The Remains

I enjoy reading about ghosts much more than I enjoy being a ghost. I miss breathing. You can't laugh when you can't breathe.

The walls here are too thin. I hear everything, only there's nothing I want to hear. I miss the wind, the wailing, the cursing, the screaming. I miss those hands reaching up for me, trying to push me away.

When you die your memories begin to fade. Only your strongest moments remain. I can't recall a kiss from my mother, don't even remember her face, but I remember tearing flesh, the smell of singed hair, the struggles, the extasy.

The dirt above me hides worms and beetles. I can sense them squirming and their squirming reminds me of my love. I am eternally stiff now that my skin sloughed off my bones. I lie still, unmoving, unafraid, just terribly bored as I try to rest on this pine board. Perhaps the lid of this thing will collapse. Perhaps the dirt, the beetles, the worms, the whole world will fall down upon me and crush what remains.

Perhaps, I might be no more. Perhaps, that wouldn't be so bad.

Gears Finds a Romance

Gears walked down the road - or what was left of the road - at sunset. His shadow stretched out long and skinny behind him like the skeleton of a straw man. He kicked clumps of weeds breaking through cracked asphalt.

"Damn. A whole lot has changed," he said with his eyes turned up to the setting sun. He said this often. It was nothing new. It was a purposeless and obvious statement, but it made him feel better to let it out, even if there was no one around to hear him.

A reddish sun cast light on an eccentric and lopsided hill whose sides were far too steep to be natural. The sun glimmered off remains of glass and steel hidden behind vines and shrubs. Gears thought that the structure might have been an old John Deere outlet a few years (or a few decades) ago. It was hard to tell. Nothing looked the same. Time had a way of giving everything a facelift. Sometimes, those changes were for the better. Sometimes, they weren’t.

Gears spat out a wad of used up tobacco. He worked his tongue around his mouth to get the soft stems and fibers loose from his remaining teeth. He hated chewing, but cigarettes weren’t easy to come by. He could dry leaves out and make cigars, but it seemed like too much work. Instead, he just collected leaves from the remains of the tobacco farm down the road from where he stayed and kept a few wound up plugs stored away in his satchel. It wasn’t a smoke, but it was just enough of a stimulant to keep him a little less fuzzy around the edges. It helped him see through things, past what was and towards what could be, or what he hoped the world might become.

Perhaps the world just might have coffee and cigarettes again, he hoped. That would be nice.

Gears walked towards the unnatural hill. With both hands, he picked up a large black clump of asphalt that had broken free from the road thanks to a particularly stubborn clump of weeds. He grunted and ignored the strain of the muscles in his shoulders and the venous bulges of his tightly-wound neck. He swung the clump of asphalt towards the building, worked up momentum by swinging his arms, and let the asphalt fly. The large rocky clump crashed through a window. It pulled a few threads of poison ivy and kudzu along with it as the rocky mass fell inside.

Gears ducked in through the broken window and turned on his flashlight. He wound it a few times to make sure it had enough juice to get him in and out. He flashed the light around the room and saw the interior was a store, but not for John Deere tractors. The room was filled, wall to wall, with shelves upon shelves of books.

Gears picked up a book. The cover was shiny, metallic. In large cursive letters he saw the name "Danielle Steele."

"Shit, nothing but kindling." Gears tossed the book aside and flashed the light back around the room. 

Something large and dark skittered off between rows of shelves.

Gears held his breath a moment and stood still. He listened for a moment but did not hear anything.

"Hello?" Gears reached up behind his back and drew his machete. "Anybody home?"

He shined the light from side to side. "I didn’t know this place was occupied. I wouldn’t of come barging in like that if I knew there was someone here. You know how it is. Your place looked deserted. Thought there might be something wasting away, unused, but still useful in here. That’s what we’ve come to, isn’t it? A bunch of thieves. Scavengers. But hell, what else can we do?" Gears shrugged. "Anyway, I ain’t going to take anything. Promise. I’ve got all the reading I need back at my place with the Good Book. In fact, I’ll back out now if you want. Is that what you want?"

Gears listened. Something moved behind him. He turned on his heels and shined his light. A row of books flew off the shelves and landed on the floor as a shadow passed. Gears tightened his grip on the machete’s handle.

"All right, I’m leaving. Don’t try anything with me. I don’t like killing at all. It never much suited me, but I’ve done it more than once over the years. But I guess you’d figure that. You can’t rightly live without killing these days." Gears laughed. "I guess it beats the old court system. Rather take a knife to the brain than have to sit through another damn lawsuit. I was a lawyer back in the time before. Name’s Greg Ayler, but everyone calls me Gears these days. I say everyone calls me that, but that’s not too many people these days, I guess." Gears tried to remember the last time he saw another person. It had been cold, so it had been at least a season ago, maybe two. "What do they call you?"

There was a hiss. Something ran at him and hit him in the side.

"Crap!" Gears pulled the machete around as a reflex. It met something hard and stopped.

The thing screamed. Long wires slapped at Gears’ face.

"Damn cockroaches!" Gears dropped his flashlight and worked his machete with both hands. The cockroach screeched and thrashed. Gears pushed with both hands and then placed a foot near the top of the flat side of the blade to work the machete down the rest of the way through the creature’s thick body. The head ran off on three legs leaving the abdomen – and most of the torso – behind.

"Nargh!"

Something wrapped around Gear’s neck and pulled him backwards. Teeth bit at his shoulder. Gears reached up, pulled down a bookcase, and shrugged the biting thing off of his back. Gears stood away from the falling bookcase. There was a scream, and plastic snapped as the flashlight exploded.  

Gears closed his eyes and counted to thirty. This was a trick his dad had taught him a long time ago. Scared of the dark? Count to thirty and the dark’s less dark. It took everything he had not to open his eyes. He just trusted his instinct – and counted on that scream, and the following ongoing strange whimpers – and hoped he would not be attacked again until he was able to get his bearings.

He opened his eyes. Thin pinpoints of greasy light from the setting sun outside the building streamed in between vines, creepers, and filthy glass. It wasn’t much light, but he could see outlines and shapes.

He looked over to the fallen bookcase. He heard raspy breathing. He looked down and saw a woman’s face looking back at him. At least she appeared to be a woman. Her beady black eyes seemed to say otherwise as they scanned about the room in a repetitive frenetic circuit. She clicked and clacked her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

Gears leaned down and attempted to look her in the eyes. He turned her face towards his. She clacked her teeth together as if biting. She turned her head away and clicked her tongue again. From the shadows, the severed cockroach walked over.  Thick white gunk glowed in the half light and trailed the creature as it shuffled towards the clicking woman.

Gears stepped back and lifted his machete.

