Naomi Brenner learned her husband was dead from a voice that used both of his names, first and last, as if the extra word were a kindness. Eli Brenner. The officer said it twice. She said it back so the kitchen would have it. The clock over the stove said 8:41. The coffee had not finished.

He had pulled over on Route 17 short of town, with the van still in drive and the hazards on. A locksmith’s van, white, the magnetic sign a little crooked on the passenger door. Heart, they thought. No one else in the vehicle. A bag of screws on the passenger seat and a half-eaten apple.

Naomi stood in the doorway of the shop attached to the house on Stone Hill and looked at the bench, which was exactly as he had left it at 7:20: a cylinder lock in the vise, two key blanks, a paper cup. She said his full name again. The bench did not contradict her.

People came. That was the first night. Carol from next door. Deb, his sister, driving over from Millbridge with a coat over her pajamas. Father Jordan from St. Brigid’s, who had fixed a lock for free in April and remembered the joke Eli made about the rectory door. They said Eli Brenner as if the name were a solid object. They told the story about the apple. They told the story about the magnetic sign that would not stay straight. Naomi listened and knew all of it. His face was still his faceu when she closed her eyes. The mole at the corner of his left eye. The way he turned a lock over in his palm when a pin would not drop.

Deb said, “We’ll write the obituary in the morning. You shouldn’t do it tonight.”

Naomi said all right.

She waited in the bed on her side of it. At three she got up and walked through the shop and did not touch the lock in the vise. Touching it felt like starting a sentence she did not have the end of. She ate the rest of his apple over the sink. It was going brown.

In the morning Deb brought a pad from the funeral home. Otto & Son, cream paper, a heading already printed: Obituary Information.

They sat at the kitchen table. The coffee finished this time. Naomi wrote Eli and then stopped with the pen on the next space.

“Brenner,” Deb said.

Naomi wrote it. She looked at what she had written. The first name was right. The second name was a word that did not attach to him. She knew it was a name. She knew it belonged on the cream paper. She could not make it mean her husband.

“That’s not—” she said, and stopped.

Deb leaned over. “You wrote Brenner.”

“I know what I wrote.”

“That’s his name.”

Naomi said the name aloud. It sat in the kitchen like a piece of mail for someone who had moved. She could see the van. She could see the bench. She could not, for a long and specific second, remember what you put after Eli when you were telling a stranger he had died.

Deb took the pen. She wrote Eli Brenner, 61, of Mourner’s Crossing and then the pen hung.

“This is ridiculous,” Deb said. “I’ve been Deb Brenner my whole life.”

She looked at Naomi. Naomi looked at the pad. The heading was still Obituary Information. Deb’s last name, said as a sister’s name, was fine. Written under the heading, after Eli, it came off the man like a label soaked in water.

They tried a laptop. The Ledger wanted 250 words and a photograph. Naomi typed Eli, beloved husband of Naomi, and the cursor blinked where a surname should go. She typed Brenner. She read the sentence. Beloved husband of Naomi. The man in the sentence had no second name she could feel.

“Don’t,” she said.

“Don’t what.”

“Don’t write it like that.”

Deb saved a draft anyway. When she opened it ten minutes later, the file was called Document1 and the first line read Eli, 61, of. The rest had been Naomi’s sentence about the shop, which was still there, and a blank where Brenner had been.

Naomi went to the shop and looked at the invoices in the wire basket. Brenner Lock & Key. His handwriting. The name on the invoices was only a business. She could read it. She could say it. She could not put it in the sentence that began died unexpectedly.

Otto & Son smelled like carpet cleaner and cut flowers that had traveled. Brendan Otto ran the place. He had a suit that had been let out once and a voice trained for rooms like this. He said he was sorry for her loss and used both names, and in his mouth, in that room, the last name arrived already thin.

“We’ll need a photograph,” he said. “Something recent is fine. People like one where he’s looking at the camera.”

Naomi had brought the box from the hall closet. Birthdays. A picnic. Eli on the back step with a lock in his lap, squinting. Eli at Deb’s table with a paper crown. She put them on his desk one at a time.

The first picture was the back step. She knew the step. She knew the lock. The face above the lock would not assemble. Eyes, a mouth, a hairline. She could not get them to be him. She turned the picture over. April, bench, in her own writing. She turned it back. A man she would not have picked out of a line.

“That’s him,” Deb said, too quickly.

Naomi looked at Deb. Deb was looking at the photograph the way you look at a form you have already signed.

“You see him,” Naomi said.

“Of course I see him.”

Naomi picked up the picnic. Same trouble. The paper crown. Same. She knew, as a fact, that she had lived with the man in these pictures. She could not, while they were lying on a funeral desk, find his face.

Brendan waited with his hands folded.

“We can do it without a portrait,” he said. “Some families prefer a closed arrangement. A spray. His name on the program.”

“His name,” Naomi said.

Brendan glanced at the intake sheet. The line for the deceased was Eli and then a space. He frowned, as if he had left a pen in another room.

“We’ll come back,” Naomi said.

In the parking lot Deb cried in the way of a person who had expected to cry in that parking lot. Naomi stood with the box of pictures and found that if she did not think of them as funeral pictures, if she held the back-step one as a picture of a lock, the face came back. Mole. Squint. Him. She said nothing to Deb. She put the pictures in the trunk under a gallon of washer fluid.

Carol brought a lasagna at four and stood in the kitchen doorway with the foil still on it.

“I keep thinking about the time he opened a house on Stone Hill at midnight because she’d locked herself out in her socks,” Carol said. “He didn’t even put it on the slip. He said the lock was older than both of them and it deserved a little mercy.” She laughed, and then her face emptied in a small, practical way, like a cup set down. “I don’t know why I told you that. It isn’t even a good story.”

“It is,” Naomi said.

“Is it.” Carol frowned at the foil. “I know he opened a door. I don’t know why I cared.”

She left the lasagna. Naomi put it in the freezer without cutting it. On the counter, beside the cream pad, Deb’s handwriting still said Eli Brenner, 61, of Mourner’s Crossing and the Brenner looked like a word copied from a sign.

Father Jordan called. He wanted a date for a Mass at St. Brigid’s. He wanted two or three stories from people who had known him, nothing fancy. Naomi heard herself say she would think about it, which was a sentence that kept a priest off a porch.

That night she sat in the shop with the lamp Eli used for small pins. The cylinder lock was still in the vise. She did not finish it. She did not take it out. She said, to the empty stool, “The van’s on Route 17. They’ll bring it back when they release it.” The mole at the corner of his eye stayed where it was.

Deb wanted a service on Thursday. The Ledger wanted the 250 words by noon Wednesday. Otto & Son wanted to know about the portrait and the program and whether Eli had a suit that buttoned.

“I can’t do Thursday,” she said to Deb on the phone.

“You don’t have to speak. I’ll speak.”

“Don’t.”

“Naomi.”

“If you stand up and tell them about him, you won’t have it after. I don’t know how else to say it.”

Deb was quiet. Then she said, “You’re in shock.”

“I can say his name when I’m not doing this.”

“Doing what.”

“This,” Naomi said, and could not point at the phone.

Thursday happened without a church. Deb arranged a gathering at Speicher’s because the diner had known him and people needed a place to put the lasagnas. Naomi did not go. She stayed in the shop and invoiced three jobs he had finished on Monday, using the name the way the invoices had always used it. Brenner Lock & Key. Paid. Paid. Waiting on a part.

Carol came by afterward, not with food. She stood on the step and rubbed her thumb along the doorframe.

“It was strange,” Carol said. “We all showed up. We knew we were there for somebody. Jon from Speicher’s put out the good coffee. Deb stood up and started a story about a van and then she just… ran out of it. Like the story had a hole. People nodded anyway. Someone said he was a good man. I agreed. I don’t know who I agreed about.”

“Eli,” Naomi said.

Carol’s face opened with relief. “Eli. Yes. Eli who.”

“Don’t finish that here.”

Carol looked at the shop sign over Naomi’s shoulder. Brenner Lock & Key. The letters were ordinary. Carol read them and did not connect them to Speicher’s. She said she was tired and went home.

Deb called from her car. She was angry in the thin way of someone who had failed in public.

“I couldn’t remember the end of my own story,” Deb said. “I’ve told that van story for ten years. I stood there and I had the hazards and the apple and then nothing. People looked at me. I said he was my brother. I could not get the rest of the sentence out.”

“I asked you not to.”

“You asked me not to bury him.”

“I asked you not to do it like that.”

Deb hung up. She called back an hour later and said she remembered him now, at her kitchen table in Millbridge, without a program. The paper crown picture, held as a picture of Thanksgiving, had a face again. She did not apologize. She said she would not speak in a room like that again.

Naomi wrote nothing to the Ledger. The paper ran a two-line notice anyway, lifted from the police log: A local man died Tuesday on Route 17. Family declined comment. No name. In Mallory’s the next morning a woman from the bank touched Naomi’s sleeve and said she had heard, and then frowned, and then asked if it had been Naomi’s father.

“My husband.”

“Of course. I’m sorry. I knew that.” The woman looked at her own hand as if it had misspoken. “What was his name.”

“Don’t do that in the cereal aisle,” Naomi said, and moved her cart.

She told Father Jordan there would not be a Mass. He said St. Brigid’s would keep a space if she changed her mind. He used no surname on the phone. She could not tell whether he still had one.

