Fetal Bait Apocalypse: 3 Collections in 1

Bedtime Stories for the Apocalypse was originally published in print by the wonderful Sam’s Dot Publishing. Please visit them at www.samsdotpublishing.com and support the small press.

Shiners

Even over the acrid odor of an old school bus’s burning tires, a woman dressed in rags smelled coffee. Her mouth watered. Coffee. How long had it been? She stepped from behind the twisted metal that had been the bus.

“Care for a cup?” A young man sat by a small fire of burning detritus, a dented tin pail resting on the glowing coals.

“Is it real?” The woman stepped carefully over a path of broken glass and sharp stones. A smile fluttered across her lips.

The man held a cup out to her. Steam danced off the top. Her hand trembled as she took the cup and drank. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply through her nose, savoring the bitter taste.

“Good, eh?”

The woman dressed in rags nodded.

“You’ve got family left?”

She didn’t answer, taking another quick sip.

“It’s okay. I’d love the company,” the man said.

The woman handed back the cup. She looked back over her shoulder and whistled; two sharp blasts, followed by a long, high trill.

Two men emerged from behind the twisted bus, followed by another woman. They held makeshift weapons; a charred two-by-four, a piece of twisted rebar, a sharp-edged rock.

The young man bowed. “Welcome.” He stood and handed the single cup to one of the men, who took it and sipped slowly.

“Beautiful day,” the young man said.

“Yep.” The man holding the coffee swished the liquid around in his mouth and handed the cup to the other woman.

Their host looked at the sky. He smiled widely.

The smile grew. His head tilted back further, as if searching for the sky’s zenith.

His mouth opened. His jaw unhinged like a snake’s.

One of the men yelled, “Shiner!”

The woman holding the coffee threw it at the young man, but his jaw opened wider.

The four ran in separate directions, while the young man remained. His skin glowed and pulsed with an unnatural light, until a thick beam of it shot skyward. It was met by another beam of light that shot down from the roiling clouds above. The two men, two women and their host were all caught in the blinding explosion that followed.

Two miles away on the side of a talus-strewn hill, Gibson winced as the beams of light connected, a bright golden beam from the shiner on the ground, and the Hubal’s brilliant red beam that raced down from above to meet it.

Gibson rubbed his eyes after the explosion that followed. Damn it. What had lured them this time? Chocolate? Fresh fruit? Coca Cola?

They kept falling for it — the promise of something long thought gone, ever since the sky had come alive. Ever since the Hubal came.

How many had been caught this time?

Gibson carefully picked his way down the slope, the explosion a ghost on his retinas.

At first it was the large gatherings, but lately it had been groups of six, seven, eight — sometimes as few as four. The Hubal were afraid of groups. An individual couldn’t do much against them, but if enough got together, if they had time to think and plan and devise — that’s what they were afraid of. That’s what they destroyed.

Gibson finished descending the hill and started toward the freshly burned area. The surrounding landscape was a patchwork of flora and ash — rough circles where the Hubal had attacked scattered amidst rich farmland gone fallow. Stands of trees stood here and there to mark what used to be property lines and windbreaks. The cities in the distance were no more.

Gibson spotted the girl lying on her stomach drinking from a languid creek. Her clothes were too large, and a pair of men’s shoes hung ridiculously loose on her feet. Gibson cleared his throat. The girl froze. “You should boil it first,” Gibson said.

The girl pushed herself up, turned and sat to face him, crossing her legs in front of her. “It’s good water here,” she said.

“There’s no such thing.”

She wiped the back of her sleeve across her mouth.

“You alone?” Gibson noticed that her hand hid something on the ground next to her. “Hey, I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Go away,” the girl said, picking up the thing beneath her hand and clutching it in front of her; a stainless steel butter knife. “Please?”

Gibson held up his hands. “Okay. Just passing through.” He started to circle, giving her a wide berth.

The fear on the girl’s face turned to a frown. “Wait.” She stood, brushing dead grass and dirt off her clothes and reached into her shirt. She pulled out a small square and held it out.

Gibson stopped and regarded her carefully. Finally, he took the square — a photograph.

“Mom and Dad,” the girl said. “You seen ’em?”

Gibson studied it. A thirty-something couple smiled at the camera, the sun glimmering off a small lake behind them.

“Nope,” Gibson said. “Sorry.”

“Probably dead,” the girl said.

“Maybe. Maybe not.” He handed her back the picture. “But probably.”

She tucked the photo back into her shirt and put a hand on her belly.

Now Gibson saw how it protruded, despite the oversized clothes. “How far along?” he asked.

She looked to be only fourteen or fifteen. Sixteen at most. She didn’t answer.

“There are shiners around here,” Gibson said.

The girl said, “I saw the lights.”

Gibson’s own daughter would’ve been fourteen by now. “Why not tag along with me for a bit?” he said. “Just the two of us should be okay.”

She patted her belly and smiled shyly. “There’s three of us, though, aren’t there?”

“What’s your name?” Gibson asked.

“Julia.”

“Like the Beatles’ song.”

Julia shrugged. “Mom said I was named after an aunt. Didn’t mention any song.”

“I’m Gibson. Named after the guitar.”

“Why would someone name a kid after a guitar?”

Gibson chuckled. “I like the name.”

“Better than my boyfriend’s name; Tabor.”

Gibson nodded at her belly. “The father?”

“No.”

“What happened to him?”

“The first wave took him out.”

“Sorry to hear.”

She shrugged. “He wasn’t all that great.”

He led Julia through the fresh burn. They stepped carefully around the charred bones and tree stumps rising stubbornly from the smoldering ash. The frame of an old school bus, burned and twisted almost beyond recognition except for the letters ISTRI on a miraculously untouched orange spot of painted metal, smoked with heat. Maybe a year ago, Gibson would have avoided the area; protect the girl from the horror strewn about. But now he figured she should see this. Smell the burned flesh and bone, experience the dead silence within the rough ashen circle.

He asked again, “When are you due?”

She stopped. A gentle dusting of ash rose from the ground and danced around her. “It’s not like I can see a doctor.” She looked hopefully at Gibson. “You’re not a doctor, are you?”

“An accountant,” he said.

Julia looked down. “You go on,” she said. “I shouldn’t be with you.” She put a hand to her chest and coughed. She dropped to her knees, retching, producing only a thin line of pink drool.

“Ouch,” she moaned.

Gibson held out his hand. After a moment, she took it and stood, brushing the ash off her knees. She nodded at the ground. “It’s still hot. But it’ll make good soil someday.”

“Come on,” Gibson said.

“We shouldn’t be together.”

“Just the two of us. That’s okay. They won’t bother just the two of us.”

“Promise you’re not a shiner?”

“What kind of alien would name themselves after a guitar?” He winked. “We need to trust each other. At least for a while. Can you do that?”

She rubbed her hand lightly over her belly. “I’ll try.” Then she smiled. “She likes your voice. Whenever you talk, she kicks.”

“You know it’s a girl?”

“I just want a girl, that’s all. Wishful thinking.”

They walked. Gibson wanted to keep her moving, keep her mind and legs busy while the rest of her body prepared for the delivery. But on the second day, Gibson realized she was the one leading him somewhere — the way she nonchalantly walked slightly ahead, but with a definite purpose and in a definite direction.

“Wait a second,” Gibson said. “Where, exactly, are we headed?”

She cleared her throat. “I know where there are some caves,” she said. “They were on my parents’ land.” She turned away from him. “I was in one of the caves when the first attack came, in a small alcove about thirty feet in. I don’t think anyone had been in there before me for a long time. I found pieces of flint, some broken arrowheads. I used to sit in there with a flashlight and journal. I was going to bring John in there — he was my boyfriend — but…” Her voice trailed off.

“How far away is it?” Gibson asked.

Julia looked up and brightened. “Another day or two and we should be there.”

That night, Gibson and Julia slept on a small hill thick with pine trees, the fallen needles soft beneath their bodies. Occasionally, they saw flashes of lights in the distance, where the Hubal attacked more people gathered dangerously, plotting against them, perhaps, but more likely seeking simple companionship.

They walked slowly most of the next day, taking frequent breaks so that Julia could rest. At one point, Gibson caught a crippled rabbit, a small dirty stump were a forepaw had been, and roasted it on a coat hanger spit over hot coals. He boiled enough water for the rest of that day, letting it cool before they continued on. They arrived at Julia’s farm, the place she’d grown up, shortly before sunset.

There was nothing left, save for misshapen hunks of metal that had once been tractors and pick-ups, and the jagged cement bases of a silo, house and barn.

Julia stepped carefully through the area. “There’s nothing here,” she said. “Nothing.”

Gibson put his arm around her as she cried. When she was done, she looked up at him. “Something’s happening,” she said, beads of sweat springing to her forehead. “Something’s going on with the baby.” She wrapped her arms around her abdomen. “Jesus, it hurts.”

Gibson looked around for something — anything — that might help. “Get up,” he said, helping her to her feet. “We need to get out of this ash. Where’s the cave you mentioned?”

She lifted her hand weakly and pointed to the rough limestone surface of a nearby bluff. Dusk threw long shadows across it. They took a few steps and Julia gasped, clutching her stomach. “Oh, geez.”

“Just a little further,” he said. He looked toward the rocky surface of the bluff, trying to figure out which of the shadows hid the cave’s entrance. Something flickered within. Gibson froze. “Wait.”

Julia looked up as a woman emerged from the rock, carrying a torch in one hand, a stone in the other.

“Stay away,” the woman said.

“She needs a place to lie down,” Gibson said. “She’s giving birth.”

The woman squinted, raising her torch. “Oh, my.” She dropped the stone. “Beth! Get out here. Someone’s about to have a baby right here in front of me.”

Julie fell to her knees. The woman rushed toward her, shoving the end of the torch into the dirt. “Beth!”

She was older — fiftyish, Gibson thought. A younger woman appeared next to her, eyeing Gibson with fear.

The older one smiled as she carefully slid down Julia’s too-large pants. “What’s your name?”

“Julia,” she gasped.

“I’m Nancy. This here’s my daughter, Beth. I’ve delivered before, so don’t you worry.” She nodded at Gibson, eyes remaining on Julia. “He ain’t a shiner, is he?”

Gibson stepped forward into the torchlight. “Gibson,” he said. “Named after the guitar.”

“Guitar?” Nancy said.

Julia said, “He’s okay.”

Nancy asked, “You the father?”

“No,” Gibson said.

“Well, give us some privacy, then.”

“Can’t I help?”

“Help by getting out of my light.”

While Nancy gave Beth instructions, Gibson backed away. Above, clouds darted back and forth across the moon. A black mass of them edged closer, obliterating the stars, sparks of light dancing within. Gibson rocked back and forth on his heels, watching. He felt Beth staring at him.

“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” she asked, slowly standing.

Nancy looked up at her daughter. “Get down here. I need you.”

“He’s one of them,” Beth said, pointing at Gibson. “He’s a shiner. Look at the sky!”

“No,” Gibson said, stepping back.

“Beth, I need you. The baby’s coming.”

Julia screamed. Beth squatted next to her head, wiping the sweat away with her shirtsleeve.

“That’s right,” Nancy said. “Push, honey. Push.”

“It hurts,” Julia cried.

“Scream, then. Get it out,” Nancy said. Then, “Push!” Then, “Here she comes!”

“A girl?” Julia panted.

“A beautiful girl,” Nancy said.

Something sparked and flashed above.

Gibson took a step closer to the women.

“Stay away!” Beth shouted.

Gibson realized the baby wasn’t crying.

Static played with the ends of his hair.

“Is the baby okay?” he asked.

“Is she?” Julia asked.

Beth’s attention turned to the baby in Nancy’s arm. Nancy rubbed the baby’s skin with her thumb.

Gibson stepped closer.

“Let me see my baby,” Julia said, her face flush, hair soaked with sweat.

“She needs attending to, first,” Nancy said.

Gibson looked down at the baby. A beautiful girl.

But she was gulping at the air, fighting to inhale.

Nancy and Beth tended frantically to the child, Beth wiping away amniotic fluid and blood, Nancy swiping a finger into the child’s mouth.

“What’s happening?” Julia asked.

Gibson kneeled next to Julia’s head, caressing her cheek. “Shhh. She’s in good hands.”

Then Nancy said, “Oh, dear God.”

Beth screamed.

Julia struggled to push herself up on her elbows, tried to look between her upraised knees. “Jesus, what’s happening?”

Gibson heard a cry. The baby.

“Run!” Nancy said. “Run, Beth!”

The baby cried again.

“Let me see her!” Julia demanded.

Nancy shook as she slowly rose with the baby. The torchlight flickered off the woman’s face.

And another light, as well.

She bent over and carefully placed the baby in Julia’s arms. “She’s beautiful,” she whispered. Then she rose. “I’m sorry.” She turned and jogged toward the face of the bluff and disappeared within the dark folds.

Again, the baby cried. As the glow intensified within her and seeped from her widening mouth toward the waiting clouds, Gibson said, “She has your eyes.”

Julia nodded, sobbing, holding her child tightly. “Stay with me,” she said.

Gibson stayed and stroked Julia’s forehead, even as the light within the baby intensified and shot skyward. Even as the clouds above answered with a light of their own, and the world around them turned explosively from night to blinding day.

Padre Sapo

He carried Amy into the narrow, rough-hewn tunnel. Graffiti marred the entrance; epithets spray-painted crudely in Spanish. A trail of crushed beer cans, empty tequila and rum bottles, disappeared into the darkness. They passed an abandoned fire-pit. A quilt of yellow fur, bone and gristle rippled with maggots. His shoes splashed through ankle-deep water.

Amy felt like papier-mâché in his arms. She’d grown so thin. So pale. The soft fuzz of new hair was reddish-blond now, instead of the caramel luster it used to be.

Her eyes fluttered open. “Dad?”

“Sssshhh. Yes, hon?”

“Where are we?”

Luke’s chest hurt, his back and shoulders. “Mexico.”

“I know, but where?”

For such a slight thing, she’d grown so heavy in his arms. But he feared that the stagnant water at his feet wasn’t clean. Full of parasites, or something worse that might wreak havoc on her already ravaged immune system.

“A tunnel,” he said. “Outside Guanajuato.” He stopped. He had to set her down. “Reach around in my backpack and pull out the plastic bags. They should be near the top. Put them over your shoes.”

