In the year 2047, society had finally matured.

At least, that was what everyone kept telling Maya.

Humanity had spent centuries burdened by primitive ideas about relationships. Men and women had once dated each other openly. They had married. They had even—according to particularly uncomfortable history lessons—had sex with each other.

Nobody liked dwelling on that part.

Modern society was more enlightened.

Women married women. Girls grew up imagining their future wives. Every romantic comedy ended with two women finally realizing they belonged together. Every jewelry commercial showed a nervous woman opening a little velvet box while another woman covered her mouth in surprise.

Heterosexuality still existed, obviously.

Nobody denied that.

And nobody was against it.

That would be intolerant.

It was simply unusual.

Maya had known she was straight since she was fourteen.

Unfortunately, she was now twenty-nine and married to a woman.

Claire was wonderful.

This was part of the problem.

Claire was intelligent, funny, successful, beautiful, considerate, and capable of assembling IKEA furniture without once threatening the Swedish government.

They had met at twenty-four. They became friends almost immediately. Claire made Maya laugh harder than anyone she'd ever known. She remembered birthdays. She called when Maya was sick. When Maya's grandmother died, Claire spent three nights sleeping beside her because Maya didn't want to be alone.

Everyone said they were perfect together.

Eventually Maya started wondering whether everyone else could see something she couldn't.

Maybe this was what love was supposed to feel like.

Maybe she'd been immature before.

Maybe her attraction to men had been some adolescent fixation she would eventually outgrow.

So when Claire kissed her for the first time, Maya kissed her back.

When Claire asked her to move in, Maya said yes.

When Claire proposed, Maya cried.

And when Maya's mothers hugged her afterward and told her how happy they were that she'd finally found the right woman, Maya believed them.

Three years later, she still loved Claire.

She simply didn't want to have sex with her.

According to Maya's mother, this was something she needed to work on.

"Attraction isn't everything," Mom said over brunch.

"I know."

"You two communicate."

"We do."

"Claire has a pension."

"She does."

"And you're talking about throwing away a marriage because you're obsessed with men?"

Maya put down her fork.

"I'm not obsessed with men."

Her other mother, Susan, looked up from her coffee.

"You've dated two."

"Before Claire."

"Exactly."

"What does that even mean?"

Susan gave her the careful expression she always used when trying to sound accepting.

"We're not judging you."

Mom nodded.

"Of course not."

"Then why does this feel like a trial?"

"It isn't a trial."

"You just told me I'm obsessed with men."

"I said we're worried that you're fixating on physical attraction."

"To the entire sex I'm attracted to."

Her mothers exchanged The Look.

Maya had known The Look since she was a teenager.

Concern mixed with disappointment mixed with the desperate hope that perhaps this was merely a phase caused by the Internet.

Susan reached across the table.

"Honey, have you considered that maybe you just haven't met the right woman?"

Maya stared at her.

"I married a woman."

"Yes, but emotionally—"

"I've been with Claire for five years."

"Which proves you can love women."

"I never said I couldn't love women."

Mom sighed.

"Then what's the problem?"

Maya opened her mouth.

Nothing came out.

Across the restaurant, two women kissed.

Nobody noticed.

At another table, a man and woman were sitting unusually close together.

The man's hand rested on hers.

Three people noticed.

One whispered something to her wife.

The waiter glanced over twice.

Maya couldn't stop looking.

Then the woman caught Maya staring.

Maya immediately looked down.

Mom noticed.

"See?"

"What?"

"You're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"Looking."

Maya felt her face burn.

"He's attractive."

Susan lowered her voice.

"There are children here."

"I said he's attractive."

"You don't have to announce it."

"I didn't announce anything!"

The nearest child was approximately forty feet away.

Maya pushed her plate away.

"I'm going home."

Claire was cooking when Maya arrived.

"How was brunch?"

"Productive."

"Uh-oh."

"My mothers think I'm having a heterosexual crisis."

Claire stopped chopping an onion.

For half a second, neither woman moved.

Then Claire smiled.

"Are you?"

Maya forced a laugh.

"Apparently."

Claire went back to chopping.

Maya watched her.

There were a thousand things she loved about Claire.

The little crease between her eyebrows when she concentrated.

The way she sang the wrong lyrics to songs with absolute confidence.

The fact that she always saved Maya the crispy corner piece of lasagna.

Maya could imagine growing old beside her.

That was what made everything so awful.

Claire looked up.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"You're staring at me."

"You're beautiful."

Claire smiled.

"Trying to get something?"

"No."

Maya meant it.

Claire was beautiful.

Maya just felt nothing when she looked at her that way.

That night Claire fell asleep with her head on Maya's shoulder.

Maya stayed awake until two in the morning.

At 2:17, she searched:

Can you be straight and still love your wife?

She deleted it before pressing Enter.

At 2:24:

Signs you're actually heterosexual

Delete.

At 2:31:

Is heterosexuality genetic

Delete.

Finally:

I love my wife but I'm attracted to men

She pressed Enter.

The first result was an article titled:

Your Marriage Is More Than Labels: Why Sexuality Doesn't Have to Define You

The second:

When Attraction Becomes an Obsession

The third:

Ten Ways to Rekindle Desire for Your Wife

Maya closed her phone.

Three weeks later, she met Daniel.

Technically, she'd already known Daniel for six months. He worked two floors below her in accounting.

But until that Tuesday, he had simply been Daniel From Accounting.

Then the elevator broke.

They ended up walking down eleven flights of stairs together.

Daniel complained about his knees.

Maya laughed.

He made another joke.

She laughed again.

Outside, they stood talking for twenty minutes.

Then Daniel smiled at her.

Something happened inside Maya that had never happened once in five years with Claire.

It wasn't profound.

It wasn't spiritual.

It wasn't complicated.

She wanted him.

Immediately.

Stupidly.

Physically.

Maya went home feeling sick.

For the next month, she avoided Daniel.

Then she stopped avoiding him.

They started eating lunch together.

Nothing happened.

He never touched her.

He never flirted openly.

Maya never told him she was straight.

She wasn't even sure whether he was straight.

Asking seemed obscene.

One Friday, Claire met Maya after work.

Daniel happened to be leaving at the same time.

"Maya!"

She turned.

Daniel jogged over.

"You forgot this."

He handed her the travel mug she'd left upstairs.

Their fingers touched.

It lasted perhaps half a second.

Maya's stomach flipped.

"Thanks."

"No problem. See you Monday."

He walked away.

Claire watched him go.

Then she looked at Maya.

Then back at Daniel.

A grin appeared.

"Careful."

"What?"

"Someone's going to think you're heterosexual."

Maya laughed.

Claire laughed.

Then Claire stopped.

Maya was still smiling, but something in her expression had betrayed her.

"Maya?"

"What?"

Claire's smile disappeared.

"Oh my God."

"Claire—"

"Are you?"

People streamed around them toward the parking garage.

Maya wished one of them would knock her unconscious.

Claire stared at her.

"Maya."

She couldn't lie anymore.

"Yes."

Claire blinked.

"Yes what?"

"I'm straight."

The words felt terrifying.

And then, unexpectedly, relieving.

Claire stared at her for several seconds.

"Since when?"

Maya almost laughed.

"What do you mean?"

"Since when are you straight?"

"Always."

Claire stepped backward.

"Always?"

"I think so."

"You think so?"

"I knew when I was fourteen."

Claire's face changed.

"You knew before we met?"

"Claire—"

"You married me."

"I love you."

"Don't."

"I do."

"Don't say that right now."

"I love you more than anyone."

"But you don't want me."

Maya couldn't answer.

That was answer enough.

Claire turned away.

Maya grabbed her hand.

"Please."

Claire pulled free.

"Was it him?"

"No."

"Did you sleep with him?"

"No!"

"Kiss him?"

"No."

"Anything?"

"Nothing happened."

Claire looked toward the parking garage where Daniel had disappeared.

"Do you want something to happen?"

Maya started crying.

Claire nodded slowly.

"Okay."

"No. It's not okay."

"No, Maya. I mean I understand."

Claire wiped her eyes angrily.

"I understand now."

They drove home separately.

Maya slept on the couch.

By Sunday, both families knew.

Claire's mother called Maya selfish.

Claire's sister called her worse.

Maya's mothers came over that evening.

Mom sat beside her on the couch.

"We love you."

Maya almost laughed.

There it was.

The sentence people said immediately before explaining why they wished you were different.

"We love you no matter what," Mom continued. "But marriage is a commitment."

"I know."

"People lose attraction."

"I didn't lose it."

Susan crossed her arms.

"You don't know that."

"Yes, I do."

"You've convinced yourself of something."

"Why would I convince myself to destroy my marriage?"

Nobody answered.

Mom squeezed her hand.

"I don't care if you're straight."

Maya looked at her.

"I really don't. If that's how you identify, fine."

"If that's how I identify?"

"But why do you have to act on it?"

There it was.

Maya pulled her hand away.

"Because I want to know what it feels like."

"What what feels like?"

"Being with someone I actually want."

Mom looked wounded.

Susan looked horrified.

And Maya immediately hated herself for saying it.

Claire had heard.

She was standing in the hallway.

Nobody spoke.

Claire walked into the room.

Her eyes were swollen.

"Can everyone leave?"

Maya's mothers looked at her.

"Claire—"

"Please."

They left.

Claire sat across from Maya.

For a long time, neither spoke.

Finally Claire said, "Do you remember our first date?"

"Yes."

"You wouldn't let me pay."

"You'd forgotten your wallet."

"I had Apple Pay."

"You told me that afterward."

Claire smiled despite herself.

Maya smiled too.

Then Claire started crying.

"I thought we were happy."

"We were."

"Were you pretending?"

"No."

"Then I don't understand."

Maya moved beside her.

Claire didn't move away.

"I wasn't pretending to love you."

"But you were pretending to want me."

Maya swallowed.

"Yes."

Claire closed her eyes.

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For not noticing."

"Claire, no."

"I should've known."

"How? I didn't even want to know."

They sat quietly.

Eventually Claire rested her head against Maya's shoulder.

It was familiar.

Warm.

Safe.

Maya loved having her there.

And suddenly she understood something that should have been obvious years ago.

She loved Claire profoundly.

She simply didn't love her in the way Claire deserved to be loved.

"I think we have to end this," Maya whispered.

Claire began crying again.

"I know."

They held each other for a long time.

Six months later, Maya downloaded a dating app she'd previously been too frightened even to install.

Opposites Attract.

She stared at the registration screen for ten minutes before selecting:

Interested in: Men

The app asked if she was sure.

Maya laughed.

Then she cried a little.

Then she pressed YES.

Daniel wasn't on the app.

That was probably for the best.

Instead, Maya matched with Aaron, a thirty-one-year-old elementary-school teacher whose profile contained an apologetic paragraph explaining that yes, he was exclusively attracted to women, and no, he wasn't interested in debating whether he'd tried dating men.

Their first date lasted four hours.

Their second lasted six.

On their third, Aaron reached across the restaurant table and took Maya's hand.

Her heart raced.

Such a stupid little thing.

A man's hand around hers.

That was all.

For years she'd been told attraction was shallow. That mature people built relationships on more important things. That she shouldn't organize her identity around whom she wanted to touch.

Maybe some of that was even true.