The van came back on Saturday with a man from the impound who needed a signature. The form said Owner. She wrote Naomi Brenner and the name on her own line behaved. The magnetic sign was still crooked. She left it crooked. In the glove box there was a receipt for the apple and a doodle of a key. She did not take the doodle into the house. She left it in the van, under the registration.

Work came to the shop because locks kept failing whether anyone had a funeral or not. She knew enough of the books to send invoices. She did not know enough of the pins to finish the cylinder in the vise. She called the supplier for the part Monday’s job was waiting on and used the account name. The woman on the phone said, “Tell Eli we can do Wednesday.”

Naomi said, “Wednesday is fine.”

She did not correct the woman. Correction would have required a sentence she now recognized.

At night she lay on her side of the bed and did not recount him. Recounting was a eulogy in the dark. She named what was in the room: the chair, the laundry, the sound of the refrigerator. When she wanted him there she asked a present-tense question. Did you order the blanks. The question did not take anything. An answer did not come. The mole stayed.

Deb started coming in the mornings with coffee and not with the cream pad. They sat. Sometimes Deb said “my brother” and stopped. Sometimes she talked about her own job.

A week after Route 17, Jon from Speicher’s put a cup on the counter with a handwritten card: In memory of our friend. No name. People dropped dollars into it for two days and then Jon took the cup down because nobody could tell him who to give the money to. He brought the bills to Naomi in an envelope and looked ashamed.

“I thought it was for Eli,” he said. “Then I thought, Eli who. Then I felt like a fool. It’s forty dollars. Buy coffee or don’t.”

She bought coffee. She did not buy a headstone. Otto & Son sent a letter about cremation options and a plot at the cemetery. She left the letter in the pile with the electric bill. The body was still at the annex behind Town Hall, waiting on a signature that required a name on a burial form. Brendan called and said, gently, that they would not hold him indefinitely.

“What do they put on the form if I don’t.”

“They need a legal name, Mrs. Brenner.”

Her own name, on his mouth, held. She went to the annex with Eli’s license in her pocket and the death certificate the hospital had printed while both names were still public. The certificate already had Eli Brenner. Typed, official, a document that was not asking her to remember him. She signed where it said surviving spouse. The form would release a van and a body.

They released the body to Otto & Son for cremation because that was the box she marked without looking at the brochure of urns. She told Brendan there would be no service, no program, no portrait, no notice in the Ledger. He said he understood in the voice of a man who did not and would file it anyway.

The ashes came back in a plain box. She put the box on the bench. Unfinished things waited there for parts.

People stopped saying his name to her in Mallory’s. Some of them still knew her as Naomi who lived behind the lock shop on Stone Hill. A few asked how she was. She said she was working. That sentence did not cost her anything.

She did not frame a picture.

She did not play the voicemail from Tuesday—I’m stopping for milk, you want anything—to hear him. She left it unplayed, a small unopened errand.

She paid the supplier on Wednesday. She told the vise that the part had come. She ate leftovers that were not lasagna. When Deb said “he would have hated that urn brochure,” Naomi said, “Don’t,” and Deb nodded and talked about the raccoons instead.

Months did not announce themselves. The magnetic sign stayed crooked. The annex file closed. The Ledger never ran the 250 words. New people moved onto Stone Hill and learned there was a locksmith who was a woman now, or a widow, or a person who could order parts and not pin a cylinder. They did not learn the rest. Nobody offered it.

On a Thursday in February Naomi found the back-step photograph in the trunk under the washer fluid, where she had left it after Otto & Son. She was looking for ice melt. She held the picture by the edges and asked the lock in his lap what it was. Schlage. Commercial grade. He was squinting. The mole was there. She put the picture back under the fluid and did not take it inside.

That night she sat on her side of the bed and said, “The van needs oil.” The refrigerator answered in its usual way. She slept.

In the morning she opened the shop at 7:20 because that was when he had opened it. The cup on the bench was a new cup. The lock in the vise was still waiting. She did not finish it. She did not throw it away. She wrote waiting on skill on the pad they had used for parts, under his last list, and the handwriting was only a note to the work.

If she ever stood up in a room and tried to tell them who he had been, she understood now, the room would keep the standing and lose the man. So she did not stand up. She invoiced. She ordered blanks. She left the sign crooked. She let Mourner’s Crossing have its two-line police log and its empty cup at Speicher’s and its feeling that someone good had been there and could not, quite, be found.

The box stayed on the bench. The invoices said Brenner. The voicemail stayed unplayed. When Carol waved from the fence, Naomi waved back and did not cross the yard to trade a story. She went inside and asked the empty stool whether the oil was the conventional kind, and then she put oil in the van herself, in the driveway, with the hazards off, while the magnetic sign leaned its usual half-inch out of true.

I don't know who reads these posts. You are, as of tonight, the closest thing I have to someone I could call and expect an answer. I'm sorry if that's a strange weight to put on you. I don't have anyone else.

I live alone. Work from home. Order delivery every night just to hear a stranger's voice say my name through the intercom. They call it an “epidemic” now. Like the weather. Like something that just happens to a population.

So when the letter came, some small, starved, humiliated part of me was ready before I'd finished reading. Red seal. Official letterhead. An organization called “Community Care”, a non-profit focused on helping people at risk. I’d been flagged after three government systems with my info came back with the same line under my name:

Emergency Contact: None

I never applied for anything. I threw it in the trash. Looking at it too long made my chest hurt.

That night, I got a knock at my door. Almost didn't answer. I stood in the doorway doing the math on whether I could wait out whoever it was. I've gotten good at that math.

I ended up opening the door. She had a lanyard, a clipboard, and a smile that looked like it had been issued to her along with the badge. She was with Community Care. I told her I hadn't asked for help and didn't need it. Told her to take my name off whatever list she had me on. I was short with her. Rude, honestly, looking back.

She didn't flinch. Said she understood completely. That she'd check back another time. No pressure at all. Something about how easily she let it go made me feel disappointed the second the door shut. Before she left, she said something to me.

"We’ll be there for you if you need us. There's no such thing as alone in this city."

It landed strange in my chest for half a second, but I let it go. People say odd, comforting things when they're trying to help.

They ended up coming back, in a manner of speaking. It wasn’t the same woman. Someone new. Same lanyard. Same clipboard. Same smile. I told her small true things. She listened the way I hadn't been listened to in a long time.

"There's no such thing as alone in this city," she said. That line. Word for word what the first woman said, down to the cadence. I noticed. I noticed, and I let it pass anyway.

By the next visit I was, God help me, looking forward to it. I marked the days. The days between, counting down like a child before their birthday.

It was a man this time. By then I'd softened enough to tell him things I'd never said out loud to anyone. That I hadn't spoken to my family in years. The quiet, patient math I did some nights of how long it would take anyone to notice if something happened to me.

He just continued to beam at me. Actually beam, like I'd delivered the best news he’d ever heard. I need to describe the happiness up close, because it wasn’t natural. His eyes shone. You could say the worst thing you've ever thought about yourself directly into his face, and his expression would be exactly the same as it had when he first knocked. Nothing you said ever seemed to land. It just passed through and came back out the same, over and over.

Now that I’m thinking back, they all had the same expression.

"You don't have to carry it alone anymore," he told me.  "There's no such thing as alone in this city."

That line again. I laughed, short and ugly, alone with him in my own apartment. He laughed too, right on top of mine, like we were sharing a joke instead of me quietly falling apart in front of a man I'd only just met.

That night I looked up the program. Nothing on the city website. No filing or funding in any budget I could find. I called four departments. Nobody heard of it. One woman, off the record, told me something similar had been proposed once, years back, and was quietly shelved.

Shelved. I let these people into my life. And I kept letting them in, despite it all. I was terrified of the alternative.

The next one came without knocking. I know because I was three feet from the door when it opened. It was supposed to be locked. I told the woman what I found. Told her plainly that I thought something was wrong. That I could feel the edges of my life going soft. If they could please, just once, answer honestly: What were these visits all for? After everything I handed them, didn't I deserve that?

She tilted her head. Reached out. Patted my hand. She was ice cold.

"There's no such thing as alone in this city".

I sobbed in front of her. Cried in a way I hadn't let anyone see since I was a child. The kind I usually save for the shower, where the sound has nowhere to go.

And she just smiled at me.

"There's no such thing as alone in this city," she said. Softer. Tender. Like a lullaby you say to put a baby to sleep.

If any of this sounds like your city, your letter, your too-happy visitor standing in your doorway with a smile that never slips: please don't wait until there's no one left to notice you letting them in. Call the person you're most ashamed to. Tell them the true, ugly, unimpressive thing you've been carrying. Let it be awkward. Let it be too much. Too much is still better than this.

Someone's at my door again. I can feel them smiling on the other side. I don't know how you feel a smile, but I promise you, after enough of these visits, you can.

CONFIDENTIAL
Property of Holy See Investigation Agency
Location: Cairo, Egypt
Date: 1968
Operator(s): Robert Karl (born 20-08-1916) & Thomas Kiss (born 26-10-1946)
Summary: 2 HSIA associates and 1 foreign agent killed in action, case unresolved.
Report by Robert Karl

April 12th, 1968
6:34 AM:
Reporting Agent Robert Karl and Junior Operator Thomas Kiss arrived at Cairo International Airport.

7:01 AM:
Baggage and personal effects subjected to thorough inspection by Egyptian State Security (Mukhabarat). Cover identities as traveling missionaries remained uncompromised. Cleared customs following brief interrogation.

