​Ben pulled back the curtain the tiniest amount and peered outside.
   “Is he-?”
   “Sssh!” He flapped his arm.
   I moved up behind him, my hand on the small of his back. Rosie followed, pawing at my leg.
   “He’s still there,” Ben whispered. “Nearly four hours now.”
   I flopped onto the sofa. Rosie jumped up next to me, dropping a tennis ball in my lap. “D’ya think he’s drunk?” I asked quietly. Pete, from over the road, had wandered into our front garden and been there all morning, shuffling back and forth, sniffing the air. He was a recovering alcoholic, and this wasn’t the first time we’d seen him acting strangely. “The lockdown’s stressful. Maybe he relapsed?”
   Ben made a non-committal noise but glanced at the rifle in the corner.
   “Not sure,” he lied, ducking down as Pete turned and faced in our direction, lumbering aimlessly still. His eyes were red and stared blankly at nothing. There were two dried rivulets of blood running over his straw-coloured moustache. His mouth gaped open gormlessly.
   Rosie nudged my hand again with her nose. I scratched behind her ears. “In a minute,” I murmured.
   “You can’t go out,” ordered Ben. “It’s too dangerous. He looks…”
   “I know how he looks, but she needs a wee!”
   “We’ll make a litter tray for her.”
   I raised my eyebrows at him. “I’ll just take her out the back real quick.” I moved into the kitchen before he could reply.
   I opened the sliding door, wincing at the sound of the rollers. I knew Ben would have the rifle ready, and sure enough I felt him come up behind me. Rosie dashed outside to do her business. She was trotting back in when her head snapped to the left. Dropping her ball, she stood, pointing, tail trembling.
   Two loud, sharp barks.
   Something was thumping on the back gate.
   “Move!” Ben shoved me aside just as the rotten wood crashed to the ground. There was a snarl, a gunshot, then all I could hear was Rosie’s barking.
   I hardly dared look. But I had to know if Ben was alright. And the back door was still open. Slowly, trembling, I crawled past the cupboards and peered out. Rosie was still barking, jumping around the bundle on the ground like a gazelle. The gun lay on the gravel, and I could see a hand groping for it.
   “Ben?” I ran outside.
   I helped him haul Pete’s body off himself. Pete lay face up, eyes staring blankly. The hole in his forehead looked like an empty eye socket. I couldn’t stop staring at it. Ben brushed himself off calmly, then walked over to the hedge and threw up. That broke my trance and I ran back inside.
   “Here.” I handed Ben a glass of water.
   “Thanks.” He swilled his mouth out, then spat it down the sink.  He took a few sips.
   “Are you okay?”
   “Yeah, sure,” he said, but his eyes were staring into space. He stayed like this for a long moment. He had blood on his hands and t shirt. “I’m gonna have a shower,” he said quietly. He handed the glass back to me and wandered upstairs. Rosie looked from Ben to me, then trotted after him.
   I sat at the breakfast bar and avoided looking out the back door. What do you do when your husband unexpectedly becomes a murderer? Should I ring the police? But it was self-defence. It was all my fault, I had to be an idiot about the dog, didn’t I? In the circumstances it hardly mattered if she weed on the carpet! Guilt crawled in my gut. What about Karen, Pete’s wife? And our other neighbours…surely they will have seen or heard something?!
   My breath came in shaky gasps and my hands trembled. I balled them into fists to try and stop them, clenching them tight until I could feel my nails digging into my palms. Don’t panic, don’t panic. Deep breaths…
   I got myself under control, but I needed reassurance.
   “Hey,” I said loudly over the shower, stepping over Rosie on the landing. I opened the bathroom door an inch.
   “Don’t come in!” shouted Ben.
   “Why?” I asked, ignoring him, opening the door wide.
   His filthy clothes were in a pile in front of the loo. I could see his blurred form through the steamy shower glass.
   I peered round. “What’s the matter?” I asked, but he didn’t need to answer. An oval pattern of red tooth marks stood out against his pale stomach. I could feel my panic rising again, but from a distance, as if through binoculars watching a tidal wave approach a cliff face.
   “Get dressed. I’ll drive you to the hospital,” I heard myself say. My brain had decided this was beyond comprehension and was acting on autopilot.
   Ben wasn’t moving. “Come on!” I grabbed his hand.
   “No.”
   I let go, confused. “There’s special wards for this stuff-”
   “No.”
   “Don’t be silly, let’s go.”
   “I’m not going!” he shouted. “The hospitals don’t do anything ’cept keep you sedated.”
   “But they’re trying the blood plasma-”
   “No. They can’t do anything, and I hate hospitals. Fifty-fifty chance if you’re young and fit, they say, and I’d rather stick it out here.”
   I stared at the bite, dripping red under the shower. The tidal wave crashed towards the cliffs, and suddenly I was standing at the top, right in front of the huge swell. I could feel hot tears in my eyes. “I’m so sorry,” I wailed. Wetness fell down my cheeks. “I can’t believe I was so stupid!” Despite my clothes I climbed into the shower and grabbed him in a fierce hug. He winced at the sudden pressure against his stomach but hugged back.
   I’m not sure how long we stayed like that, but eventually Rosie started scratching at the door. I stepped out and peeled my soaked clothes off. “So, what now? Do we ring the police or something?”
   “I guess we have to. Karen deserves to know too…” Ben looked at my stricken face. “I’ll do it. Can you…make up a bed for me in the spare room?”
   I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. We dressed in silence. My reflection looked pale, my straight brown hair still wet and black, and my dark eyes red rimmed, like a vampire. I felt guilty for letting that comparison even enter my mind, and I turned away from the mirror. After bandaging Ben’s stomach as best I could with our meagre first aid kit, I shoved our clothes in the washing machine – a pointless task, but one with some routine to it – and set about making the spare bed. I could hear Ben on the phone in our bedroom.
   “…into our back garden. Our dog was out there, so I shot him.” Pause. “Yes, we don’t really know what to do with…” Pause. “Okay, thank you.” Pause. “No, we’re all fine.” Lie. “Thank you, bye.”
   Ben poked his head round the door. “They’re sending someone over to recover Pete’s…to recover Pete. But it might take a day or two. They said to just leave him.”
   I nodded, avoiding his eyes.
   “You know why I didn’t tell them, don’t you?”
   Of course I did. They’d force him to hospital, despite his wishes. I nodded again.
   “And you know if it goes bad, you’ll have to do the same to me?”
   I looked up in alarm. “No!”
   “Please, promise me you will. I don’t want to get like Pete. He was a stupid bugger, but he didn’t deserve...” He trailed off, hand gesturing in mid-air feebly.
   “I’ll…I’ll try,” I said. That was the best I could manage. Ben seemed to realise it too, and he looked back to his phone.
   “Better ring Karen now, I s’pose.”
   “Yeah,” I said on autopilot again.
   He stared at his phone for a long time. When he finally put it to his ear, I could see the tension in his neck. I could hear the faint ringing. I gripped the bedsheet in my hand.
   The phone rang and rang, until it eventually gave up.
   “D’ya think she’s okay?” I asked.
   “No,” said Ben. “I better go over there-”
   “What?”
   “What else could possibly happen? I’ll just knock on the door and see if she answers. I’ll take the rifle, just in case.”
   This didn’t seem like a good idea to me, but if this was his last day on Earth, I didn’t want an argument.
   I watched from the upstairs landing as Ben crossed the deserted street. From my vantage point within the house I couldn’t see more than a couple of houses up the road, but from the middle of the street I knew Ben would be able to see all the way. He paused, gun raised, checking his surroundings.
   My phone rang in my pocket, making me jump. It was Alice, another neighbour, but also one of my work friends, back when we went to work. It had been over two months since we’d gone into lockdown.
   “Hello?” I asked, voice wobbly.
   “Hey, is that Ben crossing the road?”
   “Yeah, he, um, he’s going to check on Karen.”
   “What happened to Pete? I saw him wandering outside this morning. Is he drunk again?”
   “No, he-” my voice caught. “He wandered over here, and he-” I couldn’t get the words out. “He wasn’t drunk.” I said eventually.
   “I heard a shot..?” Alice asked tentatively.
   “We had to do it; he’d got into the garden with Rosie.”
   “My God!”
   “That’s why Ben’s gone over. We tried calling Karen but couldn’t get an answer.”
   Ben was at their front door now. I clutched the phone to my chest. Alice was still speaking but all I could hear was a crackling voice against my ribs. He rang the bell. Nothing. Knocked the door. Nothing. He peered through the front windows.
   I put the phone back to my ear. “What do you think we should do?” I asked.
   “Police?”
   “We’ve already rung them once. They didn’t even ask about her.”
   “They’re idiots,” Alice said. “I’ll ring them. Tell them we need a welfare check.”
   “Ben’s coming back, I’d better go.”
   “Okay, stay safe. Don’t let him go out again!”
   “You too, I won’t!” I said with fake cheeriness.
   Rosie and I thundered down the stairs just as Ben walked back inside.
   “No answer, couldn’t even hear Buster barking.” Pete and Karen’s Jack Russell was known throughout the village. I chewed my lip.
   “Alice rang,” I said.
   “Oh, yeah?” he asked with false casualness.
   “She saw you in the road. I told her…about Pete. Didn’t mention you though.”
   He nodded.
   “She’s gonna call the police to check on Karen.”
   He nodded again.
   “So, er, what shall we do now?”
   It was the worst afternoon of my life. I was full of nervous energy, wanting to do something, anything, to help. I set Ben up on the sofa with a blanket and a film, but I couldn’t settle down. I put our clothes on the airer, made some brownies, cleaned the kitchen, kept Ben fed and watered… As the evening wore on, I could see Ben struggling. He was pale and clammy, and when he got up to go to the loo, his nose started bleeding.
   “You know I get nosebleeds all the time, this doesn’t mean anything,” he said, trying to reassure himself as much as me.
   “I know, tilt your head back,” I said, shoving a tissue up his nostril.
   But by ten o’clock, things were really bad. I put Ben to bed in the spare room with a hot water bottle and some paracetamol.
   “Make sure……move…drawers…your door,” he gasped between breaths.
   “I know, baby, I’ll do that when I go to bed. I’m not tired yet though, I’ll just stay here a bit.” I sat by his side, stroking his fiery forehead, until he dropped off. I waited a few minutes, checking the steady rise and fall of his chest. Rosie was stretched out on his other side, top to toe, her head resting on his leg. I could feel the tidal wave threatening to overwhelm me again.
   I gulped and squeezed Ben’s hand. He gave the lightest of squeezes back, but his breath remained slow and sleepy. I refused to acknowledge the rattle in it. Fifty-fifty. Pretty good odds in any other situation.
   “C’mon,” I whispered to Rosie, and she followed me out. I closed Ben’s door quietly and heaved a breath. She followed me round the house as I gathered up supplies. The gun, of course, then some ammo, a torch, some tinned food, water bottles, Rosie’s food and lead, some clothes, my waterproof jacket, and a sleeping bag. I rooted around under the bed, finally finding Ben’s old camping rucksack from Duke of Edinburgh, and tetris-ed everything inside. It was heavy, but manageable. I heaved it onto the bed.
   Ready to hole up for the night, I tried to manoeuvre the huge chest of drawers in front of the door. It was too heavy, so I removed each drawer then painstakingly dragged the wooden frame across the carpet before rebuilding the drawers again. At least I could be certain no-one could get in. Rosie watched from Ben’s side of the bed, head cocked.
   I checked the gun again, and carefully set it down next to the bed. I changed into pyjamas, put my phone on charge, and then… stopped.
   My flurry of activity over, I was stumped. I needed to sleep, I was exhausted, but I was so full of nerves there was no way I would. I lay down on my back, limbs straight and stiff. Rosie shuffled around, creating a nest with the bed covers. Ben always moaned when she did that – his side of the sheet was perpetually covered in fur – and that unbidden thought released the tsunami that had been threatening all evening.
   I don’t know how long I cried for, lying there in the dark. At some point I must have fallen asleep, because when I woke, Rosie was snuggled up to me and I could see the first tendrils of dawn around the curtains. My first thought was wondering where Ben was, then I saw the gun, the holdall, and the chest of drawers in front of the door. It hadn’t been a nightmare after all.
   My phone told me it was five a.m., but there was no point even bothering to try to get back to sleep. I could hear the dawn chorus, but inside the house was silent. I dressed, then began the slow process of unloading the chest of drawers, dragging it back across to its normal place, and reloading it all again. Despite the noise there was still nothing from Ben’s room. The knot in my stomach twisted. I hesitated by the gun, pacing to and fro, before forcing myself to take it.
   Holding the large rifle awkwardly in one hand, I opened the door the smallest sliver. All was quiet. Rosie was at my heels, trying to squeeze past. I opened the door fully and Rosie trotted to the top of the stairs, then turned back to watch me, tail wagging. But today I wasn’t going straight downstairs to put the kettle on. I turned to Ben’s door. It was ajar.
   My stomach lurched. “H-Hello..?” I stammered. “Ben?” No answer. I held the gun up properly in two hands against my shoulder, cocking it.
   I used the long barrel to push the door open.
   The bed was empty, covers pulled back as if Ben had just nipped to the loo. His phone was still on the bedside table. Rosie jumped up and sniffed around the bed. I shooed her off and rushed to check the bathroom, just in case. Empty too. Heart in mouth, I checked every room, gun at the ready. All clear. The front door was still bolted, but the back was unlocked, although both our cars were in the driveway. Rosie slipped outside and sniffed a trail along the ground for a while, but soon she got distracted by Pete’s corpse still lying on the gravel. He was turning grey, and it looked like a fox had nibbled at his fingers in the night. I felt sick and called Rosie inside sharpish. I was alone, with no idea whether Ben was alive or dead or…something.
   I had to tell Ben’s parents. They only lived about twenty minutes away. Although it was still early, his dad was one of those people who hardly slept. I was struck with the sudden hope that perhaps Ben had rung them in the night. But when I tried my phone, the service was down. I tried the TV: Netflix worked fine, but there were no live channels. BBC still had the emergency overnight test card with the various numbers to ring. But it was nearly seven now, and the breakfast news should have started… I shivered.
   I was full of that nervous energy again, as was Rosie who hadn’t had a proper walk in days. She followed me around like a…well, like a puppy. I could tell my manic energy was temporary, and I was headed for a breakdown, but I wanted to put that off as long as possible. I paced the house, packing other bits into the holdall, retrying the phone without success. I made another pile to load into the car – more food, blankets, stuff for Rosie… I grabbed a couple of photo frames from the dresser too: one of Ben and me on our wedding day, and another one of us with Rosie at the beach.
   There was a knock on the door, and Rosie went mad as usual, barking and jumping onto the back of the sofa to see outside. I ran upstairs to look down through the landing window. I could see a rucksack and brown curly hair – Alice.
   I rushed back down and ushered her inside.
   “Thank goodness you’re awake, I thought you probably would be,” she said. “I just couldn’t stand being home alone anymore. The TV and phones are down, did you know?”
   I nodded.
   “Where’s Ben? I’ve brought some foo-”
   Oh my God, phones! Plural!
   “Two secs!” I gasped at Alice, leaving her in the hallway, flummoxed, holding out her shopping bags.
   I nearly tripped over Rosie on my way upstairs, grabbing Ben’s phone from the bedside table. My hands were trembling so much it took me three tries to punch in the passcode, and once it let me inside, I saw one notification: Message to Liv failed to send.
   I took a shaky breath as I went into his messages.
   I love you. I know you won’t be able to pull the trigger. I’m going before I get too dangerous. Please don’t look for me, I don’t want you to see me like that. Tell my parents I love them. I love you so much xxxxxx
   A sob escaped my tight lips, and I suddenly realised Alice had come up behind me.
   “Is…is everything alright?” she asked quietly.
   “No,” I wailed. I started crying again. These weren’t the silent tears of last night, but great howling sobs that shook my whole body. I collapsed onto the bed. Alice sat next to me, stroking my back in big circles. Rosie jumped into my lap for a cuddle too. Alice had always been a good listener, and she waited until I calmed down, then waited again for me to be ready to speak.
   “Ben’s gone,” I whispered. “Pete bit him, and he got really feverish last night.” I swallowed. “When I woke up this morning he was gone, no note, nothing. I just now thought to check his phone.” I showed her the unsent message.
   She didn’t speak for a long time after reading it. “I – I’m so sorry, Liv. I can’t imagine…” Her breath caught in her throat.
   I nodded. I couldn’t imagine it either, but then I didn’t have to.
   We sat quietly together, Rosie at our feet, until Alice suggested making a cup of tea. She wandered downstairs and I took a moment to pull myself together before following. As I walked into the kitchen, the homely scene of a kettle on the boil was comforting. Alice had shut the curtains across the patio doors. I tried not to think about Pete lying out there, not to think about Will wandering off somewhere, tried to pretend everything was normal.
   “What are you planning on doing now?” We were curled up on opposite ends of the sofa, clutching our hot mugs, Rosie’s small brown body sprawled in the middle seat, chewing a toy. I’d tried the TV again, but the emergency test card just flickered silently.
   “I was gonna go to Ben’s parents. They don’t live far,” I answered. “You can come, if you like?”
   I knew Alice’s family were all miles away: her sister’s family lived in Brighton and her mum lived alone on the Isle of Wight.
   “I’m not sure…” She chewed the inside of her cheek. “I mean, obviously you want to tell them about Ben, and to check on them. But it’s dangerous out there.” She sent a worried glance out of the window.
   “It’s safer there than here. They’re more remote, on an old farm outside Milton Abbas.”
   “Yes, but getting there?” said Alice.
   I considered this a moment. “The back lanes could be blocked. I’ll go the main way.”
   “Through town? Are you sure?”
   “Only a tiny bit. Then it’s A roads all the way.” I leaned across the couch. “Come with me. We’ll pick them up then head to the Island. There were no cases there, last I heard.”
   Alice nodded. “Yeah, I heard that too. I guess my sister will probably try to head there, now there’s no phones…but she’s got little Leo to think about…”
   We sipped our tea, and I was glad of a plan. Keeping moving stopped me thinking.
   We packed Ben’s old Mercedes estate, somehow managing to think of more essentials as we went. Alice had the idea of leaving a note, just in case Ben’s parents came to check on us and we each missed each other, so I Blutacked a message to the inside of the patio doors before sliding them shut. I wondered when, or even if, I’d ever return to this house.
   We got in the car (Rosie jumping happily into the back seat) and as I turned the key, the radio crackled into life.
   “…at home, do not leave your house for any reason. The emergency services and armed forces are conducting welfare checks at all residences. Only open your door to uniformed personnel. You must stay at home, do not leave your house for-”
   I clicked it off, but Alice and I looked at each other nervously. My gut twisted again.
   “Well, here we go then,” I said nervously, pulling out of the driveway. I could see John across the road watching from his window. Would he report us? Oh well, no-one had come to check on Karen yet. With that cheery thought, I pulled away.
   The roads were silent as the dead. We stared as we passed the shut supermarket on the edge of town. Two green army trucks flanked the entrance, armed soldiers on guard.  Only three days ago I had queued around the huge building, gloves and face mask on, appropriately distanced from everyone else.
   “Must be stopping looting,” offered Alice. I nodded and locked the car doors.
   We drove on, winding through Blandford’s old Georgian streets.
   “What happened?” whispered Alice. The main triangle followed a one-way system, and cars were always parked up the sides of the road. But now there were cars strewn across the high street, most facing the wrong way. One was on its side. This had obviously happened a while ago, maybe days, but I was surprised to see nothing official – no emergency services remained at the scene, of course, but nor did any signage or police tape. I slowly inched the long Merc in between the abandoned cars.
   “Someone’s still in there!” exclaimed Alice, grabbing my arm. I slowed, and sure enough, an elderly lady was sitting in the driver’s seat of an old Renault. The window was broken and her white curls waved in the breeze.
   “Don’t look,” I advised. “She won’t be alive.” I was beginning to realise that the village had been a safe haven, away from the population centres where this weird new virus had clearly taken hold.
   “Stop!” Alice said with such urgency that I did immediately. “She is, she’s moving!”
   Despite myself, despite knowing what I would see, I turned in my seat, squinting against the sun.
   A wrinkled hand was grasping at the air feebly. Her vacant eyes, now turned towards us, were red and weeping blood. Rivulets ran from her nose and the corners of her mouth. In the back seat, Rosie started barking excruciatingly against my ear.
   I remembered Pete’s empty expression and the red marks on Ben’s tummy. “There’s nothing we can do,” I said.
   Alice swallowed and nodded. I drove on.
   We didn’t look inside any other vehicles, but it was a relief to come out the other side of town onto the empty country roads, bursting with spring greenery. I zoomed down the deserted lanes.
   The tyres screeched as I slammed the brakes to an emergency stop.
   “Good spot,” breathed Alice in relief.
   A bloodied bundle lay across the middle of the road. I could see the dark silhouette of a bird of prey circling above.
   At first, I thought it was a person, but then I saw the golden legs and hooves. On the right, a car was half stuck in the hedge, bonnet crumpled and windscreen smashed.
   “Where’s the driver?” I asked, slowly bringing the car around the deer’s body.
   “There,” said Alice sadly, pointing to the deer’s belly. I leaned over her seat and could just see the back of a blue shirt moving up and down. Rosie started barking again, scrabbling at the window.
   “Are they alive?” I asked.
   “There’s nothing we can do.”
   I drove on, and in the rear-view mirror I watched the man turn his head slowly, following the car, blood and intestines trailing from his mouth and hands.
   When we arrived at Ben’s parents’, there was no answer from their front door, even after shouting through the letter box. They lived in an old farmhouse, which had been converted into many houses years ago. The others were owned by Londoners who only came for weekends and holidays, so I wasn’t surprised to find them empty. But Ben’s parents should have been there. Their car was still in the driveway.
   We used next-door’s access to wander round the back. A cow mooed dolefully at us, looking up from its water trough. There were fields on three sides, with the road on the fourth. The back gardens were all long and thin, with short hollow wooden fences between each, mainly to keep the cows out. Rosie whizzed past, ducking under the fences, to sit at the back door hopefully, while Alice and I painstakingly clambered over them, passing the rifle between us. Chrissie’s flowerbeds looked beautiful in the sun, and I could feel the waves start to crash against the cliff again. I forced the emotion down.
   I knocked on the back door, but there was silence. “Hello?” I shouted to the closed upstairs windows. The house remained unmoved.
   “What’s this?” Alice asked warily. She had wandered over to a bed of pansies at the edge of the patio. The flowers were crushed and trampled, and there was something glinting half hidden in the soil. Something Rosie was very interested in. I shooed her away and managed to brush some more soil off it with difficulty. The earthy scent of Chrissie’s chrysanthemums drifted over and Alice sneezed, making me look up for a second. My fingers brushed something cold and rubbery.
   “Oh my God!” I pulled my hand away as if burned.
   Chrissie’s gold earring twinkled in the sun. The ear it was still attached to, however, was as grey and pasty as Pete’s body, probably still lying in the garden back at home.
   “I can’t believe I touched that!” I looked around frantically, trying to find something to wash my hand with. The cow trough! I jogged across, scrambling over the fence, Rosie following excitedly, but with no comprehension of what was happening. The water was murky, but I could see pipes leading into it, evidence of a filtration system. I rinsed my hands as best I could and wiped them on my jeans to dry, still feeling disgusted. Then disgusted at my own disgust, because how could I be feeling anything other than grief?! First Ben, now his parents it seemed…
   I managed to lift Rosie up to get a few sips, carefully making sure she wouldn’t jump in (troughs were a favourite pastime of hers) then walked slowly back. I’d panicked. Of course the virus wasn’t passed on just by touch, otherwise I’d have caught it from Ben or even Pete.
   Alice’s round face was glum. “There’s blood there too,” she said, pointing over the fence to next door’s patio. There was a dashed line of red, but no sign of anything else.
   Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe, and I didn’t dare look round. I had visions of an infected Chrissie and Roger wandering aimlessly through the field behind, snacking on a lame calf. I snatched the rifle up from where Alice had left it leaning against the fence. “Do you think something could be…?”
   “We should go,” Alice said.
   “But what about Ben’s dad? He could be inside!”
   “He would’ve answered the door by now, if he could’ve.”
   I swallowed. Maybe it was best not to know. We hurried back to the car, mindful that we’d been making quite a lot of noise. But as I started the engine I found that I couldn’t just leave. I unclipped my seatbelt and opened the door.
   “What..?” asked Alice.
   “I have to know,” I said.
   Alice and Rosie watched from the car as I rooted around under the flowerpots by the front door. Eventually I located a grubby key and used it to open the front door.
   I heard a slam behind me and jumped and turned to see Alice wincing. She was stood outside the car with the rifle, Rosie pressed up against the window.
   “Sorry,” she said. She walked towards me holding the gun half up with both hands. “Just in case.”
   I turned back to the open hallway. The old farmhouse was dark, the thick walls and tiny windows creating shadows despite the sunny morning.
   I stepped forward slowly, my shoes echoing on the stone floor. “Roger?” I called, trying to be heard and yet not heard all at once. “Roger, are you here?”
   All the doors downstairs were open. We crept through the dining room and sitting room, expecting something at every turn, in every shadow. We tiptoed through to the kitchen, edging around the wooden table. I went ahead to check the utility. The old barn door was closed, the rusty iron latch pulled across.
   Alice raised the gun.
   “It’s always locked,” I said dismissively, walking back towards her. “Otherwise it swings open and blocks the fridge.”
   There was a shuffling sound then a thump.
   I whirled around and stared at the door in horror.
   Thump. Thump. Thump.
   The door trembled.
   After a false start, I managed to speak. “Roger? Is that you?” I stepped towards the door. The banging grew more urgent.
   “Liv, stop!” said Alice, the gun shaking in her hands. “Let’s go, it’s not worth it.”
   She was right. Whatever was in the utility room wasn’t human, not any more. I nodded and we turned to go.
   We walked briskly back through the sitting room into the hallway, and I screamed. Silhouetted against the open front door was Chrissie – I could tell by the shape of her hair. She walked slowly towards us, arms outstretched. There was something wrong with one of her legs – her foot jutted out at an odd angle. As she came closer I could see a stream of dried blood down the left side of her neck. I could smell chrysanthemums again. Her mouth hung open, but I could see her jaw starting to work. I held in a sob. Poor, kind, Chrissie. She didn’t deserve this. Was this what Ben had become?
   I backed away, and out of the corner of my eye I could see Alice trying to aim the gun.
   “Don’t shoot!” I said. “Let’s just get out the back door – run!”
   Alice turned and fled. I was hot on her heels, slamming the sitting room door behind us. I heard a crashing sound from the kitchen – the utility door must have given way. Shit. Alice skidded to a stop at the kitchen doorway and raised the gun.
   Bang!
   The sound rang in my ears, but I kept moving. Alice was walking forward cautiously too now, into the kitchen, gun still ready. Behind me I could hear Chrissie scratching at the door, but I had more immediate concerns.
   Roger was splayed out on the flagstones. The force of the shot had pushed him backwards, and he’d tripped over a chair. I could see the small hole the bullet had made in his stomach, about the same place as Ben’s bite wound. I held in another sob. Roger’s grey hands flailed as he tried to get up, like a turtle stuck on its back, pieces of the utility door strewn underneath him. I could see a red-brown bandage across his wrist – had Chrissie bitten him? Or had someone else? We shuffled around, making sure not to turn our backs on him, as we edged our way to the back door. I fumbled blindly with the bolt, then nearly fell down the step to the outside.
   “Alice, come on!”
   She ran after me and I closed the door as swiftly and softly as I could.
   “Quietly now,” I whispered as we navigated the neighbours’ back gardens. “The front door’s still open. Chrissie could have wandered out.”
   We kept a careful lookout as we turned round the end of the run of houses, back towards the car. I could see Rosie in the front seat barking towards the house, and I was glad her sound was muffled. I didn’t dare try to shut the house door, preferring to rush into the car instead. Alice followed, uncocking the gun with shaking hands as she leaned it upright next to her in the passenger seat.
   We both took a few deep breaths in silence. Rosie was all over me and I stroked her absentmindedly, staring at the open front door. Eventually the silence stretched too long. I dug the heels of my palms into my eyes, to try to stem the waves, and took a breath. There was nothing left here. I turned the key in the ignition.
   “Which way to the Island then?”
   We used the back lanes to Wimborne, aiming to avoid any roadblocks, but it took nearly forty-five minutes. Despite very few other cars on the road, we had to slow down for obstacles blocking the route. At one point a tractor blocked the trail and I had to reverse up a winding single-track lane to find a layby for a tricky three-point turn in the long Merc. I was sure that was illegal, but it hardly mattered now. Alice had found Ben’s small stack of CDs, and we could at least maintain the illusion of normality. I tried not to think about an eternity of Chrissie clawing at the door and Roger stuck there on his back.
   We didn’t look too closely at any other signs of life we passed, and it wasn’t until we reached the edge of Wimborne town itself that a roadblock stopped us.
   An armed officer standing by a large green truck waved us down and I stopped the car, winding down the window.
   “What’s the reason for your journey?” he asked. His voice was muffled through his face mask and he held a machine gun casually across his stomach.
   I didn’t dare lie. There was no reason to anyway. “We’re trying to get to the Isle of Wight.”
   “For what purpose?”
   “My mum lives there. She’s elderly,” said Alice.
   The officer’s eyes softened. “Pull up to the cabin. Remain in your vehicle. An officer will take your details and perform a quick health check.”
   I thanked him and followed his instructions. A temporary hut had been erected and two more officers emerged from it. One was armed, but the other held a clipboard.
   “Names,” he said tonelessly. We told him. “Address.” We told him each of our separate addresses. He raised his eyebrows but said nothing. “Destination.” Alice reeled off her mum’s address. “Wait there, please.”
   He stepped back inside and sat by a computer, probably to check our details on some government database. The armed officer remained near us, scanning the distance. Rosie growled softly in the back of her throat. While we waited, I watched in the rear-view mirror for signs of…well, anything. But the world beyond the checkpoint was abandoned.
   The clipboard-toting officer returned with two small test strips. “Hold this end in your mouth for ten seconds.” He watched us as we followed his instructions, then we waited for a long minute, to see if the strips would change colour. I’d seen this on TV: a colour change would indicate the level of virus prevalent in our bodies. The darker the shade, the more virus present. The officer held a colour chart, presumably to see if we hit any thresholds for self-isolation or hospital.
   Alice’s strip remained paper-coloured, but mine began to turn the faintest of yellows. I watched it, willing it to stop, and shortly it did, at a horrible wee colour. I grimaced, my stomach dropping. Was it contagious from touch after all?
   The officer consulted his chart. “Have you been in contact with anyone infected in the last seven days?” he asked.
   I swallowed. “Yes.”
   “Do you consent to a penetration check?”
   “A what?”
   “To see if the virus has penetrated the skin, any scratches etcetera...” He said all of this as if it was completely routine, and for him I suppose it had become the new normal. “I can ask a female officer to assist?”
   “Please.”
   “Remain in your vehicle with the engine switched off.” He marched back to his hut and we watched him radio for support.
   We waited about twenty minutes, whilst I apologised profusely to Alice, until a police car arrived, and a female officer got out. She talked to the two army officers for a moment, before walking over to us. “Follow me,” she said.
   I glanced at Alice nervously, but followed the officer over to the hut. I could hear Rosie barking in panic as I walked away. The officer closed the door behind her, muffling the rustling of the others outside.
   “Please strip down to your underwear.”
   I turned around as I undressed, trying not to feel embarrassed. I stood, shivering in the cool hut. The officer directed me to turn slightly on the spot as she looked me over. Arm out, other arm, one leg, other le-
   A burst of gunshots from outside.
   “What the…?”
   The officer peered around the blinds. “Get dressed, quickly.”
   I threw my clothes back on. The gunshots increased, and there were more shouts of alarm.
   “You’re okay,” she said hurriedly. “Your test results were mild enough that you shouldn’t feel any effects, and all traces of the virus will be gone in about a week.” She looked out of the window again. “When I open this door, run to your car, and drive.”
   I looked at her in alarm. What on Earth…?
   “Three, two, one. Run!”
   I leapt out the door and barrelled across to the car, wrenched the door open and flung myself into the driver’s seat. Rosie was barking in the back at something behind us, and finally I turned to see all three officers now had machine guns and were firing at a ragged group of perhaps a dozen people – men, women and children. They walked with the same disjointed, jerky movements I’d seen Pete, Roger and Chrissie use. It looked like two or three families had come together and passed the infection around. They moved slowly, although not aimlessly – it was clear they were heading for the source of human activity, but whether it was due to smell or noise I couldn’t tell.
   “Please, stop! Help me!”
   A boy emerged from the hedgerow, his torn t-shirt flapping. He was so dirty and dishevelled that at first glance he looked like one of the Infected. The officers paused in their firing for a moment, clearly unsure what to do. I stuck my head out the window.
   “Here! Come on!”
   “You’re crazy, he could be bitten!” Alice shouted at me but didn’t lock the doors. The boy gratefully turned the angle of his run towards us. Rosie was barking. Alice grabbed her and pulled her through to the passenger seat.
   He jerked open the back door and climbed inside. I started the ignition but I didn’t yet move. I needed to check he could talk, that he wasn’t ill.
   “Is there anyone else?”
   “No, they’re all…turned.” Snuffled the boy. This close up, I could see his hair was a mousey brown that might turn out to be blond if given a good wash. He looked about ten years old.
   “Who are they?”
   “My parents, sister, my aunt and cousins, and the Patels from across the road.” He turned in his seat to watch their shambling gait towards us, just as a burst of gunfire clipped one of the women across the head. She crumpled to the ground.
   “Mum!” The boy pressed his hand against the window. He started wailing. “I’m so sorry, Mum! It’s all my fault!” He stared out the back window as the officers continued to fire at his family.
   “We need to go,” said Alice, tears shining in her eyes.
   I couldn’t have agreed more. The officers were too busy with the group of Infected to stop us, even if they wanted to.
   “Hey, what’s your name?” I asked the boy.
   “Noah.” He sobbed, unable to tear his eyes away from the stillness of his mother.
   “You happy to come with us? We’re going to the Isle of Wight.”
   He nodded, and although I wasn’t sure he’d really heard or understood, we had no choice. I put the car in gear and pushed down hard on the accelerator. Time to go.
   It didn’t take long to get away from the violent scene. Soon we had twisted our way through Wimborne’s one-way system. It looked like people here had obeyed the “stay at home” order a lot better than Blandford – the cars lining the streets were parked properly, and the only movement was a cat prowling the deserted town centre. I pulled over.
   “Everyone okay?”
   “Yeah,” said Alice.
   Noah nodded, hugging Rosie tightly.
   “What happened?” I asked the boy, twisting round in my seat.
   “We were on holiday at the caravan park. Mum had organised a big family thing with my aunt and cousins. Then Dad had to let the Patels share our caravan cause their gran was really poorly and had to isolate. I ended up sharing my room with their two boys, and by the next night, Raj got really sick. Dad went to find the site doctor, but when he told one of the wardens what was happening, he made us all stay in the caravan.” Noah started to cry.
   Alice’s mouth was opening and closing in horror.
   “What happened then?” I asked.
   “One by one, everyone got sick. Dad helped me block them into various bedrooms using sofas and tables to stop them getting out. The nights were the worst…we could hear them moaning and banging on the door...”
   The hairs rose on the back of my neck. I shivered.
   “Then Dad got the fever and nosebleeds too. He knew I wouldn’t be able to get him into a bedroom on my own, so we were trying to get him into the room with Mum and Esme, but they escaped. The warden came back and tried to help but Mum got him backed into a corner, so he opened the other bedroom to escape. Mr Patel got him, right in the neck. By then Dad was flat out on the sofa so I just ran.” He sobbed.
   “Did any of them bite you?” I had to ask.
   “Raj did, right at the start.” He showed us a faint outline on his forearm. “Since then, none of them tried to. Not even when I was walking. They just followed my noise, I think.”
   “My God…” whispered Alice.
   I looked at her, and her puzzled face stared straight back. I wanted to discuss this with her, bounce around ideas about what this could mean, but not with Noah right there.
   “Okay,” I said slowly, letting out a long breath and running my fingers through my hair.
   “We’re trying to get to my family, on the Isle of Wight,” said Alice. “It’s safe there, no cases.”
   “D’ya wanna come with us?” I asked.
   “Yes, please,” Noah whispered.
   We cruised through empty roads until we eventually entered the New Forest. Noah was distracted watching the ponies, but I could see Rosie getting restless.
   “Let’s find a place to stretch our legs.”
   The official car parks were all gated shut, but I simply pulled off onto the grass on one side of a long flat stretch of road. A nearby pony looked at me curiously, then he and his small herd wandered slowly off. Once they were far enough away, we clambered out, twisting and stretching from the hours spent sitting. Rosie bounced around excitedly, ready for a long overdue walk.
   “Can I take her?” begged Noah earnestly, his blue eyes somehow even more puppy-like than Rosie’s.
   I looked around nervously. In the distance, I could see the edge of the forest – a wall of trees in which anything could be hiding. I glanced at Alice – she was looking nervously around too.
   “Here,” I said, tossing Noah a tennis ball. “Stay where we can all still see and hear each other!” It was an idyllic sight, Noah and Rosie playing together in the beautiful unspoilt countryside.
   The shadows were starting to lengthen. Alice and I cobbled together a late lunch (or early dinner?) of ham sandwiches and apples, washed down with half our water. I used more water to give Rosie a drink and started to get worried.  Three bottles had seemed plenty, but now there were four of us… Hopefully we could find somewhere to refill before the ferry. If it was even still running. I buried the thought.
   “Should we stay here tonight?” Alice asked me. “It’s a pretty secluded spot. I’m just thinking that other people will likely be queueing for the ferry too, and Lymington isn’t set up for that many people at once…”
   I nodded. “I think we’re gonna have to.” I tapped the fuel gauge. “We’re running on empty.”
   “Shit,” said Alice, biting her lip. I nodded, staring at the trees rustling in the breeze. There was nothing else to say.
   We repacked the boot, making sure the most important things were easily accessible. I gave Noah some antibacterial wipes to use as a makeshift bath, along with the most androgynous clean t-shirt I could find. He’d have to make do with his own dirty jeans. I spent most of the remaining daylight scouring the map for the nearest campsite which might have any jerry cans of diesel.
   “D’ya think we ought to have someone on watch overnight?” asked Alice. I hadn’t thought of that, but really it was obvious. As the sun started to set, the distant trees seemed to move, their long shadows hiding something.
   “Good idea, we’ll have to take shifts though.”
   Alice nodded.
   “I can help,” said Noah eagerly.
   “No, it’s too dangerous.” Alice and I said in near perfect unison.
   I looked at his enthusiastic face. “Please,” he said. “I can help.”
   “Alright,” sighed Alice. “You can keep me company on first watch.”
   As night descended, I settled down in my seat with a blanket. Alice and I had set up the back seats with my sleeping bag for Noah, but for now the boy was sat on the roof, armed with a torch and a large rock to bang in case of trouble. Rosie had commandeered Noah’s bed and Alice was laying out her sleeping bag in the passenger seat, ready for later. The night enveloped us and out in the Forest it was so dark I could barely see my own hands, let alone Alice’s face.
   “Will you be alright up there?” I whispered. “I’ve been thinking…” I turned towards Alice in the dark. “If Noah’s immune, d’ya think-,” I hesitated, hardly daring to say it. “D’ya think he could be the cure?”
   Alice’s sleeping bag rustled. “Wouldn’t that be amazing?” I could hear her smiling. “But first things first, we need to get him to the Island. It’s safe there. Then the doctors can check him out.” I heard her sleeping bag unzip. “You sleep – you drove all day. I’ll wake you at two.”
   I whispered my thanks, and as the door shut behind her, I couldn’t help but give a massive yawn. Alice grabbed the rifle from the boot before I heard the car groan slightly as she joined Noah on the roof. I could hear Rosie making a nest in the back, but already the sound of her padding around seemed comforting and far away…
   I woke up to Rosie’s loud barks by my ear. It was still pitch-black outside, and I couldn’t hear anything apart from the dog. I shushed her and hunted around in the glove box for the spare torch.
   In the tunnel of torchlight, I could see a trail of blood down the windscreen. I shrank back in my seat, a scream stuck in my throat.
   “Pull yourself together, woman!” I told myself and wound down the window slightly.
   “Alice? Noah?” I called out into the oppressive darkness. Nothing. I angled the torchlight around the car as much as I could, but my view was blocked by the bonnet and the boot stuffed high with our gear. Rosie was going mad, rushing around the confined space, giving loud warning barks.
   I shone the torch as far into the distance as possible. The illuminated grass swayed slightly in the breeze, but I couldn’t see anything else out of the ordinary. There was no sign of Alice or Noah.
   I took a deep breath and made a break for the roof, rushing out the door as quickly as I could and dashing up the bonnet, covering my hands in slick and sticky blood. Rosie had slipped outside too, but she couldn’t climb the bonnet. She ran around the car, yelping and whining.
   “Noah?!” I said in surprise. He was sitting cross-legged, his back to me. “Are you okay?” The rifle lay unattended, lodged in the roof bar, and I stooped to pick it up. “Where’s Alice?”
   Noah spun towards me, and I saw red in his eyes. I leaned away on instinct and immediately toppled from the roof. The ground took the wind out of me as I landed, but I was grateful I hadn’t broken my neck. Rosie was next to me, barking, but so was the rifle, and I picked it up with both hands. I aimed it up, but my arms were shaking. The torch flickered on the ground; broken from its fall.
   “Noah, stop!” I shouted. He was still on the roof, but his arms were lunging towards me, fingers grabbing at thin air. The old bite mark on his arm flashed in the blinking torchlight.
   Noah’s face was contorted into a grimace, rather than the usual vacant expression from the other infected we had seen.  “Noah, stay there!  Deep breaths now! In…and out…in…and out…” He did seem calmer as he breathed in time with me. I kept the rifle pointed towards him, just in case. My hands were steadier now. “I’m gonna get back in the car. You stay there!”
   I opened the door, and ushered Rosie in, but she wouldn’t go. She just kept barking at Noah, jumping around the car. He was getting wound up again. I could see his lip contorting into a snarl.
   “Stop!” I shouted just as he launched himself from the roof, landing in a crouch on the grass. I fired the rifle and the recoil hit into my shoulder.  I paused for just a second with the pain of it, but that was enough. Noah lunged forwards and grabbed my leg, biting down hard.
   I frantically kicked him off, catching him in the elbow and dropping the rifle in the process. He screeched with pain and withdrew, holding his arm, where a bullet hole was bleeding through my old t shirt. I grabbed Rosie and chucked her in the car, throwing myself in straight after and locking the doors.
   I took a moment to catch my breath. Rosie was still barking at the window, but she sounded a million miles away. Instead, I could hear the rushing of waves in my ears as I looked down at my ankle. I rolled my trousers up to see a greenish bruise. There was a line of tiny red dots, but they looked to be under the skin. Maybe I had got away with it. I leaned back against the chair, daring myself to feel relieved. Rosie had finally stopped barking. What had happened to Noah? I didn’t want to know. I shut my eyes and let the wave crash against the cliffs again. In the pitch-dark forest, my world was the car and the dog.
   I woke up shivering, but from cold rather than fever, thank God. My neck ached from sleeping awkwardly in the front seat. It was still dark, but I managed to clamber through onto the back seats, where Noah was meant to have slept. I shoved Rosie across and cocooned myself in the sleeping bag. Lying across the bench seat was much comfier than sitting in the driver’s, despite Rosie draping herself over my legs. But sleep would not return. I stared upwards for hours as the ceiling slowly came into view. As the morning sun streamed into the car, I sat up and checked my ankle. The bruise was yellowing slightly, but other than that it looked no different from last night. I looked out the windows cautiously.
   There was no sign of Noah, but of course he could be on the roof again. The rifle and broken torch lay on the ground where I had left them last night. There was a smudged smear of red down the middle of the windscreen. I looked down at my palms, the blood on them fading to a rusty pink. Where was Alice?
   I reached through to the boot and after a rummage managed to find a large kitchen knife. I held it in my sweaty hand as I opened the car door, terrified.
   Noah was on the roof again, cross legged, looking across the road at a group of ponies which had wandered over. I grabbed the rifle, dropping the knife, Rosie at my heels.
   “Noah?”
   He turned his tear-stained face towards me. There was blood around his mouth. I knew it wasn’t mine.
   “I’m sorry!” He cried. “It comes over me sometimes. I just…I can’t stop it.”
   I kept the gun pointed at him. “Noah,” I asked slowly, clearly. “Where’s Alice?”
   He looked guiltily over the other side of the car. I took a few steps back, putting some distance between myself and this shell of a boy. I slowly walked around the front of the car, keeping the gun pointed at him. Tucked around the front passenger wheel was Alice’s body. A bloody tear in her neck was coagulating with strands of her curly hair.
   “Is she dead?” Noah asked from the roof.
   Two months ago, I would have said yes, but I shot her in the back of the head to make sure. Rosie jumped and ran back inside the car, watching me nervously through the window. Tears pricked my eyes, and the tidal wave crashed against the beach again. I squeezed my eyes shut, swallowed and breathed out slowly.
   I moved back around the car, so I didn’t have to face what I had done, picking up the knife as I went. I had nothing at all to bury or burn her. I sat sideways in the back seat, legs dangling out the door, rifle next to me, Rosie curled up behind. I had so many decisions to make, but my hands were shaking, and my mind was blank. I focused on the steady aches in my ankle and shoulder. Trying to appear calm I found the wipes and cleaned the blood off my hands and rifle. I could hear water rushing in my ears.
   Noah stood opposite me, fiddling with a thread on my t-shirt. He didn’t seem to notice that his arm was still bleeding. I wondered if the bullet was still in there. “Are we going to the Isle of Wight today?” he asked.
   “I’m sorry, Noah,” I said quietly. “I can’t take you there.”
   “I’ll be good, I promise,” he leaned towards me, face earnest.
   “I’m sorry,” I said again, and picked up the rifle. “We’ve run out of fuel. Besides, you’re…it’s too dangerous.”
   “No!” he snarled. He snatched at the rifle, and his nails tore the skin on the back of my hand. I gasped, pulling the rifle back and slamming the door in his face. He pounded on the window, tears making tracks down his cheeks.
   “I’m sorry!” I shouted through the glass, feeling sick with myself.
   I couldn’t shoot him, of course not, but I couldn’t leave him in the middle of the New Forest by himself either. He was a monster. But he was also a poor, ill little boy. I sat for hours, shut up inside the car, watching Noah wander around outside, every so often turning towards me, alternating between pleading looks and pure hatred in his eyes. After a while I hauled a bag of food supplies around the headrests. Swiftly, I opened the door and threw it outside. He had a chance now. Noah inspected the bag, then looked at me with disgust.
   “I’m sorry,” I said again, soundless through the window. I wanted to walk away, but my hand was really starting to throb. I wished I had something to soothe it. I took some paracetamol and gently flexed it. The scratches had raised and were turning a sickly purple. Tell tale. My palm was hot and clammy. A sob escaped my mouth, but I held the flood back.
   I thought about what had happened to Roger and Chrissie, what might have happened to Ben. I couldn’t let that happen to me.
   I spent the rest of the afternoon looking for the ball of string I knew I’d packed. Eventually I found it right at the bottom of a bag containing the photos I couldn’t bear to leave behind. My lungs didn’t seem to want to work properly and I had to pause to catch my breath before I knotted sections of it against the handles of the two rear doors. Then I carefully measured out the exact lengths needed, cutting it with the knife I had found earlier. Too short or too long and my plan wouldn’t work.
   I worked slowly – the car was sweltering and my body was shaking. I wouldn’t be able to reach the trigger by hand, hence the strings, but I knew I wouldn’t have the strength left for it anyway. I checked the gun for ammo and jammed the rifle into place, wedged under the passenger arm rest. The empty barrels stared at me. Rosie looked at me quizzically from across the back seat.
   I unwound a section of string and opened the door opposite me. “Go on,” I croaked at her, shooing her out. She jumped around my legs in a circle.
   “Go!” I shouted at her, physically pushing her warm little body away with my feet. So full of life. She slipped off the seat and onto the grass outside. I started to cry, exhausted from the effort and just wishing it was over. With a huge effort I leaned over to shut the door, but she somehow wriggled her way back in. She leaned her full weight against me, nose on my chest. It was comforting. I didn’t have the energy to get her out anymore. I just had to hope Noah would open the door afterwards.
   I set up the photos I’d saved against the window behind her. Ben never wore suits, apart from for weddings or funerals, and he usually looked so awkward in them. But in our wedding photo he just looked happy. We both did. Our whole lives ahead of us. I sniffed and wiped my nose with the back of my hand. It came away bloody.
   Before I had time to think too much, I sat back into place and pulled the door handle.
 
