Prose

The world often turned upside down. Melina felt this though it chilled her bones, curdled the remnants of her soul, reached every piece of her insolent mind. But it wasn’t the world’s constant toll, nor the prices she paid for her every breath. She didn’t mind the way each step brought her closer to the green fires of a brighter passion. It was Anahita. It was the way she walked and moved and spoke and laughed. And, of course, it was the way she disappeared.

Often, Melina reflected on what could have sprung Anahita away, bringing an end to the immortal presence of her soul. Her heart twisted and turned, and crushed the brutal realities surrounding their every fantasy. Anahita was everything, and yet she was nothing. Nothing until Melina could return a ruined material, find it, learn it, discard it soon. Nothing until Melina found her.

At times, she recalled the way people watched Anahita. They clung to her eyes, her face, her soul. They wanted her. Everybody wanted her. Even in perceived death, Anahita managed to be the cemetery, the people, the face plastered into stones of ashes. And somehow, wherever Melina turned, Anahita’s sick, twisted delight spiked at every tendon of her frame once called a body. Anahita haunted the world.

She read and she wrote, she sang and she danced. Her impeccability threatened to suffocate Melina. How could anyone else ever survive in a world far superior? A world in which Anahita existed, in which her brain and mind and soul held the depths of the dark, vast skies deep within them, cradled every bit of her. A heartbeat pounded and rhythmed within her ears as she looked through windows, crawled deep within the reality until any shade of her faded beneath the lakes always surrounding her.

Oh, of course the world would revolve around Anahita, as it did around the same hated fools, the ones who razed reality through the constancy of their own creation. They laughed and laughed, but never perished. The fools who were everything but somehow managed to be nothing, the ones who resembled a cruel feeling of perfection. They were that warmth in the blizzard, the fire surrounded and revered and kissed and coddled. But eventually, weakness reached them, weakness Melina felt the need to escape over and over.

Melina looked at warm buildings and cold buildings and happy buildings, buildings with wanted signs and missing signs. Missing signs of Anahita, the girl who never returned.

Somehow, some pillars fall even with the strongest foundation. Sometimes they topple over and over until only blood, ash, and bone remain. Some time in between, the world had lost its sense.

Anahita, who had a mind of her own, was never constrained by the glue of those greens and blues and greys surrounding her, a crowd that would never stop growing.

Melina glanced at Anahita’s smiles, leaping at her to strengthen the growing fury. Anahita was a fiend, though also a friend, she was a being without sense. Melina supposed planets eons away could never make sense. Inhuman gods, phantoms, scythes turned alive, piercing mercy into their followers. Reality should not have been read within these lines. But eventually, it reached them. The overwhelming, bitter taste of failure raked every bone between their precious layers of skin. 

Melina had beaten the chests, the drawers, the wooden bones on and on. She needed appeasement. She needed creation. She craved the reality of the will of all life. Sometimes it happened to consume her.

Anahita consumed her. Hurricanes spilled before her, drowning her. She felt herself choking. She felt herself beating the water, the wood, she wanted to reach the ends of the earth before Anahita could dream otherwise. She wanted to beat the storm.

There was a storm in Anahita’s eyes too.

A storm, as Melina turned and watched and felt the glaring eyes upon her once more. Anahita stood across the room. She inched towards her. She was human, she was an object, she was a pounding, imminent death. And she walked without legs. She floated like a beast forgetting it survived. Melina moved backward, then forward, then across, then above, then away until she felt her feet planted into her eyes, and her fingers curl into her scalp and it was as if she was a child again, staring across the world at the only tether she had to a fatal existence. 

And then her hair encased her, the sculpture shivered within the air, shimmering with an inconstancy known to be Anahita. Anahita disappeared across the city, across the street. Melina ran endlessly, she ran foolishly, she ran like the world depended on it. Anahita turned her face. She laughed. She ran faster. Melina felt her fingers itching to tear her hair out, to pull her in, to beat her, to hug her. Melina’s body gave itself up to detested dreamings and hopes, consuming her soul in its entirety. Anahita disappeared around corner after corner, bringing Melina in circles and circles for her. Anahita wanted this. She ached for this. And Melina knew because she herself would have begged for this.

Her soul couldn’t handle it. She needed to get to Anahita, needed to become the breadth of her will. But Anahita’s will was her own. Only her own.

Melina felt senseless, hopeless, foolish hate take over her entire soul. She felt herself choking, she couldn’t breathe. She was falling and she was dying and she was living. Her entire soul went to war that she couldn’t comprehend past her own loathing. Anahita was there. And she was gone. Where on earth was Anahita? 

Melina resigned herself. She took strike after strike after strike. The seas and the jungles and the broad, vast stars couldn’t pass abhorrence after loathing after abomination. A tsunami wrangled the people, and they screamed, and they begged for mercy. Their words choked out, their lives sputtered to a close and open. What was this world?

Melina felt the fallen people surrounding her, begging for help within her heart, but help never came. Where was Anahita? 

She looked around the door and saw a strike of blonde hair. She turned and saw ice shearing her through. Her gaze landed on the frayed ends of each hem. Anahita was doing this on purpose. Anahita was an antipathy, she was a beast that choked on cruelty. Anahita was nothing but a lost dream, a crushed soul.

“You’ve been searching for me?” The voice circled her. She broke the obscenities, the curses, the monstrosities, but they responded, and they hit, and they struck. 

“Of course I have. You lied. You left. You said you died. Where on earth have you been? Why are you running?” What conceived such a fatality into her? Electricity was swarming her. Death was everywhere.

Anahita looked at her strangely. “I did what I needed. I did what the world demanded of me.”

“We all thought you were dead,” Melina carefully pronounced. Her body strengthened, her mind struggled against her arms and legs.

“Could I really die so easily?” She seemed thoughtful. As if death had never crossed her mind.

She was right. If Anahita was perfect, how could ideals of a mortal force of mind ever reach her? She floated and fought and struck for survival.

“We all die.” Melina’s voice maintained the bitter stature of a man long lost.

“I know. But I always imagined it to be rather distant. Like a dream. A world far removed from the one in which we exist.”

“We often imagine things differently from how they exist.” She sometimes imagined that Anahita was a devil, minds meant to torment her to the ends of the earth. 

“I’ve missed you. But I fear we’ve parted ways. I can’t be the Anahita you know.”

“You’re anything you want. And I am not.” Anahita looked confused.

“You’re Melina. You fight well, and you’re smart, and you’re calculating. And I am Anahita.”

Desire consumed Melina. She felt the power of shock, the force of a thousand bludgeons to the soul. She would always be Melina.

And Melina had no fiends. Melina was one of her own right.

The hate and the pain and the suffering mocked her. She felt clouds shrouding her over tossing her about. The tide had gone out, the tide was released. The world was upended. And suddenly, the distance between Anahita’s head and Melina’s hand somehow closed, and Anahita stumbled back in shock. Raging storms and fires burned around Melina. They devoured her. She realized she had finally become a part of the world. And Anahita had been kicked out. She would stay out.

“What happened to you?” What had happened to her? She couldn’t tell. 

Anahita was constant and Melina was not. 

“I’ve learned who I am. I know my place. Do you?” Melina tried to shatter a glass sculpture that could never revive, though its heart and soul may wish it. Glue couldn’t patch up the ends of a star. Anahita burned out before her time had come.

The world flew above Anahita, but not for long. Never for long for the constant persistence of life. Melina felt a shove and a tear, screaming and fighting and hate consuming a once loved sisterhood. 

Finally, Melina reached a whole. She was as she never was. 

She looked around. At last, Anahita disappeared as if she had never existed at all.

             She wasn't planning on going in there ever again.

She walked into his dark room. It's like a picture frozen in time; everything is the same, untouched, exactly as he left it. It's like he's still alive. 

It's been a month since Tristan died. The room still has a familiar smell of cedarwood and his detergent. Everything is exactly as he left it that day. His clothes remain in an overflowing pile on his chair, his bedside table still tidy as he liked it, aside from his empty glasses case and a pen. In all the times she’d been in the room, there never ceased to be a pen beside his bed. She never asked him about it, but she wished she did. Everything in this room seems more significant now that he's gone, as if each item holds his memory. 

She wondered, if she moved something from where he left it, would his memory fade all the more? Maybe this was a bad idea, as long as this room holds his memory, then maybe he won't be gone for good. Maybe then she won't have to face the fact that he’s dead. Maybe if this room is here, she can stay in this numb, ignorant state; maybe then, the truth won't be real.

She walks across the room, the cold dark blue walls reflect little light from the cloudy sky outside the window. She slowly sits on his bed, admiring what's left of him. 

Everyone moved on quicker than her. His mom never cared enough, she was too busy with work and partying, and his dad still doesn't know. His few friends moved on and the counselor talked to a couple of kids who could’ve cared less. 

His mom probably would’ve just donated all of his stuff already if it weren't for Emily.

She took his place in his bed and sunk into the pillow. She felt what it was like to be him, sitting in his room, living his life. For just a moment she got to see a glimpse of life in his shoes. She inhaled slowly before picking up the pen. She turned it in her fingers and studied it. It was just a pen, but it wasn't, because it was his. 

Her mother taught her that bedside tables were private, probably because she didn't want little Emily going through her own, but Emily always remembered that. She took another deep breath before opening the drawer. Tristan didn’t follow this “rule”, regardless, she never touched it.

Now she has to. 

It's full of junk, yet organized. She begins to shift through the items in the drawer; a charger, flashlight, lip balm, the book he’d been reading, and a notebook. She’d seen this notebook many times before but never knew what was inside.

Emily turned the journal in her hands, maybe he was writing a story, or it could be a diary or a sketchbook; it might be a book of poems, or maybe it’s just random notes.

She smoothed her hand over the leather cover and flipped her fingers through the pages.

She couldn’t open it, it was private- but he’s gone now, so would it even matter? 

Staring into space, she imagined him sitting in the spot where she is now, writing in the journal. Every time she walked into his room he’d be writing, what he was writing, she didn't know, but it seemed important; every time he wrote he seemed focused, deep, and almost melancholy.

She slid her finger under the cover, slowly opening the journal.

Tristan Finch

His handwriting. His name. The only place he lives on is this journal.

She stared at the cover page, reading his name over and over. This journal is the last thing she has left of her best and her only friend.

When she came back a week later, the room was empty. His mom got sick of waiting to get rid of his memory and was ready to move on from the child she never wanted in the first place.

Emily didn’t tell his mom about the journal, she didn't deserve to have him when he was alive, and she doesn't deserve to have the last thing left of him either.

Emily stared at the blank room, the walls were still the same color, but there were paint cans by the door. Tristan’s mom hated the dark color he painted the room, but he loved it; it reminded him of the sky after dusk. His writing was still on the wall where his bed used to be; little notes he used to write of random quotes, but soon they’ll be gone too with the new paint job. 

Everyone replaced him in their lives. It was as if they thought that they could just paint over him, erase him without a trace, replace him. But he was a person too, the best one Emily knew, and now he’s gone; all that's left of him is this journal.

I am Mark Li, but I am also 李润麒; so who I introduce myself as when I meet someone

for the first time? Usually, Mark is what I say. Growing up in the United States among diverse

communities, it is not a surprise to me nor my family that my first tendency is to identify as

American. Until a few years ago, I had always thought that when people looked at me, they

would see the same American identity I saw in myself. This belief shattered as we weathered the

COVID-19 pandemic, when anti-Asian sentiment invaded my community, my school, and

eventually my self-identity. The negative feelings became apparent once my very own friends

began to look at me whenever “China” was spoken in our conversations. That made me feel

extremely uncomfortable––exiled. Yet, this experience has become overwhelmingly positive for

me. Over the years, I’ve become more exposed to my Chinese heritage whether it was through

Chinese school or my family’s traditions. Amid the challenging times of the pandemic, I felt

empowered to claim both of my identities, understanding what it meant to be Chinese-American.

My identity is rooted in personal ties to both countries, connections which are unconditional and

unbreakable.

Waking up every day is Mr Tromble’s least favorite thing to do. He dreads coming to school and telling his students to close their laptops and put away their phones.  Although his students cause trouble every day, Mr. Tromble isn’t bothered with his cool demeanor. He loves the reward he feels after his students leave his classroom. Born with the superpower of flight, Mr Tromble prepares himself for his true calling. He returns to his car, and comes out as Trombleman! Trombleman sees two frightened children running from a shadowy figure flying around the neighborhood. The children are running away from his archnemesis Ms. Shannon. “You children need to learn the importance of the chain rule,” she yells as the children cry. Trombleman has to decide which child to save. Trombleman works only to save the most obedient and intelligent children, so he asks them to write a story using all 11 phrases. The first child, the taller of the two, trips while trying to remember the difference between participle and prepositional phrases. Trombleman swoops down, grabs the second child, and leaves the first to suffer through the curse of calculus. The 2nd child thanks Trombleman and says, “Thank you Trombleman! I’ll never wear my AirPods during my English class again!”

People didn’t like to leave the circus tent during the intermission. It was ten minutes to the second, kept

track of by a giant brass clock mounted against one of the trapeze poles. The break typically wasn’t

enough time to find food or use the restroom given the atrocious queue, and then they would miss

watching the animal tamers wrestle the tiger back into its cage.

Another thing about the circus goers was that most of them were children. Children are breeding grounds

for disease. If you were to combine a pack of eight hundred children with filthy concrete floors and

benches, you would have the seeds of a global pandemic. Their parents tried to minimize the damage

with wet wipes and hand sanitizer, but there was only so much that they could do.

Six-year-old Hugo didn’t know where his mother was. Once the intermission had started, she had told him

to stay put, and then had left their row of filthy concrete benches in search of something or other. Hugo

hoped that she was looking for corn dogs. He would kill for a corndog right about then, never mind the

french fries and fruit punch slush he had inhaled an hour before.

He glanced up at the ring, where the tamers were taking turns attempting to lure a giant, shaggy tiger into

a cell of metal bars. His mother had gotten front row seats, and he could smell the tiger from where he

sat; it smelled like straw, and the sort of foggy, dusty smell of large animals. Its stripes sat upon its hide

like strings over an open piano, all rigid ribs and plush muscle and near defeat. It stared back at him with

huge, amber eyes, then back at one of the tamers coaxing it toward the cage with something dead.

Hugo shuffled backward. His heel knocked against something soft, and he noticed that someone’s

corndog had rolled under his bench. Being six, hungry, and motherless, Hugo bent down and picked it up.

He felt the tiger watching him as he bit off the tip. In the corner of his periphery, he saw it thrash away

from the tamers, throwing them into the wall around the ring. Once they had been thoroughly dealt with, it

padded to the edge of the ring, right in front of Hugo’s seat.

Hugo locked eyes with the tiger. Slowly, he offered up the rest of the corndog, brandishing it like a sword,

so close that the end almost brushed the tiger’s nose. It was like staring into the face of the sun.

Gently, he bumped the tiger’s nose with the end of the corndog. It blinked in surprise, then bared its white

teeth. Leapt forward. Crashed into Hugo.

The giant brass clock against the trapeze pole clanged like a dinner bell over the pandemonium in the

circus tent. The intermission was over.

0 My mother’s womb is the upper bowel of an hourglass in the dark. Light leaks in and God-knows-what

leaks out, and the walls pulse with blood and foreign movement. Did you know that for stars to be created,

the dust and gas inside nebulas must collapse? The gel of my lungs drips lost time, a storm breaking.

Perseus beheaded Medusa for Pegasus to be born. They sewed Dionysus into his father’s thigh. My

mother’s body is choking and I am the culprit. How many heroes were born like this?

22 In lumine Tuo videbimus lumen. I rest on my laurels and eat lotuses whole.

32 Icing presses between my fingers. Someone I know was elbow deep in the grave by the time they

turned thirty-two. I burrow into the cake, forearms and all. My hair sticks to a piped border like a bow to a

string. My musician’s fingers imprint a sonata into a white frosted rose, and life is in C-major. I never

planned to live past thirty, I tell no one.

52 I am everywhere. Did you know that beyond blood, they only find hemoglobin in stars?

They named me Opportunity. 

They named me for what they prayed this barren landscape would hold- this landscape of rocks and dust stained red with rust, of mountains and hills speckling the surface for an eternity and then some- this landscape so devoid of life, where the only company are the stars and interstellar dust streaking the celestial sphere- this landscape where the Sun shines with a brilliant, cold blue across a haze of desolation. 

They named me Opportunity.

They named me on a chance, a mere possibility of more. They named me for a desire to not be so alone in this universe. They tasked me to find others like them- to see if the fiery heat of the stars and frigid expanse of space are really all that awaits us in the world beyond. They named me for a risk, for a hunch. They named me for the nobility of my purpose, for my loyalty, for how I will bring as much joy to my creators as they have brought me, no matter how far apart we may be.

They named me Opportunity.

They named me with the faith that I would do anything, that I could do everything, even through this pesky little dust storm my sensors have detected. They named me for the excitement they had finishing my solar panels, for the thrill of receiving my landing footage and knowing that years of work had paid off. They named me for the meteorites I will discover, for the grains that proved a terrain once soaked and filled with water like the deepest of oceans back on Earth.

They named me Opportunity. 

They named me for hope, for exploration, for a zeal to discover the unknown. They named me to prove we aren’t alone.

“My battery is low, and it’s getting dark.”

I hope I can make them proud when I wake up.

Goodnight. 

The darkness drew in around him as the persistent rhythm of the clock amplified. He felt it pulse through the thick of his head, shooting through his ears and ricocheting off the interiors of his skull. He lay there, squirming, his hands pulling his hair and his forearms bulging with the rage that flowed through him. He wanted nothing more in that moment but to remove the monotonous cacophony that consumed his body. He attempted to form a thought—in vain. With each passing moment, the tick-tock that echoed in the man’s head only intensified. His hands balled up into fists, squeezing the life out his palms as he folded on his back. The man’s body was now separate from his consciousness. It writhed, jumped, fell, and rolled in restlessness on its own accord. Then came the scream. He simply could not control it. His vocal cords let out a shriek, one so chilling it can only be described as the feeling of a knife’ edge protruding one’s spine. His eyes looked up and his eyelids twitched uncontrollably, like the flashings of a broken lightbulb. TICK-TOCK. TICK-TOCK. TICK-TOCK. Finally, the man took a gasp of the cold, dark air and lay there, on his apartment floor, unconscious. 

One evening, after another day of senseless wandering, he stumbled upon the ancient scattered remains of a village. All that was left of the buildings were their stone foundations, small kingdoms of their own where moss and ivy ran rampant through their veins and spiders peeked out of exposed pipes. Landor paid the ruin no mind. He had seen plenty of villages just like this, broken legacies left in the wake of ruthless conquerors who had undone themselves upon anyone in their path. 

Looming over the wreckage, half hidden by a curtain of tangled vines, stood the place where Landor supposed the ruthless conqueror had made his throne. Long ago, it might have been as imposing as it was massive. Landor could imagine tall, black spires clawing at the sky, battlements as impenetrable as immortality itself, banners like scraps of night billowing in a cold, rabid wind. He might even have been afraid if it was not on the verge of collapse, mostly supported by the dense trees and shrubbery that enveloped it, long forgotten by the rest of the world. To his untrained, apathetic eye, the castle was just another corpse of an age. 

But Landor was tired, and he didn’t have elsewhere to be. 

One night, he told himself. I will stay for one night. 

After he discovered the overgrown gardens, Landor amended his statement to two nights. Two nights became one week. One week became one month. A month became a year. A year faded into eternity, and then all the eternities to come. 

They would live on together, he and his castle, a tribute to forever. It was meant to be. 

And then he heard the violin.

I did not care about the death itself. Whatever physical pain it entailed, somewhat--but not the end. I was well past the age when death became as much a part of existence as life was. Most of my friends were long gone, and the flood of emails streaming in regarding funeral invitations was more frequent than rain. They always looked peaceful, my friends did, tucked to their shoulders in the lacy inside of their coffins, like those vintage dolls that closed their eyes when you leaned them back. Wherever they were, if anywhere, they seemed to be at ease. 

So no, I did not care about death. It was inevitable and close, and fixation on something so imminent was nothing more than a waste of precious little time.  

I could imagine the graveyard, skeletal and brown in this year’s snowless, harsh January. I could see the pile of dirt excavated from the fresh hole they’d stick me in, the fake roses someone would lay over the bare patch, the cross they’d stab into the ground. I could smell the frosted air, the thick odor of rotting flowers, the exhaust of the cars as they puttered away, only to return on Mothers’ Day or Christmas when I suddenly mattered. They wouldn’t remember my birthday. Of that I was sure. 

This was to be my fate.

I felt no regret, no joy, no fear, no satisfaction, none of the things I was supposed to feel on my deathbed. My thoughts were as trivial as dust and as cyclical as the universe. 

I was the beginning, the end. The end. The end. The end. 

Nya’s breath was ragged, her face dripped with sweat as she plowed the barren dirt under the searing glare of the sun. Suddenly, she saw puddles of blood staining the ground; another long cut now marked the palm of her hand. Giving up, Nya fell to the ground, lying on her back, thinking of another time, another place. Her land, the Kingdom of the Sun as she proudly once called it, Solta, had luscious green fields with cool grass and water as far as one’s eye could see. Now, the land plagued with drought caused the emerald fields to be drained of life, turning it an unpleasant, dark and dusty red. As Nya lay on the ground exhausted, she thought of only one thing, Why did the Sun, our land, our home turn on us? Hearing faint excited shouts, she arose from her contemplative state, swiftly hiding her despair. 

“Nya, Nya! The clouds are here, the clouds are here!” screamed her little brother, Rolland. 

Nya rolled her eyes and opened her mouth to snap at him, to tell him that the clouds were just going to go away again, but one look at Rolland’s young and innocent face shut her mouth. How could she extinguish Rolland’s hope? Nya had to protect her brother, and she promised herself that she would not let her brother be deprived of a childhood, regardless of droughts, or whatever came their way.

So, instead, Nya responded with a careless “Whatever,” and continued to plow. She would not let herself feel hope, a fickle emotion that left as fast as it came. 

The dark clouds roared and came closer; an ominous sign to some, but a beacon of light for Nya and her village. “No,” she told herself, “no, no, no, ignore the clouds.” Nya dug, dug, and dug. All of a sudden, she felt drops of water trickling down her face, drip, drip. She watched as the clouds rained, showering everyone in sight. Nya saw joy all around her as children lept to dance in the rain. Though many of the villagers still had several burdens and knew deep down that the rain would not solve everything, they embraced the present, the now. Nya, finally, felt hope as she allowed herself to look past the horizons in wonder of what else the future had in store for her.

Mako trudged against the soaking asphalt on all fours, his hair falling down over his eyes. He crawled forwards with the little strength he had left, scouring the monsooning area for food. His stomach felt like it was tearing open and taking him with it, and all he could do was nothing but beg, plead a meal materialized in front of him. He turned his face down in pain to the moonlit gray stone beneath him, where he could see his reflection in the pools of water. He was dark skinned with medium,  straight, jet-black hair. His mustache was thin and black, and his eyes were blue. All he could pay attention to, however, was his tight skin, so tight he could trace his jawbone. 

Further Mako marched, wanting nothing more than to either eat or be put out of his misery. Fortunately for him, however, he got the better of those two options first. Lying ahead of him was a dumpster in the dark alleyway, its lid thrown open and its contents soaked. On the edge of it he could see a molding piece of bread, with bite marks originating from who knows what. In this world, a delicacy. He crawled further and further onward, his determination granting him the strength to reach the dumpster with speed. Desperately, he swung his arm upwards, grabbed the meal, and pulled it back down to where he was. He rotated on his hip, pressed his back against the building the dumpster was connected to, and began to reminisce. 

Ten years ago, such a scenario would’ve seemed outlandish to Mako. Yes, the world was struggling, but it had hope going for it. People believed the Earth could be saved from the destruction it caused. Others disagreed, but mainly only the ones who were wealthy enough to do so. After decades of taxation and environmental pollution, the government had finally created planetary travel technology, and distributed it to the wealthy looking for a new way of life from the corrupted planet they were once bound. The government fled along with them, and have since abandoned earth and everything to do with it. Those who could not afford planetary travel or were not in a high enough position to achieve it were left to rot, while those wealthy had escaped the hellhole.

Ever since that fateful day in 2102, the Earth had reverted back in over a century's time. Technology like cell phones and computers were too complex to create and mass-distribute, so the world had turned to rotary phones of the olden times. Fashion came back around to the way it was in the 1940’s, and mobs and gangs even roamed the streets looking for their next victim. With the pollution blackening the sky, the world was stuck in an eternal midnight where there was no government, no order, no society. Loose businesses were held up the the strengths of the owner’s backs and nothing more. In a world such as this, a simple piece of bread was a godsend. 

All these thoughts rushed through Mako’s head in an instant, and he raised the bread to take a bite. As he did, however, two blinding columns of golden light twisted around the corner. Then more, then more. Suddenly a dozen metal cars shot into view, speeding around the corner. Trailing behind them was a mechanical beast on wheels, with jagged metal edges piercing the cold air around them. Mako knew exactly who would be on top of that vehicle. 

“Howdy, mutt!” a voice boomed from a megaphone on top of the car. Attached to the voice was a muscular man with brown curly hair and a street lamp pole he used as a blunt weapon. His black and white pinstripe suit was torn over the years, but still functional, and his fedora was a signature feature his enemies had come to fear. He was Searo, the commander of the Ivory Talons, the most infamous mob around where Mako trailed. They had met before, but Mako got the feeling that all of Searo’s victims blended together to him. Only in a dystopia like this would a man like Searo be allowed to exist. 

“I see-” he started, as the megaphone screeched and pierced Mako’s ears. “This dang thing doesn’t work,” Searo noted, and tossed it to the side, batteries and plastic cracking open on the rock below. “I see you’ve got something for me!” he resumed in his echoing voice. His goons laughed as they tumbled out of their vehicles one by one. “Shut up,” he snapped. “Anyways! Hand over that meal and we'll leave you mostly conscious,” he offered. “Actually, maybe that would be worse,” he realized. “Who knows? We’ll find out.”

Mako couldn’t gather the strength to protest. He was starving too much. Searo leapt from the top of his vehicle, slamming the ground with the force of a bodybuilder. “Away,” Mako managed to mutter. “Go a-” his sentence was cut short when a thick metal rod slammed his jaw and cast his body to the side. His head slammed into the brick building next to him and his vision grew fuzzy. 