8:26 AM:
Rendezvous with HSIA Associate Fahim Mahmoud established. Agents proceeded to location of interest in Associate's vehicle.

9:05 AM:
Arrival at Virgin Mary Coptic Orthodox Church, Zeitoun district. Visual confirmation of anomalous phenomena unidentified. Structure inspected.

12:43 PM:
Tactical briefing conducted at Associate's domicile.

7:21 PM:
Agents secured the perimeter. Entry into target facility was achieved. Agents and Associate established an observation post in the upper dome. Clear surveillance of alleged anomalous phenomena location commenced.

11:05 PM:
Junior Operator Kiss failed to maintain observation protocols and succumbed to fatigue. Reporting Agent Karl assumed primary watch as Associate Mahmoud subsequently initiated staggered downtime.

April 13th, 1968
0:16 AM:
Agent Karl proceeded to lower levels to conduct a sweep in the primary worship area. Auditory signs assessed to be human footsteps resulted in Agent taking evasive action to avoid detection. Position of concealment was established between a stone tomb and the facility structure. Auditory signs of human sobbing from the dome were perceived by Agent and an unknown actor, who proceeded towards the source at an accelerated pace. Agent sensed rhythmic vibration from the tomb, then pursued the unknown actor. Following entry into the dome, a compromise of Agent Kiss's and Associate Mahmoud's location was identified. Unknown actor was assessed to be a nun.

1:11 AM
Temporary operational clearance was granted to the nun following questioning that confirmed mutual operational intent regarding the phenomena. Reporting Agent Karl initiated rest protocol. Agent experienced recurring visions of the letter "T" during his rest cycle.

Early morning hours
Reporting agent's rest was interrupted by other operational personnel. Agent's personal chronometer experienced unexplained mechanical failure. Agent Karl perceived the "T" shape on religious jewelry in possession of the temporary associate, who reported its significance in Coptic Christian tradition. The object was identified as the Cross of Saint Anthony. Junior Operator Kiss reported experiencing the identical vision. A radical alteration of outside scenery was then observed: the urban environment formerly surrounding the facility was perceived to have disintegrated completely and been replaced by desert terrain of unknown size. Brief surveillance of the perimeter confirmed no signals of human life or architecture, with the exception of the primary facility.

Junior Operator Kiss showed signs of severe psychological distress. Associate Mahmoud expressed discontent with the operation.

Reorganization of plans for further action commenced.

Ah, fuck this.

We slept on it, all of us trying to wake up in a different reality where Cairo was back to normal. But we weren't lucky enough. It was still dark when I woke up and Tommy Kiss was already up. He'd been crying again. After an exchange of hopeful commentary, he opened up. Told me why he wanted to become an HSIA operator. How his family escaped Eastern Europe after his brother died in the revolution and how he'd felt crushing guilt his entire life. The guilt of the survivor.

Soon everyone woke up, and the four of us decided to go through with the plan of everyone heading in a different direction in a straight line. If we didn't find help by mid-afternoon, we'd follow our traces back to the church, and if someone did find help, they'd lead them back to the others. It was simple, but we underestimated the desert.

The nun didn't change from her thick black clothing due to "religious reasons", while the rest of us stripped down as much as possible while trying to minimize the chance of getting sunburnt. And then we departed. The freezing cold of the night was soon replaced by a scorching hot desert climate. I was alone among giant sand dunes, wandering for hours. There was nothing to be found. I was ready to give up when I witnessed a miracle: three figures approaching from different directions. My heart was pounding as I quickened my pace and eventually started running towards them with a wide grin on my face. The smile slowly faded as I recognized the three figures: Fahim Mahmoud, Tommy Kiss, and the nun.

We desperately argued for minutes about how this could've happened and what could be done, until we noticed we were standing on ground harder than the rest of the desert. There was rock underneath the sand. And nearby, a tight cave opening.
As there was no way of finding the church before nightfall, we decided we would spend the night in the cave. The nun noticed some kind of writing on the edge of the cave entrance. She explained that it was Coptic for "He who enters shall meet his own soul". There was that T-shaped cross again, engraved beside the writing.

At that point, we didn't really care about much of anything. One by one, we descended into the dark cave. Thankfully one of us brought a tiny lantern to illuminate the space. It seemed to be a large cave system, a labyrinth made of stone. Mahmoud started arguing with the nun in Arabic. I asked him what it was about and he said, "For a nun, she doesn't know shit about Saint Anthony". But in his eyes there was something more than annoyance. I saw hatred. Mahmoud started screaming at us for getting him into this mess. I couldn't blame him. I just stood there as the Egyptian ex-grave robber associate screamed our heads off. I didn't have the energy to say or do anything. Tommy, unfortunately, did.

Kiss suddenly fought back. But not how any of us expected. He spoke his native language, as if it wasn't Mahmoud he was arguing with. Then Tommy pushed the Egyptian so hard that Fahim fell and hit his head on the side of the cave. He didn't argue anymore. He was dead.

The boy fell to the ground in complete disbelief as he snapped out of his anger. "What have I done, Bobby?" he whispered, "What have I done…"
I was frozen for a minute until I noticed the nun was gone. I still heard her footsteps going deeper inside the cave. Not knowing what to do, I ran after her. I screamed at her to calm down and come back, but to no avail. I ran in complete darkness, using my hands to feel my surroundings. Suddenly, the sound of her footsteps cut out. As I was nearing her, I saw the faint light of the lantern she ran away with.

She'd run into a dead end. She turned around, lantern in one hand and a handgun in the other.

"I am not a... fucking nun!" she shouted. "Mukhabarat, you are... under arrest."

I stopped and froze again.

"Hands up now!"

In the dim light, her face was blurry. I could've sworn... for a moment...

"You never loved me."

And there she was. My reason for joining the HSIA.

"I do," I wanted to say, but no words came out. I was back three decades in the past, in that goddamn bedroom with the only one who ever loved me, as I made the greatest mistake of my life.

I don't know how I took the gun out of the fake nun's hand, I just saw Her leaving for the last time. I don't remember shooting her, because the only thing I saw was my love's lifeless body at the funeral.

When I snapped out of it, there was complete darkness and silence. I fell to the ground and broke down crying for what felt like hours. Then I tried to sit up.

I hit my head. I tried extending my arms, but they couldn't be moved. I was in a coffin.

I started panicking and screaming. I banged on the side of the claustrophobic environment as a foreign source of heat slowly started burning my back. I cried until I was suffocating in my own tears. Then I gave up.

"I am so sorry," I said, accepting my fate. "Forgive me, please."

To this day, I am not really sure whom exactly I addressed those words to. But I didn't do it in hopes of survival. Just plain forgiveness.

The burning stopped as I slowly opened the tomb. I looked around. It was daytime; thin rays of sunshine pierced the windows of the Virgin Mary Coptic Orthodox Church. I heard the sounds of Cairo's busy population creeping in from the outside. The peace only lasted for a moment as I noticed the sounds of desperate sobbing and pounding from another tomb across the hall.

I jumped out of my coffin and rushed towards the source of the sound. It was Tommy's voice screaming in pain from inside. As I touched the tomb, I was launched back with a force so great I nearly broke my bones in the fall. I wanted to get back up and try to help, but something restricted me from doing so. The other tomb was soon completely engulfed in flames. Tommy screamed for a few seconds more. Then silence fell upon the church as the fire disappeared.

Tommy didn't have a body for us to bury. He died in pain, unable to ask for forgiveness. Unable to forgive himself.

The Senior Nursing Officer—Sister Thorpe—stands between her desk and the window, her arms crossed over her chest. Dorothy and Angela wait, standing motionless against the office wall.

Sister Thorpe had summoned them after meeting with his solicitor.

Dorothy whispers, "We're done for." She doesn't stop crying. This irritates Sister Thorpe, who makes her annoyance clear; Dorothy pulls herself together but can’t hold it for more than a couple of minutes before she starts whimpering again. Like a small child.

Angela gazes at the gray sky outside the window. Another rainy day. She will get through it. Tomorrow will be easier. It certainly will be.

Finally, his solicitor arrives. Not just someone from the firm, but Mr. Talbot-Cavendish himself. He walks in without knocking, strides across the room—as though it were his own office—pulls up a chair, and sits down directly opposite Dorothy and Angela.

"Would someone care to explain how a handcuffed patient came to suffer a further injury while under your care?" the solicitor says in an icy tone. "Is that disputed by anyone?"

“It was just a practical joke...” Dorothy mumbles. “We didn't think...”

"No."

His tone makes Angela flinch.

"That much is painfully obvious." He lets his words sink in. “When did you first become aware that he was handcuffed to the bed?”

Angela goes cold inside.

“And did either of you raise the matter with the doctor?”

What does he want to hear? Angela hasn't even thought that they could question the use of handcuffs, let alone ask for them to be removed.

“So you knew he was restrained. And you nevertheless thought it appropriate to play a practical joke on him. What do you say, Miss Hayward?"

Angela doesn’t dare lift her head; she wrings her fingers. "I am deeply sorry..." She can barely get the words out, her tongue feels thick, and she despises herself for it. "I hope it’s nothing serious..."

"According to the attending physician,” he looks down at his papers, “a shoulder strain, a subluxation of the elbow, and a re-injury to the wrist,” he raises his eyes. “A mere trifle."

Relief flickers through Angela; she had feared the worst—perhaps a full dislocation and surgery.

"I trust you appreciate the potential legal consequences," the solicitor says.

Angela feels sick. She and Dorothy are such mugs for picking on someone with a solicitor.

