Wilhelm was born in the sprawling slums of Berlin. He didn’t see the sun past the hazy black sky until he was thirteen, when the North Winds howled hard and long, beating back the smog for twelve days and twelve nights. But by then its embrace did nothing, nothing but burn his skin and sear his eyes; it was nothing but blinding.

The Cardinal in the seat of Saint Boniface called it a miracle; six months later, the Holy Father in Rome agreed. A canonized miracle. What a miracle. Those winds blew out power to a third of the city, that sun beat down on temperatures miles below freezing. Last Wilhelm heard, four thousand men, women, and children died, frozen, huddled in their homes for that miracle. Some three hundred and thirty-three a day. Double that and you’d have his opinion on that matter.

His father died in the trenches of Bohemia when Wilhelm was eleven. His mother in that miracle. A ward of the state they called him, all of them, the lost sheep, the children of the twice martyred. An orphan, loved only by the Mother Church, by the Lamb of God and none other.

So His number need not be called, the draft need not claim his soul, for it more than any other belonged directly to Berlin, to the Kaiser, to Rome. So from thirteen on, he knew discipline and deprivation; he knew only faith; he prepared for martyrdom, for service to the Holy Church was the only guiding light a man ought to need.

They brought him to the countryside, where he saw the sun at least two in every three days. Blue above, clouds of heavy grey, blown in from the cities. He wondered why, why would they live in the mire and filth of their collective lives. Why would men make a world like this? Why would they sully God’s creation? To fight the damned, they would say, surely, and yet the great gift He bestowed had been sacrificed upon the altar of victory, ever illusive. A price agreed by generations long gone, paid by those still living in perpetuity. The sins of the father upon sons down an endless stream, guilt forgotten, only duty.

Prussia didn’t make warriors, Prussia made soldiers. The difference? Discipline. A warrior’s greatest strength is his ability to kill; a soldier’s is his ability to follow orders. Plenty are willing to kill for their beliefs, shed blood for God, but it’s rarer that a man be ready and willing to die for the same. To shed their own blood in service to the Godhead, to be the Lamb of the Lord, not the knife.

Not that the men of Prussia were trained to accept their fate, no, they weren’t trained to die for their country; they were trained to make some poor bastard die for his. Yet still, they had to carry the guilt of the fallen, to be ready and willing to pay the price in blood.

When the training ended and he received his stahlhelm, Wilhelm found himself a man of the Sturmtruppen. The gold bar upon his breast, the feather in his cap, the silver tassel at the hem.

Wilhelm had long dreamt of graduation, had long dreamt of taking the helm, of donning the uniform, of being lifted as he had seen others lifted before him. But the day it came, the early morning when he took his helm and donned his uniform, there was no uplift. The Chaplin anointed him in ash and oil, and he was born anew, but felt just the same as he had before.

He had a dream, a fool’s dream, of serving at the front in Bohemia. A little boy’s dream of avenging a father slain. Shattered when he received a posting with his new rank, the Eastern front. Wilhelm was to be stationed alongside Prussia’s allies in the Rus, by the River Volga, on the border of the great expanse.

So he bordered the iron horse east along the Carpathians, through the dismal Pripet Marshes of the Polish frontier, into the Russian Uplands and beyond into the Hill Country of the Volga. The train cut its way across the countryside, great iron tracks that rounded their way over and across the land, like veins pumping through the continent.

The cabins were packed end to end with freshly minted Sturmtruppen, as himself, alongside conscripts bound for the front. In times of peace, most would end up errand boys, cooks, and the like. Professionals, most of them wards of Mother Church, outnumbered conscripts some two to one. A sign of peace, fleeting as it might be.

He spoke to no one, and neither did he listen. Instead busying himself with pale blue eyes fixed on some distant horizon beyond the tram’s window. The land of his country first, the flat fields of the German heartland, home to a hundred princes and one. The land was dotted, even from his passenger seat, by the billowing black pillars of smoke rising from the many cities of his homeland. The many cities of the Holy Roman Empire, or the carcass of it that had limped awkwardly into the twentieth century.

Sunflowers standing tall, turning the whole of the land into a yellow tide, bright as the sun might have been in the days before the Fall, before the First Seal was broken. They were in full bloom as September loomed high before them, and the winter months past that. Reaching for the skies, golden petals open ended like hands splayed abreast in reverence of God Almighty. By them fields of oats and barley, hardy crops for a hardy land.

It was said a hard land made for harder men, like to like that made sense, strength to meet strength and a thick skin to survive it. But Wilhelm hoped that was the talk of beggars and fools. For while true Prussia was no Eden upon the earth, it could not hope to match the lands further north and east for suffering and deprivation inflicted upon their people. The lands of the last pagans upon God’s country made their homes on the freezing Baltic. Not to forget about his destination, about the lands of the Slavs, king among them the men called Rus, with the blood of the Norse pumping through their veins.

The land of the Poles came in the days to follow, as that iron horse charted its course; great acrid plumes of smoke belched forth, like the wheezing of some odious beast. These were rich lands at the start, with endless fields of amber wheat near ready for the reaping, for fear of an early frost. Soon, though, two days on or so by Wilhelm’s judgement, they passed out into the marshland of that frontier.

A place of haunted ruins, separating east and west. Tower trees gone to rot, half collapsed into the mire, slowly petrifying in the bog. The people of these lands were said to be a queer lot, where the east and west met entwined. Home to White Russians, Ukrainians, Cossacks from east of the Dnieper, even the odd rural Jew. Or so the debrief had told him. But one might find older things in swamps like that.

The thought of it turned his stomach. A man of Prussia needed only two things‌, blood and iron. Anything else was an extra at best, or a burden at worst. There were worse things than magic in this world, but in that moment, looking out on the blackened marshlands, he could hardly think of one.

They crossed the Dnieper, and made speed across the Uplands, rolling endless fields of amber wheat, the great breadbasket of all Europe. At least when it wasn’t set ablaze, or frozen solid, come the winter months. They kept that momentum into the hills of the Volga, all the way to Tsarisyn, the City of Heroes by the Volga. Central command for the eastern operations of the Rus, his new home.

Travel down the riverside was tedious; a summer snow drifting in from the northeast dusted anything that didn’t retain the heat to melt on impact. The riverfront was no scenic cruise liner’s dream. It was a fortress, birthed of the last Great War endless tracts of bunkers, built over some two decades. A maze where the men of the City of Heroes and the surrounding countryside lived and died.

Wilhelm had heard it told that these trench lines had entire residential districts dug beneath the earth, schools and churches, gymnasiums and training grounds. Even factories, so as to keep the men of that living fortress prepared. An ancient idea made new, inspired by the great subterranean cities of Anatolia, known since the days of the Pharaohs, now home to the last Christians in Asia Minor.

Why were men like that? They fought and died, as new technologies and tactics tore them apart, one to the next, always the same. Only to perfect the tools of one war, just in time for them to be obsolete in the next. Still, it was hard to imagine an earthen fortress guarding against amphibious assault could be obsolete.

The whistle blew as they pulled up to the city; the crumbling ruins topside, the deep scars left from the incursions halfway through the nineteen tens, were abandoned. So they guided them under the city. Even here it was all interconnected, a great maze of tunnels, where a man could be born, live and die without ever seeing the sun. In that moment it seemed no wonder the briefing had called them Mole Men of the Volga, though he dared not say that to anyone’s face.

His host was a man as tall as he was wide, a Sergeant by the stars on his lapel. With big, ruddy cheeks and a thick, long mustache gone to grey. The style and form of which revealed him a Cossack, despite the formal uniform that labeled him a man of the Tsar’s regular forces. “Privyet, kak dela?”

“I am Sergeant Bauer.” Wilhelm had only one name at birth, but upon taking the uniform he had been given a new name for the record. His hair a mouse brown so as Bauer seemed appropriate to the stenographer. “I must inform you, I don’t speak Russian, Balachka, or any of the eastern tongues, I do speak Polish, though I imagine that means little and less east of the Dnieper.”

“Oni prisylyayut mne glukhonemogo cheloveka?” The red-faced man laughed, turning to those around him, in similar dress and fashion, one another Cossack and the other clean shaven, with a knight’s mail beneath the folds of his uniform.

Wilhelm frowned. “I might not speak Russian, but I’m not blind. As an officer of the Sturmtruppen I demand proper accommodation.”

“Yes, yes..” His host laughed. “My German is not so good, but I say we will make good friends here and on, yeah? Yes?”

“Yes.” He replied, though Wilhelm had his doubts. “I hope for an amiable working relationship.”

“Da!” He smiled, taking Wilhelm’s baggage off the tiled floor of the old topside train station. “I am Vladislav Sotenko, Sergeant Vladislav Sotenko, as it pleases.”

The pair walked out together, followed closely by Vladislav’s two henchmen, and further still by the gaggle of troopers that young Wilhelm was meant to command. “You are early sadly, in a few months they’ll have finish, how you say, underground line?”

“Subterranean.” Wilhelm corrected.

“Da, subterranean, it’s good yeah?” He asked. “In and out, without being exposed to the enemy. Then we be a fortress without penetration.”

“No fortress is impenetrable, Vladislav.” Wilhelm replied curtly.

“Yes, well, you will experience this and share your thoughts, after not before.. Sergeant.” He added the last as an afterthought.

“Do you have an issue with my rank, Sir?”

“I have an issue with inexperience, green, yes? Mr. Bauer?” Vladislav waved a hand dismissively.

“Sergeant Bauer, Sir.”

“Yes, we do not make- How you say, green meat into command.” The Cossack shrugged.

“I’ve been training for this for nearly a decade, Sergeant.” Mechanical, stern with all the iron he could force upon it.

“Yes, but training is not living.”

“Yes, the Great War, no doubt there will be more-”

“More? No, the Great War never end, no beginning, no end. It simply is.” The Cossack laughed.

“Surely even you can see the difference, smoldering conflict along the borders and open war?”

“Maybe in your Berlin, in your Rome.. Here? On the Volga, on that border as you say, the war does not end. Here the war is eternal.”

Wilhelm gritted his teeth. “Apologies.”

“No need, you are here now.” The Cossack replied. “War is eternal for you now too, da?”

“Da.” He replied flatly as they descended into the depths of the tunnel works. Hundreds of miles, carved through earth and stone, reinforced with rebar and concrete, wooden scaffolding and packed earthen works.

The most densely populated tunnels were like a city spoken into existence, each concealed from the whole, separated. But the sounds of it, of life echoing in the deep, revealing the true extent of this Hero City. The ruined land above, mirrored now below. Hospitals, kitchens, factories and schools, humming in tune.

The old, the young, the smell of ash and oil, of produce and meat in the market, the laughter of children and the echo of gunshots. Here, below the earth, sound was amplified, echoing loud and long. Making even a small community cast an outsized shadow, and this place, this city by the Volga, was anything but small.

These areas were lit by overhead fluorescents, built into the ceiling, or hanging precariously. “Not bad, not bad for a mole’s town.”

The Cossack laughed, cheeks redder beneath the earth than above, despite the dearth of wind. “This is civilian grade, yeah? Ours is up ahead, further afield.”

“Right, of course.” He eyed the tunnels as they narrowed, commercial and residential space giving way to transit, narrow tunnels running in a dozen directions. Tile and stone floors replaced with hardwood set in packed earth. “Why move it beneath the earth?”

“Defense.”

“Obviously, I mean the civilians.”

“The same, you saw what happened to the old Tsarisyn, on the surface? The same will not happen again..” He tugged hard against his whiskers. “An iron rain, cannon fire, artillery, and worse-”

“What could be worse than all that?”

Wilhelm caught a twinkle in Vladislav’s eye, and the Cossack answered plainly through his yellowed grin. “This is why we don’t make officers of fresh meat, you will see, German, you will see.”

The walls were thickest closest to the border, narrow corridors wide enough for a man abreast, a maze of covered and uncovered tunnels and trenches. Mess halls, small arms factories and barracks. Vladislav claimed this quarter of the line could operate completely cut off from Tsarisyn proper for six months. And Wilhelm couldn’t help but believe him.

Berlin had its bunkers and bomb shelters, of course, he had seen the earthworks near Slovakia and the infernal infection therein. But this, this was a different beast altogether. In scale, if not in design. Birthed not of wealth or technology, for this land held neither. Built of blood and toil, a collective shame at man’s inborn guilt. The dame, holding back the damned.

Dinner was shared in the mess, men of all ranks and titles scattered to their nearest dining tables. A thin soup, blood red, with stringy cuts of fat and gore, alongside carrots and turnips, served above a bed of half mashed potatoes. “Do you like, da?”

“Da.” He mirrored, lifting a spoonful to his host. It tasted of bile drawn from a corpse, but he struggled to keep his composure. “Good..” Wilhelm coughed, he and his men light from the fair.

Of course, Wilhelm finished every bite. It didn’t matter if he hated it; it didn’t matter what it was. A soldier of God needed his strength; comfort was a luxury a Prussian Sturmtruppen could ill afford.

The Sturmtruppen under Wilhelm’s command were assigned beds by the artillery. Dugouts and concrete pillboxes at the back end of the lines, open to the air. Cannons both great and small, silent pillars of dark iron and steel. “Why are we to be stationed by the artillery, Sergeant Sotenko?” He asked. “We are not a proper fire team-”

“No, you are right where you ought to be. First to hear, the fire in the night, not close enough to the Volga herself to be the first to die.”

“I must lodge issue, as Sturmtruppen we ought to be in the vanguard of any-”

“We are not playing at war, Mr. Bauer, and you aren’t anymore either.” The Cossack frowned; mirth fled and gone. “Would you rather be at the river front, first to die? Or the middle last to know? You are right where you need to be, you and your men alike.”

The trumpets sounded at dawn, and his ten Sturmtruppen joined with Vladislav’s twenty Rus. As they mounted the surface, out into the open air, under that sickly grey sky, and the Volga, a slow stream of black sludge creeping south ever on to the dying ocean.

They made for a strange partnership. The Prussians, in pressed uniforms, armored in blackened Enochian iron. These men, his men, in their stahlhelms pinned up with formal professionalism, faces clean shaven and hair pulled back. Carrying the black cross of the Teutonic Order, standing face to face and side by their side with these strangers, these Rus. Natives of the Volga dressed in hand-me-down suits of rusting mail and ratty, faded surcoats with the two heads of the Tsar’s eagle upon their breasts.

The Prussians were cradled in power harnesses, like the exoskeleton of an insect, armed with trench knives and hand selected guns for specific purposes, from rifles to shotguns. Enochian Iron, thrice blessed, thirst quenched in holy water touched by the pontiff maximus himself. Their counterparts were not; chain mail barely holding together, wooden shields closer to relics than proper military equipment. Each hand carved, with icons painted on their forward faces. God in all his forms, Mary the Mother of God, or Saints like Abraham of Bulgaria and the Blessed Simon of Yuriet.

Grenades on bandoliers, hammers with explosive tips against the flat end, javelins with grenades bundled at the tip — nearly all of them possessed the means to kill in an immediate, grisly fashion. These superstitious yokels carried what they claimed to be reliquaries and blessings, tied off by their necks, sheltered beneath their coats, housed within their shields. If they were all legitimate, their squad alone would have enough bones to rebuild a Saint whole. Yet better that he not mention it; if their faith brought comfort, if it brought victory, who was he to judge?

Their Chaplin was a bigger problem, with green vestments over his chain mail, polished to a sheen and trimmed in gold. He carried a cross on his back, carved of hard wood and old as the decrepit man carrying it. His hair, white as the summer snow on the countryside, was long, beard and head both.

They were all Catholic now, and had been for generations untold. But in this moment of introduction, he felt a divide between them. It seemed here in the East the memory of the Roman Schism ran deep, with loyalty to the Pope interceded upon by the Emperor of all the Romans and his Patriarch.

“If this place is so impenetrable, why do we go on patrol?” Wilhelm asked, trudging through the mud by the banks of the Volga. Smoke rising from the maze of bunkers and pillboxes.

“Who do you think makes it impenetrable?” Vladislav laughed, cheeks red from the early winter winds, blowing snows south out of turn. “Walls are useless, useless without men to man them, without strong arms holding sharp blades and sharper wits.”

“As you say, Sergeant.” Wilhelm agreed. “But this place is after all a fortress, would they not need to.. assault it in numbers?”

“No, think of the trenches like a.. sieve, yes.” He tugged on his Cossack’s mustache. “It catches the big bits, but the little things, they can slip through the cracks, come out the other side.”

“Clean up then?” Wilhelm hummed. “Yes, better not to rouse that Great Beast of war, to fire thunderous cannon, to expend strength best kept close at hand.”

“Indeed.”

“But the war is a decade now done, surely-”

“Do you think the jaws of hell remain closed? That the infernal gates ever tire?” He shook that round, red face. “No.”

“And yet peace their infernal masters made.” Wilhelm knew of the war’s end, the treaties, when the guns fell silent, mostly at the least.

“The Serpent has many heads, and not a brain among them.” The Cossack explained. “You can make peace with nations, but not ideas, Mr. Bauer. There are demons and damned that do not fall under the command of the multitude states of Magog.”

“So it would seem.” It must have been a month of patrol duty before they made contact with the enemy. The sun half set, near ready to return for dinner and a cold bed.

Then it came: a pack of demented lupine monstrosities. Man and machine, beast and demon, all in one. Twisted flesh, stained teeth, and rusted iron. Eyes glowing red in the dying light, children of Wrath’s head from among the Seven, Satan, the Prince of Power.

They seemed to bear untold levels of pain, moldering piles of flesh and bone, growing and bending, breaking and rending. As they were born and reborn and born again, forever and always. They barreled through their troops, only three of them, but that was enough to match thirty true born servants of God Himself. A flurry of gunfire, the crack of bullets like thunder, and the rending of tender flesh.

Wilhelm had trained all his life for that one moment, yet in it, his vision clouded and his thoughts turned loud, blinding. The rusted teeth and gnashing jaws, tearing through men as easily as one might tear their dinner. Filling their stomachs with saccharine sweet meat, jaws dripping wet with a crimson touch, soaking through the cold earth at their feet.

These were the children of Hell, the ones that kids were taught to fear in the crib, the ones that would have, had long since destroyed the world. They took nine lives before even one of theirs fell; every shot and slash, all of their efforts healed in a moment’s time. The tenth to die enacted his price, some Russian with a lazy eye, pulled the pins of the grenades out of his lapel, and blew the creature back to hell.

The second was run through by Vladislav, a lance affixed with a grenade at its end, not enough to kill it, but enough so that a Sturmtruppen flamethrower could do the job. A weapon for every scenario, and the means, the will to use it. The third was surrounded, beaten senseless, until its healing stalled out, and a dozen knives, and shovels, and blades, and mauls left it a quivering pile of broken bones and pudding flesh.

They had set out as thirty-two men that morning, counting themselves among the number, but that night they returned twenty-two breathing alongside those ten corpses, with half that number in injuries. With no time for recovery, they took to the mess for a meal, then the infirmary for mental evaluation.

The waiting room was tiled, white, and sterile. Men rolled in and out through the doors at the far end, while the rest waited their turn. What lay beyond for them and theirs remained a mystery to him, yet he waited. In a chill silence he had come to expect in times of trouble among these cold men of the Volga.

“Some men, some men go crazy when they see the truth of it, our enemy. Not the damned, the Infernite Legion, humans in service to the Beast, but those.. things. Flesh tainted by the seed of demon kind.” The Cossack explained upon their return, waiting in that sterile white room. “It’s got to come every time, da? A man can be fine a dozen times over, a hundred, a thousand.. Then one day, the wrong day, yes? Their back breaks, their mind gives way, their sense takes flight, leaving a corpse in all but name.”

“Oh..” Wilhelm felt the word in his mouth, as if weighing it. They had lost so many men in such a short time, would that time ran in reverse. “I suppose that is a blessing. If that there could be a glimmer of light in a tunnel so deep.”

“Let God Almighty be that light.” He was smiling, smiling, red cheeks and all. How could one let this roll off their back? How does one live after, after that? “Failing that the end of a bottle, da?”

Had the Cossack’s heart calcified? Had he lost so much, so often that death itself had lost its symbol. That death itself was nothing more than an inconvenience. “You seem calm, all things considered.”

“I may, if only for the ease of long practice.” He laughed.

“Bastard.. Bastard!” Wilhelm gritted his teeth, to laugh, laugh in the face of their sacrifice, their death. “You do not deserve their sacrifice! YOU do not deserve-”

“I seek nothing, need nothing, nor do I deserve it.” Wilhelm grasped him by the collar, but Vladislav made no move to break it; instead, he replied in steely certainty born of sacrifice. “Their lives were spent on God’s behalf, their blood shed for Him and the Tsar upon the First Throne in Moscow. Not for me, not for you, not for themselves.”

He sank back into his seat, small against the shadow the Cossack cast, a presence that dominated the whole ‌infirmary. And with it, that pale white room swallowed him. What did it mean? If anything at all, that he ought to learn even at his age, that he ought to change, adapt?

“Tell me, what did you see?” The doctor asked, voice muffled through a black hook mask. Watched from behind pale crimson lenses.

“I told you three times.” Wilhelm gritted his teeth.

“Then tell me a fourth.” The doctor replied, softer then, almost imperceptibly so. “It is all part of the diagnostic test, Sergeant, please.”

“Three lupine men, or machines.. Or monsters..” Wilhelm cast eyes down from his seat mounted on the examination table.

“And they?” The doctor led, stirring memories of iron and crimson, and the forbidden saccharine sweetness of the flesh they offered.

“They ate them.”

“Who?”

“You know who!” Wilhelm snapped, pain behind the eyes, like a biting axe to the head.

“Sergeant..” He cautioned through those eyes of leaden glass.

“My men, our men..” He bit back his bile.

“How many?”

“Ten, ten brave men.. gone to God, in service of-” All of us. “Gone to God.”

“Alright.” The doctor jetted down a string of notes on a notepad. “It seems to me your mind is free from taint, for now. Know that you will see worse, worse before you return to His side.”

Wilhelm stood and made for the door. “Yes, Sir, I know.”

By the Grace of God they didn’t lose another; ten was enough, ten was more than they ought to bear. But that night, in his fitful sleep, Wilhelm was met by images of steely lupine eyes. Dreams of Serpents and sin, and the war born again on the horizon of his Mind’s eye, just past the banks of the River Volga.

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Chronicles of the IV is a podcast series covering my original short stories. Horror, dark fantasy, suspense, sci-fi, dystopian, and weird fiction, expect a bit of everything. New episodes release on Tuesdays.

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Riley made for the closet, pulling it open on instinct. Filled to bursting, literally, the support beam straining under the weight of countless jackets, dresses, skirts, and shoes. All in bright pastels, splattered with the vague impressions of flowers. This had been her closet once, not in a long, long time. Now it was Amanda’s, now it was overflow, spare space for mommy’s many things.

That brought a frown to her lips, a twitch to those dark almond eyes. Not because these clothes were worth more than her car, not because they’d found a use for empty space in her absence. No, because this was her home, a memory of it at least; that home was long gone now, but that memory, she had kept it alive until those doors pulled open.

She closed the doors and pinched the bridge of her nose. Tired, she was so, so tired. All the time now, from dawn till dusk and back again. At the height of the day and in the middle of the night, she was tired.

Sleep never came easily, despite every effort, but ever since that call, sleep seemed to have fled her entirely. Long nights spent staring at the walls, here in this pale imitation of the room she had once known so well. The peeling visage of a ribbon of dinosaurs kept her company alongside the army of teddy bears emblazoned upon the bedspread. For their part, the dinosaurs served as a spotty transition from blue walls to the white of the ceiling, off white, just off enough to raise attention, just off enough to work the mind. Just off enough to keep other, darker thoughts at bay, for now.

Every morning when she woke, or rather when the light of day found her frozen in that state of half roused torpor. Nose running, eyes red, a fresh born allergy to her childhood home, as if God decided death wasn’t punishment enough. As if a bad case of the sniffles could be worse than losing a sister.

Still, sometimes, sometimes you can only take so much. Sometimes all it takes is a sniffle, a stubbed toe, a bad grade; sometimes the unexpected pulls tears forward. But not this time; no tears fell, not when she had heard, not in the dark of those long, lonely nights, not now as she pulled that pin straight black dress over her body.

What did that say about her? About them two. Nothing new there; she had never been good at, well, living. But Emily, her big sister, was. It seemed almost fitting that it should be Riley’s own failings that tainted her shedding of the mortal coil.

Riley flattened out the edges of her dress, a bit short, too short for church, let alone a funeral, but at six foot she struggled to find a proper fit in any circumstance. Tights, that would help at least. She snatched the thin nylon from her duffel, serving as a suitcase admirably in a pinch.

Then onto the bed, shimmying by the window, bathed in the light of early morning, filtering in through the netted leaves of the pines and the birch tree just by her windowsill. Looking through the slits of the blinds, she eyed the empty nests of the year before, half rotted, irreparably deformed by the winter weather. They wouldn’t return to them; no, they couldn’t. They would have to move forward. Maybe that was a blessing; no ghosts to haunt them.

Newport in one hand and a lighter in the other, she slipped a filtered cigarette between pursed lips. Pulling down the window with a snap, cracking the seal. The cherry glew bright against the orange glow of morning, a trail of acrid smoke escaping the room through the mesh.

It reminded her of sneaking smokes in high school. Crowded in bathrooms, hiding by bike trails or in backyards, huddled next to the window late at night, long after her parents had gone to bed. And in that moment she remembered what it had been to be young, not that twenty-eight was an old maid, but it certainly wasn’t young.

Her lungs filled with the heat of it, the pressure of the pull. Once it made her cough, once it burned inside and out, sent her head flying, lighter than air. Not anymore, now it just was, like just another something to do, to keep her busy. She still got a tingle at the tips of her fingers when she smoked that first every morning, and at least the cool relief of the menthol stayed with her, even if it was only there to cover the taste of cheap tobacco.

Two firm knocks at the door, and she almost fled her skin. Now she felt like she was back in high school, putting out the smoke on the underside of the windowsill, coughing up the last of the vapors in her lungs. It had been a long time since she had worried about people dropping in, about locked doors. The plastered hole in that pale blue wall reminded her of that, the crack in the paper thin door running nearly the whole of its length, from top to bottom, stirring memories best laid to rest.

“Are you ready?” A familiar voice, her father’s voice, like the rumble of a deep bellied drum. “Honey?”

“Yes, just a second, just finishing up!” Riley coughed up, voice strained and hoarse.

“Okay, I’m going to start the car.” He added footsteps pulling away, light as feathers on carpeted floors. She pulled the tights over her legs, smoothing them out to their end. Not a single tear, and some people didn’t believe in miracles.

Riley slipped her feet into a pair of modest black heels, or they would be, if the size of her feet didn’t match her height. Of course, it would help if it matched the matt of her dress; instead, the polished leather had a sheen that could blind God Himself.

She found her footing, little better than a newborn fawn, and staggering into the hall, then down the stairs. As she inched her way, one step at a time, she couldn’t help but regret donning them upstairs. When she finally reached the bottom of the stairwell, the kitchen was empty, the living room too, and the atrium. An impatient honk from outside told her the car was ready, and her parents were in it, no doubt.

She approached the restroom at the far end, checking her dress and her shape in the mirror. A distance between them, she hardly recognized that woman in the mirror. The things we do for propriety, the acts we commit, the games we invent for posterity. Humans. Riley pulled her raven hair back into a tight bun, two loose streams emerging on opposite ends of her temples. Good enough.

Riley shuffled outside, gaining confidence with each step, even as her feet were rubbed raw in their leather prison. The car was low, forcing her to stoop, pulling her way back into the narrow back “seats” or what passed for the same. “I could have driven-” She wheezed, knees by her chin.

“In that shit box? Don’t be ridiculous.” Robert adjusted the rearview mirror.

“Better than suffocating.” She replied.

“For whom? You’ll embarrass the whole family.. Good God, us NOT going together, you like.. like that?” There was an edge in her mother’s voice, a weary pain born from tears shed.

“And here I thought I looked pretty..” She hummed.

“Pretty for a-”

“Honey, not today.” Her father was tired, the deep bellied voice cracking under the strain.

“What, I didn’t-” Amanda began, aghast.

“Enough, just, enough..” He didn’t raise his voice, his cheeks didn’t go red, but the words came forth with such focused authority that the car fell silent. The key turned in the ignition, and the engine came to life, audible but controlled. Hardly a roar, no, that was the hum of German engineering, not to mention endless hours and thousands of dollars in maintenance. Good money after bad. “You look.. good kid, nice. You look nice.” He craned his neck to check the street, never one to trust a mirror over his own eyes, pulling out into the street. “Your sister would have loved it.”

The drive was quiet, aside from Amanda’s sporadic sobs. She pretended they were sneezes, and everyone else accepted it without question. A fiction, a collective fantasy, come to life. So it was quiet, quiet as the grave. Or, as quiet as things could be these days, with the hum of the coolant systems and the hiss of fans echoing across every stretch of land.

The forests, the fields, the farms, what was left of them after the arrival of the urban sprawl, had been chopped down, leveled and repressed. Miles of data centers, hulking monstrosities each twice the size of a Walmart, disguised, poorly, as barns beyond physical plausibility. And singing that deafening song of theirs, that violent hum.

The church was at the far end of town, between what had been a park and Old Man Miller’s farm. They were both gone now. The farm turned into a warehouse; the park, where Riley remembered long summer days and nights at camp, chopped down, leveled, and paved over was now a sweltering parking lot.

More memories broken, left by the wayside. But hey, at least they had parking, just in case. That came in handy too, right?

The red brick walls of the church, the steeple soaring above. But that too was a lie, wasn’t it? There was no bell tower, or no bell within, just a recording blared over speakers. It seemed to her that lies came more naturally to most than truth, whatever men might prefer to say.

“I don’t understand why we brought her here, to these-” Robert stopped, before he said something he’d regret.

“I don’t know..” Amanda wailed, with all her motherly love. “We have, well, I don’t know. Your daughter is the one that set things up-”

“Doesn’t matter how you two feel about it, she was still Catholic, right? Or said as much, last I knew.” The brunt of the labor in preparation had fallen on her, coordinating with Father Nguyen and the funeral home. Mother was useless, and father, well, Riley had never seen her father cry, not until three days prior. No, the arrangements were on her.