The cockroach reached the woman and began caressing her head with its antennae. She smiled and closed her eyes. She began to coo. The cockroach lifted a leg and tenderly touched the woman’s face. She reached out her tongue and licked the feelers. 

The woman began to cry. She clicked softly. The cockroach clicked softly back. The woman nodded her head. The cockroach rose up on its remaining legs. The woman smiled. The cockroach pounced onto the woman’s face.  Mandibles ripped through her cheek and eye.

Gears sucked in a breath of air. He raised the machete but hesitated to bring it down. "Is this what she wanted?" he asked the cockroach. The cockroach ignored him and quickly tugged soft flesh away from the skull. The woman did not yell once. She did not scream. In fact, in that moment before the roach began devouring, she actually smiled. 

"Damn, what’s this world come to?" Gears asked. He turned and began to work his way towards the broken window.

He saw something shining on the floor in front of him. It was the Danielle Steele book he had tossed away earlier.

"Ain’t love grande?"

He kicked the book away.

Nothing to See

Tory rolled her dump truck around the floor. Barbie sat in the back of the truck, her hair cut too short, bald in places. Barbie's hair would never grow back from several too many visits to Tory’s beauty parlor.

Tory stopped playing and looked up. “Mom, why can’t you open the blinds?”

“Because there’s nothing to see.”

Tory looked back down to the floor, to the stupid carpet. She was sick of this old carpet. She knew the designs by heart. They never changed. “But it’s so dark in here.”

“I’m sorry, honey.”

“Can Aunt Carrie and Chris come over to play?”

Mother looked up to the water stained ceiling and sucked in a shuddering breath. “Not today, honey. I’m so sorry.”

Mother looked towards the window as if looking directly through the blinds. She shook her head.

The little girl bit her lip and decided to play some more. She knew the answers would be final. They always were.

***

Dinnertime brought two servings of canned spam, cold from the can.

“Mom, can’t we have McDonald’s tonight?” Tory asked.


Mother didn’t even answer.

“We never go out anymore. I’m sick of this crap. I want McDonald’s!” Tory stood up and stomped her foot.

“I’m sorry, honey. Not tonight.”

“You always say ‘Not tonight.’”

Mother nodded her head. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Mommy, I want to go outside.”

“Not now.”

Tory moved a lump of Spam around with her fork. She looked at the trail of greasy fat it left on the plate. “It’s like eating a slug.”

Mother smiled and took a bite of Spam. She quoted the old DVD of The Lion King they used to watch together when Tory was younger. “Slimey yet satisfying.”

Tory smiled, pretended she was Pumba lapping up grubs and sucked up the processed meat.

***

“Why don’t you open the blinds?” Tory asked.

“Because there’s nothing to see.”

“Can we go outside today, Mom?”

She knew the answer before hearing it.

“Not today, honey.”

But today would be different. Tory had a plan.

She sat on the floor, played with her dump truck and Barbie and waited.

Eventually, Mother went to the restroom.

Tory stood up. She tiptoed. She felt the floor beneath her might creak with every step. She walked as lightly as possible, not wanting to give herself away. Mother could come out of the bathroom at any time.

Tory crept to the window. She moved back the blinds and looked out.

There was nothing to see.

Nothing.

Letter Found Randomly Behind a Wooden Shed Full of Stained Meat Hooks and Rusty Circular Saws

These things are not easy to write about. It’s hard to find the words, but I’ll try. I have to try. If I don’t write this out, then no one will know. Or perhaps someone will know. Or maybe many people already know, but they don’t think of these things in literal terms. Only as a figurative truth, and figurative truths are only half-truths hiding reality behind a veil of language. Nobody takes figurative truths as reality. Not even the religious. Though they try. They understand parables. And what is a parable if not a truth hidden behind a lie?

So back to the stories. Readers understand fiction. But do they know where it comes from? Some people write fiction, and they think they understand, but  do they really? Most writers place one word after another. Sometimes there’s a plot written out before hand in an outline. Sometimes it starts with an image. But none of these things are tangible. They are only ideas. Only ideals. Only they aren’t. That’s what I’m trying to get at. They’re real. As real as you, the reader. As real as me, the writer. And if they are as real as you and me, then they must be real. That only makes sense.

But what are they? I wish I could say.

I see them. They hide in bushes, behind trees, in cloud formations, on school buses, playgrounds, boring classrooms, dull offices, long commutes, short commutes, bike rides, jogs, showers, sitting on the shitter, or  staring at the stars. The stories, they live. They breathe. Worst of all, they breed.

I see them covering the world like a plague of locusts. They swarm and devour entire families, entire cultures, leaving a bland homogeny in their wake. And I hate them.

The stories, they crossbreed. None of them are pure anymore. All of our cultures, they are gone. And who’s to blame? The stories.

It started out as cave paintings, grew into campfire tales, bards reciting epic poems, and then the printing press. Then there were movies, and television, and , finally, the internet. At each stage, at every level, the stories grew more alike. We share stories, we lose our borders, and when we lose our borders, we lose ourselves.

And so my job is to remove the stories. To stop them from being told. But the problem is, there are stories as long as there are people. And people will tell stories as long as they exist. They will crossbreed their mythologies and philosophies, until one day all individual cultures are left for dead. I can’t let that happen.

We must stop the cross-pollination of ideas. This is my mission in life. To cull the stories from your screaming tongues. To end the impurities of the unjust. To help the world find its own identity once again, an identity far removed from our polluted cross-cultural present. We must return to the purity of the original races, the original cultures.

And I know you’re out there rolling your eyes. You think I’m some sort of neo-Nazi or racist or something. But I’m not (and I know by denying this I am only proving my own racism in some circles), but that’s not what this is about. It’s about you. It’s about me. It’s about how these words I write leave me and enter you. We share a thought. We may not agree, but the thoughts are shared. That is, if I did my job right, if I wrote things correctly.

And when I tell you my hands are stained, what do you think about? When I say my hands have been inside the dreamers of the world, what does that bring to mind? If I were to tell you how I love the feel of decayed flesh, would this disgust you or secretly turn you on? If I were to write, in detail, about every atrocity I’ve undertaken, would you look away? I sincerely doubt it. You’d read faster.

So, you see, you are no longer just you. Now, you are part me, too.

And if you ask me, depending on who you are, knowing who I am, that’s pretty fucking terrifying.

Sincerely,

The Marquis de Sade

Rage

There’s something about the taste of blood in my mouth, when the pain grows numb, when the fists flying into my face, into my chest and stomach, no longer feel like anything at all. There’s something about that moment that causes me to feel invincible, to feel alive, and I don’t want anything else. This is ecstasy. This is right where I belong.