“Why?”

“To keep your feet dry. I can’t carry you anymore.”

“You’re not wearing any.”

“Please. Just do as I say.”

“I want to go home.”

“I do, too.”

She pulled the bags from his pack and slipped them over her shoes, then slid from his arms into the stagnant, murky water at their feet.

And so the argument went:

“When will you accept the fact that she’s going to die?” Jenna had asked a month earlier.

“I can’t stop trying,” Luke said.

“You’re making her miserable.”

“How would you know? You’re never home.”

“I’m working. I have a job.”

“I take care of Amy,” Luke said. “That’s my job.”

“Take care of her? All you do is drag her across the country, giving her false hope time after time after time.”

“You want me to throw in the towel like you?”

“I want you to accept the fact that our daughter is going to die. And damn it, Luke, let her die here, at home, with her family and friends. Someplace familiar. Not out there. Not in the middle of nowhere. Please, Luke.”

And so the argument went.

Now here, in the tunnel, Amy looked so small in Luke’s black leather jacket. “It smells like old books in here.”

Luke pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. Is it the mold? “Wrap this over your mouth and nose.”

“Geez, Dad.”

Luke stopped and listened, thinking he heard movement. He had no desire to run into anyone, especially not with his daughter here. But it was only the hollow echo of dripping water; the tunnel walls perspired with it, glistening in the weak beam of Luke’s flashlight. Bats clung like burnt lichens to the limestone.

“Can you please tell me what we’re doing here?”

Dim light ahead. Luke turned off his flashlight. Cool air chilled the sweat on his arms and neck. The tunnel stopped beneath a grate embedded in the limestone ceiling. Light spilled through the gaps between the bars.

“Dad?”

Luke wiped the sweat from his forehead. He surveyed the small area beneath the grate, finding a jagged ledge protruding from the tunnel wall. He motioned to it. “Here. Sit here.”

Amy rested her back against the hard rock. “I’m tired.”

“Close your eyes, honey. Try to sleep.” He dug a blanket from his backpack and placed it over his daughter. He sat next to her and put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her to him. He looked up at the grate, took a sip of bottled water, and waited.

But wouldn’t all the endless miles, the rest stops, the gas stations, the cheap motels be worth it if they found a cure? He knew there were charlatans out there, crooks taking advantage of desperate people like him for a quick buck. He wasn’t completely naïve. But maybe the doctors back home didn’t have all the answers, maybe there really were miracles out there waiting to be found. And besides, how could he live with himself if he didn’t at least try?

He’d scoured the internet, joined discussion boards, frequented chat rooms, grasping, groping for any piece of information out there, but it was like trying to build a bridge by tossing pebbles into the ocean.

One night, an email from a stranger; “Have you heard of Padre Sapo in Guanajuato?”

He didn’t even know where Guanajuato was. He looked it up on the Internet. Middle of Mexico. So far, he’d kept his search to the U.S. Couldn’t afford to globetrot. But Mexico — that was close enough, wasn’t it? And cheap?

He replied to the email, asking for more information, and received a brief message with an attached J-Peg. Padre Sapo, the caption said. Father Toad. A poor quality picture, but Luke made out a man standing on a platform of rock in a small amphitheater carved out of a mountain. An elderly woman kissed his chest, while a line of the afflicted waited their turn.

The email contained only an address and the brief message; “From his ugliness, I was cured. May he bless and heal your child.”

A burst of feedback woke Luke up. The light spilling through the grate had turned orange. He heard voices now, too, voices from the amphitheater above. He looked at Amy. She stared back at him, eyes wide, as if trying to figure out whether or not she was still dreaming. Luke ran his fingertips lightly over her cheek.

“It’s okay,” he whispered. “It’s just me.”

Recognition filled her eyes. She shivered. “How long was I out?”

He checked his watch in the dim orange light. “Little over an hour.”

Luke stood on the ledge and craned his neck trying to see past the iron bars of the grate. “Sounds like they’re getting ready.” He couldn’t see much, except for stage lights and the thin metal pole of a microphone stand.

Footsteps thudded above. Amy looked up. “Would you please tell me what’s going on?”

For a moment, Luke looked like a little boy caught playing with matches. He shrugged. “They call him Padre Sapo. Father Toad.”

“Father Toad?”

He smiled weakly. “They say his skin looks like that of a toad.”

Amy shivered. “Why are we waiting for him?”

“They say the moisture from his skin can heal anything.”

Amy stared. Shook her head. “Jesus, Dad. You’ve got to be kidding me.” She looked so tired, the shadows of the tunnel turning the dark circles beneath her eyes into a black paint.

“We’ve got to try,” Luke said. “We’ve got to try.”

When they’d first arrived in Guanajuato, they tracked down the address Luke received in the email. Amy waited in the pickup truck with the windows rolled down to let in the gentle breeze, while Luke went up to an apartment perched above a laundromat.

“Fifteen sousands.” The senorita who beckoned him in was large and sat on a wide wicker chair. She leaned forward, her jostling forearms crossing over the silver head of a cane. She smiled at Luke. A web of saliva formed between her toothless gums when she opened her mouth. She reminded Luke of a turtle. A young boy stood next to her, his skin as brown as his eyes. He tilted his head, parted his lips slightly as if in amusement as he watched Luke.

“Fifteen thousand?” Luke tried to calculate that into U.S. dollars.

Senorita seemed to read his mind and laughed. “Fifteen sousands American dollars.”

“You’re kidding.”

She chuckled, her gums forming a cat’s cradle of spit. “No kidding.” She dabbed at the back of her neck with a white handkerchief. She nodded at her boy and mumbled something that Luke didn’t understand.

The boy reached for Luke’s elbow. “We go now.”

“Wait.”

The woman shook her head and waved at him as if shooing away a fly. “Go,” she said.

Outside, the boy nodded toward Amy. “What’s wrong with her?”

Luke stared at the boy. His tongue felt thick and dry. The sunlight felt sharp on his eyeballs. “Why don’t you ask her?”

The boy turned to Amy. “What’s wrong with you?”

Amy took the scarf off her head. “I picked the wrong beautician.”

“Bootishun?”

Amy shook her head. “I’ve got cancer.”

“Oh.” The boy nodded. “Sorry to hear.” He reached out and ran his dark brown fingers through the fuzz of Amy’s hair. “You got very pretty eyes.”

Amy squinted at him. She smiled. “Thanks.”

The boy turned to Luke. He seemed to study him. He grabbed Luke’s wrist. “Come,” he said. “Gimme the keys to your truck.”

“What?”

“Come on. I show you another way.”

“Another way?”

“Another way to see him.”

Luke stared uncomprehendingly.

“Padre Sapo,” the boy said. “The toad.”

“I can’t take this anymore. I want to go home.”

Luke looked down from the grate, looked at his daughter slouching on the cold rock ledge, so pale and thin. How fast her thirteen years had gone by. Luke remembered the moment, the exact moment Jenna had told him she was pregnant; the smell of the lemon ammonia tile cleaner he’d just used, the sound of snowmobiles outside their window, the rerun of Cheers playing on their twenty-four inch Sony — it was one when Coach was still on. These memories were so deeply imprinted on his mind, because good God, how hard they had tried to get pregnant. It took them five years. Five years! And two rounds of in-vitro. And haven’t those thirteen years flown by so damn fast?

Amy’s cheeks darkened with anger. “Why do you keep falling for this crap? You think some guy with freak skin is going to cure me?”

Luke sighed. “We’ve come this far. We’re not going to back out now.” What else could he say? That he was selfish? That he couldn’t imagine life without her?

“Don’t you get it, Dad? I’m tired of this. Of all of this.”

She began to cry. Luke lowered himself next to her. It was so rare that she cried anymore. He put his arm around her, wiped at her tears with his thumb. She leaned into him, her shoulders heaving. Dampness spread across Luke’s shirt. What else could he say? He stroked the back of her neck. He whispered, “I have to try.”

Soft music spilled through the grate. Cello and violin. Amy sat back against the tunnel wall and wiped her tears away. Luke stood again, trying to see through the iron bars. Over the music, Luke heard muffled voices through the rock. How many were up there? How many could afford such a donation? Yet the buzz of people entering the amphitheater quickly grew.

Amy coughed into her fist and grimaced. “That one hurt.”

More feedback over the PA system. More footsteps on the stone stage above. A sonorous voice rose from the speakers, rapid-fire Spanish Luke couldn’t follow. He glanced from the grate in the ceiling to Amy sitting so fragile on the rock ledge. He had to stop doing this to her. Jenna was right. Amy couldn’t take this any more. No matter what the outcome of this trip, he knew he had to take her back home. Back to her mother. Her friends. He prayed it wasn’t too late.

But this one last time…

He had to try.

A shadow fell over the grate. A large, lumbering shape stood over Luke’s upturned face. The announcer stopped talking. The applause that followed shook the tunnel.

The boy had been right. Luke was incredulous when the boy told him the priest performed his healings over a storm grate, but there he was. “Sometimes he pours like rain,” the boy said.

Amy strained to see past her father. “What’s going on?”

Luke held his finger to his lips. His eyes remained on the man above him. The padre shifted, letting in a small stream of light, and shed a blue velvet robe. Gasps and shrieks burst from the audience. He wore nothing but a blue swimsuit pulled tightly around his massive hips. Bumps, welts and cysts cratered his skin.

Padre Sapo. The healer priest.

His voice reverberated through the amphitheater, through the stone, through the tunnel walls like aftershocks.

“Por favor,” he said, his voice hoarse, as if his vocal chords were covered with sores as well.

Numerous feet shuffled and thudded onto the stone platform. Luke could barely make out the shapes of those who approached. He shifted to get a better view, his neck sore from the strain.

A woman with a deformed hand stood in front of the priest, leaned forward and sucked at one of the cysts. She sagged and backed away. Others approached. A man with arthritic knuckles the size of golf-balls licked at Sapo’s skin. He moaned as a man in a black suit gently pulled him away. A woman held out a baby swaddled in a tattered blanket. She swiped her finger across the priest’s oozing skin and put it to the baby’s lips.

“Gracias,” she cried. “Gracias.”

More people came. They sucked and licked at the lizard-like body.

“Dad? What’s happening?”

Luke snapped out of his trance. He reached into his backpack and grabbed an empty Tupperware container and handkerchief. He pushed the handkerchief through the iron bars and pressed it tentatively to the bottoms of Sapo’s feet. Could he feel this? Luke squeezed the handkerchief over the container, releasing little more than a drop. He repeated the process, pressing the handkerchief between the unyielding bars, lightly dabbing it against the bottoms of the scabrous feet, squeezing out scarce drops. Was it enough? Soon the soles of the priest’s feet were merely dry riverbeds of calluses.

Above, more people ambled forward and sipped at the liquid that oozed from Sapo’s skin, from his chest, legs and face.

How much time did they have? Luke wished the gaps in the grate were wider. It was impossible to maneuver the handkerchief through them any higher. Besides, what if he was seen? What would happen if someone saw a piece of white cloth poking up through the stage?

A man in a wheelchair sucked on the priest’s fingers. A boy on a splintered crutch lapped at his elbow. An old woman knelt to the floor and sucked on his shin. All of them offered their thanks in muffled Spanish.

The hollow thud of footsteps diminished. A man bent over, a tongue slipping from his deformed face, and suckled a cyst on the priest’s belly.

There couldn’t be much time left. Luke looked at Amy. She stared back with wide, frightened eyes. Could she see the monstrosity above them? Why did he bring her here? Why didn’t he leave her back in the truck? Padre Sapo turned in a slow circle. Luke dug in the front of his backpack. There was a pocketknife, but the blade was too short. He pulled out one of Amy’s spiral-bound notebooks. It was a journal she’d kept religiously since learning she had cancer. Luke tugged and yanked the metal spiral, ripping it free.

“Dad!”

“Shhh!”

Frantic now, he straightened out the end of the spiral. Sapo began to lumber away. More light spilled through the grate. Luke wiped sweat from his eyes, then grunted as he jabbed the wire through one of the gaps still covered with Sapo’s foot. He jabbed again and again, holding the Tupperware container in his other hand, catching the thin streams of liquid that trickled between the bars.

The container quickly filled with Padre Sapo’s blood.

Luke stopped and fumbled with the container’s cover, trying to press it on tightly. The light from above disappeared. When Luke glanced up, he realized that Sapo had dropped to his knees, and was now peering through the iron bars of the grate. Luke looked away, finally able to snap the cover into place.

“Get up.” Luke touched Amy’s arm. “Time to go.”

The priest’s deformed fingers hooked around the bars. “Por favor,” he croaked. “No vayas! No vayas!”

Luke shrugged on his backpack and scooped Amy into his arms. Sweat streamed into his eyes, making it hard to see.

“Sangre,” the priest bellowed. “No lo bebes tu. Malo! Malo!”

Luke ran. The cone of his flashlight wobbled over the tunnel walls. He expected someone to appear in its feeble beam at any moment. Guards. Police. Someone who would try to stop him from saving his daughter.

Sapo’s cries echoed through the cavern. “No lo hagas. No lo hagas!”

Surely someone waited for them at the entrance. Someone waiting to take the priest’s healing liquid from them and spill it onto the ground. Someone waiting to throw them into jail, or worse.

Luke stopped. Listened. All he heard was his own breathing, his own heartbeat.

He set Amy down. Tugged off his pack and took out the container of fluid. He pried off the cover and held the container out to Amy. If they were caught, at least the elixir would be working its way through Amy’s body.

“Drink it,” he said.

Amy looked at him with disgust. “No way.”

“You have to.”

“Dad, please.”

Luke’s voice trembled. “What harm can it do, huh? You’re already at death’s door, so what’s a few sips of this gonna do?” He felt like shit saying it, but what else could he do?

He heard something. Footsteps?

“Here, look.” He lifted the container to his lips and took a sip. “See?” He thought a moment. “It tastes like broth.” He wiped the residue off his lips with the back of his hand.

More tears welled up in Amy’s sunken eyes. She took the container from her father. Stared at him. Gulped the whole thing down without taking her eyes off him. She threw the container to the ground.

“Can we go home now, please?”

Luke reached out and hugged her. “I promise.”