Three months later
 
   He watched through the bushes as the ragged group surrounded the car. Two men and a woman, all with curly red hair. They paused at the remains of Alice’s body, the fleshy parts all eaten by now, then peered through the yellowed windows at the stash of supplies. It was the height of summer now, and although all the fresh food had rotted, it was obvious there were plenty of tins, as well as sleeping bags, blankets, knives...not to mention the gun. The group looked capable, but tired, talking only when necessary, and even then, so quietly he couldn’t hear what they were saying.
   He brushed his overgrown hair out of his eyes. It was so dirty now it looked brown. They eventually broke a back window and unlocked the car from the inside. As the door swung open, Rosie’s desiccated body tumbled out onto the grass and a veil of Liv’s dark hair fell from the back seat. He was sorry. Rosie had been a good dog, and he’d never plucked up the courage to open the car. He stepped out from the undergrowth.
   “Hello?” His voice cracked from disuse. The group whirled around, homemade weapons in hand.
   “Oh, it’s just a boy!” said the woman. “Are you alright?”
   “My family, they all…turned.”
   “Were you bitten?” asked one of the men, at the same time as the other asked “Where are they now?” They looked around warily.
   “Months ago,” He showed them his arm. “Way back near Blandford. Some other people took me this far, but, they didn’t make it…” He gestured at the car.
   “Oh, sweetie, come with us. We’re going to the Isle of Wight. No cases there, last we heard.” She put her arm around him. It reminded him of his mum, before he… before she died. “Say, what’s your name?”
   “Noah.”

​ 
 
 
 
Chapter One
 
Franklin Pierce was on the prowl for some young blood. In his mid-thirties, Pierce was way too old to be hooking up at a college bar, but he was fit and trim as a college athlete and it didn’t hurt that he was good looking. His small stature and boyish looks helped him to fit right in with the young college students from Oregon State University who were looking to unwind at O’Malley’s pub after a stressful day at school.
As he sat, sipping an oatmeal stout at the small Irish pub—decorated in rich mahogany tones and brown Irish whiskey—Franklin chatted it up with a baby-faced kid named Charles. Charles was tall and thin, and his thick wiry hair stood stiff as Bermuda grass. He wore a bright orange tee-shirt which bore the emblem of a beaver, the mascot of the university football team.
The lanky kid and Franklin were discussing whether or not the Beavers were going to beat the Ducks in the annual Civil War game this year. They hadn’t won in years and it didn’t look like they were going to this year either. But Franklin could care less about that. What he was really doing was scanning the faces of the patrons. Talking to the kid was merely a ploy to make him look like a sociable fellow and less like a predator on the prowl.
From across the room, Franklin caught the eye of a pretty blonde. There was something about her face that he rather liked. Her honey-colored hair fell past her shoulders down to a smallish bosom. Franklin smiled at her with one corner of his mouth, inducing a dimple as deep as a canyon. He glanced away and briefly watched the flatscreen at the end of the bar.
Two lawnmower sized remote-controlled robots, driving around inside a caged arena, were bashing the shit out of each other with actuated arms. One of them burst into flames and started chugging black smoke. Franklin chuckled as the winner did victory laps around the burning wreck, slashing the air with its buzzsaw arm.
Glancing back at the blonde, Franklin saw her lean over and say something to her friend who in turn, stole a look at him. That was always a good sign. He turned to his bar-buddy who was still going on about the Beavers and their need for a new defensive coordinator.
“You want to go to a party?” Franklin asked the kid.
“Huh?” The kid looked surprised by the sudden change in topic.
“Bartender,” Franklin said, getting his attention. “Two drinks for the ladies by the door.”
Franklin was pointing across the room at the two women. The bartender nodded and went to work. The kid also looked, and his mouth spawned into a massive smile. 
“Let me do the talking,” Franklin said.
“Whatever you say, coach,” Charles replied and slid off the stool.
Two drinks landed on coasters like a pair of SpaceX rocket boosters. The kid grabbed them and followed Franklin, who was carrying their beers. He held the bottles out in front of him as if he was holding a steering wheel and he drove his way around the room full of crowded tables.
Seeing them coming, the girls leaned into each other and started giggling. Franklin stepped aside, allowing the kid to move past him. Charles set the drinks down on the table that already had a drink in front of each woman. Franklin handed Charles his beer.
“You ladies order a couple of drinks?” Franklin said, showing off his bright white teeth.
The young ladies didn’t respond but just sat there. The guys waited for a long moment not saying anything as if they were waiting for a traffic light to turn green. Finally, the blonde sighed and waved a hand towards two empty chairs.
“Okay, have a seat. But when the drinks are gone, so are you.”
“Don’t be rude, Natty. They seem like nice men,” the girlfriend said, smiling at Charles.
“It’s all good,” Franklin said. “Just don’t drink too fast.”
Franklin took a seat next to the blonde and did a quick assessment of her girlfriend. She had light brown hair that framed an oval face that was nearly as pretty as the blonde. He glanced at her muscular body and suspected she worked out a lot. Otherwise, she was the perfect size.
“I’m Franklin and that’s my pal, Charles.” Franklin said, gesturing to the kid who was sitting by the girlfriend. “We’re engineering majors.”
The kid smiled and gave them a quick wave. Unsure of what to say, he took a nervous sip of beer. His Adam's apple did jumping jacks as he swallowed down some fortitude.
“You’ll have to excuse Charles he gets a bit tongue tied around beautiful women,” Franklin said and then added conspiratorially, “though he did confide in me at the bar he’s a huge fan of the Beavers.”
The kid spit beer down his chin. The girls cackled at him.
“I couldn’t tell by his tee-shirt,” the girlfriend said, giggling.
“Natty,” the pretty blonde said to Franklin. “Aerospace engineering. I’m into rocket engines.”
“I’m Kat, her big sister from Portland.” She smiled at the kid. “I like rockets too.”
Natasha rolled her eyes. “My big sister drove all the way down to check up on me.”
“No … I came down to have some fun,” her big sister said. She sipped her drink. “This is a party town, isn’t it Charles?” she said and patted the kid’s knobby knee.
Charles arched his eyebrows and nodded his head in an exaggerated motion. Painfully self-conscious, he took another long pull off his beer. Franklin remembered that age; how uncomfortable he was in his own skin. Now his gabbing came as naturally as his good-looks.
“What’s the matter Charles, your face is all red,” Katrina said to the kid.
Charles looked over at Franklin with eyes that said, help me.
Franklin chuckled. “Poor kid … he’s suffering from the most dreaded of sexual diseases.”
Charles fired a harsh look at Franklin.
“He’s a virgin,” Franklin said flatly.
Katrina exploded with laughter. The kid’s face turned chili pepper red, and he sneered at Franklin through narrow slits.
“I am not!”
Katrina patted the kid’s leg. “You should really fix that.” 
“He does need a ride home.” Franklin arched his eyebrows up and down.
“Is that right,” Katrina said as she considered the kid with her traveling eyes.
“It’s past his curfew,” Franklin added. “His mother will be worried.”
The kid glared back at Franklin. “I have my own room, thank you.”
“Oh, really?” Katrina turned to her sister, “Do you mind?”
Natasha’s eyes went wide. “What!? We just got here.”
“Have a heart, Natty ... he looks like he’s ready to pop,” Katrina said as she rubbed the kid’s upper thigh.
“How am I getting home? And don’t think I’m riding with him,” Natasha said pointing her chin at Franklin.
“Hey, I’ll have you know I’m a Hop-In driver in my spare time,” Franklin said.
“That makes me feel so much better,” Natasha said sarcastically. “Sorry, but I’ve heard too many horror stories about rideshare drivers,” she said. “They’re rape-mobiles.”
There was a moment of silence as Natasha studied her drink that she rotated on the table between her long delicate fingers. Franklin watched Katrina make goo-goo eyes at the kid. He sighed. That’s when it came to. Why not all three?
“Hey! You guys want to come to my place?” Franklin asked.
Katrina perked up. "A party?" 
“I don't live far away and there’s plenty of room in my Tesla,” Franklin said.
“Ohhh … a Tesla! They’re so sexy.” Katrina turned to her sister. “What do you say, Natty?”
Natasha frowned at her big sister who was leaning her head against the kid’s shoulder.
“The three of us could take him on,” the kid said. “You know, if he tried anything.”
Franklin nodded. “Kid’s got a point. Anyway, you don’t have to worry about that. I’m a nice guy. Promise.”
Natasha shot Katrina a disapproving look. “I thought you wanted to hang out tonight?”
“I do! But … you know,” she said as she grabbed Charle’s hand with her own and pressed it against her bosom. The kid’s face turned red. He was obviously excited.
“Sorry if I’m such a bore.” Natasha said. After a beat, she sighed heavily and rolled her eyes in an exaggerated manner. “Okay, fine. But we leave at ten. I have classes in the morning.”
“Hooray!” Katrina said brightening. “Let’s go party!”

 
 
 
 
 
 
Chapter Two
 
Natashsa sat in the front passenger seat of Franklin’s black-on-black Tesla. As he drove through a quiet neighborhood, ‘Hey Ladies’ by the Beastie Boys, thumped through high-end speakers. Natasha stared out the window at rows of older homes with wrap around porches and thick overhangs. Eventually the Tesla moved out of the neighborhood and entered an industrial part of town where long-low buildings sat on huge swaths of land with tall grass.
Natasha couldn’t hear over the loud music, but she could smell the sex wafting from the backseat. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the shadow of her sister sucking face with the fresh-faced boy. Their hands were working overtime somewhere out of view. Natasha couldn’t believe what a slut her sister was and she rolled her eyes in disgust.
“At least Kat is having fun. Isn’t she Natty?” said the man who called himself Franklin.
Natasha examined him closely. He was devilishly handsome with dimples at the corners of his mouth. Happy lines radiated from his eyes making him appear older. Reaching over, she lowered the music.
“Are you really a student?” she asked.
Franklin eyebrows furrowed. “Of course.”
Natasha shifted in her seat, so she was facing him head on.
“This is way too nice a car for a Hop-In driver. So are your clothes. Who's your physics professor, Mister Engineering Major? Don’t try to lie to me ... I know them all.”
Franklin shot her an irritated glance. He didn't answer her, but took a sudden left turn onto a road without any street lights. The Tesla drove between two rows of closely packed arborvitaes. With the blackness of night overhead it was like traveling down a darkened hallway lit only by halogen headlamps.
Franklin reached up and pressed a remote control that was clipped to the Tesla’s sun visor. Natasha peered into the side view mirror. Reflected in the red glow of the Tesla’s tail lights was a gate that slid closed behind them. The wheels popped as they rolled over loose gravel.
“Where‘re we going?” Natasha said, looking suddenly worried.
“Just relax, we’re almost there,” Franklin said.
His thigh flexed as he pressed down on the foot pedal. The rising pitch of the electric motor matched the acceleration pressing against Natasha’s queasy stomach. As they flew ahead, the arborvitaes blurred into a green wall.
Craning her neck to check on her sister, Natasha was met with a writhing mass of intertwining arms and grinding hips and moaning so loud she thought they were climaxing.  
The electric car shot out of the passage and entered several acres of dark, empty parking lot. The arborvitaes fanned out and surrounded the entire lot, forming a castellated wall of dark foliage. The faint glow of city-light revealed a tall rectangular structure sitting in the middle of the gravel field like a giant coffin.
As they neared the structure, a shadowy three story brick building took shape. It had arched windows that Natasha could now see were filled in with bricks. Dozens of fancy cars were parked outside the main entrance.
“I don’t like this. Take us back,” Natasha demanded.
“Oh, come on. What’s the fuss? We’re here.”
Franklin turned the Tesla to his left and aligned the vehicle with the narrow side of the long building. He reached up and pressed a button to a second remote. A crack of light appeared at the base of the building and grew wider. As they got closer, Natasha made out a metal door coiling inside a large drum mounted above the opening.
Franklin slowed his approach, allowing time for the door to fully retract.
“What is this place?” Natasha asked.
“It’s where I live. I have an apartment inside,” Franklin said, his voice flat.
“But it’s a-a … Factory.”
“Factory? No. It was my father’s newspaper printing plant. He left it to me years ago.”
Fluorescent lights flickered inside of the large cavern looming ahead of them.
“And you live inside?” Natasha said, her lips curling back.
“I know it doesn’t look like much, but wait till you see the inside.” Franklin waggled his eyebrows and shot her a wicked grin.
“Kat!” Natasha called, raising her voice over the music.
“Not … now!” Katrina yelled between heaving breaths.
“But Kat!”
“I’m busy!”
Natasha yanked on the handle to open the door, but it was locked. Franklin chuckled.
“Good ol’ Tesla. Always concerned about passenger safety,” Franklin said in a snarky tone. “It’ll open after I stop.”
As the Tesla rolled into the abysmal opening, it slowed to a stop in front of a shipping and receiving dock. Three fifty-five gallon drums―each painted a different color―sat on a wooden pallet. Natasha thought there was something off about them and then noticed each had plexiglass windows installed on the upper end of each barrel.
Parked nearby was a beat up looking forklift with it’s long tines sitting on the ground. A brown rat scampered from behind the yellow truck and scurried through a darkened doorway.
Turning towards their driver, Natasha noticed he was facing away from her bent over doing something. The metallic rattling of the door closing behind them caught her attention.
Natasha unbuckled her seat belt, grabbed the handle and smashed her shoulder against the door, but it remained firmly locked.
“I lied,” Franklin said, his voice sounding muffled and thin.
She turned towards Franklin and gasped in something sweet. He was looking at her through a pair of big plastic lenses encased inside a black rubber skin. Between them sat a bulbous snout covered with holes. There was a hissing of air and her nostrils flared as the sickly sweet odor of ginger assaulted her senses.
Franklin was holding a small red canister in one hand and a big black nozzle in the other which he was pointing at her face. Wavy lines of an invisible vapor distorted his gasmask. She knocked it away with one hand and tried to hold her breath, but it was too late. The last thing she remembered were millions of stars bursting inside her skull. Then everything went black.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Chapter Three
 
Natasha awoke inside cramped darkness. Disoriented, and with a throbbing headache, she tried to move but couldn’t. She was sitting upright with her knees pinned against her chest making it difficult to breathe. She was trapped inside of something but didn’t know what. A hard surface was pressing in all around as if she was in an iron fist.
A wave of panic washed over her, causing her heart to hammer against her chest as if it was trying to escape its confines. Bile from her stomach rose up into her throat and she fought to swallow it back down. The thought of having to deal with her own puke, terrified her even more than the claustrophobia. She needed to calm herself.
Focused on her breathing, Natasha noticed the air was stale and had an oily smell. Whatever she was inside of was warm and her skin was prickly with sweat. She wiped her brow with her hand. Since her hands were free, she felt around the curving wall. It was rough and scaly. Above her was a metal lid that was slightly domed and sealed around the edges.
An image of brightly colored fifty-five gallon drums sitting on a wooden pallet suddenly flashed in her mind. It was followed by the memory of a black nozzle. She’d been gassed.
The sonuvabitch stuffed me inside a metal drum!
She slid her hands forward until she crossed over an edge where the surface became smooth as polished glass. Her right hand bumped into something sitting above her knees. It was a thin vertical shaft connected to a square base. A small round button sat nearby. It made a clicking noise when she pressed it. What it was for, she didn’t know, but something told her she was going to find out.
“Natty! You out there?” a muffled female voice called out to her.
Natasha recognized her sister’s voice. She felt a flutter of relief: “Kat! Are you okay?”
“I’m trapped inside a fucking can! What the hell do you think?”
A ripple of laughter swept through the room. It reminded Natasha of a sit-com laugh track.
“Who’s that? Who’s laughing?” a man yelled.
“I’m claustrophobic! Let me out!” a panicked voice bawled.
More frightened voices joined in: “Where am I?” “What the hell is going on?” “Help!”
High-pitched feedback crackled from several locations at once. It was followed by screaming loud rave music with a thumping baseline. The song, similar to those played in techno dance clubs, built into a frenzied crescendo until a man’s voice boomed over the top of it all:
“Ladies and gentlemen! … Welcome to the games!”
Cheers roared in overwhelming approval followed by enthusiastic clapping and whistling. There was a series of loud clunks as flood lights switched on and circled dizzily overhead. Natasha found she was looking through a plexiglass window and blinked against the bright lights that penetrated the darkness of her cramped barrel.
A joystick, silhouetted by the light, sat above her knees. A cone of light shined through a small hole in the lid above her, which supplied her with air. Somewhere nearby, hidden beneath the background of the loud music, Natasha sensed the dull throb of heavy machinery pulsing like a heartbeat.
Through her viewport, Natasha made out other steel barrels and wondered which one her sister was in. Above them, mounted on black support beams criss-crossing the wall, hung a giant flatscreen monitor that flashed to life. The larger than life image of Franklin appeared in ultra high definition, wearing a black headset and mic that was pressed against his lips.
“I can't hear you!" Franklin yelled.
The fans rewarded him with a deafening roar.
"That's better! I’ll be your host tonight. Are you ready for battle!?”
The unseen crowd bellowed their full-throated support. The Hop-In driver smiled as he pushed a mouse around and his eyes flicked from one part of the screen to another.
“Betting is now open. Please use your betting app to place your wagers. You have ten minutes!” Franklin said. “In the meantime, allow me to introduce our contestants!”
Natasha couldn’t restrain herself and yelled up at the screen: “Fuck you, asshole!”
Franklin couldn’t hear a word inside his control room. He continued talking as he introduced this evening’s contestants. On screen were a dozen steel drums packed tightly together in the middle of a square room. Each was a different color and had a plexiglass window facing the screen. A big bold number was painted on the side of each barrel. Natasha wondered which one she and her sister were in.
The camera zoomed in on a red barrel with the number “one” on the outside. Three gnarled fingers stuck out of the hole, wiggling maddly. A video of an aged man appeared on screen. Natasha could tell it was taken inside of a vehicle.
When Natasha’s terrified face appeared on-screen, she was frantically trying to open the door. Natasha stuck her middle finger through the hole on a blue barrel marked “six.” As the camera zoomed in on it, raucous laughter came from the invisible fans.
Franklin went on to introduce the other contestants along with their faces as they sat inside various vehicles. Apparently, Franklin wasn’t the only driver delivering victims to the factory. When he was finished, Natasha still had no clue which steel drum contained her sister. She guessed she was in the middle of the pack somewhere. 
“Five minutes remain to place your bets!” Franklin announced.
He reached over and turned a knob, the music grew louder. His image was replaced with random shots of the crowd, standing on a balcony that overlooked an arena. Awash in excitement, they were dressed to kill wearing fine jewelry that sparkled in the flashing lights. Popping pills that they chased down with alcohol, the rich danced to the rhythm of the hard-driving rave music.
Natasha worried about what was coming.
The music cut out and was replaced with a jaunty tune. An animated cartoon of a fifty-five gallon drum rolling on six wheels zipped onto the big screen and screeched to a halt. A joystick appeared and it’s back and forth movement matched that of the moving steel drum.
 Natasha looked at her own joystick between her knees. So that’s what it’s for.
“All right, contestants! Better listen up!” Franklin said. “Tonight’s game is called: Last Can Standing.”
The animated fifty-five gallon drum followed a dotted line to an oversized mallet that was suspended in mid-air. A square module mounted on the front of the drum latched onto the mechanical arm. Another dotted line pointed to the joystick button which triggered the oversized mallet to swing down and smash against the floor. A second fifty-five gallon drum rolled into frame and the mallet flattened it into a pancake―ala Wile E. Coyote.
Franklin continued, “Your goal, eliminate the other contestants. Be the last can standing and you’ll win ten milllllllion dollars. Are you ready to battle!?”
The spectators bellowed their approval.
“Good. The betting app is now closed.”
Natasha was beginning to understand the deadly nature of the game and she wondered if they really thought they were going to kill each other for their entertainment. The rave music returned. A thin voice came from behind Natasha’s head.
“Hello, Natty,” Franklin's voice hissed from behind her head.
Startled, Natasha jerked her arm back unaware that she knocked the joystick off its platform and fell behind her ankles.
"The fuck!"
“You have a choice to make.”
“Fuck you and your choices!” she shot back. “What’re you going to do to us?”
“Never mind that, just listen: You can either fight or you can head for the viewing platform at the other end of the arena. Underneath you’ll find something to help you.”
“You expect me to believe you, you fucking shitweasle?” she asked.
“No, but if you and your sister want to get out of this alive, you better.”
“I swear, if I get out of here, I’m going to kill you!”
“That’s the spirit.” He cut out.
Natasha slammed her fist against the wall. A low chant rose from the crowd.
“Battle. Battle. Battle. Battle.”
“Players are you ready?” Franklin yelled.
A drum roll played over the speakers.
"On your marks!”
The chanting from the spectators rose: “BATTLE! BATTLE! BATTLE!“
“Get set!”
Rattling chains came from Natasha’s left. The wall was lifting upward revealing a brightly lit arena.
“Go!!!”
A high-pitched air-horn exploded from the speakers.
All around Natasha the steel drums of the other contestants began to move. Remembering her joystick, she reached for but it was gone. She didn’t know she had knocked it off.
As she felt around for it in the darkness, she kept her eyes on the other barrels. They bumped into each other as they headed for the opening, but almost as quickly, they reversed direction and moved back into the room.
Turning her head to look, Natasha immediately understood why; scattered about were dozens of deadly machines going through their lethal machinations.
A swinging pendulum with a curved blade swung over the floor in a wide arc. An eight foot square block of solid steel rose and fell with a resounding crash that shook the floor. A metal cylinder moved along a slot, swinging two enormous metal balls in a wide circle.
There were many more, but Natasha’s eyes went past them towards the raised viewing platform at the end of the arena. Supported by a steel girder high above the floor, dozens of spectators were crowded behind a railing that stretched the width of the rectangular building. She tried to see what was underneath, but it was too dark.
Loud rumbling came from her right.
Natasha looked the other way. Another wall had lifted revealing a shiny metal cylinder as wide as the room they were in. Welded to the smooth surface in even rows were thousands of spikes. It started to spin and gained speed until the spikes became a blur.
The intended effect was immediate.
The fifty-five gallon drums dashed away from the spinning cylinder as fast their electric motors would carry them and entered the arena. Only Natasha and the old man remained. Natasha tried to reach for her joystick but she could only brush against it with her fingertips.
“What are you waiting for?” Franklin said through the tiny speaker behind her head.
Natasha ignored him, but she heard voices in the background. Franklin wasn’t alone. After a few moments, Franklin’s voice returned, somewhat subdued.
“Sorry, sweetheart, you’re all outta time. Boss’s orders.”
The floor underneath Natasha jerked sideways and started moving towards the spinning cylinder. The old man jerked forward and moved between Natasha and the cylinder.
Her fingers grasped the joystick and as she pulled it up, the old man lurched forward and rammed into her, knocking the joystick free. She screamed in frustration. Through the plexiglass, she saw the old man bang into her again. He was pushing her towards the opening.
Oh my God! He’s trying to help me!
The old man did this a couple of more times and Natty thought they might escape. But the floor picked up speed and the gains they made were eaten up by the hungry cylinder that seemed to be pulling the floor into its steely teeth.
There was a roar as the fans cried out and Natasha glanced up at the screen. Someone had just been squashed by the giant steel block. As it rose up on a thick chain, long red strands of gelatinous goo stretched up with it. A handful of small robots shot out of holes in the wall and dragged the flattened drum off the floor, leaving behind a bloody trail.
“Number eleven is the first casualty. Congratulations to the lucky bettors,” Franklin said.
Natasha heard several of the spectators shout with joy. Closing her eyes, she prayed it wasn’t her sister, Katrina.
There was a flash of light as a spike cut through the edge of the old man’s can causing it to bounce forward and bang into Natasha. The flying sparks shone inside Natasha’s barrel like a strobe. That’s when she saw it: a black wire traveling from the bracket down to the joystick.
Natasha pulled the wire until the joystick plopped back into place. She looped the excess wire around it to make sure it didn’t fall again. Pulling the joystick backwards, she rolled away from the old man who was looking at her with big shining eyes.
She watched in horror as the spikes caught the edge of his barrel again. Only this time, the teeth sank into the lid and crumpled the barrel like an aluminum can and sucked him under. Natasha reached out for him.
“No!” she cried out.
Blood from the spinning spikes splattered against the plexiglass of her drum.
Gleeful shouts bellowed from the fans as they pumped their fists up and down on the big screen above her. Rage coursed through Natasha’s veins. She swore before the night was out, she would have her revenge.
She whipped the joystick to the right and wheeled around. She glided across the moving floor at an angle and entered the arena with a bump and a bounce. The wall slammed down behind her with a convincing thud.
All hell was waiting for her.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Chapter Four
 
Franklin was staring at one of three flatscreens sitting on a wrap-around desk inside a large corner office. To the right of the display panels was a control bank with an array of square buttons and round dials. Two boxy computer cabinets bookended the entire setup. The screen Franklin was looking at had a checkerboard of images sort of like a large Zoom meeting.
With his left index finger, he tapped on an image inside the crowded field and it filled the screen. The words “Start Room” hovered over the grainy image of two barrels sitting alone inside the square room. Both sat perfectly still next to the spinning metal cylinder. The one in front had the number six painted on its side. That was Natty and Franklin didn’t understand why she wasn’t moving. The old man maybe, but not her. She was smart.
Franklin reached for the control panel to his right. With his right index finger, he lightly caressed button number six as if it was the person he desired at the other end―Natty. After going through their purses, he’d learned that Natty and Kat were short for Natasha and Katrina and that their last name was Ivanov. They were Russain. Franklin had a thing for Russain girls. It was one of the filters on his dating app and it explained why he found Natty so damn attractive.
Had he known that at the bar, he would’ve chosen some other victims instead. Now he wanted to help them but it would mean stoking the ire of his boss, Peter Daltry. Once the contestants were inside the death arena, Peter forbade Franklin from helping them. Normally, Franklin did as he was told, but lately he didn’t give a damn what Peter thought or wanted. 
Besides, he liked Natty and the thought of her dying ate away at what little conscience he had left. As Franklin considered the options, it occurred to him there was one way he could help, but it was extremely dangerous. Not for him, but for Natty and Kat. Going against the rules, he contacted Natasha and told her to head for the platform. There she would find a way out.
But that was several minutes ago and Natty was still sitting there just a few feet from the spinning wheel of death. He worried she wasn’t going to make it out of the start room, never mind all the way to the platform. What was going on? He pressed button number six to find out.
“What are you waiting for?” he said earnestly into his mic.
He didn’t hear her answer. Peter Daltry flung the door open and marched into the control room with two bodyguards in tow. Franklin wheeled around and leaned back as Peter approached him. Peter’s eyes darted from the lit-up button number six over to Franklin’s nervous face.
“What have I told you about talking to the fucking contestants, Pierce?” the tall, square shouldered man said with eyes on fire. His fists were balled up tight like he was ready to fight.
“Sorry, Boss. I-I was just having a bit of fun,” he said, smiling.
Peter slapped the smile off Franklin’s face, knocking his headset off. As Franklin was putting it back on, Peter continued:
“People are pissed. That fucking old man would’ve died first if you had turned on the goddamn conveyor belt. Now turn it on!”
Franklin stared at Peter defiantly before speaking into his mic:
“Sorry, sweetheart. You’re all outta time. Boss’s orders,” he said and toggled a switch.
Peter watched the conveyor belt kick on and the barrels begin a slow march towards the spinning spikes.
“I swear by all that is fucking holy,” Peter said, “do that again and I’ll fucking kill you.”
“It won’t happen again, boss.”
“Damn right it won’t.”
Peter stormed out of the office followed by his two bodyguards. The last guard to leave slammed the door behind him as if he was an extension of Peter’s arm.
Franklin fought the urge to yell something stupid. Instead, he scooted over to the door on his wheeled chair and locked it. After returning to his desk, he peeked at the start room. Natty was inching towards the deadly cylinder. He didn’t want to watch, so he double-tapped the image, making it disappear. A knot was forming in his gut and he thought he might puke.
Peter was going to kill him.
He’d seen Peter do the same to other drivers for screwing up. Like when a contestant turned out to be too big to fit inside a can. Angry, Peter would jam the driver inside and put them in the game. Franklin was sure Peter was going to do that to him. Maybe not tonight, but after their little chat just now, he was certain it would be soon.
Just like how certain Franklin was the people inside the death arena were all going to die. Nobody was going to win ten million dollars. He only said that to help motivate them to fight. It always amazed Franklin how well it worked. Greed was a strong primal force, strong enough to make people face death if the reward was big enough.
No, the contestants were on an expressway to hell and Franklin was right behind them. He used to think he was indispensable and that such an ending would never happen to him. This was his building afterall and he set up the arena and the control room.
Nobody knew how to operate the show better than him, including Peter.
Franklin recalled the night as a ride-share driver when he picked Peter up inside his pitiful little beat-to-shit KIA. Just another fare, he thought. But Peter knew all about him and how his deceased father had left Franklin his failed newspaper printing business. Caused by the popularity of the internet, it now carried more debt now than assets. At first, Franklin thought Peter wanted to buy the building that housed the broken down printing press. But Peter said he didn’t want his name attached to it. He had other plans. Illegal ones.
Peter was a billionaire with lots of billionaire friends who liked to be entertained in ways that weren’t lawful. Like Peter’s safari venture where he and his friends tracked down and killed unarmed transients. The killing was fun, but it was a lot of work for a brief thrill and some of the clients hated getting their hands dirty. Peter had something else in mind, something that would make him a lot more money and Franklin’s building was exactly what Peter was looking for.
At first Franklin refused, but the money Peter offered him was too good to pass up, so he sold his soul to the devil. Six years into this sordid business Franklin learned what a truly enormous prick Peter was. There were too many missing people, too many close calls with authorities and Franklin sensed it was reaching a breaking point. There was no doubt in his mind, Peter was going to kill him and after that, destroy the evidence.
But not if Franklin killed him first.
Franklin rechecked the start room. He smiled as Natasha bounced off the conveyor belt and entered the arena. He flipped a switch that dropped the wall behind her. He was happy to see she was negotiating her way around the hazards and heading straight for the platform at the far end of the building. Franklin hovered a finger over button number six and caressed it lightly.
He wanted to hear her voice again.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Chapter Five
 
As soon as Natasha entered the arena, her ears were met with the crisp ring of metal slicing through metal. She turned in time to witness the backswing of the bladed pendulum slinging crimson fluid from its sharpened edge. The drum it had just sliced through peeled apart and fell in two pieces onto the floor. Its gory contents were on display like some macab science exhibit.
The audience cheered the death as if a touchdown had just been scored.
Natasha couldn’t be a hundred percent sure, but the person inside the split barrel was wearing an orange shirt, the color Charles from the pub was wearing. She hoped it wasn’t him.
“Betting reopens after three more player eliminations, so get your apps ready!” Franklin announced to the audience.
Natasha looked up at the spectator’s faces glowing from smartphones they held up close. She remembered what Franklin had told her and moved towards the platform, trying to avoid the many death traps all around her. As she worked her way through, she noticed some of the contestants had weapons attached to the front of their drums. One contestant was cutting open another with a chainsaw. Scintillating sparks flew and bounced off the floor.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a drum zooming towards her. Extended out in front was an arm with sharp pincers that opened and closed like oversized scissors.
Natasha swung to her right to avoid the pincers, but was hit from behind by a big metal ball on a spinning cylinder. It didn’t hit her full on or it would have crushed her.
Instead it was a glancing blow but powerful enough to toss her into another contestant whom she knocked over. He rolled into the path of a high speed circular blade that rose out of the floor like a table saw. A rooster tail of blood showered a pursuer’s view window, blinding him.
That person shot through the gaping mouth of a towering clown face with sharp teeth. A row of swords chomped down with a sickening crunch. As the teeth rose up, the steel drum slipped off and fell on its side. Viscous streams poured from four blade holes and splashed onto the metal floor as bright red as strawberry syrup.
“Six contestants left! Betting has reopened. You have thirty seconds!”
A moment later she heard Franklin’s voice speaking inside her drum.
“You might want to reconsider who you’re killing next time.”
As the barrel was dragged away by the tiny robots, Natasha was overcome with grief. Who else could he be referring to except . . .
“Oh my God, Kat!” she choked on her words.
“Not her. That dumb kid she was banging in the back seat of my car.”
Natasha wanted to curse at Franklin, but she didn’t. “Is … Is Kat still alive?”
Franklin hesitated before answering. “Yes, but that’s all I can tell you. Now go.”
As the speaker cut out, Natasha wondered if this was another one of his sick games. Could she really trust a psychopath who got a thrill out of watching people die. She didn’t really have a choice. As her sister so eloquently put it: she was trapped inside a fucking can.
She turned and continued her journey to the viewing platform.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Chapter Six
 