They pulled up by the church, next to the Father’s spot. Saved just for them. The lot was half filled and still filling. Maybe that parking lot would come in handy.

They made their way inside, for now exchanging little more than a nod of the head with the many guests. It had been too many years since Riley stood before the altar, before God, and as she took the holy water upon her finger and made His sign, she was grateful that she didn’t burst into flame.

The body sat before the altar too, dressed in a pink gown, her favorite; she always looked good in pink. It lay in its coffin, her sister, her sister in HER coffin. Emily looked so peaceful, beautiful even, like Sleeping Beauty. You would never guess. Well, she looked beautiful.

Blond, thin as a rail but half as tall, with bright eyes and skin like porcelain. Everything she wasn’t, Riley was tall as a mountain, a bit extra of her about the edges, with almond eyes like stone and skin a tawny brass. The two of them had made an odd pair in life, and now, in death, one in black and one in bright pink threads, they seemed even more opposites.

They had done a great job; you could see no evidence of the.. Her sister looked as if she might spring to life at any moment, if only. My sister is dead, my sister is dead and everything is worse now, everything is wrong. Strange, wasn’t it? They weren’t close, not since childhood; life had brought them down wildly different paths, but that didn’t mean-

Riley still loved her, or the pain in her chest suggested as much. Or maybe it was jealousy, anger? Angry that even in this she had to show her up. Beat her to the finish line. Though Riley thought again, after all, this was one race she could happily lose.

Robert stood by the coffin, opposite the priest in his vestments. A father dressed in black, a shadow to the Father all in white. Her dad refused to even look in the Father’s direction. He never did believe in God, yet somehow she doubted he’d forgive the slight of stealing his eldest; being “imagined” wouldn’t save Him that ire.

He shook hands with every passerby, racing to beat the Father to each in turn, trying to muscle him out in front of his own altar. And Riley watched as each came and went, by her mother’s side at the head of the pews, hand held tight by bony fingers.

The procession of people flowed like a river up to and around the coffin, and then bending back into the pews. Each face, known and unknown, echoes of the past, even if not all of them spoke to a shared life between these two sisters.

There were childhood friends from grade school who had gone uncontacted for what seemed a lifetime. High school vestiges, reduced now to likes and shares on social media. College mates that Riley never had the misfortune to meet, former dorm mates and sorority sisters, something something kappa.

There were family friends too, of course, and by that she meant only the extended families of her father’s coworkers and golfing buddies. People that Riley hadn’t heard from in the better part of a decade, people she hardly knew now, if ever she had. Family too, though precious little of that, so much for the blood that binds them. One uncle on her father’s side and a gaggle of cousins on her mother’s.

Riley wondered how many of them knew Emily, really knew her. And even still, how many had spoken to her in the months, weeks, days, hours before.. It. Before the end. How many of them hadn’t spoken to her in years? How many were strangers in all but name? After all, wasn’t she a stranger? How long had it been? A year, two? Since last they talked, the words they shared and- Better not to think of it.

She pulled fingers free of that bony grip and approached the coffin, as the procession thinned and vanished all together. Staring down at the corpse, watching it, though it could no longer do the same, she couldn’t. Eyes closed, cheeks rosy, as if embarrassed to be so garishly dressed for a funeral. That would be just like her, showing up to an event and feigning offense when she didn’t follow expectations.

Huh, maybe she was blushing, embarrassed for the camera, even from beyond the grave. Either way, it was the right choice. She looked so beautiful in pink. Maybe she was in heaven now. Her heaven would have to be pink. It wouldn’t be heaven if it wasn’t, not for her. That was the problem with heaven, besides the dying part: it couldn’t be perfect, not for everyone. Not unless everyone got their own heaven, but she imagined that would get messy.

Maybe there wasn’t a heaven? Could you think that in a church? Well, yes, obviously, but the better question was: should you? Probably not. If she wasn’t going to Hell before, she was going now. Maybe there wasn’t a heaven, and failing that, she was wherever women go, wherever people go when they’re gone.

Even then, staring down at that cold, artificial reconstruction of her sister, she didn’t cry, couldn’t cry. It wasn’t sad, or it hadn’t hit her; maybe it never would. Yes, that’s what she would say; it hadn’t hit yet. But the wailing of the mourners intruded upon her stream of consciousness by the coffin. Fuck. Now she could feel the eyes on her, waiting expectantly for tears, for signs of visible mourning. Her father’s eyes, the Father’s eyes, mother and cousins, on and on.. all of them.

She leaned down, a gentle kiss on one cheek, and then the other. A matching set. Her sister tasted like sawdust on the lips, and smelt like pickles soured in the sun. Still, no tears came.

Riley returned to her mother’s side, smoothing out the edges of her dress, fiddling intently with the hem. Crisp, clean, flat, perfect. By the time it was, the church was full. The censor billowed that pale aromatic smoke, clinging to the nostrils, the skin, saturating their clothes. They sang their hymns, and the organ bellowed its baritone rumbling to match. Latin, she never had a mind for languages, and she wasn’t much for Sunday school either, so the mass passed her by without an eyebrow raised or a heartstring plucked.

Next she knew they were out around back, on church grounds by the graveyard. A field of pale white and grey stone, like the fingers of a golem trying to dig its way out from a burial plot of its own. Her father had carried the casket, symbolically, mostly, leaving the labor to men hale and whole, closer to their prime.

There they stood in front of the gaping pit of blackened earth that would be her forever home, the final resting place. Her father gave a eulogy, just a mess of words, one bleeding into the next. “A father shouldn’t have to bury his little girl-” He’d said, Riley remembered that part, his voice cracking under the pressure.

Mother was too distraught to speak; she tried, but only sobs and tears, and an incomprehensible wailing followed. So came her turn, and she took the stand in that lonely pulpit by the dugout. She spoke because they expected her to, because as a sister it was the least she owed the dead. Though the lion’s share of what she said and how long she had said it for she couldn’t recall.

She remembered the beginning, though, and she remembered the end. “My sister and I, my sister and I hadn’t been close for a long time, we- We were really close as kids, but you know, different choices, different roads lead to different- Different destinations.” Her mom shot her the stink eye; even through sobs and pain, she found the strength to hate. “I’m not sad because I lost the person she was, I’m sad because- Because I’ll never get to know the person she could have been.”

Riley must have said something right, else wise something very, very wrong. Because people were crying loudly then, loudly. No, those people they were weeping, people that hadn’t known her, people whose minds hadn’t turned to Emily in long moons before. It made her sick, the idea of it, the audacity. That they ought to cry, to sob, while her sister sat silent, dry-eyed. Others spoke, but none got the rise out of the crowd that she and her father had.

Then it was over, as quickly as it had begun, or maybe not; time didn’t seem to flow right anymore. The coffin sank to the bottom, down into the deep dark until the shadows swallowed it from end to end. Each of them three threw a bit of dirt atop the casket before the heavy machinery took over.

For a brief moment, Riley was convinced that her mother would leap into the pit after Emily. Die with her. Must have seemed romantic, and she couldn’t imagine what would have stopped it. Not Riley, she knew well that she had always been in last place between them two sisters. But she didn’t; the opportunity passed, and the door to follow the dearly departed slammed shut.

More handshaking followed, always with the handshaking. And then back into that German deathtrap, that marvel of modern engineering that had yet to discover leg space. The ride back was quiet, as quiet as the data centers would allow. There was a tension to it, though, as if all three were ready to speak, but unwilling to break the seal of silent reflection.

So no one did.

That evening the whole of them assembled at her parents’ house for the reception. They brought food for now and for later. Packaged lasagna, macaroni and cheese, baked ziti, deviled eggs, and funeral potatoes, or some variation on them. There was so much of the stuff that they filled the fridge and the freezer both; the overflow went into the open top freezer in the garage. Enough food to feed an army, a small one, but still.

More faces, the same ones from before, but loosened now, tired, masks slipping. “I’m very sorry for our loss.” They went like machines, built to serve. “I’m very sorry for our loss.”

Some mixed it up a bit, awkward as it may have been, visibly uncomfortable. “How’s work?” They asked, or the old heads wondering aloud. “Boy, haven’t you grown up? And pretty too.” Something odd about the last bit, especially from relatives.

Those were the good ones, though; the others, the ones that knew her best, they cut deeper. “Glad to see you’re on the wagon, kid.” Her uncle grined, bottle in one hand, blind to the hypocrisy in it. “I can’t believe you’re the one that lived!” Friends from school laughed, or tried to; “no, that came out wrong!” Or, “what I really meant was!” It didn’t matter; none of it did. None of it ever did.

But they weren’t the worst; the worst were the ones that didn’t know Riley at all, the ones that only knew Emily, the ones she had added to her life after their paths diverged. They looked at her with judging eyes. The wrong sister died, they seemed to whisper. And Riley already knew that; she could hear it in her mother’s sobs, see it in her father’s heavy eyes.

Everyone expected her to go first, to go young. The drinking and the drugs. She had legally died once, for fifteen seconds. She remembered that.. or remembered the time before it and the time after. The event itself was- Fifteen seconds without memory, fifteen seconds back to the abyss, to nonexistence. Some people saw God then, a sense of oneness, of bliss. She didn’t; she just felt‌.. cold, and then she felt nothing.

It was all she could do to slip away during a run to the freezer, more food to put on ice. Then downstairs and out the back. Flipping on one of the patio lights to beat back the encroaching night. Just one, no need to attract extra attention. This was her secret world, her private place, her safe place.

A Newport between parsed lips, a flick of a finger and a cherry appeared, a thin wisp of pallid grey rising from the tip. It had been a long time since daybreak, and the heat of the smoke in her lungs, the weight of it sent her fingers tingling, let her head fly free.

Only for a moment, a voice behind her. “Shit, that you Riley, Rotund Riley?” She knew that name, and the only one that ever used it. “Didn’t you just grow up pretty?”

“Thanks Gavin, you really know how to flatter a girl.. But, I’m not into cousin fucking.” She turned almond eyes to him; he’d grown up tall and lean, thin as a rail with a patchy beard.

“Always have to go and make things weird, don’t you?” He laughed, looking like a monkey in a suit, ill fitting, chafing at the seams. The pair met in the middle of the patio, by the rusted green dining set. An awkward half hug from the side, the kind you give from obligation not choice, it no doubt felt as odd for him as it did for her. “Sorry to hear about your sister.”

“Sorry to hear about Aunt Frieda.”

“Yeah, thanks, I mean, not thanks but.. Kids are supposed to bury their parents.”

“One of us had to go first.” Riley spoke as if there were hot coals on her tongue.

“Cold..”

“True.” She gritted her teeth, took a pull, smoke like a halo around his crown.

“We missed you, at the funeral, you know?” He gave a half smile, for himself as much as it was for her.

“I know.” She sank down by the seat, crossing her legs tight. “I was.. busy.”

“Yeah, rehab, right?” Gavin laughed, lighting his own smoke. “Don’t be so surprised, your side of the family acts all proper, but they’re messy.”

“Messy?” She joined in with a chuckle.

“Messy as fuck.” He agreed.

“News to me.” Riley shrugged.

“Guess that makes sense, you’re the messiest of the bunch.” They both laughed at that, a real laugh, a full laugh, the first since-

“I guess the squeaky wheel is the last to know it’s squeaky.” She mused.

“So how are you holding up?”

“Great, can’t you see?” She gestured to the rotting patio furniture, twisted metal and rust. Bricks stained black and overgrown with creeping green. “My sister’s dead, before thirty.. totally, yeah, totally normal stuff..” They sat in silence for a moment, just the sounds of the reception dampened against the walls. “Fuck!” The branches of the birch above were live with feathered wings from the outburst.

“Fuck is right.” Gavin grinned; it vanished as the relief turned to drudgery in the dark of the night. “If you’re having trouble with it, I mean with her, there’s this thing. It helps some people, with, you know, the grief-”

“You’re not selling me on one of those chat bots are you?” She took another drag, exhaling through her nose like some infernal serpent. “If I hear one more thing about grief response, I’m gonna puke.”

“It’s not like that, Riley, this one, Permalife, it’s good. Or, it helped, it’s still helping. Me, me personally.” He dropped his cigarette on the floor, stomping out the cherry with a quick heel. “Listen, do it, don’t, whatever. I thought you might not want to go this alone.” He turned back to the door. “It was real nice seeing you, Riley, I’m glad- I’m glad you’re doing better.”

And she was alone again. All alone. Just her and the rabbits scurrying through the undergrowth. “Permalife, huh?” She reached for her phone, casting a white light over her tawny skin. It had to be better than crawling into a bottle.

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Chronicles of the IV is a podcast series covering my original short stories. Horror, dark fantasy, suspense, sci-fi, dystopian, and weird fiction, expect a bit of everything. New episodes release on Tuesdays.

Great for active listening, a commute to work, or tunes to fall asleep to, I have been told I have a good voice for putting people to sleep. In a good way, I think.

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Horror, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, e-read or audiobook, we do it all. For more original works from F.P. Dawe and readings from your favorite classics, subscribe below!

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Horror, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, e-read or audiobook, we do it all. For more original works from F.P. Dawe and readings from your favorite classics, subscribe below!

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“Delilah!” He called out, finding her perched on a stool behind the register. “Oh, shit, sorry. Didn’t mean to scream.”

“It’s okay, I’m usually AWOL.” She gave him a smile, teeth whiter still against the shade of black that covered those pillowy lips. “What did he- Why was he all tied up with you? That weirdo?”

“I don’t know, honest.” He tried to laugh it off, but she seemed less than inclined to accepting that. “Just something about knowing what you are, I don’t know, crazy talk. The guy’s probably homeless or-”

“What was that on his arm, what he forced you to look at, to see.” Right, he had half forgotten it. The brand.

“Yeah, I don’t know, it was some kind of geometric shape, weird, I’d never seen its like before.”

“Really..” She hummed. “What did it look like?”

“I don’t know, is it important?” Richard shrugged her off, souring the mood.

“Maybe not to you, but, I’m the one getting stalked so..” Her voice trailed off, and his cheeks flushed. Yeah, it seemed a bit trite to judge what she ought to know and not know. Odds were that the old pervert in the panty section wasn’t stalking HIM.

“Right..” He sighed, thinking, as if he could forget it. Such purpose behind that twisting pink flesh. “I- Some kind of flower or something, six overlapping lobes, a circle inside of a circle. Like a lotus or a-”

“A hexafoil?” She finished the thought, the inflection of a question, but the presumption of an answer. “It’s what you’re describing.” Delilah added meekly.

“I guess.” He cocked his head. “Not to sound, uh, stupid, but what is that, a hexafoil?”

“A daisy wheel, it’s an old symbol, Egypt old. It protects from evil-” She stopped, as if showing her hand. “Or, it’s supposed to anyway.”

Richard puckered as if he had eaten something sour. “Huh, guess it didn’t work this time.”

“Crazy isn’t evil.” She corrected him, nail strumming against the counter between the pair.

“I suppose..” He thought a moment. “How do you know about this stuff?”

“Have you seen where we work?” She laughed. “Kinda comes with the territory.” Fair enough, not as if there was a dearth of self proclaimed Wicca, witches, and the like through these doors on any given day. “So-”

“Listen-” The two spoke over one another. Silence followed, then a nervous laughter. Starting with him and passing to her, feeding, growing between the two of them, like some virulent plague. Until he was near enough to tears from the strain. “You first-” He managed, just barely able to regain a modicum of control. “Go, please-”

“No, you..” She let the words hang, watching from behind the curtain of those thick eyelashes. “Please. You go, please.”

“Well, I need to clock out.. my shift’s over and-”

“Don’t.” She yipped involuntarily, shrill and weak. “Sorry, no, I get it-”

“What, what?” The moment stretched, end to end, until the whole of recognition shed like a snake slipping its skin. “You don’t think he’s going to come back, do you?”

“I don’t know..” Delilah pursed her lips, as if busy willing the words to pass them. “Could you- I mean, you don’t think you could stay for a little bit longer?”

He thought of Rustle waiting, and the mess he had made of the place the last time Richard forgot that little pig’s dinner. “I don’t-” Know. He meant to say, but he didn’t finish. Couldn’t.

Her hand was over his now, like a shroud. He couldn’t feel her warmth through the two layers of gloves, his and hers entwined, but those uncovered fingers were colder than a winter wind. “Please?” Delilah asked, eyebrows raised in expectation. “Just today, stay, walk me home, yeah?”

Walk her home? His cheeks flushed at the thought, grateful for the gloom to cover the worst of it. “I, uh- Yeah, I-” Richard forcibly cleared his throat. “I can do that, could do that, or-”

“Its just a walk home, I’m not asking you to fuck me, Richy.” She smiled, finding some perverse pleasure in his awkwardness.

His cheeks flushed redder still, hot to the touch. No doubt she could see, even through this gloom. “Right, okay, yeah.. I got you-” His voice cracked, and he fumbled to clear his throat. “Good I’ll wait.. over there.” He pointed toward the back and vanished into the storeroom.

Richard grabbed his jacket and stumbled out back, by the loading docks and trash cans hidden behind the strip mall’s facade. To think even a dump like this had a bad side, a side they rather not share. He hardly needed the jacket, or he didn’t need its warmth. The embarrassment brought a bubble of warmth with him into the chill evening air. But the passenger in the right pocket was a necessity.

He pulled a pack of menthols from the pocket, one hundreds, after all if you were going to take a smoke break you might as well enjoy it to the fullest. Richard slid the filter between pursed lips and lit the cherry with a flick of the finger.

The smoke was heavy, hanging around his head like a hellish halo, until a light winter wind pushed it along and over the city skyline. Sending a chill down his spine as it took his bubble of warmth, his comfort, with it. Richard fumbled his way into the jacket, forcing one arm and then the other into place. But the heat he’d brought with him was gone with the dipping sun, so he stood there shivering, waiting for the smoke to run its course.

Every puff was sweet relief; the smell of it, the taste, he had long gone blind to that. No, what he felt now — the slight rush as the blood seemed to flow more readily, the relief as his mind’s eye cleared and the anxiety of the day lifted, even if only for a moment. Then it was gone, the cigarette burned down to the filter, leaving a hole where relief had been, a yawning, gaping hole.

He pocketed the pack again, three left, and his lucky made four. The last rays of light were sinking below the skyline, ushering in the twilight and heralding in the promise of night to come. And the chill that would accompany it. Richard frowned, pocketing the smokes and the lighter, keeping the bullets by the gun.

One last look at the sun sinking into the haze, beneath the skyline, reaching up like so many fingers of iron and glass. Then back into the warm, familiar gloom of Hot Tropic. With its pale artificial light, black and blue drapes, trimmed in silver, purple or ruby red, a deep crimson, like blood.

Delilah was gone; her stool empty, her book half ajar. “Delilah!” He called out, fuck, the bitch hadn’t left him with closing, had she? Shit. “Delilah! Deli-” Then she was there, inches from his face, close enough he could feel her breath meet his, smell the iron in it, a saccharine sweetness underpinning the whole thing. But he felt no warmth in it, no familiar touch.

“Fuck!” Richard nearly fell, stumbling over his feet, plummeting to the ground. Just barely reaching the corner of the register before he hit the floor hard, holding tight, softening the worst of the blow. “You scared me..” He felt a stickiness at his back, carpet fused to his jacket where the coke had spilt.

“Shit-” A half-hearted attempt to wipe it clean, swatting at his back.

“Sorry.” She snorted, hands cupped over her mouth, hiding the obvious smile beneath, revealed by those laughing eyes. “It’s just-” A stifled chuckle. “Sorry, sorry.”

“Right, very funny.. Hilarious.” He rolled his eyes. “Come on, help me up.” She reached a hand down, revealing black lips turned up into a smile. Richard tugged on her arm, but she didn’t move a muscle, like trying to pull down a brick wall.

Delilah seemed to realize what he was doing, eyebrow raised, falling forward into him. Knee to his belly, knocking the wind out of him. “You asked for it.” She laughed from the ground, turning up and around, back on her feet in a blur. “Come on, we have to close up. I don’t want to keep your dog waiting.”

“Dog, who’d you know I had a dog?” Richard struggled up to his feet, quick, but not as quick as he used to be.

She was quiet for a moment, as if she needed a moment to think. “Dog hair.” Breaking the silence. “You’re always covered in it.”

“I am?” She looked down at his coat, coke stained, but no hair. Maybe he just didn’t notice it, nose blind, but with his eyes. “Gross.. Okay, let me wash this off and I’ll, yeah, I’ll be right back.”

He slipped into the back, past inventory and into the washroom. Running the faucet until it was hot to the touch, scrubbing the stick out of the fabric and tossing the rag over one shoulder.

By the time he got back out front, Delilah was ready. Purse over one shoulder and her book wedged beneath the other. “Ready?” She smiled, a fresh coat of lipstick, a clean veneer of white foundation, porcelain smooth, like a doll.

“Uh, yeah.” Richard pulled the coat back on, a bit wet at the back, but serviceable even in the chill. They walked outside right alongside one another, as he shoved both hands deep into his pockets.

She stopped at the front, setting the alarm on the pin pad and locking up. “So, spill, is there a reason you only work doubles?”

“Less days working, more time to myself?” Delilah shrugged, slipping the keys into her purse. “I don’t know, why does anyone do anything?”

“Still, waking up before dawn, getting back home after dusk? Sounds like a raw deal.”

“To each their own, but I don’t have to go to work tomorrow.” She tapped the end of her nose with the tip of her nail, like a blackened claw in the night. “Can you say the same?”

“Shit.. I guess not, fair point.” He sized her up as they set off down the block. “I don’t know the way, so..”

“I would hope not.” She poked fun, though Richard had no clue how she could stomach it. “I’m not looking for a second stalker.”

They rounded the block and made haste on the straightaway down the street. The last of the sun’s light had dipped below the horizon, replaced by the silvery kiss of the moon. Her porcelain skin glowed beneath its touch, rivulets of light caught in her raven hair.

She looked almost like a ghost. And when she took his arm in hers, it felt like the chill touch of the dead. “You’re freezing..”

“No, I’m-” She pulled back, hands raised with a smile. “I’m fine.”

“No, here-” He pulled his coat, draping it over her narrow shoulders. “There, you know, you look good in beige.” Cracking a smile, a chuckle on his lips. “Adds a bit of color.”

“Color, oh, is that something I need now?” She pulled the jacket tight around herself. Concealing her exposed skin, clean and clear, and white as snow.

“No, I mean, anyone can use color, you’re-” His nose was bitten red from the wind, his cheeks now flushed the same color. “Fucking with me, aren’t you.”

“Yes, I am.” She laughed, no cherry red nose or rosy cheeks for her. “I guess I was a bit too obvious.”

Another block came and went. “You don’t really think he’s going to, I mean, you aren’t in any danger are you?”

“Maybe, I mean, I’ve had stalkers before..” Her voice trailed, then a laugh on her lips, swallowing the nerves. “Don’t worry, he’s just some old pervert.”

“Yeah, well, he’s clearly violent.” Richard felt at his wrist, where he had met that man’s iron grip. For a man of his age to be as strong as all that- “And that smell-” Gunpowder, and salt, not a common combination.

She rapped him gently across the face. “I’m a big girl, I can take care of myself.”

“Is that so?” He hummed, massaging his jawline by the chin. “Now, I’m walking you home because?” They turned onto a row of townhouses. Peaceful little homes, brick facades, garages, two bedrooms, one and a half baths. This one had red shingles and green shutters, the next green green shingles and red shutters, then blue shutters and red shingles, and so on.

“Don’t be an asshole.” She rolled her eyes. “Being capable of taking care of yourself isn’t the same as wanting to.”

“Any reason?” Lawn-less, gardenless, just cold concrete stoops, the dim glow of kitchen lights and living room lamps pouring out onto the streets. “I mean, any reason I shouldn’t be an asshole?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I might remember why we’ve never gotten along.” Something smelt like cheap cigarettes, not menthols, some kind of long cut.

“Hey, I’ve never had a problem-”

“Don’t lie, you’ve never enjoyed working with me.” She pushed him, light, or meant to be by the switch of her wrist. All the same, he missed a step and nearly twisted his ankle.

“Hey-” He braced himself against the brick facade and kept moving. “I mean, I never meant to make you feel that way.” Richard scratched the back of his head. “I’m not much for this kinda work, if I seem angry it’s because..” I’m angry at myself. But he left the thought unspoken.

“I understand this isn’t where I saw myself at thirteen.”

“Thirteen? More like thirty three.” He laughed her off.

She laughed him off as they came to a dead stop in front of one of the townhouses. “This is me.” Much like all the rest, but this one had black shingles and ruby red shudders, somehow he could have guessed this one was hers. “So..”

“So, you need me to escort you to the door?” He raised an eyebrow. “I’d drape my jacket over the stairwell, but you’re wearing it.”

“No, it’s not that.” Delilah rolled her eyes. “It’s just-” She pulled the jacket tighter, even without a wind on them. “Do you want to come in for a night cap? I’m parched, and I could use the company, you know, just in case.”

“Just in case?” He crossed his arms against the cold; that black and grey Hawaiian shirt doing nothing to keep him warm. “I thought he wasn’t coming?”

“Think and know are two different things..” She pursed her lips. “Besides, I’d hate for you to walk home without your jacket.”

“Uh, yeah, you know what, I could use a drink.” Despite the cold, his hands were sweating, and he felt the heat at his cheeks in overdrive.

They made their way up the stairs and in through the front. The wood was polished with a black veneer; on the opposite side, the door was embossed with a dozen overlapping figures of queer, reptilian design.

The house was an eclectic mix of old and new. An oblong end table that ran the length of the narrow atrium could have been a century old, in the shadow of polished red wood banisters of the same style. The living room at the far end stood in sharp contrast, with polished marble tabletops and cold brass fixtures that would have been more at home at the turn of the century. Attached to a kitchen with granite countertops and stainless steel appliances that screamed twenty-first century. “Pass my compliments to your interior design.”

“Yeah, you can thank my dad.” Delilah gestured to an armchair, as if to command him to sit. “Pick your poison.”

“Dealers choice..” He mumbled in reply, turning eyes toward a portrait over the bar. A man with cold eyes in some kind of black surcoat, hair to match, pin straight and raven black, just like Delilah. “Your dad?”

“It’s from the seventeenth century.” She replied flatly, returning with a pair of White Russians in hand.

“You didn’t say no.” He took the crystal. “It would explain the taste.”

Delilah laughed at that, sweet and short. “I suppose it would.”

They sat in ‌awkward silence, sipping on their drinks. Richard cast queer glances at her from across the room. “So..” His voice trailed. “Is there a reason that an employee at Hot Tropic can afford a house?”

“A townhouse.” She corrected.

“Even still.” He gave in reply. “I live in a shoe box, and with what they pay us?”

“It’s his.” She added.

“You live with your parents?”

“Parent.” She corrected, crossing her legs. “And no I meant, his money bought it. He visits, rarely. But he does, from time to time.”

“Sorry about that.. what happened to-” Your mother. But he forced the words down, not that it made much difference; she was quick as a whip and filled in the blanks as fast as if they’d come from his own lips.

“My mother? It’s okay, you can say it.” She raised the glass to her lips, but when Delilah placed it on the table between them, not a drop seemed drained. “She, well, I didn’t have a mother.” He thought better of continuing that line of questioning.

“Well, your dad’s a generous man.” He took a sip of the drink, creamy, heavy on the tongue and rich like butter.

“Not really, but he means well, I think.” He eyed the portrait above them; its eyes seemed to follow wherever he went.

“Listen.” Richard cleared his throat, placing his glass, half drained, between them by hers. “I really ought to go.”

“So soon?”

“Well, not without my jacket first.” He forced a cough, eyeing the cheap fabric draped over her shoulders.

“Right..” She slipped out from it, revealing bare shoulders and naked skin, passing the coat over the table. He took it in hand, colder than it had been outside, carrying the chill of the night air with it. “Did you want to come upstairs?”

Richard pulled the jacket over his frame, stiff from the chill. “Why would I-” She was on him, an inch from his face. How did she move so gracefully? Without a sound? “Hello there-”

Delilah took his mouth into her, it was just like his dream. Though her lips were cold from the White Russian, stiff under the touch. Richard pulled back, rigid as a board, putting distance between them. “I, uh.. You have a lovely home.” He blurted out, forced, almost breathless.

Turning his eyes down and making for the exit. Until he felt that grip on his fingers, those nails tickling the inside of his palm. “What’s the hurry?” She cooed, leaning back, pulling him closer. Subtly, he hardly noticed the strength in her arms. Less when she wrapped those arms around his shoulders, draped about him like a cloak. Or a weight about his neck, perhaps.

“I need to get home to feed Rustle.. You know, my dog.” He added hastily. “You haven’t met, but-” Another icy kiss; it was too much, too fast. But her mouth was cold enough to numb his, and her tongue flicked about with practiced ease. “Why would we-” His voice cracked. “Why would we go up there? I mean, what would we even do..”

“I’m sure we could figure out something.” Delilah pulled him in closer, flush against her bosom, his forehead pressed up to hers.

“Could we?” He asked dumbly, and she took the lead. Taking his mouth into hers again. Pressing him up against the wall, half in his arms.

Like a game, he looked to be cast in the leading role, but she guided them from one vista to the next. The wall, the bannister, the stairwell, up against the bathroom door. Next he knew they were in ‌a bedroom, her bedroom?

The whole thing was purple and black, lace with curtains so thick they could blot out the Apocalypse beyond these windows. Richard tried to toss her onto the bed, but she tossed him instead, like a child with a doll. Then she was on him, like an animal, tearing off his shirt, running a coarse tongue over his chest.

This was a dream; it had to be. But she unbuckled his belt, and he pulled down his pants in reply, caught up in the whimsy of it. Her flesh was like butter under his fingers, cold as ice, but he knew how to warm her up. Makeup smudged under his touch, like fresh paint smearing pasty white and black.

Then she was on him, forcing him into the mattress, and he was in her. Rough at first, then oddly gentle. It felt.. perfect; she was perfect, as her hips rolled over him like a wave lapping at the shore. Or, wait, it didn’t feel perfect. Not really. There was something missing. Wet and- Warmth, she wasn’t warm at all, inside or out. No, she was cold as any cadaver.