***

“Rage.”

I look up.  That’s my name. That’s who I am.  That’s all I am.

Who said my name?

It’s her. She’s there, looking angelic as always. She is looking down on me as I look up to her. There is light everywhere, it surrounds her, but I’m down in the depths, in the dark, and I spit out snot and blood. I laugh, or try to laugh, but it comes out as a cough, almost a whimper. I want to sound strong, but the body has its limitations.

I defy my limitations. This is who I am.

“Send more,” I say with a wheeze, and she obliges. The cell opens and I ball up my fists. I stand up, naked and strong. I raise my fists back. I push forward and connect with flesh and bone as the onslaught begins.

The whimpering cough disappears.

I can laugh once again.

***

Time slows in here. I walk in circles. I pace. I look down, and the cement is worn from my footfalls. Every step wears down the cement a little more. Little by little I reveal the impermanence of things, of all things, even steel and stone. No cell can last forever. No thing can last forever.

Perhaps not even me.

But I will try to hang on, a force of nature eroding and corroding. I fucking dance my way towards entropy, laughing the entire fucking time.

***

Don’t blame my mother. Don’t blame my father. Don’t blame the schools, the government, or even the damned universe. This is what I am here for, and I am happy enough, I guess, in my way.

***

“Rage.”

I look up, awake again, or mostly awake. My head throbs. My lips are swollen. My nose is crooked, and every shuddering breath stings my aching ribs. There’s a dull ache persisting throughout all that I know myself to be, all that I am, all that I ever have been, all that I ever will be.

She looks down at me, my angel, and smiles. She is peaceful, beautiful, and so very much above.

I smile at her. “Send more.”

She obliges. She always does.

***

It wasn’t always this way. Once it was different. I was loved. I still am loved by some on the outside, I guess. My mother loves me, I’m sure. Mothers never stop loving, even if they should. And then there’s my angel inside with me. I think she really loves me, even if I will never rise to her level.

But those days on the outside, when things held a different resonance, a different shade of truth, that was all before. Now I’m here, and I think I’ll always be here. I have no reason to think otherwise, to hope. Not that it matters, I no longer want out. I’ve found my place. In here, I am everything I was raised to be. Things are simpler, stripped down to the single most basic element: survival. Survival is the sound of pounding fists and raining blood and shouting and laughter.

“Thirty years,” said the judge once upon a time and long ago. That’s a long fucking time for stealing some shit that no one really cared about, pieces of paper with a promised value that probably doesn’t exist anyway in the first place besides to balance some ledger or database somewhere. It was an amount that, in the end, no one truly cared about and insurance fully covered for those fuckers at the bank anyway.

Thirty years was the initial sentence. That’s about as long as Christ lived his entire life, according to the Sunday sermons. Thirty years was not enough, could never be enough. My mission hardly begun, those thirty years turned to forty based on additional charges – aggravated assault, resisting – and those years keep growing. I will keep surviving. I will keep spreading my message.

Poor fucking guards. They hear stories, they should be prepared, but they never fucking know what’s about to hit them.

“Send more.”

I hear them open the cell. Their boots clomp against cement. I ball my fists and smile.

In the Shadow of the Temple

Mother told me not to go there, ever, so how could I resist?

They called the shadow of the temple dangerous. Beneath that great spire next to the sprawling globe of roofing tiles – intricately carved with the graven images of beasts and flowers – the suns could not reach. The soil in the shadow lay untouched, dark, and damp. There were stories of giant worms that reached up and grabbed young souls foolhardy enough to trespass into that forbidden stretch of land. Some said the shadows of the dead roamed there, hungry for flesh. Others said it was something more mundane, a kind of sickness, or possibly a flesh eating bacteria that thrived there thanks to the lack of light. But no matter who told the stories, the outcome was always the same: No one ever came back alive.

The interior of the temple always clamored with life. The monks and abbesses walked from window to window, maroon shadows cloaked in red hoods and turbans darkened by the lack of light.  They sang their harmonious hymns to gods that few of us outside the temple knew or could ever understand. They planted the sun-kissed lands in front of the temple and grew crops. Because they loved us, they kept enough in their storage barns to feed all of us in the village in case there was another drought or another famine.

I hitched up my skirts and walked forward. I paused to examine the land from my vantage upon a hill. From here, it just looked dark. The stretch of land sat still, unmoving, unthreatening.

I thought of Mother, of all the things she told me never to do: never to go out with boys, never to give my heart, never to kiss. When I told her that Kamine had died from an infection from a stubbed toe, she shrugged and told me I was better off. But I wasn’t. I thought of his lips, those lips that never kissed mine. She said boys stole hearts and crushed souls. And I couldn’t argue that my soul felt crushed, but I couldn’t blame Kamine. I would have willingly given him my heart and soul just to hold the memory of one unimagined kiss.

I started walking down the hill. The grass gave way to rocks. The rocks gave way to sand. My feet slipped and I lost a shoe. I reached down to grab it, but it was already gone, sucked down beneath the moving sand of a sand trap. I tread carefully, watching for the other sand traps that littered the waste. They were easy enough to see for the most part, tiny rotating things. I knew some of the sand traps were larger, and harder to see because they moved in larger swirls. Those were the ones that a person really had to watch out for. The large ones are the ones that would suck down more than a shoe. They would suck you down whole, enveloping you too quick to be heard if you screamed.

I looked behind me and saw my sister. She was watching me in silence, crying. I wanted to tell her to go back, to not watch, but I didn’t want any of the adults to see me. I didn’t want to draw their attention. If the adults saw me, they would surely try to stop me.

At the edge of the shadow, the air grew cold. I breathed it in, and it tasted metallic with an underlying stench of sulfur.   

I took my first steps into the shadow and felt it cover me. I looked up, and the suns were gone. For the first time in my life, I was without their light. And, for the first time since leaving home that morning, I felt afraid.

The ground beneath me felt solid enough. I reached down. It was cold to the touch and dry. It was like the sand on the edge, but it felt lighter somehow, less substantial. It drained through my fingers like a cloud of dust.

A monk looked down at me through a window high above. I could not see his face, so I could only imagine his expression. Was the monk worried? Mournful? Angry? I had no way of knowing. I do know he did not yell at me to leave like I expected. There was a quick movement. A nod perhaps? And then the monk was gone, leaving the window empty.

And then the hands reached up. I felt them caress my leg, up my calf, towards my thigh, beyond. I shivered with something that might have been terror, but felt more like something else, something I had never experienced but had imagined on many lonely nights.

And then there was a kiss. There was Kamine, and I let him pull me down towards him. I went willingly. And we made our bed in the dust together. It was bliss, it was death, and my sister watched it all.