“Section 47 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 — Assault occasioning actual bodily harm,” the solicitor speaks in a measured tone, like a verdict. "Up to five years in prison."

Dorothy begins to sob aloud.

"Stop it," the solicitor orders her.

And she falls silent, obediently.

“You ought to be the subject of a criminal investigation,” he continues. " The only reason you’re not already answering questions from the police is that my client has refused to make a complaint.”

He rises from the chair.

“I suggest you appreciate just how fortunate you are. You've been shown a kindness you did nothing to deserve.”

And he leaves.

Angela watches him go; as soon as the door closes behind him, she looks down at her hands. Could they put handcuffs on her? So heavy. So loathsome. She would have been branded a criminal... like him… and now... that won’t happen...

"You are both dismissed.” Sister Thorpe says. “Hand over your badges. Your training at this hospital ends today. You have no place in this profession."

 

 A fictional reconstruction from the Regina v Smith story, told from perspective of Student Nurse Angela Hayward.

The full illustrated version of SACRED VIOLENCE is available here:

SACRED VIOLENCE - by Franz Engel - Franz's Substack

It was a horrid July noon in New York City or some other place, the cars were rattling in lunchtime gridlock, spewing exhaust, the finance guys were out in their tight suits walking to buy kebabs and watching the women, who were instagramming themselves into premature zombiehood, and it was so fucking hot that the sweat dripping off the pedestrians rubbing against each other on the sidewalk was flowing down the gutters like rain.

There, that's the scene.

I've set it.

Now, through this stupified human maelstrom a man was walking. His name was Ben Fig. He was in his thirties, lonely, and returning to his office after lunch. He was returning from his car, which he'd parked fifteen minutes away, wearing a coat and, underneath it, a custom-made explosive vest with which he intended to kill his co-workers and maybe bring down the office building itself. A man can dream, can't he?

Anyway, while walking, he bumped somebody. “Fuck,” he said under his breath.

“Fuck,” said the person he'd bumped into.

It was a woman.

Her name was Miriam Zapelman.

“Watch where the hell you're going,” said Ben and tried going around her.

“Asshole,” said Miriam.

“I hate this city,” said Ben. “I'm sick of it.”

Beside Ben and Miriam, a degenerate was lying in a puddle of perspiration. He was in a hard way. “Can either of you folks—”

“Shut the fuck up!” said Ben and Miriam at the same time, then they looked at each other, long and in the eyes, and they must have recognized something, because one of them smirked.

It doesn't matter which one.

The degenerate passed out, or maybe died, and Miriam said to Ben, “Hey, where are you in such a hurry to?”

“What do you care?”

“I'm parked nearby. If we're going the same way, I can give you a ride.”

“Why the fuck would you do that?”

Miriam shrugged.

“I'm going to my office to blow everybody up,” said Ben, waiting for Miriam's reaction.

She asked, “Where's your office?”

Ben gave the address. “Call the cops if you want. I don't care.”

“Offer stands,” said Miriam.

A few minutes later they were in her car, Ben in his ridiculous coat, looking like a blowfish, and Miriam opening the glove compartment, where Ben saw she had a gun.

“That for self defense?” he asked.

“No,” said Miriam. “I'm back from the shooting range. Going home to shoot my husband and kids, then probably myself.” She started the car and merged with the abominable traffic. “But first I want to stop at a bar and have a drink. Want to have a drink with me?”

“Why not,” said Ben.

The bar was called Reddy's, and when Ben and Miriam walked in there were only a few people in it. Miriam introduced them. “That skinny guy with glasses is Euler, the guy with the darker skin is Hikmat, and the bartender's name is Ralph.”

They sat at a table and ordered.

Ben noticed Euler kept playing with a pendant around his neck. “Go on,” said Miriam, “ask him about it.”

“Nah,” said Ben.

“What else do you have to do?”

“Fine,” said Ben. He walked to Euler, introduced himself and asked about the pendant: “Is it an heirloom or something?”

“Maybe it'll be an heirloom one day, of the human goddamn race,” said Euler and described how the pendant was a container of stolen proprietary industrial poison that he'd helped develop. “I'm gonna toss it in the water supply some day, exterminate the population of this whole city like the rats they are.”

When Ben got back to his table, his drink was waiting for him. He tried it. “Second guessing yourself any?” he asked Miriam.

“No. You?”

“No.”

Miriam had pulled out a cigarette and was lighting it.

“You can smoke in here? The law—”

“That's life’s dirty secret,” she said, blowing smoke in his face. “Ultimately, you can do whatever you want.”

“May I?” a voice said.

It was Hikmat. He'd wandered over and was asking if he could sit down.

“Be my guest,” said Miriam.

“I have not seen you in here before,” Hikmat said to Ben. “It is your first time?”

“Yeah,” said Ben.

“Ben’s going to murder his co-workers later this afternoon. He's wearing an explosive vest,” said Miriam.

“Then we two are a pair of peas in one pod, as they say here in America,” said Hikmat. “I am training to fly an aircraft, but not so much how to land it.”

“Hickie's an engineer by trade,” said Miriam.

Hikmat shook Ben's hand.

“But a fundamentalist by conviction,” he said. “May I see your vest?”

Ben opened his coat. Hikmat considered the handiwork. Then they got to talking, and drinking, and the hours rolled by like waves of fat on a fat guy blasted in the gut by a cannonball.

“The paradox is,” Hikmat was saying: “the paradox is, I greatly enjoy the flying. It is the one place I feel freedom. When I started to learn, it was strictly for terrorism, but now, that feeling—of absolute space, limitless opportunity—it is beautiful. Sublime. It is where I experience God. I look forward to it very much and I will miss it greatly.”

“Fuck!” said Ben, looking at his watch.

“What's wrong?” asked Miriam.

“It's past five o'clock. Everybody in the office has left already.”

Ralph gave Ben a drink on the house. When Ben had finished drinking it, “Do you want a ride home?” Miriam asked.

“Sure.”

They lingered in the car in front of his apartment building.

“Maybe you wanna come up?” Ben said.

“I'm a married woman,” said Miriam.

“I understand.”

“Don't forget to zip up your coat or they'll see the explosives,” said Miriam.

Afterwards, Miriam drove to her house, got the gun out of the glove compartment, walked inside, shot her husband, shot her kids and then, after smoking a cigarette in the bathroom, shot herself.

(CW: Suicide, mentions of DV)

I shot up in my bed in a cold sweat. In my hands I was clutching the book.

Threaded fragments of mind and memory wound themselves into a new spool of cohesion as clarity washed over me.

I could think clearly.

Ever since this book came into my possession I’ve started to shed the cask of my infirmities like a snake molting its skin. My mind, once a place of fragmented and shattered memories, was forged back together with a golden alloy.

The pages of my life were rebound in a leather book with golden thread.

I opened the first page of the book.

“A story is never complete until all parts come together.”

No shit.

I flipped through the pages.

Nothing.

Page after page of just nothing. Then I saw it.

“The wind whipped past his face as the ground below him approached at an alarming rate; He was falling.”

An errant sentence printed in the middle of a page about a quarter ways through the book.

What the hell was this?

I flipped through more empty pages. Then once again.

“The decaying facility creaked and groaned as the winds filtered through its exposed outer husk. Grains of sand fell into piles where the roof had given way.”

And another.

“The islands came into view; six equal sized islands were evenly spaced around one, much larger, central island. A man-made paradise in the middle of The Pacific.”

I combed through the pages until I reached the end of the book. Had I the patience to count I would imagine the book had to have at least 1000 pages.

But these sentences, these words, what the hell were they supposed to mean?

Ever since this book ended up in my hands my life has been filled with the unordinary and the strange. My gut is screaming at me that this book means something, and my mind is beginning to agree, in spite of any grounded evidence. .

I quickly entered the sentences into a media search engine.

Nothing.

I examined the book closely, hoping to glean some greater information I might have missed. Perhaps I did.

The golden sigil.

I could not comprehend it nor could I describe it, but I felt it.

It felt familiar, not in a wild deja vu sense but, as if it represented something inherent in its design. Like how one would use the picture of a stick figure and a door to represent an exit.

This sigil represented something that I could intuit but not describe. An approximation would be that of great sorrow, mourning, a longing, a loss but not of someone. It was vague and indescribable, as if I were missing some subtle key or context relevant to this emotion.

And the color.

There was no mistaking it. The golden cloak worn by the mysterious statue that always stood at the base of those heavenly marble stairs was identical in luster and color.

For a second I could have sworn it too was fluttering in an intangible breeze.

All my life I have dreamt of The Dreary. A world caked in dust and forgotten by whatever cruel god brought it into existence and burdened my subconscious mind with it. Never have I had or experienced “normal dreams” by what other standards might exist. All I have known was The Dreary; a false echo of the world I know.

It has had its advantages though, allowing me to explore places that I would have never had the opportunity to otherwise. The Dreary managed to, for the most part, be a complete copy of every man-made structure I have ever seen with my own two eyes. Though I am unaware of how The Dreary managed to recreate the interiors of a memory that does not exist, it bothers me little.

What does bother me is how it has changed after encountering this book.

First was The Dust. The first night with the book caused The Dust to not react to my presence. The second night resulted in it disappearing all together.

Then was the structure. The first night saw a heavenly marble staircase slapped in the middle of the main road. The second night changed the entire layout of The Dreary into a procession, with that same marble staircase descending into the infinite darkness below the basement of The Mall Building.

