Fetal Bait Apocalypse: 3 Collections in 1

Turista

Portman lay sick in the back of the pickup, his throat like a sponge drying on hot asphalt, the crystalline glare from the stars making his skin ache. China had thrown together a bed for him: the two blankets they haggled for in San Miguel, and a small pillow she’d made in home-ec over twelve years ago. The pillow was soaked through with his sweat.

The drive was endless. Over 1100 miles from Mexico City to El Paso through central Mexico, and at night the countryside was all looming shadows edged with silver.

He slid in and out of consciousness. Sometimes he’d sit up with the wind howling through his hair, unable to tell how far they’d gone, or where they were. Sometimes it seemed as if they’d traveled 200 miles in a few minutes, while other times, it seemed to take hours just to burrow through the deserted streets of some shit-hole town.

“How are you doing back there?” China had to yell to be heard through the small window at the back of the pick-up’s cab.

Portman sat with his back to the cab, the blankets pulled tight around him. He turned to the open window and shook his head. He saw China’s eyes in the rearview mirror, wide with worry, darting between him and the endless, snaking road ahead. His mouth felt full of sand, but when he hefted the plastic water jug up to his lips and sipped, his abdomen clenched in protest.

“We’re making good time.” Most of China’s words were swallowed by the wind and the noise of the truck’s engine. “We should be in Chihuahua by morning.”

Portman closed his eyes tight against the harsh starlight. He had tried averting his eyes earlier by looking down at himself, but it had made him nauseous seeing his stomach, feeling it churn and recoil and writhe within.

The truck hit a painful series of bumps in the road, and then there was China’s voice.

“—the chicken or maybe the chocolate. Could’ve been the chocolate. Wasn’t wrapped. That’s not a good sign. That’s never a good sign.”

Portman wondered how long she had been talking. He had given up responding to her conversations earlier in the evening, shortly before the sun had finished stretching long shadows across the highway like dirty taffy. It took too much effort to talk. Too much energy to respond. He sensed that China knew this, and felt maybe she was talking to him to keep herself awake. Sometimes he was thankful for her voice, and other times it was unbearable.

He took another weak sip of water. It felt like a dull knife jabbing him in the guts. But he was dehydrated. He needed more. He took a deep breath, raised the jug to his lips and poured it down his throat. When the water hit his stomach, it was like an explosion of glass. He fell to his side gasping for air, wheezing, trying to hold the water down. The thing in his stomach—

“—you doing?”

China was yelling again.

“I said how are you doing?”

Portman felt the truck begin to slow down. He forced himself to sit up, his stomach screaming in protest. He looked through the small open window into the cab and shook his head. Even that was hard. “No,” he said, his vocal cords shredded. “Keep going.”

China glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “You look like shit.”

“Keep going.” Portman wrapped his fingers loosely around the cold metal at his side. He wished she would just keep her eyes focused in the cone of the headlights and shut up. He closed his eyes again and concentrated. Constricted his wrist and triceps to lift.

“Keep going.” His words were swallowed by the long silver-lined throat of night as he pointed the gun at China’s neck.

“Hey, okay. Okay. Put that down.” She peeked at him one more time in the rearview mirror, then turned her attention to the road ahead. Portman felt the truck accelerate, the vibrations of the passing road turning from a trot to a gallop. He let his arm drop to his side, his fingers too tired to unwrap themselves from the pistol’s grip.

They had known each other for only two months before embarking on their journey. Met the last month of their sophomore year in college, their passion consuming and sweaty, increasing at a feverish pitch. They wanted to see the world. Expand their minds. Fuck like animals.

Neither of them knew much Spanish or had ever been to Mexico, but they poured over the guidebooks. They didn’t want to experience Mexico from first class resorts and restaurants. They wanted to starve a little, hurt a little. What better way to experience the world than through the crystal clarity that a little suffering can bring. Besides, most of their money was already earmarked for their last few years of school.

The trip south had gone great. Seeing the countryside of the central highlands, the colonial towns, the small villages in between. They ate mysterious meats from street-carts, tortillas hand-made by little wrinkled women squatting at the sides of roads. They drank cheap beer and tequila. They wanted to remain lucid, but a slight buzz was better than no buzz at all.

Yet even after all the driving, the hours and hours of driving, they didn’t really know each other. But hell, the sex was great and it seemed to get better the hungrier they were, the dirtier.

They fucked like animals. He buried himself in her, felt the primal force of her heat turn him inside out, like snakes coupling, their limbs twisting about each other, shaping, reshaping.

When the time came to head north again, they were worn out. Almost out of money. Walking the fine line of getting too much of a good thing. Neither of them said it, but both knew that when they got home, they would take a break from each other. Not break up, but cool off. They knew the dangers of flying too close to the flame.

One of the last towns they stayed in was Guanajuato, about four hours north of Mexico City. China turned in early, but Portman wanted to drink up a little more culture. He watched China fall asleep next to him, and then stepped out of their simple motel room. Only two blocks away, he found the tavern—

—“Don’t you dare fucking stop.” Portman struggled to lift the gun. He didn’t want to hurt her, and hoped to God his finger didn’t slip on the sweat-slick trigger. But the truck had been slowing down.

He almost didn’t notice it. Sleep had overcome him, dreams of vibration and the sounds of things sliding wet and slimy over the earth. But when the truck slowed, the hiss of the wind died, and it was the approach of silence that screamed at Portman. He tapped the barrel of the gun on the frame of the cab’s window. “You can’t stop.”

“What’s happened to you?” There was fear and exhaustion and frustration in China’s voice. “I can’t go on forever. I can’t.”

Portman sucked in a mouthful of air. “You have to,” he managed. He touched the gun’s nozzle to her cheek. “’Til morning.”

She barely winced, but the engine roared back to life as she pressed heavily on the gas.

“Good girl,” Portman whispered. He let his hand drop to his side.

The hot, smoky tavern glowed with candlelight reflected off the polished wooden tables, off the mirror and liquor bottles behind the bar. He’d already had one too many shots of tequila and hadn’t paid for a single one.

“Here, friend, have another.” Juan slid a fresh shot across the table. It left a trail of spilled tequila in it’s path. Friends were easy to make when you were the only white guy in a bar full of Mexicans. A novelty.

“Whoa.” Portman leaned back, waving off the tequila in surrender. “No fucking mas.”

Juan laughed. “C’mon. The last one. I promise you.”

Portman exhaled a watery sigh. He wasn’t sure how he’d make it back to his motel room, let alone the flight of steps that led from the tavern to the street below. They’d probably find him the next morning passed out in the zócalo covered with vomit and bird shit.

“Okay.” He picked up the tiny glass. “This is it.” He tilted back his head and swallowed, well past the point of feeling the burn. He decided he better get back to China.

Juan leaned forward in his chair. “I’ll help you down the steps.”

“I can make it.”

Portman started to get up but felt a hand squeeze his shoulder. He squirmed around and saw a pockmarked face staring at Juan.

“I brought the gringo a drink.”

“Leave him alone, Benito.”

Benito’s glazed eyes were crisscrossed with tiny red veins that looked like snakes hungering after his pitch-black pupils. Portman could smell the alcohol on him even over his own potent breath. Benito produced a pint-sized mason jar from a paper sack he held.

“Homemade,” he said. He lifted the jar up so that the golden tavern light shined through it. It was full of a cloudy, amber liquid. “I call it leachaté.”

Juan started to get up. “Leave him alone.”

Benito ignored him. When he tried to smile, his face twisted up into a grimace. “Tequila,” he said.

Portman looked at Juan. Juan shook his head gravely. Portman felt Benito’s fingers burrow deep into his shoulder blade.

“Just a sip,” Benito said.

Portman didn’t want to be the cause of a fight, particularly if he was going to be in the middle of it. “I think I can handle a sip.” He held his hand out for the jar.

Benito pulled it away from Portman’s grasp. “Only if it’s okay with Juan here.”

Juan’s eyes smoldered. “Just a sip,” he said finally. “A small sip.” He sat back down.

Benito swirled the tequila. Something stirred in the bottom of the jar. He grinned at Portman. “Wanna swallow the worm? Can’t say you’ve been to Mexico if you haven’t swallowed the worm.”

“Just a sip,” Juan said once more. “No worm.”

Portman tried to focus on the jar. The residual swirl of the tequila made the worm dance. It was pale white, the size of Portman’s index finger. “I didn’t think they got so big,” he said.

Benito laughed. The small crowd gathering around the table laughed. Juan did not laugh.

And just for a second, as the candlelight glowed through the glass, it glowed through the body of the worm. A trick of the light, of the occlusions in the tequila, perhaps, but it appeared as if a small heart beat in the middle of the worm. Appeared as if the worm had a dozen tiny legs grasping helplessly at its own chest.

“Just a sip,” Juan warned.

“Drink,” the crowd began to chant in Spanish. “Drink. Drink. Drink.”

Drink.

Portman lifted the mason jar to his lips and took a sip. It went down like water. Not bad at all.

“Drink. Drink. Drink.”

The chant was verbal adrenaline. It gave Portman a feeling of power, made him want to show them that even though he was a foreigner — worse, a tourist — that he could join them for a moment. Become one of them.

He ignored Juan’s pleas to stop. He tipped his head back, relaxed the muscles of his throat. The homemade concoction rushed in, flooding his mouth, a few drops spilling out of the corners. But he got it down.

And then there was the worm. Bleached from the tequila. Portman looked down his nose at it as it left the glass. He saw its mouth open just before it entered his own mouth. He gagged as it slid down his throat. Gagged at the feel of it grabbing at his esophagus, trying to latch on, trying to climb its way back out. Portman gritted his teeth and forced it down.

The crowd cheered.

Juan helped Portman back to his motel room. Only two blocks away, but he never would’ve made it without Juan’s help.

Along the way, Juan whispered urgently into his ear, “On your way home, don’t drive at night. You understand? Listen to me. Don’t drive at night. That’s when they come out.”

“Right.” Portman had heard this many times from friends back home. “Federalés. Banditos.”

“No.” Juan squeezed Portman’s wrist painfully so that he felt it. “Listen to me. Do not drive in the countryside at night.”

“Banditos,” Portman murmured.

Juan let Portman drop onto the motel bed unconscious.

“I have to pee,” China said. “I really have to pee.

Portman couldn’t look at her. He could barely wave the gun anymore. “You can’t.”

“What do you mean I can’t? What the hell do you mean I can’t?” She was losing it. Had lost it long ago.

“I’m sorry.” Portman’s breath came out in quick wheezes. “You’re going to have to hold it or just let it go.”

China was already out of tears, but their trails remained, thick and pink. “In my pants? You want me to go in my pants?”

Portman didn’t answer.

China began to hyperventilate. She hunched her neck, her shoulders, her face contorted into a tight knot. Then she relaxed. Her whole body relaxed, except for the tear trails that grew a darker shade of red. The stench of urine filled the truck.

He dreamed of the worm. Of its mouth and the tiny rictus of teeth, pointed and sharp. He dreamed of it crawling inside his belly, eating its way through his guts. And all the while, there was the vibration, the feel of the ground rumbling, of things large and lumbering sliding wet across the earth.

Portman was jolted awake as the truck bounced along the shoulder of the lonely Mexican highway. The smell of stale urine was almost gone. He struggled to sit up. His gut was on fire.

“I can’t stay awake.” China’s voice was hoarse. Defeated. “I can’t do this.”

“You have to,” Portman said.

China slammed her fist against the dashboard. “I almost drove us off a fucking cliff! I can’t do this anymore.”

“I have to get to a doctor. It’s killing me.”

“I can’t stay awake.”

Portman felt the truck slow down, the gravel at the side of the road popping beneath the tires. He lifted the gun up and pointed it at China. “Don’t.”

She stared straight ahead and ignored him. They rolled to a stop. This wasn’t right. Portman had the gun. He had the gun. How could she stop?

“Don’t,” Portman said again, but she already had. And he knew, had known it all along, that he couldn’t shoot her. He couldn’t shoot anybody. He set the gun down gently next to him. He was going to have to drive.

China opened her door and got out. She stood with her back to the side of the truck, leaning over, her hands on her knees, taking in deep breaths of air.

After a short struggle, Portman managed to open the pickup’s gate. He slid out of the truck’s bed, his stomach feeling like a knife thrower’s convention. When his feet touched the ground, his legs buckled, and he collapsed onto his butt. The world swam, the stars above, so many of them, all bright, glaring, dug into his eyeballs. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to fight away the dizziness that swept over him. The cacophony of crickets was everywhere.

Then stopped dead.

The silence fell upon them like a plastic bag pulled down tight over the head.

Portman looked up. He could hear China sniffling. Could hear the sound of her joints crackling when she straightened up. She too sensed the silence, complete and desperate.

Then the hum started.

At first it sounded like an airplane in the distance, and Portman tried to focus on the sky, trying to see the moving lights of the airplane against the thousands of bright pinpoints already there.

But the sound grew. Portman looked down at himself. It felt like his heart was beating in his abdomen. When he touched the skin on his stomach, he could feel it moving. He realized the hum was coming from inside him.

China loped over to him. “Why are you making that noise?”

Portman couldn’t answer, his mouth too dry, his jaw too rigid. Instead, he shook his head, his eyes wide, sweat pouring from his face. When China saw his stomach move — a shape beneath the skin — she screamed.

The hum intensified. The movement in Portman’s stomach increased. The shape of tiny legs, at least a dozen of them, pressed at his stomach lining from inside. Then a mouth. It looked like a child pressing his face against a sheet of pale rubber. Portman couldn’t look away.

China grabbed his arm. “Get back in the truck,” she said.

Portman shook his head. They began to hear them. A low throbbing sound in answer. A vibration. More than one. From all directions.

“I think I can drive now.” China tugged frantically at Portman’s arm. “I know I can.”

“I can’t stand up.” The ring of tiny sharp teeth pressed against his skin. A few of the teeth poked out, then retreated, as if the worm inside of him was testing the temperature of the air. Small specks of blood remained in their wake.

“You have to get up.” China pulled on Portman’s arm, leaning back with all of her strength. But Portman did nothing to help, his body dead weight.

“You go,” he said. “Leave me.”

They could feel the ground rumbling. As if something heavy was sliding across the earth.

China let go of Portman’s arm. His face was the color of bleached flour. Sweat soaked the collar of his shirt.

“Go,” Portman pleaded.

China turned and sprinted to the pickup’s cab.

“I’ll send help,” she called before shutting the truck door. The engine rumbled to life. Portman felt the breath of an exhaust pipe on his back. He was unable to hold himself upright as the support of the truck squealed forward.

On his back, the stars wavered in the night sky. They danced, suspended in the liquid blackness. He closed his eyes.

He wanted his mother. He wanted her homemade chicken soup, wanted her to place a cool, damp washcloth across his feverish forehead. He wanted the safety of her closeness, the reassuring sound of her voice. As he felt the vibrations grow within him, emanating from the creature inside, as he felt his bones knock a rhythm into the barren dirt road, he suddenly understood what was happening. The creature inside him was frightened, also. Alone. And it was calling out for its own mother. It’s own family.

It began to emit a high pitched wail, the sound piercing and urgent. Portman knew they must be close, knew the thing inside him could sense their nearness.

In the distance he heard the screech of brakes, the squeal of tires over a slick surface, the abrupt crunch of metal. He heard the plants and trees on each side of the road crackling beneath a tremendous weight. The pungent smell of freshly turned earth invaded his nostrils. He opened his eyes, not knowing what he’d see, only that they were already there, surrounding him.

He counted five of them and wondered briefly how something so large could be so quiet. They swayed slightly as if sniffing the air, giant replicas of the thing inside him, eight feet high and twenty feet long. He could barely see the stars shine through their pale, moist skin as they hovered over him.

It was touching, really. He understood their need, their love for the thing held captive in his guts. One of the giant creatures slowly loomed up directly over Portman, its slippery skin dripping silver mucus. It wavered back and forth as if in contemplation. Portman could feel the love it emanated, the sense of satisfaction at finding one of its own. A smile crept over Portman’s pale face. It was so beautiful. An eternal love.

A soft, reassuring hum rose from the creature. Portman looked up into the velvet translucence of its gaping mouth. The muted light of a thousand stars blinked at him sleepily through the creature’s skin. Everything was going to be all right.

Everything was going to be all right.

The creature hovered only a second longer. Once it fell upon Portman, there was nothing but eternal darkness and pain.

Fetal Position

“Tell me why.”

The doctor wore no nametag. He stood over Rudy Teague, shaking a handful of sunflower seeds in his left hand, occasionally popping a few into his mouth.

“I need to lay on my side,” Rudy said. “Please.”

The doctor, younger than the rest of them, shrugged. “Tell me why.”

“God, please. I just — my stomach itches and I can’t reach it this way. It’s driving me crazy.” A funny phrase to use, since Rudy’s hands were tethered to his sides, his legs slightly apart so his ankles fit in the strong canvas stirrups at the bed’s foot. A dark gray strap kept him from lifting his head.

“I think you’re lying,” the doctor said.

“No—”

“I don’t believe you.”

“What the fuck does it matter? Why can’t I lay on my goddamn side?” Tears, sweat, and snot sluiced down Rudy’s cheeks, painfully tickling his ears and adding to the stains on the yellowed bed sheets. His belly itched like a son of a bitch. He just wanted to lay on his side. That was all. They could truss him up like a hog if they were so afraid of him. He didn’t care. Just so he could lay on his goddamn side. He felt his navel grow red and swollen like a tiny puckered mouth waiting to suckle.

The doctor sighed. He tilted his head back and tossed in a few more sunflower seeds. He looked thoughtful as he chewed and swallowed them. Then his voice softened, his tone lowering an octave. “Don’t you want to see your son?”

All of Rudy’s muscles constricted as if he’d been hit with a jolt of electricity. He began to hyperventilate.

“Mother,” he hissed. “Mother…”

The doctor dragged a heavy wooden chair over to the bed and straddled it. He popped a few more seeds into his mouth and chewed. He placed the back of his right hand gently on Rudy’s cheek, leaned down to his ear, and whispered, “Tell me why.”

Rudy calmed slightly. “Because—” He spat out a bubble of snot that had collected between his lips. “Because it’s my goddamn birthday.”

Exactly one year before, Elaine was seven months pregnant as Rudy drove over the freshly plowed two-lane highway to his mother’s house. Snow piled high on the shoulders, and the sky was a harsh crystalline blue. The shadow of the minivan wavered alongside like a parasitic phantom.

Rudy almost reached over to push the long dark hair out of his wife’s eyes, but decided not to wake her. She looked so beautiful sitting there. He hoped it wasn’t a mistake bringing her along, but he no longer had any choice. The time had finally come.

Elaine shifted in her seat. “What’s bothering you,” she asked, startling Rudy. She rearranged the pillow behind her neck.

“Nothing. I thought you were sleeping.”

“Every time we go to see your mother, you’re like this. What’s the deal?”

“There is no deal.” He switched the radio on and fiddled with the tuner until an oldies station came in, the static making all the old crooners sound like they sang around mouthfuls of crushed glass.

When they pulled into Catherine’s driveway it was already dark, the maple trees lining the long driveway gaunt and brittle. Her house was a large old colonial, the porch lined with wicker chairs turned upside down. Even though it was early March, Christmas lights still hung from the gutters, the red blinking bulbs like tiny pinpricks in the light blue paint of the exterior. The forlorn silhouette of an artificial Christmas tree stood still and quiet in the living room window.

Rudy took a deep breath. “Ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

Rudy knocked first, then opened the door. This was the house he grew up in, and it always felt a little strange going back, as if all the years he’d spent as an adult were an illusion. It was like time was a cord that had twisted back upon itself.

Catherine hovered over the kitchen sink, her bony, wrinkled hands full of suds. She looked up from the dishes and cleared her throat. “Rudy. Elaine. I didn’t hear you come in.” She dried her hands on a dishtowel and hugged Elaine carefully around her protruding belly. “It’s so good to see the both of you.” She coughed lightly into her fist and frowned. “I have an apple pie in the oven,” she said, motioning them into the living room. “Make yourselves at home.”

Already, Rudy didn’t think he could handle this. Catherine kept the thermostat high and he felt he’d suffocate if he didn’t get some air. He jerked his thumb back toward the door. “I’ll get the bags.”

Outside, he leaned against the minivan and gasped, the air like cold nails hammered into his lungs. The urge to race back inside, grab Elaine and drag her the hell away from there nearly overwhelmed him. How could he tell her? Even while they said their vows less than a year ago, even as he leaned over to kiss his new bride, he knew this day would come. He’d have to tell her the truth about Catherine, about the secret he shared with his mother.

“You can do this,” he whispered, watching his words disappear into the raw night air like an apparition. “You can do this.”

He opened the van’s side door and grabbed hold of their luggage, yanking it out into the cold.

When he re-entered the warmth of the house, suitcases in tow, he felt better. Catherine kneeled in front of Elaine, patting her belly. She leaned forward and put her ear to it, her head bobbing with a slight tremor. “He’s coming along just fine.”

“He?” Elaine laughed hesitantly. “Is there something I don’t know about?”

“Oh. I thought—” Catherine looked up, her gaunt cheeks coloring slightly. “I’m just guessing, of course.” She rubbed Elaine’s belly in a soothing circle. “But everything is fine, yes?”

“So far, so good.”

Rudy watched his mother. Catherine glanced up at him and smiled. “It’s going to be fine,” she said, and Rudy knew she wasn’t talking about the child floating peacefully in Elaine’s womb.

“I’ll take these to our room,” he said.

Catherine slowly stood, her joints popping. “I’ll slice up some pie.”

Rudy placed the suitcases in the guest bedroom, then walked as quietly as he could up the stairs and over the creaky wooden floor to the room he’d occupied as a child. There was a single bed in the corner covered with a blue quilt Catherine made for him when he was five. The top of his old dresser served as a runway for numerous model airplanes. Maps of different countries hung on the walls, and an open closet door revealed a heap of dirty old sneakers, above which hung the stiff wool suit he wore at age eleven to his father’s funeral. Rudy remembered the way the collar had scratched unbearably at his neck.

Above the suit was a plain wooden shelf. He reached up and felt to the back of it. At first he thought perhaps his mother had moved it, feeling only clumps of dust and distressed wood, but then his fingers felt the small wooden box he was after. He pulled it out and blew dust off the top, revealing his name he’d carved long ago with a Swiss Army knife.

He lifted the lid; reached in and pulled out what looked like a thin delicate rope. He handled it gingerly, making sure not to break it, then gently placed it back in the box before closing the lid.

“What’s that?”

Rudy swirled around, his mouth gone dry. Elaine stood in the doorway, watching him.

“It’s nothing. Just something I made when I was a kid.”

“Can I see it?”

Rudy held the box out to Elaine but kept his fingers tight on the lid.

“I’m impressed.”

Rudy pulled it gently away from her. “We better go have some of Mom’s apple pie if we don’t want to upset her.”

“I wouldn’t want to upset her.”

Rudy didn’t catch the sarcasm in Elaine’s voice as his heart pounded in his ears. He set the box down carefully on the dresser among the bombers and fighter jets and let Elaine lead the way downstairs.

Shortly after they finished their pie, Catherine excused herself for bed and slowly climbed the stairs, the steps barely whispering with her slight weight. It was only nine o’clock. Elaine turned to Rudy and asked in a whisper, “How long has she been like this?”

“Like what?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed. She looks so much older.”

“She does?”

“Oh, come on. Surely you see a difference since the last time we saw her.”

“Well, she is getting up there in age.”

“But it’s been less than a year.” Elaine shook her head. “Remember at our wedding reception how she danced until midnight? Now she looks like she needs a walker just to get around.”

Rudy almost lied, almost said, ‘It’s her arthritis acting up.’ But as the truth drew near, was in fact only hours away, he figured lying was a waste of breath. So instead, he just shrugged.

Elaine stared at the remains of her apple pie, the dried crust, the bits of filling coating the edges like baby spit. She pushed it away from her.

“Oh,” she said, putting her hand to her belly. “What a strong little kicker.”

Rudy slid his hand beneath her blouse, feeling the curve of her smooth, taut skin, the protrusion of her belly button. He had to tell her. He had to. He opened his mouth to speak, but found that he couldn’t. The words evaporated from his lips like water spilled on hot asphalt.

Elaine yawned. “I’m tired,” she said. “I guess I’m getting old, too.”

After Elaine fell asleep on the queen-sized bed in the guest room, her snores delicate and benign, Rudy crept to his childhood room. He picked the wooden box up and carried it to the bathroom at the top of the stairs. He turned on the tap water, adjusted the temperature until it felt lukewarm, and let the sink fill. Last year, only a month before they had married, he’d come alone to visit his mother. Although Elaine had wanted to celebrate his birthday with him, she’d been too busy preparing for the wedding. And this year, when he’d said he had to go, Elaine had asked if perhaps they couldn’t wait until after the baby was born.

“Besides, we just saw your mother at Christmas.”

“I know, but it’s important,” was the only excuse Rudy had come up with.

Elaine had finally agreed to go.

And now Rudy opened the box’s lid, his fingers responding to the familiarity of his name carved carefully into the top. He lifted the dried cord from it and placed it carefully in the water. It reacted to its new environment, expanding and uncoiling in the water’s warm comfort. He took a small penknife from his pant’s pocket and jabbed his middle finger. Small droplets of blood welled from the wound and he let them fall into the warm tap water. A few drops were all it needed.

