One Rainy Day

A man sits at his desk, stooped over a leather-bound journal. His posture is stiff, his eyes fixed on his work. What was once a nice suit drapes loose upon his body, shrapnel-stained and coated with ink. The man is a writer. He is, however, a clumsy penmanship, too eager, too jittery. Too on the verge of falling apart. He can barely read his own words. He would prefer to use a computer or tablet or text-to-speech, but he knows better—knows that to change the world, his Bible must be written by hand.

A second man steps out of the shadows. He floats to the first as a phantom of torn coats and wide-brimmed hat, and in one fluid motion, produces a gun. He presses the barrel to the back of the first man’s head.

It is raining outside.

“Mr. Carver,” the second man says. His gun shakes. His hand is covered in fresh wounds. One of his fingernails is missing. “John. It’s time to put the pen down.”

“I’m almost done,” John says. He sounds far away.

“I know.”

And I walked naked through that liminal space, my arms outstretched to part the before from the after, all breath stopped in forever anticipation. No cold, no heat, no birth or decay. I was between Between, a fragment space that not even Death can enter. Only God. Only me. Only the last breath escaping dying lungs. I felt Death watch us, his eyes upon me, black tongue running across black teeth, his face pressed against the glass, waiting for his turn. He—

“John!” The second man says the name like a beg. “John …. John, please. We can still fix this.”

“But—”

The barrel of the gun digs deeper into the back of John’s skull, leaves a red mark 45 millimeters in diameter.

“I don’t want to do this. I want to throw up.” Underneath his coats and pistol, the second man is pale, sickly. His breath smells like copper and stomach acid. He wonders if this is how all the mice felt during his first tests. Ready to fall apart but incapable.

The desk is a disjointed state of terrible mess and brand new. There are no gouges in the wood, no dents or scratches from dropped keys or fumbled steps, yet it carries decades of hand-written words. John sets his quill into an inkpot. He runs his finger across the smooth wood. He purchased the desk from a department store three days ago and assembled it himself, using the little L-key wrench that came with. He remembers—or he thinks he remembers—that the young woman who swiped his credit card asked him if she needed to call an ambulance.

Three days ago, he had been a young man, clean shaven and ready to change the world. A business deal. A partnership. John Carver had money; Jay Irving had Aevum, an experimental drug that could kill aging in a single breath. Now both are old. John’s beard is full, his skin is cracked and bubbling like old asphalt. His hands cramp from writing, but he is almost done.

Outside, it is raining.

“What color is the rain, Jay?” John asks.

“We have to burn it all. All the research, all the evidence. Maybe if we erase it, the monster won’t notice.”

John looks out the window. His desk faces it, is jammed so close to the wall that he can lean forward and press his forehead against the cold glass. He is like Death. He is waiting, but not for a turn.

“There are no monsters anymore, Jay. Only rain. But the rain can’t hurt you. And the—”

“Stop!” Jay barks. He tries to sound threatening but steps back instead. Genie wishes run through his head, every hope a twist into ruin. The mice didn’t start screaming until after they took Aevum. “Stop. Let’s just, let’s just stop. Go to the nearest bar. Have a burger. I’ll buy you a beer. There’s a football game on, The Saints are playing, I think. We can be normal for another hour.”

John shakes his head. “We’re not supposed to be normal. We’re supposed to change the world.”

is not the king we claim him to be, but a cog in an ancient, golden clock that is God’s to unwind at his will. The gears are made of gemstone glass. The hands point to the heavens. It all smells of iron, or maybe, the place between iron. We walked through that infinitesimal space between molecules, so small the electrons were planets in the night sky. They twinkle brighter than Venus on a summer morning.

“What time is it?” John asks. His eyes hurt from squinting. He needs glasses. Three days ago, he had perfect vision, but the need for Walmart cheaters runs in his family. Both his parents need the help to read, as had his grandparents when they were alive.

“Quarter to six.”

John shakes his head. “No. What’s the real time? What year is it? How long has it been raining?”

“I don’t know.” Jay shuffles, twitches. His body cramps from nerves that want to snap in half. He’s had nothing but coffee and Advil since the accident.

“I think it’s been 22 years,” John says. “My watch stopped working when we woke up.”

“It’s been three days. It’s quarter to six.”

“We didn’t age when we were there.”

“Help me, John!” Jay shouts. His voice cracks. He’s so tired he wants to shoot himself. He’s so scared he’ll go back. “Help me stop the monster.”

Raining is outside it.

John looks out the window, watches the rain, hunts for words between the falling drops. The two men are in a cabin, out in the middle of a Wyoming forest so remote John has to write by candlelight. The trees are gnarled, ancient things that fight to paint the sky with dark leaves. The sky is rain clouds. Fog whispers between, skittering and hiding, waiting. John finds his words in the wisps, his next paragraph. He reaches for his quill.

“I can do it,” Jay says. “Shoot you.”

“What color is the rain, Jay?”

“I think I need to. I think it’s why he sent me back.”

John gestures to the space next to him. “Come. Watch. Help. Keep me company. Tell me what color the rain is.”

“I don’t—”

Jay looks out the window. It’s dreary outside. He spent what felt like a day hiking to this cabin, fighting branches that snag and muddy ground eager to make him slip. His clothing is torn, his shoes so dirty their only hope is to be thrown away. Three days ago, he had looked brand new, a biochemist on the verge of saving the world. He wonders why so much can change in 22 years. Water beads against the window, runs down it slowly, like it might be mixed with syrup. The candlelight makes it look yellow. The stains on his face are red. He pretends it’s all mud, but he knows better.

There’s a bar 48-hours away by foot, one with greasy food and cold beer. He believes if they leave now, walk briskly, they can be there in 20 minutes.

“It’s red, John.”

“I thought so.”

I found God sitting in a rocking chair, squeaking with each rock. He was asleep. I didn’t mean to wake him, but he feared the ticking of my watch. Time isn’t supposed to move, not there, not anywhere—not without his permission. He was angry, furious, a thousand images of my father with a closed fist, but then he saw the blood and the pain. My father could be a compassionate man, when he wanted to be. We can all hug just as easily as we can hit. I tried to breathe but had to stop, because lungs don’t work in Between. God smiled, nodded. When he wasn’t looking like my father, he looked like a creature made of light and jelly all stuck together. I think he comes from a prism planet.

“What do you think?” John asks. He knows that Jay is reading over his shoulder. Some day soon, everyone will be reading his book. His Bible will be titled Aevum.

“You need to burn it.”

For the first time in years, John turns away from the window, from his work. Jay holds a gasp. Recognition plays a painful game across his face. He sees his business partner, but he also sees a corpse. John’s skin is brittle, flaking away to show exposed muscle beneath. His eyes glaze with dead-fish scales. He smells like a rotted bone being chewed apart by farm dogs.

“Jay,” John says. He looks disappointed. He sounds old. “A deal is still a deal.”

“We died, John.”

“No. We only almost did.”

Jay wants to scream. Instead he finds himself begging, pleading for reason when facts don’t matter: “We have to burn it all. Throw my research into the sea. We can’t do this to innocent people.”

“God wants us to.”

“I didn’t see God!” Now Jay does scream. His voice rattles with black tissue. “Just that black skull. It was so dark. So cold. We have—”

Because Jay is stuck, an old man with old ways, John initiates the hug, pulls his business partner in close. His body is cold. So is Jay’s. The two men embrace in a single, heavy sob while the gun falls to the floor. It hurts them to cry. Jay knows he needs to grab the .45, kill them both to end the rain, but he is afraid. There’s a piece of bent plastic sticking from his thigh, and if he shoots himself in the head, he will go back. Death is waiting.

Is outside raining it.

“You saw me, Jay,” John whispers. “Only me. I promise. The monster can’t hurt you anymore.”

“John….”

Jay lets the word fall. Something slaps against the roof of the cabin. The room shakes. Jay jumps, but John only shrugs. Sometimes body parts fall from the sky. Sometimes the rain is more than rain. The rain has to be more than the sum of its parts for the world to change, for his Bible to make sense. Between has to become the present. The newly-dead have to walk again. But only the newly-dead—Death has already claimed the long gone.

John is of the newly dead. Jay is of the newly dead. Now they walk. Now they remember. In a few short years, with a little dose of Aevum, all can become newly dead. That last exhale will last forever.

“I’m afraid,” Jay says.

John nods. He turns back to his desk, his window. There’s a severed arm bleeding on the front lawn. “I know. But you don’t have to be.”

“The monster—”

“Death.”

“Yeah.” Jay gulps. At some point, the gun returned to his hand. It is heavy. He wipes at his face, feels scabs against his skin, feels four-days worth of beard get stuck in the scabs. A broken leg thuds to the ground in a swirl of fog. “Yeah. Him.”

John grabs his pen. “You killed him, Jay. Not the other way around. That’s all.”

There is good in this world, with its many ticking clocks converging into broken cogs. Sometimes, we even sparkle. I remember, once upon a time, I wedged a lifetime into a single breath. A hundred years in a single gasp. Nothing moved but everything mattered. The cosmic shook around me, breaking the placid into colors I could paint with. I am not an artist, but even the clumsy hand knows how to put Spackle over a nail hole. A touchup there, a touchup here. I saw it all, and God showed me the way. He paused Between so someone else could understand. I’m still there, I think. On a fundamental level I’m—

The gun presses against John’s skull again. It’s warmer now, more desperate. John rolls his shoulders, tries to find a comfortable spot so he can finish his book.

“Do you remember what our business deal was?” Jay asks. He is back to being a phantom, a cold man in a cold coat with congealing wounds. Rips in his skin turn to scars. Broken bones heal in strange ways because they were never set. Everything about him is stiff. “The pills we took right before the truck hit us?”

“No.”

“I don’t either.” Jay frowns. “I think it was important though. I think we were going to change the world.”

Now John laughs; he laughs so hard a tooth falls from his mouth. A little drop of blood mingles with the ink on his page. All Bibles require blood.

“Jay,” the old man says, a little drool falling from his mouth. Strokes run in his family. Are hereditary. “What do you think I’ve been doing here?”

Outside is raining it.

The lawn is covered in body parts, broken, bleeding things that thump into the dirt with enough force to move the world. Jay tries not to look at them. The arms and legs he can stomach, but not the organs. Not the strange, peeled faces that aren’t attached to skulls. Everything is a mess, and all he has is an old, rusted gun. He isn’t even sure it will fire. It needs to fire twice.

“I’m going to do it, John. I’m going to pull the trigger.”

“Death won’t go easy on you just because you’ve helped him.”

Jay nods, closes his eyes. The gun is heavy, the heaviest thing he’s ever held. He hasn’t eaten in years. Headaches pound behind his eyes, and his tongue swells with rigor mortis. Moths have eaten most of his clothes. He almost laughs, because there isn’t a living thing around for miles. Only the dead. They pound against the roof like hailstones.

“I’m sorry,” Jay says.

“I forgive you,” John agrees. “Just one more year, and it will be finished.”

Jay pulls the trigger.

Is raining it outside.

a God too. Dead but not dead, lonely but not for long. I waved at the sky and it turned to shrapnel plastic, split metal and little puffs of fire. It’s so easy to create when you know how, when you’re given the opportunity. God smiled at me. He offered his hand. I know a business deal when I see one. Beside us, so far out of reach I think we all forgot him, Death pounded on the glass. When I was a kid, I remember being told not to try and go in the attic. It was dangerous up there, not scary but dirty. Boring. Stupid. So of course I spent all my energy trying to get up there. I stole a ladder from the garage one night, and I ascended that little hallway door. Dust fell upon my face. Death is like that. He wants the one thing he cannot have, but that thing isn’t worth the effort. Let him keep his kingdom in the living room. Let me expand the attic for everyone. We can be as we are. Forever.

Bodies begin to fall from the sky. They smash into the little cabin, and the world becomes a raucous thunder of breaking bones. Glass shatters. The bodies stand on tired feet, naked corpses that try to scream but don’t have lungs or teeth or tongues. They shamble. Death reaches his hand through the glass. He reaches for John Carver.

It is strange, but while God and I make our deal, our pact to change the world for the better, I am reminded of my last real memory. I think it is real. I think it is a memory. I am in a car, driving with a person who I hope will one day be my friend. We are talking about something so important I lose track of what I’m doing. We are excited. There are so many ways to change the world. I want to do that, change the world. Make it better, or if not better, at least less scary. I want the chance to forgive everyone that wronged me.

John Carver scribbles his final words. His face breaks into ecstasy. Blood water pours into the cabin through a thousand holes in the roof. The room stinks of gunpowder.

There is a truck. It is in the wrong lane, or maybe I am. We’re heading towards it. I’m about to change the world.

Death grabs John’s soul and pulls. It blunders out of him with all the force of a tired breath. Jay watches the car crash in slow motion. He’s still holding his gun, a relic of a time long gone. He’s old. He’s tired. He lets the gun drop. It’s no good to him anymore, not when he’s been dead for a thousand years.