Searo laughed and slowly walked up to Mako “Look, here’s the part where I’m supposed to go ‘No one’s talked to me like that before, boy,’ but honestly, you’re not the first to do that.” Searo finished walking and kneeled down next to Mako. “Just keep in mind that none of those people are around anymore.” Mako was raised by his collar and thrown to the side onto the bread. He quickly ripped off a piece and shoved it in his pocket before Searo snatched it from the alleyway ground. Searo raised his pole above Mako’s head, but ceased before slamming it down. “Y’know,” he said wryly. “Letting you starve would be much more fun.” He started his echoing laugh once more, and turned around towards his augmented vehicle. “Boys!!” he yelled. He held the piece of bread high in the air. “We’re feasting tonight!” Cheers from his underling erupted as they climbed back into their cars and took off, their tires upheaving water upon Mako as they left. He didn’t even have the strength to stay conscious. 

Several hours later, Mako shot up in a sweat, or in a pool of rainwater. He couldn’t tell. At this point his stomach was so painful he felt as if it was dissolving before his eyes. He jammed his fist into his pocket and drew the scrap of bread he had tore off, and shoved it into his mouth. Never having a meal so good in weeks, Mako made sure to savor every last bite. His stomach felt as if it was regrowing. After finishing the last bite and his stomach fulfilled, he rose to his legs and wiped the blood off his jaw. Finally with the strength to do so, he turned his head to the sky and yelled, “You filthy lurches! If karma is a thing, you better start praying!” After a moment of silence, he heard engines revving nearby. Much to Mako’s dismay, it turns out that the Ivory Talons hadn’t gone far to enjoy their meal.

Twisting around the corner once more was Searo and his crew, in hot pursuit. Mako instantly turned his back and bolted for it. The cars behind him grew closer and closer, and Mako didn’t have the strength to continue running in a straight line for long. As the soggy road ahead turned to the left, Mako noticed the cliff edge to the right of it. Hugging the rim of the mountain was an elevated road leading to the further parts of town, raised thousands of meters above the city below. Skyscrapers lined the city below, and directly below them was a long-since destroyed factory which had developed the thick liquids used to fuel the ships used to transport off-world. Mako had always wanted to venture down to the city, but the ruins of the current world had left any path to the city miles below obstructed. With very little choice, he leaped forth.

He landed on the rim of the concrete, and felt his arm shatter. He rolled onto the red-stained road, continuing his path forwards. Although many cars on the mountain above stopped moving, the one Searo inhabited veered right and slammed onto the road right behind him. He desperately careened forwards, but knew he couldn’t outrun the vehicle, as much as the metal daggers coating the frame were probably interfering with aerodynamics. 

Once again out of options so soon, he lunged towards a streetlamp on the edge of the concrete guardrail and held on for dear life, as his legs dangled above a hundred-meter fall to the buildings below. Searo shot his vehicle right in retaliation, crashing into the concrete holding the streetlamp and thus Mako above the dark sea below. The pale stone shattered into chunks, and the street lamp jolted over the edge, horizontally looming above the fall with Mako still fused to the end.The hatch at the top of the amalgamate car shot open as Searo stepped out to meet Mako head-on.

“Filthy lurch,” Searo mocked. “If karma is a thing, you better start praying. He stomped over the jagged concrete remains of the guard rail and out onto the precarious streetlamp. He held out his metal street sign pole out to Mako to hit him off.

“Nice haircut,” Mako struggled to say, slowly slipping off the street pole. “How’d you get it, from a blender?” Searo’s eyes narrowed, but he was otherwise unaffected. 

“Well, it would make sense for you to get out some last-minute insults before you die,” Searo noted. “Again,” he added. “Y’know,” maybe I shouldnt’a let you starve and just killed you on the spot. After all, what am I, a movie villain?”

“Nah,” Mako replied. “A live one.” Searo’s eyes narrowed further. He took a step towards the pole where Mako was hanging. He held his weapon out towards him threateningly. 

“Ooh, seeing you fall is gonna be real fun.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“Oh please, there’s no way you’re getting out this one,” Searo snapped back. The street lamp creaked more and more off the road with each step Searo took towards Mako.

Right as Searo raised his beam to swing at him, he stated,“You’re right.Unfortunately, you aren’t either.” As Searo’s beam curved towards Mako’s head, he let go of the pole and clutched Searo’s weapon with both hands. As he started his descent, he threw Searo off-balance as well, and they both fell towards the ground below. Searo turned his head towards Mako midair and screamed.

“You little wretch!! I was doing nothing but trying to survive!! Weakling like you deserve to perish to feed the powerful like I-” his sentence was cut off as Mako socked him in the jaw as he had earlier, and Searo’s eyes turned into ember. He threw a punch back, but Mako blocked it with the side of his arm. The ground below them grew closer as they continued their fistfight. 

Searo’s weapon had fallen to the right of Mako, so he grasped it and hooked it to the back of his shirt. Searo threw a side punch, slamming directly into the side of Mako’s face. Mako attempted to kick back in retaliation, but the wind resistance made him turn upside down when he raised his leg. Seizing the opportunity, Searo attempted to throw yet another punch, but was interrupted when their descent reached the first skyscraper. The giant billboard split them apart, and for many seconds, they couldn’t see each other through the billboard.

Anxious to still get in some punches while Mako was turned the wrong way, Searo raised his fist when they fell to the bottom of the billboard, but instead met Mako turned back the right way around with his own fist raised.

“Hey,” he smirked. He slammed his fist directly into Searo’s face, and the blood from his nose rose up and blocked his vision. He swatted blindly in Mako’s direction, but missed all of his punches. Looking directly below him, Mako saw the factory used to produce the fuel for the planetary travel ships. Knowing Searo wouldn’t otherwise oblige to come near Mako so they could both attempt to land safely, he unhinged the metal pole from his back and swung it around Searo’s waist. He then grabbed the other end with his other hand, pulling it towards him and thus Searo as well. 

“Just what in Sckaliber’s name to you think you’re doing?!?” Searo roared back, still blind from his own blood. 

“Saving your hide,” Mako replied back through gritted teeth, sweating profusely at the thought of missing his fall. Searo repeatedly bashed Mako’s face in, but Mako could do nothing but withstand it as they fell farther and farther. 

“Could you stop trying to kill me for five seconds??!” Mako yelled between punches to the head. Searo only roared back in retaliation. Mako, having enough, curved his face backwards and slammed it into Searo’s, knocking his aggressor’s lights out as he fell limp. Mako, starting to feel more woozy than ever, saw spots of his vision go black. “Not- now…” he began, but couldn’t finish his sentence before he passed out midair.

* * *   

Mako awoke covered in a thick, pink substance dotted with turquoise and purple. It completely engulfed him, leaving only his head and hand exposed. He attempted to pry his limbs out, with little success. However, he noticed Searo’s metal pole to his side, and shoved his arm as far out as he could towards the object. The substance fought against his movements, but he pushed his arm far enough to reach the pole with the tips of his fingers. He clawed as much as he could, but couldn’t reach it. The substance rose further and further up towards his head, and he felt the weight of a thousand boulders come upon his chest. Yet, at the last moment, the pole rose, and jammed itself under Mako’s limbs.

Searo, holding the pole, unjammed Mako from the substance, with Mako tumbling onto the metal ground below. 

“This,” Searo said, “Is for making me lose my crew,” as he slammed his pole into Mako’s side. “This,” he said, “is for making me lose my vehicle,” as he slammed it into his face. “This,” Searo said, “is for making me fall for over a minute straight,” and he received another hit to the side. “And this,” Searo said, “is for saving my skin,” as he helped Mako to his feet.

“You’re still the lowest scum I’ve ever met,” Searo made clear. “And you still made me lose my crew. But, I can’t deny you just saved me from becoming a stain on the ground.”

“The only reason I managed to save you in the first place is because I made you fall as well,” Mako replied.

“Yeah, that much is true. But hat’s not what I’m talking about. I mean that even after all that, you still didn’t finish me off. As much as you’re sewer grime, you’re at least respectable sewer grime.” Mako stood there, thinking of what to say. “Get out,” he continued, guestering towards an exit with his pole. “I don’t want to see your face again.”

Mako started towards the exit, when Searo added, “But I don’t want you to see my face again either.” Searo tossed Mako a piece of molding bread, which Mako caught in midair. “Take this. And keep it this time.”

“I’ll try,” Mako said. And with that, he marched out of the factory and towards the road ahead. 

Mako trudged against the soaking asphalt on all fours, his hair falling down over his eyes. He crawled forwards with the little strength he had left, scouring the monsooning area for food. His stomach felt like it was tearing open and taking him with it, and all he could do was nothing but beg, plead a meal materialized in front of him. He turned his face down in pain to the moonlit gray stone beneath him, where he could see his reflection in the pools of water. He was dark skinned with medium,  straight, jet-black hair. His mustache was thin and black, and his eyes were blue. All he could pay attention to, however, was his tight skin, so tight he could trace his jawbone. 

Further Mako marched, wanting nothing more than to either eat or be put out of his misery. Fortunately for him, however, he got the better of those two options first. Lying ahead of him was a dumpster in the dark alleyway, its lid thrown open and its contents soaked. On the edge of it he could see a molding piece of bread, with bite marks originating from who knows what. In this world, a delicacy. He crawled further and further onward, his determination granting him the strength to reach the dumpster with speed. Desperately, he swung his arm upwards, grabbed the meal, and pulled it back down to where he was. He rotated on his hip, pressed his back against the building the dumpster was connected to, and began to reminisce. 

Ten years ago, such a scenario would’ve seemed outlandish to Mako. Yes, the world was struggling, but it had hope going for it. People believed the Earth could be saved from the destruction it caused. Others disagreed, but mainly only the ones who were wealthy enough to do so. After decades of taxation and environmental pollution, the government had finally created planetary travel technology, and distributed it to the wealthy looking for a new way of life from the corrupted planet they were once bound. The government fled along with them, and have since abandoned earth and everything to do with it. Those who could not afford planetary travel or were not in a high enough position to achieve it were left to rot, while those wealthy had escaped the hellhole.

Ever since that fateful day in 2102, the Earth had reverted back in over a century's time. Technology like cell phones and computers were too complex to create and mass-distribute, so the world had turned to rotary phones of the olden times. Fashion came back around to the way it was in the 1940’s, and mobs and gangs even roamed the streets looking for their next victim. With the pollution blackening the sky, the world was stuck in an eternal midnight where there was no government, no order, no society. Loose businesses were held up the the strengths of the owner’s backs and nothing more. In a world such as this, a simple piece of bread was a godsend. 

All these thoughts rushed through Mako’s head in an instant, and he raised the bread to take a bite. As he did, however, two blinding columns of golden light twisted around the corner. Then more, then more. Suddenly a dozen metal cars shot into view, speeding around the corner. Trailing behind them was a mechanical beast on wheels, with jagged metal edges piercing the cold air around them. Mako knew exactly who would be on top of that vehicle. 

“Howdy, mutt!” a voice boomed from a megaphone on top of the car. Attached to the voice was a muscular man with brown curly hair and a street lamp pole he used as a blunt weapon. His black and white pinstripe suit was torn over the years, but still functional, and his fedora was a signature feature his enemies had come to fear. He was Searo, the commander of the Ivory Talons, the most infamous mob around where Mako trailed. They had met before, but Mako got the feeling that all of Searo’s victims blended together to him. Only in a dystopia like this would a man like Searo be allowed to exist. 

“I see-” he started, as the megaphone screeched and pierced Mako’s ears. “This dang thing doesn’t work,” Searo noted, and tossed it to the side, batteries and plastic cracking open on the rock below. “I see you’ve got something for me!” he resumed in his echoing voice. His goons laughed as they tumbled out of their vehicles one by one. “Shut up,” he snapped. “Anyways! Hand over that meal and we'll leave you mostly conscious,” he offered. “Actually, maybe that would be worse,” he realized. “Who knows? We’ll find out.”

Mako couldn’t gather the strength to protest. He was starving too much. Searo leapt from the top of his vehicle, slamming the ground with the force of a bodybuilder. “Away,” Mako managed to mutter. “Go a-” his sentence was cut short when a thick metal rod slammed his jaw and cast his body to the side. His head slammed into the brick building next to him and his vision grew fuzzy. 

Searo laughed and slowly walked up to Mako “Look, here’s the part where I’m supposed to go ‘No one’s talked to me like that before, boy,’ but honestly, you’re not the first to do that.” Searo finished walking and kneeled down next to Mako. “Just keep in mind that none of those people are around anymore.” Mako was raised by his collar and thrown to the side onto the bread. He quickly ripped off a piece and shoved it in his pocket before Searo snatched it from the alleyway ground. Searo raised his pole above Mako’s head, but ceased before slamming it down. “Y’know,” he said wryly. “Letting you starve would be much more fun.” He started his echoing laugh once more, and turned around towards his augmented vehicle. “Boys!!” he yelled. He held the piece of bread high in the air. “We’re feasting tonight!” Cheers from his underling erupted as they climbed back into their cars and took off, their tires upheaving water upon Mako as they left. He didn’t even have the strength to stay conscious. 

Several hours later, Mako shot up in a sweat, or in a pool of rainwater. He couldn’t tell. At this point his stomach was so painful he felt as if it was dissolving before his eyes. He jammed his fist into his pocket and drew the scrap of bread he had tore off, and shoved it into his mouth. Never having a meal so good in weeks, Mako made sure to savor every last bite. His stomach felt as if it was regrowing. After finishing the last bite and his stomach fulfilled, he rose to his legs and wiped the blood off his jaw. Finally with the strength to do so, he turned his head to the sky and yelled, “You filthy lurches! If karma is a thing, you better start praying!” After a moment of silence, he heard engines revving nearby. Much to Mako’s dismay, it turns out that the Ivory Talons hadn’t gone far to enjoy their meal.

Twisting around the corner once more was Searo and his crew, in hot pursuit. Mako instantly turned his back and bolted for it. The cars behind him grew closer and closer, and Mako didn’t have the strength to continue running in a straight line for long. As the soggy road ahead turned to the left, Mako noticed the cliff edge to the right of it. Hugging the rim of the mountain was an elevated road leading to the further parts of town, raised thousands of meters above the city below. Skyscrapers lined the city below, and directly below them was a long-since destroyed factory which had developed the thick liquids used to fuel the ships used to transport off-world. Mako had always wanted to venture down to the city, but the ruins of the current world had left any path to the city miles below obstructed. With very little choice, he leaped forth.

He landed on the rim of the concrete, and felt his arm shatter. He rolled onto the red-stained road, continuing his path forwards. Although many cars on the mountain above stopped moving, the one Searo inhabited veered right and slammed onto the road right behind him. He desperately careened forwards, but knew he couldn’t outrun the vehicle, as much as the metal daggers coating the frame were probably interfering with aerodynamics. 

Once again out of options so soon, he lunged towards a streetlamp on the edge of the concrete guardrail and held on for dear life, as his legs dangled above a hundred-meter fall to the buildings below. Searo shot his vehicle right in retaliation, crashing into the concrete holding the streetlamp and thus Mako above the dark sea below. The pale stone shattered into chunks, and the street lamp jolted over the edge, horizontally looming above the fall with Mako still fused to the end.The hatch at the top of the amalgamate car shot open as Searo stepped out to meet Mako head-on.

“Filthy lurch,” Searo mocked. “If karma is a thing, you better start praying. He stomped over the jagged concrete remains of the guard rail and out onto the precarious streetlamp. He held out his metal street sign pole out to Mako to hit him off.

“Nice haircut,” Mako struggled to say, slowly slipping off the street pole. “How’d you get it, from a blender?” Searo’s eyes narrowed, but he was otherwise unaffected. 

“Well, it would make sense for you to get out some last-minute insults before you die,” Searo noted. “Again,” he added. “Y’know,” maybe I shouldnt’a let you starve and just killed you on the spot. After all, what am I, a movie villain?”

“Nah,” Mako replied. “A live one.” Searo’s eyes narrowed further. He took a step towards the pole where Mako was hanging. He held his weapon out towards him threateningly. 

“Ooh, seeing you fall is gonna be real fun.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“Oh please, there’s no way you’re getting out this one,” Searo snapped back. The street lamp creaked more and more off the road with each step Searo took towards Mako.

Right as Searo raised his beam to swing at him, he stated,“You’re right.Unfortunately, you aren’t either.” As Searo’s beam curved towards Mako’s head, he let go of the pole and clutched Searo’s weapon with both hands. As he started his descent, he threw Searo off-balance as well, and they both fell towards the ground below. Searo turned his head towards Mako midair and screamed.

“You little wretch!! I was doing nothing but trying to survive!! Weakling like you deserve to perish to feed the powerful like I-” his sentence was cut off as Mako socked him in the jaw as he had earlier, and Searo’s eyes turned into ember. He threw a punch back, but Mako blocked it with the side of his arm. The ground below them grew closer as they continued their fistfight. 

Searo’s weapon had fallen to the right of Mako, so he grasped it and hooked it to the back of his shirt. Searo threw a side punch, slamming directly into the side of Mako’s face. Mako attempted to kick back in retaliation, but the wind resistance made him turn upside down when he raised his leg. Seizing the opportunity, Searo attempted to throw yet another punch, but was interrupted when their descent reached the first skyscraper. The giant billboard split them apart, and for many seconds, they couldn’t see each other through the billboard.

Anxious to still get in some punches while Mako was turned the wrong way, Searo raised his fist when they fell to the bottom of the billboard, but instead met Mako turned back the right way around with his own fist raised.

“Hey,” he smirked. He slammed his fist directly into Searo’s face, and the blood from his nose rose up and blocked his vision. He swatted blindly in Mako’s direction, but missed all of his punches. Looking directly below him, Mako saw the factory used to produce the fuel for the planetary travel ships. Knowing Searo wouldn’t otherwise oblige to come near Mako so they could both attempt to land safely, he unhinged the metal pole from his back and swung it around Searo’s waist. He then grabbed the other end with his other hand, pulling it towards him and thus Searo as well. 

“Just what in Sckaliber’s name to you think you’re doing?!?” Searo roared back, still blind from his own blood. 

“Saving your hide,” Mako replied back through gritted teeth, sweating profusely at the thought of missing his fall. Searo repeatedly bashed Mako’s face in, but Mako could do nothing but withstand it as they fell farther and farther. 

“Could you stop trying to kill me for five seconds??!” Mako yelled between punches to the head. Searo only roared back in retaliation. Mako, having enough, curved his face backwards and slammed it into Searo’s, knocking his aggressor’s lights out as he fell limp. Mako, starting to feel more woozy than ever, saw spots of his vision go black. “Not- now…” he began, but couldn’t finish his sentence before he passed out midair.

* * *   

Mako awoke covered in a thick, pink substance dotted with turquoise and purple. It completely engulfed him, leaving only his head and hand exposed. He attempted to pry his limbs out, with little success. However, he noticed Searo’s metal pole to his side, and shoved his arm as far out as he could towards the object. The substance fought against his movements, but he pushed his arm far enough to reach the pole with the tips of his fingers. He clawed as much as he could, but couldn’t reach it. The substance rose further and further up towards his head, and he felt the weight of a thousand boulders come upon his chest. Yet, at the last moment, the pole rose, and jammed itself under Mako’s limbs.

Searo, holding the pole, unjammed Mako from the substance, with Mako tumbling onto the metal ground below. 

“This,” Searo said, “Is for making me lose my crew,” as he slammed his pole into Mako’s side. “This,” he said, “is for making me lose my vehicle,” as he slammed it into his face. “This,” Searo said, “is for making me fall for over a minute straight,” and he received another hit to the side. “And this,” Searo said, “is for saving my skin,” as he helped Mako to his feet.

“You’re still the lowest scum I’ve ever met,” Searo made clear. “And you still made me lose my crew. But, I can’t deny you just saved me from becoming a stain on the ground.”

“The only reason I managed to save you in the first place is because I made you fall as well,” Mako replied.

“Yeah, that much is true. But hat’s not what I’m talking about. I mean that even after all that, you still didn’t finish me off. As much as you’re sewer grime, you’re at least respectable sewer grime.” Mako stood there, thinking of what to say. “Get out,” he continued, guestering towards an exit with his pole. “I don’t want to see your face again.”

Mako started towards the exit, when Searo added, “But I don’t want you to see my face again either.” Searo tossed Mako a piece of molding bread, which Mako caught in midair. “Take this. And keep it this time.”

“I’ll try,” Mako said. And with that, he marched out of the factory and towards the road ahead. 

The young boy runs briskly through a meadow until he slips and stumbles on the soil bedding. He crashes forward onto the earth and screeches a sour note. Oh, how he roars in pain as his cheeks stain crimson! With his watering eyes pinched close, the young boy bites his lips in an attempt to compress his screams.

Whimpering, he turns onto his back and opens his eyes to gaze at the sky. 

He lifts his fragile hand to his face to dry his tears, but the boy freezes in fear when he sees the streaks of blood on his palm. He replays his father’s scoldings in his head: don’t you dare start to cry again, you pathetic and helpless baby. When will you grow into a man like me? And so the boy sits up and wipes his hands on his khaki pants, but (the stings of his wound too strong to ignore) he scrunches his nose into his eyebrows, squeezing his eyelids shut to prevent any escapees from his tear ducts. Anxiety overflows his tiny body like an early spring flood. He buries his head into his knees, ashamed of his actions. Why can’t I be a man like my father? He repeatedly asks himself. Ah, but suddenly the boy recalls that his father is a miserable, divorced alcoholic who was fired from a company two years ago and is still jobless.

He unfolds his body from his legs and brings his head to the sky.

Why would the boy want to be a man like his father anyway? He is the epitome of pathetic and helpless! 

Oh, for goodness’ sake, the now liberated boy must’ve hit his head too hard on the ground! The poor, little rascal forgot that his father is the reason why he ran away in the first place!

Sometimes a certain sound will yank me back a couple years. A certain song, to be precise. Every lyric, every word, every note, every syllable uttered, takes me back to a simpler time. Just mere years ago. I sit in the back seat of my dad’s turquoise Toyota Corolla, my brother in the seat next to me. The radio is on, volume high. That song, I remember it. A wave of emotions rush into me. What is this feeling? A sad happiness circulates through my body. But here I sit, in the present. No way to go back now. The simpler times are but mere memories now. 

“Day 238, Year 3078. Citizens of Europa, good morning. I wish everyone a great day, as always. Please go to your respective workplaces, and begin your duties.” The coarse, monotone voice of Supreme Chancellor Ballen penetrated Oliver’s room through the speakerphone, sharply echoing off the four walls of his government-supplied quarters. Oliver proceeded to his dresser and zipped up one of the fifty government-issued navy blue jumpsuits folded neatly in the dresser. He swung open the door and walked to the train station, a mere two minute walk. Hundreds of others living in District 92 made their way to the train station, all wearing the plain, blue jumpsuits. He met eyes with three others, all walking the same path to the train station. Oh, that’s Marty. Jenna, too. Is that Scarlett? He squinted at her name tag closer. Ah, it is. He considered them friends. They were, in a sense. Everyday for the past decade, he had seen them in this same spot. Am I their friend? He thought to himself as he climbed the steps of train 92-37, and sat in his assigned seat 37-C. Sure, they had made eye contact with him for the past decade, but did they even notice him? There was no way of truly knowing. After all, no one could know what others were thinking. For the rest of the ride, he, along with the other ninety-nine passengers sat in silence, listening to the praise of honorable citizens by Ballen playing on the speakerphones along the ceiling. What else could they do, after all? Talk? The days of talking were only a myth to the citizens of Europa. Oliver knew that better than anyone else. After all, his father, only thirteen years ago, was killed by the Cop-Bots after he had uttered a single syllable. In Europa, there was no utterance of syllables. The Cop-Bots made sure of that. Only the ringing, robotic voice of Chancellor Ballen through the speakerphones of the city and the cyclic mechanical whirring of the Cop-Bots. Oliver departed the train and walked the 100 meters to his workplace, a government factory with the sole purpose of producing the juice. Careful not to bump into the Cop-Bots patrolling the street, Oliver entered the factory and walked to his assigned station, the mixing station. For the next ten hours of his life, Oliver did nothing but mix the ethanol paste needed to make the juice. A five minute lunch break for all the workers of the factory, but that was it. Back to work. The juice was a necessary ingredient for the health of all 3 million robots of Europa, from Supreme Chancellor Ballen, to the Cop-Bots. It fueled their every move, and stimulated the electrical currents that ran through their wires. “Workers of Europa, the workday is over. What a productive day we had. Please return to your quarters now.” The voice of Ballen filled the factory. Oliver exited the factory, along with 50,000 of his coworkers. A gentle breeze tingled his neck as he looked at the dark night sky. Pure black. Nothingness. Out in the distance, though, he saw a few bright lights, small specks in the dark black sea. His thoughts were private, but he was sure that every other citizen had the same thought as him. The identical thought that rang in every citizen’s cranium, No escape, no escape…

Europa is a moon of Jupiter. Life is thought to be habitable in Europa.

Vince slammed his van’s door shut, the soundwaves vibrating off the rocky walls around him. Turning his body completely around while fiddling with his collar, he squinted his eyes at the terrain around him. The gorge he was in was composed of drab gray stone walls, scarcely illuminated by a dull steel horizon. The air was cold, but calm, leaving him with his thoughts. Vince’s chest heaved as he let in and out a deep breath of the icy air. His van was suspended at the end of an edge inside the gully, but he had certainty it would not fall. He had a path to set foot on, and such thoughts would not get in his way. 

Vince studied his attire with the calm wind swirling around his frame. He had baggy tan cargo jeans and a black and red plaid button-down shirt, the collar of which he thought was particularly itchy. He possessed a tan tie and black leather shoes as well. Although not the most fashionable of attire, Vince wore it strictly out of functionality. He pulled out a crumpled piece of paper with hastily written pen on it. It read, “Visit this place with attire from your most golden of times. From there, you will know what to do.” Although he was ashamed to admit it, Vince’s fondest memories consisted of him decked out like a lumberjack. 

With the ground ahead too narrow and treacherous to bring his trusty van, Vince decided to go ahead on foot. He stashed the slip of paper in his right pocket and stepped onwards. He reminded himself not to peer down the gully as he slowly shifted his weight from foot to foot, shimmeying across a thin strip of dirt suspended in the otherwise abyssal gully. As he went step by step, he recalled his journey up until this point. 

He remembered that many days ago, he had awoken in his mahogany bed due to his incessant alarm, which told him to get ready for a drab day as a handyman. Despite nothing out of the ordinary about this, when he slipped out of his flannel sheets, he clumsily slammed into the drawer next to his bed. He had clamped his side and jumped up and down where he had hit the corner, but after a while of that, he glanced back at the drawer. His less-than-competent ballet stunt had caused the drawers to hang open, and through the piles of tissues and combs, he had spotted a piece of paper. He plucked it from the drawer, opened it, and read the text inside. Who knows how long that piece of paper had been lying dormant in there? Certainly not him. 