“Delilah?” He tried to speak, as she showered him in pointed kisses, a bit more teeth at every pass. “Delilah, I’m not sure you’re- Delilah, I think we need to get you to the-” Then her teeth sunk into his lip. Pleasant at first, as he melted back into the fabric. But it turned painful fast, as blood pooled beneath her bite.

Richard tried to push her off of him, but her frigid body was hard as stone, immovable unless she wished it so. He jerked head back, pulling his lips free, bleeding, but whole. “What the fuck?!” In the dark of the room she hardly looked the woman he knew; the weak light from downstairs caught in the crimson that stained those pearly white teeth, sharp as knives now. Had they always been so sharp?

He tried to squirm out from under her, but she pressed him harder against the sheets, those black nails claws piercing his tender flesh. “Fuck!” He yelped. “This isn’t, it’s not funny-” Then a bitter pinch, as her teeth sunk into him. Just by the collarbone, where the neck meets the body.

Richard could hear her sucking and slurping, lapping at his gaping wound. No, it wasn’t possible. This was insane. This, this was a nightmare, some kind of horrible nightmare. A funhouse mirror of last night’s dream. Any minute now Rustle would wake him up and.. and..

A tongue ran over him, but it wasn’t Rustle’s. This tongue was long like a rope and strong as an arm. Rough as steel wool, and in its passing it peeled back skin like so much wet tissue paper.

Then a spattering of ice cold crimson on his face, forcing one eye closed. “Wow there beastie!” It smelt like gunpowder and salt.

Richard saw as Delilah’s rock hard body was pulled back from his, cast aside on the floor. “Damn it, we’re too late.. Dumb little shit heel.” No, it wasn’t too late, was it? He tried to speak, but only a painful groan, wet with his own blood, slipped from his lips.

“Oh damn, look at you!” The old man laughed. Even at night, in the dark of this room, he had those damn sunglasses on. “Wow, hold on now, you’re in shock. Try to.. stay calm, alright? Calm?” His coworker, no, the girl he- Whatever she was to him, she had been eating him, she had been- “Now, that right there is exactly what I’m talking about, you’re gonna bleed out like that. Think of, I don’t know, puppies and bunnies or boobs, no, not boobs. Something that makes you happy, but not horny.. okay?” He leaned over Richard, applying pressure to the wound, pain, red hot shooting pain. “Try to hold some of the sheets right-”

Then it was gone; a shadow in the dark had pulled the man off‌ the bed. Slammed him into the neighboring wall. Cracking the glass of the vanity behind it. Delilah? No, it couldn’t be; it carried her shape, her tenure, but it couldn’t have been. It was too fast, too strong, too.. monstrous.

The old man stabbed at the dark shade with a knife twice as long as his hand. Giving him just enough room to breathe. “I bet you don’t like that, do you?” The creature hissed, something familiar in it, something short and sweet, cold through and through. “Come on then..” He reversed the grip. “Come and get me!”

Richard grasped for the edge of the sheets, pressing them up to his tattered flesh. Flush painfully against the wound. But the blood kept coming, visible even against the black of the bedspread. Shit. He said. Or tried to, but it came out as a spurt of bile from tattered lips.

Delilah, or rather the thing that had been Delilah, tossed the silver-haired man from one end of the room to the other in not so impotent rage. Crashing into the dresser, snapping the legs under his weight. “You’re strong for your age..” The old man wheezed. “That or I’m getting slow.”

It must have been one of the two, if not a bit of both, as the creature snatched his head with those black claws, like wrought iron. And began to squeeze, like one might a grape between teeth. The old man struggled and flailed. Hitting her arm with a closed fist, tearing into porcelain skin with those rusty nails. But it was no use; none of it seemed to stop her, not even for a moment. Only the knife and he must have lost it in the scuffle, since Richard saw no sign of the garish thing.

Delilah sprouted a stake between her bosom, black blood pooling at her lips, leaking down porcelain white skin. She looked at Richard from behind those thick, curtain eyelashes, and he thought she wanted help, companionship. In that moment at least, those eyes were heavy, not hungry; they wanted.. him. And something deep inside him forced him to his feet, to help. But Richard didn’t get far, toppling back into the bed, inches from the start. His only reward was a faster bleed.

Whatever her unnatural pull upon him, he didn’t get to think about it for long. Next he knew, her head rolled free from her shoulders. As the old man took her by the hair with one hand and sawed off her head at the neck with his recovered knife. Leaving a stump leaking black bile, and that head, that beautiful head-

“That was a close one..” She wheezed.

“No shit Alisa, what the fuck were you thinking coming in like that?!” He barked. “I told you to stay in the car?”

“Me?! If I stayed in the car you would be dead, John!” The girl bit back, the one from the bus. With her baggy clothes and the stink of cheap.. cigarettes. They’d been waiting for them here; they knew. They knew.

His blood boiled at their knowledge of it, but more at the lingering indignity of Delilah’s death. Struggling again to stand, even as his vital life force slipped out of his body. The cold pressing in around him, even surrounded by his own lukewarm fluids and the embrace of the silken sheets.

“He’s still alive?” The girl asked.

“Not for long.” The man replied, Richard could hear the weight of his boots, but his vision went first. Lost to that creeping glacial chill. “Didn’t I tell you to stay calm?”

“Not exactly easy.” She added sympathetically. “Is he going to make it?”

Richard forced bubbles to his lips, crimson roiling at the surface. “Depends what you mean, he’s got a few minutes, a little longer if we help.. but not much.”

“And a doctor?” She pressed.

“Uh, yeah, a doctor could work, sure. They do some crazy-” He looked at his daughter. “No, no, no. We’re not sticking our necks out again. Another Nashville is off the table.”

“It won’t be like Nashville, we just get him to a hospital and we-” Richard could feel her hands, soft as silk and warm against his frigid flesh. “We-”

“We what? This is your problem kid, you never think things through, we get him, blood and all in the van and then?”

“We dump him, or we, I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far ahead!” She sounded younger than she was there, like a child almost.

“You never think that far ahead!” He snapped. “I’m not always going to.. Fuck, kid, you have to! Even if that wouldn’t bring the cops on us.. With a bite like that? If he loses the last of his blood-”

“He’s not going to! If we help him!” She protested, trying to hoist Richard up on her own. “Now help me, we just have to- Mister, if you could help a little it would-” Only succeeding in tossing him to the ground. “Fuck! Look what you’ve done!”

“Me? This was your idea, you wanted to hunt a Vampire, sweetie.”

“No, with this cadaver, asshole!” She barked back, loud, too loud. Loud enough that the neighbors would hear. Yes, they’d hear, and they’d call for help. He just has to hold out, just long enough for them to- “Fuck! We’re supposed to help people, dad! We’re supposed to-” Her dad pulled her back up to her feet, into his arms, cries muffled by his coat.

“We are, honey, believe me. We are protecting people. Even him. He’s a man now right? Doesn’t he deserve to go out as one?” Richard heard the shuffle of feet as they exchanged places and heavy footsteps on the approach. “I’m not sure if you can hear me good in there kid, but I’m gonna make this as quick and clean as I can. Okay? I’ll be damned if that- That thing is dragging you to Hell with it..”

Richard’s blood flowed faster, his chest tightened. That could only mean one thing. Yet his words projected from that icy black void where he had lived mere moments and eons together, came out as nothing but garbled spittle. His own blood hacked up, fresh crimson leaving smears against his teeth. “See, sugar, he wants this. See?”

“That could have been anything, a yes, a no, a death spasm-”

“Death spasm!” The old man shouted back. “See, DEATH spasm. You said it, not me.”

“Fine.. Whatever, you win.. you always win.” She sighed in abject exhaustion. Richard could feel rough hands on his body, pawing at him. Not her hands, for certain.

“I’m taking whatever isn’t nailed down.” The girl replied, footsteps out and over, lingering at the doorway. No, you can’t go. No, please.

“And won’t make a fuss?!” He called after. “I don’t want anything we can’t fence in the next city over, okay?” Blood seeped between his teeth, filling his mouth, as Richard put the last of his strength to work.

“Why don’t you focus on dolling this scene up, trying to make it look like they weren’t butchered by two serial killers?” Richard spasmed, moving ever so slightly, until the old man placed a gloved hand on his chest. Holding him firm in place.

“When have I let you down honey?” The old man replied, Richard could hardly hear anymore, but he could feel the vibration of each word through their touch. “Don’t answer that.” Footsteps away, away from the room, from him. Shaking the floorboards with each step.

Then the sharpening of a knife. Even in the haze of his delirium, Richard could hear a sound so clear, so focused. And he could feel tears pooling in his eyes, too. “Don’t worry, kid, I’ll make it quick.”

Richard clenched his fists with the last of his strength, willing himself to wake. This was a dream; it had to be a dream. No, he couldn’t die. He had plants to water, and neighbors.‌ Rustle, he thought exactly; he had Rustle to take care of. God wouldn’t, no, He couldn’t. “Listen, when you get to the Pearly Gates, put in a good word for me, right? I mean, I tried to warn you, huh?” The last thing he felt was that iron grip against his hair, and the fine edge of that blade carving through his throat.

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Chronicles of the IV is a podcast series covering my original short stories. Horror, dark fantasy, suspense, sci-fi, dystopian, and weird fiction, expect a bit of everything. New episodes release on Tuesdays.

Great for active listening, a commute to work, or tunes to fall asleep to, I have been told I have a good voice for putting people to sleep. In a good way, I think.

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Gatekeeping is lame. But you’re not lame. So don’t forget to share with friends. And thanks, for helping to grow our community!

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Horror, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, e-read or audiobook, we do it all. For more original works from F.P. Dawe and readings from your favorite classics, subscribe below!

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Gatekeeping is lame. But you’re not lame. So don’t forget to share with friends. And thanks, for helping to grow our community!

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Horror, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, e-read or audiobook, we do it all. For more original works from F.P. Dawe and readings from your favorite classics, subscribe below!

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“Listen, honey, it’s okay.” The warmth of her breath against the back of his neck, the silken touch of her fingers wrapped around him from behind. “You did your best, and that’s all-”

“Don’t do that.” He replied, the words like crushed ice between his teeth.

“Don’t do what?” She pulled back; he could feel her nails at the outer edges of his skin.

“That, don’t do.. that.” Richard rolled his eyes. He was lanky, all skin and bones, with the look of gristle to him to compliment the taste.

“I’m just trying to be supportive.” She pouted. He turned to her, hair raven black and skin whiter than snow, lips colored blue, eyes two deep copper pools. “You know, I’m doing my best too..”

“I know, I’m sorry honey, I’m sorry Delilah.” He took her narrow shoulders in hand, holding her tight against his body. Her bodice was soft like satin cushions, strapped into her skin tight dress, dark as her hair. “I’m just trying to figure out how we go forward, I-”

“I can get a job you know, two incomes are better than one..” She let the thought hang.

“No, no, my wife isn’t going to work. Not on my watch..” He gritted his teeth. “Or, not unless she wants to.”

“If it means getting my husband back? Yeah, I’m more than happy to.” She ran fingers gently over his back, tracing shapes with the edge of her crimson nails. A pop of color in her otherwise dower appearance. “Its not like managing a Hot Topic is a big money maker..” Hot Topic? What the heck was a Hot Topic?

She pressed forward, lips against his, as she took his mouth with hers. Richard closed his eyes, letting her guide them, letting her lead. Warm and wet, she tasted of spring, teeth smooth as porcelain and-

Wait, wet, why was it wet? So wet everywhere. Sloppy even. Was she licking his face? Yes, she was definitely licking his face. A tongue rough like sandpaper, leaving skin stripped raw in the passing.

His eyes opened, lids heavy, mouth dry. Only to find his wild-eyed corgi pinning him to the bedspread with stunted legs. “Rustle..” He tried to push the dog back, but the little man only redoubled his efforts. “Rustle!”

The bite of it alone was enough that the dog pulled back, eyes narrowed in suspicion, but tail all a wag. “You’re a little shit, you know that?” Rustle yipped his approval, and Richard ran a hand behind the little guy’s ears. “A little shit.” He smiled inwardly, a crack of mirth in his stony facade. “That’s you.” Who dreams about being the manager of some retail dump? Jesus, that was a sad thought, a sadder life.

He found his feet, tossing the sheets off his body. Boxers, better than sleeping in the nude, and nearly as freeing. Richard stumbled to the vanity. Pulled the drawer out and grabbed a pre-rolled joint, and a second that he slid behind his ear.

Richard shook the speakers, wiping dust from the mesh and reinserting the cable into the dock. A hum as he hit shuffle on his iPod Classic, and the setup sprung to life in reply. Once bright white, now stained a sickly brownish-yellow, old, like him, like he felt.

“She was living in a single room with three other individuals.” He mimicked the audio, the sample at the start. “One of them was male and the other two? Well, the other two were females.” Richard knew this song like the back of his hand.

“God only knows what they were up to in there.” Richard kicked open the bathroom door, Rustle hot on his heels. “And furthermore, Susan, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to learn that all four of them habitually smoked marijuana cigarettes.” He took up the mouthwash, a neon blue that clung to the teeth. A swig from the bottle, swishing and sloshing the liquid from side to side, then a swallow.

Casting it aside and turning a glance down. “Reefers..” Followed by the sound of a water bong rippling. Enough to send little Rustle running.

He looked in the mirror, deep purple bags swallowed his eyes, a long, horse’s face. Hollow cheeks and tired eyes, his hair sticking up and out in every direction like a bird in spring. Richard snatched the dry shampoo, spraying down his scalp. “Good enough..”

Across the singular room to the kitchen, a depression in the wall with a mini fridge and a bunsen burner he lifted off some high schooler. He lit the burner and kissed the joint between his lips with a cherry bright as blood. A drag, a sharp inhale, sending a hazy wave of relief over him. “That’s the good stuff..” Rustle could hardly contain himself, vibrating like an eggbeater.

“Okay, okay, shit.. You’re like a wind up toy, get you going and-” Richard blew a long line of heavy, grey, almost white smoke into the little guy’s snout. “That ought to help.”

“Breakfast?” The little thing cocked its head and fell flat on its haunches. He poured out the kibble into one bowl and cereal into the other, mixing them up as he passed the two along to their final destination. “Shit, no!” Pulling back the dry cereal with a chuckle, as he swapped the two. “Chocolate is people food.”

Kibble in paw, Rustle dug in greedily, as Richard took another hit. “That’s good stuff..” He exhaled through his nose, great billowing plumes of that pale white smoke, stinking to high heaven.

He pulled open the fridge, empty, or nearly so, with a queer smell to it, like mothballs. Richard took a carton of milk; it smelled like bad eggs and sloshed like cheese curds. A frown on his lips, he grabbed the last of a six-pack.

Pouring the cheap beer over his cereal and taking that first bite. Terrible, truly terrible. But he finished it, every last spoonful. Before tossing the dishes into the sink.

The concoction sat in his stomach hard as a rock, and just as heavy. He brought the can to his lips, the taste of tin mixing with the sour bite of the amber fluid. Swallowing one, two, three gulps. As he crushed the can and tossed it into the trash bag pinned up by the door.

He swung by the vanity again, a pair of mat black jeans, a pressed black Hawaiian shirt splattered with grey flowers, and a pair of raven black leather boots. Laced

“You gonna watch the place for me, Rustle?” The dog yipped its reply, mouth shedding crumbs from the kibble he made short work of. “Alright, I’ll be back soon. Try not to tear the place up, or-” He shrugged.

Richard slipped the second joint from behind his air and lit it against the burner, throwing a mat black zip up over his uniform. Outside the door and down the hall, a trail of smoke in his wake. This wasn’t what he imagined; what he imagined being at twenty-three. A deadbeat dropout in a studio he could hardly afford, wasn’t that the way.

He hopped into the elevator, smoke heavy and wet, pooling nearest his feet. The sixth floor, starting off for the fifth, no, stopping. As the double doors, polished to a sheen, opened and an old lady shuffled inside, waving off the smoke, nose scrunched up in disgust.

Cheralin, from just down the hall, a batty old lady with wrinkled skin and drooping, sad eyes. Pearly white dentures behind rosy pink lipstick, and a wicker cane between long, crone like fingers, ending in nails of the same color.

She had that sad look about her, a look he saw far too often. The look of someone who had never lived. Hollowed out now, sad and alone in a dump like this. It must have been hard, spending your golden years, just before the sunset.. here.

The doors shut with a clang, and the pair continued their descent. Smoke filling the narrow confines. She tapped on the sign by the emergency stop, red with white letters.

“Thanks.” He took another puff, rolling his eyes. “I can’t read, so that was really helpful, lady.”

She frowned, a frightening thing, like one might imagine a witch or a hag in some torrid tale. “No smoking. You’re in an elevator.”

“See, thanks, now I know.” Another floor, another puff. As he leaned back against the cold steel.

“So?” She let the question hang.

“So what?” Richard shrugged. “I never said I was going to stop, I can just, I don’t know, feel bad about it now.”

“Wait until I tell the landlord-” Cheralin hummed.

“We’re only allowed one pet, right?” He replied, a light cough as it threatened to sink down the wrong pipe. “I only ask because I coulda sworn I heard more than one cat in your apartment. But that couldn’t be right, after all, that’d be breaking the rules.” She fell quiet, lips flattened into a bitter line to match Richard’s thin smile. He took another puff, with the passing of another floor passed. And she cleared her throat in reply.

“Those things will kill you.” She crowed as they made the final approach to the ground floor.

“Shit, really? Here I thought this was medicine!” He feigned distress, hitting his forehead with the flat of his palm. “You’re just full of wisdom, aren’t you?” A ding as the doors pulled open. “Really, this conversation has given me a whole new outlook on life!” He emerged dramatically from the elevator, stomping the remains of the joint under his boot; it was burned down to the roach anyhow. “You’ve saved a life here, you know that? SAVED A LIFE. Tell me, what are you going to tackle next global food insecurity? World peace?”

Cheralin shuffled past him, briskly for a woman of her years, almost impressively. “Bitch.”

“Damn, that was wildly out of character for you, my hero!” He called after her as she pushed her way into the chill of the early morning. “What wisdom will you share next?! We’re all- Ah shit, she can’t hear me anymore.” Richard shoved freed hands in his pockets and shuffled out into the streets.

The street was narrow, one way, traffic flowing out and away, always. Like a vein racing to the most distant corners of the body. Watching cars zip past, he couldn’t help but wonder where they were going. A game he had played since he was knee high, guessing where the planes were heading, off on holiday, London, Paris, the Costa del Sol. He would imagine them, imagine that he was going with them to some distant, sunny shore, a paradise. But they never did.

Yet here he was, an adult, always the observer, never the passenger, wondering where they were off to. The city was like that: old, a bit disorganized. These streets weren’t superhighways; they were built for streetcars and horse-drawn carriages, foot traffic, not cars and trucks. Once they had been cobbled roads, until they pulled up the stones and paved them over with asphalt. Something sad about that; finally, out with the old, in with the new.

That was before his time, of course, but his grandmother spoke of it like a memory, a recollection, not a recitation. So he imagined it must have happened sometime in the thirties or twenties at the absolute earliest. Of course, some parts of the roadways were still cobbled to this day, and boy could you feel it when you hit them. A series of tiny tremors passing up your bones and through your body, leaving your teeth chattering and your brain a smoothie.

Richard rounded the corner, crossed the street, and passed up to the bus stop. Most days he would race up to the stop just in time, Murray, the bus driver, loitering, waiting up on him an extra minute or two. Other days he would miss the bus, those days he had to wait another half an hour for the next scheduled bus. Ended up being the better part of an hour late to work, knock on effect: if you’re late, you might as well be extra late, he supposed. Not that he minded much, being late, folding shirts and arranging leather bracelets isn’t exactly brain surgery.

Today he was on time, though oddly on time, surrounded by the familiar faces of the other fair-goers. He had been riding this bus for two years straight now, he could picture the mole on the right side of that old black man’s face, imagine the grey hairs in that Mexican’s mustache, recall the color of the blonde’s cap, red, obviously, matched her eyes. But he didn’t know them by name, for as much as he had seen them, overheard their chatter and the like, they were nothing but strangers to him. Odd, how you can be in someone’s life so often and never get noticed, Richard wondered about that. Just how many lives was he an extra in?

Stranger still, one in the set didn’t belong. An older gentleman, but fit. A trench cut leather jacket and a pair of dark blue aviators. Make that two, on the far side, past mustache, a woman, more a girl really, close in age to him, in baggy jeans and a loose flannel. Weird. Maybe this is what happens when you’re on time: it gives you time. Time to watch, to see people, to notice things you wouldn’t otherwise.

Not that he noticed as the bus approached, lost in his own world, not until the doors hissed open. As they shuffled aboard, past the sliding doors, and Murray, cap tipped downward, covering his eyes. Smelling of his cheap cigar. Richard took his seat as the rest filed by. Mustache passed him by, smelling of oranges and vanilla. The blonde in her red cap, smelling of floral. The black man with the mole, smelling of waffles.

And he imagined, imagined what brought them here. Mustache just finished up making a week’s worth of flan. The blonde just bought a vial of her favorite discontinued perfume. Mole had a lovely breakfast with his wife of forty years.

Then the strangers, the girl in the clothes three sizes too big, stinking of cigarettes. Sounding like a wind chime with every step, golden jewelry and silver chains. She took a seat nearest the back, a ways away from the bulk of the passengers.

The man, with the silvery hair and the thick trench, eyes hidden behind sunglasses, looked like the lenses on a fly. Fingerless wool gloves stained yellow, showing off his ragged nails, a ruddy brown with a film of earth packed beneath. He smelt of gunpowder and salt, and looked like he’d spent the last week on the street. Sitting beside her, despite the many open seats. For her part, the girl inched up against the window, forehead pressed to the glass, turning eyes to the world outside.

The engine roared, leaving acrid plumes of smog in its wake. Richard leaned against the headrest, exhausted before the day had truly begun. They zipped through busy streets; the asphalt live with cars honking and foot traffic, fist shaking and voices raised. None of which seemed overly concerned by the other’s rights.

Murray brought the bus to a stop under a lead foot with a raucous hiss from the moribund brakes. It was sandwiched between a Patty Emperor and a McDermotts, just two blocks from the strip mall he worked at.

Back into the chill of mid-morning, hands buried deep in his pockets, collar up to block the wind. Eyes heavy, nose sniffling. He got up alone, always alone. No one took this stop, or, not in his estimation. Not until today.

Today was different. Today that silver-haired man took this stop, right alongside him. Lighting a cigarette on the bench. Richard thought he was watching him, but no, no, that couldn’t be. The glasses blocked the eyes beyond; this old man, this stranger, could have been looking at anyone.

So off he went, down the street and rounding the block, three crosswalks, a hop, a skip and a hop, and he was there. Between a Charles E. Fromage and an Arctic Juice.

Richard shuffled through the parking lot, eyes down and back bent, pushing his way inside the store. The lights were on already, only halfway up, dim, not dark. That’s where the real fear was: in the mystery. Too dark,‌ and there are no shadows to be misconstrued, no haunting images for the brain to fill in. No, light can exist without dark, and dark without light, but that haunting twilight? That place where shadows and monsters live? That needed both in equal measure.

“Here I thought you would be late again..” Delilah sat, legs crossed in a bone white corset over a black blouse and matching skirt. Sat in the back, behind the register, book in hand, red-rimmed eyes watching him, lips dark as coal.

“Fuck..” He nearly fell in surprise. Yet, when that danger passed, and he noticed who was speaking, his cheeks flushed a rosy red, in vague memory of the dream he had last night. “Yeah, I’m- Guess not. How long have you been here?”

Richard made for the back room. “Since sun up.”

“How do you do that?” He pulled the coat free, hanging it by the back exit, cool morning air creeping under the frame.

“Do what?”

“Get here so early, shit, it’s all I can do to pull myself outta bed.”

“Well..” She flipped the page, eyes cast down to the words. “I don’t smoke much weed, so.. It’s pretty easy for me.” Delilah teased.

He frowned. “Doing the best you can, sure.. Have you taken inventory yet?”

“Noooo..” Her sing-song word stretched into the horizon, eyes still fixed on her book.

“Alright, are you going to watch the front Delilah or inventory in the back?”

“What do you think?” She rolled those dinner plate eyes of hers.

“Neither, but you have to do one of them.” Richard flattened out his shirt.

“Oh, do I?” She batted those heavy lashes, pursed those charcoal lips.

“Yes-” His voice cracked under the pressure. “Yes, uh, yes you do.” He tried to put some iron behind his words this time.

“Fine, I’ll take the front.” Delilah slammed her book shut, cracking as the pages met in the middle, clamped between her pallid fingers. “Go along little man.” She shooed him off with nails like tiny knives. “Go on, go on. Shoo.”

Richard shook his head. Why did he let her talk to him like that? Maybe it was true. If you don’t respect yourself, no one will. The thought lingered as he made for the backroom.

Box cutter in one hand and a scanner in the other. One box at a time. Slicing through cardboard and tape, like a knife cuts a cake. One after the other, Hawaiian shirts, swim trunks, collars, bracelets, sunscreen. Who thought it was a good idea to make a beach shop for goths?

Unloading the goods, organizing them onto carts by-product and size. Deep shades of blue and purple, black of course, and bone white, like a dirty grey. Sell what sells; dump the rest.

He wheeled the cart out front, past the backroom and into the display area. Unloading shirts in neat stacks nearest the appropriate display stands. “Delilah! I’ve got the first load from the back!” No reply, and as the first customers of the day trickled in, he dared not raise his voice any higher.

Richard left the cart behind by the vestibule, circling the storefront. “Delilah? Delilah?!” Familiar faces greeted him, pallid under a heavy cover of makeup, on the men and the women both. Richard thought they looked a bit like dolls, playing a role, like puppets on a string. “Delilah?”

Among the faces, one stood out: an older man with silvery hair and blue ray bands covering his eyes, even inside in the gloom of the storefront. The man from the bus, he didn’t look much like a goth, not even an emo. But here he was, looking over the chokers by the register. God, he hoped that wasn’t for the girl he was lingering around on the bus.

“Delilah?” Richard kept up his search. “Delilah?!” He found her in the changing room, legs up, door locked. “Delilah, I can hear you in there..”

“Is he gone?” She asked, like a whisper.

“Who?”

“That old guy, he’s been in here the past three days.” She replied through the flimsy pressboard of the changing room door.

“The one with the ray bands?” Richard asked impatiently. Fingers strumming against his hips.

“Yeah, how did you-”

“He’s the only old guy out there, besides, I saw him on the bus.” He shot a glance toward the door; he couldn’t see the guy, but he could feel his presence. His stink. “Gives me the creeps.”

“Right?” She sounded so small back there, no hint of the bitch that was busting his balls earlier.

“I can’t do all this alone, listen, if I get rid of him will you come back and do your job?” No reply. “Well, will you?”

“I nodded!” She replied, aghast. “Yes, I nodded yes.”

“Delilah. I can’t see you..” He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Fine, I’ll handle this, then straight back to work. Okay?” No reply. “Are you nodding? Delilah, I can’t see you..”

“Yes, back to work.” She echoed.

“Okay, I’ll handle it.” Back out into the storefront, he found the old man by the lace panties. And Richard prayed they weren’t for that girl from the bus.

“Hey, Sir, yes, you-” Richard jogged up beside the old man, a cup of brown bubbly from McDermott’s in hand.

“Yes?” He noisily sucked on the straw. “What do you want? I’m busy.”

“Listen, we’ve-” There was that smell again, salt and soot, and the smell of gunpowder and oil. Lighter than before, as if he had tried to cover it halfheartedly. “We’ve, uh, had some complaints. Respectfully, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“Is that right?” The man straightened out his back, seeming taller than he had been, broader too. Had his shoulders always been so wide? “Tell me, is that you speaking? Or the girl?”

“The girl? What girl?” His eyes widened a click. “Delilah?”

“If that’s what you want to call her.” The old man pulled back a sleeve, revealing a brand on the inner side of the forearm. “Does this have any meaning to you?”

Richard stepped back, but the old man snatched him by the wrist. “Tell me, boy!” He barked, breath reeking of onions and garlic. “Tell me, what does this mean to you?”

The man dropped the soda onto the floor; the lid popped, and the ice and suds covered the carpeting. “What is wrong with you?!” People watched, but didn’t move. Then he gripped Richard by the cheeks. Forcing him to look, to see.

“Huh, look! What does it mean to you boy?!” The brand was a simple geometric configuration. Six overlapping lobes, arranged around a circular core, and the same at the outer edges. It looked a bit like an eye, no, a flower, and more than a bit. Some strange outline of a lotus, perhaps, but it meant nothing to Richard, and his face betrayed that fact all too well.

“I see..” The silver-haired stranger hummed, releasing his grip, letting Richard plummet into a display case. As he plummeted to the ground, his mind clear with the pain, as the pleasant buzz faded into the background. “Tell her I know what she is, boy. Tell her that.” What a fucking weirdo. “Tell her.”

Then he was gone, customers crowding around Richard, helping him up to his feet. He felt the warm wetness at the back of his skull, where a gash wept its bloody tears. “Fuck..” He mumbled, accepting the aid. “Thanks..”

“Are you okay?” One asked.

“I’m calling the cops.” Another put in.

“I’m fine, thanks guys, I’m good, I’m good. Really, I’m good.” He forced a smile, glimpsing Delilah out of the corner of his eye. Loitering back by the changing rooms. “Just, gonna get some air.”

Richard pushed his way through the small crowd that had formed around him, platelets clotting a wound, outside into the open air of the street. Well, open air might have been an oversell; the air was acrid, next to caustic, and the sun hardly pierced the thick cloud cover above.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. Sucking air through his mouth, as he palmed for a cigarette. Fuck, his jacket, he’d left them. Richard leaned back against the brick facade, slowly sliding his way down to the sidewalk.

A few scraps and bruises, that’s what he had to show for it. But he knew full well it could have been worse, much worse. The man might have been old, but he was strong, crazy strong. He could have beaten him bloody with a hand tied behind his back, hell, maybe even both.

Richard stayed out there by the curb a while longer; it was nice being outside under the sun, weak as she was this time of year. Hot Tropic was, despite the name, sealed up tight. Hardly a glimmer of natural light reached the storefront; he supposed it fit the aesthetic, but it wasn’t exactly pleasant.