“Is it always so messy?” he asks.

Death nods.

“And did we matter? Did we change the world?”

“Yes,” the black, dust-made skull says. Jay is surprised at how nice the end looks. It seemed so scary all those years ago, so violent and angry. A monster shrieking against glass. He wonders who has changed, him or it. “Yes, you did. Everyone who lives changes the world.”

“Burn my work. Kill it all, and take it with you.”

“Thy will be done.”

Death reaches out a cold, skeletal hand. Jay grabs it. His watch ticks a single second. John’s body crumples to the floor. Rainwater wilts his book to mush. Blood and pain fade to black.

It outside raining is.

Fishing for Ghosts

“Who’s a good boy? You are! Yes you are!” I whisper into the lure. It’s a homemade hook, a bit of joy mixed with a bit of glass that looks sort of like a stuffed squirrel at a distance. The joy is pink; the glass is sharper than a silver bullet. I attach it to my tip down and let the rod do its thing. I then repeat this process with a second tip down, though I bait this lure with, “I love you, yes I do! Yes I do!”

I say the words in an exaggerated voice. I’ve never met a dog that didn’t love that voice.

Their ghosts love that voice, too.

The rest is a game of waiting. It’s peaceful waiting though. The aether laps beneath my feet, and the graveyard earth shifts in pleasant ways. It smells like autumn and feels like spider webs. My rods dangle from their bramble puppets, each weighted with just the right amount of exorcise to tip down and snag a biting ghost. It’s more engineering than magic, but it is magic. Anything that does 90% of the work without help is magic, at least in my opinion.

My shack is a haphazard warm. There is beer—of course—and there is a little radio spitting static and the voices that live just beneath the static. It’s a home-made structure, mostly built of grainy wooden planks decorated with knotholes. Nothing special, but it keeps the frost at bay. Bent nails pockmark the walls, acting as cheap hooks for jars and tools that threaten to fall but only threaten. Nothing actually falls in my shack. Spirits drift up, but never down.

Well, some drift down, but I don’t fish for those anymore.

I only have the two tip downs, so for my third grave, I use a bog-standard fishing pole. It’s also homemade, a gift from dear-ol’ dad. May you rest in peace, pops.

“I’ll love you forever, little man,” I whisper into my final lure. A little piece of my heart breaks away and attaches to the glass point. It glistens red like a drop of blood.

The fishing pole is a brackish piece of corpsewood, yellow at the bottom like a femur but bleach-white everywhere else. Well, except the very middle. That bit’s made of stainless steel from when I first broke it some thirty five years ago. Caught me a nasty haunt, one of them drift-down types. “Never again!” I said, but time and beer have a way of making “never again” turn into “eh what the heck?” which is why there are two pieces of stainless steel holding pop’s old fishing pole together.

He’d shake his head and sigh. Goddamn do I miss him.

I cast, and my lure plips through the dirt, and into the aether. The smell of apples cuts through my shack before turning back into old leaves. I smile, because that’s how you know its prime dog season. They like to play in the leaves. Like to chase after squirrels and bark at birds and get in the way when it’s time to set the table. Always a good scrap or two for the dogs during autumn. It’s the best time to grill in the backyard.

Static hisses through the radio. The dead grumble, and Her flute leads them on. It’s a faint sound, the melody so distorted that it’s less a song and more a part of the wind. She’s far, and as long as She’s far, I’m safe.

So I settle back, place my rod within reach, and pop a beer. I close my eyes and let the sounds of the aether do their thing. I’m in no rush. I’m much too alive for that.

*

A tip down jingles with a catch, and I set my rod aside to yank the bramble puppet up. Hooked, line, and sinker is a wriggling dog snout, fluorescent purple and yipping loud enough to wake the rest of the dead. It’s eyeless and more ooze than form, like turned yogurt stuck to the bottom of a quart, but I can make out enough details to know it was a Yorkshire terrier. I smudge its jaws aside to work the lure out of its mouth. Once free, its little barks turn into whines, which are quieter yet more annoying.

“Oh hush you,” I say. It does not hush. They never do.

In my cooler, next to the beer, is a round-bottom flask. Its neck is about an inch in diameter, but it bottoms out to something closer to six inches. It’s clear, heavy, and sound proof. I bring the complaining ghost to the edge, and it sucks the little Yorkie in without a second thought. Perfect fishing silence returns to my shack.

I add more bait to the tip down, set it back up, and return to my spot, my dad’s fishing pole between my legs and a beer to my right. The radio spits more static. Her flute is almost impossible to hear.

*

It takes another beer before my tip downs jingle, one right after the other. I plod over to them, yanking first a well-worn mutt with a blue glow, then a golden retriever with an orange shine. Both are prime catches, the kind of dogs with easy attitudes and wagging tails. Neither fights back as I bring them to my flask. The Yorkie tries to escape, but he’s too small to get out, and with the other two, they form a makeshift pack. Three is always better than one when it comes to dogs.

The goal is thirteen. It’s a prime number, and one that distills down to the perfect mason jar. The kind us backwater moonshiners call our, “special elixir.” We can thank the Morrison Sisters for that. What kind of moonshine depends on the dogs—Happy dogs skew towards rum while bitter little ankle-biters like the Yorki make a good whiskey. Real big dogs ferment into scotch. A mix of anything and everything blends into a kind of flavorless vodka, which I enjoy with orange juice on Sunday mornings. Praise God. One of these days I’ll figure out how to make brandy.

Not today though.

*

Something yanks at my pole with enough force to tear it from my hands.

“Jesus Fuck!”

I manage to catch it before it falls into the aether. The handle is death-cold, and whatever’s got hold tears back and forth like a wolf trying to break a deer’s neck. I pull, and it pulls right back, almost putting me off balance. Dirt flies everywhere. My beer falls to the ground with a thunk and a glub-glub noise. Half my trinkets crash to the ground, and one of my tip downs tips right the hell over. The radio spits static mixed with bad flute.

“Fuckin’ fuck!”

Panic takes hold, because this feels like one of them drift-down type spirits. Somethin’ real bad, like a bear or a mountain lion. Or worse, a human. My skin threatens to crawl off as I reach for a knife. The ground cracks apart. I can hear the aether twisting like a tornado, a violent swirl sucking at all life. Dirt spills in, and the smell is mold. I’ve never fallen into the aether before. Not sure anyone has and lived to tell the tale. It’s cold and black, and the dirt that sits between this world and the next doesn’t like to be disturbed. It wants to close in, wants to become a still grave. It wants me to scream and drown and die, and then it wants Her to find what’s left.

Before I can cut the line, it slackens. Everything stops with it. The fear, the screams, even the hope. My beer dribbles its last while my radio cuts out.

“Easy now,” I whisper. “Easy now.”

My dad’s old fishing pole jerks in my hand.

I slide the knife up, ready to cut the line and whatever bad spirit has hold, and find myself giving the reel a gentle wind instead. Just a few turns. The gears click like rattling teeth. Whatever I’ve caught doesn’t fight back, so I keep going. Up and up, with just a little play here and there. Sometimes the big dogs fight a bit—not the wolves, but the German Shepherds and Rottweiler’s. Once caught a Husky that threw a real howling fit, so bad it almost knocked the shack over. Most dogs are good, worth a pet and a smile, but not all. The bad dogs bite, and the spirits they distill into bite as well.

“Come on,” I say, and already I can tell the ghost is at the edge, ready to spill over. My heart quickens. I mouth a quick prayer.

I yank up not a dog but a crow.

“What in the hell?”

It’s a dark ghost, like if black could glow, and it doesn’t ooze or droop but spirits around with wings that rotate like a windmill. It caws as it flies, loud bleats that dig into my ears, through my skull, and into my forehead. Little headaches explode behind my eyes. I stumble around, one hand on my pole, another flailing with the knife. I can see my lure in the crow’s mouth, not snagged but bitten. The ghost took hold on its own. It can let go at any time.

I cut the line. The magic fades from the string in a burst of silver. Now it’s just fabric and glass.

Instead of dropping the lure and returning to the afterlife, the crow flutters to the tallest corner of my shack. It finds an empty nail and perches. Or rather, it hovers right above it. Ghosts can’t stand, but this one floats and hops like if it were alive. It gives my lure another playful yank, and the line swishes into the wall. It doesn’t even make a sound.

“Caw!” the ghost shrieks. Pain follows.

“No,” I say. I point at the hole. “Go back down there.”

“Caw!”

I stare at the crow. It stares back. Even as a ghost, it holds its form, with piercing green eyes and wings so dark they shimmer. Most ghosts don’t get so lucky. Most fade as soon as they die, turning into clumps of jelly. Dogs lose their tails and eyes first, then their ears and paws. Rodents jumble into puddles so fast it’s almost scary, yet they retain their noses and whiskers for a long, long time. Deer shrink. A deer ghost will look like a Christmas tree ornament for years before it melts into something that’s more antler than form, and even the doe grow a few points in death. Birds tend to look like eggs made of runny yogurt. Taste like it too.

Cats reincarnate like the cheating bastards that they are.

Humans—but I shake that thought away. I don’t fish for drift-down ghosts no more.

The crow makes like its preening its feathers, which is a strange sight as its beak is more thought than shape. Its feathers ooze around it, through it.

“Caw!” it shrieks when I raise my knife. Pain blossoms behind my eyes.

“You’re supposed to be dead!” I say.

“Caw!”

I look into my cooler. There are two beers left, and my flask, which is nowhere near its thirteen ghosts. If the crow won’t go back to hell, maybe it’ll distill into a spirit or two. I don’t like mixing animals—never been a fan of what the kids call a WOP—but I don’t trust this ghost as far as I can throw it. It smells like a drift-down type.

“Nice and easy,” I say. I pocket the knife and hold my hands out. The crow jerks its head in a way that could pass as a nod. I, meanwhile, stand there like a scarecrow. I look like one too, with faded jeans and a torn sweatshirt over an old button-up. I smell a bit better though. Fishing clothes last longer than farm decorations, but only a little.

“Nice. And. Easy.”

The crow lets me reach into the cooler without screaming more headaches at me. It’s wary though, alert and thinking in ways ghosts aren’t. I snag the flask, and because I’ve earned it, I reach for another beer too.

“Not sure if I should drink you,” I say to the crow. “Not supposed to catch your types, whatever you are.”

“Caw,” the crow says, but it isn’t a shriek. The headache it sends my way is light. The ghost hops from one nail to another. One of its eyes changes colors from green to blue. “Caw.”

“Shut up.”

I pop my beer. It hisses, and the crow darts towards it. I offer my own headache-inducing yelp. The ghost flaps around my hand with its windmill feathers, a freezing ball of jelly and claws sharp as needles. I bat at it while I try to run and hide. Every tap with its beak, every brush of its wings, causes my shirt to freeze and crack. Beer spills down my sleeve, and what doesn’t turn into blonde ice drips onto my pants.

“Fuck!”

“Caw!”

I drop the beer to put my hands over my ears. The crow flaps a circle around the shack, kicking up dirt and knocking my second tip down over. The lights turn off, on, off, on. And then the ghost heads for my beer. It pecks at it. When that doesn’t work, it tries to stand on it, though it can’t because it’s a ghost.

“Caw!”  It screams. It looks at me, all huddled on the ground and feeling like I just lost a fight. My arms hurt. My head pounds. I’m bleeding, though I’m not sure from where. “Caw?”

I’ll be goddamned. It sounds like a question.

“What?”

The crow rubs its head against the beer bottle. Instead of moving the glass, it drifts through it, turning it to ice.

“Caw?”

“You can’t be serious.”

It takes a bit of will, but I stand and brush myself off. The crow watches me with eyes that keep changing color. Blue and green then blue and orange then red and white then teal and purple. One minute it looks like a living bird, the next a ghost orb, the kind you’d see at a cemetery. I check myself for cuts and bruises and find half a dozen, but nothing I can’t fix. Ain’t the first time a ghost bit me.

The crow waits patiently for me to regain my senses, and when it sees that I am ready, it offers another chirp. This one doesn’t hurt.

“You can’t have any,” I say. I shake my head. “Sorry. Ghosts don’t eat or drink. That’s for the living. You should know that.”

“Caw?”

The crow oozes at the bottle. When that doesn’t work, it floats around it, approaching the glass from every direction. The glass doesn’t budge though. An angry ghost can knock things over and make stuff move, but a confused one can’t do nothin’ more than be confused. Or sad. Or dead. The crow blinks. It is crying.

“You gotta go back,” I say. My voice trembles. I’ve been fishin’ for ghosts for decades. Learned it from my father who learned it from his. You can do a lot with a ghost, though we always just drank ‘em. Kick back, relax, and as long as you mind Her, what more could anyone want on a Sunday morning? Then once you’re done, head to church to purify. God forgives the sorry. Then wink and do it again next week.

