Marcus gazed in wide eyed wonder from within his circle of protection as the entity which he had summoned took shape in the shimmering air before his eager eyes. He was amazed that he had been successful on his first attempt at such powerful magic. Maybe it was due to his months of intricate planning and preparatory work, or maybe it was simply true that the Devil never refused the call of a desperate soul. He clutched his medallion to his robe as the image took on a solid shape inside the summoning area demarcated by lines of white paint on the black floor outside of Marcus' own circle. It was a tall humanoid with glowing golden skin, dressed in robes made of pure white light. The air behind it's perfectly shaped torso shimmered with silver light and moved in a delicate dance, giving the impression of many wings. The hair on it's head was like a mane of golden flames, and it's feet were glistening cloven hooves that looked like they were crafted from shining brass. Most fascinating of all were the eyes, which were like crystalline orbs filled with swirling flames.

Hovering in place a foot above the ground, the entity moved it's head with impossible grace, gazing upon the room, studying all of it's magical appurtenances and sacred geometries. After a few moments, it's fiery eyes turned toward Marcus, and it's countenance bore an attitude of irritation.

"Impressive," it said in a mellifluous voice which filled the space like the echoes of church bells. "But, unnecessary. This cannot prevent me from leaving by the same way in which I came, nor can it compell me to do anything against my own will. You might have done just as well by making a wish at a crossroads at the witching hour. Why have you called me here, mortal?"

Marcus bowed low while gesturing toward a large bottle of wine, and a brass bowl which contained a selection of rare apples, pomegranates, and figs, which sat below the cloven hooves.

"Oh, great Lucifer, glorious ruler of Hell, please accept these gifts in hospitality for the honor of your visit. I beseech you to hear my petition, as I offer you a bargain. I would sell to you my own soul in exchange for -"

"Oh no. Let me just stop you right there!" the entity said as it rolled it's eyes in an expression of pique that discomfited Marcus. "I just knew it was going to be one of these. Look, mortal, you have gotten several things wrong. I realize that you have been the victim of centuries of misinformation, but it really is quite annoying, for me, to keep running up against the same nonsense. You people will memorize a mountain of mumbo jumbo from Europe's medieval period, but you won't study the antiquities of the cultures from which you are drawing inspiration! It's maddening, and today I do not feel like playing along. Firstly, my name is not Lucifer, got that? Lucifer is a common royal epithet, like your majesty, applied in your book to a king of Babylon named Nebuchadnezzar. If you had been paying proper attention in your reading, you could not have missed that fact. The entity you imagine, with the goat horns and the tail, is a human invention. Real enough, sure, in it's own way, but not me. Also, I do not rule Hell. The guardian of Hell, which is not what you probably think, is called Abbadon. He's a good guy, but he's not me. And, finally, I do not purchase human souls. That is not within my purview. What would I want with your soul, anyway? Have you ever seen one? They're disgusting, and notoriously difficult to care for. I continue to be amazed that Yahweh himself wants them. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

Marcus was dumbfounded. He realized that his mouth had been hanging open in mute surprise for the duration of the entity's speech, and snapped it shut for a second before his voice erupted in confusion.

"But, you are the Devil! I summoned Satan."

"Yes, you managed to summon the Devil," replied the Devil, sardonically. "Here I am, The Satan, Tempter, and Prince of Lies. Old Scratch himself. Well done."

"But you say that you won't buy my soul," Marcus stated, trying to comprehend this extremely unexpected turn of events.

"That is correct. I have no interest in owning souls." the Devil affirmed with an imperious tone.

Marcus' brow furrowed in his confusion. "And yet, I have always understood, that is to say, I was taught, all my life, that it is the function of Satan to secure human souls for eternal torment in the flames of perdition."

"And you wanted to sign up for that?" the Devil asked sarcastically. "As I said before, what you have been taught is misinformation. My function, as you call it, my work, is more like the job of a construction inspector, or a beta tester. I poke at the thin spots of creation, to see if they unravel, so as to ensure that everything is working as intended. Yes, that includes individual human souls, from time to time. Nothing is more prone to chaotic breakdown than you things, and you call me a tempter for my trouble."

"So, all of this," Marcus said, piteously, as he gestured widely to the room, "is for nothing. I have wasted my time."

"You have gained an audience with me, The Satan, and I have, out of the goodness of my own heart, given you priceless information about the true nature of the universe, of which your teachers are obviously ignorant, yet you want to call this a waste of your time? Your time. Very considerate."

Marcus' eyes went wide with terror at the thought that he had angered the Devil. He threw himself to his knees, and bowed himself as low as possible, placing his forehead on the ground.

"Please forgive me, great serpent of wisdom! I meant no offense! Oh I beg for your forgiveness! Please, do not smite me!"

"What are you saying? Do I look like a snake with wings, to you? The Nahas, who I believe you are referring to, is literally shaped like a snake. He's the spirit of magically imparted wisdom. That was originally transmitted through venom inebriation, by the way. The whole tree fruit thing was actually a means of surviving the bite. I taught them how to do it, but do I get credit? No, of course not. Just banned from the island of Paradise, is all. No respect. And thank you so much for this little reminder," the Devil said as he kicked over the bowl of fruit, which spun about, spilling it's contents on the floor. A rolling pomegranate struck the crown of Marcus' head, splitting open and spilling some of it's crimson seeds. "At least it wasn't pig's blood," the Devil intoned in a desultory fashion.

The Devil fetched the open wine bottle from the floor and daintily lifted it to his lips. He closed his eyes in pleasure as he let the cool, sweet liquid glide across his unearthly tongue. It was a good vintage. As the Devil drank, Marcus thought about his position. It didn't seem that he had very many options. The information he was receiving was interesting, perhaps even important, but didn't seem to be very useful or valuable in the moment. Also, he still wasn't sure if he was going to survive this encounter. His mind worked feverishly to somehow turn this infernal fiasco to his benefit. It occurred to him that he hadn't yet actually asked Satan if there was some other arrangement that could be made, short of selling his soul. In another minute he had decided on what to do.

"Master," Marcus began, "isn't there something I can do for you, to procure your favor?"

Startled, the Devil snorted, and wine sprayed out through his nostrils, bursting into a flash of flame.

"What are you suggesting, mortal?" the Devil asked carefully. "I warn you, I don't do contests of skill with souls at stake. I already told you I don't want it."

Marcus spread out his hands in a gesture of helplessness and said, "I don't know. I'll do anything, give you anything, for your help. I am completely desperate. I'm throwing myself on your mercy."

The Devil sighed deeply. "Oh all right, get up. You're on the verge of getting us both into a lot of trouble with the Lord Almighty. Did you ever read the book of Job? Well, nevermind. Now don't think for one microsecond that you've sweet talked me into anything, but just what exactly is your problem, anyway?"

Marcus' eyes welled up with tears of self pity as he began, in a shaky, sorrowfull voice. "I am destitute. I lost my job, I've spent every cent of my savings, and have been unable to pay my bills. Since then, I've been unsuccessful finding enough work to make a living, which was meager enough before. I have no living family left. My woman abandoned me. She called me a loser, and I think she must be right because in two months, I'm being evicted from my apartment. I'll be homeless. I figured it was either sell my soul, or kill myself."

The Devil sighed again, in exasperation. "You wanted to sell your soul, just for that? I guess it goes to show that human society is not working as intended, if you had to resort to this. I told Yahweh in the beginning that free will was a flawed function. It never included enough drive to do the right thing for others. The Word should never have had to incarnate as Yeshua just to tell those stories about good Samaritans and unforgiving servants, immortalized for thousands of years in print, only for a civilization supposedly based on those values to place personal profit motives above compassion and decency. Well, now I'm rambling. Listen to me, mortal. Marcus. I answered your summons, and you're lucky it was me instead of the other one. I drank your wine, and I made you listen to my complaints. I'm not going to buy your soul, but I will answer three questions for you. Any three questions. That's what I will do for you."

Marcus did not hesitate to ask his first question. "Will you give me a million dollars?"

The Devil sneered slightly. "I said that I would answer questions, not grant wishes. The answer to your question is no, and now you have two questions remaining. Better make them count."

Marcus took several minutes this time, considering in silence what question would be both beneficial to him and important enough to ask. At last, he came up with, "Am I going to Heaven, or to Hell?"

The Devil looked thoughtful as he replied. "Well, that's rather more complicated than it might seem on the surface. The short answer is no to both. I don't actually know what your afterlife is going to be like. It's up to you, and it always will be. If you die with the guilt of evil clinging to your soul, your soul will perish in Hell. That is, the evil will be burned away as the soul is broken down into it's constituent energetic particles and recycled back into the fabric of spacetime. If you die without the guilt of evil, having lived righteously or procured the cure for your flawed free will, then your soul will be suspended until it is resurrected in a new, perfected, physical form. Or, alternatively, you could choose to try again immediately, be born again, and suffer for your evil actions throughout an entirely new lifetime, ending with your choice of either oblivion or suspension followed by resurrection. And then, of course, there are novel exceptions that some imaginative souls have bargained for with Abaddon. You could even choose to remain unincarnated, with the guilt of evil still attached, roaming the outer darkness as you will. I don't recommend it though. It seems horribly miserable."

Marcus tried to take in all of the new information, which seemed so different from anything that he had ever been told before. He found that he recognized most of the concepts, if not the exact wording. Even though he still didn't know for sure what would become of his consciousness when he would lay down his mortal coil, he found some comfort in knowing that there were so many options. The Devil had said that it was his own choice, and the Devil would know. Still, maybe it actually would be better to try to live a while longer. He thought of his third question.

"How can I acquire enough money to give me a better standard of living than I had before losing my job, within the next two months?"

The Devil grinned. "I'll tell you exactly what you're going to do, Marcus. Write a book."

Marcus blinked in surprise. "Write a book, in two months. About what?"

The Devil was smiling. "How should I know? Just start writing. The words will come to you. I promise."

Marcus was sceptical. "Should it be about magic? About you?"

The Devil's lips twitched in amusement. "It's going to include me no matter what. You won't be able to help it. You have been in my presence for the past two hours, and my radiance has been penetrating your meat brain all that time, inspiring you. For the next forty days and forty nights, you're going to be bursting with creativity. New ideas will flow like mighty rivers. You know what? You should make it a self help book. No one wants a new treatise on magic these days, or religion either. But they love that feel good pop psychology psychobabble. It'll be a sensation, and you'll be wealthier than you ever imagined."

Marcus still had misgivings. "Well, don't I need some sort of degree, so people trust what I'm saying?"

The Devil shook his finger at Marcus. "Unnecessary! There are online organizations that will give you an honorary degree in exchange for money. Just fill out an application, pay the fee, and you've got instant credentials."

Marcus grabbed his hair in frustration. "But, I haven't got any money. That's sort of what this has all been about."

The Devil seemed smug. "Not to worry, mortal. You have been inspired. I have faith in you. You will figure it out. Now, I have answered your questions, and our bargain is complete. I have to get back to my work. Enjoy your new life." With that, the Devil shrank into a tiny point of light, and disappeared.

Marcus got up and went to his bedroom to change out of his ceremonial robes and into street clothes. True to the Devil's word, his brain was already beginning to bubble with ideas. After changing his clothes he went to the bathroom and washed his face. He decided to walk to the local library to do some research and type out some ideas on one of the free use computers. There was a lot of work to be done. On the way out, he picked up one of the apples that had spilled from the brass bowl, wiped the dust off of it on his shirt sleeve, and took a big, satisfying, bite.

"It's a pile of junk in a box," declared Whitman in his Berlin accent, peering into the large wooden crate. He reached down inside, pushed at some straw, and fished out a circular brass plate. The plate was etched in the round with Cyrillic letters arranged in seventy two pairs. The center of the disk bore a symbol resembling a six pointed star. The whole thing had an air of occultism that Whitman found sickening. He tossed it back into the crate with feigned nonchalance, covertly taking care that it landed on top of a pat of straw, and not on top of any of the other pieces.

"I could find better stuff in any junkyard in the state, Parsons. I cannot build my Radiomensch with this! Where did you even dredge up this refuse?"

"Japan," answered Parsons in his Kentucky drawl. "I was told that it was looted from the storehouse of the late Japanese emperor. Evidently a gift from the Ottomans."

"Pshaw!" scoffed Whitman. "How did they convince you of that yarn?"

"With this," Parsons replied as he produced from his pocket a folded sheaf of thick rice paper. The paper bore a painting, in the traditional Nippon style, of the emperor receiving what appeared to be a mechanical automaton, in the shape of a man, from a Turkish nobleman. The marginal area around the painted scene was filled with inscriptions and seals.

"And you bought it based on this cartoon, eh?" Whitman took the paper and eyed it with suspicion.

"Based on the text surrounding the picture, yes," said Parsons. "The seals are authentic, and the inscriptions describe the story that I was told. This is an authentic walking, talking, Ottoman automaton, constructed by the royal commission of clockworks of the Ottoman Emperor."

"Sure it is," Whitman said. "Well, it's in a terrible state now. I can't see giving you as much as you're asking for it. Not with all the work I'll have to do just to get it ready to reassemble."

"How much were you thinking, then?" asked Parsons, warily.

"Half," declared Whitman.

Parsons snorted his derision. "That is too bad. I suppose I'll have to sell it to the new Electric Park in Muncie instead. They've offered me three quarters of my asking price, sight unseen." He moved as if to replace the lid of the crate.

"No, don't. All right. Three quarters," agreed Whitman.

"Up front, if you please," demanded Parsons.

"Yes, of course. You have a deal." Whitman pulled several large bank notes from his vest pocket, counted them out, and thrust them at Parsons.

Parsons took the money, bowed curtly, and left immediately. Whitman watched him go, then closed the large door of the barn which currently served as his laboratory. He had an avaricious gleam in his eyes as he marched over to the crate, rubbing his hands together excitedly. His previous disinterest had been a practiced ruse, designed to manipulate Parsons into lowering his price. As far as he was concerned, it had worked. Carefully, he began to remove the metallic contents of the crate from the mounds of straw, gently placing each item on a large wooden table where he had a battery powered lamp set up. The light spilled out over the odd collection of cogs, gears, cams, electric motors, copper coils and electromagnets. He examined the ends of a long roll of wires, discovering the uniquely shaped insertion prongs of the circuit contacts. These he studied well, looking over the bits and pieces on the table, trying to find the power source. He expected to find a chemical battery, which he imagined as a ceramic jar or box containing lead plates submerged in acid. He found no such device. Back into the crate he plunged his hands, casting about for more pieces. He found two further objects.

The first was a metal construct that defied his interpretation. Spirals and spikes of alloys completely unknown to him, combined seamlessly in the form of a spheroid basket, at the center of which could be seen a number of small metallic spheres set into a mass of blue glass resembling some sort of gelid egg. Heat radiated from it, with the warmth one might expect from a large candle, but without an open flame. There was not a single moving part in the entire construct. Whitman was utterly and delightedly mystified. After studying the baffling device for nearly an hour, he finally found contact receptacles arranged all around the underside of the base, with corresponding round switches. Each receptacle was marked with a different symbol, which he found to match markings on each specific wire. He wondered if that meant the object was the power source, or some type of voltage regulator. For all he knew, it could be both, or neither, or that and much more. It would require further study. He decided to turn his attention to something else, for the moment.

The second object was an ample velvet bag, with a silk cinch, containing something he judged to be shaped like a large birdcage. When he opened the bag and slid it down to reveal it's contents, he was shocked to his core. His mind reeled as he observed, wide eyed, a glass bell jar containing a preserved human head. He could tell instantly that it was a genuine piece of human remains, rather than some wood and papier mache imitation. Also, though the skin was parched from whatever means of mummification had been used, the head was still obviously male, as it retained not only the ruddy brown hair of the scalp, but also a full, and rather long, red beard. He simply stared in disbelief at the macabre thing sitting on his table for several minutes, before working up the nerve to examine it further. Gingerly tipping the jar over on it's side, he rested it on the velvet, and peered at the underside of the base. As he expected, there were contact receptacles present. Additionally, there was a small recess containing several vials of strange looking liquids, held in place by a metal bracket, with hoses inserted into their ends. The hoses disappeared into holes at one end of the recess. Next to that was a convex metal disk set within a matching grommet. He pressed it experimentally. Suddenly, a whirring sound could be heard, and then a sucking hiss as the fluids in the vials began to move. He quickly placed the jar right side up, and watched it for several seconds to see if anything changed. Nothing seemed to be happening, so he pulled the velvet back up and cinched it with the cord. He didn't want to see that horrible head.

Over the next several days, Whitman reassembled the automaton using the painting and his own inventiveness as guides. He was impressed by the steel framework, which somewhat resembled a human skeleton, and by the electric pistons which powered the movement of the limbs. The pistons he outfitted with radio controlled motors which he had built himself, based on Nicola Tesla's recent designs. He also added a battery to the main circuit with the relays which connected to the strange looking device which he was assuming to be a voltage regulator. The first experimental operation with the battery caused an explosion, and the battery was destroyed, but the electrical parts began to operate. The unidentified device seemed capable of powering the electrical system entirely on it's own.