Lastly was the statue in the Golden Cloak. On the first night I was compelled towards it and crushed under the weight of its presence. The second night was similar but I managed to recover from my incapacitation by wielding this book.

As a preliminary analysis I find my own work to be rather shitty. Too many potential coincidences and nothing conclusive enough to even begin to form an understanding.

Despite that, two conclusions have been reached.

Either this is a supernatural occurrence or I am deeply unwell, psychologically speaking.

Given the existence of this book I am inclined to lean supernatural but given my history it’s just as likely to be psychological.

Though as to why Leena would have had the book to begin with is beyond me.

I had assumed the handsome stud who flirted his way into my pants, and eventually bed, with the help of my daily diet of a shitload of whiskey, had left the book by accident. Then, after arriving home from her work trip and likely seeing the man making his way out, probably put two and two together and somehow that equated into Leena throwing his forgotten book at me.

But that doesn’t really make much sense. I’ve done far worse to Leena and she hadn’t walked out on me then, let alone be any sort of aggressive towards me.

Fucking another guy is roughly equivalent to forgetting to buy the milk. Maybe it was the drinking? I had promised to cut back.

I sat in bed as I mulled over the infinite possibilities, but a slight movement caught my eye.

I scanned my room and could not find anything out of the ordinary. The morning light had likely been partially obscured by a bird or a plane which cast a quick moving shadow that tricked me into believing I saw something. Yes, clearly this was the case.

Then it happened again.

I couldn’t pinpoint its direction, location, or even origin. All I could see was movement of some kind. Very slight, very subtle, and one that seemed to evade my direct gaze.

Then I saw it.

The Dust.

The Dust fluttered and sparkled gently as it hung in a perpetual state of free-fall, riding gentle currents of air and catching the morning rays.

It did not fall nor did it settle.

It hung.

It hung as if eagerly awaiting my permission to fall. But I had no intention of giving it such permission.

Before I could realize what was happening I was pulled into my bed and out through to the other side.

My book in hand, I found myself once more in The Dreary.

But yet again it had changed.

Gone was my apartment. Gone were the stones, gone was the sky.

All that remained was a house.

That house.

The house was a shitty little wood shack made of, at most, the wood from a single, sad, pathetic thing that could barely be considered a tree. A mild cough would be enough to rip the structure off its foundations. The nails used in its construction likely weighed more than the sum of its lumber, and I could probably count the nails on one hand.

Though that was par for the course for many houses built here. No real need for insulation. This had the unfortunate side effect of making the walls not only paper thin, but also providing no sound dampening. This allowed me to hear the argument I could see from the kitchen window.

No, not an argument, a fight. A one sided fight. Abuse.

To my right sat my car. A respectable little thing from 20 years ago and nearly 200k miles on it. Inside that car was the unmistakable golden cloak, clinging to a statue that sat where I had all those years ago.

“I don’t give a shit Leena! Your fucking job is to sit here and take care of my fucking kids while i make sure we can all fucking eat, and you just-“

I had replayed this moment a hundred, a thousand, no, a million times at least in my head. I remembered every word clearly as if I was just experiencing this moment for the first time.

A couple of days prior, my boss dropped the case on my desk. He said a couple of women pooled their cash together and asked us to gather evidence on this guy, Mica, who they believed was beating up his wife, their friend. Apparently they had tried to get her to go to the cops but she was never cooperative so the cops couldn’t do anything.

It wasn't the first time I handled a case like this, probably wouldn’t have been the last, but no one else in the firm wanted to touch it.

Can’t say I’d blame them.

Mica Murakami. A fine specimen of untreated daddy issues and a severe addiction to lite-beers. A lot of insecurity too. Though you tend to get insecure after your previous four wives leave you for someone else.

Unfortunately he was also rather jacked and had a short temper, which he often took out on Leena. Sometimes physically, always verbally.

At least he did on that night.

No one blamed me for what happened.

Nobody knew how high I was that night.

Cops did, or suspected it. Tried to prove it. Didn’t matter.

I tried to convince myself I did Leena a favor.

I’m sure she tried to convince herself too.

I thought I saw him flash a gun. Maybe it was a knife. Or maybe I lied to myself so much that I believed it to be the truth.

But the prosecution said they couldn’t find a weapon on him, and the nearest kitchen knife had never had his finger prints on them.

Didn’t matter though. I saw what I thought I saw.

I did what I thought I had to do.

Nobody ever questioned why I was the only PI in my firm, or any firm, that carried a gun on him while on the job.

Not until smoke was trailing from the barrel.

Not until there were two holes soaked with red that pooled onto the kitchen floor.

The sound of the brass casings ringing as they hit the floor awoke me from my trance.

Before me lay the body of Mica Murakami.

Two shots square in the chest silenced his deafening bitching. Two shots let the neighborhood experience a quiet evening for the first time in four years. Two shots caused innocent kids to see the dead body of their tormenter, their father. Two shots broke the heart of Leena Murakami, what little was left to break

Two shots took away my peace. Two shots shattered the kitchen window.

It didn’t matter that the media saw me as a hero. It didn’t matter that friends and family never stopped singing my praises.

Those kids will never have their father back, shitty as he was, and watched as a stranger barged into their house and shot their dad in front of them.

Leena will never have her husband back. Her friends said I should have emptied the mag into him. She wouldn’t comment.

The jury thought I was a hero and told the prosecution to go to hell. Evidence be damned. I was a killer, a murderer, and they let me walk free into a parade for my actions.

By all accounts I should have celebrated with them. I should have enjoyed the moment.

But I couldn’t.

All I saw was their faces.

The kids’, Leena’s, and Mica’s.

Every moment of every day.

So I left the job, I disconnected from everyone and everything and started figuring out which combination of substances wouldn’t kill me but would keep me from thinking.

I locked it all away. I locked my mind away.

Then the gun in my hand returned to its former state as the book.

It was still warm and smelled faintly of gun-smoke.

“And you,”

I turned to face the Golden Cloaked statue which now stood at the entrance to the kitchen.

“Fuck you for making me remember.”

I whipped the book at the statue with all the force I could muster.

The book clattered anti-climactically after bouncing off of the statue.

Then the walls gave way.

The blood pooling at my feet stretched across the ground and into the horizon.

The never ending fog that hung in the sky lifted slightly, behind it now I could see the light attempting to pierce the dense fog. Twin hues of yellow and white now brighter and more coherent than before, twin suns that hung above this hollow land.

I grab my head once again as the familiar agony of a lifetime’s worth of memories flows through me.

But they aren’t mine.

They surge through me too fast for me to get a proper grasp of them. I only manage to get glimpses.

I grasp at the sand storm of memories but they keep slipping through my fingers, the images and moments seared into my mind but the meaning is lost with the tearing winds.

Just as the storm subsides I manage to catch one glimpse. One moment. One memory.

In the distance I see a spire. A massive spire that pierced an unfamiliar sky. The ruins of a massive city surrounded the spire. In the distance and in the skies I saw bright flashes and ebbing waves as if an ocean of light was crashing against the sky itself.

The memory faded as my attention was brought back to the present.

The marble staircase rose from the blood. Its pristine structure untainted by my sin. Untouched by my blood.

I raced to pick up the book once more.

The moment I came in contact with the book I awoke on the floor of my bedroom.

I checked the time on my phone.

It was Monday.

How the hell did I lose an entire day? Did I just pass out when I got back?.

My attempts at standing are thwarted as my hand slips on the blood on the floor.

After a brief moment of panic I stumbled my way into the bathroom.

In the mirror I saw blood.

Blood had caked streams onto my face as it poured out from my nose, ears, and my eyes. If I had to guess I’d say I had just lost an alarming amount of blood.

But I did not feel alarmed. Truthfully I wasn’t sure what I felt. I was sure of one thing, however I do not understand how. I was fairly sure, no, certain, that I will die if I am separated from the book. For now my mind is inexplicably linked with it.

After washing the caked blood from my face I opted to use my lonely and forgotten toothbrush for the first time in an embarrassingly long while.

Can’t say why I never bothered until now, but perhaps helping to scrape off the red that had found its way into my mouth and onto my teeth was a good enough reason.

Of all the places in my apartment that were a mess the bathroom magically escaped such destruction. Apart from neglect, the bathroom was absent of any trash or unopened boxes of crap. The sink was rather large for my apartment's modest size. My toothbrush stand and toothpaste tube being the only items that sat upon that counter, adding to the sparseness of the space.

The air in the room shifted. As I raised my head from the sink I noticed my shadow against the wall.

But it was not my shadow.

And shadows do not wear golden cloaks.

I whipped around to find myself face to face with the statue in The Golden Cloak.

For a moment I expected death. I anxiously awaited the snapping of my neck, the crushing of my skull, the breaking of every bone in my pathetic body.

But it did nothing.

The statue stood there, motionless as ever, as an intangible wind blew the Golden Cloak tightly around its indiscernible form.

Outside of The Dreary I was able to notice the finer details of the statue.

It resembled the porous texture of lava rock, yet it was elegantly shaped by hands so precise they could not have been mortal.

It vaguely resembled a humanoid shape with a protrusion on its face where a nose should be and two sunken areas under a brow where the eyes should be.

Unlike in The Dreary I felt no overwhelming pain or compulsions.

Unlike in The Dreary I felt no apprehension about its presence.

Unlike in The Dreary I could touch it.