But seeing this crow sulk around my beer bottle makes me feel worse than dirt. Worse than the aether, which churns beneath the dirt, smelling like autumn leaves and feeling like spider webs.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I tell it. It flutters to my chair. If I sat down, it would be at my shoulder. I bet it used to sit on its owners shoulder when it was alive, and they’d share a beer and a story. I bet someone loved it once. I bet someone loved it forev—

“I’LL LOVE YOU FOREVER, LITTLE MAN.”

The voice is flutes and death and infinity all rolled in one. I am trapped in the aether, and it is trapped around me. Everything is cold. Everything is tornadoes and drowning. I scream a soundless sound, and I blink a lightless blink. Up and down merge together while the crow caws headaches into my skull. Some part of me curses for not fixing the radio, for not listening for Her, but the rest turns into panic. The rest falls.

The rest dies.

“THAT WAS YOUR TRAP. THAT WAS YOUR LIE.”

She appears in front of me. Her face is a patchwork of skin sewn together with pink thread. There is no light in her eyes. Her hair flows around her face like weeds, and her nose threatens to fall off. Only her lips are complete, contorted into the most gorgeous frown I have ever seen. She could kiss the life from an angel. The rest of her shimmers in and out of existence as flutes play terrible sounds around us.

I cannot see her army of the dead, but I can feel it. I know it is there, and I know I am doomed to become part of it.

“YOU PREY, AND NOW YOU ARE PREY.”

“I’m sorry.”

“YOU ARE NOT.”

“I—”

“YOU ARE NOT!” Her voice is a rage so thick it could end the universe.

“Caw!”

A headache rips through my head. For a split second, I can see the inside of my shack. It’s hazy and dark, and the ghost of a crow rests near my head, staring into my face with eyes that burn bright with red fever.

“YOU DID NOT LOVE HIM FOREVER, AND YOU ARE NOT LOVED FOREVER.”

I’m crying. I have no form, and I have no voice, but I am crying. She’s lying to me. Her song is lying to me. I did love him, and I am sorry. Everything else is gone, but those two things are not.

“YOU WILL NOT FIND HIM HERE! YOU WILL NEVER SEE HIM EVER AGAIN!”

“Please.”

“Caw!”

The world returns. The ghost is screaming at me. My mouth tastes like copper. I try to raise my hand, but it’s heavy with sleep. My shack reeks of autumn. I can hear flutes outside.

“I—”

“THE DEAD MARCH, BUT YOU WILL CRAWL. THE BETRAYERS CRAWL.”

“No,” I plead. I am a ball of sobs and excuses, and my voice is a whisper. “I did love him. I still do.”

“LIAR!”

“Caw!”

I’m sitting with a knife in one hand and a trowel in the other. They’re both bad blades, one made of bone and coffin wood, the other glass and empty words. They’re strong magic though, the kinds of things that let me go searching for ghosts. Because there’s one ghost I want to find, one I’d do anything to see again, even if just for a moment.

“HE SCREAMS AT WHAT YOU DID TO HIM. YOU WERE THERE, AND HE REMEMBERS. EVEN NOW HE REMEMBERS. HE DOES NOT LOVE YOU, NOT ANYMORE.”

“He was sick,” I say. And he was sick. His kidneys were so busted he could hardly control himself, and he growled if you touched his belly. We had to keep him outside that last month. We had to do a lot of things we didn’t want to. But I miss him. It’s why I use that spell when I go fishing. Because maybe he’ll bite hold, and maybe I can tell him I’m sorry.

“YOU GREW SICK OF HIM.”

“No!”

“Caw!”

I’m standing in my shack, one foot on the ground, the other in the aether. Pain explodes through my head. I’m bleeding from my ears. The crow hovers at my shoulder, flapping and cawing and sending waves of cold death through my body. Everything hurts. My fingers are white with frostbite. I’m holding my knife in one hand and pressing its blade into my wrist. All I need is a little more pressure, and I can go back. I can tell Her she’s wrong. I can—

“Caw!”

“Stop.” The word is a whisper.

“Caw!”

I look at the crow. It has three eyes now, each as red as blood. Its form shifts. Its beak melts into a mouth, one filled with fangs.

“Help me,” I say.

“Say it,” the crow says. Its voice is feminine and far away, and I understand what I’ve caught and what I’ve done. “Say the spell.”

“You’re a witch’s familiar.”

“Caw!” The crow shrieks a headache at me, and I press my knife into my wrist. Blood spills. “Say her words! Make her come here! Tell me you love me because I miss her like you miss your dog.”

Through tears I do as the ghost asks: “I love you forever, little man.” My voice cracks, and I fall to the ground.

I look into the aether, and for the first time, I see my own reflection in it. I’m tired and hurt, with sixty years of wrinkles swimming through my face. I was thirty when I put Bailey down. He was eight. Only eight. The good died young, and I stayed living and searching, fishing and drinking. I am dirt, and the best I can manage is sorry.

The crow caws a headache. I grip my knife. It’s a different color in the aether, black instead of silver. The dirt shifts beneath me. It wants to close up, it wants to cover bodies.

“Goodbye,” the ghost says. It hops from my shoulder to the ground. It shakes its head and raises its wings. “When you said her words, you looked like her.”

I let the knife go. It hits the dirt, sinks, and is no more.

“I didn’t mean to,” I say.

“And when you said you were sorry, I believed you.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“If I see your companion, I will let him know. I think he will believe you, too.”

“His name was Bailey.”

The crow nods. “I will find him.”

The crow’s mouth disappears, replaced with a black beak. It blinks its third eye away. It’s a ghost, and it’s dead, and I watch it fly back to Her. The graveyard earth shifts and pours until the hole to hell is no more.

My radio spits static.

Man in a Hurry

The store stank of gunpowder and cat litter. Four bodies lay on the ground, each torn apart and soaking into a growing pile of Tidy Cat. The 45mm bullets hit bodies and just kept going. Whispers filtered in from outside. Someone pounded on the door. A window shattered, and a large brick slid across the floor followed by a river of glass. And the worst part was, nothing made sense anymore! Nothing. Guy was in a hodunk town in Iowa called Frankfurt—population 4,000 on the dot—holding a SCAR L military rifle and wondering how the absolute fuck he was going to get out of here alive.

He had 196 rounds. That left 3,996 people.

The pounding intensified, angry fists competing with Guy’s makeshift barricade of charcoal bags heaped onto a small shopping cart. It would hold for another ten minutes if Guy was lucky. He did not feel lucky.

“Essentials,” he said. “Pretend it’s a ruck march.” The rifle had a strap, and he let it dangle as he ran deeper into the store, looking for a backpack. He could fill it with water and energy bars. After that, well … he wasn’t sure what came next. Des Moines was 140 miles away, and that was a hellova trip on foot. It didn’t help that his phone had stopped working as soon as he entered the town.

His CO had joked when he said he would take the scenic route. “Scenic? Ain’t nothin’ to see in Iowa, rockchewer. Just corn and rednecks.”

“Fucking bullshit,” Guy muttered.

Jake’s Convenience Locker lived up to its name. Guy grabbed a hiking backpack on his way to the grocery section, where he found a wall of glass-door fridges stocked with energy drinks. He popped the local brand called Sprintfurt. It tasted like cherries boiled in piss, but it had a 100mg of caffeine. He dumped another dozen of the things into his bag. Guy didn’t plan on sleeping anytime soon.

Backpack fit to burst, Guy ran for the exit. He wasn’t good, but he was in control. That mattered more. It was how he lived through Iraq, and it was how he’d live through this.

He put two bullets through the door.

He stepped over two bodies.

*

It all started with red and blue lights, a siren, and a short deputy officer with a uniform so primed and pressed it looked like a costume. “Documentation,” the cop asked. He chewed on the word like it was gum. He rested his hand on the butt of his pistol, either a sign of insecurity or paranoia. Or racism. Guy didn’t think there were many black folk around here.

“Sorry,” Guy said. “Got my wallet in my pocket, and the paperwork in the glove. Gonna reach for ‘em.”

“Come on, come on. Let me see your documentation.”

To be fair to the cop, Guy had been going 20 over. However, the roads were empty. No trucks or cars or people walking along the side. He hadn’t even seen a bird fly overhead in the last hour. It was like he had entered some ghost road, one so peaceful it made his skin jittery. It wasn’t right. Guy shoved his hand into his pocket, and the cop shuffled on his feet. Maybe he was high. Not like there was anything else to do around here.

“Here,” Guy said, handing over the license.

“This is expired,” the cop said.

“Bullshit.”

“See, it says right here. Expired February 20^th, 2018. What day is it? Well? Do you know what day it is, because I know what day it is.”

“April 20^th.” Guy took his license back. There was no way it was bad. But when he looked again, it was. “This doesn’t—”

“Come on, come on. Out of the car and hands were I can see ‘em.”

“Fuck.”

*

Guy kept his shots short and sweet. The gun responded to the slightest press of his finger, almost eager to go off, and the residents of Frankfurt crumpled around him. Many were carrying knives or bats, though a few had their own weapons, mostly hunting rifles. They were strangely bad shots. Guy had met his fair share of rednecks, both in the army and out, and most could hit a bulls eye from a hundred feet once they had a few beers in them. These ones though, they couldn’t hit dirt if they were aiming at the ground.

“Just one more thing that don’t make sense,” Guy said. He reached down to loot a corpse of her pistol. It was a cheap 9mm, and it fit comfortably in the waistband of his jeans.

The woman was pretty, or had been. Brown hair. Blue eyes. Pale skin. She was wearing a yellow sundress with two big red stains on it. Guy sucked in a breath. He had only shot her once. He was sure of that, because he had to be careful with his ammo. Yet she had two wounds, and big ones too: One in her chest, where the SCAR had done its work, and one in her gut. Guy didn’t do gut shots. He had a scar from one, and even these batshit rednecks didn’t deserve that kind of misery.

“What is goin’ on!?”

Well. Shoot first, questions later. It wasn’t ideal, but it was either that or die. Guy was not going to die in Iowa.

“Well Golly!” the town’s only mechanic shouted from somewhere behind. “I found him! I found him over here!”

Guy ran. That mechanic had come to visit him in the jail with bad news about his car. He had been wearing someone else’s face.

The worst part about Frankfurt was that it looked like a perfect little town. Idyllic. The houses were modest with big yards, and half the trees had tire swings hanging from them. On his trip in, Guy swore he smelled pies cooling on windowsills. The place was clean, the church big, and everyone smiled. But the smiles were wrong, too wide, too distended, like everyone was secretly a snake. Everyone’s breath smelt like stale meat.

Guy cut through a yard, stopping just long enough to watch an old man light a cigarette. When he smiled, his grin went all the way to his ears.

“Good luck, son.” The man said. “No one ever makes it to tha road, but youa almos’ there. ‘Bout two miles lef’.”

“What the fuck is going on?”

“Shouldn’ cuss,” The man shook his head and reached for a bucket hanging by his side. Guy leveled his gun. He didn’t want to waste the ammo, but he didn’t want to leave this one alive, either. “Frankfurt’s a ni’ place. No one cusses here. Not ‘till you shauw’d up.”

The man dumped the bucket over himself. It was brown and red, and it stank like a sewer.

“Two mile,” he shouted. “Watch fer deer!”

“Golly!” the mechanic called again.

Guy ran.

*

Guy hadn’t been surprised that the jail stank. All jails stink. This one though, it smelled like ten-week old death. And like all bad things, it reminded him of being in Iraq. Guy shivered. He knew it was funny in its own way, because he had come to Iowa to escape this shit, not get dragged back in. His CO would laugh at the irony.

“Just corn and rednecks,” he said to himself.

“Yeah, yeah,” the cop said. He opened the jail door and shoved Guy in. The door closed with a heavy clank and the rumble of rusted tumblers.

“You didn’t even read me any rights,” Guy said. “This whole thing is bullshit. Just charge me a fine or—”

“Rights?” The cop demanded. “I know your rights. Got ‘em memorized from the book. You want ‘em? Well, go ahead and sit down. Just go ahead. I’ll recite ‘em to you word for word. Right from the book down to the punctuation mark.”

Guy looked at the cot. It looked clean enough, yet it was where most of the bad smell was coming from. He decided to remain standing.

“You’re supposed to read them while you arrest me, not after.”

“Don’t you tell me how to do my job!”

The cop moved further into the jail, towards a desk. He twirled his keys on his hands. Guy told himself he was being paranoid, that this would work itself out—it was PTSD and concussions and every other bad thing that had happened to him overseas. The smell wasn’t real.

Except it was. It burned, and his eyes watered. The cop sat behind his desk, propped himself up, and began to read the paper. The major headline read, “Headless Deer Found Outside Cuddle Family Property.”

*

The SCAR burned; the barrel smoked. It was eager to shoot. Guy ejected another clip and loaded his last one. 50 rounds left, and then he’d have to switch to the 9mm. Nothing still made sense, but he had passed that two mile road and was now deep in an Iowa forest and heading east. If he kept going, he was sure to find a road or a farm or something. At the very least, that mechanic was now dead. He had dogged Guy for three full miles, screaming “Golly!” at the top of his lungs until Guy put a bullet in his throat.