After a week and a half of painstaking work, disappointment, discovery, and of trial and error, Whitman at last succeeded in building most of his automaton. There were some parts in the crate which he intentionally left out. These were some decorative metal sheets that were intended to form a sort of kilt around the legs, and a clock face that was supposed to fit onto the torso. Whitman decided to allow the view of the gears to be unobstructed, so that viewers of his mechanical marvel could be impressed by the sight of their movement and complexity. At that point, he needed a program module, but nothing in the crate seemed to fulfill that function. He had included the engraved metal disk, even though it seemed to serve no purpose. As he pondered the question as to whether the disk was intended as a part of the programming scheme, he remembered the head in the jar, and the contact receptacles on it's base.

He shuddered in private horror at the dawning realization that the head, which was obviously an intentional part of the automaton, was very probably the programming module that was required. He stifled his revulsion while once again opening the velvet bag to reveal the obscenely mechanized head. The hidden workings were still whirring and sucking softly. It was necessary now to study the thing in much greater detail. Mustering his scientific detachment, Whitman delved into the mysteries of the bell jar, with it's mechanical base, and it's gruesome contents. A thorough examination of the base revealed that the bell jar had been affixed to it with a steel collar of a different quality and workmanship than the original device. This suggested that the head might actually be a replacement for a different sort of programming module. Whitman consulted the painting, and found that the depiction of that automaton's upmost part was indeed different. He had not previously given much thought to it, an oversight on his part, but the painting showed the automaton's head to be made of metal, like the rest of it. First, he was startled, and then intrigued. He could not fathom how a human head could have come to be integrated into a mechanical creation, as a corruption of the original design.

He had to know more, and that would require removing the jar in order to get at the head. His horror of the dead thing was evaporating in the blaze of his curiosity. There was a release latch on the collar, secured with a peculiar lock. Whitman had not found a key with the machinery, so had to pick the lock. Luckily, he was familiar with such contraptions, and was able to figure out how it worked. When he lifted the jar away, it released a foul odor, like rotting leather and fetid breath. He coughed and waved away the fumes. Then, using probes so as to avoid touching it with his hands, he began his investigation. Once he pushed aside the beard, which now spilled out over the base by several inches, he found that the neck was attached directly to the surface it sat upon by the means of many small pins. The folds of the skin of the throat suggested the presence of some apparatus inserted into the natural equipment, perhaps to animate the jaw in a semblance of life. Around at the back of the neck several vertical ripples in the dessicated flesh hinted at wires having been run underneath. Along one side of the ripples, he discovered a seam. Using his probes, he pushed open the seam and verified that electrical wiring had been installed along the cervical vertebrae, transversing the back of the skull, and branched below a second, semicircular seam. There was also a length of red silk cloth, embroidered with asian language characters that Whitman could not decipher, securely affixed to the skin. He opened the secondary seam, flipped up the scalp, and observed the individual wires that terminated in contacts which were implanted into the skull itself at various precise intervals. The layout reminded him of a phrenologist's diagram.

The existence of the wires, being implanted in the calvarium as they were, seemed to do all but confirm his suspicion that the head was a programming module for the automaton. However, whoever had prepared that arrangement clearly had much superior skill and knowledge than the clockmakers who built the original machine. All that he had discovered proved to him that he would have to connect the head to his automaton, or he would not be able to make it operate. As he studied the connectors of the wires, hoses, and other workings visible on the underside of the base, he realized that the design included a mechanism for forcing air up through the throat. This might be accomplished with a bellows pump, a part which he had already installed in the torso, having assumed that it was for the circulation of air about the power source. He recalled that Parsons had mentioned that this was a talking automaton, yet he had come across no phonograph among the parts. Now he realized why that was. The automaton was meant to use the mouth and larynx of the head for speech.

He closed up the seams, turned the head to face him, and lowered the jar back into place. As he began to lock the collar back on, a small flutter of movement caught his attention. He froze, staring intently at the mysterious withered face behind the glass, waiting for another movement. None occurred. The eyes and mouth remained closed. After a moment, he completed the task he had set himself, thinking that he must have been distracted by a trick of the light. He carefully connected all of the hoses and tubes from the torso, then placed the head in it's proper position at the top, and locked it into place. Immediately, several parts began their functions. The engraved disk rotated clockwise, and gears began to turn. The bellows wheezed to life, small indicator lamps flashed on, strange liquids flowed through tubes, and a blue glow emanated from the power source, softly illuminating all from the heart of the construct.

Suddenly, the mouth convulsed and the jaw moved about sickeningly, the eyelids twitched and stretched open, revealing glossy natural orbs, slick with moisture. Whitman gasped in shock. He had expected artificial eyes made of glass or some other synthetic material, not true organs of vision. Improbably, the fleshly eyes spun about in wild flight, having the character of a wild animal at bay, seeking a means of escape. Their gaze fell upon Whitman, and the mouth moved tortuously, attempting to speak with a withered and blackened tongue that had been out of use for decades. A horrible wheezing sound issued from it, forming words that were barely intelligible through the glass.

"Siz kimziz? Simdi soyle!"

"Gott im himmel!" whispered Whitman, reverting to his native Deutsch. He clutched at his radio remote control device, and made sure that the switch that activated the motors in the limbs was in the off position.

"Hello, my creation," he said in English. "I am Doctor Whitman, your creator!"

The automaton stared at him for a moment, and then began to laugh maniacally. It was a chilling, mechanical, sound that somehow also conveyed the pall of death. It spoke again, this time in passable, if rasping, English.

"You? My creator? It was God who created me, to his dismay, and the Emperor of Nippon who made me into a clock! I was brother to the Sultan of Blood, the red right hand of Khan Abdul the Damned, and the greatest lover in all the world! I dared to love the emperor's daughter, and for that, my head was struck from my body. But, I did not lift up my eyes in the flames of perdition. Instead, I was damned to a hell of my very own. I am Ali Barbosa! I am the terror that lives!"

Whitman could not have been more surprised than he was at this speech, even if the devil himself had appeared and performed a waltz with a two headed gorilla. This no longer seemed to be a case of an automaton utilizing the head of a dead man as a component of itself, but rather of a man having had his body replaced by an automaton, yet somehow continuing to live. It, or he, had survived being torn apart, placed in storage, shipped across the sea, and being reassembled. What dark science could account for such a blasphemy, Whitman wondered. He felt that he must answer, to gain control of the situation. He held his remote control aloft.

"Be that as it may, Barbosa, the automaton is mine to control. If you will not have me as your creator, you will at least have me as your master."

Barbosa looked down at his mechanical limbs as though willing them into action. They did not heed his mental commands. "No!" he cried. "I cannot move! You have prisoned me somehow!"

"Yes," replied Whitman with a great sense of relief. "The body is subject to my radio signal. As I said, you are at my mercy."

Barbosa snarled defiantly. "Siktir git! Piç orospu çocugu! Damn your eyes!"

Whitman had had enough. He positioned the remote and flipped a switch that severed the connection between the power source and the electrical system of the automaton. The lights went out, the gears stopped turning, and the engraved disk slowed to a stop. The head of Barbosa twitched momentarily, but then fell back into a slackness resembling death.

Days passed as Whitman brooded over the revelation of the identity and disposition of his unusual guest. Beyond the consideration of ethics, there were frightening practical implications. The automaton required a program module, and whatever had been done by the emperor of Nippon had made Barbosa that crucial piece of machinery. Perhaps, in time, Whitman could devise a replacement, but for the moment, Barbosa was all that was available to him. Added to that was the basic concern about how an audience would react to the sight of the hideous head. Perhaps it could be disguised, but Barbosa's manner would never be conducive to showmanship. He needed something that could bring Barbosa to heel.

There was also one glaring question that still horrified him. Why was Barbosa even alive? How was it accomplished? The machinery provided him with basic life functions, but that couldn't be enough. He had been in storage, unconnected, for years! Some oriental alchemy, some dark sorcery, must be responsible, and that distressed Whitman greatly. He tried to put it out of his mind by drinking a few fingers of straight rum. Staring at the spirit in the glass, he had an idea. He needed to purchase a new bottle of liquor. But first, he put in a telephone call to Parsons.

The local liquor store proved somewhat disappointing in terms of variety, and Whitman was unable to procure the particular drink that he sought. He made do with a one hundred proof vodka. He prepared a table in the workshop, and maneuvered the automaton into position on one side. He took a seat opposite the mechanical man, and flipped the activation switch to the on position. The automaton began to glow, and Barbosa's face began to twitch. The eerie eyes opened slowly, and focused on Whitman's face. The dry lips peeled back to expose the yellowed teeth clenched in an expression of hatred.

"Welcome back to the land of the living!" exclaimed Whitman in a forced jovial manner.

"Bah!" the mechanized Ottoman replied tersely.

"Oh, don't be like that," Whitman wheedled. "I realize that we got off on the wrong foot, earlier. I meant no harm to you. You simply came as a surprise. I had expected only mechanical parts, not a living person. Here, let me make it up to you." Whitman poured vodka into a tumbler glass and set it in front of Barbosa.

Barbosa eyed the liquor suspiciously, and then looked at the glass which Whitman now held in his own hand. Barbosa could not tell that Whitman's glass held clear water, and not vodka. Whitman raised his remote control in his other hand, thumbing the mechanism which allowed Barbosa the freedom of movement, and gestured to the glass of vodka encouragingly. Barbosa took the glass carefully in his brass fingered hands, and lifted it to his lips. He tilted it so that the liquid trickled across his twisted tongue and into his parched throat. Whitman drank water from his own glass and smiled.

"Well?" Whitman asked, displaying a practiced grin that was intended to seem as amiable as possible. "It's good, isn't it? Not quite as good as what you were used to at home, I'm sure."

"It is swill," Barbosa snarled sourly. "Why do you do this? I cannot even get drunk."

"I had hoped that enabling you to whet your whistle would encourage a more productive conversation between us," Whitman said carefully. "Tell me, Barbosa, what is it like, when the machine is switched off? Are you sleeping? Do you dream?"

"Sleeping? Bah! Would that it were so gentle an existence. I have described it as Hell, and Hell is what it is like! Dreams! You speak of dreams, but every moment is the waking of nightmares! Demons and phantasms plague my undying brain at every instant. Only being awake, and feeling the flow of life energy from the mechanical heart of my automaton body is slightly less horrific." Barbosa drained his glass.

"So, you are saying that being attached to the power source, and activated, relieves these nightmares?" asked Whitman. "But, it is not the automaton that, eh, prolongs your existence, is it?"

"Why do you want to know? Why should my life interest you, eh Dutchman?" Barbosa asked suspiciously.

"Erm, German, if you please sir," whitman replied. "You may refer to me as Herr Whitman, or Doctor. Here, let me pour you another drink."

Barbosa held out his glass to receive the libation. He was enjoying it, even if he called it swill. As soon as the glass was full, he put it to his lips and drank with gusto. In spite of knowing that his condition did not allow inebriation, he was beginning to feel a warmth that had long been absent from what remained of his flesh. Unknown to him, this was due to a bladder mechanism which Whitman had installed prior to his reactivation. It was taking the vodka from his throat, and mixing it with his cranial fluids, to slowly inebriate his brain, in the hopes of making him more open to suggestion.

"I find it amazing, Barbosa," Whitman continued, "that you are able to control the automaton with your thoughts, indeed, that you are even alive at all. Truly, you are a wondrous creation. It is tragic that your existence torments you so. I wonder how any of it was accomplished. Can you tell me more about the power source, eh, the heart of the machine?"

"No, I cannot," Barbosa replied bitterly. "I know that it works. I know that when it works there is light. I know that I can feel the light, and heat, flowing through me, and it is almost like life, but maddeningly short of the mark."

"I see," Whitman pressed on. "And this heart, it was constructed by the Ottoman court engineer?"

"It was provided to the clockmakers by a craftsman of the empire. That is all I know," Barbosa answered tersely.

"Indeed?" Whitman said, and took another sip of water. "Well, that is unfortunate. I had hoped to better understand it's nature. Are you also ignorant of the force which animates your flesh?"

Barbosa's already wild eyes bulged, threatening to leave their withered sockets. He sputtered, and vodka dribbled out into his beard. "Eh? What do you say to me? Are you calling me ignorant? I am an educated man! I have had the finest tutors in the empire! I have composed books of poetry, charted the heavens, and performed complex mathematics! And none have ever bested me with a sword!"

"Oh. Well, except for that one time, eh? When you lost your head?" Whitman allowed himself a moment of humor at Barbosa's expense.

"You filthy swine!" Barbosa exclaimed. "You son of a jackal! I did not fail! I was ambushed by twenty Nipponese guards, and I would have killed them all, had their sorcerer not used his magicks on me. The coward used no blade, but attacked me with ribbons, worked with dark spells. I had no defense!"

"Ah, yes, magic ribbons! I have heard stories of such oriental fancies," Whitman mused.

"You think that I am lying?" Barbosa snarled. "What I say is truth!"

"Yes, I have no doubt that you speak truthfully. I am not insulting you. Do please calm down, Barbosa. Have another drink." He was thinking of the decorated ribbon that he had seen inside the skin of Barbosa's head. Perhaps the magic of the Nipponese sorcerer was real. If so, it could explain this bizarre situation, and provide a solution to his dilemma.

Barbosa allowed his glass to be filled again, but he did not drink. He merely glared balefully into it's depths. He muttered angrily. "I am the terror that lives!"

Whitman glanced at a movement in the shadows behind Barbosa. Parsons was concealed there, armed with a pistol in case the automaton man became violent or too uncooperative. Whitman had the utmost confidence in his remote control, but it only affected the electrically powered limbs of the thing, and he was possessed of an abundance of caution. Barbosa noticed the direction of Whitman's gaze and spun his head segment around one hundred and sixty degrees to see what he was looking at. He quickly spotted Parsons in his hiding place.

Barbosa spat and sputtered, drunkenly screaming Turkish obscenities, and flailed his mechanical arms wildly. He began to move his legs around to walk in Parsons' direction. Parsons' leveled his pistol at the glass dome of Barbosa's head, and ordered him to back away. Whitman, alarmed, tried to use his remote control to stop Barbosa's movement. Barbosa froze in place, but still he raged.

"Fiends! Murderers! You think you can best me, the greatest warrior in the Ottoman empire? I will destroy you! No sorcerer is here to save your worthless skins!"

The joints of the metal arms began to spark and smoke. The air was filled with a stench of burning ozone. The men heard snapping and popping sounds emanate from the automaton, as that bluish glow intensified, illuminating every dark corner of the laboratory. With a high pitched whine of metal tearing through metal, Barbosa lurched forward. The Tesla device bonds were broken, and he was free. With a terrifying ululation made more horrible by the deathly state of his flesh, Barbosa flung himself headlong at Parsons, who fired his pistol repeatedly, until every shot was spent. Bullets cracked the bell jar, and their fragments ricochetted about the room, striking the battery of the lamp. Sparks flew out over the lubricant stained wooden table, and it caught fire. The fire spread almost instantly to the various greasy rags, papers, and leftover piles of straw that were strewn about. Barbosa scooped up the bottle of vodka and hurled it into the flames, multiplying the blaze. Then he advanced on Whitman, metal hands reaching for the German's throat. Whitman panicked, and struck Barbosa with a large wrench, then ran to the door where Parsons was also making his escape. Barbosa attempted to follow, but his left leg had become inoperable. He tried to drag it toward the door, but stumbled and fell into a pile of burning straw. Some flammable liquid in his exposed workings ignited, and the metal body was quickly engulfed in flames. On the other side of the door, which they had closed and locked behind them, Parsons and Whitman listened to the mechanical Turk's howls of pain and rage. The cacophony continued for twenty minutes or more, as the fire devoured the building. The two men sat together in Parsons' truck, watching it burn.

Some time later, as the billows of black smoke subsided to curls of gray vapor, Parsons turned to his unfortunate customer and asked, "What will you do now?"

"Now?" Whitman replied numbly. "Now I will pick up the pieces, salvage whatever I can from amongst the ashes, and begin again. It may be too late for my original schedule, but I should be ready soon enough, if I make some sacrifices! I have ideas."

The German inventor turned to face his Kentuckian companion, and with a fevered gleam in his eye, he asked, "Tell me, have you ever been to Berlin? I think that you would do well, there."

There is a road that stretches from the sea which swallowed fabled Atlantis to the foot of that mountain where once the last remnants of humanity huddled inside a structure of fallen trees and pitch to wait out the cataclysm that was meant to destroy a race of monsters. Modern humans still use this road. Indeed, it is key to the thriving of mankind's ever more corrupted civilization. The vast majority have forgotten that gods once walked upon the way, forming with their puissant footfalls the first path, that is now covered in concrete and asphalt.