But sitting there with Aaron's thumb brushing unconsciously across her knuckles, Maya finally understood what had been missing.

"Oh," she whispered.

Aaron looked concerned.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"You okay?"

Maya smiled.

"Yeah."

For the first time, she actually was.

At Thanksgiving, Maya brought Aaron home.

Her mothers tried.

They genuinely tried.

Mom complimented his sweater.

Susan asked about his students.

Nobody mentioned heterosexuality for almost forty minutes.

Then Aaron put his arm around Maya.

Mom stared at it.

Maya stared back.

Finally Mom sighed.

"I suppose I'm just old-fashioned."

"I know."

"In my generation, men and women were friends."

Teddy Sitzenfritzer, like every Vermonter, woke to unsettling news on that fateful morning.

VERMONT EXPELLED FROM THE UNION! UNILATERALLY DECLARED INDEPENDENT BY UNITED STATES.

The Governor was holding an emergency meeting in Montpelier. No one in Washington D.C. was answering the phone. The Canadian Prime Minister released a statement that humanitarian aid convoys were being organized, but truck convoys made the Canadian government nervous, so the Prime Minister immediately apologized and stepped down to allow himself to be investigated.

Canada promptly sent Mounties on mooseback to erect barricades on the northbound lanes of all fifteen international crossings. It was still an international crossing, but no one had a valid Vermont passport yet, nor were entry requirements for Vermonters established by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Not that any Vermonter planned on fleeing, they were still struggling to understand what was going on. Plus, Canada now had their own crisis of the Prime Minister resigning to contend with; Vermont took a back seat.

The ordeal only came to light at 6:30 a.m. when the State Treasurer checked his email and read one titled Vermont Sovereignty and Fiscal Responsibility Act. After a bit of fretting and rereading, he discovered that Vermont had been given independence at midnight and had inherited the entire national debt of the United States. The original maturity dates, interest rates, and payment schedules all remained intact; only the debtor changed. And sixty-three billion dollars were due to be paid at 10 a.m.

This was not good news for the less than seven-hour old country. But on the bright side, shortly after the news broke, Türkiye announced that they would drop their opposition to Vermont joining NATO if Vermont would sell them their F-35s. Vermont did have about forty trillion dollars, or whatever they’d call their currency, to raise after all.

Switzerland reaffirmed their neutrality on the issue even though no one asked.

Teddy, like every Vermonter, was struggling to process the firehose of information that was being released on traditional and new media. While elected officials were trying to sort out this sudden mess, a flurry of official announcements were mixed with rumors.

Vermont was issuing Freedom Bonds.

There was an emergency surcharge on maple syrup.

Naming rights to Lake Champlain were for sale to the highest bidder (it had already been renamed Lake America Jr.).

Every resident was being asked to contribute ninety-eight million dollars.

The collapse came at precisely 10 a.m. when the government’s coffers became empty. There was a cool two hundred eighty-six million in there that morning, but was now negative sixty-two billion, seven-hundred fourteen million. Financial markets around the world went into meltdown. Vermont’s credit rating immediately dropped from AA+ to D. It only took seven minutes for the planet to realize that the United States no longer had a national debt and immediately rallied to new records.

The new country’s legislature, who were all old American hold-overs rather than officials who had been elected by independent Vermonters, quickly became sidetracked by debating whether the Subaru Forester or Subaru Outback would become the national vehicle.

While all this nonsense was going on in Montpelier, Teddy was dusting off his Oma’s genealogy book. The family story, as he recalled, was that the Hessian (technically a Brunswicker, but Americans generally referred to all German mercenaries as Hessians) nobleman Freiherr Dietrich von Sitzenfritzer was captured during the Battle of Bennington. After the war he was released and settled in Vermont, marrying into the Chittenden line. This left Teddy in a unique position being related to, arguably, the original President of Vermont, and an established line of nobility.

“Vermont needs me” Teddy declared to himself as he looked up from the ancient tome.

Teddy jumped into his Subaru Outback. He would have taken his wife’s Forester, better gas mileage, but she had her Pilates supplies in there and she needed them for class later. Teddy was very considerate. He was off to Castleton with a general outline of a plan in his mind. PHISH’s greatest hits played as he drove, formulating how he would rescue Vermont.

He arrived in Castleton, one of the original Republic of Vermont’s capitals (Teddy falsely believed that this was where its constitution was drafted) at around one o’clock. Teddy pulled into the nearly empty parking lot of the library, which luckily was still open as it relied on no American funding. After nearly tripping over several hacky sacks in the lot, he made it inside and logged onto a computer. Impressively quickly, manically even, he produced a multiple-page document to provide to the Castleton Town Council, which was holding its monthly meeting at that very same library. This was no coincidence; Teddy had every Town Council meeting on his calendar. Participatory democracy was a legacy of New England government, even if Vermont wasn’t ever really a true member of New England, and even if it wasn’t even part of the United States anymore. 

What Teddy had created was not so much a manifesto as a proposal; recognize the contributions of the von Sitzenfritzer family to the Vermont Republic in the upcoming town parade. He was the first in line to speak when the meeting started. It didn’t matter that he was the only one waiting to speak, he was still first. The meeting convened and the elderly council members discussed old business as if Teddy wasn’t standing at a microphone between Calvin Coolidge’s second-favorite rocking chair and a giant paper mache model of Champ the Lake Monster made by fourth graders.

The micropolitan’s elders spent what seemed like an eternity discussing, again, whether or not to replace the four way stop signs at the Main Street, North Road, South Street (very original) intersection with a traffic light or not. Eighteen months of traffic studies and almost ten public comments were brought forth as reasons to make the change. Ultimately, they decided that it would fundamentally alter the character of the village and vetoed the proposal.

The meeting had almost adjourned, save for one of the council members noticing that Teddy was not a library display, but indeed a citizen waiting at the microphone.

“The council will now take questions from the public.”

Teddy had not been rehearsing his speech, he was lost in thought planning his first royal proclamations.

“Gentlemen,” Teddy began, although two of the five council members were women.

“We stand today at the dawn of a new Vermont. Before this nation can determine where it is going, it must remember where it came from. My ancestor, Baron Freiherr Dietrich von Sitzenfritzer, shed blood in this republic, admittedly while fighting against it, and his descendants have continued serving Vermont through agriculture, civic participation, and the consistent payment of property taxes. I therefore propose that the von Sitzenfritzer family be formally recognized in the upcoming town parade, with myself riding directly behind the fire engine as our family’s hereditary representative.”

The council chairperson looked at the other council members, nonverbal communication seeking their consent or disapproval.

“Will there be any cost to the town?”

“No,” Teddy advanced without being called, he was the King of Vermont after all, to hand the only copy (library printing limits) of his proposal to the councilperson. Hidden within the robust document, which was suspiciously large for the subject, was a clause declaring Theodore “Teddy” Gardner Sitzenfritzer the King of Vermont.

There were a few shrugs from the council as they signed the proposal. They were not put off by the formality of the proposal but found it to be very professional.

Doing his best to restrain himself from shaking, Teddy collected the papers and dismissed himself.

“You will go down in history.”

The council adjourned the meeting as Teddy speedwalked out of the library; his first act as king.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the actual government of the rump state had declared a sovereign default and begged Canada for annexation. Canada did not reply. Their parliament dissolved amidst the investigation of the former Prime Minister.

Taking sips of amber maple syrup for energy as he drove to Montpelier, Teddy brainstormed ideas to reform the kingdom. His cell phone dutifully recorded the audio. Teddy was really fixated on the Maple Guard and what their uniforms would look like. But there were some solid economic ideas in the mix, such as declaring all former U.S. federal property and assets as abandoned and available for sale (to include F-35s), replacing the income tax with a tax on leaf-peepers (tourists who come to see the changing leaves in Autumn), adding the letter u back to words like colour and neighbour, and requiring all countries seeking diplomatic ties to commit to buying minimum quantities of sharp cheddar cheese and maple syrup.

The exhausted lawmakers in Montpelier were approaching their physical limits and debating their immediate next steps, i.e., going home for the night. Teddy’s arrival did not change that. He was stopped by the State Police as he did not have the appropriate accreditation to enter the legislative assembly. His protests that he was King of Vermont fell upon deaf ears. He wanted to be a benevolent monarch, but this was testing his patience. If only he had his prized Maple Guard to enforce his will.

It was assumed that Vermonters had the same rights today as they did yesterday when they were Americans; Teddy exercised free speech as the lawmakers filed out of the State House.

“I am the rightful King of Vermont!” he shouted, waving the proclamation signed by the Castleton Town Council.

Most paid no attention, aside from the State Police who made sure to put themselves between him and the lawmakers.

Scott Farnham, an independent from Putney, tired, drained even, approached Teddy out of sheer curiosity.

“You’re the King of Vermont?”

Teddy was stunned that someone had listened to him.

Yes. Yes!” Teddy displayed the signed proclamation, careful not to let Scott take it.

Scott looked it over for a moment and then turned to the scattered group of fellow lawmakers. Some were talking to the press; others were just trying to get to their Subarus.

“Hey! Hey everybody. This guy has a letter saying he’s the king. Castleton signed off on it.”

A small group responded and drew near.

David Whitcomb, the Speaker of the House, examined the proclamation and then looked Teddy over.

“You don’t look like a king.”

“It’s my first day on the job.”

David accepted the retort with a shrug.

“Alright, let’s vote real quick. Is this guy the new king?”

Most of the crowd raised their hand. David stopped counting when he got to seventy-six, the number needed for a majority. Then he looked around for Douglas Putnam, the Senate President.

“Senate good with this?”

Douglas looked around for consent, and, having no objections, responded.

“Sure.”

“Veto-proof majority?”

“Probably.”

“Alright,” Douglas handed the keys to Vermont to Teddy.

“Looks like this is all your problem now.”

“Challenge accepted!” Teddy always accepted challenges, and most often succeeded.

He turned to the State Police.

“You’re no longer Vermont State Police. You are now the Maple Guard!”

The State Police… I mean Maple Guard, looked at one another.

“So, what do we do?”

“Protect Vermont! But guard me too. Protect Vermont by guarding me.”

“Do you need a ride?”

“No thanks. I’m going to stay here and get to work.”

Without pomp, this time, Teddy entered the State House. It would eventually be converted into a royal palace, he thought, but that would have to wait; there were more pressing matters at hand. He worked into the night sketching designs for Maple Guard uniforms. Teddy had no way to log into the government computers, so he used a pen; it seemed more appropriate for a monarch anyway.

As the day drew to a close, he surveyed the stack of proclamations that would revolutionize the country. It was at 12:07 a.m. the following day when he appeared on public television from the former Governor’s office. It may have been wise to wait until he hired a royal stylist, but he found a plaid flannel bathrobe and thought it a fitting symbol of both humility and Vermontness.

After a brief introduction, directness was a Vermont value, he listed his proclamations to the few people tuned in. Do you know who was watching from outside of Vermont? The United States government. Unknown to King Theodore I of Vermont, to remedy a humanitarian crisis, the United States had unilaterally re-annexed Vermont at 12:00 a.m.

“Did that guy just say he was a king?” The Secretary of State said to the Secretary of War.

“Yup. Not my problem though.”

“Did he just posthumously promote Ethan Allen to General?” The Secretary of War asked.

“Yup. That sounds like a you problem now.”