Luke slowed at the tunnel entrance and peered out. The landscape was still and dark. Where were the police? The Federales? But there was no one. Luke slumped against the rough rock of the entrance. “Shit,” he muttered.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

Luke sighed. “The truck’s gone.”

They walked hand in hand along a gravel road. Luke wasn’t sure how far they were from town, but at least the night was warm, and the sky clear.

“I feel funny,” Amy said.

Luke watched her, wondering what to do. Surely he could make it back to town, but what about Amy?

Stop pushing her so hard.

He guided her into the brush a short distance off the road and found a small clearing. He set the backpack down. “Lie down. Put your head on this.”

Amy no longer questioned. Luke laid next to her, putting an arm over her, the blanket over them both. A cool breeze rustled the brush around them, and Luke rubbed Amy’s back until she began to snore. He closed his eyes against the starlight. Drifted in and out of sleep. When he opened his eyes again, the stars appeared muted. Fuzzy. They seemed to pulsate. His stomach felt scooped out. His throat threatened to close.

But what about Amy? What if she doesn’t make it through the night?

He felt her forehead, listened carefully to her breathing, watched her chest rise and fall, rise and fall. She seemed fine, but he couldn’t trust his own senses any more. The stars looked like they’d been smeared across the sky with a paint brush. His skin tingled.

What’s happening to me? Was it happening to Amy as well?

What is that thing’s blood doing to me?

He opened his mouth to call out to Amy, to wake her and ask her how she felt, but his tongue no longer worked. It felt like dozens of tiny ants skittered over his teeth and gums. He fell back on the hard ground, losing consciousness to the sound of crickets chirping, singing his name.

The violet haze of an early dawn…

Luke woke in long, slow stages. When he tried to speak, there was only a wet, whistling sound. The right side of his body felt sticky and numb. Snot dripped from his nose into his mouth. He felt something next to him. He struggled to turn his head.

“Amy?” he finally managed. He couldn’t focus.

There was no answer, and his heart tried to beat out of his chest in panic.

But then — movement.

“Dad?”

His ears felt stuffed with wet cotton.

“Amy? You okay?”

Something wasn’t right. Something…

Then he felt it, felt what was wrong, as Amy moved next to him, as feeling returned to his body. Their skin — it oozed clear liquid onto the ground around them. Their skin — full of welts and cysts.

Their skin—

—fused together where his arm lied over her chest.

“Jesus,” Luke croaked.

What else could he say?

His vision cleared, and he saw that she was worse off than he was, her entire body a mass of suppurating sores.

“God,” he said.

“Dad?” Amy turned her dripping eyes toward him. “It’s okay.”

“No.” Luke tried to shake his head.

“We won’t charge people. We won’t make them pay.”

“What?”

“We can heal now. Don’t you see?”

And he did see. Out of the corners of his eyes, thick with matter, he saw the hard, rocky ground around their bodies sprouting small, green shoots. His attention turned back to his daughter as a tube-like appendage unraveled from her mouth. She spoke around it.

“There are so many who need us,” she said. “So many…”

The appendage wavered for a moment, as if sensing the air. It hovered in front of Luke’s eyes, and then gently, it settled onto a cyst widening on Luke’s forehead. With soft sucking sounds, it began to drink.

Narcissus in Links

I’ve seen fog in the valley many times, but never quite like this. Rivulets of blue swirl and eddy through it like blueberries blending into vanilla ice cream. At first, I thought it was a trick of the light, of clouds flying quickly through the bright blue sky, but now I have to wonder.

A week ago, I conducted a computer search on my name. I’ve been getting a few things published lately, and I wanted to know; had I become somebody on the wide-open plains of the World Wide Web?

In the real world, my wife Jill is the breadwinner of the family. She does well enough to pay the mortgage on our 3,000 square foot home, as well as letting me take a sabbatical from work to pursue a career in writing fiction. I assured her I’d easily make five grand the first year, then gradually increase each year after that, what with the book deals, the sale of foreign and movie rights, etc, so that she’d be able to quit and we could move to a ranch in Montana, own horses and have parties where our new friends would trade recipes for home-brewed beer. I’ve been at it over a year now, and my gross receipts for short stories have totaled $87.21. That didn’t even cover my bar tab at the last World Fantasy Convention. And of the five novels I was planning to write this first year (one every two months with two one-month working vacations where I’d travel and do research) I’ve filled five pages up with notes. And of those five pages, two of them have phone messages I jotted down for Jill.

But so…

Maybe — just maybe — I was gaining some momentum on the web.

I typed in “Ben Cleaver” with quotes around the whole thing, waited a few seconds, and up popped the first ten links. Ten out of 497. Wow! 497 links to Ben Cleaver. My presence was alive and well on the virtual silken weaves of the ‘net. But as I scrolled down the page, my head deflated. Apparently I wasn’t the only Ben Cleaver in the universe. In fact, most of the Ben Cleavers listed were not me.

There was a Ben Cleaver on the East Valley High wrestling team in Colorado. A Ben Cleaver who dealt in Meerschaum pipes. A Ben Cleaver who was principal of an elementary school. And look at this guy! A Ben Cleaver who was vice-president of Val-Corp, apparently a large company by the number of links pointing to it. Mostly press releases quoting him on things like “chain supply management” and “cost-effective global networking.”

Then there was a Ben Cleaver who died in the civil war. This one intrigued me. I clicked on the link, and for the first time ever, found myself face to face with another Ben Cleaver. He stared stiffly over my right shoulder in full Union garb. It was one of those old, grainy sepia-toned prints. Odd to see someone who once owned my name over a hundred years before I was born.

And look at that! Finally. A link to a message board on which I lavished praise on Don D’Auria, editor at Leisure Books. “Don, I appreciate you publishing the works of…”

The computer froze up. Damn it!

I rebooted.

As I waited for the computer to get its act together, I wondered how many other Ben Cleavers were out there. I wanted to leave my mark upon this world, but who was to say my mark wouldn’t get lost among a multitude of other Ben Cleavers? A feeling of pointlessness ran its scrawny fingers over my thighs, plucking at my little black leg hairs.

The computer sparked back to life.

I entered“Ben Cleaver.”

420 hits. Hadn’t there been more last time?

Another intriguing link took me to a site called The House of Platinum, founded by one Ben Cleaver. It looked as if an Arabic street bazaar had vomited a tray of baubles and trinkets across the screen. In the center was a Taj Mahal-looking place encrusted with jewels. Was it a record company? A strip club? Nope. It was a cult.

Thoughts ran through my head, the silly thoughts of a once care-free man—

Perhaps I should start my own cult. Use my middle initial so as not to be confused with the House of Platinum guy. Maybe I could call it The House of Vinyl Siding.

And—

What if I contacted these other Ben Cleavers? We could create a Ben Cleaver Society. Pool our resources and buy a ranch in Montana. Populate it with nothing but Ben Cleavers!

Thoughts like that.

I hit the back button.

My computer froze up again.

Hadn’t I wasted enough time? I’d already eyeballed the first hundred links, and as far as this Ben Cleaver was concerned, there wasn’t much to write home about. If anything, it made me feel like a grain of sand in a dirty kitty-litter box. I apparently didn’t rank very high on the Ben Cleaver totem pole.

Ben Cleaver; vice-president of a large company.

Ben Cleaver; faced death and caught it in the civil war.

Ben Cleaver; principal at an elementary school.

Ben Cleaver; leader of a cult.

And what could be said about me?

Ben Cleaver; message board stalker of writers much more talented than I.

But…

What if…

I hit the restart button, logged back onto the net, brought up the search engine and typed in my name.

396 hits. Huh. Did I do something different this time, or is the net really such a fickle mistress?

I skipped ahead to links 120-130.

Another blurb of mine on a message board.

“Mort, I’m a big fan. Where do you get your ideas?”

Okay, did everything need a fucking link to it?

Then there was the web page of a Steven Ben Cleaver. A youngster, apparently, who’d made it on some honor roll.

I never made the honor roll.

Another Ben Cleaver who was an endocrinologist.

More of Ben Cleaver, vice-pres of Val-Corp. The same press release over and over.

More civil war links to Ben Cleaver.

Shouldn’t a name be like a snowflake? A fingerprint? A strand of DNA? Something unique like a domain name, a patent, a social security number?

Jill shouted from the bedroom. “Aren’t you finished checking your email?”

“Be right there.”

I logged off.

As I write this, all is silent on the highway that winds past our backyard. No roar of semis or cars or motorcycles. And there’s no singing of birds, or the playful holler of the neighborhood children. And that fog — that blueberry swirl fog — is creeping up the hill.

I stopped checking the links to my name for a few days, but two nights ago—

I typed in “Ben Cleaver.”

217 hits.

I realize it can change daily, but that’s less than half of what it was when I first conducted this search.

More silly thoughts from what was still, at that time, a care-free man—

Was a conspiracy underway to get rid of all the Ben Cleavers of the world? Was the idea of a society of Ben Cleavers too much? Perhaps one of the other Ben Cleavers wanted to eliminate us one by one until only he remained. I suspected Ben Cleaver, vice-president of Val-Corp. To reach a position like that, you have to be crafty. Ruthless. He was only one step away from being on top of his company, so why not dominate the playing field of names as well?

Thoughts like that.

I scrolled through the search results. There was the usual cast. Civil War Ben Cleaver. Val-Corp vice-president Ben Cleaver. House of Platinum Ben Cleaver. Honor roll Ben Cleaver. Another inane blurb I left on a message board. Is it really necessary for these to be linked? I’ll have to watch what I say in the future, or at least not post after four rum and Cokes.

“Hey Mort, man — you rock! I mean, you really rock!!” I felt like pounding my head onto the keyboard.

Jill again. “Ben? Honey? You coming to bed?”

The women I’ve known don’t value the importance of alone time. Jill has said that if she were never alone for the rest of her life, it would be fine with her. In fact, she’d prefer that. Prefer constant company, continuous companionship.

I used to think this was a strange defect particular to women. But maybe I’m the one with the defect. Maybe Jill’s longing for constant companionship, whether it be with me or her family or friends, is a symptom of altruism, pure and simple. A desire to share. Maybe that’s the true sign of unselfishness.

Maybe I should spend more time with her.

My computer stopped working only ten minutes ago, so I’m going to write as fast as I can the old-fashioned way; on a pad of paper. With a pen.

I can no longer see the valley below. The phones aren’t working. I don’t know where Jill is. I shut the computer room window this morning, because what if that strange fog seeps into our house?

But…

Last night. Paranoia set in. Only 103 hits when I entered “Ben Cleaver”. The vice-president of Val-Corp and all his captivating press releases were gone. Maybe their computers were down. Their network? Hell, I didn’t know how it worked. But other Ben Cleavers were gone, too. The elementary school principal. The honor roll student.

I hit reload. The hits dropped to 98. I stared at the screen.

Hit reload again.

97.

Reload.

Still 97.

I noticed that civil war Ben Cleaver had disappeared.

Jill called out from the bedroom. “Ben?”

“In a minute.”

“How long are you going to be?”

“Just a minute!”

I tapped on the mouse. Hit reload again.

Exhaled. The number of hits remained at 97.

I had to stop. I had to pry myself away from the screen. I didn’t know what this was all about, but it couldn’t be something bad, could it? The worst it could be was some computer virus roaring across the virtual highway like a PCP freak on a Harley. Right?

I pushed the chair away from the computer, walked zombie-like down the hall and fell into bed.

“Sorry I snapped at you,” I whispered, but Jill was already out. I kissed the back of her neck and watched her sleep. She looked so vulnerable. A sleeping child. I rolled onto my back, but the pillow wouldn’t conform correctly to the shape of my head. It’s hard to fall asleep when you have so much to say, but don’t know how to say it, or are afraid to say it, or don’t want to wake up the one you want to say it to because she’s so goddamn beautiful laying there, and you feel that if you wake her, you’ll ruin something so pure and perfect and rare.

But mostly, I thought about the links.

What was going on?

And why should I care if tomorrow there were only fifty hits? Twenty hits? What difference would it make?

I told myself I wouldn’t even check. Not tomorrow. Not the next day. Forget about it. I won’t even check my email until Friday. It was Tuesday then, so I figured three days of no checking. Jill’s right when she says I’m too damn obsessive about my email. Especially since all I get is spam about enlarging my penis and *** HOT COED COLLEGE GIRLS *** and Look and Feel Younger in Just 10 Days!

So who cares? Who cares if I don’t find out until Friday? Not me, boy. No way.

When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed of cotton candy. I haven’t had cotton candy in over a decade, but I woke up craving it.

Before Jill woke up, I snuck down to the computer and fired it up.

How could I not look? Just a quick peek. I brought up the search engine.

Typed in “Ben Cleaver”.

Only two hits.

Two.

The note I’d left on Mort Castle’s message board. (Hey Mort, man — you rock!)

The other was for The House of Platinum.

Doesn’t matter. No big deal.

I tapped nervously on the mouse. I looked outside.

The valley below was engulfed in the blueberry swirl ice-cream fog. It crept up the hill in softly rolling waves. My hand trembled over the mouse. I was afraid to hit reload.

“Jill?”

She didn’t answer.

“Jill? Wake up!”

I clicked on The House of Platinum link. Instead of the website, an error message popped up informing me that the site no longer existed.

I hit the back button. Hit reload.

One hit.

Me.

“Jill!”

I looked out the window. The blue haze rolled up gently to the highway that wound past our house. Concrete crumbled and dissolved as the haze drifted over it.

“Jill, damn it, wake up!”

Where was the smoke and dust? The sounds of explosions? Screams? Where was the fire and brimstone and the blare of Gabriel’s trumpet? Where, oh God, where is Jill?

It’s so quiet. Peaceful. Beautiful. The fog laps at the foundation of our house like a playful kitten. It rises softly. Quietly. Reminds me of cotton candy.

I keep staring at my reflection in the blank computer screen. Once I put down this pen, it’ll be all I have left.

Branding Day

The children gathered at the fence of the corral, jockeying for position as the cowhands separated the calves from their mothers. The calves bawled, jumped and kicked to the amusement of the students, while their mothers groaned with eyes rolling wildly and milk dripping from their teats onto the dusty ground.