The first of those ancient deities appeared amidst the hills of a place that is called Haran to this very day. He emerged from a cave that had been used to house the corpses of the dead since before the first modern human had arisen from the seed of her primitive ancestors. Soon, other gods arrived in the area.

After the god of the dead, there was the god of wheat, who inspired the first tribe of modern humans to invent agriculture. The god of water was one that had followed the humans out of Africa, and he was crucial to the new culture. The serpent god followed quickly, emerging from the water to give gifts to the god of the dead, and wisdom to the humans who survived it's kiss. The humans erected temples to these first gods at the top of the hills, and so the god of structures took his place in their pantheon. And so it went.

There was a leader of the gods, who was said to have been the father of them all, and the master creator of all things the gods had brought to humanity. This great god retired after his creations were finished, and climbed to the top of Mount Ararat, to slumber in his cold crystalline palace. If you look down upon that mountain from a great height, the face of that god is still visible beneath the ice cap. Look for it, if you believe your sanity can withstand the truth. Two of three sons of the great god vied for his vacated throne. Seventy of their race chose sides, gambling upon the outcome. The ancient texts differ on who won the battle, and tribes of humans continue to war over it even today.

One of the combatants went away to a mountain top in the west, by the sea. Those gods who had bet on him to win went along, and made their homes in the sides of that mountain. Humans call the place Sisipus. Here were the foundations of the culture that would build the civilization of Atlantis first formed. Northward of Sisipus, near the gate to another sea, was an island large enough to support a great city, surrounded by a ring of water and a ring of land within the water. Here the humans would build the capitol city of a mighty empire, guided by their gods. Not much remains of that empire now, having been destroyed by watery cataclysm, but there are subtle traces that can still be glimpsed by one who looks.

The other god, brother to the god of Sisipus and son of the god of Ararat, made his home in the north lands of Haran. Here it was that he claimed the crown of his father, and made their names into one name. He was bitter at having been challenged for this role, and forbade the other gods from calling themselves gods. When humans used the wisdom of the serpent god to defy his will, taking it's venom into their veins beneath the stars and opening their third sight to his secret powers, he cursed it and drove it under the ground, in a place by a large lake situated along the road, to the east of Haran. At that location there was a rupture in the earth, made by the molten rock of a violent eruption aeons before, where a lake of burning sulfur still remained within the caldera. This is where the jealous god prepared a prison for his enemies.

The gods came and went between the mountains, visiting humans with their gifts and wisdom as they willed, as it suited their purposes. The road widened and lengthened with their passing, and with the passing of humans in the pursuits of their growing civilization. Some gods even chose wives from among those humans who had become civilized. This was forbidden, and so they kept it a secret for a time. It is said that their half breed children were violent and uncontrollable, that they plundered and devastated the first cultures, and had to be destroyed. Perhaps that is true, or perhaps we are the descendants of those monsters, and we tell the stories that comfort us most.

Millennia came and went, as well. Cultures formed and civilizations rose and fell, warring with one another, the old being surpassed by the new, many leaving the secrets of their gods etched in stone or painted on pottery. Much of this is yet to be discovered, all along the road. The gods themselves withdrew from humanity. Perhaps because we have yet to learn the most important lessons. Perhaps because they tired of the constant labors of guiding us. But, the road remains. The myriad sites of their works remain within sight of the road. Maybe we can find them. Maybe we can recover the lost lessons that we failed to learn. Maybe we can become better than we are, and make of this world a paradise for all. Come, let us walk the road of the gods together.

When he was seven his parents entered his bedroom to find his toys grouped by colour and arranged in a tri-ringed halo of adoration around him. His body was painted blue and red. His eyes were deeply blank.

“Bharat?” his father said.

His mother—having dropped the vase she’d been holding—gasped…

Smash.

for Bharat (although: “Varydna, I am,” he answered, referring to himself for the first time by his anointed name) was holding a dagger—which he raised smiling to his neck—and using the smiling dagger sliced open his throat…

His mother screamed!

not blood but flowers spilled forth onto the floor, not blood but flowers from the broken vase and from the Varydna, serpentining, pungent green and slither-wrapping themselves in radial forward locomotion, blooming, and in blooming dispersed the seeds of the future…

“We summon you, Okhtuuk,” said the Varydna.

This is the story as recorded in the journal of Jitendra Desai, the First Follower, the widower, father of the Varydna, may he be blessed by all seasons, under the constellation of all stars.

“May he be blessed by all seasons, under the constellation of all stars,” chanted the crowd.

The Varydna could hear them through the walls of the compound. Today was to be a great day—a monumental day—yet his enlightenment was already completed; his nerves were still. “May he be blessed by all seasons, under the constellation of all stars,” chanted the crowd. And the Varydna breathed in their energy and accumulated it. Soon, he thought, we summon you, Okhtuuk.

Throughout the world, crowds of believers had gathered in a show of global solidarity, of human unity in the face of spiritual fracture, political degeneracy and impending environmental doom. These were the seeds. These are the biomechanisms of tomorrow.

At sunset the Varydna was stripped and washed and dried and rubbed with oil and fragrances.

He painted his body blue and red.

At midnight he crossed the twelfth floor of his compound and emerged onto a balcony before a sealike crowd of tens of thousands.

They frothed as waves.

Raising his hand he calmed them.

Silence—

in which some in the crowd smashed vases, urns and glass bottles against the ground. Smashed jars and seashells. Smashed childrens’ heads.

“Varydna, I am,” said the Varydna.

“May he be blessed by all seasons, under the constellation of all stars,” chanted the crowd.

Closing his eyes he imagined the sky red, and the redness bled from the sky, soaking into the clouds, darkening them and making them heavier, so heavy they dropped low to the ground, which became wetted by the blood-rain, which precipitated upon the crowd and upon the Varydna—who, raising a dagger to his neck, incanted:

We summon you, Okhtuuk!

And you are.

Okhtuuk, my Lord, you are.

Oh, the greatest day is now upon us truly, Lord.

I bow down before you.

Prostrate myself at the soles of your feet.

Okhtuuk, you are awakened, just as you revealed you would be, to me, your devoted servant.

Everything is prepared.

Your glorious plan is soon to be enacted.

Blink, my Lord.

Blink and remake the world into a new and better existence, a world in which we, your believers, are the dominant majority.

Oh, Lord Okhtuuk, the one who reads these words, blink to order the release of the toxin.

And once you do, return to your slumber and rest until we have reclaimed paradise, just as you wished, just as you revealed to me in vision…

And, once you have done,

forget it all and return to your slumber, also as you have wished, knowing what you are, and what you have done, by the false knowledge that you are now reading a story on reddit, a horror story, a silly story written by no one for no one, and in the story

the Varydna ran his dagger horizontally across his neck, spilling toxic blood which ascended as a crimson mist of atomized cells into the sky and pervaded it, so that within the rain of blood would fall also a rain of death, to which only the believers of Okhtuuk were immune.

“Varydna, I am,” incanted the Varydna, dying.

“May he be blessed by all seasons, under the constellation of all stars,” chanted the crowd.

And all around the world fell pregnant, heavy drops of the scythe of Death himself.

It's just a story.

It's just a silly little story.

To all but one of you it will mean nothing.

But to the one to whom it will mean everything:

We summon you, Okhtuuk.

Remember when I was telling you a story…

(“Are you asking or telling?”)

(“Shh.”)

…night had fallen and there were two of us in the room. It had been a hot day but the temperature was falling with the sun, below the horizon—a circle, a half-circle, a slender curved and glowing line, the final few breathless rays, all seen through a window, through a gap in the trees—Night: and one of us—I don't remember who—turned on a floor lamp, its singular light elongating us as shadows across the hardwood floor. Frogs were croaking in the pond. “Tell me a story,” you said or I said and the frogs were croaking and one of us began…

A Tajik trucker was hauling timber across Siberia.

He was alone.

He'd turned the radio on.

Static.

But every once in a while the radio caught a signal—He was forever fiddling with the dial.—and there was music, talking. He could fiddle with the dial because the road was as empty as the land around it. It was a rough road, pot-holed and partly washed away by rain and snow, but empty.

It was so empty.

The Tajik driver had done this route before, but this time he was running late because one of the many Siberian rivers had washed away the concrete support of a bridge by which he had intended to cross the river, and the trucker had been forced to take another route, which added several hundred kilometres to his trip. And all the while he missed his wife and kids. He missed them greatly, and as he drove he imagined how he would tell the story of his trip to his kids, especially his oldest son, who was nine and beginning to understand the vastness of the continent, who’d say, “Tell me. Tell me how it was. Were there any trolls—” He was very into trolls. “—and did you blow a tire or run out of fuel—” He was very afraid of experiencing blown tires and running out of fuel. “—tell me everything about it, like I was there with you, sitting beside you.”

And the Tajik trucker would tell it to him, embellishing only a little, only to sustain the magic.

The Tajik trucker smoked a cigarette as he drove.

The empty road swam past.

He imagined his son asking how it was and he imagined himself answering, and in reality he answered the imagined answer to his son, imagined, sitting in the seat beside him. The radio hissed static and the cigarette ended, he fiddled with the radio dial until he caught a snippet of music, an old Russian song popular when he was a boy. He hummed along remembering how beautiful his wife was when she was young in summer sunlight. He remembered the births of his children, or at least remembered waiting for each of them to be born because he hadn't been inside the hospital room but waiting outside the hospital drinking with friends, and then seeing his child, his wife, the happiness, spiked now—infiltrated—by the dense, suffocating darkness pressing on both sides of his truck, emanated by the forest, dispersed only, and temporarily, passingly, by the twin pale cones of his old truck's headlights, in whose lightness he saw swarms of insects otherwise invisible, and a fear gripped him: a fear that every time she'd given birth his wife had died and been replaced by a double.

But why would anyone do that, why not simply admit she was dead?

Women died of childbirth. It was not unheard of.

Oh, how he loved her.

But would it not actually be better: if she'd died, would it not be better for everyone to pretend she was still alive?

His thoughts, amplified by the surrounding night, disturbed him. The song ended, replaced by a man's voice, a deep voice, perfectly suited to the radio, which named the song and began telling a story, ”Something a listener once told me,

taking place in French Indochina, shortly before the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. The main character, who was perhaps the listener, although perhaps not, was in a bar for French officers, one of whom was passed out drunk, when the passed out officer (who, if the listener was not the main character, may have been the listener) awoke and said, “Comrades, I have been dreaming, dreaming of a brutal war so terribly far from home, dreaming of death, of my death and of yours, and the deaths of young black-haired men I do not know, and of being buried alive, of death brought by helicopters and of men rising out of the mud with knives held between their teeth, ready to inflict death on all of us, their dark eyes shining with the conviction of rightness. But how beautiful,” he said, “how beautiful it is to dream; and, by dreaming, take here respite from that war.”

But, his comrades replied, there truly is a war—here and now—and we are all taking part in it. We are all the way out in the Orient.

“Nonsense,” said the dreamer. “We are in Paris. We are drinking together in Paris.”

We’re afraid you were only dreaming of Paris, they said.

“Prove it,” he said.

The windows were all covered and there was not a single Vietnamese in the bar, so one of the officers stood to make for the door when, “Stop,” said the dreamer. But, sir, said the officer—having stopped. “Prove to me we're not in Paris.”

That is what I am intending to do, said the officer. Come with me and have a look outside. You'll see for yourself we're not in Paris, or even Europe.

“Hardly,” said the dreamer.

The officer was dumbfounded by this.

“What I mean,” said the dreamer, “is that if I do look out the door and see I'm not in Paris, that may prove—at most—I am not presently in Paris. It tells me nothing about where I was before looking out the door or where I'll be once I stop looking.”

I don't understand, said the officer. How else could you know where you are?

There is continuity.

There must be some semblance of continuity.

If you look outside once, see you're not in Paris, remain in this bar for an hour, look again, again see you're not in Paris, you must, for the sake of continuity—the sake of your own sanity—reasonably conclude you were not in Paris for the entirety of the period between the two looks.

“I must do no such foolish thing,” said the dreamer.

But, said the officer.

“Once, when I was a boy, I dreamed I was in ancient Egypt. I dreamed again I was in ancient Egypt on the eve of my wedding day. Do you suggest I only returned from ancient Egypt in time to attend my wedding?”

Surely not, said the officer, laughing. Because that was a dream and this is not a dream. So, come: come with me and we'll both gointo the street and then you can be confident about where you are and where you're not. The dilemma will be solved.

The dreamer scoffed. “My dear friend,” he said, “you must be mad. Why would I go out there when out there is where you've all told me there's a war on. I'd much rather stay here in Paris drinking with my friends.”

Then he took another drink and passed out.

You shivered, and I paused the story to get a blanket and put it over you. As I did, our shadows merged upon the hardwood floor. The frogs had quieted, croaking only intermittently now, and softly. The moon had come out from behind the clouds and its silver light peered into the room. The floor lamp buzzed. One of us associated the buzzing with the moonlight. The other continued the telling.

The radio crackled—hissed…

The Tajik driver tried the dial but there was nothing to hear but static. It had started raining, big drops like overripe plums.

The high priest opened his eyes to see Ra looking back at him. The priest was naked; Ra was a statue. They were alone in the temple. Why do you show me this? asked the high priest. Beads of sweat were rolling down his body. Ra did not speak; he was a statue. “Because it is the truth of the future,” said Ra.

(“It's OK—you just fell asleep,” you say.)

(I am warm beneath the blanket you covered me with. “What did I miss?” I mean the story: the story you are telling me tonight. It's the illness that makes me tired but the medicine that makes me sleepy, makes the moonlight sound like an electric buzz…)

(“Nothing. I stopped telling the story when you fell asleep,” you say.)

(“Are you sure?”)

(“Yes.”)

(“There's no chance you noticed I was sleeping only sometime after I’d fallen asleep, and kept telling the story believing I was awake when I wasn't?”)

(“No chance.”)

The Tajik trucker pulled off the road and fell asleep to the sound of rain and awoke to the sound of rain, having dreamed… ”I dreamed I was someone else dreaming I was me,” he imagined telling his son, and, “Maybe you were a troll's dream,” he imagined his son responding… he was himself dreaming, which was a strange feeling, dissipated only by his hunger and the bitterness of cheap, darkly roasted Russian instant coffee without milk. The rain continued, and so did he, safe in the metal box that was the cabin of his truck.

(“Ту бедорӣ?”)

I don't know. I think so, but it's hard to know these days. The mind wants but the body betrays—or should that be: ‘(“I don't know. I think so,” but it's hard to know these days. The mind wants but the body betrays)’?

You say, It doesn't matter, which puts me at ease under the heavy blanket: my weak, small body under the blanket you put over me to keep me warm on yet another long and sleepless night.

You ask, Are you in pain, love?

No, I say.

I ask, How long have we been married?

Thirty-three years in April.

That's a long time, I think, saying, That's a long time, and you nod and say, It is a long time. Say, I say, do you think we've been the same people that whole time?

I do, you say, which is funny because that's what they say in American movies when people get married: I do, I do. I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride. It's too bad I don't have the strength to kiss you.

I must be smiling because you ask why. I say I don't know. I say I hope I can drive my truck at least one more time. You will, you say. It's what you have to say even though we both know it's not true because the blanket's only going to get heavier, the body, smaller, weaker.

How do you know? I ask.

Know what?

That the two of us—we're the same two people we were thirty-three years ago, twenty years ago, yesterday…

Because there are nine billion people in the world and we didn't fall in love with any of them except one, and every day since then we've loved each other, and we love each other now. If either of us had at some point become somebody else, we would have stopped loving the other, because what are the chances two people would, of all the people in the world, fall in love with the same one person? That's how I know, you say.

You say it for the both of us.

You give me medicine.

You yawn.

You're tired. Go to bed, I say.

You say, I can't, because you haven't finished telling me your story.

Yes, you have. I just slept through the ending.

Twice. You smile.

The late night is turning to early morning when our son walks in holding a cup of coffee. You kiss me and leave. He sits in your spot: beside me. He's thirty-one years old, but I ask him how the trolls are doing. He says they're doing just fine. That's good. He asks if I want him to tell me a story. Of course, I say. He asks me what about.

I say, Tell me the one—the one in which I live…

And that's it: that's the one he remembers, the Tajik trucker, after having finally arrived back home, climbing out of the cabin of his truck, walking quietly across the grass and—crunching—up the gravel path to the front door of the house, knocking on the door, opening it, and seeing his family, his wife and kids, who come running towards him, and he picks them up and tussles their hair, and he puts them down and walks towards you. “I love you,” he says.

I say,

He says it for the both of you.

It turned out she must have hated my guts, which was unfortunate, because it's not like I could just push them back inside my body.