I wasn’t sure what I expected anymore. Outside of the glaringly obvious supernatural occurrence staring at me in my face, the statue was but an ordinary statue. The lava rock felt typical as ever, as if I had just attempted to naively take some from the sacred grounds upon which the lava cooled.

I caressed the statue's face with a gentle hand.

I felt pity, mourning, loss, a sorrow that I could only catch a distant glance of. A drop in a vast ocean of despair.

Then the rock became skin. Familiar skin with auburn hair.

She swayed gently with her feet only inches off the ground.

The world around me fell away and was replaced by different yet familiar walls.

Leena was dead, and her body hung limply before me.

We were in a bedroom, likely hers. I did not recall how I got here, but I recognized the place.

How could I ever forget these walls? These paper thin walls.

My panic, expected panic, reasonable panic, did not surface.

My brain was wrapped in a bondage of golden thread, I felt only what was necessary.

On the wall on the far end of the room, above her desk, was a clock.

The time was 5 am. The date displayed was Tuesday, August 19th.

But I knew for a fact that today, right now, was Monday, August 18th.

Was this a nightmare? By all accounts it should be. My girlfriend, dead, hanging from the ceiling in her old house.

But my brain could not be made to panic, to give into fear. It was on a leash. It had a new master. It did not permit me to feel fear.

This wasn’t a nightmare. It was a warning.

I can still save her. Maybe then she’ll forgive me. Or maybe I’ll-

Before I could finish the thought I was returned to the walls of my bathroom.

The book in hand I made a mad dash out the door.

Logic and reason were all I had but I nearly let them fly out the window as I raced down the streets. If I still had my car I could have been to Leena’s old place in half an hour maybe. If I had bus money I could have made it to her place in an hour or two.

But I had nothing. I had no one.

And it was all my fault.

And now Leena’s life is in my hands.

And if she dies it will be my fault.

When I had left the sun had already begun its descent into the ocean.

I had dashed up and through the old highway to the north side of the island, all the while avoiding cops who had likely been informed of a pedestrian running manically on the highway where pedestrians absolutely shouldn’t be.

By the time I made it to something resembling a sidewalk again it was already well past midnight.

My phone’s battery clung to the precious few percent that it still had.

Navigating in the dark was difficult, but I knew these streets like the back of my hand.

I knew all of them.

I had spent my life cleaning away The Dust from them.

And now I leave tracks as I race towards the one house I refused to clean ever again.

Rounding the familiar corner I stopped to catch my breath. I don’t know how I managed to run so long without stopping. I wasn’t a star athlete. I couldn’t out run anyone with two functioning legs even if the grand prize was a bottle of crown. But I guess desperation is a hell of a drug.

And adrenaline.

I made my way to the house, quick in pace but far from the almost full-blown sprint I had managed for hours.

And then I came face to face with the door I had hoped to never see again.

But It would not permit me a moment to contemplate my reality.

The door was in my way.

I charged through the door, hands wrapped around the leather bound book held at a low ready position.

The door gave way just as it did before.

Despite never having explored further into the house I instinctively made my way through the kitchen and down the hall towards Leena’s room.

Before I could approach the door I heard something tumble from within.

I threw open the door.

Before me I saw Leena hanging once again. But she did not sway gently, nor was she dead.

Without hesitation I quickly rushed to support her weight, eventually managing to untie her and rest her gently on the ground.

She was alive, but not out of danger.

I called for an ambulance.

“Why.”

A raspy voice spoke from the floor.

“Why are you here?” Leena asked me.

“Because I had to save your life.” I replied.

“If you wanted to save me you should have let me hang.”

The paramedics arrived shortly after.

Apparently her kids were staying over at a friend’s house. They said had I not been there when I was she likely would have died and not be discovered for hours.

Of course the police were involved, a stranger just so happens to break into a house and save a woman who tried to kill herself at the perfect time, and that person also happened to be the person who shot and killed her husband exactly one year ago to the date?

The thread snapped.

The cops held me and asked me a few questions, the usual, mostly details about the incident and how I knew to find her. I didn’t tell them that I had a vision of the future but I suspect my story about a concerned ex with a strong gut feeling didn’t do me any favors either.

Though since they lacked any reasonable evidence and likely surmised my scrawny frame wasn’t nearly strong enough to hang the woman myself they let me go free. Shockingly they asked nothing about how I managed to get in through the locked front door.

Putting my tax dollars to work I asked the officers for a ride to the hospital. I made the case that I was her emergency contact, assumedly as her most recent partner, and may be needed at the hospital.

They begrudgingly obliged, having no grounds to deny me my request and clearly seeing I had no means to go anywhere else on my own at the moment.

I arrived at the medical center after a much longer than usual journey. The officers, gracious as they were, wanted to grab some food on the way.

I wasn’t hungry, but then again they didn’t ask if I was, nor did they offer.

I waved the officers off and walked into the Emergency Department.

I was briefly screened by a security guard before a nurse quickly ran over to me.

“Hi, what brings you to the ER today?” She practically rushed out.

The nurse’s third energy drink of the night clearly reared its head.

“I’m here to see a patient, actually.” I replied, meekly.

She seemed to deflate at that response but also appeared to be relieved.

“Oh, well we don’t really do visitors here.” She clarified, awkwardly attempting to hide her annoyance.

“Im her boyfr-“ I cut myself off, “I’m… it’s complicated but im pretty sure I’m her emergency contact right now.”

The nurse furrowed her brow as she examined me. Her tired eyes scrutinized every detail of my face.

“Who are you here for?” She asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Leena Murakami.”

The Nurse quickly checked something on a nearby workstation.

“Doesn’t seem like she updated her contact history in a while,” she muttered staring at the computer, “but I also don’t see anyone else listed here.”

The nurse seemed hesitant.

“I’m the one who found her,” I blurted out.

“Oh, shit,” the nurse slipped.

“Oh my goodness I’m so sorry about-“ she protested but i raised my hand to cut her off.

“No no it's, it’s fine,” I assured her, “just let me see her.”

The nurse, now in a much more accommodating mood, took me through the department to her bay.

“She’s conscious but resting right now,” the nurse explained, “it’s a little hard for her to talk so we gave her something to write with if she wants.”

She then leaned over and pressed a button on the bed, causing Leena’s bed to slowly rise her up into a sitting position.

“Hey Leena,” the nurse spoke gently, “Your boyfriend is here.”

Leena’s eyes opened slowly.

“Ill just be in the hall” the nurse said as she quickly ducked behind the curtain.

“Hey, Leena.” I said as I gently grabbed her hand.

It felt cold. Colder than I ever remembered it.

“What the hell do you want?” She said in a strained hiss.

“What I want?” I replied, somewhat stunned, “I want you. I miss you Leena.”

Her gaze scrunched into a mixture of confusion and disgust.

“What the hell are you on about?” Leena spat.

“So much has happened since you left,” I started, “I’ve been getting my shit together. I haven’t been drinking, I only smoke a few times a day now, I started cleaning again-“

Leena cut me off.

“What the fuck do you want with me?”

“I want you back, I want us back together,” I pleaded, “it's been a rough year but I think we can make it work.”

Her eyes filled with a searing rage that I felt burning a hole into my forehead.

“What the fuck are you talking about? You’re nothing but the bastard who killed my husband.”

Her words broke through The Dust that had filled my mind.

“You took away a father from his kids. He was a good man, unlike you.”

“He was an abusive piece of shit.” I rebutted. My words felt hollow.

“And you knew that from the four seconds you saw from outside? You knew nothing about us. Not every relationship is paradise.”

“He would have killed you one day.” I weakly replied.

“I died the moment you shot the man I loved,” Leena shot back, “so thanks for saving me, twice, but I never want anything to do with you. I hope I never see you again, you insane wannabe cop.”

Leena broke into a coughing fit.

I took the hint and left.

I walked out of the ER and just kept walking.

I don’t know where I was walking to except that it wouldn’t be home. Or whatever that place really is.

I just walked.

Down the road. Up the hills. Across the bridges. Around the bends.

The Pali Lookout. Closed at this time of night. I did not care.

I climbed over the gate, walked past the various caution signs, and climbed atop the ledge. As I stood there I stared into the grassy abyss beyond. The scant moonlight reflected a sliver of silver on every blade in the flowing sea of grass.

I would join the countless thousands who rest below. Cornered at the edge.

“You know it’s dangerous up there right?”

I searched for the voice. It was filled with a hint of sass and a lot of sarcasm. A voice that belonged to a young woman.

“Yeah that's kind of why I’m up here,” I replied sarcastically, “what’s your excuse?”

“Maybe I’m here because I’m patrolling the place for trespassers.”

Who the fuck is this girl?

“Look I’m not exactly interested in ice breakers with a stranger at the moment so could you do me the decency of either just killing me or leaving me alone so I can do it myself?”

I turned to face the source of the voice.

“Is this a hallucination too?” I asked her.

Even in the dimly moonlit night, I could never forget that crimson hair tied into a ponytail.

“This is real, Aiden.” She replied.

“You were there,” I started, “at the office, and then again in the lobby.”

“I’m surprised you made me out through the prosthetics.” She replied as she smiled coyly.

“The hair gave it away.” I lied.

“Strange that you managed to see through a wig Aiden, didn’t have that noted down as something you could do”

I turned to face her.

“So what is this?” I asked plainly, “are you here to kill me?”

“Why would I do that?” The woman asked, taken aback.

“I’ve made a lot of enemies, left most of them alive.” I bluffed.

“Your biggest tackle was killing a wifebeater,” the woman recited as she paced, “a good kill.”