Peter was pounding on the locked door, screaming obscenities. Franklin unlocked it before he tried to break the door down. Peter barged in, followed by his two slabs of meat.
“Why’s this door locked?”
“I don’t know, Boss,” Franklin lied. “Musta locked when you slammed the door.”
“Fucking smartass. What’s the numbers, wise-guy?”
“We’re up seventeen mill and change.”
“Seventeen?” his eyebrows shot up. “Not bad.” 
“Not bad? It’s a record.”
“How much time do I have?”
“Soon,” Franklin said. “Very soon.”
"Everything ready?"
"Your rig is all set."
"Good, I love seeing their faces when I come into the death arena swinging my buzzsaw."
Franklin glanced at the monitor. “They’re killing each other pretty fast down there.”
“How many cans left?”
“Six―” a buzzer sounded inside the office. “Make that five.”
“Right. It’s showtime,” Peter said excitedly. He started to leave, but stopped and turned around, “Keep an eye on him until I get back, boys. We got some unfinished business,” he said with a thin smile.
He slammed the door as he left and Peter’s bodyguards positioned themselves in front of it. Franklin didn’t like the way Peter smiled at him. He didn’t like the way his boy’s sneered at him either. Like the contestants on the arena floor, Franklin felt his time was running out.
Peter was heading down to the garage where he would climb inside his personal killing-bot. It was a tank really and he liked to end the night by finishing off the remaining contestants. Peter was a bloodthirsty killer who loved getting his rocks off, so just to be sure, he always went down at the half-way point to get ready.
Franklin was well aware of that fact. Earlier, when no one was around, he’d rigged several pounds of explosives at one of the death traps. When Peter drove near it―he would flick a switch and―kablooey! Franklin didn’t want the slabs of meat to hear him as he spoke to Natasha again, so he cranked up the volume inside the office.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Chapter Seven
 
Using her joystick, Natasha moved through the gauntlet of death by carefully maneuvering around one deadly hazard after another. She also managed to avoid any further altercation with the other contestants. About halfway across the arena, she came into an open area that appeared to be free of any obstacles. As she was about to zip across, a voice crackled to life.
“Wait here a second,” Franklin said from the usual point behind her head.
Natasha jerked to a stop. She couldn’t get used to the sound of his disembodied voice appearing suddenly. As she waited, she noticed the floor was covered with rows of small holes, their edges were scorched black. A loud hissing sound was followed by the stench of rotten eggs.
That was the only warning she got before a bright fireball erupted in mid-air. The heat radiated inside her drum, making the air hot and heavy to breathe.
“Quickly now, little butterfly . . . before you burn your wings off,” Franklin said.
Natasha hurried across the rows of holes afraid Franklin would reignite the flames and roast her alive. But he didn’t. As she neared the other side, she smelled the rotten eggs again. She barely got across before the fire belched from the holes, unfurling like an explosion.
“Why are you helping me?” she asked.
“I’ve got my reasons. Fly away little butterfly.”
Natasha scoffed, she felt more like a larva trapped inside its cocoon.
From her left, a contestant with an oversized battleaxe chased another with a metal claw. The axe came down and cleaved the lid but apparently didn’t harm the contestant inside. Because that person whirled around and clamped it’s metal claw around the steel drum of its attacker. The claw squeezed until the seams of the can popped and then released the drum. It fell to the ground and wobbled drunkenly as it scooted away.
The driver with the claw then came after Natasha who sped away. But she ran over a rotating platform that redirected her onto a conveyor belt with rails on both sides. Natasha tried to drive off the belt, but the rails prevented her from leaving the belt that carried her towards her final destination: a pair of air-actuated pistons, slamming into each other with a sharp clang.
Natasha tried to back up, but the conveyor belt was going faster. Her heart was banging inside her chest like the pistons in front of her. She thought she was about to die.
Sharp metal scraped against the sides of her barrel. Using her joystick she turned to face the driver with the claw. A glaring light hid the driver’s face. At first Natasha thought the driver meant to crush her, but she felt herself being lifted.
From this higher angle, the glare was gone and she could see who was lifting her. It was her sister, Katrina! She carried Natasha off the conveyor belt and dropped her to the floor. Natasha smiled at her through the plexiglass and Katrina smiled back at her.
“Oh my, God!” Natasha yelled and waved at her big sister. “You’re alive!”
Katrina held a hand up next to her ear and shook her head. She couldn’t hear her.
A surge of hope filled Natasha’s soul. Franklin hadn’t lied about her sister. Maybe there was something under the platform that could help them escape this slaughterhouse. With no means to communicate, she pointed towards the platform and beckoned her sister to follow.
“No more dilly-dallying,” Franklin’s voice said. “The final boss is coming.”
Natasha and her sister deftly negotiated the remaining obstacles without further incident. As they rolled under the platform Natasha didn’t see anything helpful at all. There was a roll-up door that was as wide and tall as a semi. Above it was a yellow light attached to the wall. To the right were a couple of long black pipes that hugged the brick wall. Each had a round handle.
“We’re here! I don’t see anything, asshole!” Natasha yelled from inside her barrel.
“Give it a minute,” Franklin said.
The yellow light lit up and started rotating just as the door cracked open at the bottom. Thinking Franklin was opening it, Natasha moved closer. But as the door rose higher, something on the other side came into view.
It was monstrous, whatever it was, and sat on a dozen wheels that Natasha decided probably wasn’t friendly. She moved to the right of the door and hugged the brick wall. Her sister joined her.
Dramatic music filled the room and Natasha heard stamping feet coming from the excited crowd above her. They began to chant over and over:
“Boss ... Boss ... Boss ... Boss ... Boss.”
“That’s right! We’re down to the final four! Please extend a warm welcome to … ”
A big armored monster hurtled out of the opening. Painted on its back, in big fat sloppy paint strokes, were two words:
“... The Final Bosssssss!” Franklin shouted.
The size of a dumpster, the big rig rumbled into the death arena, flailing its long arms. The fans jumped up and down and screamed. The monstrosity spun around and exercised its weapons: a snapping lobster claw and a swiveling buzzsaw. It charged across the arena, plowing through death traps without harm, chasing after three barrels that scattered in different directions.
“Who the fuck is that?” Natasha yelled.
“My boss. He’s a real asshole. Go inside, you’ll find a can-opener,” Franklin’s voice said.
“A can opener?” Natasha said disbelievingly.
Natasha wheeled into the empty garage where the monster had come out of. To her right was a regular door with a glowing red “EXIT” sign above it. Across from that, mounted on the wall to her left, was a weird looking apparatus with a circular band of metal.
Natasha wheeled over to the door but there was no way she could open the doorknob without the use of her hands. She spun around and faced the weird looking apparatus. Below the circular ring was a square module like the one in the cartoon. Maybe that was the can opener.
Outside the garage, the horrible sound of a buzzsaw cutting through steel made its way into the garage along with the enthusiastic screams of the fans outside.
“One down. Three to go,” Franklin’s voice echoed from the loudspeakers. "You have one minute to make your wagers!"
Natasha moved towards the thing on the opposite wall and docked with the module. She felt as well as heard the connection. The arm pivoted down and the ring clamped around the upper end of her barrel.
“Press your joystick button.” Franklin said to her urgently.
Natasha hesitated: “Is this thing going to kill me?”
“No, but you might want to stay away from the sides.”
“The hell? No way!”
“You want to get out?”
Natasha sighed. “What happens after that?”
“You saw the door, follow it to the front entrance. The keys are on the front seat of my Tesla outside. Now hurry. He’s coming.”
Grinding sound of a steel drum being ripped in half carried into the garage. An ecstatic ovation erupted from the onlookers. 
“I’m calling the police first chance I get.”
“I’m counting on it.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“To get even with my asshole of a boss. This is his operation. I just work for him.”
“And you picked today to find a conscience?”
“Yes and no. I’ve been planning to screw him over, but I’m doing this for you.”
“Don’t think this absolves you of anything. I hope you rot in jail.”
“I expect I will. Now hurry, little butterfly.”
Natasha pressed the joystick button. A high speed grating screeched inside the drum and she grit her teeth as a pair of diamond saws cut the metal in a perfectly straight line just above the plexiglass viewport. Glowing hot embers splashed inside and burned through her clothing and stung her skin. She screamed in agony.
As the blade traveled behind her, she leaned forward as far as she could, but the heat burned her back. When she didn’t think she could stand any more, the top end of the barrel lifted abruptly and a rush of cool air enveloped her. She took in a deep breath.
The module disengaged from the steel drum and the lid fell to the floor with a loud clatter.  Katrina grabbed Natasha with her claw and turned the barrel sideways spilling Natasha onto the floor. Her movements were stiff and slow like a newborn baby gazelle.
The rolling wheels nearing the garage made both women look up. The mechanical nightmare extended its arms outward, brandishing bloody weapons.  
Natasha pushed herself up to her knees. She tried to stand, but her legs wouldn’t work. They were stiff and numb from the lack of circulation. She grimaced in pain.
“My legs! I can’t … I can’t … I can’t stand up,” Natasha cried.
Katrina looked down at her sister and then at the incoming beast. She bit her bottom lip.
“I got this,” Katrina said.
“Katrina, don’t! You can’t win,” Natasha pleaded.
“Do you remember when we were kids and the oven exploded?”
It took Natasha a moment but she remembered. As a little girl, the pilot light in the oven went out. It smelled like rotten eggs right before the oven blew up in a ball of flame. She nodded her head.
Katrina continued: “There are two valves just outside the entrance. One is labeled, pilot.”
The lumbering monstrosity was almost to the edge of the viewing platform. Katrina turned and flew out of the garage. She headed straight at it.
“Katrina! Wait!” Natasha yelled after her. 
But it was too late. Katrina was gone. Natasha watched her big sister race out of the garage with the bottom half of the steel drum in her claw. Katrina raced around the support beam just as the buzzsaw was about to hit her. It bounced off the iron girder instead.
Katrina sped around the beam in a big circle and smashed the steel drum against the back of the metal monster. It bounced off harmlessly. The monster spun around and she scooted to the opposite side of the beam well out of reach of its swinging arms. 
Natasha crawled on all fours towards the opening and watched Katrina playing keep away from the less nimble mechanical boss by keeping the thick support beam between them. Occasionally, the buzzsaw would miss Katrina and cut into the beam, chipping off big chunks. 
Outside the entrance, Natasha found the two valves: each attached to its own pipe that ran down the wall into the floor. Natash was up on her knees and she found the valve marked ‘pilot’ as Katrina had told her.
She cranked it clockwise until it wouldn’t turn anymore. She then cranked the other valve marked ‘main’ all the way open. Natasha knew it would take forever to fill the building with enough gas to cause an explosion. But that would buy them time to get away. 
Her sister screamed and Natasha whirled. The Boss had grabbed Katrina’s claw and ripped the mechanical arm from Katrina’s drum. The monster swung the buzzsaw at her but hit the beam again. This time it cut so deep that it jammed and wouldn’t break free.
Natasha pulled herself up using the pipe until she was standing on wobbly legs.
“Katrina! Katrina! Come on!!” Natasha yelled.
She got her sister’s attention but also the metal beast as well. It extended its snapping lobster claw at Natasha, but the jammed blade held him in place.
Natasha leapt into the garage. Katrina sped around him, barely missing the scissoring pincers and entered the garage.
Natasha had spotted a control panel with two buttons labeled: Up and Down. As Katrina rolled inside, Natasha slammed the button and as the door lowered closed, the behemoth tried repeatedly to free its buzzsaw from the steel girder. 
Looking back, Natasha saw Katrina docking with the can opener like she had earlier. The ring powered around the top of her barrel. Natasha limped towards her, the feeling in her legs returning slowly. As she got closer, she heard the buzzsaw winding up outside.
The door was hit by the beast’s lobster claw, putting a big dent in it. He hit it again and again, the dent growing in size. Then the buzzsaw cut through the door and sliced in a horizontal line. Red and orange sparks showered inside the garage. 
Natasha stood by helplessly as she waited for the can-opener to continue spinning and cutting, spitting out a dazzling spray of white hot metal. It seemed like it was taking forever.
“Come on!” Katrina yelled from inside the barrel.
The diamond blades stopped spinning and lifted the lid, revealing her sister stuffed inside. Globs of sweat ran down her red face.
“Katrina, are you okay?”
Katrina looked up at her Natasha. “Get me … the fuck out …  of this goddamn can!”
She threw the joystick against the wall, smashing it into a million plastic pieces.
“On it,” Natasha said.
She placed both hands on the warm jagged edge. As she readied herself to push, chunks of red brick peppered her face like buckshot.
Shielding her eyes with her hand, the blade had grinded its way into the brick. A shudder ran through her body as she realized where the blade was headed. A blast of adrenaline spurred Natasha into action.
“Tip me over!” Katrina screamed.
Ignoring her sister, Natasha wheeled Katrina towards the door, grabbed the doorknob, and for a split second, feared it was locked. She pulled.
The door flew open.
Natasha heard a metallic ring which was followed by a blazing flash of light and then an explosion. Natasha heaved her sister and herself through the opening as a powerful blast rocked the room. The door smashed Natasha into her sister as it slammed shut.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Chapter Eight
 
Franklin watched the battle taking place between his boss and Katrina underneath the viewing platform. The patrons hung by the waist over the railing to watch the fight. The rest watched the battle on the big screen above the arena. It played well on the betting app as bets started climbing for Katrina. He scoffed at the idea, but the odds were high and some people can’t resist voting for the underdog.
Behind the battling duo, Franklin saw movement. Double tapping the screen, the image zoomed into Natasha. She was crawling through the opening on her hands and knees. He pressed the button. 
“Don’t go out there,” he said.
But the lid was behind her and she couldn’t hear him over the noise. When Natasha started cranking the valves, Franklin scratched his head. He couldn’t remember what they went to, but he reasoned it out quickly. Only two things required a valve: water and gas.
“The fireballs,” he said, whispering to himself. 
Tapping the screen again, he zoomed in on the flooring where the fireballs shot out. He counted to twenty seconds. Instead of seeing a huge ball of flame, the floor became distorted by rising gas. That was where he placed the explosives.
His lips stretched into a frown that lasted maybe three seconds. The frown curled the other way and into a devious smile as an idea entered his devious mind. Tapping a series of buttons, Franklin locked all the doors in the building except for the main entrance.
It was too bad about Natasha. He really liked her, but he didn’t think she would abandon her sister. Which is what she needed to do if she was going to survive the impending explosion.
 With the bodyguards blocking his way only out, Franklin reached down as if to tie his shoes. He grabbed a revolver from an ankle holster and swiveled his chair around.
Franklin laughed at the dumb look on their sweaty faces as he put a hole in each man’s chest and they fell in a heap on top of each other.
As Franklin dragged the dead bodyguards from the door, the office shook as if hit by an earthquake and he lost his balance. A muffled explosion reverberated through the walls. He looked at the monitors, but most of the cameras had gone blank, robbing him of visual information. He manually directed a working camera with his mouse and saw the unimaginable:
His boss, Peter, was dead.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Chapter Nine
 
Natasha’s eyes flickered open. Her sister was leaning against the wall, her legs stretched out in front of her. The steel drum laid on its side several feet away. It seemed only moments had passed. Natasha sat up. 
“Katrina. Katrina. Wake up.” she said to her sister.
Katrina rolled her head loosely as if she were drunk. Her lips stretched into a painful grimace as she tried to move her stiff legs.
“Oh shit. My legs. I can’t feel them.”
Natasha climbed to her feet and stumbled towards the door. A whistling wind sang a high pitched tune as it flew under the door and into the garage. Gently, she touched the doorknob. It was warm, but not hot.
Deciding to investigate, Natasha intended to crack the door only an inch, but a strong gust ripped the doorknob out of her hand and the door swung open with a bang. She was hit with a wave of superheated air and she threw her arms up in front of her face.
She squinted against a brilliant yellow light that shined like the sun from where the garage door had been. Her ears were assailed by the sound of a rocket engine at lift off. A multitude of horrific screams echoed from the viewing platform that was still standing.
She didn’t know that Franklin had locked all the doors and they were roasting alive on the balcony above. An occasional figure leapt off over the rail and crumpled on impact.
Natasha took a tentative step into the furnace and shielded her eyes. A thick yellow stream of fire vomited forth like a dragon's breath. Natasha knew immediately what had happened. The buzzsaw had cut into the gas lines, sparking an explosion. It knocked the final boss into the metal support beam. Both were now glowing a bright yellow under a focused blow torch from the reputed main.
The beam shook violently.
“The hell is going on!?” Katrina said as she stuck her head inside the garage.
“We need to go,” Natasha said, backing into the hallway.
There was a loud groan as thick steel slowly surrendered to the stresses and ruptured into a thunderous explosion. Tons of metal from the viewing platform crumbled and fell on Franklin’s boss, Peter, obliterating him completely. The spectators rained down and their screams were snuffed out one by one as they tumbled into the inferno.
Natasha pushed Katrina back into the hallway. She looped an arm around her waist and together they ran down the hall and entered the first open doorway. Billowing smoke curled into the room. The building shook from another massive explosion. Natasha thought it was going to go on forever and she feared the brick building would fall down on them.
She scanned the room, looking for cover, but there wasn’t any. Only stacks of cardboard boxes against the four walls up to the ceiling. Handwritten with a black magic marker on the side of each box were labels: coats, hats, purses, wallets, jewelry, phones, and so on until Natasha saw one marked, weapons.
After pulling the box down, she opened it and removed a shiny silver pistol with a pearl handle. Her sister, Katrina smiled at the sight of it.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Chapter Ten
 
Franklin ran through the double-doors of the main entrance and skipped down the rough concrete steps to the sidewalk. He turned around and leaned back to look at the old plant one more time. There weren't any exterior lights and the building stood dark against the starlit night. At the far end the glow of red flames licked the smoke dotted sky. Franklin decided there was no way anyone could survive that explosion and the fire that followed. 
As Franklin strolled towards the parking lot, he was hit with a wave of mixed emotions. Sorrow for the loss of his father's old newspaper plant. Relief that he’d gotten away with it. Happiness that his horrible boss was dead. Sadness for the loss of Katrina. But under it all, a glowing tingle of anticipation from what he was about to rake in.
He glanced at the phone in his hands and laughed out loud at how much money was in the betting app: twenty-six million dollars.
“What’s so funny?” Natasha asked.
Franklin looked up. There was a shadow blocking his path. A silver plated pistol shined in the dark and moved towards him until Natasha’s glowing red face came into view.  
“Oh … Hey! You made it!” Franklin said, raising his hands in the air.
“You forgot what I said earlier?” Natasha asked, continuing her slow approach.
Franklin shrugged. "Remind me," he said as he slowly backed away.
“I said, I was going to kill you.” She stopped walking and leveled the gun at his face.
Franklin bumped into something. He looked back. Katrina was standing behind him.
“Come on now. You-you don't want to shoot me. I can make you rich”
Natasha tilted her head sideways. "I never said I was going to shoot you."
Franklin looked down at his feet. “Oh look, my shoe’s untied.”
As he bent down and wrapped his fingers around the gun, a sharp blow to the back of his head made him grunt. He wheeled as he fell and saw Katrina holding a nightstick in her hand.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Chapter Eleven
 
Franklin was broiling. Sweat ran in rivulets down his slick face, tickling his skin until he woke up. His eyes snapped open and he gasped in a mouthful of hot air. In front of him stood a towering inferno that was eating the ceiling inside the arena.
Giant red chunks rained a fiery cascade onto the burning floor. Franklin reflexively tried to back away, but he couldn’t. He was trapped inside a steel drum and he felt his heart leap into his throat and choke him. Between his knees sat the joystick. He grabbed it and tried to back away from the advancing wall of fire but he charged towards the fire instead.
“Oopsy! Did we put that in backwards?” Natasha’s voice said from behind his head.
Katrina’s voice came next: “Sorry, we’re kind of new at this.”
Franklin pushed the joystick forward and reversed direction, moving away from the burning fire that was filling the arena. 
“What’s the matter, butterfly? Afraid you're going to burn your wings?” Natasha said.
“Why are you doing this!” Franklin yelled. “I tried to help you, you fucking ingrates!”
“You have a choice to make. You can head towards the viewing platform,” Natasha said.
Franklin heard a rumbling noise and jerked the joystick to the right―but spun left. It was disorienting and he felt like he was going to throw up. The metal cylinder had come alive and was spinning up, the spikes beginning to blur.
“Or, you can take the easy way out,” Katrina finished for her sister.
Franklin turned his steel drum until the screen came into view. Both Natasha and Katrina were staring down at him. From outside came the muted sound of approaching sirens.
“We’d love to chat, but the fire department is here,” Natasha said.
 “Byee,” Katrina said waving the tips of her fingers at him.
The screen blanked out and Franklin stared up at it for a minute. The heat inside the drum was growing and he reckoned it must be a hundred and thirty. He tried to swallow but it felt like razor blades in his throat. His eyes stung from sweat. Jerking the joystick, he spun in the wrong direction again. He yanked it the opposite direction, but overcorrected and the joystick fell from his slippery grasp and fell between his ankles.
As Franklin sat there, baking inside his steel drum a thunderous crash fell from behind. A tree length piece of burning timber had just hit the floor. It bounced and rolled and smashed into the wheeled barrel, knocking Franklin into the spiked cylinder that chewed through his barrel from the top down until nothing was left but the wheels.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Chapter Twelve
 
The silver light of dawn had topped the arborvitaes and shone down on the dozen fire trucks that surrounded the crumbling red brick building. Firemen pointed hoses at the smoldering ruins, shooting streams of water that hissed on contact and kicked up clouds of ash. The gray flecks billowed into the sunlight and floated back down onto the rows of expensive cars forming a thin layer of ash over the bright paint jobs.
Natasha and her sister, Katrina, sat on the grated steel bumper of an EMT vehicle. Each wore a blanket thrown over their shoulders. A police officer moved past the paramedics and neared the two women whose faces were smeared with streaks of black soot.
“I understand you’re the only survivors,” he said.
Natasha’s lips stretched tight and she nodded her head almost imperceptibly.
“What happened?” he asked.
Natasha looked up at the cop and barked out a bitter laugh.
“Oh, you know … fucking rich people.”
Katrina started snickering. Natasha leaned against her and the two of them lost it. Their cackling laughter echoed across the parking lot and rose above the hissing hoses. They continued laughing like that for several minutes.
The End

​ 
            There’s an old saying everybody’s heard a thousand times—always the bridesmaid, never the bride. It’s like it’s a mantra, like it gets said so much about some poor girl who never gets anything nice and never ends up on the winning side of anything or finds herself in the winners’ circle as far as matrimony is concerned, that now, whenever anybody hears it said, it’s like it goes over their head and there’s just not much empathy whatsoever for that poor girl who’s been left all by herself on the sidelines. It’s like it’s one of those facts of life that happen all the time and a cliché and there’s no need in dwelling on it that much, because that’s just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes, that’s the way it is in the cold cruel world, that’s the way it’s been forever and the way it’s always going to be. There’s no use worrying about it, because it’s one of those things nobody can change.
            I suppose after hearing this maxim said so many times over the years and knowing at the same time the people who were saying it were generally talking about me that after a while the whole idea took hold of me like a birthmark in my head and I became convinced I was surely going to be by myself and on my own for the rest of my life and was simply going to have to learn to live with it, the thought of which made me consider turning into someone Sappho-like and to go through the remainder of my days like some sort of Butch figure or same-sex person, but I couldn’t imagine myself in that mode or wearing neutral gender clothes or even making the attempt to transform myself into some sort of Joan Baez swing-both-ways AC/DC sort of gal. No, I couldn’t stand that idea at all, because, frankly, I never could stand that soprano voice Joan had and I didn’t like women that much even to sit around and chew the fat with, and I wasn’t the least bit socially conscious and didn’t much have one diddly care about the fate of the human race whatsoever. So, with all that in mind, I decided to just go out on my own and do my thing and never worry about things too much, and maybe something out of the blue would possibly come my way and change my life.
            Go ahead, I thought. Surprise me. Humor me just this once.
            It’s hard to pinpoint it exactly, but to the best of my memory it started happening around the fourth grade, although I suppose it could have been earlier, since most of my early years were spent in a kind of shock, coming as I was from the womb to my family and learning right from the beginning that I wasn’t really a part of them whatsoever, that I had to have been left on their doorstep for them to claim, because it was plain as day to me that my parents and my sisters and my brother and me weren’t of the same ilk in any way.
            My parents both noticed it, but my dad was the first one to bring it up.
            “Why did you pitch such a fit when your mother wanted to get you a new dress for Easter?” he asked. “Both your sisters got one, and your brother got a new sport coat to wear to church this Sunday. They were happy about getting new clothes, but your mother said you acted like somebody was trying to pull one of your teeth out or something.”
            “I didn’t like the colors,” I told him. “Pink makes me look like a sissy and white makes me look like a ghost.”
            “How does a pink dress make you look like a sissy?” he asked. “You’re a girl, Connie. The last time I looked in the encyclopedia girls aren’t ever classified as sissies.”                                   “I’m not really a girl,” I said. I saw him looking at me like I was from outer space. “I think I might be something else.”                                                                                                     Just exactly what, I hadn’t figured out yet.
            “You’re a girl,” Daddy said.
 
            My first real rejection occurred in the fifth grade, when I convinced myself I was required to be in love with Randall Harper exactly the way every other girl in Miss Washington’s class was. Randall was the tallest boy in the room and had strawberry-blond hair like he was the forerunner of all things Robert Redford. He made good grades and always gave the best book reports when he stood in front of the class and gave his recitation. Every now and then he would look up from reading his report and smile.
            I don’t know if he knew what he was doing or not, but it sure worked.
            My feeling about Randall had a base of confidence behind it. Unlike all the other girls, I went to the same church he did. His mother and my mother were in the same Sunday School class. Add that to the equation that my dad and Randall’s father both worked at the water company together, and I thought I perhaps had the inside track to Randall ahead of the other girls. I wasn’t of the age yet where I’d learned boys liked girls better if they didn’t know much about them. It was like a variation of the old adage that familiarity breeds contempt.
            So, when mention of the Sweetheart Banquet at the church came up, there was some irrational part of me that actually believed Randall was going to do the right thing and ask me to go with him. I guess I might as well have believed Rudolph Valentino was going to come back from the dead and ask me to go with him instead, since that would have been no more far-fetched than me sitting by the telephone for two weeks waiting for it to ring, and then finally convincing myself that Randall was waiting to see me at church so he could ask me in person.
            I wore my newest, best dress to church that Sunday before the banquet. I can still remember putting it on and walking into Sunday School that morning. We didn’t go to that big of a church back then, so there was just one class for the girls to attend, and if you were a boy and not in high school yet there was just one class for you too. The young peoples’ classes were all held down in the basement of the Education Building, where there were four classrooms, two on each side, and a big meeting space in the middle where everybody had to gather before going to their classroom. I remember the Sunday School Director, Mrs. French—who was also the church’s piano player—had a son named Hubert, who always had to stay locked in a room by himself.
            It was hard to tell about Hubert French, how old he was or what was going on in his mind at any time, because Hubert was totally retarded—afflicted, my mother used to say through pursed lips—and he stalked around like Frankenstein with his arms and hands all scrunched up like he had ingrown claws. I knew he couldn’t talk or make words like any other person, but what he did do was every thirty seconds or so stop on a dime and then moan for a while before raising the roof with an unnerving shriek mixed inside a howl. Unless you were about a mile away you couldn’t keep from hearing Hubert loud and clear.
            Mrs. French, since she didn’t teach a class of her own but just presided over everybody from nine to ten on Sunday mornings like she was Eva Perone or something, let Hubert roam around free and unhoused during the Sunday School hour, and I spent a lot of time sitting in my chair acting like I was listening to the weekly lesson when I was actually looking through the little square window on the door trying to see what Hubert was up to out there. I wasn’t the only one. The entire class sat there looking out that window and grinning at each other every time Hubert stopped in his tracks and raised his voice to high heaven. After all, it was such a noise that it couldn’t possibly be ignored, though all the women and men in the church did their best to act like there was nothing emanating from Hubert’s mouth that could possibly keep anybody from studying the Holy Scripture or worshipping with all their faculties in utter concentration, but we were girls ages nine through twelve, and you can bet we heard it loud and clear. We were supposed to act like we were deaf to it and didn’t hear the commotion going on outside our door, but we heard it all right. The big trick was to listen to it without coming down with a bad case of the giggles. But it was hard to concentrate on being prim and pretty on those mornings and getting right with God, what with Hubert carrying on so much you couldn’t think about anything else.
            It didn’t get any better after Sunday School let out. Mrs. French would dismiss everyone and we would all troop up the stairs on our way to morning service, but nobody ever had much of a chance for conversation because that was the time when Mrs. French had to lock Hubert up in one of the classrooms while she went to the auditorium to play the piano for the morning service. This was when Hubert really cut loose and went ballistic, when he got left behind by his mother in the nursery room with just him and a bunch of foam rubber toys and plastic furniture. He’d yell and stalk and stomp around and pick up whatever was in his path and throw it at the windows over his head, where a lot of the time we would sneak back as a group before and after worship and watch him pitching his fits and gaze through the glass enthralled at the monster present in our midst.
            Church wasn’t exactly the most inspirational place for affairs of the heart to be conducted, and even though I had high hopes of getting asked to the Sweetheart Banquet on that particular Sunday morning, with my best dress on and my hair all brushed and fixed up the way I liked to wear it, still Randall never came near to ask me to go with him. He didn’t even sit close enough to beg my pardon or give me the time of day. He stayed way off in the back with a bunch of other boys.
            I waited around all that afternoon and night for the telephone to ring. It never did. Later that week, in the middle of recess up on the playground I found out that Randall had asked Teresa Dunn to go with him to the banquet. Teresa was my best friend at the time, and she gushed out the news for me to share in her joy. She didn’t know how I’d had my hopes fixed on Randall all along. I never told anybody anything personal like that and still don’t. I always felt like doing so was dangerous, like I was providing ammunition that could later end up being used against me, so I kept everything to myself to stay safe, then and now.
            I also didn’t say so at the time, but from that moment on I crossed Teresa Dunn off my list. She would have to find a new best friend from then on.
 
            “I don’t think it would hurt you one little bit to take a few days off from work,” Valerie told me. “Go with us and we’ll have a lot of fun. There’s just no telling how much trouble we can get into in four days.”
            Valerie was my latest best friend. We’d shared a dorm room at Murray State for two years, and still, these four years after graduation, made it a habit to meet once a month for lunch. Sometimes we’d even take in a movie together. It was about all I could stand to do much in those post-college days besides eat. I love going to the movies. I never have to be myself there.
            “We always go to this one motel that’s a little way up from town,” Valerie was saying. “That way we can get our three rooms down at the end where we’re all together. The way it works is we hit the beach all day and work on our tans and look at everybody around us, then we head into town for dinner and party the rest of the night. There are lots of places to go and there’s always tons of guys hanging out. You can pretty well have your pick of them. So, Connie, what do you say? Are you coming with us or not? You’ll be sorry if you don’t. You’ll be missing out on the time of your life.”
            “The time of my life has already come and gone,” I told her. “In case you don’t remember, I turned twenty-six my last birthday. That means my golden girlhood is officially over. Whatever glorious things that were supposed to come my way are in the way back past, if they ever showed up to begin with. If they did, I don’t remember them. What I’m thinking is the entire rigmarole was all so inconsequential and overrated I must have blinked and missed the whole parade when it marched by.”
            “That’s just it,” Valerie said. “You always close your eyes what’s going on and never see anything.”
 
            “I don’t understand why one minute it’s okay for us to spend the night together and do anything we want for an entire weekend,” John said, “and then twenty-four hours later we’re supposed to act like we’re still in the courtship process and we haven’t gotten around yet to touching each other.”
            John was what you might call my steady boyfriend at the time, although I suppose if you substituted the word only in place of steady you’d have our relationship classified more succinctly. Both of us worked at the same insurance company together, he and I and about seventy others, everyone sitting at desks inside cubicles taking information for claims and enrolling people for car insurance. John’s cubicle was next to mine. We’d begun talking to each other about a month after he’d been hired, and after a while we started going out together, on the weekends at first, then eventually a couple of more nights during the week. It wasn’t like it was a hot romance or anything like that. I was my usual plain self and he was certainly not Johnny Depp. He was no dreamboat, but I went out with him anyway, mainly because he was the only guy in quite a while who’d bothered to ask me.
            I don’t know what kind of mental state I’d allowed myself to fall into by the time I started messing around with John Ambrose, but I had to be pretty low in spirits and self-esteem to choose him as an option. That first time we even went to bed together was after we went to a Rolling Stones concert out in the middle of a football stadium. It was October and unseasonably cold that night, and we sat way up in the end zone bleachers about ten miles from the stage with a brisk north wind blowing in our faces for the entire Stones set and the warmup act and all the preliminary waiting which we spent watching about a thousand people set up the stage and the lights and the sound system. We were also about an hour and a half early for all of it, because John was afraid we might miss something if we weren’t the first people to arrive.
            Like I mentioned, John was a real winner, and there I was with him, so it kind of made me feel like I wasn’t much better, like maybe the two of us were meant for each other or something.
            It was so cold that John kept drinking from some yucky concoction of vodka—I think it was peach—certainly not anything anybody had ever heard of, but more some kind of leftover liquid that had been bottled up out at the airport after all the jetliners had been gassed for the day and this was what was left over. It was horrible stuff and I wouldn’t touch it for a while after I took in the first whiff when John removed the cap, because I didn’t feel like barfing all over myself right then up in the top of the end zone and having it freeze all over me from the wind, then have to sit there for eternity seeing some far-off figure who might be Mick Jagger sing “Jumping Jack Flash.” But after a while I got so cold I chugged a bunch of it down anyway.
            When we finally got back to my apartment that night it was way past midnight and I was wondering if certain parts of my body were ever going to be any color other than blue. I was so sleepy and intoxicated I was in bed and almost asleep before I realized John hadn’t left and in his drunken state was crawling in there with me. That was when I realized I’d been wrong in not drinking even more of the hideous vodka at the concert. I could have had been totally oblivious of where I was and what was happening in my bedroom.
            The good thing about my year and a half relationship with John Ambrose was that I never got pregnant. It wasn’t that I was so smart and knew how to handle birth control so much, but more the fact that John was so bad and inept in bed that he couldn’t have aided in making a baby for all the money in the world, because no woman who still counted herself as being alive would have ever let him get close enough for long enough of a time for whatever sperm he might have had to contribute to get close enough to someone’s uterus to make a match. And yet there I was with him, desperate for companionship and stark naked in bed most weekend nights of that time. I was lucky my sentence didn’t go any longer than that. It could have been life.
            On the night I finally told John how I thought it was best we not see each other anymore—I made up this big story about my old sweetheart moving back to town and how we’d decided to give it another go—he actually hung his head and acted like his world was coming to an end. How was I to know that in a week’s time he’d be dating another girl at work and in three months after that they’d get married and both quit at the agency to take another job?                                  Funny how things like that work.
 