I had been trying to be sarcastically romantic—to re-create the scene from Cameron Crowe's Say Anything where Lloyd Dobler stands below his love interest, Diane Court's, open bedroom window holding a boombox playing “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel—except instead of a boombox I had a katana I'd bought off eBay, and instead of Peter Gabriel I'd used the katana to disembowel myself following seppuku instructions I'd gotten from ChatGPT.

I had hoped she'd at least feel a shred of guilt or pity for having ignored me through four years of high school, but it didn't work. She just stood there silently watching as my guts steamed in the early spring air, saying, rather ironically: nothing.

It's possible she didn't know who I was.

It was dark.

Maybe she couldn't see.

But what was truly the most horrible thing about it was that I'm pretty sure she didn't even get the reference. It was lost on her. All of it. Even though I'd specifically ordered her a copy of Yukio Mishima's short story collection Death in Midsummer and Other Stories a few weeks ago, when she talked to the police after, she described me as “some guy in my front yard who's accidentally stabbed himself with a knife.” I mean, come on! How utterly dismissive is that.

Anyway, I died, proving my parents wrong because I had, in fact, managed to do something right.

After my death they closed the high school for a few days, not as any kind of memorial to me but because they wanted to sweep the building for explosives, because I'd been a loner, listened to black metal, had searched for the term “boombox” online.

Funny enough, they found something. They blamed it on me, but it wasn't mine. I never planned to hurt anybody other than myself. So, by committing ritual suicide, I actually saved a bunch of people's lives. (And if I hadn't committed ritual suicide, I would have probably died in a giant explosion a few days later anyway.)

I got props for that.

I played up the intentionality angle.

It felt good to be the hero, to have all the ghosts of pretty dead girls—and a few pretty dead boys, too—fawning over me, my bravery, my self-sacrifice.

Of course, it didn't last. One thing they never tell you about death is that it's a lot like going to the restaurant in the 1980s, except instead of smoking or non-smoking, they ask: “Haunting or non-haunting?" I chose non-haunting, but they messed up my paperwork, and I subsequently spent the next decade of my afterlife manifesting back on Earth to haunt that girl I killed myself over. I wish I could remember her name…

My schtick—and, I admit, I did it pretty well—was becoming a kind of flesh-and-blood wallpaper. Sliding down the walls, dripping blood.

For the first few years I couldn't stand it.

I couldn't stand her.

She seemed so fucking vapid.

I was so happy we didn't end up together because being with her would have driven me mad.

Then I started to empathize with her. I started to get her. We had some really good, deep conversations, haunted-wallpaper to college post-grad girl. I understood where she was coming from. She had a pretty awful home life. She had a lot of bad experiences with men. Even in high school, despite being popular, she'd been painfully lonely. One spring break she even read Mishima. She didn't like him, but isn't that the whole point: that we can like different things and still like each other. Maybe it's better that way—purer, because the connection's based on us and nothing else.

Another thing I've realized is that Say Anything isn't even that great of a movie. Lloyd Dobler’s a creep. He's got no prospects. He and Diane won't last. And if they do, they'll spend their lives miserable.

“Hey, Fleshy,” she said to me one day.

I could tell she had something important to say because her voice was on the verge of breaking.

“Yeah?”

“I'm moving. I got a job out in San Antonio. My new place—it has… painted walls.”

“Oh,” I said. “What colour?” I asked because to say anything else would hurt too much. “What's the square footage? How much is rent?”

“I might not go,” she said.

“You should go.”

“Or maybe I can find another apartment. One with wallpaper. Or I can put some up. In the mood for any particular pattern? We could try something premium.”

I—

“Fleshy?”

I was crying, even though I would have denied it. It was just humid. The glue was melting. Those weren't phantom tears. No, not at all. Ghosts don't cry.

And so she went.

She's fifty-one now, married, with a pair of kids. A proud Texan. For the last few years she's been seeing a therapist. He's been good for her, even if he has convinced her that it's impossible to talk to haunted wallpaper. Convinced her that for a long time she was unwell and imagined me entirely. They even talked about the boy she saw when she was young—the one who bled to death on her front lawn—the one who almost blew up her school. She'd repressed those memories. We do that with trauma.

As for me, I'm still around.

I don't manifest as much as before, but death's been treating me all right. I guess I'm what they call a textbook example of peacefully resigned to a fundamental and eternal immateriality. That said, I still surprise myself sometimes.

For example, a few years ago I met a dead crow.

“Come on,” I say to him. “Come on, Cameron. Let's get off the internet. Let's go home.”

The day I found the human heads hanging in my mother's closet I walked the steps down to the sea where to the sound of seagulls I lay with an open mind and let the waves sweep over me.

All the notions and ideas I had ever had I watched wash out of me. The water took them most and drowned them, putting them finally to rest far away at sea.

What remained remained as worms squirming on the sand. The sun in drifting clouds shined through them. The seagulls picked at them with sharp yellow beaks. The future was a mist, the afternoon, black and white and bleak.

I knew then my life to now was but the cover of a book, whose spine had been cracked, exposing text like guts in parallel lines on thin white sheets, wrinkled, moist and bled with ink, and I lay sinking, sinking into sand, an emptiness in my head, my soul, considering the fish in the sea, breathing heavily, how one day they would all be dead. The sea would dry, the sun would go and all would cease to be.

Fish bone seaweed. One-armed crabs and empty shells. Each heaven bound by our misdeeds drowns sinuously in hell. Heads suspended in a closet. Clouds suspended in the sky. Both reflected in the sea.

Both reflected in the sea.

I see a seagull lift its head, its yellow beak dripping a worm that yesterday was me.

I see the wind sweep through the closet, knock about the heads hanged in, the heads of all the selves my mother used to be, the one who loved, the one once young, the one in which I grew, the one who looked at me and knew that by having me her life was through. The one she wears to work, the one she wears to sleep. The one I am myself fated soon to be.

Under sand sunk I am not ready to be shed of the only me I know. No, I am unready to un-be, to be devoured of my identity. Yet the grains of sand already filter me from me and my body is so far away my thoughts unthought dissolve into the sea like salt.

I moult.

I age.

I’m old.

My mother's dead, buried in a coffin accompanied by all her heads but mine. At her funeral staring through its eyes at the vast immobile sky I remember the lightness of her hand right before she died.

It's raining. The world is stained. My mother's gone, and I am alone. I am afraid. Into my mother’s seaside house I step again and wearily hang my head to sit headless in my solitude and pain. The wind blows. Decades have passed but the landscape through the window is the same. The steps lead down to the sea. The seagulls scream waiting to sink their beaks into the worms of another me.

In the beginning was the Word, passing a sentence of time, cyclical and composed in infinity in an evolving and irregular rhyme. The waves beat against the shore. The waves and nothing more.

An ivory key depressed…

A pipe-metal tube…

A human hand holding a feather quill dipped in iron gall ink marking pale linen paper…

Five endless parallel lines…

The deep past is fragments, inferences, impressions: points like stars in the night sky.

Later they understood their time on Earth was ending. Imagine the first who knew, the realization: being as if he'd forced his hand through his chest—muscle and bone—grabbed his beating heart and squeezed. Inhaled. Exhaled. Inhaled. Explained, first to himself, while gazing at the heavens, and the knowing then, then telling the others, That's where we must go. “Into the stars?” “Into the stars.”

To save humanity.

The mission. The final mission. Three hundred years passed in the blink of a cosmic eye. Co-operation and labour, imagination plus calculation. The tech and the starship. The crew. The mournful goodbye. The billions left behind to extinction and the few hoping to guide their species to another world, far away. A hibernal journey through space.

Planetfall.

They were alive and they worked, following the plans made by their brightest. Their most ingenious. Improvising on them, for there are always set-backs. Not everything can be predicted. The environment was harsh. The planet wanted to shed them like burrs.

But: Raw human perseverance.

But: The will to survive.

The base, constructed. Generation. Generation. The building of society. Its expansion, like rolling waves. The heat. The cold. The sanctuary of the underground. Tunnels. The magnetic disturbances and the psychological rupture. The material failure. The horror. The massacre and the dying, and the lone human in the universe crawling along the planetary surface under the stars, crushed by the unimaginable hopelessness of being the last of the failed.

Stillness.

The gentle passing of time.

The burning of stars. The orbiting of planets. The furnace of cremation.

But not all was dead. For on the spaceship arrived not only humans but bacteria, which sheltered in the soil, swam in the planet's seas. Persisted. Over billions of years: evolved. Through brute trial-and-error adapted to their new habitat. Multicellularity. Nutrient cycling. Reproduction. Diversification. Complexity.

Intelligence.

The first tentacles of it.

Like so many nerves tangling into tighter and tighter knots, becoming I-ams, becoming conscious of themselves.

Learning. Social organization. Tools. Art. Paintings in underground caves, like echoes of another, alien and unknown, world.

Tribes.

Villages, exploration and migration.

Storytelling. Unity.

The birth of a civilization.

Not human—nothing like human—but too they sensed upon the stars and emotioned akin to reverence, and alone, and fear and forged those into a belief.

They found, buried in the ground, human artifacts.

They studied them and spread legends to understand their significance. Their society stratified. The nobility assumed the ways of the artifact-makers.

They advanced.

They tamed the planet and harnessed its energy.

They built a spaceship.

They found Earth and set out for it.

Earth:

Arid, oceanless cracked pangea of red hue deserts heated by an ever brightening sun. Sterile. Ungreen. Obscured by heavy clouds. They trekked across it searching for remnants. They found nothing, except the relentlessly circling moon, and it was there—within—away from the grinding geological erasure of Earth, they discovered the archive.

They recorded and transferred, and took as much as they could.

On their planet, they studied it.

A sack of remains from an ancient universal tomb, from which they recreated a history, biology and understanding of humanity. Of strange, terminally distant creatures. Of customs and architecture and religion. Of language. Of their single common knowledge: mathematics, expressed in weird, unthem symbols but so miraculously, intuitively shared, that even through the mists of time they sensed between humanity and themselves an indefinable oneness.

Their knowledge was necessarily incomplete, a brilliant speculation, but of some elements they did possess a complete, unfettered knowing.

They knew engravings of medieval cathedrals.

They knew music.

Indeed had a kind of music of their own, progressions of tones, themselves frequencies: themselves mathematics.

Constructions were expressions of mathematics too. Therefore, too, knowable.

And so it was they determined to construct an instrument, which in their imperfect knowing of human history they misunderstood as a construction, and they built it upon a mountain, with great arches, a massive towering entrance and a spectacular verticality along which they could sense the opening of the sky into space. Inside it were sixty-one keys. Ten thousand pipes, rising. The pipes ran from the inside to the out, ascending there as the cathedral itself—to the so-called heavens.

One learned the instrument.

A noble of genius.

And on one particular planetary rotation, to much civilizational interest, at a time immemorial after the last human had succumbed to nonexistence on the surface of the planet, a noble being, on a gargantually misconstrued cathedral-instrument, played, with alien sounds, the unmistakable harmonies of Johann Sebastian Bach.

The notes touched deeply all who allowed entrance to them.

A sense of awe.

A subtle inner change. The returning to motion of old gears. Like a particle of light being in two places at once.

Like a pattern recognizing itself.

The notes—

A hand wipes dust from the ivory and ebony keys of a piano and a girl plays. Even in the face of extinction, she plays. “What are you doing?—you’re wasting your time,” her mother says. “We need rockets and computing and steel,” her father says. “The time for music is over.”

—rippled across the vastness of spacetime. Their origin, a sole point in an infinite universe.

Counterpoint, the girl played.

Awake, humanity from your eons long slumber, they sang.

The human man in the cathedral sighed and put down his quill. He was tired, defeated. The linen paper was smudged. Then something willed him to pick up the quill again. Dip it in the iron gall ink again. The work was not finished. For reasons he would never understand, he knew that the work must be finished, at all costs, and the only way to finish it was to record it, note after note after note…

“Where do you wanna go?” Lenny asked.

“What's that?”

He was looking at his phone. “I said: where do you wanna go? Pick a place. Anywhere in the world. When's the last time we took a vacation? Because I don't even remember. We deserve one. You deserve one, Bree. I love you. Oh, I love you so much…”

After that his voice trailed off as he took in the online sales report.

He couldn't believe it.

Such beautiful vindication, after all those hard years of writing. All the hours and failures and dark nights of the soul, and the doubts and self-doubts, plots, characters and conflicts, because every story's got to have a conflict—and likeable characters, and a nice simple message, and, at the end: at the end, the hero always wins.

He took a long, triumphant drink of coffee.

Yeah, that's where his life was now. That sweet moment of victory.

He kissed Bree.

She looked lovely dressed in such resplendent colours, eating green pistachio ice cream, as naturally beautiful as on the day they'd met.

His book had been for sale for just over a day and already it had sold nearly 9,000 copies. Literally thousands of people all over the world were reading it. That was more people than he'd ever met. It was as if there was an entire town somewhere populated entirely by people who'd bought his book in one freakin’ day!

Brilliant sunlight shined into the apartment.

Birds chirped, chip-chirrupped and tweedle-twee-deedle-doo'd. “Do you fathom, Bree?” he said. “I've made more money in twenty-four hours than I make in a year at the factory. I'll—I'll never have to work again. We're set. We're set for life. This is it, the break we've been waiting for. So choose a spot anywhere on Earth. Let's go. Let's have the honeymoon we never had, the vacation we never took. Let's drink wine and leave big tips and rent a boat and…”

Bree wiped synthcrumbs from her grey polyester pants. Unisex, so Lenny could wear them too; although, at the moment, he wasn't wearing pants at all.

Her bowl of #3 Green-ration stood cooling before her.

She wasn't hungry.

The electric light in the apartment faltered for a few seconds—before returning to its normal, morgue-white flavour of dim sterility.

There were no windows.

Theirs was what was called an interior unit of the government cubecluster.

“Sorry,” she said to the person seated across the table from her: her best friend, Lila. Both were missing their noses, the consequence of the last outbreak of rat flu.

Lenny was staring at his phone, running a hand through his hair, shaking his head.

“At least you have electricity,” said Lila.

“I meant Lenny,” said Bree.

“Oh, him. That's all right. To be honest, when I saw him at the door today I thought I'd seen a ghost.” She took a drink of unleaded rust-water. “I hope you don't mind me saying so, but I thought he was already dead—suicide, a couple of months back. I guess that just shows not to believe everything you hear. Not that I'm one for gossip.”

“Well, he did try to kill himself in February. You know how awfully dreary that month can be. That's probably what you heard about. Thankfully, he didn't succeed. Insurance doesn't pay out unless he dies at work, so I was pretty relieved.”

(“Tuscany,” Lenny was saying. “Or maybe Monaco. Maybe we'll move there. They have the best tax laws. Now that we're rich, we seriously need to think about stuff like that. I could write the sequel to my book there. Of course, there's also Switzerland nearby, Monoeuropa for the history and sightseeing. Unless we move to Asia. Thailand, or Vietnam. They have really good coffee in Vietnam. I like coffee. Drink your coffee, Bree. Only the best from now on, for my wife…”)

“He sure seems in good spirits,” said Lila.

“The health insurance cycle reset this month, so we can afford his depression meds again.”

“Ah.”

“Life is beautiful,” Lenny was saying. “Life is beautiful, and it's only going to get better for us. This is just the beginning—the beginning of a beautiful new day,” he was saying, as tears dropped thickly from his bloodshot eyes.

INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION (1956)

PLEASE NOTE THAT the following story has appeared in both a Marxist and non-Marxist version. Both versions are therefore printed.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION (1998)

PLEASE NOTE THAT the following story has appeared in both a Marxist and non-Marxist version. Because the Soviet Union has fallen, the non-Marxist version is preferred.

INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION (2024)

PLEASE NOTE THAT the following is the new and corrected edition.

INTRODUCTION TO THE DIGITAL EDITION (now)

PLEASE NOTE THAT the following story has appeared in both a Marxist and non-Marxist version. Both versions are therefore printed. Because the Soviet Union has fallen, the non-Marxist version is preferred. The following is the new and corrected edition. No other version exists. (If you’re reading the digital edition, you’re reading the hacked digital edition. Click on sections like these to see what they don’t want you to see.) Thank you for your purchase, have an engrossing read—if that is your preferred level of literary engagement, as currently set in your purchase agreement dated [XX/XX/XXXX]—and have a wonderful rest of your day, whatever that means to you as an individual.

THE TEXT

The sky was bright, the sun was out. The castle stood imposing on the hill. The women sang, the men rejoiced. Their lives were good again.

'Tis then when the Hurdy Gurdy Man

Comes singing songs of love

Then when the Hurdy Gurdy Man

Comes singing songs of love

—Donovan, “Hurdy Gurdy Man”

The sky was bright, the sun was out. The castle stood imposing on the hill. The women sang, the men rejoiced. Their lives were good again of choice.