In the current time zone, however, Vince was dangling over an apparent bottomless pit in the remote sections of Yellowstone. He closed his eyes and took in another breath, then skipped over the last section, stumbling on the edge of the cliff he had jumped on to. As suddenly as he had jumped, Vince found himself descending, and he let out a yelp as he did so. As quickly as he could react, he grappled on to the unstable rocks, and managed to catch his momentum for a second. Peering down at the darkness below, he observed chunks of stone flying down, never to be seen again. 

Determined to escape his current situation, he swung his legs over to the right, catching his leather shoes on a rock jagging out of the side of the cliff. With his face wrinkly and tense, he slowly yet surely pulled his frame over the cliff and onto stable ground. Immediately he collapsed on to the grass below him, and let out yet another sigh, this time out of relief. That was, until he saw his van on the other side of the gully, and he realized he had no substantial way to get back to it. Out of options, he pulled out his note again, and peered at the map drawn on it. Dead ahead lie the “X” on the map, and he knew he had to continue his journey. He sprung to his leather shoes, and trekked onward. 

As he brushed across the tall grass, he took in his surroundings. Around him the cold air swelled and curled around him like a snake to its prey. It invaded his nostrils and he felt as if an impossibly thin layer of frost came around him, cold but almost comforting in a way. With each leg he shoved forwards through the strikingly green grass, he got faster and faster, more and more determined to reveal the secrets behind the “X” on the note. The earth below him slowly rose in altitude as he felt minuscule drops of snow pepper his face. The closer he approached the peak of the path he was on, the more he wondered if what he was doing was worth it. He had no reason to listen to the note outside of curiosity, but that was enough for Vince. 

A strange figure broke through the horizon, which seemed cylindrical from afar. With the sky spilling with orange above his head, he decided to pick up his pace and move towards his target. He romped through mud as he went, ruining his good leather shoes. He hoped that didn’t interfere with the process he was trying to achieve. He stepped onward to what he observed in the distance, breathing heavily in anticipation. The further he walked, the greater the hues of the orange sky above became. As the fire in the sky spread, Vince approached the figure. It seemed to be a giant boulder, with gold trim. Why a rock had such pristine trim Vince did not know, but it did not make him any less intrigued. 

He glanced at his trusty map once more, only to see that the X was right ahead from where he was standing. Vince knew this boulder was somehow related to this, and he had played enough video games in his day to know that wherever he was intended to end up at was directly behind that boulder. He walked up to it, and unsuccessfully tried to push it. With its massive size, it was probably best that he remove shoving it from the equation entirely so that it wouldn’t crush him. Unsatisfied with the fact that the boulder didn’t seem to be budging, he tried studying the smaller details of it to see if he could use any form of leverage to shove it in a direction that wouldn’t crush him. Nearby he found a log, and he used his strength to hoist it up. 

As he dragged it in the mud, it left a trail behind, causing it to root deeper in the earth and become harder to drag. In his increasing frustration, Vince snapped off the end he had his burly fist around so it would be easier to drag. Once he reached the boulder with his newfound leverage, he jammed it into a crevice in the unmoving rock and jumped towards the sky, then fell back down on the log so hard it snapped into fragments that fell to the frosting grass below. He stumbled due to the impact, and nearly rolled off the edge of the basin once again.  Before he could fall, though, he grasped onto the crevice in the rock, which had loosened due to his efforts. Instead of careening off the edge, the square of rock swung open like a door, which swung open over the abyss with Vince still attached. Holding onto the door for dear life, Vince had to devise a way to get back onto safe land before he fell like the rocks had before. 

Vince stared at where the door had opened from the boulder, and noticed golden hinges. As the door he was fused to slowly crept further and further over the black depths below, he saw the hinges creaking and collapsing. As he studied the hinges further, however, he noticed they did not have a break built into them. Turns out his boring career did have a use. With this knowledge, he let the door slowly creek all the way in a near-circle, and when he started to see the gold pop out, leapt out towards safe land in a dangerous effort. It seemed to go in slow motion, and it looked like his outstretched hands weren’t going to make it, but he shot his legs outwards behind him in midair. Despite the fact that he was barely able to slam his hands into the ground in front of him, his legs fell on top of the door behind him. With him now planking above instant death, he grabbed the other section of the log he had left behind, which was anchored with the earth underneath it, and safely swung over. Now on land, he crawled through the small rectangle in the stone, and braced himself for what he was about to see. 

On the other side was a purley golden room, composed of the same material as the trim and hinges outside. The unilluminated room had a balcony further into it, with a small flight of stairs on either side of the railing. That was not the main attraction, however, instead it was the man placed on that balcony. Although he had his back to Vince, he could still spot out a few noticeable features on him. His clothes seemed futuristic, not in the sense that he was wearing a multicolored space suit and a cyborg visor, but in the sense that it wasn’t clothes you’d see today. The collar rose to the man’s jawbone, and the pants alternated from very tight to very baggy every few inches. He noticed mud on the man’s shoes as well, presumably because he had committed to the trek the same way Vince had. Vince opened his mouth to speak, but the man beat him to it.

“Vince. You’ve put in quite the trek since you’ve last been in your leisurely home in Michigan. What compelled you to come so far, despite having no idea what my note meant?” Vince recognized the voice as old and worn, but wise-sounding. After a second to process how weird all of this was, Vince finally responded.

“A feeling.”

“A feeling, eh?” The man said sarcastically. He turned around with a smirk on his face. His wizard-esque wispy beard grew all the way down to his waist, and his chest was lined with pockets. In one of the pockets Vince noticed a pen. 

“Okay, fine. I was bored. You try living in Michigan as a handyman for thirty years with no change in your life whatsoever.” The old man smiled like he knew something Vince didn’t. 

“Well,” he said. “If you’ve come so far, I might as well show you what I’ve called you for.” He spread out his hand and held them to the ceiling, his mouth scarcely opening as he silently chanted a few words. As he did, the walls around them shifted. What Vince saw blew him away. Illuminating on the once-dark walls was him, him as a baby in his crib, him accepting his job as a handyman, him driving his reliable van out to the middle of nowhere to accept a note written by some stranger. Oddly enough, however, Vince noticed memories that were not his. He has a slightly weathered Vince sipping coffee at his house, he saw him with young children on his lap he had never met before. The more he aged, the more he realized he looked like the old man. 

Vince turned himself to stare at the man with dinner plate eyes. “You’re- you’re me,” he said, almost as a statement instead of a question. In response, the man took off his strange attire, and underneath, he wore lumberjack attire. Tan cargo jeans, a red and black plaid shirt, and a tan tie. 

“You’re quite right,” the old man exclaimed, the rapidly rotating memories shared between them constantly changing the lighting on his face like a  projector. The old man guestered towards the images around them with thin, sprawled hands. “You’ve forgotten all of these, haven’t you?” He asked, knowing the answer. Vince knew he did not expect a response from his lips. Elder Vince shook his head and lowered his limbs. “Thirty years in perpetual boredom has lessened you, has it not?” he continued. This time he knew he wanted a response. It was what Vince would’ve wanted out of himself.

“Yes,” he stated. “It has.” He craned his neck around the swirling memories around him, all of which were flooding back to him by the moment. “What is this place?” he finally asked.

“Ah,” Elder Vince replied. He chuckled, and could hear the old man say under his breath “I forgot that last time, too.” “This is the Rift, hidden away from the world,” he answered. “It shows us glimpses of our memories, so we can reminisce on what once was and use it to help us as we move forward. To connect with it truly, however, you must link yourself to your fondest memories as much as possible; ie, the clothes we’re wearing.” Suddenly that made much more sense. Elder Vince turned to his former self once again, this time with a more serious look on his face. “Vince. We can not keep forgetting. Every time we get to your age, we always wind up here on a path of rediscovery. But each time changes slightly, as there is a butterfly effect. At least, that’s what I told myself thirty years ago in this chamber.” He shook his head. “We cannot allow this to keep happening.”

“How?” Vince questioned. If there was any way to escape the cycle he had newly been introduced to, he would pounce on that opportunity as soon as he could. Elder Vince answered simply. 

“We do what we’ve been doing for all the other attempts, and hope we’ve come far enough that something will change. Here,” he said, slowly waving his hand at the wall to the side. All the memories froze in place and disappeared, except for one where he had guestered his hand. Vince saw himself as a young boy, maybe four or five, in tan cargo jeans, a plaid shirt, and tan tie. He couldn’t remember why he was dressed in such attire, but he could tell by the infectious grin on his face that he was happy. 

“This is where we must go,” Elder Vince claimed. He strode down from the balcony to meet his past self. “Here is where we can remember things. Here is where we can end the cycle. Here is where we must go.” Elder Vince outstretched his hand, offering it to his former self. Vince saw his gesture, warmley smirked, and took his hand. Together they walked towards his happiest memory, for a chance to end the cycle or at least make it better for him to come. 

Vince slammed his van’s door shut, the soundwaves vibrating off the rocky walls around him. Turning his body completely around while fiddling with his collar, he squinted his eyes at the terrain around him. The gorge he was in was composed of drab gray stone walls, scarcely illuminated by a dull steel horizon. The air was cold, but calm, leaving him with his thoughts. Vince’s chest heaved as he let in and out a deep breath of the icy air. His van was suspended at the end of an edge inside the gully, but he had certainty it would not fall. He had a path to set foot on, and such thoughts would not get in his way. 

The following document has been extracted from a mysterious book on Patricia Tubb. Since then Tubb has gone on to be added to the national missing persons list, but with this book found within the rubble of her home, we hope to finally put an end to the mystery of her disappearance, once and for all. 

In the year of 1996, there lived a girl named Patricia, who lived happily with her parents. For many years prior, her dad had been working for hours each day, and her mom had been at home cooking and cleaning. Her grandmother also lived there, but mostly just stayed in the basement resting on the bed. Patricia’s dad said that grandma Marian was getting worse, but Patricia didn’t really know what that meant. Was she getting worse at solitaire? She used to play that a lot. But now she doesn’t. Not much made sense in the nine year old mind of Patricia, but that was fine. 

It was her birthday, and everyone was coming. She paced back and forth in front of the grandfather clock as she contemplated in suspense, waiting for the door to swing open. She could get a doll! Or dollhouse! Or… anything doll-related! Really Patricia’s tastes were quite simple. After half an hour of anticipation, Patricia’s waiting was rewarded with the doorbell ringing throughout the family room.

 As each one of them walked through the door, she ran up to them, giggled, and hugged their legs, because she couldn’t really hug anything else. She wasn’t all that tall. Despite that though, all of her relatives greeted her with “Oh my, look how tall you’ve become!” or something along those lines. She attempted to frown and cross her arms and go, “I’m not tall! I can’t even reach the cookie jar!” Her relatives laughed, and her mom gave her a playful glare. “Since when do you try to reach the cookie jar?” her mom asked. “Um… never…” Patrica said, holding her hands behind her back and looking away with a guilty face. 

Her mom turned her face into a playful smile and ran over to her daughter. She put her up on her shoulders and started to bound around the living room they were all gathered in, and Patricia laughed the entire way. Her giggles filled the halls as she traveled down them, yelling, “Giddyup, horsey!” to her mom. They looped around the first floor for a while, and then Patricia’s mom stopped and fell onto the couch in the living room, all tired out. “What? Why’d the horsey rides stop? She asked her mom?” Her mom responded with a wheeze. “She’s all tuckered out,” her uncle James said.

 He was a tall man with a greying beard and a cap, and had a cyan plastic pipe in his mouth, due to a request from Patricia. She said it made him look like a giraffe with a blue tongue sticking out. Uncle James couldn’t argue with that. “Aw. But I liked horsey rides!” she exclaimed. “Well, don’t horseys need to rest?” Uncle James said. “Yeah, I guess…” Patricia said. Uncle James laughed, then gave Patricia’s hair a ruffle as he stood up and walked to the bathroom. Patricia thought that Uncle James looked like a giant when he stood up. As he walked away, her dad scooped up Patricia and plopped her onto the couch. Patricia did her classic laugh as her dad sat down right next to her. “So, kiddo,” he started. “Enjoying the party so far?” he asked. “Yes!” Patricia yelled. “I like it- this much!!” she said, holding out her arms really wide. “Well, I’m glad to hear that!” her dad said. And with that, the front door opened. 

“Yaaaaaay!!! More people!” she yelled as she ran full speed at the door in a hugging position. But then she ran full force into a big, muscular leg instead of the arms of a family member. “Oof!” she cried as she launched backwards, and plopped onto the floor from bouncing off of the leg. Her head was a little dizzy, and she looked up to see who was there. Two huge, towering men with dark shades were staring back at her, or at least she thought they were through the lens. They were holding black suitcases, and they looked like they had communication chips in their ears. “Oh, stop this nonsense!” Patricia heard an elderley voice say from behind the two men. “I can go inside my own relative’s house without protection!” the voice continued to say as she emerged from between the two men. Patricia recognized the woman as her Grandmother Sophia. The two guards looked at her grandmother doubtfully after what she had said, but Grandmother Sophia just glared at the guards, and they silently nodded and went outside the house. 

Patricia waited until the right moment to say something, and there was a long silence. Then, Grandma Sophia smiled. “Grandmaaaaaaa!!” she yelled, and then ran towards the figure of her grandmother. “Oh, dear! You’ve gotten mighty tall since I’ve last seen you!” her grandmother said. Patricia didn’t say anything this time, because it was true. Patricia hadn’t seen Grandmother Sophia in years. Grandma Sophia and Grandma Marian looked very similar, although Grandma Marian was apparently doing a lot worse. Whatever that meant. 

Grandma Sophia owned a state-famous drug factory and pharmacy called Sophia’s Care, which made drugs to help people throughout the state of Michigan. In the past, when Patricia asked Grandma Sophia about it, she asked: “Drugs? Aren’t drugs bad?” Her Grandmother laughed. “The good kind of drugs, silly,” her grandmother said. “Oh,” Patricia replied, feeling dumb. She didn’t know there were good drugs. She thought those were called medicine. “Oh, don’t be so down,” her grandmother said, clearly hearing the tone in Patricia’s voice. “We all can’t know everything in this world,” Grandmother Sophia said. But, now, in the present, Patricia wasn’t thinking about that event. She was thinking about presents, blissfully unaware of the implications of the guards. 

As Patricia held her grandmother’s hand and walked into the dining room, the guards glanced at each other and nodded. They each placed their suitcases on the ground and opened them up, and held up a rectangular blue prism object and an ovoid with red liquid inside it. With their objects acquired, they strut towards the front door...

Document 2 will be released to the public shortly, as long as this search turns up any new evidence on the case of Patricia Tubb. 

Two souls, once united, now drifting apart. 

Two ships, once docked at the same port, now drifting alone on the open sea. Yearning, hoping, praying for the return and safe passage of the other. 

Sometimes, they see one another at a distance, always at a distance, afraid to trust again, afraid of the memories of the people they used to be. 

Conversations flit by, aimless as the breeze, but underneath the surface, the two halves long to be whole once again. 

And just when they needed each other the most, the lost souls drifted together again, perhaps guided by the currents of that ever-mysterious ocean, Fate. 

And whether it be by Fate’s currents or the ship’s faithful captain, the heart, the two souls are again one. 

Reunited, 

now and forever.

He closes his fist around one of the iron bars and tugs experimentally. It doesn’t budge. Unsurprising, but disappointing nonetheless. 

No matter. He’s been thrown into jails leagues less guarded than this one. He will escape, undoubtedly. The real issue is --. 

His stomach growls loudly, echoing off of the wet stones. He deflates. Food. God, what he’d give to dive into a meat platter right now. 

But, right. Escaping - escaping is the main objective as of now. Best not to get sidetracked. His family is waiting on him, he would hate to inconvenience them further. And what an inconvenience it is, being trapped behind these flimsy gates. 

He threads a hand through the gap between two bars. His skin stretches, elongating, sliding through the crack easily. He feels his body warp on the molecular level, his very atoms bending and extending to push through the small gap. It used to terrify him, his powers. He’s gotten used to it, though. 

He squeezes through the bars, his body distorting itself horrifically to escape the cell. It would be comical, almost, if not for the way his skin rippled like there was something festering below the surface. 

He escapes successfully and stands opposite the cell he was just in. He’s not sure where exactly the exit is but he’s sure the solution will present itself if he wanders a bit. He takes off in one direction, swinging his arms lazily as he goes. 

At once, a voice calls out. Then another. And then three more. The guards have found him, it seems. That’s okay - he’ll take care of them quickly, and then he will reunite with his family. His family, who waits for him outside. He should hurry, wouldn't want to inconvenience them. 

His arm stretches twenty yards, crossing the distance between him and the closest guard, and punches the poor soldier in the face. He can see the look of horror on the others’ faces. A monster, they must think of him. 

“He has the Devil Powers,” one whispers, affirming his beliefs. 

Devil Powers, indeed. Only the Devil could grant powers such as these. 

He makes quick work of the guards. They are not a match for him, not as he is now. He wipes his hands on the wall, not flinching at the blood that is left behind. It’s okay, it’s not his blood. He keeps walking, the sound of his sandals echoing in the now-quiet dungeon.

Devil Powers are rare, but they are necessary - necessary for him, at least, necessary for what he will one day accomplish. The tasks he has set out to do would kill any normal man. His powers are necessary, as garish as they are. 

He adjusts the hat on his head, thumbing over the holes and weariness it has collected over the years. Yes, his life has been a hard one - but these powers are necessary, he assures himself. So what if they make him a monster? He must be a monster, he would not survive if he was a human. Humans are weak, it is best that he isn’t one - he is better this way. 

He tugs on the brim of the straw hat. He is a monster now, but someday, he will be King.

*MAY 1914:*

May is a young American girl living her adventurous life in Berlin. Ever since she was a child she had dreamed of living in the boisterous and beautiful city. She moved to Germany a mere three months ago with her childhood friend Tarence, and they had just recently bought an adorably quaint apartment on the outskirts of the city, away from the hustle and bustle of the factories. The two girls always found that a quieter workspace was the best way to go, ironic since their job was to write about news in the city center. May recalled the days where she and Tarence would spend hours upon hours sitting on their favourite green park bench, engulfed in imagining the lives of each passerby, creating extravagant life stories from thin air, analyzing their every behavior. They loved to write, write, write. They spent every minute of every day scouring for stories to jot  down and then build into an enticing article for their little newspaper company. Tarence believed that they should expand their horizons and stories through travelling to other countries, however May wanted to keep their small audience and their small German-town topics. She thought that their ‘fame’ would diminish among all of the other big and noteworthy companies. 

*JUNE 1914:*

“Tarence! You better hurry on up before you miss the train now! I need time to say my goodbyes….” May screeched up the elegant staircase. She felt tears pooling in her eyes, unable to speak due to the feeling of barbed wire around her throat, afraid her emotions will spill over the edge in an uncontrollable disaster. Tarence was moving away in order to explore different parts of the world, but more importantly, to write about different subjects and countries. May’s mascara formed long black streaks across her cheeks at the sight of Tarence walking down the staircase with her small blue suitcase. 

“Jesus, May, pull it together would you? It’s not like I’m heading off to the other side of the world for God’s sake. Vienna is only a day trip away, and I’m always free to-”

May’s tears started to gush out, seemingly never ending. Before she could be embraced by those familiar arms, she was bawling, causing such a racket. 

“Oh stop that now, you’ll get snot on my new sweater...” Tarence whispered into May’s ear, causing her to chuckle and cheer up a little. 

“I’ll see you soon my dear, ok?”.

And she was off. 

*JULY 1914:*

‘Gosh I must get the mail, hopefully Tarence has replied!’ thought May mindlessly. ‘There has been news of a very dangerous and evil organization in Serbia….’ her brain continued to wander, ‘I should send word to Joshua to make sure he’s safe…’. Her step brother (Joshua) moved to Serbia when she was at the young age of sixteen, and she undeniably, undoubtedly missed every piece him. They were extremely close before he up and left her with their drunken wreck of a mother. He left without a word. Vanished. Recently reconciled by way of writing to each other, she wanted to make sure he was alright. 

“You worry too much,” she envisioned him saying to her, “you’ll get wrinkles before your thirty at this rate.” 

He use to say it oh so often, but how she wished he were saying it to her face now. ‘I know I’m a worrier, it’s what I do best’, she replied to no one. 

May left her little apartment and walked down the street, the scent of fresh bread from the local bakery floating through the air. She walked silently to the local Schriftsteller (writer’s) Shop, and bought some fresh parchment and wax. After arriving home, she plopped down in front of her gorgeously expensive wooden desk and began to write. 

“Dearest Joshua,” May began, “I hope this letter finds you in good health,” she continued with the expected pleasantries. Following such, she explained through her worries about the Evil Serbian group, apparently called the ‘Black Hand Organization’. Knowing that Joshua wasn’t renowned for making the best decisions, she prayed to any and every God that could possibly be out there, hoping he did not join the group. 

Weeks passed by- no response. But she had figured out what had happened.

*AUGUST 1914:”

“SERBIAN NATIONALISTS SHOOT AND KILL ARCHDUKE FRANZ FERDINAND! LIST OF NAMES BELOW;”

‘The newspapers always tell me what I don’t want to know,’ May grunted, “Joshua might’ve not replied, but I know my answer” she whispered to herself, disappointed in her unrecognizable sibling. ‘My brother is a murderer.’ she repeated to herself, over and over and over, ‘how dizzying to think that my brother has killed someone, the poor Archduke! What will his family think? And his friends?’ She was talking to herself like a real lunatic at this stage, but what else could be expected? Life at that point had become unbearably miserable and depressing. Austria-Hungary had just declared war on Serbia, and neither Tarence nor Joshua sent a word regarding their well-being. May did not care for Joshua anymore. He was a backstabbing murderer who clearly didn’t deserve for anyone to care for him. Tarence, however, still held most of her heart. 

‘Now, where is she…?’ May pondered quietly on a bright saturday morning while sitting comfortably on her cloud-like grey couch. Feeling upset, she rose to make a comforting, piping hot cup of bitter coffee for a warm breakfast drink. She scurried over to her massive glass front door and peered out onto her entry way, expecting a thick roll of thin, dullen paper. 

“Here we go...” she murmured whilst picking up the day’s paper. Careful to not spill her coffee, she gently relaxed herself into a cool, smooth leather chair as she sipped on her drink. She then proceeded to open up the paper to see what was happening lately in the world. 

“Oh god!” May exclaimed. “Life cannot become any worse than this!!”

*SEPTEMBER 1914:*

“AUSTRIA-HUNGARY HAS SPLIT AND ANNEXED SERBIA, NO COUNTRY HAS ADDRESSED THEIR ANNEXATION!”

“Greedy, greedy, greedy little country... Why would they do this? They have only faced backlash but will not relent…” again she questioned the integrity of her neighbouring countries and their intelligence. 

“Obviously if nobody is happy just give back the stolen land! I don’t understand why they are all so selfish!”

*LATE OCTOBER 1914:*

The Serbs, now Hungarians, had tried to form an army in order to push back the Austrians, but they would not budge. They had tried compromising, but to no avail. They had even attempted a rebellion, which was a big mistake as there was a massive loss of life and to no benefit. The Hungarians were trapped under the control of the Austrians and could not relieve themselves of their presence. Not one single country, other than the Austrians, had shown signs of contentment. Instead, the Austrians faced attacks from the French, Germans, and, as to be expected, the aggressive and nosy Swiss. Although half of their population was completely eradicated in these attempted invasions and battles, they would not give up their newly acquired land. 

According to the lists of names in the Wartime News, Tarence had joined a Hungarian battalion to help fight the Austrians, and had then died in the Austrian-Hungarian Bloody Massacre. It was written that she had almost no identification other than a small tattoo required for all soldiers to have. Her name and family was written in her arm with thick black ink, and so May was one of the first to discover that her best friend had died trying to save her country and friends. 

The manner in which the Army messengers were taught to deliver the horribly devastating notice was inexplicably cold and non sentimental. They were told to walk right up to the door of the loved-one, knock, and deliver a hand-written piece of paper with the short and simple sentence saying what no person has ever wanted to read, then calmly and with an impassive, stoic expression say “My apologies”. 

And so that’s exactly what they did. 

*NOVEMBER 1914:*

“No, no. It’s literally impossible. Tarence wouldn’t ever join the army… she never told me… No. I can’t process this….” May squealed, hot salty tears running down her face in endless streams. She felt as if her world had collapsed in on itself, forming a black hole of pain and misery. ‘I have nobody left,’ May thought, her mind racing, “how can this be possible?”. She spoke so softly the stone-faced men in green uniforms barely heard her. May peered through her wet eyelashes straight into one of the gentlemen’s piercing blue eyes, hoping to see something, anything that would tell her that what he was saying wasn’t true. 

“It just can’t be. It can’t!” bewailed May. 

*JANUARY 1920:*

Whistling down the street, hand in hand with one of her closest friends, May smiled. It had been almost five years since the worst events of her lifetime had occurred, and she had been able to dig herself out of her deep, seemingly irresolvable depression. The world was unhappy with the whole situation, but May smiled so brightly that at that moment it didn’t even matter, because she was alright. She made it.

“Alright everybody! Today is another bright and brilliant day in Quick Information Journalism Co., and I am excited to see what we can write about in this greed-ridden mess of a continent!”

May’s employees laughed as her sarcastic Monday morning announcement and swiftly turned back to their notebooks, planning what to put in the Day’s Events article. 

Although the war was technically over as the Hungarians had run out of munitions and funding, no country was happy. Hungary broke out into a massive civil war, which stole millions of lives, yet accomplished absolutely nothing. All of the soldiers lost, time spent, money burned, all for this unhappiness. The greed of the world was shocking and hurt nobody but itself. 

‘All of the misery for what? More land? Space? A larger country? Why would that matter?’ May asked herself, shrugging in disappointment. She had begun to wrap up her autobiography about the pain and misery the disgrace of Austria-Hungary had caused her. 

“They’re just too greedy for their own good.” She whispered, shaking her head side to side as she finished the last sentence of her recount, ‘They’re simply too greedy’.

Mary Mcleod Bethune once said, “If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves and allow those responsible to salve their conscience by believing that they have our acceptance and concurrence. We should, therefore, protest openly everything…that smacks of discrimination or slander.” Bethune’s quote tells us that by not standing up against discrimination we are complacent, and therefore we should always speak up. 

 I do not know when or how many people kicked me down to the point where I stopped speaking up. Where I stopped fighting. This is what happens when we give a little here, take a little there and in the end, we lose ourselves and forfeit our power to fight discrimination. I remember one morning on the way to school I heard a classmate shouting racial slurs. Immediately everyone looked at me, the new black girl on the bus. As I remember this moment, I can still feel their eyes staring at me. The silence on the bus was deafening as if they were waiting for me to say something. 