            Valerie finally did talk me into going to Destin with the rest of the girls. I didn’t want to do it, but I knew I’d never hear the end of it unless I did. Besides, I was at a point where I was starting to get restless. It was a strange kind of feeling, and I was having a hard time with it. It was like I wanted to do something crazy while at the same time I just wanted to be by myself and be left alone. One minute I wanted a lot of noise, then I wanted silence. I wasn’t a lot of fun to hang around with acting schizoid all the time, so I knew if I was going to take a vacation trip with a bunch of yahoo fun-loving girls I would have to snap out of my mood-swings pretty fast.
            It was about a seven-hour trip to Destin. There were five of us going, and between that number of girls and all the baggage everyone would have to carry to get through five days away from their closets we decided to borrow Leigh Barret’s dad’s van. That way we could all go in one vehicle and we wouldn’t be split up on the trip down and run the risk of somebody getting lost. This was a long time before cellphones with built-in GPS, and besides, we were all so crazy and just altogether dipsy-doodle that the chances were good we wouldn’t have known how to use such contrivances anyway.
            Destin was a lot different from what I remembered it being when I was a kid, when I went with a group of about forty Baptist teenagers on a three-day retreat, where we all stayed in this cheesy motel and congregated on a scraggly beach to swim during the afternoon after studying the Book of Romans all morning, eating pizza at the motel party room, and then going down to the beach again at night to sing songs about Jesus and rededicate our lives a couple of times before heading back home. Destin was a lot bigger by this time. There were restaurants and bars and live music playing down on the piers, and nobody was getting observed all the time the way those counselors used to watch us kids back then on the church outings. Nobody was watching us at all. We were legal and could do anything we wanted.
            Everybody went wild, except for me, of course. I might have been twenty-six years old by then, but with the way I felt about the world and everything, I might as well have still been fourteen. I was scared of just about everything, getting knocked up, getting arrested, having all my possessions stolen—you name it. I had somehow imagined so many unpleasant things that were out there in the world that were probably going to happen to me any minute in the future that I found myself absolutely frozen in my tracks when it came to engaging with the world in any kind of social manner.
            So it was that for the first three nights we were there in Destin I found myself reading a mystery novel on a porch looking out at the Gulf while all my friends were down on the beach drinking Tequila and dancing and doing their best to get themselves laid. I sat there by myself with a bottle of Coke Zero reading one of Sue Grafton’s alphabet books, telling myself I was just trying to get accustomed to where I was and how I’d join everyone and start having some fun later, but here I was on the third night and there were only two nights left until we had to go back home, and I could easily see myself sitting right here those remaining nights too. Sue Grafton had plenty more novels, and I was only on the letter G.
            I was just about to give it up and go inside and watch TV with a bag of microwave popcorn when I saw this guy walking up the beach smoking a joint just as pretty as you please.
            I guess in my prim and proper role as moral monitor of our group I should have been appalled that very moment at the sight of seeing some pagan sort of fellow trooping through my range of vision and personal space engaging in illegal drug activity like it was his God-given right, but at that precise moment in time I was feeling so disgusted at my own status in the world that I simply couldn’t summon up the inertia to look down my nose at anybody else. I just watched him as he walked along getting closer to where I was sitting, and that was when I heard him singing between tokes, after he’d taken in some smoke and held it in his lungs and exhaled it out. He’d sing a snatch of a verse or two in between. After a couple of stanzas I recognized the song. He was singing “The Girl from Ipanema.”
            He had a nice voice. I didn’t know if I was imagining it or not.
            He glanced over my way and saw me sitting there. It was dark and there wasn’t but one small light on the porch burning so I could read, but he made me out just fine. He didn’t act startled or anything, not like he was afraid someone might spot him smoking a joint or being high and walking along the sand singing songs to himself, not like there was anything to worry about at all. He just looked my way and smiled and raised his hand in greeting, and I didn’t know much else to do but wave back, and the next thing I knew he was walking over my way.
            “You just sitting out here all by yourself?” he asked. “I thought I was the only human being around for miles and miles. I thought everybody else in the world was over there.”
            He motioned with the hand that was holding the burning joint toward where he considered the world and all the action that was going on besides where he was standing and I was sitting. It didn’t seem to occur to him one way or another if I was sitting on the porch because I wanted to be alone or that it just might be that I was one of those persons on the planet who did not much care for any kind of exhilarate, liquid or lit or administered in a swallowed, sniffed, or ingested sort of way, and did not want to be in any way in more of an altered state than I was in already. No, he wasn’t thinking about any lines of correct social behavior at all; he just kept coming closer and closer with his smile and the burning joint that he offered over the porch railing to me.
            Which, before I had the chance to think about it, I took.
            This wasn’t the first time I’d smoked pot in my life. I’m pretty sure I’d done such a thing two or three times before, but this night was the first time I ever achieved the results that all good weed aficionados were always striving for. I took the cylinder from him and drew the smoke deep into my lungs, and when it got way down there I held it in like I was waiting on my birthday to come around, and then I blew it out and had a coughing fit. Not much smoke escaped out into the night air, and I knew the preponderance of it was now cascading throughout my anatomy, and that for a goodly time from there forward I would be psychotic and unhinged and perpetually unbalanced.
            Nice toke, he said. He was grinning.
            Just like that, out of the blue, in exactly the manner in which he’d materialized before me out of the Gulf night, he began to talk to me. It was like we were continuing a conversation we’d started a while back, like we’d known each other a while and now was the logical time and place to start our discussion back up again.
            “This place is okay for a while,” he told me, “but after a couple of days it’s like a been there, done that kind of thing. Do you follow me? It’s like I’ve been thinking all day that about one more twenty-four hour period is going to be my limit. I was even considering getting up early tomorrow morning and having breakfast and hitting the road back to Athens. That’s Athens, Tennessee, by the way, not Greece. Then I remembered I didn’t drive down here—I came with two other guys—but no matter, I’d get back somehow.” He smiled at me. “Even without a car, I get anywhere I want to with no trouble at all.”
            I guess with the help of two or three more tokes off the offered joint I got to where I halfway understood what he was talking about, even if he did have the darndest way of saying things, because before I knew it I was enjoying myself and not dreading being there on the beach and wishing I was dead anymore. I noticed how this guy who’d appeared before me like he’d walked out of the ocean had evolved into a cute stranger I’d never in my life thought would make my acquaintance with his sparkly eyes that were probably brown but were certainly dancing, and all at once I wanted to get out of my chair and close my book and take off walking with him. I didn’t want to go find a big crowd of people and join them or anything like that; I just wanted to amble down the Destin sands with this guy out of nowhere and laugh the night away. I think it was the first time in my life I ever did anything without thinking it over for a year or two beforehand.
            “I have to confess this is not exactly an accident,” he told me, “walking up the beach and finding you sitting by yourself reading your book.” He finished off what was left of the joint to where it was burning his fingers, then flipped it extravagantly away into the waves. “I saw you when I went by the past two nights, and I started thinking you might be like me and be a creature of habit and you’d be out here again tonight.” He looked at me and grinned. “Bingo,” he said. “I was right. First time for everything, if you know what I mean.”
            “You mean you’re never right? I asked. “You’re always wrong?”                           “Hardly ever right,” he amended. “Maybe I’m right every blue moon or so. Once a year at best. I guess even a blind dog doesn’t bite his own tail some of the time when he’s after a rabbit.”
            “I don’t think that’s exactly the saying. You’ve got it mixed up and turned around.”
            “The whole world’s mixed up. I’m just trying to fit in some way.”
            We walked along in the dark and talked about the mixed-up world. I realized pretty fast I’d met someone who was possibly more ill at ease about life than I was. I hadn’t thought such a thing was possible.
            “I could be back there on the pier partying down with my buddies,” he told me. “The thing is I don’t want to. I don’t like to be around a lot of people if I can help it. I don’t even like to be around my friends that much. People always seem like they do their best to keep me from having fun. I’m always too worried about what creepy thing they’re fixing to do the next minute that’s probably going to make me barf.”
            He sounded like me talking. I was immediately enthralled. I guess the only explanation was I was in love with myself and this stranger beside me was about as close to a manifestation of my own essence as I was going to find.
            Something like that.
            I was smiling at him and trying to be seductive, even if I wasn’t certain he could see me very good out there in the dark. I started flirting. In a crazy way I wanted him to take me right there on the beach, like I was Deborah Kerr and he was Burt Lancaster in that old movie “From Here to Eternity.” I wanted the waves to wash over us and sand to be clinging to our bodies and for neither one of us to care one little bit.                                                                                              Well, you know what? I got what I wanted. Maybe not quite like the movie, but good enough for a start.
                                                                        *****
            I got home, and it wasn’t long at all before Jimmy Mills—that was his name, which I finally got around to learning later that night—I discovered didn’t live so far away as Athens as I thought. It turned out he had an apartment in town that was only a half hour or so from my apartment, and he commuted to work every day at his job at Holloway Furniture, where he sold sofas and beds and recliner chairs at this huge warehouse on the other side of town. We ended up being together for two days in Destin doing the dirty deed each night, and I’d figured, with the way things worked for me, that we’d never see each other again afterwards, but the first night I got back home, after a day of work and coming home to eat a pot pie, my telephone rang and it was him.
            He was still at work and hadn’t left yet. He was, he said, as a matter of fact, still on the clock. It was one of two nights a week that he had to stay until closing time at nine. I told him I didn’t think I’d like any job where I had to work at night.
            “I don’t mind it too much,” he said. “I don’t have to fool with the rush hour in the mornings or afternoons. The only bad thing about it is when I have to be back in to open the next morning after working that night. I don’t get much sleep because I’m generally wired when I get home. It always takes me a while to wind down.”
            So we got into the habit of Jimmy coming by to see me on those two nights a week he worked. After a few weeks it seemed stupid for him to drive back to his place only to get right back up and drive back in the next morning, so starting with those two nights he began staying the night with me. It took maybe another couple of weeks and he hardly drove back home at all but to get fresh clothes. Soon he started bringing his clothes by, then his cat, and by the time Halloween rolled around we were pretty much living together.
            His cat was named Jacques.
            Jacques was the last item Jimmy brought with him when we made it official we were living in sin, when it first took root in our minds. When Jimmy arrived with Jacques in a travel crate and a box full of toys and a water dish and a bag of Meow Mix and a bevy of cat treats, all I had to do was look in the crate and see Jacques peering out at me and I knew the move was officially done.
            I never have really been a cat person. All my life I’d been raised with a string of Chihuahuas, little yappy creatures who were mostly around for my parents’ sake, to beg food or sit in their laps or pose for pictures for that year’s Christmas card instead of their real kids. Some of my friends had cats I would see from time to time when I would visit, but other than that I hadn’t been around them much.
            To make a long story short, Jacques the cat didn’t like me at all, right from the beginning, and it didn’t take long for me to not like him either.
            It started with Jacques just seemingly having an instantaneous inclination to go to war with me. I couldn’t lay in bed in the mornings without him seeking out a part of my body beneath the covers and digging his claws in hard enough to draw blood. I couldn’t walk through the apartment without him springing out from behind some piece of furniture and wrapping his body around my ankle, getting tighter like a boa constrictor and using his hind legs to kick at my skin like he was trying to start up some reluctant Harley Davidson that had been sitting in a garage neglected for years. Whenever I cooked, he had this menacing habit of climbing up on the top of the door and balance there and watch my every move during the meal preparation. Most times a low growl came from his throat, guttural and audible enough so only I could hear it, letting me know all his animosity was strictly for me.                                                                                  I grew to where I despised that damn cat.
            Jacques made his big mistake on a Saturday afternoon when I was home and Jimmy was working, the week before Thanksgiving.
            For the month he’d been here, Jacques had from the beginning made a practice out of every single time the front door got opened to make a beeline for the opening and try to escape out into the hallway. It was like Jimmy and I both had to be on constant guard cracking the door and blocking the opening while we were stepping through it and then closing it quickly before Jacques could rocket over from wherever he might be hiding and scurry through to the hallway as his first step toward gaining everlasting freedom.
            On this particular Saturday morning I was getting ready to leave for the grocery store to do some Thanksgiving shopping. I wasn’t really going to do much cooking at all, since I was having Thanksgiving dinner at my parents’ and all I was responsible for was making some banana pudding. It was still kind of up in the air whether Jimmy was going to come with me to eat, because neither him or me was really ready yet to make our relationship known and out in the open. His parents lived in Athens, so they were far enough we could keep some distance from them a while, but my parents were just thirty minutes away and it was harder to keep things from them. My parents were nosy as hell is what it was. They were forever calling or dropping by unannounced, so it wasn’t like we were going to be able to keep our relationship a secret forever.                                                                                                                                      On that morning, with all these holiday predicaments running through my head, maybe I wasn’t so diligent in my everyday routine. I had my list and my cloth bags in my hand and was thinking about whether I needed to get gas while I was out, when the absolute second I opened the door to go, Jacques, like he was shot out of a cannon or something, tore across the floor and ran out the door before I could stop him. I watched him skitter down the hall about fifteen feet and then stop and turn around and look at me like he was trying to decide if I was going to be dumb enough to try and catch him. I already knew what he had in mind—he was going to let me walk over and pick him up so he could then wrap his legs around my arms and dig in and draw blood and maybe even reach up and take a hunk out of my face and leave a nice scar for me to remember him by.
            Well, I wasn’t about to let that happen.
            “Now you’re out, you little bastard,” I told him. “It’s the answer to all your prayers. Now what are you going to do? Now you’ve got to worry about how you’re going to get back in, because it’s not going to be that easy.”
            I locked the door and walked by him on my way to the stairs. He didn’t run when I got near him, but just sat there and watched as I passed. He had a funny look on his face. I think he expected me to pick him up and take him back to the apartment.
            I walked down the stairs to my car. I was halfway hoping I’d seen the last of the little demon.
            I was all the way out in the lot and inside the car and backing out of my slot when I knew I had to stop and go back and save Jacques from himself. I couldn’t bear the thought of him lost and wandering around the apartment so close to the holiday with most everybody gone out of town and no one around to take him in.                                                                                       I think this was the final straw in the foundation of my personal makeup in those days. It was like everything I did was one big pattern that never deviated from form. If someone treated me kindly, if I went to a place where I felt comfortable and enjoyed myself, well, that was when the alarms went off in my head and I’d have to take off for another part of the world. It was like if I didn’t feel good about where I was or who I was around then that meant everything was normal and I didn’t have to worry about something coming at me out of the blue and freaking me out. I guess rescuing Jacques the monster cat with his scratches and his hisses and his unprovoked attacks was a perfectly rational course of action for me.
            Jacques or Jimmy. I hadn’t decided by then who was the craziest, who was likely the most dangerous in the long run.
            I walked back upstairs and Jacques was sitting against a wall, licking his paws like he was waiting for me and knew all along I’d be back. I opened the door and he strolled back inside, like his whole experiment was now completed and it was time for a nap. I walked back to the car with the dual feelings of being glad I’d gone back and saved him balanced with being ticked-off at myself because I’d let a damn cat play me like I was one of his toys he only fiddled with now and then to relieve the tedium.
            The whole time I was shopping, pushing my cart up and down the aisles among the holiday throng with their crying children and their unwillingness to get out of my way so I could grab the few things on my list, and the holiday music that was already playing over the store speakers, I thought about Jimmy Mills and Jacques the cat and how I was smack-dab in the middle of a chapter in my life I never dreamed would come to be.
 
            But it wasn’t like I was unhappy and bewildered all the time. It was more like my emotions were now on some kind of elevator, going up to the top floor of elation and contented joy, and then taking the downward trip to some form of seething anger, frustration, misery, and finally to the basement floor of unexplained despair. I wasn’t used to fluctuations. I guess what bugged me the most was the fact that I’d never really been overjoyed at any time in my life, and so when I finally arrived at a plateau where I was supposed to feel that way it was such an unmitigated mystery that I became upset and frightened when I decided such a state wasn’t going to be anything constant and eternal. I was of the opinion that the smile on my face and the song in my heart was supposed to last forever, but there was another part of me that knew it wouldn’t.
            And I blamed Jimmy and his appearance in my life for the majority of that present uncertainty.
            The really stupid thing about the whole deal was that most of the bitterness and hostility I was harboring only got played out between Jacques and me. Most of the time Jimmy wasn’t even present during my black moods and blue times and didn’t know there was a war going on. He’d come in after one of his shifts and begin instantly receiving snippy replies to his cheerful conversation or a good dose of the silent treatment I directed his way, and I guess if I’d been adamant enough to refuse his sexual advances our relationship would have been over with faster than it had started, and I guess I couldn’t have blamed him either.
            No, it really wasn’t Jimmy’s fault there was strife in the air. It was emanating from me, with a lot of assistance from that damn evil Jacques.
            I could have complained or bitched about it if I wanted everything out in the open, pitched a little fit and stomped my foot and said either the cat or both of you have to go, but I knew how crazy Jimmy was over Jacques and I was afraid that, if it came down to it, in the end he would choose Jacques over me. Anyway, I just felt like all my grievances against Jacques would come across as the railings of an unbalanced jealous woman, and Jimmy would wonder how he ever came to be embroiled with some girl who was in dire competition with a cat. And it wasn’t like I could prove any of my case against Jacques either, because Jacques never acted like the spawn from Hell when Jimmy was around. When Jimmy was there Jacques was as gentle and loving as any domestic pet could ever aspire to be.                                                                                       It was on those evenings when Jimmy worked the late shift at the furniture outlet, when I’d get home from work and fix something to eat and relax until he got home, that Jacques would invariably unleash his attacks. I would even go out of my way being nice to him in an effort to win over his affection, little stuff like dropping food on the kitchen floor or talking to him in a gentle voice, but none of it ever did any good. He’d just gobble up the food like he had it coming to him all along, and at the sound of my voice he’d show scarcely any emotion at all other than to stare at me like I was violating his own personal space.
            It was generally when I sat down on the sofa to watch television that the trouble would begin.
            Jacques had genius as far as knowing when to begin waging war. He would curl up in a ball over on the other side of the room, on a chair or under a table and sit there motionless with his eyes closed. After a few minutes of this I was always convinced in some irrational corner of my mind that he was sleeping in that zombie-like manner cats like doing, so I would relax with my magazine and my television program, and the next thing I knew I’d be dozing off, all contented and cozy, away from the demands of the day and perfectly happy.                            That was when Jacques would spring into action.                                                      Sometimes he was stealthy and sometimes he wasn’t. He liked mixing his tactics up to keep me off-balance. One time he’d let me completely nod off or get totally engrossed in my magazine or television program, then he’d leap out of nowhere and land on my head or my shoulder or my arm or my thigh, any place where he could sink his claws into and make me scream in shock and pain, do his damage and then dash away before I could swat him with my hand or whatever weapon I could find to defend myself. Other times he switched his strategy and came at me full-force all at once, no surprise element whatsoever, just an all-out attack brought about without any forethought or planning. The best that I could garner from such behavior was that this possessed spawn of the Devil had an immediate desire to draw blood, and he looked upon me as his primary donor.
            But most of the time he preferred the surprise element, and after a while I took my own steps to counteract it.
            Once I’d fallen victim three or four times, I decided it was time for a counter-attack of my own. I taught myself to do different things that would change the chemistry of our encounters. I began by feigning sleep while sitting with my reading materials on the sofa. I closed my eyes and as an added enticement allowed my head to drop down to my chest as if deep slumber had overtaken me. Peeking out from closed eyes, I could see Jacques drawing nearer and positioning himself for another Pearl Harbor attack, but I was ready this time. I knew what he wanted to do and had learned when and how to foil his plan.
            I armed myself with a sofa cushion and a flyswatter. The flyswatter I kept hidden beneath the pillow, which I set down beside my hip and the sofa arm out of sight. Then I began breathing gently and in a rhythmic manner, as if I was sleeping. I closed my eyes and waited.
            It took almost five minutes, but soon I sensed Jacques’ approach. His paw wasn’t touching me, but I knew it was right there close to my exposed wrist, poised and ready to slash away any moment. Somehow or another this act of aggression had become so ingrained within my psyche that I knew when Jacques was about to pounce and spring better than he did himself.
            He’d just become airborne when I suddenly raised the sofa pillow and caught him in mid-flight. The pillow smashed against the side of his body and carried him with its force and momentum onto the back of the armchair beside me, where I pinned him, smushing his head and body against the arm with the protection of the pillow. I held him captive there, writhing and struggling, and pulled out the flyswatter I’d hidden away.
            I swatted his carcass a good six or seven times before I let him go. I wore his evil, conniving butt out. When he finally got loose he ran under the kitchenette table and peered out at me. I could tell he really wanted to hiss and growl at me for what I’d done to him, to issue a threat as to what would happen if I ever tried such a thing again, but I could see the uneasiness in him about everything concerning me now and how he was hesitant to try even the least little thing.
            I didn’t think I was going to have any more trouble out of him, but by this time I didn’t want to give him the chance. I walked over and opened the door. In about two seconds Jacques was by me and out into the hallway, and I closed the door behind him. I wasn’t going after him this time. It was fine by me if I never saw him again.
 
            Jimmy took the news of Jacques’ departure better than I thought he would. I thought I’d have to concoct some wild story about how Jacques had managed to get out and run off, maybe do my best Bette Davis imitation and act like the grief of Jacques’ absence from our lives was threatening to eat me alive, but I didn’t have to. When Jimmy got home from work that night Jacques was nowhere to be seen, and he was fine with my explanation of why his cat was on the lam and how I’d done everything in my power to find him after his escape. Jimmy just smiled and said how that was just the way things went sometimes.                                                           “Sometimes things happen for a reason,” he surmised. “It could be old Jacques has an appointment with destiny he has to keep, and maybe when his fate is all aligned with the stars he’ll come back again.”
            I had mixed feelings of being surprised but not too surprised when Jimmy said that. It wasn’t in the way he said it, because that was just the way he had of wording things, kind of an out there in a dreamy, mystical manner about most anything going on in the world, but it was the different road he was taking with the disappearance of Jacques, who was one of the few things in the world Jimmy valued much. There was Jacques, and there was his obsession with the NBA Utah Jazz (although we lived in the South, three thousand miles away, so I never could figure out where that attraction came from), there was Jimmy’s love for anything Dr. Seuss ever wrote, and also his abiding interest in Jim Morrison and the Doors. He whistled “People Are Strange” and hummed “Light My Fire” or something like that all the time. It was almost creepy. Very little else of what went on in the world sparked much interest in Jimmy’s realm or point of view, being of not much significance at all, and I spent a lot of time wondering which classification I happened to fit into. He had no friends from high school and he never talked about his college days, other than to say he had dropped out after two years because he didn’t want to waste his parents’ money on a lot of crap not worth knowing in the long run. He’d taken up selling furniture as a vocation, and before that he’d worked a few years at one of those quick oil change places, where he’d motion folks in their cars to move forward or go right or left and stop, check their bright and dim lights and turn signals to make sure they were working, and then try to get them to add on some other part or service while their oil got changed. He said he liked being around automobiles and such but that he’d quit after two years because he got tired of bilking people out of their hard-earned money and at the same time how his boss was always griping about how Jimmy needed to pressure the customers more so they’d spend money on stuff they didn’t need.                                                                                                                                             “It wasn’t that I was tender-hearted or anything,” he told me. “It was just depressing to see how stupid people could be, how they’d just hand over money because somebody told them they needed to.”
            At least in the furniture selling business Jimmy didn’t have to be quite so aggressive. The good thing about selling a sofa, he said, was you always know exactly what someone wants when they walk in the door. You don’t have to figure it out. They just walk right over and sit down testing one out, and then you don’t have to guess what they’re thinking.
            So, for some unknown reason Jimmy didn’t grieve or waste a lot of time conjecturing on Jacques disappearing. For a day or two the subject didn’t come up, and I almost believed the matter was all said and done. Then two nights later after a dinner of takeout from Taco Bell, Jimmy put on his jacket and grabbed his keys and said he’d be right back. He was already out the door before I had the chance to ask him where he was going.
            He was gone for more than three hours. He’d left his phone on the kitchen bar, so I couldn’t call and ask him what in god’s name he was doing for so long.
            He finally returned around bedtime. He took off his jacket and said he couldn’t find Jacques. He’d been searching for him all that time and he’d gone everywhere he thought Jacques might be.                                                                                                                                          “I had a dream about him last night,” he said. “It was like God came to me in a vision and told me where he was. Connie, I’ve never had God speak to me in a dream before, or at least not that I remember, so I took great stock in what information I was getting. I did exactly what I was told to do and went right to where God said Jacques would be, but he wasn’t there, so none of what I’d dreamed was true. In three hours of looking high and low I saw exactly one cat, and that one was orange and not black like Jacques and ran off before I could get near it. Everything I got told in my dream didn’t happen, which brings me to the conclusion that God is dead or at least doesn’t know anywhere near as much as I always thought he did.”
            As far as Jimmy was concerned, he told me, the mystery of Jacques’ disappearance was going to go unsolved. He had done all he could humanely do in the matter. He was giving it up, he said. I wondered if I was an unnamed suspicious character in the puzzle, the culprit in the whodunit going on inside his head, but Jimmy never mentioned it again. It was like whatever he’d done or wherever he’d gone that night during his search for Jacques had closed the door on any more of his efforts, and from then on Jacques would have to be somebody else’s problem.
            I was beginning to learn more about Jimmy Mills every day. I realized he was not like other people in the slightest. When Jimmy was done with a thing he was done. He didn’t harbor second thoughts or wallow around in the past looking for answers or try to change what had already become history. What was done was done, and not even God could do anything to change it.
 
                                                                        *****
            All this time I was experiencing increasing highs and lows and new ways of looking and thinking about the things going on in my life, most of them having to do with my funny, up and down feelings about Jimmy. It hadn’t been that long since we met and started seeing each other and Jimmy moving in with me, but I kept ruminating about how my life had evolved from being something quiet and humdrum all the time to suddenly spinning around with Jimmy and his whereabouts and his philosophy. What was his schedule each day? Did he want to eat at home or go out somewhere? Was he bored or did he find his lifestyle entertaining and fulfilling? Did he truly like me, were there romantic sparks going on within him, or was he merely going through the motions in our relationship because he’d finally found a warm body he could sleep with every night and eat her cooking and not be required to reciprocate in any way? It was like I had no ready answers for anything, much less know what I was truly feeling myself about all that was happening around me.
            Then it got to where, at least once a week, Jimmy suddenly started wanting to drive twenty-five miles out of town and eat in this Bavarian beer hall-type place that was off by itself in a strip mall that was mostly deserted with buildings where the businesses had failed at some point in the past, rental furniture and quick loan places and tattoo parlors. Where Jimmy ever heard about it or came across this place—which was named Hugo’s—I don’t know, but it must have been about the only entertainment venue in the community, because every single time we went the place was packed. There was a bar and a dance floor, a stage where six members of a band played Oom-Pa music and drunk people got up to do the Chicken Dance, and an upstairs and a downstairs filled with tables that were never empty. I spent a lot of time watching the band and trying to ignore the weirdness that went on around me, because frankly, the clientele of the place scared the living daylights out of me. There were rough characters everywhere you looked, and I’d bet a lot of money most of them were armed and on drugs and guilty of a whole lot of other stuff I didn’t want to know about.
            At first I couldn’t figure out the attraction. Jimmy wasn’t a big drinker, most of the time preferring to roll a joint of an evening and zone out listening to The Doors or watching the Jazz if they were on television, and he wasn’t the type to want to go out in public among boisterous crowds with fights going on and imbibe until the cows came home. But whatever, the night would come around when he’d say he felt like some brats and fried potatoes and a few schooners, and so off we’d go to Hugo’s. He’d drive and get there and drink a lot of beer to float his brats and potatoes, he said, in his stomach, then disappear off and mingle with unsavory people and go outside in the lot with them, come back happy and drink some more until I’d drive back while he sang “Light My Fire” and various snatches of The Doors’ Greatest Hits at the top of his lungs until he fell asleep.
            Then he’d go for a long while, after one of our trips to Hugo’s, and he wouldn’t mention the place even once or show any inclination of ever wanting to go again. That was Jimmy’s way, up and down and in and out and over and out, never the same pattern. That was the way his entire life worked. Just when you thought you had him figured out, when you thought you knew what he was going to do or say, that was when you found out that everything you thought you knew about him and how you had him categorized was down a blind alley and you’d made a wrong turn and it was totally different from the way you’d had him figured. You’d have to stop on a dime and change the way you thought of him, and then when you thought you had him nailed down this time for sure, he’d go and become that chameleon portion of himself and change on you again.
            That was when you discovered it was best not to try and predict anything Jimmy Mills might do. You just had to wait and see who he was that moment and what was coming this time around and then go from there.
 
            It hadn’t been but a little over four months’ time when Jimmy had first met me on the beach at Destin. Summer was gone by now and the days and nights had passed while we got to know each other and started living together, and one morning when I woke up it was the day before Thanksgiving, just like that. I thought about how the holidays were here, starting with dinner with my folks tomorrow and dinner on Friday at Jimmy’s parents in Athens, where I’d meet them and his two sisters and their families for the first time, and how by the time the four-day weekend ended the Christmas holidays would be in full swing.
            This would be the first time in my life I had ever had a boyfriend at Christmas time. I’d always spent the holidays on my own, perhaps with my family or friends some of the time, but in the end by myself, in my room at home or after I’d moved out in my apartment with a bowl of popcorn watching some stupid old movie on television. I can’t say that was a bad thing, because I always enjoyed myself during those times, being alone and watching Edmund Gwynn or Jimmy Stewart go through their Christmas poses, crying along with Claudette Colbert when she opened her present from her husband who was missing and presumed dead in the War and who she thought was gone from her forever while “Together” played on the music box in her hands. I didn’t mind getting maudlin and sentimental those times, having a glass of wine and giving myself over to feeling sorry for my own existence and shedding a few tears, because it seemed like after I finished up sobbing and went to bed all by my lonesome I’d wake up the next day feeling a whole lot better, probably because I knew things couldn’t get worse than they’d been already.
            But now with Jimmy my life had changed, and I didn’t think it was possible to go back to my old existence ever again. That was the past, and this was the present.                                                What changed everything was that Jimmy was a part of my life now. He was in the moment and present in every scene I saw myself in and the one person in the world who seemed to know what I was thinking and what I was fixing to do. I couldn’t imagine any further solitary evenings for me—holidays or not—and so I started to settle in with the idea that the grownup portion of my life was now in full-swing.
            It was pretty scary, this being suddenly happy, to tell you the truth.
 
            It was twenty miles to my parents’ house in Lebanon, so it wasn’t like we had to spend all day traveling to get there. I wanted to leave around mid-morning, ten or so, so that way I could be around to help get dinner ready a little, although my two aunts and my sisters would be there already, bringing dishes of their own and puttering around in the kitchen the way they always did, so save for me bringing banana pudding and a couple of bags of rolls there wouldn’t be much more for me to do other than get in everyone’s way.
            Jimmy got up from eating breakfast just as the Macy’s Parade started and said he had one quick thing he had to take care of before we left. He said he’d be right back and was out the door before I had the chance to ask what could possibly be so important that somebody had to run out on Thanksgiving morning and get it done.
            He was gone for an hour and a half. I called him a couple of times to see when he was coming back but he didn’t answer. I was right on the verge of getting upset and bent out of shape because he was going to make us late when he came in the door whistling “Sleigh Ride”—like he was happy as the day was long. I couldn’t understand why in the world he ought to be so cheerful that moment, since what was staring him in the face was a visit to my parents’ for Thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of my relatives he’d never met before, which was in the same league as what I was going to have to do Friday when we traveled to Athens, which I was dreading to no end because it was so unknown and mysterious, so it wasn’t computing in my head how I could be so nervous on my end and he could be so happy and carefree on his.
            “Where have you been?” I asked him. “I was worried you’d chickened out and weren’t going to come back.” I was trying to act like there was no big deal going on. I didn’t want to let on how I was a person who could get perturbed and tied up in knots over a whole lot of nothing.
            “A dude at work needed to borrow my truck to move some stuff today. I went over to his place so we could swap vehicles. He’s got the truck and I’ve got his Mercedes.”
            “Somebody at your store drives a Mercedes?”                                                                      “Yeah. It’s a good deal for me, don’t you think? It’s one nice car. We can drive it to your parents for a kick. For one thing, it’s got a hell of a stereo system. Speakers everywhere you look. I can’t wait to hear Jim Morrison on it.”                                                                             “Well, you’d better be careful and not wreck it. You and me put together couldn’t afford to pay to get a Mercedes-Benz fixed.”
           
            We left to make the drive to my parents’ house, and when we got outside there was the Mercedes-Benz sitting in the lot that we were going to take the trip in.
            I’ve never been in such a car in all my life. I certainly hadn’t been in anything quite so nice. I was used to hatchbacks and economy cars and vehicles designed to get you around using hardly any fuel whatsoever, contraptions that ended up making you pay the price of not spending your money on gasoline by delving it out on expensive repairs instead. My driving experience had always been a case of knock-on wood for luck—I had to search for something wooden to knock on because all my cars had always been composed of cloth and plastic and flimsy metal that was supposed to be durable but never quite made it to that level because it all ended up disintegrating first.
            It wasn’t that way with Jimmy’s borrowed Mercedes. I got in the passenger seat and it was like I’d entered into a world I’d never dreamed existed.
            The seats were cream-colored and genuine leather. I didn’t know exactly what kind of leather, but I couldn’t stop this Fernando Lamas voice in my head that kept describing it as “rich” and “Corinthian.” The dashboard was authentic wood (mahogany?) and there were several shiny silver vents for the air and heat to come gushing out at about twelve speeds at your convenience. The seats were large and comfortable with an adjustable headrest that drew my head back on it like a magnet. I could see icons galore on the dash—Phone, Music, Maps, Audiobooks, GPS, Podcasts—all sorts of pleasures and luxuries I never knew existed in an automobile up to that moment.                                                                                                                 “This car will run you about a hundred grand,” Jimmy said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if it was more than that.”
            “If somebody can afford a car like this,” I said, “you have to wonder why they’re working in retail.”
            “Well, a person can’t just drive around all the time. Sometimes you have to come to work to keep from getting bored.”
            “I believe if I had the choice to make on my own, I’d pick being bored. There’s not as much stress as there is hanging out in an expensive automobile and worrying all the time if some nut is going to run into you.”
 
            Everybody was already there when we arrived. It was a nice fall day, there were cars parked in the yard and the driveway, and the whole group, my sisters and their husbands and their kids, were all out in the front yard throwing a frisbee back and forth. I waved when we got out and everyone waved back, looking, of course, at the car that transported me here. We weren’t that close, my family and me, but I was their sister and their aunt and their daughter, and no one had much reason to hate my guts, for as it was then I was just Aunt Connie who was for some unknown reason designated as the crazy person of the family. I sort of resented being given such a moniker, because I really hadn’t done anything in my life so far to deserve it, but I guess I was considered the crazy one because for most of my existence I’d done pretty much nothing at all to write home about.
            Everyone was taking in Jimmy for the first time. Until that day I don’t think I’d ever been seen by any of my family with a boy before. They especially hadn’t seen me with a fellow driving such an expensive car as the Mercedes we’d pulled up in. They may have been my nieces and nephews and brothers-in-laws and sisters and parents, but they could all tell a luxury car when they saw one.
 
            After a while I started realizing that the only person at this Thanksgiving gathering who was suffering in abject misery was me. Everybody else was enjoying themselves immensely, or at least, if they weren’t wallowing in the pure joy of the moment, they were at least secure enough in their own skins to relax and be at peace and not go into a conniption about what others might be thinking about what stranger this was I had become involved with enough to actually bring him with me to dinner. Everyone seemed almost sane and laid-back, like there was no dynamic present anybody had to worry about or question. Even Jimmy seemed like he was cool with the situation, that he wasn’t in the least feeling like he was under a microscope getting inspected by a nosy family trying to figure out what sort of species he was to willingly be here with crazy Connie. Jimmy, as a matter of fact, appeared to be having a good time being among a group of folks who weren’t entirely certain, but probably, judging from the expensive automobile he’d arrived in, were convinced he was the head of a drug cartel and had money funneled his way illegally one way or another. But it wasn’t like anyone was going to mention it. My family has always been in awe and held a sort of reverent admiration for anyone with money and financial freedom. Veto Genovese could have been sitting there at the table that day and everyone would have gathered around him with honey in their voices and smiled for the camera when it came time to take a picture.
            The fact that Jimmy was employed by a cheap retail furniture outlet didn’t make a bit of difference to my mother. That he had no tattoos or visible body piercings and was not dressed in a Gothic mode, along with the shiny car parked in the driveway, made him all right in her book. That I had a male with no glaring impairments who was interested in me—and who might possibly save me from myself and an impending life of being Nutty Aunt Connie Who Never Married Because She Was Just Too Crazy For Anybody To Say I Do To—and he actually had a job and had been to college and drove a vehicle that pretty much broadcasted to the world that he was a success in all his ventures, lifted him up to an exalted position in my mother’s eyes. She made sure he had seconds of everything on the table and laughed at every word that came out of his mouth. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her he was driving someone else’s car. It seemed cruel to bust her bubble.
            We had the most pleasant visit I’d had with my parents and family since childhood, and on the ride home I was feeling very grateful for the experience and affectionate toward Jimmy for how he’d acted during the day, planning secretly in my mind to jump his bones when we got home. But when we pulled into the parking lot he immediately said he had to take the Mercedes back and he’d be back in a few minutes. I asked if I could go with him but he said it would be better if he went by himself, since, he told me, his friend lived in a pretty rough neighborhood and it might freak me out to go there at night.
            He was gone for a good two hours. I don’t know what took him so long to return the car and come back, but I made myself a cup of tea and stayed up waiting for him. I didn’t want him to think I was asleep, because I still had romantic notions on my mind. The whole time I worried about what he said about the rough neighborhood. I figured it would be just my luck and in the cards for somebody to kill him while he was returning the Mercedes, to leave me alone for the holidays once again.
            I don’t get that way too often about boys and sex and all, never, really, to be truthful, so I wanted to make sure I didn’t let the feeling get away without anything happening.
 
            On Friday I had to return the favor with Jimmy and make the trip to Athens to have dinner with his family, which wasn’t so long of a trip, maybe fifty miles. I got everything we would need to carry together—more banana pudding, which seemed to be all that was ever required of me—then jumped in the shower to get ready to go, but when I got out, once again, Jimmy was nowhere to be found. I finished dressing and was about to call him and try and track him down when he came in the door with a to-go cup of coffee in his hand. We had an entire pot of coffee sitting in the kitchen, so I wondered why he’d seen it necessary to go out and get more.
     “Somebody else called me and wanted to borrow the truck,” he said. “I ought to start charging a fee. It seems like everybody I know is moving or having to haul something off somewhere.”
            This time we had a big loaded, fancy SUV to take on our excursion. I think it was a Cadillac, which is another synonymous big hunk of metal that normal people don’t own or drive around, but anyway, there it was for us to go to Athens in, and I was beginning to wonder whether the majority of Jimmy’s friends and acquaintances were members of Forbes 500 or something, judging by the vehicles they owned. I wondered, if these people had this kind of money to spend on expensive cars, why they didn’t bother to buy one of those monster pickup trucks that cost about as much as a house to move their stuff around in, or even better, just hire some company to do it for them, since money was obviously not an issue. Why not just go all-out and buy an entire moving company and be set for life?
            This was my first time to meet Jimmy’s parents, so I was hoping to make a good impression. I’d talked to his mother on the phone a few times, but I’d fudged out one time when they’d called wanting to see if the Facetime App on their new phone worked, because I’d just got home from work and it was raining and my hair was wet and I looked like crap and I didn’t want them seeing me like that the first time because first impressions are the strongest ones and I didn’t want them to picture me that way in their heads forever.
            We pulled up in the gleaming and shiny Cadillac or whatever it was in the November sunshine, and we went inside to say hello to everybody. This time we were about the first ones to arrive except for Jimmy’s grandmother on his mother’s side, and that was only because she lived there with his parents and was already there and didn’t have any other place to be coming from except a bedroom down at the other end of the house. Arriving later were Jimmy’s big brother and his little sister and their families and a set of aunts and uncles. I found it interesting that there wasn’t but one grandchild in the entire group, and he was this nine-year-old kid who had not a word to say to anybody, who was so mute and lifeless I wondered if he was like old Hubert back at church and was going to start screaming and baying at the heavens any minute.
            We sat down for dinner and Jimmy began talking, dominating the conversation so much that no one could manage to get a word in because of his lengthy narratives. I guess this was why the kid kept quiet all the time; he’d been around enough times to know with Jimmy around his turn was never going to come.
            Jimmy told long stories about incidents that had occurred at his workplace, strange customers who’d come in and nutty fellow employees, weird circumstances he’d run across lately doing one thing or another. He made no mention of Jacques and his disappearance or the line of luxury cars he was lately driving on a daily basis because of his affluent friends’ need for his truck, or, most noticeably, of me and him and our relationship and how we’d seemed to find one another. It was like anything that was real and actually transpiring in his life couldn’t be articulated. I finally figured it out after a while and it made good sense. I came to understand that Jimmy was doing with his family exactly what I’d been doing with mine for the longest time. He was telling them what they wanted to hear. He was filling in all the available gaps talking about anything but the truth, because the truth was the last thing he figured his family or anybody else in the world would ever want to hear about him.
            At that moment I thought I’d begun to understand him at last.
            Halfway through dinner I began to get a second inkling about Jimmy and his rambunctious chattiness, and I realized he was continuing to monopolize the dinner talk so much so that no one in his family had time to speak or turn their attention toward me. At first I’d thought all his blabber-mouthing was maybe to keep me quiet and not give me any opportunity to open my mouth so everyone would discover what a loser Jimmy was unfortunately hooked up with at the moment, but then I could tell, just by the way he would occasionally look my way and wink or flash a quick smile, that he was putting on this show intentionally just to hold the wild beasts at bay and keep them from getting at me. It was a nice thing he was doing. He was protecting me from the very same people that he considered his greatest enemy—his family. I realized that if I wasn’t there he would be in retreat and silent this moment, far within himself in that place where he always would go so he could be at peace and not have to come out and defend himself, just stay silent and chew his food and hide inside his personal fallout shelter.
             I was grateful for this sort of protection. I was beginning to believe Jimmy was a master at handling things.
            He didn’t take the Cadillac back to its owner that night when we got home, but just left it in the lot about a hundred yards away from the apartment. He said he’d park it off by itself so no one would scratch it opening a car door against it. By the time I woke up he’d already left for work and the Cadillac was gone.
            I’d been awake maybe two hours when my phone rang and I looked to see an unknown number on the screen. I started not to answer, thinking how it was probably some post-Black Friday marketing ploy to get me to buy something I’d missed out on, but something about the word that said Booking and the exchange that appeared to be local made me give in and see who it was.
            It was Jimmy on the other end.
            “I’ve got a problem,” he said. “Don’t freak out, but I’m afraid I’m in the process of being arrested.”
            “Arrested? What are you talking about? Is this one of your jokes? If it is, it’s not funny.”
            “No, this is the truth. I’ve already been booked and this is my one phone call.”
            “Why are you being arrested, Jimmy? Tell me the truth.”
            “I got in a wreck when I was driving to take the car back this morning. I tried to run away but they caught up with me.”
            “Why would you run away? I don’t understand. Did you do something wrong?”
            “I was driving a stolen car.”
            He let it hang in the air a moment, then he laughed a little, like it was a funny thing to think about.                                                                                                                                       “I knew I’d be in a deep load of shit if they caught me. You have to understand, Connie, it’s not like I ever really stole any of these cars. I just borrowed them for a while, just to go on a little ride.”
            “What are you saying? These cars? Are you telling me there’s been more than one?”
            “There have been several. A few.”
            He paused again, and I could almost see him shrugging his shoulders on the other end, like this predicament he was in was just another one of those times when he’d been having some fun out in the world and the world in turn didn’t like it and decided to spoil his party.                   “I’ve been borrowing cars for a while now,” he admitted. “But I never kept them. I always brought them back. It’s just this little game I play sometimes. I’ve done a lot of research on how to steal a car over the years, so I like to practice. It’s like it’s a hobby of mine.”
            “So those cars we took to Thanksgiving dinners were both stolen?”
            “Borrowed.”
            I couldn’t believe the way this conversation was going, so finally, after promising to somehow get my hands on enough money to come down to the jail and bail him out and to also check around for a lawyer on his behalf, I hung up. For a few minutes I walked around the apartment wringing my hands and wondering what in the hell I’d gotten into, how my quiet little existence had ever managed to get embroiled in a situation like this, and then I sucked it up and went to the bank before it closed at noon and drew out my savings and started trying to make sense of this imbroglio.
 