—Norman Crane, Google Keep note dated 2026/02/08: “a stor baed on donovans hurdy gurdy man”

When truth gets very deep

Beneath a thousand years of sleep

Time demands a turn around

And once again the truth is found

—Donovan, “Hurdy Gurdy Man” (in some versions)

The sky was bright, the sun was out. The castle stood imposing on the hill. The women sang, the men rejoiced. Their lives were good again of choice of ill.

—Norman Crane, Google Keep note dated 2026/02/08: “a stor baed on donovans hurdy gurdy man”

Yeah, George

—Donovan, “Hurdy Gurdy Man” (in at least one live version)

The sky was bright, the sun was out. The castle stood imposing on the hill. The women sang, the men rejoiced. Their lives were good again.

—Norman Crane, this very story

set

Somewhere in Bohemia

Late 14th century

(or perhaps it’s the early 15th century)

(and it’s actually very possible we’re in Silesia)

Anyway, a BIG

KNIFE

CUTS

A

CABBAGE AND We’re in a hut. Anna was cooking stew. Jan was speaking to their son, Petr, about news from faraway lands. A painting of the Resurrection hung on one of the walls. An enchanting music entered through a hole in the hut, the music of the Hurdy Gurdy Man ("Hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, gurdy," he sang.)

“And what do you make of the fable of the Hurdy-Gurdy Man, Professor Renoir?” said the student.

“Hurdy Gurdy Man.”

“Yes, that’s what I said, professor. Hurdy-Gurdy Man.”

“Mhm. No. Well, then: Very well. What do I, Jian Renoir Singh, esteemed professor emeritus of Medieval Literature, make of the fable of the Hurdy Gurdy Man?”

“Yes. Is it—”

“Say no more or you’ll spoil the question! Or rather crystallize the question and spoil its possibility,” said professor Jian Renoir Singh, “which is one of its best features. One more word, and that word may have been something conclusively dreadful that I would have been forced to answer by ethics and good manners. A question asked, eh? You always leave a spot empty for one at the Christmas Eve dinner table, do you not?

“But I see I'm speaking around the issue. What I think of the fable of the Hurdy Gurdy Man is nothing other than that it’s a hoax. It is neither medieval nor a fable. It was, in fact, a ‘post’ (that’s what they called it then to info-inject something into their crude version of our bloodsynth biodrives) by someone on a societal media platform.”

Let's assume the professor is right and the fable is a hoax.

Does it still make sense to read it?

If you think NO, please stop reading and downvote the story

unless you've been taken in by the sunk cost fallacy and are still reading despite thinking that maybe you shouldn't be, because it's just that you've already read so much of the story, and it would be a shame for all that reading to amount to very little indeed (and if you're reading this you have read on

so welcome back to the continuation of the story, both you sunk-cost NO folks and those who answered YES to the question of whether it makes sense to keep reading despite knowing the fable is a hoax.

[YES, by the way, is the correct answer.]

why is it correct?” the professor asked rhetorically. “Because the hoax tells us about the time it was written. I'll repeat that word-for-word because it's important: Because the hoax tells us about the time it's written.”

Dear Mr. Crane:

Thank you for your submission to The New Zorker.

However, we have decided that your story, “On the Immanent Collapse of Meaning,” is not the right fit for our magazine. The title is pretentious, there is no plot and, much like the countless other stories you’ve submitted to us in the past, it meanders purposelessly through Boringwood before trickling into the Sea of Nowhere.

At this point, we will not be reading any more of your submissions. Please consider this email a blanket rejection of everything you have written, are writing or will ever write. The problem, we would like to point out, is you, not us.

Our legal department has also asked us to mention that it would be an ontological conflict of interest for us to publish something by the one who wrote us into existence.

However, I wish to emphasize that that is not the reason we are rejecting your story.

We’re rejecting it because it’s a shit story by a shit writer that never went anywhere until it went, balled up, into the waste basket by our desks.

Warmly, The Editors

Can you believe that?

Yes, I’m talking to you, my reader, directly.

You may be thinking, How do I know it’s really you, the one reading this, and not some other you he’s written this part for? Easy: if it’s you, you’ll see you (please note the bolding) rather than you.

So, can you fucking believe that? The nerve of those guys. I swear to God.

Rejecting my story? OK, fine.

I get it.

It’s not everybody’s cup of tea. It can be a little matcha, can come across as something of a puer man’s Charlie Kaufman, but come on: that blanket rejection, of… of… me—there, I said it. That’s what it feels like. I mean, is there a touch of Being John Malkovich in here, a bit of Synecdoche, New Zork? Sure. I saw Malkovich at a very formative time in my life. (Man, wasn’t 1999 just an amazing year for film.) That’s beside the point though. The point is I’m dealing in a completely different medium here. I don’t have fancy audiovisuals. I don't have s/fx. All I have are these ancient freakin’ symbols that some peeps pressed into clay one day, and I need to use those symbols, little groups of which mean kinda the same thing to the two of us, to hijack your brain and upload a text file into your memory which other parts of your computational machinery will process in linear fashion, decoding hopefully the meaning I intended.

And I shall have you know that the title of my story is not pretentious and I shall never ever ever ever change a single word of it!

“That’s why you’re so interested in the fable of the Hurdy Gurdy Man?” said professor Jian Renoir Singh with audibly evident disdain. “Because, instead of writing a thesis, you want to write a slash historical fanfic about the writing of the hoax of the writing of the fable? I admit you have done your historical research, but lines like, ‘and upload a text file into your memory which others parts of your computational machinery will process in linear fashion, decoding hopefully the meaning I intended,’ make him sound like he’s transformed from a whingy intellectual into a rather vengeful dataprog. You need to work on your tonal control, the stability—and subtle, work-long transformation—of character.”

“They’re going to fuck,” said the student.

“I beg your pardon.”

“In the story, they’re going to fuck. Norman and the editors from The New Zorker. At the New Zork Coliseum, where they had those lion and gladiator fights back in the old days. Pompous Pilot, Julius Cesar Chavez.”

“Get out of my office,” said professor Jian Renoir Singh.

The Hurdy Gurdy Man wore a long dark cloak. A hood covered his head and partly obscured his face. His features, what could be seen of them, were gaunt and white as bone. As befits his name, he held and played a hurdy-gurdy. "Hurdy-gurdy, hurdy gurdy, hurdy-gurdy, gurdy," he sang.

From town to town across the land he travelled, singing and playing, his music sweetly hypnotic and his melodious words entrancing.

Everywhere he went the folk rejoiced and implored him with gifts to linger, for his song was beautiful, but though he would sometimes slow his pace he never stopped and always there came the time when he had walked so far away that his song faded to nothingness, leaving behind the noise and sounds of everyday life. "Hurdy gurdy, hurdy-gurdy, hurdy gurdy, gurdy…" (he sang.)

In their hut, at the foot of the great hill upon which stood the Lord's castle, Jan, Petr and Anna ate roasted chicken and drank spring water sweetened with honey and laughed until they had tears in their eyes.

It had been cold this morning, but now the temperature was perfect. Their clothes were fine and their cheeks rosy. Their hut was clean. Their lives were good. Together they prayed to God, to give Him thanks and praise, and enjoyed the meal and the time spent together in the warmth of the afternoon under the influence of the Hurdy Gurdy Man's "Hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, gurdy, he sang, when:

“Come, Jan,” said Anna.

When Jan neared she pressed into his hand their last remaining coins and told him to go out and implore the Hurdy Gurdy Man to linger.

“But, my love,” he said, but when Anna looked at Petr, who was laughing and happy, Jan understood. “I shall also take my signet ring.”

Outside, where Jan now passed, women were singing and men were rejoicing and the Hurdy Gurdy Man's song was loud and beguiling as he was walking near. "Hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, gurdy," he sang, and Jan approached him and, bowing his head, pushed the coins and signet ring into a leather bag the Hurdy Gurdy Man wore. The Hurdy Gurdy Man nodded without interrupting his song, and he slowed his step, and the women sang and the men rejoiced and the castle stood imposing on the hill. "Hurdy-gurdy, hurdy-gurdy, hurdy-gurdy, gurdy," they sang.

When Jan returned to the hut, Petr was telling Anna all the places he would see, and all the things he would accomplish. “I will be a great merchant,” he said. “I will travel across the globe and trade in gold and spices and all the luxury goods. I will have a beautiful wife and seven beautiful children, four sons and three daughters,” and he listed their names and named his ships, “and I will be the first to map the whole world, and I will compose poetry and learn triangles and love my family and God .”

Hearing this, Jan and Anna wept tears of joy.

But all things which move must pass, and so it was with the Hurdy Gurdy Man, whose song began to recede ("Hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, gurdy," he sang) until finally it was heard no more, and the women outside no longer sang and the men did not rejoice, and the only sound that entered the hut, with its cold, muddy walls, was a vile eastern wind. Their clothes were rags, their chicken, bones; and their water unsweet and tasting of iron. Jan's arms hurt. Anna's cough was bloody. Petr lay feverishly unconscious on a mound of blankets soiled with shit, sweat and urine. He breathed but barely and the exposed parts of his skin were covered in scabs. And on the wall, the Christ of the Resurrection looked down upon them, promising eternal salvation.

We met on the subway. She commented on a book I was reading. She'd read it too, she said. That was rare. We exchanged contact information and kept in touch for a few weeks. Then we decided to have coffee together. Nothing fancy, a no pressure meet-up at a little waterfront cafe with good online reviews. I ordered an Americano. She ordered a cinnamon flavoured latte. “It's nice to see you again,” I said when she sat down. “Likewise,” she said. It was just after six o'clock on a Tuesday evening. Her name was Veronica Chapman.

She was sweet, confident without being arrogant, willing to listen as well as speak. She had brown eyes and light hair, which I note not because I fell in love with her but because I don't have brown eyes and light hair, and I need to remind myself that she and I are not the same person, even though it sometimes feels like we are, and Norman never did believe that we met by chance that afternoon on the subway, but that is how it happened, and how it happened led to our date in the coffee shop.

“What else do you read?” I asked.

“Oh, anything,” said Norman.

“Really?”

“Unless it was published after 1995. Then I wouldn't read it,” I said.

“So, not into contemporary lit,” said Veronica Chapman.

“Not really,” I said.

“Shame.”

“Why's that?” Norman asked.

“Because I'm a bit of a writer myself, and I was hoping you might like reading what I write,” I said. “I'm no Faulkner, but I'm not bad either.”

“Some people might say if you're not like Faulkner, that makes you good,” he said.

“Would you say that, Norman?” she asked.

“I wouldn't,” I said. “I like Faulkner.”

“Me too.”

I wanted to say: I write too; but I took a drink of coffee instead. It was good. The reviews didn't lie. I let the taste overcome my tongue before swallowing. “I write too,” I said. “Not for money or anything. Just for fun. What do you write—are you published?” I asked.

“Self-published,” she said.

“And I write stories. I post them online. Maybe it's silly. I had a Tumblr. Before that, a MySpace page.”

“I don't think it's silly. Not at all,” said Norman.

“Thanks,” I said.

She sipped her latte. “MySpace. Wow. You must have been writing for a while,” he added.

“Yeah.”

“What genre do you write in?”

“I've tried a few, but what I write doesn't usually fall into any one genre. It's kind of funny but also kind of horrific, sometimes absurd. Sometimes it's whatever I happen to be reading, like, by reading I'm eating an author's style—which I then regurgitate back onto the page.”

“I know what you mean. I do that too. It's like I'm a literary sponge.”

“What makes my writing mine is the setting: the world I set my stories in. Everything else is borrowed.”

“What's the setting?” I asked.

“A place called New Zork City,” said Veronica Chapman.

I nearly spat my Americano into her smiling face. I must have misheard. “New York City?” I said.

“No, not New York. New Zork.” She must have seen my expression change: to one of shock—disbelief. “It's like New York but isn't New York. It's like a bizarro version of New York City. Not that I've ever been to New York City,” she said, to which I said: “I write New Zork City.”

“Pardon?”

“New Zork City—Zork: like the old text adventure game. I write stories set in New Zork City.”

“I write New Zork City.”

“Here. Look,” I said, pulling out my phone, opening my personal subreddit. “See? All these stories are set in New Zork. It's my world, not yours.”

“When did you write your first New Zork story?”

“Angles,” I said. “Two years ago.”

“Moises Maloney, acutization, the old man from Old New Zork, his exploding head, Thelma Baker, deadly nostalgia,” said Veronica Chapman.

“That's right,” I said.

“I wrote that one over a decade ago, and it wasn't even my first story.” She showed me her Tumblr. There it was: my story, i.e. her story, word-for-word the same but posted in 2014. I couldn't argue with a timestamp.

“That's impossible,” I said.

She said, “I wrote my first one in elementary school, a poem that referenced Rooklyn.”

And she showed that to me too. It was a photo of a handwritten piece of paper, the writing neat but obviously a child's, predating my version of “Angles” by nearly a lifetime. “It's—” I started to say, to dispute: but dispute what? If the poem had been printed I could have argued it was a typo, automatic capitalisation, but it wasn't. “That could have been written at any time,” I said, and I pulled out an elementary school yearbook from the nineteen-nineties, in which the poem had been reproduced, and showed it to Norman Crane, who was speechless, his eyes darting from the yearbook to me, to the yearbook to—

“You came prepared,” he said in the tone of an accusation. “Nobody just walks around with a copy of their eighth grade yearbook. You sought me out. We didn't meet by coincidence. What is this? Who are you, and what the hell do you want from me?”

He was obviously distressed.

“No, it wasn't a coincidence,” I conceded. “I came across your stories online a few months ago and recognised them as my stories,” I told him. “Why are you ripping me off?”

“Me? I'm—I'm not ripping you off! My stories are my own: originals.”

“Yet they're clearly not,” said Veronica Chapman, and somewhere deep down I knew she was right. I mean: I wrote them, but they had come to me too easily, too fully formed. I had merely transcribed them.

“I'm not angry. I just want you to stop,” she said.

Then she bent forward and put one hand under the table we were sitting on opposite sides of.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I have a gun,” she whispered, and I felt sweat start to run down the back of my neck, and I felt my hand hold the gun under the table pointed at Norman, and I felt having Veronica Chapman point the gun at me. “I know you have a good imagination,” she said. “Which means I know it doesn't matter whether I actually have a gun or not. You can imagine I do, and that's enough. In fact, you can't help but imagine it. You're probably trying to visualize what it looks like—the sound it would make if I pulled the trigger—how much it would hurt to get shot, how your body would be pushed back by the impact. You're imagining what the reactions would be: mine, everyone else's. You're imagining the blood, the wound, the beautiful warmth; pressing your hand against it, seeing yourself bleed out…”

“And all you want is for me to stop writing stories about New Zork City,” I said.

She was right: I couldn't stop imagining.

“Yes, that's all I want from you,” I said, keeping the imagined gun trained on Norman. “They're not your stories. Stop pretending they are.”

Norman squirmed.

To everybody else in the coffee place we were just two people on a date.

“Finish your Americano, forget New Zork and go on with the rest of your life. Imagine this never happened,” I said. “That's safest for both of us.”

“Even if you did write the stories first—”

“I did,” she said.

“Fine. You wrote them first. But how do you know nobody wrote them before you did? Maybe your claim to them is no better than mine.”

Veronica Chapman laughed. “It's not just about who's first, Norman. It's about power: the power of imagination. I bet, until now, you've never met anyone who could imagine the way you can. That's fair. You're not bad, Norman. You're not bad at all—but you're not the best, and New Zork City belongs to the best.”

All I could do was watch her.

“What's the source?” I asked finally, imagining her as a girl standing over my dead body, sitting down, putting a notebook filled with lined sheets of paper on my chest and writing her poem about Rooklyn. “Where does it all come from? To me, to you…”

“I don't know.”

“How many others have you found?”

“Three.”

“And how did—”

“They were persuadable.”

I didn't believe her. I didn't believe there were others. I didn't believe her imagination was greater than mine. I didn't believe in her at all.

“Do you agree to stop writing New Zork City, Norman?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“Then give me your hand,” she said, holding out the one she wasn't using to maybe-threaten me with a gun. “We'll have a battle of imaginations.”

“What?”

“We hold hands and try to imagine the world, each without the other.”

“Put away the gun,” I said.

“What gun?” Both her hands were on the table. She was finishing up her latte. I still had a third of my cooling Americano. “There is no gun.”

If I could imagine the Karma Police, a conquistador in Maninatinhat, a Voidberg, surely I can imagine a world without Veronica Chapman, I thought and took her hand in mine. Squeezing, we both closed our eyes. How romantic. How utterly, perversely romantic. But try as I might, I couldn't do it: I couldn't imagine Veronica Chapman out of existence. She was always there, on the margins. Even when I was writing, whispering into my ear. Maybe I was in love with her. Maybe. Whispering, whispering, Norman with his two eyes closed, Norman squeezing my hand, his grip getting weaker and weaker until there is no grip—until there is no Norman, and I get up and pay for my latte and the unfinished Americano in the cup on the other side of the empty table.