The thing in the sink squirmed and writhed. He took off his shirt. Took a deep breath. Looked at himself in the mirror. Funny, the little surprises life tosses you, he thought.

He picked the thing up from the sink and carried it to his mother’s room. He felt it warm and fleshy in his hands, felt it pulsing urgently against his fingertips. His belly tingled.

He pushed open the door. Catherine sat up in bed, waiting for him. She wore a blue terry-cloth robe. Green towels were spread out beneath her on the mattress and thin white sheets were pulled up to her waist. Fat pillows supported her frail back.

“Where’s Elaine?” she asked.

“She’s sleeping.”

“But Rudy, she has to see. She has to know.”

“I can’t.”

“My God, Rudy, you have to. For the sake of your baby.”

“How do we know this one won’t be different?”

“Has it ever been?” Catherine smiled tenderly. “This is the way it’s always been. It’s the way our lineage works. You know that.”

Rudy stood mutely in the doorway, the snake-like coil squirming in his hands for attention.

“Go get her,” Catherine said. “Bring her up here. We’ll make it as easy for her as we possibly can.”

Rudy refilled the bathroom sink and set the fleshy cord in the fresh warm water where it slowly writhed and coiled in upon itself. Rudy stared at it a moment. When he reached down and stroked it, it responded eagerly to his touch. His belly button itched. He scratched at it lightly with his other hand. It was time to wake Elaine. Things would be different for her from now on.

Downstairs in the guest room, he gently shook her awake.

“What is it?”

Rudy tried to keep his voice from quaking. “Get up, dear.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. There’s something I have to show you.”

Elaine’s voice was groggy, and her eyes squinted at Rudy in the dim light. “Can’t it wait until morning?”

“No,” Rudy said, tugging at her arm, the itch in his belly growing. “You have to get up now.”

He led her upstairs to Catherine’s room, where a blue nightlight illuminated the walls with a soft, gentle glow.

Catherine smiled weakly. “Elaine. I think you better sit down.”

Elaine shook her head. “What’s going on?”

“Please. Sit.”

Elaine backed up to a small love seat perched in the corner and slowly sat down.

Rudy touched her shoulder. “Trust us — this is going to seem weird, but you’ll appreciate it in time. You’ll come to realize how special and amazing it is.”

Elaine reached out for his hand. Now her voice shook. “Can’t you tell me what’s going on?”

“It’s best to show you,” Catherine said. “Don’t be afraid, dear.”

Rudy tugged his hand out from Elaine’s grip and went back to the bathroom, where he lifted the dripping cord from the sink. The itch in his belly instantly grew, a burning sensation spreading slowly out from his navel as he walked quickly back to his mother’s room.

When Catherine saw the thing he held, she smiled and held her hand out for it. “I know it’s not going to be easy for you to watch,” she said to Elaine. “But it’s the most beautiful thing. It’s pure love.”

The burning in his belly was intense. Rudy grabbed his pocketknife from the top of the dresser and, without any inhibition, jabbed it into his navel. Before too much blood spilled, he placed one end of the cord against the wound. It attached itself eagerly with a squishy, suction sound.

As he handed the other end to his mother, he grew light-headed.

Elaine screamed.

But it was too late to allay her fears, too late to hold her hand and convince her of the beauty she was about to witness.

Catherine spread her knees slightly apart and let go of her end of the cord. It burrowed between her legs. Her eyes fluttered.

Rudy crawled into the bed with her. Felt the old familiar feeling of the umbilical cord tug at his belly. He relaxed. It was best not to resist.

It didn’t hurt as much that way.

He no longer heard Elaine’s screams as he re-entered his mother’s waiting womb.

It was amazing the peace inside. Amazing the warmth and love he felt despite the contortions his body made, despite the incredible stretching Catherine’s body endured to accommodate him in her belly. But like every year on the anniversary of his birth, he was able to curl into a fetal position. He felt himself flowing back into his mother through the ancient umbilical cord, nourishing her, giving her back the much-needed vitality she had lost since the last time he was inside of her. Part of him knew Elaine was having a hard time of this out in the cold, harsh world, but this was a reality she had to accept if she wanted to live much longer after she gave birth to their new child.

He listened to his mother’s voice warbling through the red fluids and layers of tissue.

“Come here and hold my hand,” she said. “Please, Elaine. Don’t be afraid.” Her voice was a soothing coo. “Touch.”

And Rudy felt Elaine’s touch on the side of his face through the layers of his mother’s flesh.

“He recognizes you,” his mother said.

“Rudy?” It was Elaine’s voice.

“Yes, dear,” Catherine said. “Isn’t it wonderful? He keeps me young.”

And then Elaine’s hand no longer caressed him. He felt the vibrations in the floorboards as she took a step back. Barely heard her now, as she said, “My God.”

Rudy stuck his thumb in his mouth. Rocked himself slightly back and forth in total bliss for the next twenty minutes until he felt a familiar set of rumblings.

Rebirth.

Both his shoulders dislocated as he emerged to the sounds of both Catherine and Elaine screaming, Catherine in pain, Elaine in terror. He felt a warm slosh of blood all around him as he grabbed at air, feeling as if he tore his mother in two. But this was the way it always was. The way it always would be.

He emerged covered in blood, gasping for air. As he popped his shoulders back in place and wiped the fluid from his eyes, he saw Elaine sitting on the floor, her eyes wide, breathing quick and pained. He spat blood from his mouth. Looked at Catherine. Her eyes were closed to slits, but she still breathed, and as he watched her, a smile enlivened her features. She already looked years younger. She nodded.

Rudy found the scissors somewhere among the blood soaked towels and cut the umbilical cord from his belly, then reached between Catherine’s legs and cut it from her, also. He wadded up a clean towel and placed it at the entry to her womb to stop the still flowing blood.

He turned once again to Elaine.

He expected her to be in shock, expected her to accept this after much contemplation and solitude. But he didn’t expect her to stand up. Didn’t expect the word ‘Monster’ to issue from her lips in a banal scream, and certainly didn’t expect her to grab the scissors from the edge of the bed and plunge them into Catherine’s belly, slicing upwards to the sternum as the fickle vitality quickly left Catherine’s eyes.

All Rudy could do was run screaming and naked and covered with blood out into the cold night air, the blood steaming as it froze into a brittle shell around his body. And when the police finally found him, he told them it was his fault. He’d been the one to carve up his mother. He’d been the one to plunge the scissors into her and open her up like a bag of writhing snakes.

He didn’t want his new son to be without a mother. He didn’t want his new son to miss the total love and closeness he’d experienced.

“So that is why,” Rudy hissed one year later, his belly itching like a son of a bitch as he lay on his back, constrained to the asylum bed.

“That is why,” he grunted between tightly clenched teeth, the doctor with no nametag staring at him, no more sunflower seeds in his hand to chew up and swallow.

“That is why,” he gasped as his navel opened up and gushed forth the nutrients meant for a mother he no longer had.

The sheets covering him turned a dark, sticky crimson with his love.

Shift

Telephone

Jill Johnson inserted herself into the oval of six and seven-year olds standing at the front of her class. “You know how Telephone is played, don’t you?” she asked. She was met by nods of affirmation and a few dumbfounded stares. “I whisper something into someone’s ear, and that person whispers it into the next person’s ear, and so on until it gets to the end. Then we’ll see how much the words have changed. Okay?”

She leaned over and whispered into Benjamin Cale’s ruddy, wax-rich ear, “I like plums and apples.”

Benjamin knit his brows, then leaned over to Lydia Rathberger, cupping his hands over her strawberry blond hair. It went like that from person to person, around the entire class, until Bobby Blaisdell whispered into Gail Dupree’s ear, and Gail, directly to Mrs. Johnson’s left, nodded. Mrs. Johnson smiled at Gail, “Tell the class what you heard.”

Gail Dupree smiled back and said, “’They know you did it.’”

Johnson squinted at Gail. They know you did it? How did ‘I like plums and apples’ mutate into ‘They know you did it’? But that was the fun of the game, wasn’t it? So Mrs. Johnson told the class the original phrase, the ‘I like plums and apples’ phrase, and the kids laughed, and begged her to do it again.

Mrs. Johnson leaned over to Benjamin again, this time whispering a simpler, rhyming phrase, one not so easy to confuse. “Candy is dandy,” she whispered.

Benjamin nodded and whispered to Lydia, who in turn whispered to Craig Masters, and so on and so on, until once again, Gail Dupree nodded as Bobby whispered into her ear. She smiled. Mrs. Johnson said, “And what was it you heard, Ms. Dupree?”

And Gail said, “They found her where you drowned her.”

Mrs. Johnson stared at Gail. “Is that what you heard?” she asked. Gail nodded.

Mrs. Johnson looked at Bobby. “Is that what you heard?” Bobby nodded.

Johnson scanned her students. She no longer smiled. “What I said was ‘Candy is dandy.’”

“It still rhymed,” noted Gail.

Mrs. Johnson said, “We’ll do this once more, but we’ll go the other way around this time.”

She bent down to Gail, and whispered, “I loved her.”

Gail looked at her as if she hadn’t heard correctly, but Mrs. Johnson nodded, and so Gail stood on tiptoe to whisper into Bobby’s ear, and he shrugged and passed the message along. When it got back to Benjamin Cale, Mrs. Johnson hesitated a moment before asking him, “Okay, Benji — what did you hear?”

Benjamin Cale smirked. “‘They’re coming to arrest you.’ That’s what I heard.”

Mrs. Johnson blinked slowly. She heard a sound rising in the distance, a sound outside of the classroom, outside of the school building, a sound racing up the streets, getting closer and closer. The sound of sirens. “Is that what you heard, Benji,” she asked, the words causing her tongue to feel heavy and thick against the roof of her mouth.

Benjamin nodded.

“Well,” Mrs. Johnson said. “Okay.” Her eyes followed the three police cars as they slowed outside the building. Officers emerged. She dropped her hands to her sides, and plopped down into one of the small student desks as the rest of the students ran to the windows to see what the commotion was about. Her fingers briefly felt once more the memory of soft flesh going from warm to cold as she held it beneath the swift flowing Zumbro River.

Gail Dupree turned from the window and asked, “Mrs. Johnson? Can we play again?”

Turn Signal

It was the yellow strobe of light that first caught Johanson’s attention. At first he thought it was the Gophers/Wolverines game reflecting off the window, but when the television screen went blank for a moment, the pulsing light continued.

He pressed his face against the glass of his shack, cupped his hands around his temples and looked out over the impound lot. Cars and trucks sat like sleeping lions. It was quiet out there. No one had stopped by in the last two hours. But at three AM on a Wednesday, that wasn’t unusual. Johanson yawned. His eyes locked on the blinking glow of light. It came from the back of the lot, distorted through cracked and broken windshields, a dull reflection on the few cars surrounding it. Better check it out.

A train roared by, shaking the frame of the two story shack. He waited until it’s loud rumble passed before stepping out into the frigid night.

About sixty yards away on the other side of the railroad tracks was the main office. Another glow, that of a television, came from one of its windows.

Shatterbaugh. Wonder what he’s watching?

The place was creepy enough without Shatterbaugh. He was one of those guys who’d fix you with an ‘Are you fucking stupid?’ stare no matter what kind of question you asked him. The job was a lonely one, but better to be alone that hang out with that psycho jerk all night long. Johanson headed toward the other light. The one that blinked on and off. The one near the back of the lot.

The impound lot was shaped like a giant ‘U’. A dirt road wound past the waiting cars. A tall chain-link fence topped with barbed wire surrounded the lot. People coming to claim their cars checked in first with Shatterbaugh, who checked their ID’s and gave them their keys, then came down to the gate where Johanson let them in.

Most of the vehicles had been towed in for parking violations. But there were others that were islands of twisted metal, doors ripped off from the jaws of life, roofs caved in from flipping over, tires missing, shattered windshields, upholstery torn to shreds and stained with blood.

Johanson probed his flashlight into the vehicles as he passed. He shivered. Kept his hand on his holster. For what? To pacify the chill that spider-webbed down his spine? He stepped through the mud and watched his breath escape in a mist. The Mississippi River, less than thirty yards in the distance, passed silently, like a long dark cat crawling on its belly.

As he neared the blinking light, he heard something. A quiet tick, tick, tick as the soft yellow glow blinked on and off, on and off. It belonged to a blue Pontiac Sunbird.

Johanson whistled softly. Must’ve been one hell of an accident.

He shined his light at it. The left turn signal continued its rigid blink. The plastic that shielded it was gone. Johanson aimed his light through the driver’s side door — at least where it used to be. Glass winked at him from the driver’s seat. The fabric was stained with blood.

Johanson reached in gingerly and found the bent lever that controlled the turn signal. He pushed it upward. The signal stopped. He let out his breath, breath he didn’t even realize he was holding. There was more blood on the passenger seat. In the back was a baby’s car seat pressed into the upholstery. Jesus.

As he walked back over the muddy lot toward the shack, he rested his right hand on the butt of his gun. This place had spooked him since the day they assigned him here. Too many places to hide, too many shadows and odd noises. He forced himself not to look over his shoulder, not to whistle, not to do any of the stupid things people do when they are unreasonably afraid. But when he finally opened the door to the shack, he breathed a sigh of relief.

The rattling of the chain-link fence and a female’s voice startled him.

“Hello?”

Johanson whipped around. A young couple stood on the other side of the fence.

Johanson swallowed. “Can I help you?”

“We’re here to see our car,” the woman said.

Johanson nodded to the main office. “You have to check in first.”

The couple looked to the office.

“Please,” the woman said. “We’re in a hurry. We need to see our car.”

“The procedure is—”

“Look,” the man interrupted. “We just want to look. We won’t be long.”

“Hold on a second.” Johanson lifted his radio to his mouth. “Shatterbaugh, you there?” He listened. Said again, “Shatterbaugh?”

No answer. What the hell was he doing?

“Promise you’ll make it quick?”

“Yes. Thank you. Yes,” the woman said.

He stepped into the shack and pressed the button that opened the gate. “Give me a holler when you’re done and I’ll let you out.”

They nodded, their eyes already searching the waiting vehicles. They stepped into the impound lot and walked slowly down the muddy road.

Johanson contemplated accompanying them, but instead only watched them for a moment, the man in a black suit, the woman in a white dress. A crescent of moon reflected off their pale skin. They walked hand in hand.

Johanson stepped back into the shack, went up to the second floor and looked out the window. The couple was already lost amidst the hulking and twisted metal shapes. He eased into the worn easy chair and turned his attention back to the basketball game. Three minutes left and it was tied.

When the game finally ended (double over-time) he remembered the couple. Wondered what the hell they’d been doing for the last thirty-five minutes.

He got up and pressed his face against the window. A thin fog covered the lot. The light from the main office was dimmed by the haze. And he noticed another light. He swallowed.

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

Glow. Darkness. Glow. Darkness.

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

He found it almost impossible to move from the window. He felt like he would melt right through it and float out into the misty darkness. His face felt numb. Finally he turned away. He looked at the glow of the television, the tinny audio coming out of the speakers, buzzing like a mosquito in his ear. He looked back at the lot.

Blink blink blink, the glow fuzzy as the fog and darkness devoured it.

He felt vulnerable standing in the window. He stepped to the side. Checked his sidearm. Pulled it out and made sure it was loaded. One more turn to the window, one more look outside.

Okay, just a short in the wiring. That’s all it is. Something got fucked up in the accident.

He talked into his radio. “Shatterbaugh, you there?”

Again, there was no answer.

Someone was in the car this time. A couple of teenagers humping away like mad in the back. The guy who was on top wore a letter jacket with a big ‘A’ on the back.

“Hey! What the hell are you doing in there?”

They ignored him and kept at it.

“Get the hell out of there.”

The boy paused. He turned his head. His face was white and streaked with blood. “Fuck off,” he said. “You’ll get your turn.”

Johanson saw the girl. She was dead. One arm was missing, her skull was smashed and pieces of brain spread like jelly over the back seat. Johanson jumped back and pulled out his sidearm. He aimed at the boy.

“Get out now!”

“Fuck off,” the boy said. He looked familiar, and the girl, through all the mess, looked familiar, too.

Johanson’s mind reeled. That couldn’t be. These two were younger. Dressed differently.

He fired. The boy didn’t flinch. Johanson fired again, the bullet crashing into the boy’s skull.

“Leave us alone,” the boy grunted as he continued to screw the corpse beneath him. “Wait your turn.”

Johanson fired again and again, flinching each time until his bullets ran out. His hands shook. He gasped. He realized the car was empty. He stared at the bullet riddled child’s car seat. It took an effort to get his gun back in its holster.

His radio squawked.

“What the hell’s going on down there? You okay?” Shatterbaugh.

Johanson turned in a quick circle. Lifted the radio to his face. “Where’ve you been? I tried calling you twice already.”

“Taking a shit. What’s going on down there? Sounded like the OK Corral.”

The turn signal was still on, reflecting the grinning grills of the surrounding vehicles. “Nothing,” Johanson said. He stared at the blinking light. “Target practice.”

“Knock that shit off.”

“Yeah,” Johanson said. He reached in, his hand shaking, and turned the signal off. “Yeah.”

He walked the perimeter of the lot looking for the couple. They couldn’t have let themselves out. Certainly couldn’t have climbed the fence. And that hallucination…

Don’t let it get to you, Johanson thought. Anyone would be creeped out by a place like this. How could you not be? The darkness was heavy. Palpable. Even with the lights surrounding the lot, it seemed to weigh on the cars, squatting on them like some fat, intangible bully.

Suck it up, he told himself. Suck it up.

Inside the shack, he reloaded his sidearm. He started to wonder if the couple he’d let in was another hallucination. Maybe he dozed off during the ball game and dreamed the whole thing. Wouldn’t be the first time he fell asleep while on duty.

Johanson dropped his gun at the sound of knocking below. He forced himself to relax before picking up the gun and slowly taking the steps down to the door.

The couple’s silhouettes were backlit against the door’s glass window. Backlit by the on-again, off-again blink of the yellow light in the distance. The turn signal he’d turned off not long before.

For a moment he didn’t think he could twist the door knob. He stared at his hand as it sat there like a flesh paperweight. Another knock made it twitch.

C’mon. Don’t be silly. Open the damned door.

He opened it.

The couple looked frantic. The woman grabbed Johanson by the sleeve.

“We can’t find him,” she said.

Johanson pulled away. “Who?”

“Please help us. We can’t find him.”

He took a step back, thought about shutting the door on them.

The man said, “Our son. We can’t find him.”

“You didn’t come in here with anybody else,” Johanson said. “There’s no one else in here.”

The woman’s voice rose. “Please!”

“What have you been doing here for so long, anyway? You’ve been here for over an hour.” He grabbed his radio. “Shatterbaugh? You there?”

Of course not. Worthless fuck.

“Help us find our son,” the man said.

“Settle down. Both of you. What makes you think he’s here?”

“It was the accident,” the man said. Tears formed at the corners of his eyes. “We lost him.”

The turn signal in the distance. Blinking.

On/off.

On/off.

Okay, a couple of nut jobs. Kid died in an accident and they’ve lost their grip on reality. Made sense.

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

Once more with the radio. “Shatterbaugh?”

Nothing.

“Please,” the woman said, tears in her eyes as well.

Johanson looked from one to the other. Okay. They want to look for their dead son? Nothing wrong with that. Why the hell not?

“Let’s take a walk around the lot,” he said. “Will that be enough for you?”

The woman nodded desperately. “Thank you.”

When they headed toward the blue Pontiac Sunbird, it’s turn signal calling to them like a beacon, he was not surprised. He wondered why he hadn’t shot the light out earlier while shooting up the rest of the car.

“We’ve looked everywhere,” the woman said. “At the crash site. At home.”

Why were they doing this to themselves?

“We just want to see him again,” she said.

“Tell him we love him,” the man said. “Tell him it’s okay. It’s okay to be with us.”

Johanson followed them to the Sunbird. He reached in and turned off the signal one more time.

The couple stood and stared at the wreck.

“Maybe I should leave you alone,” Johanson said.

They didn’t answer, their eyes moist and shiny, trained on the child seat in the back of the car.

Johanson said softly, “He’s not here. Come on folks. I’m sorry. But he’s not here.”

His radio squawked, making him jump. He quickly backed away from the couple.

“Johanson, you there?” It was Shatterbaugh.

“Yes. What?”

“You tried calling me a bit ago?”

“Yeah, where were you?”

“Taking a shit. What’s it to you?”

“Again?”

“Did you want something or not?”

He almost told him no, forget it, but then he turned away from the couple and said quietly into the radio, “Tell me about this blue Sunbird that’s our here.” He gave him the license plate number.

Shatterbaugh sighed audibly before clicking off. A moment later he was back.

“Ninety-three blue Pontiac Sunbird? Hit by a semi two days ago. Family of three. The mother and father killed instantly. Smashed like water balloons. I talked to the tow truck operator when he brought it in. But the kid was all right.”

“What?”

“I said the kid was all right. Can you believe that?”

Johanson clipped his radio to his belt. He walked slowly to the car, to the couple who stood there.

The turn signal flashed at him like a bad facial tic.

Blink. Blink.

A strobe of bright glowing yellow.

“You still there?” Shatterbaugh’s words were like the distant barking of a dog. “You listen to a fucking word I said?”

“Excuse me,” Johanson said to the couple. “You have to go now.” The light from the turn signal engulfed him. He closed his eyes against the blinding flash. “He’s not here.” He felt for the car’s exterior, found the hood. “You have to go. Please. You have to leave him alone.” His hand traveled over the car’s body up to the driver’s side. He found the signal lever. It broke off in his hand.

The signal continued to flash.

He let his eyes adjust. The couple was no longer there. He looked inside the car. Looked at the empty child’s safety seat pocked with his bullets. Looked at the front seats, the dash only inches from them, dark stains covering them like a second skin.

The kid survived. He survived. Where was he?

The left turn signal…

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

Small explosions in his eyes. Funny how the crash hadn’t destroyed it. Funny how things can be touched. Untouched. No rhyme or reason. Just random spatterings of dumb luck.

The kid survived.

Blink blink blink…

The couple was there again, pale against the on/off glare of the signal. The looks in their eyes — longing, pleading.

“I can’t help you,” Johanson said. “I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

The woman bent down, stuck her head into the car. She crawled inside. Crawled over the bent, twisted seats to the back. Hovered over the child’s seat. The man followed her.

“He’s not there,” Johanson said. What if the couple did find their child? What then?

“Please,” Johanson said. “Please.”

The couple hovered over the safety seat.

Johanson saw images as the turn signal flashed, each flash bringing a new one. A flash of the couple as teenagers when they first bought the car. A flash of them making love in the backseat. A flash of them driving, the turn signal flashing on them like passing road lights on an interstate. A flash of them giving birth — here — in this very car. Flashes of them with a child, their son, singing, playing, as they drove from destination to destination. Then flashes of the wreck, of the looks on their faces as they saw the truck coming, each flash like a single frame advance on a DVD player. He watched them die in slow motion, watched their bodies crushed by the force of impact, impossibly squeezed until blood was forced out of them in great splashes. Yet the child in back remained unharmed.

And he watched as the couple lay dead and disfigured stuck in the front seats as emergency workers hurried to pull the child from the wreck.

Each flash. A new scene.

Each flash an unwanted revelation.

And now the couple wanted to find their son. Why? Into what realm did they wish to take him?

Johanson found his voice. “Leave him alone.”

And they were in the back once again, eyes pleading and desperate. “We have to find him. We have to see him, touch him,” the woman said.

“Please, leave him in peace.”

Their eyes registered no understanding. Instead, they kept turning to the safety seat, looking at it longingly.

No. Johanson couldn’t accept this.

He turned away, his mind made up. He felt the flashing light hot on his back, saw it illuminate the mud at his feet. He ran toward the shack. Pressed the button that opened the gate. Ran out to one of the tow trucks that sat outside. Jumped in, turned the engine over and stepped on the gas.

He drove through the gate and headed toward the percussive flash of the turn signal. Between flashes he could see the couple in the car, impossibly contorted, looking frantically for their child, now clawing through the seats, clawing through the back of the child’s safety seat.

Johanson maneuvered the tow truck until its back faced the rear of the Sunbird. As he hopped from the truck and hooked the tow chain to the car’s bumper, he couldn’t help but look as the couple pressed their pale, bloodied faces against the rear spider-webbed glass, their eyes searching, pleading. Johanson hurried back into the truck’s cab, and with a jerk, pulled forward. There were snapping sounds, cracking, squeals of chrome and metal. He pressed the gas and the tow truck moved forward.

And somewhere in the distance, there was Shatterbaugh yelling through the static of his radio. “What the fuck are you doing?”

He headed toward the railroad tracks. Once the Sunbird was situated across them, he unhooked it, trying not to look at the couple inside, trying not to listen as they insistently asked “Where’s our child? Where’s our son?”

And all the while…

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

Until it was joined by more lights. The lights of an oncoming train. The lights of the patrol car Shatterbaugh had called in.

He heard their screams. Or was it the screech of the train’s brakes? Or the shouts of the cops surrounding the tow truck, their guns drawn?