And I looked up one last time as Kamine, or what I imagined to be Kamine, caressed me. I saw my sister’s face, and she wasn’t my sister at all. She was my mother, and she cried for me.

I closed my eyes before the dust fell down on me, enveloped me in a cool embrace, but it didn’t matter. The dust penetrated everything, even my closed eyelids. The dust in the darkness was unrelenting and fierce with hunger. I gasped with short quick breaths until there was no air left, no life, and the shadows swallowed me whole.

When I awoke, there was no light, only the songs of the monks and abbesses, and they sang my name. They whispered the story of my marriage with reverence and terrified awe.

The Referee

At first, she cried herself to sleep. Then eventually, it grew more bearable, almost acceptable.

She still smelled him sometimes when something happened to remind her of him, just the passing scent of his shampoo or his deodorant. Once she grew aware of the scents, they always dissipated. It was almost as if they were never even there in the first place. And perhaps they weren’t ever there at all, not really. Perhaps they were just flaring synapses triggered by memories. But she knew the sensations to be real, in their way. Ghosts aren’t always visible, aren’t always poltergeists making noises in the dark. Perhaps ghosts can just be scents. Why not? And Lord knows she deserved a good haunting.

She washed her hands more often these days, scrubbed them under scalding water. The flesh of her hands grew dry and brittle. Sometimes her skin cracked and bled. She used lotion, a lot of lotion, but she always ended up washing it off. It felt too familiar, too viscous, too much like something else that once coated her hands.

The house they once shared seemed unbearably quiet. He used to watch college footballs on Saturdays. She always hated the way he screamed at the television after a fumble or interception or missed field goal. She hated the way he cursed the officials. It wasn’t like the poor referees were doing anything other than their assigned jobs. They tried to be fair. At least, she assumed so. She had no reason to assume otherwise. The world needed referees, needed justice.

But no one had ever called her out. No one ever expected it of her. No one even knew he was gone. He hadn’t had many friends, and what friends he had in his life were now more or less gone, moved on to other lives full of wives and kids. The days of keg parties had been over for a long time now. No one phoned for him. His family lived in other states and rarely spoke. It was summer now. She had at least until the holidays before the eventual invitation for a visit arrived. She might have to explain something then, but maybe not. Maybe she would simply answer the phone like she was now. Explain he’s not in, but she’d be happy to pass on a message. It wasn’t like he returned that many messages before. In fact, to the outside world, his predicament made no impact at all. It didn’t really even matter if he was alive or dead. The world moved on, kept circling, and no one really noticed the difference.

No one, that is, except her. She knew the world was different.

She fumbles with the floorboards when she is lonely. She looks into the crawlspace, past the growing spider webs gathering dust, to where the earth lies faintly disturbed and uneven. The soil there is mostly hard and whole once again. There is just a lump where it had once been a hole. The holes were the hardest part. The clay dirt did not give easily, and she had not had much room to work. Still, it worked. She worked. She could do that much, at least. She gave him a proper burial, almost.

She smells him strongest at times like this, can almost feel his smell envelop her like his arms once did. She lies there sometimes and watches the ground. There is another spot where the ground is sunken next to him. She will lie there next to him one day but not today. Not that anyone would notice her absence. They’d think she just ran away like all the others.

He was the only thing that ever made her feel alive, real. Without him, the nonexistence goes on. Days turn into weeks. She works. She eats. She sleeps. She reads. Sometimes she watches television. She even turned on the Bama game one afternoon, but she grew bored with it quickly. Some things never change.

If only he had loved more. If only he hadn’t been so full of hate and rage. If only he hadn’t done those things to those innocent women.

She had seen his videos, found them on his computer. He had rented out a storage building, bought chains and leather straps. Sometimes, she still hears the young women in those videos scream. She had even known some of them. They hadn’t been friends, not really, but she did know them. The waitress at the Waffle House where they ate breakfast sometimes before church was in a video. So was the pastor’s wife who everyone thought had run away. Even one of her coworkers whose transient, free-spirited nature had led everyone at the office to believe the girl had simply gone back to Portland where she had once lived a relatively care-free life of adventure on the streets. That girl had never seemed much at home in the office. Sometimes, she liked to pretend the rumors were true, that those young women were runaways who had simply chosen other lives without responsibility. She tried to forget the videos, but they were burned into her mind.

Outside her window, the world passes by. She sees police cars. At first, just after she took care of business, she expected to hear a siren or see flashing lights, maybe a harsh knock on her door. But these things never happen. The police cars drive past, making their rounds, keeping the neighborhood safe. And it is safe now. Now that he’s gone. She had done her part.

Not that anyone noticed.

The Captive: A Parable

The captive fought against the rough ropes holding his wrists above his head. Coarse, fraying threads drew blood as he struggled. A warm wetness slid down bare skin. A thin trickle of light coursed through the uneven edges where a metal door met a stone wall, and it was just enough light to see. Looking around, the captive wished he couldn’t see anything.

The floor of the pit writhed with life. The walls echoed with the clicks and chirrups of insects as beetles poured over one another scavenging the remains of the previous occupants of the pit. And, judging by their depth, there had been many previous occupants. Tiny jointed appendages crawled over the man’s feet, over his ankles, halfway to his knees. Sometimes they bit him, but he still could fight, still could shake them off, and the insects would scatter, content to consume more passive prey, to resume foraging the nearly bare bones and overturned skulls littering the pit.

Knowing better than to waste any moisture, the captive – he no longer knew his name, no longer remembered where he was from, not that it mattered, all that mattered was that he was there – strained his neck to touch his arms. He sipped from his own blood. It tasted of metal and damp earth. His swollen tongue scraped against his skin as if it were covered in sand and grit. He tasted of himself and found he tasted of corruption.

There was a clank at the door. The captive tried to compose himself, to rest, to stay still, unmoving, to act uncaring, unbroken. A shadow entered with a grunt. The captive glared. Water was thrown from an earthen bowl into the captive’s face. The captive drank what he could, just a few drops, but most of the water fell on the ground to be swarmed by the writhing insect mass crawling around his feet. The dark shadow, most likely another man, held up a wooden spoon. The spoon contained a gelatinous mixture, a gruel of some sort. In another life, perhaps in another time, the contents of that spoon would have made the captive man retch. But in his present predicament, the contents made him salivate. He slurped greedily even as he gagged from the bitterness, the taste of rot and decay. Despite the rot, or perhaps because of it, he savored the taste of survival.

The shadow retreated. Footsteps diminished. Once the captive knew he was alone again, with no one to see, he began to struggle once more. Fresh blood coursed down his arms. His wrists no longer hurt. Nothing hurt anymore. He could not feel anything.