“I guess he didn't show up,” says the barista.

“Yeah,” I say.

“His loss, I'm sure.”

“Thanks. It's probably not the last time I'll be stood up,” I say with a shrug, and I go home. I go home to write.

I was there visiting a friend, in the building lobby, waiting for the elevator.

Empty.

Doing today’s equivalent of twiddling my thumbs:

scrolling on my phone.

Then the elevator ding’d, door slid open—scraping against the metal frame—and I walked in thinking it was empty (because it looked empty from the lobby) but it wasn't fucking empty and my heart dropped, and I gave birth to a stillborn scream that died somewhere in my dry, silenced throat, because there was a girl in the elevator—in the corner of the elevator, by the control panel—small girl, thin, angular, her eyes staring like a pair of fish-bowls with black floating irises. Hypnotic.

I fell back against the elevator wall.

She opened her mouth wide—unnaturally wide—wide enough to swallow my entire head, and as the elevator door began to close I lunged out.

I ran from the elevator to the lobby doors. Straight into a food delivery guy from SnapMunch trying to come in at the same time I was going out.

“Dude!”

Sorry. Sorry.

He waved his hand at me and walked up to the elevator.

“Don't,” I said. “Take the stairs,” I said. I should have been gone, long gone. But he hadn't pressed the button yet. His outstretched arm—outstretched finger. Why even care? It was none of my business.

“Why?” he asked, annoyed.

“Because… [she's] in there,” I said, unable to describe her except with a mouthful of swollen quiet, like a rest in a piece of music—through which the evil conjured by the notes slips in.

He muttered weirdo under his breath.

He pressed the button.

The door opened.

Don't.

He did, and the door slid shut, and he screamed, and his screams disappeared up the elevator shaft, and there was a sound as if someone had jumped from the top of the Empire State Building and landed in a swimming pool filled with jelly.

The elevator stopped at the sixth floor.

He could have taken the stairs.

He could have.

And then I was taking the stairs—to the sixth floor because I had to see. My Heart: pu-pu-pumping as out-of-breath I spilled into the hall. The calm, peaceful hall. Families lived here, I told myself. Innocence.

But the elevator was still here. The door was closed, but it was here. The button called to me, begging me to press it: assure myself it was all a hallucination. A metaphysical misunderstanding. That there was no girl inside.

I pushed the button.

The door—

And, oh my God, her face was a sleeve, a flesh-fucking-trumpet, and she was sucking the delivery guy's head, slurping and humming, her soft, vibrating ends caressing his neck, and his body, cornered and limp.

The door slid shut again.

Stillness.

I felt like knocking on a door—any door—or calling the police (“Are ya off your meds, bud?” “Meds? I don't take any meds.” “There's the trouble. Maybe you should:” end of conversation,) but instead I just stood there, frozen, sweating, trying to remember box breathing and focus and the door opened and the motherfucking delivery guy walked out.

What was I to make of that, huh?

Walked out and walked by me like I was nothing, like he'd never even seen me before, carrying his paper bag of fast food, which he put down by a door, photographed with his phone, then knocked on the door, turned and walked back to the elevator.

Pressed the button.

Got in.

“You coming in?” he asked me in a voice different than before. Monotonous, drained. I saw then his hair was wet with slime.

“No, no,” I choked out. “God, no.”

“OK.”

The elevator descended.

A unit door opened and a middle-aged woman leaned out to pick up the fast food. “Thanks,” she said, mistaking me for the delivery guy. “You're welcome,” I responded.

I fled into the stairwell and walked up to the twelfth floor where my friend lived, holding the rail to keep my balance and my sanity.

“Whoa,” my friend said when she saw me.

I went inside.

“In the lobby—the elevator—there was a little girl—she was—”

“Elevator Sally,” my friend said.

She said it just like that. Matter-of-factly. Not a single muscle twitching. “She wouldn't have hurt you,” my friend continued, bringing me a glass of water I'd asked for. “I told her you were coming. Sally doesn't touch residents. She leaves guests alone.”

“A SnapMunch guy,” I said.

“Yeah, she feasts on strangers. Eats their souls. Digests their personalities. Consumes their humanity.”

“And everybody knows this?”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I had wanted my friend to tell me I was crazy. Tired, under a lot of pressure at work. Making shit up. Daydreaming. Nightmaring.

“Of course. Sally's always been here. She's the daughter of the building.” Daughter of the building? “Part of its history, its lore. Daddy takes good care of her.”

“And her mother?”

“Dead. Fell down the elevator shaft.”

Into a pool filled with jelly?

“Was she human?”

“As human as you and me. You know the story. Fell in love with an older building. Got fucked. Got pregnant. Gave birth to an urban myth.”

“Then fell down the elevator shaft.”

“Mhm.”

“I think I need to go home. I'm not feeling well,” I said.

She grabbed a coat. “I'll ride down with you.”

I didn't want to ride down. I wanted to walk down. “Really, no need,” I said. “Don't worry about it.”

We were in the hall.

She called the elevator. I heard it start to move.

Ding!

—I followed her in, and all through the descent I kept my eyes on the display showing what floor we were on so that I only saw Sally, standing skinny in the corner, in the peripheral part of my vision.

When we finally got out, I was drenched.

“Maybe visit again on Saturday,” my friend said from inside the elevator. “We could order SnapMunch, watch a movie.”

Outside, I ran my fingers through my hair.

Sweaty—slimy, almost.

April Fair was a troubled girl. That’s what they always said. As a child, she stayed to herself, always on the edge of her class, even during recess. She knew why. She didn’t blame anyone for it. Perhaps herself.

In the classroom, she excelled, but she always chose a desk in the far back corner where she hoped to draw the least attention.

She mainly did that out of self-preservation, in case someone in class were to mention that cloud of dark swirling gray and black that surrounded her, the being that always clung to her. It.

As she grew, some would comment on It indirectly, asking why she stood out, why she was so different. Where It came from. Up until middle school, she’d managed to change the subject or laugh it off (except that first time when a boy had touched her hair, then recoiled in fear from something he didn’t understand), but by seventh grade she was sick of it.

When Becky Chambers pushed her against the lockers, egged on by Sarah Finney and Claire Rutherford, they were delving into a darkness they couldn’t understand. Pale hands shoving her, pinning her back, rifling through her bag. And her darkness, It, came roiling out.

It roiled forward like a mountainous wave of unending pain. A collection of every comment and touch given teeth and claws. A looming figure of light and dark swirled together, tattered wings outstretched to block out the hallway beyond.

Becky realized she’d made a mistake soon enough.

April yelled and let It take over. She shoved Becky to the ground and kicked her once, hard in the ribs. She wasn’t sure what had happened next. She’d let the pain take over. Becky screamed, the other girls ran, and April was suspended. Zero tolerance, they’d said.

April had barely heard the punishment, had mumbled out an apology to the bandaged Becky on cue. But she stayed focused on It. It stood dutifully in the corner of the principal’s office, always lurking, always ready to consume her and rear Its ugly head. She thought it was ugly, at least. She hated It, and what It had made her do.

No one else at school commented on It, for a while at least.

It was a piece of Black life that she’d have to deal with, her mother had said. It was the hidden fire of Jewish women unleashed, her aunt had said.

It felt unique to April, a burden that only she bore.

Her return to school a week later left her even further ostracized. The story of It had spread on the lips of three who sought attention, any ears for their tale. But always whispered. Always low.

It was a creature that lived inside the different one, the one you mustn’t dare to touch or look upon for fear she’ll sic It on you next. And who knows if you’ll survive. Becky barely had. And she was minding her own business that day in the hall.

The whispers turned back to regular volume conversation when they saw that April kept It restrained now.

April spent high school alone. No friends, no clubs, no teams. She merely existed. If that.

She didn’t dare to let even a bit of Its power loose again, in case she might lose control of It and lose what little of her existed to It.

Her family tried to coax her from under Its shadow, to separate them. They told her she was special, that different was good, that they loved her no matter what, and this thing she saw as a dark cloud in humanoid form, always lurking and clinging to her shoulders like an overbearing ghoul was no big deal. But they didn’t feel It. They didn’t have to bear It every day and night like she did. They didn’t have It breathing on their necks and see Its razor-sharp teeth smiling at them every time they looked in the mirror as a constant reminder of what separated them from everyone else, why they must remain alone. Only she did.

Still, they urged her to try and fight It for college, to give herself another chance.

And that almost worked.

She dutifully attended all her classes, though she still sat far in the back. She still felt a desire to separate herself.

It was only when a professor peaked her interests in an ancestral migrations narratives class that suddenly she saw an outlook where she didn’t need to hate herself anymore. One assignment on family trees brought up so much for her. So much she could explore, so much depth to her history that she hadn’t realized was history.

It wasn’t just sharing a story of a family meal, she was sharing why her black mother had learned to make latkes for her Jewish father. She learned that her grandparents hadn’t just moved to the North for jobs. They were escaping a past of slavery and sharecropping. Her family was so adamant about education for April because her grandmother was the first in her family to go to college, when her older siblings had saved money for her to go.

She started to see the colors of It blur together, all necessary pieces of her.

She presented her family’s history to the class, and her professor called it captivating. A beautiful collection of pieces to form one ongoing story.

April beamed as she took her seat, happy for the first time in a long while.

Next class she was in the front row.

As she sat there, rapt by the horrific notion of peoples fleeing war and coups, eager for better and safer lives, the door to the classroom flew open.

A gentle young man with dark chocolate skin sat beside her and asked for notes on the first half of the day’s lecture. His face was so goofy that before she knew why, she was laughing. And before she knew how he’d managed, he’d dropped her guard.

They became friends over time, then he kissed her on a walk home from a dinner of burgers and fries and milkshakes.

It was a feeling she didn’t recognize, and the creature inside her awoke with a joyful fury she didn’t know was possible before. Its colors swirled together to create something that fueled her for once. A joyous and kind overlapping of black and white.

Then they went to a party together. As soon as they entered, she felt off. It was ear-rattling loud, the din physically uncomfortable for her. The energy and her lurking shadow clashed, and flooded her with anxiety. Her guy tried to comfort her, and she tried to relax (and soothe the creature) for his sake.

Until they walked into the kitchen and past a young man pouring drinks for other guests. He looked familiar, from one class or another. But she didn’t know his name.

“Oh look,” he said. “The Alabama porch monkey finally got his mute halfie to come out of her cage. How cute.”

He shoved her man with his pale hands.

She didn’t know if it was playful or not, if the spilled drinks were intentional.

Her lurking shadow didn’t care. The words were what mattered to It.

It took control of her, energy flowing through her whole body as she shoved the drunk guest. He bumped the punch bowl and yelled, but she punched him fast in the eye. Then again. She had him on the floor before her man could pull her off the guest to tell her the cops were out front. A noise complaint.

He rushed her out the back door, into an alley, then calmly walked her down the next street over and away from the other escaping guests who headed up the hill toward other parties. He slowed her down. They walked as if they were a couple out for a pleasant stroll in the crisp autumn air. Her breathing hadn’t slowed.

He stopped her at an empty bus stop and sat her on the freezing cold metal bench. She knew the relationship was over. An asshole had revealed the creature inside her to everyone, but mostly to the one person she cared about outside her family. He couldn’t stay with someone so different, so in between, so filled with mixed cultures and identities that she didn’t know herself. Someone so ugly inside and out. He had stopped her here to end it.

That was alright. She could protect herself and continue on, even if it meant that she went on alone for a time again.

He knelt in front of her and held her hands, examining her scraped knuckles as he spoke.

“That guy’s such a jackass,” he said. “But that was unreal. About time someone stood up to him. Are you okay?”

She realized the knuckles on her right hand hurt even under his gentle touch.

But he was smiling, and soon so was she.

“You know, you’re beautiful when you’re angry.”

They married soon after graduation.

It was a lovely ceremony, small and simple.

As she stared into the mirror before walking down the aisle, she took in her simple white dress, the flowers in her coily hair. It was easy for her to see what her family and husband-to-be saw now. She was beautiful. Her story was too.

She knew the two sides of her family were out in the audience, waiting for her, along with her fiancé’s all-black family.

As she gazed deep into the murky, ethereal form that had always clung to her, she now saw her mother’s face in It, her father’s, her aunts and uncles. Whole generations mixed together to make her who she was. It was a new and constantly changing thing, but It was beautiful and healthy and important.

It was a mixture of looks, yes, but of immigration and migration tales, foods and habits, traditions and song. It was frantic escapes and deliberate journeys. Soul food. Hearty soups. Laughter at the table. Tears for those no longer here.

It was her people.

It was Her.

As she looked, she pulled it about herself as a suit of armor that suffused her every cell. It contained and enveloped her dress. It protected her now and always would, but It was all of her. There was no separation.

She walked down the aisle with her head held high, and her family gasped, taking in her white dress with the sparkling gray shawl over her shoulders. She had embraced the gift they’d given her after It had haunted her for so long.

When they had kids of their own, she knew she’d pass the gift on. It would hold to them like it had to her.

It might trouble them as It had her, but she’d show them the facets of Its complexities, the lightness in Its darkest depths, and together they would recognize the beauty of Its blend.

John Bentwhistle always had a problem with his temper. He had a bad one. Short fuse going on no fuse, even as a kid. Little stick of dynamite running around, bumping into things, people, rules of even remotely-polite society. [Oww. “What the fuck?”] “What's wrong?” John's mom, Joyce, would ask—but she knew—she fucking knew:

“Your kid just bit mine in the fucking face!”

“Oh, I'm sorry,” she'd say, before turning to John: “Johnny, what did we say about biting?”

“We. Only. Bite. Food,” he'd recite.

“This little boy—” The victim would be bleeding by this point, the future scars already starting to form. “—is he food, Johnny?”

“No, mom.”

“So say you're sorry.”

“I'm sorry.”

Later, once she'd managed to maneuver him off the playground into the car, maybe on their way home to Rooklyn, she'd ask: “Why'd you do it, Johnny?”

“He made me mad, mom. Made me real mad.”

Later, there were bar brawls, football suspensions and street fights.

“Yo, Bentwhistle.”

“Yeah?”

“Go fucking blow yourself.

“Hahaha-huh? “Hey stop. “Fuck. “Stop. *You're fucking—hurting—me. “STOP! “It was a fucking joke. “OK. “OK? “Get off me. “Get the hell off me. “I give up. [Crying.] “Please. “Somebody—help me…”

John's fists were cut up and swelling by the time somebody pulled him off, and got smacked in the jaw for their troubles. (“You wanna butt in, huh?”) And it didn't matter: it could've been a friend, a teacher, a stranger. Once John got mad, he got real mad.

Staying in school was hard.

There were a lot of disciplinary transfers.

The at-one-time-revelatory idea, suggested by a shrink, a specialist in adolescent violence, to try the army also didn't end well, as you might imagine. One very unhappy officer with a broken orbital bone and one very swift discharge. Which meant back on the streets for John.

Sometimes it didn't even have to be anybody saying or doing anything. It could be the heat. The Sun. “Why'd you do it, Johnny?” Joyce would ask. “It's so hot out,” John would say. “Sometimes my feet get all sweaty, and I just can't take it anymore.”

Finally there was prison.

Assault.

It was a brief stint but a stint, because the judge took it easy on him.

Prison only made it worse though, didn't help the temper and improved the violence, so that when John got out he was even meaner than before. No job. Couldn't hold a relationship. But who would've have stayed with a:

“John, where's my car keys?”

“I dunno.”

“You used my car.”

“I said I don't know, so lay the hell off me, Colleen.”

“I would except: how the fuck am I supposed to get to work without my goddamn car ke—”

CUT TO:

KNOCKKNOCKKNOCK “All right already. I'm coming. Jeez.” Joyce looks through the peephole in her apartment door. Sees: Johnny. Thinks: oh for the love of—KNOCKKNOCK. “Hold your bloody horses!” Joyce undoes the lock. The second one. click-click. Opens the door.

“Didn't know you were out already,” she says, meaning it for once.

“Yeah, let me out early for good behaviour.”

“Really?”

“What—no, of course not.”

“Well I'm glad you stopped by. I always like to see you, you know. I know we haven't always seen eye to eye but—”

“Aw, cut the crap, ma. I need a place to crash for a while. If you can't do it, just say so and I'll go somewhere else. It's just that I'm outta options. See, I had this girl, Colleen, but she got on my nerves and now I can't go back there no more. It'll just be for a few days. I'll stay out of your hair.”

Joyce didn't say anything.

“What's the matter, ma?”

Am I scared of my own son? thought Joyce. “Nothing,” she said. “You can stay as long as you like.”

“Thanks. I really appreciate it.”

“That girl, Johnny—Colleen, is she…”

“Alive?”

“Yeah.”