The turn signal blinked on and off, on and off. The train whistle was a hollow cry in the night, it’s echoes like bony fingers clenching his heart.

The cops jumped on Johanson, tackled him to the ground. One of them tried to re-hook the Sunbird to the tow truck, but the train was too close. The officer jumped.

The train couldn’t stop in time.

It smashed into the Sunbird. The train’s engine and the first ten cars behind it, jumped from the tracks and plowed their way toward the impound lot, while the rear fifteen cars tumbled the opposite way into the Mississippi river.

Johanson felt his arms twisted painfully behind him as his fellow officers cuffed him. But it didn’t matter. A smile pierced his lips, pierced the blood and sweat that dripped down his face. Pierced it like the bright yellow glow of the turn signal.

“He’s safe now,” he said to the officer who restrained him, praying his own words were true. “He’s safe.”

My Fear of Escalators

I appreciate you having us write this paper, Mr. Anderson. It’s much better than some of the other assignments you’ve given us. Especially the one on that old, dead English author. That one really sucked. Don’t get me wrong. You’re still my favorite teacher. You seem to understand us for the most part. And to have us write a paper on Bobby Truant and the effect his death had on us — I think that’s really important to almost everyone here. You’re the coolest. Marsha Blick thinks I have a big crush on you. Isn’t that hilarious?

Of course the death of Bobby was crazy, but why is it so hard to believe like the newspapers make it out to be? I mean, he was kind of a weirdo. No disrespect for the dead and all, but he did have a few screws loose.

I think it’s ridiculous that Marsha told everybody that I had been dating him before he died. That’s crazy! I was not dating him, Mr. Anderson. I hope you believe me. He was just a friend. Maybe not even a friend. Just someone to pass the time with when I was bored. I mean, when the majority of my friends are in dance line practice, what can I do? They don’t even let me in the gym to watch anymore. Just because they caught me with one cigarette. One lousy cigarette! Can you believe it? By the way, I noticed you smoke, Mr. Anderson. I can tell by the way you smell when you walk into the room. I really like that smell. That cigarette smell and the cologne you wear. What kind is it? Is it Polo? It is, isn’t it?

But so Bobby and I were just friends. I’d go over to his house — his parents were always working late — and we’d sit around and watch TV. We wouldn’t talk a whole lot — he wasn’t much of a talker. But I’d tease him sometimes. Flirt with him. It was fun to get him to blush. Sometimes he’d turn so red, I swear, Mr. Anderson, I thought he was going to explode.

I guess the real reason I went over to his house, though, was because of his paintings. Not a lot of people knew he painted. And he was really good.

No. I mean he was really, really good. His paintings were incredible. They were the kind of paintings that made you wish you could look at them all day long. It was like they’d hypnotize you. Like you just wanted to step inside and get lost in the paint.

I told him he should show them to people. I told him he could probably sell them if he wanted to. Why he didn’t take any art classes is beyond me. And each one of his paintings was different.

I thought of asking his parents if I could have some of them. After all the crap dies down, of course. There are still reporters at their house all day long. Why can’t they leave it alone? They seem to get off on the fact that he died in such a public place and in such a gross way.

I’ve gone back to the mall about a million times since he died. At first, just to see where it happened. Then to try getting over my fear.

I almost always take the stairs right next to the escalators. Sometimes, I can’t even stand the stairs, because it’s like my eyes are always pulled to the escalator, to the steps being pulled along until they disappear under those sharp metal teeth. Where do the steps go after that? I wonder if they got all the pieces of Bobby out of there.

I never told anyone this next part, Mr. Anderson, not even the police, and I hope you don’t read this aloud in class. I’d get pretty embarrassed, I think.

The last time I was at his house, he asked if I wanted to see something different, and I said, sure. So he disappears into his bedroom for a minute, and comes out with his hand behind his back.

“What do you got for me, Bobby?” I asked, all flirtatious. I reached out and brushed his bangs out of his eyes. “What do you got behind that back of yours?”

I thought it would be a new painting, so I was kind of excited, but then he smiles, and pulls out a jar from behind his back.

“What is it?” I asked him.

His voice got real low. “What do you think it is?”

“I don’t know, let me see.”

So he opened it — it was an old peanut butter jar, not even cleaned out very well, because there were spots of dried peanut butter stuck to the sides — and he holds the thing under my nose.

“What is that?” I asked. There were all these little dirty white-yellow things in there, like pieces of shredded Barbie doll. He didn’t say anything, just smiled and held them closer. The smell that wafted up from them was kind of familiar. Like b.o. or something.

And then I realized what it was. It was a jar full of clippings. Fingernail and toenail clippings. The jar was full, Mr. Anderson. Right to the top.

“Eeeew,” I said. “Where’d you get all those?”

And he said, “I save them.”

“For what?”

He looked at me like I was a total idiot, and said, “They inspire me.”

“Are you crazy?” I asked.

Instead of answering, he pinched a few between his fingers, opened his mouth, and shoved them between his cheek and gum, like it was chewing tobacco.

You can bet, I was pretty grossed out. I mean, I can see maybe an eight year old doing something like that to impress a friend, but a sixteen year old boy doing it in front of a sixteen year old girl? Was I supposed to be impressed? I mean, I’m almost seventeen, which is very close to being an adult, Mr. Anderson. So I just kind of gagged, and told him it was time for me to leave. Then he got all sorry-like, and closed the jar back up and hid them behind his back again and asked me if I wanted to see a new painting. I didn’t know what to do, because I really did want to see a new painting, but on the other hand, I wanted to get out of there, since I was getting a little creeped out.

But so I said, “Sure, if you get it fast.”

He disappeared into his bedroom and came out a few minutes later looking a little sick. I think it was probably from the nail clippings and all.

And then I saw his new painting.

Mr. Anderson, I cannot begin to tell you how cool it was. It was so full of amazing colors. And the oil was still wet and shiny. There were coffee pots and roses and books all swirling around in this cool wild room, as if a tornado was tearing through it.

“Wow,” I said.

“You like it?”

I just nodded. I was numb.

“What do you like about it?” he asked.

I had trouble thinking of ways to describe my feelings. The words got jumbled around in my head. “Everything,” I finally said. “Just everything.”

Then he leaned over and kissed me. Right on the mouth. I was so stunned, I just let him. I let him keep on kissing me until I felt his hand on my chest and his tongue darting between my teeth. I pulled away, because I remembered what had just been in his mouth, and I thought I could kind of taste them on his tongue.

“Please don’t go away,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not ready for this,” I told him.

I was just so taken off guard and everything. I felt kind of nauseous, and I thought I better get out of there before I threw up on everything. But then Bobby started crying. Can you believe it, Mr. Anderson? He started crying, and part of me wanted to stay and tell him to stop crying, but the other part of me was still feeling like throwing up all over the place, and the crying just made me want to throw up more. So I let myself out the door.

Then the next thing I hear, he’s dead.

That very next night at the mall.

Well, everyone knows what happened there. How could anyone not know? It’s still being talked about in the papers. It’s already been three days. Can’t they get on to something new?

But there is one thing the papers haven’t mentioned, and I don’t even know if this is true or not, and maybe I shouldn’t even be mentioning this, but Marsha told me Deanna Fredericks was there at the mall when he killed himself on the escalator, and she saw the whole thing.

She was going down on the escalator at the same time he was going up. What she told Marsha was that when he pulled out the knife, all of these little things fell out of his pocket, little pieces of plastic, she said, and when he stuck the knife into his chest, he leaned over the railing and all the blood began to spill onto the white tiles below. She said he was swaying back and forth, leaning this way and that, almost like he was trying to get the blood to spill in a certain way. And when she passed him, he was saying my name. Over and over. Just whispering my name.

I think she’s making that part up. She’s probably just jealous because I’m your favorite student, not her.

At least I hope I’m still your favorite.

You said we should tell you how we feel about Bobby’s death, and I’m not sure if I really have said it very clearly, but whenever I go to the mall, and I’m on the balcony overlooking the escalators, I look at the spot where his guts spilled on the floor, and I know they washed the floors and all, but I think I can see something, Mr. Anderson.

I think I know what he was trying to paint.

Maybe I’m going crazy, but I think it was me he was trying to paint on the floor. And I can see it, I really can, and it’s really the most amazing painting I’ve ever seen.

I’m still afraid to use the escalator, though. I’ve tried a few times, but each time I start looking over the railing at the floor below, at the painting Bobby left for me, and it’s hard to look away. Each time I forget where I am and get closer to the sharp metal teeth waiting for me at the top. I think it’s Bobby waiting for me. I think he liked that kiss a little too much. I think he wants more.

He wants me to forget where I am and be pulled into the same place he was pulled into.

And the thing is — I think I want more. I think I am almost ready for it.

You really are my favorite teacher, Mr. Anderson, and I hope you’ll remember me. Maybe you can have everyone write a paper about me, too.

Reminders

Translations

August 20^th, 2004

To William Krenshaw, Director of the Olmsted County Historical Society:

I have in my possession some letters that I believe may interest you. They were found in one of the caves located in what is now Quarry Hill Park on the outskirts of Rochester. As you can see by the photocopies, the letters have weathered the elements quite well.

I had them translated from the original German by Professor Gustav of the University of Minnesota. He was quite amused. I’ve enclosed his translations here as well.

Sincerely,

Jim Stuvey, Minneapolis, MN

The letters:

January 12, 1898

My Dearest Christoph:

How many years have passed since Gerta and I laid you to rest? Time goes so quickly and so slowly all at once!

I write this on a train crossing the Mississippi River in the United States of America. It’s beautiful, flowing through heavily wooded valleys much like those of the Rhine. I can only imagine it in the summer, when all is green, or in the autumn, when colors dazzle the eye. But now is the heart of winter, and the hills roll with thick white snow, and the bare trees sleep, stark and gray. Yet all is still so beautiful!

Only moments ago, I witnessed a pack of wolves race across the river and pull down a male deer. It happened so quickly, and before the train passed out of view, the deer’s blood began to spread in a slow red dance across the ice. Horrible, yes, but quite amazing.

Ah, Christoph. You say, “Get to the point.” You know I am Master of Procrastination when it comes to matters concerning your mother.

Two months ago, I received a telegram from Superintendent Hastings of the Rochester Asylum for the Insane. The message contained three words:

Come at once.

What trouble has your mother gotten into this time? I will not allow myself to waste energy on premature worry. If she is dead or dying, I shall find out soon enough. Am I callous? It is only because I learn from the past.

Let me say this; here, complete honesty is in order. You know how I skip timidly around the subject of Gerta, but to do so would be a disservice to you. So let’s cast all molly-coddling aside, and I shall treat you like the man you’d be if you were still with us.

And of course you are still with me here, Christoph, in my heart.

January 13, 1898

My Dearest Christoph:

To travel so far, only to find I’ve been the subject of a hoax. I should’ve known from the beginning. I should’ve confirmed the telegram with Superintendent Hastings, but what does your father do when it comes to matters of family? He does not question. He drops everything, his appointments, his classes, his studies, and tramples like a blind rhinoceros into the glass factory.

I arrived in such a state of excitement, not bothering to shave or comb my hair, that Dr. Hastings didn’t recognize me. He pushed away from his desk as if ready to fend off a bear.

I held out my hands in supplication. “Please.” I showed him the telegram. “What is this?”

He stared hard at me, and then relaxed. “Zwick? Is that you?” He squinted at the telegram. “I didn’t send this.”

“Surely, you joke?”

Hastings grinned perplexedly and adjusted his red velvet tie. His black double-breasted suit hung loosely on his small frame. “Wouldn’t be much of a joke, would it?”

“Then who—”

It was your mother, Christoph. Who else could it be?

You laugh. You say, “Father, surely you knew.” And you are so right. But I was too stubborn to listen to myself!

Hastings led me out of the red brick receiving building and into the frozen night. We trudged through fresh snow to the women’s wing of the dormitory. My eyes stung with cold. I had to rest in the entryway of the building to stop shivering. “How in God’s name could a patient send a telegram from these grounds?” I asked.

Hastings stomped the snow from his boots. “I’m sorry, Brahm, but you know the liberties our patient’s enjoy. Gerta has vacated the premises twice in the last year, and was found both times in Rochester. She obviously sent the telegram during her last absence.”

“Take me to her, then.”

He put a hand on my shoulder. “Take it easy on her. Surely you realize the guilt she feels for the loss of your son. The telegram was merely a cry of loneliness. It’s been years since you visited.”

Gerta’s room is small and smells of tulips. She lay asleep on a single bed beneath a blue quilt. I quietly sat on a wicker rocking chair next to her bed. On top of a dresser I recognized her wedding ring sitting in a glass dish like a piece of candy. And her necklace — do you remember the one? A modest braid of gold, around which hang five small crucifixes.

She stirred. “Do you recognize my wedding present?”

The sweetness of your mother’s voice surprised me. She sat up in bed, the quilt falling from her naked bosom.

“Cover yourself,” I said.

“Must I be so modest in front of my husband?”

I glared at her and thrust forth the telegram. “Did you send this?”

She barely gave it a glance. “I had no choice.”

“Do you understand how difficult it is to drop everything, rearrange everything to come here?”

“Isn’t that why you chose this place?”

I threw up my hands. “I only chose it so you’d receive the best care.”

Gerta slid her legs out from beneath the covers. She held out her hand. “I missed you.”

I pulled her from bed, but refused her embrace. Instead, I turned her around and examined her. Scratches covered the backs of her arms and legs. “What have you done to yourself?”

She twisted away and fell on the bed, burying her face in the pillow. “It was a mistake to send for you.”

“What do you want with me?”

She raised her head from the pillow.

Christoph, I have never seen such a pitiful face, so wet with tears, her lips swollen and cracked, cheeks mottled and puffy.

She whispered, “I want nothing. Go back to Berlin.”

She spit.

I left her naked and crying on the bed.

More later. May God bless and keep you,

Brahm.

January 14, 1898

My Dearest Christoph,

Your mother rests.

Superintendent Hastings urged me to stay at least one more day. He was eager to show me the improvements in the buildings and grounds since my last visit. I slept on the sofa in his office, and despite my temper, fell quickly asleep.

It is indeed a remarkable place. Many of the patients, including your mother, are free to roam the grounds at their leisure. There are no gates, nothing to keep them locked in, yet they stay of their own free will. Far removed is this institution from the asylums of mere decades ago, when for a small fee, the public could stroll through them as if touring a zoo.

Christoph, a limestone quarry sits on the asylum grounds and employs a dozen patients. More are employed on the farm where they grow all manner of things: peas, squash, corn, green beans, apples — they even have a greenhouse in which they cultivate bananas! They raise and slaughter hogs and cattle. And next to the slaughterhouse, a soap house makes use of the fat. Did you know, Christoph, that they provide soap for all the other institutions in this state? Truly amazing.

Every Tuesday night, entertainers arrive from Rochester. Singers, musicians, thespians, magicians. The patients are encouraged to share their own talents, and today as we toured the grounds, we passed a trio equipped with banjo, clarinet, and tambourine. They’d cut the fingers from their mittens in order to play their instruments even on these coldest of days. They begged Hastings to sing a verse with them, but he politely declined with promises to join them later with his ukulele.

Then there are the caves, dug by the patients themselves. The largest of them is U-shaped for a horse and cart to enter, unload its produce in one of numerous storage niches, and exit the cave without having to back up and turn around. A smaller cave, more recently dug, is used to store bodies during the winter until the ground thaws in the spring. Three unfortunate souls rest there now, none with relatives to claim them.

Your mother wakes.

Later—

My last entry was made in a state of serenity, but now my hand shakes, and I don’t know how to get the words out.

I must pace myself.

When your mother woke, she looked at me as if I was a stranger, but recognition crept over her face like the wax of a melting candle. “Did you hear him?” she asked.

“Whom?”

She rushed from the bed and fell to her knees in front of me. “Christoph. Have you heard him?”

How strange that I’d just been writing to you. “What madness is this?”

“He speaks to me. Don’t you see? That is why I sent for you. Christoph has come back.”

“Shall I call a nurse?”

“No! Brahm, he comes to me, talks to me. You wonder where these scratches are from? Don’t you see? They come from him.”

I threw open the door. What blasphemy! I shouted into the empty hall. “Nurse! Somebody fetch the superintendent.”

She grabbed my coat. “Please listen to me.”

No matter how I twisted and turned, she wouldn’t let go. A nurse arrived and pried her from me. When I left, she was on her bed, mewling like a hungry kitten.

There is a sharp chill within these halls, a draught that pierces my clothing. I must meet with Hastings to discuss your mother’s behavior.

Later—

It is lovely outside, even in the winter. Oak, aspen, evergreen and ash flourish on the rolling hills. Deer browse the snow unafraid. And the air here is so clean, so invigorating. How could this not be the best place for your mother?

Hastings and I talked at great length. He assured me that it’s not unusual for someone in Gerta’s condition to hear voices. It is part of her madness; Dementia Praecox.

You laugh. You say I should know this. But in matters of the family, all cognition is an elusive wisp of smoke.

Hastings is an intelligent man. He put me at ease over brandy and cigars, and convinced me of something I’ve known all along; that I should treat Gerta with gentleness, rather than vehemence. He suggested I play along with her delusions. Act as if her ravings are fact. Perhaps then she’ll recognize the paradox and see that what she takes to be real is merely a trick of the mind.

It is evening now, and I must go to your mother’s room.

Later—

She entered the room shivering and wet shortly after I arrived. I asked her where she’d been.

“Talking with Christoph,” she said.

“Out in the snow?”

“Don’t mock me.”

“Why not talk to Christoph here?”

“Please, Brahm — “

“No — Gerta — forgive me,” I said. “I want to know what you and he talk about.”

Her suspicion faded with a smile. “He tells me such wonderful things. He asks about you often.”

“Does he?”

“Oh, yes.” She touched my arm, and then hugged me tightly. “I’m so glad you came.” She kissed my cheek. “He wants to come back.”

“Come back?”

She trembled. “He needs your help.”

“Bring him here, now, so that I can talk with him,” I whispered.

“We must go to him.”

“Then take me to him at once.”

“Tomorrow night,” she said.

“I wish to see him now.”

She let go of me and backed away. “No. Not tonight.” Her shoulders slumped, and her face fell slack with exhaustion. She peeled off her wet clothes and slid into bed.

Now I, too, must sleep.

January 15, 1898

My Dearest Christoph:

She is in good spirits today, as if a great weight has been lifted from her. We lunched with the other patients in a large dining room, a bright and cheery place with large windows overlooking the snowy grounds. Hastings joined us for a dessert of apple pie, and he was proud to point out that the apples were grown on the property.

Your mother sleeps now. How she enjoys her post-dinner naps! A subtle light enters her room such as in Vermeer’s The Milkmaid. You remember the one?

When she wakes, she will take me to meet you. It is hard to write such a thing without throwing my hands in the air with contempt and frustration, but I shall do my part as the superintendent wishes. I will try to gently back her into a corner of her own mad logic. But I question the point of it all, for if the truth at last shines upon her, will not a half-dozen more delusions creep into her mind like a thick fog?

Later—

Hastings arrived while your mother slept, and inquired if all was well. I assured him it was. He invited me to accompany him on his rounds, and I eagerly accepted. Why is it that the ill fortune and madness of others fascinate me so?

We started in the women’s wing. Hastings introduced me to his patients as a visiting doctor — a slight deception, yes, but at the same time, very true. I kept quiet and stood out of his way as much as possible in order to keep the patients from becoming upset or over-excited at the presence of a stranger. But the doctor’s easy manner and congeniality never failed to put the female patients at ease. Some of the women actually fawned over him, touching him as if a pet.

A strange thing, Christoph; during the course of our rounds, I crossed paths with a female who had a large tumor protruding from the front of her neck. It was the size of a grapefruit. My instincts as a doctor took over, and I tried to question her about the growth, but she refused to talk. She covered her face and hurried away, as if ashamed. But what was most odd, was that as she turned a corner, the tumor appeared to pulse.

Hastings informed me it was a recent growth that will likely soon kill her. I felt sorry for the poor soul.

We soon passed through a central rotunda and into the men’s wing. Hastings pulled two cigars from his shirt pocket and offered me one. I accepted, but as he lit my cigar, a troubling thought jumped into my head like a hungry flea. I paused mid-puff and put my hand to my forehead.

Hastings noticed my sudden change of mood. “Yes?” he asked.

“May I ask you something?” I asked. “It is a question of delicacy, but I wish an honest answer.”

He squinted through a cloud of cigar smoke. “Of course.”

“With the freedom here — the men and the women — do they…” My heart beat rapidly, my face grew hot. “What I mean, has Gerta — “ I searched for the proper words.

Hastings sucked on the end of his cigar and blew out a ring of smoke. He said, “With the liberties the patients enjoy here, there are of course occasional, shall we say, flings.” He smiled. “But Gerta, I assure you, has been steadfastly chaste.”

Now, Christoph — again, I will be honest. Your mother is fourteen years my junior, yet she is no longer as viable and lovely as when we first met, before her madness set in. Wrinkles cross her face like cracks in bread crust. The skin of her neck sags, and her hair runs with streaks of silver. But I caught something in the superintendent’s eye, in his tone of voice, and I knew at once he lied. Lied to protect my feelings, my honor — of this I have no doubt. But nonetheless — my insides felt like a rag squeezed tight.

Does your mother have lovers here? Can I blame her? It is the essence of nature, is it not?

I must stop torturing myself with these thoughts.

While in the men’s wing, we came to the room of a patient named Branagh. Before entering, Hastings informed me that Branagh had been the one responsible for digging the caves.

He sat in a chair, his wrists restrained by rope.

Hastings introduced me, but before I could say anything, Branagh asked in a thick Irish brogue, “Are you one of Satan’s imps?” His muscles flexed beneath a tight black shirt.

I looked at Hastings, then back at Branagh. “I assure you, I am not.”

“Then why do you converse with him?”

Hastings shrugged. “Mr. Branagh believes himself to be the Son of God.”

I asked, “You’re the one in charge of digging the caves? They’re quite ingenious.”

Mr. Branagh’s thick hands relaxed on the arms of his chair. His face brightened and became at once youthful.

It was fascinating, Christoph, as he explained in detail the logistics of such an undertaking. Amazing how one so delusional can also be so intelligent, so gifted.

“But it is God’s work,” Branagh said. “It is not a place meant for the wicked doings that go on there.”

Outside the room, Hastings raised his arms. “So much talent wasted to the trappings of delusion. Wouldn’t it be much easier to comprehend if all the mad were mere idiots? Thick-skulled criminals?”

As we made our way back toward the rotunda, quick, light footsteps approached from behind. Before I could turn, a hand grabbed hold of me.

The man was pale as snow, with a large Adam’s apple that bobbed violently with each swallow. He winked lasciviously. “I know your Gerta.” He straightened to his full height and bowed to me. “It is an honor, sir.”

“Ignore him,” Hastings said.

The man’s stomach appeared grossly distended, like that of a starving man. He took hold of my hand and pulled it to his belly. “See?” He smiled. “He’s fine. Everything is fine.”

Hastings wrenched the man’s hand from my own. “James!”

“It is an honor, sir. An honor.” He looked nervously to Dr. Hastings, then back to me. “There are worse ways to die,” he whispered.

Hastings’ hand shot out and slapped him hard across the jaw. “Leave at once!”

The patient cowered and felt his lip. A speck of blood came off on his thumb. He slunk away like a chastised dog.

Hastings shook his head, staring after the man. “Forgive me. I feared for your safety. I am not normally a man of such temper.”

“What was that about?”

“More of the same — a poor man with enough delusions to fill an entire wing.” He stubbed his cigar out on the wall and dropped the butt to the floor, waving an attendant over to sweep it up.

Christoph, when I pass through these halls, patients and attendants alike stop to watch me pass. Do I carry the mark of Cain on my forehead? Am I being paranoid?

Your mother grows more delusional by the hour. “A miracle,” she said only an hour ago. “Tonight you shall see.”

She’s become giddy. It has grown so hard not to slap some sense into her. But that would do nothing to cure her. It would merely result in petulance.

A miracle…

She obviously believes that you, my dear son, will communicate with us. Is it to be a séance? Are others to be involved? Perhaps that is why they stare at me so.

I must not get upset. Why is it that I am such an understanding and patient man, except when it comes to your mother? Around her, I am so often a beast.

A miracle…

If indeed you can speak to me, Christoph, I’d value nothing more. But as you know, I am a man cursed with common sense.

A miracle, Christoph. It will be a miracle if I can keep my wits about me through this ordeal.

She comes now, brandishing a bottle of brandy. “From Hastings,” she says.

January 17, 1898

Christoph? How can I continue to write coherently? To whom do I truly write? Surely not the Christoph I’d imagined. The Christoph of youth?

Or no — to myself. I write these letters to myself so that I might keep some semblance of sanity about me.

My God, what have I done?

Do you understand that I am no longer the same man I was only days ago? Yes, I am still Brahm Zwick, but such a fundamental part of me has changed. How much like clay are we?

I must gather my wits.

The brandy was drugged. I should’ve guessed by the strange taste, but the drug overtook me so quickly.