            I didn’t know exactly how much money it was going to take to bail out a car thief who also had an additional charge of leaving the scene of an accident tacked on too, so I drew out everything in my savings and hoped if that wasn’t enough that they’d maybe take a credit card for the rest. I didn’t know if I had to call up a bonding company and finance everything through them or what the deal was. I was stupid and thought you just paid at the desk of the jail, like you were at K-Mart or something. Even though they didn’t take all my money on the initial run I still had to sign a paper that said if Jimmy decided to jump bail that I would be the one on the hook for paying off all the balance plus fees.
            It ran through my mind how it might be a wise thing to let Jimmy sit in jail for a while.
            “It’s really just a big understanding,” he explained. “Everybody’s making a big deal out of practically nothing.”                                                                                                               We’d just got through with posting his bail and getting his valuables and being told when the court date was, and we were standing outside the front doors of the downtown Justice Center waiting for the light to change. It was noon and the sidewalks were bare, what with it being a Saturday, no court employers or city or state workers bustling around on their lunch hours. What few people were around strolled by us with dogs on leashes, and I wondered if any of these citizens were tuned in to the foibles of human behavior enough to know that I was standing there among them with a soon-to-be hardened criminal at my side. I wondered if the people of the world would soon start regarding me as if I was Blanche Burrow, wife of Buck, consort of Bonnie and Clyde. It was like I was suddenly guilty by association.
            “Five thousand dollars bond,” I said aloud, probably just so I’d believe it. “That’s what it cost to get you out. Sounds pretty serious to me.”                                                                                        “It’s all a racket. They make you jump through a bunch of hoops just to get your money. It’s nothing but a game. If I knew anybody important this whole thing would vanish like a magic trick.”                                                                                                                                                           He’d already phoned in to his store and given them some kind of story about why he wouldn’t be in for his shift today, so I drove us home and tried to determine how I was going to handle the rest of the day with Jimmy the car thief underfoot. I wanted to drive him somewhere and tell him to get out of my life for a while, that I needed to think this whole thing out and maybe I’d be back to get him in a little while and maybe I wouldn’t. As it was I wasn’t the least bit prepared or receptive when in the five minutes after we got home to the apartment Jimmy began trying to touch me and started chasing after me like sex was the only salvation that was going to see him through the woes he’d lately found himself a victim of.                                            Victim, my foot. He’d done this just for kicks all on his own without any assistance from anyone, so I wasn’t buying into any of it.
            “Keep your hands off me,” I told him. I think this was the first time I’d gone against him in anything before. I think he was so accustomed to me deferring and letting him have his way on everything that this action I was taking shocked him even more than getting arrested and hauled off to jail in the back of a police car. It was like me turning him away was even more traumatic.                                                                                                                                                      I guess because I wasn’t receptive to playing around that afternoon Jimmy decided he’d instead regale me with assorted tales of his adventures as a master car thief, like he thought it would impress me and woo me and maybe work like foreplay when I heard them. And the thing of it was, as much as I tried to ignore him and tune him out just for that reason, the more his stories started tickling my imagination. The stories came in waves and layers, and each one grew a little more interesting than the one before.
            “The first thing I learned to do was to always check out the car I was thinking of taking off in.” He sat at the kitchen bar with a bottle of Pepsi, leaning back on the stool like he was some big authority on the subject, a stolen car guru or something. “What you do, see, is go up and bump against the side of a car and see if an alarm goes off. If it does you just keep on walking like you didn’t have a damn thing to do with it.”
            He was full of all kinds of tips and illegal expertise.
            “Heck, one of the first things that come to you is that people mostly have their heads up their asses all the time. They don’t hear alarms going off anymore because they’re so used to it. You can stand there and break a window or jimmy a lock all day and hardly anybody will even look twice at you while you’re doing it. Of course, I never wanted to get anywhere near as blatant as to having to use force to get into a car. There’s plenty around parked and unlocked without having to resort to shit like that.”                                                                                       I’d been emptying the dishwasher and putting the clean dishes away. I didn’t want to stop listening to all he was saying, so I started cleaning out the refrigerator, which is something I’ve never done in my life.
            “There’s a lot of stuff people can do to keep their car from getting lifted, but some of it costs a lot of dough, so most of them don’t want to take the time to fool with it. They’d rather take their chances and not think about it. Some people think putting a security emblem or an insurance sticker on their windshields will scare thieves off, but after a while a guy gets to know who’s wired up and who isn’t. Anyway, there are plenty of dumbasses out in the world who leave their cars unlocked and all their valuables just laying out on the seat inviting somebody to take them. They leave their keys in the ignition and their wallets in the glove compartment and their pistols under the seat. All you have to do is stroll up and down a lot a couple of times and there one is, like a hand-wrapped package under the Christmas tree with your name on it. All you have to do is hop in and away you go.”
            He looked over at me and grinned.
            “Sometimes, though,” he said, “it’s almost too easy. One time I got so bored with everything I jumped in a car—it was a Land Rover, I remember—while the driver was twenty feet away using an ATM. That almost got too exciting, what with him calling the cops and them looking for me everywhere. I had to ditch it really quick before I even had time to take it for much of a test drive.”
            He studied the contents of the Pepsi in his glass, like he was looking for something lost in there.
                                                                                                                                                Jimmy’s court date was set for the next week. We’d managed to find a lawyer by then, what with a little more financial aid from me, which was beginning to drain me dry and which Jimmy promised to repay me as soon as this whole ordeal was all over with. I didn’t much believe him though. I had already marked it down as the price I had to pay for letting myself fall into a dicey situation with some weirdo guy all on the basis of me aspiring to be like all my friends in the world and get married or romantically involved and not be a lonesome castoff like I’d been thinking I was for the longest time, or, if I had to be truthful, all my life. What I’d done—and I knew it just as well as I knew my own reflection in the mirror—was confuse desperation with love. I’d willed myself into a crazy situation on the premise it gave me a chance at being normal.
            I didn’t really want to go to court with Jimmy that Tuesday morning. I didn’t feel like asking my boss for the day off so I could go downtown with my car-thief boyfriend and find out if he had to go to jail or not, if I was going to have to sit there wondering if they were going to take him into custody right on the spot or what was going to happen, but I couldn’t see any way of getting around it other than to tell Jimmy I was through with him and this mess he’d created and he was on his own. I still wasn’t sure I was up to being by myself again after having someone around to connect with for the first time in my life.
            Talk about being torn.
            I don’t know why we even bothered to hire the lawyer who represented Jimmy. The guy was nothing but a doofus. All he did was have Jimmy plead guilty and ask for a suspended sentence with a chance to eventually get the charges expunged from his record, and a court-appointed attorney could have done that just as easily and without a lot of financial cost on my part. I guess if the judge had decided Jimmy was simply this goofy guy who’d up and done something stupid one time in his life then he might have had a chance, but since the prosecution had already determined—by Jimmy’s own admission—that he’d stolen and taken joy rides in at least a dozen cases, it was determined some time in the workhouse was justifiable.                                                Because it was his first offense, Jimmy got two months in the workhouse and twenty-four hours of community service. He would have to serve sixty percent of his sentence, which amounted to about five weeks, and he would have to report to the downtown jail in two weeks to begin serving his time.                                                                                                                         So the thing of it was that when Jimmy got out in February he would be an ex-con. Maybe they might wipe it off his record later for time served and good behavior, but in my mind he was always going to retain that classification.
            What I knew for certain was I hadn’t in my entire lifetime ever planned to be the squeeze of an ex-con. Other girls might find that aura of danger exciting and attractive, but not me. Count me out. I was a good girl in my own strange way, and I made up my mind from that point on I was going to stay that way.
           
            There was a lot of silence between us from then on. Neither Jimmy or I had much to say to one another, and after a few days Jimmy drove to his parents’ house in Athens to hang out with them some before he had to report to jail. I couldn’t really tell if this meant our relationship was over or not, since he didn’t pack up anything or make any kind of formal announcement, but I really was at the point where I didn’t care, because it wasn’t a happy situation whichever way you looked at it. I was mostly interested in seeing if I could get my money back from Jimmy for the bonding and the attorney and the court costs, and it was beginning to look like none of that was going to happen. I told myself how maybe breaking off with Jimmy would be worth the money I’d lost, because in the end I’d at least be living a quiet and normal existence again, but there was still that part of me that had an inkling he was always going to be hanging out in some little corner of my mind for the days to come.
            Toward the end of that second week, a few days after Jimmy left, this man at the grocery store, whose job was to stock all the over-the-counter medicines at the pharmacy, aspirin and cough remedies and antacids and things like that, asked me if I’d like to go to dinner with him sometime, and I surprised myself and said yes.
            We decided to make it on Friday night, which was the next day.
            Now it wasn’t like this guy was some sort of dreamboat or was bubbling over with personality and charm—no, the fact of it was he was mainly pretty doggoned average, perhaps a little slow on the outtake, but maybe that was because he was so shy. He’d managed to screw up his courage to ask me out—he told me this later—so that meant there was at least something present in me that was attractive to other men besides those who stole cars for kicks. It appeared to me that after running across him—Mike, his name was Mike—the past couple of years whenever I shopped at his store, he’d been waiting to ask me out but had been afraid to take the first step. The possibility occurred in my head that he was a lot like me, which wouldn’t, of course, make him normal, but the chances were good we might be able to get along with each other without either of us keeling over.                                                                                                          I didn’t think too much about it on that Friday night of our first date. By then Jimmy had been gone a couple of days and hadn’t called me, so I was beginning to get the feeling he’d decided to take the money I’d contributed on his behalf and run. My feelings were about halfway hurt by his acting that way, but the better sense part of me reminded me I’d be better off the further I got away from Jimmy Mills. It wasn’t like I considered him dangerous or scary, but it was the feeling I had that he was going to do me some sort of harm in the end, cause me a beaucoup of trouble and all. I just somehow knew there was going to be something undesirable coming my way the longer I let myself fool around with him.
            It was the middle of the Christmas season, so Mike and I decided that first night we’d drive down to the Opryland Hotel and look at all the lights and decorations they put up every year. We walked around outside for a while looking at the trees and shrubbery all lit up, then we went inside and strolled around through a lot of lobbies and rooms with floral and trees and animated reindeer and Santas and elves and Grinches everywhere you looked. Finally, we boarded a pontoon boat and floated around a waterway where we could view the Christmas trees on balconies and colorful wreaths and bunting on display everywhere you looked. We thought we’d take in the sights for a while and then go into one of the restaurants and have dinner.
            There we were floating along, not even talking or anything, just looking at the decorations and listening to the Christmas music playing over the speakers, Nat King Cole and Burl Ives and Brenda Lee singing “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree.” I was wondering how many hours it had taken to make all these displays, hang all these lights, how many people it took to do it. That was when I saw Jimmy up above on one of the walkways, leaning over a railing with a grin on his face, watching us as we passed by.                                                                   I didn’t at the time know if this was a coincidence or not, Jimmy being there at the Opryland Hotel at the same time as us, or if, in fact, he was stalking me while I was out on a date with another guy, but I don’t mind saying that it really creeped me out seeing him up there. I didn’t say anything about it to Mike because I didn’t want to spoil the evening or anything, but I was ill at ease enough for it to ruin the rest of the boat ride and dinner too. When we went to the restaurant I didn’t have much of an appetite, even if I hadn’t eaten anything since noon.
            I knew it was bad when we finished dinner and walked outside across the big parking lot to Mike’s car. His car was gone, not there, precisely the way I thought it was going to not be there back in the far corner of my mind all along. We had to call the police and wait for them an hour to get there, then Mike had to fill out a report and find a friend of his from the store to come and give us a ride home. The whole time I kept my mouth shut about Jimmy and how I knew he was the one who’d took off in Mike’s car, and how I knew there was a good chance the car was sitting somewhere close by, and how Jimmy was probably laughing out loud that very moment about the way his special talent had taught me a thing or two about being faithful and loyal.
            Mike didn’t call me back after that night, probably because he was embarrassed at having his car stolen on our first date. He was that kind of guy. Like I said, he was a lot like me. I wanted to go down to the store and tell him how it hadn’t been his fault and to not worry about it so much, but it took another three weeks before I saw him again. For a little bit I’d bet he’d been hiding from me during that time, maybe seeing me come in the door and going off to the stockroom to lay low until I left. When I finally did see him again, Jimmy was already well into his sentence, but I played dumb and didn’t mention to Mike anything about what had happened to his car, even when he told me the police had found it that same night parked over at the mall.                      I didn’t go out with Mike during that stretch, and I didn’t hear from Jimmy for quite a while either, even when I knew his sentence was over and he was a free man again.
 
            As much as I told myself I was better off breaking everything off with Jimmy, there were still some things that wouldn’t allow me to completely close the books on him all the way. For one, he still continued to hold some fascination for me because of the way he’d always gone about doing things, like courting me from afar on the Destin beach and knowing how I wanted to be involved with somebody even when every facet of my being was trying to convince me to be Greta Garbo for the rest of my life, like coming on to me so shy and slow there at the first and then all at once moving in with me with practically no discussion about it beforehand, and finally that mystery bad-boy side of him that was out there in his secret places meeting up with rough-looking characters in bad neighborhoods and beer joints and doing and selling drugs and stealing cars from unsuspecting folks and driving them wherever he pleased with that grin always present on his face. I guess, despite my inner protests and objections, there was a part of me that couldn’t turn my back on him, couldn’t put distance between this guy who courted a certain brand of trouble and couldn’t bring himself to join the rest of the world in being normal.
            I found myself falling into a waiting damsel sort of existence. As much as I struggled against it I still caught myself coming home from work and sitting with my phone all night waiting for Jimmy to call. It was stupid as all get-out, and I’d go through thousands of valid arguments trying to convince myself that this wasn’t the smartest thing in the world for me to be doing with my time, how it all needed to come to a halt very soon. It was more than way past time for me to be moving on from Jimmy Mills. Every day and night I would give myself this lecture in one form or another, I’d nod my head in agreement, and then within minutes I’d find myself right back to thinking about him again, wondering when in the world he was going to get in touch with me, when I would see him once more.
            Christmas came around and there was still no word from him. I had to go to Christmas dinner without him, alone again like before, and all the way to my parents’ house I pondered over what I was going to tell the family about my latest failed relationship. I knew I wasn’t about to tell them the truth, about how Jimmy was a car thief and done some time and had, I thought, now disappeared from view and his whereabouts were unknown, because that would have done nothing but fuel the fire of Crazy Aunt Connie and the foolishness that always was going on in her life one way or another. No, I knew I could get along better without donating any more evidence to everyone’s viewpoints and conceptions of the kind of failed, hopeless person I was.
            I ended up telling everybody that Jimmy’s company was opening up another outlet store in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Jimmy had taken the position of manager there because it was a wonderful stepping stone for his future advancement within the ranks of the company.
            I chose Nova Scotia because I heard Carly Simon singing “You’re So Vain” on the drive there on some station that wasn’t still playing Christmas music, which I was listening to because I couldn’t stand to hear anything Yule-related even one more time, and Nova Scotia seemed about as good a place for Jimmy to be right then as any.
 
            He finally came back around on New Year’s Eve. It was the middle of the afternoon when he showed up at my door, and I was lolling around the apartment trying to decide what I was going to do with myself the rest of the night, if I was going to simply sit around like a concrete block alone all night watching a bunch of inane specials on television--Dick Clark and Guy Lombardo, who were both dead and what year they were in didn’t matter anymore, and the Boston Pops with dead Arthur Fieldler and all that—or if I was going to call one of my friends and get myself invited to some sort of gathering or party or join a throng barhopping and acting like a fool on this night of nights. None of the alternatives excited me much. I debated about calling Mike down at the grocery store but didn’t want to appear desperate or anything just because it was New Year’s Eve. I had a lot of pride. Don’t ask me why.                                                            Jimmy didn’t call first but simply walked up to the door and rang the bell. Later I thought how strange it was that he hadn’t bothered to use his key simply to see if I’d maybe changed the locks while he was incarcerated, which I suppose if I had it would have been a symbolic way of saying I’d put an end to our relationship by doing so, but I hadn’t changed the locks and he didn’t check to see if I did. No, he just politely stood out in the hallway and waited for me to answer the door, which I did in a real flash. I looked through the peephole and saw him standing there and didn’t say anything or ask any questions or anything. I just opened the door and he stood there and said hi.
            “Hey, Connie,” he said. “I was wondering if you were home. I thought you probably had the day off because of it being New Year’s Eve. Hardly anybody works on New Year’s Eve.”
            It was sort of a stupid way of beginning a conversation considering the circumstances, but I guess it was better than him saying he was back from prison or he’d just finished stealing another car and why don’t the two of us go for a little ride, so I let it go.
            “I wondered if I was ever going to hear from you again,” I said at last. “I’ve been wanting to thank you for the unique way you had of saying merry Christmas to me, that nasty trick you pulled of making my date’s car come up missing. I knew it was you who’d done it right from the start. I even saw you in the hotel earlier in the evening.”                                                                                “It was just my way of bringing you a little Christmas cheer.”                                              I moved out of the way so he could come in, but the minute he was inside the door I came to my senses and recognized him for what he was and wanted him gone again. It was like it took being near him once more to jolt me out of my fantasy world where he was Robin Hood or Clyde Barrow or the Sundance Kid and I was Maid Marian or Bonnie Parker or Etta Place, and it came to me that what this was was simply a case of a past-his-prime little boy who couldn’t stand anything in his real life and had to do something every now and then—idolize Jim Morrison or cheer for a sports team three thousand miles away or steal a car—to free himself from the mundane world, and while he was at it to pick somebody who was just as much in the doldrums of life as he was so he could show off and strut his stuff in front of her so she might look upon him with some form of awe and be in servitude to him and his grand and classic acts forever.
            This wasn’t love and I knew it for certain right that moment. I was not the loser he thought I was. I was not anything what the people in my vista regarded and classified me as. I was no doe-eyed girl friend who went along with anything and everything, I wasn’t a stick in the mud spinster just because I liked staying home and reading the classics of literature and transporting myself to other worlds and different ages from the sorry scenario I inhabited each day, and I wasn’t Crazy Aunt Connie to be looked down upon and snickered at and laughed about. I didn’t need to take the first man who came along as some sort of consolation prize, even if it was quirky Jimmy Mills. It didn’t matter if he was halfway cute and not conventional in a boring way like all the other fellows in the world. The bottom line was he wasn’t the guy for me. There were lots of others out there—it had taken quite a while for me to learn to believe this—who were looking for somebody like me. I was a prime catch, damn it, and I needed to learn to accept that as a fact. After all, look at Mike. He’d noticed me without any effort on my part, and he’d been pining for me for a couple of years now.
            I made a pot of coffee and we talked for a while about how he’d lost his job at the furniture store and how he’d had to pick up trash along the interstate for three weeks and some of the real lowlifes he’d had to hang around with until they’d finally let him out.
            “I did get out three weeks early,” he told me, like I was supposed to be really proud of him and ought to be awarding him a medal or something. “I never want to go through anything like that again.”                                                                                                                                        “Tell you what, buddy. You keep borrowing cars and trying out recreational drugs and you’ll be right back there again, sooner rather than later.”
            “Yeah, I have to remember that.” He smiled at me like he was invoking his magic spell on another one of his victims. “It’s just terrible how the world always tries to stop you when all you’re doing is trying to have a little fun.”
            “I wouldn’t know about that. Fun’s not something I’ve had a whole lot of for a good long while now.”                                                                                                                                               A few minutes passed and he tried to kiss me and I wouldn’t let him. He acted like he was disappointed or about half-pissed, and after a few more minutes he grabbed his jacket to leave. He asked me if he could call me later and I told him no.
            “Well,” he said. “You might change your mind. I’ll check back just to make sure. I’ll be around.”
            I guess he believed I couldn’t continue to say no to him, but that just shows how he and everybody else in the blasted world didn’t really know me, because one thing I can say for me is when I say no, I mean no.
            He left and I immediately started feeling a whole lot better. I started thinking about the new year ahead and making some resolutions about it in my head, first and foremost putting Jimmy Mills in the rearview. I knew it would be busy at the grocery store because it was New Year’s Eve, but I decided I wanted to cook something special tonight instead of sitting around thinking about all the failure of the past year and eating a sandwich and calling that a meal, and I went shopping for the fixings.
            I also wanted to see if Mike might be working. Maybe he didn’t have plans for the evening yet.
                                                                        *****
 
            New Year’s Eve went exactly the way I wanted it to. Mike was at the store working and came over when he got off and had dinner with me—I made lasagna, which I’m pretty good at—and we brought in the new year together. Before I knew it February had rolled around and it was Valentine’s Day. There was a big arrangement of roses sitting on my cubicle desk that Mike had sent earlier in the day, and about every woman in the office had passed by on their way to the breakroom to get coffee and oohed and ahhed and remarked how pretty they were. I knew they were probably wondering the whole time who the guy was who’d dropped so much money on me for flowers on Valentine’s Day when for the four years I’d been there no one had ever done such a thing before. I was getting a whole lot of attention out of that vase of roses, that was for sure. I felt like taking a picture of them on my phone and texting it to my mother and sisters and all the rest of my friends and acquaintances who couldn’t believe I was no longer a loser at romance.
            Things were going great guns with Mike by then, and I was about as happy as I ever thought of being. It was like when I went into his store on New Year’s Eve and invited him to dinner that I’d opened the portals of Heaven wide to him and he came galloping in with the idea fixed in his head that those gates were not going to stay open too very long and pretty soon they’d be closing and maybe for good, so he was determined to make his place in his own Land of Milk and Honey with me and not be cast out alone again for the rest of his life. I’d never been anyone’s savior or dream girl before, and it was a nice feeling to bask in after wearing a worthless cloak on my shoulders and being alone for so very long.
            I repeat, it was nice.
            And Mike had been the perfect embodiment of a boyfriend since that night. He was attentive and didn’t tune me out when I was talking, even if what came out of my mouth was stupid stuff about my family or what had gone on at work that day, which was usually absolutely nothing of any consequence. He was constantly busy concocting plans for things for us to do, movies we could see or restaurants to go and eat at or miniature golf courses where we could go miss putts and act like fools. He discovered how much I enjoyed acting like an idiot and was always on the lookout for some attraction or venue where that could happen.
            Yes, life was good at last, and I very seldom thought of Jimmy Mills anymore.
            I had no idea that Jimmy hadn’t completely checked out of my life just yet. I didn’t know the Fates had him scheduled for a return engagement.
 
            Like I mentioned, Mike looked upon my emergence in his life as a gift that had to be continually cultivated. This meant that he could never get complacent about our new-found relationship and couldn’t rest easy until he’d come up with some new way to please and entertain me. There was no limit to the movies and concerts and restaurants or festivals he was constantly carting me off to, so much that sometimes I had to invent some concocted place I had to be at without him simply so I could stay at home on a night and get some rest.                                    On St. Patrick’s Day he wanted to take me to an Irish-themed restaurant called O’Toole’s so we could eat corned beef and Irish stew and drink Guinness and Harp and listen to live music while the step dancers clogged away on a stage. I wasn’t all that crazy about going because O’Toole’s was about as traditionally Irish as a McDonald’s was Scottish, and I knew the place would be full of people showing their rear ends because it was a holiday whether it denoted anything to them or not. But I’d learned that once Mike got an idea in his head there was simply no way to make it vanish. It had to be followed through with all the way to the end. Still, I told myself, things could be a lot worse than getting inundated with Mike and his various ideas for entertainment, so I shored up my energy and went along with him like a good little girlfriend, which I had in my mind was exactly what I wanted to be these days.                                         What I didn’t know at the time was that there was an added piece of entertainment at O’Toole’s for the St. Patrick’s Day celebration—the Wienermobile was parked in the lot, all twenty-four hot dogs tall of it, with its yellow body and a twenty-foot retractable wiener on top. There it was playing “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” and “Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ra” from its jingle horn with a calliope tooting out from time to time that commercial tune about wishing one was a wiener.
            Of course we had to take the tour. We walked by the performing step dancers and the person in a leprechaun’s costume handing out free hot dogs and climbed a step and viewed the innards of the Wienermobile. Everything in there had a hot dog theme. I had to laugh at the ingenuity of the contraption, the dashboard shaped like a coney and the mustard and ketchup seats and a big TV with wieners dancing like the Rockettes on the screen. It was ridiculous. It was idiocy taken to the limit. I loved it. I couldn’t help but have a good time, and I decided right then and there that my life was going along just fine and dandy.                                                                    We never went inside the building that night to eat. We stayed out in the lot eating free wieners and drinking Guinness and watching the dancers and listening to the Wienermobile play songs from its speaker and its horn.
            It was maybe the most fun night of my life.
            I was feeling so good about everything that when I was driving to work the next morning I was smiling and tapping my fingers on the steering wheel along to the music, which is not the way I generally act in the morning. Usually I’m despising every minute of the waking ordeal, starting with getting up with the clock radio and getting ready and eating something nutritious like a Pop Tart as I drive in. Sometimes I’m in such a foul state of mind with the likes of it that I can’t stand to hear music or the sound of a human voice until my entire being has accepted and adapted to the whole dilemma of another day of work in front of me.                                             But this morning was different. This morning I felt composed and had a feeling of joy pervading my every movement. I wanted to be a part of the glorious world and not keep to myself away from the grand parade of life any longer. I turned up the radio and listened to several songs and savored my Pop Tart as I drove along. I wasn’t cursing the traffic under my breath or bemoaning the morning sun shining in my eyes. Somewhere in my heart I felt like my life was starting anew with every beat of my heart.
            The music stopped and the two disc jockeys started in with their morning chatter, talking about the events going on around town and giving away free tickets to concerts and reading the weather forecast, and then amid the happy talk they began perusing some of the morning headlines, tax increases and murders and awful stuff like that. Then they started talking about something that instantly made my ears perk up.
            “Now, of course, everybody in town is really buzzing about the crime of the century that happened last night. This, I’ll tell you, is one of the most bizarre stories I’ve ever run across.”
            “Oh, yes,” his morning partner laughed. “It will be hard to ever top this one, even if you spent years dreaming up something to try and rival it. Now, in case you’ve been in a cave and haven’t heard this story yet, I’m going to read you the official police release. And just remember, this crime the entire nation is talking about happened last night right here in the heart of our fair city.”
            “Drumroll, please,” she said, and then she started reading.                                                   “‘Just after midnight, the department was alerted to the Harrison Hills O’Toole’s restaurant location to investigate a stolen vehicle. A white male, possibly in his late twenties, wielding what appeared to be a firearm, entered a vehicle identified as the Wienermobile and ordered the driver and an assistant out of the vehicle from where it was parked in the O’Toole’s lot, which earlier had engaged it for a St. Patrick’s Day celebration promotion. It was then driven off in by the lone assailant. After a two-hour search the Wienermobile was spotted in a suburban neighborhood and pulled over after a chase of five minutes. The man arrested, identified as James Cameron Mills, offered no resistance and was taken into custody. No true motive was established for the incident, other than the fact Mills told officers he had only borrowed the Wienermobile for a while to go surprise his girlfriend and take her for a ride. The girlfriend has not been identified and an investigation is ongoing.”’
            “Who in their right mind gets it into their head to steal the Wienermobile?” the male DJ asked.
            “Maybe he was hungry,” the lady said. “Or crazy. Or both.”
            “Probably he should have picked something that blended in a little better,” the man said. “The Wienermobile has a way of sticking out.”
            I turned the radio off and tried to make it into work without crashing into anybody, wondering if the cops were going to be there waiting and I was going to get arrested when I got there.                                                                                                                                                       Jimmy, I thought. Of course it had been that damn Jimmy. I wondered if he was trying to send me a message, or what was going through his head this time?
 
            The media—and I mean the local and the national media combined—couldn’t get enough of the story. For a few days the theft of the Wienermobile was all the rage. The local paper followed it daily, providing their readers with court dates and the history of the culprit and a background report of Jimmy’s penchant for filching automobiles. One reporter for a national service published a story about all the dimensions of the Wienermobile and why Jimmy might have been compelled to steal such an item. There were pictures and diagrams of the Wienermobile’s features, profiles of the two crewmembers who’d been threatened with a gun during the heist--a gun which turned out to be a plastic Dirty Harry replica Jimmy bought off of eBay. I held my breath every day hoping no one stumbled across my name as being Jimmy’s former girlfriend. I certainly didn’t want to be linked or associated with any of this tomfoolery, and absolutely not be identified as the woman Jimmy Mills had gone around the bend for and attempted to make off with the Wienermobile just to impress her as a token of his affection.
            I got lucky. Nobody ever called requesting an interview or was camped out wanting to take my picture when I stepped outside to go to or from work, so after a week passed I allowed myself the luxury of breathing a sigh of relief. Naturally my family heard all about the incident and bombarded me on the phone to find out more about the scandal of it, which got pretty old after a couple of days. My mother even halfway insinuated that I was involved somehow in the crime, that because I’d stopped going to church a few years back I was on my way to a place in Hell for certain.                                                                                                                        I debated with myself, but I finally ended up telling Mike the whole story about Jimmy and me and the trail of stolen cars culminating in the heist of the Wienermobile. I didn’t want him to find out about it on his own and freak out or anything, like Jimmy was some crazed lunatic and was going to come gunning for him one day because he was so jealous and obsessive about our prior relationship. Mike was justifiably a tad wary and bewildered about the story, but he at least didn’t immediately take off for the hills as fast as he could go to get away from me, so I felt a little better that I’d told him. At least now there wouldn’t be many more big surprises in store.                                                                                                                                                        I just tried to play it cool and let the whole thing blow over. I couldn’t help but be wary, though, because I knew how Jimmy was and how he was out there somewhere on bail and there was no way of telling what he might do next.
            I kept expecting another surprise coming my way from him, some bizarre action or a return appearance, but nothing happened. I almost got antsy as the trial date—which I’d memorized—drew nearer. It was like a doomsday clock was ticking the moments down and there would be a big explosion coming at any time.
            What happened that was totally out of kilter was I got a letter in the mail with no return address on it. At first I thought it was one of those invitations to join a health club or a chain letter from the Scientologists wanting me to adopt their lifestyle and become a hundred percent devoted to their beliefs, but it wasn’t anything like that whatsoever. No, this was a handwritten letter written and signed by Mr. Jimmy Mills himself.
            It was dated over a week before, so I had to wonder if he’d had some misgivings about sending such a note and carried it around a while trying to decide if he should or if he shouldn’t.
                                                                                                                                                            Dear Connie,                                                                                                                           How are you? I thought I’d drop a line and stay in touch, since I’ve got a feeling you’re probably wondering what I’ve been up to lately. I guess the answer to that is quite a lot. Quite a lot, indeed.
            In case you haven’t heard—maybe you’ve been up in the space shuttle or pursuing your romance with your new paramour and the stars are in your eyes and lovebirds are singing in your ears and you haven’t had time to keep up with current events—but I’ve had another little slipup with the police and the legal system is not being nearly as accommodating and tolerant of me as the last time we crossed paths, and, believe me, that initial time was bad enough without going back for seconds. I guess the consensus feeling is that I didn’t learn my lesson the first time when the book got thrown at me, and so this time around they’ve decided to really put the hammer down on my thumbs or any of my other vulnerable spots.
            So, in case you’re uninformed, I got in trouble for borrowing the Wienermobile on St. Patrick’s Day, which was really done all in fun and shouldn’t have been construed as criminal or an act of terrorism like everybody is making it out to be. I mean, Connie, if you really think about it, I can’t see how any judge worth his salt or any jury with an open mind could come to the conclusion that this was actually an act of automobile theft like they’re charging me with, because who in their right mind is going to steal the Wienermobile and think nobody is going to notice and that he’ll be able to get away with it? And they’ve also charged me with assault with a weapon, when the damn “weapon” is just plastic and cost me six dollars for a used one on the internet—how does that figure into the equation?
            It doesn’t look that good for me as my court date approaches. I had to get a court-appointed attorney this time because I don’t have the money to afford anything else, since it’s just me and my family has now disowned me. I know I still owe you for my first attorney’s fee, and believe me, once I get this stuff behind me, I’ll make it up to you. But you don’t have to worry about me bothering you again. I know when I’m not wanted, and I also know how I’ve freaked you out with some of the things I’ve done. All I can say is I didn’t mean to. You just sort of took it the wrong way. Don’t sweat it so much because it only means you’re like the rest of the world and don’t really get where I’m coming from or catch my drift. I forget sometimes that there aren’t a lot of people out there in the galaxy who have the same sense of humor that I do.
                                                                                                Yours Sincerely,
                                                                                                      Jimmy
                                                                                                                                                            The letter for the most part pissed me off in the way he tried to group me with the rest of the world he wasn’t a part of and was presently at war with, a bunch of shallow people who didn’t quite get his sense of humor. I didn’t appreciate it one whit, and I wanted to somehow go out and find him and let him know just what I thought about him and his sophisticated viewpoint of Planet Earth and inform him how he wasn’t nearly as elevated and high and mighty as he thought he was. Of course, I was playing into his hands, getting stirred up exactly the way I’m sure he wanted me to do, and so I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. After twenty-four more hours of thinking about it and seething over what was said I got into my car and drove an hour to Athens to his parents’ house just to see if I could find him. I had no idea what I was going to say or do, but I had to do something.
            When I got there, sure enough, there was Jimmy’s truck sitting in the drive behind his mother’s and father’s cars. I didn’t know whether this meant he was home or not, but after driving all the way there all my cascading anger had ebbed away. I’d at first considered ramming his truck with my car as a sign to show him I was thinking of him in the same way he’d stolen Mike’s car and the Wienermobile simply to let me know I was on his mind, but now I sat there on the street in front of the house looking at it and thinking how it was going to be sitting there all the time for his poor parents to have to look at while Jimmy was off at prison serving his term, so I figured that fact right there was bad enough for them to have to suffer through without me making the truck a crumbled wreck on top of it. In the end I put the gearshift in Drive and rolled away. I wasn’t angry or sad about any of it anymore; I was just sort of empty and had nothing more to say.
            Jimmy went to trial the next week and it was all over with in about a half hour. He pled guilty to a count of property theft—which was certainly better than being a repeat offender on grand theft auto—and the court dropped the assault charge and made it malicious mischief instead, both of which added up to six months in the city jail that could be reduced after half the time served. As long as Jimmy didn’t steal somebody’s car at the workhouse and try to make an escape he’d be all right. I had the feeling he’d get through all this one way or another.
            Now of course the local media was all over Jimmy’s day in court, and it was also followed by the national news organizations and the major television networks, Jimmy and his antics getting a whole lot of attention. I saw the evening news and watched him standing before the judge getting admonished for stealing the Wienermobile and wielding a plastic Dirty Harry 44 Magnum, while the whole time the judge and the stenographer and the two lawyers were having a hard time keeping straight faces. I all at once came to the conclusion that this story wasn’t playing out the way most crime and punishment tales do. There weren’t any moral lessons to be learned from this. This was a feel-good piece tacked on at the end of the broadcast to make the audience smile after hearing all the horrific news of the day beforehand.
            And just like that, Jimmy Mills was a folk hero.                                                                   He was on the front page of USA Today, smiling as he was being led from the courtroom in handcuffs. Usually when you see somebody getting carted away to get locked up everybody looks grim and serious, but in this picture even the deputies and the guards are grinning along with the D.A. and the Defense Attorney and all the reporters and photographers milled around. Heck, even the court’s foreman, who was a woman, looked a little moonstruck, like she wanted to go give Jimmy her number and tell him to call her when he got out, maybe even give him a farewell kiss, just to show him she meant business.
            There were even some follow-up articles that came out here and there in the news, all about what Jimmy’s average day in the workhouse consisted of, his schedule, his living quarters, the menu of what the inmates ate each day, you name it. I halfway expected them to do a special segment on recreation time and if he got to shoot basketball, but word began to dwindle after a week or two more. I thought it looked like Jimmy had been granted his fifteen minutes of fame and a good measure more, and now it was all over and that was the last anybody was ever going to hear about Jimmy Mills and his plastic Magnum and the stolen Wienermobile.
            But I was wrong.
            Just in the short time Jimmy was in jail—and it turned out to be less than three months—he spent some time with a notebook and a pencil and started writing down some of his more memorable heists of vehicles other than the Wienermobile. The list turned out to be not only extensive but pretty impressive in its choices of brand names and highly entertaining in the stories surrounding the thefts, whether they were true or fictional, and the first thing he did when he was released was to call up one of the reporters who he’d befriended during his arrest and trial and get together with him to find a literary person somewhere who’d help him write a manuscript detailing the capers. After that was in the works, the ghostwriter contacted a literary agent to see if she was interested, and soon after Jimmy signed a contract with her and the book got sold to a big publishing company in New York, and word leaked out that he had a book coming out--The Wienermobile Caper: Grand Theft Auto and Other Pastimes—and that was when his phone began to ring and buzz asking him to come be a guest on every talk show anybody has ever heard of. From what I could gather, even Johnny Carson in his grave was doing his best to book Jimmy Mills for an interview.
            So once again he was on all the news and had a big article about him in the Sunday paper. I saw him doing commercials for his old furniture company—yes, they hired him back as their spokesman, like he was Shaq O’Neal or Cindy Crawford or somebody famous and likeable like that—and selling Chevrolets for some slimy dealership, and then he had a stretch of about two weeks where he was in New York and Los Angeles making appearances hawking his book on all the big network entertainment programs—Fallon, Kimmel, Colbert, Ellen, even on CNN, where Anderson Cooper called him “a national phenomenon.” It wasn’t long after that I read he’d been offered a part in a movie the following year, so it looked like he was cornering the market whichever way it came to him.
            Jimmy Mills was now a bonafide celebrity. For a little bit, you could maybe call him a star.
            I always wondered if Mike might be jealous of Jimmy because Jimmy was suddenly the bee’s knees, while Mike was stuck stocking laxatives down at the grocery store pharmacy six days a week, but he never said anything about it, and I never brought the subject up for discussion. No, Mike just stayed the same unassuming person who constantly did his best to make me smile, and I appreciated that. Mike was giving me exactly what I needed after all Jimmy’s commotion and emotional toil. Mike was like a calm spring day after Jimmy the tornado had finished passing through.                                                                                             I didn’t want to go to Florida anymore with my wild and rowdy pack of girlfriends. It seemed I’d outgrown them over the past year. I was no longer the innocent little sister they thought of me as, who was the butt of every joke, the poor girl everyone looked down on but had adopted anyway as a means of charity. I wasn’t Crazy Aunt Connie to my family anymore either, the one always out on a star in a dither unable to get through whatever obstacle the world threw her way. I was calm now, I was resolute, and it was me these days who watched the ways of the world and the happenings and the events that transpired and wondered inside myself if any part of it, any person, any institution, was ever going to learn from past mistakes and try to do better by taking a different path, or if the entire collective group was going to keep touching the hot stove and burning themselves over and over again.
            So I was happy with where I was in my life, but I guess I wouldn’t be telling the entire truth if I didn’t say that there was still a part of me that missed Jimmy a little, that funny, ornery guy who’d wooed me secretly from the shadows of the Destin beach, so secretly that he was the only one to know it, not even me, the wooee. No, to be honest I had to be grateful in a way to Jimmy Mills for coming along and pulling me out of the accumulated mire I’d spent my entire life sinking into. Because of him, I’d learned to do something besides watch television at night and keep myself at a safe distance away from all the life dramas going on around me. Jimmy, in some kind of agitated and halfway scary way, had saved me from a lifetime of tedium and void.
            I decided the best thing to do to give it all a little closure was to confess a few things to myself and not let everything welled up in me fester. I thought about Jimmy’s grin, his laugh, his utter and complete sense of the ridiculous. I remembered the way he’d pick at me sometimes, like I was a ball of yarn and he was this big playful cat. I let myself imagine hearing him while he was singing in the shower, always getting the lyrics mixed up and replacing them with words and phrases that made not the slightest bit of sense. I recalled going out to eat or staying home playing Scrabble and him challenging every word I tried to use and always somehow or another winding up as the winner. I wondered how many cars he’d stolen during our time together and never told me about. I wondered about his secret life with all those rough people and the drugs and all the things going on in his head and his life he’d never mentioned.
            Yes, to be truthful I was going to miss his weird and strange ways. I couldn’t argue against it.
            When I saw his picture in the paper with his new girlfriend, I looked at it for a while, and then I let it go. She was prettier than me. She was a singer who’d had a few hit records. It could be she was exactly who Jimmy had been looking for all his life, the girl of his dreams.
            But maybe not. Time would tell, I supposed. But it was none of my business anymore. It was one of those things now. He had his life and, wonder upon wonders, I had mine.
                                                                        *****
            On a summer Sunday night, Mike and I fixed dinner at my apartment. He watched 60 Minutes with me and then decided to go home early and get a good night’s sleep. He was tired. We’d had a busy weekend. He’d, as usual, gone out of his way and beaten his brains out keeping me entertained.
            I lived in the upstairs of the apartment complex, so I walked outside and leaned on the railing watching Mike get in his car and drive off. I was deliciously alone this Sunday evening, and a feeling of mixed contentment came over me. I was more than glad to have good old steady and dependable Mike around me all these times at night and on the weekends, doing his scouting work finding places for us to go and things off the beaten path for us to do. I appreciated the sound of his voice and the polite way he always listened to every single thing I had to say, whether the content was earthshaking or trivial or whatever. Sometimes he would even cook for me, maybe nothing that would earn high culinary honors anywhere, but it wasn’t poisonous or botulism-laced and I was always glad to have him do for me. A part of me was constantly warmed by the way he never stopped giving his all trying to please me. We spent a lot of time together at night and on the weekends. There was an abiding joy that came to me in the familiar way we made love, a comfortable and gentle act that brought me a cozy feeling of serenity and peace.
            Mike loved me. I was sure of it. It was a wonderful feeling.
            But there was still something inside me that was glad when it was time for me or Mike to go home by ourselves. I reveled in those moments when I was finally alone and had nothing to think of but myself.   
            I stood at the porch railing feeling that solitary peace of being on my own come over me again when I heard a sound coming from the stairway. I walked over to see where the noise was coming from, what interruption had come to disturb my solitude, and I looked down in the center of the stairs and saw him.                                                                                                             It was Jacques.                                                                                                                        I couldn’t believe it. It had been close to a year since he’d vanished out the door, and I’d gone from thinking about him missing to considering him dead and gone. But there he was, looking up at me with his orange, mystical eyes.
            He meowed again.
            “Where did you come from?” I asked. “Where have you been? I thought you were gone forever.”
            I didn’t reach down to touch him or anything, but just studied him a minute before heading back inside to finish the dishes and relax a while. I walked down the hallway and he ran by me and scampered down the corridor to my door. When I opened it wide enough for him to get through, he darted in and climbed up on the sofa where I always sat.
            He closed his eyes, completely relaxed. He looked like he was right at home.
            He’d come back, and I wondered if, in a way, his presence signified the way it was going to be for Jimmy Mills and me from here on out. I had this feeling I was never going to get rid of Jimmy completely either. I was pretty sure he was always going to be around in one way or another, just like Jacques, showing up out of the blue to grin at me, even if it was just in my head.
            Maybe he’d be driving somebody’s borrowed car.
            Maybe it would even be the Wienermobile.
 