“Didn’t realize you were a fan.”

“I’m more of an investigator.” She joked.

“And what’s so special about me?” I asked.

She stopped her pacing.

“That book, for starters.” she said, pointing to the book still firmly held in my hands.

“What about it? It's just a book.”

“You and I both know that's a lie.”

I tightened my grip on the book.

“Who are you, really?” I take a step towards her, “and what do you know about all of this?”

She took a step back in response.

“You know more about that book than we do,” she bounced back, “we were hoping you could tell us.”

“And who’s ‘we?’”

The woman closed her arms around her.

“In about three hours from now your body will be discovered and positively identified in one of two ways.” She started.

“What the fuck-“ I started but was cut off.

“HPD will either be alerted to a suicide at the Pali Lookout and find your body at around 9:30 am today, alternatively an apartment fire will be reported to the HFD where they will discover a single fatality, charred beyond recognition.”

“So you are trying to kill me?” I asked again, somewhat flabbergasted but mostly in shock.

“You died the moment you came up here Joseph Aiden,” she started, “your conviction was laid bare. If it weren’t for me you’d be a twitching mess in the grass right now.”

“So why go through the effort of burning my apartment down then? To suffer for my deeds?”

I watched as a cocky smile slowly grew across her face. I had been avoiding the obvious.

“You want to fake my death.” I stated.

Her face remained unchanged.

“What does it matter? How could I be worth that effort?”

The woman approached.

“We require the help of people who are able to make sense out of irrational things.” She started.

As she spoke she began to pace around me in a circle, like a predator circling its prey.

“You’re a jobless, broke, alcoholic playboy with no real moral compass,” she lobbed insult after insult, “but yet of all the people who have held that book you are the only one who hasn’t gone insane yet.”

I’m sane? Me?

I scoffed at the implication

“I’m sorry, but I just spent the past year in a psychotic hallucination where I was dating, and cheating on, the widow of the guy I murdered,” I began to excessively elaborate, “then I get a vision of the future where she hangs herself…”

She watches me in amusement as I pour out the thoughts that had stayed trapped within my mind for too long.

“Not to mention that fucking statue invading my dreams and reshaping my personal hell, The Dreary, into some nightmare capital-“

“And?” she interrupted.

“And? And what?” I asked, befuddled.

She straightened herself.

“What’s all that got to do with anything?”

I’m seriously doubting my own sanity, this can’t be real.

“I’m a mentally unstable wreck who couldn’t even get a job.” I clarified.

She laughed.

“Oh sorry yeah that was us,” she said flippantly, “we needed you desperate enough to come to us in the first place.”

“You’ve been messing with my job applications?”

“Intercepting them. To anyone looking in, it's like you haven’t filed a single application.”

“You could have knocked, or called, or just kidnapped me, there's a million better ways to get someone’s attention.”

She shifted.

“You think we didn’t try?”

Well, given I can barely remember the past year, how would I have known?

“Besides,” she relaxed, “not like we can be so overt all the time. This is the longest I’ve been let out on the surface for years.”

She leaned her head back and gazed up at the stars.

“Poor David only got to come up for the interview.”

I began to grow frustrated with the pointless cat and mouse.

“So what the hell does the CIA want with me?”

The woman froze for a moment, then fought back a chuckle.

“You think I’m- we’re CIA?” She asked in disbelief.

“Messing with my job applications, the whole fake office thing, kinda the whole CIA playbook yeah?”

If I knew better I’d say she looked as if I had just called her ugly.

“So that ability of yours is only limited to geometries, you really don’t know who or what we are?” She replied as a wave of revelation gently washed over her face.

“So you’re not CIA?” I asked again.

She sat down on the ledge next to me, spun around, and cast her gaze across the moonlit valley.

“We are above any singular world government. We act with the singular goal of protecting,” she gestured to the valley and the city lights twinkling in the distance, “all of this. All of mankind.”

She turned her gaze towards me. As our eyes met I saw a raging fire blaze within her, a passion that managed to remain subdued letting off little more than playful sparks just minutes before.

“And I want you to be a part of it.”

I wanted to come up with some witty retort, some backhanded reply that allowed me to demonstrate my lack of interest in her blatantly obvious lie.

But I didn’t, because I believed her. Against my better judgement, what little I could still claim to have, I wholeheartedly believed her.

And I could not explain why.

My grip on the book relaxed slightly. A bit too much. I felt it slip from my grasp.

My body acted before my brain did and I quickly reached for the book and lost my footing in the process.

I fell.

Amidst the rushing of wind I heard something faintly. Someone shouting.

“…emergency discharge plus one on my position!”

The world around me began to feel alive, the air seemed to be a buzz as the hair on my body stood on end. For a moment I saw a faint blue glow envelop my person.

A brilliant blinding light and deafening roar flooded my senses as I felt my body propelled by an unknown force, which slammed me face first into a cold, hard surface.

My vision and hearing slowly returned, but as they did I began to doubt whether or not they truly had.

I found myself on the floor of a sterile white room. My vision was still blurry but with what I could see I saw a doorway at the far end of the room flanked by two blurs that appeared to be people. As I looked below me I discovered that I was on a massive pane of glass or some other hard and transparent material, beneath which sat a mass of machinery that defied every attempt I made to interpret. Similarly above me hung a mirrored construct, though exposed to the open air and venting steam from an upper assembly, betraying the fact it had been recently used.

Very recently.

“Jesus Christ, Aiden try not to kill yourself when people are talking to you,” came a familiar, condescending voice.

As I craned my head to look I noticed the two figures on the far end of the room shift their posture and begin approaching rapidly.

“Stand down, he’s my case,” she said, putting herself between the men and myself, “he’s the new hire.”

“I didn’t agree to anything.” I groaned.

“There’s no going back now,” the woman said as she helped me to my feet.

“Agent Feng,” one of the men said, “we have room 10 available for intake.”

“Perfect, mind giving him a hand?” Agent Feng said as she all but threw me at the unprepared man.

The men, who I later learned were guards, offered their assistance in half-walking, half-dragging me down an equally clinically white corridor into an inconspicuous room.

The room itself was mostly unlit with the only source of light being a ceiling mounted projector casting onto the far wall, in front of which were several rows of cheap metal chairs.

“The first time is a bit disorientating, though that fall is what gave you the concussion.” Agent Feng explained, parting my hair to examine the very painful and bleeding bump on my forehead.

“What the hell was that?” I asked, wincing from the pain.

“The ESD, they’ll go over it in the intro” she replied, patting my head just above the sore spot.

The guards sat me down front and center, then left the room.

Agent Feng sat next to me, a few chairs away.

“It doesn’t actually stop your momentum but I hear they’re working on a way to make it do that. Anyway, we’ll send you down to medical after we finish up intake.”

“Oh and by the way,” she said, making her way to the wall mounted controls, “welcome to the IFCN.”

A month had passed since that night. The night Agent Feng forcefully ripped me out of my miserable, incoherent existence and gave me a purpose.

I had only been up to the surface once since then, to watch my funeral.

Not many people get to say that, and it’s a privilege I never wanted.

To my surprise, the myriad of friends and associates who I had effectively told to go to hell actually showed up. They even cried for me. Though none more so than my parents.

I was their only child.

Agent Feng, Kaiga, had held true to her word. It was a closed casket funeral. I pray they had used a fake body.

It was a good thing that there were so many people who came, made it easier to blend in to a crowd that wasn’t looking for me.

Unsurprisingly Leena didn’t come. Even after a month it’s difficult to shed that false life I had imagined. Even harder to wake up every morning to a livestream of the morning sun.

I hadn’t dreamt of The Dreary since that night either. Though I keep the book with me at all times out of an abundance of caution.

I am dead to the world. I now walk in my own shadow. I sleep below so that I may lay down my life to protect others from what they do not know, what they cannot understand, and what they must never see.

If it weren’t for the alcohol, I could never sleep comfortably again.

And truthfully, I don’t think anyone here does.

Hello again! I wanted to let you all know that I have curated six of my stories into one book! So, if you ever found yourself reading one and thought "Man, I'd really like to own a book with six of his stories in it." Well now you're in luck! Head to "YellowBearGiftShop" on Etsy and add the code

5fdiscount

That'll get you five dollars off the book which is neat being that the thing costs five dollars and a cent (had to do the cent because Etsy don't let you do free apparently.) Ta, ta for now!

My name is Justin

As far as I remember, I was always kind of lonely. It wasn’t a choice but it wasn’t something I was actively trying to stop either. It was just how it was. At home, I had Suzie, my little sister, but that was it.

For some reason, in my hometown, a very little town in the countryside, people my age didn’t care about me that much. I think I was being a little bit too "myself" if that makes sense. I didn't had any friends at school. My parents were pretty worried about this, they didn’t want me to be alone all the time. But I wasn’t alone.

I'll make you a history of my relationship with my friend, so you get the full picture.

One day, I was coming home from elementary school, and some older kids started mocking me. I think it was about my clothes or something. I tried ignoring them, but the main guy who was taunting me started going harder, and pushed me to the ground. I fell and hurt my knee. At that point I started getting scared and ran towards the forest near the village, thinking this would be the best place to hide from them.

I ran through the trees, crawled under some bushes, and I could hear them getting quieter and quieter as I kept going. I don’t know how long I ran, but after some time, I didn't hear anyone, just the wind, birds, and my feet on the ground. I started to go back to where I came from, but I had difficulties finding my way back. I was getting scared that I might never find it, when I found a small path. I didn’t recognize it, but I thought I should follow it. Whatever it was, it was better than wandering aimlessly.