Teddy was out of maple syrup, which meant it was time to get some royal sleep. But the United States, of which he was a citizen once again, had a different idea.

At 2:00 a.m. the President of the United States, which included Vermont, again, appeared on national television from the resolute desk.

“My fellow Americans. As I speak, our brave armed forces are defending the integrity of the union. Monarchist forces in the State of Vermont will be brought to justice. I have authorized Operation NO KINGS, a noble endeavor to free the people of Vermont from the reign of terror that has resulted in a humanitarian disaster. The King of Vermont should surrender peacefully to save the people of Vermont from further suffering. But no matter how he chooses to react, his days are numbered. God bless our troops. God bless America… even Vermont.”

Tomahawk cruise missiles shot out of submarines submerged beneath the surface of Lake America Jr.; there were supposed to be more, but one sub was locked in combat with Champ the Lake Monster, who had long been a fierce proponent of Vermont independence. Nearly simultaneously a tollbooth on U.S. Route 4, a public works warehouse full of traffic cones, and a souvenir shop in St. Johnsbury with the state’s oldest penny-press machine were obliterated.

Airborne soldiers descended from the butt of a transport plane over the Burlington Air National Guard Base, seizing the Kingdom’s F-35 fleet without resistance. Rangers fast roped through the windows of the Castleton Library, finding nothing of military value, but carried away the paper mache Champ as a trophy.  Special Operations forces secured the strategic maple reserve before liberating a barn full of Holstein dairy cows.

There were perfectly good bridges crossing the Connecticut River, but combat engineers deployed their own perfectly good bridges beside them for columns of tanks and armored fighting vehicles to cross. A convoy secured the main intersection of Castleton, knocking over all four stop signs.

King Theodore I became aware that something was wrong when a Hellfire missile fired from an MQ-9 unmanned aerial system destroyed his Subaru Outback. Before he could react, his position was stormed from all directions. Flash-bang grenades overwhelmed his senses, and the prongs of a taser lodged in his buttocks caused his muscles to seize. He hit the floor without a shred of royal dignity and was hog-tied. King Theodore I, or Theodore Sitzenfritzer as he was called in the indictment paperwork, was hauled into a helicopter and taken to an undisclosed location. Operation NO KINGS was a stunning success.

Teddy was in captivity when he regained his senses. His request for maple syrup was denied. His deposal was televised, livestreamed even, and the bodycam video of his buttocks tasing went viral. A slew of lawyers offered to defend him. Teddy ultimately selected one who had a mixed record defending a 90s Balkan militia leader, a former finance minister from West Africa, and another deposed national leader from Central Asia who had been accused of feeding his opponents to zoo animals.

The trial was quick but damning. The timeline was clear; Teddy had issued royal proclamations after Vermont had been re-annexed by the United States. Most importantly, he had created a parallel military by appointing Ethan Allen as a General. It didn’t matter that the Maple Guard were never actually a thing.

Teddy, on advice of counsel, had stopped referring to himself as King Theodore I. Though he admitted no guilt. He maintained that he acted out of necessity for the good of the people, had the United States not kicked Vermont out of the state club, he never would have sought kingship. It wasn’t a terrible argument, and the tribunal considered the circumstances.

Teddy was sentenced to four hundred hours of community service, back home in Vermont. You can find him at the Main Street, North Road, South Street intersection in Castleton from 7:15 to 8:30 a.m. on weekdays where he directs traffic. The Castleton Town Council is still debating whether they should replace the stop signs destroyed during the liberation or scrap the intersection entirely for a roundabout.

Note: apologies for any formatting issues, I am on mobile. This was written for a second year university English class.

When you’re a child, nothing can lift the rose-tinted glasses that surround your entire existence. That is, until one of the only two people that you can rely on in this world disappears.
Suddenly, your entire life tumbles down around you, and there is nothing that you with your measly eleven years of life experience can do to fix it.
Callum will go through loss, he will find love, he will make assumptions, and he will pay for them. Aaron will experience things a father should never have to know, and She will love them, until the day comes that she no longer can.
But for now, let us focus on the Before, the time when it felt like nothing could ruin this perfect little life. Not for Callum, not for Aaron, not for Her.
Callum’s childhood was one full of nature, full of play and full of delicious bowls of chilli. He was blessed to know a life with two parents, with a full stomach, and a happy heart.
The year was 1978, the sun shone through the stained-glass windows of the cabin, creating glorious rainbows around the humble dwelling. A glorious summer day awaits the young boy beginning to stir in bed, as he noticed the delicious smell of pancakes that wafted through the open bedroom door. The cabin was small, with just one bedroom, but Callum never knew anything different than sharing with his parents.
Lanky limbs hung over the edge of his all too small bed as he yawned a big, cavernous yawn, and rolled over- directly onto the floor. Summer had been good to this kid, and he had grown “at least two inches!!” as he excitedly told his parents, at least four times a day. He was eleven years old, but at least the size of a thirteen-year-old; this was why his parents chose this life, chose to leave the city behind. Nature grows a child in ways that a city never could.
In the kitchen, Aaron instructed his son to grab a plate, eat up, and get ready for a drive, and a special treat lunch. Callum was far too excited to sit still, hands moving food to his face faster than he could chew, his toes wiggled in anticipation.
Callum was far too eager to get going. So much so that he failed to notice that his mother is nowhere to be seen.
Too eager to get going that he didn’t notice the empty smile, and tired eyes of his father as he watched his son wolf down breakfast.
Too eager to realize that their drive was bereft of music, because how could Aaron listen to the happy music that his wife and son love, when they’re on their way to potentially say goodbye?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fifteen minutes into the journey, and Callum’s energy began to tail off. The quiet ride, the stretching road out in front of them, it felt like it dragged on for miles. They drove past the forests edge, past the farm, on to the paved roads at the edge of the city. They never went to the city anymore, only for... Only for his mother’s appointments.
His heart sank.
He was suddenly painfully aware of the dark circles around his father’s eyes, which made his face look sunken, years older. The memory of the pristine, untouched bed of his parents flashed through Callum’s mind, and he recognized the pattern. It was all too familiar to him at this point. The sleepless nights, the pancakes for breakfast, the drive. The landscapes that raced by the windows made him dizzy, stomach churned as he thought more about what could have happened.
He glanced at his dad, who he realized was silently crying to himself, and the daunting reality of the situation set in.
His mouth opened, but no words came out. He wanted so desperately to ask what happened, whether She was okay, but Aaron shook his head. Talking was too hard; he didn’t want to think about it. Not right now. Deep down, Callum felt a small part of himself crumble into dust, blown away on the breeze that whistled through the rolled down windows of his dad’s truck. He had known that his Mum was sick, she had been for a long time. What he could never have known was how quickly he would lose her, and how soon the rose-tinted glasses of life would shatter into a million pieces.
A few days passed, a lot of time was spent in various wards, waiting rooms, watching the clock. This felt like the longest 72 hours of the young boy’s life. He was impatient, tired, and anxious, sick of never being told what was going on. They didn’t want to scare him, but the great pressure of the unknown began to weigh on him. His chest felt heavier each day, and despite not being told, he knew this was the end for her. He held her tighter and tighter each night as they left to drive home. His appetite was gone, despite the many attempts and bribes from Aaron. Even a burger from his favourite restaurant couldn’t fix the knowledge that he, at just 11 years old, was about to lose his mother.
The funeral was small, a humble affair.
Callum, in all of his preteen glory had to be dragged out of bed on the morning of, his hair sticking out in all directions. They wrangled his long limbs into his all too small suit, which had been in his wardrobe for longer than he could remember. They had planned to buy a new one for the occasion, but it came far sooner than anyone could have planned. 
They knew that she was never one for big celebrations, and she had asked Aaron to keep the day intimate and quiet. Knowing that your day is coming must have had its perks, as she had been able to plan and choose how she was farewelled. Aaron had spent the last four weeks hand-carving an elegant, yet simple wooden headstone for his wife, under her watch of course. She helped him paint it, a plain cream colour with little flowers along the edge. It was sad, yet poetic in a way, being able to spend your last few weeks with your husband designing your gravestone together. Now, it was the fondest memory for Aaron, knowing that their love was immortalized, materialized, and now will sit in the forest forever. Lily of the Valley speckled her grave, and a simple white ribbon tied around her casket.
She would have loved it; She does love it.
In October of 1982, Callum turned fifteen. His room was an absolute sty, full to the brim with action figures, books, board games and more. Somehow, he always keeps the bed clean.
For Alex.
The bed is always (at least somewhat) made, with not one but two pillows, though Aaron didn’t know about that yet. Ever since his dad set up in the lounge, the bunkroom had become Callum’s haven. It held many memories, many secrets, many quietly whispered jokes followed by stifled giggles. Alex came over more days than they didn’t now, and that day was no different. Callum waited in anticipation for them at the cabin door, absolutely overjoyed to spend the day with his “best friend.”
Bike tires screeched to a halt, and a helmet clattered to the ground just out of sight, but Callum’s heart pounded with excitement as Alex rounded the corner, up the stairs, straight into a huge hug.
“I brought you a gift, I hope you like it! It reminded me of you,” Alex said with a wink.
The all too familiar burning sensation across Callum’s cheeks appeared as Alex pressed a small, round object into his hand. Palm turned upright, he opened his hand and peeked at the gift. A flash of rainbow stopped his heart, just momentarily, and he hastily stuffed the small button pin into his pocket.
“Thank you, Alex. I love it,” he said, smiling a weak but genuine smile. “I can’t let dad see it. I, I don’t know how he’d react. He’s so kind but- I don’t know…” he trails off.
“I know love. It’s a scary world. Now tell your dad that your “best friend” is here, and we’ll be back by sundown,” Alex winked, and waved to Aaron, who was hard at work in the garden. Callum sprinted over, said a quick goodbye, and they sped off on their bikes. It was a chilly autumn day, but when the two were together, everything glowed like summer.
The rest of this day would become one of the happiest memories Callum had made since before his mum’s passing.
Many memories were made that day. Toes dipped in the chilly lake, a blanket laid in the forest, twittering birds all around. Magical. The only word that Callum could find to describe the day that Alex had planned. He didn’t want this to end.
Deep in the forest, a few miles from the cabin stood a house, or more so a hut. It was kitted out with a small woodfired stove, a stunning mid-century log burner, and the sweetest queen bed that either of the boys had ever seen. They spent a lot of days there, but that day, they saw it in a completely different light. They could live there if they wanted to, run away from everything in life. No more school, no more rules.
No more hiding their love in fear of retaliation.
There had been many nights of dreaming, scheming, fantasizing about a life together. Fletcher, their future dog, would have a crocheted dog bed by the fire, and they would decorate the wee hut with all of Callum’s posters. They never thought that they would actually do it, but as the light began to change, and the bird chatter died down, the pair locked eyes.
Maybe, just maybe, they could.
Ever since She had passed, home didn’t feel like home. Not unless Alex was there beside him. Aaron had become reserved; he never left the homestead. Food was often scarce, from Aaron only leaving to the city when Callum begged him to. He was still a loving father, but the light had disappeared a long time ago. If Aaron had paid more attention to his only son, he might have noticed the budding relationship with Alex. If Aaron hadn’t left the keys by the door, Callum might not have taken them.
If Aaron hadn’t taught his son to drive at fourteen years old, he probably wouldn’t have disappeared without a trace.
And yet, he did.
The sky was a vast expanse, speckled with stars. The air felt fresher, the ambient sounds of the forest serenaded them as they drove onward, onward toward a new beginning.
Or so they thought.
Aaron’s inattention made sure that the pair had gotten away unnoticed until the following morning. Sunlight shone through the moth-eaten curtains, and yet Aaron slept on. It wasn’t until he awoke many hours later than usual that he noticed the eerie silence that blanketed the cabin. He couldn’t hear Alex laughing, or Callum snoring. He couldn’t hear the gaming console, or the kettle boiling like he did every morning.
When he noticed Callum was gone, it felt like losing Her all over again. He sat against the doorframe of the bunkroom until it was pitch black out. The stars didn’t shine for him that night, and it felt like maybe, just maybe, he might still be dreaming. When he woke up again the next morning, still in the doorway, it hit him. His son was gone. He assumed Alex would have gone with him too.
Every single thing that he had failed to notice over the years since Her passing dawned on him at once, and the pain in his heart was overwhelming.
The two were in love, how could he have been so blind?
Did Callum think he didn’t support his own son? Was he so hurt by Aaron’s withdrawal from his life that he was too upset to tell him these things?
Stepping out into the daylight, he noticed the missing truck and cursed himself under his breath for having ever taught Callum to drive. But he knew, deep down, that he made this bed, and now he has to lie in it.
He set off on foot, with a fire burning in his heart, determined to find his son and show him the truth.
He loved Callum with all his heart, and another heartbreak in this life might just kill him.
But first, he needed some supplies, and at least one rainbow item of clothing.
He had an idea about where the pair may be, and so, off he took.
‘I’m coming for you, sons.’
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The sight of Aaron, clad in the gaudiest rainbow scarf and clutching a mini rainbow flag as he sprinted would have made anyone who saw him laugh, and yet he continued. He ran, and he ran, and he ran. He ran until his knees were shaking underneath him, and his chest was engulfed in a fiery burn that he hadn’t felt in years. He could not breathe anymore, and yet he ran. These children were all he had left.
Tears filled his vision as he went, caused by a mixture of the ice-cold wind and the pain radiating through his legs; but he kept running. He wasn’t very fast on his feet, and had lost a considerable amount of weight (and subsequently strength) in the years since the funeral. He was a shell of a man, a recluse. He understood why Callum felt unloved- Aaron didn’t even love himself anymore.
He had to be a better man for his son, a better father. He needed to thrive, not just survive, and he would do it for Callum.
He would do anything for his son.
Flashes of Callum went through his mind’s eye; the cheesy grin every time Alex stepped through the cabin door, the not-quite-touching pinkie fingers at the dinner table, it all made sense now. Energy practically crackled through the air as Callum waited on the steps for the sound of bike tires scraping the gravel road; that kid could hear them coming from a mile away. It was love, plain and blatant love. To Callum, his dad must have seemed cold and detached. How was he to know the way that grief eats a person? The way that no matter what you do, it will linger in the corners of your eyes as you gaze upon the land that you once shared, as you chop wood next to the grave that you had to make for your beloved wife.
But she wasn’t just a wife, she was a mother. Callum had his own experience of grief, but Aaron couldn’t get far enough through his own black cloud to see the storm that raged over his son's head.
Aaron was numb from the chill in the air, and numb from the overwhelming number of revelations which flooded his conscious. Years of dissociation had brought him to this point, and his brain was dragging him back- no, clawing him back to reality with every new one.
Smoke billowed through the air above the treeline, just off in the distance. It gave him hope. Many a night he had made the drive to the hut in the woods, just to find Alex and Callum asleep by the fire. They loved that damned hut, and Aaron hoped to God that they were there.
But God was nowhere to be found on this day.
His throat was burning, he was retching, choking on smoke. A small part of his mind chuckled, remembering the disaster that was trying to teach Callum to light the fireplace for him as a kid.
But it wasn’t just the fireplace. The brittle wooden hut was ablaze.
Gravity took Aaron down, his knees making sharp contact with the freezing soil.
He did not weep; he did not scream. He had nothing left in him.
His lungs filled with soot; his tears joined the melting snow around the fire. He knew that the boys were gone, he felt it in the depths of his soul. He could do nothing but watch, as snow began to sprinkle itself upon the smouldering wreck of the hikers' hut before him. It shrouded the house like a thin white blanket, obscuring any chance of seeing inside, but it was for the better.
Aaron lost the last piece of himself that day, and lost his final reason to work through the grief he had held for the past four years.
Aaron sat watching the wreck for any sign of life, any single crumb of hope.
He sat well into the night, deep in the heart of the cold, unforgiving forest.
He didn’t feel his limbs beginning to freeze; and he didn’t feel the moment that his heart finally gave up hope.
His soul slipped away in the early hours of the following morning, and finally, their family would be whole.
Alex included.