I awoke to a sharp ringing in my ears. My brain felt full of broken glass. I didn’t know where I was, only that I was cold. A straightjacket bound me. My eyes adjusted to the light of burning torches, and I realized that I sat on the floor of a cave, my back against the rough stone wall.

Gerta kneeled before me. She brushed the hair from my eyes and stroked my face.

“Unbind me,” I sputtered, the words echoing painfully in my skull.

“Brahm, my husband, who committed me here against my will — how can I trust you not to flee?”

“This is madness.”

Gerta lifted a flask to my lips.

“Haven’t you drugged me enough?” I gasped.

“It’s only water.”

I sipped, and then gulped until Gerta pulled the flask away.

Other figures stood against the cave walls. I recognized the woman with the pulsing neck tumor, and the patient called James with the distended belly. And there were more.

As I looked from one to the other, bile rose in my throat. Everyone here bore a strange protrusion on his or her body. A man with an apple-sized lump on his forehead. A woman with a hump the size of a bread-loaf on her thigh. Another man’s shoulders rippled with tumors. In the flickering torchlight, all of the growths appeared to pulse.

Was the drug toying with my senses? For the growths not only pulsed, but they pulsed in synchronicity with each other. Surely I dreamt! If not, I had lost my mind. Was my brain conjuring these images while I sat locked in a padded room back in Berlin?

“My good friend, Brahm.”

I recognized Hastings voice immediately and saw his small frame enter the chilled cavern. At last someone sane come to rescue me from this nightmare!

“Hastings,” I said. “Unbind me.”

He adjusted his red velvet tie. He was a lone island of refinery in a sea of savages. Not only did he wear his double-breasted suit, but he sported a silver-headed cane, white gloves, and a black derby.

He pulled a curved dagger from inside his suit, and then mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. He kneeled in front of me. “You are here to take part in a miracle,” he said.

Gerta’s face beamed. “Tonight is the night that Christoph comes to us.”

I said to Hastings, “Why do you let this go on?”

Hastings stood and took two steps back. His hand disappeared into a crack of the cave wall and reappeared holding a thin book bound in goatskin. A look of joy spread across his face. “I can bring him back to you.”

“What?” I cried. “Stop this madness!”

Hastings nodded at the other patients, who stood by in silence. “These people give their lives for you, for your son. All of them were suicidal, Brahm, but I talked them into giving their lives so that someone else might live.”

Their malignancies pulsed with newfound vigor. Faster and faster they beat, as if each contained its own heart.

I feared for my sanity. I struggled within the straightjacket. “Do you use your patients as laboratory rats? You’re all mad!”

Gerta kneeled at my side. “Listen to him, Brahm. Christoph will soon be with us.”

I tried to bite her, but only managed to dash my head against the cave wall. A trickle of blood ran over my left eye, down my cheek, and into my mouth. I spat it onto the dirt floor. “I will not watch this!”

I squeezed my eyes shut, then heard Hastings in front of me. “I’ve waited years to perform such a miracle, studying, learning, practicing. And ever since Gerta arrived, she’s prayed to give your son back to you.”

I thrashed within my restraints.

“Surely, you wish to witness the rebirth of your son.”

Gerta took hold of my head. I tried to keep my eyes shut, but Hastings’ fingers dug into them, prying them apart. Pain pierced the soft, baggy flesh beneath each eye, and in both eyelids. Something now kept my eyes propped open. I could not help but see. I gasped when I realized the objects forcing my eyes open were two of the crucifixes pulled from Gerta’s necklace.

“An asylum is a wonderful place,” Hastings mused. “So many people wanting love and attention. And they’re willing to give so much in return.”

Hastings stepped from patient to patient with his ugly dagger. He opened his book and read aloud words I did not understand. He sliced open the tumors one by one.

From each freshly opened wound, something spilled.

They were appendages. Small body parts.

Each had grown to its present size within the protective ooze of the tumors.

I cried out. I raved incoherently.

Gerta gathered the pieces in front of me as the patients fell dead one by one.

The pieces of flesh pulsed in the maddening torchlight.

As the last patient fell dead to the ground, Hastings turned to me. Again, he lifted his dagger.

“It needs you, Brahm. It needs the life-force of your blood to complete the miracle.”

“What miracle?” I rasped.

“The mad know many truths. So many delusions are but images sent from God. So many mad ramblings are but His words, His voice speaking through these poor, wretched vessels. I am their translator. Through them, I hear God’s wishes. Be glad, my friend, for He wishes your son to be reborn.”

He drew the dagger swiftly across my forehead. Blood stung my eyes. Hastings cupped his hands beneath my chin to catch it.

I had screamed so much that no more sound came from my throat. I fell limp against the cave wall as Gerta lovingly stroked my blood-matted hair.

Hastings dribbled my blood on the pile of appendages. They writhed together, coalescing into one unit of flesh and blood. How much time passed, I do not know. But time ceased to matter when all sanity had left the world.

I remember Gerta gasping, then clapping with delight. “Oh, Brahm,” she said.

I remember hearing the wet, desperate cry of a newborn babe.

Here is the last of it. Here is where I write about what had to be done. Here is where I write what a sane man had to do, what a moral man must do.

After they unbound me, after they led me back to Gerta’s room, after I slept for many hours, I at last awoke to the sound of crying.

I was alone in the room with — with that thing.

I wasted no time.

There was a creek outside, frozen over with a rind of ice. I set the thing in the snow, and with a large rock, chipped through the ice until there was running water.

I took it — I took the child — and held it beneath the icy water.

But Christoph; you know that I have always loved you.

I am a sentimental, foolish man.

Mr. Krenshaw;

That’s the end of them. Crazy shit, huh? But just because the letters end, doesn’t mean the story is over.

Let’s just imagine that the paternal side of Brahm Zwick took over. Perhaps as he held the child-thing in the freezing water, he felt it struggle and kick, and he could not go through with it.

Just imagine that.

And imagine that he lifted the child-thing from the water, wrapped it in his coat and brought it back to Gerta’s room. He fed it. Stroked its face. Perhaps kissed it on the forehead, held it, felt it warm in his arms. Imagine…

Imagine Gerta and Hastings raising the child in the privacy of the institution, the patients treating it as one of their own, playing with him, teaching him the things they knew.

And imagine that one day, when the boy was a young man, his mother took his hand and they walked from the asylum’s grounds, never to return.

And imagine that young man had a child, and that child had a child, who bore another child.

One generation translating into the next.

And that last child grew up to be me.

Gerta found the letters not long after Brahm Zwick left. He’d gone back to the cave and left them crumpled on the cave floor. Gerta saved the letters and eventually gave them to Christoph, and they were passed down from generation to generation.

Stuvey was Gerta’s maiden name.

So do with the letters what you choose. I still have the originals. And if you think this a hoax, well—

I’ll always know the truth.

Sincerely,

Jim Stuvey

A Bride’s Head, Revisited (compiled by Joel Arnold with the assistance of Park Historian Lee Bartlesby)

“I saw her. I swear to you, I saw her.”

—from the suicide note pried from the hand of John Paris.

From the managing editor of American Highways Magazine:

From: Doherty, Arlene

Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2008 2:58 PM

To: Paris, John

CC: Doherty, Arlene

Subject: Old Faithful Inn Ghost Anniversary Query

John,

I love it! Let’s schedule this. Yes, weave the legend of the headless bride through interviews with the Inn’s employees and guests. Perhaps some can join you to observe the anniversary of this event? Bring the Inn to life as much as possible — figure about 2800 words, due December 1. As far as photos, take lots, particularly of the Inn — I hear it’s beautiful — the people, the amazing scenery. Remember, we need at least 300 dpi. I’ve got a contact with the WY Dept. of Tourism, so can possibly get you a few nights comped.

Any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

Arlene

From the Wyoming Department of Tourism:

From: Lemon, Cynthia

Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2008 10:34 AM

To: Paris, John; Doherty, Arlene

Subject: Old Faithful Inn lodging request

Dear Mr. Paris:

I’ve arranged a room in the old house of the Old Faithful Inn for the nights of September 4^th and 5^th. The Inn’s manager, Dale Shroud, is a great guy, and it might behoove you to shake his hand and tell him thanks for putting you up gratis. I also recommend talking to Craig Vetter from Bozeman, cell # 406-555-3281. He’s the one to talk to regarding your ghost. He knows the place like the back of his hand and was interviewed for some show on the Travel Channel about it. He came off as quite the colorful character.

Let me know if you need anything else.

Warmly,

Cynthia Lemon

Publicity Liaison, Wyoming Department of Tourism

Portion of Craig Vetter interview transcribed from a micro-cassette tape found in John Paris’ belongings:

Paris: It’s 5:20 PM Mountain Time, September 4^th, 2008. I’m here at the Bear Pit in the Old Faithful Inn sharing a couple pints of Black Dog Ale with Craig Vetter, who is here to tell me all he knows about the ghost bride of the Old Faithful Inn.

Vetter: (chuckles)

Paris: Mr. Vetter, you worked at the Inn?

Vetter: The only one calls me Mr. Vetter is my tax guy, and only because he’s a jerk. So, please — it’s Craig.

Paris: Craig, then.

Vetter: Started bell hopping here the summer of 1970. The Yellowstone bug must’ve bit me, ‘cause I kept coming back every summer and winter until ‘98. Became Bell Captain in ‘74, and worked in that capacity until ‘92. Went on to be Assistant Location Manager, then finally Location Manager of the Inn in ‘96. Finally left on account of getting married to a beautiful woman who happened to also work here as a front desk clerk, and found ourselves with a brand-spanking-new bouncing baby girl. Yellowstone is a great place to work and live, but not a great place to raise kids. So we moved to Bozeman.

Paris: What do you do now?

Vetter: Personnel manager at the Doubletree.

Paris: Okay, let’s get right to the tale of the headless bride.

Partial Transcript of daily talk given by Old Faithful Inn tour guide, Tammy Whitney:

“What’s the first thing people do as they enter the lobby of the Inn? That’s right, they look up. The lodge-pole pine that makes up much of the inn rises over ninety feet from where you’re standing up to the roof’s apex. Robert Reamer, the Inn’s architect, wanted the Inn’s interior to reflect the surrounding countryside. He wanted the sun shining through the windows to remind us of sun filtering through treetops. He wanted the stone fireplace in front of us to remind us of the many mountains in Yellowstone. Just look up into the scaffolding; it looks like you’re looking up into a forest…”

From the Craig Vetter interview:

Vetter: I’ve told this story so many times, and I’ll hear it come back around — you know, someone else telling it to me not realizing I know the story probably better than anyone — and the story’s always changed a bit, little details mutating here and there. Sometimes even a big detail gets a makeover.

Paris: Tell it the way you best know it.

Vetter: The way I heard it was that a newly married couple came here for their honeymoon back in the early days.

Paris: 1908.

Vetter: Sure. 1908. The Inn had only been open four seasons, but it was already well known not only here, but also throughout Europe. Hell, just look around. You ever seen anyplace like this in your life? Anyway, they come here and everything’s going great. They eat in the dining room, dance in the lobby while a band plays up high in the crow’s nest. Everything’s great, right? When the night’s over, they go to bed. Next morning, the maid knocks on their door. No one answers, so she figures it’s safe to go in. She goes in. Finds the bride’s body on the bed. Minus her head. Maid sees this, sees all the blood, freaks out, screams bloody murder. The Inn’s manager goes in for a look, sees the bride’s body still in her wedding dress, the sheets soaked with blood, and her head’s missing. They turn the place inside out, send rangers out onto the roads, the trails, everywhere, looking for the groom, but he’s nowhere to be found. Neither is the bride’s head.

Paris: Wow.

Vetter: And sometimes you’ll hear it that she was found in the tub, but the way I heard it, she was on the bed. More symbolic that way — murdered on her marriage bed still wearing her wedding dress? Anyway, ever since, people claim to see her ghost, sans head, wandering the balconies in the early, early morning hours.

Paris: Were the bride and groom registered guests?

Vetter: If they had a room, they were registered guests.

Paris: Do you know their names?

Vetter: (chuckles) No. I suppose you could dig around the archives up in Gardiner. Find their names there. Lee could probably help you out.

Paris: Lee?

Vetter: Lee Bartlesby. Park historian, archivist, et cetera.

Paris: Did you ever see her?

Vetter: The bride? Naw. I honestly don’t believe in that shit any more than I believe in the tooth fairy. Do you? But hey, if telling the story got me a better tip, I’d tell guests I not only saw her ghost, but we kept her head in a case in the bellmen’s quarters.

Paris: I don’t suppose you could join me tomorrow night up on the balcony? For the hundred-year anniversary?

Vetter: A hundred years? Is that right? (laughs) I’d love to, but I’ve got a nine-year old girl and two-year old identical twin boys at home. Betty’d kill me.

Paris: Understood. Hey, thanks for your time. I appreciate—

Vetter: Well, hold on. As long as you’re buying the beer, there’s one other thing you might want to know about the headless bride that I haven’t told you yet.

Paris: Yeah? What’s that?

From a statement made by Wayne Gooding, owner of Wild West Olde Tyme Photos in Jackson, Wyoming, to the National Park Service on September 8^th, 2008, 4:30 PM MDT:

“Mr. Paris came in to my shop around 8:50 pm on September 3^rd, just before closing. He asked if I had a wedding dress that he could rent for the weekend. Claimed it was for a photo-shoot he was doing at the Old Faithful Inn concerning the ghost of a bride or something like that. We’ve got all sorts of old West clothing for our photos — simple things you can take on and off really fast. They just tie in the back. Work great for our portraits. Anyway, we had an old-fashioned wedding gown, and I let him rent it for $75 for the weekend. I’ve got a copy of the receipt. Since it happened on National Park property — if I could get reimbursed for the dress — you’ve got a slush fund for that kind of thing, right?”

From the statement of Andrea Anderson of Seattle, Washington, seasonal concessionaire worker at the Old Faithful Inn, housekeeping department, given to the National Park Service on September 6^th, 2008, 6:25 AM MDT:

“I can’t believe he did that. I mean, he seemed so nice. I thought it was a fun idea. Morbid, sure, but in a fun way, you know?

“He wanted me to pose in this frumpy old wedding dress walking along the balcony, looking all melancholy. There was nothing kinky about it, nothing that got my radar going. Plus, the dress just slipped over the clothes I already had on, so it wasn’t like I had to take my clothes off, and we were in the lobby and up in the balconies the whole time, so I was never afraid of anything — you know — weird happening…

“He said he was sorry he couldn’t pay me, but he did buy me a latte, and he promised he’d send me a copy of the magazine when it came out. American Highways, or something like that? I thought it would be a cool souvenir, you know?”

From Tammy Whitney’s tour speech:

“Five hundred tons of volcanic rock. Can you imagine? Fitting the fireplace together one huge rock at a time until it rose forty-two feet to the roof, and then extended another forty feet beyond that. The Hebgen earthquake of 1959 caused the upper portion to collapse and blocked off five of the eight inner flues, which is why now we keep only part of the fireplace lit. There were plans to restore it to its original glory two years ago during the Inn’s renovation, but the construction team realized they’d not only have to take the entire thing apart, piece by piece, but they’d also have to put it back together the same way. Way too costly. I’ve gotta admit, I was a bit disappointed. I wanted to see what they’d find in those blocked-up chimneys. You could fit a lot of bodies in there…”

From Inn housekeeper Andrea Anderson’s statement:

“So he took a bunch of pictures, and he wanted me to go up to the crow’s nest, but obviously we couldn’t do that, since it’s closed off. Earthquake in the 50’s screwed up its integrity or something like that. There’s a sign at the foot of the steps explaining it all. But that was the only time he seemed agitated. Not like I’d ever guess he’d go on and do what he did, but he seemed like — like he thought he was going to a buffet, and all the fried chicken was gone. Does that make any sense? Like he really wanted the fried chicken? But it was all gone, you know? Okay, I guess that doesn’t really make sense…”

From the statement of Jay Watson, clerk at Spratt Hardware, Jackson, Wyoming, given to the National Park Service on September 8^th, 2008, 6:45 PM MDT:

“Jesus, he said he wanted it for some special photography effect he was doing. I didn’t think he was going to do that with it.”

From Tammy Whitney’s tour speech:

“The clock you see on the face of the fireplace was also designed by Mr. Reamer. The pendulum is fourteen feet long, its disc made of pure copper. The clock’s face is five feet across, and the Roman numerals are each eighteen inches tall. The present bellhops are quite happy that in the year 2000, a new endless rewind mechanism was installed. Before that, a bellhop had to carefully step out on that vertigo-inducing scaffolding three stories above us in order to wind the clock…”

From Inn housekeeper Andrea Anderson’s statement:

“Oh, the wire. Right. He said it was for some effect he wanted to try. Loop it up and around the hem of the dress to prop it off the floor? Make it look like the dress was floating off the ground? It didn’t really work out. Besides, with the dress lifted up, you could see my hiking boots and calves, although I guess if the guy knows Photoshop, he could’ve just taken care of it that way. But so is it true what I heard about what he did with the wire?”

From the Craig Vetter interview:

Vetter: That’s probably the thing I miss most; walking out on the widow’s walk up to the roof, the sun setting on the geyser field, all that steam. I always had a smoke up there. (chuckles) I guess you could say that’s the closest I’ve ever come to seeing real spirits — the way the geyser field steamed, the steam drifting up into a golden sky. Like earth spirits, or some such crap.

Paris: How poetic.

Vetter: (laughs)

Statement by Lee Bartlesby, curator of the Yellowstone National Park Archives in Gardiner, Montana, given to the National Park Service, September 6, 2008, 7:54 PM MDT:

“He came in Saturday morning asking to see an old guest register from the Inn. The year he wanted was 1908. I retrieved it for him, and left him alone with it in the research room. He seemed nice enough. When he left, I asked him if he found what he was looking for, but I guess he didn’t hear me.”

From the Craig Vetter interview:

Vetter: Besides not believing in that kind of crap, I’ve got an even better reason for not believing in the headless bride ghost of the Old Faithful Inn.

Paris: And that is?

Vetter: Because I’m the one who made the whole thing up.

Paris: You’re kidding.

Vetter: Nope. I swear to God. Ask any of the bellmen who knew me at the time, and they’d confirm it.

Paris: Why are you telling me this? Aren’t you spoiling the legend?

Vetter: Spoiling the legend? The legend’s got its own legs. Hell, anyone who really wanted the truth, I’ve told the same thing I’m telling you. But it’s out of my control, now. It’s in books, magazines. Hell, even that Travel Channel show.

Paris: You told them what you just told me?

Vetter: Sure. They didn’t give a crap. The producers had a good laugh. I bet you won’t even mention it in your article, either. Am I right? And for the record, if you want to write that I made the whole thing up, feel free. I won’t dispute it. But I’m guessing after you’ve thought about it a bit, after the concept has rattled around in your noodle a while, you’ll probably realize it wouldn’t make nearly as good copy as just going with the ghost story. A piece about you sitting in the balcony of the Old Faithful Inn, waiting for a glimpse of the ghost of the headless bride on the hundredth anniversary of her death? Much sexier than ‘former bellboy pulled a story out of his ass for larger tips.’ Am I right?

From the statement of Luverne Harding, third shift security guard, Old Faithful Inn, given to the National Park Service on September 6^th, 2008, 3:45 AM MDT:

“He was just sitting up on the third floor, staring out over the lobby with a legal pad in his hand. And he kept looking up at the clock on the fireplace. A few times I passed him, he was staring hard up there. Squinting. Like he was trying to focus on something. I glanced up there a few times myself, like I might see whatever it was he was seeing. But he was just sitting there. He wasn’t wearing that wedding dress, yet. Just a Yellowstone sweatshirt and a pair of jeans.”

From the statement of William Tancredo, overnight front desk clerk, Old Faithful Inn, given to the National Park Service on September 6^th, 2008, 4:05 AM MDT:

“God, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. He just — I just — out of the corner of my eye, I couldn’t even tell at first. And the sound — the sound of him hitting the floor. Christ it was bad. And then the head. And the blood. Fuck.”

From third-shift security guard Luverne Harding’s statement:

“I entered the 3^rd floor mezzanine from the west wing at approximately 2:15 AM, and saw him standing on the balcony in that — that wedding dress. Didn’t realize it was him right away, but by the time I shouted to him, and he turned to look at me, I realized it was the same guy. He had wire wrapped around his neck, and the other end was looped around the clock scaffolding. Then he jumped. His head popped right off. The wire sliced right through his neck. Won’t be able to get rid of that image for a while, I know that for sure.”

From overnight desk clerk William Tancredo’s statement:

“I saw his head. Lying right up there against the fireplace screen. His eyes were still open. Like he was watching the smoke go up the chimney. Fuck…”

From the Craig Vetter interview:

Vetter: See, John, sometimes it’s not always the ghost that makes the story. Sometimes it’s the story that makes the ghost. Know what I mean? Hey, the next round’s on me.

From Tammy Whitney’s tour speech:

“Who here has heard of the headless ghost bride of the Old Faithful Inn?”

Persistence

They keep calling. Every ten or twenty minutes, from 8 in the morning ‘til 9 at night. I know I should answer, but by now it’s the principle of the thing. Look, I know it’s a computer that dials the number, and a human only picks up when some schmuck like me answers the phone. I used to answer, tell them I’d make a payment the next day, or by the end of the week, but then they’d call again as soon as their computers indicated the payment never showed up.

I tried to hide it from Jessica as best I could. I didn’t want her to be bothered. I didn’t want her to worry. I admit, I didn’t do a very good job at that.

They always want the payment right away; they want to take your banking information right over the phone. And they’re damn insistent, but the problem is, we just don’t have the money to cover it. Or if we technically do have the money, it’s slated for other things; you know, unimportant things like food and shelter and gas so that Jessica can drive to work. Jessica has her own personal savings account, too, but it’s for the little things; a cup of coffee here, new eyeliner there. But she’s had that since high school, and even when her hands are cold and dead, God forbid, there ain’t no one who’s gonna pry it from them.

But here’s the thing. We’re trying. We’re trying to earn enough to pay them. Jessica’s got her job, and I’m working from home, but they don’t care about that; they keep calling, the phone ringing every ten, twenty minutes, and you can tell who it is by the caller ID, and you’d think we just wouldn’t bother, wouldn’t be such slaves to the phone, but what if it was actually someone important, you know? Like a neighbor, or someone with work to do. So we have to at least look at the caller ID.

“It’s all about persistence,” Jessica tells me. “They just keep calling and calling knowing that at some point you’ll pay them just to get them off your back.”

“It’s not that we’re holding out on them to be spiteful,” I say. “We really don’t have the money they’re asking for.”

Jessica says, “They count on you to have a tipping point. They count on you to get so annoyed, so bat-shit crazy from the sound of the ringing phone that you’ll do anything to make it stop. They don’t care how you get the money. They just know that somehow, at some point, you’ll reach critical mass, and you’ll get them their money.” She nods. “It’s all about persistence.”

The phone rings. I look at the caller ID. Damn.

Persistence.

But Jessica says, “Give me the phone.”

I hand it over.

To them it’s just a job, and they sit at their little consoles, or switchboards, or computers or whatever the hell it is they sit by, and wait until a computer tells them one of us poor schmucks have picked up the phone, and then they swoop in like vultures.

Jessica winks at me. “Where are you from,” she asks the caller flirtatiously. “I know what company you’re from, but where? Where are you calling from?” She smiles, and asks, “What’s your name?”

She does this with every call now. We still haven’t paid. We still don’t have the money. But she answers every damn call after she gets home from work. And they still call.

Most of the time, they don’t answer Jessica’s questions. That’s not why they’re calling. But sometimes she gets names. Locations.

She’s persistent.

And with a name and a location…

Jessica has been away for five weeks now. I didn’t realize how much money she had stashed away in her personal savings account. She’s way more frugal than I realized.

So far the killings appear random. As far as I can tell, nobody’s figured out a pattern.

She sends me postcards. “Having a grand time in Michigan!” or “Getting my kicks on Route 66” or “Loving the food here in India.”

You’d think they wouldn’t be so forthcoming with names and locations. But like I said, it’s all about persistence, and if I had to find one flaw with Jessica, it’s her damn persistence.

Cowboy Cthulhu

Director’s Cut

Amazing how one press of a button can change a man’s life forever. A simple transference of electronic impulses. An invisible leap as the remote control breathes life into the components of a television set. There is blackness at first. Then static. Carter sits back in his leather chair. An image pops on the screen, a subtle glow that captures his breath. He leans forward.

EXT. A FOREST — NIGHT.

A woman runs screaming from the video camera, the camera work amateur and shaky. The nozzle of a gun appears on screen, a thick black pointer, its tip wobbling against the running woman’s ass. There’s a loud crack, and the woman falls. The camera, relentless, is drawn to the fallen woman, and the smoke from the spent bullet can almost be smelled wafting up through the lens as the camera zooms in and leers at its subject.

She is still alive, but no longer screams, her hair a tangle of sweaty black, her eyes underscored by sleep circles so dark they look like bruises, and as she tries to scoot away from the camera on her back like a crab, a black gloved hand comes into view pointing the gun at her neck. You can hear the heavy breathing of the cameraman, and as the sounds of an oncoming climax nears, the bright explosion of the gun nozzle blinds the electronic eye of the camera for a moment until it refocuses, re-meters the scant incoming light. When the picture is once again clear, we see the damage the bullet has done.