It took ten minutes and thirty-nine seconds for the cops to show up. A flash of their lights, and the siren ran on one of the two cars for a fleeting moment. Richard found his footing and made his way back inside. He wasn’t overly fond of cops, not in the best of times and certainly not in the worse. Even if this seemed the kind of thing they ought to be good at helping with.

The cops staggered inside, four of them. Three men and one woman. One black, one Asian, and two white. One old, and three young, one of which had a baby face. He imagined, as ever he did, the lives they led, the homes they came from, what they had been doing before the call came in. Not for long. Richard had quite the imagination, but without bud to fuel it, that imagination grew lethargic.

“As I understand it, you’re the primary victim?” The girl, or woman rather, asked. She had tawny skin, blue eyes and raven hair, tied back in a tight bun.

“What?” He asked dumbly, too distracted by her dimples and almond eyes to come up with a more elegant reply. “Sorry, I-”

“No need to apologize, Sir, just need your statement.. Whenever you’re ready?” She flipped open a notepad.

“Oh, right, yeah, my statement..” He let the words hang, buying him what precious few seconds they could. “I don’t know. The guy has been loitering around the store for a few days now, apparently-”

“Apparently? Why apparently?” Already with the questions, though a cop asking questions was probably preferable to one filling in each blank on their own.

“Oh, well, I was off for that stretch. But my coworker, Delilah, she said he’d been here before. Don’t buy anything, thing is I saw him in the bus to work too-”

“And how did the altercation begin?” The officer diligently scribbled in her notepad.

“Oh, that’s easy, I asked him to leave. That’s when he grabbed me, started talking nonsense and showed me a scar he had on his arm.. well, more a brand really.” Richard shrugged.

“Can you describe it?” More scribbles.

“Uh, sure, like six overlapping circles, or lobes.. petals really, because it made some kind of odd flower.”

“Is there anything else that stood out?”

“No, I couldn’t see his eyes past those ray bands, and the coat covered almost everything else..” He thought for a moment, snapping his fingers when it clicked. “He smelt though, gunpowder, and salt, I guess? I know, probably a weird combination.”

“Not as weird as you might think.” Her eyes narrowed as if something clicked.

“And his breath reeked of onions and garlic.”

“Thank you for your time.” She passed her card; it read Officer Emila Garcia. “If you think of anything else.”

“You’re going to get him right?” Richard asked. “I’m not too worried about myself-” He didn’t want to sound like some kind of loser. “My coworker, he was, you know, freaking her out.”

“We’ll do our best, something tells me this won’t be too difficult.” She eyed the card between his fingers. “Don’t lose it.” Then she was gone, the cops hung around for a few hours still. Milling about, asking for statements from.the onlookers, Officer Garcia went straight to Delilah.

Richard went back to work, nose to the grindstone, hands turned to their task. By the time the cops left, the storefront had largely cleared out, the tip jar was full for the first time in his memory, and the hour grew late.

Chronicles of the IV is a podcast series covering my original short stories. Horror, dark fantasy, suspense, sci-fi, dystopian, and weird fiction, expect a bit of everything. New episodes release on Tuesdays.

Great for active listening, a commute to work, or tunes to fall asleep to, I have been told I have a good voice for putting people to sleep. In a good way, I think.

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Gatekeeping is lame. But you’re not lame. So don’t forget to share with friends. And thanks, for helping to grow our community!

Share The World of F. P. Dawe

Horror, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, e-read or audiobook, we do it all. For more original works from F.P. Dawe and readings from your favorite classics, subscribe below!

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Chronicles of the IV is a podcast series covering my original short stories. Horror, dark fantasy, suspense, sci-fi, dystopian, and weird fiction, expect a bit of everything. New episodes release on Tuesdays.

Great for active listening, a commute to work, or tunes to fall asleep to, I have been told I have a good voice for putting people to sleep. In a good way, I think.

Leave a comment

Gatekeeping is lame. But you’re not lame. So don’t forget to share with friends. And thanks, for helping to grow our community!

Share The World of F. P. Dawe

Horror, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, e-read or audiobook, we do it all. For more original works from F.P. Dawe and readings from your favorite classics, subscribe below!

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

Gatekeeping is lame. But you’re not lame. So don’t forget to share with friends. And thanks, for helping to grow our community!

Share The World of F. P. Dawe

Horror, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, e-read or audiobook, we do it all. For more original works from F.P. Dawe and readings from your favorite classics, subscribe below!

Subscribe now

Polanski had spent his entire life in the shadow of this factory. His father had worked it, his father before him, on and on as far as memory and records both went. He had grown up in its shadow, in the smog choked streets of his little slice of Warsaw, two blocks in either direction. He had been born there; he had lived there, and one day, by the grace of God above, he would die there.

Two blocks, a pen without fencing, yet even still he had never crossed beyond those arbitrary bounds. Not by decree, but by necessity, or the lack of it. His family was within those bounds, his chapel where the Father anointed him in oil and ash, his next meal, his home and the bed he rested his head upon, one day, when God saw fit, his wife and children yet born to him.

The air was heavy with soot, a healthy layer of earth to coat a man, inside and out. Lips dry and cracked, bleeding from time to time, rivulets of crimson decay. Always in various states of half healed construction, a work in progress, in pursuit of the perfection of the Lord.

Only twenty-two and already his entire life was visible from one end to the next. To live, to work, to die. A son, a worker, a father, a Christian, all in one. He had almost forgotten the color of his flaxen hair, now mat black, heavy with soot, the color of his skin, now and forever smeared with the memory of those acrid plumes, stained charcoal black. Even the color of his eyes was a mystery long forgotten, hidden behind the red lenses of his goggles.

So he sat there, as he did every day, from dawn till dusk, ass sore and back bent like some ape of a man. Deafened by the thunder of the conveyor-belt, the crash of wrought iron and the squealing of the damned. One by one the product and purpose of his labors rolled by, lumps of silent flesh, pallid pink skin, smooth as a baby’s bottom and just as soft.

The tool of his trade, a bolt gun in one hand, the other clad in a thick leather glove, stained the same ashen black as everything else. As he ran fingers over the puddles of pink flesh. Checking for the proper number of legs: four. The expected number of eyes, two. The right number of teeth, forty-four. Any deviation, any mutation could be a sign of the infernal, a sign of the workings of damnation.

Mere seconds to cut the wheat from the chaff, to chart a proper course. Amateurs tried to count each feature, but amateurs didn’t last long. Those with a hair more skill, talent, whatever one might call it, felt in wide strokes. But the best men, like Polanski, they could smell it through the iron and the saccharine soot. It took but a sniff or a glance to cut the tumor from the whole.

His was the last line of defense; rows of men stood between a porcine pupa and the feeding pens where their ilk grew to monstrous size for the slurry. But this was the last; once they were in the feed lots malformation could go undetected, unseen in the mud, the blood and the shit.

So it was his job, his duty, his sacred purpose to sort them. Cleanly, one path leading to the feeding lot, the other to the incinerator. A bolt to the brain for those doomed to die, just in case, just because they could.

Across his line of sight, another did the same, matching goggles, vest, soot stained skin, bolt gun in hand. Their movements mirrored in perfect time. If Polanski didn’t know better, he’d have called it a reflection, no, not a reflection. Just another man, another sacred purpose, another chosen by God to feed His flock.

And so he labored for king, for country, for God Almighty. Feeling out the guilt of each porcine infant drawn before him upon the chopping block, shallow breath and tender flesh. Some are easy; this one has an extra limb; that one two snouts. It’s a wonder such corruption went unnoticed for this long, a wonder it reached him at all.

Others were stealthy infiltrators. Corruption, almost imperceptible from the surface, a witch’s mark here, or a bloody eye hidden beneath sealed lids, an ill borne callous on the first knuckle by the hoof horn. Others had no outward corruption whatsoever; their innards hiding the wickedness of their flesh. Their tender, tender flesh.

The mornings were the worst, getting over the night, shaking off the shackles of his dreams. Visions of the hereafter, clean water and clear skies, a fantasy, a dream. Such thoughts, such dreams were temptations from the seven heads of the Serpent, that Great Beast beneath the earth, whose name is Death and whose home is the deepest circle of the Pitt.

So he forced such pleasant thoughts of what could be deep beneath his mind’s eye back into the deepest recesses of his thoughts. In his waking hours beneath that dark sun and the fluorescent hum of the factory lighting above the scaffolding, he dreamt only of duty to his king, his country, his God.

He hardly ever touched the product; he had little need of it. A sweeping glance, the slightest sniff, almost always enough to pass His judgement. Once or twice a shift he would run gloved fingers over flesh, check teeth, feel at a limb. Always enough, always.

Today was no different; the brace of his bolt gun was already slick with crimson. So many wretched before the block, deformed inside or out. It seemed to Polanski that corruption was spreading. Should that the feeding pens run empty, and the rations halt. Who would guard the walls? Who would feed the machines of war? Smelt the steel and fashion the bombs? Who?

A lump of flesh came before him, pale and pink, smooth and nearly hairless. Eyes shut, body shaking in the chill air of the factory floor. A sniff provided no guidance, nor a once over by eye. He reached a gloved hand by the mouth, feeling the teeth. Movement, they never moved, these lumps of flesh. But this one did, sucking at the tip of his finger like a baby at a mother’s breast.

An eye strained open, watering against the light of the open floor, twitching. Something struck him, as if that lump of flesh, that piglet were begging to be saved, desperate for someone to pluck it from perdition. And he, he the only one capable of it. The only one that could save her‌.

Eyes behind red lenses turned left, turned right, as he held the little girl at hand, lumps of pink flesh piling up, unable to move forward. Then across to his mirror.

Polanski pulled her off the track, placing her in his jacket, off the hook by his station, and under his stool. Eyes passed once over again, back and forth. No one seemed to notice, if not for the backup, the piling of pudding flesh. He raced to catch back up, bolts against the skull of the damned. Good, bad, good, good, bad, bad, bad.. Treads leading forward to the pens, forward to the cleansing flames.

Supervisors trolled the floor, officials of the church. Dressed in pressed vestments, clean with a shined plastic finish to keep the soot at bay. Mouths replaced with loud speakers, fused directly into the flesh, scarification, twisted and painful to the eye, holding the steel grid in place. As they barked hymns in Latin, a loud crack like thunder, a storm passing through the factory floor in ebbs and flows. As the acrid plumes of soot and smoke were joined by the familiar, pungent scent of the burning incense swung by censors of brass and bronze.

Polanski became so engrossed in his work, in the hymns and the fervor, that he forgot the piglet wrapped in his jacket, hidden beneath the stool. For how could a single life, even in the clarity he had felt in that split second, be compared to Him. To His service, to His needs, to His servants, to His work.

Then a nibble at the back of his ankle, and the memory of that precious infant found him once more. Gnawing with tiny teeth on his Achilles and then his toes, hungry, but he had nothing to give it. Nothing but the pigs, and he couldn’t, not them. So the tiny thing went hungry until the end; the work whistle blew and the day came to a close.

But not the work; that never stopped. Polanski stood, wrapping the piglet in his arms, hidden beneath his rough spun trench. His relief came, the same man every day, an old man with thinning grey hair. They never exchanged names; they never shared any words, in fact, nothing more than a stiff nod. Acknowledgement, subtle but unignorable, was shared between them every day as they passed each other by.

But not today; today Polanski pushed his way past the old man with nary a whisper of acknowledgement. Today he had that tiny heartbeat to worry about, that little lump of flesh rising and falling with every shallow breath. Spilling out from the deafening rumble of the factory line into the tumult, near as deafening outside its walls.

The streets were laden with heavy snowfall, banks rising up and over the second floor of buildings, lapping at the third. In his dreams, snow fell white as wool. But here in the real world, the one men had made, damned and otherwise, snow fell black as soot. Snow smelt of ash and iron, burning to the touch. Everything that came from that hazy sky was the same, rain fell black, burning the skin, so too hail; even on calm days, that steady soot came to rest across the city.

The streets were busy; the turning of the clock; the shift change between night and day. Automobiles, metal carriages powered by steam, beside carriages of wood drawn by horses. Streetcars right alongside carts drawn by donkeys. The old and the new, each with purpose in the struggle, every man, every beast, every machine to its duty.

A bubble of guilt grew in his chest. What of him then? His failure to fulfill his duty. What of the piglet in his arms, beneath his coat? The cold winter wind rolling over him, the touch of caustic snow against exposed skin made it all obvious- Then a nibble from that little life beneath the bindings of his jacket. It brought a smile to his lips, dry and cracked, seeping blood in reply, but he could hardly bring himself to care.

Polanski shielded the little thing from the snowfall, wrapping it tighter in his arms. He could hear it snort beneath the wrapping, snuffling at the edge of its confines with that padded porcine snout. It seemed more alive now, more focused. As if a poison in its blood had passed from its body, leaving her with a fresh vigor.

“Hush.” He whispered into the coat, and it, she struggled, but the squealing stopped. As if she recognized his command, his words. “Thank you..”

The pair huddled in the cold, shuffling across the cobbled street, and rounding the nearest corner. Polanski’s boots left a trail of footprints against the blackened earth in his passing. Up and into his apartment building.

The wind stayed outside, the wind and the biting cold and the caustic snow. But that chill, deep in his bones, on his meat, that didn’t leave. Like a hunk of beef only half thawed.

The stairwell led up, and the halls branched off left, right, and straight ahead at a regular pace. Every inch of space was used, nothing went to waste in high-density housing. Seven by seven feet, little and less for sleep, families might be lucky to have a space of twenty by twenty.

Bathrooms were shared by every two floors, a single showerhead each freezing in the winter and boiling in the summer. A single toilet, a single sink, no lock on the door. One might be taking a shit, only to be met by an impatient bather. Privacy didn’t exist, not in his Warsaw, or hardly, if you were lucky enough to live alone, that seven by seven block was yours, and everything within its bounds.

He hastened his way up the stairs, the rotten wood creaking beneath heavy footfalls. It smelt of mildew and damp, a kind of damp chill that permitted the walls, the very foundations of this old teardown. No doubt it was killing them, no doubt it would kill them, if not for the grace of God Almighty and his heavenly host. If not for the strength of their faith.

Four flights of stairs, two floors down from the top, as he stepped over the floorboards of the hall. Covered with a long rug from one end of the hall to the next rug worn thin in patches, some places so thin you could see straight through to the scuffed wood below.

Polanski pulled up to his apartment, a brass board no wider than a palm and no taller than a thumb. Carved into its metallic face, four hundred and forty-four. Four, four, four. It seemed to him as if such a number ought to have some kind of auspiciousness to it.

He pulled on the nob, copper long worn smooth, stained that sickly green under the touch of countless fingers. “Niko? Nikodem?! Good to see you? It’s been too long!” His neighbor, three doors down, but close enough. A big man, and broad, he worked down in the loading docks of the factory. Muscles building on muscle.

He tried to close the distance, but Polanski pulled back. “We still haven’t had you over for dinner, buddy, have you given it any thought?”

“Rations tight as they are? I wouldn’t want to impose.” He felt the piglet snuffling at his chest, writhing beneath the jacket. Just out of sight, but not for long. “Listen, I’ve got to go-”

“Oh, sorry, I get it, off work and you want some time to yourself.” He winked, shrinking back. “I won’t keep you. But please, feel free to come by once they lift the winter quotas, okay? The kids would love to see you.”

“Yeah, of course, I will..” Polanski pulled the door open and slipped inside. Closing ittight behind him.

Seven by seven. A fold up bed set in the wall opposite a dresser, abreast with a pantry of the same make. They couldn’t be down at the same time; only one open, each in its turn. Not exactly a proper fit for a man and a pet, but he’d make do; he had to.

The piglet forced its way from his arms, taking the trench draped around him like a comet’s tail, running back and forth across the floor. Then into the wall opposite the door, hitting home with a hollow thud just beneath the window. A pained snort as the little girl fell back on her haunches.

“Shit..” He knelt, pulling back the coat. Revealing the girl beneath, pink, with a red ring around one eye. Had that always been there? “Are you okay?”

She rushed to his side, up into his lap, gnawing at the hem of his shirt with a demanding squeal. “Would you keep quiet?” He hissed. So weak, so small, just a few hours passed; she had been just this side of the grave. Now she was full of energy, strength in her legs, eyes wide open to the world.

“Okay, okay. I’ll feed you.” He forced her off his lap and found his feet. The pantry was bare: a bag of potatoes, an onion, a bag of dried jerky. Just enough to get him through the worst of the winter months ahead.

He took an onion in hand, peeling back the outer crust in strips. The piglet rushed to his feet, where the brown skin fell in flakes, greedily sucking up the scraps. Polanski snapped a stick of jerky tight between his teeth.

Polanski closed the pantry door and pulled down the bed. Hoisting the little sow up in his arms, tossing her onto the bed. Fighting off her advances the whole way, as she desperately wiggled and writhed, attempting to take the whole of the onion. “Hey, wow, calm down, greedy! You’re lucky I didn’t send you to the feeding lots, and this is how you repay me?”

She edged back, and Polanski imagined she could understand him. That such a thing was possible. “Prayer first, then food.” He sat, hands clapped, head bowed. “Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord.”

An eye turned down to the little girl, watching with eyes of fire and brimstone. Two little red rings, like goggles.‌ Like his goggles?

Polanski peeled back the lenses and left them by the bedside. Splitting the onion in two with bare hands. “One for you, one for me.” She looked at him, eyes vibrating with expectation. “No. No jerky is people food, not for you, its pork you little cannibal..”

“Hmm, you need a name don’t you?” He bit into the onion as one might an apple. Sour, with an underlying hint of sweetness. “Won’t do, risking all this, for a pig.. What about Pinky?”

No response, as the little girl gnawed on her half of the onion, one layer at a time. “Okay, googles?” She turned up at that, brow furrowed. “Okay, okay, not that.. what then?”

She licked her lips, onion demolished, eyeing the jerky between his teeth. “Oh no, not-” She was on him, snatching the morsel from his mouth with a victory squeal. Swallowing without chewing.

“Shit, alright.” Polanski laughed, pinching the curl at the end of her corkscrew tail. “I guess I should call you.. Cannibal?” She licked her lips in agreement. And so, Cannibal it was; what else would fit?

One day passed into the next, as the winter whiled away. Bit by bit. Every day the morning found him, the wailing winds down the snow laden streets of Warsaw. Every day he braved the drifts and the smog. Every day he fulfilled his duty before King, before country, before God Almighty. But for the first time in a long time, his evenings belonged to him.

The simplicity of his routine, the monotony of duty. But every evening he found himself renewed by Cannibal, snuffling, searching out her meal, showering him in cuddles and tiny kisses. Her warmth against his, curdled up against his belly, weight on his chest. A little heat pump, a steady heartbeat, so small you might miss it. Thud. Thud. Thud. In tune with his own. Thud. Thud. Thud.

When he dreamed, Cannibal was in them. Under that blue sky, drinking that clean, clear water under clouds as white as snow ought to be. And in the mornings, when memory faded and dreams found their shadowed corner to seek shelter, he did not race to force them there. No, he let them linger in his mind’s eye, let them rest, take root. By the by, just for a while.

He hardly noticed what they ate at dinner. Hardly noticed his pantry emptied, bit by bit. Not until the hardtack was gone, down to their last bag of potatoes and half empty sack of onions looming on their lonely hook.

Polanski ran calloused hands over his face, as if to peel back the flesh in their passing. It was hard to miss the sunken sockets about his goggles, the hollow cheeks and skin sweltering beneath the fresh layer of ash. “Sorry little girl..” Cannibal snorted her disapproval, oinking in distress at the idea.

“We’re, we hardly have anything left. Not nearly enough to-” She looked at him with those big, watery eyes, framed by patches of ruddy red hair set against a sea of flaxen blond she had grown into. “Don’t look at me like that, it doesn’t change a thing. I can’t-”

Cannibal stared him down with those eyes, almost human, watching, waiting. Every pound she gained and her eyes seemed to grow smaller and smaller still, as the little girl became less little bit by bit. But even now, some eighty pounds down the line, they still seemed two times too big for her porcine snout. “Fine.” He snatched an onion, almost making to split it in two, but thinking better of it. Tossing the whole thing into her open mouth, retreating toward the bed they shared. “I’d like to hear your plan, for how we get our-”

She stared at him, wordless, but she didn’t need words. It was in her name after all: Cannibal.

The next day at work, while sorting the tainted from the clean. He lingered on the thought: food enough for her meant more for him from the pantry; no reason they both couldn’t make out of this better off. A clean one then, destined for the feeding pens.

But the metallic chanting of the Father’s the heavy, scented smoke of their censors brought him to his senses. No, those destined for the feeding pens would be on plates come summer. That was food for the rations for the front, no, he couldn’t do that, wouldn’t. Not even for Cannibal, for his little girl with his flaxen hair and-

The tainted ones then, less tainted, meat that a lesser inspector than himself might miss. Meat that would end up in human bellies if it weren’t for his keen eyes and intuition. So he waited, sorting each of the comatose animals into their proper lines. A bolt in the brain for every damned, a silent prayer for the rest. Which was luckier seemed anyone’s guess to him.

After all, pigs weren’t people. Pigs didn’t have immortal souls. Pigs didn’t- Well, most pigs. His pig, his little Cannibal did. With those bright eyes and her clever temper. Cannibal wasn’t like other pigs; Cannibal was his pig, and that meant she was special. Right?

Perfect, a fresh one, tainted, but only by a slight. The faintest hint of a witch’s mark at the snout. A glance from one side to the next and across the way to the incessant mirror opposite him. The coast was clear, or as clear as he could hope. He pulled the lump of pallid pink flesh from the line and into his jacket. Then he continued the work, no one the wiser, no one but himself, and the pig. And neither seemed likely to talk.

Though as time wore on, that proved a tenuous point at best. The lump of flesh in the shape of a piglet seemed to clear the toxins from its system; it began to move and groan in its fabric prison. Polanski knew well he couldn’t have that.

There was always the bolt gun, a quick pump to the back of the head and- No, what would he do about the blood. It had to be clean, and it had to be quiet; too many prying eyes as it was. So, as the tread thinned for a brief respite, he took the tiny thing in hand. He could feel its tiny, shallow heartbeat, feel its fear.

He fixed his hands around its frame, one on the head and one on the back. A twist and a jerk, and the poor thing fell quiet. It went limp in his arms. The deed was done, and even though he had killed countless lumps of pallid pink flesh in his life, this had been the first piglet.

The walk home felt longer still, not just the cold of late winter against his exposed, jacketless arms; no, it was something more. Weighed by the blood on his hands, the piglet wrapped up in his arms. Something had taken root inside him; something had changed.

Up the creaking stairs and down the halls that reeked of damp. “Niko!” That damned neighbor again, when would he- “hey, you don’t look so good, are you getting enough to eat?”

“Rations are running thin.. it’s been a long, long winter.” He gripped the lifeless package closer to his breast. At least a dead piglet would be easier to explain; the one in his home, his little cannibal, would be harder.

“It has, hasn’t it?” The barn of a man laughed it off. “It’ll be spring before we know it, and we’ll be praying for the cold. I swear if-”

“Is that all?” He snapped, shorter than he had intended. “Is it? I’m just, tired, I’m-”

“Don’t have to explain.” Polanski could hear the frown in it, the disappointment, the distance now pressing out between them. But it was too late; the deed done and his door opened as he slipped inside.

Pulling the door shut behind him, he found Cannibal lying on the bed, half asleep, huddled under the blankets for warmth. “Here you go you little princess.” He unfurled the gift, letting the piglet’s corpse fall to the ground. Its tiny body limp, its little neck snapped clean.

Polanski pulled himself beneath the covers, hardly a thought given to his empty stomach, or Cannibal as she flopped down onto the floor, pacing forward on cloven hooves. Then he heard it: the tearing and the crunching, like gravel fed through a chipper. A pointed, erratic sound, snapping and rending without hesitation, like biting into deep fried faworki. By the time he got up for a glass of water, all evidence was gone; she’d eaten her victim, their victim, bones and all.

Winter parted in the coming weeks. The blackened snow of Warsaw was replaced by the noxious black rains of spring. Every day was the same as the last. Rise, work, pray, eat, sleep.‌ Rise, work, pray, eat, sleep.‌

He carved out room there for love, even in his weakness, for tenderness, and in the doing found the deepest wells of cruelty. For to love one is to hate another, for to protect one is to inflict harm upon the other, love is hate and hate is love. That was the truth his piglet taught him, not in so many words, for the truth need not be spoken to be understood.

The Feast Day of Saint Bobola came upon him by surprise. Up and ready to work, one day inseparable from the next. The streets clogged with the clamor of foot traffic, the absence of machines and beasts of burden both, just men. Heavy footfalls on worn, blackened concrete, on cobbled stones polished smooth.

Even still, he moved forward, an automaton, his days devoted to his work, devoted to God. His nights, the fruits of his labors devoted to another. But this day he found the factory doors sealed shut; he found the hum of the line fallen silent. The chimneys did not spew their soot and bile, no, and in it you could see the barest glimpse of the true sky beyond that hazy shroud.

He found himself caught in the wave of human forms. Swept upward and onward to the shadow of the steeple of his church. Filled to bursting. The pews, the standing room, Polanski and all the rest crowded at the edge of the door, to hear the word of their Lord, spoken by the tongues of Fathers, and birthed again by the copper and iron of the speakers.

Today was Andrew’s day; today was dedicated to the martyred Patron Saint of Warsaw. Torn to pieces by Tatar scum in service to Tartarus, whose flesh was tattered and torn, whose life was ended by hate and gallows intent. Whose flesh was so pure it turned the stomachs of Beelzebub’s children, even the chosen of the Lord of the Flies could not stomach the true love of the Lord of Hosts, for He, the Lamb of God-

Polanski could not tell where his thoughts began, where they ended. Which words were his, which belonged to the Father, to God Almighty. It burned his ears, splitting his mind in two, as he clawed against his ears, clawed futilely against the words that came from within and without.

Then the clarity of it, that pure moment, that moment of focused attention, of enlightenment unbound. The rain fell, acrid, caustic against the skin, leaving streaks of raw, inflamed flesh in its wake. Tears lost with the rain.

The crowd stayed, the crowd listened in awe, even as their hair was weighed down with bilious rainfall, as their clothes clung to their skin. He had his clarity, and they had their own; no, they had His clarity above their own. A truth of another’s making. He, he was free from that; he was a man among sheep; he was liberated.

Polanski forced his way through the crowd, back to his apartment building, back to his home. Back to his little girl with the locks of flaxen hair.

He mounted the stairwell; it no longer stank of damp, of mildew. No, something stronger still took the reins now. Iron, soaked into the carpeting, the rugs, and the floorboards. A saccharine sweet scent having taken root in the foundations beneath stone and brick, mortar and wood.

Strongest by his own room, by the room labeled four, four, four. Whose number and name had a meaning beyond the pale, an answer found only in the clarity of the bile.

He pulled the copper nob, stained that sickly green, rough beneath his fingers, blood pooling by the nails. As Polanski pulled his way into his private world, the one that belonged to him, and him alone. No, he and his family, his little girl.

Polanski peeled off his clothes, drenched in that bile from the sky, stinking of soot and shame. Peeling back from red, raw skin beneath its touch. Bones pressed vacuum tight against the skin, hollow cheeks, and upon the removal of his goggles, sunken eyes, so deep in the skull the shadow of the room swallowed them.

“Do you have it father?” A bilious voice asked, a low rumbling like a shift deep beneath the earth. Heavy with phlegm and fat.. pained. “I hunger father..”

“No, the stores are closed..” He reached the light switch tepidly and cast back the shadows of the room.

He was sunken, broken, hunched and small. So small, like the lumps of pallid pink flesh upon the tread. And she, great and swollen. Five hundred pounds or more, the bed serving as his little girl’s throne buckled and bent, sunken to the floor.

“I hunger father..” Its lips didn’t move, its tiny eyes set in roiling rolls of inflamed fat, under thinning locks of his flaxen hair. Like father, like daughter, the thought brought a smile to cracked, seeping lips. “It hurts.. I hunger..”

“I know sweetie, I know..” He propped himself against the wall, the strength in his legs not nearly enough to hold him fast.

“No, father, it hurts father, it hurts..” Polanski couldn’t tell if the words were heavy on the air, or weighed upon his inner mind. “I hunger..”

That moldering pile of flesh, his little girl all grown up, watched through those beady pig’s eyes. One limb inseparable from the next, one end welted and sore, the same as any other. Those watery eyes, pupils square, not round, square like the Great Goat, master of men.

“I know, sweetie, I know..” Tears sprang to his eyes, as caustic as the rain. Running down his emaciated body. “Me, you must eat me, sweetie..”

“Eat.. Father?” A question, one with only one answer.

Polanski stepped forward, arm held out toward her great, blubbering form. Beautiful, like no other, to his sunken eyes, blurry with tears. “Eat, father?”

“Yes..” Closer, till he was overwhelmed by the stench, her sickly sweetness, the layers of her sweat and filth. The hunger was palpable in the air. “It is the only-” His voice cracked. “The only way..”

“Eat. Father.” A statement then, not a question. As her mouth pulled forward, like a worm crawling, inching free through the dirt. Pulling over a field of molten flesh. Till those teeth, like man and monster both, sank into his tender skin, broke his brittle bones.

Painful at first, but as tendrils of flesh and stunted limbs came to support him, there was something calming to it. Freeing. This was the answer, the answer so many sought, but so few ever found. “Thank.. You..” Polanski whispered through the din of his own destruction.

“Eat.” She wheezed through a laden mouth, gnawing, gnashing, breaking, rending.. Streams of crimson saliva and stinking sweat. A wicked smile, stained ruby red. Dripping. “Eat. Father.”

He closed his eyes and let his daughter take her fill. And like so many of her victims before, their victims, she ate him. Bones and all.

Chronicles of the IV is a podcast series covering my original short stories. Horror, dark fantasy, suspense, sci-fi, dystopian, and weird fiction, expect a bit of everything. New episodes release on Tuesdays.

Great for active listening, a commute to work, or tunes to fall asleep to, I have been told I have a good voice for putting people to sleep. In a good way, I think.