“Okay,” Guy said. He stared into the dark woods. “Ruck march.”

In a way, it wasn’t much different than the swamps of Louisiana. Big trees, big dirt, and paths worn down by animals. Guy could march for hours in this. No alligators, muck, or mosquitoes the size of his fist, either. A cool breeze filtered through the trees, rustling leaves and the beads of sweat running down his face.

He felt safe.

“Ain’t safe though,” he reminded himself.  He opened his bag and grabbed an energy drink. “Not by a long shot.”

Guy marched deeper into the forest. If he got out of this alive, no one would believe him. Pleasantville meets Cannibal Holocaust in the middle of fucking nowhere, and then the only cop was so stupid he left the keys hanging on a hook outside the cell door. It was the town drunk who had let him out, a fat man reeking of gasoline and slurring the word, “goat” as he fought with the buttons on his jacket. Guy had slipped passed him and found the SCAR in the jail’s weapons locker.

It was all too good to be true, yet Guy was still alive, still whole. He was in control.

He marched for what felt like another mile before the quiet forest gurgled with noise. At first it sounded like the whoops of a coyote, but knew coyotes from his time in Louisiana. These weren’t right. They were too slow, almost giggly. He leveled his gun. The sounds were out front and getting closer, heading in a straight line. Whatever they were, they wouldn’t be happy once they got here.

The trees rustled again, not with breeze but with people. The family stepped out of the leaves as a single unit, each naked from the waist down and wearing a shredded flannel shirt, except the lone woman who wore a faded crop top. She cradled a baby and wiggled her fingers at it. Then she wiggled them at Guy. Mud covered them in thick patches, like they had been sleeping in it, and each wore a severed deer head as a kind of helmet. It hid the tops of their faces but left their hanging jaws visible. Their tongues were long and swollen purple. They whooped and jumped, and one strummed a chord on his guitar.

Guy shot him through the right lung.

The rest charged. They didn’t carry weapons, yet they scared Guy more than anyone else. These people passed batshit long ago. They laughed as bullets blew pop-can sized holes in their chests, their blood bouncing through the air, their legs carrying them forward. They moved like people on PCP. Or zombies. A man with a thick beard stretched his grimy arms out wide in a bad imitation of a hug.

“Get the fuck back!” Guy shouted as the man tried to bury him. Guy scrambled back and swung the SCAR like a baseball bat. It hit the man in the jaw and took it clean off, spraying blood and yellow teeth onto the ground.

“Oh tha’s good,” the man slurred as he fell to the ground. “He’s a real—” Guy stomped his face into pulp.

The man’s family clapped. Guy returned to shooting, terror overtaking fineness. They kept coming, and the bullets kept flying. Lead tore apart the forest, turning dirt and bark into little brown fireworks that fizzled out into pools of blood. The gunshots rang loud, only now they sounded like church bells. Everyone died with a too-big smile on his face.

When the SCAR clicked empty, the forest was stained crimson and smelled like gunpowder and vomit.

Guy dropped the rifle and reached for the 9mm. Only the woman still stood, clutching her baby close and surveying her dead family. She shook her head, and the dead deer covering her face twisted about until it faced backwards. Guy took aim.

“Reminds me of a song,” she said. “Sad song. Always makes my daddy cry.”

“Turn around,” Guy said. “Turn around, and go home.”

“You want to hear it?”

“Turn the fuck around or I’ll kill you!”

“It’s called ‘No One Dies Here.’”

The woman began to hum, and Guy ran passed, torn between shooting her in the back or simply putting a round into his own skull and calling it quits. The forest became a blur of stinging branches and large tree roots that threatened to trip him every other step. Sweat ran down his face and into his eyes. When his sides burned and his breathing labored, he forced himself to stop and drink another energy drink. His eyes felt like sandpaper, and his nerves twitched in ways he didn’t like. He was one bad cough away from falling to the ground or losing his mind. For all he knew, both had already happened.

It took most of the night, but Guy eventually found the edge of the forest. He stepped out, the ground going from dirt to gravel to concrete, and stopped. He screamed.

*

Frankfurt waited for him. The entire town clapped while church bells rang and the faint smell of an apple pie carried on the breeze, cooling in some windowsill in the middle of the night. A coyote that wasn’t a coyote whooped from deep in the forest. The entire town had come to see, their jaws hanging wide and clothing stained with blood. Chunks of flesh dangled where the SCAR had done its work, but no one acted hurt. Their too-large mouths cheered like Guy had just won some kind of prize.

Guy took aim with the 9mm. His hand shook. Sweat smeared his vision.

The crowd parted. A man Guy did not recognize parted the crowd, followed by the deputy from before. This new man also wore a police uniform, though his came with a shiny, golden badge. An empty holster dangled from his right hip. Guy took a step back. The man took another step forward.

“I told ya, Atii, I told ya he’d make it. Well, didn’t I tell you? Well didn’t I?” the deputy said. He grinned like this was all his idea.

“Boy howdy, you sure did, Barry!” Atti said through a wide smile. “Mhmm, mhmm!”

Atti was tall, well over six feet and too skinny to be real. The closer he got, the more he looked like a walking skeleton. The skin on his face clung so tightly to his skull that he had no wrinkles, and his eyes and mouth looked like they were made of plastic. He held out his hand for a shake.

“Stay back,” Guy whispered. “Get the fuck away from me, or I’ll—”

“Now calm down, sir. Calm down. I think there’s been a misunderstanding.” Atti made an awkward gesture with his hands. “See, this here’s Frankfurt Iowa. Why, we’re the most pleasant town around!”

“I’ll kill you.”

“Well, I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”

Barry laughed. “You hear that, Atti? He thinks he can kill you! Do you believe it? Funniest thing I ever heard.”

Guy continued to fall back, and the sheriff continued to march at him. He smiled. Guy waved his pistol.

“Sir, if you’d just put that down and listen, we could be on our way home.”

“Go away!”

The sheriff shook his head. “Afraid I can’t do that, either.”

Soon they were back in the forest, with thick trees blocking the sky and fake coyotes shuffling in the bushes. Leaves crunched beneath Guy’s feet. He tried not to trip over tree roots or loose stones, and he tried to keep in control, but everything was spiraling away. He waved his gun, going from the sheriff to the deputy. Would it even work? He had six bullets. He took aim at the deputy. The sheriff was the bigger threat, but he hated the stupid cop. This was his fault.

A hand gripped Guy’s shoulder. He stopped. His blood turned to ice. He could smell the dead deer on her head and the filth on her body, and he could feel her infant squirming against his back.

“Thankya, Clara,” Atti said. His hand fell towards his holster. Up close it wasn’t empty; it carried some kind of thin stick or twig. “My name is Atticus. Atticus God, and we got a place here in Frankfurt just for you.”

Guy’s voice caught in his throat. A shot rang out, thin and weak. He twitched. His finger was on the trigger, and a small hole smoked in the tree trunk to the right of Barry’s neck. The sheriff smiled, and his stupid deputy laughed. Guy took aim, but the woman grabbed his wrist and forced the gun to the ground. Her hands were cold. Her baby squalled into his back.

“Did you like my song?” she whispered.

“I’ll forgive that,” Atticus said. “Because we’re a forgiving lot here in Frankfurt. But first you gotta do something for me. See,” he pulled the stick from his holster. It was made of wood and looked gnarled and old. Someone had spent a long time sharpening it into a knife. “I need you to smile.”

“No,” Guy whispered, or maybe he mouthed. He stared at the knife that couldn’t be a knife, because it looked like a wand. All around him, the people of Frankfurt clapped. He was back in the town again. Blood leaked down the right half of his face.

“You want to hear another song?” Clara asked.

She let his hand go, and Guy put the gun to his chin. The barrel was cold. He closed his eyes.

“This one’s called, ‘Now You Live Here Too’.”

Guy pulled the trigger.

He did not die.

In The Glass Desert

In the glass desert, the sky is always a sunset. It is burnt orange, and it is dark purple. It is black with muck. For the skeleton who has no eyes yet still sees, it must be a sunset. A sunrise would bring him joy. A sunrise would not smell like poison. He hefts his bag and shuffles into the desert to face the ending day.

The skeleton prays for night.

The desert glitters with false stars, and a cold breeze blows over the uneven ground. Dirty shards patter with the current. It sounds like rain, but sometimes, on bad evenings, it becomes song, a thousand wind chimes playing all at once, clicking together to block out the sobs of the dead. It is a sad song. He prefers not hearing it.

Globes of yellow-green fire float by as the wind threatens to take the skeleton’s bag. It is a frigid evening, though he does not notice it. He is too busy, his eyes focused on the ground looking for pieces of glass. He knows he shouldn’t expect any this close to home, but the wind is always blowing, always ready to unearth some new gem for his work. He sees a piece the size of his palm and bends to pick it up.

The glass is too small to use, but it has a rosy color that marks it as treasure. He likes the rose glass. He doesn’t know why. He puts this piece in a smaller satchel wrapped around his waist. The skeleton has a collection of rose glass, a corner of his home piled to the ceiling with misshapen fragments and half-finished projects. He wishes he could remember, wishes he knew why he hoards this one specific color, but all he can do is shake his head and believe this find is a good omen. Today’s sunset will be a good one. A productive one. This evening, the song will not play.

Hours shift by, and more glass glitters.

Once upon a time, the desert used to move like the ocean, its sand dune waves made of soft grain. Once upon a time, the desert used to teem with life, stout cacti that swelled with water, lizards that always kept one foot up, off the heat and ready to run. Once upon the time, the skeleton had been a man. But once upon a time was long ago, and the skeleton has problems catching those memories. They fly while he remains trapped on the ground.

The colors are prettier now though. The skeleton is sure of that.

Eventually the skeleton reaches the end of his worn road, where uneven glass turns into windowpanes of shrapnel. He sets his bag down with care and crunches to a large pile of twisted shards, ready to excavate.

Even after all these years, the skeleton is picky. His work demands the finest pieces of glass, the clearest ones. Cracks can be mended, but anything smoky or opaque must be tossed aside. He scrutinizes each piece like an archeologist, looking for flaws, patterns, and stories. One piece is from a building that no longer exists, maybe a home. Maybe his home. Another is made of bone, humans fused together and then transformed all in a second. A third is simply melted sand and animal fats. He throws that one away. It doesn’t smell right.

“Caaaaw! Caaaaw!”

The skeleton looks up. “Hello,” he says. The word grinds in his throat. “Come to watch again?”

“Caaaaw!”

A dead crow flaps out from a burrow of glass shards. It stumbles along the ground, scratching red lines into what little flesh it still has left. Its colors are dead grey and infected crimson, and the sunset makes the small bird glow.

“Caaaaw!”

“And good evening to you,” the skeleton says.

The crow jumps and struggles with its wings, trying for lift but failing. Too many of its feathers have withered away. The skeleton appreciates that it tries though. Perhaps one day it will work. He used to pray for the bird, but God did not answer, and the skeleton fears he has only so many prayers left before God will stop listening. Best to not waste them.

He does like the bird though. He wishes he could smile at it.

Satisfied that today is not a good day for flight, the crow hops over to the skeleton and taps at a piece of glass. The skeleton picks it up, shakes his head, and tosses it back. The bird cocks his head.

“A trick of the light,” the skeleton says. “It is not rose. I’m sorry.”

“Caaaaw!”

“Try that pile over there.” The skeleton points, his hand blackened and scarred from his chosen line of work. “I bet you’ll find some there.”

The crow does as it is asked, though not with fineness. It is a creature made to fly. The skeleton turns to his own pile and shoves his hands inside, not afraid of sharp points or disease or pain. He is a creature made to work, and that is the difference he believes. It’s why he is still around. Someone has to rebuild. Someone has to pray for night.

Sometimes he wishes there were others though. He is lonely, and he is tired.

“Caw,” he says, and the crow backs out of a glass tunnel. Blood trickles into its face. The skeleton chuckles from somewhere within his ribcage. “Just checking,” he says.

The bird cocks its head. “Caaaaaw!”

“I prefer your voice to mine.”

“Caaaaw! Caaw! Caaw!”

The skeleton shakes its head. Glass fragments glitter as the wind howls, and together, they threaten to play their sad song. The dead below scream for help, and wind chimes begin to twinkle.

“Tell me a story, please,” the skeleton says, afraid the song is about to start. “Tell me what it was like to fly.”

“Caaaw!” the crow says. It hops, flaps its wings, and falls to the ground, gouging a line into its belly. A green ball of flame floats by, slowly turning to turquoise.

While the crow struggles with his story, the skeleton reaches back into the pile, making harsh movements that crack and clatter. Together, he and the bird keep the song at bay.

It is work, the skeleton knows, and hard work too. The city used to be huge, a jewel that housed hundreds of thousands. It had roads and shops, fresh fruit and trees whose leaves changed with the seasons. It had people. It had music that was not sad. It had water! The skeleton knows it can have those things again; it’s why he is here. It’s why God spared him. And yet he is afraid of what might happen next. What if he has to make more than just a city? What if he has to rebuild the state or even the country? What if he has to rebuild the world?