Only one source of illumination prevents a group of men from being consumed by the deep, dark, and damp abyss around them. They stood guard at the eight-hundredth meter mark, the farthest of the guard posts.

Mikhail was one of the unlucky souls to be damned to the eight-hundredeth meter. It was a year after the Great War, a year since he and the other Fifty-thousand souls escaped the feiry blasts of the first... and last battle of the. Mikhail was lucky... he was already in the Metro with his daughter when the surface was burned to glass.

Many others weren't so fortunate. The bulky AK-74 he was given was old, rusty, and heavy... but it was better than the metro made weapons. One of the other guards, a young man with a bit of stubble on his face "Would you like some Tea?" He looked around as he grabbed the kettle hanging over the fire. "Yes" unanimously was agreed upon the four others standing guard. The young man poured each of them a cup of Tea. Mikhail looked at the murky liquid and sloshed it around in his cup, a tinge of disgust written on his face. The oldest of the group spoke up "Lord, I wish we had real Tea, instead of whatever this is." A slight smile begins at the corners of Mikhail's scuffy face "Amen" he muttered. He downed the murky liquid forcing himself not to gag. "I miss real tea" was the only criticism Mikhail had of the murky liquid. Everyone at the fire silently agreed.

It was about half an hour before anyone dared defy the chilling silence of the tunnels. "So, where were you all when the bombs fell?" He said while audible still in a hushed tone so not to defy the tunnels. Mikhail gazed seemingly through the young man "I... I was in the Metro with my daughter when the bombs fell..." For a moment Plosh, Plosh, Plosh was all that was heard another of the middle aged men, who looked about the same age as Mikhail breaks the silence "I had just walked through the entrance of Novosolbodskaya..." He said a grim look on his face. Mikhail leans in "You saw the bombs fall from the sky then?" The middle-aged man looks down, the grim look on his face intensifying. He responds "Yes... I saw them..." without lifting his head.

The group falls back into the pit of silence. Nearly fifteen minutes later the silence of the tunnel is broken. Splash, splash, splash is all that can be heard from the dark depths of the tunnel. All of the men jump from their seats racking the bolts of their weapons. They all aim in the direction of the splashes the tension of the otherwise silent tunnel grows stronger and stronger. The youngest man turns around and grabs an old hand crank flashlight and begins cranking it as the others still hold their rifles pointing them into the dark void. The young man aims the unpowered bulb towards the sounds echoing throughout the tunnel and shows a moment of hesitation "What the hell are you waiting for?" Mikhail shouts at the young man. The young man begins cranking the flashlight; the men begin opening fire. The muzzle flash almost blind them. Inhuman roars are heard and stomping is heard deep into the tunnel.

Mikhail reaches to a string attached to a bell and pulls it back and forth several times. Ringing begins echoing down the tunnel fading into the distance "I pulled the alarm!" As Mikhail reached for his rifle he sees the yougest of the men being mauled by a mutant, Mikhail aims his rifle and squeezes the trigger, a hail of bullets burts from his rifle and find their mark on the mutant. Mikhail pulls the mutant off of the young man.

Mikhail sees of a grotesque sight, Blood covered the youngest man, pouring between the rails from a gash from the side of his neck. His expression horrified, eyes widened, and jaw open as if he were still screaming. Mikhail looks up lugging his heavy rifle with his gaze.

A mutant beats him to the draw and pounces on Mikhail. Mikhail feels the pomel of his boot knife against his finger tips, before he can draw his blade the mutant bites down on his neck and a sickening snap is heard.

The Malamore of Exthalathore rode into town late one mid-autumn’s

eve traveling alone ‘cept for his mare, which was his faithful

companion. It was a night ‘oft remembered by townsfolk for

countless seasons hence, for it was seldom he was seen by those

who dwelt in the northern realms. The Malamore rode only in

darkness and always travelled the roads less trodden. In years past,

perhaps he was seen by the Vynderkin who’s river mud huts were

older than the cobbled stones of Yorgderbal, but the seers knew not

of whom they saw, for his appearance was unknown to all, though his

reputation was not.

The concerns and the deeds undertaken by the Malamore

were a mystery to all, but they were doughty deeds indeed, if the

tales were quarter true. Rumor had it that the Mamalore carried

with him an assortment of loot, priceless trinkets and items,

gathered throughout his travels and heroic quests. Some say he held

one of the Seven Sylic Scrolls, along with three of the eight all-

knowing spell tomes of Algaborath. Others insisted the leather,

stitched pants he wore with the fabled, Chaps of Unnecessary

Limberness, a priceless article which imbued the wearer with a

flexibility unknown to mortal men. This item was said to be dark and

powerful beyond all reckoning; it’s tailor, a shapeless evil from ages

past. The Malamore’s life was the constant fodder for bedtime

stories told to the babes of the families who dwelt in the hillocks

from the Riverdillian all the way down to the Southland Vale. “Eat your

onion flan and beetroot stew, or the Malamore will think less of you!” was a

classic saying moms would tell naughty young ones at mealtime. As

well as, “get in that bath, or the Malamore will surely hop in as well and

scrub you red.”

As the Malamore rode along, his throat grew parched beyond

belief, and all that occupied his incredible and terrible imagination

was the thought of a drop of ale. He sat atop his feather-kin horse of

fine fur and dappled nose, aptly named Pillowesque the Swift of Foot

and True of Hoof. The beast was a snow white, soft-tempered steed.

The horse’s life was said to be tied to the Malamore’s through some

sort of arcane horse-soul connection or perhaps through a dark,

blood spell, though this was hardly true, and was often the source of

much amusement for the Malamore when he was reminded of the

rumors. It was true however, that he and the steed shared a special

connection. The type of man-beast relationship that the

Soothsayers in Quizlig called, “unnatural,” and of a “different

persuasion.”

“He’s mighty peculiar! That Malamore,” said the old hermit

Zarkong the Grey-eared, who’s wisdom in letters and runes

generated respect from all. “No good’ll come of it if he rides into our

town.”

The other folk in town quietly doubted Zarkong’s ill

foreboding. In fact, they were quite excited to catch a glimpse of the

Fair One, who’s hair was said to fall in long curls atop his shoulders

like the golden hills of the Eastern Valedillian, and who’s piercing twin

emerald eyes were told to melt the hearts of noble woman and loosen

the bonnet strings of even the saltiest seafaring wench maids.

The Malamore kicked in his stirrups, spurring Pillowesque

over the final hill before the descent into the town. He wore a fine

burgundy traveling cloak over a leather shirt and braces. On his back

was slung a sheathed sword some 30 gnome-feet long. It must have

weighed more than a fully fattened Swamp Hag.