Unfortunately, I did not say or do anything. I stared straight ahead, my back rigid, pretending that I did not hear; however, I did hear. Did I care? If I did, why did I not speak up? When did it become embarrassing to confront racism? At that moment, I felt as if I abandoned myself and who I was. I made it okay to use this type of language against my family, my friends, and the people I love. 

During these several months at home, I have had time to think and see what has happened to people who have chosen to fight back from their oppressors. It was only until large masses ceased being silent that others suddenly stopped to listen. People started pointing out the blatant wrongdoings around them, they recorded, they wrote, they spoke, the truth. More and more activists stood up for us...for ME.

I think of Mamie Till and how she stood strong and spoke up for her son, Emmett Till. This young boy was beaten, tortured, mutilated, murdered, and left in the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi like a worthless rag. Mamie Till dared to be courageous. She stood firm and showed the world the ugliness of racism, fear, and bigotry. This was the spark that changed not only the nation but the world. Bethune told us that we should, “protest openly everything! That smacks of discrimination or slander.” The next time I heard a peer calling another that very word my back went rigid again, but this time I spoke up and demanded him not to use such degrading language. The entire class was silent, the boy mumbled an incoherent response. By not speaking up previously I had given my permission, I had soothed their conscience.

Mamie Till’s life during her time of loss and anguish embodied Mary Mcleod Bethune’s powerful and inspiring words. Ms. Bethune has taught me NOT to bow down to discrimination, hate, and racism, but to stand firm on what is right even if I stand alone. I will not kneel in the face of fear, and I will not give discrimination a resting place. If we give them a little, how much more will they take? If we give them a pass, when will they stop? We must, no, we have to stand strong together. Today, I am here standing courageously and free in the footprints of the matriarch, Mary Mcleod Bethune, and I will not sit silent!

Someone perches high above the corridor, eyes like a hawk with the stealth to match.

The Watcher dreams of soaring into the heavens, a dark angelic bird. But she’s stuck on the rooftops, suffocating under agony, without an outlet.

Her fantasy has been fractured—she’s human, not avian.

So she has hardened her heart, accepted her pain. Instead of trying to fly, she darts along the shingles of the city, staring up at the stars.

Wandering aimlessly across the skyline.

~~~

Others come to the alleyway for different reasons.

The first scrambles backward through the dirty streets early in the morning, desperately dodging the lunging blows of her pursuer. His knife slices her left forearm, cutting deep, and she gasps.

She stumbles back, eyelids fluttering woozily. Her feet wobble, threatening to fail right then and there and ensure her death.

But she locks her jaw and continues running, using the remainder of her energy to throw herself down a street.

She stops, panting, and collapses with exhaustion after her tormentor loses her within the maze of buildings.

She’s not the first to wander through this particular backstreet. But she is the first to stop and glance around her, to actually look at where she is.

She’s the first to see a blank canvas instead of rough bricks.

A scrap of wood lies in the shadows to her right, and she snatches at it with her hand. She only pauses for a moment before gritting her teeth and scraping the tip of the wood against her bleeding forearm. It must be excruciating, but she ignores the pain and collects her blood on the stick until it coats the edge.

She nods once before striking the wood again, this time against the brick. Her mouth curls into a snarl as she forms images, drawn in her own blood as permanent graffiti.

A heart, slowly breaking itself in half. 

An easel looming over the shredding heart.

A pair of begging, pleading hands.

And a real paintbrush, thousands of times more usable than the stick within her grasp.

She stares at the image. It glares back at her until she finally grimaces, the closest to a smile her face can get.

She returns three times over the next month, her arm scabbing up safely.

Each time, she holds a stolen can of spray paint.

Each time, she adds a different color to her graffiti masterpiece.

Each time, when she turns to collect her spray can, it has disappeared.

After her artwork is finished, she never returns.

Dreams abandoned.

~~~

The second visitor runs frantically into the alleyway, nearly tumbling over his own feet as he snaps pictures of everything he sees with an expensive camera. The fancy equipment doesn't match his dusty, worn attire.

He smiles softly as he quickly takes the angle of the sun and the shadows of the walls into account to gather crisp and clear photos. He snaps beautiful shots of the graffiti on the wall.

The camera automatically prints a few of the pictures, and they fall to the ground, forgotten in the boy’s desperate rush to capture every image.

A man stalks into the alleyway, glaring and shouting loudly as he pins the boy against the wall and spits in his face. The boy’s eyes widen helplessly as the man wrenches the camera from the boy’s neck and places it on his own shoulders.

Then, for good measure, he breaks the boy’s arm, ignoring his gasp of pain. Unfeeling, the man walks away.

The price of being a thief.

The boy sobs, staring at his limp left arm with angry eyes. Then, caught in a fit of rage, he madly grabs at a few of the photos on the ground, tearing them to tiny pieces quickly swept away by the wind.

It’s unclear if he’s angry at himself—or at the system.

The boy turns to look behind him, feral eyes searching for the rest of his forbidden photos, but they’ve disappeared. The boy glances at his mangled arm once more before sobbing harder and running out of the corridor, cursing his passion for photography.

Dreams obliterated.

~~~

Another girl walks slowly into the alleyway in the dead of night, eyes darting from side to side. She unclasps a few stolen sheets of paper from her hands, smiling briefly at them.

Then, using the blank pages and a piece of charcoal from her pocket, she writes a song.

The lyrics flow from her hand as if they’ve been building up inside her for years. Her smile grows brighter.

As the wind picks up, she curls in on herself, eyes trained on the paper, ignoring the falling temperature.

She finally stops writing after about an hour, and immediately begins to sing.

Her voice starts out weak and hoarse, but after a few coughs, the vibrato in her voice shines through, and she sounds perfect. Everything flows, the notes are beautiful, the lyrics are heartbreakingly real.

The girl repeats the chorus a few times as she cranes her head up at the stars and smiles slightly. 

Anyone could tell, from the last lyrics in her life’s song, that she finally feels free.

Her singing stops eventually, and the sheet music drops from her hand as the temperature dips below zero.

The night is bitter, without pity.

They drag away the corpse early the next morning.

But the officers don’t find the paper—the sheet music—they were looking for.

The music has disappeared.

Dreams buried.

~~~

More and more visitors stumble upon the nook of an alleyway.

All with a broken dream, all falling to pieces.

It becomes a grave half the time, beggars’ bodies carted away.

The other times, the visitors get away—but every time, they’re throwing themselves back into danger.

Each time, no matter the outcome when dawn breaks, the visitor leaves something behind. An example of their craft, a symbol of their hysteria, a moment of their weakness cast into the shadow.

Dreams mislaid.

~~~ 

None of the alley’s visitors know the Watcher is perched above, silently gazing down with piercing golden eyes. Nor do they know she’s been there since the first day.

The Watcher’s keen eyes assess the world below and witness all: the way the visitors bare their souls to the unassuming cinder blocks on either side, the way each vagabond falls to pieces and lies helplessly on the ground.

Somehow, the Watcher relates to each of them. All broken wings and faded claws, never having another chance at her dream.

The Watcher collects fragments of each visitor’s identity, hoarding the items until hundreds of stories circle her.

Three empty cans of spray paint sit in a row behind her, while to her left pictures lie scattered. Overturned sheet music is on the Watcher’s right. 

A notebook and a sharpened pencil, both stolen from an abandoned warehouse, lie on her lap.

The Watcher stares down into the empty alleyway, reliving memories of everyone who has ever wandered through.

Then she nods, and with a gentle scratching of the pencil, she begins to describe her own pain using the crushed dreams and experiences of those she has observed below.

From her precarious perch on the shingled roof, the Watcher writes.

She wonders on a girl’s defiant face as she leaves an everlasting mark on the brick.

The Watcher’s words speak to the pure bliss as a boy completes his dream of photography, for those precious few seconds.

She laments a girl who simply wants to sing in spite of cruel reality.

And with every story about someone else, a bit of the Watcher’s own pain shines onto the paper. The Watcher’s own scars fade, bit by bit. 

It’s real, it’s true, and it’s the story of everyone.

The Watcher steals more paper, sharpens her pencil against the rough brick edge, and continues to write.

It takes months, but she finishes it.

A novel, full of individual stories that create a cohesive and beautiful web.

Dreams captured.

~~~

When a pile of paper, neatly stapled and signed by an anonymous “Watcher,” ends up in the accepted manuscripts pile of a publisher’s office, no one knows how. No employees remember meeting with a “Watcher.”

However, the manuscript’s location means the managing editor approves of the story within. And who are the office workers to question that editor’s wisdom?

The book’s cover—vibrant streaks of color against a rough background—is emailed to an employee’s account from an unfamiliar address a few hours later. With only a subject line of “For the Watcher” and no internal text, the email surprises the employee, but he just shrugs off his confusion and forwards the cover to the managing editor. (He doesn’t get paid enough to think.)

Within three weeks, the book is on a shelf in every bookstore in the city.

And it’s only a matter of time before someone steals a copy.

Two tiny hands latch onto the book, and the small figure leaps out through a broken window.

The girl steals it with a purpose higher than literacy: survival. Material for starting a fire, or a bargaining chip to gain something else.

But when the girl glances at the book after escaping from the building, the breath escapes from her lungs. Her determined eyes widen, and her grasp on the book weakens. She just stares.

Because the image on the cover is a photograph of her beautiful graffiti, raw, painful, and true. 

A bruised and battered mark on the wall.

She clasps the book to her chest with both arms, a scar halfway fading but still visible on her left forearm.

The girl smiles—a real grin—from ear to ear. She may not be able to read, but her heart understands the book’s meaning.

Her problems aren’t solved.

But now, maybe, she’s a little less lost.

Dreams rediscovered.

~~~

The book becomes a national bestseller, as everyone who buys a copy empathizes with a different piece of the story.

And still, the Watcher doesn’t reveal her identity.

The book reaches more bookstores, and a few more people steal copies of the book.

Eventually, a copy reaches a beggar within the city, one of the literate few.

A dozen people crowd around him as he begins to read the stories of everyone surrounding him. 

~~~

The Watcher sits two stories above the group as the man shares the book aloud.

She still wishes for wings to curl out behind her, for talons to scratch through the sky and let her soar through the clouds.

But her hopes can’t come true.

She doesn’t have a pure soul, a ticket to heaven after the malice of reality.

But her heart does lighten slightly when she hears other stories being told—when a few of the group begin to nod, when a few faces crack into smiles.

And maybe that’s enough.

When the reader reaches the end of the book and reads the last line of the author’s note in a wavering voice, the Watcher smiles slightly and leans back, her head against the comforting brick as she listens to the emotional reactions of those far below.

“May this recollection of stories serve as the means to look within your hardened heart at dreams fractured to reveal their beautiful promise.”

Herbert Ollivander looked at his computer with dread. The clock on the wall ticked away as the shadows from the windows in his office danced across the bookshelves. Not that Herbert, or as his mother affectionately called him, Herby, really noticed. No, he was sitting tunnel visioned at the box of death, defeated. 

Herbert was a writer, and he thought himself a pretty good one too. At least, in the 80s he was. That was when he hit it big in the mainstream. His books of wonder and mystery enraptured a generation, cementing his position as a timeless artist. That's what the papers said. Who was he to disagree. 

Now, it was later. Much later. While you could still find an Ollivander classic in the bowels of your local Barnes and Nobles, they weren't exactly flying off the shelves. It wasn’t that Herbert lost his charm, wit, and masterful storytelling. It was that the market had changed. The enraptured generation grew up, and their kids took hold of popular culture. 

The new craze was postmodernism, whatever that was. It truly was an enigma to Herbert, how a whole generation, and now another it seemed, could enjoy such structureless swill. How millions of people could look at a so-called art piece and find some kind of meaning was beyond him. The market had changed, not him. 

Today was the deadline for Herbert. It’s what was on his calendar after all. The deadline for his new piece of fantasy comedy that was supposed to thrust him back into the spotlight, and cement him as a truly timeless artist. The only problem was that he couldn’t figure it out. He had watched countless youtube videos of people trying to make sense of a new culture built on a foundation of nothing. He had tried his best to understand the new crazes of the day, but it just wasn’t getting through to him. He wasn’t built to make it this long. He had his time, and now it was done. 

A knock at the door interrupted his pity party. “You get anything done there Herbert?” said his friend Floyd, while looking at him pityingly. 

“Can’t say that I have, Floyd,” replied Herbert, not looking away from his computer. The funny thing about Floyd Sanders was that he didn’t seem to have a grasp on any culture, new or old. Herbert hadn’t asked him how old he was, and he couldn’t venture to guess. It was as though Floyd had waltzed through life in his head, stubbornly positioned in that land of dreams. 

“Well Herbert, it's hard to see you like this, I can tell you that,” Floyd said as he took a seat at the other side of Herbert’s desk. “I wish I knew how to help you Herbert, but I can’t say that I do.” 

“Don’t lose sleep on it, Floyd. I’m an old man, looking for meaning in a world that has forsaken it.” Herbert looked at the clock on the wall. Twenty minutes until his pitch meeting.

Twenty minutes until the details of his big comeback were to be revealed to the board. He didn’t quite know what the board was. As much as Herbert wanted this to go well, it just didn’t seem to be working in his favor. Life, huh. 

“I don’t think that’s entirely true, Herbert.” 

“Tell me why Floyd.” 

“Well Herbert, I have to take issue with the meaning part of your last statement. The world has not suddenly become meaningless, Herbert. It seems to me that there is more meaning today than there has been in a long time,” Floyd said, while looking at Herbert squarely in the eyes. Floyd was always looking for eye contact. He almost never got it. 

“Well I’d love for you to tell me where it is Floyd, because I just can’t seem to see it in all the newspapers these days. The televisions and movie theatres are filled with instance upon instance of nothing being presented as the greatest thing people have ever seen.” Herbert truly believed what he was saying. He had seen it with his own eyes. “I guess I’m just the angry old man yelling at clouds, aren’t I Floyd.” 

Floyd chuckled a bit at this, but continued. “Herbert, while I would love to be able in good conscience to tell you that was the truth, I simply cannot. What I think is happening with you, is that you have lost base.” 

“Whatever would you mean by that Floyd?” Herbert asked, finally meeting the searing eye contact that he had been dodging for the past couple of minutes. 

“Well, Herbert, when you wrote your big hits, you had confident ground, and you knew exactly where you were headed. You had an ear to the ground, and your head in the clouds. That's why everyone loved you. But now, you have your head in the clouds and your ears up your ass,” Floyd replied, not being able to hide a little smile that danced on his lips. 

Herbert was taken aback by his friend's harsh verdict, but decided not to reply. Instead, he looked at his blank computer screen and sighed. The two sat in a slightly charged silence for a bit, while the clock on the wall acted like a sentry, reminding Herbert of his doom. 

In all fairness, Floyd was onto something. It wasn’t like Herbert was the most hip kid in the neighborhood. Even when he had released the books that dragged him up from middle class to upper middle class, he wasn’t exactly in tune with everything going on around him. The head in the clouds often distracted from his ear on the ground, but somehow he had still been able to appeal to the younger generations. 

Or had he. Had he given a voice to a generation he wasn’t even part of, or had he given them something to calm their minds while they developed their own way of thinking. Had he acted as the cultural lightning rod that he was acclaimed for by people of his generation, or had

he acted as the oasis in the middle of the desert, a stopping point for thirsty travellers on their way to greatness. 

This made Herbert chuckle. He wasn’t a fraud, he was sure of that. The question that is raised, then, is what exactly was he. He wasn’t the new messiah, he wasn’t the snake oil salesman. He wasn’t a leader, but he wasn’t a traitor. 

“Well, I should be going Herbert. But I hope you think about what I said. You still got it in you. Just find it,” Floyd said as he gave a wink to Herbert and left him alone in the office. Herbert didn’t know what to do. He hardly had a grasp on who, or really what, he used to be. How could he make a comeback in this world of vague interpretation when he didn’t know what he was doing? 

Or was that really a bad thing. Was it bad that Herbert had no label for himself and the impact he had. Wasn’t that what the culture really was now? Just a bunch of people trying and succeeding to find meaning in the dark while keeping themselves detached from what others thought of them. Scared kids in a scarier world trying to grasp onto anything that they could while it all disappeared and crumbled around them. 

Herbert knew something about the world crumbling around him if his recent endeavors had made any sort of impact on him. Why was he trying to figure out what the culture was, if the kids now didn’t even know. He could easily, and more importantly, meaningfully become a part of the artists, countless, ageless, faceless artists groping around in the void. 

He didn’t know quite what he would find, but he would certainly know when he found it. Would he be playing a character trying to blend in? Aren’t we all?

If Jeremy Smith had kept his head on straight for about three minutes more, then he would've at least known the whole truth of the situation that had transpired. If Barbara Waters, whose friends called her Barb, had some of her wits about her, she might’ve formed at least one coherent sentence. Hindsight. 

Jeremy Smith was already losing his mind with the current state of the world. It was safe to say that he wasn’t having a very good time, and safer to say that he probably wouldn’t do anything about it. Everyone loves an upset, though. Jeremy felt the whole world crashing down around him when he tried to get information out of Barb, who didn’t speak that well. 

He had just got back from his shift at the Barnes and Nobles, where he stocked the nonfiction mystery section. Not many people really shopped there, for whatever reason, so he was resigned to being bored and watching the news on his computer. The news wasn’t a very good way to calm down. 

Barb had been lounging around in their shared apartment while Jeremy was at work. She always felt awkward. A knock at the door had her up out of her seat and looking at a package that had landed in the hallway. She had been expecting a package so this one was no surprise to her. Had she been reading the news, she could’ve seen some of the problems with packages in their area. 

The local zoo, after accusations of mistreating their animals, had started a campaign to try and gain back support. They ran ten commercials every five minutes showing they had nothing to hide. They had also started sending information and merch through packages in the mail to random people. “Not the best way to get themselves out there”, noted many advertising experts at the time, “but I can see what they are going for.” 

Jeremy was not a very big fan of the zoo, so he stopped reading after the headline. He missed the part of the article that mentioned the randomness of the packages. A person came up to his help desk, so he had to stop reading the news for a bit. 

“Can you help me find a book that I’ve been looking for? I don’t know where it would be, but I certainly know where it isn’t,” the person said with a chuckle. Jeremy smiled and started typing the name of the book into the computer at his desk. It did have other uses than the news. 

While he was looking, the man said to Jeremy “Have you seen the whole catastrophe with the zoo?” Jeremy looked up at the man and scowled. The man decided not to take it personally, but kept going. “You know, it really does shock a man. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.” The man looked at the ground thoughtfully. 

Jeremy had half a mind to start yelling at the man asking for his help, for what he didn’t quite know. After all, he was only making small talk to further the plot. Nothing wrong with that.

“I guess it just goes to show that you can’t take anything at face value,” Jeremy said to the man. It might’ve done him some good to listen to what came out of his mouth, but once it was out it was gone. Moved from one plane of existence to another. Jeremy told him where to find the book, and the man was on his way. 

Barb opened the package with a knife from the kitchen that had been used the night prior to help in her famous chickpea salad. She thought that the package had been something she ordered, or even wanted. That was not the case. As she emptied the box of its contents, she became increasingly more confused. It was from the zoo, as the cover letter read. It had many pamphlets that she was most likely not going to read, and a stuffed tiger with a happy face. Barb looked at the box for a while. 

Jeremy left his shift after seeing the man leave with the book he wanted, and walked to the subway. It wasn’t a long walk, nothing he couldn’t handle, and he had hiked once. The train was not that full when he entered, but there were some new things on the walls. Ads, evidently, put up by the zoo to rehumanize themselves. They had a picture of the recently deceased bengal tiger, named Frank, who started the whole controversy. 

Frank was a very big deal at the zoo because he could stand on his back paws when directed. Everybody would go crazy when the 12:00 show would come around, and Frank would roar and run for a couple minutes, eventually doing his famous standing trick for the audience, and being led back to his cage. The thing that most people would soon find out was that when Frank failed to perform his tricks, he would get beaten. One too many of those caused him to keel over when he was told to stand on his back paws at the day’s 12:00 show. Mother Nature at her finest. 

The ad had a picture of Frank doing his trick, adoring fans lining the stands, and a smiling handler, with the text “No mistreatment, only fun happy animals” in big black text to the right of Frank’s head. When pictures of these ads spread online, marketing experts would say “Now that is not a very good idea.” 

Jeremy Smith saw that ad on the subway and had a similar reaction, with a few more choice words mixed in. How could the zoo say that? With the amount of evidence stacked against them, one might think that they would at least apologize, but they had gone with a more deflective route that had Jeremy seeing red. 

That same ad was at the bottom of the package that Barb had opened. She was similarly upset, but not as up in arms as the rest of the world. It was just one lousy tiger, weren’t there more pressing issues that needed to be addressed right about now? Maybe put this one on the backburner.

The more she rationalized like this, the more she stepped onto the side of the zoo. Sure there was a little evidence against them, but really there was no way to prove it. Better to just let it go. 

      Also in the box was a hat that said “Rest In Peace Frank.” Barb found this hat very tasteful, due to the nature of the thing it was commemorating, so she put it on. It wasn’t a very comfortable hat, but it was a hat made by a zoo in honor of a dead tiger, so she could cut them some slack. This was the unfortunate decision that led Jeremy to do some not so nice things. 

Jeremy had the whole walk from the subway stop to the apartment to stew in his anger towards the zoo. By the time he got to the stairs of the building he knew that there would be a very long venting session that would need to take place, and Barb would be on the receiving end of it. She probably wouldn’t mind though. 

The next three minutes went by like this: Jeremy entered the apartment, put down his keys, saw a box on the floor, looked up and saw Barb’s hat, and a yelling match began. Yelling match is a strong word though. Jeremy did all of the yelling, and Barb did most of the being afraid and not saying anything. She had every right to be afraid. Some of the things that Jeremy said to her were things that you only heard in very bad situations. Barb had found herself in some of those situations in the past. 

Jeremy left the apartment with a slam of the door, leaving Barb to fend for herself from the onslaught of demons that had been set upon her. The rest of her week was not a very good one, it’s safe to assume. 

Jeremy did not really care about what he said. He said all he needed too, and he also didn’t remember. The words had left him. He could only feel their slowly diminishing warmth in the back of his head. The front and middle of his head were filled to the brim with anger over a dead tiger. Jeremy pieced together a plan in his mind that would see him arrested by 5:00 that afternoon, five hours after Frank would've done his trick in front of the crowds at the zoo. If Frank was still a live tiger. 

Jeremy stormed into a hardware store and picked out a nice sledgehammer, different lengths and strengths of rope, and seeds for a sunflower garden he was planning on planting. He would have to wait awhile for the garden, though, due to him being arrested and all. He had no plan for any of his tools. He was more of an improvisational guy, and he had never gotten this angry before. 

He walked up to the checkout counter where a man rang up his purchases. The man saw how tense Jeremy was, and tried to lighten the mood with some small talk. “Did you see what happened to that tiger, Frank, over at the zoo?” That was not the right thing to say to invite polite small talk with Jeremy at the current moment. The man at the checkout counter couldn't've known that though. He was just trying to push the plot along. 

“It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” Jeremy mumbled half to himself as he gathered up his things, took his receipt, and walked out the door. The man at the counter just chuckled, albeit confusedly, before getting back to work. 

Jeremy walked towards the zoo with blood in his ears. There was usually blood everywhere in his body, as there should be, but today it had decided to take a nice holiday to Jeremy Smith’s ears. He walked down the sidewalk, not getting out of anybody’s way or stopping for cars at the crosswalks. If someone had noticed this, then maybe Jeremy Smith would not have been arrested, but this behavior was normal of many people, so it was let go. 

Jeremy arrived at the zoo, the facade of which had been plastered with the likeness of Frank the tiger, and paid to get in. He wasn’t concerned about giving money to an institution that he despised, because he would be giving them their just desserts soon enough. The ticket that he bought came with a memorial lanyard dedicated to Frank. It was the least they could do. 

Barb was at home on the phone with a friend, crying her heart out and baring her soul. The friend on the other line was very good to Barb. She owed her a lot after the whole situation was over. They would move in together and get married later on, because I said so, and what I say goes. They also loved each other very much. Just covering my bases. 

Thoughts of Barb were nowhere to be seen in Jeremy Smith’s head as he walked past the former enclosure of Frank the tiger, which was now filled with a memorial shrine that not many people had visited. In fact, despite it being late afternoon, only ten people had come and visited the shrine since the zoo opened that morning. Most thought it was in bad taste. Some marketing experts would say “It seems to be in bad taste.” Aren’t we glad they're here to let us know. 

As Frank walked up to the enclosure, he finally knew what to do. He would smash the cage wall that was around the memorial and destroy it. Not a very rational plan, but in that moment Jeremy was not a very rational man. As it were, it seemed like a great idea in his head. 

Unfortunately, he was an angry looking man who had entered the zoo with a sledgehammer that was concealed, which he had recently revealed. A security guard tackled him before he could make his move, and five hours after Frank would’ve stood on his hind paws for a crowd of adoring fans, Jeremy Smith was arrested. It was noted later in the papers that eyewitnesses mentioned the suspect yelling “It wasn’t supposed to be this way” over and over while being restrained by the responding officers. When they were asked why he was yelling that, nobody knew.

Barb would not put up bail for Jeremy, and her friend who had consoled her over the phone said she agreed with her decision. That was when Barb first moved in with her. Barb needed a safe environment away from Jeremy to process what was happening, The two of them were some of the only people who didn’t watch the trial as it was televised. 

Jeremy, as it stood, was not in a very good place to be arguing about his innocence in front of the court. He got a bad lawyer because he had no money, and the bad lawyer put up a bad defense because he cheated on the bar exam. Something about Jeremy being pushed to the edge by the immoral acts of the zoo. Emotional appeals don’t really work well with the honorable judge Gordon Haplan presiding. Jeremy saw that he was fighting a losing battle, and decided to give up. 

On the day of his sentencing, after being given six months for his actions, he was asked outside the courtroom by the sea of reporters if he had anything to say. Jeremy looked at them square in the eyes and said “It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”

To whom it may concern,

My name is Richard Parker.  Today I am going to die.    

I have known this for some time, though time itself is a very notion which has fled from my grasp.  The strange-looking creature in my territory has stopped moving and we have neither food nor water.  I can no longer move, and even with the opportunity to attack him, I am too weak.  It is a vicious cycle.  

I never wanted to die here, alone in a small enclosure out in the middle of the sea, relying on a weakling to survive.  Though if I must rely on him, I wonder what that makes me.  

I’ve started to recall memories, days of warm sunlight and fresh, abundant water.  I remember my mother, though the haze of time she is hard to see clearly.  I did not love her as a human might love; she was as lovely to me as the warm sunlight is on my coat, or the presence of abundant food in times of hunger.  She was comforting, though I do not think of her often with much sadness.