The woman no longer moves. She lays there, her throat a rose in fresh bloom, the residual petals dotting her face and chest. Her eyes remain open and void of fear. It is as close to a miracle as anyone can ever hope to witness. A brief bridge that spans the chasm between life and death caught on tape.

Carter’s thumb misses the stop button twice before finally finding it’s mark. He stands, the hint of sweat licking at the collar of his shirt, and looks out the window, making sure Angie hasn’t pulled into the driveway. He knows how he gets when the tape is new, his total immersion into the picture, his obliviousness to outside noises. He knows this can be dangerous and shudders at the thought of his wife of ten years catching him.

He shuts the blinds. Sits back in his chair, the remote in his hand, presses rewind, then play. Again the black and the static and the picture popping on like a quick jab to the gut.

Angie comes home first, followed shortly by their eight year old daughter Brittany. By then, Carter has set the dining room table and taken out the meatloaf which he’d hastily stuck in the oven over an hour ago.

“How did your day go?”

It’s Angie’s usual opening question at the dinner table. She bites a piece of meatloaf off her fork, then reaches over to cut Brittany’s slab into bite-size chunks.

“Busy.” Carter catches himself nodding at his food a bit too long. “And yours?”

Angie begins a soft-spoken litany of the day’s events, and although Carter tries to follow the thread of her speech, he can’t concentrate. He left work early today, and the newness of the video flows through his head like molten steel.

“Are you okay?”

“Huh?” Carter realizes both his wife and daughter are staring at him. “Yes. I mean no. A bad headache.” He gets up from the table, pats Brit on the head. “I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“You haven’t even touched your food.”

“I’ll eat at my desk.”

Angie brushes Brit’s long blond bangs from her eyes. “You shouldn’t let them work you so hard.”

“It’s part of the job, Angie. You know that.”

“Doesn’t mean I like it.” She turns her attention back to her plate.

Carter feels Brittany’s eyes dig into him. He takes his meal to the den and locks the door. The meatloaf sits untouched and forgotten as he picks up the remote and presses play. He turns the volume down next to nothing

Black. Static.

The woman running through the trees.

Stop. Rewind. Play. Stop.

Rewind.

Two hours later, he ejects the video from the VCR and places it in its black plastic box. He opens the bottom desk drawer and buries the box beneath a stack of Playboys. He locks it and forces a smile on his face before leaving the den.

After a month, the tapes wear down, a white static veil shrouding the image. He needs a fresh face, a new scenario. He leaves his money in the hiding place; an empty videocassette case nestled inside the hollow of a maple tree in a nearby park. An even fifteen hundred dollars cash. The first one was only five hundred dollars, and he sees the cleverness of it now. He would have balked at fifteen hundred the first time. Now it seems reasonable. He needs them.

When he comes back later in the evening, he scopes out the park, and when he’s sure no one is watching, he pulls the cassette box from the dark maw of the maple. It now contains a videotape. He can only speculate as to its contents. But he doesn’t watch it right away. He waits irritably for the long night to end.

He calls in sick the next day and drives downtown to a large hotel. Before entering the revolving glass doors, he looks up at its facade. It looks back down at him, the sun a harsh wink in each of its many windows.

In the room, he puts the chain across the door and shuts the thick maroon curtains. He takes off his clothes. Pops the video into the VCR. Picks up the remote and presses play.

Black. Static.

Then—

INT. AN OLD ABANDONED BARN — DAY

Sunlight pours in through the worn wooden slats of the walls like spotlights. Straw is strewn about the floor as well as splintered pieces of wood, beer cans, fast food wrappers, cigarette butts. A twenty-something prostitute enters the picture looking back at the camera and smiling. She chews gum, wears too much make-up, sports badly frizzed hair. She has the voice of a serious smoker.

“I don’t know about this. You shoulda brought a blanket.” Her steps slow as she searches for a place to sit down. “You grow up here? Is that the deal?”

She finds a place where the straw isn’t too moldy. She tosses aside some large rusty nails. “Is this where you want it?” She winks at the camera.

The cameraman’s hand comes into view holding three hundred dollar bills.

She frowns at first, perhaps because the camera is recording this transaction, but she takes the money just the same and tucks it into the pocket of her tight skirt and raises an eyebrow in mock seduction.

Her expression suddenly changes. The cameraman’s hand comes back into view holding an evil looking hunting knife. Its large blade reflects the incoming sunlight into her wide-open mouth. She screams for the first ten plunges as her blood speckles the camera lens. There’s a dull clang as the knife is dropped to the ground. The camera zooms in slowly on her face. The cameraman’s breath pounds the microphone in quick, distorted bursts.

Again, there is that miracle captured as her life vanishes, her breath making a final, hasty exit through the heavily lipsticked moat of her lips.

Stop. Rewind.

Play.

“Where’ve you been?” Angie asks, the moment Carter walks in the door.

His briefcase is tight under his arm. “What do you mean?”

“I called work. They said you called in sick.”

“No.” Carter shakes his head. “No, that’s not right. Who told you that?”

“The receptionist.”

“No. I was there. She must not have seen me come in.”

“I left five messages in your voice mail.”

“I didn’t get them. I had meetings all day.”

Angie’s eyes burrow into his skull.

“Who took your call? Was it Denise? If it was Denise, she doesn’t know her head from her a-hole.”

He watches her as she mulls this over.

She exhales, her entire body deflating in front of him. “Okay,” she says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to accuse you of—”

“Of what?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“Can I put my briefcase away?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. Of course.”

He guards his checking account like a rabid wolf, keeping two sets of check registers. There is the real one with the monthly fifteen hundred dollars deducted kept at work. Then there is the doctored one he keeps on his desk at home meant for Angie’s eyes. The videotape — he only keeps one at a time — is kept deep in the locked desk drawer.

Brittany has started playing soccer. She comes home after practice with grass stains on her clothes, her knees and elbows rubbed raw from her rough style of play. Angie spends more time with her, helping with homework, watching rented movies on the VCR in the living room. Carter knows it’s nearly impossible, but can’t help imagining Brittany accidentally finding one of his tapes and sliding it innocently into the VCR out of curiosity. The thought makes him nauseous.

But the time spent locked in the den only increases.

Another month goes by. The tape of the barn has become overcome by a fuzzy snow, the prostitute’s screams garbled as if the television speakers have been immersed in sewage.

When he leaves his fifteen hundred in the empty video box, he finds it still there when he returns to collect the tape. Only now there is a note attached to it.

PLEASE DEPOSIT $500 MORE.

He freezes with anger. He’s been ready to see something new, has been anticipating this for the last three days. But he lets the anger melt off him and goes to the bank, withdraws five hundred dollars in cash, and places it along with the previous fifteen hundred in the box. When he reaches in the hollow of the tree two days later, there is a new cassette. No labels. Only a shiny black plastic shell, the miracle it surely contains palpable in Carter’s sweaty hands.

INT. AN EMPTY HOUSE — DAY

She’s a real estate agent — maroon blazer, black pants, a name-tag that says BARBARA WHITEHALL in crisp black letters. She leads the camera through the rooms smiling, pointing out the features of the house.

“You’d be surprised at how many people bring a video camera to these showings,” Barbara says. “I thing it’s a great idea.”

She climbs a set of stairs covered with beige carpet. The camera follows her up. She turns at the top.

“Right this way.”

She leads us to an empty bedroom, turns a circle, then slides open the closet.

“Decent closet space. Southern exposure.”

Indeed, the sun spills in through the blinds, it’s light spliced with lines of shadow as it splays over her body. The cameraman likes this and zooms in on the interplay of light and dark on her neck. He only backs off at the moment the scalpel appears and makes a quick, precise cut across her jugular. The blood appears only slightly before her eyes register confusion, then terror. She reaches up to her neck as the color of her blazer becomes saturated. The scalpel enters the picture once again and makes short work of her hand. It cuts through her fingers as the sound of the cameraman’s breath, so close to the microphone, cuts through the woman’s piercing screams. He cuts deeper, and the screams abruptly stop as the lens follows her to the floor. The fountain of pumping blood diminishes to a slow seep, and again, the exact moment of her death appears on-screen in glorious color, captured like a butterfly in an empty peanut butter jar.

He is greeted that evening with Angie’s harsh stare.

“What?” he says.

She waves a bank statement in front of his face. “What the hell is this?”

His stomach turns inside out. Where did she get that? It was supposed to be mailed to his work address. Not here. How the hell—

He tries to bide for more time.

“What are you talking about?”

“You know damn well what I’m talking about.” She reads off two large withdrawals that total thirty-five hundred dollars.

“Investments,” he blurts. “I’m investing in the stock market. I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“Bullshit.”

“Honey, I—”

As she crumples the statement in her hand and throws it at him, hitting him squarely on the jaw, she says, “Pack your crap and get the hell out of here. You’re through.”

“But I—”

His words are lost in the room’s chilled air as she slams the door shut behind her, locking herself in their bedroom.

A month later, Carter’s tape is almost fully depreciated, the face of the victim lost in a blizzard of static. He rents an apartment now, and has no spare cash with which to feed his habit. He writes this on a white half-sheet of college-ruled paper, adding that he can have the money in one short month if he can please just have a new tape. He folds the paper and places it in the empty tape box, mentally keeping his fingers crossed.

When he goes to retrieve the box, it is empty save for another piece of paper. He unfolds it and reads.

We are not in the business of loans, but there is always the option of trade.

The option of trade. What exactly does that mean? He says the words over and over in his mind.

Option of trade.

His hands shake. His unshaven chin works back and forth as if his jaw is trying to free itself from his skull. He pulls a pen from his pocket and scrawls on the paper one word.

Trade.

Brittany’s soccer team has made it into the playoffs. Carter watches them win from the shadows of a giant silver maple tree. He cries uncontrollably when she scores a goal. He wants so badly to run to her, pick her up and carry her away.

Instead, he wipes at his eyes with the back of his shirtsleeve and leaves. He drives to a nearby pawnshop. Uses his wedding ring and a wrinkled hundred-dollar bill as payment for a used video camera.

That night he rents a motel room and sets the camera up on the dresser, aiming it at the motel room bed. He places a shirt over it so that only the lens pokes through. When the call girl knocks, he presses the record button and answers the door.

“Come in,” he says.

“I’m Cherry.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.”

INT. MOTEL ROOM — DAY

A call girl named CHERRY comes into view, placing her purse on the bed. She wears too much rouge and eye shadow, and speaks to someone who is off-camera.

“Mind if I use the bathroom?”

She disappears from view, and the camera is lifted from its place on the dresser. It focuses on the bathroom door. The glint of a freshly sharpened hatchet is reflected in the brass doorknob. Cherry opens the door. She is naked and screams as the hatchet hacks its way easily through her make-up.

As she falls to the ground, the camera zooms in on her face, the camera momentarily losing focus, but sharpens on her tongue as it stops in mid-swipe across her bloodied lips. The voice of the cameraman is heard in a distorted, breathless growl as his own lips press into the microphone.

“Cut.”

Fade out.

Wicked Wire

Whenever William Farini became aware of himself, when he took note of his existence, it was always here. High above the strewn sawdust, the canvas of the ceiling close enough to smell, the silhouettes of crows perched outside, as if waiting for his cries of pain. How often had he found himself here, staring at the tightrope, the razor wire gleaming, waiting for him to step across, waiting to slice into his tender feet?

He grabbed the wooden pole off its perch, sweat-stained indentations from countless performances where his hands clutched it, the pole’s ends splintered and cracked, red paint flaking off in spots.

He looked out across the tightrope, at the hungry razor blades, the thin, taut wire. The other side may as well have been on a different planet. How many times had he performed this? Each time, the other side — a mere fifty feet — looked miles away. Whoever said the shortest distance between two points is a straight line?

The Ringmaster’s voice echoed off the bleachers in a strong practiced cadence.

“Ladies and gents, raise your eyes to the skies above the center ring where a feast of fantastic feats of funambulism awaits! Please join me in bearing witness to William Farini, Walker of the Wicked Wire!”

The crowd roared.

The crowd. Every performance brought new faces, yet the crowd as a whole remained the same beast.

William took a deep breath, tightened his grip around the balance pole and stepped onto the wire. He winced as his weight pressed his flesh onto steel. He’d stopped wondering why he never developed calluses long ago. Each time he began his performance, the soles of his bare feet were fresh and tender as baby skin.

A razor blade sliced into his middle toe. He kept his mouth shut, sucking the pain in, and took another step. His blood dripped through the air, becoming tiny round globes as it fell, splashing onto a webbing of net before continuing its journey to the floor. The pain remained as sharp as the razor blades he stepped on.

A new weight on each end of the balance pole pushed him further into the wire. Painful, yes, but a weight he’d been expecting. A weight he welcomed.

“John! Frank!” he called.

His sons clutched desperately to their respective sides of the pole. Although their weight pressed him forcefully onto the sharp, hungry wire, it also lowered his center of gravity and made balancing easier.

“It’s good to see you, boys.”

He took a second step. Felt his foot press hotly onto a razor blade, his weight pressing until the razor sliced through to the bone. He held in a scream, beads of sweat popping on his forehead. He forced himself to smile. His sons didn’t need to know the pain he was in. They had their own problems.

Johnny looked so frightened straddling the end of the pole, so shaky and unsure.

“It’s alright, John.” William nodded. “Don’t look down. Look at me, John. Look at me and take your time. Pretend you’re in the barn playing on the rafters.”

And Frank, the fearless one, who’d leap from the barn loft down onto the back of the hay wagon like a young Tarzan. Yet here, he was frightened, too, although he put on a brave face. There was a tremor in his voice as he inched his way toward his father. “When can we see Mom?”

“She’s here,” William said. Can’t they see her? “On the platform.” Waiting just as he remembered her.

But Frank squinted toward the platform and said, “It’s so dark over there. Are you sure it’s her?”

“Yes, Frank. She’s waiting for us.”

Drops of blood fell through the net to the sawdust below. He would’ve preferred that there was no net. Not like the one beneath him.

Concentrate. Look straight ahead. You’ve done it before. So many times before.

He smelled the farm, their farm, the freshly thrashed hay, the sweet aroma of manure (and yes, it was a sweet smell, especially in memory, especially now) and the smell of the barn and the corn bin and the hen house and the fields — the whisper of corn stocks on a breezy summer day. The memories were strong. Painful. Sometimes he wished he could forget.

He looked out at the upturned faces of the audience, like baby birds waiting in their nest to feed. The tin echo of calliope music mingled with their communal hum. Sunlight radiated through the tent canvas making their skin glow orange. The light and heat made William dizzy. Nauseous. The taste of a dry cigar had grown stale and bitter on his tongue.

He remembered when he’d been part of the audience. Connie was the one who got so excited about the circus coming.

“Oh, let’s go. Please Bill. The boys will love it. We’ll all love it so much.”

It was the first time in his thirty-six years that a circus had traveled to their small town. Maybe the spectacle would lighten their hearts. Let them forget the hard times, if only for a few hours. They could barely afford milk and bread, but how long had it been since Connie smiled?

He saved pennies and nickels in a Prince Albert tobacco tin hidden behind a wooden crate meagerly weighted with rations of sugar and flour and coffee. On the day the circus rolled into the barren fields on the other side of town, he had barely saved enough, and counted it twice to make sure he wouldn’t be embarrassed by coming up short at the Big Top’s ticket booth.

They traveled on foot for five miles over a dusty road, through the failing heart of Riverbend. The winding river that gave the town its name had dried up only two years earlier, leaving behind a bed of coarse gravel and widening fissures.

Dirt stung their eyes. Small funnel clouds of topsoil danced in the outlying fields. They wore handkerchiefs over their mouths and noses to keep from breathing in the dust, yet they still tasted it, a thin glue on their tongues. As William and his family neared the huge red and orange tent, the large entrance flaps snapping and whipping in the wind, they saw other families fighting their way through the blowing dirt.

They stepped inside. The wind stopped. William looked up slowly, carefully, pulling the handkerchief down as if he didn’t trust his senses. The smell of popcorn made his mouth water. A woman in a blue leotard and pink boa walked by carrying a tray full of beer. She stopped and turned to William.

“You look parched, mister. Have a beer on the house.”

“I can’t—”

“Oh, c’mon now.” Her smile was big. Wet. “Course you can.”

“Thank you.” He took the bottle of beer and sipped, closing his eyes. Nothing had ever tasted so good. He handed the bottle to Connie, then let each son take a sip.

He counted out his change at the ticket booth. The ticket teller slid back a nickel and winked. “The missus gets in free.”

William eyed the rows of available seating. Plenty of open space on the tiered metal benches. They ascended the rickety steps to a spot just left of center, and when they sat, only a moment passed before trumpets blared and the Ringmaster stepped into the center ring. His uniform was bright crimson in the hot spotlight.

William looked at his sons, their mouths agape, hands gripping the edges of the bench. He looked at Connie. Excitement and anticipation filled every pore on her face. For a moment, it was impossible to take his eyes off her. He soaked in her happiness as best he could, because he knew that when he told her the bank was foreclosing on their farm in the morning, it would be a long, long time before her face shone this brightly.

He blinked away tears, rubbed his eye, pretending a bit of dust had lodged there. He turned away. When his vision cleared, he saw a figure cloaked in shadows staring at him from the other side of the center ring.

A dagger of harsh sunlight pierced a hole in the big top’s canvas and caused William to blink and tilt his head. He struggled to keep his balance as his sons inched closer. He felt their fear tremble through the wood of the balance pole. He stopped. Closed his eyes. Regained his balance and sucked in the pain.

From the other side, Connie whispered, “William.”

He gritted his teeth. Took another step. “Look at me, boys. Slow and steady. Slow and steady.”

His right foot pressed deeply onto a razor blade. The razor sliced into his heel, not stopping until it hit bone. He held in a scream. Blood dripped through the net to the sawdust below.

The circus clowns gathered. They looked up at him. Pointed. Sneered.

He’d never seen them without their makeup on. He never wanted to. They were short, brutish things. Coarse black hair sprouted from the thin line of exposed skin between their white gloves and tattered coat sleeves. They were kept away from the other performers in claustrophobic, thickly barred cages, and only let out at show time.

Five of them stomped below him now, jumping up and down, snarling, laughing.Did the audience see them lapping at his blood as it dripped into their mouths?

What had he seen when he’d been part of the crowd?

The figure clothed in shadow.

What had propelled him to her?

“How about a soda?” William asked his sons as they sat transfixed in their seats.

“But William — “ Connie placed her hand on his knee. Her eyes were large, moist moons, and she didn’t have to say another word to convey her worry over money. How could they afford anything else on this day? This month? This year?

“Don’t worry, Connie. I’ve got enough to cover it.” Just enough. He patted her hand. Winked. Ran his fingers over the back of her wrist. How could he have known it would be the last time he’d see her?

Really see her — as someone whole. Solid. Not merely the mist waiting on a platform high in the air whispering his name.

“William. William.”

Halfway across, his sons heavy on the balance pole, his blood dripping; the clowns below catching it within the darkness of their painted-on smiles.

His sons inched closer as he took another excruciating step.

Soda.

He circled the perimeter of the performance area to the concession booth. Down here, the crowd sounded different, like hundreds of birds squawking in a deep canyon. Between the metal benches, in the empty spaces between seats and floorboards, a thousand luminous eyes surveyed the arena. The performers seemed to move behind a wall of murky water. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a clown pull off what looked like great hunks of taffy from its face. But his main focus was concentrated on the figure in the shadows.

He knew her name.

Aria.

When she smiled, William’s mouth went dry. His tongue felt like a sponge wrung out and left to dry on hot concrete.

He’d dreamt of her for as long as he’d tilled his fields. Dreams that were warm and moist, dreams from which he awoke next to his wife, next to Connie, with a sense of guilt and longing.

How many nights had he slipped out of bed to stand trembling in the bathroom, the lights off, his reflection ashen and dim in the mirror? His hand stroking feverishly below…

Every time he finished, he felt as if his soul had been yanked up through his throat. He’d slip back into bed next to Connie and face away from her. Otherwise, he couldn’t fall back asleep.

Aria. But how could this be her?

He knew it was her the same way he knew when to plant the fields in spring, the same way he knew when to harvest in the fall. He felt it. Felt it inside him like a hornet trying to work its way through the valves of his heart.

She reached out and touched his forearm.

“I can help you.”

He barely nodded. A part of him was angry and wanted to ask, Can you pay off the bank? Can you save our farm? But instead he looked into the shadows of her cloak and knew she could help him in a more fundamental way.

“Do you want to be helped?”

William gasped “Yes.” He stepped forward and lost himself in something wet, deep and cold.

Suffocation. Numbing blackness.

How long can a man drown in oblivion without collapsing in on himself? His soul shrank and unraveled for an eternity until the woman from his dreams unfolded from him like shadows melting into daylight.

Then — so many years later…

His hands gripped the rough, flexible rungs of a rope ladder, and he found himself climbing up, up, up toward a canvas ceiling. A flock of silhouettes danced and cawed impatiently overhead.

William reached the platform.

Razor wire stretched out long and sharp and cold before him. He was no longer in Riverbend.

“Ladies and gents, raise your eyes to the skies — “

A calm settled over him like a morning fog.

William Farini was now part of the circus.

They traveled by train, by truck and bus, over endless valleys, plains, mountain passes. Images came to him like bits of remembered dream, images of meals shared with the other performers, sitting in somnambulistic circles, chanting in fevered monotones. But every time he became aware of himself — fully aware — he was on the platform high above the middle ring of the Big Top. The pain he felt as he stepped onto the razor wire was a balm to the guilt he felt for betraying his family.

The woman from his dreams had helped him, all right; helped him ignore reality and turn away from the pain that life brought. But to never face the hardships was to never live. So he welcomed the sharp pain of the wire, the razor blades, because that was something that reminded him of what it was to be alive.

Soon, he felt a new weight on the balance pole.

“John? Frank?” His tears blinded him. He struggled not to fall.

“Father?” his sons said in unison.

Months, years later, Connie waited on the opposite platform, a beckoning mist that solidified bit by agonizing bit with each performance.

Maybe this is the way, he thought, to get my family back.

Maybe this is my penance.

He had yet to fall.

Was it even possible to fall?

He looked down at the net.

Faces swirled hungrily in the sinewy threads, weaving and reweaving, an undulating sea. Connie waited on the far platform, standing the way she used to stand on their front porch.

And now, so many years later…

His sons inched closer, their weight on the balance pole intense on his palms. Razors sliced into his feet. Blood dripped through the net into the open mouths of the clowns below.

He was so close.

John and Frank crept toward him, their bodies shaking, eyes wide with fright.

“That’s it,” William said. “Steady now. Steady.”

The last of the sun blazed through the Big Top’s entrance like a fire dying in a bed of ash.

He took another step. A razor sliced through his middle toe.

So close.

“William.”

Connie looked whole. Solid.

Was this the night to end thousands of such nights?

How long had it been since he’d seen her like this? So whole. So real. If only he could reach her. He’d never been able to reach her before. She always disappeared like a moth into a flame.

But tonight.

Tonight.

He prayed silently to the Ringmaster.

You can have my feet, my flesh. Just give me my family.

At last, his sons inches away, Connie a mere step away. Joy replaced the pain surging through him.

One more step.

Her touch was electric. The first time he’d felt her fingers on his face in decades.

His sons draped their arms around his shoulders and clung fast to him. He stepped into Connie’s arms.

He let the pole drop. It shattered on the ground like an icicle.

He stepped firmly onto the platform.

At last.

At last.

He closed his eyes. His family clung to him, their lips kissing him, their tears wet on his skin.

When he lost his balance, they dropped as one mass into the writhing net below.

The audience rose like a great beast and roared.

Confidence

Traffic crawled, an endless line of chrome and glass. Jill glanced in the mirror. Jesus! She slammed on the brakes. A horn sounded behind her. She examined her face. How could she have forgotten? She’d been in such a hurry to get to the interview, she neglected to put on her make-up. She grimaced at the wrinkles, the crow’s feet, the black bags beneath her eyes. No way could she go into an interview like this. Not without her Esteem.

The Esteem lady, Betty Briar, had assured her it made her look ten years younger. “Just look at you,” she beamed, holding up the mirror for Jill to admire herself.

Jill turned her head this way and that. She did look younger. The dark circles that hung around her eyes like permanently tattooed shadows were gone, or at least covered up. And her crow’s feet had disappeared, the skin at the corners of her eyes supple and fresh. The hi-lighting pen that the Esteem lady applied forced attention away from her saggy jowls and gave the impression of strong cheekbones and full lips.

Hell, she looked great! And looking great gave her that boost of confidence she needed to make it through the day. When she was laid off two weeks earlier, the loss only stung temporarily until she studied her face in the mirror. A fresh layer of Esteem, and nothing mattered any more; the mortgage, the outstanding loans, the high cost of insurance, the daycare…

She looked fantastic!

Besides, she’d been getting some great interviews — this was her fourth this week. If only she could nail this one, the pay would be even higher than her previous job, and the company was known for its great benefits. Getting laid off was the best thing that ever happened to her.

The traffic inched forward. Not far to go, but—

Damn it, how could she have forgotten her Esteem?

She looked at the dashboard clock. Did she have time to race back home and throw on a fresh application?