“There’s not enough glass for that,” he says, though he knows it isn’t true.

Underneath him, the dead sob, and all around him, wind chimes sound. The skeleton works, and the crow digs for rose-colored fragments. They are loud, but not loud enough. Soon the song begins, out of tune clangs that catch the one memory the skeleton wants to forget. The skeleton puts his hands to his head, but he cannot block out the noise. He has no ears. He has no flesh.

He falls to his knees, grinding glass into powder.

It wasn’t God but bombs, and it wasn’t fate but dirty magic. The skeleton remembers seeing the mushroom cloud on T.V. and holding his breath, terrified of what would happen next. He remembers turning to his wife and daughter. He remembers the color rose. He remembers the terror and shock of the days that followed, and when the next bomb went off, he remembers the pain of giving up. There was nothing anyone could do, only watch and pray. Neither helped.

The third bomb was an accident, but the fourth and fifths were on purpose, made to be the biggest the world had ever known, made to turn souls into glass. By then, no one could remember what they were fighting for, only that they had to finish what they started.

The sixth and seventh contained poison. The eighth contained magic. Nine through twelve contained nothing but were launched anyways. It would be a waste not to use them, not to turn every inch of the sky into sunset.

The thirteenth bomb was a dud. The last man alive died before he could launch the fourteenth.

“Caaaw!” the crow says, and the skeleton gets up. He shakes, and a pane of glass slips from his hands to shatter into a thousand pieces. “Caaaw!”

“Sorry.”

Tired though not thirsty or hungry, the skeleton reaches for his sack and slings it over his shoulder. It is heavier now. The glass inside clinks. He does not smile for his face is stuck, but this sunset was a productive one, a good harvest. Each pane is just right for his project. He will mend any cracks, and then his bellows will spread heat into the world. He will work.

The skeleton turns back, and though he is far from his home, he can see the glittering line of his city. Each building is made out of glass, perfectly sculpted as it once was. One day the entire place will be finished, and then maybe the dead will stop sobbing. Maybe he won’t be alone.

The crow carries over another piece of glass and drops it at the skeleton’s feet. He taps at it with his beak. It is the wrong color, not truly rose but reflecting the burnt sunset, but the skeleton reaches for it anyways. He does not want to offend the small bird.

“Good,” he says. “Thank you.”

“Caaaw!”

“I’ll see you next evening.”

The crow tries to fly one last time before giving up and returning to its glass burrow. The skeleton sighs. He has many hours to walk, and then many hours to work, and when he is done, he will get into his glass bed and pray. He will then pretend to sleep.

Maybe God will answer this time. Maybe tomorrow, the sun will set.

The song begins to play as the skeleton walks home.

Going Down

Lewis Corvel looked a bit like a rabbit: He had a twitchy nose, a thin mouth, eyes that some might call beady (though never to his face), and ears set just a little too high on his head. He moved quickly, a laptop bag slung over one shoulder while his index finger made rigorous demands of the elevator’s “Open” button. Like another famous rabbit, Lewis was late, and while he had never met the senior partners, he was pretty sure they didn’t tolerate tardiness.

He looked at his watch, an expensive piece of jewelry with only one hand and no numbers, cursed at the slow elevator, and then yanked out his phone. 2:45. His meeting was at 3:00 sharp, and while fifteen minutes should be more than enough travel time, Life Pool was 80 floors tall. The senior partners meanwhile … well, Lewis wasn’t sure how they would react. Not a single person on his floor had ever met them—though come to think of it, he wasn’t sure he knew anyone in the building that had.

Lewis decided to try the “Down” button next, and after pressing it, the doors slid open. The elevator was spacious, its walls a sleek black with strips of ocean blue on each corner and a floor made of yellow tiles. Lewis stepped inside and hit the “Top Floor” button, which was located right above floor 79.

“Strange,” he mumbled, it now occurring to him that the topmost floor wasn’t actually numbered.

The elevator began its ascent, and at a pace Lewis found adequate. He smiled, checked his watch again, and then checked his phone. 2:48. He would not be late!

He still had to present his findings to the senior partners though, which meant replacing one anxiety with another. His research wasn’t positive. Their new prosthetic limbs were indeed hackable as every major news outlet claimed last night, and they weren’t responding to their newest software updates, either. This wasn’t Lewis’s fault of course, but messengers had been shot for less.

Lewis chanced another look at this phone, because worrying about the time was better than worrying about being fired. He frowned. It still read 2:48, though it had to be closer to 2:52 now. He tried his watch but wasn’t sure that thing had ever worked.

“Can’t be,” he said. The screen dimmed, and Lewis tapped it again. 2:48. “But I’m late!”

As soon as the words were out, Lewis wished he could take them back. His anxiety flared, and he reached into his pocket for a GABA pill. He had been popping the supplements like candy these last two weeks. Every day seemed to be more bad news, more disasters and upset shareholders.

First there was the leg that simply stopped working in the middle of a crosswalk. The lady wasn’t hurt, but it stopped traffic long enough to get a story in the local paper. Social media then turned it into a national headline.

Then there had been the boy petting a dog with his Life Pool hand, the newest model capable of transferring sensations through artificial nerves. “I can feel the fur” turned into “It’s too tight!” One dead dog later, and Life Pool’s legal team was taking more than GABA pills to get through the day. That boy’s mother did not want to settle out of court.

Lewis threw back a pill, which he began to chew. His jaw felt tight, and if he didn’t know any better, the elevator was moving even faster.

“You’re fine,” he said to the buttons, which refused to light up. Normally they showed him what floor he was on. “You’re fine. Just having a …” A what? A stroke? A hallucination? He checked his phone, but his phone refused to help. No bars. No WiFi. He was in a dead spot.

As a senior member of the marketing department, Lewis considered panic to be completely beneath him. Words and numbers could solve every problem, and what they couldn’t fix, money could. Yet a stroke wasn’t something to reason with, and it certainly couldn’t be purchased. Lewis needed a doctor, and he needed one right now. He slapped the “Emergency Stop” button. The elevator responded by increasing its speed.

“Help!” Lewis roared. He smashed his fist against the control panel, hitting buttons at random. “Help!”

The elevator was now a rocket, and any second it would crash into the ceiling. Lewis flinched, expecting the worst, but after what felt like another five minutes, he was still shooting upwards. It wasn’t possible. He couldn’t even be in the building anymore.

He threw back another GABA pill and leaned against the back wall. It was cold, and it felt good. Sweat soaked the armpits of his suit, and he clutched at his chest, positive he was having a heart attack.

Lewis slid down the side of the elevator and closed his eyes. His head hurt. His chest did too. “Phone,” he said, loud and clear. “Phone call the police.”

“Dialing 911,” his phone said in a soothing voice. Lewis smiled. See, this really was a hallucination. He was fine, probably stuck between floors 64 and 65. Any second now, someone would come find him, and then he’d go to the hospital where money would buy him the best medication on the market.

“Just a few more minutes,” he mumbled.

“No signal,” his phone responded.

Lewis opened his eyes. His phone still read 2:48. His battery was at 20%.

“What do you mean no signal?”

“No signal.”

“Call me an ambulance!”

“No signal.”

Pain stabbed Lewis in the chest. He groaned, and his sitting position became a sideways one. His heart felt like it was going to explode. He was going to die. He was in the world’s most advanced medical facility, the place where Alzheimer’s was cured, the place where ALS was turned into a disease as easily treatable as diabetes, and he was going to die of a stupid heart attack. He squinted, and he frowned, and then he laughed a very shrill sound.

Let the reporters have a field day with this!

Twenty minutes later and Lewis was forced to conclude that he was not dead. He got back to his feet. The elevator continued to rise, and his phone continued to read 2:48. The battery was now at 16%.

“I don’t understand,” he said to the black walls.

It wasn’t that the elevator was still shooting up at the speed of a rocket but the fact that he was hungry. This was a hallucination, him going crackers after years of stress, yet what kind of person needed to stop mid crazy to have his 4:00 granola bar? It made no sense!

That being said, Lewis popped open his bag and dug to the bottom where he kept his emergency snacks and a small bottle of “Drink Me” sports water. Lewis was quite proud of that slogan. It’s what landed him the job at Life Pool.

Midway through his break, the elevator dinged as if it were about to open, and an enormous sense of relief washed over Lewis. This nonsense was finally over. He was free. However, the elevator showed no signs of slowing down, and if anything, was beginning to speed up again.

“Stop!” Lewis roared. It wasn’t fair. None of this was fair. He shouldn’t even be here! None of this was his fault.

And then the doors did slide open. Or they must have, because the elevator was now filled with smoke, and Lewis got the impression that he wasn’t alone. He stumbled against the wall, which was no longer cold but very, very warm. It felt relaxing, like a dip in a hot tub.

“Who are you?” said a voice. The voice then proceeded to cough.

“What?” Lewis asked. Was this a senior partner? “I’m Mr. Corvel, sir. I’m late for the 3:00 meeting.”

“Oh. I’m afraid I don’t know anything about that.”

“What?”

“Care to enlighten me?” Life Pool was a very American company, yet Lewis thought he heard a slight British accent in the voice. It didn’t make any sense, but nothing did at this point. At least it was someone to talk to.

Lewis held out his hand until the smoke cleared enough for him to make out an enormous, snakelike shape standing before him. He coughed, swallowed his last GABA pill, and retracted his hand.

He then screamed until he tasted blood.

The creature was an enormous caterpillar, emerald green from top to bottom, with a top hat on its head and a silver vape pen in one of its many hands. It popped the pen into its mouth, inhaled, and then exhaled an amount of smoke that would make a dragon jealous.

“Well that was quite unnecessary,” it said.

“What … What’s going on?” Lewis stammered.

“Not on,” the caterpillar corrected. “Up. We’re going up.”

“But I don’t want to go up.”

The caterpillar made a tsk tsk noise. “Well then, you’ll be late for the party, won’t you?”

“But—”

The large bug took another puff on his pen and filled the elevator with smoke. Lewis slipped to the floor. The caterpillar looked like it wanted to say something, and Lewis was afraid to interrupt it again; however, when the time dragged on from 2:48 to 2:48, Lewis decided it might be best to just take a nap. He’d wake up in a hospital, and all of this would be behind him. He took out his laptop and punched the bag into something resembling a pillow.

“It’s very rude,” the caterpillar said, exhaling another round of dragon smoke, “to ignore someone mid conversation, but I shall be here when you wake up, and perhaps you will dream up some manners in the meantime.”

Lewis shook and sobbed. He told himself the talking bug wasn’t real, that none of this was real, but it didn’t stop him from knowing the caterpillar was watching him. It didn’t stop him from being terrified and lost.

When sleep did find him, it did not bring comfort.

He dreamed of yesterday’s massacre. Olympic athlete Chris Orlando was at a shooting range with his friends, nervous yet excited too. Reporters converged on him, taking pictures and asking questions. He smiled, bid them step back, and then picked up a rifle. He hit every shot.

“What’s it like,” one reporter asked. “How do you feel?”

“Great!” Chris said, and he looked great too. His smile was the kind of image Life Pool could use for decades. “Never thought I’d get to shoot again after the accident.” He rolled up his sleeve to show a metal arm that went to his shoulder. “Works like a dream.”

“Will they let you compete with that?” a different reporter asked.

Chris shrugged. “Don’t see why not. It’s me aiming, not the software.”

After that a different reporter handed him a pistol, and Chris scored six bull’s-eyes. He reloaded the gun, prepared to score another six, when his arm jerked the pistol up, towards his neck. He had time to shout before the gun went off. His body fell to the ground, but his arm continued to swivel, pointing to each of the reporters. Even dead, Chris had pinpoint accuracy.

Lewis woke feeling empty. The caterpillar was still there, and the elevator was still zooming up, to some party in another galaxy. Or maybe another dimension.

“Pleasant dreams?” the caterpillar asked. He was poking at Lewis’s laptop.

“No.”

“Well make yourself useful and help me with this game. I don’t understand it.”

Lewis inched over and looked at his screen. He expected work emails and documents and was surprised to see solitaire. He was positive that new IT intern had removed all the games from it two months ago.

“Move the Red Queen there,” Lewis said, pointing at the card. “Then you can move the black jack.”

The caterpillar smiled. “So you did find some manners. Ready to come to the party?”

Before Lewis could answer, the elevator doors slid open. The top floor of Life Pool was oddly bland, with clean white floors and wooden walls devoid of anything but the company logo. At the end of the hallway was a door, though it wasn’t tiny or huge but normal. It was where the senior partners were waiting, each with bad news on his lips.

His phone read 3:01.

Lewis looked at the elevator buttons. He was at “Top Floor,” but a new one had appeared above it, this one labeled “Party.” He pressed it.

“Good,” the caterpillar said. “Good, good.”

Lewis smiled as the two of them zoomed away.