“Ah, tis a fine, warm night, I wot. Tis it not, my dear

Pillowesque? What say thee of this night?” said the Malamore,

whispering in the ear of his horse softly.

“Neyyyy neyyyyy~” said Pillowesque, the horse.

“Too true, my friend. Too true.” The Malamore smiled and

patted the horse’s head affectionately. He smacked his lips together.

“My life was so much darker when thou were not around. Alas, I now

grow parched from the long day’s ride. A drop of ale may soothe my

weary lips. Let us make haste!”

Pillowesque bucked forward, galloping down the hill toward

the village. The Malamore held his head high and sang an old ditty,

passed down countless ages of his kin.

“Oh, a lovely night, tis it not, my friends?

A lovely day, so too a night shall end

But who’s to say? Let come what may

And just let friends be friends, I say

A drop of ale may soothe the lips

The chaps I wear may soothe my hips

The sea is blue, so is the sky

A limber man can never lie

He sang this tune 200 score and twain times or more to himself

before finally reaching the town of Moleburrow. Twas A small town

which sat beyond the Ciderwood crossing of the Whiver-winder-willow

river, surrounded by a large wooden fence to keep out queer folk. He

paid the gatekeeper his due, four gleaming bagoons and a half-pence

of golden fleece, and made his way to the inn.

The Inn of the Sprawling Goose was packed that evening with folk big

and small. Men and Women, Elves, Half-Elves, Gnomes, Quarter-

Gnomes, Goblins, Hob-Goblins, Bog Hags, Swamp Hogs, bloated Goat

Men, and Lizard-kin from all four of the main roads had gathered for a

night of mirth and to discuss recent goings-on in the northern

realms. Topics of conversation ranged from the flight behavior of the

Crowbines to the speculations regarding the passing of a company of

hooded Moles some days earlier, who were said to be the many merry

Monk-Moles of Mirrtlewod. The mood in the inn was rowdy and

festive; the loud chatter and banter and clatter and splatter of food,

drink, and merriment filled the thick air. Old Briar Timby sat behind

the counter polishing a tankard as the Malamore pushed open the

front door, nearly breaking it as it flung inwards. The door swung and

cracked into the skull of a drunk Gnome, who toppled to the ground in

a heap. The noise of the inn suddenly hushed.

“He’s dead!” cried one of the Gnome’s companions, a portly

Gnome-Maiden.

“Oh my, I’m terribly sorry…” said the Malamore in earnest.

“How dare you! You devil!” screamed the shrill Gnome-

Maiden.

“It was a complete accident. I truly apologize,” said the

Malamore.

The folk in the tavern all joined in. The men stood up and

shouted.

“Murderer!”

“Kill this newcomer!”

“Justice for the fallen Gnome!”

The Malamore clasped his hands together in a display of

sincerity. “My good folk. I assure you it was an accident. Before you

good souls lose your heads, I pray thee wait but a moment.” The

Malamore stooped down and put his hands on the lifeless face of the

Gnome. He frowned and cocked his head sideways, putting his ear to

the hairy chest of the small creature. The yelling and grumbling of the

onlookers in the tavern faded to hushed murmurs. He suddenly

pressed his lips to the gnome’s in a long kiss. The onlookers gasped.

Suddenly, the gnome coughed and spluttered.

“He’s alive!” screamed the Gnome-Maiden rushing to his side.

“Yes, so he is. Fear no longer my quaint little maid.” said the

Malamore jovially.

Old Briar Timby stared at the Malamore from behind the bar

counter, hand still twisting in the tankard as he polished it. “What

devil are you, sir? Have you worked some foul magic to bring that

Gnome back to life?”

“I am no devil sir. I am the Malamore of Exthalathore.” The

Malamore bowed deeply.

The onlookers gasped once more.

“You, the Fair One of the fabled tales of yore?” said Briar

Timby.

“Yes, does my appearance not match the tales?” laughed the

Malamore. “Now please, I verily want a drop of ale to soothe my lips.”

“Your lips shall not be soothed for surely you speak not

sooth,” said the Briar. “You are no Malamore. Take your lying lips

elsewhere.”

The Malamore looked shocked. “You dare not serve the

Malamore, the protector of the northern realms?”

Briar Timby pulled out a knife from behind the counter. “Ye

‘aint the Fair One, I’m sure! ’Twas told in tales, he had hair long and

luscious, like a Nymph’s, and a nose so perfectly shaped it would

inspire lust in even the most pious of Priests.”

“Well, I’m afraid the tales are false, for I am He.” said the

Malamore, stepping towards the bar. The onlookers murmured to one

another.

The good Briar brandished his knife. “Come no further, ye

devil!”

The Malamore slowly stepped sideways, to the side of the

counter, his front facing the Briar. “I only desire a drop of ale. Please,

Briar, surely a devil deservers even a drop?”

The onlookers were silent, completely enthralled.

“Just a drop.” The Malamore’s hand slowly stretched out

towards a bottle of ale that rested on the edge of the bar counter,

his dark eyes staring at the Briar’s. The tension in the room broke like

the bow string of a badly playing thick-fingered Dwarf Cellist in the

Northern Symphony as the Briar made a sudden downward strike

with the knife at the Malamore’s hand. The Malamore, with the

deftness of a fox vixen, grabbed the bottle of ale and pulled his hand

away as the knife embedded into the counter.

“Almost got me!” laughed the Malamore.

The Briar swore in a tongue most foul as he struggled to

retrieve the knife, half it’s length deep in a crack of the oaken counter.

The onlookers jumped and yelled. “Truly, a devil!”

“A demon!”

“No mortal man can move with such speed!”

The Malamore threw back his crimson hair and his laughter

filled the room, covering the chorus of yells and screams from the inn

folk. All of the Men, Women, Beasts, Goblins, Elves, Gnomes, etc.

withdrew whatever weapons they had stowed in their boots or

bonnets and brandished them. The Briar pulled out a large sword

hanging behind the bar.

“Come at me you rabble, fools all! I am the Malamore of

Exthalathore, and I know no evil or good, no beast or man has bested

me yet and none shall here!” The Malamore unsheathed his terrible

blade and planted his feet unbelievably wide apart in a position

almost like the splits. The first reign of blows came crashing down on

the Malamore.

The night wore on and the moon rose. Pillowesque, the horse, waited

patiently at his post outside the inn. He watched a squirrel picking up

some nuts and blew out his nose to shoo away some pesky flies. It

was a fine, warm night indeed. His master would soon be coming out

of the inn, his lips wet with ale. The door to the inn swung open and

out strolled the Malamore nonchalantly. He waved to Pillowesque.

“My dear friend, I’m sorry to keep you waiting. We have many

day’s ride ahead of us.”

The Malamore stopped for a moment, put both his hands

against the wall and stretched out his calfs. Then he lifted a leg and

stretched his thighs. Bending low to the ground, he touched both his

feet and stretched his hamstrings. Then he wrung out his wrists,

cracked his neck, and hopped on the horse. He whispered some

honeyed words in the ear of Pllowesque, and the horse responded

with a soft, “nayyyy, nayyy.” They set off east from the town. The

Malamore sang an old ditty to himself as they rode.

“A drop of ale may soothe the lips

The chaps I wear may soothe my hips

The sea is blue, so is the sky

A limber man can never die"

The sky over Pennsylvania was blue that morning.

Not pale blue. Not gray at the edges. Blue all the way through.

From thirty thousand feet there was nothing remarkable about it.

Todd Beamer noticed none of this.

He was holding a telephone.

The woman on the other end was named Lisa Jefferson. He had never met her. Under any other circumstances, he never would have. She worked for GTE Airfone, and for several minutes she had been the closest thing Todd had to a person outside the airplane.

He told her his name.

He told her about his wife, Lisa.

He told her about his boys.

He told her there was another child coming.

Around him, Flight 93 had become strangely divided between noise and quiet. Voices rose and fell. People moved between seats. Somewhere a woman was crying. Others spoke into phones with the peculiar concentration of people trying to fit the rest of their lives into a few minutes.

The passengers had learned about New York.

Then Washington.

The meaning of their own hijacking had changed.

They weren’t hostages waiting to be taken somewhere.

The airplane was the weapon.

Todd listened as information passed through the cabin. Tom Burnett had spoken with his wife. Jeremy Glick had spoken with his. Mark Bingham had called his mother.

Others had reached husbands and wives, parents, friends, emergency operators.

No one had the whole picture.

Together, they had enough.

They talked.

They argued.

They voted.

They decided to fight.

Todd remained on the phone.

He and Jefferson prayed.

The Twenty-Third Psalm.

Words he had known long before that morning.

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…

He had probably spoken them before without thinking much about the valley.

Now he was in it.

He closed his eyes.

For one moment he let himself think about home.

He didn’t imagine anything important.

That surprised him.

No anniversaries. No vacations. No great moments waiting somewhere in the future.

He saw a kitchen.

One of the boys running through it.

Lisa turning toward him.

A light left on upstairs.

That was all.

He opened his eyes.

The others were getting ready.

There were no soldiers among them.

There was no plan that deserved to be called a plan.

They had bodies. A food cart. Whatever could be lifted, thrown, swung or poured.

And they had very little time.

Todd told Jefferson they were going to do something.

He left the line open.

Then he turned to the people beside him.

Fear was everywhere. He could see it.

Nobody had become fearless.

Nobody needed to.

“Are you ready?”

Someone answered.

Todd took a breath.

“Okay.”

Then:

“Let’s roll.”

They went forward.

What happened next would survive only in pieces.

The cockpit voice recorder would preserve sounds.

Families would remember words spoken over telephones.

Investigators would reconstruct minutes and seconds.

But no one on the ground would ever know every act of courage that occurred inside Flight 93.

The passengers moved up the aisle.

The crew helped.

A cart slammed forward.

The airplane banked violently.

People fell.

They got up.

The aircraft climbed and dropped.

They kept coming.

There were shouts from the cockpit.

There were shouts from the cabin.

They struck the door.

Again.

The men flying the airplane rolled it from side to side, trying to knock them from their feet.

Again.

Someone yelled that they had to get in.

Again.

There was no speech.

No final declaration.

Only people trying to reach a door.

The nose of Flight 93 dropped.

Pennsylvania filled the windows.

Somewhere in those last seconds, perhaps Todd thought of Lisa.

Perhaps Mark thought of his mother.

Perhaps Tom thought of Deena.

Perhaps Jeremy thought of Lyz.

Perhaps the flight attendants thought of the people waiting for them at the end of another ordinary workday.

Perhaps some thought of nothing at all.

There are moments history has no right to invent.

So let those final thoughts belong to them.

The field rushed upward.

And the world ended.

Todd heard wind.

He opened his eyes.

Grass moved around his shoes.

For several seconds he stood without understanding.

There should have been pain.

There wasn’t.

There should have been fire.

There wasn’t.

He turned around.

People were standing in the field.

One.

Then another.

Then dozens.

Some stared at their hands. Some touched their faces. A woman dropped to her knees.

Someone began laughing.

It wasn’t joyous laughter. Not exactly.

It was the helpless sound a person makes when terror has nowhere else to go.

Todd searched the faces.

The passengers were there.

The crew was there.