My class had three children who stayed home that day, which was better than previous years. The first year we took a field trip to Culver’s Farm, only nineteen of my thirty-four third-graders attended. Parents retain the right to keep their kids home on branding day, but they seem to have grown more tolerant of the excursion. I think it’s a good way for the kids to see how the world works. And hell, any reason to get out of the city, with its gray skies, buildings and sidewalks, and into the fresh air of farm country is good enough for me.

All three third-grade classes from Lincoln Elementary were there, as well as the third graders from Roosevelt and Martin Luther King elementary schools. A lot of kids, and it was already a hot day.

I passed out popsicles and bottled water to the children in my class. Even though we had to pay for these out of our own pockets, I felt it was the least I could do. Most of the other teachers did the same, except Ms. Durphy, also from Lincoln, who filled up plastic gallon milk jugs with lukewarm tap water. I felt sorry for her students. They eyed our fruit-flavored popsicles with longing. I wished I’d brought enough for her class, but that would be an affront to Durphy’s authority. She was one of those gems who took out her personal problems on her class and passed it off as a way to get through to them. Frankly, I think all she needed was another bull dyke to come along and give her a couple good nights with a strap-on. Might put her in a better mood for a few days.

I waved at her when she glanced my way. “Morning, Janet.”

She nodded curtly, her eyes narrowed. She hated it when I didn’t address her as Ms. Durphy in front of the kids. As if they gave a shit. I encourage my class from the get-go to call me Ben. If you want to get through to the kids, show them some respect.

A student of mine tugged at my shirtsleeve. Tim Crocker. “Does it hurt?”

I put my hand on his shoulder and squatted. “Remember what we talked about in class? It doesn’t really hurt. Maybe for a little while, but they have thick hides.”

He looked nervous, as if a handful of bees buzzed around his frizzy black hair.

“It’s like when you get a shot,” I said. “A little sting, and that’s it.” I gave him a pat. “Okay?”

He looked me in the eye, trying to find a lie in there somewhere, then nodded. “Okay. I guess.”

Good enough for me.

“Ben?” It was Cal Sellers, the third of our trio of teachers from Lincoln.

“Hey, Cal. How’s it going?”

He bit off the end of a grape Popsicle and looked out at the dust rising in the corral. “Fine,” he said. Then he shook his head. “I hate these days. Wish I could stay home. Call in a sub.”

“Why don’t you?”

He glanced up at me, blinking from the hot sun. “Why don’t I what? Call in a sub?” He squinted at the enthralled faces of his students as they watched the events unfold in the corral. “I’d feel like I’m shirking my responsibility. You know? I mean, I spend one hell of a lot of time gaining their trust, and if I didn’t show up on today of all days…”

Good old Cal. Even on a day like today, he wore a shirt and tie, trousers, good shoes whose polished sheen was already coated with dirt.

As for myself, I’d opted years ago for jeans, a flannel shirt and shit-kicker boots for branding day. This was a farm, not an art museum.

“I better check on Culver,” I said. “Make sure the kids are behaving.”

Cal nodded. “I’ll hold down the fort here.”

Good boy, Cal.

I walked through the children huddled up to the corral fence. A wave of excited chatter arose, and I saw that the first calf had been roped by the hind legs and pulled to the fire. Two cowboys wrestled it to the ground, while a third untied its legs and held onto them. One of the cowboys who’d tackled the calf knelt on its neck, while the other pulled a brand out of the fire and pressed it to the bawling calf’s flank.

I heard groans, cheers and hoots. I heard a child wretch, followed by a slew of voices saying “Eeew!” and “Gross!” but when I looked toward the perpetrator, Cal was already next to her, wiping at the poor girl’s mouth with his handkerchief. I headed over to the barn.

The barn was big and red and had stood for seventy-eight years, raised by Bertrand Culver’s father and a host of neighboring farmers. There’d been a big celebration the day of the raising, and Mrs. Culver proudly showed anyone who cared to look an album brimming with black and white photos of the event.

As I entered, I felt like Jonah being swallowed by the whale as I moved from bright sun to deep shadow. My eyes adjusted quickly, and I sucked in a sweet lungful of hay dust and cattle smells. Soft strands of sunlight spooled from fractures in the roof and walls.

We let in ten children at a time while the branding went on outside. They huddled around Bertrand Culver — current patriarch of the Culver family and all-around head honcho of the farm. He held up a branding iron of cold, black steel, and let the kids inspect, touch and pass it around.

I stopped just outside the circle of children and listened to his soft, gravelly voice.

“Every farm has their different brand,” Culver told them. “Their different mark. Back in the old days, there weren’t the fences like there are today, so we branded cattle in case one of our cows wandered onto someone else’s land. That way, we could tell whose cows belonged to who.”

I got his attention with a nod and a smile. “Mr. Culver, how’s everyone behaving today?”

He winked, the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth stretching. “Just fine, Ben. Haven’t had to whup one, yet.”

Some of the kids giggled.

He passed along another brand. He’d acquired quite a collection over the years from auctions and antique stores. His own mark was a stylized CFF, or C double F, which stood simply for Culver Family Farm.

Jennifer Bately, one of my smartest students, raised her hand.

Culver nodded. “Yes, m’am?”

She pointed to an area behind him. “What are those ones for? Why are they smaller?”

Culver looked over his shoulder and adjusted his black cowboy hat. He smiled at Jennifer. “We’ll talk about those next. But let’s get back to what I was saying.” One of the brands passed around the circle came back to him. He held it like a riding crop. “Another reason we branded was ‘cause of cattle rustlers. It was a lot easier to get our cattle back if they were marked.”

Tow-headed Gary Billings raised his hand. “Are there still cattle rustlers?”

Culver nodded. “Long as cattle are worth something, there’ll be rustlers. Just like there’ll always be bank robbers and muggers and kidnappers. Always someone around who wants to take something that ain’t theirs. Understand?”

Gary nodded, his mouth hanging open around an overbite.

Then Jennifer Bately, her eyes having never left the area behind Culver, gasped and put a hand to her mouth. She stifled a cry, turned and walked outside the tight circle. She gagged, as if about to vomit, so I went over to her while Culver continued his talk. I knelt and put my arm around her.

“You okay?”

She wiped at the tears collecting in her eyes. “I just realized—” She composed herself. Looked up at me.

I patted her back. “It’s all right.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about.”

She nodded.

I wiped at a drop of sweat that hovered on the tip of my nose. “It’s part of life. Something we live with, you know?”

She nodded again, looking up at the hayloft.

“Are you going to be okay?”

“I think so.”

“Do you need to go outside?”

She wiped at her cheek and took a deep breath. “No. I’m okay.”

I stood up and gently guided her back to the circle. The children listened intently as Culver reiterated what I’d already told them in class about the way things are in this day and age.

Once all the students had been through Culver’s lecture and demonstration, Barbara Culver, Bertrand’s wife of forty-some years, rang the dinner bell, and her own children passed out paper plates, cornbread, slices of watermelon, corn on the cob slathered with butter, hot dogs and hamburgers.

We ate our lunch scattered about the property around the corral and under the shade of maple and oak trees and by the side of the barn. The cowhands also ate lunch, and I wondered how many years they’d been doing this — how many classes they’d tended to, how many students. Were they used to it by now, or were some of them still green around the gills? Could you ever get used to it?

A few of the cowhands ate together, leaning back casually against the corral fence, while others sat with the children and let them try on their cowboy hats, feel the leather of their chaps. Some told jokes, or answered questions about what to expect later in the day.

I took my paper plate and lemonade over to Ms. Durphy and Cal, who sat in the shade of the big red barn. I eased down to the ground and spread my legs out.

Cal Seller’s plate sat half-eaten next to him.

“Not hungry?” I asked.

He looked at his plate. Shrugged. “You know — just the day.”

“We’re halfway through it,” I reminded him.

“But that was the easy half.”

“Easy for you,” Ms. Durphy said. “I can’t stand the smell of this place.” She waved a hand over her plate, trying to rid it of the half-dozen flies hovering over her cornbread.

“The smell’s the best part,” I said. “That, and the fresh air.”

“You call this fresh air?” Durphy said. “It turns my sinuses to mush.” She elaborated by blowing her nose into her napkin.

Then Cal said, “Maybe it smells fine now, but every time this day ends, I can’t get rid of the other smell. The smell of the branding.”

I looked over at the students as they finished their lunches. They were brave kids. Taking everything in stride. I was proud of them. Not just my students, but Durphy’s and Cal’s as well. Looking from one child’s face to the other, I didn’t see a frightened one in the bunch. They were excited, yes, and some talked a mile a minute. Others giggled nervously or paced and fidgeted over the grounds, but not one looked like they wanted to turn tail and run.

“We got a good bunch this year,” I said.

Ms. Durphy rolled her eyes and stifled a belch.

Cal wiped his chin with a handkerchief and said, “We’ve got a good bunch every year.”

For a moment, I thought he was going to cry. Even Janet Durphy took her eyes off her plate and looked up at Cal with concern. But Cal cleared his throat, stood and dusted off the seat of his trousers.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said. He blew the whistle he wore around his neck and called out to his students, instructing them to line up at the barn door.

Ms. Durphy gathered her students together and made them wait in line behind Cal’s class. “Keep your voices down,” she said, her voice stern. “Stop shouting!”

Why didn’t she just let them play for another half hour? It would take that long for Cal’s class to take their second turn in the barn, this time as one group. I wasn’t about to gather my students yet. Let ’em enjoy this beautiful early summer day. Let ’em play tag and Frisbee. Let ’em explore the farm and look at the animals. This was a rare thing for them to be out of the city.

I sat outside the corral fence. The cowhands had finished lunch and were helping inside the barn now. The corral itself was empty, save for the fire that still burned, and the branding irons stuck in it, waiting to be taken out and cooled down and put away until the next time they were needed.

Again, I heard Durphy telling her kids to behave and stay in line, and how she didn’t want to have to give anyone detention for misbehavior. I wanted to tell her to shut the hell up.

A shadow fell over me and I looked up at Jennifer Bately. She squinted at me. Her hands were behind her back. She moved dirt around with the toe of her sneaker.

“Ben?”

“Jennifer? You okay?”

She nodded, then asked, “You sure it doesn’t hurt?”

The sun shined in my eyes as I looked up at her, so it was hard to see the expression on her face, hard to see whether she was frightened or nervous, but I didn’t hear either of those emotions in her voice. What I heard was an eagerness to hear me tell her that it didn’t hurt, it’s only like a sting, like getting a shot. I knew that’s what she wanted to hear, and I knew she wanted to trust me with all her heart when I told her that.

So I nodded into the sunlight. “I’m sure. It doesn’t hurt. Not much. It’s just like getting a shot is all. No different than that. Okay?”

I guess she nodded. I couldn’t tell in the sun’s glare, but she didn’t say anything else. She turned and walked away.

I wondered if there was anything different I should tell next year’s batch of third-graders. Whether or not I should fine-tune my lecture to make them less afraid or less anxious about branding day. As it was, I tried my best to explain how branding was a way to find something when it got lost or had been taken by someone who shouldn’t have it. Much like Culver explained it to all the kids he talked to. I told them about how their mothers and fathers would want the same kind of thing for them. Their parents wanted the best for them, and would want to find them if anyone ever took them who wasn’t supposed to. And with all the budget cuts, there really wasn’t a better way.

I blew my whistle.

The last of Ms. Durphy’s class disappeared into the deep shadows of the barn.

“Let’s line up,” I said. “A through Z.”

Jennifer Bately was second in line behind Jason Aldritch.

They lined up and I walked down the line to make sure they were all accounted for. I also wanted to be available to answer any last questions they may have had.

I stepped back to the front of the line. “Okay.” I smiled. “Here we go.”

We walked into the smoky expanse of the red barn. A pit of coals glowed at the far end. Squeals and yelps of Ms. Durphy’s students got swallowed up in the hayloft and the old barn wood. A lone cow chewed and shuffled in its pen.

Beyond the hot coals was a table set up with gauze, bandages and ointment. Barbara Culver sat in the hayloft on a bale of hay. She played a fiddle and sang, her sweet voice drifting over us like a soft kiss.

Iron rods protruded from the coals.

The nearer we got, the quieter my students became.

I watched Bertrand pull a rod out from the coals and show the hot end to one of the last of Ms. Durphy’s students, a red-haired boy with wide brown eyes.

“See,” Culver explained, “how the brand is cooling to that ash gray color?”

The boy barely nodded.

“That’s just the right temperature.” He winked at the boy, friendly as could be. “You ready?”

Again, a slight nod.

Culver tilted his head back to two of the cowhands standing at the ready. They wore facemasks to protect them from the smell. One grabbed the boy’s arms, while the other held the boy’s legs steady. Culver pulled up the boy’s shirt.

I put my hand on Jennifer Bately’s shoulder.

At the end of the iron were the initials L.E. Lincoln Elementary. Beneath that was a small set of numbers identifying our city, state and school district.

The hot iron neared the boy’s skin.

I winked at Jennifer.

“Just a sting,” I assured her. “Just a sting.”

Night of the Cold Caller

5:37 pm

“Hello?”

“Mr. Arnold?”

“Yes?”

“How are you this evening?”

“Uh, geez — look, I just sat down to dinner.”

“When’s a more convenient time?”

“How about never?”

click

6:30 pm

“Hello?”

“Mr. Arnold?”

“Yeah?”

“How was dinner?”

“What? Oh. Hey, let’s be honest here. I can’t stand you people, always interrupting meals, T.V., time with my family. Whatever you’re selling, I’m not interested.”

“I apologize, but — “

click

7:15 pm

ring…

click

7:45 pm

“Hello?”

“Mr. Arnold?”

“I thought I told you—”

“Did you listen to the message I left?”

“You mean when you called, what, twenty, thirty minutes ago?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a persistent little prick aren’t you? Calling from a different number so I wouldn’t recognize it on the caller I.D.—”

“Did you listen to the message?”

“No!”

click

9:45 pm

“Hello?”

“Mr. Arnold?”

“Ssshhhit…”

“If I could just take a few minutes of your time.”

“Do the words ‘Do Not Call List’ mean anything to you?”

“Please. It will only take a minute.”

“No. N. O. No. No, no, no!”

click

11:30 pm

“What?”

“Mr. Arnold?”