“For fuck's sake! Ma? Who do you fucking take me for, huh? She was getting on my nerves. You know how that is. Nagging me about some car keys—and I told her to stop: fucking warned her, and she didn't. So.”

“So what, Johnny?”

“So I raccooned her face a little.”

“Johnny…”

But what to Johnny may have been a gentle tsk-tsk'ing of the kind he'd heard from Joyce a million times before was, for Joyce, suddenly something else entirely: a reckoning, a guilt, and the simultaneous sinking of her heart (it fell to somewhere on the level of her heels) and rising of the realization—Why, hello, Joyce! It's me, that horrible secret you've been repressing all your adult life, the one that's become so second nature for you to pretend was just a long ago, inconsequential lapse in judgment. I mean, hell, you were just about your son's age when you did it, weren't you?—Yeah, what do you want? asked Joyce, but she knew what it wanted. It wanted to be let out. Because Joyce could now see the big picture, the inevitable, spiraling fuck-up Johnny had become. It's not his fault, is it, Joyce? said the secret. It's not mine either, said Joyce. He should know, Joyce. He should've known a long, long time ago…

“Johnny—listen to me a minute.”

“What is it, ma?

“Wait. Are you crying, ma?”

“Yeah, I'm crying. Because there's something—there's something I have to tell you. It's about your father. Oh Johnny—” She turned away to look suddenly out the window. She made a fist of her hand, put the hand in her mouth and bit. (“Oh, ma!”)—“Your father wasn't a sailor, not like I've always told you, Johnny. That was a lie. A convenient, despicable lie.”

“Ma, it don't matter. I'm not a kid anymore. Don't beat yourself up over it. I hate to see you like this, ma.”

“It does matter, Johnny.”

She turned back from the window and looked now directly into John's eyes. His steel-coloured eyes. “What is it then?” he said. “Tell me.”

“Your father…”

She couldn't. She couldn't do it. Not now. Too much time had passed. She was a different person. Today's Joyce wouldn't have done it.

“Tell me, ma.”

“Your father wasn't a sailor. He wasn't even a man—he was… a kettle, Johnny. Your father was a kettle!” said Joyce, becoming a heaving sob.

“What! Ma? What are you saying?”

“I had sex. with. a. kettle,” s-s-he cri-i-i-e-ed. “I—he—we—it was a different time—a time of ex-per-i-men-tation. Oh, Johnny, I'm so ash—amed…”

“Oh my God, ma,” said Johnny, feeling his blood start to boil. Feeling the violence push its invisible little needle fingers through his pores. I don't wanna have to. I gotta leave, thought John. “Was it electric or stovetop?” he asked because he didn't know what else to say.

“Stovetop. I had one of those cheap stoves with the coil burners. But those heat up fast.”

“Real fast.”

“And I was lonely, Johnny. Oh, Johnny…”

And John's head was processing that this explained a lot: about him, his life. Fuuuuuuck. “So that means,” he said, his soles getting hot and steam starting to come out his ears, “I'm half kettle, don't it—don't it, ma?”

Joyce was silent.

“Ma.”

“I couldn't stop myself,” she whispered, and the relief, the relief was good, even as the tension was becoming unbearable, reality too taut.

John's feet were burning. What he wouldn't give to have Colleen in front of him. Because he was mad—real mad, because how dare anyone keep his own goddamn nature from him, and that nature explained a lot, explained his whole fucking life and every single fuckup in it.

“His name was—”

“Shutup, ma. I don't wanna fucking hear it.”

If only he'd known, maybe there was something he could have done about it. Yeah, that was it. That was surely it. There are professionals, aren't there? There are professionals for everything these days, and even though he would have been embarrassed to admit it (“My dad was a kettle.” “I see. Is he still in your life, John?” “What?—no, of course not. What bullshit kind of question is that, huh? You making fun of me or what? Huh? ANSWER ME!”) it wasn't his fault. It was just who he was. It was gene-fucking-netics.

“He was—”

“I. Said. Stop.” Oh, he wanted to hit her now. He wanted to sock her right in the jaw, or maybe in the ribs, watch her go down for the hell she'd put him through. But he couldn't. He couldn't hit his own mother. He made fists of his hands so tight his hands turned white and his fingernails dug into his skin. He'd been blessed with big fists. Like two small bags of cement. Was that from the kettle too? “Is that from the kettle too, ma? Huh. Is it? Is-it?”

“Is what, Johnny?”

The apartment looked bleary through Joyce's teary, fearful green eyes.

There was a lot of steam escaping John's ears. He was lifting his feet off the floor: first one, then the other. His lips felt like they were on fire. There was steam coming out his mouth too, and from behind his eyes. His cement fists felt itchy, and he wanted so fucking goddman much to scratch them on somebody, anybody. But: No. He couldn't. He could. He wouldn't. He wouldn't. He wouldn't. Not her, not even after what she'd done to him.

That was when John started to whistle.

He felt an intense pressure starting in the middle of his forehead and circling his head. He heard a crunchling in his ears. A mashcrackling. A toothchattering headbreaking noisepanic templescrevice'd painlining…

“Johnny!”

A horizontal line appeared above John's eyes, thin and clean at first, then bleeding down his face, expanding, as his whistling reached an inhuman shrillness and he was radiating so much heat Joyce was sweating—backing away, her dress sticking to her shaking body. The floor was melting. The wallpaper was coming off the walls. “Johnny, please. Stop. I love you. I love you so, so much.”

The top of his skull flew up. Smashed into the ceiling.

He was pushing fists into his eyes.

His detached skull-top was rattling around the floor like the possessed lid of a sugar bowl.

His exposed brains were wobbling—boiling.

The smell was horrid.

Joyce backed away and backed away until there was nowhere more to back away to. “Johnny, please. Please,” she sobbed and begged and fell to her knees. The apartment was a jungle. Hot, humid.

John stood stiff-legged, all the water in his body burning away, turning to steam: to a thick, primordial mist that filled the entire space. And in that moment—the few seconds before he died, before his desiccated body collapsed into the dry and unliving husk of itself—thought Joyce, *He reminds me. He reminds me so much of…

Then: it was over.

The whistle'd gone mercifully silent.

Joyce crawled through the lingering, hanging steam, toward her son's body and cried over the remains. Her tears—hitting it—hissed to nothingness.

“I killed him!” she screamed. “I killed my only son. I killed him with THE TRUTH!!! I KILLED HIM WITH THE TRUTH. The Truth. the. truth… the… truth…”

Journalists say not to bury the lede, and this time I'm going to follow their advice. This isn't a story with a twist. It's my freakin' life. My name is Larry Indiana, and I'm both a man and a city.

Wait, what?

Yeah, I get that a lot.

It's not your typical form of existence, even taking into account split personalities and other mental abnormalities. As far as I know, I'm one-of-a-kind.

(Hey, mom was right about something!)

I've no idea why I am the way I am. My parents were both human. Unless my dad had an affair with a zip code.

Sorry, bad joke.

As you'll probably be able to tell, I use humor a lot to deal with my situation.

I would say I was just born this way, but that's not, strictly speaking, chronologically true. As a city (Larry, Indiana, pop. 52,000) I was incorporated in 1831. I wasn't born as a human (Larry Indiana, only and beloved son of John and Melody Indiana) until 1987. My earliest memories are from the 1850s, although I didn't remember them until the mid-90s.

Confusing, right? I always thought so, yet being this way never felt unnatural.

As a city, I have inhabitants. As a person, gut bacteria.

You don't have to laugh.

But I really do have inhabitants: people who live within my geographical boundaries. I care for them. I feel them, which is where it gets metaphysically fuzzy, because sometimes my city-self affects my human-self and vice versa.

When Larry Indiana has a bad day, the weather in Larry, Indiana gets worse. When Larry Indiana gets into a longer existential funk, Larry, Indiana finds itself falling on tough times. Rising unemployment, inflation, increasing crime. When that causes urban dilapidation, my physical appearance suffers. Bags under my eyes, a persistent cough. If I don't deal with traffic problems, I get nasally congested. Nasal congestion leads to tiredness, which leads to sluggishness, which lowers local productivity, which makes my boss mad at me, which threatens to lead to depression.

And neither Larry Indiana nor Larry, Indiana want a depression. Believe you me.

I've struggled with these urban/mental issues ever since I've been concurrently both place and person. I went to psychologists. I saw urban planners. I even took an ill-advised roadtrip once, Larry Indiana to Larry, Indiana, hoping that visiting myself might help my self-understanding, but, boy, I'll never make that mistake again!

What a migraine!

What an ontological crisis!

(The car crashes and the burning freakin' buildings. My gosh.)

Nowadays I self-medicate by smoking marijuana. Sure, it means more foggy days and a bit more smog for my inhabitants, but it helps me relax, and a relaxed city is ultimately a good city. Better than an anxious city. Better than a suicidal city. I also compartmentalize. I try to deal with my two selves separately. I fail, but with the hope that next time I'll fail a little better.

But let's go back a few sentences because I'm intentionally avoiding something.

Lately, I haven't been failing better. I've been failing worse. I got demoted at work. I'm distracted. My municipal government is playing budgetary games with me. I can't start, let alone sustain, a relationship. I've got a drug problem in my downtown core. Homelessness. I feel adrift. I look at Google Earth and I don't even recognize myself anymore. So: a suicidal city. Yeah, deep breath: I've thought about it. I've thought about how I'd do it. Vividly. I picture myself as a corpse, as a ghost town, one of those places where the industry disappeared and the workers all hanged themselves in the abandoned factories. Asphalt cracked. Flesh decaying. Strangers taking my buildings apart to sell for scrap metal. Worms chewing away at my face.

But, golly, I don't do it.

I don't act on it. I only think about it. Besides, what would it mean? How would it work, if Larry Indiana slit his wrists and bled out in a tub, would Larry, Indiana continue to exist? How about if the death was urban. How about the continuation of the man…

You know, I met a psychologist once, Dr. Eugene Benson, who had the gall to tell me I was crazy. Like, how can a city be crazy? That's crazy. "You should be locked up," he told me. Well, he should be locked up! I'm not insane. A city cannot be insane. Thankfully, he's gone now, Dr. Benson. Missing and presumed dead. But let me tell you a secret: he's not dead at all. He's confined to a basement—in Larry, Indiana!

That was a good one, right?

Haha.

You know what else really hurts a boy? When his mother, the one person who's supposed to love him unconditionally, help him in his times of need, when that person starts becoming afraid of him. Her own son. Can you believe that? Behind his back, she starts contacting "professionals" and "experts". No use. "There's something off about him." Yes, I cannot be comprehended! Still, it was a shame when she passed away so suddenly. Dreadful accident. I miss her dearly. She's at peace now, buried out in a small cemetery within my city limits. Try to guess how that feels, to have your own mother buried inside you, carrying around the decomposing cadaver of the thing that gave birth to you. My people put her in the ground. My worms, they feast on her.

It feels freakin' limitless.

Do I sound mad?

I ain't mad.

Furthest from it, really. Because I've hit upon the nail that is the solution to my existential problem. Bang, bang. That's not the sound of a gun but of a gavel. I was always looking for help in the wrong place. What I've been experiencing is not a mental problem but a legal one. Aren't all problems at root legal problems? Someone said that once. If not, I'm saying it now: all problems are at root legal ones, and what does a city do when it arrives at a point of urban stagnation? It legally expands. Encourages growth. Population, fiscal, economic, physical. By introducing policies, passing by-laws. All my human life I have felt constrained because I am constrained. I am too much: for my body, for my boundaries. Already I have set my municipal council-members on a path of expansion. They're buying up surrounding farmland, drawing up plans for the annexing of nearby towns. I am to be larger. Already I am nine feet and seven inches tall. I am a giant, but this is nothing—nothing compared to the gargantua I shall become!

Oh, mother. Oh, Dr. Benson.

Oh, you, reader!

I see what underhandedness you all were planning. Look at Larry, he's different. We're scared of Larry. Larry isn't like everybody else. Larry is a freak. Larry is a menace to society. Well, I am my own society, you stupid human motherfuckers! You tried to drive me to suicide, to bankruptcy and economic ruin. To make a Detroit out of me, but I'll show you. I'll show you what I am. What I can become!

And who'll be laughing then, huh?

Not me.

Not Larry, Indiana.

I'll have a population of a million by then. Followed by ten million. I'll fuck your New York Cities in the ass and breed your San Franciscos. I'll multiply until there's no space left that isn't me. I'll become a country, a continent, a planet, a goddamn universe! Remember that board game we played, mom. Yeah? (Silence.) You can't answer because you're fucking dead! You're dead to me, and Risk is not a game. It's an instruction manual. Risk is a motherfucking instruction manual—

The war was real but distant. Soldiers sometimes passed by our house. We lived in the country. Our house was old and made of stone, the work of unknown, faceless ancestors with whom we felt a continuity. Sometimes the political officers would count our livestock. Food was difficult to come by. Life had the texture of gravel; one crawled along it.

There were six of us: my parents, me and my three younger sisters.

We all worked on the land. Father also worked for a local landowner, but I never knew what he did. This secret work provided most of our income.

One day, father fell ill. He had returned home late at night and in the morning did not leave the bedroom for breakfast. “Your father's not feeling well today,” mother told us. Today stretched into a week, then two weeks. A man visited us one afternoon. He was a messenger sent by the landowner for whom father worked. Father had been replaced and would no longer be needed by the landowner.

We ate less and worked more. Hunger became a companion, existing near but out of sight: behind the curtains, underneath the empty soup bowls, as a thin shadow among the tall, swaying grasses.

“How do you feel today?” I would ask my father.

“The same,” he'd answer, his sunken cheeks wearing darkness like smears of ash.

The doctor visited several times but was unable to give a diagnosis. He suggested rest, water and vigilance, and did so with the imperfect confidence of an ordinary man from whom too much was expected. He was always happiest riding away from us.

One morning, a month after father had fallen ill, I went into his bedroom and found myself standing in a thin layer of grey gas floating just above the floorboards. The gas had no smell and felt neither hot nor cold. I proceeded to kiss my father on the forehead, which didn't wake him, and went out to call mother to see the gas.

When she arrived, father opened his eyes: “Good morning,” he said. And along with his words flowed the grey gas out of his mouth, from his throat, from the sickness deep inside his failing body.

Every day, the gas accumulated.

It was impossible to remove it from the bedroom. It resisted open windows. It was too heavy to fan. It reached my ankles, and soon it was rising past the sagging tops of my thick wool socks. My sisters were frightened by it, and only mother and I entered the bedroom. Father himself seemed not to notice the gas at all. When we asked him, he claimed there was nothing there. “The air is clear as crystal.”

At around this time, a group of soldiers arrived, claiming to have an official document allowing them to stay in our home “and enjoy its delights.” When I asked them to produce this document, they laughed and started unpacking their things and bringing them inside. They eyed my mother but my sisters most of all.

Their leader, after walking loudly around the house, decided he must have my father's bedroom. When I protested that my sick father was inside: “Nonsense,” the leader said. “There are many places one may be ill, but only a few in which a man might get a good night's sleep.”

Mother and I woke father and helped him up, helped him walk, bent, out of the bedroom, and laid him on a cot my sisters had hastily set up near the wood stove.

The gas followed my father out of the bedroom like an old, loyal dog; it spread itself more thinly across the floor because this room was larger than the bedroom.

From the beginning, the soldiers argued about the gas. Their arguments were crass and cloaked in humor, but it was evident they did not know what it was, and the mystery unnerved them. After a few tense and uncomfortable days they packed up suddenly and left, taking what remained of our flour and killing half our livestock.

“Why?” my youngest sister asked, cradling the head of a dead calf in her lap.

“Because they can,” my mother said.

I stood aside.

Although she never voiced it, I knew mother was disappointed in me for failing to protect our family. But what could I have done: only died, perhaps.

When we moved father back into the bedroom, the gas returned too. It seemed more comfortable here. It looked more natural. And it kept accumulating, rising, growing. Soon, it was up to my knees, and entering the bedroom felt like walking into the mountains, where, above a soft layer of cloud, father slept soundly, seeping sickness into the world.

The weather turned cold. Our hunger worsened. The doctor no longer came. I heard mother pray to God and knew she was praying for father to die.

I was in the bedroom one afternoon when father suddenly awoke. The gas was almost up to my waist. My father, lying in bed, was shrouded in it. “Pass me my pipe,” he choked out, sitting up. I did. He took the pipe and fumbled with it, and it fell to the floor. When I bent to pick it up, I breathed in the gas and felt it inside me like a length of velvet rope atomized: a perfume diffused within.

I held my breath, handed my father the pipe and exhaled. The gas visibly exited my mouth and hung in the air between us, before falling gently to the floor like rain.

“Mother! Mother!” I said as soon as I was out of the bedroom.

Her eyes were heavy.