                                                2020, Madison, TN   

​     I saw you.
     You were absolutely exquisite, I remember. Designer black dress, heavy black boots, thick soles better suited for a battlefield than our renown Theatri Nocte. Your black hair, as dark as the ink I scratch on the paper with these words, flickered in and out of the crowd.
     In a room full of my kind, any one of us pressed to remember the touch of life herself, you were a ghost. You matched us, concealing yourself as one of us, blending in, hiding the singing of the blood in your flesh. You belonged. You stood beside us as damned creatures, lifeless and cold. I do not know how you managed it, and, frankly, have not an itch to find out. It had very little relevance, as you succeeded, nonetheless. That fact, and little else, is all that I find relevant.
     In a room full of predators, you transformed each and every one of us into prey. I smile with the thought that none of us even knew it, engrossed in our own existence, safe in our collective vanity.
     But I knew. Oh, yes. I knew.
     My lifeless heart nearly leapt at the thought of your nearness on that fateful night. A goddess of death herself, vengeful angel in black, here, amongst our most prominent members, invading our most treasured ritual.
     You, a darkly angelic guest at our feast.
     Oh, yes, cor meum, my heart, I knew.
     I uttered not a word when you opened the Queen's throat.
 
II
     This beautiful world is new to me, I must admit. This life of extravagance, comfort, and privilege is one that I did not expect in the time that most of the world died out in the last, horrible, final plague. In a time when most of the dead rose again, coming to rule the world, this grotesque civility seems but a dream.
     Humanity, and my memories of it, have long since gone. I cannot tell you how long ago I died and lived again, only that it happened. I made the trade, just like the rest of my kind, sold my soul and inherited the world. I must have been entitled enough in my life before to afford the opportunity, true. That was then, long go, and matters only that it led me to this place.
     To you.
     "Love, it's almost time."
     I tear my eyes away from the mirror, turning towards Darius. His beautiful skin is paper white against the dark crimson of his shirt. His eyes are dull, milky orbs. The black curls of his hair are lifeless and still. Even the points of his ears have dulled. Without looking, I know my beauty, too, has dulled, slipping away over the last month.
     We are terribly hungry, you see. I imagine most of my kind coming together tonight will look like us, like corpses dressed in fine clothes, sitting at fine tables, waiting to be fed. It has been so long since we've been able to eat, to restore ourselves.
     Thanks to you, cor meum. All thanks to you. Oh, how you've changed our world.
     "My love." Darius places a cold hand on my shoulder. He traces his frigid lips across my throat. I smile faintly. "We must go. The guards are letting no one in after midnight, the window is only so long. We do not want to be left out in the cold"
     I stand from my vanity, deciding I'm ready. My mouth waters at the thought of the night's promises. But I must not lie, I would gladly go another month of fasting if it means I get to lay eyes on you once more.   
     "Yes. Yes, we must."
 
III
     Our canticum carnem, our song of flesh, is most sacred to my kind. It is the highest of communions for us, the epitome of our religion. Ever month, when the moon turns dark, and hides her face from the destroyed world we live in, we gather. We feast. We thrive.
     Here, we hold our power. Here we fortify our divinity and become gods of dominion.
     Here, my heart, is where you committed your most beautiful sin. You turned gods into mice. Oh, how I want you to be my goddess.
 
IV
     Words cannot express the disappointment I felt when our last feast wasn't interrupted by your presence. I'd so looked forward to catching a glimpse of you one more time, to, just once again, behold your delicate dangerousness, your nocturnal beauty. I covet all things beautiful. I worship the very thought. I am not one to be denied my wants.
     I'm sure Darius would agree that I was a bit perturbed as I sliced into my steak. I didn't even register the tender rareness of the meat, losing myself into my own self-pity and your apparent absence. The last feast slipped by without so much as a speck of my attention.
     It's a perturbed attitude that still affects me tonight.
     "I'm afraid if you don't abandon that sour mood, my love, I'll be forced to strap you to a stake in daylight myself."
     I ignore Darius's words. He's a vile pest most nights, but in my irritation, he is damn near insufferable. You'd make an infinitely better companion, I'm sure. Alas, like the last feast, you are not here, even among your own kind. Pity.
     The moon shines bright above us as we meander down the city streets. The air is cold, I gather, judging by the humans around us, bundled up and scurrying with heads covered and faces forward, going wherever they go when humans have things to do. Some of them aren't dressed so warmly. Some of them sit against the walls, wasting away and ashen, eyes and lips turning black with the plague. I cannot feel the cold, am not affected by the disease, so I do not care.
     Even if they weren't human, weren't cattle, I wager I wouldn't care. They are irrelevant to me. As irrelevant as a sickly mouse to a satiated tiger.
     Like mice, they recognized us as tigers, not looking at us, paying us no mind at all, just staying out of our way. I smiled sardonically at the thought of you, such a brave mouse, never once alerting the monsters. Here, however, out in your world, we sent the people scattering. I must admit your ability sparks a bit of jealousy in me.
     "Love," Darius says, placing the lightest of touches on my elbow.
     He points to a dim corner, hidden by the dingey lights of the dilapidated shops. I see small feet spilling out of the shadows, a small hand, a blanket. I inhaled. So did Darius.
     Ah. The scent of cattle. So sweet, so enticing. A strong heart beat from within the shadows. Powerful lungs breathe in and out. Pure. Clean.
     Together, Darius and I cross the street, approaching our prize.  
     She is so small, so delicate. Her hair is long, white, but dirty with the filth of this place. The blankets piled around her look like the wooly pelt of a large mammal. She isn't alone, but soon she will be, that's for certain. Her mother, I assume, although barely more than a corpse, is with her, holding the girl as she sleeps. She clutches a bit of broken glass in her fist, ready to lash out at anything threatening her child. Her black eyes, thought rotten, are vigilant. Her snarling lips greet us as we approach.
     The woman's resistance is pathetic, futile, her glass shard useless. It takes merely seconds to eliminate her. I stroke the girl's white hair as I carry her away. Never once does she stir.
     I wonder, cor meum, if your mother put up a better fight. Or your sister?
     Oh, yes, my heart. I know.
     I know.
 
V
     With our Queen gone, Darius is next in line for the throne. It's a droll idea, I must say, and I can seldom be bothered to care much about it. I'm well aware of the fact that, as his brood-mate, I should most definitely care, should be relishing in the idea, even.
     All I am consumed with is you. You and only you.
     Boredom paints my face, I'm sure, as I sit here, empty plate before me, utensils glittering in the light, waiting. I look stunning, as usually, as we all do. Our beauty hasn't faded as it did when you interrupted last. In fact, we are as vibrant as ever. You’ve been gone a long, long while.
     We all sit at empty tables, large expanses of white cloth between us, waiting. It's all so dreadfully boring.
     Oh, how I miss you.
     My thoughts are interrupted by the dimming of the lights in our exquisite theatre, all silver and onyx and velvet. The conversation around me stops, fading into a handful of whispers before going silent.
     Music blossoms around us. Haunting, elaborate, twisted notes fill the air, humming in my flesh. The lights on the stage come up, red as blood.
     Then, like delicate, beautiful lambs, they were march in. Twelve of them, singing, a chorus of flesh. All shapes, sizes, sexes, ages and colors. Divine, each and every one, they stand there, perfectly still in their matching white robes, only their mouths moving as they sing. I lick my lips, hungry. The white haired one we provided is there, too, cleaned, dressed, and put on display for all of my kind.
     Darius grabs my hand, squeezing it. I squeeze back, not really caring for his touch, but permitting it, nonetheless. This is his night, after all, and we are the guests of honor. The delicate crown encircling his head did look damned decadent.
     "Which cut would you like, my Lord?"
     The attendant is insignificant, but Darius answers, making his decision for the both of us. He chose a large male, brutish and ape-like, but still beautiful in his own right. Not suspiring, as Darius always did have rugged...proclivities.
     The attendant bows and scurries away to the stage, returning with the selected human. The male drops his white robe, revealing a perfect body, ripe and full. Without a word, he climbs onto the table and stretches out on his back, prone, willing, sacrificial. Darius reaches out, running a hand down the human male's chest. He picks up a carving knife.
     Dinner is served.
 
VI
     I know it is your knife pressed to my throat before I even open my eyes. I know you'd find me. You're so clever, so smart. I know you wouldn't stay away.
     Did you know the living dead slept before you found your way into our bedchamber? Did you think that we hid from the sun, tucked away in lavish coffins deep within the earth? Were you shocked to find a massive four-poster bed, dressed in silk sheets, in which our sleeping, naked bodies lay? Tell me, cor meum, tell me.
     "Hello, my heart," I say, caring not that the movement of my throat nicks my skin on your blade.
     You sit there, staring at me, silent, a tantalizing doll crafted from darkness. You don't move. Your eyes are wild, singing in a way I've never seen.
     I try to sit up, and you let me. My movement pushes something with weight away from me. Darius. I know he's dead without even looking. Oh, cor meum, you are truly beautiful.
     In the light of the room, I get a good look at you. Your dress, the same black one I saw you in on the night the Queen died, is tattered, fading, parts of it torn. Your skin is scratched and dirty. There are scuff marks on your boots, which are ruining my silk sheets, I see, much like Darius's blood. I can't bring myself to care. Most interesting, however, is your hair.
     The inky blackness of it is fading near your scalp, the night of it giving way to gleaming spiderwebs. A white that looks very, very familiar.
     My eyes widen, connecting it.
     "Her name... was Taylor."
     You open my throat with the last, angelic words I'll ever hear.  
      
           
    
      
        
 

Hashim AlHamar graduated with a BSc in Biomedical Sciences from Bradford University and is currently undertaking an MFA course in Creative Writing  at Kingston University. ​

​Dust swept across the road. It cumulated in clouds to block his vision. He could not see anything a few metres ahead. At night with headlights in the dark, or in the orange glow of day it made no difference. He could not see anything.
The floor and surfaces of the truck were lined with cups – paper, take-out, anything, everything – spilling over with the last dregs of coffee. A cigarette burning at his fingertips. The hill of stubs in one holder neighbouring the latest drink, top popped open, contents sloshing to the rhythms of the metallic beast. He looked down at it, wondering if he should take a sip. His eyes burned, lids streaking down a whiteboard anytime he blinked. Ash fell and spread into the coffee. Well, that was that.
Sand pelted the windshield. The dance of the wipers further stressed his lack of sleep, distracting him from the curves and turns of the rolling hilltops. He always seemed to pull it together in the nick of time, never in fear of flipping down an incline. The thought did enter his mind every now and then. A little change couldn’t hurt.
He sprang up with a gasp. The ridges of the steering wheel etched into his forehead. He wiped the drool off his chin and saw it was the same. Two inches of road bled into two inches of road swallowed by fog, its radiated orange prophesizing the end times. But that wasn’t true. It was the usual weather these days.
As if the thought of regular, everyday routine decided to make itself manifest, the diner suddenly popped up out of mountains and bridges and sandstorms. He had missed the exit.
Shit.
He took the other one which led back out to the highway. Good thing no cars came. He wouldn’t have seen them.
 
When the heart wants something, it does funny things to the body, sending weird, desperate signals to act against rational logic. How he had accomplished that three-way turn down the wrong ramp he didn’t know, but the realization he did it in the first place came as he walked out of the diner, full and caffeinated, ripping open a take-away pack of beef jerky. He looked out while the strip hung from his mouth, to the cars leaving and ascending into the void. Had he done it while in reverse? No, the cargo would’ve snapped. He shrugged. He made it. Got a bite to eat. That’s all that mattered. He almost stepped on a dead dog.
The Rottweiler’s middle was burst open, ribs and gunk spilling out. Either end was stiff yet intact, as though someone had only tread on this one part and popped a balloon. Its eyes were half open, tongue limp on the pavement. Reminded him of the girl inside asking for a lift, scratching at her arms and head, hair matted and firm from too few baths and too much hairspray. Smoking all the while, her head ringed by an ozone. I can suck you off, she said. He was tempted but in the end said no. The colour of her teeth and gums was not something he wanted around his dick. She nodded, lit another cigarette. Got another coffee. She was used to no.
He entered the truck, started her up, and lit one of his own Dunhills once done with the jerky. The dick thing was probably 70% of it. The other 30 was he had deliveries to make, enough time already wasted.
He rolled out, back onto the freeway. He consulted the sheet. He didn’t know where he was going, and phoning home base wasn’t an option; the radio had been nothing but crackles and static for the past – Jesus he didn’t know how long it had been. Didn’t help that time of day was a vague concept, the sun’s specific place in the sky completely blocked off.
All he needed was to drive and pretty soon he’d get there.
After an immeasurable amount of time, the road started to go uphill.
*
The man and woman walked out to the deck through sliding glass doors. He lounged in a chair while she shed off her towel, crumbling to reveal the one-piece, bright red bathing suit with a V-line travelling down to accentuate her cleavage. She circled a couple of times under the pretence of stretching, but more so to catch his eye. It was hard to tell under the shades whether he was looking at her or the sky. He was looking at her, it was obvious, but chose not to flatter with comments. She huffed and dived headfirst into the pool, not coming up until absolutely necessary. The man did not move. He continued staring at the clear, blue sky.
*
Little voices would pop in every now and then.
The constant static on the radio would be cut by a blurt or sound, some chopped up word which broke through the hubbub on his end. It was probably one of the girls at HQ. Specifically one of the girls. What was her name? Marion? Martha? Margo – there was a Mar in there. She was a cougar after him. They all were. Except the thing which designated someone a cougar, at least in his book, was she had to be hot. And feisty. But especially hot. And she was neither.
Still, it got boring on the road. Boring, not lonely. He could live with himself for days. But in losing track of time, it got difficult for a man to entertain himself. So he would pick up the receiver, push down on the button, and hum, soon graduating to singing. It did not alleviate his chances with the ladies, crooning Frankie Valli or Sinatra. Those boomers probably liked that. That’s if it reached them at all. He couldn’t know either way.
The lines started to spread out. He would go, alley-oop around a bridge and carry on a different route, if not parallel to where he was originally headed.
There were less fellow drivers up here. He couldn’t see them before, more of a sense. But now as the air thinned, he found himself on a narrow trail going up a hill, bending along every sharp turn. He was certain the barriers would prove flimsy if he decided to careen off the side. The fog dissipated and then vanished. The truck surfaced onto a vista.
Trees. Actual palm trees, with green on top. The blades waved in the breeze. He plastered his face to the window to look on at this sight. A sea of noxious orange and brown roiled under this peak, as though he were a submarine emerging. The road spread out before him clear and endless. Life to one side. Armageddon on the other. He did not dare open the window.
Finally there it was. A mansion. A grand house, designated and secluded under the auspices of nature. There was no other address as far as he could see. This was it.
The gate was open. No one waited by the guard booth. He rolled up the driveway to the front door. He got out and walked to the back of the truck. The air was clean here. There was no musty weight to block his orifices. He could smell the mowed grass. Hear birds chirping. Inhale the fresh oxygen. No other way to enjoy this serenity, he popped a cigarette in his mouth and lit up.
*
The woman jumped out of the pool in one smooth motion. She did not use the steps but instead did it by the rim at his end. A showcase of muscle and fitness, arms propelling her onto the surface, water cascading off her slick body. The man was read the paper. The ruffling pages blocked her completely from view.
The doorbell rang.
*
The man who answered was possibly the cleanest he’d ever seen. That was his first impression.
Sleeked black hair. Beard trimmed to the finest point. The smooth, chiselled body of an Adonis or David underneath trunks and an open dressing gown. 100% unfiltered machismo energy.
He gestured the clipboard. Hey. Delivery. Just gotta get your name.
Noah, the man said.
He checked up and down the list. Full name?
The Prophet Noah.
There it was. The Prophet Noah. First one on top. He shrugged this off. Just sign here, sir.
He opened the truck container and pulled a heavy chest down the ramp. It was more a two man job, with handles on either side, but he managed. Did a number on his back and arms though. The man was kind enough to hold the door for him as he brought it in.
Put it there, that’s good.
It dropped with a clang. Dust flew off. He arched his back, he and the man standing over it for a moment. Then the man jabbed it with his bare foot. It slid, and some things shifted inside, but that was it.
Alright, then. The man Noah clapped him on the back, with such strength that it suddenly retched out of him a coughing fit. He bent over, holding his knees, shaking his head and moving away to communicate he was fine, but the man seemingly ignored him, looking at his hand layered with a thick coat of sand.
You’re filthy. Go that way. Air out. I’ll get you something to drink. Lupé! Lupé!
He followed where the man had pointed. There was a partition open to sun and bright blue. It was easier to breathe. He straightened up, basking, and shed his jacket immediately.
There was a woman in a chair, tanning under the sun. She wore shades, her blonde hair spilling around her, and smoked from a long ass indigo holder.
She was turned away but said, Are you the pool boy?
His mouth was a dustbowl. No, he croaked.
Shame. I needed someone to fuck.
He noticed his footprints behind. A Cheeto trail of where he’d been. He looked down to find his whole body dipped in the stuff. His jacket on the granite floor pollinated into the breeze. Most of it travelled over the pool to the horizon.
Here you go.
The man had come back and held out a glass of some purple, fizzy drink. Water and minerals, he said. Bad weather today.
He took the glass and pointed before them. Seems fine.
I’m talking about you. You can’t really say we travel down the same roads, do you?
Let him stay, the woman called, puffing out streams of smoke. At least to catch his breath.
The lady wants you to stay. And who am I to deny her?
He said this last bit out loud, but she remained silent in response.
The man Noah led the way to two other lounge chairs, positioned behind the woman who siphoned most of their view of the water.
Drink that drink. It’ll giddy you up.
There was a slight bitter aftertaste to it. He finished the whole thing.
So what’s your name, delivery man?
Trevor.
I’m Noah.
I know. The prophet.
The man looked at him for what seemed to be the first time. His eyes scanned thoroughly from behind those dark lenses. That’s right, he said. I’m the prophet Noah.
The woman guffawed and flicked ash over the side.
And that’s Lupé, my companion on the impending voyage.
Please! Tell him more, she shouted over her shoulder.
That’s all I can divulge for now, dearest.
Pity. I thought he’d want to join us.
Honey, you know that can’t happen. We’re already us two enough.
There was a bar which the man went to pour himself a drink.
But animals can come aboard, no? she asked.
That’s rude, the man said but laughed nonetheless. Technically, though, yes he is an animal.
I’m no animal, Trevor said.
The man pointed indoors. Then what else would do that to my house? A dog is cleaner.
Trevor meant to get up and – what? Defend himself? Attack this man who called him lesser than a dog? Leave? All valid options but pointless because he fell then, limbs weak and numb, useless to stop his skull from thudding on the hard floor. He felt nothing. The glass in his hands rolled away.
Looks like you can’t handle your drink, friend.
Push him back up. I told you he needs to rest. The woman did not look over for a second.
He was cradled like a baby and placed back in the chair. The man Noah clapped his hands and lit a cigarette. A row of them lined the bar, total white cylinders, along with a zippo. He slid one into Trevor’s slack mouth and lit it for him. The zippo snapped shut.
Best relax and wait for it to hit, he said, patting, almost slapping Trevor’s dead cheek, the cigarette about to fly but clenched between his teeth. Jets blew out his nostrils.
He laid prone, hands crossed at his chest. A cadaver on a slab. The sunset reflected in the pool. An orange burst to engulf the blue, white and opulent colours of the deck. The couple huddled together in the same seat and looked on, shadows to be devoured in the nuclear blast.
 
He woke to faint light cutting through the dark. He sat himself up, wrung his wrist. Working fine. Move easy and slow. The deck was empty. The water rippled under the moon and stars. The light was coming from the house, through the open doors and upstairs windows. Shadows passed inside. He touched his feet to the floor. Held his head in both hands. Ears ringing. He remained there for the eternal chime of a second.
How’re you doin, old sport? A shout and hard clap on the shoulder made him jump. The prophet kneeled, a tray of assorted drinks held firmly in one hand.
He tried to wave him off. Get away. Get away! His voice a lost cause; depleted with no hope of return.
I’m sorry to startle you, old chap, but we’re having a little shindig soon. A sort of end-of-world type thing, and we were hoping you’d join us.
Trevor vigorously shook his head. It made the world spin but returned all the same to the man’s musclebound thighs, knees and calves. He would shake his head again.
Noah placed a hand on his shoulder for a second time, as though that were a stop-start button. Sad thing was it worked.
Looks like that stuff is hitting you harder than I thought. Here.
He placed in his hands another glass of the same purple, wrapping limp fingers around it as though Trevor were a helpless retard.
Another one of those oughtta get you straight.
One last pat on the shoulder and he walked off to the other side of the deck, looking back to say, I expect to see you dancing pretty soon. He did not perceive stepping over the edge of the pool.
Trevor waited for the fall.
There was no splash. No shattering of glass. No shout or curse. The man carried on, as though he walked on the same floor. His footprints remained in the water for a second before they disappeared. He spun, arms spread wide, the glasses upright but sliding together, and laughed.
I love that face people get when they see it for the first time.
He gestured to his dumbfounded audience of one, motioning a cupped hand to his lips. Trevor looked down at his drink, bubbles frothing and popping at the top. He shrugged and swallowed half of it. Same revolting taste which made him gag.
Here. Take it with this.
The man had set the drinks on a table at the far end and come back, suddenly crouched before Trevor to bring them to level. He displayed in his hand a single orange pill, with a ridge in the middle. It’ll make you see things you’ll want to see.
How did you walk on the water?
How ..? Because I can.
But how?
He smiled. I told you already.
Clip-clop. The woman came out to them in a red sequin dress, champagne glass in hand. Her heels clicked, hair rolled up into a bob. They’re arriving now, she said.
The man clapped the pill into Trevor’s palm. I’ll see you on the other side, friend. And he was off.
Trevor stared at it, the woman looming over him, draining her glass. I’ll split it with you, she said.
Before he could stop her, she tossed her glass – shattering in the distance – snatched it from him and cracked it between her thumbs and forefingers. Like a crazy, reverse mirror, he followed everything she did: sticking out the tongue, placing of half the pill at the tip. But she swallowed and he did not, tongue getting dry in the wind.
I dun nah hwa thith ith.
She responded by holding his jaw shut and pinching his nose so he swallowed. She was surprisingly strong but he wasn’t mad. She wasn’t mad either, instead laughing and getting him another drink. Something not purple this time.
 
He was loopy again. His legs wobbled. He stood on them and his upper body swayed from one side to the other but he did not fall. His arms pirouetted to keep steady. If a cop stopped him, he could probably pass the drunk test. Why did he think that? There were no cops here. Unless those two lights coming were a car. Alone here on an empty road, dark, vast desert on either side, his feet anchored so the yellow stripes ran between, the lights came closer. First two, glaring eyes, shuttering in the distance, then one encroaching threat, devouring his vision; everything he saw. His whole world. The blinding light was no longer a promise, but a new state of being. He could hear the roaring engine. The screeching of the wheels. His feet, all the while fixed, suddenly came loose, and he turned in a belated effort to flee but then slipped. The monstrous, growling beast devoured him, his shadow projected, reaching for something in the distant night. Before he could land the ground slid away. He saw the metallic pipes and wheels pass over him before his entire body immersed in a wet, cold veil.
His eyes remained open. The moon and stars fogged up and blurred; eclipsed by a faceless crowd. He tried to rise but his hands stayed, interlocked at his chest. He tried to kick and wriggle, forces holding him down underneath the water. He was drowning.
When at last it became too much – when jets entered his upturned nose; through the slits of his frantic, rolling eyes; mouth bubbling in a mute scream – he came up. Breaking through the cutaneous layer, he entered the world trembling and frightened, soaked and still half his body submerged. He coughed and sputtered, hair washed over his eyes to render the surrounding dozens headless in their elegant evening wear and drinks in hand. It did not seem to matter such extravagance was ruined once dipped in the pool.
He is reborn! the prophet declared, wading in the water to address the spectators. It had been he alone who held him down. The applause was rather half-hearted and empathetic in their manoeuvring through purses, fineries and numerous drink glasses. Then one girl raised her arm and splashed around, overzealously volunteering to be baptized next. The crowd edged him out as she came forward, and he had no choice but to
slip and slide down to the bottom, bare and dry tiles galvanizing his fall. The pool was dug like a trench, and he had no way of getting out on whatever side. He was alone down there. The people had already climbed out and were dancing at the edges, taunting him, goading him, not taking to any of his calls or pleas for help. He tried to jump up or find a loose hold to kickstart an ascent, but there was none. In the end he would slump in his hole in the earth, listen to the beating music and intoxicated laughter, and pray for some sort of divine intervention.
It started to rain, first a light drizzle which graduated to a shower. He heard screams as people rushed out of view to go inside. He wanted to scream at them himself, to remind them that he was in there, but he hardly got a word out when his tongue was slapped with a bucketful.
He was floating in it now, rising ever so quickly as a tommy gun of water rattled off its rounds solely at him, the proverbial sitting duck. Then it ceased just as suddenly as it began. He could now swim and pull himself up, and he had taken only the first strokes when rumbling came. He stopped to look above and froze in a terrified, quiet form of acceptance. The oceans were coming down to meet him. This was it.
They smashed down, filling up the bare pool to the rim again, the excess water spilling out over the edge of the balcony to the unsuspecting, unknown inhabitants of the world below.
He did not die, but pummelled first, then yanked with the waves and shot through the air, landing with a crash of chairs and tables back on the terrace. The people were dancing again.
That’s how they were. There one second, gone the next. There. Gone. There. Gone. Their music and noise vanished with them, intercutting into the still quiet just departed in a schizophrenic symphony, to the point where he could not tell whether it was a trick of the party, the drugs, or both contracting in him some delusional psychosis. He crawled over boards and broken wood, sliding on his knees, legs bent and aching from being run over, drowned and wrestled with in some unfunny, three-act comedy penned by Dante. There was no one he knew in the split-second faces glimpsed. They were laughing–gone. Jostli–poof. A scant, pitiless flash his way before – yep, sayonara. They would pop back but he had already moved on to another corner, looking for his compadres, or at least the people who had condemned him to this state. They were nowhere under the LED lights outside. No fancy, billowing robe. No bright red dress crowned with a yellow lollipop.
He managed to stand on his own, his feet heavy; gait lurching. He would blindly wave his arms to grab on to something, but there was nothing there; for all intents and purposes he was alone in some sick dance macabre, perhaps himself passing through both realms of the living and the dead, his one ease from suffering cracked and splintered in a pile behind him.
His noodle legs crossed, moving independent of each other, and he slipped, grabbing and hiking down the pants of some recent apparition. He didn’t care. He climbed up. Grabbing on the thighs, stretching the material out. Slipping a hand into the waistband and belt. Holding on to the blazer, another pair of hands tried to swipe him off. Wrap around the collar, pull and straighten himself up to be met with an angry young man who vanished. He was thrown off balance, swivelling on the balls of his feet, when the young man appeared again. They both leaned into each other in unison. Their skulls impacted. The young man seemed to have meant it, rubbing his brow and cradling his martini while those around patted him on the back.
Trevor fell once again at the feet of a whole different crowd, apparating and disappearing every few seconds, not stepping on but outlining his borders. He got back on his hands and knees, shrieks and jumbles entering through the ears to ache at the back of his head. Someone rushed past and stepped on his hand, the stiletto puncturing through maybe to the other side he didn’t know. A shin collided with his head. He recognized those red heels. He looked up, cradling his bleeding hand, to see that yellow bob weaving above the crowd and disappear. He was bleeding a lot. Some holy mitt proffered itself from the world standing over him. It did not care whether it smeared itself in his own blood or cause stinging pain to the injured party (which it did). Pulled to his feet and led away, the partiers parted for them and he saw they were headed toward the pool and he stopped, trying to yank his hand free (that hurt too). Noah ultimately tugged him forward, almost pulling his arm out of its socket. He probably didn’t mean to be forceful, but that smile said something. He sat them side by side on the edge, feet paddling in the water. Blood trickled from the cracks of his fingers into the pool.
Crazy night, huh?
His hands wouldn’t stop shaking. What’s happening to me?
Oh, nothing. Just a simple test for my disciple. You passed, by the way.
I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.
It’s me. Noah. The prophet.
I know who you are, and you ain’t no fucking prophet. You’re just some crazy asshole who drugged his delivery guy.
Come on. We both know you’re not really a delivery guy.
He thumbed back at the party behind. Who the fuck are those people?
Noah looked over his shoulder. My congregation. They hear I’m going away and they all wanna get on my boat. You’ll notice the women are here alone, trying to get in my pants. The guys too. But I don’t think they know what that largely entails.
He patted Trevor on the shoulder.
They also don’t know I’ve already chosen my disciple.
What does that even mean? He was sick of this now.
It means you’ll come with us when this place eats itself, she said.
Lupé had come back, sitting next to them with her bare feet lapping in the pool as well. She brought with her some ointments and wrapping which she got down to applying on his hand. He did not resist. He took it as an apology for what she did, whether on purpose or not (on purpose). Besides, it felt nice, her cleaning and rubbing his hand.
Yes, that’s exactly right. You’ll come with us, the prophet said, a cigarette magically appearing, waved around in smoke ribbons as he talked.
Are you Noah? he asked. He felt soothed by the massage, eyes half open.
Yes. He said it without offense, as though asked that same question countless times.
Then you know only two people can go. A man and a woman. And two of every other species. That’s how the story goes, I think.
And that’s where you have it. Two of every species. The prophet brought the cigarette down in an arch to hammer his meaning. Ash fell to hiss and spread in the pool. Homo richness. And Homo poor-as-fuck. One species we have the pair. And the other there’s only half. We need to find you a woman, my friend.
I’m not poor.
Lupé lit two cigarettes and gave one to him. She smoked while continuing to bandage him up. He let the thing idle at the tip of his lips before remembering it was there to take a drag.
You are poor. You wouldn’t be working down there if you weren’t poor. You wouldn’t be coming up here in awe, mouth hanging open if you weren’t poor. You would be one of us here if you weren’t poor.
So you’re saying we’re both separate?
What the fuck are we talking about? Yes! That’s been true since the beginning of time. Sorry, my friend. Noah looked at him and shrugged, a forlorn expression on his face while the cig burned down between his teeth.
What do you mean you have to find me a woman? Someone here? Trevor looked around, almost excited. The thought fetched with it a little jolt in the groin.
Nah, none of them. Noah swept a hand through the air. He did not see the pack of scantily clad vixens encroaching ever closer only to be dismissed and sent flying by his gesture. They’re not for you.
They will gladly try, but in the end will find you already taken and the whole thing pointless, Lupé said, looking from the knot she’d been tying in the strip of gauze.
It wouldn’t be all pointless.
Some of them eyed Trevor from across the pool, dancing and feeling each other up. The lump in his pants grew tighter.
Now why did you have to tell him that? It was supposed to be a surprise!
Noah had to lean out and shout to speak over to her, trying to come through the din and music. Already drunk.
We got you a woman, old sport. He tapped and shouted in Trevor’s ear. For no good reason. It flipped the dime in him then and he was in a sour mood.
Where did he go? Lupé rubbed a hand over his lap. Your friend is gone. Did he get scared? Her stroking fingers let a little tingle pass through which she felt, her hands staying. Someone wants to come out and play, she giggled into his other ear. The fact her man was sitting right there only made it get harder, framed within her ring-adorned fingers.
He turned toward her, slipping from Noah’s leaning body.
On that thought, wait. Stay here. Noah took his time to roll over, glasses crashing and falling into the pool. A series of burps churned and flowed out his mouth. No one helped him up – their messiah did not need it – but they did part as he stumbled through them. He went inside to the chest, retrieved something from its contents, and made his way back. This, he said once he sat down, pulling Trevor and Lupé’s huddled heads apart. It was a small wooden boat made of melded branches and sticks, light from the party passing through the spaces between. This is what I went out on the first time. A model at least.
Are you really Noah? he asked once the awe fell on the deaf, mute and dumb, the silence to follow filled by the bass instead of crickets.
Yes, he said again. This time the ire was clear.
Trevor pointed. Because that thing would drown in this pool let alone a flood.
Noah looked at him with a twinkle in his eye, the anticipated question finally proffered. Lupé had her chin on Trevor’s shoulder, spectating the whole thing. Noah held the boat up on the tips of his fingers and now daintily lowered it into the water. While he was turned, she planted a kiss on Trevor’s neck, hand slipping back under his unfastened pants.
Upon setting sail the boat carried itself along the ripples, bobbing left and right until it stopped centre of the body of water. Some slipped through its bottom crevices, though other than that there was not much to report. It did not sink. This elicited a wave of faint applause, though much like the baptism it died quickly.
Noah eased back in his seat and observed with his compadres.
Well done, Trevor said.
Noah looked at him, noticed the woman’s fondling under cover. He raised up a hand and held Trevor’s sun-stricken cheek. He brought their mouths to kiss. Tongues wrestled and pressed inside. Trevor clasped the back of his head, fingers ruffling through oily hair, and locked them further together. The woman, her actions growing more energetic, pulled them apart, turned his face and plastered her own lips onto his. Noah proceeded to remove Trevor’s shirt and pants, hands lingering and tracing over parts of his body.
Somehow, some way, the people had disappeared. The deck was silent and empty except for them.
Thunder rumbled overhead.
*
Under the amber bulbs of the bedroom, they disrobed and mounted one another. There was no person who was the evident lead and master of ceremony. They each communicated with gestures and glances and directions to where a body or part of it should be. Soon they achieved a second nature to each whim and desire. There was not one left without satisfaction at any given second. The drugs and booze allowed their peripheral senses to blur and fade into each other, so the fingers of one might have been the knee of another. They became some sort of deformed creature made up of three arched backs, limbs and appendages interlaced through skin and flesh. Thrusting and grinding within itself. Fluids spraying out or into orifices and holes belonging to not one individual person. This thing would copulate throughout the night and into the early hours of the morning, then collapse onto the wide, red, heart-shaped bed, stark bodies glistening, hair on their heads matted. The pubic areas relaxed and flaccid, venous and throbbing from overstimulation. The three of them jumbled together, chests rising and falling with heavy breaths, each curling into the other with eyes closed, only left with the cool, saturated air as coverlet. It rained the whole night.
*
The hexagonal window looking down onto the terrace was either frosted or steamed from the amount rising off their heated, convulsing bodies. They did not see the rain until the woman put her hand on the wet glass while ridden up and down the wall. The moisture coated her palm while its print quickly disappeared under further heat, a storm drumming on the other side. By that time the little ship was still afloat.
It weathered the downpour which peppered the surrounding body of water, its husk drenched but traversing the waves courageously. A light emitted from within its confines. Faint at first though maybe seen by the upstairs residents if they had not been occupied with carnal matters. The light grew, flickering in and out from different cracks, when at last it could be contained no more. It engulfed the whole thing from the inside out, flames reaching up from the sides like slaves groping for freedom or death. It breached through from the hull, a pyre which sailed along for a few moments, unextinguishable from the rain. Its bright burn lit the vast, surrounding wasteland; a beacon in that ever darkness before the bow tipped and sunk in the pool with a hiss, in its wake a gurgling, ashen mess turned to nothing.
*
He woke to find the room empty. Maroon bedsheets stripped and tossed aside. His body twisted, legs one way, torso another; pulled in different directions. Light seeped in to reveal the hollow crevices where bodies had lain, wet smears on the walls and bed. Dismembered remains of their outfits littering the floor, a further layer to encase the heart which his hand was cuffed, the metal chafing his wrist as he tried to pull it off the headboard.
*
Noah descended the stairs and passed the chest. He trailed back, stared at it for a moment, then delivered a hearty kick. It was hard enough to move the thing along the floor, though his steaming coffee sloshed in its mug but did not spill. He remained there to see what would happen. It was static at first before the contents inside began to squirm and toil, banging against the lid to lift it by a crack – thank god the lock kept the rest of it secure – though the chest itself did bounce from the force, moving back and forth on the floor, to and away from him in every inconsequential direction. Then it stopped, at the foot of the stairs. Not underneath where he had stored the thing. He decided not to move it and left.
Outside the woman was sunbathing again. Their days had bled one into the other to render them rote and oblivious, with no everlasting change to their routines or encounters. He doubted she wore the same swimsuit, though he could not distinguish this from the previous day’s or the numerous prior. Her hair fluffed and cascaded around her with movie star glamour, as though there were a whole team responsible for that job where it had been only them two (now three).
He walked and stood over her, staring past the pool and railing at the horizon beyond. He blocked out the sun from her in an obelisk of darkness and shadow.
After a while she looked up, her vision of him dimmed further through shades. Do you mind? she said.
A taste of coffee, with the accompaniment of a loud, comical slurp. He did not move or answer. It was a response in a sense, non-verbal but audible.
She eased back and shut her eyes under the blue tapestry. It was all for show. Something hot and bothered boiled under the cool surface.
At first he thought the black smudge was a trick of the light or reflection. He looked around to see what had caused it, then craned his neck to peer closer, finally forced to step to the edge of the pool, toes curling at the brink. The fear popped in that someone might come rushing and push him. He knew what that black carcass at the bottom was. An omen of things to come.
I saw it in the morning, the woman said, not opening her eyes and basking in the newfound glow once he had left her side. Not a good sign.
No it wasn’t he thought but did not say. He wouldn’t give her that little spike of victory. Instead he came back, and along with him came dark clouds overhead, trailing on his heels to shadow the path he walked. First the pool and its guest decomposing underneath, reducing it from serene tranquillity to grey slush, sudden waves churning and bobbing in this new climate, given an air of restless, nightly sea, water splashing from its depths onto the manufactured surface.
He came up to her and she did not seem aware of his presence or the clouds ruining her placid day. After a silence between them while thunder and wind blew, bringing rumblings and small debris and speckles of dust, she said, without turning or moving at all, You’re spoiling my view.
It looks like you’re spoiling it yourself.
She lifted her head at him, slid the glasses down the bridge of her nose so he could peer at those icy blue eyes. I will eat you alive, you know.
He only smiled and tipped his mug at her. Enough of it was already drained, and besides, it quickly cooled under the conditions and whatever particles floated through the air probably made it their home. She laid back as though there were no change, eyes shielded once again. She did not say anything as he went up to see if their guest was awake. Robe flapping like wings to expose his pristine body, he climbed invisible steps from the deck to the window, dust outlining each of these as he took them before being swept away to coincide with his rising feet.
On a landing which did not exist, he peered through the window, having to cup his eyes between both hands for a better look. He’s awake, he said. She did not respond. A light drizzle began to fall. I said he’s awake.
Then bring him out here, she shouted back.
*
The glass in the window smashed open and fell inward. More flew from the force, not exactly hitting the wall opposite but skirting across the bed, a shard almost slicing where his toe had just been. The man floating by the window did not seem to have done it, fist not extended with neither a bruise nor a cut. He climbed in now, one bare leg followed by the other. It did not seem he would fit, the hole too small, but he managed in a feat of flexibility (a call-back to the previous night). Glass crushed under the soles of his feet, though instead of embedding into his skin, these were ground to a fine powder, almost glitter, as evidenced by his blood-free steps across the floor.
Trevor wrung the cuff, rattling the bars of the headboard. His limp penis flopped in a cushion of pubic hair.
Easy there, big fella. Noah approached as though in the cage of some feral tiger, arms held out to establish calm. A little fun and games, that’s all. No need to get mad. He produced a small key and unlocked the handcuffs. The grind of ratchet teeth and the thing slipped off, falling down the bar to land on the bed.
He rubbed at his wrist where he had pulled and strained to get it free.
There we go. No need to sock me. Noah stood there and laughed, eyes closed like some Japanese cartoon, expecting all issues to be resolved at the end of their prescribed 20 minutes. In an alternate world, he would have punched him. In a better world, he would have laid in, beat the shit out of him, and robbed the place. But the world was different. His asshole burned.
*
He walked out to the deck stark naked, still rubbing his wrist and the other one for good measure. It was sunny again. For a moment he thought the bad weather had followed him there, only a day behind. But now he saw it would more or less remain this way. The true disease and calamity were the people.
And speak of the fucking devil.
I see you’ve decided to grace us with your presence, she said, sitting up to observe him. She wore larger, heart-shaped glasses and a sunhat, its wide, pink brim dyeing her head a grotesque shade. The bright colours all of a sudden did not do well for his acid reflux. He managed to swallow it down. She was smoking again from that long holder.
I would ask if you were glad to see me, but I can see that you are. She blew out a puff and gestured with the holder.
He looked down. It was erect and pointed at her like a compass.
He felt a rise in heat but did nothing to hide it. Instead crossing his arms behind to accentuate it more; show it off. She only laughed and lay back down.
Pardon moi. Noah passed with a tray of drinks and glasses. The party was to begin again. Anew. Wrought forth asunder. From the early hour of – 10? 12? 2? The sun did not leave its place from the middle of the sky. It appeared to have been there for hours.
It’s like it didn’t rain last night.
It didn’t. Noah was at the bar, his back turned.
I saw it.
Then you were mistaken. Lord knows you would’ve conjured anything to get away.
Aren’t you waiting for a flood? I thought you’d be happy to get some rain.
He laughed, a gross, mean sound. He turned with a derisive smile on his lips, one to give a simpleton who had just illustrated his ignorance. Handed one drink to the woman. The flood has already happened, my friend. It’s in the sky. Pestilence. Disease. It’s nothing we can see or feel until it’s too late. Why do you think we’re this high up? The world has already gone to shit down there, so we gotta keep ascending until we’re well out of it.
So where’s your boat? Or your barge? Or your plane? It was difficult to keep his voice straight. He was given a drink too. It was awkward when Noah’s thing brushed up against his, but then walked away. Now he truly felt naked, holding the glass up while liquor dripped over the side. He didn’t know what to do with his other hand.
Noah did all this, coming up to him and going back, in a blank silence, almost making them forget the topic entirely, when he smiled a broad smile with shades on, arms spread wide. Where we’re going, all we need to do is this.
He floated in the air, feet crossed at the ankles in the shape of a cross. 1 metre. 2 metres. 3. Higher and higher until he was just two black lines against the sun. Then he came back down, robe billowing like a cape as he landed daintily on solid ground. Went up as Jesus, came down like Superman.
If only we can all do that.
I can teach you.
He can teach you a lot of things, sweetie, the woman said with another puff.
Ignore her. The man waved her off from inside his gown, bringing with it the hem to flutter.
What? I’m jealous, darling. You’ve been spending too much time with him and not with me. Where’s my lesson? And I thought you’d bring him his own dame to annoy and bother and peck with attention? All this she gesticulated with exaggeration, lips pursing at every other word and hands flailing like some neglected Italian wife, holder used as a baton, smoke criss-crossing her image in white lines.
I recall you did mention that, yes. Trevor folded his hands behind again, glass dangling from the fingertips, trying to match the joke of the theatrics.
Just one minute, then, if you’re so impatient. If the prophet’s words characterized someone irritated and at wit’s end, his tone and demeanour was of the opposite, of a dutiful, gracious host at the bidding of his guest. He left them to go fetch something from the chest, as he did the previous night. He rummaged in there, they could see, though pulled nothing out for a while.
What do you think it will be this time? A clinking of ice. The woman took a sip of her bourbon-infused drink.
I don’t very well know, do I. He had a taste of his own.
That wasn’t my question, she chuckled.
I can’t guess.
I think it might be a gun. A big shotgun. This big. She spread her hands wide, parting the holder and glass a great distance to illustrate her point.
What would he do with a shotgun?
Shoot you with it.
He choked on the gulp just taken. Swallowed in the end. Held his throat. Adam’s apple stiff and hard against skin. What? Why? A croak.
What else did you think? Why would he bring you here? This is not a place where you belong. She waved her arms to encapsulate their surroundings, the grand house behind her. An arch of smoke dissolved above. Drink spilled on the patio. You know it. I know it. He definitely knows it. A violent finger tugged in the general direction; splashes and ice cubes flew to crash on the floor. What do you think that talk of different species was? He doesn’t consider you people of his class. He doesn’t consider you even human. You are here to be mocked and made fun of. You are here to be toyed with. A plaything. And when he is done teasing you, when he is done fucking you, he will kill you with no remorse or repercussions at all and do it all over again. Unless …
Here she stopped although there was no reason to. She eased back from where throughout she had leaned forward, eyes drilling into his with an unwavering intensity, words and teeth slicing into every pore. Gashes to bleed. The man came soon after, welcomed to their silence, carrying something behind his back. It was hefty, requiring both hands, and he had to squirm every now and then to keep it from falling, whatever it was.
I’m sorry to say the thing I was looking for wasn’t there, but I brought you a nice little consolation.
He did not present it but remained there with a twitchy expression on his face. His lips quivered.
There was a woman I had in mind when I heard you were coming. It was what you would expect from a person down there. Relatively young with track marks crawling up her arms. I promised her a sum to come here and she agreed. I did not give it to her of course. I knew what she would do with it. Lo and behold, she did it anyway. Thank god she was pregnant. We ripped out the baby just in time before it expired too.
In another world, the man would have brandished a shotgun and blasted him straight into the water, guts floating in the pool, screaming to be sent to high heaven. In another world it would not have been a baby he brought forth, nuzzled and wrapped in its pristine white blankets, asleep, its face full and healthy and ostensibly not the by-product of some junkie lowlife.
Noah stepped forward and held her out.
He came closer.
Even the woman seemed interested, craning her head and sliding the glasses down her nose.
He extended his own hands, about to retrieve her, to take her in.
I figured a couple of years, you might be ready to mate with her. The prophet looked at him. His teeth burst into a grin.
Without thinking without forethought without a sense of self without anything he swept the baby off his arms where it landed on the floor and began to wail while he grabbed the man and they tussled the man stronger than he imagined why did he fool himself look at those muscles it was the robe which was his undoing it fell off his shoulders he stepped on the bit dragging on the floor and slipped bringing him along they fell on their bellies one on top of the other by the edge of the pool he remembered this his naked form on top brushing where he was meant to enter only now it was different he grabbed the back of his head same as before fingers cloying around hair he whimpered as well only now his scream would not be from pleasure but horror as the brow came knocking down on the edge of the precipice and again and again and again until the yells waned and juices squirted and squeezed and the hard thump of solid on solid became soft and mushy and his head went deeper and deeper until there was hardly any head at all but a black mush seeping its contents out into the pool where it was watered down and trailed farther and farther in
He stood, face and body coated in blood. The baby cried, its hands freed and flapping from its bundle. The woman was still there in the same spot, looking at him. She nodded to the bawling child.
There can only be two of us, you know.
He picked the baby off the floor. Bloody handprints stained the blanket. His steps were painted red on the floor. His erect penis too was drenched, as though he had just fucked some girl on her period.
He walked beyond the body. It took him a moment to realize he only crossed the surface, the soles of his feet washed and cleaned in the water. The baby had stopped, giggling at his perplexed expression. He had to will a descent, think and picture the fact he wanted to be in the water for it to happen. It reached up to his waist. The baby got more excited, kicking and screaming. He looked at it, smiling its toothless gums at him. He dunked it in the water and kept it there until the ripples disappeared to calm and tranquil again. Even then he kept his hands underneath. A baptism of water and blood. Her eyes never left him 