He fought until exhausted and then slept.

When the captive awoke, insects were crawling up his legs. They ignored his protests as he kicked his legs. They bit his flesh. Still, he struggled. Still, even though he had forgotten his name long ago, he knew there was something worth fighting for, even if that something, whatever it might be, remained unnamed and unidentified.

The ropes may draw blood, the insects may sting, and the captor may beat the captive unmercifully. Despite, or perhaps because, of these things, the captive fought harder knowing that it was only because of the fight itself, because of his unceasing struggles, that he was free.

Somewhere Near The End

There you were. You were alone. The world had moved on, but you were still here.

You were still here.

The world was covered with ash. The laughter of children – your children – faded to nothing. All was still. All was quiet. The world left you behind.

Toys rusted and degraded. Households were soiled and rotten.

You remembered the softness of your wife’s hair, her smile, her laugh. These things were now silent and gone.

She was bones.

Your children were bones.

Those bones were buried long ago. Gone but not forgotten.

You are still flesh and blood. Your heart still beats in your chest. You hold life within you, but no real life.

All is still.

You walk outside. The moon and the stars still shine through the clouds. And the sky is always cloudy. The light above gives light but no warmth.

You walk.

You find an empty bar. You find a nearly empty bottle of whiskey. You suck it down. You light a found cigarette. The tobacco is stale but still burns. You inhale. You exhale. The air tastes no different, no more meaningful.

The world moved on without you.

You hear a rustling in the trees outside. You feel things watching you. Perhaps they’re people. Perhaps they’re ghosts. It doesn’t matter. Because all that mattered once is now gone away.

There are cans of food and dried beans. These are in your bag. You eat, but nothing has any taste.

You drink, but the burn of alcohol is just a momentary sting before all feeling fades.

You smoke, but the air is already filled with smoke and carcinogens.

The world is not what it once was. There were sounds, there was life, there was something like normality, but normality is nothing but a memory. And life is a bitch.

And you almost had an epiphany. But it was gone.

It was gone.

Somewhere, on the other side of the world, the ocean still crashes against sand. Somewhere, there is rain and ice eroding the mountains. Somewhere, there is a cycle that goes on and on and on, and it will go on once you are long gone.

You are already long gone.

And you were gone before you even arrived.

And there is your epiphany, but it doesn’t matter.

There is no one left to hear your scream.

The Reluctant Huntress

When they called her name, she stared up blankly.

I don’t know who I am anymore.

She clenched her fists. Slick fingers rubbed up against each other with no friction. She held her hands to her face and looked at the color. The wetness clotted in places.

“Diana!”

The stag next to her lied still. A redness contrasted the whiteness of snow. The sun shone bright overhead from a frozen and cloudless sky. He ran so far, chased by his own dogs. He ran so long. He almost got away.

She looked up at a patch of barren oak trees, noted the way their bare branches cut jagged lines through the blue unending dome of sky.

“Diana.” A hand fell on her shoulder. A soft grip on her chin tilted her head up. She saw a face she almost recognized. “It’s me, Diana. It’s okay. You’re not in any trouble, baby. I promise. I’ve come to take you home.”

Diana looked at the stag again. She willed it to move, willed the chest cavity to rise and fall once more. It stayed still.

I don't know who I am anymore.

She closed her eyes. She reopened them, and the world changed.

Her ears heard sounds. Cars honked. A pair of policemen milled nearby talking together with hushed voices. She turned away from the field and saw the grey brick back of a strip mall.

She turned to the stag.

In place of the stag lay a man: not Actaeon, not a myth, just a man. A young man who had tried to…

She shuddered and pulled her legs up to her chest. She cried.

“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong. Shh.”

Diana found her voice. “Why’d he do it, Momma? Why’d he try to take me?”

Her mother looked to the policemen with glassy eyes. “Can I take her home now?” she asked. The words came out hitched and uneven. The woman released a stubborn sob.

The two men looked to each other. They nodded.

One of the policemen walked over. “The general manager says they have just about the whole incident on tape. Self-defense, so I don’t think anyone’s going to press any charges.” He reached out his hand to the mother to hand her something. Diana jerked away, startled by her own movement and instantly felt shame for being afraid. “Here’s my card, Mrs. Vines. Should you have any questions, give us a call, okay?” The policeman bent down and ran a hand over the back of Diana’s hair. She wanted to pull away but didn’t. The man tried to look into her eyes, but she hid herself in her hair. “Look, I know a good doctor who deals with this sort of thing all the time. I mean it, unfortunately. All. The. Time. Normally, after, you know, if it goes too far, we always have to take them to the hospital. But in this case, I think home might be best.” He sighed. “Anyway, please understand this girl will need to talk about this with someone. There’s good people out there who help people get through this sort of thing all the time.”

Diana’s mother nodded, said her thanks, and helped the girl to her feet.

They left fresh tracks in new snow as they walked back to the shopping center, back towards the parking lot full of people and something resembling normalcy.

Diana turned around one last time. She saw the dead stag, his fine coat shredded by his own hunting dogs. Something pulsed in her clutched fist. She opened her hand and saw Actaeon’s heart bleed through her fingers.

That Cold, Dark Womb of Stars

Davis stared up at the sky. Lying on his back, his shadowed form resembled a pincushion in the gloom of twilight. The fading light from the disappearing day reflected off glassy eyes. He reached up a bloody hand – he wondered how much of that blood was his own and how much had once belonged to others?—and grasped the protruding shaft of an arrow. He grimaced as he pulled it free.

He pulled out arrow after arrow. The notched heads tugged and ripped at flesh and fiber. He ignored the pain. He held his breath as he yanked out each arrow, gasping with pain with each gush of fresh blood. He knew no sorrow. Each revealed seeping wound brought him one step closer to something resembling freedom.

His open wounds bloomed upwards into roses of red. They unfurled above him and rained down blood-soaked tears. Their scent reminded him of love, of something not quite but almost forgotten: another time, another place, a much more comfortable bed, soft skin like rose petals.

He gasped and felt his heart shudder. It shook like a frightened bird unable to extend her wings because the cage was much too small. Those unfurled wings ached and grew stiff from lack of use until the bird found itself paralyzed. He sucked in a draught of air and tasted the roses blooming above him in the sky. Unlike the wings of the bird in his chest, the roses growing from his seeping red wounds could unfurl. There was no cage up in the sky above him. It was wide open.

The night grew dark and stars emerged. He watched the stars dance across the horizon and tried to remember the names of forgotten constellations and saw revelations: glimpses and hints of the now lost stories the images in the sky above him represented once upon a time for another race of man. He smiled and listened to the stars sing a song that only the dying get to hear – a small consolation to offset the fear.