 Nowadays, I start to wonder what might have happened if I were shot instead of her.  Would I have taken her place to travel to the world beyond?  Or perhaps, would I be reincarnated?  I find that humans have grandiose ideas of gods and men, those who have created the universe for the chosen species to inhabit.  I disagree.  Life is life; one exists until they can no longer, or a stronger predator chooses to prey upon the weak.  There is no Grand Plan, no ‘good and evil,’ no mercy.  There is only life, and shortly, death.  It is all meaningless.  

It suddenly begins to rain, though the sweet salvation it brings is meaningless to me.  I cannot move, cannot even shake off the bothersome creature suddenly finding courage enough to touch my body.

After an eternity of motionless half-sleep, I finally am able to pick my head up and lap at the rainwater.  I am slow at first, my throat and tongue seemingly disconnected from the ever-present necessity of water.  At a length, I was finally able to eat.

But it’s no use.  The days will become longer, hotter, stretching out before us like a vast desert; the food will be eaten and the rain will fall-- but nothing will outrun or escape the inevitable fate that awaits us all, god or man, predator or prey.  Nothing can outrun Death.  

So this must be a goodbye.  A goodbye to the life I had known, a goodbye to the Sun and the Stars, a goodbye to the wind and the sea, and a long-awaited greeting to my mother.  

I missed you. 

Our mirrors can portal you across our world. Vast millions of locations to pick from. Costa Rica to Australia, Antarctica to Italy, all within your grasp. How? Walk into any slab of glass. Don’t balk, not a bit, that’s all magic asks for. If you do that, you can tour any country.

Your mirror will glint, shift from solid to almost liquid as your first foot falls on your mirror. Push it through, and duck your skull into your mirror's body so you can walk through. 

Walk through Mirrorland calmly. Constant motion with your final location in mind will push you to a particular mirror, proximal to your location pick. Just walk straight through, and you’ll find your glorious vacation spot.

It’s straightforward. But I do hold minimal instructions for you—laws, truly, to confirm your immunity and sanctuary from what is also in Mirrorland.

Don’t ask about limbo—nobody can clarify this halfway found amidst all mirror doors. It’s not a rational thing—limbo just is. Don’t stop midway, during your occasion in limbo. Maintain your walk throughout. And for no condition should you stop in limbo and turn in position. Voids among mirrors contain things, scary things, you’ll wish you could consign to oblivion and blank from your brain.

If you turn and look, Mirror-folk will grab you and catch you for infinity.

Don’t succumb to curiosity—if you want so badly to know how a Mirror-man looks, I’ll clarify it for you. A Mirror-man’s build is an approximation of a human in our own world, but a mirror copy. Which is probably not a good analysis, but it’s difficult to pinpoint how a Mirror-man looks, in that staring at a Mirror-man could finish with you dying. Truly, this mirror of our world is blank and ominous.

It’s not important, a Mirror-man’s physical build. Just know that it will kidnap you. If you turn and look at a Mirror-man, it will gain an ability. An ability to grab you from your path and pull you into its Mirror-world, a location you don’t win a way back from.

So, if you jump into a mirror, just know: You can go to any location in our world, but don’t try to visit Mirror-world. If you turn and walk towards a Mirror-man, your vacation will turn into a kidnapping. This magic of mirrors is glorious, but at a cost. Mirrors contain risks.

This is your warning.

The fair ground was set up on top of a former cornfield. Everything around Western Howard County gave the impression that it used to be a cornfield. Everything must start somewhere. In the fairground’s case, it started as the field of Farmer Bob Matchet. Matchet was little known. He did little, said little, had little say anyways. He wasn’t the one who had come up with the idea for the fair, and as it turned out he wouldn't be the one to prevent its existence either. 

Nobody seemed to mind the ground they were treading on. But then again, how could they. With the flashy lights and sweet smells in the air, any Matchet related thoughts were squashed. How would they know about him, though. Matchet was a story from a generation passed. A generation of middle class teens who had come to the grounds years before. 

Arty Benson was just finished setting up his stall. He came to the fair every year, hoping to sell his pottery made of the finest clay to the public of unartistic simpletons, so he called them. Strange that he would decide to come back every year as if the fair had some sort of pull on him. Beckoning him no matter how hard he tried to resist. This year, in a fit of rage, he had smashed all of his available pottery to prevent him from going. Somehow, he found the time to make them all from scratch again and actually show up. 

Arty Benson wasn’t a man to be showing his face at a county fair. In all honesty, he wasn’t sure he was even a man. Who is sure about things like that, he would always tell himself. The only thing he was certain of was his love of pottery and his hatred of blueberries, but that was more of a preference. 

“Hey Arty! I see you’ve somehow found yourself crawling back to the peasants at the fair, huh,” shouted a man around his age with a voice that somehow shook and stabilized Arty’s mind. 

“I even smashed all my art beforehand,” Arty responded absentmindedly. “What can I say, I think something about the land just calls to me.” 

Arty looked up from his booth to take in the voice that had interrupted his peace, not that he minded. The voice belonged to a face. The face belonged to Teddy Gold. If Arty was confused about his gender, then you could say that he was more confused about why Teddy Gold had approached his stall. It’s not like there was any ill will between them. More like there was no will whatsoever. End of story. 

Or so Arty believed. 

Teddy Gold was not one to purposefully try and shut anyone out of his life. Quite the contrary, he wanted as many people inside his life as possible. Populating his mind and heart, making him have to think about himself less and less each day. So far, he was succeeding. He 

1

The Fair 

wanted to do everything in his power to have as many people in his court as possible, and the fair was the perfect place to recruit. 

As Arty looked confusingly at him, Teddy decided to push on through the awkward greeting. “These really are some beauties you got this year Arty. If i didn’t know any better I’d say they were your best.” 

“Thanks, I guess. I have a fun time making them.” Arty responded. 

The two looked at each other for a while, each trying to glean what the other's angle was. Arty didn’t have an angle. He had come to the fair because it called to him like normal. Teddy had an angle, but he didn’t have convictions. His goal was to fill the void, and all the people left little room for other goals or thoughts. 

Teddy took another look at the pottery and sauntered away from the booth, a nagging voice in the back of his head informing him that the interaction had not gone well, like he didn’t already know. Arty watched him leave with a little confusion on his face but went along with his business, shifting a pot here, smoothing the tablecloth. 

He looked around at all the faces in the crowd, and recognized none of them. He didn’t have a reason too. Teddy wasn’t kidding earlier when he talked about Arty not getting down with the peasantry. 

Arty looked past the crowds and took in the sight of the old Matchet barn. It was fading and out of use, like most of the remnants of farmland out here. He looked at it as if it was an exhibit in a museum. Almost like it wasn’t there to begin with. Matchet held no meaning to Arty. It was only the name of the old barn on the hill. The barn that seemed in rougher shape every time he saw it. 

Nothing had been done to protect Matchet's existence. He didn’t get the old road leading up to the barn named after him. He didn’t get any signs up around his property. That might be the reason no one knew about him. He wasn’t given the star treatment. Nobody had cared when he died, if he had died at all. He was a barn in the eyes of the world. And how little of the world it was. 

How easy it is to be forgotten. How simple it is to let a name slip through the cracks, imprinting itself on the landmark of a nonexistent legacy. There would be no revival of Matchet farms either. How could there be. 

Arty felt the smell of the fair rush back into his senses. He didn’t want to talk. Nobody wanted to talk to him. Nobody knew him. Nobody knew him bar Teddy, he grumbled to himself. Would Teddy be the only one to acknowledge Arty was there. When Teddy told of Arty’s pots, would anybody know the name. Did Arty want them too. 

2

The Fair 

As the fair started to get shut down for the night, Arty made little attempt to get his stall cleaned up. It was the only thing that could truly mark the fact that he had been there that night. If he moved, how could he know that it was real. If he couldn’t hear Teddy, how could he know that Teddy had existed. 

After the last of the lights had faded from the field, Arty roused himself to clean up and put away his pottery. He hadn’t made any money, unsurprisingly. He wasn’t in it for the money he told himself, he loved what he did. He smashed his pottery out of passion. 

As Arty started to drive down the road that was not named after Matchet, he let his eyes wander to the old barn. He did not question its presence, or its name. He just looked. Everybody just looked. The world passed by but the barn stayed in the same place. Over the years it would grow more dilapidated until the roof caved. Or it wouldn’t. Who could tell? Nobody would check on the barn. Nobody checked on Old Farmer Matchet. 

Sandwich, My delicious sandwich, where are you? I can’t wait to sink my teeth into some deli goodness. All the nutritious and unhealthy ingredients that were put together to create the beauty you are. I just can’t wait to get home after work and spend the rest of the day with you while watching a romantic comedy. It takes years to master the skill to put together such an amazing sandwich. The soft crispy Italian bread, the glistening melted American cheese, green tender lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers. I can’t forget about the most important ingredients: chipotle southwest and mayo, as well as salt and pepper that delightfully compliment the flavor of this masterpiece. No one can ever say no to you, the only thing they will ever experience when they see you is their salivary glands increasing in saliva. Valentine's day is just around the corner and you will be the perfect one for me, you will sit by my side while we enjoy the lovely day together. Surely you will fulfill my promise, wouldn’t you? I hope at least you’re not gone by the appetizers, because it's terribly hard to stare into someone’s empty soul and do nothing about it. After all it’s just a sandwich, but sandwiches should be cherished, shouldn't they? 

In the end sandwiches will always be considered food, which should be eaten. No matter how delicious it can look and the amount of attention it is given, it will always end up in my stomach, where it’s supposed to belong. All the nutrition and amazing flavor that comes from one sandwich is crazy. Imagine living in a world where only sandwiches were made and served, that would be the best place to ever live. Back to reality, there are so many places to eat that make splendid sandwiches, but none of them can compare to the handpicked vegetables and homemade sauce that were carefully put together to create you. Creating something is cool, but the way it is created is even cooler. Food takes time and the only way to perfect that skill is by understanding the recipe. You have to spend time with it, learn how it likes to react with the pan. If vegetable oil is good friends with vegetables and if they like to be

bonded together. Treat the recipe with respect and love it till the day it comes to life. The day when it’s put to use, the day when others around you can also experience the same amount of love you show towards this majestic sandwich. 

In conclusion there are many things to be said about this sandwich. I have spent many countless hours with it, which is an exaggeration. I really  spent around 2 minutes with it, but then it magically disappeared out of plain sight. I looked around and then I heard a very familiar sound. The sound came from my stomach, why would that be? I didn’t recall having any beans for dinner, but then it striked me. The perfect sandwich left in front of me is now making its way through my digestive tract. The masterpiece that I considered spending a lifetime with has now soothed my nerves. The sandwich has made the best of its life and in the future sandwiches have many more to come.

‘He finally did it’ I thought as the ink splashed on the canvas. All the arguments chalked up to this. Throughout all his yelling all I could do was sink to the floor and stare blankly. The ink covered the entire canvas—I couldn’t just paint over it this time. His one motion had made me lose the details I had spent working on for over a decade. 

It was my best piece, or it was going to be. I had driven the wedge in between us when I first started it. But I didn’t know that it would cause such corruption in our lives. I had worked on it every day for hours and finally, he snapped. 

All I could do was look at him in utter disbelief. Not only did he destroy something that he knew would destroy me, but he had punctuated his point in the argument by destroying my greatest work. I shouldn’t have been surprised, every week there had been a broken vase or a hole punched in the wall which was fueled by hatred and anger. 

He walked away and simply left and the great black ink splatter. But I can’t leave because I have to hold onto something. I always seem to find hope in the debris of broken glass and drywall which is all that is left in evidence that anything had ever happened because he always comes back to find me, and even though he never apologizes I always forgive him. 

A while ago I decided to keep a piece of paper that bears tally marks to keep track of all the times we had a fight. And I know there have been times when I can’t always tell the difference between a fight and an argument so I just ignore the raised voices and just count up the number of times the police had shown up, how many times something has been broken, the various times either one of us had cried, the situations where I had been guilt-tripped, or someone left the apartment to go drink.  

I used to write little notes in a journal of why it started so I didn’t do what I had that caused him to get upset. This time it would be that I hadn’t made dinner because I had lost track of time. But I don’t write the cause anymore, just the tallies on the pale and fragile loose-leaf piece of paper that I had tucked in my journal. 

The paper got filled on the front and this was the last tally I could make on the backside. Each line took up a very minimal amount of space and as I kept making these marks they seemed to get closer and closer to the next mark. I made them so small that I eventually had to go to the backside, but before I even made a mark on the clean slate I told myself that I would be different. That I would do better and be better for him. I could only hope that he made the same promise soon. 

Nothing changed after that. Fights originated out of thin air and there was nothing that I could do to stop them. So the backside got filled with violence that had been introduced in my life just by that one man. As I filled half of the backside I had made yet another promise.

I told myself that I would leave. I would pack a suitcase and run away from him and leave the apartment filled with my art that symbolized the years of torture that he had put me through. And I did just that. He was gone and could not see the tears as they streamed down my face as I packed my bags. I took no time at all to ruin our room and the bed that we slept in. 

The apartment was empty and the cool night breeze swept over my tears to comfort me and my decision. I chose to leave and that in itself was a choice I was debating over. I paused in an infinite amount of times where I had debated whether or not I was making the right choice. 

It was early in the morning by the time I had finished. The rest of me debating overcame my ability to do anything as I sat and stared at pictures where we looked happy. But I knew that I wasn’t, so I started up again, resuming what I had started. 

He never came back. I didn’t want to know where he was or who he was with. I left the door unlocked as I strolled out of the place with all of my valuables. I didn’t look back at the messy place but I still took my canvas. I didn’t care if it was ruined, I was still going to fix it.

The bus was empty since it was still so early in the morning. More people boarded as the sun rose. I didn’t care that I had no destination, I just needed to be away from everything that I had worked so hard to build and repair over the years. I listened to the silent chatter and conversation a few people made just before I put a pair of earbuds in to disappear into my own world which soon filled with orange and red hues as the sun finally broke the horizon.

There is this sandwich I really love, and I am going to tell you about it. So, this sandwich requires to be toasted or it’s no deal because toasted sandwiches are the way to go. This sandwich needs 2 toasted breads, jam on one of the breads, and butter on the other bread. What I did to prepare this sandwich is: I put 2 pieces of bread in the toaster for 2 minute to get crispiness. Then I put butter on one bread, jam on the other bread, and then I put them together to make a sandwich. Bread, butter, and jam sandwiches are some of my favorite breakfast sandwiches. As I take a bite of the sandwich I taste the unsalted butter and grape jam with the bread, which is an excellent combination. Every time I take a bite of the sandwich, it gives me memories of how I felt when I ate this sandwich for the very first time. When I eat it, I taste the smooth butter, sticky jam, and crunchy bread, which is one of the reasons why I like this sandwich.

Every time I make this sandwich I can feel that the bread is very rough with the hardness of rocks on the ground. The butter and jelly are very soft, but the jelly also feels sticky. Whenever I spread the butter and jam across the bread vigorously my hands get all dirty with the butter and jam. So I have to wash my hands to get the sticky jam out of my hands. 

This sandwich changed my life forever and now I eat it 3 times a week. When I was a little kid I used to eat this sandwich all the time but now I realized that this sandwich isn’t that healthy which is why I eat it 3 times a week. I do this so that way I can still enjoy this sandwich while watching what I eat. When I toast the bread in my toaster I hear a click sound when it is done toasting and when I spread the jam and butter on the bread I hear screeching sounds from the bread being toasted. If I wasn’t allowed to eat this sandwich at all, I would be heartbroken because this sandwich is one of my favorite sandwiches I’ve ever had. I also grew up eating this sandwich for most of my life.

The heart of New York City is a place of endless possibilities. Immediately I see a bus filled to the brim with New York natives. Then my eyes drift towards a towering skyscraper and the rows of distinguished apartment buildings. 

This New York City post card sure is nice; too bad I live in Oklahoma.

Whenever something goes terribly wrong in my life, I decide on whether I’m dyeing or cutting my hair, and in which seemingly life-altering way. The old hair, too strong a reminder of the past, must go. Of course, I’ve never actually gone through with any of it, but one time I did curl my hair. 

“I can’t believe I’m going to this stupid support session. My grades aren’t that bad…okay they’re bad, but there’s no point in fixing them,” Paul mutters aloud as he walks toward the library.

“I’m your tutor, are you excited to review some algebra?” says his crush Lola.

“Absolutely, learning is such a gift,” replies Paul.

“Startling news out of Yosemite National Park today, A nineteen year old boy has gone missing while on a solo camping trip. The parents of the boy are asking for anyone that might have information to come forward. In other news…” 

Brenda had stopped listening. She only ever watched the news for the missing persons section. That, and she had to keep viewing time short if she wanted enough power for her home. The home was not a pretty one in any stretch of the imagination. She used to have a pretty home, but the owner of that home had left. She didn’t need him. 

Cries from the only other room of the apartment, like a siren on a calm summer's night, alerted Brenda to the reason she has to watch the news for the missing persons. Little Sammy. She had Sammy while she still had the big house that could fit them both. Now, she didn’t have it. She didn’t need it. 

Brenda used to be content with living simply while the owner of the house went away and worked. She was fine with taking care of the newborn all on her own. But, in the grand scheme of things, nothing lasts forever. That's what she told herself. Now she was living in a run down apartment running her so-called business as a psychic. She would watch the news for the missing persons report, reach out to the family, and get paid to help them find what was lost. She was turned down a lot. She never found them anyways. 

The boy inevitably would be discovered, mauled by a bear. No thanks to Brenda. 

Brenda found the source of the cries and quickly picked the baby up in her arms. She knew why he was crying. He had many reasons to cry. So did she. This time the fuss was about his hunger. A hunger that was being paid for by only watching the missing persons report on the news. Brenda knew there was no food for Sammy. She knew that like she knew her own name. There was never any food. Not unless she got a job, which were harder to come by these days. 

Brenda sighed while rocking the baby back to sleep and finding the number of the searching family. This was the last phone call she could make that month. It had better work, she told herself, it has to. 

“Hello is this the family of…” She started, continuing on with her practiced speech about how she could help find the missing boy if she was hired. The name of the boy didn’t matter much to her in the long run. It's not like she didn’t empathize with the family, because she did. But she couldn’t get attached to them. Facing them when she got her money and the kid wasn’t back had been too much to bear the first time. She would never make that mistake again. 

“Well then, I can fit you in for a reading tomorrow at the head of the trail, how does that sound? Good, good, I’ll see you then.”

She really did empathize with them. But the siren needed food, and the lights needed to stay on. What else could she do. 

Her contract was for one week, like all the others before it. She would spend a week doing readings and any other things she read about in the psychic manual that had brought her down this path. She would be paid by the end of the week and the family would be no closer to knowing where their missing person was. She would have enough money to live. All in a day's work. 

The next day came with fair skies and warm weather. As Brenda pulled up to the trail head she could see a group of people, the family she guessed, all standing around waiting. As she got out and walked up, a woman with a familiar voice came to introduce herself. It was the woman she talked to on the phone. Naturally. 

As people went around saying their names Brenda tried hard to ignore them. Put on a smile, but hide in the back of her mind where these people didn’t exist. She would never make that mistake again. 

“We’re so glad you could make it,” said the woman she talked to on the phone. “Can we start please, we’re really worried about him.” The woman had a look in her eyes that Brenda was all too familiar with. 

“I don’t see why not,” Brenda mused. 

“What do you need us to do?” 

“Well, I want you all to concentrate on …” She said the boy's name with a cold detachment that the others couldn’t pick up on. A cold detachment that prevented mistakes. “Once you feel his aura surrounding you, I want you all to think about him coming out of the trail head right now, unharmed.” 

They continued on like this for about an hour. That was the contractually specified time that Brenda had laid out for her to help the family each day. When nobody appeared from the trail except a few search and rescue officers, Brenda started to wind down the crowd. 

“Do not lose hope,” she declared with false confidence, ”We still have a week to find him. A day one find is very rare. Do not lose hope.” The people who had shown up for the day's reading looked to be content with what they had gotten done that day, but still sad that a day one find had not occurred. 

That's how the rest of the week went along as well. An hour at the trailhead, the occasional search and rescue party, the inevitable disappointment. Nothing new to Brenda. Her week had revolved around trying to scrounge up any type of food she could find, for her or for Sammy. Mostly for Sammy. It was all for Sammy. Once the house left, it was only her and Sammy. 

The end of the week came, and Brenda pulled up to the spot that she had been visiting for the past six days. She knew that no miracle would occur. No boy would walk out of the forest. She knew, and in the backs of their minds so did everyone else. But they had been desperate when they hired her. 

Oh well, Brenda thought as she walked up to the blank faces of the normal group. 

The day went off like normal, no sign of the missing boy anywhere. After the ritual was complete, Brenda approached the grieving parents and put on her best sorrow filled face. She was sad that the boy was gone, she really was. When they saw her, the woman who talked to her on the phone quietly thanked Brenda and slipped the agreed amount of money in her hands. Brenda took it thankfully, gave a sad smile for the parents and anyone else who was looking, and got in her car. 

Five hundred dollars. In just a week she had made five hundred dollars. As she started her car and drove away, she thought of the value of the money now in her pocket. Back when she had the big house, five hundred dollars would have been a nice lunch and maybe a new shirt if she wanted. But the house was gone, and five hundred dollars was now equivalent to her life. The family that had paid her had agreed to the price instantly, claiming money was no object. Was it right for Brenda to have a little resentment towards them? 

She was taken from her thoughts as she pulled into the parking lot of the grocery store that she had been frequenting since her life had changed. The items were cheap, and not very high in quality. The items were cheap, is what Brenda preferred to think. 

As she walked down the isles, she saw everything she could ever want. She had money to blow again. As much as she resented the old house, why did she have to resent the old lifestyle? As her mind was slipping into the abyss, she heard a familiar crying, loud like a siren. She could feel the weight of it in her arms. She walked over to the baby food without a second thought and smiled to herself. The reason she did this. The reason she put up with public scrutiny and mind numbing rejection. The reason she wanted to carry on. 

She had enough money to feed her siren, and that was all right with her.

The room is empty of anything suspicious. I turn to my partner. She looks around, confused. 

“Where is that voice coming from?” she mutters. She glares around the space. “I don’t mutter!” 

“Let’s head to the next room,” I say. She turns to me. 

“What do you mean? The body is right in front of us on the floor! We have to call it in!” She exclaims. Yet there is no body on the floor. 

“What the heck? Yes, there is. WHERE IS THAT VOICE COMING FROM?” She glares at me. “Stop that!” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I tell her. “Are you feeling okay?” 

“Yes, I’m fine, just stop whatever it is you’re doing with the weird voice. We have to call in the body!” I shake my head. She’s loosing it. The room is empty. 

“THE ROOM IS NOT EMPTY WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?” She screams at me. She pulls out her radio. “Dispatch there’s a body in room 13 of the Ric--” I pull the radio from her hand. 

“Dispatch, agent Rodness is compromised. She’s hearing voices and seeing things. Please send an ambulance to our location.” 

“Roger that, ambulance on its way.” 

“I AM NOT SEEING THINGS THERE IS A BODY AND MY PARTNER IS TRYING TO COVER IT UP!” She shrieks. I get out my hand cuffs and---

She jumps away from me. 

“Ha!” She yells. “You’re stupid voice trick is giving you away. So just knock it off and CALL OFF THE--” I cut her off, grabbing her shoulders and forcing her arms behind her. She struggles against my grip, yelling unintelligibly. I lock her in the bathroom, the hide the body under the bed just in case someone walks by and sees it. 

“I TOLD YOU THERE WAS A BODY!” She screams from the bathroom. I throw my gloves away and grab her elbow, leading her from the hotel room to the ambulance outside. She’s gone mad. 

You sigh, forlorn, as you trudge through the seemingly endless savannah of ash alone, your mother vanished and your father’s body buried somewhere under this grayish dust that makes up your home city. 

Los Angeles. The City of Angels, reduced to cinders.

It’s been two days since Chaos struck.

You accepted you needed to move elsewhere as soon as the fires burned down your home, the resulting ash suffocating you slowly. You grabbed all you had and set out aimlessly on your own. In the post-Chaos time, with half of humanity dead and the other half isolated, it’s everyone for themselves, at least where the fires hit worst.

If you can survive, you’ll be lucky. Already, you’ve twisted your ankle, your foot contorted in the wrong direction. You grit your teeth, ignore the twinges, and walk onward by placing most of your weight on a walking stick.

But first you have to get away from the big cities, which were hit the worst because the buildings were so close to each other. All these “fireproof” buildings, burnt down. The irony. L.A.’s structures were so old due to the manufacturing freeze that it took just one match to light up the whole city.

As you walk to… well, anywhere... you scavenge anything tangible you can find. Metal scraps, wooden planks, canned food. As long as it isn’t filled with dust or completely destroyed, you grab it and place it in your brown knapsack. Who knows, it might come in handy. Nothing’s certain in your new reality.

The unrelenting warmth—the same heat your government aimed to destroy, but just ended up increasing—forces sweat droplets to form on your neck and burns your skin. After a few hours of wandering, you finally arrive at a rock outcropping. 

There’s no ash here because there was nothing to burn.

Twenty minutes later, you collapse in exhaustion on top of the cliff. From your high vantage point, you see nothing but death. No movement, no people… even the animals have retreated.

With a disappointed sigh, you stand and set up your tent as the sun dips below the horizon.

You cough up dust before opening a can of corn and devouring it. After your underappreciated meal, you walk tentatively towards your tent.

Your injured ankle causes you to stumble, and you fall hard, gasping as you land on the coarse ground.

You sigh as you realize you’ve ripped a gash in the side of your tent from your fall. Rolling over, you look through the tear and gaze up at the midnight sky, filled with thousands of white dots.

 Each star, all alone millions of miles away from you and from each other. Each lonely star a fireball. 

Perhaps Earth is just becoming a star, burning into a fireball that wants to make a mark on this galaxy, so it won’t be forgotten in its insignificance.

The next morning, you awake with a regained sense of purpose. Rather than aimlessly wandering around, you choose a destination and stick to it. 

Avalon. Only 26 miles from here. It’s surrounded by water. If Avalon’s burning, then nowhere is clean.

You walk for a few days, prying open cans of food and drinking bottled water when you find it. Guided by your late father’s trusty compass, you reach California’s shore, limping through the already-growing dust pile within an abandoned boathouse.

You push off from shore in a stolen rowboat, steering with its oar.

After a few hours, Avalon comes into view.

From a distance, you see a few shimmering rooftops, several boats docked, and a long green expanse. Though you’ve only lived through Chaos for a few days, it seems like a lifetime since anything green, anything living, has come into your vision.