“Aw, gee-ZUZ!”

click

11:33 pm

11:36 pm

11:39 pm

11:45 pm

11:48 pm

“Listen, you idiot, I’m calling the cops. I’m giving them all the numbers you’ve called from. Then I’m suing your ass, your company’s ass, and if your mother’s still alive, I’ll sue her ass, too. You got that?”

“Got it, but Mr. Arnold, just let me say three words.”

“You’re digging a deeper hole, buddy.”

“Kraaken Zum Tweenz.”

“Excuse you?”

“Kraaken Zum Tweenz.”

“Uh…”

“Do you understand?”

“…”

“Mr. Arnold?”

“…”

“Hello?”

“Shit.”

“Do you understand?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“Yes. Yes, I understand. Sir.”

“Be ready in ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes?”

“You should’ve listened to me earlier. Give your mate and spawn a kiss goodbye, then prepare for transport. Our time has come.”

“Sir?”

“Nine minutes. Midnight.”

“Yes, sir.”

click

11:52 pm

“Honey? Who was that?”

“Nobody, dear. Just another phone solicitor. Go back to sleep.”

“…”

“…”

“You haven’t kissed me like that in a long time.”

“I love you. Now go back to sleep.”

Burrow

It was dark and hot, and the smells were those of rot and perspiration. Clay moved with a mechanical precision through the tunnel, the light on his hard hat moving from the bottom of the wall to the top in a sweeping zigzag pattern. If a chunk of glass or metal winked at him, he’d take his dulled pick and dislodge it as best he could. Sometimes, if he was careful, he could remove an entire glass bottle that way without it shattering. He’d place it, along with the plastic containers, aluminum cans, bullets, and other items of value, in his cart. He thought it was best to have a method, best to focus on one’s work. It made it all the easier to get through the day that way. Made it possible not to lose his sanity and try digging his way out to the top like others had. He’d come across more than one miner who tried desperately to dig their way out, all the old bones and debris crushing them in a suffocating avalanche.

He had spent his first fourteen years on the surface. The waters had receded, but what good had that been? There was still not enough room. And the Game had been going on for the last fifty years.

The Game.

The rules were simple. You’re placed deep in the mines, and you have to find your way out. This could take years, and you had to work for your food. You had to mine the precious remnants of past generations. Aluminum. Plastic. Steel.

They called it a game, but it really wasn’t a game at all. How many people had Clay known to make it out alive when he had been above? Had he known any? Even his father never made it out. His father had been a strong man, levelheaded — if anyone could make it out, he could.

Yet he hadn’t. Clay had not seen his father in five years.

Sometimes, when the oxygen was low, Clay imagined his father down there next to him, watching him work. Was it possible he was still alive? Could he have survived all these years in the tunnels? Did he make it out in the year and a half that Clay had been down here?

He remembered watching his father being hauled into the tunnel’s entrance on a mining cart, arms and legs manacled. His father looked up at him and smiled just before the entrance of the tunnel swallowed him in one pitch-black gulp.

Maybe that was the worst — the fact that he remembered the surface. Remembered feeling the fresh air on his skin, the sun like a kiss on his face. Fresh water, the sound it made lapping at the shores of old crushed rock and bone.

Best not to think too much. Best not to let fading memories instill too much hope.

Some of the men sang to keep from thinking too much. But Clay didn’t believe in that. To him, their voices sounded pitiful and lonely ricocheting through the tunnels, and whenever he tried to sing, his voice returning to him unheeded in diminishing echoes, it reminded him of how much of his life had been wasted in the mines.

No. It was best to concentrate on the swing of the pick, the connection of metal to bone. Keep the senses tuned to the rhythm, the *chink* an accent to every fourth beat of the heart. Even though it made a crude clock, a cruel reminder of the glacial passage of time below the surface — at least it denoted progress. Momentum. At least each strike at a tunnel wall was a strike toward freedom.

Clay struck.

Two cubic meters of compacted bone and dirt loosened and tumbled around his work boots. He held his breath a moment, listening for signs of instability, the telltale rumblings of a potential cave-in. But the debris settled around his ankles and the tunnel’s walls held tight. He leaned over, kicking apart the remnants of a not-too-distant past. There was a femur. A jaw-bone. Half of a skull. A set of ribs.

Amidst the rubble, something winked at him in the weak cone of his helmet’s light. He reached down, but stopped short. It was a copper penny. He looked behind him into the tunnel’s dark throat. He waited, straining to listen above the sound of his own breathing.

You can never be too careful. That’s what his grandmother always told him. They’re always watching, Clay. Always listening. And she was right. How else could they know where to find you, to dole out their pitiful ration of food, have it delivered to within ten feet of where you toiled? Their little rusty-can robots on squeaky wheels, the food tray balanced on top of their short squat bodies, and if the food spills on its way to you, that’s your own tough luck. Another good reason not to dig at too sharp of an angle. If the damn things have to find you on a steep upsweep, half your food’s going to be soaking into the ground, soaking into the upturned bony mouths of the hundreds of skulls that lined the tunnel floors.

He squatted over the penny, pretending to dig at a phantom stone in his boot, then quickly slid the penny between the boot’s hard leather, and his own callused skin. He stood.

You can never be too careful.

He filled his cart with the bony detritus hewn from the tunnel. Pressed a button on the cart that signaled another worker, another Player-of-the-Game, to bring an emptied cart and haul the full one away.

There’s always someone lower than you, he thought. Always someone worth less no matter how worthless you are.

He heard steps coming toward him, the dull crunch of hard boot rubber on old bone. He didn’t turn around to look. What if it was one of them, one of the enforcers sent to terminate his play? Had they seen him take the penny?

The light from another helmet threw Clay’s shadow flat against the tunnel wall. If he had been caught, if it was time to leave the game, he didn’t want to see it coming.

He felt a presence behind him, waiting. Clay stared straight ahead. Lifted his dull pick and swung at his own shadow. It struck weakly against solid bone.

Get it over with, he thought, the back of his neck hot in the glare of the other light. But there was only the receding squeak of the cart’s wheels as it was hauled away.

His shoulders sagged. The smell of his own sweat, the feel of heat prickling his face, overwhelmed him. He wanted to drop to the ground and sleep until the game was over. Sleep until the sun engulfed the planet. The sleep of eternity. He often envied the previous owners of the bones he picked through.

But he heard his grandmother’s voice again. The last words she said to him before he was swallowed up in the tunnel’s maw.

“We’re not quitters, Clay. Don’t you ever give up.”

He rolled his shoulders back. Let the tears flow down his dirt caked cheeks. He took a deep breath, the dust-filled oxygen like glass shards in his lungs. He swung his arm, the pick bouncing impotently off the mass of bone in front of him. But he forced himself to keep swinging.

“Did you hear it? Eddie made it out.”

Rumors.

“Hey, did you know — Frank broke through.”

The miners thrived on them.

“They’re sending people down from above to show us the way out. They’re going to help us. They’re actually going to help us out of this goddamn mess!”

Rumors of the sunlight above, of how far they had come, of how close they were to the surface. The rumors gave them hope. Yet the rumors could kill. There were times they stirred a man’s heart past the point of acceptance, shook it up until he couldn’t take it any more, and he had to get to the surface right the fuck now. He’d dig like a madman, burrowing up through the dirt at a dangerous angle, not paying attention to the intricacies, the textures of the earth. More often than not he’d become trapped. The earth, the bones, would cave in around him, crushing him, jamming his fingernails, his teeth, his eyes full of countless generations of the dead.

Clay ignored the rumors as best he could. What good were they? If he was near the surface, he’d find out soon enough, rumor or not. Best not to let glimmers of false hope lead to pain and agony further down the line.

He believed that the only way out was to work methodically. Dig slowly, carefully, consistently. Eventually, his pick would break through the surface and the fresh air would fill his lungs, the sun fill his heart.

“I know your father.”

The voice arrived at Clay’s ear like one of the many insects that scurried about down here. Clay continued to face the wall of bone and dirt, his heart quickening.

The stranger was only inches away, his breath painful in Clay’s ear. “He made it out. I saw him on the outside.”

Clay struck his pick hard in the conglomerate before him, hard enough to make his hands go numb and his wrists scream with pain. He let go of the pick and stepped back, the metal tip deeply embedded, the wooden handle vibrating with the force of the blow. He wiped the sweat from his face, tried to keep his breathing under control.

“Who are you?” he asked, his voice quiet and hoarse from disuse. He knew they sent spies down here to gather information and tempt the miners to lose their cool. “How do you know who I am?”

“He sent me down to find you.”

“You’re full of shit.”

“No. It’s true. He made it out.”

“You didn’t answer my question. How do you know who I am?”

The man took a step back, looking Clay up and down. “You think I wanted to come back down here? You think I’m enjoying this?”

“You’re not a miner?”

“Don’t you get it? He made it out. He won.”

Clay studied the man. A light tan, a lack of calluses. The dirt on his face was only surface dirt, not deeply ingrained in the wrinkles and pores.

“Shit, kid. What’s your problem? I thought you’d be pissing yourself with joy right now.”

Clay turned away from him.

You can never be too careful.

“Wait.” The man pulled a small gray envelope from his shirt pocket. He opened it and slid out a photograph. “Here. Take it.”

Clay turned. His fingers trembled when he touched it. He slumped forward, grabbing onto the handle of the pick, still protruding from the mine’s wall, for support. It was a picture of his father. Standing on the surface. Squinting from the sun. Even though Clay hadn’t seen his father for five years, he knew the picture was recent, knew it couldn’t have been taken before his father was sent into the mines. He looked older. Deep wrinkles. Hair gray and balding.

“Why didn’t he come himself?”

“Are you kidding? It took him four years to get out. You think he’d want to come back here, risk getting lost? Maybe he thinks I’m full of shit when I tell him I know where you are. Maybe he thinks it’s a trick to get him back into the mines.”

Clay couldn’t take his eyes off the photograph. Tears made pink slash marks through the dirt on his face. “How do I know this isn’t a trick?”

“Can’t help you with that, kid. That’s up to you to decide.” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. On it was drawn a map. “Here’s where we are now,” he said, pointing. “And here’s where you wanna go.” He traced his finger through a convoluted maze of tunnels, criss-crossing and switching back on each other, all rising steadily to the surface. “Once you’re in this area, you can dig your way out. That’s the main thing, kid. You still gotta dig yourself out. Otherwise, if you follow me on up to the main entrance, they’ll cry foul and toss your skinny ass back down to the bottom.”

Clay took the map. Studied it. Used his fingernail to mark his current location.

The man gently pried the photograph from Clay’s hand and pocketed it.

“Can’t I keep it?” Clay asked.

“That’s not the way it works.” The man turned, looking up the dark maw of the tunnel from which he’d come. “I have to go now.”

Clay nodded. His eyes went back to the map.

“What should I tell him?” the man asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Should I tell him you’re coming?”

Clay didn’t answer. He stared at the map, the narrow hand-drawn lines like thin dark worms on the paper, the trembling light of his helmet making them dance.

He’d been in the tunnels for so long now, kept to himself so much he didn’t know whom to trust, wondered if trust was merely a commodity of the past, discarded like so many glass bottles and cans and bullet shells. The inside of his mouth tasted of bitter bone dust.

He didn’t know what to do.

Ten hours later, he had traversed most of the map. At least he thought he had. He couldn’t be sure. The map was hard to follow, the proportions off. He’d passed only a handful of other miner’s, most of them resting against the tunnel walls, their eyes glazed over, the pupils wide and hungry for light. He passed a fresh corpse, only the feet sticking out of a collapsed wall, as if the remains of the long ago dead had devoured him.

He trudged forward, his body aching, his heart racing. It was hard not to let the excitement eat him alive, hard not to sprint ahead. What if this was a trap? Just one more twist in the game?

The map ended. He looked ahead, following the dim cone of his helmet’s light. Had he made a wrong turn? He saw nothing beyond the light. He stood still. Tried to quiet his own breathing. There were no other sounds. Not even the far-off echo of the other miners’ picks connecting with the tunnel walls. Not even the drip of moisture as gravity sucked it hungrily from above.

Where do I go? he wondered. What’s left?

He stepped forward. Stopped. Turned around. There was nothing. Nothing. He looked at the tunnel wall. Reached out and touched it. Felt the debris crumble beneath his fingertips.

He closed his eyes. Thought of his father waiting on the surface. Is he standing over me? An earthly angel above this dehumanizing crust?

He made up his mind. Stepped back. Hoped his father would be proud. Lifted his pick in the air. Took aim at the tunnel wall, his cage, his prison, and swung.

Over and over again, he swung. The earth crumbled around him. He kicked it away. Kept swinging. The earth fell in great clumps. The air was thick with dust. He quickened his pace. Clink! Clink! One swing after the other until his muscles burned, his head spun with the lack of oxygen, yet still he kept swinging.

He struck higher. His father, the one he’d glimpsed in that picture, filled his mind. Beckoning him. Urging him forward. Swing! Clink!

And the earth caved in around him.

The earth swallowed him whole.

He was encased in it, like a caveman frozen in ice.

He pushed his hand forward, the only part of his body that could still move. He sucked in the stale, rancid air, bits of dirt and decaying bone entering painfully into his lungs. Don’t panic, he told himself. Don’t panic.

Think. Take it one step at a time. Slowly. Methodically.

He forced his left hand forward, the only appendage he could move, through the putrid soil. A shard of glass from a broken bottle cut into the base of his palm. Coarse dirt embedded itself deep beneath his fingernails. The pain was intense and he wanted to scream, but he couldn’t even do that.

He remembered the copper penny he had found. Would some miner in the future pry it from his rotting bones?

Find a penny, pick it up…

He struggled once more for breath, inched his hand forward, feeling the skin peel back, exposing raw nerves.

Father, he tried to whisper, but could not.

When he inhaled for the last time, dirt filled his mouth, and his bloody fingertips felt the sting of fresh air.

He had won.

Mr. Blue

Mr. Blue had always been Mr. Blue. At least for as long as he could remember. He did not remember any other life. Not his arrival on the train, nor his stop at the Melanin Alteration Room, nor the pneumatic elevator ride up. He did not remember the days in the isolation room as his dosage of Happy and Sad pills was perfected, nor the slight discomfort that had occurred. But as soon as his dosage was correct and the contentment process began — none of it mattered any more.