​Am I Gulliver who went to an island and woke up tied, unable to move hands, legs or head? No I’m not because my eye lids are also tied. Not with ropes but with pain. There is acute pain, I can’t pin point where but unbearable pain is there, all over my body. I surrender and  make peace with it. A murmur st knocks my ears, as if asking my permission to come in. Am I a teacher? No,  my  English teacher canned me for not giving the answer of her question,  the meaning of word wading from the chapter- Gulliver’s travel.
I’m wading through the blood with wounded palms. Am I a mad woman thinking incoherent things? Who’ll answer who am I? I permit the words knocking on my  ears, to come in. I want  to know who I am.
“Dementia.” A composed male voice says.
“What’s that? If she is fine why she is not responding? Why is she lying like a dead person?” a panicked  female voice counters.
I can distinguish between male and female voice. I feel triumph. Soon my identity will be revealed. It’s some hospital. I try to smell, the peculiar smell of a hospital .No although the smell is not there but it feels like a hospital. Am I ill ?
“All the papers of eye donation are ready. You’ve to come with me for completing the formalities.” A polite female voice drawls.
They are taking my eyes. I’m not dead. How cruel? “No” I try to shout but I’m tied. Am I a mountaineer slipped off in The country of the blinds by H.G. Wells? Are they taking my eyes? No. She is asking for donation not making me blind. But fear is gripping me.
“What’s the name of the donor?” Same polite female voice asks.
“Nayna” The word escaped with a sob.
Am I Nayna? No. Vivid images of Nayna flash in my mind. A pretty girl, fifteen running towards me rubbing her eyes?
“Mummy! My eyes are dry where is my eye drop?” she  asks me.
Now I comprehend. Nayna is my daughter but dryness in eyes is common these days with so much exposure of smart phones and computers. What happened to her? What made her die and landed me in the hospital?
Hospital. Yes, I can see a hospital. A nurse is coming towards me with newborn Nayna. I’m worn out and tired after the labor. Seeing her, makes me happy. “Her eyes are so big, we will call her Nayna(eyes).” My husband says.
Where is he? I can’t see him. A wave of unbearable pain sweeps my body. Blood only blood is there, everywhere. I want to cry out of pain but my cries are caged within me. I start perspiring profusely.
“Sister! Come  fast. She is not feeling well, ”says an old tired voice, very familiar. This is Biji, my mother in law.
 Is it a dream or is it really happening? She doesn’t like me because I am not her choice, her son’s choice. In our country the Government allows us to choose the leaders after certain age but parents never trust our choice of a life partner at any age. But things are changing now, I’ll trust Nayna’s choice. But she is no more? She was not ill. What killed her?
A chanting catches my attention. Words are enveloping me in peace and warmth. These are not mere  words these are the words of  the mantra my mother taught me. The only treasure she left for me- Gayatri Mantra. It took her place for the rest of my life. Biji is chanting this. Why? She never chants Sanskrit mantras. She speaks Punjabi and offers prayer in Punjabi.
Where is my husband? Who is he? Why I can’t remember anything about him? Is he the reason Nayna is dead and I am lying in the bed with nothing but incoherent thoughts? How many days have passed? I  remember the name of Nayna’s lubricant eye-drop,  but not my husband’s name. I try again to remember something about him. How did we meet?   All in vain, only images of blood comes into my mind. I become restless. I want to ask Biji. Yes, she will answer.
 We both bent to seek her blessings but Biji moves backwards. She does not approve of me that day and the rest of the days. All the other family members love me, like me but for Biji I always remained an outsider.
“Biji, come with me.” It’s Tejdeep’s voice. He is my husband’s younger brother. He loves me like a sister. His wife, Preeto pampers Nayna with delicious cuisine. By and by I’m remembering entire family except my husband .
“No, I’m not going to leave her,” Biji says.
“Biji, it’s the last Prayer of your Sukh,” Tejdeep says.
Sukhdeep. My Sukh, no he cannot die. He is so brave. He is in army. The most handsome face comes before my eyes. My love, my husband, he is the epitome of perfection, a perfect son, brother, father and husband. He is looking at me with bright eyes , then he smiles and his dimples deepen. He turns and looks again with blood and pain all over his face. I scream with all my might but it gets stuck inside somewhere. I get frustrated and want to think straight, to get up and ask what has happened?
I take deep breaths to calm myself. I try to recollect my story from my wedding, sixteen years ago.  Nayna is fifteen now or was fifteen so I’m sure about sixteen years. Everyone from the village pour into our home to have a glimpse of me. They want to see what’s special in me so Sukh choose me over a Punjabi girl. They go home disappointed. Nothing is exceptional in me. It took some time but by and by they accept me and start praising me for my efforts to mingle with them. Then Nayna born and Sukh takes both of us with him. It becomes a ritual to visit the village during summer vacations.
It is one such summer vacation. We are packing. Biji is instructing me about Nayna’s well being. She has given a lot of goodies to eat on the way. We drive through the Grand Trunk Road. Nayna ask  Sukh to take a selfie along with the greenery on the road side. Sukh parks the car. I’m sitting in the car. They both are outside it. A speeding truck hits our car and moves ahead. My universe is destroyed. The last thing I remember is a pool of blood. My Sukh lost his life in a road accident. A brave soldier, an asset of the country with immense potential became the victim of rash driving. If given choice, he would have chosen  a death of valor and courage. All the dreams of Nayna died with her, my little angel. But I ‘m still here, suffering through no fault of my own. Why I am alive? I want to be with them.
I don’t know how many days have passed. I am drifting in and out of sleep but Biji is there every time I hear something.
“You are chanting Sanskrit mantras  in a Punjabi accent.” It’s an authoritative female voice queried.
“I’ve spoken only Punjabi all my life so it is a bit difficult to chant in Sanskrit,” Biji says.
“Then why are you chanting these, God knows no language bar.” Same voice said mockingly.
“These are not for God, these are for my daughter in law. She believed a lot in these mantras.”
“She is a lucky woman to have a caring mother in law like you.”
She is not a nurse. She is interrogating Biji. Who is she? I concentrate on what Biji is saying.
“No, she is not. All through her life I never gave her the  love she deserved. I showered all my love on my son and granddaughter but always ignored her. My son loved and married her. It took an era for me to accept it as a reality. I always felt that he had been duped in this bargain.” Biji paused as if revisiting the past.
She cleared her throat and again continued, “I always tried to find fault with her. Her language, dressing sense,  her name and even her prayers were quite different from what I had been practicing all my life and that became a bone of contention. Out of love for my son I tried to get along with her but two months of summer vacations were too long to conceal my true emotions. I hated her from the core of my heart.”The clink of her golden bangles reminds me that she must be fidgeting.
        I concentrated again. Biji is saying “ She tried her best to please me by hovering around me, asking me if I need some assistance in the household chores. I always hated her till the fateful day I got the message of the death of my son and granddaughter. That day in shock  and despair I thought , “Why have they died and she survived? Why has it not happened otherwise?” The answer came from within me. “They died because they got the amount of love destined for them but she survived because she is yet to get her share of  love.” I did not know if it was my guilty conscience or my God who showed me this path, from that day  I became her mother and started caring for her. She was bedridden for one or two weeks sleeping due to Dementia. She  woke up never to be the same again. The accident had left a scar on her mind. Haunted by the fatal accident, she could not come to terms with life. She could not accept that she was alive and they were dead. She felt that their souls were summoning her to join them, their vision and voices calling her repeatedly. She tried to kill herself .Firstly, people sympathized with her, believed her, but after some months it became tedious for others to get along with her. I couldn’t leave her. I owed this to Sukh. I went to every temple, Gurudwara , Peer- Faquir and doctor but nothing cured her. Then a psychiatrist told me that she must be suffering from “psychosis”. She can be cured with medication and council. We were coming to the hospital, while I was paying the Autowala, she ran in front of a moving bus and met with the accident.”
“Is it not strange for an old village woman to remember the complicated terms like Dementia and Psychosis?” Same voice asks.
“I have been tirelessly visiting doctors and telling these terms since last year.” Biji
It has been a year since that accident. The voices about eye donation and the last prayers for Sukh  are from one year back.  It seems a few days. Am I a mad woman trying to kill myself ? It is due to this other accident that I am tied to this bed. Oh I want to be fine and think straight. I start taking deep breaths and concentrate on their conversation.
“Your statement is different from auto driver’s story . He says that you saw her going in front of the moving bus, you could have pulled her but you just let her go.” Same voice asserted.
“ I don’t know why he is lying ?” Bjiji said.
“Neither do I but when I find out who is lying, he or she will land in jail.” Same voice said.
This voice is of a Police officer not a nurse. She is a lady Police officer. Nayna wanted to become a Police officer. Biji tried to kill me? Can Biji do this? No. Never.  I’ve to be fine as soon as possible and prove Biji innocent. But how?  I am tied here.
I try to open my I lids but I am tied like Gulliver.  How did he manage to free himself? I don’t remember. But I remember Gayatri Mantra,  prayer of the Sun God. It will help me to think straight. But now it is more important for me to testify in favor of Biji and help her. God please help me. I remember so many things but a larger part is missing. My name is still missing. I  start chanting  Gayatri mantra but Biji stops chanting it. May be she must be thinking about the Auto driver’s version of  the accident.
“Don’t panic Biji, everything will be fine.” Preeto.
“Ma’am, you have to come with us.” Police inspector.
“ No, I will not come. Have mercy on my age. I haven’t done anything. Vijaya Lakshmi ( the goddess of victory), prove your name right , wake up fighting against all odds . Tell them I am innocent.” Biji cries.
I open my eyes and spring to a sitting position on my bed. The tubes attached to my hands makes the bottles clink. Everyone looks at me. I focus on the Police Inspector and tell her, “Biji is innocent, it was  my fault.”
Everyone applauds with joy. Biji thanks God .This time in Punjabi. One second I was sleeping like a dead person, the other I got up to save Biji from all the harassment. The Doctor comes and tells me that I will be discharged within a few days. I will be  fine soon.
Today is my discharge day, I will be back home soon. How will it appear without Sukh and Nayna? Preeto is at home arranging for my welcome. Me and Biji are waiting for Tej to take us home. Biji goes outside to call Tej asking what’s taking him so long? The Mobile signal is weak in the Hospital lobby.
 Suddenly, there is chaos in the lobby. An old woman has died in an accident on the road outside the Hospital. I rush outside only to see Biji in a pool of blood. I’m wide awake now, out of my dream.
 
 

There is a little girl, skipping down the stone streets, her hair braided into two, wearing a nicely ironed sundress, a pair of white shoes at her feet; a spotted red handkerchief tied on her wrist like always, a string bead necklace and three dollar bills in her right hand. The walls are painted in red and pink and green and blue, some rooftops are purple. Shops line up down the street, waiting for her choice. She enters the candy shop down the block and comes out with her arms full. Realizing that she is not clad in her usual mud-stained overalls (because her mother told her to look nice for once in town), her pockets are absent so she searches for another solution to replace her pockets. This is when she unties the handkerchief from her wrist and spreads it out on the stone steps before the candy shop to place all the jewel-colored candy pieces in the center of the red cloth and tie it up at the top. She now has herself a pouch of candy. She bites into her first gumdrop, the flavors bursting in every corner of her tongue. She continues her journey, munching on the treats down the street, as far as her skinny legs could carry her.
Now the walls are all the same color: gray, and the roofs are all brown and muddy. The pipes that run down the sides of the walls are dripping furiously with inky water. By now, the little girl is almost done with her sack of candy. Only three more left, she thinks, Why are candy pieces so small but carrots so large? Then she thinks. Why does my mother enjoy staying at that widow support group so much when she could eat candy with me? There are only two left now. Then one. I shall save this for mama. I’m sure she will enjoy it. The little girl doesn’t know where she’s going, but she’s going somewhere for sure. 
Suddenly, she hears something. She turns to her right. There is an old man sitting on the muddy road, leaning against a gray wall with tattered clothes no cleaner than his face. He buries his large droopy head into his skinny long fingers, letting his tears drip down his face and into his shirt.
“Are you alright?” The little girl asks, approaching him. She fingers the candy wondering whether to eat it or not.
“No—” His lower lip trembled. “Go away, little girl. Everything is alright for you. You wouldn’t understand what is not alright for me.”
The girl reaches her hand out. “Do you want a piece of candy?”
The man lifts his head to see the bright yellow candy in the little girl’s hand but shakes his head and continues to blow his nose into his shirt collar.
“What’s wrong?” The little girl asks. “If my mother allows it, she might let me buy some more candy. I can share at most ten pieces if you’re nice.”
“I don’t want candy, you little girl!” The man cries, his face still in his shirt. “My little boy has died from pneumonia! Would a piece of candy make me feel better? You wealthy spoiled—no good children do not know what it’s like—to live in a hovel all your life—to see your only boy pass away before you—to be offered a piece of candy like nothing ever happened.”
“I am sorry—”
“Leave me alone.” He blows his nose again, the snot running down the insides of the filthy top.
The girl rummages to find something.
“Here you go.” The little girl holds out, not the candy, but the handkerchief. “You can have it.”
The man peers at the girl but gratefully takes the cloth out of her hand and wipes his tears. And before he can say anything else, the little girl is gone.
She is up on the streets where the walls are so colorful and the shops are overflowing with treats and goodies. Her wrist feels so empty without the handkerchief. For almost three years, except when she was washing, she had never taken it off. Three years ago, her nose was buried in that little polka dot handkerchief. Three years ago, she stood at the far edge of town where the ivy and the grass go tall. Three years ago, her father died. And she had used that piece of cloth to dry her tears.
But now, it felt nice. Giving the handkerchief away did not seem like a sin, it did not seem like she was losing her father again, and it definitely did not seem like she was trying to shake away the memories.
It felt like she had found something new.


​

​Murali held the bowl carefully in his hands. He made sure his brown, lean legs did not deceive him at this crucial moment. He walked cautiously, one foot at a time, being watchful enough to not step on any big pebble that he might stumble on. Obstacles were many on the road: big stones that he might trip on, smooth ones that he might slip on, or the numerous potholes which meant either you fall headfirst on the path, or get your clothes dirty if you had one of your unfortunate days when you lurch into a muddy one. The ‘road’ was a mere walkway the villagers had created to let the folks walk by without facing any thorns or bushes that were native to the area. Or that was simply a result of the incessant bullock carts that pass through everyday. The locals called the road ‘dagar’.
 
The dagar was the longest pathway in the village, the grand road, like we have the main commercial roads in cities and towns. It connected all the smaller tributaries of trails, streaming from the fields, the residential hut areas, and other establishments like the Balu’s mithai shop or the sarpanch’s home and the ‘justice court’. The ‘justice court’ wasn’t like one of the law courts in urban settlements, but a makeshift shack constructed by tying a large jute sheet to the trees nearby, and placing an old cot as the judge’s bench, where the sarpanch would sit and hear pleas. This courtroom came into play to try petty cases like a robbery, brother’s quarrel over a piece of land, and graver scenarios like lover’s elopement. Though robbery and theft took place day in and day out, the latter kind happened just once. Or as far as Murali could remember.
 
It was during last summer. That afternoon, Murali was on his way for a swim in the canal. Summers in the plains were unbearable. Not many villagers stayed out in the scorching sun. Women and babies would stay in the comparatively cooler mud huts, chattering the afternoon away, while the men would smoke hookah in the thick shade of trees beside the fields. Murali preferred going to the canal. As he would dive into the cool waters with little fish streaming past him, he would forget the world and just float there like a hollow bark torn apart from a tree. Only when his brother would call him back crying that mother was angry and would beat him if he did not return immediately would he realize that the sky had turned a soft crimson. A few peddlers walked past with their wares and a bullock cart passed by. Murali turned his head to look at the new pair of bells on the bullock when he heard some commotion.
 
Murali was confused. The scene in front of his eyes didn’t seem to make sense. There was a small group of men swearing wildly in the air while some of them held thick wooden sticks in their hands. Two young people lay huddled on the ground amidst the crowd. As Murali squinted to see clearly, he could make out who the silhouettes were. Rupa and Bisnu kaka! He knew both of them. While Rupa had just passed her school, Bisnu kaka used to work in a local factory. The other big children used to tease them when they were found holding hands. In fact, once Murali had seen the two sitting on the bank of a river outside the village when he had followed a rabbit. Rupa had treated Murali with some laddoos she had brought with herself.
 
Sensing some danger, Murali hid behind a tree nearby. He saw an elder man drag Bisnu kaka to one side and kick him ruthlessly. He tried to stand. At that instance, one of the men hit him hard with a stick on his head. Kaka fell on the ground and coughed up dark red blood. Rupa’s bloodcurdling scream pierced Murali’s ears as his heartbeat quickened. She tried to push away the two men, apparently her brothers, who were holding her arms in a twisted manner. Rupa was pleading, “No! Bhaiya please don’t! Just leave him and kill me instead! Please bhaiya…. No….. no….” and she collapsed there, wailing. The man who had hit Bisnu kaka with the stick towered above the huddled mass of Rupa. He pulled her by her arm, and slapped her tightly, “I had warned you to stay away from these dirty pigs… In saalon ki jaat neechi hai! They are black, ignominious assholes who are destined to stay under us Brahmins’ shoes , and not marry our girls! Tujhe ek baat samajh mein nahi aati! I had well warned you…” Rupa was hysteric, “I love him tauji! I can’t live without him….” Now Rupa’s tauji’s blood boiled like tar. “TAKE HER AWAY FROM MY SIGHT!” One of the brothers yanked Rupa’s hair and pulled her away. The other men came close to tauji. With a grave expression he hushed something, briefing the others some instructions. There was urgency in their movements. “Let’s go to the sarpanch.” One of the men saw Murali hiding behind the tree and scowled, barking abuses and hurling words at him which Murali didn’t recognize. Afraid that the man might just come over and thrash him for spying on them, Murali ran away as fast as his thin legs would carry him.
 
Rupa and Bisnu kaka were never seen after that day.
 
Murali looked at the bowl in his hands. It was a hot day, and Murali was thirsty. The bowl was full of fresh, thick cow milk which his grandmother had milked the first thing that morning. A layer of cream appeared on the surface. Murali was always fantasized by the fat layer. It was like magic to him. He would slurp the white film and then drink the rest of the milk quickly, before ‘bhalu’ would snatch the glass away from him. It was a childish fear Murali couldn’t yet get over at the age of eleven. It was a hoax his mother used to make sure the children didn’t roam about without drinking their milk. Bhalu, the bear was the accompaniment of the local madari. It looked scary, but wore frills which instead of making him funny and friendly made him a lot freakier.
 
Now Murali had the bowl in front of him, full of creamy, pure milk but he resisted from drinking it. Taking a deep breath, he covered the bowl safely with the sewn leaf and continued his way. It was a crucial day, and Murali didn’t want to ruin it.
 
Murali studied in the village school. Most of the boys in the village went there. It was a six kilometer walk from Murali’s home. Every morning, the boys who passed each other on the way would challenge them for a race to reach school first. Murali had an athletic body, and although no one ever challenged him, he would still run, fast and surpass the other boys. The older, defeated boys would beat him once they reached school.
 
The school, an all boys one, was a brick structure, cemented at some places, and raw bricked at the others. Apparently the funds ran out when the cementing wasn’t finished yet. It had big classrooms, where children used to sit on the floor on some dusty mats. The only chairs that were in the school belonged to the teachers, one in each classroom. The teachers, ‘masterji’ were considered as the most learned people in the village. They were just five of them in the village; they could read and write, and looked quite respectable in their attire of neat, white dhoti, kurta and spectacles. The village folks were always pleased to serve the teachers in any way possible. They would send them grain sacks during harvest season, sweets made at home during the time of Diwali, or pots would pour in from the potter’s. They were the reputable lot as they were the ones who would read notices from the government office and write replies for the tax officials. Murali always looked up to them and was incredibly fascinated by them. Especially his teacher, Gopi Prasad.
 
Gopi Prasad was the oldest teacher of the school. He was tough and known for his hard ways to get things done. Regardless, Murali had admiration for him. When Gopi Prasad used to pass by, Murali’s eyes would follow his movements until he was gone, all the time smiling from ear to ear. Being a shy boy, Murali never had the chance to interact with Prasad. When the teacher took classes, Murali would never blink an eye in order to listen to every word that Gopi Prasad spoke. Although Murali had to listen hard amidst the noisy classrooms, with his and his friends’ mats at the rear end of the classroom, almost outside, he still would try listening to some words, and would make sense of others watching masterji’s mouth. He was in awe of masterji’s fluent way of speaking and his knowledge. He dreamt of becoming like him one day. Sophisticated, wise and refined in all his ways. Murali had, since forever, wanted Gopi Prasad to address him anyhow, or at least have an eye contact. What a day would it be! But, alas, he never got a chance. Until yesterday.
 
As autumn was nearing, and so was the harvest season, the older boys of the school felt that they weren’t doing enough for the teachers. Rumor had it that those boys recently had read about the Gurukul system in one of their history lessons. They wanted to gift their teachers guru dakshina as a token of respect. “What should we gift our teachers? They get enough of grains and other produces. They might be sick of them.” One of the boys said.
 
“But what else do we have? The best thing we own is marbles. I don’t think they would appreciate it.”
 
“What about some handmade stuff? We can present them with…”
 
“Balu, the finest you can create is a mud pile, which will get washed away by the rain.” All the boys laughed.
 
“Any good ideas?” The eldest one demanded, who was apparently presiding over the meeting under the banyan tree.
 
A younger boy spoke, “My grandmother told me the story of Eklavya. He cut off his thumb as guru dakshina as he was a great student. I never sat in the front row after listening to this story. What if the teacher asks me to cut off my thumb as well?”
 
And so, a daily supply of milk for masterji’s tea every morning was decided as the safest option.
 
The day had arrived when it was Murali’s turn.
 
The boys had charted out a cycle where each student would have to bring milk once a month. Murali was impatient since the past few weeks. Now finally, the moment had arrived. He was going to talk to Prasad masterji face to face! No more staying in the shadows. But what would he say when he would meet Gopi Prasad, and hand him over the milk bowl? Should he put his hands together in a Namaste, and say ‘Pranam masterji’? But he would have the bowl in his hands, and he wouldn’t want to spill the milk. Maybe he should touch Gopi Prasad’s feet and then say ‘Pranam masterji’. Wouldn’t that be too much? But his father had taught him to touch all elder’s feet for showing respect. After all, Gopi Prasad was of such reverence. He would say, “Pranam masterji, I have brought you milk for your morning tea. Thank you for teaching us values and morals of life.” If everything went well, he would add his name as well to ensure masterji remembered him. He repeated the lines in his head and didn’t realize that he had reached school. Show time. With a deep breath and heart pounding, he stepped in.
 
Murali kicked a stone in front of him. The stone rolled to one side and crashed into a bigger rock. There wasn’t the leisure in his walk he generally had. He was dejected. A group of small children were fighting and tearing at each other’s hair. Murali didn’t care. He looked at the bowl in his hands. The bowl was still full of fresh cow’s milk. Grandmother’s innocent face, smiling at him as she carefully prepared the bowl danced in front of his eyes. How pleased she looked when Murali had told her about his chance of taking milk to masterji! “This is the first time in our family that we are getting to share our food with big men like him. Let me fill the bowl.” She looked into the milk pot, was a little hesitant, but poured its contents into the bowl Murali was to take with him. She quickly covered the pot. “Here my boy, take this carefully.” She smiled her bright smile and kissed Murali on the forehead. Grandmother had tried her best to hide the milk pot, but Murali had already seen. The pot which had milk for the whole family was empty.
 
What would he tell grandmother when she would ask him about his experience with carrying milk to respected individuals of the village like Gopi Prasad? He couldn’t imagine looking at her hurt face when he would return home with the bowl as it was in the morning: full of milk. Although Murali couldn’t make sense of all the words of masterji, but he knew it was bad. The teacher had moved a step away from Murali as he approached him with the bowl. Murali was so thrilled and eager, but legs shaking all at the same time that he had forgotten his practiced words. He just put his hands up for Gopi Prasad to take the bowl from him. The disgust on Prasad’s face was enough to make Murali’s innocent, little heart sink. He winced, and said loudly in front of all the boys, “I don’t think we yet touch, let alone having food from their homes still, right?” The boys laughed. “And this dirt here thinks that I would drink milk from his home! Why don’t you go and dirty the pigs in the swamp with your milk?” Prasad smirked. With a darkened face he continued, “How dare you can even think of doing this, avarna? Just stay in the shadows, boy. Don’t you think there was reason for us to make you and your filthy friends sit at that far corner of the classroom, away from all our children? Go away, now.”
 
Murali couldn’t let his grandmother know about this. He was thirsty, he was hungry. There was milk, the one drink he loved, in front of him. He had made his decision. He walked down to the corner of the street. He stood there, holding the bowl. Taking a deep breath, he poured the milk on the ground below. Once every drop of it was out, he wiped any droplets that might have sprinkled off on his legs. Grandmother mustn’t know. Picking up his milk bowl, he started his way home, as fast as his little legs would carry him.
 
(Based on a true story)

​It’s as close to a happy ending as he can imagine.
 
It’s the pink and violet melting in the sky, the last gold of the day adorning her hair. For once, he’s walking instead of running, towards her instead of running away. He opens his mouth, but there are no words that can touch this moment.
 
But it’s all right, because slowly, one hand lets go of the railing. And just as quietly, she turns around.

 
 

Years and an ocean away from this happy ending, Yagya sits up in the armchair of the hospital room.
Harsh and white, the morning glaring through the windows blinds him for a moment. He turns away.
 
Instead, he watches his mother, sleeping on the bed. Her limbs are clasped tightly around his youngest brother Tejah, whose resting face is nothing but angelic.
 
It’s so different from his mother’s face, guarded even when asleep. Looking at her, a cocoon around his brother, who’s at last breathing calmly after being admitted to the hospital, eleven-year-old Yagya is suddenly cold.
 
Sleeping next to their mother is Jivesh, his other brother. Jivesh’s face looks exactly like hers, yet the lines around his eyes look much harsher on an eight year old.
 
Yagya hears footsteps then from the hall. Quietly, he goes to the bed and reaches for his mother.

 
 

“Please tell me a story, Ama.”
 
It comes out as a plea, with his hand grasping her sleeve. Yagya is where he always wants to be, sitting on his mother’s lap. Like always, she’s looking away from him.
 
Maybe a story would bring her back.


“You’re too old for stories,” his mother tells him when he tugs her sleeve again.
 
Still, she reaches for his favorite book on the nearby shelf, with him clinging to her like a baby koala.
 
“Too old,” she murmurs before starting to read:
 
“Once upon a time, in a far away land, there lived a little girl…”
 
Her voice carries his heart to the story.

 
 

Once upon a time, in a far away land, there lived a little girl.
 
She lived with her family: her mother, her father, and her big brother Arsh.
 
She loved playing in the fields and sewing clothes with her mother. Most of all, she loved helping her brother bring buckets of water from the village well.
 
But she would topple over when she tried to heave the bucket above her head, making her brother laugh and say:
 
“Srinidhi, that’s too much for you. You’ll never be able to carry all that.”
 
“I’m going to get stronger!” she told him. “And then I’m going to carry the bucket! No, two, three!”
 
That just made her brother smile. But everyday she worked hard. Finally, when she was older, she could carry three buckets. She became so strong that her brother let her carry all the buckets as they marched back home.
 
“See?” she laughed. “I told you I could do it! I’m strong enough to protect you!”
 
She never asked if he would do the same, because life then was still a fairy tale, and she believed.

 
 

He’s running.
 
Climbing wildly up the rusted fence, ignoring the cuts across his palm. Jumping into the neighbor’s yard and the overgrown weeds. Tripping over the trash scattered on the ground, then scrambling back up and dashing to the back door of his ratty apartment. They’re yelling obscenities behind him, there’s the bark of their dog biting at his back, they’re taunting that they’ll hang his dark skin on their living room wall.
 
He’s fumbling with his keys, his hands slick with sweat and blood. Yagya doesn’t want the dog to bite him again.
 
Finally the back door opens and he runs to the fourth floor. He can still hear their jeers behind him, and – fuck! – he forgot to close the building door. He knows they’re not afraid to chase him right into his room unless he locks the doors. Ama always warned him about how dangerous the neighborhood is.
 
Everything hurts. Somehow he makes to their door and stumbles inside. He slumps to the floor.
 
“Yagya.”
 
In front of him, his mother is cutting cucumbers, her eyes fixed on the chopping board.
 
It’s not only his hands shaking now. It’s his entire ten-year-old frame. He desperately wants to reach out and hold his mother. Be held. He knows better though. Instead he stands up.
 
“You need to learn how to protect yourself,” his mother says. “I can’t be there for you all the time. And how can you take care of your two little brothers like this? You’re all so sensitive. You need to protect yourself.”
 
Yes, he needs to protect himself. From them. From her. Without a word, Yagya leaves the kitchen so he can change his soiled clothes.

 
 
 

Tejah always believed in the good in people. It seemed that he was the last one in his family who still did so.
 
After all, how could Tejah wear his white coat and greet his patients everyday if he didn’t?
 
Well, he didn’t quite have his own patients yet.
 
“So, Celia is our five-year-old girl with right forearm cellulitis, healing well after antibiotics, recently afebrile, investigations normal so far,” the intern tells the team. “I think she can go home tomorrow.”
 
Tejah looks at the meticulous notes he prepared for the presentation on Celia for rounds. Another presentation he didn’t get to do. He suppresses a sigh as he follows the team into Celia’s hospital room.
 
“Hi Celia, you’re doing better today,” the staff pediatrician smiles at the patient’s mother before taking Celia’s arm. “Wow, your arm is looking great! Yes, she can get discharged tomorrow,” she then turns to the intern.
 
The team leaves the room. Celia waves them goodbye and only Tejah waves back.
 
“Hey,” the staff pediatrician looks at Tejah when rounds finally end. “I’m going to give you another patient, especially since you barely talked during rounds today. The new patient’s family is a little tough, but I think it’ll be a good learning experience.
 
“Besides,” she raises an eyebrow. “You want to be a pediatric neurosurgeon, right? I haven’t really seen a lot from you, so you need to step up.”
 
The five patient presentations he didn’t do because a resident doctor interrupted him. The thirty-minute case presentation he didn’t do because the team was too ‘busy.’ The seven times his questions were cut short this morning.
 
At least the disapproving glance that the staff doctor gives him is nothing compared to his mother’s eyes when he told her he’d be going into medicine.
 
How could you? They cried at him. How could you take their side? After everything I went through for you?

 
 
 

For the first time, she found someone who would protect her. And after everything Srinidhi went through, didn’t she deserve this?
 
They would watch silly Bollywood movies or just walk together, hand in hand. For the first time since running away from home, she didn’t feel lonely.
 
And he was so handsome. How many times did she see prettier girls with clean saris glance at him? (She wanted to forget the disdain curving their lips when they perused her thick, untamable hair and her gangly limbs.)
 
Yagya’s father wanted her to spend money on nice saris and makeup. Sometimes, he would go out without telling her. She didn’t ask questions then.
 
It was only when he told her to walk a few feet behind him that she turned to him and asked.


“Why?”
 
Suddenly she got punished again, the sting matching the hurt from what her family hurled at her years ago. Everything that she tried escaping from.

 
 

In the bedroom, Yagya is meticulously adjusting his tie for his high school graduation when his mother enters.
 
By this time, all his wounds are out of sight.
 
Over the years, Yagya has mastered the precarious balance between flight and fight. No longer does he cower behind trees or his mother’s legs. Instead, in school, when someone stares at him with a jeer, he has learned to gaze back with sharp eyes. He learns from the best, after all.
 
It doesn’t hurt that he’s now much taller, stronger. It doesn’t hurt that even the white girls often take a few seconds to look him over.
 
Even his mother, who’s now staring at him with wide eyes. 
 
Their gazes lock for a moment. Then he turns away.
 
When Yagya raises his head again, it’s to find his mother still watching him, although she’s looking afar.
 
Why aren’t you looking at me?
 
Even when her eyes are on his face, she sees something else. Or rather someone else, because there’s…
 
… There’s the glimpse of that stranger when he stares at his own sobbing reflection in the mirror years ago, his face drawn thin by nightmares, memories of those kids waving sticks, throwing stones, breaking bones…
 
“You look very handsome, Yagya,” she whispers, taking a few steps forward to touch him lightly on the shoulder.
 
They’re so close. Yet he knows that some part of her will never see him. Just as sure as the mountain ridge of scars on her back will never disappear, he will never cease to share his image, his existence with…
 
It’s the classic story then, as his brother Jivesh will scoff later (much, much later on, and from much, much farther away, his brother’s voice distorted from tens of thousands of miles of mountains and oceans). You get hurt, Jivesh will whisper, so you hurt other people.
 
Date after date, ghost after ghost. He loses track, they’re all the same, always the sliver of malicious pleasure of getting to let someone go in this place where he is expendable, where he is expended.
 
“You got your heart broken once so you want to just throw other people away too, don’t you?”
 
These are the word that Karin shouts when Yagya abruptly breaks off his relationship with her.
 
“Would it be different if we came from the same culture?” Karin starts crying. “If I wasn’t Japanese? Would I have had a chance to be taken seriously then?”
 