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“In the days of the philosopher kings of Greece there was a bond of unique strength between man and dolphin. With no stronger bond than that which existed between the dolphins and the noble people of Athens.” Gideon sat by the kitchen table, listening to the early morning broadcast, alongside his mother, hard at work in the kitchen. He could smell the syrup warming on the stove and hear the crackle of the bacon. “The ancient Greeks, being not so different from ourselves, were fond of their pets. Dogs, birds, monkeys.. and so, when a ship ran aground one day on its way to the port of Piraeus, sinking beneath the wine dark sea, the dolphins came to the aid of men.”

“Seeing an ape struggling in the thick of the surf, a dolphin took him upon his back, mistaking him for a man.” The voice ran on; these were Gideon’s favorite stories. Those that fed his obsession with noble Greece and powerful Rome, the stories about the first days of the West. “The dolphin, not realizing the deception, asked if the ape was from Athens. The ape, boastful and filled to brim with falsehood, claimed he was not only an Athenian, but from one of the wealthiest and noblest families of that illustrious city.”

“Sweetie, here, eat your breakfast.” His mother slid two eggs, sunny side up, onto a plate, alongside three pieces of bacon, extra crispy just like he liked it.

“Where are my pancakes?” He turned from the radio, frowning.

“They’re coming sweetie, now eat.” She wore a pressed dress, bleached white, with blood red polka dots that reminded him of strawberries.

“The dolphin asked if the ape visited Piraeus often, if he was a man of such importance, short and hairy as he might have been.” The story on the radio continued, crisp and clear.

“Now, son. Listen to your mother.” His father advised, at the edge of his hearing, little Gideon was much too engrossed by the story to listen properly. “She’s the only one you’ve got.”

“The ape, full of pride, claimed that he surely visited Piraeus often, for they were the best of friends. And so, the clever dolphin realizing the deception rolled the wicked ape of his back, leaving the liar to drown. For none should be so hated by men, as those that pretend to be us.”

“Are you even listening to me?” His father asked from behind the shield of his newspaper. “Son?!” He snapped, as mother stopped cooking and the whole world seemed to watch with bated breath.

“Sorry, dad, yes, I’m listening!” Gideon turned down the radio, his palms sweaty. “Sorry mom.” He shoved a cut of bacon into his mouth. “Eating, see? Sorry dad, eating, see? Sorry..”

His father rustled the paper, and his mother returned to her domestic labors; the world seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief. Life continued. The buzz of the radio, the crackle of the eggs, the whistle of the kettle, and the acrid smell of the coffee within.

“Have you seen the paper, deary?”

“Oh Asher, you know I don’t read the morning pill.” She replied coyly.

“More like the morning swill, eh?” He chuckled, a puff of smoke like a belch from a chimney.

“HAHA.” Elizabeth replied, forced like the last of the jam scrapped up from the bottom of the jar. “Go on now, spill that swill, or you’re bound to explode.”

A crackle as the radio broadcast rolled over. For a moment Gideon thought his father had messed with the dial, changed frequency, but no it was just an emergency broadcast. “Hello there dear listener, accept my deepest apologies for the interruption to your regularly scheduled broadcast.” The voice on the other end was sharp, focused. Without the whimsy or warmth emblematic of Mr. Green. “A reminder to all citizens of Greenway, help keep our streets clean. Ensure all trash is put out by eight o’clock the day before pickup. With a notable uptick in pest animals it is now suggested all trash be doused in chemical agents or other, nonintrusive, repellents. Thank you for your time and attention to this matter. And remember, see something, say something.”

“Oh my.. pests, you don’t think it could be.. Roaches, do you?” Those big blue eyes took on an unfamiliar shade of panic, as they turned toward her husband.

“No, it’s fine, they would tell us if something was really wrong, you know that.” His father tried to laugh it off, but there was an edge to his voice behind the cover of the paper. “There’s no danger here, no monsters, no war. Here we’re home-”

“But what if-” She caught herself, interrupting, cutting off her husband in the eyes of God and man.

“Calm down Elizabeth, you’re going to work yourself up into a tizzy.” Asher was put off enough to set his paper aside, turning those hard hazel eyes on mother. “You wouldn’t want to say anything you’d regret, now would you?”

“You’re right of course dear, no good going manic over something like this, no good at all.”

“Precicesly, we’ve seen worse, and hey, if it gets bad enough we’ll call the exterminator. Okay?” He reached back for the folds of the paper, rustling out the creases as he took it back in hand. “Son, remind me to put the pest poison in the trash tonight.”

“Of course-” He answered, mouth stuffed, doing his best to ignore the thick tension drowning the room.

“Don’t speak with your mouth open, sweetie.” His mother cooed, lipstick red as blood, hair like spun gold, a poodle cut of tight curls that went just to her shoulders.

“Exactly. An open mouth catches flies, you don’t want to catch flies now, do you son?” His father was looking at the paper again, but Gideon still felt those hazel eyes burning like coals through the entertainment section.

“No, sir.” Gideon closed his lips tight, chewing the last of his food, and swallowing. “No.”

“Anyway, it says right here in black and white, our boys in blue are pushing north of the Potomac, can you believe it?” Another snap of the paper, a crease and a fold as he moved to another segment. “They’ll be in New York before Christmas at this rate, aye son?”

“Oh come on now, leave the boy out of it, he’s too young for all that mess, honey.” She turned up the radio, placing a plate with twice the amount of eggs and thrice the amount of bacon for her husband. “Here, eat up.” Another offered a stack of four pancakes, each more golden brown than the last. “And for my little man too, lest I forget.”

“No doubt you’re right.” His father agreed, conceding the point with practiced grace.

“We can call it a woman’s intuition, if that will preserve your pride.” She chuckled, a jab without barbs, a bite without teeth. A game the pair indulged in: a back and forth, a give and‌ take.

“I can talk about grownup stuff.” Gideon protested weakly, knowing his father’s eyes lingered behind the paper.

“Of course you can, you’re my little MAN after all.” Mother put weight on the last, but her tone was one taken with a child, not an adult. She would never talk to his father like that.

“No, no, your mother’s right.” He peeked out from behind the paper, eyes like charcoal in the brazier. “We’ll make a deal, you can be a grownup when you lose that sweet tooth of yours, eh?”

Gideon knew what came next. He forced an entire cake into his mouth and replied with naught but a full mouth and the syrupy grin that naturally accompanied it. To the shared laughter of the family.

“Repetition is the hallmark of civilization, routine the vindication of all we have worked for, tranquility the certainty of the security we have strived for.” The radio sang in the background, the sign off for every program given by Mr. Green. “I know it’s frightening, children, to learn about the world outside, the world that was, and all the foolishness of Old America. If I were you, so young and innocent, I would be frightened too. But, I’m not, so I need not be so and you need not be so either, for you are surrounded by the high walls of our great society, the walls built and manned by the men of Greenway, for you, for us. You need not be frightened children, for you are home.”

“Remember, God loves you children, and so do I. You are special, you are loved, you are a survivor.” The radio crackled. “You are special, you live in Greenway. You are loved, after all you have a father that brings home the bacon, and a mother that cooks it too. Look at them, smiling faces, the heart and soul, the blood and sweat of our community, the saviors of America-”

“That’s enough of that.” Elizabeth cut the radio with a pristine porcelain smile. “Now my boys need to hit the road, or my big man will be late for work, and you, little man, you’ll be late to school.”

Gideon jumped to his feet. “Golly, you’re right mom! Thanks for breakfast!” He gave her a quick peck on the cheek, as his father ruffled the mop of ruddy blond hair on his head.

“Knock them dead son, and mind those little ladies!”

“Asher!” His mother shouted. “You’re incorrigible!”

“Come on now Elizabeth, Heaven knows how handsy I was at his age-” But his voice faded fast, as Gideon raced out the front door and down the front way onto the street. He zipped past Mr. Smith on his daily route. A uniform white as the milk he traded in, with a bright blue belt and a bronze buckle on his cap.

“Wow, who lit a fire under your butt, Gideon?!” He laughed, just managing to keep the empty bottles in hand, securing his footing against the stoop.

“I’m late, Ms. Sharp is gonna skin me me, Mr. Smith!” He called back.

“Go on then, run Gideon, run!”

Gideon zipped down the block, passing the row of perfect little houses on their pleasant little street. This one was pale blue, the next green, followed by pink and then back to blue, on and on and on it went. Each was two stories, with a front porch or a back deck, never both. Each had a single car in the driveway: black, then red, yellow, and black again, on and on and on it went.

A white picket fence out back, a vibrant green lawn out front, with a dog yipping at every passerby, small, medium, large, large, medium, small, and on and on it went. A red rosebush in front of this house, then pink, a collection of tulips in front of the next, and back to roses, daring today, as these roses were white as snow.

A police car ran its siren, the early morning filled with blues, whites and reds, casting twisted shadows in the uneven light of dawn. Creeping tendrils grasping at their perfect little street, there one moment and gone the next. “Hey there, Gideon!” Officer Johnson’s voice came over the speaker. “This is a no speeding zone, don’t make me pull you over!”

Another play, a back and forth, but Gideon missed his line. Continuing down the street, his thoughts lingering on the beating Ms. Sharp was sure to give him if he was late again.

Then onto Main Street, the church of blackened ash timbers, accounting for the steeple, it was twice as tall as any other building in town. To its right was the Police Station; to its left was the red brick Schoolhouse. Across the road, in the shadow of the bell tower, stood Town Hall, with red brick walls trimmed in polished brass. Crowned with the clock tower, that white face, with black hands and gold lettering, watching, always watching. A comforting thought.

Gideon slipped up the concrete walkway, and under those red brick walls, through the double green doors. “Sneaking in again are we?” Came the familiar voice of Officer Park, and Gideon came to a halt. The officer was dressed in navy blue, with a black belt, matching shoes, and a hat marked with a silver buckle.

He didn’t stand by the front offices; rather; he loomed over Gideon, arms as thick as tree trunks crossed his chest as wide as a car. “One day this is gonna catch up to you, Gideon, you are downright incorrigible.”

The bell rang before he could reply, and Gideon hung his head in shame. “Don’t worry kid.” The Officer winked, the same offer every time and the same deference given in return. “I’ll walk you to class, just follow my lead.”

They made their way past the green lockers of the upperclassmen, the pale beige wooden veneer of each classroom door, and up to Ms. Sharp’s classroom door. Gideon heard the clip of the older man’s nightstick, he could see his service weapon at his hip, and the radar gun opposite, itself all too close to the profile of a gun. Officer Park gave Gideon a reassuring nod as he pulled open the door and slipped inside.

He quietly took his seat and put his backpack in the metal cage beneath his desk. “Found one in the hall, Ms. Sharp! Don’t worry he was helping me.” Officer Park smiled, teeth like fresh cut marble, a twinkle in his eye as he gave the boy a knowing wink. Doffing his cap, as a man ought to in the presence of a lady.

All the eyes of the class turned to him, necks craned, heads ajar. Green, blue, hazel, and brown, heads of gold bright as the sun, and those black, dark as sin, and everything in between. “Mrs. Blackwood now, if you please, or soon to be.” And then eyes turned back to her in shock, Gideon’s among them.

“Congradulations Ms-” Officer Park stopped himself. “Mrs. Blackwood. Pass on my well wishes to David, will you?”

“Of course, Mr. Park.” She answered, but the giant of a man tapped the silver buckle on his cap. “My apologies, Officer Park.” Mrs. Blackwood corrected, and with that he donned his cap, tipped the edge, and slipped back into the hall.

Mrs. Blackwood was tall and thin, raven black hair pulled back in a shallow bouffant. “Now, I didn’t want you learning this just yet-”

“Ms. Sharp! Ms. Sharp!” Little Mary, with‌ the green eyes deeper than any lawn, called out. “I mean, Mrs. Blackwood, are you leaving us?”

“I’m afraid so, at the end of the month, deary.” She was nineteen, with pale grey eyes and a slender figure, skin clear porcelain as she sat at the edge of her desk. Pushing down her tight pencil skirt that went almost to her ankles.

“Awe.” The class groaned in unison, a performance, the expected. Young teachers came and young teachers went. They all knew that beautiful ladies didn’t wait long for a husband.

“Oh, come now, you’ll be able to see me on the street, at the store-” She touched her stomach through her loose blouse. “Who knows, God willing some of you might teach my little ones one-day, now wouldn’t that be nice?”

The second bell rang, and the class fell silent as they found their feet. The intercom crackled to life, as Principal Blackwood, old as Greenway itself, came over the speakers. “Stand for the pledge of allegiance.”

They all turned forward in locked step, eyes fixed on the red, white, and blue bolt of fabric flying high over the green chalkboard at the front of the classroom. “I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the United States of America. And to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God with liberty and justice for all.” Principal Blackwood led, but everyone in the room could recite their oath of loyalty at any time and in any place. A promise, to one’s country, one’s nation, one’s community, one’s family.

The day rolled on, smooth as could be expected. They went over their numbers, then practiced their letters, quiet reading time, followed by a lecture. “Don’t you feel safe, children? Here, in Greenway, in my classroom?” She asked from behind her oaken desk. “It’s a serious question. How many of you feel safe? Show of hands, no, show of hands.”

Most raised their hands, Gideon among them, though he felt strange about it. Did he? Feel safe that was, he should, what with good men like Officer Park watching over him, his hard-working father, his loving mother, what else could he ask for? What else could he want?

“Good, thank you children, hands down now, hands down.” She smiled. “And why shouldn’t you, we live in a perfect world don’t we, safe and secure behind these walls, I never had to live out there, beyond the safety of this community, you never had to live out there, in the world that was. But, it’s still there children, watching, waiting, always just out of sight, just out of reach.. Who knows what I’m talking about? Go on, show of hands now, show of hands.” But only four raised their hands, Gideon tentatively among them. “Go on then, what am I talking about?”

“Monsters!” Martha, with the curly red hair, shouted.

“Pests!” Noah, head shaved to the scalp, put in.

“Roaches..” Gideon repeated that phrase, he didn’t know what it meant, not really. But he’d heard his mother talking about them. Frightened by them, even his father was frightened of them, and he wasn’t frightened of anything.

“Cainites.” She corrected. “That’s the word that alludes each of you, the proper name of the wicked creatures in your mind, but all of these are true. Monsters, pests, roaches, deceivers, the bane of all civilization, these are all monikers the enemy carries.”

“Teacher?” Mary asked, hand raised high. She didn’t dare continue, not until she was called on. “Do you mean like THE Cain, like Cain and Abel?”

“Precisely.” She nodded approvingly. “Such a smart girl you are, Mary. The Cainites are his ill begotten children, birthed by foul union with his father’s spurred second, Lilith.. Tell me, what is it that Cain did?”

Mary made to reply, but Noah ran right over her. “He was the first murderer!”

“Yes, Noah, but don’t forget to raise your hand if you please?” Mrs. Blackwood corrected gently; she corrected him often, and it never took root. Yet, she always allowed it; better a boy be a peacock than a shrew. “He killed Abel, for jealousy-”

“Jealousy of God’s love!” Mary cut in, a look of superiority with it.

“Now Mary, you know better than to blurt out answers left and right!” Mrs. Blackwood scolded, better a girl be a mouse than a braggart. “But yes, he was jealous of God’s love for his brother, Abel, whose sacrifice pleased our Lord where Cain’s had failed. And so, he murdered him. Claimed his life and with it the spoils of Abel’s labors, the product of his blood, sweat and tears.” She rose to her stiletto feet and took up the chalk, pallid as her skin. “And God then was made to punish Cain, ill begotten son of his favored, Adam. Tell me, how should he have been punished?”

“Death!” Noah barked, and a gaggle of the cruelest boys bayed in agreement. “Death!”

“True, and it would be deserving, but our God saw fit to punish him more severely.” She wrote out the words in bold letters on the board, every swipe an assault upon the ears. “God cursed him to wander the world forever, frightened and alone. He marked him, for all time, as a deceiver, a parasite, a killer. He and all his descendants would carry this brand, this Mark of Cain, as proof of their wicked souls, so even if they might wear our faces, we better men should know their monstrous intent by the skin they wear.” The room seemed to take a chill at that, as any lingering chatter died on their lips.

“What did they do?” Gideon couldn’t help but ask, and the collective gaze of the class turned once more on him, so many judging eyes, waiting on Mrs. Blackwood’s word to decide what they thought of him. “I mean, to us, besides you know.. uh, besides being the children of Cain.” The sins of the father shouldn’t be the sins of the son; he remembered something like that in church, or thought he did.

“They destroyed Old America, took our faces, polluted our land, turned brother against brother. They are the ones who brought on the bugs, Gideon, the ones that instigated the riots and collapsed the banks, and when that was done, the ones that picked our bones clean.” She let the words hang. “They ate us alive, Gideon, they pretended to be human, and in turn we extended them the courtesy that comes with it and they destroyed us for the kindness.” She jotted down a few key points in bone white chalk. Cain, Cainites, the Mark of Cain, The Bugs, The Riots, the Second American Civil War. “Now, can anyone tell me how to go about identifying a Cainite?” This time none among them raised a hand; were they all truly so ignorant of the greatest threat to mankind, a threat that could be hiding in plain sight even now? “Good, because that will be the topic of the lecture tomorrow.”

Gideon raised a hand. He so rarely asked followup questions, but for some reason this topic was of great interest to him. “So, how do we know- I mean, what if there are Roaches, right here? Right now, in Greenway, what if-”

“Don’t be afraid, sweetie, oh no, don’t be afraid. None of you should be afraid.” She almost laughed at the idea, so absurd it must have been. “We are safe, here in Greenway, behind our walls. We are safe, and we are loved, and we are special.. Understand?”

School let out just past four, as it always did, and as always Gideon walked home with his friends. Lucas, Elijah, Ezra and Asher. “Don’t you wanna come to the park and play Gideon?” Elijah asked. He was tall for their age, but thin. With a mop of ruddy brown hair and cheeks thick with freckles.

“What are we playing?”

“I don’t know, the other guys said they want to play Cops and Cainites.” He shrugged, drawing attention to those lanky noodle arms of his.

“Cops and Cainites? I haven’t played that one.”

“I don’t think anyone has, I think they just came up with it, but I imagine it’s something like playing soldier, or whatever. Come on, it’ll be fun.” He gestured for Gideon to follow as they peeled off the mainstream toward the park.

“No, I, I got a lot of homework to do. Besides with all the talk of pests and what not.. We really oughta get home.”

“Okay, suit yourself.” And he loped off after the others, down into the thicket.

Gideon continued home, the crowd of students slowly but surely thinning with every block they passed. What had been a tidal wave was little more than a trickle by the time he reached his own street. Passing each same house by, trash cans lining the street, cars pulled up by the curb.

“Hey there, Gideon!” And he nearly leapt out of his skin, losing his footing, falling flat on his butt. “Oh gosh, sorry about that, kiddo!” It was just Mr. Graves, thin as a rail, just like his son. With the same ruddy brown locks, though his were shaved close to the scalp. “What’s got you so jumpy?”

Gideon took the hand he offered and found his footing. “Oh nothing, we were just, just learning about Roaches at school.”

“Oh golly, learning about Roaches already?” He scratched the back of his head, a disapproving frown on his lips. “Guess it had to happen at some point, time for the talk with my boy I guess-” Mr. Graves waved him off. “Oh don’t mind me, thinking out loud is all! Go on and say hi to the folks for me, oh, and remind your father he still owes me a game of gin rummy!”

“Of course, Mr. Graves! I’d be happy to!” He waved back, trying to smile, to match his energy. As he stumbled down the street back home.

Dad was already back home, his long black four seater pulled up in the garbage, the door was open, like it always was before dark, after all, this was a perfect little street in a pleasant little town. He made it up to the door and out into the living room; Mom was cooking dinner.

His father sat in his armchair, a rough leather one, worn in a perfect imitation of his backside. A pipe between his lips, a martini on the end table, and a copy of Atlas Shrugged in his free hand. “I know my son’s not home before dark.” He grumbled, he couldn’t care less about that; his father was just mourning the loss of his private time. “You need to be out there, scraping knees and knocking heads. It’s good for a kid your age.”

“Oh, sweetie, what’s wrong? You’re never home this early.” She had just finished casting the jello-mold, a fillet of red snapper, butterflied and suspended in that clear film.

“Just tired is all, and-”

“No one’s bullying you, are they, son?” His father peered up from the text.

“No, I’ve just got a lot of homework.” Gideon insisted. “And, well, you know-”

“Good, because a real American knows how to deal with a bully, right?” He asked rhetorically. “The old one two? Just like I taught you, son.”

“What is it sweetie? Asher, mind listening to our son?” Light ribbing, never more, never real, never painful.

“I just have a lot of homework is all, or-” Gideon scratched the side of his face. “What’s a Roach?”

“Where did you hear that kinda talk, son?” That same edge to his voice from the morning, as his father closed his book, setting it aside and taking his pipe in hand.

“Us, this morning, honey.” She closed the oven with a pointed crack. “Don’t worry sweetie, they’re not important. All the bad stuff, that’s out there, not here. Here we’re safe, here, we’re home.”

“It’s not just-” He frowned. “We learned about them in school. Mrs. Blackwood-”

“Blackwood?” His father raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, Ms. Sharp, she’s getting married.”

“No surprise there, a fox like that isn’t on the market too long-”

“Asher!” She rolled her eyes. “Listen sweetie, that’s grownup stuff, okay?”

“Yeah, we put more than our fair share down during the war, son, there’s not a Roach within fifty miles of here.” He pulled back pipe out, a trail of smoke following in its wake. “And if there were, your old man would deal with them, alright?”

“Alright..”

Dinner was sweet and salty: fish in a clear jello mold accompanied by roasted root vegetables, carrots, potatoes, and turnips. His father’s favorite, but Gideon had no appetite, just pushing his food around his plate, turning it into a smooth mush.

After dinner he packed up the trash and took it to the garage, packing the bag in place and pulling the whole bin down to the curb. It was heavy, and Gideon was grateful for the downward slope. He left it by the curb and went back up the driveway.

A pale pink and purple sky, the long twilight of spring, clouds stretching up and over in great tendrils, like mighty teeth at the end of the horizon. Like a hungry set of jaws already swallowing the world. He brought the garage door down and stepped back inside.

The radio was on, a low, indiscernible rumbling from the kitchen, his mother hard at work taking care of the dishes. “Son, did you forget to put out the pest poison?” His father asked, and Gideon cursed himself.

“No, just coming inside to ask where it’s at dad!” He lied.

“Top shelf in the second cabinet son!” His father shouted back.

Gideon stepped back into the garage, flipping the single, lonely light back on. A light bulb hung by a thin string, smacking to and fro from the force of his pull on the drawstring. He pulled open the pig iron door of the cabinet, painted a plain grey to denote it from its green companion of the same make.

There, on the top shelf, was the pest poison in a white bag, with a black rat on the front, slashed through with a blood red line. He propped a footstool up by the cabinet’s base and climbed up to retrieve it. Heavy in his tiny little arms, enough that he almost split it, almost, as he caught himself at the last moment.

So he descended and threw up the doors to the garage. Night had come on fast in his absence; gone were the pale purples and pinks of twilight, replaced with the deep blues and inky blacks of early night. The streetlights were just flipping over, casting the river of black asphalt in an oppressive fluorescent light.

Gideon rubbed one eye and yawned, making for the far end of the driveway at a brisk shuffle. Approaching the bin, a rustling came from inside, a tapping at the hard plastic walls. Whatever it was, it was big, or big enough to give little Gideon pause.

He crept forward, palms sweaty, and knees weak. Trying to be as quiet as he could. That failed out of hand, as whatever was inside the bin stopped moving, as if it knew someone had noticed it, that someone was watching. Gideon was unarmed; he could have gone back for a bat or a hammer, should have, but whatever was inside might get away if he did.

His eyes scanned the ground and he snatched up the first decent size rock he found, enough to deal with some pest rooting through the garbage. Gripping the stone so tightly his nails bent and buckled against the surface, he continued up to the bin and threw the lid open at once.

What he saw was enough to force the bag of poison from his hand, casting the pellets against the asphalt. There, amid the bags of filth, he found a girl, not much older than him. Crouched, with sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, as if he could see the bones beneath her charcoal skin.

Gideon had never seen anything like her before. Long braids of jet black hair, textured, frizzy and riven through with garbage, bits of discarded food and plastic. She stank all the way to the Pearly Gates, and her clothing, little more than tattered rags, fell over an emaciated body. What on God’s green earth could make a person look like that? Then he realized this was no person. This was a Roach, as sure as the day was long. This was a Roach.

But, sitting in the garbage, yellow teeth borne at him, and frail as a leaf in autumn, he couldn’t help but wonder, what was so scary about a Cainite? Then, without warning or forethought, he spoke. “You.. You don’t look like a monster.” He thought of Mrs. Blackwood, how the Roaches stripped them to the bone, ate them alive. “Are you- You aren’t going to eat me, are you?”

Share F. P. Dawe

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Dylan had never been one to dream big; small wonder he had never been the kind of man whose dreams came true in the first place. People are like that; fail enough and it becomes ingrained, burned into your soul. It shapes the way you interact with the world, the way you actually see things. Lock a man in a cage long enough, and he forgets there’s anything outside of it.

His wasn’t such a terrible fate, though, was it? Especially from where he started. He had a B+ life, not too shabby for a C- student. His B+ wife, Rachel, with big blue eyes and bright blond hair. His B+ job, a mechanic at his brother-in-law’s shop downtown. His B+ kids, Stacy and Stan, with little Albert on the way. His B- house, a ranch, with an unfinished basement and an attic that gave him the creeps. Yes, a B+ life. Not too bad, better than most at least, and considering how far behind he started in the race, he was basically a superstar.

When he was five, his father left them; that same year, his mother was mauled to death by a bear. Mauled by a bear that never sat well with him, what was this 1800? Who gets mauled by a bear in the 1980s?

The thing was, they lived in West Virginia at the time, so really, what were the odds? Like who gets mauled to death by a black bear of all things? How many people even get attacked by black bears in a year? Five, eight? Six, it turns out the answer is six, on average, of course, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. How many are fatal? One, one of those is fatal yearly, on average, which means some years, none. Just go figure, what are the odds it’d be his mom?

But there was no use crying over spilt milk. What did they say? Statistics mean nothing to the individual. On a macro scale, sure, next to no chance you get bit by a shark.. but what good does that do for some surfer who just became a leftie permanently? So his mother got mauled to death by a black bear, despite the odds, and he ended up with his grandparents. On his mother’s side, of course. His father was distant enough that Dylan never heard hide nor heel of his paternal family tree. Probably for the best; for all the manners he kept, you’d assume his old man had been raised by wolves.

Or so the stories went, Dylan didn’t remember much of anything about his old man. He remembered one phrase: how did it go? Some people were born lucky, others were lucky to be born, and Dylan had made peace with being a card-carrying member of the latter. That was fine with him; he had to struggle for everything he had, every seat at the table, every chance given, no, taken. Nothing ever came easy; he supposed that was the gift his father had given him: struggle. Fuck, he’d have taken a check instead.

Imagine that, leaving a legacy of suffering and struggle to your bouncing baby boy. Thank you very much, but you can keep it. I don’t want it. I don’t want it. Yeah, sure, not like that dog would hunt. If only, if only. If only it were so easy to return an unwanted gift, especially one bound up in‌ blood. He had plenty: skin that never tanned, nearsightedness, a metabolism that kept him thin as a rail well into his thirties, but no, it wasn’t that bad. That deadbeat, no good, piece of shit dad of his was that bad, but it, in the broader sense of the word, wasn’t, not all the time at least.

His mother hadn’t left him much either; at least she hadn’t drowned him in her own inadequacy.. no, that wasn’t fair. She was a good woman, or so the story went; she loved him, even if he had no means to verify. Maybe he just wanted to believe that. Or maybe he saw it in those big brown eyes she’d left him, felt it in the fading warmth of her last embrace, ruby red hair and ruddy skin. Which was odd, as Granddad’s pictures always showed her as a brunette. Funny, funny how memory works.

So when he dreamt a dream, big or small, he learned to ignore it. Even the good ones, especially the good ones, and all the more grateful to drop the worst of his nightmares in the bin.

Tonight was no different; he dreamt of his home hushed and silent, draped in the light of a pale midnight moon, red as blood. The scene was beautiful, eerie, carrying some strange quality he couldn’t put his finger on. And if he could, Dylan would have stayed there too, enjoying his rest in the comfortable embrace of that hollow facade of his home. After all, a man’s home was his castle, and this was his home, inside his mind no less, making it doubly so.

He sat to rest a spell in the living room, just off the main atrium. The place was empty, like an open house, beautiful but fake, hollow inside, just below the surface. Still, the dream felt so vivid, so real, and here he was nestled in haunting drapery and surrounded by freshly painted walls, pale and pink, or any color the heart might desire.

A creature, hollow cheeks and haunting eyes. Eyes, its eyes sunken peach pits, ridged and rippling, empty where the soul should have been. Its skin was a pallid grey, pockmarked with welts and pustules, purple, pink, and yellow, riven through with streaks of fresh crimson. Skin loose over an emaciated frame, like a scarecrow hoisted upon the cross.

Its nails rust red, overgrown like razors burst forth from the flesh, caked in dried, flaking viscera. Teeth like blocks of ‌some sickly stone, black as ebony, gnawing, gnawing, ever gnawing. But what was it gnawing on? Dylan could hear bones cracking and flesh tear, sucking, wet and wild, as a child greedily inhaled a shake. Still, even as he strained to make out the victim of this carnal slaughter in the haunted dark of his own imagined abode, nothing, nothing else.

Then those hollow, haunted pits turned to him, eyes tempest tossed, roiling beneath a reflective veneer. Caught red-handed, dripping with their great sin, lips caked in fresh crimson, breath little more than a low wheeze. It crept forward, not like a man, no, something lower, like an ape, a half-formed shuffle on raised feet and curved knuckles.

Dylan could feel it lunge before the deed was done, hurling him back into the waking world. A dream, just a dream, but the fear, the fear had been real. The sweat on his brow, too.

“The common cuckoo, grey and white, trimmed in black. One might be forgiving for mistaking it for a pigeon.” Dylan came too, sunk into his armchair, half swallowed by its folds. “This cuckoo, our cuckoo, is special, she is pregnant.”