And although he didn’t exactly remember marrying Mrs. Blue, it seemed she was as natural a part of his life as anything. Like a pill on the tip of his tongue. As good a match as any.

The wonderful thing about living on the forty-first floor of building #812 was that every possible biological desire was fulfilled and every urge was accommodated. For one thing, everywhere the eye could see was an orgasm of color. The eye couldn’t help but be pleased. There were enough visual stimuli to satiate an army. All the citizens of the forty-first floor were free to come and go from their rooms as they pleased. They could gather in the commons room. Gather in each other’s rooms. In the dining area. The hallways. The rumpus room. They could gather in the view room and watch the ColorMaster on the television all day long if they so chose.

They could eat when they were hungry. Take Happy pills when sad. Sad pills when the happiness became too much to bear. They could have sex whenever and wherever they felt like it; there always seemed to be someone ready and willing to perform the act. Strategically placed vibrating phalluses were abundant for the women, and masturbation tubes were always ready for the males. It didn’t matter whom it was done with, either, all jealousies having been genetically removed.

What more could a person want?

Nick Johnson was a Controller who lived on the sixth floor of building #812. He was assigned eight Melanin Enhanced citizens. He distributed the Happy and Sad pills via pneumatic tubes and measured the amount of sperm collected and distilled in the masturbation tubes. His main job was to watch his charges on monitors and make sure they were content at all times.

Contentment was the number one priority of a Controller.

The problem with Nick Johnson — being a Controller and not being as constantly content as the Melanin Enhanced — was that he had retained the traces of a sense of humor. What an embarrassment! In the Controller Recruitment Act of 2005, potential Controllers were courted with the promises of free will. Free this, free that… Although it sounded good at the time, the Controllers often looked upon their charges with a certain envy. A certain longing.

Of course, the Controller Recruiting Act of 2005 was abridged in 2006, 2007, and 2008, each abridgment altering the free will sections, one of the abridgments being the removal of a sense of humor. And since the process of humor removal had yet to be perfected, there were those Controllers who still retained trace amounts.

Nick Johnson tried his best not to let it show. But there were times when he could not help himself. Changing the dosage of Happiness in Mr. Blues’ Happy pills was one of those times. When Nate Johnson giggled after typing the change into his computer terminal, he pretended it was just a hiccup when the Controller next to him looked discreetly in his direction. He excused himself to get a glass of water.

The ColorMaster was a favorite TV show of the residents of the forty-first floor of building #812. It was a favorite show of all the Melanin Enhanced citizens throughout the city. He changed colors like a psychedelic chameleon at regular five-minute intervals, so that nobody watching would feel superior or inferior, nobody’s bodily function monitor would fluctuate from the prescribed guidelines.

On his show were puppets, singing animals, dancers, singers, comedians, sex performers — always ending each hour-long show with the words — often mouthed by the residents of the forty-first floor of building #812—

“Won’t you be my friend?”

Of course the ending of one show always meant a new one would soon start. The new one would begin with the ColorMaster singing the words — also mouthed by the residents of the forty-first floor—

“Hello friends, so happy to see you. So happy, so happy, to see — you.”

Although many of the residents ate food, swallowed pills, or sexually interacted in the commons, most of their faces were turned to the five-meter square screens placed throughout the floor. Unless one decided to put on Quietgear, it was impossible not to hear the soothing sounds of the ColorMaster’s hour-long shows.

Mr. Blue wasn’t quite sure what was happening to him. He ate his favorite dish (cheese pizza) watched hour after hour of The Best of the ColorMaster, had sex with not only Mrs. Blue, but with Mrs. Peach, Mrs. Pink, and Mr. Cadmium as well — then used one of the Masturbation Tubes until he was ready to fall asleep. Yet, there was still a part of him that wasn’t quite satisfied.

What a strange feeling. Not to be completely satisfied. He wasn’t sure what to make of it. He scratched his thigh, scratched his shoulders, his belly — yet there was still something not quite right.

He looked around the common room, hoping to find solace in the contented faces of all the other Colors. It was as if he was looking at them in a different light. What is happening to me? he wondered.

Every tile on the floor, every panel on the wall, every square on the ceiling was a different color. The Happy Pills were a different color each time he received one, as were the Sad Pills. But for the first time in his existence, he realized that — wait — the sheets on his bed were always white. Why is that? he wondered. And the tubes that protruded into his room, into every room, distributing the multi-colored pills — they were gray. All of them. In every room. Gray. Never green or orange or burgundy. Just gray, gray, gray.

Is that the way it’s supposed to be? It seemed rather unfair.

Mr. Blue began to notice other things as well. Inconsistencies and disconcerting patterns. For example, even on his favorite TV show, the ColorMaster’s desk was always brown. How strange, he thought. The ColorMaster, who was the very epitome of color-conscious thinking — had a brown desk. Not just on certain episodes, but on all of them. Did he favor the color brown?

Mr. Blue walked into the commons. The ColorMaster’s guest on this particular show was a talking horse, whose name was Mr. Ed. The horse was entirely white. Or black. Depending on which part of it you looked at.

“Won’t you be my friend?” the ColorMaster asked Mr. Ed. The horse said, “Of course. Of course.”

The show ended as it always did. Predictably. Comfortably. With a shot of the city, a shot of all the evenly spaced buildings, all evenly built and uniform, the same size, the same shape, and the same — color.

Hmmmm…thought Mr. Blue. All the buildings are an off-white. He looked across the room at Mr. and Mrs. Off-White. They held hands while performing an acrobatic sexual act. Do they get some kind of special treatment? Mr. Blue wondered.

“Won’t you be my friend?” came the ColorMaster’s voice over the view of the city. The residents of the forty-first floor of building #812 mouthed the words along with him and smiled when the next hour started.

All of the residents, that is, except Mr. Blue.

Nick Johnson got another glass of water after his second bout of ‘hiccups’ that day. He had been watching Mr. Blue on the video monitor, and had noticed the strange look on his face. He altered the dosage a bit more, looking to his left and right to make sure no one was watching.

But there is always someone watching, someone monitoring every move everyone makes, he thought. He hunched over his screen, his uncontrolled smirk reflected in the monochrome monitor, like an invitation to intercede.

For the first time in his life, Mr. Blue noticed that there was an almost invisible outline on one of the walls of the cafe. The cafe walls consisted of squares of every color Mr. Blue had ever laid eyes on. Yet there was this faint outline. An outline of indistinct, musty — what was it? Gray? Black? An outline in the form of a rectangle, the same shape as the portals between each and every room.

He walked over to it. Touched it. Ran his fingers along the outline and felt an emptiness in the line. It wasn’t a line at all. It was rather, an absence of line. A space. Empty. Lacking solidity. He put his face to the line — it was much like a crack in one of his drinking mugs — and tried to see what he could see. Of course, he could see nothing. There were no lights glowing on the other side of the crack.

The doorway hadn’t been used in years.

Nick Johnson watched in disbelief. Mr. Blue had actually noticed the door. Didn’t look like he knew what to make of it, exactly, but just the fact that…

He felt a hand on his shoulder. “Is something wrong?” came a soothing voice slightly over and above his left ear. He could feel the humidity of breath on his neck. He tried to keep from visibly cringing, and turned around nonchalantly.

“No. Nothing’s wrong, sir. Nothing at all.”

“Nothing wrong at home? The wife? The kids?”

He almost told him he didn’t have any wife, any kids, but decided not to push his luck. “No, sir. Nothing at all.”

The man paused, his chin lifting into the air as if filled with helium, then settling at a place just above his Adam’s apple. “All right then,” he said. “Okay.” He turned and walked to his large cubicle at the end of the hall, his eyes still on Nick Johnson even as he shut the door…

“Won’t you be my friend?”

The ColorMaster waited for the light on the video camera to click off. He got up from his chair and walked to his dressing room. Although a handful of Controllers passed him, ones he had never seen before, none of them asked him for his autograph. Nobody ever asked him for his autograph. Not since the Great Separation.

His dressing room was plain. Ordinary. No bundles of roses. No notes written in flowery script left by young nymphos asking to be his friend. He looked in the mirror at his pale white skin, saw a zit forming on the end of his nose, popped it, relishing the release of pressure, the release of the milky white ooze that smacked against the mirror’s surface without a sound. One of the few remaining pleasures in the world, he thought. The satisfying eruption of a ripe pimple.

He worked ten hours a day, six days a week, with Sundays off. Three hour long episodes a day were filmed. The remaining seven hours a day were spent going over the thin scripts, talking to the guests, reapplying make-up, talking with the director about the blocking. Et cetera…

He was tired of it.

Of course, the changing of his skin color every five minutes was done by special effects. He would not have known it was done, except he had happened to stop by the director’s office for a raise one day, when what on earth should be playing on the video monitor, but his show, the show, the only show legally produced.

He was seen by millions every day, hour after hour, yet he hadn’t been asked for his autograph in years.

He looked at his five o’clock shadow, rubbed his chin, pulled the razor from his dresser drawer, looked at the inviting blade, wondering….

Mr. Blue sat in a comfortable armchair watching Mrs. Blue getting it on with Mr. Lime and Mrs. Indigo. His head bowed to his lower neck and his eyes narrowed. He pressed his hand into the fold of his lap out of reflex, but felt nothing stir. He stood up and went to the vend-machine, ordering up a large cheese pizza. It was in his hands within five minutes, and although he felt a slight rumbling in his stomach, he looked at the pizza as if it were made of excrement. He tossed it in the waste slot.

He ordered a chocolate-caramel-mocha malt. It appeared with whipped cream and a glistening red cherry, things he also loved, but hadn’t ordered. The malt ended up in the waste slot, too, and Mr. Blue trudged to his room, wondering if he had some virus. He pressed the button labeled ‘HAPPY’ three times, and three different colored pills plopped happily out, accompanied by passages of his favorite music. He swallowed them without water. They tasted bitter and left a bile-like aftertaste in the back of his throat. He grimaced, waiting for the happiness to overwhelm him.

Nick Johnson read the memo that had been placed on his desk in a crimson envelope. He frowned, the words like the third strike of the ninth inning of those long forgotten baseball games. The words like the days just before the Great Separation. The words a foreboding. A directive hinting at the shape of the future. Hinting at the tint, at the hue of the future.

The words — “Prepare for Directive Thirty-Nine” — taking on the same color as the envelope in which they arrived.

As he read the words over and over, the firm hand of the director clamped onto his shoulder like the grasp of ice on a long, potholed dirt-black road.

The director’s eyes said to Nick Johnson — “Into my office. Now.”

A hand clasped firmly on Mr. Blue’s shoulder as he ran his fingers gingerly along that strange crack in the multi-colored wall of the cafeteria. He turned and looked into the flush face of Mrs. Blue. One of her hands was busy between her legs, the other sliding from his shoulder down to his chest, to his belly, to the place between his legs….

“Hey, mister,” Mrs. Blue said seductively. “How about we go back to our room and take out the good ol’ cat-o-nine.” Her voice was hungry. Erotic. Moist.

Yet Mr. Blue gently pushed her hand away. “Not right now,” he said.

“What’s wrong, honey?”

“Nothing.” Mr. Blue knew that if he told her what was wrong, something bad might happen, although he didn’t quite know what that might be. Bad was a foreign word. Nothing ‘bad’ ever happened to anyone here, ever, but there was the word. The word existed. BAD. Usually used playfully in the many sex games, but now the word had a different meaning — bad — a meaning he associated with the feeling in his gut, in his heart, in his brain.

Badddddddd……

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said again, feigning a smile. To prove it, he placed a hand between her thighs until her eyes rolled to the back of her head and her lips parted into a prolonged “Aaaaaaahhhhhhh………”

The ColorMaster had never really been all that interested in color. The program’s colors were all inserted after the actual recording had been done, the original disc it was put on being itself black and white until digitally manipulated.

Never had been interested in color until he saw the color red flow from his wrists like air currents into the running water of the sink he held his throbbing hands into. He became suddenly fascinated with it, the color of blood flowing from his wrists in red, blossoming banners. The blood danced in the sterile sink waters. It polluted the ionized, fluoridated water so deliciously, so finally, so — colorfully.

He looked around his room, noticing for the first time the other colors there. Even the dirty, dusty grays began to fascinate him. Even the color of the world fading quickly from his line of vision, the fade itself becoming a color, distinct, clear, haunting, creating a longing, a satisfaction, a finality…

“It seems that there has been a lack of communication between you and I,” the director said to Nick Johnson. The director’s chair was twice the height and width of the chair Nick Johnson sat in.

“A lack of communication?” Nick smiled a perspiration-inducing smile. “What do you mean?”

“It doesn’t matter what I mean. The meaning has always been classified. But what I say should be as clear as black and white. Whatever I say is as simple as saying turn left or point up or stand on your tiptoes. They are directions. Orders. To be followed implicitly. The meaning of those orders has nothing to do with you.”

“I see,” Nick said.

“Whether you see or not makes no difference to me.” The director’s chin jutted out accusingly. “You are to report to the Melanin Alteration room in ten minutes. Enough time to take a shit and smoke a cigarette.” The director smiled.

Nick smiled, then stood, trying to lunge at the director. But of course, the force field between them only sent a numbing shock to Nick’s abdomen and temple as he was propelled back into his seat. He shook his head, stood up resolutely, and walked to the door, his head held high, but his eyes focused on the bridge of his own pale, white nose.

Mr. Blue’s fingers were once again roaming the rectangular edges, misty gray/black/midnight-blue, the edges of the secretive doorway that hadn’t been opened for years. But suddenly it creaked open, to the amazement of Mr. Blue.

For the few seconds it took for the door to swing slowly open, he thought — what have I done? I was only running my fingers along those lines, feeling the — mystery…

But by then, the door was open and a figure stood there, gently grabbing a hold of Mr. Blue’s arm, saying, “Come with me, please.”

“Yes. Certainly,” Mr. Blue said. “Most certainly.”

He walked for the first time — the first time, at least, that he could remember — out onto the steps (steps?).

“What color are you?” asked Mr. Blue, to the man who helped him walk shakily down them to the floor below.

They got into an elevator and drifted down like an angel to another floor so many levels below, so many countries away, it seemed. As Mr. Blue walked into a room with a sign above that said “Melanin Alteration Room” he passed a man who was his same color. A blue the color of a ripe, bruised blueberry.