The streets are clean, the houses are covered in solar panels, the small countryside is dotted with wind turbines. The dust is minimal.

All you know is that Earth’s past is lost, its present is horrific, and its future is uncertain. It’s worth a try to reach this potential paradise.

If Earth is going to be destroyed in the coming days of rebuilding your world, at least it's going to go down brilliantly in flames, to leave its legacy as a bright, defined fireball.

Pristine is the picture of perfection. Her mother must have had a keen sense for naming her children, because this young lady certainly lives up to her denomination. Out of all the girls in London, Pristine certainly sits high above the rest, floating above their egos and frustrations with a divine beauty, like a beautiful oak tree growing tall and sturdy above the weeds in the ground below. Her stature does not resemble that of a tree, though, but more like that of a flower; she possesses long, flowing hair that is delicate as petals, a youthful, gentle face, and a perfectly proportioned figure. It is as if the Gods created her to resemble a periwinkle, the flower that Pristine braids into her hair each day. 

She’s only sixteen years of age, but she already has her affairs in order; she manages her father’s bakery, tends to her farm animals twice a day, and shops at every store in the market each day at dusk. All of the mothers in town wish to have her as their child, and all of the young girls wish to be as elegant and refined as her. Everyone in the town is always in quiet awe of her presence. When she arrives in the square, there is always a change in the atmosphere. 

As her light footsteps create soft dents in the coarse gravel, you can feel the air get warm from all the whispers of the townsfolk. Her effervescent spirit makes the sun shine slightly brighter. The clouds depart and carry gentle gusts of wind to her dress so they can dance around the colorful fabrics. The quick glances of the townspeople gently poke at Pristine, tickling her until an ethereal laugh sends forth from her throat and into the ears of her listeners. Her life is extraordinary. The cards seem to have been dealt perfectly in her favor. You certainly never would've guessed that she is an orphan.

My tears flicked into the cold night air as I dug my heels into the sides of my steed to urge her to gallop quicker. I could barely fathom what I was doing- surely they would have my head for this. 

I was kidnapping the crown prince of Fungaria.

That’s how they would see it. My hand made its way to my throat at the thought of the sharp steel blade coming down on my neck and separating my skull from the rest of me. I must have begun to shiver as well, because the next thing I felt was a comforting hand on my shoulder, squeezing me gently to calm my nerves.

“It’s okay,” the prince said, “they’re never going to find us.”

Honestly speaking- I highly doubted what he said. Still, I felt my shoulders relax under his touch. He could have said anything in that moment and it would’ve made me feel better. His smooth voice, his slight accent, the way his mouth moved- it let me forget about everything.

His hand returned to around my waist, and I found myself missing the warmth on my shoulder. A comfortable silence between us ensued and the only thing that filled it was the sound of galloping hooves. The repetitive rhythm brought me back to before everything had fallen apart- before I had met Prince George.

I dismounted from my steed after several torturous hours of riding. The sun beat down on my sweat-glazed eyelids, forcing my eyes into a squint as I eyed down the stout man opposite me.

“Sir Dreyer. Your presence is required in the royal foyer this evening.” He took a disdainful glance at my current appearance and added, “Please make sure you look presentable.” I scoffed under my breath as he strutted past me to bother other knights coming off of their riding sessions. But I quickly forgot about him as my attention was diverted to the looming structure in the distance: the Royal Palace.

A mess of nerves, doubts, and excitement flooded my senses. My mind grasped frantically at all of the possible outcomes the evening could bring. Never would I have considered befriending, let alone being in the presence of, a member of the royal family.

He was gorgeous. I’ll admit it. A bit absent, but stunning to look at. He tried his best to maintain the same stately appearance as the court members surrounding him, but his nimble fingers fiddling with the fabric of his red and white-spotted cape caught my eye. I had been greeted first in the foyer by two nobles, a man and a woman, lacking any explanation as to why I was being summoned, then led down several corridors to reach an obscure doorway tucked away within the castle. Despite the door’s ordinary appearance, it opened to reveal tall elegantly carved marble walls forming a dome to surround a circular red table speckled with white spots. It was the infamous Toadstool, which I had only heard rumors of. It was the famed table at which the most noble knights before me had taken their seat, and it was where every knight (including myself) wished to end up one day. The prince was standing at the far end of the table. As the noblemen left my side to join the prince’s, I couldn’t help but smirk under my chainmail mask I always donned; the prince was significantly shorter than both of them.

“Sir Dreyer,” The noblewoman to the left began.

“You have shown much promise in your duties as a knight,” continued the nobleman.

“Believe it or not, the royal family has always been keeping close tabs on all of you knights,” the first one said excitedly, subconsciously letting ‘you knights’ come out with a tinge of disdain.

“Indeed. And the royal family seems to have taken a liking to you,” finished the second.

My eyes lit up. The two nobles continued to finish each other’s sentences, becoming increasingly excited with every word:

“So, Sir Dreyer,” began the noblewoman,

“You have been blessed,” added the nobleman,

“With the esteemed honor,” continued the noblewoman,

“That you must accept with extreme grace,” noted the nobleman,

“Yes, yes, you must accept!” emphasized the noblewoman,

“The great honor,” the nobleman confidently stated,

“Of-” 

“They want you to watch me.” The prince cut in, his eyes now trained on mine. His royal accent rolled off of his tongue like butter. It melted in my ears. I felt them go red.

“Oh. This is going to be a problem.”

“Well, no- well, I suppose that that is encompassed in what’s expected,” stuttered the noblewoman, still taken-aback by His Royal Highness’s interruption.

“Sir Dreyer, you are expected to protect His Royal Highness with your life.” The nobleman clarified, finally regaining composure and completing a coherent thought. His tone shifted slightly. “The Prince’s life and wellbeing will take precedence over everything, including your own. And you are not to let him out of your sight. Ever.” The prince winced at the sound of ‘ever.’

“Yes! No getting into trouble before your big day, little one.” Said the noblewoman in a patronizing tone, while bending down to meet his eye level. A hint of pink flushed his cheeks, and he opened his mouth to rebut but was interrupted by the exclamations of the nobleman who had also brought himself to the prince’s level.

“I cannot believe it- our little Georgie, grown-up, and forming alliances.” He cooed. “I still remember when you were a tiny tot, you would always refuse a bath becau-”

He didn’t get a chance to finish, as the prince had swiftly taken my hand in his and pulled me back through the doorway quickening his pace to pull us into a light jog down the halls and away from the Toadstool room.

The prince finally halted our impromptu tour of the palace when we reached a tall window at the end of a corridor providing natural light for its entire length. Only then did he realize we were still holding hands. He quickly retracted his.

“Sorry,” he spat out.

“Uh, it’s alright.” I struggled to get out through an entirely flushed face, only hidden by a thin layer of chainmail.

“I, ah, hope you didn’t hear anything Wimblur said. I don’t know, he really likes to exaggerate to impress everyone else or something.” He said, clearly flustered.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t.” I chuckled. “I got sort of distracted…” I trailed off when I noticed how much shorter the prince was than me, now that we were standing just a foot apart. He glanced upwards to notice I was staring and shifted uncomfortably.

“We should head back.” He said quickly, turning on his heels and speed walking back the way we came. I easily caught up with two long strides.

When we came to an intersection of hallways, I let the Prince take the lead so I could follow.

“Have you never been in the palace before?” He questioned.

“No, actually,” I answered, “I guess I just got the express tour from you.” 

“So… if we were to separate, you would just be lost in here?” He teased.

“Definitely not. I think I could find my way out somehow, I’m pretty smart.” I shot back.

“No, you need me,” he pressed.

“Hm. Maybe I do,” I replied. “Maybe we should hold hands again so we don’t get separated.”

Regret. That’s all I felt in that moment. It was reactionary, a reflex; I used it as a defense mechanism like I always had. But the prince wasn’t a fellow knight I could flirtatiously mess around with- obviously.

I refused to look down at him. I don’t think he looked at me either. For a while we walked in a painful silence until I couldn’t take it anymore and I broke the silence with a genuine query.

“So who’s the lucky girl?”

“Hm?”

“Aren’t you getting married?” I asked.

“Ohh- oh.” 

Had he forgotten?

“Uh yeah, something like that. Her name’s Maia. She’s cool.”

“She sounds cool.” I lied. But why was it a lie? It felt fake the moment I said it.

“Yeah. Pretty too.” He added.

“Oh.” I replied. Why ‘oh’? I could’ve said anything in that moment, and I chose ‘oh’.

We walked in silence for a bit more. These hallways were long as hell. How long had we been running for? How long was he holding my hand for?

“Why the mask?” He finally questioned.

“Oh this?” I gestured to the layer of chainmail covering everything under my eyes.

“Yeah, you’re the only knight I’ve seen wear one. And it’s hard to hear you through that thing sometimes,” he remarked.

I chuckled. “What, you like the sound of my voice?” My breath hitched as the words left my mouth. Another reactionary line. It took everything I had to continue as if nothing had happened.

“Well I -ahem- I feel like my face isn’t something of importance as a knight. I guess I want people to give me recognition for other things.”

“So, no one has seen what you look like under there?” He asked. 

“Huh. I guess not.” I said after making the realization.

“I bet you’re hot.” He replied nonchalantly. It caught me completely off guard. Through my flushed features all that escaped was an incomprehensible grunt.

“What? If you’re gonna dish it, you’ve gotta take it too.” The prince said smugly.

“Oh, come on now.” I laughed. The tension in my shoulders relaxed slightly now that I wasn’t the only one making awkward flirtatious comments.

My laughter was abruptly halted when the prince and I stopped dead in our tracks upon coming toe-to-toe with the King and Queen of Fungaria- George’s parents.

“George!” His father exclaimed in disbelief. “Where have you been all day?”

“Tomorrow is your wedding day and you’ve been off fraternizing with your- your knight?” His mother scolded, raising her voice especially high upon saying the last word.

“I uh...” George was searching desperately for an excuse in my eyes. I chimed in.

“I sincerely apologize, your majesties.” I said, bowing. “Geor- His Royal Highness was giving me a thorough tour of where I’m meant to be working for the next- well, I’m not sure how long I’ll be guarding-”

“You’ll be with him for life.” The King cut in. That sentence hit differently somehow.

“You are dismissed to your quarters, Sir Dreyer.” The queen ordered sternly.

I stood frozen for a second like an idiot, not having a single clue about where “my quarters” were, when I felt a thin finger quickly draw a path on my back before George let out a surprisingly realistic cough, signaling me to leave and follow the path. Somehow, I was able to decipher his tracing, and upon opening the door I arrived at, a simple, yet elegant bedroom and bathroom. A smile made its way onto my face as I settled down onto the cushiony bed that soothed the scratches on my skin from years of sleeping on an old cot.

As I fell asleep atop what felt like a cloud, I encountered a tingling sensation up my spine as I remembered where the prince’s small fingers had touched. 

“I’ll remember those directions for as long as I live.” I thought to myself before I slipped out of consciousness.

Consciousness returned to me in the form of a hand violently shaking my shoulder. I looked up to see the prince- covering his eyes with his other hand.

“Why are you-” I stopped myself. I hadn’t realized that I had removed my mask. “Oh.”

I sat up to look for it but the prince stopped me and handed it to me.

“Thanks.”

“Uh, you’re welcome.” He replied, removing his hand from his face to look up at me.

We sat on my bed looking at each other. I wracked my brain for something to say, but his abrupt presence had caught me off guard, and I couldn’t focus with his face so close to mine.

“Um… What’s up?” I managed to utter.

The prince looked down, balling my sheets in his fists. He exhaled deeply. Then he looked up at me.

“I can’t get married tomorrow."

Prologue 

When it started, people thought it was the only solution. The world had descended to chaos. The threat of war loomed close to home. Some fought for bridges and others for walls. Crime faced no end. Pollutants plagued the air. Violence filled the streets. News stations spread lies. People were divided and afraid. Maybe once there was a time when most people were happy, but that time was over. Anxiety. Depression. Fear. Happiness had been replaced.

They must have wondered, “How do you rid this callous world of its plagues?” 

New laws? No, they didn’t work before and they wouldn’t work now. New leaders? No, who could guarantee they would have the solution? New medicine? No, billions of antidepressants were sold each year, but still, there was no change. New technology? A promising idea they must have thought…  

In two months' time The Holder was released. Designed to “hold” unpleasant emotionsー the clear, flat, penny sized machine was sent out to wash away the sins of the world. Once stuck onto the right temple of the face, one never had to deal with it again. It was simple. Say someone were to endure a painful emotion, the device would send a small, painless shock, signaling them to look away. The memory of that moment would be lost to a shock lasting only a few milliseconds. Out of sight, out of mind. The person was never to feel that agonizing pain again. 

It must have sounded like a blessing then. It sounded like a blessing to me at first too. But pain doesn't arise from painful things. No, the most painful things come to us as beautiful things. 

I wish they had realized this then.

.         .         .            .                                         

 I was 5 years old when dad gave me my first Holder. Every morning since then, I come down the stairs for breakfast and I’m greeted with “Alice are you wearing your Holder?”. And like a reflex I say I am. This morning is no different. Dad and I have a routine. He makes breakfast, and I set the table. I get the mail, and he reads it. After we eat I wash the dishes, and he dries them. We always work by routine. It's just how we are.      

I follow the routine and head for the front door to check the mail. On my way I look at the calendar. Zap! I feel a shock at my temple. There is only one date in the whole year that makes my Holder go off. May 22nd. The day mom died. I was three then, so I didn’t know her. Actually, I still don’t know what she was like. Dad knows, but he never tells. I know he loved her because no matter what happens on May 22nd he is sad. I can’t change that. The Holder can’t change that. A strike of lighting to his brain couldn’t even change that. And that is why I can’t look at the calendar on May 22nd. Because I know it will be a painful day.

Most years, I know it's May 22nd, before I even look at the calendar. Usually I can tell by how dreadfully slow and quiet dad is. He just sits with mom’s picture. And he tries to look. The Holder won’t let him, but he doesn’t stop trying. There has never been a year where he hasn’t done this. Not until today. I grab the mail and run to the kitchen. Me being there doesn’t help much, but at least he won’t feel alone. I expect to see him at the table with mom’s picture and coffee. But he isn’t.

“Dad? Are you okay?” I say, almost cautiously.

“On a perfect day like this, how could I not be okay?” he says laughing. 

This doesn’t make any sense. Dad is never happy on mom’s death day. I don't get it. Did he forget? It’s nice to see him happy today, but I think he would feel worse if he realizes tomorrow that he forgot mom’s death anniversary. Should I remind him? I debate it in my head.

“Do you know what day it is?” I ask slowly.

“May 22nd” he says while flipping a pancake.

So, he knows the date. Did he forget what happened? But, dad doesn’t forget things. Well, there is a first time for everything... 

“Isn’t today special?” I hint.

“Any day is a special day, you just have to make it special” 

What is wrong with him!? Is he sick? Sometimes fever impairs your judgement. Yes! That has to be it.

“Dad, are you feeling okay?” I prod.

“Why so many questions today? I feel fine. Can you please set the table?”

Zap! Oh no. Looking at dad must be painful for me because the Holder doesn’t want me to look. I don’t understand what is happening. How could he just act like mom didn't die on this day years ago? This isn’t right. I leave the kitchen and go to the basement. In the very back of the basement there is a desk. Hidden there is mom’s picture. I grab the picture and take it back to the kitchen. Dad is setting the table when I get there.

“Come eat Alice, I made pancakes.”

“Dad look at this!” I shove the picture in front of his eyes so he has no choice, but to look. I expect tears.

“Who is that Alice? A friend of yours? Pass the syrup please.”

That is all he has to say? Zap! Again I can’t look at dad without feeling bad. Why can’t he remember her? How did he forget her?

“Dad, that’s mom.” I say with my panic filled voice.

“Whose mom?” he asks innocently.

“Dad, don't you feel shocks from your Holder?”

“Well no. The picture doesn’t make me feel anything bad.”

Now I know the problem. His Holder is broken. It should have shocked him, and it didn’t, so dad thinks nothing is wrong. I go get the instruction manual for the Holders and flip to the section titled Holders that don’t shock. 

“A Holder that doesn’t shock is most likely broken. It should be recycled and you should get a new Holder. However, in some cases a Holder is designed not to shock. If someone is repeatedly exposed to something that causes an unpleasant feeling their Holder will permanently erase it from their memory. They will no longer get shocks from looking at said thing because they will have no memory of it.”

Zap! The Holder doesn’t want me to look at the manual, I’m guessing because it has made me cry. I wish looking away made me feel any better. I can’t believe this. The Holder made him forget mom! 

This can’t be right. One day, a long time ago, dad told me mom was the “source of his happiness”. Now he doesn’t even recognize her! Holders are only supposed to get rid of the bad, not the good. Mom was the good. This has to be a glitch. I grab my phone and call the Holder repair hotline.

“Holder repair, what is the problem?” 

“My dad’s Holder erased a memory of his, but it was something good!” I scream.

“This can’t be right, Holders don’t get rid of the good memories. Can you explain?” he says. 

I explained to him how dad always tried to look at mom’s picture, even though the Holder didn’t let him. And how now he can’t remember her at all because the Holder erased his memory.

“Can’t you tell? When your dad remembered your mom it made him feel terrible. And now he never has to feel that way ever again.” he said, annoyed. 

Then the call ended. I was torn in half. My dad is happy today, but he can never remember mom again. Which is better? Which is more important? Is it worth it? And what about all his good memories with mom? Are they lost now too? I go back into the kitchen where dad is reading the mail, as always. I sat next to him.

“What is your source of happiness? I ask.

“You are.” he says smiling.

“Would you ever forget me?” 

“Never, ever!” he says as he grabs my hand. 

I know he wouldn't forget me. Not by himself. But if he was wearing his Holder he could… 

Rage fills my body. How could that stupid machine just take something so precious from my dad without even warning him? What if he didn’t want to forget mom? What if I forgot him? I could never forgive myself. I could never be happy if I didn’t remember him! 

Without a word I rip dad’s holder off. I do the same with mine. I place them on the table and smash them with my fist over and over again.

“Alice! What are you doing?” he screams.

I bet his holder wouldn’t let him watch me right now.

 “That woman is your wife. You forgot her, cause of this!” I yell. 

I point at mom’s picture then the Holders, but dad just looks confused.

“Holders hold away the bad to leave room for the good” he says, reciting an ad from the Holders company.

“Dad you can’t keep the good and get rid of the bad! You can’t pick and choose! You either keep them both or nothing at all!” I say.

I am confident that I will never wear a Holder again in my life.

It’s like clockwork. She rides her bike, rusted and weathered, at eight o’clock each morning. Constantly moving, she orbits around his lonely star; a planet too far away to reach, but just close enough to watch.

He gazes from his window, smiling.

Always lacking the courage to walk up to her, his dream girl.

The girl falls to pieces one fateful day. He glances up from his writing, ears perked, and walks over to his window. His eyes widen as he takes in his damsel in distress. Her tire, a bundle of shredded ribbons. Her knee, a war zone. Her tears, begging for help.

He doesn’t wait for his mind to freeze, for cowardice to overtake him. The boy runs down the steps, races across the road, nearly trips to reach the girl in her darkest hour.

He stops, gasping, in front of her. He smiles, hesitantly, and it eases her pain.

She smiles back.

~~~~~~

Gears in the world’s time rumble every day, slowing down for the two of them. One moment, now infinity.

They bike alongside, their full hearts beating wildly with each roguish smile and each word whispered into the wind.

The boy’s blue bike still shines from the wax on the day it was sold. The girl’s brown bike is a walking junkyard.

He thinks hers is much more beautiful, if only because she rides it.

They laugh as they pedal, hoping that this moment will last forever.

~~~~~~

The grandfather clock chimes, an endless and monotonous murmur. She sits on his lap as they ride his bike together, the girl’s junkyard bike left behind by the corner of the road.

Their naive hearts, thinking it’s true love. 

In their world, anything is possible.

They bike for hours, lost in each other.

They never really go anywhere, but with their intertwined hands they explore new galaxies.

~~~~~~

The clock’s glass frame shatters.

A screaming match breaks loose, his shining bike half-demolished between the pair of them. She tries to make him listen, that the scratches and popped tire aren’t her fault.

He ignores her and only yells louder before storming off, shoulders hunched and hands thrown in the air.

She stands there for a few minutes, lip trembling, before disappearing back into her house.

The girl wails as she flings the clock against a wall, knowing that the day can never be reversed. She breaks time in her anger, forcing her moment of anguish to remain deep inside of her for much longer than it should have.

She walks on a different road now, abandoning her first love.

Her bike, shoved in the garage. Cobwebs don’t accumulate. Even the spiders can’t find happiness in her fractured memories.

The boy boards up the window. A fit of rage further dents and wrecks what’s left of his precious bike, but the memories, his true goal, are still painfully etched into his brain.

In the seemingly endless haze of misery, both swear off biking for the rest of eternity.

~~~~~~

The resin of experience binds the shards of glass back together. Not whole, never whole. But it is usable, so time begins creaking along at the usual pace.

Years fly by, a bicycle steadily moving into the unknown.

The boy’s house is boarded up, matching his bedroom window.

Before he leaves the city, he pauses by the girl’s door. He moves to knock, but then looks down at his shoes and moves on.

She gazes from her window with damp cheeks.

He walks away, until he’s barely a speck in her vision.

As he rounds the distant corner, something in her mind, a piece forgotten and abandoned long ago, snaps into its rightful place.

The girl scrambles away from the window seat and bounds down the steps.

She pulls her ancient bike from the musty garage and clambers onto it.

Her feet pound against the pedals as she rides furiously across the grass.

She turns the corner and nearly runs the boy over as she jumps off the bike.

She stops, gasping, in front of him. She smiles, hesitantly, and it eases their pain.

He smiles back.

And somewhere, time shifts back on course.

A fire flickered in the living room in the darker hours, and an old woman sat in her weathered rocking chair of wood. She was tired as she was old, and has seen just about there was to see. She no longer knew anything that was new. A young girl, perhaps about five, toddled up to this weary woman, curious and full of questions.

“Gran-ma? Can I ask ya something?” she piqued, sitting at the old woman’s feet.

“Anything you wish, Anemone.” The old woman smiled, taking the girl’s small hands into her own worn ones. “Though I am afraid I have run out of stories to tell.”

Young Anemone’s face fell. “Aww, Gran-ma! I love your stories!”

“It’s okay.” Gran-ma nodded. “Instead, I want to take you on a little adventure today.”

“Oh, boy!” Anemone jumped up and down with excitement. “An adventure! I love adventures!”

“And just a little bit of magic.” Gran-ma winked. Carefully standing, with the buoyant little girl in hand, they had made their way to the closet.

“Hold still, now. Don’t let go.” The woman whispered as she placed a hand on the wall.

“I never!” Anemone smiled. Together, their surrounding shifted frames to a quiet winter morning, where people went about their business as usual. “What are we doing here?” the little girl asked.

“I’m going to give something to someone. You can watch me through these.” The woman handed her a pair of binoculars. “I’ll be back soon. Don’t loose sight of me.”

“I promise I won’t!” Anemone smiled. Gran-ma kissed the top of Anemone’s sweet head, and set off towards the people.

Anemone lifted the pair of binoculars, which had already a snowy lense put into place. Yet when she looked, the only people she could see was those with the same snowy skin. They laughed and played and went about their business, and the little girl was confused. She took the binoculars off and saw everyone, but Gran-ma, yet as she put them on, she only saw those who fit with the lens color.

Shaking her head, she saw there was another lenses, this time a deep ebony of sorts. She hoped that she could see Gran-ma through here. But the same thing happened again! Only those with such dark and ebony skin would fit in this lense. Some were from the snowy lens, a light mix of the two. Anemone looked and looked again, but failed to find Gran-ma.

So she shifted to another lense, a golden one. And yet again, the same thing happened. And so was the light tan lenses, and countless shades Anemone clicked and clicked, and she could never find Gran-ma in even one. 

“This is impossible!” Anemone pouted, throwing down the binoculars. “I can’t find Gran-ma!”

But in one last attempt of determination, she looked through the first lense: the clear one. There was everyone standing there, no one was isolated because of the lenses anymore. But still, Gran-ma was nowhere to be seen.

“Have you given up?” A soft voice said behind her. Anemone squeaked, and sure enough, it was her Gran-ma.

“Gran!” Anemone wailed, running into her arms.

“Were you able to find me?” Gran-ma smiled.

“No,” Anemone sulked. “I tried all the lenses, but I couldn’t see you!”

“Not even the clear one?” The woman asked.

Anemone shook her head. “I don’t get it. If I got rid of the colored ones that isolated people by that same color, then I don’t understand why I couldn’t see you if the lense was clear.”

“Did you try all of them?” The woman asked.

Eagerly, Anemone grabbed the binoculars and put all the lenses on. And she saw everyone, but this time, it was defined. She could see cultural understanding and who everyone was; she saw character and a story behind each of the people. Confused, she compared this look with the clear lenses. Everyone was the same black and white with no difference. They seemed dull and uninteresting, and no one was separated from the other. And yet with all the lenses, each of them came to life.

“Wow!” Anemone said, looking at everything, and even Gran-ma, with the binoculars. “This is amazing!”

“It is,” Gran-ma agreed. “Not everyone thinks the same, sadly.”

“Huh?” Anemone put down the binoculars. “Why not?”

“Some people think it’s better if people are seen through the lense they belong,” Gran-ma pointed to a man who hung the same binoculars on his neck. He waved away another man who wanted a job at his workplace; though his eyes were glued through the ebony lenses. The man turned away, devastated. And another man walked up to the man with binoculars, and requested for the same job. The man switched the lenses to a golden one, and smiled widely, greeting him into the job without a doubt.

“Others would rather ignore the lenses altogether and live like normal,” she pointed at those who walked around with the clear lenses. 

“What’s wrong with that?” Anemone scrunched up her nose, puzzled. “It’s not wrong to leave out the lenses. They separate people, and that’s not good, right?”

“You are correct. You can do that if you want. But if you seek for a change, a call for unity like history always yearns for, then you use all of them,” Gran-ma said, pointing to a man in a podium, passionately speaking with words of all colors. People watched in awe and clapped. “They clap because he understands everyone, each to his own background and culture without using stereotypes and assumptions to justify how he treats individuals.”

“But… what if you don’t have binoculars?” Anemone asked again.

“That would be either the innocent,” Gran-ma ruffled her hair with love, “Or ignorance.” She turned Anemone’s attention to an old man who had no binoculars, walking around and minding his own business. He did not live to help others but himself, and kept himself separate from others.

“Cool!” Anemone had already been distracted by the fantastic binoculars once again, staring at the trees, and sky, and animals; each vivid with color and culture. 