The sky tugged him upwards, and he felt free. The sky was open. There were no cages, but there was a chill. Stars shined, increased in size, and then receded.

Davis blinked, found himself back in his body, and tears rolled down his cheek. His breathing resumed. A sudden awareness of pain shook him to his core, and he cried out. He prayed he might soon return to that cold, dark womb of stars. The shell of his body seemed much too constricting. His roses withered and joined the dust of the desert surrounding him. The wings of his heart cracked as they were bent back and broken. A medic called out his name.

Bubbles*

Jelly watched the shadow orbs bounce around the room. They transformed her perceptions, changing the soft lighting and filtering it into a pale glimmer. She helped her mother paint the room a soft pink last summer. The pink resembled maroon in the half-light.

It looks like blood, she thought to herself.

The orbs continued their clumsy dance. Her bedroom resembled a life-sized lava lamp. She knew she should be afraid, but she wasn't.

It had grown familiar long ago.

She turned up the Lady Gaga playing on her IPod, laid back, and smiled.

***

"Momma got run over by a reindeer," Jelly would reply to any idiot dumb enough to ask about her mother. In reality, she had succumbed to cancer. For Jelly, however, the why didn't matter so much. All that really mattered was the finality of it.

At times she had felt sorry for Momma, seeing her pain as her cells degraded and her body wasted away. At other times she did not care so much that Momma had hurt. At least Momma had been there. In pain or not, Momma survived and was willing to hold Jelly's hand while she described her pre-pubescent soap opera tragedies. Momma would nod and smile and stroke her hand.

Aunt Grace had said it had been for the best, but Aunt Grace was a poop-for-brains, as Daddy would say. Except Daddy usually said that other word.

***

It was the night after the funeral that the shadow orbs had first appeared. Jelly was terrified. She screamed into the night for her mother, having forgotten that Momma had passed on.

Her father came in place of her mother. Wiping the sleep from his eyes, he asked what was wrong.

Jelly told him, but as the words came out, even at her young age, she felt ridiculous. The orbs bobbled through her room, soaking up the light of her Princess Barbie night light. It was clear her father couldn't see the dark bubbles.

Jelly had called Daddy in a few nights after that before she accepted he never would see them. The orbs – whatever they were – were hers and hers alone. A vision she could share with no one.

Over the years, she discovered they seemed to like music, or at least when she listened to music. Even while wearing the ear buds from her pink IPod, when no living soul other than her could hear the songs streaming through the wires, the bubbles seemed to be in tune. They pulsated, varying between differing shades of grey and black, soaking up the light in different frequencies.

***

The therapist asked her about the bubbles. Jelly felt anger towards her father for betraying this secret. She would never talk about the orbs to her therapist, she decided. He creeped her out, and the only emotions she dared to share with the bespectacled weirdo were imagined. Her reality was her secret. Besides, her fantasies and daydreams were realistic enough. The therapist never questioned her honesty.

Whenever the bubbles came up during their sessions, Jelly shifted the discussion. She would talk about the confusion caused by her budding sexuality. She fabricated stories of pillow fights with girlfriends that went too far. Her therapist didn't seem to mind. In fact, he always forgot all about the bubbles. He would blush and dab the sweat away from his forehead.

***

Night after night she looked up to the ceiling, listening to music, awaiting their arrival.

They bounced and danced for her. They soaked up the light. They vibrated and hummed. Sometimes she imagined words and symbols. Jelly felt the bubbles communicate, but meaning eluded her.

Accustomed to their presence, she grew bold. Listening to a mix tape of gothic dance music her friend Shanna had given her – mostly a collection of remixed Cure and Evanescence songs – the orbs grew around her.

Eyes wide and with a feeling she could not describe, almost a hunger, she reached out her hand.

The orb enveloped her flesh and caressed it. The orbs closed in around her. Invisible fingers stroked through hair. Nonexistent legs wrapped around her. She sucked in a deep draught of air as her lungs tightened. Something held her tight in a bear hug. She held her breath as an orb descended over her head. Inside looking out, everything wavered. Her hair billowed around her head as if she were underwater.

The grip around her, holding her down, relented. The urge to breathe took hold, and she relaxed. She sucked in a breath of…

Suddenly, the bubbles were gone. She was on her hands and knees, coughing, gasping for air. She knew what a fish out of water must feel like.

She purged out a thick puddle of black goo. It bounced and jiggled on the floor like Jell-O spilled from a mold. She shivered. Her body convulsed. She rolled around and felt the texture of the carpet pressing against her bare skin.

"Jelly? You okay in there honey?" she heard her father call from the other side of the door. His voice was muffled by the wood and the distance between them.

She tried to reply that she was fine, but couldn't gasp in enough air to say anything.

She attempted to breathe in but the air felt too thick to enter her lungs. She thrashed and crawled on the floor. Using a dresser, she managed to pull herself upright.

Looking back at her in the mirror was someone she did not recognize.

"Jelly, babe, I'm coming in!"

Thud after thud sounded out as the door shook in its frame.

Jelly was only dimly aware of the rattling door. She was transfixed by her reflection. After the initial shock, she was able to see herself in that stranger's face. Her face had aged fifteen years since she last saw it.

Her hair hung sticky and wet around her. The face was covered with wrinkles. Deep frown lines marred her lower face. She was bruised and battered. A tourniquet was tied around her arm, and a half-plunged syringe stuck out of a vein. She looked into her eyes. They were lined by wrinkles. The pupils looking back at her were black holes on a bloodshot canvas. She was naked and withered. Loose skin hung from her skinny frame in places. Smallish breasts drooped over an exposed ribcage.

The door crashed open and a man she did not recognize entered. He was tall and lanky. Blond dreadlocks hung around a yellowed and acne-covered face. The man's build was nearly as withered as hers.

"Jelly? Baby? You okay?"

Jelly felt the man rush up and embrace her as she fell.

She saw the orbs again and smiled. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she felt her heartbeat shudder. Death embraced her with the stranger.

*Originally appeared in Sand: A Journal of Strange Tales, Issue #2, Fall/Winter 2008.

The Blank

A tick-tock mechaman wandered around the shining metal room trying to plug into anyone. The machine was drunk on data, greedy for more. He wandered over to me. His iron wheels screeched and scratched steel floors. He rolled in my direction with his lead thrust outward. Sparks flew from his vision processors. I knocked him away, but he pushed harder against me. I took his lead and jammed it into the punchbowl and laughed as acidic smoke poured upwards from his circuit board. I poured myself a glass of punch and sipped. I received a fading glimpse of a million stolen memories. None of them meant anything to me. None of them were mine. At least there were none I recognized.