She’d been in such a hurry to leave. Her husband had a meeting and couldn’t take Allison to daycare, couldn’t even get her ready, and Jill forgot that four-year olds weren’t always the most compliant creatures in the world. How many times did she have to ask her to finish her Froot Loops? Then she noticed a typo on her resume, so she had to correct that and print out a couple fresh copies, and—

Dang it, Allison, finish your Froot Loops!

So it was a rush to daycare, Allison crying and needing to be held and reassured that she’d have a fun day, then rushing into busy traffic…

She hadn’t even grabbed her extra make-up bag!

Maybe she could talk Betty into making an emergency run. They were tight, weren’t they? Tight enough to do each other a favor once in a while? She really wanted this job.

She checked traffic. Barely moving, but her exit was in sight. She dialed Betty on her cell phone. No answer. She left a message. “Betty, this is Jill. Jill Carole. I need a huge favor. It’s an emergency, actually. I’m on my way to an interview — remember how I told you about losing my job? Well, everything was so hectic this morning — I left without my Esteem. I need some foundation, eyeliner, lipstick—” She glanced in the mirror. “Oh, geez. I need the whole shebang. Can you meet me in the parking lot of the Johnson Building off I-94? I’ll pay double, plus throw in a few bucks for gas. I’ve got a half hour before the interview — if there’s any way you can get here before nine — I’ll be waiting in the parking lot. Please. It’s critical.”

She hadn’t been without her Esteem since she’d met Betty three months ago at her neighborhood block party.

Traffic eased forward. By the time she arrived at the Johnson Building parking lot, it was only twenty minutes to nine. Still — even if Betty got the message and raced here, it would be cutting it close.

She turned off the engine, leaned back and closed her eyes. Come on, Betty.

There was a sharp knock on the car’s window. Jill’s eyes flew open. It was a young man, twenty-something, creamy dress shirt, smart maroon tie. Jill sat up and rolled the window down a crack.

The man looked worried. “You okay in there?”

“Yes,” Jill said. “Just gearing up for an interview.”

The man frowned. “You don’t—” He swallowed. “You don’t look so good.”

Jill instinctively reached for her face. God, she could just feel her skin loosening, creasing, the wrinkles growing…

“I’m fine,” she insisted.

The man pulled out his cell phone and shook his head. “You need a doctor.”

She knew it was bad, but the guy didn’t have to be insulting. “I’m fine.”

The man hesitantly put his phone away and backed off. Talk about a confidence buster! Jill glanced at her watch. Five minutes to nine and still no Betty.

Maybe I should reschedule the interview.

Three minutes to nine.

But for this job, rescheduling was as good as saying no thanks. Their schedule was packed — the human resources director told her on the phone she was one of twenty interviewees. And to cancel this close to the interview…

Two minutes to nine and still no Betty.

She had to get in there, had to take her shot, make-up or not.

Come on, come on…

She took a deep breath. Confidence.

Her husband had always told her that it’s what’s inside that counts. But wasn’t that just a nice way of calling her ugly?

No, come on. He’s right. Show some confidence. Talk a good game. Let your inner light shine through.

Who’d said that? Oprah? Doctor Phil? Her mother?

She stepped out of the car. Adjusted her dress. Tossed her shoulders back and held her head up high.

That’s it. You can do this. Think positive!

When she stepped into the building, the security guard flinched behind the desk. “Jesus, lady!”

She ignored him. Stepped into the elevator and pressed 8. The elevator rose. As the doors opened, the receptionist shrieked and ducked behind a cubicle. Jill snorted and walked past. If they don’t like me for who I am, then they have a worse problem than I do, she assured herself. She’d find the conference room herself if she had to.

She passed a deliveryman on his way out. He doubled over, retching.

That’s just plain rude, she thought.

She found the conference room, knocked once and entered. Barbara Manning, the human resources director, looked up and froze.

Jill reached up and tried to push the flaps of skin back onto her face. “Sorry I’m late,” she said. Her upper lip dropped with a splat onto the large oak conference table.

Ms. Manning opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

Jill quickly shoved a drooping eyeball back into its socket. She tried her best to smile, to maintain her confidence despite her lack of Esteem. She winced as her left ear dropped onto her shoulder. She made a mental note to get her dress in the wash right when she got home.

She cleared her throat, dislodging her front teeth. She held out her hand, waiting for Ms. Manning to shake it. “Sanks for giving me a chance to meet wis you today,” she whistled around her missing teeth.

Her tongue flopped onto the table.

Confidence, Jill told herself as Ms. Manning screamed. Jill took another deep breath, the air making wet, sucking sounds as she inhaled.

Confidence.

Two-Minute Warning

Beyond the goalposts at the south end of the field, the undead howled and marauded within a large cage of thick, metal bars. They climbed the walls, shook them, stepped on and over each other, clambered their way to the top of the cage that rose just beyond the tips of the goalposts, only to fall back upon each other. They reached through the cage with torn, reeking limbs, reached out to grab at the humans who passed by. The cage seethed with their hunger.

Burke Smith stood on the sideline scanning the crowd for his wife, Sherry. He knew what section of the stadium she sat in, but could not see her among the crowd standing on its feet. Burke turned his attention back to the field. The undead had the ball and somehow they were winning. Burke’s team had not lost a game the entire season, yet here they were down by two points with less than two minutes to go. Burke watched his defense line up on the field, their helmets hiding grim faces. The undead wore no helmets. No shoulder pads. Just old jerseys, mud-caked and torn.

Burke remembered playing football as a kid. The smell of grass, of turning leaves, the cool autumn wind, the thrill of catching a long bomb and running, running, the feel of pure joy and exhilaration…

Now fear was his motivation. When he threw the ball or ran with it down the field, it was with anxiety, with not knowing whether the next time he was back on the field he’d be playing for the other side.

The ref blew the whistle. The undead tramped the earth, rubbed their chaffed hands together like anxious children, formed a wavering wall at the line of scrimmage. Their center chewed on the football as if teething. Their quarterback trembled with anticipation; his tattered jersey exposing glimpses of intestines hardened from exposure, of splintered ribs, the protruding ends sharp and poking into putrid green lungs.

“Hungh!” it grunted. “Hungh!” The center grinned like an idiot and pushed the ball into the quarterback’s bony hands. The quarterback stumbled backwards. Raised his mangled lips to the air and let out a guttural howl. He cocked his arm back to pass in one quick jerky motion and let loose with the ball.

It wobbled through the air toward another pair of tattered hands. The receiver caught the ball and pressed it into his chest. He ran with his head held high, his jawbone exposed and riddled with squirming maggots.

Hank Jones, one of the living, caught up to him and shoved him hard. The zombie fell face forward with an ugly crunch. Hank jumped up and brought his cleated shoe down on the thing’s back, where it disappeared up to the laces. The receiver stopped moving. The ref blew his whistle. Hank pulled his foot out and shook off bits of shredded heart and lungs.

The referees lured the undead off the field and into the confines of an electric fence with hunks of fresh meat skewered on long, sharp poles. Two men in blue uniforms carried the latest corpse off the field in a canvas bag. Armed with cattle prods, the refs urged the swaggering, shuffling forms back onto the field.

Burke sighed and put his helmet on. As he jogged onto the field he froze.

Johanson.

Goddamn. Johanson. He knew he’d show up sooner or later, but how can you really be prepared to see your best friend on the opposing team?

He’d been the best running back Burke had ever played with. Now there he was, hunkered down across the line of scrimmage staring at Burke with lifeless eyes. Shit, they’d been roommates in college, and now…

There he was. Listless. Crazed. Hungry for flesh.

There was a flash of light up in the stadium. Burke looked up. A woman ran toward the cage of the undead with a Molotov cocktail. She lobbed it and it exploded on the outside of the cage walls, spewing a rain of fire both inside and outside the cage. A security guard grabbed the woman from behind and hauled her away as humans and non-humans alike shrieked and slapped at each others burning clothes. Smoke accompanied by the smell of burnt flesh poured out from the cage. Outside the cage, the fire was quickly subdued, but inside the burning creatures tried scrambling up the cage walls, only to fall screaming back onto the others. More security guards appeared, this time with a hose. They sprayed at the cage until the fire was out. Only a few of the undead lay twitching on the ground, smoldering, but they soon arose, pieces of charred bone protruding from their parchment-like flesh.

“It’s no different than our sex drive,” Johanson had once said. “An unavoidable biological urge to propagate the species.”

“But why? What kind of a god…”

…and they’d stay up late some nights talking about it over beer and pizza, their wives trying to hide their fear behind the normalcy of chit-chat and wine.

“Why do we do this, Burke?”

Burke shook his head. Couldn’t say it but remembered—

His son Julian, his daughter Calley. They’d become infected. They’d become craving slobbering things he’d been forced to destroy. He almost didn’t. Almost let them eat him.

Wouldn’t that have been better? Wouldn’t that have been the right thing to do in the end?

“I don’t know,” Burke said, the words in his head, the thoughts too much to get out without jumping up from the table and smashing everything within sight.

How many of them would he have to destroy before becoming satiated?

All of them.

That was the unfortunate answer.

Every goddamn one of them.

And still he’d want to hurt something, someone, for what they made him do.

Concentrate, Burke told himself. It’s not Johanson. Not anymore. Johanson is gone.

Easier to say than to believe. There were rumors of cures just around the corner. Rumors of antidotes that could reverse the process, restore the tissue, the brain. But what about the soul?

“Hike!”

The center snapped the ball. Burke took it and dropped back to pass. Tidwell hurtled down the field, knocking aside two zombies with his large, powerful shoulders. He turned back. Burke threw a long bomb. It hung in the air. The crowd, the living and undead alike, became silent as the ball descended toward Tidwell. Tidwell sprinted past the fifty, the forty-five, Johanson matching him stride for stride, the apex of the ball’s trajectory and Tidwell coming to a point. It landed in his hands perfectly. But at the forty-two yard line, Johanson reached out his long tooth marked arm. Grabbed Tidwell’s face mask, and with one swift jerk, tore Tidwell’s head off.

Tidwell’s body twisted and fell forward. Good enough for a first down. Johanson reached into Tidwell’s helmet, and with strong bony fingers, scooped out handfuls of brain and ate. He ambled off to the sideline with his meal.

Jesus, Burke thought. He had drive before, but what drove him now?

The refs came in with their cattle prods and got the undead back in line. They shifted jerkily on the new line of scrimmage. The seconds ticked away.

They had discussed it over beers many times. Was the urge of the living to stay alive as great as the urge of the undead to feed?

“Depends on the individual,” Johanson said. “Some of us would do anything to stay alive. But then we’ve both seen players who just all of a sudden sit down in the middle of a play, take off their helmets, and let the feeding frenzy begin.”

“Why would somebody do that?”

“Cause they’re tired.”

“I’d never do that.”

“Some people just get sick of the way the world’s turned out. Maybe all their friends and family are gone. Maybe they think it’s inevitable, so better submit to fate rather than waste all that energy fighting a lost cause.”

At least Tidwell had gotten them a first down.

Burke looked up into the stadium seats, his eye landing on Tidwell’s widow. Her face was in her hands as she rocked back and forth. A woman next to her patted her on the back, talking to her, words that Burke knew would never matter.

The center snapped the ball. One of the undead, number fifty-three, leapt over the center as Burke scrambled backward. Fifty-three was on him in an instant, trying to twist his head around, trying to snap Burke’s neck. Burke landed on his back, number fifty-three on top of him, his brown ugly teeth gnashing around his face mask. The refs blew the whistle. Fifty-three continued to pummel Burke with rot-purple fists. When a ref zapped the thing with a cattle prod, the electricity flowed into Burke as well, causing him to bite down hard on his mouthpiece, streaks of black light crossing his vision. His body went rigid for a moment. Fifty-three rolled off of him. Burke took a deep breath and looked at the gray sky. Spence, a running back, helped him up.

“You okay, man?”

Burke nodded.

“You sure?”

“I’m fine. Huddle up.”

In the huddle, Aidan Carter, as much of a veteran as Burke, rubbed his hands quickly together.

“We’re coming down to the wire. This is way too close.”

“We’ll get ’em,” Tyrone Bishop said, his voice surly and deep beneath his helmet.

“I don’t like it this close.”

“We’ve done it before.”

“What if we don’t.”

“Don’t talk like that, bro. We’ll get it together.”

“We better. We better do it now.”

Second down. Still at the forty.

They lined up. It seemed as if there were sparks in the eyes of the undead, their ferocity, their hunger so great it seemed to animate them in a way Burke had never seen before. They drooled a green and yellow slime from the corners of their torn, misshapen lips. The humans in the stands got quiet while the undead in the giant cage beyond the goalposts howled and shook the large metal strips.

“Hike!” Burke yelled. The ball hit his hands like a bullet. He dropped back, handed off to Paine. But Paine’s grip was off. He grabbed it too far forward and it slipped from his hands. It bounced on the grass. Paine dove on it and clutched it to his chest.

The whistle blew. The clock ticked down.

Forty seconds left.

Aidan Carter’s eyes were wild. “How could you fuckin’ miss that? You know what this means?”

Paine wouldn’t look at Carter.

Carter punched him hard on the shoulder. “This is our life you’re fooling with. Don’t you know that?”

Burke grabbed Carter. “Come on. The clock’s ticking.”

Third down.

Burke took the snap. Stepped back. He looked to Carter, but he was trying to shake off two of the undead. He looked to Bishop. Bishop’s rage had gotten the best of him, and he was going ape on a zombie, bashing his head in with his helmet, screaming obscenities, tearing the cold limbs off the walking corpse.

There was no one to throw to. Burke tucked the ball into his chest, put down his head and ran. He straight-armed a tackle, his fist busting through the thing’s brittle decaying ribcage. He shook him off. The tackle fell in a heap. Another zombie dove for him, but Burke sidestepped him and brought his foot down on the thing’s face, crushing it into the ground.

Burke ran. He gagged at the stench in the air. He heard screams from the stadium seats. Howls. Shouts. A cacophony of rage and disbelief. His blood pounded in his ears. He saw the clock’s digital read-out on the balcony in front of him. The seconds blinked down in a slow motion pulse. It felt like his legs were encased in cement.

A hand gripped his shoulder. A strong hand. Burke spun around, tripped on his own feet and fell, the other player falling with him and landing beneath.

It was Johanson. Hungry. Rotting.

Johanson. Only a week ago Burke’s best friend.

Burke took his helmet off. Johanson struggled beneath him. Burke felt Johanson’s clammy hands circle his throat and squeeze.

Maybe it would be easier to just give up. Better that than to live in constant fear. Maybe it would be easier to die, let Johanson finish him off like he should’ve let his children do. He searched Johanson’s face for a sign of something. Anything. A memory of the times they’d spent together. Just a spark of something.

Burke whispered, “I love you, buddy.”

Nothing registered in Johanson’s eyes, his pupils dry and clouded. His nostrils flared with the scent of fresh meat hovering over him. Burke lifted his helmet in the air. Kept his eyes wide open as he brought it down on Johanson’s face again and again until he heard the crack of skull, the destruction of brain. The hand on his neck went slack.

The crowd, both the living and the dead, went wild.

They called a time-out. Ten seconds left.

“We need this.” Burke scanned the morose faces of his remaining players. “This is our last chance. You know what it means if we don’t win.”

The huddle was silent. Strange how despite the roar of the crowd crashing down upon them in one continuous wave, they could notice the silence among themselves.

Bishop doubled over and vomited. Carter got down on his knees, clasped his hands together and prayed. There was another explosion in the stands, but no one in the huddle looked up. They didn’t even flinch as the flash of fire reflected off their helmets.

The ref blew the whistle.

Burke clapped his hands together. “Let’s get this fucking thing over with.”

The huddle broke.

The silence broke.

They cringed with the force of the noise as it pounded against their skulls, pummeled at their guts. Nothing mattered anymore except crossing the end zone with the ball.

The undead shuffled inches beyond the line of scrimmage, their fingers wriggling, waiting to tear into flesh, their mouths gnashing at air, eager to taste that which lived.

The living took position at the line. They set themselves, bending, squatting, then freezing that way. The grunts of the dead increased. Their thick foul slobber splatted on the helmets of the living.

Burke wiped the sweat from his hands on the rag hanging from the center’s hip. He paused. Looked out at the crowd. How were the living any better than the dead? The dead in their giant cage, climbing the metal rungs, falling backward onto their brethren below. The living standing, jumping up and down, pumping their fists in the air, screaming for blood.

He wondered where Sherry sat. He didn’t see her among the other player’s wives. He wondered if she was watching or if she was looking at her hands, nervously balled into tight fists, rocking back and forth the way she did in times of crises.

He closed his eyes for a moment and enjoyed the gentle breeze that wisped over his skin and through his hair. That was a gift, he thought. The best part of this whole damn day. That breeze. That simple breeze. He took a deep breath. Tapped the center on the small of his back.

“Ready! Set!” His words were lost in the cacophony. “Now!”

The center snapped the ball.

Burke took it and stepped back.

The noise in the stadium exploded.

Burke faked a hand-off to Carter. Watched for Bishop down field, but Bishop was trying to claw his way out of a duo of undead. Burke looked for Monroe, but saw a flash of ragged flesh charging toward him. He ducked, shoved the football up so that it caught the bastard under the chin. He heard a crack as its neck snapped, felt the thing fall in a heap behind him.

He spotted Monroe outrunning two undead toward the end zone. Monroe stopped abruptly and turned, tearing his own helmet from his head and using it as a weapon as the first zombie fell upon him, followed quickly by the second.

Monroe flailed at them, smashing their skulls in a blur of swinging arms. Then he was open.

He dropped his helmet, waved both hands in the air signaling Burke to throw as three undead noticed him and began to charge. Two more were honing in on Burke as his linemen crumbled. With a quick glance, he noticed his tackles Leo and Busby down, each with a corpse kneeling over them, digging through the skin of their necks and lapping at the blood that spouted upwards in a thick geyser.

Monroe continued to wave, only ten yards from the end zone. Burke cocked his arm back, then with one big exhale let the ball fly. Watched it sail through the air in a long graceful arc. Without taking his eyes from the ball, he sidestepped another attacker, dropping his elbow on the thing’s back as it sailed by, the satisfactory crunch taking a backseat to the view of the ball dropping into Monroe’s arms.

As Monroe hugged the ball tight against his chest at the ten yard line, as his muscular thighs pumped toward the goal line, he failed to see the remnants of a skull sticking up from the sod. The 240-pound receiver stumbled. Yet still he dove toward the end zone, his arms outstretched, his entire body now prone in the air.

It was going to be close.

He landed.

The whistle blew.

The ref had to run to where the ball lay, it was that close.

Burke held his breath. The whole team held it’s breath. Even the crowd was silent.

The ref shook his head. Waved his arms back and forth across each other.

It was no good.

The crowd erupted. The game was over. The undead had won.

Burke kneeled to the ground. Thought of his wife up there in the stands, wished he could tell her how sorry he was. He looked frantically in the stands for her.

The refs cattle-prodded the undead players back into the giant cage with the rest of their kind, howling and screaming, their rotting vocal chords flying from their mouths in shiny wet shards.

Then he saw her. She was escorted through the stands as people yelled at her, spit on her, tore at her clothing. She was with the other players’ wives. All of them in a solemn huddle being led by large men in black hats armed with cattle prods.

Burke couldn’t watch. He turned away. He heard the wrought iron doors of the undead’s cage being opened. He only turned to look at the last minute, but already his wife, the other players’ wives had disappeared beneath the bodies of the zombie horde. Burke waited for the men in the black hats to come for him. He hoped that once he was up there, it would be his wife that devoured him.

The Child Gate

The night the intruder entered our home, Davey was almost three years old, brown hair, hazel eyes, and as sweet as a boy can be. Yet, he still hadn’t said his first words. No “mama.” No “dada.” A giggle here and there, a scream or a cry when upset, but no words. His pediatrician told us he was a late bloomer; boys tend to develop a bit slower, he’d said. Nothing to worry about. But soon, even he changed his tune. The words would not come.

The thing that stopped the intruder from coming up the steps and into our bedroom was the child gate installed when Davey was learning how to walk. He was fearless, and when he fell, got right back up and tried again. To keep him from toppling down the stairs to the white tile floor below, we kept the gate closed whenever he was upstairs.

The night the intruder came, we’d left our windows open to take advantage of the cool autumn breeze, and it was through one of these that the intruder entered at two in the morning. Alone and quiet, he used a small knife to slice through the screen.

Jenny and I slept in the master bedroom, and Davey snored quietly in his bedroom down the hall. The tentative rattle of hinges woke Jenny first.

The gate opens with a simple latching mechanism that requires a squeeze to be released, but if you’re unfamiliar with it, and stealthily sneaking up someone’s steps at two in the morning, it poses a potential problem.

Jenny shook my shoulder, her breath warm and urgent in my ear. “John. Wake up. Someone’s on the stairs.”

“Davey?” I asked, shaking off the restraints of sleep.

“No, not Davey. Someone—” She stopped as we heard the child gate rattle again, louder this time. Jenny’s fingernails dug painfully into my bicep.

I sat up. “Who’s there?”

An adult male voice grunted, “Fuck,” followed by the heavy staccato of thuds — something heavy tumbling down the steps and banging against the wall. There was an awful crack, followed by a sharp cry of pain.

Jenny tore out of bed. “Davey!” she gasped.

“Jenny!” I yelled. Neither of us knew what waited on the stairs.

I first learned about autism many years before Davey was born through the movie Rainman. A good film, but I mostly remember it as a tragic series of parlor tricks. Guess how many toothpicks the waitress dropped? What’s the probability of being dealt Blackjack? And — watch the autistic man memorize the phonebook in one go-round.

But my son. My two-year old son…

Here’s one of his parlor tricks. He falls asleep in our bed, yet I hear him moving around a bit later while my wife and I watch TV in the living room below. Soon, all is quiet again. When I go upstairs to check on him, an unpleasant odor greets me. I know what’s making the smell, but when I look into the dim light of our room, I see Davey asleep, arms at his sides, but—

Something darkens his hands, and—

Something darkens the sheets around him, and—

As I turn on a lamp to see more clearly—

That same darkness is smeared across the nightstand, the dresser, swirled onto the walls in circles and curlicues. His diaper is still on, and he has merely reached inside for the ammunition, the medium of this art.

I choke back a cry and brace myself. Freaking out will do nobody any good.

I start a bath. Gently shake Davey. “Wake up, hon.” I pick him up, holding him away as much as possible from my body, but then I realize it’s just shit and it’s going to get on me, anyway, so…

He wakes slightly and I strip off his pj’s and set him in the tub, scrub the crap off of him, drain and refill the tub to let him soak and play while I strip the bed, use bucket and sponge and Lysol to clean the furniture, the walls, until it’s all gone, and Davey plays in the tub like nothing’s happened, it’s just another night in the Kendall household.

But the night the intruder came…

Jenny ran to Davey’s room, a mother bear protecting her cub. I got out of bed, the journey from bed to doorway seeming like a thousand miles. Heavy, labored breathing came from somewhere on the steps. I heard a groan as I peeked around the corner. The child gate remained shut. “Who’s there?” I called again.

The stairway curves from foyer to upstairs hallway, taking two small turns, each punctuated with a small landing. I forced my eyes down the steps until they came to a shape huddled on the landing six steps up from the tiled floor.

Jenny called from Davey’s room, “What is it? What’s going on?” In her rush to his room, she hadn’t even glanced at the man on the stairs.

I kept my eyes on him. Black shirt, black pants, black skull-cap. There was something odd about his shape. His leg — bent at an odd angle. He clutched at it, his face twisted in anguish. Jenny gasped behind me.

“Go back to Davey’s room,” I said.

“What’s going on?”

“Stay with Davey,” I insisted.

“He’s asleep.”

“Please.” Then I asked the man below, “Who are you? What do you want?”

He looked up at me. A cowl of sweat covered his face. “Call an ambulance.”

Jenny remained frozen behind me.

“Please,” I said to her, my eyes stuck on the intruder. “Stay with Davey.”

“I’ll call the police.”

“No. Stay with him.”

“Someone needs to call the police.”

The man below said again, his voice strained, “I need an ambulance.”

When the intruder climbed our steps, he came to the child gate. In the dark, unfamiliar with it, he couldn’t get it open. He tried stepping over it, but my voice must’ve startled him. He tripped, lost his balance, and ended up there — leg twisted behind him on the landing six steps up from the foyer floor.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

The man grimaced.

“Answer me.”

“What do you think I was doing here?” he gasped.

“You were going to rob us? Kill us?”

He shook his head. “I needed some money.”

“So you thought you’d just break in here and take it?”

“Please.” He looked up at me, anguish casting furrows across his sweat-slicked brow. “I’m begging you. Call an ambulance.”

Jenny called from Davey’s room, “What’s going on?”

“Everything’s fine,” I said.

The man’s back was against the wall, and he clutched at his twisted leg. A patch of blood stained the wall behind his head. He must’ve banged it on something on the way down. I scanned the carpeted steps, then the handrail.

There — blood on the handrail, halfway down. The rail was cut at angles to follow the flow of the steps, and some of the angles produced sharp corners. I’d meant to sand them down in case Davey fell, but like so many household projects, still hadn’t gotten around to it.