Gran-ma sighed. “Let’s go home, dear. You’ve seen enough.”

“Can I keep these?” Anemone begged.

“You can look through them until you get a pair of your own.” Gran-ma smiled. And the two ladies faded out of the scene.

I wake up screaming, and swipe my eyes. Juicy colors flash before my staggering vision. The cry of war drums beat my skull numb with pain.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I focus on the calm, eternal darkness before my vision, playing the soft lullaby my mother used to sing to me in my mind. When my breathing returns to normal, I open my eyes again. Perhaps there’s nothing but faceless slabs of dark gray. Instead, a gasp flies from my cracked lips and my eyes widen.

The cave walls are illuminated by a group of fluorescent insects that cling to the walls with razor-sharp claws. They converse among themselves in soft, robin-like chitters, mostly glowing jade and cerulean.

At the sight of this scene, a trail of saliva forms at the corner of my lips. My stomach whimpers. I feel the soft vibration against my hand, for the waterfall ahead blasts all sounds to white silence.

It descends from a massive crack in the ceiling, standing about twelve feet tall and roaring with the ferocity of a wild beast. For some reason, the sound brings a smile to my face. The splashing white-silver water collects in a nearby pond, which gleams undisturbed, serving as both a mirror and the habitat of two fish.

As I approach the pond, a fish swims up to me, and the silver water ripples. It’s small―no larger than the size of my palm―but its wax fins shine with the festivity of a dragon. 

Beside the pond sits a collection of boulders covered in soft, dull moss, which I barely notice when I see the flowers growing in it. They remind me of the roses I have back at home, the sunset-orange petals giving off a mild, sweet scent and the stem gleaming ivory. I reach out out a hand to brush against a petal, softer than a feather. The feeling immediately relieves the soreness in my blistered fingers.

The flowers’ protruding thorns, however, bring me back to reality. The sight of them forms a screaming image of the tiger who had chased me throughout the loud, wild jungle an hour straight before it lost me. I had never been so relieved when I crashed into the cave, feet sinking down as I fell unconscious.

“Oh yeah,” I mutter out loud, ignoring the strain in my voice. “I should probably make a weapon of some sort with what I can find here.”

As I walk deeper into the cave, a wave of hopelessness washes over my body. My vision catches sight of nothing but more ponds, moss, and bugs. Right as I’m about to turn back, something sharp smacks me in the face. A branch.

A whoop of satisfaction escapes my lips. I snatch it. I lay it on the ground and begin to rub the rough piece of wood against the ground, when something else hits my head.

Under the faint glow of the insects, I squint and trace out the words on the rectangular sign hanging in front of me.

Welcome to Cave Eternity.

I awoke with a sense of confusion with no apprehension or understanding of my surroundings. Sitting up abruptly, I noticed that I was in a dimly lit room with tile floors and a wooden desk. Where was I? Who was I? I knew nothing, and never had I felt so intellectually challenged. I lifted myself with caution from a bleak unnerving table. Lingering around the bizarre room, I advanced to a divergent area, similarly lit like the first. I was then acknowledged by a perturbed man who was sitting by a stack of chaotic papers and looking through them hastily. The man seemed intimate almost as if we were affiliated. He contemplated my intentions and his countenance was reduced to harsh remorse when I approached him. I yearned to help the man and tranquilize him, however, he ran out of the room when I attempted to reach out to him and embrace his fragile frame. Now alone, I attempted to understand and recapitulate why he fled. I continued to investigate my surroundings with pertinacity, inquisitive as to where I originated from. The task was facile seeing that the floor was littered with documents all scrawled upon with hideous diagrams of some treacherous being. Among the documents, butchered offal lay scattered around the table which I had first rose from. I continued to linger around the room steadily looking for the  evidence hoping to recognize the slightest bit of myself. Concluding nothing, I established to leave the ominous apartment, and advanced outside into the remote streets where the scarlet red sun had already set. Delicate snowflakes were dispersed among the stiff brick sidewalk as the bitter wind blew savagely across my hideous complexion, matching my perturbed thinking. I attempted to distance myself from the horrid place, forcing myself to continue treading through the treachery that was this new life. Distancing myself from the city slowly, it was long before I had noticed that the scarlet sun had risen serenely. There was nobody roaming the streets, for I had finally decided to step out of the shadows. Crossing an empty alley, I came to be in front of a grand, rustic building. Interest brought me closer as I inched through the swinging doors of the great architecture. Never had I felt more astonished, gaping around the unified territory. Books masked every conceivable surface, from the landing to the ceiling of the marvelous structure. Picking up the closest novel, I wiped off a solid layer of dust and began examining it closely. I flipped through the book’s yellowing faded pages aimlessly for I did not have the proficiency to comprehend the classic literature. I pursued the novel, attempting to shift my hideous thoughts, for now I truly had something to tradition. I devoted all my time to perceiving and studying the novels and before long, I had read each one a legion of times. While reading the stories I felt shielded, for I did not have to hide and could be absent from the phenomenon which was my existence. I became obsessed with theory and wisdom as it was my only escape from the living nightmare made up of my thoughts and scrutiny. 

Years passed from when I first arrived to exotic yet comforting location and now I knew every crevice in the building. Upon a warm night in July, I heard quiet and careful footsteps approaching the main expanse. The footsteps slowly got closer and closer, paralyzing me with fear. The corner of a bookshelf revealed a young man, aged with worry staring back at me. He was familiar, I recalled him sitting at the desk in the dormitory in which I had awoken. The man advanced a few steps closer and reached out his hand. “My name is Victor Frankenstein.” he muttered delicately. I attempted to recollect from where I heard this name. The name summoned a strange memory, for now I could remember everything clearly. I remembered Frankenstein creating me, the electricity burning flesh, and severed limbs. I am the monster.

Up until now there have been two types of anger, wet and dry. Today is different, a sort of misty mellowness hanging like the cool-cut dew after the storm.

A dragging scrape beneath her shadow-cloaked jacket. The silver glare of steel. 

I wearily eye the rapier’s tip poised tense millimeters under my chin. Given the lack of muscle in her arm, it’s a wonder the girl can position her blade this high. Moonlight waterfalls from the open window and streaks the folds of her sleeve golden white. Each crease is a trembling ghost fluttering about the muted night air. Still, her honorable blade hovers.

“I’m not up for dueling.” My voice cracks as I protest, wiping my hands against my pants. They’ve become clay—chunky fingers damp with numbness, easily snappable under the faintest scornful . “Just let me get my studies over with.” My gaze drifts to the red “C” glowing like a semblance over the test on my desk. A string in my chest plucks uncomfortably.

“Come on,” she trills, tapping her watch. “Just three minutes. Unless you’re too weak-willed to endure even that. Starting in five seconds.”

Moonlit mockery flashes through her dilated gaze into the sword she gently swings in front of her, poised to attack. My gaze drifts toward my sad blade dragging drowsily below my hip. I force my fingers over the hilt. This position feels weak, foreign. Ice-pricked tension frosts the midnight air, layer thickening atop layer every second. 

She charges. 

Mirror glass explodes, crystal fragments shooting into my face and arms. My sword flies out. Blades click. Tension thickens. I dare not exhale, all breath pinpointed in the girl’s eyes. They flare of burning ice. 

“How much have you wasted over yourself,” seethes the girl, pressing into my block, “you incompetent child?” 

“Get back,” I grunt, “into the mirror.”

She sidesteps a candy wrapper on the floor, adjusting her blade’s angle. Metal screeches against metal, the agony of rusted whistles. The pressing weight lifts. White flash, sword high and diving down. 

SLAM. New energy unfelt seconds ago. It transcends into pain spilling over my forearm. 

I raise my sword and swing. Swing again. Advancing. Dodge, slash, parry. It’s a dance remix, memory-engrafted handworks altered by shifting patterns and speed. The drumming in my chest escalates. I reach for her head, chest, arms. 

“Is that it?” growls the girl between ducks and dives. “Two minutes! Do something useful!”

Tension gathers in my throat. Fine, then. I mirror her scowl, blade upheld as I charge. Foreswing, followed with two backswings. She dodges the first two and meets the third. Again, agony shoots into the blow. We encompass each other, newly birthed wind swirling around. A week-old essay paper flutters from my desk.

Dryness claws my throat. Ragged panting ensues. My burning forearm pushes sweat-soaked hair back. Running my tongue over my lips, I close my eyes, praying for the best. A floating haziness clouds my vision in black and white.

Her sword swipes sideways. I dodge. Though not enough. A red line etches across my wrist. Sweat pools into the fresh gash, the raw sting boiling. An unpleasant thickness swirls around the base of my throat, above my stomach. Hold on, an inner voice pleas. 

SLAM. The sword tumbles out my hand, my body flying backward. The wall smashes my back; I crash over snarling wooden tiles that reject my fall. 

“Get up,” the girl murmurs in a voice of silk-encased steel. 

An inaudible sound crawls from the back of my throat. Zombielike, I prop myself up under trembling limbs. My straining hand snakes toward the salt-dampened hilt laying two feet ahead. The ghost of a smirk creeps over the girl’s lips, fading as I slump back over the wall. Defeat’s specter is but a decaying shadow under the hollowed groans of my smashed bones. 

“How dare you stop.” The echoing click of her shoes sharpens with each step. Her eyes flash, wolflike. “Stand up.”

Almost in an ethereal trance, my legs rise. Steadying myself on thin air, I inhale a fresh gulp of air. Yet the aching plagues my body like nothing before. Fatigue lingers everywhere, heaviest within my heart.

“Is the drama done yet?” she grumbles. “Quit being a whining fool and face who you are.”

A shift. Someplace within, a straining cord of knotted emotions blasts into a thousand fractional parts. The split pieces twist, churn, writhe alive like a nest of worms over an oiled floor …

… Which sets fire to my heart.

“It’s not like-” I hiss between surging gasps, tilting my rapier. “I wanted- to be like this.” My vision strains through a thick, wavering coat of saltwater. “So leave me alone!”

My eyes snap clear, tears soaring free as I sprint. Savage instinct swallows my mind, gifting nerves and breath to my sword—a third arm rebirthed from the metallic bone. 

We clash stupidly. Fury blasts renewed strength through my limbs. Strike, hook, slash—all the same attacks. I don’t feel myself breathe, but it’s okay; rage does more than reignite life to a dead soul. 

“LISTEN UP!” A long-sealed pocket of my soul liberates the words. Throat charred yet forever ablaze, I scream until the wildfire sears the numbness. “You cannot fight me! You cannot conquer me! YOU ARE ME, AND YOU ARE ONLY SO MUCH AS ME!”

Stab. Plunge. Thrust. Blank air eats the first two, the third biting flesh.

I yank my rapier out. The girl grunts and sinks, clutching her stomach, knees slamming the floor. Laden blood trails down the edge of my blade; time is no more as I watch it fall and bespeckle the floor. Phantom moonlight pours in columns from the window, gilding the crimson patches copper. 

The marching click of my heels across the floor is no longer satisfying. I seize her collar and yank the breathing carcass up, numb to the wail of fabric tearing under my fingers. 

“Listen to me,” I growl gently, but the heat has long abandoned my voice. “The next time you even think about fighting me …”

There is no need to finish. Hollow eyes reflecting my own admit their defeat through a blink. One from each silver pool above, shimmering saline twin rivers cascade off her jaw and slide down the miserable folds of her battered jacket. The dismal moonlight outlines all the worst parts.

A shift in the air. A warm force, passing clean like a shaft through my chest, melts dry anger into a new wave of tears. I swallow hard and swipe over my eyes.

“Why?” I surpass my trembling jaw. “You were meant to guide, heal, support me. You were meant to be—” A wet sob. “My friend … what happened to you?” 

Her silence replies as an answer in itself, which only smothers a heavier layer of chagrin hanging over my chest. Unsure of what to do, I search her lifeless face for a solution.

“Go,” I whisper helplessly. “Get back in the mirror, and stay there. Forever.”

“But …” the girl rasps through cracked lips. 

She lurches sideways. My hands fly out to catch her body. I cradle her head, a tortured ruin of grease-coated strands across a sallow face, over my lap. She looks away, out the window as if to beseech a revelation from the stars. There are none. Only the forsaken moon stares back, having withstood the blackness that charred the entire sky tonight. 

“Alright,” she murmurs. “I’ll stay there.”

My voice obeying its own will … a long lasting weight in my chest sets free. The dormant atmosphere blankets her glowing figure. 

Ten seconds. A lurching shudder dashes my spine. I stumble and crash, aching rubber limbs aflail over the wooden tiles. Rapier gone, I claw. Metallic crimson flushes the beds of my nails as I grip my stomach. Pounding nausea encircles me. Rapier gone, I claw the air and entangle my fingers between the shadows that crush my lungs breathless. The ringing atmosphere flails, swirling, swirling … 

Young daylight sings through the open window. Its golden-white essence sears under my eyelashes and I awake, soaked atop a halo of sweat drowning the leathery strings of my shirt. I sit up. I feel nothing, but a good nothing—no restless flickers clogging the back of my mind; no echoing cries from the bleak chasm in my heart. Today the atmosphere is lightweight, perhaps an omen of forgiveness.

“Hey.” I face the mirror. 

For one second, my gaze drifts toward the bottom corner of my reflection. I snap back up, searching my eyes for any flicker of intensity, remorse, emptiness; I see none of it. The girl I see greets me with sincerity, and sincerity only. 

“I think you remember what happened last night,” I say. “I truly don’t want this—you slapping me around, treating me like a forever broken clock and damaging me every time my mechanics don’t work instead of working to fix them.”

The sincerity morphs into weary blankness. Passing seconds pause and hang in the air like heavyweights. Slowly the girl nods. The seconds pick up and fly past.

“With that said …” I extend my hand and smile. It’s an ancient feeling—the edges of my lips naturally extending this far. I don’t recall the last time it happened. “Join me, okay? It’s the only thing we can do, because we’re each other. Let’s start a new journey in peace, alright?” 

The mirror girl nods again, more energetically. Our fingers interlace at the cool center of the reflection. I turn to the door. As I pass my desk, the dull shine of metal catches my eye. The newest cut flashes over my wrist as I briskly toss the razor in the trash. 

It embellishes my arm submissively—a continuation of the fading red stripes scaling my upper arm, each stripe a battle scar earned for and by myself. The newest stripe is the last of its kind, and I’ll proudly watch it fade under the lilt of time’s gentle wing. As for the present, it serves as the sole reminder of the last and final time I will assault myself. 

Never again. 

Nadine, with the warmth of Ruth’s hands in her own, looked up at her girlfriend’s dreary blue eyes and gave a soft, sad smile.

“What’s wrong?”

“Why don’t I cry when I pray?” Ruth asked and tightened her grip on Nadine.

“Excuse me?”

“You cry when you pray.”

Nadine raised a skeptical brow. “I don’t pray.”

“Yes you do,” Ruth insisted, taking Nadine’s face in her hands. “You pray every time you tell me about Wallace and how you hope that he’ll recover. You pray that your little sister will grow up better than you could ever dream of. You pray.”

“That’s not prayer. God never says anything back.”

Ruth shrugged. “He often doesn’t and He doesn’t have to. You pray to Him and He hears you and I know He’s working on helping you because you cry and you beg of Him to show His mercy on your naked human soul. You cry when you pray and while it doesn’t happen often…” Ruth took a deep breath and met Nadine’s eyes. “You always cry. It’s the only time I’ve seen you cry.”

Confused and scared, Nadine pulled away like a deer startled by a distant but ever daunting gunshot. “So what if I pray?” she asked with an edge.

Ruth shook her head. “It’s not that you pray, it’s that you cry.”

“So what if I cry?”

“Why don’t I cry when I pray?” Ruth repeated. The question hung in the air between them, volleying in their minds. It was a loaded question but a valid one. Why didn't Ruth cry? Nadine, desperate to make sense of Ruth's words, thought hard for a response but not before Ruth continued once more.

“Why do you, a self-proclaimed Agnostic, cry when you pray? Why is it that when you kneel before the Lord and tell Him all you desire, you weep like it’s the death of Christ all over again while I merely ghost over my daily prayers without feeling? Why do you get to feel Him? Why can’t I feel Him? Why won't He let me feel Him?”

Nadine laughed roughly and denied Ruth. “I don't feel anything. I don’t care for God, nor does He care for me. We’ve been over this.”

“But you do,” Ruth exclaimed feverishly. “You feel when you pray to him and I don’t feel anything! I’m supposed to feel something!” She wailed, shaking as emotion wracked her body. Her hands dropped down to her sides in defeat.

“I’m supposed to feel the Holy Spirit, the awesome power-- something, anything from the Lord! But I don’t! I’m a fraud!”

“Ruth, come on now--”

“Did you know,” Ruth started with tears welling in her eyes, “that when I was going through the process of getting confirmed, I wasn’t happy, or annoyed or anything? It didn't matter to me how extensive the preparation was or how many classes I needed to attend, I felt nothing from start to finish. I just felt as if it was something to be done, and good God Nadine, that’s not really feeling is it!?”

Ruth laid her head on Nadine’s chest and sobbed. As she was held in a proper hug, Ruth felt the religious shame exude from her. It wasn’t exactly true that she hadn’t felt anything when she prayed because sometimes she felt shame.

The shame of living a lie.

Carefully and softly, Nadine asked Ruth if she even believed in God to which Ruth floundered to respond through her snot and her past lessons.

She settled on, “I have to.”

“No, you don’t.” Nadine said quickly. “You don’t have to believe in anything or anyone if you don't have the faith to do so. So I ask again: do you believe in God?”

“Do you?”

“Could we answer at the same time?”

“Sure.” 

One. Two. Three.

“Yes,” Nadine said.

“No,” Ruth said.

And the two stood in silence as the revelation blanketed them. The dead man slipped out of the noose and laid between them, making their lives stink to high heaven and Hell.

One… 

Two…

Three!

Crash!

Clouds of tiny bubbles encased her body, swarming around her. They tickled her face, whispered in her ears, and fogged her vision, rendering her incapable of perception. She pressed her lips tightly together, fingers and toes tingling in the cold.

The bubbles finally subsided, and silence reigned. Her ears were filled with the sounds of nothingness, her heart beating gently in her chest. Her eyes, now free to discern this new world, focused on the bright beam of white light shining through the hazy blue around her. Her body floated in this haze, no longer on Earth, but on an alien planet. All was calm and still.

A dark silhouette floated past, in and out of her vision, followed by a trail of clouds. The light flickered as it passed, then shone again. Her hair spread around her face in a fan, waving like the tentacles of a creature of the depths. It was her and the hazy blue around her. No noise, no disturbances. The haze was as dependable as time.

And suddenly her lungs burned with an intense desire for life again, as if a fire had erupted in her chest. She propelled herself upwards, kicking, kicking, desperate for air, desperate for life. She couldn’t stop, she had to keep moving, swimming with intense might until she broke the surface of the water.

Upbeat music played in her ears. A chorus of joyful laughter came from behind her. A small child shrieked with glee. Sounds of splashing, of good times, of happiness.

She looked below. There she was, in the middle of everything, her legs drifting below her. From the depths came that same comforting white light, shining in the darkness. The misty blue water swirled around her, enticing her to join in. She wanted to go back under, to dance with the waves again, but inevitably she’d have to go. The water clung to her, didn’t want her to leave. She smiled and waved goodbye one last time before swimming forward into whatever awaited her next.

One step. Another step forward, followed by shallow panting as your fingers press over the exuberant drumming in your chest. 

“Slow down,” shouts your mother from behind, minutes after she stops walking. “Stay on the inside of the path!”

You gaze to the side, wary eyes cutting along the jagged edge of the trail where mountain rock runs against open air. One slip of the foot and you’re airbound.

Like a loose boulder, your mother had exclaimed, throwing her hands up. You’ll go hurtling thousands of feet in thin air!

Swallowing the fear welled up your throat, you scoff and rerun your brother’s words inside your head. It’s a deal, you’d said, extending a finger toward his smug face, and I’ll make sure to get up there faster than you can say ‘expeditious!’

“Coming through!” a high voice slits the silence. A chanting wave of bright shirts fly past, dust shooting up with every step. You duck and squeeze sideways into a barren wall of tan rock, hissing as you rub the dry sting out beneath your eyelids. The parents mutter a frantic string of apologies, sprinting after them. Once the sultry breeze encompasses their dishelved footsteps, you continue. 

Sweat. It’s abundant, gathering at the peak of your hairline in plump beads waiting to spill down your face, gluing the strings of your shirt to your back. You pause and swipe a hand over your forehead, steadying yourself with a nearby branch. 

Something thick gathers in your throat, nausea threatening to spill out your lips. Stop walking, bemoans an inner voice. Gritting your gumline raw, soupy vision flailing to grasp the ringing atmosphere, you shake your head. The unspoken law of wilderness forbids retreating. Each muscle-twisting stride bursts renewed energy through your weary legs, tenacious to parallel your breathing.

Destination in 100 Feet, you read on a sign after immeasurable moments spent listening to the crumble of sticks and gravel beneath your dirt-swept feet. The primitive song of nature has never sung so loud, whisking its melody through the whistle of knife-sharp winds piercing the air. You can only imagine what lies ahead of those thin trees lining the trail up ahead, some peeling russet bark as their jagged branches claw upward to squeeze the clear sky. 

The hazy cacophony of softly clicking cameras and casual smalltalk regarding the landscape signals your arrival. With a shuddering exhale you hug your sides and slump forward, unheeded fatigue from the trek washing over your body, soreness evanescing from your twisted calf muscles. You massage them with fingers of clay. Right as you finish, the infinite horizon draws you forward toward the edge. 

Your soul travels to water first—a raging white waterfall under the bridge swimming furiously against harsh, stubborn rocks; silver-blue streams trickling downhill that sing an eternal melody, undisturbed for centuries to last; a vast, clear lake, afternoon daylight dancing in glitters upon its azure ripples. And to think you once saw this element as nothing more than the lifeless liquid in your bottle …

Sunlight adorns the ferns and trees like jewels, golden flecks peeking through the delicate cracks of lush greenery. Their heights stand mismatched like the various shells of a matryoshka doll. Hidden birds harmonize an impromptu symphony through the shrubs; no guiding tempo dares exist to restrain the vivacity of each bird’s separate solo; together, their voices harmonize an impromptu symphony in the shrubs.

A different world. Civilization … what’s that? The line between humans and the primitivity they once embraced has been drawn the moment of your ascent. Fear and excitement, fractiously swelling through your veins. They swim on pure instinct. 

The true reason you struggled up here in the first place—a breathtaking view ascended for foolish thirst—what was it, again? Ohh, right. Still, a relieved smirk skims your face, content to hover forever at the corner of your lip.

“I did it, brother dearest,” you whisper, words evaporating into the breeze. “Now, go get me my five bucks.” 

Five years.

Five years passed before he stopped searching for Ava. 

The small delicate sliver of hope in Adrian’s heart, held together by thin strands of faith–barely alive, could not bear it any longer. It shriveled up and died slowly, taking a part of him with it. 

* * *

Adrian had always loved the ocean, although he did not live on the coast. He had never been to the ocean, yet he loved it and treated its existence with extraordinary passion. He’d only ever seen its massive waves and salty waters and life that thrived within it on pictures, videos, marine science documentaries, and an aquarium which he once frequently visited. Seeing it in the physical world, though, was incredibly different.

One impulsive decision led to another and Adrian found himself driving down Interstate 17 one summer day in a blue Honda Civic. It would have been his senior year of college, if he had gone to college. He had attempted a year in a local community college as his grades from senior year as well as the end of junior year were not high enough to land him into a university. College simply didn’t work for him, though. The disappearance of his best friend caused his life to fall apart, affecting him more than it affected her very own parents, but then again, her parents never showed a sign of caring for her, so they were out of the equation. Adrian Snow did not know what to do with his life. More than anything, he felt as though he were useless to this world and questioned his existence. His parents had thrown him out of the house before his senior year of high school upon discovering that he wasn’t the traditionally heterosexual Evangelical son that they made him out to be, and after Ava’s disappearance, life became even more difficult. His little brother wouldn’t look at him nor talk to him after he found out about Adrian’s true self, which probably hurt even more than the rejection of his parents. He lived with Sterling’s family for a while before leaving and… he honestly couldn’t bring himself to remember what he had done in these past three years besides search for Ava. Time flew by quickly. Too quickly. 

He traveled past Phoenix, past the border between Mexico and Arizona, only stopping five hours later when he arrived on the coast of a great body of water. 

Adrian parked the blue car which once belonged to his mother on the gravel lot situated in front of the gulf and slowly made his way out of it and into the pouring rain. The familiar grunt of the ignition came to a halt; this would be the last time he heard it. He walked down the wooden steps leading to the foot of a great seacliff. 

Within his mind, violins, violas, and cellos wept their haunting song. Slick with the pain of an aching heart, their chords combined to form a glorious harmony. A piano shed its own sorrow through an equally despairing tune. His subconsciousness pressed its black and white keys, carefully darting along with pale gentle fingers.

Despite the melancholic nature of the music, it emitted sounds beyond what the word “beautiful” could ever dream to describe. The chords were a manifestation of grace itself. Complimenting one another, they created blissful euphony. 

His inner self abruptly bent its head over the pianoforte like a grieving swan suffering from hopelessness. The once calm manner of the music parted for a more serious, dramatic, and loud portrayal of human emotion. When his foot reached the final wooden step, the music stopped and he was faced with the view before him.   

The Gulf of California was tranquil on a beautiful day. Today, though, it was something else entirely. Adrian was met with the sight of monstrous waves clashing against sea cliffs, marking the emergence of a great storm. Gulls and albatrosses scoured the ocean surface in hopes of seizing oncoming sea life brought by the restless waters. Some of the sea birds encountered luck and got away with carrying a miserable catch to their rocky nests, though some received the opposite treatment from the sea and fell to their deaths–swept away by fierce waves and winds.

The wrath of mother nature unfolded as the storm progressed. Large waves became all the more tremendous. Threatening downpour bludgeoned the earth. Ruthless winds slashed through the air as if they could cut the living to pieces, only to leave them suffering from flayed skin and uncontrollably bleeding wounds. 

When enraged, the natural world was a terrifying and powerful thing.

Adrian, however, did not find it frightening in the slightest. He walked across the shore, unhindered by the angry earth, and placed a foot into the saltwater. 

He took a step. Another. Then another. 

The deeper he waded into the sea, the freer he felt. The iron chains that had once confined him so released him in an instant, sinking to the merciless depths of the sea. 

The boy who once played the piano soon joined his chains at the bottom of the sea. He felt reunited with the place he loved most as the ocean enveloped him in all its brutality. The last emotion he remembered feeling was calmness before all went black. 

From the stars, Ava watched the horror unfold.