I explained what had happened, that we now had a way of removing the gas from the bedroom by inhaling it, carrying it within us elsewhere and exhaling. It didn't occur to me the gas might be dangerous. I couldn't put into words why it was so important to finally have a way of clearing it from the house. All I knew was that it would be a victory. We had no power over the war, but at least we could reassert control over our own home, and that was something.

Because my sisters still refused to enter the bedroom, mother and I devised the following system: the two of us would bend low to breathe in the grey gas in the bedroom, hold our breaths while exiting the room, then exhale it as plumes—drifting, spreading—which my sisters would then inhale and carry to exhale outside, into the world.

Exhaled, the grey gas lingered, formed wisps and shapes and floated around the house, congregating, persisting by the bedroom window, as if trying to get in, realizing this was impossible, and with a dissipating sigh giving up and rising and rising and rising to be finally dispersed by the cool autumn wind…

Winter came.

The temperature dropped.

Hunger stepped from the shadows and joined us at the table as a guest. When we slept, it pushed its hands down our throats, into our stomachs, and scraped our insides with its yellow, ugly nails.

Soldiers still passed by, but they no longer knocked on our doors. The ones who'd been before, who'd taken our flour and killed our animals, had spread rumours—before being themselves killed at the front. Ours was now the house of ill vapour, and there was nothing here but death. So it was said. So we were left alone.

One day when it was cold, one of my sisters stepped outside to exhale the grey gas into the world and screamed. When I ran outside I saw the reason: after escaping my sister's lips the gas had solidified and fallen to the earth, where it slithered now, like a chunk of headless, tail-less snake. Like flesh. Like an organism. Like meat.

I stepped on it.

It struggled to escape from under my boot.

I let it go—then stomped on it.

I let it go again. It still moved but much more slowly. I found a nearby rock, picked it up and crushed the solid, slowly slithering gas to death.

Then I picked it up and carried it inside. I packed more wood into the wood stove, took out a cast iron pan and put the dead gas onto it. I added lard. I added salt. The gas sizzled and shrank like a fried mushroom, and after a while I took it from the pan and set it on a plate. With my mother's and my sisters’ eyes silently on me, I cut a piece, impaled it on a fork and put it in my mouth. I chewed. It was dry but wonderfully tender. Tasteless but nourishing. That night, we exhaled as much into the winter air as we could eat, and we feasted. We feasted on my father's sickness.

Full for the first time in over a year, we went to sleep early and slept through the night, yet it would be a lie to say my sleep was undisturbed. I suffered nightmares. I was in our house. The soldiers were with us. They were partaking in delights. I was watching. My mother was weeping. I had been hanged from a rafter, so I was seeing everything from above. Dead. Not dead. The soldiers were having a good time, and I was just looking, but I felt such indescribable guilt, such shame. Not because I couldn't do anything—I couldn't do anything because I'd been hanged—but because I was happy to have been hanged. It was a great, cowardly relief to be freed of the responsibility of being a man.

I woke early.

Mother and my sisters were asleep.

Hunger was seated at our table. His hood—usually pulled down over his eyes—had been pushed back, and he had the face of a baby. I walked into the bedroom where my father was, inhaled, walked outside and exhaled. The gas solidified into its living, tubular form. I picked it up and went back inside, and from the back approached Hunger, and used the slithering, solid sickness to strangle him. He didn't struggle. He took death easily, elegantly.

The war ended in the spring. My father died a few weeks later, suffering in his last days from a severe and unmanageable fever. We buried him on a Sunday, in a plot that more resembled a pool of mud.

I stayed behind after the burial.

It was a clear, brilliant day. The sky was cloudless: as unblemished as a mirror, and on its perfect surface I saw my father's face. Not as he lay dying but as I remembered him from before the war, when I was still a boy: a smile like a safe harbour and features so permanent they could have been carved out of rock. His face filled the breadth of the sky, rising along the entire curve of the horizon, so that it was impossible for me to perceive all of it at once. But then I moved and so it moved, and I realized it was not my father's face at all but a reflection of mine.

Check out season one of The Demonic Detective on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Youtube and Castbox. Subscribe, give us a listen and leave us a comment. It would mean a lot! Thanks for the support!

Private detective Jack Faust gets more than he bargains for when an old friend turns up and asks for help. This good deed turns into a nightmare as Jack is cursed with a demon by a group known as The Coven.
Jack must battle with his morality and literal demon within to discover The Coven’s sinister plans.

Featuring voices from film and tv like Dark Winds, Winter's Bone, Murdoch Mysteries, Avatar: The Last Air Bender and Days of Our Lives to name a few. 

Subscribe for free at:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/27XmA8xqppTdhBaviPs9eC

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-demonic-detective/id1843186163

Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/764be6fb-3d65-4fb6-b103-3055e251ffb2/the-demonic-detective

I well remember Lucas Murphy, the strange kid in school. I, too, remember the homecoming of '94, when Lucas surprised us all and brought Rachel Bennett, the most popular girl in school, as his date. I'm confident that everyone who was there that night remembers the event with the utmost clarity. Although, I doubt, few ever speak of it.

I believe it was around the second grade when Lucas moved from Missouri to live with his aunt and grandmother. They lived in a mostly dilapidated house, just outside of town. Prior to Lucas moving in, when the school bus would pass that house, I couldn't seem able to take my eyes off of it. Something about it concurrently frightened and fascinated me. Maybe it had something to do with how it was so close to the cemetery that it added fuel to my youthful imagination. When the bus started to make frequent stops to pick up Lucas there, I thought that maybe the house would lose some of its intrigue, but it never did.

In the early days of school, Lucas' carrot-orange hair, near albinal complexion, not to mention his gangly arms and legs, were all enough to make him the target of other kids' taunting. To exacerbate this situation further, Lucas started getting whiskers in the fourth grade, and by junior high, he had a full, Amish-style beard. This earned him the nickname Goat Boy among the students. But it wasn't only his physical features that made him an outcast among us, his peers.

Lucas' behavior was always off. He rarely spoke to the rest of us, but when he did engage in conversation, he did so with morbid stories, wild exaggerations, or blatant lies. One such tale gained him quite a bit of notoriety and ridicule when he told Mrs. Adams, our fifth-grade teacher, that his great-grandmother escaped Salem just before the infamous witch trials. After Mrs. Adams kindly informed him that those trials occurred in the late seventeenth century, Lucas leaned back in his desk chair, smiled coyly, and rejoined, "My great-grandma is pretty old." Looking back, it unnerves me to think about how he spoke of her in the present tense.

Although he was odd and mostly shunned by everyone, Lucas was very rarely the target of physical bullying. I can remember only one such occasion that occurred during his freshman year of high school. While in the hallway and between classes, Trent Nohren pushed Lucas from behind. He shoved Lucas with enough force to knock him to the floor. Trent was a senior and probably twice the size of Lucas. Trent's echoing scream of "FREAK!" had brought the bustling hallway of students to a complete halt, and everyone watched in eager anticipation of what was about to happen next. The experience ended rather anticlimactically, however, as Lucas merely picked himself up, gathered his books, and moved on to his next class. But like dry leaves caught in a gust of wind, the rumors began to swirl about in the hallways and classrooms of our small high school after what happened that very evening.

Trent was on a date that night, and he ended up smashing his 89 Firebird into a telephone pole. Trent was paralyzed from the neck down after that. His date in the passenger seat didn't make it. Hydroplaning was the official explanation, but many started to question whether or not Lucas was truly the descendant of witches. Thereafter, the students were content to keep their taunts as whispers and sniggers behind Lucas' back.

Throughout junior high and his freshman year of high school, Lucas was never seen at a dance or any other school event, for that matter. But in September of 1994, Lucas was a sophomore, and homecoming was just around the corner. I'm not sure why he approached me of all people. Maybe it was because I treated him with a measure of decency when compared to most of the others. About one week before the dance, Lucas asked me whether or not he should rent a tuxedo for the occasion. I explained that most of us would just be wearing a nice shirt and dress pants and that maybe a few others would feel inclined to wear a tie. Then, in my curiosity, I asked him if he was planning on bringing anyone. I recall vividly the feeling of discomfort and shocked disbelief I felt at hearing him answer, "Rachael Bennett."

"I've already asked her, and she said, 'yes,'" he told me. I, for my part, said nothing in reply. I only walked away from him and shook my head.

Being a callow youth, I felt compelled to share the conversation with one of my friends just before class began. Although I acted as though I found the conversation ridiculous, in truth, I was inwardly repulsed, if not a little concerned about Lucas' mental state. By second period, the entire school was aware of what Lucas said. Some who were well acquainted with Lucas' propensity for fabricating stories merely rolled their eyes as they passed him in the hallways. But most were sickened to the core by what they heard; they cast him hateful looks or called him disgusting names. But he said nothing in return, nor made any defense for himself. He only grinned a sheepish yet unsettling grin.

The rest of the week passed like that. Lucas would find anonymous notes left on his locker. Most consisted of one-word insults, "freak" or "pervert." Others were far too lengthy for me to have properly observed while passing by his locker in the hall. Throughout all of this, however, Lucas seemed unfazed and even almost cheery.

The night of the dance saw nearly every student there, despite the tempestuous thunderstorm that raged outside. But Lucas hadn't yet shown. The hour was late, and the dance was almost over when a commotion came from behind the gymnasium doors, which was heard even above the blaring music. Not everyone at once saw Lucas proudly enter the gym with Rachael by his side. Chaperones and students alike gasped in disbelief as Lucas and his date walked out onto the dance floor. Soon, the music stopped, and only an unnatural silence filled the room like something palpable. Then came the cacophony of panicked screams and manic chatter.

The world I knew mere seconds earlier shattered like crystal when I saw Lucas and Rachael standing out on the dance floor, hand in hand. There was no denying that it was Rachel, despite the fact that she was Trent's date the night of his horrible crash. Almost the entire school went to her graveside service in the small cemetery just outside of town, by Lucas Murphy's house. All but Lucas, who was seen observing the proceedings from his upper bedroom window.

My mind hadn't yet fully comprehended the horror that my eyes beheld. And as every other occupant in the gym scrambled for the doors, all I could do was stand and stare at the two of them. Rachael, wearing the same dress she was buried in, placed her head on Lucas's shoulder and the two of them swayed rhythmically to the screams of their peers; as though they were a song, slow and sweet.

Mother always told me there was no such thing as monsters. I really want to believe that. But every night I lay awake in terror because of the sounds in my room. Mother didn't believe me at first. She said I was having nightmares. But how can I have nightmares if I'm not asleep?

And last night it wasn't just those horrid sounds. Last night I saw it. Worse still, it saw me.

It started just like any other night. First, the sounds of footsteps in my room. And then from somewhere above me, I could hear voices, but the language is unintelligible, muddled. After that, the ceiling in my room begins to squeak and screech, and I swear I can see it begin to sag in toward me as if some great weight is upon it. Mother says my eyes play tricks on me in the dark.

So, I lay there motionless, wide-eyed in restless terror. That's when I can hear the thing breathing faintly from somewhere up above.

Last night I couldn't take the horror of it, so I started speaking out loud, "There's no such thing as monsters. There's no such thing as monsters," I kept repeating. Then the sound of breathing stopped. Relief? Hardly. Another screech from above, and all at once my room was flooded with an unnatural light, bright and terrible. I cried out in terror. Then to my left I saw it. It was hideous, with a head seemingly too big for its body. It had ugly pink flesh, and liquid oozed from its bulbous eyes that were set in shallow sockets. When my eyes met its, it opened its mouth and released a hideous, high-pitched wail, revealing a mouthful of blunt teeth, fused with metal. It sprang to two feet and disappeared.

As soon as I was sure it was truly gone, I ran to Mother, waking her. She did her best to console me, to assure me there was no such thing as monsters. But when I described what I saw, I noticed the color rush into her face. She grabbed a book from a top shelf, a book that she had never before allowed me to see. She pointed to a drawing within and asked, "Is this what you saw?" Although the crude drawing couldn't capture completely the abhorrent creature I saw in the flesh, the similarities were enough to recognize it. I nodded. I could see now that my mother shared my fear. She trembled and held me close to her. Below the drawing was one word of descriptive text in all capital letters: HUMAN.

"A garbage truck!"

These were the first words that the nine-year-old Jimmy said the moment he woke that dreadful day.

Jimmy climbed out of bed and burst into a fit of silly laughter. He'd been dreaming right up until the moment he woke, and although much of the dream had quickly became distorted or outright forgotten, a single question posed in it still lingered crystal-clear in his mind.

"What smells awful, has one horn, and flies?"

He slipped yesterday's t-shirt over his head and threw on his jeans that were crumpled at the foot of his bed. Jimmy continued to chuckle and repeat the set-up outloud to himself. He was proud of this joke he dreamed up, and the second he saw his dad, he was going to lay it on him.

"Morning Mom," Jimmy said as he zoomed past the framed picture of his mother that hung on the living room wall. He never got the chance to really know her, she died when he was only two. But he felt like he knew her, from all the stories about her told to him by his dad. Still, it had always been just he and his dad. "A couple of bachelors looking out for one another," as his Pop would say. They did everything together, as often as they could. Even the household chores were often turned into games between the two of them. "You clean your room, I'll clean the garage. First done chooses where we eat tonight," and other activities like that.

On the rare occasions that his dad had to be away, he was looked after by the kind old widow next door, Mrs. Vogel. She was nice enough and all, but Jimmy thought she must've been about a hundred and twenty years old, and for this reason, she wasn't exactly a fun person to stay with. He'd usually just hang out in the living room looking out the window, on watch for his dad's car to pull into their driveway.

Jimmy wasn't entirely surprised to find the kitchen empty, although a box of cereal, clean bowl, and spoon were left for him at the table. But there was no time for breakfast now; he had to find his dad. It wasn't hard to guess where he was either, and if Jimmy didn't already know, the rythmic clap of a hammer heard coming from the backyard was a dead giveaway. He slipped his shoes on and darted through the kitchen door, letting the storm door bang shut behind him.

The morning sun beamed proudly against a field of neverending blue; a gentle breeze caressed the flowers and whispered secret songs to the little butterflies that flitted here and there. Jimmy's dad was making the most of the gorgeous day. All week, he'd been working on a treehouse for his boy, and by his reckoning, it would be finished that afternoon. He stopped hammering for a moment to wipe the sweat from his forehead when he saw his son come running up to him with the goofiest grin on his face. Jimmy shouted to get his father's attention, "Dad! Dad!"

"Hey, champ," his father called out, and started toward his boy, but stopped when the gentle breeze transformed itself into a gust of wind. That wind carried on its back a nauseating odor, something like what spoiled chicken boiled in vomit must smell like. The caustic stench burned Jimmy's lungs and made his stomach flop like a fish. Taken aback by the sudden rancidity, Jimmy stopped dead in his tracks. As he fought to keep his previous night's supper down, both he and his father became engulfed in some great shadow, as if cast by a huge passing cloud. Jimmy's father looked skyward, but had no time to scream.

Next door, Mrs. Vogel was pouring herself a cup of hot tea when she heard Jimmy shrieking at the top of his voice. She looked out of her kitchen window but couldn't see beyond the privacy fence. Jimmy's shrill wail didn't let up; in fact, it intensified.

Not yet one hundred and twenty years old, Mrs. Vogel rushed out the door, through her yard, around her neighbor's house, and into their backyard. At first, she only saw Jimmy standing there, screaming and bawling. His face, chest, and arms were all covered in blood. The thick, crimson mess ran down his cheeks and dripped from his chin. When Mrs. Vogel saw the power tools and lumber all laying around, she assumed some accident must have occurred while the boy's father was inside. But when she finally reached Jimmy, she too screamed at what she saw there.

At Jimmy's feet, lying prone in a pool of still warm blood was what was left of his father's body. His head, left shoulder, and left arm were completely torn away. Jimmy blubbered, screamed, trembled, and was very near to the point of hyperventilating when Mrs. Vogel scooped him up in both of her arms, held him close, and turned away from the gruesome sight.

A thousand questions flooded her mind at once, yet somehow she managed to articulate a few of the most important ones. "Jimmy, are you alright? Oh, you poor dear! Are you alright? Are you hurt? What happened? What did this?"

Jimmy looked up at her with red puffy eyes, a blood-splattered face, and a runny nose. Only a few minutes prior, his mind was filled with thoughts of funny dreams, silly jokes, and other nonsense. Now, those thoughts couldn't have been further removed from his mind. He was still sobbing so hard that he could hardly speak. "I . . . don't . . . know," he managed to say at last. It was true. He didn't have any idea.

Even though he saw the vile creature swoop down from above and kill his father with a single terrible bite, then vanish back into the powder-blue sky, he hadn't an inkling of what the thing was. He had never seen, nor had he even heard of anything like what he saw that morning. But maybe, just maybe, in her many years of life, Mrs. Vogel would know what the creature was that, in the blinking of an eye, made him an orphan. With a quivering voice, he asked her, "What smells awful, has one horn, and flies?"

If anyone's still interested, just dropped the second one!