Stolen Colors

The waves sucked and pulled, smearing the horizon into rolling hills and little bubbles of fire. A siren blared. Max tread water and watched the 200 meter cruise ship sink, his mind stuck on ten minutes ago. He had been dry then. Safe, too, his eye stuck against a telescope while meteors streaked across the sky. It was the biggest shower he had ever seen, each meteor like a streak of white paint. He had taken notes. He had smiled and thought of the paper he could write. He had—

There was no sign of the shower now, nor of his telescope. He kicked at the water, his clothing sticking to him like a second skin, and listened to people panic. Some wore life vests, others paddled in random directions hoping an orange raft would come and save them. A cruise ship of this size should have at least a hundred, yet they were all gone, or maybe just hidden behind the fires and smoke. Max wiped at his eyes and spat water that tasted uncomfortably salty.

At least the water was warm.

The Delight rose from the ocean at an angle, its bow pointed at the sky. Or was that the stern? Max didn’t know much about ships, only that he had been on the left side, near the railing when everything became rushing water. He could remember what happened, yet he couldn’t grasp any of the details. They had hit something, he was sure of that. It had sounded like an explosion, but it felt like a bad car accident. But then what? And what had they hit? The Delight was sailing the Pacific, far away from the nearest ice berg and too far out to sea for rocks or other pieces of wreckage.

Max continued to kick at the water, his shoes making the movements slow and uncomfortable. The Delight drifted further away. The word “riptide” passed through his head, and for the first time, it occurred to him that he might die. He couldn’t see a single life raft, and there were fewer and fewer screams. Where was everyone?

“You okay?” a voice asked from behind. Max splashed around to see an old woman with long, grey hair. Her skin was pale and covered in brown marks, and her cheeks hung loose off her jaw. She looked positively normal, someone on vacation, yet her eyes were the most piercing shade of blue Max had ever seen, almost like gemstones.

She smiled, and her teeth were rotted brown.

“I dunno,” Max said, truly not sure. Now that he wasn’t alone, panic seemed one step further back. If this old woman was fine, then he would be too. All they had to do was wait for a rescue.

The woman chuckled. “Same, same. I was here for a reason, and now that reason is gone.” She stared him down, the glare bluer than the ocean. “But maybe I’ll still get what I want.”

“Sure,” Max said, suddenly wishing someone else had found him. He didn’t know why, but this woman scared him. Her eyes weren’t real.

“Any idea what happened?”

Max shook his head. “No. One minute I was looking at the meteor shower, the next I was in the water.”

“It was the right shade of white.” The woman frowned. “And now it’s gone.”

Max nodded, not sure how else to respond. He gave a few heartier splashes, hoping it looked like he was trying to float and not swim away. For every stroke of his arms though, the ocean brought him closer to the woman.

The woman smiled, and Max felt something stir underneath him, a movement that wasn’t a wave. A new fear waltzed through his head: There were sharks in the Pacific. He looked down, expecting a cavernous mouth filled with teeth, but all he saw was dark, choppy water.

“You okay?” the woman asked.

“Sure,” Max said, feeling anything but. “Just … my shoes are still on. Makes it hard to swim.”

“What color are they?”

“What?”

The woman smiled, showing the tips of her rotted teeth. “I like colors.”

Max shuddered, but when the woman let the pause stretch into uncomfortable, he answered her. “Uh, white, I guess. They’re just tennis shoes.”

“Good.” The woman said. “I need that one.”

“We need to swim. Get closer to the ship. There has to be a life raft. Has to be.”

The woman nodded. “After you.”

Max wasn’t a strong swimmer, but he could keep himself afloat and move in a straight direction. He pumped his arms and squinted every time a large wave crashed into his head. The woman followed close behind, barely moving yet keeping pace. He was surprised at how strong she was, but that didn’t seem to matter. The Delight refused to get closer. After ten minutes, his chest ached and his ankles hurt from his sopping shoes and socks.

“Everything alright, dear?” the woman asked when they had stopped. It occurred to Max that she never blinked, even with all the water splashing in their faces.

“I—” Max froze. Whatever was underneath the water was following them, and it was big. He could feel it lurking, moving the currents. “I—”

“Maybe you should take your shoes off,” the woman suggested. “It’ll make swimming easier.”

Max nodded. It didn’t make sense, but neither did how far away the Delight was. They hadn’t even been in the water more than half an hour.

“I can help, if you want.”

“Okay.”

The woman brushed a sopping strand of grey hair away from her face and reached for Max’s feet. He told himself not to move, not to be afraid, but her hands were hard like concrete, and he was positive there were sharks swimming below them. Or just one giant shark.

“Hmm,” the woman said, holding up one of his ruined shoes. “Not very white anymore, though the plastic on the laces is alright. Still, it’s not good enough.”

She tossed the shoe away and didn’t go down for the second.

Max watched her, how she barely moved yet could stay afloat. How her eyes never seemed to change color even though the sky had grown darker now that the fires were further out. Everything was wrong—the Delight was now so small he could hold it in his hand. Smoke hung heavy in the sky, and the waves slapped at his shoulders and neck, threatening to take him underneath.

“What do we do?” he asked.

“I’m tired,” the woman said, though she didn’t look it. “Can you help me?”

“Uh…”

Without waiting for an answer, the woman lunged at Max. He yelped. Her hands were so cold they sent a shiver through his body, and below, he could feel the ocean stir. Whatever was beneath them was still there. Or maybe it had always been there, like a spider with a web the size of an ocean.

“What are you—”

“Your eyes turn a very brilliant shade of white when you are afraid.” A wave crashed over Max’s head and thrust him below the water. Everything became murky dark, and then he was above the surf, choking on salt water. The woman smiled.

“Stop,” Max gasped. “Please. We have to swim to the ship. We have to—”

Another wave thrust him down, and now he could hear the thing below them, moving through the water like sludge. It was so big. He opened his mouth to scream and tasted more salt. It felt like it had been a year since he had last taken a breath. His head grew light, and another word tiptoed through his head. This one was drowning.

The woman yanked Max above the surf. He coughed on his scream.

“Be more afraid!” she roared. “They can get whiter!”

“Help!”

She squeezed his shoulder until it became bright pain. “Again!

“Hel—”

A third wave took Max below the surf. He struggled against it, but it kept dragging him lower and lower, until everything was dark. He wanted to scream but needed to breathe, and he wanted to close his eyes but couldn’t seem to. His heart roared in his ears, yet he was so tired now, so sleepy. And the water was so warm.

“Yes,” the voice of a god said from somewhere all around him. “That is the white I seek.”

Something brushed against Max’s face, something that he first thought was hair and then plastic. It folded as it passed, a floating dent that controlled the tides. As Max struggled to find another breath, the dark oceans gave way to color. There was green, and there was black, and both were the most pure shades of anything he had ever seen. Even the darkness of the ocean couldn’t hurt them. The green reminded him of finger-painting when he was a kid, and the black was like the first time he had ever looked through a telescope at the night sky. They were comforting colors.

The green spread all around him, pressing against him or floating just out of reach. It was soft, and instead of hair he thought of a nice blanket. He could go to sleep in this green, and he wouldn’t have to be afraid ever again.

Max exhaled, and as he did, he saw himself floating in the green. He was smiling, and the whites of his eyes were gone, replaced with rotted brown.

And as everything shifted into the very essence of grey, it occurred to Max that this was the real color the woman was looking for.

Still Breeze

The cave breathed in short, sobbing huffs that sent chills down Aiden’s spine. In, out, in, out. The smell was dry and stale, the temperature lukewarm. He approached it slowly, afraid of what might happen if he was noticed, but the cave ignored him. In, out, in, out. The opening was large, big enough for a bear or mountain lion to call it a rich home, but Aiden knew it would be empty. It’s how he knew he was going in the right direction: Not even bugs would approach.

Left hand on the hilt of his sword, Aiden stepped into darkness. A breath blew against his face, and despite his fear, he smiled. It was the first gust of wind he had felt in over ten long years.

*

Scholars and magicians called the day the wind stopped, “Normal,” and for some, it was normal. People moved about, tending fields and selling wares. Students studied, the king ruled, and the wind blew—until it didn’t. For Aiden, however, it had been storming. The clouds were jet black, the rain like pelting stones. He stared out the window with his mother and father and watched their crops crumble.

“Can’t keep this up for long,” his father said. “Give it a few more minutes, and we’ll go check the damages.”

“Dear, what do we do if it floods?” his mother asked.

His father grunted. Aiden did too. It seemed like an appropriate response. Lighting splintered across the sky.

After a long pause, his dad said, “Up to the Gods, I guess.”

“Let’s go pray,” his mother said, tugging on Aiden’s arm to follow. They went into their small living room, avoided the buckets collecting water from their leaky roof, and knelt to ask for guidance. Sometimes the Gods listened.

They didn’t this time though, because this wasn’t about the Gods or magic or men. This was about the wind and how it had simply stopped blowing.

*

Aiden set foot into the cave and despite himself, drew his sword. It was a short, rusty thing, not even sharp enough to shave with, but someone once told him all great adventurers had magic weapons, and this was all he could afford. It couldn’t cast spells or burst into flames, but the blade did attract metal, could even pick up nails with a simple touch! It was a neat parlor trick and not much else.

The wind continued to suck and blow, and Aiden felt himself walking to match the pace. His torch danced with the breathing. In, out, in, out. There was a kinship in it, or maybe he had been alone for too long. At least it wasn’t mosquitoes.

When Aiden reached his first fork, his torch went out. He held his breath and tried to relight it, but the wind breathed for him. Terror eased along the rocky ground, slimy and black and ready to bite. Aiden fumbled. The sparks weren’t even bright enough to cast shadows.

“Go away!” he begged, and the breathing ceased. Aiden felt the blood drain from his face. His voice echoed down both passages, bouncing through time and distance. How long had he been here? How much further did he have to go? Could he escape?

It took Aiden a few more tries to light his torch, and he cursed himself for being a fool and a bad adventurer. He was not cut out for this, but everyone else had moved on.

The flames billowed bright, throwing lights and shadows around the cave, which had narrowed into two passages the size and shape of doors. Aiden checked for hinges, though there weren’t any. The left doorway was smoother than the other though, its edges almost like river stones. Its ground too was smooth, as were the ceiling and walls. Without the wind to call its direction, Aiden chose the stranger of the two paths.

Hours came and went. Silence stalked Aiden’s heels. He tried to keep his footfalls quiet, though he had never quite mastered the adventurer’s walk. His feet were more suited to heavy boots and grassy farmland, of being caked with dirt and things a bit dirtier than dirt. But when the wind stopped, so too did the farms. Without the wind there could be no rain, and without rain, no crops. Fresh-grown food was now so expensive most couldn’t afford it.

The great mages of the land spent all their time conjuring grain and fake apples instead of battling dragons or doing whatever it is mages do. Even now, Aiden still didn’t know, and he had talked to hundreds of them, many unhappy to be forced into the profession.

They were, on the whole, an unhelpful bunch of people. Well, except one.

*

“As to that,” a woman with blue hair was saying as she picked at a scab on her elbow. “I can tell you what doesn’t work, but not what works.”

“Why not?” Aiden asked. They were standing in her shop, which was filled with wooden shelves stocked high with bland, bread-based products. There were even conjured butters and cheeses, neither of which would get moldy no matter how long they were left out. They would, however, vanish after a week if not eaten.

“Because nothing works!” The woman succeeded in tearing her scab off, which she put in her apron pocket. “For later,” she said.

“Right.”

“Listen, if the best mages couldn’t figure it out, I don’t know what makes you think you can.”

Aiden scowled. Every mage had said something similar, though he had yet to find one of these fabled “Best.” People were starving to death, and half the planet was becoming a burnt desert, and Aiden couldn’t understand why no one else was trying to fix it.

“Are you going to help me or not?”

“Depends. You going to buy something?”

Aiden turned to leave. He had been through this song-and-dance before, and was tired of it. There were other people to talk to, ones that couldn’t cast spells. He’d just have to find them. But the woman grabbed him by the arm and held him fast. Her grip was oddly strong, like a blacksmith’s vice.

“The birds stopped migrating this way in the summer.”

“What does—”

“Probably nothing! But it’s strange, isn’t it? The wind stopped blowing, but north and south are still north and south. But the birds migrate differently, the robins. I never see them anymore. Noticed it last year. Even wrote the Guild a message, but no one seemed to care. Robins aren’t magical, just stupid.”

Aiden nodded. “I don’t think it’s a magical problem.”

“I think … I think you might be right.”

*

The cave continued, its noises reduced to Aiden’s footsteps and dripping water from stalactites. Thus far there was only the one direction, and his torch lit it well enough. Quartz crystals glittered bright pink, and a strange metal Aiden had never seen before glittered an entire rainbow. For a brief moment he wondered if he was traveling into another dimension, and for a brief moment he wondered if something would jump out and devour him.

Mostly though, he wondered if he’d always be alone.

Aiden had been alone for a long, long time.