The light of dawn was trickling in through the window, pinks and yellows caught in the eye of every mirror, glass, and any other reflective surface besides. Glowing with and like the rising sun. He attempted to pull his way up from the recliner, a failed attempt, but a good effort.

“As a mother, our cuckoo is woefully unprepared. Most birds, most animals even, have a natural maternal instinct. To protect, nurture, and raise their young, in any combination. But, not the cuckoo.” Fuck, he fell asleep in the living room again. Rachel was going to kill him. He pulled at the lever by the recliner, springing up in an instant, as the chair locked back into place. “Don’t fret, this old girl has a plan.” They dramatically pulled in on the odd-looking bird, staring at the camera, as if she knew. Knew she was being watched by someone, something, leering eyes and heavy breath.

“A Reed Warbler couple, with a beautiful nest. What a lovely family, or they would have been, if mom and dad hadn’t made the mistake of walking out.” The coffee table was covered in pizza boxes, a half dozen tossed about as if a typhoon had hit the living room overnight. Each empty, save for the grease soaking through the rim of the cardboard, the parchment paper drooping like wet rags. Cans of root beer covering the carpeting, stains long since dried over the night. “Our cuckoo has no intention of making a lunch of these eggs, no. She has something far more sinister in mind.”

Dylan ran curious hands through the refuse. Searching, with little and less luck, for the remote. “She lays her egg among the clutch, and leaves without a second thought. She can lay up to twenty eggs in a season, far more than most birds. Many will fail, but many more will succeed.”

“The first test, mom and dad are home.” He could see the tiny rust red specks return to their nest, checking over the eggs. “If they notice the intruder, it’s all over for this baby cuckoo.” The birds sniffed and pecked, but in the end pulled back. “Safe, and with that, the first great hurdle has been overcome.”

Had he, did he eat all of this? He hadn’t eaten like that since high school, and even then he had the decency to pretend to share with his friends. “Our little cuckoo will hatch quickly, often before his step brothers and sisters. And he will grow quickly too.” The freshly hatched cuckoo instinctually pushed the other eggs to their doom. Though for now made more moves against those that had already hatched.

“And he will grow quickly too. Three to four times the rate of his siblings, bad news for mom and dad.” The screen cut to a rotund black bird, a fledgling yet to malt, three times the size of its parents. “Mommy and Daddy Warbler will run themselves ragged feeding their bouncing baby boy-” The TV fell silent, the screen black, though Dylan hardly noticed.

He felt his stomach, flat as his feet, how’d he- “You slept down here again, didn’t you, Dylan?” Her voice was sharp, tired, not angry. So tired. “You can’t do that, keep me up all night-” She had ballooned in size, though Dylan would never dare to say it. “Worried, worried about you, when I should be worried about-”

“I know, I’m-” He ran calloused hands over his rough, unshaven face. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I- Shit, I don’t know, honey.”

“Don’t honey me, Dylan.” Her voice was hushed, but hard as iron. “Up all night, sleeping all day..” She trailed, placing a hand under her stomach to support the weight. “Bobby says you didn’t show up for work yesterday..”

“I didn’t?” He groaned, rubbing his bloodshot eyes. “Shit, I’m-”

“Sorry, I get it, you’re sorry. But that doesn’t mean-” She caught herself before she cussed. “You can’t just be sorry, you just, you can’t. That’s not good enough, Dylan, not anymore. Be better, you can’t just be sorry for-”

“I get it!” He snapped, and she pulled back. “Fuck, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.” He found his feet, but she pulled as quickly as her state allowed.

Her face flushed red, free hand falling to her phone. Her grip loosened, and she shook her head. Disappointment, shame, regret? Any of them would be enough to turn his stomach. “Clean yourself up and get to work, Dylan, just- Can you do that much, huh?”

He nodded wordlessly, slinking toward the bedroom. Running into the kids along the way, Stacy, scrapped knees and taped knuckles as she rushed to the kitchen, her little brother, Stan, stumbling after her. Stacy was nine, and Stan was five — the same age he had been- No, Dylan would never do that, leave them, and thankfully there weren’t any bears in Illinois.

He slipped into the room, a cherry red crib already set just beside the bed. Rachel had read something about co-sleeping, whatever the hell that meant. It was all plain as day in Dr. Lipschitz’ Parenting Parents for Parenting.

Apparently, it meant they had been terrible parents previously. Stacy and Stan were already ruined, too late for them, but not for the new baby. So it went they needed to sleep in the same room as little Albert; otherwise, his whole life would be ruined from the start. Dylan suggested they sleep in the same bed, but according to Parenting Parents for Parenting, that was bad parenting too.

Dylan stumbled into the restroom, running the sink until the water burnt his skin, then pulling the dial back only just. He doused his cheeks in shaving cream and held the razorblade under the water. Then, carefully, ever so carefully, he ran the blade over his cheeks. Smooth as a baby’s bum in the wake of its passing. Dylan had only just finished with his jawline when a slip and a tug birthed a fresh wellspring of blood, thin as water rolling over his cheek, down into the sink.

His nose was overwhelmed by the scent of the crimson fluid. It smelt like pennies, and a sickly sweet undercurrent. Dylan’s hands were shaking, sweat beading on his brow, and not just from the steam from the sink. He raised a finger, pressed against the wound, as the blood bubbled up beneath the surface, staining the snow white shaving cream with rivulets of ruby red, like tiny streams cutting through a frozen countryside.

It took all the strength in his arm to pull back the sullied razor, rusted with his fresh vitae. As he became uncomfortably aware of his own heartbeat, a fuzzy white light, like a head rush, pressed in at the edge of his vision.

He splashed the scalding water on his cheeks, washing off the remaining shaving cream, unshaven. Then stepped into the shower, running the water. It started cold as ice, so he ticked it up and up and up. Until the dial wouldn’t go any further. Until his skin turned pink then red, raw, and exposed. Hot, it was boiling; he knew that, or it should have been. But it felt like ice water against his skin, frigid, unyielding.

Dylan turned off the spigot and dressed, blue jeans and a red flannel, edges trimmed in black. Socks, then work boots, weighted, a cold brown, with a steel toe. And last, his phone; wouldn’t want to forget that.

By the time he spilled back out into the kitchen the house was empty. Rachel must have taken the kids to the bus stop. He opened the fridge, looking for a quick snack. Yogurt? Bleh. Vegetables? Worse. Milk? He took the carton, but before he could pour it out into a cup, his lips were on the edge, gulping down the foamy white fluid. Leaving streams of creamy excess to roll down his unshaven cheeks.

The carton was drained before his appetite was even wetted. His stomach growling, writhing, bubbles rising from the depths of his gut. He knelt, bringing himself to eye level with the fridge. Bloodshot eyes rolling from one potential meal to the next. Then they stopped, lingering a pound and a half of fresh ground beef. Meatballs, burgers; if only he had the time.‌

But his body didn’t seem to care, reaching in, pulling out the goods. He placed it on the counter, like an offering upon an altar, that pale plastic wrap holding the waving strips of beef flush against the white foam below. Staring at it, just staring, stomach turning on itself, eyes wide.

Thoughts of burgers played their way through his mind, meat sauce and white people tacos. Drip. Drip. Drip. As droplets fell on the counter, he looked up for a leak; nothing. It was him; he was drooling, drooling at the thought of the meat itself, not the visions of prepared meals dancing in his head.

Hands shaking, shaking at the sight. He tried to pull back, but his phantom hunger, the beckoning of that bottomless pit in his stomach, was stronger still. Dylan tore off the plastic wrap, digging into the meat with bare hands. Soft like Playdough beneath his fingers. Next thing he knew those hands were slick in the juices of the meat, dyed red.

He closed fists around the mash, squishing, sticking between his fingers, trapped under his fingernails. As he shoved the cold meat into his mouth. Chew. Chew. Swallow. Chew. Chew. Swallow. It tasted sweet, like his cut had smelt; it tasted of iron and stone, and felt like an overcooked custard going down.

He didn’t stop until that one and a half pound package was gone, licking up every stray morsel, the wet imprint that had been left in its wake. Sucking on his fingers as one might clean Doritos dust. Not until it was gone, all of it, did he step back from the bloody deed?

What was wrong with him? Why would he- Dylan rushed to the sink, scrubbing his hands clean of the evidence of that grizzly breakfast. Between the fingers, under the nails. Until the water ran cold and clear out the other end, pooling at the bottom of the sink. Even still, it smelt like sweet iron.

He wiped himself down and disposed of the packaging, pushing the white baseboard to the bottom of the heap, in hopes his wife wouldn’t see it. Wouldn’t ask any questions.

Then Dylan swiped the key ring off the hook by the door and whistled his way down to the curb. At least his stomach was full, for the first time in a long time. The shame seemed to melt away in the presence of that completion, a shadow of a shade decrying his guilty pleasure. And why not? He heard the French ate raw meat, lots of fancy rich people, even the Germans, well, not a great example, but everyone knew they meant business at least.

His car was a 95 Ford Pick Up, his first car, his only car. He remembered when the old girl was squeaky clean; her finish a cherry red brighter than the sun. He’d taken good care of her, of course; she wouldn’t be running else wise, but damn if she wasn’t showing her age.

The drive to work was calm; he turned on the radio, but every station seemed to be playing noise, just disgusting, erratic noise. Painful to the ear. Eventually he gave up and went the rest of the way in silence. No problem there; he liked the quiet. Time to think. But today he only had one thing on his mind. Beef, raw and wet, cold to the touch.

Dylan skated into work, late, over half an hour late. Shit, Bobby was gonna pull him apart. He pulled his old work gloves from the console, slid them on, pilling leather as rough as sandpaper against his skin, and ran inside.

His station was empty, at least that meant- “You’re forty minutes late.” Bobby was a head taller than he was. Big in every sense of the word, broad shoulders, arms like tree trunks, and a belly like a keg. People would joke he became a mechanic because he saved so much money on car jacks.

“The place is empty, Robert-”

“Maybe it’s empty because of you, huh?” He gave back, flush in the face.

“Maybe it’s empty because you’re a-” Dylan stopped himself, just shy of the point of no return.

“A what, little man?” He leered down at him, arms crossed, chest puffed. Bobby might have been a big, powerful man once, but somewhere along the way he’d let himself go to fat. Now? Now he was just big.

“Nothing.” He raised his hands. “I’m just here to work.”

“Work, yeah, that’s what you do.” He rolled those beady pig eyes, set in that big, fat face of his. “You know, you’d be long gone if Rachel hadn’t-”

“Can we drop this, I want to work. We’re brothers by law, but we don’t have to be friends.” Dylan frowned, as Bobby poked one of those grotesque sausage fingers into his chest.

“We aren’t.” Bobby was stiff, short, poking him again more forcefully. “I’m your boss asshole.”

Something about that word, or maybe his tone, sent a jolt through his body, a raw red rage. He snatched Bobby’s hand, nearly ripping it from his body. “Fuck! What the fuck! You broke my wrist!” The big guy struggled, floundering for purchase as he sought an escape, any escape.

Dylan’s grip pressed hard against the skin, turning Bobby’s fingertips purple, nearly ready to pop right off. He could feel the blood flowing beneath his skin, hear the beating of his heart as it spiked, smell the sweat on the larger man’s brow. And he was hungry again.

Then a clatter, as someone dropped a jack or a wrench, enough to pull him from the moment as Dylan released his grip. He let Bobby fall to the concrete, hard and rushed out of the shop, as eyes turned, watching, leering, judging.

He started up the truck and raced down the street; it must have been half an hour at least before he noticed the speed he was going. Sixty through a long stretch at thirty-five, he was lucky in the Lord that no one had pulled him over for reckless driving.

Dylan pulled over to a roadside bar; old, worn lettering read The Corral Bar. He checked himself in the rearview mirror. His skin was flush, hot to the touch, cheeks as red as a baboon’s ass with a layer of sweat on his brow, so much sweat his hair stuck to his scalp as if it had been glued. In short, he looked like day old shit, and not in a good way.

More still, ever since he laid that finger on Bobby, he was hungry again, starving. Dylan forced himself up and out of the truck and made his way inside. This early in the morning it was just layabouts, drunks, gamblers, vagrants. Few respectable sorts start their day off with a trip to the pub.

The lighting was dim, to cover the filth of the place, but it served well enough to cover his delirious state too. Pulling up a stool, he paused a moment, only a moment, as he settled in. He could feel the phone ringing in his pocket, he reached for it, took it fast but didn’t answer.

“What can I get you?” The bartender asked, short and well endowed, with frizzy hair that screamed ‘the eighties aren’t dead, not until I say so.’ “Hey, mister! Come on now, what do you want?”

“Uh, vodka, straight, keep it coming.” The phone rang again, and with a squeeze he cracked it open.

“Any brand in particular? Don’t answer and I’ll give you the pricy shit.” She smiled, a pretty smile for a pretty girl, no woman. Though she wouldn’t be, no, not if she could see him.

“Rail. I.. Rail.” He could hear her blood too, just beneath the surface pumping, pumping, pumping. Smell the rich sweat in her hair.

She turned to ready the drink, posterior out, but Dylan only had eyes for her neck, the blood racing below, warm and fast.

“Cash or credit.” She asked, but he kept staring at her exposed neck, perfectly cast porcelain, filled to the brim with- “Come on asshole, my eyes are up here.” There was that word again; he hated that word.

“Alright, you got your look see.” The bartender pressed her breasts together mockingly at the edge of his view. “Now, how are you paying?” She placed her hand over the drink, shielding it from him. “This ain’t funny, Mr.” It took everything, every muscle in his body, every inch of strength he had left to keep himself off of her. Contained. So much so that he was humming, vibrating visibly from the strain.

“You know what, get out.” She came out from behind the bar; he closed his eyes, tried to forget the curve of that neck, the pale porcelain promise of the- No, he had to focus. “Get the fuck out!” Eyes closed, he saw her more clearly, as if she were standing right in front of him.

She placed a hand on his shoulder, and the next thing he knew his mouth was full of sweet, sweet meat. Tender, wet, and soft beneath his teeth. But warm, so, so warm. The juice dribbled down his cheeks, soaking through his gloves, staining them a rust red.

It was night before he returned home; a blood moon hung swollen above, dominating the night sky. He staggered out of the truck, stumbling to the front way and up the stoop. Wearing a jacket that wasn’t his, and every inch of his body was itching, straining against his clothes.

Rachel was packed up, suitcases by the door, her big blue eyes stained red and wet at the edges. “So you decide to show up.” He didn’t reply; he could hardly hear her, so deafening was the sound of her blood pumping. “I heard what happened at work today.. care to explain? You broke his wrist in two places you know? You’re fired obvious- Are you even listening to me?”

“Yes.” He wheezed, in a voice that wasn’t his.

She took a step back from the door, sizing him up with those big baby blues. Hunched like an ape, shaking like a leaf, and struggling to breathe, he must have been a sight. “You look like shit.”

“I feel like it..” He groaned, forcing the words through chattering teeth.

“Is that-” She stopped, taking another step back. “Is that blood? Dylan is that blood?”

Dylan turned his eyes to his gloves, soaked through in crimson. Dripping still, but slowly drying from the heat of his skin below. “Is it?”

“Are you, did someone hurt you? Or- What did you-” She stopped, taking another step back from the door. Her stomach was swollen to bursting; he could hear the siren song of two heartbeats now, as one. His mouth watered.

He tried to resist, to fight it. But every bone in his body was vacant, every muscle numb. As he staggered forward on instinct. “I’m so-” He mumbled under breath, dripping saliva. “I’m so hungry..”

“What the fuck about you talking about Dylan?!”

“I’m so.. hungry..” He could feel the tears tugging at the edge of his vision. “Honey.. I’m. So. Hungry.” Staggering forward, one step at a time, each one heavier than the last as he struggled against the overwhelming desire. Losing inch by inch.

“I.. I can make dinner or, what about-” She shrugged away, pressed flush against the wall.

Dylan stopped, breath heavy, knees shaking. “Where are the kids?” He could smell her, even the baby in her belly. Hear the blood rushing through their twin hearts, but he couldn’t smell the kids. “Where are they honey? Where are my kids?”

“I, I took them to my-” He could hear her heart beat faster. “They’re at a sleepover.” Faster still. Racing through its paces.

“You’re lying to me Rachel.” He wheezed, in a voice that wasn’t his, thick ropes of half dried saliva pooling at his feet. Dylan reached a gloved hand toward her, but she slapped it away.

The glove fell free, tearing away the upper layer of the flesh below, a thick jelly, leaking clear fluid across the floor. Revealing pale pink skin beneath, vacuum sealed to his bones, half again as long as they’d been before.

She ran toward the door, and he followed on instinct, as a dog might chase a bone. On hands and knees, knuckles scraping over the ground, feet bent upward. Moving with such speed as to force the jacket from his shoulders, coming loose with thick, moist clumps of viscera, big and small.

Rachel tried ‌the door, even as Dylan slammed into the oak, cracking the frame with a lead foot. Snatching her wrist, nearly separating her shoulder, screaming out in pain. He tugged her closer, close enough to taste her sweat, feel the beating of that liar’s heart in her chest.

He was like a man possessed, sinking his overgrown nails into her soft flesh, peeling skin and grit back from bone. “Stop!” She cried, and he right alongside her. But he couldn’t, neither the inclination nor the strength. Sinking teeth into her supple neck, tearing back as one might rip the flesh of a peach from its pit. “S-” The sound caught in her throat.

“I’m. Sorry. I’m. Sorry.” He wept into his dinner, into those tender arms that once held him dear. Crouched over his wife’s steamy corpse, blood pooling beneath the entry table, soaking through the doormat. ‘Visitors Welcome!’ He was like a twisted knot, a shadow of a man, twice as long, but little more than a whisper. “I’m. Sorry.”

In the eye of the windowsill he saw his reflection in the light of the swollen blood moon. Sunken eyes, like two great black pits. Every bone in his body stretched to its limit, skin vacuum sealed, raw and red, warm to the touch.

He pushed fingers like meat hooks into her chest, cracking open the ribcage like a clam. Pulling the babe from the wound. Perfect, just perfect. Dylan ran his tongue, thick as an arm and long as a rope, over its cotton soft skin. Perfect, just perfect. He fitted the baby boy between her arms, blood born, but breathing. Some were born lucky, others were lucky to be born.

There, in the shadow of the moon’s eye, behind closed doors. He gnawed and chewed, ripping and rending flesh all about the child, leaving Rachel with ruddy skin and ruby red hair. And he wondered, in the fleeting moments where he still had the time and inclination, if they’d call this a bear mauling too.

Share William Dawe IV

Chronicles of the IV is a podcast series covering my original short stories. Horror, dark fantasy, suspense, sci-fi, dystopian, and weird fiction, expect a bit of everything. New episodes release on Tuesdays.

Great for active listening, a commute to work, or tunes to fall asleep to, I have been told I have a good voice for putting people to sleep. In a good way, I think.

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Share The World of F. P. Dawe

Horror, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, e-read or audiobook, we do it all. For more original works from F.P. Dawe and readings from your favorite classics, subscribe below!

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Chronicles of the IV is a podcast series covering my original short stories. Horror, dark fantasy, suspense, sci-fi, dystopian, and weird fiction, expect a bit of everything. New episodes release on Tuesdays.

Great for active listening, a commute to work, or tunes to fall asleep to, I have been told I have a good voice for putting people to sleep. In a good way, I think.

Leave a comment

Gatekeeping is lame. But you’re not lame. So don’t forget to share with friends. And thanks, for helping to grow our community!

Share The World of F. P. Dawe

Horror, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, e-read or audiobook, we do it all. For more original works from F.P. Dawe and readings from your favorite classics, subscribe below!

Subscribe now

Orson woke up in a dazed state. Tired, he was always so, so tired these days. He inched right up to the edge of the bed and slipped one foot out of the covers. Toes met instantly with the frigid kiss of the fan at the far end of the room.

He slipped back under the warm embrace of his sheets; he wanted to stay there, in his cocoon, forever. But he had class today, students waiting with minds fresh for molding. No rest for the wicked, no reprieve, so he tore the bandaid off and made his way to start the day.

A black button down, all the better to cover a stain, a cross stitch, a selburose vest, grey and tan, with leather shoes to match. He set them aside and made his way into the bathroom, tiny, with a deep brown film over the grout. Orson could remember a time when he owned a five bedroom, three and a half bath home, or the bank had owned it. But you better believe he had been the one living in it. He and Eileen, but that was a long, long time ago, back when they were one flesh and everything made sense, some things at least.

He stepped into the shower, the bathtub at his feet acrylic stained yellow from years of hard use, sweat, filth, and other unmentionable things. Running the water, letting it roll over him, he built up a lather with a three in one shampoo, body wash, and conditioner. He hardly had hair left to tend to these days. The water ran warm, perfect, but only for a brief moment. Then it ran hot as Hell itself. Orson raced to turn it down, but then the stream ran colder than ice.

The mood thoroughly killed he raced to run the suds from his hair and leapt out of that deathtrap. Drying himself with an over-starched towel, he covered his parts and looked in the mirror. Fat. That was the first thing that came to mind. He never much thought about it: how big he had gotten, how he’d let himself go, and how far he had fallen since. But now? Looking at himself here in this mirror, eyes still caked in sand, he could say it, finally, fat.

A stomach out ‌to there, arms so flabby they could serve as water wings, and two more chins than any man needed. No wonder she’d left him; this wasn’t him. Or it was, but it wasn’t the Orson he remembered being. It wasn’t the Orson she had married.

Orson brushed his teeth, for that at least ice cold water was no hindrance. He combed over his thinning greys and made to start the day. He threw on the clothes he had so lovingly laid out, allowing himself the indulgence of imagining he still had a wife to do that for him, and entered the kitchen. Cozy, one might say, that was one way to describe it, but not his way. Cramped, yeah, that’s what he would call it. Filthy, for the freeloading little tenants that clung to the shadows, scuttling beneath the pantry and between appliances.

He grabbed a box of cereal. That was the ‘great benefit’ of the capitalist machine after all, right? The fruit of modern liberalism. You might not have healthcare, but at least you can buy your favorite brand of cereal! Unless you were him, paying alimony, then you had to buy generic.

Orson shoveled three spoonfuls of bone dry ‘Wheat Os’ into his mouth before he saw the time. Seven twenty, blinking in pale green light on the stovetop. Shit, was it that late? He staggered ‌to his feet, draining the bowl, letting the spittle run down his chin as he tossed it into the sink. Wiping his face down with a paper towel and snatching up his briefcase, sat by the door.

He stumbled down the stairwell, feet passing over carpeting worn bare a decade ago, wallpaper peeling, with the smell of mildew emanating from the walls. Every time he passed this way, he was killing himself, literally. He read somewhere that exposure to certain molds can be as harmful as cigarettes, more so even. And Orson smoked too, so that meant he was in twice as much danger as anyone else. So many words to say, he was the real victim here.

His car was a beat up Chevy, mat black, two decades out of date, kept running on chewing gum and duct tape. It had been a gift once, for his son, but that was ten years ago, and now? Now he had to buy it back from him, just to keep his head above water. To keep the lawyers off his back, the debt collectors, and worse.

It was one of the last cars in the garage; the rest had been sold off, repossessed, impounded, or they just sat in their place, hunks of rotting metal propped up on cement bricks. He started her up with the push of a button, and the old girl hummed, a painful, droning thing, not the purr of a pleased automobile.

Orson peeled out of his spot, passing from the gloom of the parking garage out onto the street. The sun was just rising now, cascading streaks of light streaming through the high rises, casting twisted shadows across the empty streets. Used to be there was bumper to bumper traffic in the neighborhood this time of day, not anymore, not since- Not anymore.

He approached the outer reaches of the neighborhood, one way in, one way out. A chain-link fence with a two story brick wall behind it. There was a short line at the gatehouse, a chance to turn on the radio, breathe for a second, and collect his thoughts.

“Today every true American honors the sacrifices of our brave sons and daughters, know that you have not been forgotten! Know-” Orson rolled his eyes and flipped the station.

“So, Britain is reaching out to us again, huh? Dottering old Dad is worn out, tired of his new friends? Asking his son, all grown up, to be his daddy?” Orson knew that voice, the former Director of the FBI, Benjamin Carlin Jr. “Well, where were they when we needed them? What side of the line did they stand on when the fate of the world hung in the balance?! I’ll tell you where dear listener, right alongside the red menace! They were poisoning our air with chemtrails! Befouling our water with atrazine! You know about strained, dear listener, you know. They’re turning the frogs gay! GAY! They tried to turn us gay-”

“Nope.” He flipped the channel again.

“My country tis of thee, sweet land of liberty-” Sure, liberty.

“The bombs bursting in air-” How original.

“I’m proud to be an American, where-” Orson turned off the radio with a haggard sigh. Jesus fucking Christ, was there anything worth listening to these days?

Apparently not, as he spent the remainder of the wait in silence. Watching his life slowly ticking away, inching forward, once, twice, thrice, and on. Then he was at the front of the line, face to face with security, rolling down his window for what would, no doubt, be a riveting exchange. “Hey there, Mr. George!” Officer Tableau, but he knew him well before that, a former student of his, Thomas Tableau. Short, with a moon face and a neck like a pencil, he thought the kid would grow into his nose, but now, fast approaching thirty, it seemed he never would.

“Am I good, Tommy?” He looked at the clock, quarter to eight, shit. “Running a little late here.”

“Wish I could teach, but rules is rules.” He gave a courtesy frown, something you offer out of respect for the situation, not actual distress. “Hate to do this, but I gotta check your work ID.”

“No, I get it.” Orson sighed, pulling out his papers, passing them through the window into Tommy’s fat sausage fingers. “We’re all just doing our jobs, right?”

“Don’t I know it.” The boy, who was no longer a boy, chuckled. He ran the barcode once, an error. Twice, an error. Then, painfully, he typed in the nine-digit code, agonizing click after agonizing click. “There we go, sorry about the delay there Mr. George.”

Orson took the papers back in hand, folded them up and away. “You know, you don’t have to call me that any more, Tommy? You’re not in my classroom anymore, you can call me Orson.”

“I know, just feels-” He shrugged. “I don’t know, it just feels familiar, yeah?”

He nodded in understanding, and he did; he truly understood the desire, the impulse. The security of repetition, the warm embrace of the familiar. It felt good to know your place, to understand. Orson gave a curt nod and proceeded through the chain-link fence, and then past the stainless steel doors built into that red brick wall.

The streets beyond were busy, live with many countless people rushing to work. Cars packed the streets, pedestrians packed the sidewalks, no buses, no trams. Public transit was a “luxury” that the government couldn’t afford anymore, so you got where you were going under your own power, or you didn’t get there at all.

It was nearly eight by the time he pulled into the driveway, up to his parking spot, and came to a stop. He shut off the engine, steeled his nerves, and got out of the car. ‘Welcome to Andrew Jackson Memorial High School’, a pointed choice, since it had been Jesse Jackson Memorial High School not so long ago. He frowned and made for the door, unlocking it with a swipe of his keycard.

He slipped inside, briefcase close as he passed through the pale halls, just barely concealing the rot within the walls. Mold behind the beige tiles, and the scurrying of rats in the rafters — fewer now, the heat had kicked on over the weekend, and the whole building reeked of burnt hair and rendered fat.

The bell rang, and the halls filled with students, or, filled might be too strong a word. Enrollment was down year over year. This year? Less than a third of the seats were filled, so much for job security.

There was already a queue outside his classroom door, rounding the hall. “Where were you?” John asked, a scrawny kid with a broccoli cut and chicken bone legs.

“We’ve been waiting here-” Noah began, an athletic kid, if not overly bright, with a mop of dirty blond hair and pale grey eyes.

“Hours I’m sure.” Orson rolled his eyes. “They only just opened the door, kid.” He shook his head in disappointment. If you were going to lie, you best not get caught. “Don’t shit a shitter.”

The students made their way inside, fifteen kids, the largest class he had out of six blocks in a room that sat thirty-five. And he was a lucky one, teaching seniors, better retention for the older ones, sunk cost, they started an education, might as well finish it. But now? Now they were reaching the end of the line; soon they’d be graduates and his classroom would be empty too, for the dearth of new admissions.

Orson shuffled behind his desk, deflated, leaning back in his reclining office chair. Padding worn in a perfect image of his posterior, with two sticky wheels, and one missing. The whiteboard smudged blue and red, green and black, with the half forgotten ruminations of half a lifetime of lectures. He reached into his desk, running soft hands over the hard plastic of his inhaler.

“Good morning, Andrew Jackson High!” Richard coughed into the microphone, the same line first thing in the morning, every day, for the better part of twenty years. “Please stand for the pledge.”

Orson stayed seated; he always stayed seated. For a long time, the kids did the same, most anyhow. Now? Now they all stood, teary-eyed, faces turned forward toward Old Glory.

Overlapping voices, mixing and melding into one singular droning screed, like the blasting of a foghorn, drowning out all thought. “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Everyone found their seats, everyone but Jackson, still standing at attention, pale grey eyes lingering on Orson. “Why don’t you stand for the flag, Mr. George?”

“Because I actually believe what the flag stands for, Jackson.”

“What’s that-” The boy frowned, the same question every day, and his the same answer. “That’s not an answer.”

“Maybe not. But I’ll be cold in the ground before I recite a loyalty oath to a country built on-” Orson took a deep breath. “Never mind, let’s move on.”

“My dad says if you don’t stand for the Stars and Stripes you’re a commie.” The class fell quiet, hushed whispers through covered lips exchanged between desks.

Well, your dad’s a fascist, kid. That’s what he wanted to say, probably what he should have said. “Oh, come on now, he’s not thinking big enough. Why, they could be an immigrant, or a negro, even a terrorist.” He leaned back in his seat with a sharp creaking. “Let’s try to show a modicum of creativity here, Jackson.”

The bell rang and class ended; Orson breathed for the first time in ninety minutes. Students cleared out like a tide pulling out to sea. He turned off the projector and made for the door before he felt his phone vibrating against his hip. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

He pulled the brick from his pocket and answered the call. “Hello, Orson speaking, how-”

“I want it today.” The voice grumbled, that harsh artificial tinge from a voice scrambled, like Donald Duck on barbiturates.