The handrail.

I stepped quickly into our bedroom and threw open the top drawer of my dresser. The junk drawer. Full of odds and ends, a place to put all the crap accumulated over the years of living in the same place.

I grabbed an old Phillips screwdriver and stepped back to the top of the stairway. The man’s eyes narrowed on the screwdriver. “What’s that for?”

I opened the child gate. Just a squeeze of the latching mechanism was all it took.

“What’s with the screwdriver?” he asked again, panic rising in his voice.

I stared at him a moment, then sat down on a step next to the bloodied corner of the railing. I began to unscrew the railing supports.

“What the fuck are you doing? Call an ambulance!”

I ignored him and let the loosened screws fall to the carpeted steps, let the supports fall, too, as they separated from the wall and railing.

“Everything okay?” Jenny called in a singsong voice, valiantly trying to conceal her nervousness, not wanting to scare Davey.

“Yes,” I called to her. “Stay with him.”

“He’s waking up,” she said.

The man on the steps said, “Please. What are you doing?”

I lifted the railing, balancing it in my hands. “Why did you come here?” I asked. The railing felt solid, the wood smooth, the weight good.

“I told you.”

“Why our house?”

He closed his eyes. Tilted his head, pain twisting his features. “Your window was open.”

“What if you’d made it upstairs?”

“I just wanted money. Jewelry.”

“What if me — or my wife — woke up?”

“Come on, man.”

My grip on the railing tightened. “What if my kid woke up, walked out of his room and saw you?”

“I’d never hurt a kid.”

“It’s dark. Maybe he surprised you and you reacted.” Something caught the corner of my eye. A black, obscene object on the white tile below.

The intruder’s eyes followed mine. “It dropped out when I fell,” he said.

My pulse quickened. “You brought a gun into my house?”

He didn’t answer.

“You brought a gun into my house?” I asked again, my voice rising.

I heard Jenny’s voice, gentle now, singing softly to Davey. I heard the creak of the rocking chair in his room.

“What if my son woke up and surprised you? And you pulled out your gun…”

The man on the stairs shook his head. Fresh pain shot across his face. I heard Davey’s voice, now. No words, but a sweet babbling mixed with Jenny’s soft, kind voice as the rocking chair creaked out its familiar rhythm.

What if he’d come into our room? What if something — any number of things — had happened to turn a simple robbery into the slaughter of a family? What if he…

What if…

My grip on the railing tightened. I changed the directions of my thoughts.

Okay. What if he’d fallen down the steps in a slightly different way? What if he hit his head hard on the stair railing I now held? Maybe hit it at a slightly different angle, hit it hard enough to split his head open.

I slowly lifted the railing up to my eye level and studied it.

Would the police even question it? What sympathy would they give a man who broke into our house while we slept, while my wife, my little boy, slept peacefully, and with him — him, the man lying twisted on the stairs — carrying a gun? Would they even notice the inconsistencies? Would they study the forensics of his fall? The fact that maybe, just maybe the angle of blood splatter was inconsistent with my version of events? Besides, it would be my word against—

“Please,” the man said, breathing rapidly, his skin pale and dappled with sweat. “Please,” he said as I lifted the railing above my head, feeling for the maximum leverage, the best angle to create the greatest force.

“Please!” he cried one last time.

I swung.

The singing, the rocking in Davey’s room stopped.

“Honey?” my wife called.

“Everything’s okay,” I said. “Stay there.” I wiped the sweat off my brow with a shaking hand. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

I lifted the railing from the cracked bone and cartilage, the blood and bits of brain that clung to the wood. I stared at the silent, limp form of the man who’d invaded our home.

The police wouldn’t question it. I’d be a fucking hero.

I screwed the railing back into place. Stepped quickly into our bedroom and called 9-1-1.

Davey sits through four hours of Applied Behavioral Analysis — ABA therapy — a day. It focuses on repetition, compliance, reward. It attempts to circumvent and rewire the misfiring synapses in his brain. He’s made progress. No words, but the sounds were coming. The sounds — sweet and mellifluous. Occasionally there were the harsh croaks of frustration, but we’d take them, too. My heart, Jenny’s heart, longed so much to hear Mama, to hear Dada.

Often, I’d take Davey to the park. He usually let me hold his hand and guide him there, and once there, he spent most of the time sifting through the smooth pebbles surrounding the slides and swings. The therapists call it stimming — self-stimulating behavior — during which he’ll fixate on an object or movement — flapping his hands, stroking a stuffed animal over and over.

Sifting rocks through his fingers past the point most children would find it boring and move on.

We were supposed to discourage this, try to distract him, redirect him, but in the park I just let him be. Let him sift the small, cool pebbles through his fingers over and over again. I liked to think he was doing what little kids were supposed to do.

A month after the intruder came uninvited into our house, Davey still had not spoken his first word. Syllables, yes — “Ba” and “ka” and “ah” and “eh.” So we knew he was trying. We knew, we prayed, the words would come. We remained hopeful. Even when he started spending hours on the landing where the intruder had died.

The first time I noticed him there, he was making sounds. “Da—” he said. “Ah — eh.” I watched, not wanting to interrupt. He giggled. Rocked back and forth on his knees. Stared at the wall. Rocked back and forth. “Ah. Eh. Kah.”

Finally, I offered my hand to him. “Davey, c’mon, hon.”

A shadow fluttered against the wall and disappeared.

I froze.

Davey giggled.

I forced a smile. “Davey?”

He turned to my voice, but didn’t look at me. He stood and walked upstairs, whatever spell that held him now broken.

I shivered. The child gate swung slowly and tapped against the wall as he passed it.

The child gate.

How long would I feel the need to keep it there? Davey had the steps mastered even before the intruder came. Yet, when going to bed, I continued to shut it. Despite our new alarm system, despite keeping our windows closed at night, I felt safer with the gate latched.

I began to find him there often. Kneeling, rocking, flapping his hands, his mouth making sounds. It no longer seemed like the typical self-stimulation of autism, but something more, like something in that spot had a pull on him.

And the briefest of shadows appeared and disappeared on the wall, a shadow that should not be there, not the way the light shined, the way the sun hit the banister and spindles. I began to see it more and more, always fleeting.

“C’mon. Take my hand.”

Davey stared at the wall, oblivious to my presence, my voice. His right hand flapped, the individual fingers folding and unfolding. He opened his mouth, sounds forming. “Kah… kah… kah… er… kah… er…”

I continued to take Davey to the park. Now, he not only sifted the playground’s pebbles through his small, soft fingers, but he scooped them into his mouth, as well. At first, I stopped him. They were dirty and I was afraid he’d choke or swallow them, but he did neither. It soothed him to roll the smooth stones over his teeth, over his gums and tongue. I ended up letting him be, letting him stuff the stones in his mouth and sucking them clean. There were worse things a kid could do.

As I suspected, the police treated the death of the intruder in our house as an accident. He tripped on the child gate, fell down the steps and cracked his head open on the corner of the stair railing, end of story. His name was Clayton Jones, and he had a substantial record of B&E, as well as domestic violence.

Never murder, however.

One day, while Davey kneeled on the landing, rocking back and forth and staring at the wall, the shadow stayed.

I blinked and it stayed.

I looked away and looked back and it stayed.

The shadow that should not be there.

It gained form. Gained shape. The shape of a sitting man, one leg bent unnaturally.

I scooped Davey into my arms. “No!” I shouted, my voice frightening him. He cried, hitting me hard across the cheek, once, twice. I carried him into our bedroom, dropped him on the bed and closed the door. I let him tantrum as I paced back and forth, and soon the fight was out of him and he collapsed in a snoring heap amidst the rumpled and tossed white sheets.

I walked back to the top of the stairs and slid my eyes down the wall, looking for the shadow that should not be there, but all I saw were the shadows of banister spindles cast by the foyer lights. I took the steps slowly and stopped on the landing where the intruder died, my own shadow now cast, a big, dumb, still thing. I waited. Listened. Had I really seen it? I stepped aside to let the foyer light through, and still — nothing.

“What do you want?” I whispered to the wall. Nothing answered.

Instead, I heard movement on the tile floor below. I whirled.

“Jenny?”

She regarded me curiously.

“You scared the crap out of me,” I said.

Fatigue had tattooed purple-black half-moons beneath her eyes, had stolen her easy smile. “You’ve seen it, too?” she asked.

My brain refused to acknowledge I’d even heard her question. I couldn’t answer, because if I did, if I acknowledged that yes, I had seen it, it would be so much harder to return to any sense of normalcy. Easier to convince myself I’d been imagining things if no one else validated that shadows existed where they shouldn’t.

“John?” she said, waiting.

I shook my head and climbed the stairs.

A week later. Two in the morning. I woke. Heard something on the stairs.

There wasn’t enough oxygen in the room to breathe. I listened. Listened closely. The steps creaked. I sat up. Saw through the bedroom door that the child gate was open. I reached under the bed and felt for the bat, a wooden Louisville Slugger, and grabbed it around the middle. I slid out of bed. Jenny remained asleep, sleeping pills now a regular part of her night-time routine.

Another creak. I heard whispers. I couldn’t make out the words. I stepped quietly to the bedroom doorway. As I did so, a familiar odor hit me.

Davey. Where was Davey?

The odor was strong. I peered over the top of the stairs and tightened my grip on the Slugger. My eyes seemed to play tricks on me, because I saw two figures. Davey was one of them, his hair gelled with what I realized was his own shit. The other form—

But no. My eyes adjusted. There was no other form.

I turned on the hall light.

“Davey!” I hurried down the steps.

Davey was naked, his body covered with the awful brown smears of excrement. He covered his eyes with filth-covered hands to block out the light.

Jenny’s voice came groggily from the bedroom. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

I swallowed. “It’s okay. It’s just Davey. Go back to bed.”

Davey raised a shit-covered hand, four fingers curling in to the palm, one finger, the index finger, pointing at me. He frowned, concentrating. “Kah…” he said.

I realized he’d smeared the wall. The feces was in lines — intersecting lines — more than lines.

“Kah…” Davey tried, looking me directly in the eye.

I looked again at the wall, at the lines, at the letters he’d drawn there, thick and brown and reeking. He had spelled a word. Couldn’t even talk, yet, but he’d spelled a word.

As the word registered in my mind, I faced Davey once again. His eyes penetrated deep into mine, his finger accusatory. With much effort, he finally said his first word, the same word written on the wall.

“Kah…” he said. “Kah…”

Finally, he managed it.

“Killer,” he said, his eyes on my eyes, through my eyes, into my brain.

“Kah… killer,” he said again, his shit-covered finger pointing at me, an inch from my chest. “Killer!” he spat out.

The sound of a soft sigh briefly surrounded my head, and the shadow that had been sitting there this entire time dissipated amidst the purposeful lines of Davey’s shit.

I grabbed my son, put my arms around him, squeezed him tight and put my mouth to his ear. I whispered into it, something for him to hear, something I needed to hear.

“Davey,” I whispered. “I am here. I am not a shadow. I will always love you and protect you. Look at me. I am here.”

His hand dropped to his side. His eyes lost their focus.

I did the only thing I could do.

I gently picked him up and carried him upstairs. Scrubbed him clean and let him soak in the warm water. While he did so, I quietly scrubbed the wall clean. And then, so as not to wake Jenny, I found a screwdriver and quietly dismantled the child gate.

I placed it outside and prayed the shadow of the man I killed went with it.

Rhythm of the Dead

Too much tequila. It was hard to move from the edge of the narrow canal that ran through San Miguel. Shallow, dirty water flowed around a dead mule ripe with flies. I wondered how long it would lie there before someone dragged it out. Wondered if the inside of my stomach wasn’t much worse off than that mule. I belched up an acidic bubble of tequila and molé. Never again.

Someone tugged at the back of my shirt. I turned.

A child. Chalky-brown skin, hazelnut eyes, thick black hair falling to her shoulders in waves. She looked up and smiled.

I forced myself to smile back. It was hard not to stare at her mouth, at the desecrated gums where shiny white teeth once sat.

She held out her hand.

“What’s the matter? You lost?” I took hold of her delicate, cool fingers. My Spanish was piss-poor, so I didn’t even bother. “Where’s your ma?”

Wordlessly, she pulled me over the city’s cobblestone streets. We passed old buildings, walked quietly through narrow, dark alleyways, passing no one, hearing the bark and howl of dogs in the distance. Rod Stewart’s Maggie May wavered through the air from a nearby bar. Every once in a while, the girl looked back at me and smiled, as if to say, Not much further. You’ll like it where we’re going.

I fell in love with San Miguel the minute I got off the bus three weeks earlier. The jacaranda trees were in bloom, the people friendly — I was amazed at the abundance of shops and art boutiques. I spent half my days sipping Café Viennese in the Bellas Artes building, watching students of the Instituto Nacional in the courtyard below. The other half I spent sitting on a bench in El Jardin, the city’s zocalo, writing. There was something about the cacophony of noisy sparrows, vendors hawking tortillas and jewelry, and young men and women flirting in bright, freshly ironed clothes that lent itself to a day of writing. Instead of a distraction, the noises and sights soothed me, reminded me I wasn’t alone in this world.

Not much further…

At night, I drank Tecate and shots of tequila that the locals bought me. They seemed to find it entertaining to get the white turista drunk. Everything was fine, more than fine, except that I only had a few days left before my vacation was over. Everything was more than fine until—

Not much further…

She smiled at me. I grew dizzy. Her shredded gums bled over pink lips. Blood dribbled down her chin. She wiped it away with the back of her hand as if it were nothing more than spit.

We walked through El Jardin. The sparrows screamed at us. The walkways were drenched in shadow, the gazebo a black silhouette against the backdrop of La Parroquia. An elderly man lay on the gazebo steps, moaning, trembling, his left eye open and darting, as if loose in its socket.

“Where are you taking me?”

The girl looked back at me, shook her head shyly.

What was I doing here? Why was I following this child? I looked down at her, at the back of her neck, at the shimmer of her black hair. We left the edge of the zocalo and crossed the street to La Parroquia.

La Parroquia; a beautiful nightmare church of gothic architecture, sharp parapets, ornate frescoes.

“We’re going there? But it’s closed.”

I knew she didn’t understand, but it was one of those alcohol hazy nights where it helps to speak out loud in order to prove you’re not dreaming.

We walked up pink stone steps to a set of monstrous wooden doors studded with rivets. She let go of my hand, grabbed the brass knob and leaned back. It swung silently open. A cool breeze ripe with the scent of candle wax, old paper, and wet rock caressed my face. She wiped blood from her chin, looked back at me and smiled.

Quick footsteps slapped the stone behind me. I whirled around. An older woman, face grim, radiating anger, grabbed the girl around the waist, picked her up, and spat at me.

“Turista!”

I brushed the spit off my neck, stood there, dumbfounded. Watched as the woman carried her daughter away.

Voices bubbled out from the church.

I’d visited during the day, marveled at the opulence, the highly detailed statues of saints, the thick gold leaf suffocating the altar. Now, as I stepped inside, it was all musty darkness. A soft talcum glow rose from the stairway descending to the catacombs, off-limits to visitors except on the Day of the Dead.

Murmurs. A barely audible chant. A dull steady beat rising from beneath the floor.

The glow in the stairway intensified. And then a voice. Beautiful. Young. Singing. It was a soft warm caress across my soul. I drifted toward the stairway, hovered over the steps, lost to the music. How could I turn away from something so beautiful?

I was halfway down the steps when someone screamed.

The beat turned into a sharp percussive attack that jostled every bone, every organ in my body. I thought my bones would shatter, crumble to dust. I fell back, crab-walked up the steps, ran to the door.

Nobody stopped me. I ran a frantic mile back to the hotel.

As I lay in bed, waiting for the room to spin, I wondered briefly about the young girl, about her ruined mouth. I thought about my own little girl, waiting back home. What would I have done if I saw her hand in hand with a stranger about to go into a dark church?

I wondered about the beautiful voice that drifted up from the catacombs.

I called home the next morning.

“Jane, it’s me. How’s Peanut?” My pet name for Shelly, our eight-year-old daughter.

“She misses you, but otherwise, she’s fine. How are you?”

“I’m good. I can’t talk long. I just — I just wanted to know how she’s doing. Can I talk to her?”

“She’s at school. Remember? School?”

“Oh yeah. What about you? Holding up?”

The way she breathed over the phone, just one breath; I visualized her. Shoulders slumped, eyes closed, nose pinched slightly as she tried to control her breathing.

“I’m okay,” she said. “You’re still coming home Thursday?”

“Yes.” I rested my head against the payphone. “I think I’ll be alright now. I had lots of time to think.”

“You get some writing done?”

“Yes.”

“Good. John? I miss you.”

I sighed. “Miss you, too. Give Peanut a hug.”

We said goodbye and hung up.

I packed my suitcase for the flight home, then took the short stroll to the bar. Tecate, tequila, and tortillas. I began to panic. Three weeks of soul searching, and I hadn’t found a goddamn thing. It was the first time I’d been alone — really alone — in the ten years of our marriage.

I knew I missed Jane. Who was I kidding? Maybe things weren’t perfect, but they weren’t all that bad, either. And I certainly missed Shelly. Peanut. Missed her smile, her voice, her laugh. So what was there to think about? What else did I need?

On the way back to the motel, the sound of moaning stopped me. I looked down the nearest alley. A man stumbled over the cobblestones, apparently drunk. Every few feet he stopped and propped himself up against rough stucco walls. He reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a fistful of -- something. He stopped. Leaned against the wall. Stared at the contents of his hand.

Blood dripped from his mouth and spattered on the stones like raindrops.

He shook his head. Frowned at what he held. Slowly turned his hand over, letting the contents scatter over the ground.

Tiny white things. Chiclets? Bright-eyed children sold them to tourists in the zocalo. The man gathered himself and continued along the alley. More white things fell from his pockets, hitting the street like dice.

I followed. They weren’t Chiclets. They were hard as pebbles beneath my shoes.

I bent down. Picked one up.

It was a tooth. A speck of blood still glistened on the root.

His mouth…

The girl’s mouth…

Not much further.

I followed him to La Parroquia. He paused at the foot of the steps that led to its entrance. He put his head in his hands. I stood at the edge of the zocalo watching, listening to his sobs. He abruptly turned and walked away.

But I didn’t.

I stayed.

“Jesus, John — what is it you’re looking for? Are you tired of this? Tired of being a husband? A father? What are you looking for?”

“I don’t know. I—”

Through the large front doors. Down the rough stone steps. Already, the music, that beautiful, saintly voice, pulling me down those steps like a soft velvet rope strung around my waist. I didn’t understand what she sang, but the words weren’t important — it was the way she sang — the melody, the timbre of her voice.

At the bottom of the steps, this is what I saw—

Slabs carved into the stone floor, the coverings of graves etched with the names of dead clergymen. Standing on these tombs were twenty people in a circle — men, women, children — their backs bare and golden in the light of torches, eyes alight with ecstasy, chins dripping blood. And all of their teeth intact. The singing came from within the circle.

Why didn’t I turn and run?

The singing pulled me closer. A sweet melancholic sound full of love. Hope. There was nothing to be afraid of here. I nudged my way into the circle.

She stood over a rough wooden table. As she sang, she smiled. In each of her hands was a long, sharp knife.

She was as beautiful as her voice. Jet-black hair. Skin the color of melting caramel. I couldn’t tell you how old she was. Thirty? Sixteen? I leaned in through the crowd of people to see what was on the table.

The man she worked her knives through wore the robes of a priest. The robes were spread apart to expose his body.

There wasn’t much left.

She sang. Looked at me. Continued singing as she smiled, then carved out a piece of the man’s thigh. She scooped it up with one of her knives and handed it to the person closest to her. It was passed from hand to hand until it reached me. I held it, the hunk the size of a coin purse, and felt it throb against my palm. I looked at the woman. She nodded. Beautiful words flowed from her lips. Beautiful intoxication.

I lifted the flesh to my lips and ate.

The circle closed around me. Hands slapped and patted me on the back. Teeth. So many teeth. Lips pulled back in crimson smiles of rapture. Why wasn’t I revolted? Why didn’t I run screaming at what I had done?

The singing continued. The knives kept moving within the robes of the dead priest. The circle reformed and resumed their bloody communion. The drumming started.

The drumming of the dead.

It was the same pounding I’d heard the last time in the church when I thought my bones would shatter. It came from within the stone tombs, the former bishops and priests of the church playing a tribal rhythm of unholy joy. What had aroused them? What caused them to celebrate along with the living?

And this time…

The drumming…

The beat coursed through my bones, my blood, took over the beating of my heart. I felt myself as one with everyone in the catacombs, living and dead alike.

I’d never felt such pure joy.

I stayed until there was nothing left of the desecrated priest. I stayed, hoping someone else would be brought fresh to the table. When the singing stopped, when the percussion of the dead stopped, the circle broke.

I found myself alone in an alley.

Hungry and alone.

My stomach growled. I wondered if the old man with the darting eye had passed out on the gazebo. I stumbled toward the zocalo. If anyone saw me, they would’ve judged me drunk.

The old man lay on his side on the gazebo steps, groaning in his sleep, his snores wet and throaty. I hovered over him. Reached down to touch him. Ran my fingers over his cheek. His eyes opened slowly. Bloodshot eyes. Eyes that held no fear. He smiled.

Tiny silver crosses were jammed haphazardly into his gums. When he laughed, blood trickled out. He babbled incoherently, the words crucified on the bramble of metal in his mouth.

I turned and ran as fast as I could, trying to outrun the hunger, the anticipation of flesh squishing warmly in my mouth. I flew blindly into the hotel, burst into my room and collapsed on the bed.

Time passed. Two hours? Three? My hands became numb from gripping the sheets. I sat up. Looked across the room in the mirror. Dried blood decorated my chin. I looked at my hands. Had I run across town with these gore-soaked claws? Oh God, oh God…

How dare I cry to God? Why should He help me?

I crept to the bathroom. Looked in the mirror. Grabbed my bottom lip between thumb and forefinger and yanked down. I stared at my teeth. My stomach growled. I wanted more.

More.

I wanted to sink my teeth into flesh, wanted to tear skin from bone, savor the flavor, the texture on my pulsing tongue.

- god oh god oh god please god just one more taste, one more bite, one more one more one more—

I stood there panting like a starving dog.

Tomorrow. I had to leave tomorrow. I had to fly home. What would I do when I saw my family again? Pink drool rained from my lips. I thought of my daughter, my Peanut.

How good she would taste. The feel…

Oh god oh god

No god NO!

I struck the mirror hard with my fist. It exploded in a crash of sparkling shards. Blood gushed from my knuckles. I looked at them, considered stripping the raw flesh from my fingers with my teeth.

My teeth.

I grabbed a piece of glass from the sink, the edge slicing into my palm. I opened my mouth.

This craving. This need.

I lifted the shard of glass. It gleamed like a dagger in the bathroom lights. I jabbed it into my gums. Dug into the soft pink flesh. Popped out a glistening tooth with a flick of my wrist.

I decided to cure this craving one tooth at a time.

I never boarded the plane.

My mouth still bleeds, especially when the craving is at its worst. There are times when I see the others — the little girl, the old man from the gazebo, the man from the alley. We gather at the steps of the monstrously beautiful church, longing to go inside. But our mouths are useless now. We are unable to gnash and tear, unable to satisfy our need, our primal need, to feel the warmth of flesh squish between our teeth.

We are unable to satiate the craving we share.

More have joined us. Those who believed they could remove the craving by simply removing their teeth. We laugh and cry at our stupidity. So we do what we can.

We look upon the doors of the church, strain to hear the primal rhythms of the dead, and imagine.

We imagine.

It is all we have.

Seller’s Market

This is our house. A modest three-bedroom rambler painted light blue. The backyard fences in a deck and a beautiful red maple. An ancient oak stands out front. Boxes full of petunias grace the windows like mascara, and there are several large bleeding hearts on either side of the front steps.

It’s a pleasant neighborhood. Quiet for the most part. Not a lot of kids. I mow the lawn, take out the garbage. Do the dishes, the cleaning. There’s a lot of work to be done to make this house presentable. A lot of sacrifices.

We’d been living in a one-bedroom apartment for our first two years of marriage. When Ellen learned she was pregnant, the urge to buy a house suitable for raising a family came upon her like an unstoppable freight train.

“I can’t stand it here anymore. It’s so cramped. This is no place to raise a family.” She pats her stomach, which barely shows at this point. “I want a yard. A garden.”

I look up from the evening news.

“I’m suffocating,” she says.

Saturday morning she’s up at the crack of dawn. She scrambles eggs for breakfast, brews coffee, butters toast. The real estate section from the morning newspaper lays spread out on the kitchen table. Thick red marker circles the properties she wants to see.

It’s insane. Every house we look at is sold within an hour of our arrival. Twice we find houses we’re excited about, and twice they’re bought out from under us before we even have a chance to check out the basement.

It’s like that on Sunday, too.

I suggest we wait until the market cools off.

“Are you kidding me?” Ellen snaps. “Every night I can hear the couple next door coughing and snoring, and the people stomping on the floor above us at all hours of the day. How many times have they jacked up the rent on us here? They think they can screw us over anytime they want. I can’t stand it.”

We look every day of the following week, and the results are the same. Nothing. Insanity. It’s a seller’s market.