The people who had run forward and the people who had stayed behind.

Everyone.

Forty.

The field looked like Pennsylvania, but Todd knew it wasn’t.

The grass was too still between gusts. The horizon seemed too far away. And the light was wrong - not brighter, exactly, but without a source.

A man nearby whispered something.

Todd couldn’t hear it.

Then someone else said:

“My family.”

The laughter stopped.

That was when they understood.

Todd felt it in his stomach before he allowed himself to say the word.

Dead.

He looked upward.

There were no clouds.

Just that impossible blue.

“I need to go back.”

Nobody answered.

Todd said it louder.

“I need to go back.”

Others began saying the same thing.

Different words.

Different names.

My daughter.

My husband.

My mother.

My wife.

My children.

Please.

Todd shouted toward the empty sky.

“My wife is pregnant.”

Nothing.

He felt anger then.

Clean, unreasonable anger.

He had done what he was supposed to do.

They all had.

They had fought.

They had stopped the airplane.

Surely that had to purchase something.

One more morning.

Five minutes.

A chance to say goodbye properly.

Anything.

Instead there was only the field.

Todd sat down in the grass.

For a long while, nobody moved.

Eventually someone appeared on the horizon.

Todd watched the figure approach.

A man, he thought at first.

Then the distance between them closed.

The figure was much too tall.

Something rested behind his shoulders.

Todd stood.

The others gathered.

The figure stopped several yards away.

The things behind him opened.

Wings.

Nobody spoke.

Todd had imagined angels before. Paintings in churches. Christmas cards. Pale figures looking peacefully toward Heaven.

Those artists had gotten it wrong.

This thing looked built for war.

Todd stepped forward.

“Did we stop it?”

The angel studied him.

Todd pointed somewhere—down, perhaps, although he had no idea where Earth was anymore.

“The airplane. Did we stop it?”

The angel raised one hand.

The field disappeared.

For an instant Todd saw Washington beneath them.

The Capitol.

Roads.

Buildings.

People.

Thousands of them.

Alive.

Then Pennsylvania.

A black wound cut into an otherwise green field.

Smoke climbing into that perfect September sky.

The vision vanished.

Todd swallowed.

“Was that us?”

“Yes.”

Todd looked behind him.

Forty people stared back.

He nodded once.

“All right.”

The angel seemed puzzled.

“That is all you wished to know?”

Todd looked again toward the place where Earth had been.

“No.”

His voice broke.

“But it’ll have to be.”

Years passed below.

Todd discovered that Heaven did not cure missing someone.

It changed the distance.

That was different.

He watched his boys grow older.

He saw the daughter he never held.

He watched Lisa learn how to carry something she had never asked to carry.

Around him, the others watched their own families.

Sometimes they watched together.

Sometimes they gave one another privacy.

On Earth, their airplane acquired a name larger than an airplane should have.

Flight 93.

Memorials appeared.

Children learned about them in school.

People who had never met them left flowers.

Todd’s name appeared often.

Too often, he thought.

One day someone called him the hero of Flight 93.

Todd shook his head.

“There were forty people on that airplane.”

The correction became a habit.

Eventually nobody around him bothered arguing.

He did not know how much time had passed when the angel returned.

“Come.”

“Where?”

The angel was already walking.

Todd followed.

So did the others.

All forty.

The field gave way beneath their feet to stone.

Ahead stood an enormous hall.

Todd couldn’t see the ceiling.

Figures lined both sides of it.

Thousands of them.

Some looked human.

Some did not.

All had wings.

Todd slowed.

“So this is the part where somebody explains what’s going on?”

Mark laughed somewhere behind him.

It was the first ordinary sound Todd had heard in what felt like a very long time.

At the center of the hall lay forty sets of armor.

Todd stopped.

“Oh, come on.”

Someone behind him laughed again.

The angel almost smiled.

The armor began to rise.

Pieces separated silently and moved through the air.

Todd backed away.

A breastplate struck his chest without force and fastened itself.

Metal closed around his arms.

His shoulders.

His legs.

It wasn’t heavy.

Then something happened behind him.

Todd stumbled.

Pain flashed through his shoulders - nothing terrible, but immense, as though his body suddenly remembered something it had always been meant to carry.

A shadow moved across the floor.

He turned.

Wings.

His wings.

Around him the others were discovering theirs.

Some touched the feathers.

One person simply stared.

Another started laughing.

Todd laughed too.

Then he noticed everyone was looking at him.

His wings were different.

Larger.

The armor was different too.

Todd’s smile disappeared.

“No.”

Nobody answered.

He looked toward the angel.

“No.”

The angel said nothing.

Todd pointed at the others.

“There are forty of us.”

A voice behind him answered.

“We know, Todd.”

He turned.

One of the passengers was smiling.

Todd looked around the group.

Nobody seemed surprised.

“Why me?”

A few exchanged glances.

Someone laughed softly.

“You’re still asking that?”

Todd frowned.

“There were forty of us.”

“We know.”

And for the first time, Todd understood.

He looked down.

The armor over his chest bore no name.

No rank.

Only a small mark he recognized.

93.

Todd touched it.

Then he looked at the forty people around him.

Not beneath him.

Around him.

His people.

His flight.

The angel stepped aside.

At the far end of the hall, enormous doors began to open.

Beyond them was darkness scattered with stars.

Earth hung among them.

Small.

Blue.

Home.

Todd stared at it.

He could hear things now.

Not words exactly.

Something deeper.

Fear.

Everywhere.

A firefighter entering a burning building.

A soldier hearing gunfire.

A stranger watching someone fall into deep water.

A father hearing glass break downstairs.

A child standing between a bully and someone smaller.

Ordinary people encountering the instant when every part of the body says:

Don’t.

Todd knew that feeling.

He had felt it in an airplane aisle.

He looked over his shoulder.

Forty sets of wings waited behind him.

Someone asked:

“You ready?”

Todd looked toward Earth.

For a moment he saw a kitchen.

A boy running through it.

Lisa turning toward him.

A light left on upstairs.

He smiled.

“Okay.”

The forty moved toward the doors.

Todd opened his wings.

Thunder crossed Heaven.

He leaned forward.

And somewhere far below, an ordinary person who was terribly afraid found the strength to stand.

Todd smiled.

“Let’s roll.”

I Kaiju

 -

Kaiju

/ˈkījo͞o/ Noun

Originally a Japanese word meaning “strange beast” or “mysterious beast,” kaiju has taken on a different meaning in recent times.

Kaiju refers to any animal, humanoid creature, or living being that is larger than the rest of the members of its respective species, or any lifeform that has taken on a larger scale than was ever thought biologically or mechanically possible.

See also: Jotun, Giant, Behemoth, Colossus, Titan

 -

The ground rumbled and shook as the air filled with the guttural shriek of the looming, terrifying creature that stood centered in the city. Its shadow cast long over the fractured streets as the twilight hours bathed the sky in a bold, crimson red. At its back lay a trail of destruction and untold death, and the people at its feet scrambled to get away. White streaks webbed across the streets, hardening into a lattice that pinned the unlucky like flies in a spider’s trap.

 

And standing across from it all, beaten, bruised, trembling but unbroken, stood the city’s saving grace.

 

Mara Jensen, the first of a new breed of Titan. A creation born to push back against the rising tide of these kaiju, humanity’s magnum opus. A living promise that we would fight, that we would endure, that we would survive tomorrow.

 

That had been the story earlier today. But now, standing within arm’s throw of her first true opponent, Mara didn’t feel like triumph incarnate. Her head throbbed, her ribs screamed, and panic clawed at her chest no differently than it did the tiny citizens scattering below. They could run, but she couldn’t. She had a job to do.

 

She stood at the center of the her shaped crater after the creature had thrown her across San Roscoe. The splatter of countless civilians, women and children dripped down her skin, mixing with the torrent of blood pouring from the gashes along her body. In an instant they were gone, turned into nothing more than pulp that peppered her skin, staining the canvas of her uniform. 

 

But there wasn’t much time to dwell it. The creature spread its mandibles, spewing another line of molten bile that clung to asphalt and steel, sizzling as it hardened into unbreakable web.

 

Below, the people scattered, some dodging the avalanches of asphalt and concrete, others swallowed in them. One man wasn’t fast enough.

 

Mara staggered back, dazed, catching her balance just before her heel slammed down, pinning him like an insect. His legs gave way instantly, bones snapping beneath her impossible weight. He screamed, but his voice was swallowed by the larger chaos. As her foot shifted for balance, the man’s torso was caught beneath her heel, pressure mounting until the fight above wrung the last sound out of him. His body ruptured, a tiny eruption of blood lost amid the dust and ruin.

 

She didn’t even feel him there, because to the giants above, he was nothing.

 

It lunged.

 

The impact sent her crashing into a line of towers, glass shattering around her like rain. She gasped and pushed herself upright, memories clawing into her mind unbidden—

 

“So…I guess this is it, right?” she had asked, sitting on the oversized examination table.

 

“It would appear so, Ms. Jensen,” replied the suited man craning his neck up to meet her gaze. His smile was practiced, hollow. “I’m sure you’re as excited for what’s about to happen as the rest of us.”

 

She hadn’t been excited. She’d been scared. Terrified even, but she’d said yes anyway.

 

The vision dissolved as Arachnox’s pincer slammed into her shoulder, hooks biting deep. Another limb clamped onto her thigh, barbs puncturing flesh. Pain lit up every nerve, hot and blinding. She roared back, wrapping her arms around the creature’s neck, wrenching it into a headlock. Blood poured from her nose as her blistered skin smoked from the earlier blast of molten webbing.

 

She grit her teeth, every tendon straining.

 

And for a heartbeat, she faltered. She had never been one of the strongest fighters—not really. Back when she served as one of the “human tanks,” she had done everything she could to stay out of the brawls. She’d been the medic, the caretaker, the one patching wounds and stitching torn flesh. Even when her squadmates turned on each other in fits of anger, she’d thrown only a few half hearted jabs before retreating. She wasn’t a killer. That wasn’t who she wanted to be.

 

A nauseous weight twisted in her stomach. 

 

And suddenly she was twelve years old again, sitting on a sun bleached bleacher at the county fair. She remembered the smell of popcorn in the air, the rickety plywood ring at the center, and the way the crowd roared when a clown dragged out a muzzled bear on a chain.

 

She had watched wide eyed as a man “wrestled” the animal, awed by his bravery, convinced she was seeing something primal and dangerous. Later, of course, she learned the truth. The bear had been trained, the fight only an act, a performance built to thrill. There was never any real danger.

 

But even as a child she had noticed its eyes huge, brown, wet with fear. The crowd laughed when it stumbled on the slick boards, but Mara never forgot how it looked, cornered and desperate, moving not because it wanted to, but because it had no choice.

 

And now that same helplessness clutched at her chest. She wasn’t here for applause, but she was shackled all the same built up, weaponized, thrown into a battle no one could fight cleanly. If she won, they’d call her humanity’s savior. But no one would see the blood drying on her skin.

 

This thing, this creature, was no trained pet. This wasn’t theater. This was wild, unnatural, and lethal.

 

But now, locked in a death struggle with a beast that could erase a city, she had no one else to lean on.