He lowered his voice, turning eyes to the door, and pulling down the privacy curtain, blocking the one bridge to the hall, the one glimpse to the world beyond his four walls‌. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

“Figure it out.”

“As if it’s that easy.” He peeked under the curtain, eyeing the children flitting by. “I need more time, I-”

“Tonight.” It cut him off with finality. “Don’t be late.” Leaving only the hollow hum of an empty line in its place.

Orson killed the screen and slid that omniscient brick back into his pocket. Pinching the bridge of his nose in exhaustion. Then a knock on the door, and his blood flowed in reverse, painfully pushing backward through his chest, like a shake forced down a straw.

“Orson?” Another knock. Principal Decker, just Richard. “You in there, Orson?”

“Yes, I am, I-” He wiped his sweaty palms against his khakis, pulling the door open. “What did I say about calling me Orson?”

“Keep it professional on campus. Yes, yes..” He trailed. “But, we’re friends, aren’t we Orson?”

“Sure, yeah, we’re friends, Dick, we’re friends..” Their wives were friends at least; that’s about as close a thing to a friend as a man his age ought to have. He stepped aside, letting Richard pass.

“Yeah, so, how are you doing?”

“Fine.” Orson retreated behind his desk. “You know, we can, uh, skip the small talk. Right?”

“Not small talk, it’s a proper question.” He pulled up a student’s desk, sitting at the edge of the wood facade vinyl. In a vain attempt to look at ease, but Orson knew his boss well enough to see the nerves popping off beneath the surface.

“You don’t want to know how I’m doing, you don’t-” He sighed. “I’m not putting that on you, just-”

“No, I really want to know, Orson.”

“Shitty, Dick.” He pushed out a brief burst of air, a trill through his lips, like a leaf in the wind. “I’m, I’m fucking shitty-” Orson waved it off as a joke. “How’s Eileen?”

“Good, she’s, uh, yeah, she’s good.” Richard shrugged, adjusting his perch on the desk. “Dani says-” He hesitated, swallowing the words on his tongue. “Well, we can just say she’s good.”

“Good.” Orson echoed. “Good is.. good.”

“Listen, I didn’t come to, well, I wanted to check in you, but there’s-”

“Out with it, Dick.”

“Okay, listen.” Richard was his elder, by somewhere between five and ten years, a belly half again as wide as his own, and a shaved head to hide the war his hairline had long since lost. “I need you to be a team player, okay?”

“I’m not a team player?” He raised an eyebrow.

“You are, or, I don’t know.” The Principal stammered, seeming more an ill prepared pupil than his superior. “You aren’t, well, enough of a team player, yeah?”

“Is this about the new directives?” Orson thought of the fresh criterion, so much for states’ rights.

“Part of it.” He bit his lip, like an impetuous child.

“You really want me to ‘teach’ to these, uh, standards?” Lauren Chandler wouldn’t know learning if it ran her over drunk driving, and she knew plenty about that. “Can I even call them that? Standards that is.”

“Well, I don’t want you to do anything, Orson, I’m telling you to.” Richard put some steel in it, though his heart was clearly absent.

“Yeah, well, I haven’t talked about any of the banned topics-”

“That’s not enough.” It was his turn to be terse now, and Orson didn’t much care for exchanging shoes. “You need to teach the approved ones too. I know they aren’t-”

“Thought out? Planned? Adequate?” Orson rolled his eyes. “What the fuck is a Lincoln-Douglas Debate?”

“Oh. That’s the, uh, one about slavery right?”

“No, not Stephen Douglas, Fredrick Douglas.” He let the words hang. “The numbskulls that wrote this thing mixed the two up. The benefits of slavery, Dick? Pagan-Socialist excess as the catalyst for the fucking Holocaust?”

“I get it, I-” He snorted. “Yeah, but, you know, that’s the job.”

“Not the one I signed for.”

“Yeah, well.. I don’t think anyone signed up for this.”

“No, they did, there are always people that sign up for it.”

A silence hung between them, smoothing, encompassing. “I don’t want- Ugh, this isn’t a back and forth get it? I’m under a lot of pressure here, Orson.”

“You’re under a lot of pressure?” He laughed. “You?!”

“I- You know what, yes, me, me personally.. I’m under a lot of pressure.” Richard crossed his arms. “I had to cut a third of the staff for next year.”

“And you’re the victim of that?”

“You make it hard to be your friend sometimes..”

“No, I really want to know how you’re the victim here. Not Mrs. Brown, Ms. Luddgate, Mrs. Sharp, Mrs.-”

“I’m just following the law, Orson.”

“That’s what they said at Nuremburg.”

“Oh, so I’m a Nazi now?”

“I don’t-” Orson sucked his teeth. “I didn’t- You don’t need to be a Nazi to be complicit.” A longer, sharp silence, as one man looked at the other. Two used up sacks of flesh. “Why haven’t you fired me? It’s the law after all..”

“We’re still working on that we’re- It’s not a defect, it’s fine, you just, you know, smoke too much. You sent in those papers, right?”

“Is that everything?”

“Please just, tow the line, keep your head down and tow the line.. I can’t keep you safe, not forever.”

“I can take care of myself, Dick.”

“Can you?” He left, nothing more to say, nothing left.

Orson gave him sixty seconds to put distance between them. They both needed- Better to clear their heads apart. He snatched the cigarettes out of his briefcase and made for the breakroom.

A cramped room, a radio broadcast playing. Benjamin fucking Carlson, Jr. Still droning on about that same stale shit. “Little more than a leper colony, now, who would have thought? I would, I did, we said it here on our program! They abandoned their heritage, to pollute their blood, to abandon God Himself! They did this to themselves, thinking Britannia still ruled the waves!” He crossed the room, filled in that sickly fluorescent light. “Not here, not again! Never again, dear listener, never-” Orson killed the power, silence replacing that bag of hot air. Silence.

“Hey, I was listening to that.” Mr. Brown called up from the opposite side of the ratty sofa.

“You were?” Orson pulled out his pack of cigarettes, pale blue American Spirits with that familiar earthy taste, as he took them between his lips and burned. “I didn’t realize anyone listened to that crap.”

“Not much news these days, or, not many ways to hear it.”

“If you’re that desperate for connection, I’m afraid you might need a smoke more than I do.” He extended the pack in hand, but his peer waved him off.

“No, I’m quitting.”

“Shit, so you really need one.” He shook the pack, but no dice, so Orson pocketed it. Taking a long pull off the ciggy. “Fine, your loss.”

“You’re funeral.” Mr. Brown corrected, he was a tall man, more of a kid really, and wide as a barn. Fit and young, maybe twenty-five? What a shame the line of work he went down. “You got second off?”

“Nah, thought I’d go for a smoke break, leave my class unattended.” He rolled his eyes. “Obviously.”

“Last kid left dropped my second period, so..”

“Yeah, it’s a crap job, but, uh, better than the alternative..” He shrugged. “I guess.”

“You guess? Are you, I mean, I wouldn’t blame you if you tried to leave.”

“Leave?” Orson laughed, taking another drag. “As if anyone else would hire me. What? This can’t be a surprise, me Chavez, every X chromosome still working here? There’s a reason we aren’t-” He swallowed the words. “You know what, nevermind, best to just.. Nevermind.”

The day sailed by, each class bleeding past the next, four hours, one long blur. When the bell finally rang, he was already halfway to his car, briefcase in hand. He saw Mr. Chavez in the parking lot, a cardboard box in hand, laden with his things: tarnished awards and old papers. Antonio was an old, shriveled thing, with hollow cheeks and sunken eyes, tawny skin made pale by the deep blackness of his hair; even at his age, not one grey in the mix.

“Not you too?” He called out after him.

“Not me what?” The old grump flipped open his trunk, tossing the box into the bed.

“You didn’t get fired did you?”

“Fired? Me?” Atonio shook his head, bone thin, skin sagging like wetted rags. “No, they- No, they didn’t fire me. I quit.”

“Lotta guts there.”

“No guts, I’m getting out of here, and you should do the same.” He closed the trunk hard.

“I think I’ll take my chances, you know Principal Decker, he’d be lost without me.” He shrugged. “Besides, not all of us could get another gig.”

“Gig? This isn’t about-” He pinched the bridge of his nose, hard, shifting the color of aged skin. “I’m not getting out of this job, I’m getting out of the country.. before things get any worse.”

“Out of the country? That’s crazy.” Orson laughed as if it had been a joke; he knew it wasn’t. Somewhere inside, deep in the furthest recesses of his mind, he knew.

“Yeah, that’s right. When I was young, back in Chile. After Pinochet-” He frowned, lips dropped, almond eyes heavy. “Well, let’s just say I’ve seen this play before. And I’m not a fan of the ending.”

“Where are you gonna go?” Orson chuckled. He wasn’t sure if he found it funny, or if it was just that awkward wheeze one coughs up when they’re nervous.

“Anywhere.” Mr. Chavez rounded the edge of his car and pulled his way into the driver’s seat.

“What are you gonna live off of, where are you gonna-”

“Listen.” Antonio pulled the door shut, hard, before he cranked down the window. “It might seem crazy, but, look around you, this isn’t normal, it shouldn’t be.. normal. What’s your Rubicon? Your line in the sand, the one they can’t cross, the one that would change everything.”

He tried to think, but his thoughts turned to the dark, and Orson shook the idea from his mind’s eye. “I don’t know..”

“Would you have known a year ago, ten?” His almond eyes were on Orson, searching him, sizing him up. “How many Rubicons have they crossed already, lines in the sand you never knew you had?”

“It’s like a tornado man, you just gotta hunker down, and hope for the best.”

“You’re sitting in a basement waiting for the wind to pass, because that’s how it’s always been. But this time? This time you’re staring down a flood.” He reached a hand out the window, covered in sun damage, swollen at the joints with veins pushed up to the surface. “Its been a pleasure.”

He took the hand, soft like a bag of pudding under his fingers. “Huh, yeah, yeah, it has.”

“Just, you know, before careful.”

“Don’t worry about me, I-” He forced a weak smile. “I can take care of myself.”

The drive home was a clip; used to be you would get caught up behind kids driving, buses, angry parents laying on their horns. Not anymore.

He passed around the red brick walls of the ghetto, rounding by the gatehouse and back through the chain-link fence. They didn’t check for those entering; why would they? People weren’t lining up to get inside ‌a ghetto. People knew what happened there, didn’t they?

Orson found his way into the garage, up the ramp, upturning loose black gravel from the asphalt. He parked in his regular spot and made it the rest of the way to the highest floor on foot. Passing empty spots, derelicts on cinders and junkers that hardly passed as roadworthy.

Then he was there, on the top floor, no ceiling above, just sky, all the way up into the hazy clouds leering down at them. He waited there under the open sky, waiting and watching, as the powder blue and sun kissed clouds, silvery in the light, faded. Replaced with a deepening twilight of blacks and pinks, and purples.

Night came on so much slower than morning. Dawn was something sudden, awe-inspiring. The light, in one moment of intense passion, overthrew the dark. But dusk? Dusk was a long, painful twilight, a slow descent, as the dark dragged the light away for another evening.

Once that curtain closed and darkness finally fell over the city, his handler arrived. The stars were just beginning to poke out, those few brave enough to face the light pollution, and the crescent moon by happenstance had shown her smiling face. All of them were banished by the blinding light of a car pulling its way up the ramp.

It was big and clean, more than you could say about most these days. Five dollars to the gallon wasn’t a nightmare, not anymore. When the headlights flicked off, he saw the windows were tinted as black as the night as the car crept up in front of him. “Do you have it?” The window rolled down just a crack, just enough for his words and will to seep through the opening. Whoever sat on the other end was still using a voice modulator, like they always had, always did.

“Nothing too good.” He unlatched his briefcase and passed a manila envelope through the crack. “My coworkers are clean, most, or-” He thought of Richard, Dick, and his attempt to skirt the rules. He felt a shortness of breath at the idea, a tightness in his chest, but he wouldn’t pull his inhaler, not in front of them.

“You need to give me something, we aren’t-”

“Running a charity, yeah, I get it.” Orson shook his head. “A couple students in there with questionable tendencies. And-” His mind turned to Antonio, to his ‘escape’ if he truly was, a decent prize, if- But no, he couldn’t. Or mayhaps he hadn’t a choice, mayhaps, mayhaps. “Mr. Chavez, Antonio Chavez. He’s trying to leave the country, without going through the state department, or, I- There’s reason to believe that.”

“Huh.” The unseen man snatched up the envelope with a gloved hand. “We’ll look into it.”

“Just don’t-” Orson sucked on his teeth, hard, bone dry by the time he was finished. “He’s a good guy.”

“They all are.” Not an agreement, tacit or otherwise, and Orson imagined they’d done far worse to far better. The window began to roll up, then it stopped short, and that inky black void stood silent in the night. “Thank you, Mr. George, you are a true American Patriot.” He’d shed the modulator, for just a second, a peek behind the curtain as he peeled out, rubber against the rough gravel of the garage, a plume of acrid dust and George was left alone again.

For all his distaste for it, for himself. Orson had only one real question on his mind. What now?

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Sleep. Sleep was a precious commodity that Tom so rarely enjoyed these days. Since it changed, since everything changed. When he did? He didn’t dream, or at the least, he didn’t remember them. Maybe that was a blessing; the world was oh so dark these days, and Tom struggled to imagine his dreams any brighter.

He shot up from bed, or what passed as one here at the end of the world. A flat cot, just by the door, set up in what had been the public floor of Three Little Butchers, an Italian deli, or it had been. Three empty cots accompanied his, each of them long left bereft of a sleeper. Were they lonely? Could they be? Was he mad just for asking?

Tom rubbed the sleep from his eyes and ran a finger’s width of gel through his filthy black hair. Overgrown, like a lion’s mane, with an unshaven beard to match. He’d given up on that, on shaving, since he lost the ability to hold a razor steady. Too much meat in a diet did that, or so he’d concluded from this self actualized experiment.

His eyes were two dull green marbles set sunken into the back of his skull, with heavy purple bags piled high below each. The sheen of his natural oils heavy on his brow, the skin below was pallid, stained a jaundiced yellow, and he was breaking out in inflamed patches of irritation and pus. “You’re going to die in here.” He whispered to himself in this, his only private moment. “You’re going to die..”

Sure, everyone dies, and there isn’t a thing you can do to stop it. But this felt different, caught like a rat in a trap. Knowing what comes next, unable to stop it, unable to run, unable-

“Mr. V! Mr. V!” He heard the cry of the kids. It could be anything: a stubbed toe, a hand sliced open, another gone missing.‌ Tom made his way through the gloom to his hand cranked lantern. Passing empty shelves, long cleared of every last morsel, but the memory of it lingered, sending a strained rumble through his empty stomach.

Set amongst a hand cranked burner, a can opener, tenting equipment, and more, most of it a pile of unopened boxes. That had been Bob’s idea: raiding the camp supply store. How long had it been since he left them?

Tom pumped the crank as it clicked, clicked, clicked. Slower than it had been at the onset, at the beginning, no surprise there, after all, he was slower too. Someday soon the mechanism would break; the lantern would become a useless hunk of plastic. What then?

But that day wasn‘t today, as that wisp of a light was summoned forth, banishing the dark in a strictly limited bubble, while deepening it everywhere beyond its reach. Casting shadows in the shape of grasping hands, gnashing teeth, ghouls, and other beastly things in the dark recesses of the abandoned storefront.

“Mr. V!” They called again. “Mr. V!”

“I’m coming!” He shouted good energy after bad as he raced up the stairs, the narrow corridor pressing in around him. “I’m coming!” The twisted shadows birthed by the lantern followed close in his footsteps, never straying far from the light of their mother, but pressing back into the black abyss upon her passing, waiting for their next opportunity at life.

The upper floor had been some kind of apartment: two bedrooms, a bath, a living room, and a kitchen with an open floor plan. Listen to him, talking like a realtor, from back when there was such a thing. Of course, the lights here, the fridge, the electric stovetop, all of it had died with the grid. Now the floor was littered with sleeping bags, fewer than there had been, then there should be.

Two of the kids were rolling on the ground: John and Salim. John was wild-eyed, hitting the smaller boy over and over. “You aren’t Salim!” He screamed. “You aren’t Salim!”

They were thirteen or so now; it was hard to tell. Tom found there was all too much guesswork in predicting just how many days, weeks, months, even years had passed in the world outside these walls, the world that was. “Hey, hey.” He called out on his approach, but neither listened. “Hey! Hey!”

They were rolling around on top of one another, dressed in filthy layers, to keep out the omnipresent chill of the eternal winter beyond these doors. Jacket, sweater, sweatshirt, shirt, two layers of socks, and boots, just in case a screw got loose, or a nail was protruding where it ought not to. If they took on a real chill, don a cap of some kind, and maybe a scarf. Today wasn’t so bad though, maybe it was summer outside, maybe not. But today? Today wasn’t so bad.

“Get off of him!” He shouted, wrestling John off ‌Salim, a trickle of crimson pooling over his lips, seeping down between his teeth. “What the hell is wrong with you?!”

“It isn’t him, Mr. V! That isn’t Salim, they-” He was wild-eyed, manic, greasy hair matted flat against his scalp with sweat.

“He broke my nose, Mr. V!” Salim shouted back, two of the other children, Stacy and Noah, helping him to his feet. “It hurts-”

“Would you all shut up, okay, would you.. Would you just shut up for a second, let me think.” His voice was little more than a murmur, a whisper, as he flicked sweat from his greasy brow. “Johnny, you first, what- What the fuck are you doing?”

“Don’t say that!” The emaciated little goblin shrieked, backing up toward a corner. “It’s John. It’s John!”

“Shit, okay, whatever, John. John!” His voice forced, hoarse, as it crept out from his lips in limp, tattered streams. “Fucking John, okay?! What’s wrong, why are you acting like a lunatic?!”

That took the poor thing by surprise, falling flat on his backside in the corner. “He’s not Salim!” The pitiful creature wept. No, the child.. child.. child. It, ugh, he‌ cried, a light flow of precious water at the edge of his eyes.

“I didn’t do anything!” Salim barked back, and a few of the kids nodded.

“He didn’t I saw it, John, he just jumped him outta nowhere, outta nowhere Mr. V.” Jamal cut in, little shit stirrer that he was.

“Clear out.” He ordered, the twenty odd kids lingering, hunched cretins, like vultures circling the beaten, the lame. Kids were like that, even before. People prescribed an innocence to them, a big lie. Kids, more so than anyone else, were like wild animals. Quick to trust, slow to forgive, prone to turn on the injured at the drop of a hat. “I said clear out!” He snapped, the only thing they understood since.. The only thing they respected. “You all got jobs! Clear the fuck out!”

The herd scrambled back into place, jockeying against one another, shoving for pride of place. Teams for cleaning, for checking stations for any new broadcasts, waste disposal, and operating the HAM radio, just gazing into the doorway of their own destruction, just prolonging the inevitable.

“Mr. V?” Tom turned, fists tightened, balled up on instinct. Just Sally, just, just little Sally. “Is John gonna be okay?”

“Yes, sweetie, of course, everything.. everything is gonna be okay.” He was softer with her, with every girl. Tom desperately tried not to play favorites, but as a boy himself, Mr. V saw bubbling malice in his peers. “You believe me, right? Everything-” His eyes passed over the teams, once and then again. “Ninteen Sally, uh, nineteen.”

“Kids?” She cooed, counting on her fingers “Yeah, I think so..”

“No, there- There ought to be twenty, twenty, Sally.” Tom’s eye twitched, his leg spasmed, forcing him into a chair. “Where’s Matt?”

“Missing, Mr. V.” She replied, stepping closer to check on him, until Tom raised a hand to deny her. “Has been for.. uh, this many.” Sally held up eight fingers, no thumbs. Eight. Eight days. No, he would have noticed. Should have noticed.

“Not missing, Mr. V!” John sobbed, crumpled up in his corner. “He’s not missing! It, it got him. Hiding in plain sight, it-”

“There’s no IT!” Tom snapped, loud, too loud, so many little eyes turning on him, waiting with bated breath, like a Sunday congregation. How long had they been here? How long had this been their life? “ There’s no it, John, no-”

“How do you explain it all then Mr. V!” John barked, like a cornered stray, yellowed teeth borne and blackened nails splayed. “Fifty of us, there were fifty of us.‌ I remember, fifty of us and four of you.” Bob, Samantha, Katie. He remembered each of them, or had a vague shadow of a recollection. Their faces empty now, placeholders, smudged in his memory, bad reel, all of it bad reel. “Where did they go?! I want Ms. Simpson back..” Katie. Katie would know what to do with him; she could deal with the boys proper. She, this was all her idea, not his. Sheltering in place, and the news echoed her, echoed her every day until the broadcasts died, until- “Where did Matt go?”

“He left kid, he just-” Tom sighed, placing a grimy hand on Sally’s shoulder. Her eyes were puffy, nose cherry red with a sniffle, cheeks ruddy with the cold. “Sally, get an extra jacket on and get to work, don’t want anyone catching a cold.. We’re good here, right, John? We’re good?” He nodded mute, and Sally slipped away to her mindless chores. Work, not to save them, just something to wake up for.

“Why don’t you come over here, John?” Tom kneaded his thigh with the tightest grip he could muster, trying to soothe the muscle beneath. Like an old injury, but one he didn’t remember, fidgeting beneath the surface.

The boy shook his head vigorously; it was there in that corner, or nowhere. Fuck. Tom found his feet despite the spasms running rampant over his leg; the muscles live like the sea. A tide rising and falling, falling and rising. He placed the lantern on the kitchen table, positioning its light just to the right of John. “And He said ‘Let there be light’, and there was light and it was good..”

“Eh?” No reply, as Tom stumbled forward, an old wicker chair in one hand, the other seeking support against the kitchen table, then the end table, then the wall on his approach. It took a minute, but he got there.

“Thought I wouldn’t come, huh?” He put down the chair, just by John’s corner. “Ugh, fuck that.. Alright, spill, what’s eating you?” A poor choice of words, as John pressed further into the corner, putting the drywall through its paces. “Just, come on, what’s-”

“I already said..” He whispered, as if the shadows might be listening, waiting for him to slip up. “It came for them, all of them.. it’s gonna eat all of us, if we let it. No one believes me, but it’s gonna eat all of us, please, you have to listen, you have to believe me. You have to protect us.”

“I believe you.” Tom sighed, once again kneading the underlying muscle. Rippling like running water, every twitch like a blade beneath the skin, like barbed wire through his soft insides.

“You do?” John looked up; his eyes were sunken, like the rest. Deep black pits, but his baby blues were swollen, red, and ringed with a halo of undefined wet. “You really- You really do?”

“Of course, kid, yeah.” He tried to ignore the pain in his leg. Tried and failed, as he gritted his teeth and did his best to smile. “I believe you believe it.”

“That’s not the same.” His cheeks were hollow from hunger, hands shaking like leaves in autumn. Katie might have been able to tell them why, why the shakes were passing from one to the next in an endless loop, but not him, not him.

“It’s not, but, sometimes it’s the best someone can do.” The worst of it passed, and Tom sighed in relief, however brief it might be. “Listen, I know it’s hard, everything-” He stopped himself. The bombs, the radiation — no need to go over it, no need to open wounds hardly half healed. “I know we all want to believe things happen for a reason, kid, that’s what you’re doing here. Trying to, you know, make sense of everything, put things into neat little boxes, but sometimes, sometimes things don’t fit into a box. Sometimes they aren’t neat and clean, sometimes things are messy and sad and painful-” Fuck, where was he even going with all this. “Never mind, just, never mind any of that. You know what? Do you want to know what’s really going on?”

“I already know what’s-”

“You think you do, but you don’t, trust me, kid, trust me.” John nodded in agreement. “We’re running out of food, kid, it’s not so good. It’s bad even, real bad. Don’t know how we lasted this long but.. it’s bad.” Tom sighed in relief; it felt like a boot had been lifted off his throat; he could breathe again. He could just be. “Damn, that feels good to say out loud.”

“Running out of food?” His eyes were still wild, but a different kind of wild: panic, not fear. “What are we gonna-”

“Don’t worry about it kid, I’m going to take care of it. Okay? Like I always do, I’m going to take care of it.” Tom lifted his weary head, looking out at the kids, hard at work in their pointless toil. Like breaking rocks in the prison yard, burning energy, and building character. Keeping the mind and the body both busy.

“If I can help, you know I could-” Tom cut the kid off with a ruffle of his hair.

“Don’t worry about it kid, I know you’d do whatever you could, but don’t, don’t you worry about it. I got this.” He forced a smile, too forceful, enough to reopen the cracks in his red raw lips, swatted thirsty. “I’d do anything for you kids, you know that, right? You know that?”

John nodded, wordlessly shoving his head between his knees, arms wrapped tight around his legs. “Okay, good.. Okay.” Tom found his feet. “Listen, just get some extra sleep, you look like shit- I mean, you look like you didn’t sleep good last night, yeah? Get some sleep.”

Tom rotated through the stations, first checking today’s cleaning crew; they always rotated, always. Every week there was a new assignment. Katie set up the system, but now Tom, he just let the kids run it on their own. The goal was to keep anyone from getting too bored; that was the real killer, not the starvation, not the radiation, or the filth. It was the omnipresence of boredom. Enough to surround you, penetrate you, pull you down to the bottom and drown you if you let it.

Cleaning was always the same: scrubbing the same places with the same dirty water to the same result. The HAM radio was always silent, though every once in a while a kid would lose it manning the station; they’d start talking to angels, or worse, demons. All sorts of nonsense, that was the time to rotate them off that duty and keep them off it for as long as possible. Maybe that’s why all those kids ran away, why Katie, why she ran away. Angels and demons whispering to folks in the night.

The standard FM radio was much the same; no way to reply, of course, but they tuned into every station, rotating through them at set intervals and recording the output. Never anything new, but one could hope.

“The President has issued DEFCON 1. Nuclear exchange is imminent. Remain in your homes, retreat to a basement or cellar if possible. Failing that, stay as far away from windows and points of entrance and egress. Fill sinks, bathtubs and any obvious containers with water. There is a strong possibility that water systems will be unavailable for an indeterminate period. Shelter in place, help is on the way.” That was it, the only word they’d gotten from the outside in God knew how long. Whenever the broadcast finished a loop, it flicked over for a moment. “Emergency broadcast, please stand by. Emergency broadcast, please stand by. Emergency broadcast, please stand by.” Then back to the top, and round and round it went.

It felt like some cruel joke; he couldn’t believe he’d bought it, the first few times at least. “Shelter in place, help is on the way.” Tom believed them; Katie did too. They thought someone was coming, but no one ever came, not for them, not for anyone.

“Good work kids.” He smiled, that forced grin with the cracked lips, seeping tiny drops of crimson, falling onto his shirt and making a mess of things.

With the kids up and moving, Tom took his crank lantern and made for the first floor slow and steady; the last thing he needed to do was agitate his leg, risking bringing back another shaking fit. The shadows came with him, birthing new monsters in the dark crevices of the descent. He thought of John as the phantom fiends played out in and under the stairwell. It wasn’t the kid’s fault; people were just like that, seeing patterns where there weren’t any, seeking monsters to tell stories about, instead of acknowledging the truth. It would be sad if it weren’t so pathetic, not for the kid, of course, but he wasn’t alone; adults all too often had a habit of letting their imaginations get the best of them too.

He approached the old iron doors of the walk-in freezer, worn, with the slightest kiss of rust at the hinges. There he began working through his pockets for keys, a rustle of metal as he pulled them out and unlocked the door.

A shuffle inside, a butcher’s block at the far end, stained in the rust red of blood from years of service. Worn down into the shape of the many victims it had claimed. It was too warm in here; every day the freezer seemed to lose its freeze, one day it’d be all gone entirely. Though it seemed they’d run out of meat before they crossed that bridge. A forest comprising dozens of hooks that once housed hundreds of pounds of pork and beef; now there was only a single carcass left, undersized and already stripped quite bare. The hindquarters? Gone. The arms and legs? Gone. Even that sweet meat had been taken out of the cheeks.

Ribs, that’s all that was left. He unhooked the carcass, bringing it down onto the butcher’s block. Tom took a cleaver in hand, letting a particularly bad spasm pass through his arm before splitting each rib from its attachment to the spine. That was it, done and done. He dumped the spine and viscera in the bits barrel, the throwaway parts from the butchery, the leftover bones from their meals. In a pinch, they could eat that, boil the bones, shuck the last of the meat from them, suck out the marrow, and make a broth. If people could keep going off boiled leather, they could survive off that.

He carried the two sides of the rib out; they were narrow and the bones thin as toothpicks. Who in their right mind reaped a pig like that? Whatever, he should be grateful, happy someone thought to kill it, to leave it here for them, without even knowing that’s what they were doing. Else wise they’d already be knee deep in the bits barrel.

Tom left the meat out to thaw, only half frozen as it was, and sat at the foot of his cot. Staring daggers at the entryway. It was locked, bolted, and they’d put down the iron mesh. They’d even boarded it, and the windows, up from the inside, covered it all in layers of aluminum foil for good measure. Nothing could get in, nothing could get out, not without him knowing. Yet strange things could be heard at night, out in the world that was, the imagined places just beyond these walls.

So he sat there, his cleaver gripped tight in hand, an extension of his body, his will. Ready to protect what little they had left, what little he had left. Time traveled differently here, inside the butcher’s shop. In the old world you never had enough time: work, your family and friends, work, doomscrolling, work, your pets, work, dating, work... There was never enough time for everything, never enough hours in the day.

But, now? Now he could sit and stew in his thoughts for hours at a time. Staring at the boarded up door, wondering how he’d gotten here. It was funny almost, then he had everything to do, but no time to do it. Now he had all the time in the world, but nothing to spend it on.

Tom felt a tug at his sleeve. “Five, Mr. V.” She said with a smile, always smiling, that one. Always happy. That surprised him every damn time.

“Thanks, Sally, I’ll start up dinner.” He found his feet, cleaver still in hand, bloody now where the frozen viscera had melted outside the freezer block. “How’s the work going?”

“Good, Mr. V, great evening!” All smiles and cheers, even after she started losing her teeth. Tom didn’t know why they just started falling out of her head, one by one. But she was still smiling, even if that smile wasn’t so bright anymore. “Lindsay thought she picked up a signal on the HAM, but it was just static.. still, I just know someone’s going to answer.”