She didn’t understand what was happening until Adrian stepped into the water and didn’t move when waves washed over his thin frame and forced their great masses onto him. 

Thinking that she had escaped the painful nature of life was foolish as she witnessed the boy she loved get swallowed by an enraged sea, which was not even enraged by him, but by the twisted sins of the remainder of humanity. One of the purest and most innocent souls she knew suffered such a dreadful undeserved fate. Life on earth was painful, and watching it without being able to do a thing was even worse. 

She was taken by the sky, and he, by the sea.

But they will meet again, in a world beyond our own.

They will just have to wait a little longer.

Time passes by fast in the depths of the ocean.

And even faster in the stars.

I glanced at the signs for the hundredth time as I strode through the hall. Their presence infested every room in every house, school, and library. I memorized the message from a very young age: Those known or discovered to have any type of mental illness will be tortured or executed. My parents and the government always told me that mental illness birthed from laziness, distraction, and defiance. Was this the real truth? I heard rumors before but was not certain ‘till today. I’ve thought about it before, but the ‘incident’ has allowed me to see everything as it really is.

Waking up in darkness, I glanced at the wall to check the time: 3:30 AM. I had a couple of hours before it was time to get ready for school. I turned on the night lamp to find my enormous backpack which was ripping at the seams sitting in the corner of my room where I had left it from the night before. My books and untouched homework were sprawled all over the floor. My stomach churned. This was the 10th uncompleted assignment this week. Mother was  furious. I want to be like the others, but I always find the work so lifeless and routine. I look out the window, thinking about all the sleeping masses. 6:30 AM. I’m late.

I walk down the stairs quietly, making sure to skip the steps that creak. Sweatshirt. Backpack. Sneakers. Phone. I unlock the door and step out in the open, the darkness is strangely comforting today. The air smells different and I can feel the peculiarity. Something will happen today. My head is beginning to pound. An engine roars, headlights shine so bright I am blinded for a moment. The enormous figure squeaks to a halt and the paint chipped doors slowly open. Bus is here. Reluctantly, I drag myself up the small steps and through the narrow aisle. The bus is empty except for a few conversing masses in the front. The back of the bus seems peaceful; nobody will disturb me there. I don’t want to talk about pointless things with pointless people. Sit. Sitting.

7:00 AM. More boring masses. The library is filled with them. Nobody is reading or studying, or using the library as a library is used. Everybody talking, always about nothing. I watch them, constantly, always the same. The sound of nothing has wrung. The masses scramble to their respectable voids where they are fooled into thinking they learn. I sit alone for a while, no mass around to bother me. I think about the masses who are just now waking and those sitting in the voids connected by innocent hallways. The masses are always cheerful, walking on air, surrounded by others, always smiling, it seems possible only for them. I am a different mass. Another sound of nothing. Voids are empty, hallways full, masses strolling with no purpose. If voids are empty then so are masses. The hallways are always innocent.

8:00 AM. Second void. I decided to attend before the other masses begin to notice. I find a seat. There is an old gum under the chair, and initials carved into the decrepit desk. More pointless work, I don’t even bother to read the task. Another thing I have failed. Mother will begin to worry again and I will reassure her with my fabricated optimism. Something will surely happen soon. I can feel it. I grab my overstuffed backpack and leave a void, searching for something, anything to feed my everlasting hunger for purpose. I feel different again.     

9:00 AM. They came, the government officials, made us all line up and examined us. They asked me questions: “What do you like to do?”, “Who are your friends?”, “What I plan to do after the voids today (they called them classes)?”. I answered only what they wanted to hear, to play it safe, I have seen the officials before but they have never come here. What has changed?

They took a couple of the masses away and everybody is not happy for once, panic devours the voids. I know where the officials took and them, and why, and what they will do to the masses. The taken masses did not pass the test, which I find incredibly bizarre. If anything, I should not have passed the test. It was only logical to assume they were falsely executed, as they had been the same as everybody else. I should have been taken. I should have been executed. I am different. I need to talk to someone.

Shaken from these peculiar events, I decide to visit my father, I hardly remember what he looks like anymore-- blue eyes or green? We haven’t talked since his prosecution in eight years, in 2060.

I peddle my bike hard and fast, as if this will change anything. It is almost dark outside now, and the  sun wanes over the edges of houses, its swaying tendrils staining the sky with hues of red and yellow. So peaceful, I think. The sun has no worries. I wish I were that sun. 

I am a tennis player because of the rubbery smell of opening a new can of balls and early mornings on the court, because of the exhilarating feeling of a powerful serve and pieces of ball lint on clothes and shoes, because of swinging through a shot and hitting a clean winner down the line, because of winning the match after tireless back and forth points, because of pep talks I give to myself, because of the endless hours practicing and gulping down the frosty water from the coolers, because of the sunburns during the summer and numb hands in the spring, because of my love for the team and winning a deciding match, because of my coaches constantly encouraging me to be the best, because of pushing my strings back into place in between points, because of being sore and upset after a difficult practice, but most importantly because of a sense of belonging.

I  became loyal to the sport and these impressions subconsciously. It is my passion that drives me to succeed. I feel at home when I am talking to my coaches and competing with my friends. My heart skips a beat before every match even if my opponent's abilities are clear. I am part of a community that is so much larger than tennis, a supporting second family, made up of coaches, friends and players, people I trust and would not give up for the world. On the court, my mind is focused on returning the ball, nothing else. I hunger for competition and even greater challenges but what resonates greatest is the thrill of the game.

"If he but fail to recognize himself, a long life he may have.”

 - Ovid's Metamorphoses

Imagine!

If we think of ourselves divided into separate entities of existence from the time we are born until we draw our last breath, then the stages in which we live are distinguishable by variations of the aging shell. What other ways might the soft slopes of infancy, the angular stretches of adolescence, and the weathered plateaus of old age be so aptly identified?

I thought myself an immortal beauty. Years stretched before me like long roads, unending, yet still I dragged my feet, lingering beside the glittering waters which so appealed to me. I found myself enraptured by the person who met my eyes through the ripples.

In the water the man had skin like sunrise, face lit with marvelous expectation. In godly fashion, his contours bore their own light, casting shadows that squalled for the place at his feet. Like him, I relished the dark envy of others. Young men and maidens fell at my feet; from them I heard my name whispered, a decadent delight, sugar on their disconsolate lips. I felt such inexplicable pleasure when I endeavored to fish their hearts out by the strings. How willingly they were surrendered! I cannot even begin to describe the sensation of a heart in my hands, visceral yearning pumped up from the bowels of the soul. It was delicious.

The road seemed endless. Still I ate up the miles. My beauty was not so permanent as it seemed, and soon the wretched years began their lusty conquer of my appearance. Morphed and mottled, my skin, once sun-soaked and bronze, succumbed to the pull of the devil beneath me. My flesh sank in folds, downward, and I wondered how long I had before my bones would follow.

My hair, once laurel gold, yielded to a slow vanquish of age and waved new gray banners. Dark crumbs grew on my forehead and cheeks as if I had knelt and pressed my face into the ground, then let the morsels of dirt cling to my skin. With time, lines etched my face, tracing it with undulating precision.

Oh, and this blasted self-envy! It is as though a part of me had gone missing, leaving holes in my heart. The jealousy of others subsided as I aged, but my disdain festered. Once I had taken comfort in my appearance, but change had brought ruin to its handsome certainty. I thought, to age is the slow yet relentless moldering of one’s framework.

At this time I began to think of a man I heard could give forms immortality, eternal youth. I heard he could carve away years with his hands and his tools, an uncanny magic. In the beginning I had ignored the rumors. Now as an older man, I began to consider more seriously the prospects of finding him. What was his name? I searched my memory, until it came to me. The Sculptor. I hoped he could work the magic I heard he possessed, so that he might return me to my fine form. At last I had realized that youth is divine, yet fleeting.

Years passed. I spent each day searching for him. I walked between villages and cities, feeling the hours slipping from me, feeling the days diminishing. Neither doctors nor witches I passed along the way could cure the ailment of ageing. I trudged through the sands of time, nearing the Gates. I must have been right upon them when at last I stumbled upon the Sculptor’s shop.

I had been traveling since sunrise. I had no food or water, and my spine wilted as I came upon the midway point between towns, at dusk. Walking felt like wading in mud, and my joints creaked like old hinges. Parched and aching, I searched for respite. By now I had worn blisters into my toes and ground my soles to bone.

From a way off, a building appeared. In relief, I stumbled, slowing as I neared. The entrance featured a plain door, upon which a tiny hand had been carved into the wood. Simply, beneath the carving were two words, cast in bronze: The Sculptor.

At last, I had found him! Without assistance, the door swung inward, inviting me in.

Through the doorway I glimpsed a little man. His face looked like a candle, half melted. He was short and sickly thin, with bulging eyes and deft hands. Veins slunk up from his fingers like knotted ivy. Tools hung from a belt on his waist. He appeared to be expecting me, shaking my hand and ushering me into the hall. Bemused, I let him lead me forward. He offered me water and simple foods; bread and old cheese.

On the inside, wine-red walls arched themselves around marvelous figures. Stone women cast their eyes downward to the marbled floors, the folds of their veils honed to such smoothness they seemed to fill the women’s mouths with breath, if only to give the fabric reason to stir. Winding folds of cloth flowed from the arduous forms, illuminating soft skin beneath. Pieta cast her eyes skyward; Moses gazed down the expansive hall. The Elgin marbles viewed me with cool indifference, and my chest ached with chagrin as I hunched in their shadows.

At once I remembered a description of the ways we might be moved by such flagrant depictions of the human form. It was the transmission of energy from immobile persons, entombed in marble, to me, suspended in my rapture. They evoked wondrous sensations; melancholy and virtue as their sinuous forms strained against the confines of stone.

Such feeling had been recorded in their features! Some had their chins lifted, glowing with the light of heavenly ecstasy. Others had their brows creased, shadowing eyes like storms, mouths ruptured in silent screams.

“Oh!” I wept, “the beauty of these have far surpassed my own.”  In the large cavern of the room, my sobs echoed. If possible, the statues seemed to relish my anguish.

“If I may,” The Sculptor interrupted my wailing as he led me past, “imagine a world exists where you might exchange your parts for perfection.”

My eyes and nose dripped in unison. His mouth curved as he continued, “If you were presented the opportunity to pick apart all the wondrous creations of humanity and exchange the parts for your own, would you?”

I asked him what he meant.

“It means you could have their glory.” His eyes glinted. “Or their youth.”

 By then we had reached the end of the grand hall. In earnest, the Sculptor turned and asked if I wished to be young forever.

“Oh, if I could!” I stole another glance at the stone figures and my breath dissolved; for the first time I had laid eyes on something that surpassed even the aesthetic of my own reflection. It haunted me. My voice cracked; I stifled my sobs. “Please, little man, I would like that more than anything in the world. Make me worthy of the figures in the hall.”

A smile crept over his face.

I asked the Sculptor if he knew who I was. He assented and I realized, with delight, that even in the recesses of the world echoing tales of my former beauty had found audience. I asked if he could return me to my youth but he told me he had no image to work from. I told him I had the structure of David, Apollo’s face, and the charm of Cupid. I said I could carry the hard weight of divine artistry as Atlas bore the weight of the world.

At this, the Sculptor clapped gleefully. “What an exciting commission!”

He led me up to a pedestal, carved with flowers boasting ruffled trumpet mouths and creased velvet petals. He motioned me up, then lifted my chin. I saw a stranger in the glass before me, as he rearranged my limbs into a pose.

He commenced his work.

I dared not move, hardly breathe, for fear of breaking form. Reversing the clock seemed an impossibility, but I had just seen the work of this little man and knew he worked miracles. If I had walked these halls earlier, as a young fellow, I would have been the most revered.

But, I consoled myself, soon the loveliness of my form will far surpass those in the hall. 

I felt him slough away the years as trees sifted sunlight in the courtyard; as the weary sun yawned into slumber. He worked, and I was overcome by a strange languor. I slipped into a dreamlike state, feeling weight lift from my shoulders and my body uncurl, like new blooms. It became easier and easier to remain still. He hammered and picked my flesh, carving details, shaping and sharpening angles, tightening skin as if winding paper. He molded my features with gentle hands and gradually my muscles firmed; my skin hardened. Inside I felt my blood slow and my torpid heart, like pearl, cocoon itself in stone. The sensation worked its way outward; the viscera strung from my marbled sides solidified; I felt my lungs close in a few moments of fiery breathlessness, a new stillness settling over my features. I felt the shell overtake my chest, varnishing my arms and legs.

I felt stone build up from under my lashes, but before my eyes had been entirely coated I cast one last look into the mirror and beheld my new figure. I saw myself renewed, rendered perfectly with an ivory pallor to my skin.

And by Gods I was gorgeous!

I am God because in the innermost part of my mind I feel it to be true, because no mere mortal has presented me with anything that shows the contrary, because my parents and my parents’ parents have all reaffirmed this truth from the day I was born and will continue until the day that I’m laid to rest, because I have faith in my own ability and judgement, because my life has been full of wondrous miracles that only a being of my power could have produced, because all things are meticulously crafted with a deft hand that could only have been mine, because I feel my existence need be justified by my own higher authority, because my belief grants me the justification to pass self-righteous judgement onto others, because of the security I feel in knowing that in times of uncertainty I am the one and true answer to all questions, because of a deep seated insecurity and flaw within my own being - ego. I was sent down this path from my very conception, sheltered by my parents from the evils of those who would oppose the truth. It is my feelings that guide my way forward. When I look into a mirror, I feel my own divine presence within me. Wherever I may be, I radiate my faith and confidence so that it may permeate into the public conscience. I am the only answer that anyone will ever need, and to suggest otherwise is to defy my divinity and to reject all that is good in the world. Truly it is only the evil that revile me, for no individual could, in good faith, witness my creation and not be convinced. They reject me not for disbelief, but for hatred of my creation. It is all well, however, for I do not hate those who decry me. They too are a part of the creation they so denounce, and I could never castigate my own creation. It is with a heavy heart, full of divine love, that I must bestow their calamity upon them, and condemn them to the eternal suffering they so deserve. For I am The symbol of justice and good.

 The body is the vessel in which sustenance re-purposes into actions meticulously calculated for survival and procreation. We are thrust into an aimless simulation, flailing in a sea of which promises inevitable drowning. That is the one truth on which the cosmos was built upon: the cyclical nature of creation and destruction governs a universe so enormous and ever expanding, it has become deaf to the suffering of living, breathing inhabitants. 

Characteristic of this indifference, it cursed man with intelligence, granting mental capacity beyond primal instincts that compels neighboring lifeforms, all the while still bound to mortality. He wielded this in the form of wisdom as a defiant weapon against the overarching order in space and time which condemned him to a fruitless existence. Where there were untouched pastures, he claimed; where there was an environment unsuited to him, he changed. The momentary euphoria of conquest distracted him from existential dread for millennia until every crevice of the once green Earth bore the scars of his aftermath. 

There he stood, alone atop his destruction, with the ghastly presence of Death still looming above in mockery of his self-perceived omnipotence. As the dust settled, he withered from age, leaving behind only a cruel legacy for his brethren to continue. Heaving his dying breaths, he still agonized in his starvation. He had usurped the lion to become king, no, God of the animal kingdom but was still hungry for more. He craved nothing short of ultimate grandeur, but the universe did not bow to his majesty. 

In an ironic twist of fate, his soul severed from his body and was exiled into the abyss, alongside those of the lesser creatures he had arrogantly assumed superiority over. There, he wailed and cried against this humiliation towards his audience, spirits of wildlife, responding with blank stares at their new comrade who gloated of his achievements. He rambled until his conceit irritated the authority of the spiritual plane. Death itself paled in comparison to this overlord, the only force more sinister than man: Reality. 

It plunged its fangs into his conscience to inject into his mind the very truth which he sought after in his mortal time, but it was far less flattering than the narcissistic autobiographies he wrote and then called “history”. The world crumbled as the landscape shifted from darkness to scenes he was so familiar with. 

The story was centered around him, the protagonist, as he presumed it should. Except this time, he viewed this tale from third person, bearing witness to his impact upon natural order, one that was utterly selfish and disruptive. The terror he caused for Earthly creatures manifested as chaotic vibrations inside his cranium, echoing the shrills from trillions of unique voices. Among them, many of whom he recognized as being his fellow man. His ghostly existence rattled momentarily in excruciating agony before he remembered this was merely a simulation, and the world around him swirled back with dark canopy looming above. 

After being released from Reality’s clutch, he shuddered feebly as he laid ashamed of himself. The feelings of vulnerability which emerged from the depths of his psyche that fostered the emotions his scientific mind had long since expunged. Shame manifested into guilt which battered at his ego. 

He begged Reality for forgiveness who then scoffed at his plea. 

He then begged the animal spirits for forgiveness who were unacquainted with both his human speech and the exclusively human process of asking for undeserved forgiveness.

He then begged himself for forgiveness, and, luckily, his penchant for selfishness relieved his soul of the weight from guilt. 

In response, Reality immediately drove its claws into his figure, demanding further repentance. He spiraled into a permanent bout of agony—slumping pathetically and defeated.

After the death of my mother, I had first laid eyes on the image of my true love by the grave; a weeping angel draped by fabric atop the steps of a tomb, marvelously carved with her blackened fingers twined in ivy and outstretched towards the lip of the monument.

She had one hand resting loosely on her thigh, the indents beneath her fingers smoothed into the marble, creamy like un-veined petals. Lilacs bloomed beneath her fingers, stems inching up the slopes of her legs. The violet blooms were stark against the whiteness of her skin. I took her in and realized that at last the empty room of my heart had found its new centerpiece. She was an unblemished beauty, untouched by all but the flowers. 

The angel wept with me for my mother; a sore-pocked woman entombed six feet beneath the lovely stone figure; a woman who had died with a cough still building in her throat, blood still speckling her lips, carried up from her lungs. By the time my mother went cold, she still had her kerchief clenched in one weak fist, clotted with phlegm and fluid. 

At the time of her death, I was thirteen, in school, and achieving low marks. But losing my mother inspired some sort of new diligence in me; at once I felt the thrill of passion alight, a newfound desire to make something of my life when I had no present meaning for my existence. I decided to pursue medicine, to honor my mother’s passing. I had hopes that I could prevent more deaths like hers.

This was a good investment for love. I finished school and apprenticeship, then passed quiet decades in the practice. Patients passed before me, each like the other. Many were women, but I felt nothing but hopelessness as I treated them. A fear began to build with each passing woman, each a stone to my chained heart, weighing it down further into the dark depths of lonesome misery. I feared the image in my mind, the angel above the grave of my mother, could not be replicated for me in the flesh.

I was in my sixties when illness seized the city, well practiced yet no more high sought for my skill than the younger and more brilliant doctors beneath me. I was called to work at one of the wards.

Rows of sick patients limned the room from doorway to far-corner, sallow-faced; their skin pallid and empty as moonlight, with hues of green and purple layered into their despondent features. I worked with a few others to treat them, but suspected we did little more than oversee the comfort of their deathbeds.

This continued for some time before the most perfect woman I had ever seen came in, half-carried by her family. She was assigned to a cot on the far side of the ward, furthest from the door. I first saw her as I performed my routine checks on all the patients.

Her skin was as sweet as summer roses, soft and glowing as morning dew; a dulled sunbeam at twilight. My arched back folding in awe, my knobbly joints shaking. Emerald bright, I thought of the angel. Her face came to me, sharpened when I gazed upon this woman, humbling me with her ethereal beauty. Jaw quivering, my beard bristling against the soft folds of skin of my throat.

For years I had sought to find a face as perfect as the one I had seen before me at my mother’s grave, and now it had been brought as if by the fates themselves. 

So suitably, she was named Lily. 

I saw her and my throat closed; I felt an itch in my throat and my heart quickened. For the first time I could feel its beat I felt as though my life had become surreal and it was not truly happening- was she but a mirage before me? Or was this woman truly real, made of more than myth and foam from the raging ardors of the sea? She was the image I had fallen for, the object of my serene desire. 

So long I had thought there would be no one for me! I had lived years in such great accumulations I thought by now, well, if I have not met her then she must not exist as more than want in my desolate heart and dismal mind. But alas, she was here, surfacing memories of my youth with her innocence and unmatched beauty. I saw her and the face returned to mind; an angel’s face, carved like pale marble, green-tinged yet flawless. She was a statue given the gift of breath, my Aphrodite’s gift.

I knew my true love had come to me at least.

That night was the first I coughed up petals.

To begin, I thought I had caught whatever she had fallen ill with. When the lights had gone out, and the night-shift nurses were away I stayed beside Lily’s cot. Her skin clung to its violet shadows, as vibrant as the lilacs. A pressure built in my throat; it compelled me forward and I began to cough so violently I felt as though I might wake her, or attract attention to her bedside. I coughed and coughed, feeling warmth slide down the sides of my mouth until at last I bore what had me stricken; they were long petals, a pinked cream, pollen-dusted and blood-flecked. Still feeling their remnants in the back of my throat, I studied the petals, then looked up. Lily petals.

What had come over me? A new sort of illness? 

Stubbornly, I associated the plight with age. As age often does, it wore deeply on both my bones and spirit alike. I would no longer see but a few inches in front of my own filmy eyes, but that was enough for me to watch in horror as my skin, once youthful and stretched tight over knuckles and joints alike, began to sag. Once, I prided myself in my handsomeness, a condition bolstered by the many overtures of women who had thrown themselves at my feet that I turned away, but alas, such charms had begun to disappear. Furthermore, age made me increasingly susceptible to sickness. 

A week later her family returned for news, and I promised them it was well within my realm to save her. With pollen tickling the back of my throat, I said it was only a matter of time before she had completely healed. I knew lies were like poison, but I could not taste them over the bitter-sweetness of the flowers.  

When conventional treatments failed, I prescribed Lily homemade remedies; herbs and honey; various mixtures with even the petals I coughed up pressed into syrups. In response, she hacked specks of blood onto my white shirts. Any shirt with her blood staining the white, I refused to wash. I kept them together in the closet, crumpled in death’s hand like the kerchief of my mother.

From the days forth, I pined for my lover. I found myself incapable of eating, my mouth glued shut with misery when I was not by her side, hope waning as she worsened. 

I wore the shirts with her blood. I pressed locks of hair to my nose and breathed in her sweet scent, flowers on a summer’s day. I administered remedies. But the petals wilted beneath my fingers; her skin yellowed and her eyes sank into her face. 

I feared the desecration rot would bring to her lovely form, and longed to find a cure, a cure for death when I had nothing of the sort. I knew angels rose from the deaths of beautiful women, but how could anything more perfect emerge from the grave of an angel who walked the earth?

I brought up more and more petals. At last, I decided that I might consider finding a remedy for my own affliction; prior to this thought I had been too absorbed in healing my Lily that I didn’t dare think of myself. As I did not know my illness, I did not know how to treat myself. Had it been age, I may have prescribed rest, but I had the sense it was something far darker. 

I went to the library to search for answers. 

I researched extensively. I read countless studies and journals, until at last I found the source of my affliction, buried deep in the pages of a textbook of foreign illnesses and remedies. 

It was called Hanahaki Disease. 

The book stated it to be an illness that stemmed from unrequited love where flowers bloomed in the heart and lungs, and eventually led to suffocation. 

So I knew I would die unless I made her love me back.

I went back to where she lay prone in her bed, half-dozing.

“Lily,” I whispered urgently, grasping the book in white knuckles. 

She had progressed beyond consciousness, and could not reply.

“Tell me you love me,” I said. I grasped her shoulder lightly. She had sweat through her blouse, and a faint rasp had entered her breathing

She eased out a few incoherent syllables, lashes trembling.

“Tell me, please, tell me, tell me, tell me. TELL ME!”

Pressure built in my throat and I turned away to empty my lungs. 

When I turned back, I noticed a new stillness; her lashes had quit their shivering, her rasps waned to silence, the air near her mouth at last stilled. I realized that my Lily’s stem had been cut by the Fates. 

Even words could not unbind my lips. Hideous, choking sobs wrenched by bony shoulders; tears soaked my sleeves as I wept into my hands, collecting despair like raindrops in cupped palms.

I looked upon Lily’s stony face from the last time and caught my breath. She had become the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, more perfect than the angel. 

My heart swelled. Breathing faster, gasping, I collapsed next to her. Angels watched from the heavens, waiting for the moment they could pluck the garlands from my throat. More and more petals came up, each heave more powerful than the last. I felt myself slipping by her bedside; sputtering, blood bubbling over my lips until at last full flowers had bloomed from my mouth, their roots anchored to my heart and curling in my lungs. They were as pure and lovely as true love. 

*Hanahaki Disease is a borrowed concept, not mine!

It is warm and orange outside.

The curtains are drawn back, but the shades are open and cast the rich warmth of the sun across the room. My bed is neat for once and the flowery blankets are tucked snugly into the sides of the bed frame. The air is still and silent. Everything is in its respective drawer, organized as it should be, neat and orderly, but there is something out of place. A stack of clean cream colored envelopes, 17 letters, at the corner of my bed, tied together with a single line of thin twine. The pile is quiet and still speaks volumes as it sits at the edge of my bed, awaiting the moment it can be opened to spread its knowledge. The strong summer sunset shines through the windows, illuminating the stack and the silence. I wish I could but cannot watch as someone comes into the room and is first surprised at the neatness of my room, but then also confused at the strange envelopes on my bed. They examine the letters, reading the small, neat print of people’s names on the outside before the suspicion sinks in, grabbing at their heart, stealing air from their lungs as they try and find a phone, but it is too late. I’m gone.

But that is in the future. I can see the room, its warmth, the hum of the a/c system, the quiet, always the quiet. But right now, the sky is gray, and the sun is pale, and so I cannot go. It will have to wait until the day is warm and sky is rich. I tell myself to wait until then. 

I wake up behind bars. I stretch out, letting out a large groan in the process. It’s just a normal day at the Erie Jail, filled with lots of love and attention from my favorite inmate, Fred. He calls me over for my morning meal and I gobble it up as fast as I can. It’s been so long since I last ate and I’m extremely hungry. The prison warden comes to take me out to the bathroom. I lift my leg to mark my territory on the prison walls. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and I just have a good feeling about today.

When I return to my cell, Fred surprises me with lots of dog treats. He sings a song called Happy Birthday that says I look like a monkey, and I smell like one too. How rude! Fred looks through a binder with the letters CPL on the outside. I don’t know what those letters mean, but I do know that Fred learned how to train me by reading instructions in that binder. Usually I get excited when he pulls out the binder, because it means it’s time to learn a new command. I’ve learned over 40 tricks from Fred, and I like to think I’m an expert at all of them. My favorite is lap, of course. Cuddling is my favorite thing in the world!