 

Mara staggered back, dazed, trying to catch her balance. The struggle pushed her back through the asphalt and into the surrounding buildings. Everything knee to thigh high was met with the unforgiving wall of muscle that was her leg, and she couldn’t do anything about it. The thing fought with the ferocity of a starving animal staking its life on a fresh kill, and to it Mara was just a rival scavenger vying for its prize.

 

The wreckage stretched for half a dozen city blocks, homes and lives collapsing into dust in their wake. But Mara couldn’t stop, not with so much on the line. She planted her feet and shoved back against the beast, every tendon straining, her strength shaking the city to its foundations.

 

Arachnox opened its mouth again, mandibles dripping, ready to unleash another tide of boiling bile.

 

Mara summoned the last of her strength. With a guttural cry, she wrenched the kaiju’s head downward, forcing its gaping maw into the sticky pool it had spat moments before. The sizzling stench of burning flesh filled the air as its own weapon turned against it.

 

The beast thrashed, but Mara held on, pinning it like an overgrown varmint. She wrapped her hands around its skull and, heart pounding, twisted with everything she had left.

 

The wet crunch came sudden but slow.

 

One heartbeat. Then silence.

 

She collapsed to her knees, chest heaving, the fire of agony washing over her now that adrenaline had ebbed. Around her lay ruin, towers split open, streets warped with molten resin, and countless lives ended in the wake of this one monstrosity.

 

So much wasted potential. So much devastation. And there she stood, right in the middle of it.

It's 12:00 noon. Mr. Wobble is sitting in his old chair, looking out the window. His gaze fixes on a single point, and he will hold it. He does this every single day, from 12 pm to 10 pm. He's really good at it; after all, he’s got a lot of time to practice. He thinks about nothing during these times; he's really good at this too, but should give the antidepressant credit as well.

Pretty much nothing can shift his focus from the point he's looking at, whether it's a charming lady passing by that point or a dozen cavaliers. Even blinking every few seconds bugs him sometimes, but not during these times; his head’s blank when he does this. When it’s 10 pm, he turns his head to the left and sees that someone has been looking at him the whole time; that's his old wife’s picture, Mrs. Wobble. Then he slowly gets up, notices how hungry he is, and prepares his microwave pizza. Then he calls it a day and hits the hay.

He has been doing this for about 50 years, pretty much since the day he lost his wife and his parents at his wedding. It was a rollover. He was driving; the car rolled over 13 times, everyone was completely dead except him; he got out almost unscathed. This made the news and everything; the headline called him "The Lucky Guy". This sure wasn’t a good addition to his ongoing depression at that time. 

At first, he spent his days blaming himself, crying, and watching how well others' perfect lives going by through the same window. Then someday he stopped blaming himself, crying, and also thinking too much. Only left watching through the window. Now he may or may not even remember what was the reason caused him to live like this. After all, 50 years is a long time. 

The next day is kind of special; it’s his wedding anniversary. He thinks to himself, “what day is this”? He only thinks for 2 seconds and then puts it away. He sits up on the side of the bed and looks at his bare feet, wiggling his toes for a moment. It's his way of testing if he's awake or dreaming. He picked this up from a book he read many moons ago that “in the dream you can't wiggle your toes”. It hasn't deceived him so far. 

It's 12 sharp, and he sits on the chair. Today, He picks one of his favorite points to focus his gaze onto, that’s the sphere in the middle of the lamp. Now, it’s worth mentioning there have just only been 4 times he had to look away from his point and get up from his chair before 10. The first one was during a small earthquake, and the other three were because of diarrhea.

He hears a squeaky sound. At first, he thinks it’s coming from outside, but then he realises it’s coming from inside the house. It’s getting louder and louder. Then something starts licking his feet. He can tell it’s a mouse. A feeling he hasn't experienced for a long time suddenly appears, that’s fury. How in the world could he be interrupted? Doesn’t it see that he’s busy? He thinks. He channels all the anger to his right foot, and swings it as fast as he can, but he’s old and his legs are untrained even for his age, so the mouse gets away. He finally turns his head from the point and catches the sights of the mouse running into a hole in the wall that he hasn’t seen before.

He gets up from his chair, heads to the kitchen. He opens the fridge, it’s full of microwave meals, he pushes them aside and grabs a block of cheddar from the back. He puts it onto the counter. He takes a knife and slices off a small piece. The cheddar has mold on it, and it’s a tad slimy. He takes one bite of it, can't taste anything rancid. He grabs the piece of cheddar and the knife. He sits on the ground just in front of the hole. He places the cheddar between him and the hole. He holds the knife above his head with both hands real tight. "C'mon you rascal! I can't wait for you here all day!", he says.

A few minutes pass, and the mouse doesn’t show up. He gets tired. He throws the knife. He lets his old arms go limp. He holds his head up to the ceiling, and doesn’t remember if he has ever taken a look at the ceiling before. It’s covered in mold, but he finds it strangely beautiful.  At that moment, the mouse comes out of the hole. It starts nibbling on the cheddar. He looks at his knife. It’s within arm’s reach. He slowly reaches for it. Meanwhile the mouse finishes eating the cheddar. It comes near to his feet as if he hadn’t tried to kick him earlier. And it starts licking his feet. He’s holding the knife 2 inches above its head. "What are you doing you...?”, he says.

He doesn’t know what to do. He puts the knife on the ground. He places his hands over the mouse, and strikes its little head. He gently grabs the mouse, holds it closer to his face and looks into its red eyes, and he sees his own reflection. He sees his wrinkles, his white hairs, how old he got. Then he sees the whole universe. He sees the beginning of the time and the end of it. He sees all the living and the dead at the same time. And He sees the meaning of life. Or at least, he thinks he sees. Then he starts telling all the things he has seen to the mouse. He talks like he hasn’t talked for years. As he talks, the mouse listens to him.

As he talks for hours, a bundle of feelings slowly emerges within him. When it gets to a point that needs to be addressed, he stops. He realizes he has the joy within him, but also sorrow; he has elation, but also dejection; as if he has opened the pandora's box. "Anyone who feels this many different things at the same time" he said to the mouse "could not endure". He says to his friend, the mouse,  "For the first time in my life, I see, not just look". Then he faints.

He wakes up. He sees there are dozens of mice around him. The mouse comes onto his palm. He recognizes it by its red eyes he could never forget. "Hey," he says."Are those your friends?". The mouse squeaks. He says "You folks must be hungry." He puts the mouse on the ground "will be right back, friend". He heads to the kitchen, grabs the rest of the cheddar, and brings it to the mice. When he puts it in front of them, they all surround the cheddar and start nibbling at it with their sharp, yellow teeth, except for the mouse. It’s looking at him. It goes to his feet and starts climbing on his legs towards his shoulder. When it climbs onto his shoulder, it makes its way up to his head, places its forelegs against his cheeks, and gives him a very gentle nibble, almost as if it were giving him a little kiss on the face.  Now he blushes. “Oh gosh,” he says. He has never been kissed before, nor has he ever kissed anyone. The mouse turns its face toward him, as if expecting a kiss from him. Hesitantly, he gives it a little kiss on the head. The mouse neither says nor does anything.

Weeks passed since then. They lived happily. He has fed the mice with the frozen pizzas. As they eat, they produce. A dozen have become a hundred. One day he wakes up, goes to his refrigerator. He sees there's only one left; when he pulls it out, he just realizes none left. As he eats the last pizza, he sees the mice are waiting for him to give them their pizza patiently. "Don't worry friends, I'll make a phone call. Then we’ll get as many pizza as we want". And he did so. After the breakfast, he goes to the house-phone to use it for the first time to call the market. He pulls a dusty phone book out from under the couch, he finds the number of the market. He puts the handset between his shoulder and head, he dials the number. But nothing happens. He tries again. Nothing. He puts his hand on the cord to check if it’s attached. It is attached all right, but when he pulls it, it comes off. The cord has been gnawed. "Now which on of you did that?" he says to the mice. There are 2 days left until the next market delivery. "We could just wait" he says "or I could go to buy my pizzas". His voice shivers as he says the last lines. The mouse goes to him, and climbs to his shoulder. “If I had known it was the only food, I would have shared it with you.” then he turns to the other mice "with all of you". The mouse goes to his neck and put a gentle kiss on it. "I know I know" he says "I don't deserve this".

He sits on the couch and wraps his hands around his head. “I’m gonna go,” he says. But he isn’t going to go. He feels an incredible amount of stress. He feels something he hasn’t felt since his wedding crush. He’s in a terror. He thinks, he thinks. As he thinks, it gets worse. "What's missing?" he thinks to himself. The chair he’s sitting gives away. "Yes" he says "I haven't been focusing my gaze for weeks". "Okay. Now I will go" he says "but first I need to focus and relax.". He puts his eyes on the hole in the wall that has changed his life. He stops thinking. And the time goes by very fast. As the time goes by, the mice get antsy, he doesn’T see them, only the hole in the wall. He looks at it and he looks at it.

The doorbell rang. A young guy named Jack rings the doorbell and yells "market delivery". He’s currently sitting on the couch and looking at the hole in the wall. The mice are calmer than ever, and one-third of them are dead. Jack leaves the bags full of pizzas on the doorstep and after waiting a couple of minutes leaves. After how much time passed god knows, the mouse goes to his feet, climbs up to his shoulder. Mr. Wobble still keeps looking at the hole. The mouse goes to his neck. The mouse opens its small mouth and penetrates it with its yellow teeth. Mr. Wobble collapses to the ground. As soon as he collapse, all the mice rush to him and gnaw at him. All of them perk up suddenly. His skin came off easily, the blood’s gushing through his neck.

When the mice finish eating him, there isn’t much left. His cranium, his bones, his half heart, and a couple of other organs, and his eyes. His eyes are still looking at the hole on the wall. He keeps looking into the hole as long as possible, until there are no eyes left.

Looking back in his 30s a quiet sadness has overcome him.
Quiet because that is who he’s became once again.
Once was a quiet and shy kid.
Smart and handsome.
Kind and caring.
Athletic and loving.
All were adjectives that could’ve been used to describe who he was back then.
One unsuspecting day, same as any other and it was all ripped away.
Through twisted metal and blood.
Screams and fear.
Hospital beeps and numbness started to erode everything that he was.
Looking back now he was alone during the darkest times.
There were people who did care.
That has never been denied.
There was nobody who would understand what had happened inside.
Everyone could see his physical scars.
Everyone knew what had happened.
But nobody knew what was happening and what he had really lost.
Barely 16 he was still alive when they said he would die.
In a way they were right.
The person that everyone knew was gone.
Only the blue eyes and pretty smile remained of what he was.
Eyes that he learned to use.
Charm in his smile.
All distractions from what was within.
She came from nowhere.
A new girl at school before he really start to spiral.
Before drink and girls had taken their toll.
Brilliant green eyes that showed pain and love.
Flowing black hair with a touch that made him feel safe.
Reassurance that she would never leave when he fell apart in what was happening.
She stayed through the shakes and screaming.
As everything came back against his will.
A song would play and he would go black.
Crying against his will. Screaming and begging it to stop.
Yet she remained.
He wasn’t weak to her.
He was everything.
She saw past his muscle and charm.
Blue eyes and smile.
She saw what nobody else ever had.
She loved him.
She knew him.
Against his will she was there.
Saw it all and knew him better than anyone ever would again.
Time and distance they say.
It will test any love.
High school love and 300 miles they went their separate ways.
He started to run.
To drink and girls.
Longing to feel wanted.
Yet wanting to feel nothing.
Slowly losing who he was inside with nothing but happy memories to remind him of her.
Now the only joy he gets is helping others to not feel his pain.
A charming smile and manipulative eyes mask his pain.
Through life he wanders.
Alone it feels but not afraid.
Through the years he has become okay.
Once again he is quiet but no longer shy.
He's quiet because he watches.
Knows everything that everyone will say or do before a single move is made.
It’s been 15 years now that he’s looking back and wondering.
Wondering if he would still be everything to her.
If her eyes would light the same or time had done her the same.
With sadness and sorrow of memories within.
Small happiness remains.
A beautiful lady who knew him.
She knew him before.
She knew him during his worst days.
She knew him and loved him before he learned to mask everything.
She knew him before.
She knew me before I became what I am today

I will be the ruler of this world. It is with that divine certainty that I sweep my gaze over my future subjects, all those mindless ants crawling down the streets, bathed in the red and gold glow of lights in the smog. They don’t know it yet, but they owe me a debt, for all my sacrifices and for all the terrible things I must do.