I was a blank. There was nothing left.

The data junkies had already taken me. Or rather, I had already given myself to them. At least that is what TomTammy told me. She was my best and only friend. She was the only other organic. It didn’t matter that we did not share the same mold of flesh. She was short and squat and walked about on a multitude of jointed appendages. Her pitch black exoskeleton shone underneath recessed mercury bulbs. It was only because of her that I knew who I was. I saw my reflection on her back and in her compound eyes. I saw many sides of myself reflected in those eyes. I was tall and pale with long legs, long arms, and a sprout of coarse, wiry, salt-and-pepper hair sticking out upwards from my head. A splotchy beard marred my face. My loose flesh was pockmarked and scarred. I looked nothing like TomTammy, but this did not matter. In my way, I loved TomTammy, and based on how fully she saw me, I liked to think she loved me, too. We shared something special being organic. The rest of the ship, the other occupants of this isolated place, rusted around us.

TomTammy walked over and told me my story:

“Once there was just me and the mechas. Then there was you. Then I wasn’t alone. We spoke and told each other our stories. We spoke of our homes and where we were before we came here. You were from a place of light and land and water. You came here to find out more, to learn, to study. Like the mechas, you were addicted to data. You came to converse, to learn. Then you drank with the mechas. Then they plugged into you, and you fell. I sat back and watched and hid. They had tried to plug into me previously, but my shell held me safe. They grew drunk on you. They pushed their leads into every available opening. Once there were no available openings left, they made their own. They cut into your flesh until you were slick with blood. I drank some of this – I am sorry, but I was thirsty. Then you lay still for a very long time. I thought you were dead. I came over to drink the rest of you – I am sorry for this, but I was hungry. Then I noticed you still stirred, if just barely. Your chest moved to take breath, so I carried you back to my web and wrapped you in fibers and sat next to you, watching you, feeling you through my strings. You awoke, you spoke, and I knew you had forgotten me. You had forgotten where you were, where you came from. You had forgotten yourself.”

So, TomTammy rescued me and reminded me of myself, even if I was forgotten, and for that, I owed her my thanks. I did not remember any of her story but knew it was true. I trusted her. She was the only other organic. I had to trust someone. Without someone to trust, there is no life – or no life worth living anyway.

I took another sip of punch and felt inspired. “Are you still hungry?”

TomTammy pulled up on her tiny appendages and rubbed her mandibles. A viscous liquid dribbled from her dark, gaping mouth. Her compound eyes blinked and twinkled. “Come with me.”

I followed. We pushed hungry mechas out of our way and walked to her web.

“Just lie there.”

I did as she said and balanced on a network of strings. The lines clung to my skin. They seemed insignificant and fragile but held my weight. She wrapped me tight with more strings that emerged from her abdomen, and I felt hugged and loved. It was good to feel contact, to feel pressure from something outside myself holding me tight. It was like the embrace of a mother or a lover or both. She hummed a song out from her carapace as she worked.

Once I was wrapped tight, she looked at me. She ran her appendages through my wiry hair, gently taking out the many knots. I closed my eyes and enjoyed her touch. “Are you sure you want this? You give of yourself with willingness? I would never take that which isn’t given freely.”

I nodded my head. “I love you. I want to be a part of you forever.”

“I loved you, too.”

She dug her mandibles into my neck, and I smiled as she drank me away.

Mirror Image

The first time I saw him, his face was pounded in. It was nothing more than bits of bone and flesh and a pool of blood. He was beautiful in his way, a masterpiece of the grotesque, but he wasn’t my type, so I ignored him. He croaked like a toad and gargled fluids.

The next time I saw him, he looked much better. His face had mostly healed. Scars crisscrossed his cheeks and forehead. Yet, his skin was a bit too pale and swollen, unnaturally so, almost like a mushroom. I thought if I touched his face that my hand would sink right in, leaving an impression, like a mushy foam pillow or something. He smiled at me, and I shuddered. I didn’t like the way he looked. Not at all.

The last time I saw him. He was immobile. He was still. He was dead, or at the least, he was dying. A pool of blood originating from a slit neck spread outwards around his head like a strange, gory halo.

My mirror fell forward and shattered into a million reflections. I never knew his name, but at that moment, I knew he meant everything.

The Caveman in the Flowerbed

I found the first of the cavemen in the loose ground behind Momma's flowers. All around me, the roses bloomed in hues of red, white, yellow, and pink. Between the blooms, between the thorns, I saw his hand sticking out of the dirt. I only got scratched a little as I crawled on my hands and knees to make the discovery. A line of ants crossed his skin. A few bit me on my knees and ankles before I swatted them away. I touched the grey skin of the hand and it felt cold and hard. That's how I knew it must be a frozen caveman.

I went inside to get my shovel. Momma was upset.

"What's that dirt on your new dress?"

"I'm digging up a caveman, Momma."

She made her eyes look big and said, "Really? A caveman?"

"Yes, Momma."

She smiled at me and patted my head. "In that case, you go on up to the bedroom and change into some play clothes, okay? You don't need to be getting your school clothes all dirty."

I nodded my head and ran up to my room where I changed into my pink shorts and a cranberry juice stained i-Carly t-shirt. I grabbed the small plastic shovel Daddy had bought me last summer at the beach and rushed back downstairs.

"Be careful of black widows!" my mother yelled to me as the screen door pulled shut behind me with a hiss.

Digging in the dirt, I was able to reveal an arm. Parts of the skin moved a little, and when I touched those parts they felt gooey. I worked my way up the arm and revealed his body. The caveman wore a t-shirt with a black Metallica logo. Then I dusted off the dirt from his face, and open eye sockets looked back at me. There were no eyeballs. Curious, I poked an empty socket with a stick, and little white bugs were on the stick when I pulled it back out of the hole. Despite his lack of eyeballs, he looked kind of like one of the older guys in my school. Like one of the kids who had moved on to the middle school last year. I think his name was Trent.

I looked at the throat and it looked funny. There was a black line across it, and more of the little white bugs were inside that line. They seemed to have found a home there. I started feeling sick. But I was excited about my discovery and ran inside to tell Mommy.

She did not react the way I expected her to. She came out smiling, letting me lead her by the hand. "I have revealed the caveman!" I yelled while moving my arms around with a dramatic flourish like that magician at school did during his show that one time. Then I stood back and noticed her face.

It turned white, really pale, almost green, and then she fell to her knees and began throwing up all over her flowers.

"Don't dirty your dress, Momma," I told her.

She waved me away. She wiped the spit trails falling off her nose and mouth and pointed to the house. "Get inside, baby! And don't look back out here."

