle, sharp, but not sharp enough to cut, and the rooster began to drag him backwards. Before he could guess as to where it was going to take him, it stopped and dropped him.

Ben picked himself up and turned around, mystified, until he realized what the thing was looking at. His blood. There was a line on the floor.

Ben sprung to his feet as the rooster leaned down to look at its own accidental creation, its good eye dilating and shrinking rapidly, its simple brain tantalized by this new pattern. He lurched over to his desk, doing his best to ignore his screaming arm as he grabbed the paper cutter, clumsily knocking into his shelf and making the Rocky books tumble to the ground.

He lifted it to hit the rooster over the head, before stopping himself and thinking what the hell am I doing? Ben dropped the paper cutter on the floor, pushing it with his foot under the rooster’s head, and placed his hands down on the rooster’s neck with all his strength.

To his shock, it went down for a moment before it started to struggle and seize under his foot, but Ben had already begun to push the blade down. The rooster screamed again as the tool dug into its tough, stony flesh, but after a moment, it started to give way. It looked at him with its bad eye like the squirrel, unblinking, asking “please” instead of “why?” Ben ignored it, groaning with effort as it slid in further. The rooster screamed again before the blade sank in deeper with a chunk, causing it to go silent.

Ben stepped back, not allowing himself to look as its head came off with a peeling sound like a band-aid clinging tightly to a fresh scab. It was his refusal to look that prevented him from seeing the headless body rise up and run right at him. It knocked him to the ground and stopped for good right on top of him, pinning him under its bulk. Ben groaned, struggling under its weight, his cut arm still bleeding. Its neck bled with him, but its fluid was dark and inky.

The oozing liquid covered Rocky the Rooster, staining the cover. When it washed away, the cover no longer displayed the gentle animal millions of children loved, but the rooster, the terrible one, its bad eye staring at Ben’s ceiling, asking “why?” instead of “please.”

“So where are we going again?” Mike asked, his voice echoing through the parking garage as they approached the car, a red Challenger that had several circular indents on its left side doors.

Ray ignored him. He tended to do this—Mike would often not listen to what they were doing, so he’d started to just ignore him, and found it worked out better this way. They got in the car—Ray drove, of course—and started to drive down the circling ramp.

“Seriously, where’re we going?”

“Job.”

That was enough for Mike, and he shifted around, a little uncomfortable, until he settled into the passenger seat and the car lurched over the garage’s speed bump exit out onto the Las Vegas strip. The green, red, and yellow neons of the signs reflected off of the car’s windows, slightly concealing the interior. The sky was inky and, as per usual, cloudless.

Ray glanced over at Mike, the lights flickering along his youthful face, illuminating it as they approached the outskirts of the city.

"You ever hit any of the casinos around here?"

Ray looked over at Mike, who had turned his face away from the window to stare directly at the endless, dark desert of the surrounding city.

"No. All of them are money sucks." Ray murmured, keeping his eyes parallel with Mike's, front and center, as they entered the vast desert.

"Where's your sense of adventure?"

"What's adventurous about losing your money?"

Mike huffed with disapproval. “God, you’re so fucking old.”

As the brightness of the city faded away behind them, leaving them in total darkness.

“So what’d this guy do?”

“He made too many mistakes. Boss wants him gone.”

“Ah. Sucks. Surprised he doesn’t live in Vegas.” He glanced at Ray. “How far out is he?”

“Not far. Thirty minutes more.”

“Mmm.”

They drove in relative silence, only interrupted by the hum of the car surrounding them and the passing of another, the swoosh of their passing making them both start at attention before settling back into their seats.

“So, I was working a couple weeks ago, right?” Mike started, and Ray side-eyed him with a look of don’t. “Right. There was this guy, and he owed, like, twenty grand. I had to rough him up a little, send a message, et cetera. And so I track him down to the Bellagio, he’s playing roulette—and he sees me—and he knows. Leaves seven hundred worth on the table and just books it.”

Mike stopped for a moment, glanced out the window at the flat plane of sand, and continued.

“So I follow the guy into the bathroom, and he’s got his hand in his pocket. Take a step towards him, feed him the ‘can you pay?’ thing, and he turns around and he’s got a fucking gun. I jump him before he can do anything, and something about the fact that this guy tried to pull on me just…makes me mad. So I grabbed him, threw him down, and I started kicking his face. And then my foot started going deeper and deeper in, and then–”

“Why are you telling me this?” Ray asked quietly. This story did not particularly faze or disturb him—he had heard and done worse—but he understood that Mike had to be going somewhere.

“What I mean is, people mess up, right? People make mistakes, they get things wrong, but they always make it whole.”

Ray turned to see that Mike was looking directly at him. He took his eyes off the road for several seconds, the two men staring at each other, heavyset and slim, middle-aged and young. “When did you figure it out?”

“When you said that thing about the guy making a lot of mistakes. I’m not as stupid as everyone thinks, Ray.” Mike broke eye contact, turning back to facing forward. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

“Because then it keeps whoever I’m taking calm.”

“No, I mean why didn’t you warn me ahead of time?”

“Because I think you’re incompetent and I don’t particularly like you.”

“Oh.” Mike’s voice was quieter now. “Hey, you ever been to that big fountain outside the Bellagio?”

“No, but I’ve pas–”

Mike’s hands moved in opposite directions—his left grabbed for the wheel, and his right jammed itself down the back of his jeans. Before he could take hold of either target, Ray plunged his left hand into the pocket of the car door, withdrew his pistol, and shot Mike three times in the head, the flashes of cordite mixed with oxygen illuminating his boyish face like the lights of the strip, eating away his features with each pull of the trigger.

The car slowed to a stop and Ray pulled over on the shoulder. Compulsively, he lifted his leg and kicked Mike's, waiting several seconds to see if he moved. When he got no response, he put the car in drive.

As he was hurtling down the highway at seventy, seventy-five, eighty, his phone, sitting in the cup holder, vibrated. Ray glanced down at it, then at Mike. He answered and put it on speaker.

“Ray?” The female voice on the other end asked.

“Yeah?”

“Are you still at work?”

Ray looked at Mike, and even in the dark, he could vaguely make out the rivulets of blood still streaming down his face—one bullet had gone right into his eye, another through his right cheek, where it had undoubtedly shattered several teeth, and a third through his neck.

“Yeah, been kept late tonight.”

“Awful quiet for a late night.”

“Went up to the top floor for a smoke.”

“Only one a day, right?”

He nodded. “Yeah, one a day.”

“That’s good. I love you, Ray. Get home soon.”

“I’ll try. Love you too.”