No, of course not, he thinks. They’re outside the coffee shop by now when he glances at the shop’s window. Instead of seeing content customers sipping their coffee, he sees something else. Something like him. A brown monster ripping a brown girl apart.
 
“No, of course not,” he replies.
 
And before Karin says anything else, he gets into his car. He never looks back.

 
 

What does Yagya see?
 
Not his memories but his mother’s story, shards of which have stung him throughout his childhood.
 
In a laughably organized world, the shards would piece themselves together into the window pane showing a handsome man in a cravat slapping his mother, who’s nothing to him but another overeager girlfriend.
 
Is it his father… or actually a man with white hairs and a bent back beating his daughter again and again for wasting her time trying to study? There’s another young man, just standing by the side and staring straight ahead, avoiding his sister’s eyes as she begs him to shield her.
 
Isn’t that why Srinidhi had run away from her home, letting the soles of her feet bleed until she reached the edge of the ocean and screamed? Screamed for a prince to save her, to carry her to a better life?
 
Yet it was the phone line cut dead by the love of her life (or so she thought) that finally did it. The phone connection severed the moment she uttered the world ‘pregnant’… it finally compelled her, while cradling Jivesh in her womb, to buy her ticket to leave the motherland that had battered her sore.
 
One day, she would think it strange that one conversation with Jivesh’s father that never happened carried her all the way to America. More powerful than the bruises and scars that Yagya’s father had branded on her. 

 
 

Shrieking, the little girl runs away. With an apologetic smile to the other children in the playroom, Tejah follows his patient into her hospital room.
 
“You’re okay. I just need to listen to your lungs,” he whispers, crouching down and tapping his stethoscope.
 
“No! No!” Tricia cries, violently shakes her head.
 
Was he like this when he had been in the hospital two decades ago? Yagya, the realist, had told him that he had run away sobbing from anyone who hadn’t been his brother or his mother. Jivesh, the storyteller, had told him that he had been too trusting and had been almost childnapped.
 
Really, Tejah doesn’t remember much from his asthma admission, besides being suffocated by gloved hands and his mother’s warm embrace.
 
“Look,” he smiles at Tricia and takes out a llama toy from his white coat. “I’m just going to listen to your lungs. Just like what I’m doing with Jeannie here.”
 
Opening his eyes and mouth wide in a hopefully comedic effect, he puts the stethoscope’s bell on the llama’s chest and pretends to listen.
 
“What do I hear?” he raises an eyebrow. Slowly, Tricia comes closer and pets the toy as he makes exaggerated breathing noises. “I think her lungs are good! How about for you?”
 
He reaches out his stethoscope’s bell to her chest and she lets out another shriek. She’s shaking her head, so vigorously that Tejah’s wondering if her braids, brightly decorated with rainbow beads, sting her as they slap her cheeks.
 
“No, silly,” he grins. “Don’t you want to listen to Jeannie’s lungs too, Tricia?”
 
He hands her his stethoscope. Still sniffling, she takes it and places the bell on the llama’s head.
 
“Can you hear it?” he whispers and then makes the same loud breathing sounds. “How’s Jeannie doing, doctor?”
 
At last, Tricia gives him a trembling smile. She gives him back the stethoscope. As delicately as he would one day reach into the mind with his scalpel, Tejah reaches out the bell to her chest. Tricia’s silent, following his hand and the bell with wide eyes. Then it’s on her heart.
 
“Get AWAY from my baby!”
 
The stethoscope’s flung onto the floor, along with Tejah.
 
Looming over him, Tricia’s mother glares at him, lines of hate drawn on her face. The child starts crying again.
 
“How DARE you touch my child, you foreigner,” she spits out.
 
“I’m sorry for surprising you,” Tejah hastily says as he gets back up. “I think you remember me from pre-rounds – ”
 
“SHUT UP! And don’t tell me what I do and do not remember! God, doctors think they know everything, and they PUSH you aside… I’m not going to let that happen, I know how the stuck-up people in the hospital treat people like me.”
 
The onslaught of her words are familiar, the wrath on the mother’s face, the derision she has of him, of the sterile walls surrounding them… It’s more than just Tuskegee studies he learned about, it’s something closer, the same line of hate drawn on another all-too-familiar dark face…
 
“You’re not even a doctor,” the mother sneers. “You might wear that damn white coat, but you’re NOTHING. Don’t you dare touch my child again.”
 
It might be worse though, Tejah thinks dully as the footsteps of his team come closer and he hears the staff pediatrician mutter, ‘What did that medical student do this time….’
 
In his mind, he sees his own mother looking at him, through him.
 
What can I do, Ama? What can I do to make you happy?

 
 

One day, maybe, Srinidhi would look back and think it funny.
 
One day, when she’s not crumpled on the floor, she’d think that it was strange and even perversely funny how the countless beatings from long ago had never pushed her to leave India.
 
But one mistake, one slap, was enough to push Jivesh to return to India.
 
“What does he expect to find there?” she spits out a few days later, when Yagya brings her a pot of dal.
 
“Belonging. Unconditional love. His father. The usual mundane dreams,” her eldest answers, shrugging as he heats her some soup.
 
“I don’t understand,” she says dully.
 
“You wouldn’t, would you.” He’s looking at the microwave, his tone bland the way she hates it, the way she brought him up to be.
 
She remembers Jivesh’s face after she put a hand on him, the first and last time she would act anything like her sons’ detestable fathers. Those eyes… They were so familiar, as if they were her own from a world away, hoping for everything despite everything.
 
“That’s the problem,” she hisses. “That child is too much like me. I’m helping him.”
 
“How is that going,” Yagya replies.
 
He turns to her, exposing her.
 
How could she protect her sons when she hadn’t been able to guard herself from them?
 
After all, she knows who their fathers are.

 
 

Jivesh is going to find out.
 
As he bikes through the streets of Gandhinagar, he lets the harsh wind cool his face. He lets himself be distracted by the music of his mother tongue, so strange to hear everywhere instead of just in the intimacy of his home. For a moment, it helps him forget the burn on his cheek. The bruise has faded long ago but the pain remains.
 
Instead, he turns to the wind and admires the tall proud trees beckoning the laughing crowds with its sun-kissed leaves. He looks up to the cerulean sky, clear in the early morning before the smog catches up.
 
Of course, Jivesh has to weave through laughing families and fly past scooters and cars, with people yelling out “You stupid American!” in two or three languages.
 
It’s different. Maybe a little cleaner, definitely a lot greener, vastly bigger than he had imagined. This is not the India where his mother grew up. What else has changed then… or never had been what his mother had told them?
 
Tales of a family who hates her. Tales of men who hit, steal, and cheat on a pregnant woman. Tales of sons who grow up only to become their fathers.
 
“I’m not going to have you define me, Ama!” he shouts up angrily; in only a few days he has reached the countryside road, with his outburst startling the few walking travelers in this parched heat.
 
Look what it did to Yagya, to Tejah, he had shouted at her the last time they had been together. This is what you get when you look at us with those eyes! Are you happy now? All Yagya does is make a fool of the people around him because he could never please you! At least he learned though, because Tejah would still kill to make you happy… like an idiot!
 
He’s going to break the cycle, though. Going back to the place his mother vowed to never return to find some answers, a home… a version of himself untainted by his mother’s scorn.
 
And after weeks of biking, sleeping on buses with vomit on the floor, hitchhiking to scramble onto wagons and once even into a Jaguar, and staring at the mountains from the train….
 
There it is.
 
As Jivesh gazes at his mother’s childhood home, the India that his mother remembers stares at him back.
 
Surrounded by a brittle field, scorched by the waning heat, a bare-bones concrete hut stands.
 
Jivesh imagines his mother, just a young and naïve girl then, running out of the door with her arms outstretched. Then he remembers her the day she had cut all her long, unruly, ebony hair with their kitchen scissors.
 
She hadn’t known then, but her three sons had been hiding behind the pantry door, mesmerized. Even eleven-year-old Jivesh knew then that this was the first time that he saw an Indian girl, woman, with short hair. The only time.
 
Jivesh’s knocks reverberate across the walls of the village house. Some heavy footsteps, some mumbling in Gujurati, and a short old man opens the door.
 
“Let me get it, Father!” Then a middle-aged woman with a tightly woven braid and a magenta sari appears.
 
They look at Jivesh, quizzically by the woman and already with a scowl by the older man.
 
“Is this… is this… the home of Arsh Sundaresh?” he says in Gujurati, asking for his uncle.
 
After a pause, the woman nods and calls out for her husband. A few minutes later, a lanky man with shoulder-length hair joins them.
 
“Yes, can I help you?” he says politely in English to Jivesh.  
 
“Do you know Srinidhi Sundaresh?” Both men stiffen but Jivesh forces the key question out: “She’s my mother.”
 
He’s known his stoic mother all his life, so he didn’t expect tears of joy or hugs from her family. Still, when his grandfather, snarling, slams the door in his face, Jivesh is ashamed to find that he is more surprised than he should be.
 
The force of the slam blows dust in his eyes, in his throat. As he bends over to cough it all out, he can hear his mother’s biting voice: See, what did I tell you, there is no reason to go back… and you doubt me…
 
… Slowly, he straightens his back up just as the bride and the groom kiss. A long time ago, he watched a Bollywood movie with Yagya and Ama, admiring an extravagantly bright wedding scene. Did you have a wedding like that? Yagya and he asked.
 
Their mother’s eyes flickered to them once, before returning to the calculations she was doing for the store where she worked. Staring at the screen (the shouts of delight, the vows of eternal love, the elaborate dances), Jivesh just assumed it was make-believe. The colorful scenes, though, would stay with him, reappearing after every blow and every biting remark delivered to him.
 
This is real though. In front of him is a real celebration that shows what happens when a man and a woman come together like they should, instead of hanging up when they find out they will have an illegitimate child.
 
The good thing about Indian weddings is that they are as huge as they appeared in the movies. So it wasn’t too hard for Jivesh to slip into the lavish outdoor event and watch his father kiss his bride.
 
There are confetti and flower petals in the air, festive music from his childhood blaring from every corner imaginable as the crowd stands and screams. Ribbons of pink, mauve, and baby blue twirling in the breeze, with the scent of lavender, the rustle of fancy saris, the powdered sugar taste of coconut ladoo.
 
“Hope it goes better the second time around,” he hears one of the uncles mutter.
 
And now Jivesh is supposed to push past his grand-aunts and grand-uncles clapping their hands to the tune of a deafening classic song, past the children chasing each other with their face smeared with sweets, and somehow make it far enough to grasp his father’s arm.
 
To tell him who he is so that he can finally exist in this vibrant crowd.
 
But as always, as always – and he curses himself, isn’t this why he left –he’s held back by his mother. Or rather the picture of her with the phone close to her ear after his father abandons her, while her other hand gently presses down on the slight bump of her belly.
 
She has always been the one holding him.
 
Hope it goes better the second time around… This was the third woman, though. Or maybe the fourth or the fifth… who knew.
 
The coughing fit starts as he nears the venue’s exit, so violent that he almost loses his footing. He hides his face in the crook of his elbow, and with a curse, he continues walking. He doesn’t look at the red dotting his sleeves.

 
 

He’s sick.
 
Srinidhi can feel it, in the tightness of her lungs as she struggles to cough the phlegm out. The heat crashing into her, as unbearable as the smothering New Delhi air she passed by decades ago… followed by unshakeable chills crawling up her spine.
 
She hasn’t heard from Jivesh since their fight, she has no ideas if he has even kept in touch with his brothers. Yet she knows, she knows deep in her bones – from her bones and her flesh did her cursed darlings spring forward – that he’s not well.
 
Srinidhi needs to save him.
 
Abruptly, she stands up. And immediately has to grasp the kitchen counter to not crumble on the floor. Once her head stops spinning, she looks at the mug of tea she made for herself an hour ago, still untouched.
 
Is it her fault that she hasn’t had an appetite, not even for tea, since… A few days ago? Months ago, since Jivesh left?
 
She needs a computer to book the flight to India. But the laptop is nowhere in sight. She’s stranded on the kitchen island. Fortunately, her cell phone is on the counter. She unlocks it, ignores the missed calls, and fumbles with the screen until it’s dialing an airline company.
 
“Hello? How can I help you?” an agent comes to the line.
 
“Srinidhi Sundaresh, I need a ticket to New Delhi, as soon as possible, my credit card number is…”
 
“Ma’am, excuse me, I didn’t catch that, can you please repeat yourself?
 
“Ticket to India, one way, right away, my credit card number is…”
 
“Ma’am, I’m sorry, I can’t understand you, your name again?”
 
They’ve always wrinkled their nose at her accent, at her name, in this place that long ago she imagined as paradise next to her forsaken motherland. There they had turned away because of her coarse voice, her coarse hair, her coarse caste, here they turn her away because of her coarse voice, her coarse hair, her coarse accent, her home without a man…
 
It doesn’t matter though. No matter how they all turn their backs, she’ll shield her sons with their backs turned to her, save them even if it kills her.
 
“Ama?” A distant voice rings in her head. “Ama?”
 
There’s Yagya at the kitchen doorway, he’s glowing like his father used to, and Srinidhi is sure that he’s not actually here. Like Jivesh isn’t here.
 
“What are you doing?” he asks flatly.
 
“Going to India. Bring Jivesh back,” she tells the hallucination, her voice crisp even when everything else around her wavers.
 
“Why?” the vision comes closer. “You haven’t been answering your calls for the last few weeks, so I figured I’d stop by. You’re sick…” He frowns, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Sit down.”
 
The apparition lets out a startled sound when she collapses on the stool. For something that’s not there, he has his hands firmly on her shoulders.
 
“I’m going to India,” Srinidhi repeats sharply, struggling to stand again, but she’s no match for the hands holding her still.
 
“No, you’re not,” Arun counters just as sharply.
 
All of a sudden, she’s young again and he’s holding her down when she wants to stand up for herself. Yes, he’s the tall, handsome man, but does that mean that she’s nothing besides him?
 
Srinidhi is no longer the small stupid girl. No longer the weakling who’d just let Yagya’s father slap and kick her when she announced she was pregnant, just to walk away and leave her bleeding on the ground. It was a curse, a blessing, that there had been no miscarriage, because how could she ever prevent her son from following the same footsteps?
 
Srinidhi is no longer a weakling and she raises her hand to slap the ghost away. But then he puts a hand softly on her forehead and says:
 
“You’re burning up. I’ll take care of Jivesh. Don’t worry.”
 
Arun would never take care of her, so the hallucination shifts to become his son, or rather the idealized version of her son, the version who wouldn’t walk away.
 
“I’m calling Tejah. Then I’m putting you to bed,” the dream says, taking out his own phone.
 
She should protest, stand up, and redial the airline herself. But fighting against Arun has exhausted her. Srinidhi puts her head on the counter and closes her eyes. When she wakes up, Yagya won’t be there. And then she can head to India for Jivesh.
 
“Hello?” The voice on the other line is half tension, half exhaustion.
 
“Tejah, I need you to help me track down Jivesh,” Yagya says.
 
“What?” The tone shifts to incredulous. “I thought you told me he was still talking to you!”
 
Yagya sighs. Next to him, his mother sleeps, her head buried in her arms. He pats his hand softly on her hair. He never wanted to ask such a thing from his little brother.
 
“I lied,” he sighs. “Well, not completely. When you called me two months ago to tell me Jivesh stopped talking to you, I still got the occasional email. But I haven’t heard from him in six weeks.
 
“And Ama was minutes away from getting a flight back to India but she’s really sick. I need to take care of her here. I need you to find Jivesh.”
 
There’s silence on the phone.
 
“I’m sorry,” Yagya says. “I didn’t want you to worry and I know you’re going through a lot with medical school and your licensing exam. That’s why I didn’t tell you about Jivesh. But we’re at this point now.
 
“Ama’s bad enough that I think she’s hallucinating. I think she was about to hit me because she thought I was my dad. She has a fever and she’s coughing pretty bad.”
 
As the silence stretches, Yagya wonders whether Tejah would refuse. He knows better, though.
 
“I haven’t heard you talk so much for a long time,” Tejah finally says, with dry amusement. “Jivesh was in Mumbai last time you talked to him, right? I’ll be in India in a few days. Take care of Ama.”
 
The line goes dead. His mother is still asleep, her shoulder length hair completely covering her face, maybe seeing ghosts in her dreams. Funny how she thinks so constantly about the past, Yagya muses, looking around the kitchen. After all, there are no almost mementos of India in their home. The few they have are kept hidden.
 
Yet who needs mementos when their memories are already powerful enough?
 
What stays so clearly in Yagya’s mind is the memory of her mother gripping her waist length hair with one hand, as if choking it. The other hand held a huge pair of kitchen scissors. That day after school, all three of them had been supposed to go to a library, but it had been unexpectedly closed.
 
So they trekked home, for once unscathed. The three of them looked for Ama and found her in her bedroom.  But they kept hidden behind the slightly open door, staring. Because they had peeked into her room and saw her squeeze the life out of her beautiful hair.
 
Slowly, elegantly, their mother raised the scissors. Then she sheared her hair off as close to her head as possible.

 
 

She seemed so cool, so strong, then, when she cut all her hair off. Like a warrior. Wasn’t that why Yagya and he learned some fighting skills? So that they could become warriors like her to keep Tejah safe, so that they could make it back home at least once without bruises and tears? So that they could be as tough as she was, as tough as she wanted them to be?
 
Jivesh wished he had his camera then. So he could have captured that moment with her mother and the scissors held proud above her head like a sword.
 
Then Jivesh sees himself back in the hospital, eight years old and flinging himself in front of little Tejah to defend him from the scary grownup with the metal necklace, with her white coat so sharp against her black skin. So like theirs but so different.
 
“Don’t touch him!” he shouts at her. “Only Ama can touch him!”
 
“It’s okay,” she tries to be soothing, but she’s pretending. Tejah before was smiling, but now he’s shaking.
 
“I just want to listen to his lungs to make sure he’s okay,” she taps her metal necklace. “We just want to cure him so he can go home,” she says in a singsong voice.
 
“Only Ama can cure him!” he shouts. “Get away from my brother!”
 
There’s so many people poking Tejah and making him cry. Jivesh is sick of it. All of a sudden there is a crowd of people around them. They’re all in white coats with metal necklaces and they’re whispering around him.
 
There’s a frowning old lady with a pearl necklace as pale as her face, a pair of shiny black shoes, the grownup girl surrounded by an army of white soldiers while Tejah just has Jivesh…  
 
“Now, now,” it’s a tall, scary monster doctor, so much worse than the singsong girl. “You behave there, young man.”
 
He’s smiling but his eyes are angry. He puts two hands on his shoulders. When Jivesh doesn’t budge, the smile thins. The man shoves him aside.
 
Tejah is defenseless, with his helpless and wide eyes. Jivesh has failed, he’s failed, where’s Yagya, where’s…
 
All of a sudden, she’s there.
 
She’s shouting, “Don’t touch him!” In a flash, she has both of them scooped in her thin arms, glaring at the mob with white coats.
 
“How dare you,” his mother hisses.
 
The white mob’s not scared, instead shaking their heads, narrowing their eyes, and preparing to fight. But it’s okay because his mother is there.
 
And she is there again with him, protecting him. Yet now why isn’t he happy, why is he glaring at her as savagely as the bullies are staring at her? In this memory or dream, Jivesh is an adult. He can take care of himself.
 
It’s been raining. A downpour blinding him when the local gang abruptly cornered him. They pulled out their knives and spread gashes everywhere, with red mixing with the rain on the concrete ground.
 
And now there’s his mother, screaming and kicking with a huge stick in her hands. Embarrassing him. The bullies around mother and son sneer at them and wave their knives threateningly. Fear slides down his stomach as he thinks of his mother cut open. I can’t protect Tejah, I can’t…
 
Finally the monsters leave. Then it’s Jivesh screaming at his mother, what the fuck do you think I’m a baby I can handle this myself what the fuck. His mother just shrugs, lets go of her stick, and turns away muttering about how their block’s overrun by these kids and how they need to protect themselves better.
 
But in a flash, she turns around, his head whips back, and his cheek burns. They’re in the kitchen somehow, he can’t handle it anymore, he’s leaving, he needs to escape her, because here he only disappoints and disappoints…
 
After all, Ama is crying, looking at her stomach with the most contorted expression because this third child is going to be a boy again. There’s a black and white fuzzy photo of his little brother inside his mother in his hand and he just lets it go…
 
Jivesh is only three and he can still see his mother crying with the picture on the floor. And now, in this delirium, so hot and confused but much older than three years old, Jivesh can only fathom how disappointed, how disgusted his mother was when she found out her second child was a boy.
 
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he’s babbling.
 
Jivesh opens his watery eyes. He expects his mother’s face to turn from her swollen belly to skewer him with angry eyes. Yes, there are eyes glaring at him, but they’re so much softer, who is she? The mask covering the stranger’s mouth makes them even harder to recognize.
 
“You better be sorry,” the person hisses. “What the fuck, Jivesh?”
 
It’s not a stranger, not quite his mother. Jivesh knows.
 
“What the fuck… little brother?”
 
“It took me forever to find you,” Tejah snaps, wringing out a towel already soaked with Jivesh’s sweat. “Thanks a lot for ghosting both of us so we had no idea where you were. I thought you were in Mumbai, but NO, you’re in the outskirts of Bangalore.
 
“I had to track down every stupid hostel you were in… It took me weeks!”
 
“I hate it when you rant,” Jivesh mumbles, closing his eyes again.
 
Is Jivesh even awake? Tejah hasn’t been sure that his brother has been lucid once since he found Jivesh yesterday, slumped against the wall.
 
Of course Tejah panicked then, dropping to his knees and shaking Jivesh to within an inch of his life. It was a small neighborhood, but even then, bystanders stared and shook their heads. No one offered to help as Tejah staggered with almost all of Jivesh’s weight on him. And once Jivesh coughed a smattering of blood on his shirt, the N-95 mask was secured snugly on Tejah’s face.
 
Unfortunately, the blood meant that none of the nicer hotels would give them a place to stay, forcing them both into a ‘hotel’ room the size of a walk-in closet.
 
“I can’t believe no one helped you. Here, drink this.” After wiping Jivesh’s face and neck for the fourth time, he lifts his brother’s head and pours lukewarm lemon water in his throat.
 
“So many people here, they can afford to lose one or two, or a million,” Jivesh mutters.
 
It’s a small comfort that Jivesh can still deliver some dark humor, but the blood in his cough, the high fever…
 
“Do you have a TB?”
 
“The hell would I know, brother.”
 
“Didn’t you get a chest x-ray? Any kind of medical attention?”
 
What if Tejah gets tuberculosis too? He’s in his fourth year of medical school, so close to graduating, he can’t afford to let anything slip, he has to be perfect. Medicine and his mother have made that all too clear.
 
Jivesh isn’t answering, he’s probably asleep. His sheets are soaked again. Night sweats, classic TB symptom, his mind offers (un)helpfully. As gently as possible, he rolls Jivesh over to replace the sheets.


“You really think I could get any x-ray here? Find any doctors here?”
 
Jivesh has his forearm on his face to hide his eyes. Tejah sees tears rolling on his cheeks. Then it hits Tejah: it’s been more than a year since Jivesh has been in India. It’s where their blood comes from. Yet is there anyone here for them, for Jivesh… all this time he’s been away?
 
“I’m sorry, it’ll be okay.” He takes a tissue. “Here. You can wipe your face a little. Or I can do it for you.”
 
“No,” Jivesh says tersely. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”
 
“You’re already half-dead,” Tejah hopes he’s joking. “I think I can see your face and a few tears too.”
 
“Why? Your face is covered, isn’t it?” Jivesh is still hiding his face, but the contempt slashes through Tejah. “God, you look just like them.”
 
It’s never enough, is it?
 
He’s holding Jivesh’s hand, his own hand now ungloved. He’s shaking, taking heavy breaths.
 
“It’s okay, I was just…”
 
For the first time, Jivesh sits himself up: it’s a struggle, but it’s done. He’s looking at Tejah with wide eyes, his concern for him laid bare. Tejah hasn’t seen such wide eyes on Jivesh since he was in preschool.
 
“You should put your mask back on,” Jivesh says.
 
Tejah distantly remembers having ripped off his mask and thrown it on the stained floor. He remembers that he’s sobbing, gripping Jivesh’s hand with both his own.
 
“You shouldn’t get too close, Tejah. I might have TB,” he half-smiles.
 
Jivesh’s arms give way and he’s about to fall back down on the bed, but Tejah catches him in an embrace, tight and desperate.
 
“I don’t care, I don’t care anymore,” he babbles, and Jivesh gently puts a hand on his hair, a familiar comforting gesture.
 

It’s strange how familiar the photos are, snapshots of a place that has so defined Yagya even if he has never stepped foot there himself.
 
They are the first things he notices when he steps into Jivesh’s hospital room.
 
His brother’s eyes are closed, his breathing finally calm. Without his unkempt beard (his mother – having overcome her own flu long ago – had stormed in and shaved it all off a few days before), Jivesh looks like how Yagya always remembers him: young and unshielded.
 
It’s a miracle that Tejah was able to stuff enough antibiotics in Jivesh so that they could make the flight back to the States without having the authorities ground them for major public health concerns. (Tejah had muttered: ‘I swear I checked,’ ‘ethical, ‘no TB’… not that Yagya much understood or cared.)
 
It turned out to be a hefty case of pneumonia, dormant on the plane but then striking Jivesh again once he stepped out of the airport.
 
There are two clean IV lines hooked to his brother’s arms and a warm unsoiled bed. Jivesh can finally rest. With his brother asleep, Yagya only has Jivesh’s photos for company.
 
Pictures and pictures of fields. A group of children chasing a soccer ball. Ama looking out the window from their kitchen. The Taj Mahal. Some slums. Ama working in the store. The stars crisp against the black sky. Gargantuan skyscrapers, their facades alight by the Diwali festival.
 
There are also a few pictures of Tejah and him. There’s four-year-old Tejah lying asleep with the same IV line running in his arm and the same oxygen nasal thing in his nose. Tejah, ten years old and kicking the soccer ball to Yagya. There’s Yagya in his graduation suit, when Ama couldn’t look at him.
 
“You could have picked a better picture of me,” Yagya says to Jivesh.
 
“I’m sorry,” he then sighs. “After Tejah being here so many years ago, I never wanted to see anyone in the hospital again. I was careless.
 
“You did a better job caring for Tejah from those doctors even then, and you’d probably do a better job now too, he might need it.”
 
Yagya remembers his youngest brother’s drawn eyes, how he quickly returned to his medical school after he left the airport, his tone clipped when Yagya tried to persuade him to rest.
 
“I don’t know if I can do better,” Yagya admits.
 
Jivesh sleeps on. It’s best this way. Tejah’s right: Yagya doesn’t speak much. Long ago, he tried telling his story, sitting on his mother’s bed when she was asleep. He wanted to see how it was to open your heart without being stopped.
 
His mother, he found out, was a light sleeper. So it had been only one attempt. Only years later did he find out that his mother had made herself a light sleeper ever since their apartment had once been broken into at night. He suspected that was not only the change she had made.
 
He himself hasn’t changed much, he fears.
 
“You’ve hated a lot of things about me,” he says quietly. “About how I just keep leading people on. There’s no girl who’s ever kept my attention…” And there was always one who took up all the space in our lives. “Dima was really fun, Apurna always said that things will be okay, Karin did so much for me…
 
“It could be worse. I don’t think I’ve ever hurt anyone the way that my dad hurt Ama. I don’t even know how he looks like, but every time I see myself in the mirror… I see less of myself.
 
“But you and Tejah, you guys are better,” Yagya smiles slightly.
 
“You are a lot better at keeping Tejah safe.”
 
Yagya stops. His brother’s eyes are open.
 
There are bags under Jivesh’s eyes and his voice is scratchy and quiet. But it’s the same vulnerable, earnest face looking up to him.
 
 “You made the right call back then when you stopped Ama from going to India,” Jivesh continues. “You protected her.”
 
“She would have saved you, even with her own raging fever. She would die trying,” Yagya says quietly.
 
“But she doesn’t have to anymore.” His brother turns to the window.
 
Yagya stays quiet, watching the tension slowly leave Jivesh’s shoulders.
 
“Yeah, it was the right call sending Tejah to India instead of going yourself,” Jivesh turns to him again. “You would have had no idea how to handle India or a sick person.”
 
“How long were you awake?” Yagya asks.
 
“Long enough.” There’s Jivesh’s trademark cheeky smile that he hasn’t seen in years. “I’m a pretty light sleeper.”
 
Yagya should have known. Then again…
 
“But you apparently didn’t wake up when Ama destroyed your face?”
 
For a minute, Jivesh looks at him blankly. He gingerly touches his cheek, then gasps. The next moment he’s clawing at his face.
 
“What the f – “
 
“You don’t like it?”
 
As stealthy as always, their mother makes her presence known on her own terms. She’s leaning on the doorframe, and who knows how long she’s been there.
 
The moment Jivesh hears her, his arms drop to his sides. It’s been more than a year since the two talked.
 
“It’s not bad,” Jivesh at last says evenly.
 
Slowly, their mother makes it to the bedside. She puts a hand gently on the back of Yagya’s chair, just as Jivesh glances at him. Yagya stands up to give his place to their mother.
 
He leaves the room quickly enough. Still, he catches a glimpse of his mother softly putting a hand on Jivesh’s cheek before the door is closed.
 
 

He didn’t match.
 
He’s not going to be a surgeon.
 
Tejah stumbles out of the car like a drunk man. Reaches the apartment building, races up the stairs, trips, swears, and wrenches the door wide open.
 
Anything to escape the pity in his friends’ eyes  searing into his a few hours ago, when they all found out if they matched, if they had a future as doctors next year. On that day, he opened his letter and felt the last drop of energy drain away from him. No hospital had accepted him.
 
Oh god he didn’t match.
 
“Ama!” he screams as he runs into the kitchen, his eyes darting everywhere.
 
He can’t stop fidgeting, his eyes can’t stop searching, he can’t keep still. Get out of my OR and go hang yourself! the surgeon shouted at him last year when he couldn’t stop his fingers from shaking when he was suturing the incision. Tejah fixed that afterwards though.
 
(His hands were so much steadier last month when he stitched the lady’s scalp together, although of course nobody noticed… they were unshakable when he took Jivesh’s clammy hand and injected the antibiotic directly into the vein.)
 
But maybe some things couldn’t be fixed, no matter how many hours he worked, no matter how he struggled to finish all his rotations on time despite the month he spent hauling Jivesh back home in one piece. No wonder he didn’t match in neurosurgery.
 
No one answers. The apartment is empty. Thank god. What was he thinking? His instinct was – has always been – to go running into his mother’s arms. Why does he think he can still trust himself given where it has led him to? Did his mother ever hug him back when he came running?
 
He can imagine his mother’s face twisted in disgust if she finds out about his failure. This is what you get for trying to be one of them. For being such a fool.
 
Just those imagined words strike him hard enough for him to cry out. It’s too much, he needs to go, Ama can’t find him like this.
 
His hands have never stopped moving. Now they’re scrambling to open every drawer, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, he finds knives, a pair of scissors, plastic bags, a gun, an elastic band, a broken plate…
 
Thank god it’s loaded already, Tejah’s not even surprised, he’s never known before but all of a sudden it’s as if he’s known all along that his mother had bought a weapon after Jivesh was stabbed by those kids a long while ago… Thank god thank god thank god…
 
He’s never touched a gun before, yet his hands (never going to be a surgeon’s hands, never going to be anything) grip the gun, unhook the safety pin, adjust the parts as precisely as his mother has learned to do since Jivesh ran away.
 
Every moment has to be smooth, decisive, don’t think, don’t hesitate.
 
At least his OR training comes in handy for the last time.
 
He puts the gun to his temple.
 
“Don’t make me shoot.”
 
Their mother, in all her endless love, has hurt them all so much. Yet even Tejah has never imagined that his mother would point a gun at him.
 
She didn’t raise her voice, but her sharp Gujurati surprised him, almost enough to press the trigger.
 
Her hands are steady, her eyes are dry.
 
“Do it, yes, please do it,” he babbles.
 
He’s disappointed her, he deserves this, yes, this is the best way. He keeps his own gun to his head. Two guns pointed at him are better than one. In medicine and in life, one needs a contingency plan.
 
“I don’t want you to lose a hand, Tejah,” Ama says calmly. “Put down the gun.”
 
So what? So that she would inevitably discover how low he’s fallen, so low that he put the gun to his head in the first place? It’s too late to turn back.
 
“I will shoot your hand!” she shouts.
 
She’s never been this harsh. Her shot won’t miss.
 
A wave of nausea hits. He throws down the gun and vomits all over his crisp white shirt, the stained kitchen tiles. He slumps to the floor. He’s retching, he’s throwing up, he coughs and coughs and coughs until there’s mixture of wheezes and blood clogging his airway and god he hopes he chokes, he hopes his esophagus just ruptures and he can be done with it.
 
None too gently, his mother gets him up to his feet and pushes him onto a chair.
 
He’s finally stopped vomiting. He’s still wheezing though, his breathing becoming more and more labored.
 
Srinidhi distantly remembers where she put away his pump when Tejah left for college. It’s on the top shelf in the kitchen. Her eyes never leave him as she grabs the blue pump.
 
Gently, she removes the saliva and vomit from his face and puts the inhaler to his mouth.
 
“Open,” she whispers.
 
He does and reflexively he starts taking a few puffs. In a few minutes, the wheezes quiet down, although he’s still breathing faster than she’d like. His eyes are glassy, dry. Srinidhi wonders if her son’s in shock. She can’t quite remember the definition of ‘shock’ from when Tejah was studying for his exams by reciting his notes to her a while ago.
 
She surveys the kitchen and puts the knives, scissors, gun, random utensils… she puts it all in a bag. She then takes it out of the kitchen.
 
When she comes back, she has a whole set of clean clothes. Slowly, she takes off Tejah’s dress shirt, drenched in vomit and sweat, and the shirt underneath. She takes off his pants and socks. Once she wipes away every speck of dirt from his chest and legs, Srinidhi puts on a tee shirt, a pair of sweat pants, and Jivesh’s socks on him.
 
He hasn’t stopped shaking. He goes back to wrapping his arms around himself.
 
What happened? Srinidhi has spent the last thirty years guarding her sons with every fiber of her being, while trying – almost offhandedly, definitely futilely – to shield herself as well.
 
She has never been so naïve to think that she would raise sons who wouldn’t turn into men who’d hurt her. That became all too clear when Jivesh left for India. Although hadn’t she deserved it then?
 
Still, she thought at least she could give them her life and happiness. Even if it meant having Jivesh rush back to the place that almost broke her… even if it meant that all three would grow up to break her heart.
 
Somehow Tejah… not the emotional one like Jivesh, not the smart one like Yagya… but the sweet one, the one who would always bundle himself in her arms until he was much too old to do so…
 
Somehow Tejah almost managed to do both: destroy her, and even worse, destroy himself.
 
“I need you to come over,” Srinidhi says over the phone and hangs up.
 
Tejah’s still shaking, his arms tight around himself. It’s spring though, and an uncommonly warm day. She puts a jacket around him but he only shakes harder.
 
Then it comes to her, a buried memory from right before she left Gujurat: she’s shaking uncontrollably after her father hit her, slumped behind the house… so hurt that her brother just stood and watched… her mother turned away when she saw the angry welt on her face… all she wants is to be held, and all she has are her own arms around her, gripping herself for dear life.
 
Srinidhi takes Tejah by the shoulders and envelops her in her small arms. Then the tears fall.
 
When Yagya comes into the kitchen, he’s expecting anything. Yet he’s still beyond words when he sees the vomit splattered on the floor and Tejah’s head buried in their mother’s chest. Already too thin after his trip back from India, Tejah’s now even gaunter.
 
Suddenly Yagya remembers the bulky bag besides the front door, slightly ripped where a knife pokes out.
 
“Yagya,” his mother says calmly. “I need to do a few things. Take care of Tejah.”
 
She slowly lets go of Tejah. Yagya sees that her shirt is wet and he gets a box of tissues. He and his mother change place so that he’s sitting in front of Tejah and she heads out of the kitchen. Tejah’s eyes are dry, unseeing. Yagya puts the box of tissues on the table.
 
“You want something to eat? To drink?”
 
His youngest brother doesn’t answer.
 
“Let’s get you to bed,” he says.
 
He makes a motion to pull Tejah to his feet, but Tejah does it himself, robotically but steadily. He follows Yagya to the bedroom.
 
The bed is much bigger than Yagya remembers it to be. It takes him too long to realize that this is their mother’s bedroom. Less long to decide that her bed would be best. He softly pushes Tejah until he sits on the bed.
 
“Lie down and sleep,” he says.
 
He’s about to adjust his catatonic brother into a sleeping position when Tejah suddenly grabs his arm. He’s muttering, he’s slurring his words, a mush of Gujurati and English that makes no sense.
 
“You’ll be okay,” Yagya tells him.
 
Always empty words, and he’s always amazed when they work, like when Apurna whispered them to him all those years ago. Like now, when Tejah lets go of his arm and lets Yagya guide him until he’s lying on his side.
 
When his brother’s breathing evens and the wheezes disappear, exhaustion slams into Yagya. He should drive back to his place. He wonders how dusty their old beds are.
 
When Srinidhi returns with full grocery bags of food, a lighter, and a potpourri of medicine, both of her boys are fast asleep in her bed.
 
 

There’s the fire she’s made outside and the last handful of mementos lying on the ground next to her.
 
She throws the saris in the fire first. Why did she even keep them? Did she think she would find a man and wear them again? Did she think she’d ever find her place in a scattered Indian community in North America that was as judgmental as her hometown?
 
Then there are the photos. Srinidhi always told herself they were a reminder of her mistakes. The photos of Arun blacken in the fire. But it’s been too easy to conflate her memories of them with her sons. She throws the pictures of Dhruv in as well.
 
She should have learned from Tejah, who is the only one who never wanted to find out more about his father. Because why would he want to know someone who cheated on his mother? Raghav’s smile disappears under the flames.
 
Finally, she takes out the last sibling bracelet she made for Arsh. Tears well up for a fleeting moment. Then she breathes deeply. She tosses them and sparks fly.
 
It’s summer already, but an unexpectedly cool day, so she sits on the ground and enjoys the warmth.  
 
Something flies over Srinidhi’s head. There’s now a white coat burning in the fire.
 
“For Tejah.”
 
Jivesh sits next to her.
 
“Tejah’s trip tomorrow is booked for 3 o’clock. So we should leave before noon?” Srinidhi gives a small nod.
 
“Can’t believe he’s going to keep his beard while volunteering in Central America,” Jivesh says. “It got so hot and scratchy when I had one in India! At least everyone thinks a beard looks way better on him than on me. We’ll see what he thinks after he flies down there.”
 
“He’s not flying,” she tells him, making him raise an eyebrow. “At least not to Guatemala. He’s flying to the coast and then he’s going to take a ship down there. So he can visit and volunteer on some islands on the way there.”  
 
She imagines her youngest son on the ship, on the ocean to feel the salty breeze in his hair, to at last get some air.
 
“I got rid of all my old pictures,” Srinidhi tells him. “Not of you three, of course.”
 
“That was a mistake. You should have gotten rid of those too.” Jivesh retorts. “Okay, our baby pictures looked cute. But still. I’ll take new pictures. Starting tomorrow.”
 
Srinidhi looks at her son, his quirked lips, his dark eyes bright and not just from the fire reflected in them. For the first time in a long time, she just sees him.
 
“I will never hit you again,” she says.
 
He gazes at her, no longer a scared and angry child who runs away to fantasies.
 
“I know,” he replies, here with her. He puts his arm around her.
 
“So noon tomorrow?” Jivesh asks a few minutes later. “I’ll be driving. Yagya will meet us at the airport. By the way, he says he’ll take a little break after Tejah leaves. Maybe even a vacation.”
 
Srinidhi thinks of her eldest, asleep peacefully in the bed with Tejah, handsome and aloof and so fearfully awaiting permission to be himself.
 
“That sounds good,” she smiles.
 
 
 

It’s as close to a happy ending as he can imagine.
 
It’s the pink and violet melting in the Indian sky before the night, the last gold of the day adorning her hair. For once, they’re – he’s – walking instead of running, towards her instead of running away. Yagya opens his mouth, but there are no words. No words at all that can touch this moment.
 
But it’s all right, because slowly, one hand lets go of the railing. And just as quietly, she turns around.
 
His mother is smiling, fully, happily, at him. She’s the same girl with so much light and hope in her face years ago when she was last here, when the Arabian Sea breeze serenaded her. For the first time, she reaches out with her open hand.
 
And for once, Yagya takes it.