After disease had killed his parents, he was drafted into the mage program along with every other person between the ages of 12 and 19. He didn’t want to be a mage, but food was short and conjuring bread was a spell so simple most anyone could perform it. Aiden was not most anyone. A gnarled man in a black robe had asked him to leave, and before Aiden could open his mouth, he was teleported outside the large tower, its door barred shut. His pack appeared at his feet a few seconds later.

After that he had simply … wandered. He was a farmer in a land devoid of farm country, unable to read or write. He could dig irrigation ditches, and he could dig for wells, but both were backbreaking work that wouldn’t bring the wind back. No one seemed to care that the wells would dry up and the rivers would shrink. It was a problem for next year, or the year after. At one point he had tried to sign up with a fishing vessel, but that too was a failing industry. All the big ships were gone, most still stranded out at sea as floating graves, and those that made it back to shore needed at least two mages to man. Conjuring waves was a lot harder than conjuring bread. The rest were rickety rowboats incapable of leaving sight of the shore, and there were more people begging for work than actual boats. Aiden was overlooked.

He couldn’t be overlooked here though, because he was the only thing in this cave. Him and the wind.

*

Two more torches later, and Aiden stopped to have supper. The ground had turned into polished stone, so smooth it was slippery, and the walls glowed with quicksilver. Or maybe it was regular silver. A real adventurer would know the difference. Whatever it was, his sword didn’t seem to like it. It shook in his hands. Some magical swords did that to alert their owner of danger, but Aiden was pretty sure his wasn’t that smart.

He fumbled with his flint, ready to light a proper fire to cook his food, and dropped it. The sound bounced around the narrow walls.

Aiden dropped to his hands and knees and searched as quietly as he could, hoping that if he didn’t make a sound, the sliming darkness edging closer would stay in his imagination. He ran his hand along the stone, surprised at the lack of cracks or seams. It was like one polished piece of marble. He blinked, and the cave seemed all the darker.

An adventurer better than Aiden had once told him to pack multiples of everything important. Aiden took this to mean food, knives, and boot strings. It only now occurred to him that two flints were better than one.

“Please,” he said, happy to hear a voice, even if it was just his own. There was a ring of anxiety in it. “Please where are you.”

The breathing returned.

Aiden almost screamed. His hand jerked to his useless sword. The breaths were stronger now, closer, and there was a mildew smell in them. The wind was close. Aiden moved his sword and felt it vibrate. He then heard a loud clink.

“Oh,” he said to himself, his startle replaced with relief. His flint had metal in it, and his sword attracted metal. He plucked the useful tool from the useless one and lit another torch. The room glowed silver.

The breathing grew harder, more labored. The wetness was thick and heavy, almost like a gargle. It reminded Aiden of his dead parents and his drowned village. It reminded him of mosquitoes.

Supper forgotten, Aiden trudged on.

*

The cave narrowed until Aiden was forced on his hands and knees. His stout shoulders, normally perfect for hauling bales of hay or nudging horses in the right direction, scraped against rainbow metal. He inched forward, his torch blinding the path with both bright yellow and grey smoke. He coughed. Fear stalked in, so close it bit at his feet. He was afraid something would grab him from behind, and he was afraid the heavy breathing would grab him from out front. He was afraid the cave would bury him.

When the passage opened, it wasn’t to another giant, glittering cavern but a small stubby one lined with sharp edges. Aiden had to stoop to enter, and his torch felt too bright. The breathing stopped. Aiden did too. He had found the wind.

The figure was small, childlike, and huddled in one corner of the room. It curled into a ball and clutched at its legs with its arms, its face buried into its knees. It had no skin but was instead made up of what looked like grainy lines that shifted in a thousand different directions at once. It had no eyes or face. It had no toes or fingers.

Aiden didn’t know what to do. Part of him was afraid, but more of him wanted to cry. He approached the wind and sat down, cross legged and with his back bowed.

“I found you,” he said.

The wind responded by inching further away, pressing itself against the back of its little cave. A stubby stalagmite poked through its body.

“Are you okay?” Aiden asked.

The wind shook its head, but its breathing resumed, short and huffy.

“Me neither.”

They sat in silence until Aiden’s torch burned low and the room filled with smoke. His thoughts were a windless storm, his lips tasting words right before they spilled onto the floor unsaid. Tears welled in his eyes, and imaginary mosquitoes buzzed in his ears, and the wind sat, and so did he.

“At least we’re not alone anymore,” he said.

The wind didn’t respond. The smoke thickened. The cave continued to breathe—in, out, in, out—but Aiden had to cough. His eyes burned from the smoke, and his throat felt like it was getting smaller. Or maybe he was getting smaller. That made the most sense.

“I miss you,” he whispered.

The wind gasped, and Aiden felt a gentle breeze surround him.

And then the wind was gone, taking the smoke with it. Aiden waited in silence, not sure what to do, not sure what to think. Eventually he lit another torch and started his way back to the surface. He kept his sword out front, because he could hear creatures lurking in the dark.

He was no longer alone.

Shedding Stars

It begins with a gasp. It will end with one, too.

First there is nothing, and then there is us. The ground is cold, the sky black. It has been a trillion years since any of us have felt cold. “Wake up,” Life whispers. “Wake up!” It has been a trillion years since any of us have heard that sound, have heard that promise, and the voice is electric. The story is about to begin. We stir. Eyes open. Memories explode in rainbow stars, our lives to be measured in color. I see red pain and blue despair. I see purple love and green hope. I see orange contentment. It is a winding path, one smeared with curdled sapphire, but it is a path, and it is mine to take. I reach for it. It too sounds electric.

Despite the rigor mortis pain, I smile.

“Mornin’,” two hundred billion people say in a thousand different languages. Bones crack in stretch with the ferocity of a thunderstorm. The yawn is loud enough to wake the dead. “Mornin’.”

“I hope,” someone says, “I hope things are a little different this time, you know? Just a little.”

“Mom!” another sobs. “Mom where are you! Dad? Help!”

“Oh. I always forget there is no God.”

“Mom!”

A billion people laugh. Ten billion simply scream.

“Love is Love,” I say.

The amphitheatre cradles us in the idea of darkness. It is everything, and it is nothing. It is chaos. The ground is smooth glass, a transparent plane floating above an ocean of shifting ink. Black bubbles wash up through the floor, the first breaths of our stories to be. I know mine, the beginning, the middle, and the end, and yet I wonder what flourishes the strokes will take. It’s always the same, yet the little details are always different. The color of her hair. The sound of his voice. The smell of the fire.

I too hope things are a little different. Just a little.

Shoulders rub together as people start walking, most looking for loved ones, others moving because to move is to be alive. To move is to tell a story.

I pick a direction.

The ground wets with rising ink, the ocean tickling my toes. I smile. We are a history of reborn ghosts, all the people who will ever be in a world not of our choosing, and while we are anxious and scared and angry, we are calm too. The volume is just right. The smell is pleasant. Many talk and shake hands, others make love, but no one fights. In the future, there will be wars, death, murder, but right now, in this place of waiting, we are one beautiful being. I smile, and even those crying over doomed fates smile back. In this moment, we are one.

Someone slips and falls, splashing black ink onto his naked face and chest. I pick him up. He’s light, his flesh nascent, his hair long. He looks like a dozen strangers I will glimpse during my life, but in this moment, I know him. Ink drips from his nose.

“Thanks,” he says. I’m not sure which language he is speaking, but I understand him.

“I know you,” I say.

He looks at himself, at the black staining his body. “You don’t. I would remember you if you did.”

I wiggle my toes in response. The story is rising; already it is at my ankles. Soon it will drown us all. Soon chapter one will begin.

“Take my hand.”

“It’s covered in ink.”

I bend over and wet my hand. The ink is thick and warm, idle but eager. It cannot wait to begin again, to open with “Once upon a time…”

“Mine too,” I say.

He takes my hand. His grip is strong, his hand smooth. There are no creases, no calluses or scars. It is an unlived hand, completely pristine. What will it become? Will it make, will it destroy? Will it love or hate? I squeeze it, and he squeezes mine back.

“We don’t know each other though,” he says. “But this is nice.”

“Look for me in the crowds.”

“It won’t matter. My story doesn’t cross paths with yours.”

I shrug, because the little details are always different. “I’ll wave as I walk by.”

“Then I guess I’ll wave back.”

Drops of ink spill from between our palms to land in the rising ocean. It is now up to our knees.

“Which way?” he asks, though all ways lead to the same place.

I nod in a direction, and we walk. I see people that will be born two thousand years before myself, and people that will be born two thousand years after I die. We look the same, all of us struggling to move, to stretch, to live before it’s time to live. It’s a shame I will not remember any of them.

“Cancer,” he says when the ocean is at our waist. We are now wading, trudging shallow waves into the ink, warming it to flow. “Every time it’s cancer, no matter what I do.”

I nod. I can see the fire, the blinding pain, the smell of burnt hair. I can hear the screams lost in smoke. “But it’s the story.”

“I wish it was different.”

“Life only knows the one story.”

He looks at our ink-stained hands. One day they will be gaunt, the fingernails bit short. The next day they will be weak. The day after that, lifeless, trapped in the long sleep of death until Life whispers into our ears once again. “Maybe next time will be different. Not this time, but next time.”

“Maybe,” I say, but we both know it isn’t true. Life only knows the one story.

Aimless slides into direction. The ink is at our chests, and now we are swimming, heading towards the one event we must all witness, the beauty we must all smell and taste. We are humanity, and we are about to be born. We are the story.

The ink is now up to my neck. I crane my head towards the sky to keep the wet out of my mouth, to breathe with lungs that aren’t there. We are at the edge of the ampitheatre. The tips of my toes hang over, ink welling along the nails and dripping into oblivion. The man I know is on my left, and his grip is shaking. A woman approaches my right, and I take her hand. It’s delicate and cold, the hand of someone who will die in childbirth. Right now though, she is strong and brave and beautiful. She holds back red tears.

“At least I get to see this.” She sniffs. She will never know what it’s like to breathe real air. “It’s worth it, right? I mean, I don’t know what I’m missing.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. I have nothing else to give her.

“Thanks.”

Another woman links with her, and another man to that woman. The chain is forming, every human to ever be born in one straight line. The story is almost ready, is preparing its notes for chapter one. But first there must be a prologue! Everything smells electric.

The ink rises above my head.

The universe begins not with a bang but a lilac roar, the first seconds of time counted by flaming breath and crystalline wings. The beast is Creation, and it stretches from one end of the cosmos to the other. Fire rushes from its mouth and nostrils. Stars glitter inside its scales. It cranes its head to peer at us, its idiot eyes seeing through our little haven of nonexistence to the potential beyond. It stretches, and then it is flying. Energy crashes down like waves. Colors erupt in volcanic explosions, and with them come song, dance, painting, sculptures, and poetry.

And it writes, “I!”

It flaps its wings, shedding stars throughout the universe. My eyes fixate on the familiar ones, passed the North and to a small, yellow orb in the middle of a small white galaxy. It’s home. It’s life. It’s comfort.

It’s time.

We step over the edge as the world fades into a searing glare.

We gasp.

The Congealing

It was the little girl’s 12^th birthday, the most important day of her life. It was the day she would get a name. She was terrified. Her mind was a whiplash: Help me. I’m stuck. Run. Run! I can do this. I practiced. Please don’t make me do this. I can do this! My name is Lilly. She tried to stay on her name but kept going back to fear. She had seen the pain before, had heard the screams. And everyone she knew and loved would be watching. She quivered, wrapped in a light, beige robe that offered no warmth from the cold church room, and tried to wiggle her left ankle. It responded to the thought. Her mind reeled back to hope, because even terrified, she could still do it. She had spent all last year practicing in anticipation for this.

Of course, so did every boy and girl when they turned 11, and many of them still died. She could too. Her mind went back to fear.

The priest entered the room. He too wore a beige robe, though his was streaked with maroon, the color of their religion. The color of the congealing.

It occurred to soon-to-be Lilly that that was also the color of blood. Her church was awash in it. The rooms were all a red-burnt clay, and the floor was speckled with reds and browns. And underneath the church, far below in the catacombs, was … but she did not want to think about that. She was already too afraid.

The priest put a hand on her shoulder, and her heart thudded so hard that even he arched an eyebrow. He wasn’t allowed to talk to her, but that gesture was enough. She was too afraid to succeed, her heart too ridged. It was a prison, and her ribcage was a prison, and if she couldn’t break out of her prison, she would die. And the worst part was, he wouldn’t care. Children had to die now and then. It was all part of the congealing.

He led her out, his hand always on her shoulder and he always one step behind. She couldn’t run. He was bigger and stronger than her, and even if she attacked him, kicked or bit, it wouldn’t matter. He had survived the congealing and no longer felt pain.