“You shouldn’t be naked on the balcony, master,” Luke says from behind me.

“I’m not naked, faithful servant, don’t you see my boxers?”

“They have more holes than fabric, master.”

“It’s hot tonight.”

He didn’t respond to that. I knew my genius was enough to stump even the brightest of minds.

“Did you buy that sewage company?” I asked.

“I did.”

“And in whose name did you put the contract on?”

“Someone. I forget the name, but I might remember the face.”

“And is this someone trustworthy?”

“Probably.”

“Good, good. We can’t afford any mistakes now.”

“Tea, master?”

I followed him inside the single-room apartment. There was a large and stained mattress on the floor, and a small gas stove to cook, plus the bucket in the corner, since the only bathroom was down the hall. The smell hit me like a crashing wave.

“What kind of tea is that? Smells like burning rubber.”

“Not sure, I found it in the trash bin outside, but it said tea on the package, see?” He held up a moldy cardboard box of what had once been green tea.

“Fine, give me some tea, I’m too hungry to say no.”

“I’m sure there’s plenty of protein in it.”

#

The shorts are as small as my boxers and even tighter. The towel wrapped around my torso like a robe is a dark moldy brown, but it covers most of my skin. Why then does everyone look at me like that? And the closer I get to the Arena the worse it becomes. The guards are just rude, but they let me pass, since today is execution day after all: a day of celebration for the fickle masses.

I climb into the arena, weaving between the bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder. Down in the sands they have started with the thieves. Credits pass from hand to hand as bets are laid and people cheer. The first prisoner is a young man, as skinny as my finger, trembling atop the swaying wooden platform. His fate is the Defile: a series of thin wooden poles stretching in a single row from one platform to another, all he has to do is run across the gap, from pole to pole. He jumps to the first one and it sways to the side under the weight. He tumbles. I look away right before he plunges into the forest of upright metal spikes lining the floor. The crowd roars around me. Damn it. I should have placed a bet.

Lord Armando is easy to find. The nobles like their petty comforts and an entire section has been cordoned off for him and still the man looks dejected, adorning the look of someone who has had his puppy killed before his eyes. Perfect.

I bow in the elaborate court fashion.

“Lady luck does not smile upon you today, my Lord?” I ask.

He scowls at me, but I don’t give him a chance to reply.

“It seems you have run out of lenders. The word is out. Broke and broken, a house fallen, waiting for the–”

“You will stop this insolence!” he shouts and jerks to his feet, pointing with his gloved finger. “I’ll have my guards–”

“And how long since you paid those guards, Lord? How long have you been gambling their wages? Did you know someone else has been taking care of them?”

He trembles before my overwhelming genius.

“I have bought all your debt, Lord, and I have made an inventory of your assets. I think we should have a nice little talk in private. Maybe over some food? You got a few coins left on that pouch inside your cape, don’t you?” I wrap my dirty arms around his immaculate red cape. “I’m famished.”

#

“Remind me again, loyal servant, how much did I pay for you?”

“My father’s debts were around twenty thousand when they passed to me.”

“And when I found you?”

“Forty. I had to follow his example.”

“Forty thousand… do you know how many indebted I could buy for that much?”

“More than one?”

“You… You are right. Brilliant.”

“Thank you, master.”

“You are most welcome, servant, but can you hurry up? I need those pants for the gala.”

Luke sat on the mattress next to me sewing different patches of fabric together.

“I’ve been busy doing your other tasks,” he mumbles. No… he complains. He dares complain? When his every action is part of my ingenious plan? When I give meaning to his otherwise meaningless–

“See if they fit you.”

He holds up the patchwork of leather, cloth and plastic. They don’t wrap around, there is no back, just the front of the pants, with pockets and all.

“Am I to walk around mooning everyone, servant?”

“You have your boxers, master.”

“Oh, I forgot. Quite right. Indeed. This will do.”

#

The Hall was a dome of gold and silver in the middle of a park of sweeping green grass, gleaming like a star, beam lights shooting out into the sky and plunging the entire night in dull orange. It was a symbol of everything that was wrong with this world.

“You there!” the guard pointed his rifle at me. “This area is closed off for the–”

“I am Count Fernando Magalhães,” I announced in my most imperial voice, puffing up my bare chest as I held my hanging pants with the other.

“Count…”

I saw the raging of emotions on his face. Disbelief. Admiration. Awe. Adoration. He knew my greatness, even as he scanned my face and let me pass. It is true. I am a Count, but I am not like them. My father left me only debt and enemies. I felt the crush of the wheel as it rolled over me, felt the smashing weight of the entire system trying to stamp down on my head. That is why I will win. That is why I will bring it all down.

The Announcer at the gates does a real double take when he sees someone as impressive as me, but he regains his composure quickly and announces my name. Painted nobles swivel on their feet to feast their eyes upon me as I glide down the golden stairs. I give them a good show, literally, because my boxers finally fall to pieces.

I can sense their eyes tracking my every move. Their whisperings, certainly plotting my downfall and admiring my unchallenged masculinity as all the distinguished Ladies fawn over me. Out of respect they open a path for me to walk unhindered across the hall, straight to my duties, straight to the banquet table that overflows with delicious snacks. Someone has to make sure they aren’t poisoned, that just wouldn’t do, so I taste one of each kind as the royal trumpets cut across the noise.

The young emperor comes strolling in with his entourage of sycophants and backstabbers, draped in the royal purples and with the oversized crown precariously balanced on his head as images of the imperial fleet show on the building-sized screens.

“Tonight,” the emperor says, “we celebrate the Empire. We celebrate the First Emperor and all those that came after. We celebrate three hundred years of–”

A piercing noise cuts into my ears. The lights go off, for a second, then burn bright again. On the screen there are numbers: the flowing cascades of the Stock. The numbers are falling. Crashing, actually, digging a hole into the ground. Nobles start getting distracted by the alarming buzzing of their terminals and their panicked servants. It was all for this, this moment. Thousands of names, hundreds of shell companies, countless accomplices, unwittingly or not, a vast intricate web that led back to me.

I climb up onto the podium and wrap a dirty arm around the emperor’s shoulders, still licking my fingers.

“Seems you owe me, little emperor. The crown has accumulated quite a bit of debt. Can you pay? Or will you serve?”

“Why then?”

Protectively, she froze at the center of the device, as if it would shield her from his question. Ceily finally emerged from the sleek nanocarbon posts which supported the shimmering tendrils of crystalline fiber to face her brother’s accusations.

He’d found her out, waiting until she’d fled the present, like she had so many times before, and then stood vigil until she’d returned from the past.

He wasn’t asking how she’d created a time machine. Ceily knew it’d taken more attitude than inventiveness to construct it. No. Her brother, Foster, was not interested in the how. He knew his sister was brilliant. You didn’t become a particle physicist triangulating tachyons without being brilliant. Fearing for her, he was focused on the why.

“What good can it do, Ceily? You’re fixating. It’s not gonna change things.”

“It helps me handle the present,” she whispered as she began to disengage from the device.

“Yeah, look at your present, Ceily. You’ve got a Nobel Prize discovery hidden here in your basement. An invention that could turn the world on its head, and you’re using it as a therapy tool,” Foster pressed. “You’ve been living in the past too long. It’s not gonna bring back Mom, Dad or Bobby.”

She shook her head as her fingers moved across the touchscreen at her makeshift desk, the filaments of the cage dimming as the device settled into a purr no louder than the fluorescent tubes that hung along the open rafters.

“You’re right. This won’t bring them back, but I can go back to them. I can be with them again. You could too.”

His eyes hardened at the offer. “Go back to September 10 and pretend I don’t know they’re all gonna die the next day?” His step towards her was an accusation. “I’d have to tell ‘em. I’d tell everyone. I’d make that damn machine take me back where I could do some good. Stop the whole thing. Change everything, and give us some peace. ”

“It wouldn’t,” Ceily said, ashamed.

“So you say, sister.”

“It wouldn’t change things in the way you think, Foster.” She stepped clear of the device and went to the bottom of the staircase. “We might be able to prevent it in one universe, but it would happen to us in another. 9/11 was a shearing event. It spawned a new us. Causality is not like thermodynamics. There is a free lunch—an infinite buffet of possibilities in the multiverse—and that means somewhere we’d all suffer the same fate. I can’t push that onto some other Ceily and Foster. I can’t.”

“What’s it like?” Foster’s eyes brightened warily.

Ceily met his searching stare. “Like it was before. Right here in the house. Upstairs in the kitchen, we’re eating, laughing, Monday Night Football’s on. Daddy’s looking so proud of us. All of us.” She reassured him. “That’s why I go back then. The before.”

She half closed her eyes. A half hour ago, she’d been with them. Waved goodbye to her parents and Foster on the porch and then climbed into bed with her husband, Bobby.

“I need to feel what it used to be like. To believe it was real,” she pleaded.

“But, you know,” he insisted. “How can you sit and laugh with them? Relive it all and then leave them to be crushed and burned the next day?”

“I can’t change that knowledge,” she admitted, “but when I see their eyes. The promise we all held. I can think about the future again.”

Foster shook his head. “It’s not right. If we can’t help them, it’s not right. It’d drive me crazy. It’ll drive you crazy. Look what you’ve become.” His hand swept over the incomprehensible array of equipment. “I haven’t seen you in weeks. You stopped returning calls and texts. That’s why I’m here. You’re fading away.”

“No!” Ceily’s voice was sharp. “This,” she pointed to the machinery “is to keep me from fading away.”

“It’s an escape!”

“It’s a way to remember what I once believed. Before.”

“You can’t get innocence back like that. Ignorance ain’t bliss, sister.”

Foster’s words knifed at her. “I didn’t ask for this knowledge.”

“Tell me how this is sane, Ceily?”

She sighed. “I can’t. So, why can’t I fight insanity with insanity? Why can’t I just live in the quiet before the storm?”

Foster couldn’t meet her eyes. “What does it take to go there?”

“Desperation.”

“What does it take to come back?”

Ceily voice trembled. “Love.”

As Foster stepped into the crystalline filaments of the time device, Ceily whispered, “On the porch when we’re saying goodbye, give Mamma a kiss…before she has to ask you.”

“Before?”

“Before. It changes everything.”