“Hello,” Mr. Blue said, surprised.

But the man did not answer. He only looked at him confused.

Mr. Blue swallowed a pill given to him by a friendly man dressed in a pale green robe, and when he woke up again, his skin was a strange yellow-pinkish color.

“Am I dying?” was the first thing he asked to the smiling man in the pale green robe.

“No,” the man said. “You’re just fine.”

Mrs. Blue of the forty-first floor of building #812 squinted at the five by five meter screen in the commons area as Mr. Beige and Mr. Chartreuse were each having a go with her.

The ColorMaster looked a bit different, she thought. He looked — familiar? But her orgasm overtook her as Mr. Blue walked up to her and placed a hand on her breast through the mass of moving flesh already surrounding her.

“Are you all right?” she asked him, her voice out-of-breath, her blue skin darkening a bit.

“Yes. Of course. Why do you ask?”

“You just look — I don’t know — not quite yourself today.”

He grinned, squeezing the flesh of her upper thigh. “I’m quite all right. Quite fine, indeed,” he said. He kissed her, and although his saliva tasted a bit different, a bit off, Mrs. Blue said nothing as he entered her and they fell to the floor, along with Mr. Beige and Mr. Chartreuse, one big sweating heap of multi-colored flesh.

“Five, four, three, two — “ the cameraman counted down with his fingers.

The ColorMaster looked at the video camera and smiled. How odd, he thought. How odd. He had been shown a copy of Directive Thirty-Nine. Read its contents with interest, in fact.

He looked at the camera, his face a pale white, only the slightest tinges of blue going unnoticed in the skin of his scalp and the space behind his ears.

Directive Thirty-Nine. Hmmmm…..

“Won’t you be my friend?” he asked the video camera. The bright red light shined at him, and he thought only for a moment, It’s staying the same color.

But the thought disappeared quickly, finally, like a dream forgotten upon waking. He told the video camera who the guests were to be for that hour. Asked the unseen audience to stay tuned throughout the entire hour, and to — to—

“Please ignore the misty smoke seeping through the vents,” he said, reading off the video screen to his left, in a calm, reassuring voice. “They are just happy gasses. A special treat from me, the ColorMaster. Enjoy. Breathe deeply. If you feel like sleeping, do not resist. Breathe deeply and enjoy.”

It was a live broadcast, the first live broadcast ever for the ColorMaster’s show. The list of guests was shorter than usual, only enough material to fill about twenty minutes, and then they would be off the air. Twenty minutes was all the time they needed for the gasses to take effect.

Nick Johnson had already forgotten his name as he copulated with Mrs. Blue. Had forgotten his name even before setting foot on the forty-first floor of building #812. The smoke came in through the vents in different colors.

How nice. Greens and golds and pinks and yellows and even his own color, blueberry blue, and my — wasn’t it just the nicest smell? Wasn’t it so awfully nice to breath in? He began to feel tired as his latest orgasm dissipated from his body. His eyes began to shut, and he noticed Mrs. Blue and Mr. Beige and Mr. Chartreuse already snoring. He only noticed their breath stopping as his eyelids fell shut irretrievably. He noticed their breathing stopped, but didn’t mind, the stopping of their breathing no more worrisome than premature ejaculation.

“Five, four, three, two…” The cameraman counted down to the end of the show, the last show for a long while, not caring if his voice was heard over the live broadcast.

The ColorMaster — newly appointed, but still the same — squinted at the video camera, at the bright red light that winked unceasingly at him.

“Won’t you be my friend?” he asked. The red light winked for the last time and turned the color of soot. The television crew began turning off the lights. The camera was rolled away and the ColorMaster was soon left in darkness.

Yet still — he repeated — time after time, as if the words had their own taste, their own color — “Won’t you be my friend? Won’t you be my friend?”

Harvey’s Favorite Color

“Here ya go. Take it.” The stare-down lasted five seconds, but Harvey finally gave in and freed the hot dog from the bleached hands of the street vendor. Harvey paid the guy, thanking him with a sneer, and headed toward The Park.

Passing dirty white buildings and grimy apartment complexes, Harvey soon spotted the entrance to The Park. It was a wrought iron gateway that simply read PARK in cold block letters on top. The gate extended around the entire park in the shape of a square. Harvey walked through the entrance and onto The Park’s dull concrete ground.

“I smell ducks,” Harvey said, and grimaced. He bit off half of his gray hot dog and swallowed. He felt it swim down his esophagus.

The Park was a city-mandated nirvana of silicone and cement, containing iron trees scattered in computer designed patterns, a central lake, and numerous benches. Most of the benches were coated in slime formed by decades of gum, spit and crushed cockroaches. Harvey spotted a fairly new one with about a two-foot space free of muck. He sat down, holding the remaining half of his hot dog over his head.

“Quack!” Harvey yelled. He waited and listened. “Quack!” He watched the ground intently. A cockroach skittered out from behind an iron tree. Cockroaches were the only wildlife in this area, apart from a few species of mutated flies.

Harvey followed the cockroach closely with his eyes. “Quack!” he yelled again, and flung the remainder of his hot dog at the roach. He missed, with the bun flying to one side of the bug, and the meat flying to the other side. The cockroach waddled toward the hot dog as if running to the aid of a fallen comrade. It grabbed the meat and pulled it behind the tree.

“Damn ducks,” Harvey said, getting up. He peered around the iron tree and spotted the cockroach. He stomped on it three times before it stopped moving. “Goddamn ducks getting bigger every year.”

The Park was Harvey’s favorite getaway, his favorite retreat. It was a rationalized Eden of geometric shapes juxtaposed around manufactured liquid waste. The liquid waste constituted the contents of the cement-encased lake. Harvey’s attention slowly shifted toward it.

The lake was a perfect oval in the exact center of The Park, one hundred meters long and fifty meters wide, with an indiscernible depth. The surface of the lake was what had lured Harvey Waller to this spot years ago. It was covered with swirling rainbows of spilled oil, dancing and turning the fluorescent light of morning into a palette of shifting color. Harvey could watch for hours if he’d had the time — red bleeding into orange bleeding into yellow bleeding into green. There was nothing more beautiful, nothing more sensuous on earth, than the surface of that lake.

Except, of course, for Harvey’s color book.

He looked nervously about for signs of people. Normally, he wouldn’t dare look at his color book — not here, not at this time of day. But the ethereal display on the lake’s surface was of exceptional beauty today, and instead of satisfying Harvey, t made him want more.

He sat down on the bench, lifting his briefcase to his lap. He looked around again, listening for signs of any movement. He opened the briefcase slowly, lifting up the papers inside. Underneath was a false bottom, one he’d constructed himself, specially designed for the color book. He unlatched the false bottom and reached inside, grasping the book’s binding. He pulled it out.

Lifting open the cover was like glimpsing into the blinding glory of Heaven and Hell combined. Each of the first three pages of the book was a block of primary color — red, yellow and blue.

This was foreplay.

The rest of the pages consisted of various mixtures, various shades of these colors. Blue-green. Dark purple. Light pink. Orange. Lemon yellow. Fluorescents. Pastels. Colors that reached out and touched Harvey’s soul, contrasting greatly with the real world, whose primary colors were black and white, mingling with various shades of gray.

Harvey’s favorite page of the color book was filled with a deep red-orange. It flared out at him, lapping at his heart, giving substance to feelings that often flashed through his mind. It made that confusing flash of heat in Harvey’s brain almost tangible. Harvey ran his fingers over the page, caressing the red-orange color, wishing it would leap out at him, engulf him and form a cohesive bond with his entire being. He hoped it would fill the emptiness he felt.

There was a sharp tap on Harvey’s shoulder. His body went rigid as he slammed the book shut.

“Harvey Waller!” the voice over his shoulder boomed. “It’s decision time.”

Harvey turned and looked into the smoke-filled eyes of the man behind him. Harvey’s heart turned to cold metal, while the man’s face remained granite, carved with saw-toothed wire, jagged and rough.

“Do you love your country?” the man barked. “Do you love your country?”

Harvey stumbled for a reply, feeling the hot dog rise in his stomach.

“Don’t let your hesitation give me the answer,” the man said, his eyes boring a hole through Harvey’s retinas, through his bleached irises, lighting his brain on fire.

Red-orange fire.

The heat in Harvey’s brain was a wonderful feeling. A wonderful color. It warmed Harvey’s mind, sparking off of the metal plate in his head.

“Do you love your country?” the man asked again, grabbing Harvey’s shoulder, digging in with hard fingers.

The pain shot more fire into Harvey’s brain and flashed through his eyes.

“Yes!” Harvey cried. “I love this country more than anything. More than life. More than my mate. More than my children.” Harvey sneered. “I love this country even more than death.”

“Then give me that book,” the man demanded, his buttoned-up trench coat bulging with the promise of a quick, violent end.

Harvey ran his fingers over the cover of the book, feeling the indentation of the word COLOR ripple under his skin. “I won’t look at it again,” Harvey said. He looked sheepishly into his lap. “”I’ll keep it shut.”

“Give me the book and this will be forgotten.”

Harvey slowly handed the book over. The man grabbed it and threw it on the concrete. He produced a vial from one of his many pockets and poured a clear liquid over the book’s surface. It immediately smoked and spit, the acid disintegrating the cover, then the pages, leaving nothing but a pulpy slush.

“I ought to make you lick that up,” the man said. He turned and started to walk away.

“Wait!” Harvey shouted. He stood up. The man stopped and turned.

“I love this country more than anything.” Harvey took a step toward the man. “I love this country more than life. More than my mate.” A sneer grew on Harvey’s face. “More than my children.” Harvey took a giant step and stood looking up into the man’s eyes. The smoke in them began to clear.

“And I love this country more than death!” Harvey cried as he threw his arms around the man, hugging him tightly.

The man was caught by surprise — Harvey felt it. The red-orange glow in his brain told him so.

“Quack!” Harvey said.

“Quack?” the man said.

“Quack!” Harvey said as he reached into the man’s trench coat and wrapped his fingers around cold metal, squeezing it as fire raged through his brain. Red-orange. The color the sun should be, Harvey thought. The color of fire.

Squeeze. A charge went off, filling the man’s nose, Harvey’s nose, as the man slumped forward. Harvey let him drop and heard the crunch of a hundred glass vials as the man hit the concrete. He began to smoke and spit, bubbling, dissipating into the air, becoming nothing more than a vile odor.

Harvey sneered and walked to the edge of the concrete encased lake. He watched the oil swirl and dance, the colors bleeding into each other endlessly.

Working Class Hero Worship

I’ve got a secret to tell you.

I can sing you songs you were never meant to hear. They were his songs. Beautiful songs. I’m the only one alive who’s ever heard them.

Here’s another secret. Mark David Chapman did not kill John Lennon.

This is what I know.

Listen.

I see his breath rise in front of his eyes. Feel the chill in Chapman’s face, his beating heart. I see through his eyes. Hear with his ears, feel with his skin. I smell Central Park, I smell sweat and excitement through his nose. I hear the voices in his head.

The gun is heavy in his pocket, a five-shot short barrel .38 caliber Charter Army Special containing five hollow-point bullets. I know that unless I stop him, unless I can fight through the legion of voices in his head and take control of his body, four of the bullets will hit their intended target, rip apart his body as if it were a piñata, and end the life of one of the greatest songwriters in the world. The voice of a generation.

I have to take control.

I have to stop him.

A white limousine pulls up. A woman steps out. A woman I recognize. Black hair cropped short over a complexion of cream-kissed coffee.

Then he steps out.

The man I’ve idolized since the age of ten. The man whose music, whose voice, whose words and actions have become almost a religion to me.

The body I’m in reaches a chilled hand into its coat pocket, wraps its fingers around the dense metal of a gun.

“Mr. Lennon.”

The words are out before I can stop them.

I have to take control.

Concentrate. Make his fingers move.

Concentrate.

It’s like trying to bend steel.

Lennon turns.

I recognize his glasses from the cover of Season of Ice. On the album’s cover, they are still coated with his blood.

The skyrockets going off in Chapman’s mind nearly overwhelm me. His arm rises with the gun.

Concentrate. Push.

I have to stop him. I must.

If you’re old enough, I bet you remember exactly where you were when you heard that Kennedy was shot, the moment deeply chiseled in your heart.

But that was before my time.

My milestone of shock and grief happened on a cold December night in 1980. I heard the news during a football game. Howard Coselle, of all people, made the announcement.

John Lennon had been shot.

It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think. It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t. Life stopped as I lay in bed that night, my heart beating painfully in my throat. John Lennon was a singular voice of honesty and clarity and intelligence in this world, and now he was gone. The earth seemed to falter in its rotation, as if it, too, wasn’t sure how to proceed.

But even the worst effects of tragedy become malleable over time. The immediate hurt turns to a dull pain turns to an emptiness evoked by things like anniversaries and songs heard on the radio.

And my talent remained.

My talent.

It used to frighten me. Images slid unbidden into my head. Images from nowhere, it seemed, distorted and dim and confusing. As a child, my schoolwork suffered. Why did my mind wander? Why wasn’t I paying attention? Eventually, the images became clearer. Cohesive.

Like—

Mr. Marpoli, my third grade teacher; images of his affair with Mrs. Cravitz, the Kindergarten teacher.

Like—

Images of the undulating webs of Ms. McKay, my fourth grade teacher, as she battled with demons who quietly insisted she hang herself.

Like—

—the assistant principal, Mr. Olaf; I felt the guilt he suffered, saw it as a slow-turning pinwheel of crimson-tinged blue. The guilt he felt for offering a janitor twenty bucks to suck his cock. The janitor threatened to tell Olaf’s wife if he didn’t pay him two hundred dollars to keep quiet.

I learned to control whose head I was in. If I focused, if I concentrated, I could be there in moments.

December, 1980. John Lennon was back in the public eye after five years of caring for his son Sean. Double Fantasy was released and was an immediate success. Once again, John Lennon was on top of the world. He seemed so happy this time around, so full of hope and excitement. Maybe that’s what made his death that much harder for so many of us. The world was anticipating so much more of his music.

But that night — December eighth, 1980.

“Mr. Lennon?”