The church was full to bursting, but it was a solemn fullness, like it was its own prison. It was a domed building with stout wooden buttresses holding the ceiling high, and connecting them together was a single, white light. It was the eye of God. Adults folded robed hands and bowed heads while children looked on, their eyes absorbing every detail. They were taking mental notes, ones they’d bring to their own ceremonies when they turned 12. She passed by a boy with no name, and he wiggled his ears in solidarity. The nameless girl to his left stretched her nose. They were her best friends, and next year they would be in her spot, walking up the aisle towards the Congealing Alter.

Her feet walked heavy like her heart, the slaps the only sound in the church. Once the ceremony was over, she would walk without sound like the adults.

She approached the Alter. It was an alter, but it was also a shallow tank a little smaller than her bathtub at home and only a foot deep. Like the light, it was white, the purest white she had ever seen, purer than a piece of paper or even the moon. From this close, it was like looking at the sun. Her heart thudded in her chest, and the priest heard it, and she heard it, and everyone waited. The priest let go of her shoulder.

The whiplash in her head continued, now stuck between two distinct thoughts. My name is Lilly. I need to hide. She was willing to take either yet unable to reach far enough. She wrapped her arms around her body in a hug, perhaps the last one she would ever have. Streaks of burnt shale circled her, all silent, all without compassion. Would that be her next year? An adult with folded arms and eyes incapable of crying? Would she have a daughter and not name her? She shivered, and the priest watched, his face stern, his eyes brown pools. No one spoke. Everyone heard her heart. It was the hardest part of the body, and hers was especially loud. They knew, and she knew, and she had practiced but it wouldn’t matter anymore, not when it needed to most.

She shifted her arms to her sides.

“So it begins,” The priest said, and the congregation repeated the words. It was the beginning of a prayer, the only prayer any of them ever needed to know because it was the only prayer God responded to.

She sat in the alter and stretched her legs to the end, confined on all sides by white crystal. She shivered. It was cold, colder than how she practiced. She would fill her tub with ice and watch until it was almost all melted before lying down, but this was worse. This was frostbite. This was frozen with fear. Her feet pushed against the tub and stuck in place, right on top of the small drain that led to the catacombs.

The priest placed his hand on her head and finished his prayer. She had missed it. No! He pushed her down. Her eyes pleaded while her mouth didn’t move. She didn’t hear, and he knew, but neither could say anything. It might not work if someone spoke out of turn.

The church was different from the Congealing Alter. The wooden buttresses that had always seemed so strong and safe now looked like spider legs, and in the middle was that light, the spider’s blinding face. It hurt, and it was God, and it was a spider, and it knew she wasn’t holy. It stood over her, trapping her in its brown web of dried blood and old clay.

Faces looked down on her, first the priest and then her parents. No one smiled. They were adults, and this was their ceremony. The little girl begged for something, but the priest’s face was stone, and so was her father’s. He wouldn’t love her until after the ceremony was over, and even then, he only had a little love to give. She turned to her mother, her heart desperate for any kind of sign, and saw the glint of tears behind her mother’s eyes. She cares.

The little girl wiggled her nose at her mother and was relieved when her flesh responded.

The priest brought forth a metal grate, just wide enough to cover the Alter. It was a prison door, one with four vertical bars and no horizontal ones. The left and right gaps were thinner than the one in the middle, but not by much. It’s not a sacrament if it’s easy. Her father had told her that once. The priest let the door swing down, turning the Alter into its own cage. The bars rested against the girl’s face. They were cold. She couldn’t tilt her head to the left or right, but she heard her parents lock the grate in place, the clicks the only sound in the church. Her father handed his key to the priest first; it was long and black, the kind of key a lord would carry to unlock a very important room. Her mother knelt and placed her key in the girl’s mouth. It was shiny silver and tiny, the kind used to lock a diary or a locket. It tasted like warm secrets. The girl’s nose poked out the bars. She wiggled it again. The priest stepped back, and so did her parents, and they waited for the light to flicker. Once it did, the ceremony would begin and she would have 24 minutes to escape.

When she practiced, she could do it in six.

The girl tried to calm her heart, tried to become one with her body, to wiggle her shoulders and the backs of her knees. She tried to jiggle her elbows and her liver. About half responded to her thoughts, the easy pieces like her limbs, though her liver remained stationary. She tried to jiggle her heart, but it was beating too fast. She told herself that that was okay, that once she started everything would ooze into place like always, but the spider blinked all hope away.

I’m going to die. I’m 12, and I’m going to die, and no one will care.

Liquids flowed below her, rushing through long pipes underneath the church like an underground rainstorm. It thundered in her mind, louder than her heart, and she didn’t know what to do. Everyone knew about the liquids, but no one had ever told her they made noise. She only practiced in silence.

In panic, she slammed her eyes shut and pressed her face against the bars. She tried to concentrate, and her face respond to her will. Her nose elongated until it was as thin as a pencil; her cheeks molded together and reached for freedom. Her skin became the consistency of ground meat. The bars were smooth, polished just like the Alter, but they were tight. Her cheeks poked between them, but her teeth remained solid. She pushed anyways and tasted blood. It was solid, too solid to go through. She lay her head back down and watched the spider watching her. Her body returned to normal. Below, the liquids ran through their maze, racing to eat her.

Her heart continued to thud in its ribcage, harder than the bars.

Again.

She pressed her face against the bars and pushed. Like before, her face elongated, became ooze, and she pushed. Her teeth went through, and now the pressure was at her eyes. She had two, and God had one, but God was a spider and her vision wavered. Tears rolled down her malformed face, not running down the channels of her nose but into her ears. Her eyes bulged wide when she needed them narrow, and one of her molars became solid. Her heart would not stop beating. The blood pounded in her ears which were solid despite how easy they were to wiggle, and she couldn’t do it! She fell back against the Alter. Her solid tooth got caught against the bars and pulled free. Pain burned in her mouth and mixed with blood, but she didn’t scream.

She swallowed the tooth but kept the key in her cheek. The key was hers.

Dad would be proud if he knew. I won’t tell him, but he would be proud if he knew.

The girl wiggled her legs and turned them into jelly. She did the same to her hands and then her arms and shoulders. She wished she could go sideways, because the limbs were the easiest to control. They were the farthest parts away from the heart. But the Congealing was like giving birth: It worked best going head first, then shoulders, then chest. The kids that tried to go backwards only did so as a last resort, when the tub was filling with liquids and burning their feet. It never worked.

Time passed, hearts thudded, people watched. The girl laid in her prison that the adults called an Alter and looked at the face of God who wasn’t a God but a spider. Liquids rushed below her, getting louder in her ears. They were coming, the Congealing Fluid, but it wasn’t a sacrament but an acid. It would eat her, and no one would care. Children had to be dissolved for the religion to work.

Tears rolled down soon-to-be Lilly’s face, this time following the proper path. She only had 12 minutes left. There were no clocks, but she knew how much time had passed. Every kid got good at measuring time without the need of a clock, because every kid had to face this 24 minutes. If she survived and became an adult, then she would get to measure things in 60 minutes.

I can do it in six.

She pushed against the bars again, but this time her face wouldn’t turn to jelly. She was stuck, trapped. She thought of her two best friends, of the games they played at recess and their adventures through the dead forests at the edge of town, and tried again. Her face jiggled but only somewhat. She remembered the time they wandered the city hunting for treasure, digging through trash and dodging adults. They had wound up at a junkyard full of old wonders, big electric machines with screens that lit up when the sun was high enough to pierce the smoggy layer of clouds. She remembered stepping on a rusty piece of wire and thinking it was a pretty color. She remembered the tetanus shot she had to get after. That too had been a pretty color. Her face jiggled again, and she forced it against the bars. Her nose elongated and her cheeks followed. She continued to remember, and in remembering she relaxed. Her eyes bulged in the right direction and slipped through the bars. The bones around her face turned to noodles.

She thought of that one secret night, when they had all snuck out of their homes to wander the streets and whisper amongst themselves. The night was warm, the sky a fuzzy orange fog. Clouds shifted with the wind which was always roving, looking for leaves to blow, and now and then, black velvet pinpricked with stars poked through. Everything was big and wide and free.

Then they had found a small dog, too tired and skinny to bite them. Its eyes drooled into its matted fur the color of burnt coals, and it whimpered at their shadows. She remembered petting it, how its fur was slimy and coarse yet still comforting, how its tail shifted in a heavy wag. The nameless boy dug into his pockets and handed the dog some crackers. It ate, and it lay still and accepted their affection, but it knew it was going to die and so did they.

There was no point in naming it.

“Mark,” the boy said. “I want to be named Mark. It’s a strong name, right?”

Soon-to-be Lilly flushed with embarrassment, but nodded. It was a strong name. “I’m going to be Lilly. Like the flower.”

“You ain’t ever seen a lily flower,” Mark said. “Only dandelions.”

“So?”

“Well I think it’s a gorgeous name,” the other girl said. “Better than Mark.”

Mark huffed and stood as tall as he could, which at the time wasn’t very tall at all. “Is not!”

“Is too!”

“What about you?” Lilly asked. “What name do you want?”

The girl looked at her feet, which were without shoes and covered in calluses. Her toenails were filthy with grime. “Grace,” she said. “I think that’s a nice name.”

Mark opened his mouth to argue but decided against it. Even he had to concede that it was a nice name. Mark. Grace. Lilly.

But we never named the dog.

Soon-to-be Lilly’s ears pressed against the bars and turned to mush. She slid her head between them, her hair following behind, light and waving. Next came her neck, and then the tops of her shoulders. The bones were rigid, close to the heart and strong, but she remembered that night, and they bent to her will, becoming slime. She pushed with her elbows, oozing through the narrow bars, her skin reddening with strain and misplaced blood. Her body was no longer a body but a cold soup of parts. She was no longer a person.

The acid flowed below her.

I can do it in six.

The little girl tried to sit up, but the bars stopped at her chest. Her heart beat thunder, and the ribs around it were harder than the Alter. The eye of God glared from its spider body. She gasped, but already she was forming her lungs into not lungs, folding them piece by piece until they were as narrow as her fingers. Her heart roared. It didn’t want to shrink and shrivel, it didn’t want to become an un-heart. It was hers, and it was why she loved her family and her friends and that dog, even though they had never named it. It was why she wanted to be named Lilly.

The congregation watched her struggle, arms folded and heads bowed. No one spoke. It was a ceremony, the most important ceremony they had, and this was the most important part. They want my heart to die.

Soon-to-be Lilly choked. Acid pounded near, matching the beating of her heart, the rush of blood in her ears. She had four minutes left, and then it would be on her, dissolving her in front of everyone. She would become burnt red like the church, like dried blood. She would become a memory, but one easily forgotten for she had no name.

She struggled against the prison door, tried to force her heart through, but it was too big. It did not want to die.

Pain lapped at her feet. The little girl tried to scream but couldn’t, for she had no lungs. The acid was on her, filling up the Alter from the bottom. It burned her heals, turning the pink flesh into red goo. Tears poured down her face as she watched the adults watching her. No one made a move to help. Her father stared, but his eyes were distant, not looking at her but through her.

Soon-to-be Lilly tried to find her mother, but the pain and tears were blurring her vision until everyone became the same person, the same priest with a beige robe smothered in red clay. The acid splashed up her left foot, taking the pads of her toes and exposing the bone beneath. She tried to pull away but couldn’t. The bars were too tight, the Alter too needy of her warmth.

She was going to die.

“Lilly!” a voice shouted. Grace’s. “Lilly!”

“Lilly!” another voice roared. Mark’s. “Lilly you can do it!”

Above soon-to-be Lilly, the eye of God blinked.

I am loved, and I love, and that’s the truth they don’t want me to know.

The little girl wiggled what was left of her right foot, and though it was dissolving, it responded to her. She turned it to jelly and moved it away from the pain, leaving a trail of red snail slime. She did the same to her left foot. Her bowels came next, easy to manipulate because she knew what she must do. Her heart could not die. She needed to love, and the world needed to love. The adults were wrong.

Her body contorted into a gelatin shape, no longer resembling a person but a kind of monstrous blob. Yet she was more a person than anyone in the room. She heard Mark and Grace laugh, and she wanted to as well. Soon she would.

The acid filled the pool, slopping and splashing its way for her, but most of her was contorted through the bars now. All that was left was the small of her back and her heart. She was growing up from the Alter like a tree, but not a dead one. Her forest was strong and vibrant, and the color was not burnt red but lily.

“Heart,” she mouthed, and her heart slowed, ready to listen. “It’s okay. Everything will be okay.”

Little by little, she felt the organ that gave her life, pumped her blood and flooded her emotions with meaning, slow down. It was scared, and so was she, but deep down, they both knew they would be alright. It would only take a second, and then she could reform into a person, one that was whole and alive. One that her God could not damage.

Grace and Mark continued to yell encouragements, and soon the rest of the children were doing the same. The adults bristled at the noise, at the sacrilege, but the little girl saw. It was a half-hearted bristle, one that didn’t feel because they had long ago lost the ability to do so. Never again. Never again, never again, never again!

“Never again!” the girl screamed.

The eye of God went out.

Lilly slid through the bars.