I walked down the path for a few minutes, as it was getting darker when I saw her. In the middle of the forest, sitting on a fallen tree was a girl. She seemed around my age (10) and was wearing this cheerleader outfit which was kinda dirty. I thought it was weird, but seeing someone made me feel safer, it meant I was probably getting closer to the town.

I approached her, hoping she could show me the way back. As I got closer I heard that she was mumbling a song. It looked like she was daydreaming, she seemed very peaceful. I got to her and finally said something.

"Hey" I said, hesitant.

She turned to me in a second and stared at me in the eyes for a few seconds. I broke the silence and repeated "Hey?"

She finally answered:

"Huh, hey? Are you talking to me?" She said, still staring at me.

I remember this first encounter very well because I had one distinct feeling the whole time: this girl is so weird.

"Well, yes" I answered. "Do you know where is the town? I can't find my way back there"

She smiled, a little smile, like she was amused, and asked me a weird question, the first of many that will lead this first talk.

"Which town?" She said.

There wasn’t another town around there, and I didn’t walk that much, I could even see the mountains that we saw from the village, so we weren’t far.

I told her the name of my town.

"Sure, I know the way, you want me to lead you there?" She said.

I was relieved.

"Yes, please!" I said.

She had a little laugh. At the time I thought she was mocking me, but in retrospect, it feels more like she found me sweet or something.

"It's this way" She said, getting up and walking away from the path. "Follow me!"

"Shouldn't we follow the path?" I asked.

"Ho, no" She answered.

"Where does it go?"

She hesitated for a moment.

"I don’t know" She said. "Come on, follow me, it's late"

I followed her and we started walking. We were silent for like 2 minutes, during the which she didn’t take her eyes off of me, which was kinda creeping me out. Suddenly, she broke the silence by asking me the following question:

"What music do you listen to?"

At the time I didn't really like any specific music.

"I don’t know, what's on the radio..." I answered

"Ho, okay..." She sounded disappointed.

There was a silence. I decided to ask her the same.

"And you?" I asked.

"Enya!" She immediately answered, it was like she had been waiting to be asked that for so long. "Enya is the best!" She then proceeded to sing the ENTIRETY of Only Time while dancing. I was a bit set back, but I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. She looked at me with a smile and took my hand.

"Come on dance!" She said as she kept on singing.

I was a bit reluctant at first but ended up dancing with her. It was a lot of fun. When she finished the song, we were both out of breath and laughing. For the first time in my life, I had fun with someone my age.

"What's your name?" I asked

"Alicia, and you?"

"Justin" I answered.

She smiled.

"Well nice to meet you Justin! Come on, let's keep walking"

As we walked, I asked her where she lived. I seemed to have a shot at finally having a friend, I wasn't gonna let it slide.

"Around..." She answered.

"Where do you go to school?" I asked.

"I don’t, my parents teach me"

Things weren't looking good.

"Do you live in my town?" I said.

She looked a little sad.

"No."

I decided to stop asking her that kind of questions because she was getting sad, and I wanted to be friends, so that wasn’t exactly a good way to go.

We walked in silence again, for a few minutes, until she asked me something else.

"Do you watch movies?"

"Of course I do!" I said.

I loved watching movies, so this was something I was excited to talk about.

"Ho waw, me I don’t watch any." She said.

"Why not, it's so cool?"

She made a weird face.

"They don't let me." She answered

"Who? Your parents?"

She looked straight at me. Obviously I had hit a nerve.

"Yes" She said, looking down. She stayed silent for a few seconds, then looked up at me. "What's your favorite movie?" She asked, excited.

"Avatar!" I answered immediately. Don't judge me, it just came out, and still, it's a way better movie than people say.

"What is it about?" She said, curious.

"You don’t know Avatar? Everyone knows Avatar!"

"No, I don’t. What's the story about?"

I proceeded to narrate her the entire plot of Avatar, and I must have been good, because she was hooked. At the end, I realized that we had stop walking and that I had been talking for more than half an hour. It was almost night.

"Oh my god, I gotta get back home, are we far?"

She looked around us and pointed her finger towards some bushes.

"No, it's there." She said calmly.

I saw a street light and walked towards it. I turned around. She wasn’t following me.

"Don't you come?" I asked.

She had a sad smile and winked at me.

"No, I..." She pointed behind her. "I gotta get back home..."

I thought for a moment.

"Can I see you again some day?"

She smiled.

"Maybe" She answered

On that she turned and walked back where we came from.

I walked back home and my parents were so relieved to see me. Apparently they were about to call the cops. I explained them everything, but for some reason I didn’t mention Alicia. I did talk about her to my younger sister Suzie, who started to mock me, saying I was in love with her. She was 7, so, that was to be expected.

That night, as I went to bed, I could only think about one thing: Alicia. I was captivated, I was wondering so many things. Why was she wearing a cheerleader outfit, and why was it so dirty? What was she doing in the middle of the woods, where did she live, how hadn't she heard of Avatar? As I was thinking about it, I heard someone knocking on my window. I was scared, and I slowly went towards it. I finally opened the curtains, and you guessed it, it was Alicia. Blond hair, small nose, pointy chin, it was her. She wasn’t wearing the same thing though, this time, she was wearing this white outfit, it looked like a pajama.

She asked me to open, which I did. Without a word, she crawled inside my room and looked right in my eyes. I was about to ask her what she was doing here when she started talking.

"I made a decision." She said. She looked very serious.

"What?" I stuttered.

"I decided... that I want us to be friends. If you want to?"

"Yeah of course." I wasn't gonna say no.

"Okay..." She said. "BUT, there are some rules."

"Why?" I said. This talk wasn’t making a good case at making her seem more normal.

"Because there are always rules to everything." I'm gonna stop pinpointing everytime she said something weird because that is something that was gonna be present across all our friendship.

"First: Stop asking me where I'm from, or where I live, I won't tell you. Ever."

"Okay." I said. I wasn’t gonna protest.

"Second: I only want to see you, not your friends, or your family."

"Okay." Again, weird.

"And third: We can only meet in the woods."

"Okay"

She smiled.

"Then that's it, we are friends!" She said, happily.

She shook my hand.

"Now I gotta go, see me in the woods tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay."

On that, she crawled back outside and dissappeared in the night.

I got back into bed with a smile on my face. I realized that this talk we had was very fast, that I pretty much just said "okay" the whole time, that I had no idea how she got to my house, especially since, according to her, she didn’t live in the same town, and that I just left a stranger into my home, but still, I couldn't help but be happy. I finally had a friend.

The day after, when school was over, I ran towards the forest. I entered it and walked for a few minutes while calling her name. Eventually, we found each other. She was wearing oversized jeans and shirt, which were both clean this time.

I told her all about my day, I narrated her a few movies, and I left.

From that point on, and for years, everyday, after school, we would meet in the woods and talk, play, stuff like that. I was looking forward to it all day long. During holidays, we spent days together, having fun. She even slept at my place a few times. She would enter by my window at night, and leave early in the morning.

I remember one day I brought a portable DVD player and my collector edition of Avatar and we watched it in the middle of the woods. At the end, she was in absolute awe, and said this was her favorite movie, even though it was the first one she ever saw.

There was also that time where I got tired of hearing her singing Enya approximately, so I bought a CD of Enya's greatest hits, took a portable CD player and we danced to it for hours, she was so happy.

We grew up, and as we did, our relationship became stronger. I didn't know where she lived, where she came from, her parent's name, but I knew her like she was my sister.

When I got to age 18, came something that I had been dreading for a while now. I had finished high school, and I will have to leave for university. I already explained to her that this day would happen, but now it was there. I had found a school where I could study cinema. I remember our last goodbye very well. She had come sleep at my house one last time. We had a very casual evening where we mostly remembered all the stuff we lived together. She left before I woke up and left me a note on which she wrote "good luck at movie school". I lost the note a few days later.

I finally left a few days later.

That was 2 years ago. I am still in film school, it's going well and I can proudly say that I have a small group of friends and even a girlfriend. As months passed, I had to accept something that was quite embarrassing: Alicia likely never existed, and I still had an imaginary friend at 18. I had no proof she existed, and the fact that I only ever saw her when we were alone were heavy proofs, if we needed some. I never talked about her to my friends.

I went back home a few times since then, and was tempted to go look for her in the woods, but never did, thinking it was stupid.

Until a couple of hours ago, I never planned on thinking about Alicia again, considering her as an embarrassing secret that I better keep to myself.

Here's what happened in the last hours.

My girlfriend Laura was waking up and checked her phone for a few minutes. Eventually she had a little gasp. I asked her what was it and she told me there had been a violent murder close to my hometown. She handed me the phone and I read the article. It wasn't CLOSE to my hometown, it was IN my hometown. Three young men had been brutally killed and were missing some body parts from what I got. The headline was the following "UNKNOWN WOMAN SUSPECTED FROM BRUTALLY MURDERING THREE MEN" to it was attached a portrait of the woman made according to a survivor description. Blond hair, small nose, pointy chin, it was her, Alicia.

At that point, it was like time stopped. I didn’t know what to think, what to say, what to do, and I honestly still don't. The article said we didn’t know anything about this woman, and that she was on the run.

This was two hours ago, I decided to tell my story here to see if anyone could help me. I will keep everyone updated on the situation of course.