“I know they will. Would you mind starting up the burners for me? ” He ushered her toward the hand cranked stovetops. Click, click, click. She got down to work. Click, click, click.

They never ceased to amaze these kids, his kids. Somehow or another they still had the ability to do that: to smile, to live, to adapt. Kids were like that; you can’t break a kid, not really. We think of them as weak, but in reality they’re stronger than any of us, bouncing back no matter the ordeal, no matter the severity. He wasn’t so strong; the end of the world had killed him, hollowed him out, and spat up his corpse.

No, that had been his world, the world with smartphones and a thousand TV channels with nothing to watch, the world where you could eat a crisp apple in the middle of winter and enjoy spring lamb in the fall. This, this was their world. A world where men hid like rats from the ghosts they’d birthed. Where the putrid corpse of what came before wriggled with live maggots. But a corpse only stays fresh enough to eat for so long; one day, the maggots have to grow up and fly, else be food for all the rest.

Tom cut the rib meat into individual chops, twenty-four of them, too many by four. He took the excess back to the bits barrel and got down to it. A smear of tallow on the pan, cooking them one at a time. Cooking them through, rotating from one charged burner to the next. The juices releasing, the golden brown char, the smell of grilled meat, one of the few pleasures left to him‌, left in the entire world.

One by one he set plastic plates aside with a single chop. “Here, Sally, I can do the rest.” He handed her a plate, a steaming chop fresh out of the pan. “Eat, while it’s hot, then bring the rest to the others.”

She dug in, peeling the chop down to the bone, grease covering her fingers and drenching her lips. It was slow going; the missing teeth didn’t help, but where she needed to, Sally used her fingers and ate up every last bite.

When she was done, she ferried the cold chops to the others upstairs. He finished, just as another fit of shaking came on, rolling through his body like some terrible tremor, the pain washing over him like a breeze. There one moment, gone the next.

Tom ate his dinner alone; the meat was chewy, tough, and overcooked, stringy bits of flesh clinging to the bone. As he gnawed on his meal, he could hear the kids upstairs talking, laughing, living, or trying to at least. What was he doing, and why was he doing it? Maybe he should just leave, slip out into the night, like Samantha, Katie, Bob, all those kids leaving them one by one. Why should he be the hollow one? The one cursed to linger in this place between life and death?

Sally made her way down the stairs with next to no grace, and he remembered why he was here, why he hadn’t gone with the others. “Everyone’s finished!” She grinned, a pile of dishes licked clean, and bones picked clean. “Picked everything up for you too, so you didn’t have to ask.”

He smiled, a proper smile, not that forced impression of mirth, that mask he donned almost every day. His lips cracked all the same and seeped painful rivulets of crimson, but he hardly noticed all that. “Go to bed Sally, I’ll take it from here.” He ruffled her filthy locks, gravitating into braids without design. Then, ushering her back up the stairs, he stopped only a moment. “You know, I’d do anything for you kids, right? Anything?”

“I know Mr. V.” Sally climbed back up the stairs, each plank whistling her arrival with fresh vim and vigor.

The freezer was empty now, lifeless, as he dropped the bones into the bits barrel. It’d keep them alive a few weeks, but little more than that. Only so much juice you can squeeze from a stone.

Tom locked up and returned to his cot, hard as a rock, with scratchy sheets that did little to keep the new world’s chill off his back. But it was a bed, and that was enough; it had to be. He cranked his lantern a few times, propped it up by the bed to keep the light on, to banish the shadows just a little longer. How long had he been there? It was anyone’s guess, but at some point in the endless daze of his lonely meditation, he found sleep. But not for long, never for long.

He heard something that stirred him from slumber, heavy eyes opening on a gloomy world. Was it morning, night, or the middle of the day? Who knew in the depths of this hole, this prison he’d built for them? No, Katie did that. Tom tried to stand, but found his muscles locked, his back straight, eyes fixed to the ceiling.

Another spasm? A tremor, no, it couldn’t be, he didn’t hurt not all over not anywhere. If anything, he felt numb from his head to his toes, as if someone had paralyzed him.

Then he saw it. Or, heard it really, scuttling along the floor with practiced ease. It was by him, circling him, and despite its gingerly footsteps, it was massive. The bed creaked as it climbed on top of him, just inches from his face. Its breath reeked of saccharine sweetness, that smell of rotting flesh, and iron, so much iron.

It ran a tongue over his cheek, his lips, forcing its way through them, parting his mouth so it might explore the interior. Was it tasting him? Deciding if he was worth eating? Apparently not, as it pulled back. Revulsion? Instinct?

In the dark, he struggled to make it out, but as his eyes adjusted, he saw the vague form of a man, but stretched out, like taffy pulled just before the breaking point. Its flesh was black as sin, with some ephemeral quality to it, as if wrought from bound shadow. Its face was like a man’s, but elongated, with jagged, misshapen teeth, in a snout more similar to a pig’s than a man’s .

Then it was off, scuttling on all fours up the stairwell, rounding the walls, like some horrible spider of incomprehensible size. The children, it was going after the children. He struggled, trying to break free of the paralysis. No, too little, too late, a yelp from upstairs and then a long, painful silence.

It crept its way back downstairs, a body locked in its porcine jaws. The creature cast but a single glance at Tom as it made its way toward the freezer. Beady green eyes, set in sunken sockets, hollow cheeks and greasy skin. This creature, whatever it was, was truly the stuff of nightmares.

It opened the freezer door and slipped inside, its prize in tow. Then sleep took him, took everything.

Sleep, sleep was a precious commodity that Tom so rarely enjoyed these days. Since it changed, since everything changed. When he did? He didn’t dream, or at ‌least, he didn’t remember them. Maybe that was a blessing; the world was oh so dark these days, and Tom struggled to imagine his dreams any brighter.

He shot up from bed, or what passed as one here at the end of the world. Cranked his lantern. Click, click, click. Each pump was heavier than the last. And made his way up the stairs, each step a symphony, nails in his eardrums. Tom roused the kids and did a quick sweep to check on them, then a second. No, that couldn’t be right.

As the children set to their tasks, he reached out a gloved hand and caught Sally by the shoulder. “I count eighteen, there should be nineteen, Sally.” His shakes were getting worse; his hand visibly vibrating against her arm. Tom pulled back in shame, cradling his hand. “Where’s, where is John?”

“I don’t know.” She frowned, a deep frown, only possible due to her missing teeth and half collapsed jaw. “He was here yesterday, Mr. V. You don’t think, you don’t think he left too?”

“Shit, or, no, it’s fine. I’ll-” He forced a smile. “It’s fine, Sally, I’ll take care of it.”

This morning, when he descended the stairway and opened the freezer, he found a fresh carcass to work with. Waiting just for him.

Leon woke up face down in a puddle of his own sick. The ground was hard beneath his raw bones and he’d been there for some time. The vomit had gone rank, cold clumps like cottage cheese clinging to his skin. Turning tired eyes up from the grassy knoll, he could just make out his home in the dark.

Struggling to his feet, he found his knees were scrapped and his lip had been split; the fresh taste of iron on his tongue mingling with the acrid burn of bile. Leon’s skin was pale, almost sickly so, and stained in shades of purple and blue with fresh bruises. Turning his thoughts back, he tried to remember the night that preceded his current state, tried to remember how he ended up here. But he found only an empty void set before him, blackness, empty blackness all the way back through.

He couldn’t remember how he had gotten home, but he must have. He was here after all, wasn’t he? Leon breathed a sigh of relief seeing the Dodge Charger still in the driveway. However he’d gotten home, at least he had the good sense not to drive. He remembered the day he brought it home, and how his wife instantly hated it. God, did she hate that car. “Honey, you know, most men get a convertible when they’re going through a midlife crisis.” She said, a hint as subtle as a sledgehammer, though not half as effective. That ‘Red Rocket’ as she lampooned it, was a prize, a gift to himself for a job well done, not a balm to soothe some unseen wound. Leon never imagined this life at thirty-three. With a beautiful wife, a home, even if the bank owned two-thirds of it, and now, a baby on the way, the “Red Rocket” was far below them on the list of things Leon was proud of.

He stumbled to the door, propping himself up against the light post, then against his wife’s rosebush, which immediately gave out, sending Leon into the bushes. Hurtling face first into the overgrown briar, the thorns dug their way deep into his flesh, piercing straight through the thick fabric of his flannel and tearing into the thin skin beneath, blood pooling under the touch.

That wasn’t like her. She always trimmed her rosebushes, always. Her pride and joy. They’d won second place at the county fair. Despite his disbelief, he wrenched himself free from their grip, shambling back to his feet and continuing his odyssey toward the entryway. It took everything in him not to fall headfirst through the glass paneling of the front door.

The stained glass paneling was handmade and held together in a black oak frame. His wife had insisted on taking them home. “Aren’t they so beautiful? Aren’t they so charming? I mean have you ever seen anything like it?” And they were beautiful, and they were charming, or they had been before he saw the price tag they came with. Shades of pale green, blue, and yellow, bound with thick black iron, or lead, or whatever stained glass was bound up in. The shapes they formed were another thing entirely: feathered serpents and bejeweled skulls. Leon often boasted of the ‘steal’ he got on them while vacationing in the Yucatan, more likely than not he had been the mark, but the memory of that trip still brought some much needed comfort.

Leon tried the brass knob, cold as ice against his palms, and locked. Letting out a haggard sigh, his head hit the dark oaken rail. Of course, it was locked. Propping his weight up against the door, the world began to sway under his feet, threatening to bring up whatever acrid bile was still lingering in his stomach.

He patted himself down, first his chest pocket, his jacket, then shaky hands running over his legs, front, then back, and back again. “Fuck.” He groaned. No keys. The ignition; he left the keys in the ignition. Leon staggered back from the door, a wet spot, a poorly placed step, a slip and a fall. He flew down the porch steps, as his back met the brick lay of the front walk, then a split second later, his head hit the floor. A sickening crack rang out as everything went black, again.

His eyes opened out of turn, lazily blinking, one then the other, as his vision strained to focus. The moon was at its full height, poking out from behind light cloud cover to shed its pallid silvery light. It was almost a full moon, a waning gibbous, on its slow journey to be made again. And its position told him everything he needed to know, even without a clock, Leon could see it was far later than he had planned to return home and dreaded the lecture his wife was sure to wake him with.

Leon felt at the back of his head, hair scraped clean where it had met the brick. Pulling his fingers back into view, stained with a thick, sticky crimson gel. Blood, his blood, though in that silvery light it looked more like jam against his fingers tips. Mesmerized by the warm liquid, Leon felt a sudden urge to taste the blood. He shook his head, trying to expel this intrusive thought from his mind and compelled his hand down, wiping the excess against the garden walk. At a glance, the evidence of his passing disappeared against the red brick.

At least now he was sober, well, rather, more sober than he had been. He found his feet at speed, fast, too fast, as his head became light enough to take flight. Vision blurred by a field of blinding white, and legs weak in a novel way. Leon stood in place for a moment, letting it pass him by, only continuing when his vision cleared.

Stumbling back to the Red Rocket, Leon could see now it was in worse shape than he could see before. The front bumper hung on by a thread, and a pool of dark liquid had formed under the car. Shit, how much was that going to cost him? He leaned down, catching himself only just, and feeling at the sludge, thick and warm, and oddly enough, when he pulled his finger into the light, red. Leon opened the door, finding the keyring still hanging in the ignition. Leon reached for them, knee propped against the leather of the driver’s seat and free hand against the grip of the steering wheel. Even then he almost fell twice; his depth perception was shot, and his balance with it. He’d hit his head pretty hard, and for a moment wondered if it might be a concussion. No, it was the drink; he was in his thirties and he’d been out drinking half the night. Yes, that was it.

Back over the brick walkway, up the stoop to the front door and into the house. “Honey!” He shouted up the stairwell almost instinctually. “Shit..” Leon hissed under his breath, now that he was back flat-footed in the atrium. The idea of waking up his sleeping, pregnant wife seemed less than wholly advisable.

Instead, he clammed up, stumbling through the dark to the guest restroom. By the grace of God, he didn’t cause any more damage as he reached the paper thin door of the restroom, bone white, though the paint was already beginning to chip. He pulled the golden cast knob and tottered his way inside. Running a rag under hot water in the sink.

He looked at himself in the mirror, a shadow of a man. His cheeks were almost concave, his blue eyes dull, set deep into two sunken black pits. Skin so white it seemed almost the skin of a dead man walking. Leon shook his head clear of his own putrescent visage. As much as he wanted to try to remember the sequence of events that led him here, his body was screaming for the soft embrace of his bed, his wife.

As the water steamed and the hand towel soaked, he checked his eyes. The pupils seemed normal. With any luck, he didn’t have a concussion at all. No, with any luck he was just drunk.

Leon knew it was done when the mirror fogged, obscuring his reflection. Mindlessly, he ran a finger against the misty glass, creating an amateurish smiley face. It came out as a frowny face, and he frowned in solidarity, trying again with the same result. The water in the sink began to overflow, snapping Leon from his trance. He must have drawn two dozen more faces as time continued to escape him.

He quickly switched off the water and snatched the towel in hand, warm and wet against his skin, like a hot tub or a nice steamy bath, or another thought, one that made his cheeks flush red. Leon wiped his hands clean first, clean of the dirt and dust, the filth of the road, and his own blood caked under the fingernails. Then he lifted it to the back of his head, and it stung like fire for an instant, then nothing. Pulling the hand towel back into view, he found it unsullied, unsullied by the hole in his head, even unsullied from the filth of his hands, though clean they now were.

Just how drunk was he? Leon shook his head to clear the mental fog, now more ready for sleep than ever. He hung his head there a moment, taking in the muggy warmth like a sauna, then pulled the door open and ventured out into the hall.

Creeping as quietly as he could, he paused for a moment, leaned down, and slipped off his shoes. And though his feet smelt like stale corn chips and his socks smelt like piss, he reluctantly took them in hand.

Through the hall, back to the atrium and out to the mudroom, he dropped his shoes off. He meant to be gentle; instead, the sneakers slipped out of his fingers and hit the floor like a bag of rocks. He winced, sealing his eyes shut, as he held his breath. No reply, thank God; the last thing he needed was a tired wife.

He doubled back to the laundry, just off the mudroom, and dropped off his socks. It smelt like a garbage dump. Piles of clothes, filthy clothes. Jesus, how long had it been since Janice did laundry? But looking around, Leon noticed they were all his clothes; nearly every damn pair of pants he owned, and nearly every shirt too, from casual Ts to button ups. Then it dawned on him, yeah, sure, trying to teach him a lesson, right? About cleaning up after himself. Fuck, no rest for the wicked, he’d have to spend the whole day washing up.

Leon left the socks in the pile of used clothing. And shuffled back out into the atrium and up the stairs.His bare feet welcomed the relative warmth of the shag carpeting, he was halfway to the second floor when his stomach growled in pain. Empty, for better or for worse, now demanding food, Leon made his way back down the stairs toward the kitchen..

He checked the pantry, but there was nothing; every shelf was picked clean. Empty boxes of cereal, and half eaten containers of chips and cookies, left open to go stale. Leon grabbed the stainless steel handle on the fridge, pulling it open. At first glance, he found only beer, cases and cases of cheap light beer. No, that didn’t make any sense. He didn’t even drink beer, certainly not piss water like PBR. Maybe Janice was planning another party. She could always find a reason to celebrate. The other side of the fridge seemed more his speed: a few containers of leftovers, half eaten Chinese takeout, an old pizza box going to rot even in the chill of the fridge. The freezer was stranger still in its own way, piles of prepackaged meals, lasagna, baked ziti, mac and cheese, soups frozen into blocks, chili and chicken noodle, matza ball and Italian wedding. Each had an index card tapped on them, with dates and names.

Leon stood there in silence for a moment, letting the chill of the night slowly creep its way up his legs from the bare tile. Letting the glacial breath of the icebox billow over him until his arms were covered in gooseflesh and his eyes were dry. Then, in an instant, he came to, shutting the freezer door and ‌the frigid hell it led to.

The fridge door opened again, and he grabbed one of the takeout boxes. Lo main, or he hoped it was. Whatever the case, he ate what he could until his stomach soured. Maybe the food had gone bad, or maybe it was the sesame oil, mingling with all that booze, which didn’t sit well. Either way, it was all he could do to keep himself from blowing chunks again.

When the nausea passed, he tossed the remains of his dinner into the garbage. Finding, to his surprise, the recycling and trash bins filled to bursting with cans of that same cheap light beer. Well, if it wasn’t him, it certainly wasn’t Janice. They must have had a party, and he had to go out for something. Yes, and he drank too much, blacked out and forgot the whole thing, right? Leon was sick with himself; he could have gotten in serious trouble, gotten seriously hurt. But why, why would Janice let him drive like that? Why would their friends? His head throbbed from the effort of his thoughts, the biliousness of it all coming over him in waves.

He mounted the stairwell once again, creeping from one step to the next. The sound of his coming was muffled by the carpeting, his feet grateful to be free of the frigid touch of the kitchen’s tile.

The upper hall was silent in the dead of night; good, the last thing he needed was a snoring wife to delay the end of this odyssey. Leon crossed the hall toward the master bedroom, like a homing pigeon on its return, but found himself drawn to the room opposite his. The door was only slightly ajar, leaking pale silvery moonlight across the second floor, just a sliver, just a taste.

The room was a shrine, an altar, perfectly preserved as it ought to be. The walls were a bright powder blue; the dresser, the vanity, the changing table off white, like carved ivory, an illusion, as it was all carved hardwood, textured then painted bone white. Piles of pale beige toys, every piece in its place, carefully arranged, perfectly placed.

The crib at the center of the room was the same: a tiny prison like a ribcage cast in the moon’s light, a prison without a prisoner. Within powder blue blankets, trimmed in a rim of white silk, tucked in tight at the edges. There ensconced a stuffed lemur, brown and white, just like the one Leon had as a kid, the one he’d watched on television. Those polished green marbles for eyes, dead eyes, looking out with a thousand-yard stare.

But those eyes didn’t stay dead; they pilled at the edges. Something leaking from under the stitching. Slow at first, then faster. So red it appeared, almost black in the dim light. Flowing like water, its movement was fast, but heavy, like syrup or like blood. The faucet of crimson reeked of rotten eggs, and the air tasted like pennies.

What little life was left after this trying day drained from Leon’s face. Skin so pallid white you could see the blue of his veins flowing just beneath the surface. He could hear the beating of his heart, the blood as it raced, pumping through his body. No, it wasn’t his heart, too staggered, too fragile; it was the stuffed lemur’s.

The blood continued to spread out over the blankets like a red tide, soaking into the bedding and spilling out and over the edges of the crib. It leaked onto the floor in a dozen dozen great streams, divided by each of the bars in the cage that was his baby’s crib. He could feel it spreading, the heavy red syrup soaking the shag carpeting until Leon’s feet were stained crimson, and he was forced to peel them back from the floor, to struggle against their grip.

Leon closed his eyes tight as he could, so tight he was overwhelmed with a field of blinding white light. Fuzzy at the edges and growing, filling in the black spaces of his vision. But the pumping of blood, the beating of that alien heart intruded on the silence of his mind’s eye, the bright blackness of his dream.

Then he opened his eyes, and as the heart rush faded, the room was back to normal: no streams of crimson, no beating hearts, just those dead marble eyes and the powder blue blankets. His fear, that had been real though, his heart still leaping into his chest at an accelerated tick. He began to doubt his less than scientific diagnostic. Just how hard had he hit his head? Or was he really that drunk?

Yes, it was a shrine to life’s next step, an altar to the future, a tombstone for what came before. Perfectly prepared for its new tenant, for little Jonas. The corkboard at the opposite end from the windows had only a single picture pinned up, a sonogram, the sonogram. An incomprehensible series of black and white smudges. At a stretch, he might guess it was a piglet or a fish, but the doctors assured him that wasn’t so. They assured him that the piglet he saw was his son, that the fish was little Jonas.

He approached the board, pulling the sonogram and inspecting it. The doctors had tried showing him the head, the torso, the tiny baby feet. But he couldn’t see it, couldn’t see him. When he told Janice, she cried and cried, insisting Jonas was there, insisting that Leon could see it, had to see it. Eventually, he had agreed. The last thing he needed was a bereaved wife.

She was due any day now. He could remember that much, standing in silence, tears tugging at the edges of his swollen eyes. He was going to be a father any day now, he was going to be a father. Leon pinned it back to the wall, and took one last look at his little piglet before retreating back into the hallway.

The bedroom door was shut, and as he crept his way within, the cheap pressboard of the door creaked under his touch. Leon was absolutely certain to wake Janice. But he didn’t, not for a lack of trying, but because the room was empty.

The bed, unmade comforter cast asunder; the sheets bunched up by the foot of the bed. “Janice, honey?” He called into the gloom. “Don’t be worried, it’s just me honey.. Sorry for getting home so late.” Leon waited, but there was no reply, and he wondered, worried where she might be. A little taste of his own medicine.

He stripped to his boxers and slipped into bed. Cold, as if no one had slept there tonight, fuck, Janice must be furious with him. He pulled the sheets up to his chin and tried not to think of the tongue lashing he was going to get come morning. Heaven knew the last thing he needed was a wife.

It wasn’t long before he found rest, snug as a bug in a rug beneath the layers of insulation, sinking into the mattress as it embraced him. He didn’t dream though, no, and so it felt like mere moments when he opened his eyes and found Janice tight in his arms beside him.

“When did you get in?” He whispered in her ear, close enough that his hot breath rolled down her porcelain neck. “Listen, I’m sorry for being out-”

“What are you talking about?” She groaned, swatting at him blindly, as you might drive away a fly. “You’ve been here the whole night.” Janice yawned like a cat stretching out on a sun kissed rug.

“Right, I-” He tried again to remember where he’d been, before this entire ordeal, and his struggle to find his way back to bed. Maybe he had been here all night. Maybe he just got turned around at some point.

Either way, his head was screaming at him. Leon gave her a kiss, right at the nape of her china doll neck, and felt the bump of her stomach. He couldn’t help himself but smile as he skipped out from beneath the covers.

“Where are you going?” She groaned.

“I need to wash off my face, and get some water, my head’s killing me.”

“Oh, get me a cup of water too?” She called after him, laying her head back down. “And not sink water!”

“It’s going to be sink water honey.” He called back, already halfway to the master bath.

“Sink water, for your wife? The mother of your unborn child?”

“Fine, fridge water it is..” He slipped out onto the cold white tile of the restroom, sending a chill up his spine.

Leon ran the faucet a moment, letting the water run cold over his fingers before he filled his cup. He drank it down in a flash. The water was saccharine sweet, like rotting meat smells, and thick like syrup by the end.

Then he turned the faucet hot, hot as it would go, as he watched himself in the mirror. The purple bags under eyes sunk deep into his skull, veins pressed up against the edge of his skin, ready to pop. Fuck, he was going to be a father. He had to start taking care of himself. He had to-

Were his lips moving? In the mirror, they were moving.‌ He raised a hand to touch his own lips, the real ones attached to his own body. They were motionless, but the ones in the mirror were moving, silent, inaudible. But it was the same pattern each time. Leon tried to mimic the movements, to figure out what the other him was saying. “You know.” It went. “You know.” Over and over.

Leon tried to pull his eyes from his reflection, but found himself powerless, even as his muscles strained and his veins popped. It wasn’t until the mirror fully fogged and his visage crowded out with it that he found the strength to turn back to the sink, breathless, wheezing from the strain.

He cupped his hands beneath the faucet; the water scalding his skin on contact. Leon shrank back from its touch, and only tentatively eased his way back in, one at a time, nice and slow. Once acclimatized, he cupped his hands beneath the stream and splashed his face with the water, refreshing, eye opening, enough to shake off the shackles of sleep.

Then he turned up to the mirror, the fog on it, and the mist rising up from the faucet was crimson red. His hands were filthy again, the skin covered in nicks and bruises, nails chipped and stained a rusty brown. Panicked, Leon wiped the mirror clean, leaving streaks of blood as he revealed a face covered in half dried pools of the stuff. He tried to scream, but only a high-pitched whine escaped his throat, all the while the him in the mirror mouthed those same words.

“You know.” It went. “You know.”

Leon, frightened beyond his own belief, closed his eyes tight again. And hoped on hope this was but another flash in the pan, that he could escape this one too, like he had before, as he had always done. The sound of his wife’s saccharine sweet voice snapped Leon from his thoughts. “Honey, is everything okay in there?”

He squeezed his eyes tight for just a moment, wrestling to make sense of his reality. When he opened his eyes again, everything was as it had been. That melting, seeping place of woe was gone, and in its place was his own bathroom in his own abode. He stared at the mirror long and hard, at the smears where he’d moved the fog about, but he found no sign of what came before. So he breathed a sigh, filled with relief and fear, for if the waking nightmares weren’t real, why did they haunt him so?

He cut the faucet and cleared his head, returning to his shared bed. Slipping beneath the covers then, and joining his wife, his dearest friend. He held her back tight against his chest and laid his head down for a rest. “My fridge water honey?” His wife yawned in question, and Leon sighed in his distress.

“Can I hold you, just a little bit longer?” He asked.

“Okay, but only since you asked so nicely.” She placed Leon’s hand on her stomach, and he felt the slightest kick from the other side. Bringing a giggle to his lips like a small child.

Then a second, stronger, and another stronger still. But he kept holding onto her, as Janice hardly seemed to notice. Then another, too hard, and another harder still. Until it didn’t feel like the kicking of an infant, but a rabid beast in her womb, clawing in desperate straits to escape her stomach.

“Janice, something’s wrong, we-” He tried to pull back, but she was holding him by the wrist. With a grip like wrought iron, nailing him in place.

“You know.” She said, clear as day. Like the mirror before. “You know.” Then he felt something warm and wet, thick like syrup between his fingers, leaking out from his wife’s stomach.

He kicked and struggled, but he couldn’t free himself. The air took on the sweet smell of meat and the metallic hue of iron, thick enough that you could taste both. Leon kept pulling, but she was strong, so strong. “Help me!” She screamed in pain as their sheets ran red with her blood, so much blood, too much blood for anyone to survive.

Then she released him, and he toppled back to the edge of the bed, teetering there before he fell to the ground hard. Thankfully, the shag carpeting broke the worst of his fall as he scrambled back to his feet. Only to find the bed was empty, no trace of Janice, no blood, no baby.

Leon tore across the room and flipped on the light switch, bathing the room in a flood of artificial fluorescents. There, clear as day, he saw a woman in a nightgown white as snow, stained red with blood, her blood. “Hello, Leon.” She smiled, and he recognized the curve of her face, the placement of her eyes. That was Janice, her body at least, but that wasn’t her smile, nor did she have that curious glint in her eyes, no, these eyes were as dead as those green marbles.

“You aren’t Janice..” He exclaimed, backing up toward the master bath. “You aren’t-”

“No, I’m afraid not, but you knew that from the start, didn’t you?” She stepped forward, but only to close the distance he had made with his retreat. “You’re not a dumb man after all, you know what happened here, right?”

And Leon knew what she met. In an instant, he knew, and in a way he always did. Two bodies, two tombstones, two coffins. An empty house. A fridge full of bereavement meals. The drinking, worse and worse every day, he knew, he knew all too well. “Yes..” He mumbled, tears rolling down his cheeks freely, warm and wet, salty to the taste.

“And you know what you need to do now, don’t you, Leon?” Her voice was colder now. This wasn’t his Janice, that wasn’t his wife, she continued toward him even as he stepped away from her, from it. “I can help you, but you have to do it, I can’t- I can help you, Leon. I want to help you.”

“No, I-” He cut himself short and turned to the bathroom door, slamming the pressed wood door, thin as paper, shut on the apparition.

He slid to the white tile floor, his butt freezing through the thin fabric of his boxers against its icy embrace. Leon could see the light from the bedroom, seeping beneath the gap in the door, crowding out the silvery light of the moon in their battle of wills. “She isn’t real.” He whispered to himself. “She isn’t real.” But he could see the shadow she cast over the light, a gap where the fluorescents were blocked from reaching him.

“You know what you have to do, Leon.” A voice, not the fake Janice, a voice in the room with him. A man’s voice, all too familiar.

He struggled to his feet and glanced around the room. Nothing, no one. In a panic, he flipped on the lights; the glare reflected off the tiled floor. So bright, too bright. It blinded him for a split second as he rubbed his eyes to regain use of them.

But the voice didn’t stop, and with every word that it formed he got a clearer picture, his voice, or so close to it he could hardly tell the difference.

“Come on now, you know what you have to do, what we have to do.”

But there was no one in the room. No one but the mirror him, he seemed scrawny still, and filthy, filthier than before. His sockets were so sunken now that Leon could no longer see his own eyes, and he spoke, even though his mouth had been ‌sewn shut. “I want to help you, but I can’t do it alone.”

In a blind panic, Leon snatched the nearest object with any heft to it, a hair straightener, his wife’s hair straightener, and hurled it at the mirror. The mirror shattered into countless pieces on contact, falling like a deadly rain of broken crystal. Some were as big as steak knives, others were small as nails. The Mirror Leon shattered with it, leaving the quiet to descend on the real Leon, enveloping him in its warm embrace. Leon tried to silence his thoughts before the reality of his situation could take hold. The last thing he needed was a dead wife.

“You know, Leon.” Not one voice, but a hundred, a thousand, a chorus of voices, each the same, in tune with all the rest, each that facsimile of his own voice. Quiet at first, but growing louder with each repetition. Leon looked around the room for its source as he discovered a Mirror Leon was caught in the eye of every broken shard of glass. “I want to help.” The eyeless cretins droned through their mouths wide shut, lips sewn together with hempen string. “You know what you have to do, but you have to do it.”

He tried to make a run for the door, but slipped and fell hard against the broken glass, tiny shards embedding in his feet and his knees. Leon’s warm blood began to pool around him on the cold tile. “You know, Leon.” They said, no, they commanded in eerie unison. “You know what you have to do.” Yes, he already knew. He knew from the start. Leon reached for a shard, ignoring the cut it left deep across his palm, a shard as sharp as a razor and as long as a steak knife.

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