Ellen gets grumpier each day. Short-tempered. She spends more and more time at night on the phone with her best friend Ruth Grayson, her sharp words muffled through the bedroom door.

It is two weeks later that I arrive home after work to find my wife sitting on the couch with a serene look on her face. She turns to me as I enter.

“I’ve found a home.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I mean I bought one. It’s ours.” She ignores the stupefied look on my face. “Ruth introduced me to a real estate agent yesterday.”

“Ruth?”

“The first place he showed me was perfect. I hope you don’t mind, honey, but I had to act quickly.”

“Couldn’t you have called me?”

“I told you — I had to act quickly.”

A little something about Ruth Grayson; she makes me sick. I hate the way she boasts of her conquests, of how easy it is to seduce a happily married man, the simplicity of getting him to betray his wife and children. I don’t like the way Ellen responds to this nonsense. She laughs, as if it were all some kind of joke.

Ruth once tried to seduce me. One night when Ellen was gone, she came over and asked for her.

“She’s out,” I told her. “I thought you knew that.”

“Oh, that’s right.” She laughs. Walks into our house, brushing past me. Turns and winks. “I did know that.” She unbuttons her blouse and pulls it open.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“What’s it look like I’m doing?”

She reaches over and brushes her hand over my crotch.

“It’s time for you to go.”

“Oh, come on now,” she says. “Ellen’s not here.”

“She’s your best friend.”

“What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

She reaches back for my crotch. I slap her hand away. Grab her by the shoulders and turn her toward the door.

“Seriously,” I say. “Get the hell out of here.”

“Oh, come on now.”

“Out.”

“Prude.”

“Slut.”

She leaves, buttoning her blouse, laughing.

I hate her. And what’s more, part of me thinks it’s some game she’s playing with me, a game that Ellen is in on. A wager, perhaps. I can just hear her bragging to Ellen how she can seduce any married man she wants to.

And Ellen says, “Not Roger.”

And Ruth says, “Oh, no?”

“Just try it.”

“You’re on.”

And as I imagine Ellen laughing, I feel like I want to throw up.

Jealousy is a dangerous emotion. It clouds the mind. It influences us irrationally and blinds us from the truth. I become suspicious that Ellen is having an affair with our real estate agent.

“Ruth recommended this guy?” I ask.

Ellen nods. She has trouble looking directly into my eyes.

“You were lucky,” I say, testing her. “To find a place so easily with this guy, even in this current housing market.”

Ellen nods again. I try to get her to look at me, but she won’t.

“He just showed you this house. Said it’s yours if you want it?”

Ellen yawns. “I’m tired,” she says. “I had a busy day.”

“Sounds like it.”

Then she snaps. “Look, what are you trying to imply?” Her eyes flash. “I got the house fair and square. It’s a nice house, and now you’re accusing me—” She stops.

“Accusing you of what?” I ask.

Her eyes smolder. My heart races.

“You should thank me,” she says.

I leave the room.

It doesn’t matter that she is four months pregnant. All I can see is the beauty she radiates. All I can think of is how desirable she is, how another man’s eyes would smolder at the sight of her, how lurid fantasies would slink through his head.

The next day, my suspicions are reinforced. I hear a voice-mail message left for Ellen. It’s Ruth.

“I just got off the phone with Mr. Wishlow, and he said he made you a sweet, sweet deal. God, El, I hope it was as sweet as mine. Didn’t I tell you he was the best? And it was so easy, wasn’t it Ellen dear? I’m glad you’re finally loosening up. It almost makes me want to move every week. I gotta go. Call me when you can. I want to hear all of the details. You understand, darling? All of them.”

I erase the message and say nothing. It feels like a tourniquet has been placed around my heart and Ruth’s voice tightens it with every word.

The movers we hire are fast and efficient. We spend the first week taking down wall-paper, painting, cleaning, arranging furniture. We start with the living room, then the master bedroom. We move on to the baby’s room. The paint we choose is a bright, sunny yellow. We buy a crib, bedding, a changing table. My mother sends us a mobile to hang above the crib, a mobile of tiny stuffed bears and tigers and birds. When it turns, a song plays. I can picture the baby reaching up with her tiny pink hand, wondering what these little creatures are hanging above her. The thought makes me smile. The thought takes some of the anger away.

There is one room in the basement that we’re not quite sure what to do with. It’s a small room, only five by five. An old well room, we think. But now it’s only an empty cement cell, bare and dingy. Its door is paneled like the rest of the basement wall, and is hard to see unless you look closely. Then you see the small metal latch that opens it and its faint outline in the wall. It will make a good storage room, perhaps.

I meet some of the neighbors. Ken and Linda Hughes who live next door bring us fresh baked bread as a house-warming gift. John and Lisa Solomon from down the street pass by nightly while walking their German shepherd. Betty Sandford, an elderly widow who comes by on our seventh night here, asking if we’ve seen her cat, Princess.

At work, my imagination runs rampant. It’s hard to concentrate on the balance sheets, the expense reports, the reconciliations. Instead, I see my wife driving away from our house and meeting up with Mr. Wishlow at some cheap hotel, fulfilling her part of whatever bargain they struck as she’s down on all fours, letting him inside of her. The brashness of it, the audacity of him, placing himself so disgustingly close to our unborn child.

I have to get up from my desk often, take short walks around the office building to keep myself from yelling with rage.

That night when Ellen is gone, I begin to smell something. Something in the attic. Rotting. I set a ladder beneath the square of plywood and push it aside, raising my head above the attic floor. There is a buzz of flies like the hum of a high voltage power line. I shine a flashlight along the attic walls, and at first I see nothing but insulation, a thick pink snow. Then something catches my eye. A gray paw sticking up. And the flies circling it. A cat.

I get gloves and carefully climb into the attic, making sure to keep my weight on the wooden beams. I lift the cat up out of the insulation. Its belly has been sliced open. Its insides have been taken out. I wonder how long it’s been there.

The next evening, I hear Ellen answer the phone after one short ring. I turn down the volume of the television and try to listen. She speaks quietly, yet I hear her, the words like needles pushed into my ears.

“Not tonight. No. I can’t. Tomorrow. When he’s gone. Then we’re done.”

There is a soft click as the phone is placed back in its cradle. Anger overwhelms me. It’s as if a light bulb has exploded in my skull. I want to throw something, I want to hit someone. I want to scream my fucking head off. But instead, I swallow it. I save it in my stomach, keeping it ready, like gasoline. When I face him, he will be the spark that ignites it. He will feel its burn.

At three in the morning I wake as my wife gets out of bed. I pretend to sleep and can feel her hovering over me, watching. She tiptoes out of the room. I hear four short beeps as she deactivates out alarm system. The house shudders slightly as the garage door rises and her car rumbles to life.

My God, is she that desperate, that hungry for this man that she can’t even wait until I’ve left for work?

I wait for her to come back as I toss and turn in bed, my imagination a whirlwind of lurid images and sounds. But by the time she returns and slips quietly next to me in bed, I have somehow managed to fall asleep.

The next day after I get home from work, I can’t stand it anymore. I had spent the whole time thinking I could just let it go, just swallow the thoughts, the suspicions I had, but now they burst up into my throat like acid.

“What kind of deal did you make with him?” I ask. “Did you have to fuck him? Was that part of the deal?”

She sits on the couch, her legs tucked under her. Her eyes widen and turn to her lap. “No.”

“Don’t lie to me.” I’ve never felt this angry, this sure of something in my whole life. “Did you fuck him?”

“No,” she insists.

“Look me in the eye and tell me that. Tell me, ‘I did not fuck him.’”

She puts her face in her hands and shakes her head, then starts rocking back and forth. I can feel it now. I can tell she is going to break. I feel satisfaction coming on along with a new sense of nausea. The whole situation is unreal, and I don’t want it to be happening, but I have to hear her answer. I have to hear it.

This time I yell. “Did you fuck him?”

She looks up at me. Tears stream down her face, but she looks me in the eye and says, “You bastard, you goddamn bastard. No. I did not fuck him.”

I stand there watching her, waiting for her gaze to break, but it doesn’t. It seems like we are frozen like that for hours, yet it is only a matter of seconds before she mumbles the next words

“He gave me a second option.”

My gut twists in on itself. Even though part of me is so completely sure she slept with the real estate agent to get our house, there’s another larger part that thinks the whole idea was ridiculous. And now these words. Second option.

“And what was that?” I ask. “What was your second option?”

She stands up. Her eyes flash. “Why can’t you trust me? You’ve never trusted me.” She storms out of the room.

The next night, the buzz of flies is so loud I can hear it through the ceiling like a muffled power generator. I wait until Ellen leaves, get my gloves, and climb into the attic again. The smell is intense.

It’s a dog this time. A big German shepherd, lay across two beams on its side, it’s back haunches and snout sticking above the pink insulation. Is it the same dog I’ve seen the Solomon’s out walking night after night? My God.

It’s hard work removing it. The thing is heavy, but again, the insides have been scooped out.

I confront Ellen about the dog. It is strange accusing my five month pregnant wife of this deed. Accuse? That is too harsh of a word. I question her. But instead of pleading ignorance and acting shocked and disgusted, she just stares at me. Looks me in the eye. Tears run down her cheeks as she says, “I told you, I did not fuck him.” How do you respond to something like that? I shut down. Walk away. Sit at my desk and stare at a blank computer screen for over an hour.

Even though we spend that night in the same bed, we might as well be on opposite sides of the world. The space between us seems infinite and cold. I can barely sleep, and when I do, it is only for minutes at a time.

At work the next day, I realize I have never met our real estate agent, Mr. Wishlow. He is faceless and dark in my imagination. He looms like a giant shadow in the corners of my mind. I can barely get any work done. When my boss asks what’s wrong, I tell him I can’t talk about it. I mumble something about family troubles.

When I get home, I find Ellen groaning in the bathroom. Her face is ashen. When I ask her what is wrong, she breaks down and collapses in my arms. I feel her tears warm and wet on my shoulder. “What is it?” I ask.

“The baby,” she says. “The baby.”

She crumples to the floor, her body heaving. She’s hysterical. Blood trickles from beneath her skirt.

I take her to the emergency room. They tend to her, give her a sedative, tell her everything is going to be all right. A young intern takes me aside and tells me Ellen has miscarried. He asks me what she did with the fetus.

I make no secret of placing the ladder beneath the attic opening, of donning gloves, of climbing into the attic, staying on the beams, of screaming with rage when I see it, a tiny hand poking through the pink insulation. I lift it and cradle it in my arms. It’s so small. So light. Dressed in doll clothing to hide the cut. I climb carefully down the ladder, balancing it in one hand.

“When does it end?” I ask her.

She won’t look at me. “It’s over,” she says. “It’s done.”

Can I believe her? When will it really end? How far does she have to go? Was I part of the deal? Was I included in this escalation of sacrifices?

When I ask her this, she replies quietly, “I could never hurt you.” I stand and wait for her to say something else. I watch her as she walks away, her head bowed down, weary and defeated. At that moment, I believe her. At that moment, I feel my heart colliding against my rib cage. What pain she has gone through. What heartbreak. An ugly sound breaks from my throat. I am overcome by loud, body wrenching sobs. To want something so bad…

I run to her. Put my arms around her. Tell her how much I love her, how much I need her.

Two weeks have passed and things are almost back to normal. I outfitted the well room with a comfortable chair and a table full of her favorite books. I sawed a hole in the door at eye level and moved the television at an angle where she can see it. I let her have the remote control.

I don’t believe she’d ever try to kill me. I would hope not. After all, I love her with all my heart. I always have. But still—

I don’t entirely trust her.

Not quite…

Pran’s Confession

The young men in Bangkok sometimes called him Grandpa or Uncle as he clutched their lithe oiled bodies. His fingers grasped a bit too tightly; his nails dug into their skin and drew beads of blood. Sometimes he’d choke them, but never enough to kill them. He had to be careful. He was gaining a reputation among them, and a reputation was something he had to stay away from. But it was hard not to let the old feelings overcome him, the memories flooding into his mind of how it once felt to watch a life quickly fade behind the suffocating film of a plastic bag.

Samnang startled. He clutched frantically at his shirt pocket. The piece of paper was still there.

It was a long, tedious train ride from the Thai border in the northwest to the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. He slept most of the way, getting out to stretch at Battambang and again at Pursat, where he ate a quick meal of fish soup. He fell back into another short, fitful nap. Hard to sleep because of the dreams. His dreams of Pran.

There were other dreams, too, other nightmares of those times. Dreams of Duch, the prison’s director; his parchment-like face, teeth too big for his mouth, his death-like smile. How could one not have nightmares about him? But it was Pran who coaxed Samnang back to prison S-21. Not the nightmares of the beatings, the beheadings, the children in black peasant garb with red scarves, suffocating men and women with clear, plastic bags — men and women who could’ve been their parents.

No.

It was the simple dreams of Pran whispering to him in a voice worn down from days of screaming—

“You took my soul.”

The train pulled into the Phnom Penh Train Station. Samnang got off with a small backpack. He pulled his New York Mets cap down low on his forehead and looked out over the waters of Boeng Kak. Tendrils of dawn reached out over the lake’s surface revealing the shapes of small boats and early risen fishermen setting out nets.

He felt for the piece of paper folded in his shirt pocket. Rubbed his fingers absently over the tiny protrusion it made against the shirt’s fabric. A tremor ran along his arm up to his shoulder. His tongue felt dry. He wanted to lay down here as the sun rose, shut his eyes to the sound of the cormorants and egrets, and sleep for a hundred years. But he knew if he did that now, Pran would continue to come to him in his sleep. Plead to him forever—

My soul.

He turned in a circle to work out the painful cramps in his calves, then found a cyclo and driver to take him south down the city streets and boulevards. He recognized many of the buildings, the monuments, the roads — yet something had drastically changed in his absence. What was it?

In the markets, vendors busied themselves over colorful displays of fruits and vegetables and the silver bullet shape of fresh fish. Monks shuffled past in bright saffron robes. Children with outstretched hands implored him to toss them spare change. So many people bustling about in the warm morning air. So many people.

That was it. The people. They moved about freely now, and there were so many of them. Not like the days of the Khmer Rouge, when the city had been emptied of nearly everyone, its citizens forced to the outlying hills and labor camps. They’d been promised peace, but were given nothing but violence and death.

Now the city thrived. But the urging of the dead kept Samnang moving. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep as the wheels of the cyclo whirred over fresh blacktop.

Was that the only reason he came? To put a continuing dream to rest? To give peace to just one of many souls that begged for justice? Surely, there were other reasons.

He awoke when the cyclo driver braked to a squeaky stop.

There it was. The prison.

Now it was a museum. The Tuol Sleng museum. A testament to the atrocities of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Back then it was referred to simply as Security Prison 21.

S-21.

Samnang tipped the cyclo driver and stood alone outside the gate, reading the old red sign.

The words chilled him.

Was I such a monster?

Samnang kept his sunglasses on and his Mets cap pulled low. Would anyone recognize him after all these years? Most of the ones who’d feared him were killed long ago, and besides — his hair was mostly gone now, the rest of it wisps of bone white. His skin was creased with age, and there were scars on his neck and face where dozens of black, cancerous moles had been removed.

He nodded at the guard standing casually at the museum’s entrance and stepped into the compound. For one dizzying moment he felt as if he’d never left, as if his years in Bangkok were nothing but a sweet, vivid dream.

Phantom smells of sweat, blood, and feces invaded his nostrils.

My uniform. Where’s my uniform?

He’d be punished without his uniform.

And Duch — he sensed him in the walls. Felt that he’d step around a corner at any moment with his donkey teeth, guards on either side. One nod and the guards would descend upon Samnang with hard black batons.

The sound of children playing on the grounds of the compound snapped him back to reality.

Before this was a prison, it was a school. Funny how things have come full circle. Children again play on the open field.

How many have I watched die here?

Do these children know the ground they now play on is saturated with the blood of human slaughter?

Samnang swept back thin strands of hair and tucked them back up into his cap. He walked into one of the buildings.

Prison cells that had once been classrooms.

You will write your confession now.

Samnang gasped as he peered into one of the cells. Black and white photographs covered the walls from floor to ceiling. Mugshots that Samnang himself had taken.

There were hundreds of them. Thousands. Every room that he passed was full of them. Photographs of the prisoners who lived and died here. Doomed faces, blank eyes, unsmiling mouths. They continued to look at Samnang as they did all those years ago.

This one died easily. And here — she hung herself with her trousers. And this one — and here — taken out to Choeung Ek. The killing fields. And this boy here begged for his mother.

So many of them crowding around him. How could he remember them all?

Over 17,000 prisoners.

Only seven survived.

He felt once again for the paper folded neatly in his pocket. He searched for Pran’s face among the photographs on the walls.

So many. So many. The light from their eyes lost as they stare at the camera, their wills smashed. It’s as if they are already dead.

Why this obsession with documentation? Duch was meticulous about keeping records. His red-inked notations peppered many of the confessions. It was as if the Khmer Rouge wanted to leave behind proof of their cruelty.

Another room full of pictures.

More familiar faces.

Samnang remembered how dazed they were, their blindfolds freshly removed, beatings freshly stopped, his own diatribes halted as he asked them to look at the camera lens. Duch would tell them to smile. He’d laugh at his own joke, his tongue waving behind ghost white teeth.

But the prisoners never smiled.

How long ago had it been? Twenty-five years?

His index finger twitched at the phantom memory of taking Pran’s photograph—

—placid face, darkly tanned, his prisoner number — 10572 — stitched on his tattered shirt.

Pran squinted. Poor eyesight. Owl-like circles of light skin where the frames of glasses once sat.

Glasses were a sign of an educated man.

The welts and scars on his hands were fresh, probably inflicted by Pran himself to make him appear like a simple farmer from the hills. A farmer, a peasant, a friend of Angka would have no need of glasses, no need for smooth, soft hands. And Angka had no need for educated men.

Angka — the Central Party of the Khmer Rouge.

They wanted the farmers, men from the hills, whose minds were free of education, whose minds were blank slates that could easily be filled.

“You will write your confession now, Pran.”

Iron manacles, big enough for oxen, restrained Pran’s legs. His hands were tied behind him with wire, and a heavy chain connected them to the manacles. “Who is Angka?”

Samnang flexed the fingers of his right hand. “Angka is your new family.” He squatted in front of Pran, lifted his head up by the hair so that he could look into his eyes. “Angka is your mother and father. Angka is all you need.” He let go of Pran’s hair and brought his right fist quickly forward, connecting with Pran’s nose in one dizzying instant. Samnang felt the small bones break, felt a fresh burst of blood on his knuckles. He stepped back and flung it off his fingers.

Pran breathed heavily through his mouth as he looked up at Samnang, eyes squinting, jaw quivering with pain.

“Angka doesn’t have time for your games,” Samnang said. “You will give your confession now.”

Another man sat in a chair in the corner, poised over a pad of paper, ready to capture Pran’s words and regurgitate them in ink.

“Why should I trust you?” Pran strained to get the words out. “How do I know what I tell you is what gets written?”

“You think too much.” Samnang lit a cigarette, inhaled and blew a cloud of bluish smoke in Pran’s face. “Now,” he said. He brought the glowing end of the cigarette close to Pran’s left eye.

Pran’s eyelid fluttered. Tiny pink bubbles formed on his lips as he panted. “Please. Okay. My confession. Here is my confession. You write it down like I say, yes? Then I confess.”

Samnang backed away and took another long drag from the cigarette. He nodded. “Of course.”

Pran rubbed his cheeks against his shoulders as best he could to wipe away some of the sweat and tears.

“I am a teacher,” Pran said. “A teacher of history. Why is that so dangerous?”

Samnang said nothing. He waited patiently. The man taking notes looked up eagerly from his pad.

Pran looked down at the floor and ran his tongue gingerly over his swollen lips. “You say there is no family but Angka. You say there is no love but the love of Angka. But an idea cannot be a family. A set of principles cannot be love.” Pran looked up. “I love life. That is my crime in your eyes.”

Samnang flexed his fingers again. Curled them into a tight ball. He took a step toward Pran and raised his fist to strike.

Pran winced. “At least if I no longer breathe, if my body stops functioning, there is hope of something more.”

Samnang waited.

“There is hope that I will find my sisters, my brother, my mother and father, my two sons. That we will rejoin and live again in another existence.” Pran swallowed. “But if I choose your death, the death you are all living, then there is no hope.”

Samnang stood still. He felt a trickle of sweat flow from his forehead, down his cheek, and stop on his chin where it hung and would not fall. “That is your confession?”

“That is my confession.” Pran swallowed. “Please kill me so that I may hope to live again in peace.”

Samnang wanted so badly to reach up and wipe that drop of sweat away. He wanted so badly to scratch his chin where the sweat clung. But he remained calm and smiled at Pran. He turned to the note-taker. Held out his hand. The note-taker handed him the piece of paper. Samnang looked it over as if studying a grocery list. He held it under Pran’s nose. Blood dripped on it.

“This is not a confession,” Samnang said. He frowned. “This is a direct attack on Angka.” He folded it in half. Then in half again.

He put it in his pocket.

Pran whispered, “That’s all I have to say.”

“You want to die, then? That’s what you wish?”

Pran’s words were labored and slurred. “This is not a place for the living.”

Samnang ran his hand along the welts on Pran’s shoulders. “It is a place for the guilty. The traitors.”

“You say I’m guilty. You say everyone who resides here is guilty. Why then must I confess?”

Samnang stood in front of Pran, his hand stroking the back of Pran’s head like a lover. “We want the names of others. Where they hide. Who is helping them. We want names.”

Fresh blood began to seep from beneath the crust on Pran’s lips. He leaned forward as much as his shackles allowed so that it would drip on the floor instead of his chest. He quietly spit out a tooth as if it were a watermelon seed.

“All my friends, all my family — everyone I know is dead. I have no names for you.”

People like to believe there are always those who defy the system, who will stand up in defiance no matter what the cost. They relish the stories of heroes and martyrs who don’t give in to evil.

But not at S-21.

It didn’t matter how strong they were — how willful.

Here, they all gave in eventually.

Twenty-five years later, Samnang located Pran’s official confession within a gray metal file cabinet and carried the bulky drawer that held it to a table set up for scholars and researchers.

He remembered leading Pran along with five others to what used to be a playground. Where once the shouts of children at play could be heard, was now filled with the sounds of heavy clubs landing on flesh and breaking bones, the subtle thud of emaciated and beaten bodies landing on hard-packed earth. Bullets were considered too expensive to waste on the executions.

Pran died like the rest. Body broken. Soul crushed.

He’d given a new confession outlining the lies the Central Party wanted to hear.

Samnang now hovered over this confession. Blood marred it, bloody thumb and fingerprints, tiny neat drops spilled in random patterns. It attested to Pran’s treason and guilt. The words of a dead man.

Give me back my soul.

With his back to the lone guard standing watch over the room, Samnang pulled the other piece of paper from his pocket.

Is this what you want? Will this let you rest?

He replaced the official confession with Pran’s original confession. Folded up the official one and placed that in his shirt pocket. All too easy. He hefted the file drawer back into place and nodded at the guard. “I’m finished.” He wiped away the seedlings of tears in his eyes.

Now perhaps I can sleep at night.

Too easy.

Would this truly let him sleep?

He walked quickly down the corridors past cells once used for education, then again for re-education. He exited into the courtyard in the center of the compound and heard the laughter and cries of children. The sun was high and hot. The children were dressed in black shirts and red scarves.

Some of them looked up as he neared them. One caught a ball and held it against his chest. He motioned for Samnang to join them. They all stood watching Samnang, waiting. Samnang smiled at them. How long had it been since he played kickball?

The one with the ball drew back and rolled the ball to Samnang. It rolled unevenly over the close-cropped grass. There was hair on the ball, and tan flesh-like protrusions.

Ears, a nose, lips, eyes.

It stopped at Samnang’s feet. He did not kick it. He stood and stared.

Here. Here is Pran. This is Pran.

Pran’s lips contorted into a smile.

As Samnang stared, gasping, he sensed the children walking slowly toward him. They whispered one word over and over.

Confess.

A chorus of whispers.

Confess.

Confess.

Each of them pulled a plastic bag from their pockets.

Confess.

Whispers that rose up into the wind.

One after the other, they opened their bags.

Confess.

They surrounded him.

“Please.” Samnang held up Pran’s head. “I came here for him. That is all.”

A young boy came up to him. “Confess!” The boy pulled the bag over Samnang’s head.

A girl ran up to him. “Confess!” She put her bag over his head.

In quick succession, one after the other pulled their bags over Samnang’s head. As his vision faded, it looked as if the playground opened up. He felt bony hands reach up and grab him, pulling.

There is a story that the children visiting the Tuol Sleng museum that day now tell their friends and family. They say a man picked up a soccer ball and held it in front of him. They say the man cried and talked to the ball and kissed it.

They also say that the man turned blue, and that he fell to the ground tearing off the skin of his own face.

The children are often asked, “But what happened to the man? Did you help him?”

The children look away. How can they explain the pleasure, the rightness they felt as they each took turns kicking the old man’s body, beating it into the hard-packed soil? Or the museum guards who stood silently as they smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, their eyes black and dead like those in the photographs that lined the museum walls?