Lennon turns, his face flush and happy after a night in the studio. Chapman’s arms rise, both hands on the gun now, and Lennon squints at the gleaming metal object aimed at him.

My talent. I practiced. I learned to focus. It got me through those tough months, those months of shock and grief that followed the death of the one person I’ve never been ashamed or embarrassed to call a hero. It filled part of the void left within me.

Life continued. I graduated from high school. College. Met Jill. We had a baby. Brianna. Bree.

Jill found humor in my obsession with John, but she accepted it and let me put up my Beatles posters and framed Beatles albums and agreed not to throw out my box full of magazines and books about John. She even went along with buying the Carter’s collection of Lennon baby paraphernalia when she was pregnant with Bree. Baby blankets, crib bumpers, wall hangings, lamps, bookends, all featuring the whimsical artwork he’d created for Sean.

Yet, I continued to practice, to learn. I spent hours shut in our den, the lights out, shades and curtains pulled tight. At first I told Jill I was suffering headaches and needed the rest. Then I began coming home over lunch while Jill was at work and Brianna was at daycare. I simply lay on the couch with a pillow beneath my head and traveled. That’s what I called my talent. Traveling.

You’d think that over the years, the shock of John’s death would wear off. To some degree that’s true. But even twenty-six years later, there were still those times while hearing a song of his on the radio, I felt the wound left in my heart widen.

So I made a decision. A decision to use my talent for something important. Something monumental.

I traveled. I searched.

I reached out into the gauzy ether, grabbing onto thin threads of time and space, following them, backtracking, jumping to other threads and seeing where they led.

See, here’s another secret; space is not an empty void. It’s an endless mesh of multi-dimensional threads leading like highways back and forth across time and distance, mass and brainwaves. Finding a particular thread is like untangling a thousand greased and electrified fishing lines hopelessly knotted together, trying to work to the center in search of one particular hook.

And I found it. I found the right thread, the right hook. And I followed it. Followed it back, twenty-six years to that cold December night in 1980.

“Mr. Lennon?”

John turns. He squints. A flicker of recognition plays across his eyes. Maybe you’ve seen the infamous photograph of John signing an album for Chapman earlier in the day.

The body I’m in drops to one knee. Even now, I can feel the struggle in Chapman’s mind. Two sides of a coin. Heads. Tails. Yes. No. Shoot. Don’t shoot. A brief, violent struggle.

I have to focus. Act quickly. Take advantage of the quickened pulse, the flood of adrenaline rushing through his body.

I push. Push hard.

His finger tightens on the trigger.

I make his nose bleed. Make his eyes water. I become another voice in his head. Stop it! Don’t!

He aims.

I send a sharp pain through his head.

No no no no no

He squeezes the trigger. The gun jerks in his hand.

One. Two. Three. Four.

Five.

Oh, God. Please, no. But the shots — all five of them — go wide.

Why not Gandhi? Why not JFK? Why not prevent the events of 9/11? Gandhi and JFK were too far in the past. It would’ve taken many more years of practice, and there was too much involved that I didn’t know about. And the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, involved getting into too many minds. I would’ve killed myself trying, and not a damn thing would’ve changed.

I woke up in a hospital after saving John Lennon’s life. My head pounded. IV’s dripped into my veins. I had no idea where or when I was. It took me a while to remember my own name. I fumbled for the cord that held the call button for the nurse’s station. Even as I pressed it, I felt the phantom vibrations of a discharging gun. A nurse arrived, tall and pretty and young.

I smiled stupidly at her.

“You had us worried,” she said.

“What year is this?” I gasped.

She told me.

I was back.

I emerged from the hospital into the bright sunlight of summer. I searched my new memory for who I was. Where did I live? Instinct led me to a studio apartment above a noisy pizza joint, but on the way there, I stopped at a Tower Records. I looked under L.

LENNON, JOHN.

My mouth dropped open. I barely held in a shout of joy. There were eight compact discs of Lennon’s music that had been recorded after 1980.

I’d done it.

This was the world now. The new world. Here John Lennon still lived and breathed and wrote music. Eight CD’s! I carried them to the counter as if carrying a handful of diamonds and pulled out my wallet. The clerk rang them up.

All I had was a ten-dollar bill, a driver’s license, and a library card. What happened to my Citibank MasterCard? My World Perks Visa? My Platinum American Express? What happened to the pictures of Jill and Brianna?

I looked at the clerk. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. “I—”

The clerk sighed, as if to say Thanks for wasting my time.

Jill and Brianna.

The clerk asked, “Are you okay?”

I turned and stumbled out the door, gasping, choking on the stale air that filled my mouth.

I ran to the apartment without thinking, my new memory guiding me there. I didn’t notice what a shit-hole it was at first, because I was so desperate, crazed, thinking about Jill and Brianna. Where were they? What had I done to them?

Ray Bradbury wrote a story called “A Sound of Thunder” about a man who travels back to the time of the dinosaurs and accidentally kills a butterfly. When he returns to the present, he realizes with horror that this one misstep has changed the course of history.

I always knew it was possible. But I never thought I’d lose Jill because of my actions. And God help me, I never thought I’d lose Brianna. Sweet little Bree. I don’t know how, exactly. What different steps through life I took due to John Lennon surviving that assassination attempt all those years ago. But now I owned two sets of memories. The old one turning slowly to fog, the new one solidifying like coal into a diamond.

I never met Jill, so we never had a daughter.

What, then, had I become?

I searched my apartment. It already felt familiar. I knew where everything was even before finding it — not that there was much to find. Pay stubs from a place called the Rigel Company. What did I — I was a mailroom clerk there. Jesus, I already felt a pang of the job’s drudgery.

In my old life (I’m calling it “my old life” already?) I was an accountant at a software company. Not the best, but it paid well. A lot better than a mail clerk position. Jill was the one who got me out of the world of dead-end jobs, encouraging me to finish my college degree, to give myself some credit.

Jill—

But here in the trash and piled up next to it were empty pizza boxes, empty cans of tuna and Campbell’s soup and three empty bottles of Jim Beam. God, how long had it been since I’d had a drink? In this new life, apparently not long. Already I felt my tongue slide across my lips in anticipation of a bourbon and Coke.

This wasn’t right. It couldn’t be right. But—

Something caught my eye. A stack of compact discs piled next to a portable CD player. Within that pile were six post-1980 John Lennon CD’s.

I forgot about my loss, my newfound poverty, and picked out a CD.

On the cover was a picture of John and Yoko walking through Central Park with a seven year old Sean. I slid a disc into the CD player and pressed play.

Strangely enough, the songs were familiar, like old friends, already stored in my new set of memories. And just like John’s pre-1980 songs, these cut to the bone. He sang with such raw emotion and power, I wondered how he was able to keep from breaking down during each take. It was amazing. Tears dripped from my eyes in a slow, gentle rain.

Listen—

Music bypasses the skin, the muscle, the bone and travels directly to the heart and mind. It amplifies our feelings and reminds us of our soul. Music, like nothing else, spreads our humanity from person to person like the shockwave of a nuclear bomb.

I spent the rest of the night listening to his CD’s, not eating, not sleeping, only stumbling from a worn-out beanbag chair to use the bathroom.

But also — I was afraid. Tremors ran through my body like a colony of ants. Here was the voice of a dead man. A man I’d resurrected.

And I found myself longing.

Longing for Jill.

Longing for Brianna. My daughter. By saving John Lennon’s life, I had snuffed my daughter out of existence.

I found a bottle of Jim Beam. I held it up to the light. The seal was broken and a third of the contents was gone. I stared at it as if I was staring at a shiny bauble. The label blurred. I tilted the bottle to my lips and drank.

Later, I curled up into a corner, shivering with fever, John’s music playing, filling the room with the sound of a modern-day Lazarus. At times, it wrapped around me like a warm blanket. At other times, it unsettled so much that I pressed my thumbs into my temples to keep my head from exploding.

How could the joy of changing the world be so fleeting? I felt empty, I felt like I’d been hung by my ankles over a rocky abyss. One day in this new world and my life was already unbearable. Was this the price I had to pay? And to whom was I paying it? No one would ever know what I’d done.

And what was the reward?

The CD player stopped. I popped in another disc and pressed play.

The music.

The music was my reward.

The next morning, my head throbbing, the taste of rot in my mouth, I searched for Jill. What had become of her? In this new world, we’d never met, yet why did I still remember her? Why did I remember Bree? Why didn’t my old memories get washed away the moment I saved John’s life? The memories were painful, a curse. How could my daughter weigh so heavily in my mind when she was a mere dream, a fragment of shadow from some other life?

I couldn’t find Jill in the phonebook. Perhaps she had married. I called her parents. I told her mother I was an old high school friend.

“Oh, I’m sure she’d love to hear from you.” Her mother sounded as I’d remembered her, always cordial, always in the middle of a cigarette.

I choked out the words — “Is Jill — is she married?”

Her mother laughed. “Five years. They just celebrated their anniversary in Bermuda.” She exhaled and I could almost smell the smoke through the receiver. “I offered to tag along and take care of Danny, but they said they’d manage.”

“Danny?”

“Their son.”

A son.

I cleared my throat. “Thanks. I’ll give her a call.” I hung up. My stomach lurched.

I vomited. I cried. An hour went by before I had the will to clean up the slick mess.

And all the while, I listened to his music.

At least there was that.

He still sang about love. About peace. About the frailty of men and women, their vulnerabilities and weaknesses. He sang about the strength of the heart. The resiliency of the soul. Mostly, he sang about you and me and how the world is a crazy, strange place, and how we should embrace it for what it is. We should love each other for who we are.

Yet there I sat, with the people I cared about, the ones closest to me, wiped from existence, like chalk from a board of slate. And John’s songs, old and new, told me that this is not right. They told me that in my attempt to save the world by bringing him back, I destroyed my own world.

The phone rang, but I didn’t answer. I unplugged it from the wall. I grew hungry, and I welcomed the hunger as punishment for what I’d done. I listened to his music, listened to it all, the old and the new. I listened to it over and over, rocking on my knees, leaning over the kitchen sink with eyes closed, swaying, swooning, drinking in his music and letting it fill the deepening fissures of my psyche. Twice, I held a razor blade over my wrist. I took off my clothes. I poured bourbon over my head, letting it rain over my face and sting my eyes. I screamed. I cursed myself until my voice gave out.

I listened. I danced.

Though my voice was broken, I mouthed the words in a rasp.

Other tenants pounded on the walls, but I ignored them. I rolled on the floor and cried and hit the refrigerator with my fists until I lost all the feeling in my hands.

And then I made a decision. I knew what I had to do. I knew how to make things right.

I lay on my back on the floor with an old Army surplus blanket rolled beneath my head. I cleared my mind. Prayed I had the strength. The strength to travel far enough, long enough. The strength to make things right.

There’s a famous picture of John taken by Bob Gruen in 1974. In it, John stands at the base of the Statue of Liberty giving the peace sign. He looks so human in that photograph, like he could be your brother or friend, and just looking at that, to think that this man, this very man I’m looking at, was shot — not once, but four times — the hollow point bullets merciless as they devoured him…

It made me ill.

I had a postcard of this photograph in the apartment, and I stared at it, no longer feeling hunger, no longer feeling pain. My tears had long since dried up, and all I could do was croak out the words, “I’m sorry.”

I traveled.

Words, printed words, appear, come into focus, and at first I’m afraid I failed, I grabbed hold of the wrong thread, the wrong hook. But as my eyes skim the words, I recognize the sentences, recognize the voice in the words. Holden Caulfield. The Catcher in the Rye. Mark David Chapman’s eyes, the same eyes I see through, devour the text like holy scripture.

He looks up. The Dakota is a huge brick mountain in front of us. The gun is heavy in his pocket.

The white limousine pulls up. First the woman steps out. Black hair cropped short over a complexion of cream-kissed coffee.

Then he steps out. My hero. My idol.

I fight through the voices in Chapman’s head, trying to gain a foothold. My hands rise steadily. Jesus, no. But it’s not me, I remind myself through the cacophony. It’s not me, it’s him. It’s Chapman. This is how it was meant to be. I had no business changing the course of history. I had no business changing something that already was.

Do it, I tell him. I’m fighting my own conscience as much as his.

Do it, do it, do it!

“Mr. Lennon.” The voice comes out of my mouth, his mouth, and again I watch John turn. Again, I watch his eyes, his kind eyes finding me through the night, and this time I let the fingers, my fingers, his fingers, do their work, the work they were meant to do. They firmly squeeze the trigger.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

The hollow points rip into him, into the man I most admire, and it is me pulling the trigger. No, it’s him, it’s Mark David Chapman, but this time I don’t fight him, this time I am complicit in the deed.

Blood splashes across the ground beneath the Dakota lights.

“I’ve been shot.” John’s voice. This is the first time I’ve heard his voice undiluted by electronics, his voice floating unhindered into my — into Chapman’s — ears. Jesus.

But I think of Jill. I think of Brianna. This is how it was meant to be. They — my wife, my child — were meant to be, and this is the only way I can get them back.

“Do you know what you’ve done?” the doorman asks.

I shove him aside and lean over John’s body, now sprawled over the steps of the entryway. I ignore Yoko’s screams, ignore her pounding on my back. I push and force Chapman to grab John’s collar. I force Chapman’s mouth to open. Force words out. Force him to say,

“I’m sorry.”

Force him to say,

“I love you.”

John is still alive, but he can’t talk, and already a squad car screeches to a halt, and with one last push I force Chapman’s arm to rise and bring the gun smashing down on John’s skull.

I had to be sure.

I need to go back now. It’s done. The world is right again. I need to get back to Jill. To Brianna. I’m ready. I’m ready. Take me back. Take me back.

But — I still feel Yoko punching me, kicking me. I feel the rough hands of cops pull me away and throw me to the ground. I hear Yoko screaming. I hear I hear I hear

Attica prison. 2006. There are times I remember the old me. Times I remember the man who loved Jill, who loved Brianna.

But every day, I forget a little bit more.

But the songs. I still remember the songs. They are wonderful songs. Beautiful songs. I sing them every day so that I won’t forget them.

I sing them out loud.

I sing them to the tiny cracks in the walls, and I sing them to the voices in my head. There are so many voices.

His songs and the voices in my head are all that keep me sane.