She stood up and grabbed the upper part of my arm. I tried to wiggle away, but she grabbed me tighter. "C'mon! Get inside!"

"Don't you like my caveman, Momma?" I asked her. I looked up to her face. She didn't look back at me. Her eyes were wet with tears and focused on my caveman.

"I've got to make a phone call. Now! C'mon!"

She jerked me so hard tears formed in my eyes. I had a bruise from that yank for a few days afterwards.

She sent me up to my room. I heard her make a phone call. A few minutes later there were sirens. I looked outside and watched policemen talk to Mommy. I saw some men in orange suits take my caveman. They put him in a black plastic bag which they loaded into an ambulance. Mommy signed a piece of paper, and some people in white suits began digging at other places in the flower bed. More cavemen were revealed. All of them looked like boys I knew from school.

When Daddy pulled into the driveway, he started shouting. A policeman grabbed him, leaned him over his Buick, put a bracelet on his wrists, and took him away. I asked Momma that night where they took my caveman and where they took Daddy.

She never answered me. Anytime I brought it up, all she could do was cry.

The Beautiful Visitor

Jeremy stared at the scene through the grime coating his small hospital window. Beyond a gravel rooftop he spied a speck of blue sky breaking through grey clouds. He breathed in the antiseptic aromas of soap and laundry detergent. He tried to lift himself up, but found it awkward because of the plastic leads trailing down his arm. He thought about The Bionic Man and about what he once thought the future might be like and resigned himself to his present. He looked at the speck of blue and watched as a Jacob’s Ladder of sunlight descended.

The door opened.

A woman stepped inside his room. She was tall and lean and young. She was shapely and perfect. Tresses of golden hair framed a fine face with high cheekbones and large emerald eyes and full lips.

Jeremy worried a moment about his appearance. He wished he had a mirror, but then, considering his present position, he decided it was better he did not have a mirror. This way he could at least imagine he looked like something resembling okay. He ignored the pain in his back as he sat up to face his visitor.

“Oh, it’s you.” Jeremy thought for a moment and then blinked. “Wait. Who the hell are you?”

She smiled and sat down next to him on the hospital bed. She was so light, the flimsy mattress barely moved. The scents of jasmine and honeysuckle washed over him. He breathed her in.

“You remember me? You know me?"

He nodded his head. “I have no idea who you are.”

She smiled. “Confused, huh?”

He thought about the drip lines coursing down from above into his arms. “Maybe it’s the morphine.”

She nodded her head. “Probably. Maybe. What do you think?”

He tried to focus on her question but it filtered in and out of consciousness. “What are you doing here?” He finally managed to spit out. He could not answer her question. His head filled itself with more questions the more he looked at her. The more he looked at her, the more he longed for her. He thought of his wife, his loyal wife who visited him every day, and before he was hospitalized had taken care of his every need, no matter how embarrassing, no matter how undignified. He was ashamed of the amount of dirty bed pans he had made for her, but at the same time was resigned to this. What choice did he have? Age and prostate cancer had led to very little in the way of choice. Life was what it was, and mostly he had found it disappointing. But now, looking at his visitor, he felt an adolescent irresponsibility rising inside of him overtaking all feelings of guilt (and that wasn’t all that was rising – he hoped and prayed his visitor did not notice the rise in his bed sheets).

“I’m here because you wanted me.”

And he knew this was true.

“I’m here because I’m everything you’ve ever desired.”

And he knew this was true, too.

He regarded her and thought of his first kiss, of his first time with a girl, of the first time he had smoked marijuana with some buddies at a KISS concert. “You look so familiar. You look like something I remember from when I was younger, like someone perhaps, but for some reason the word something feels more right.”

She smiled at him and gave a nearly imperceptible nod.

He looked into her emerald eyes and saw things there, everything, all he ever wanted, all he ever desired: that CEO position that had passed him by twenty years ago, the fancy cars, the cabin nestled in the Smokies, the beach house, a model wife followed by another model wife and then another and on and on and on knowing that when one woman grows old and saggy he could always trade her in for another (if Larry King could pull it off, why couldn’t he?), the comfortable retirement (opposed to his current existence where he was bound to leave his wife with nothing, nothing at all, except a pile of medical bills to sort through once he passed without the benefit of his meager pension which no longer offered a survivor’s benefit due to the recession), the kids who grew up to become famous athletes and rock stars (instead of the truck driver and the idiot in jail for possession charges with intent to sell). These green-tinted dreams swirled through his mind and heart and body until he felt a longing more powerful than any he had ever known before. He wanted to embrace his beautiful visitor. He wanted to lose himself insider her. He wanted to rip her apart and take all that was good out of her so that he could devour it and take it all for himself. He wanted more. He always wanted more. Nothing had worked out the way he had once hoped, the way he had once dreamed.

She smiled at him and leaned down. Her bosoms heaved (simply because that’s just what bosoms like hers were supposed to do), and she breathed on him. “You want me? You can have me.” Her breath was soft and warm against his face.

But there was an undercurrent on her breath – the slightest hint of sulfur. The jasmine and honeysuckle fragrance that had once seemed sweet became cloying and suffocating. He coughed.

Jeremy thought of his wife, he saw her washing his bed pans without ever complaining, and saw her for what she was: beautiful. He saw himself for what he was: silly and vain and ungrateful, always ungrateful – no wonder his kids hated him. He looked back to his visitor. She grew pale. Her hair lightened to a brittle grey and then fell out leaving a scabbed and rotted scalp. Her eyeballs began to sink into her decaying flesh leaving black holes in their place. A maggot fell from a nostril and took a chunk of her nose with it.

“What’s wrong? I’m everything you ever wanted, aren’t I?” she asked with a teasing voice.

She embraced him. Her touch chilled him to the bone. He recoiled, fell back against his hospital bed, and watched the sky through the dingy window over the exposed bone jutting through the moldy flesh on her shoulders with unblinking eyes. Clouds came and went. A rain storm passed. Eventually the sun returned. The clouds marched across the blue sky of yet another day. He smiled and found himself able to ignore the cold touch of his visitor. He watched the sun set over the gravel strewn rooftop. The blinking lights of airplanes from the nearby airport swept through the darkening sky.

The door opened. His wife stepped inside the hospital room. He wanted to get up, to embrace her, to tell her how much he loved her, to tell her he was sorry for all he had done, for all those affairs she had ignored (he knew she knew) for the sake of creating an illusion of happiness for their children, and that she had mattered to him and that she had always mattered to him, that she was good enough, and that she was better than he deserved. Only it was too late.

He heard his wife’s cry and understood the only tears she shed were tears of relief.

Sally

The Pastor Comes A Courtin’

Pastor Jason shook hands with Momma and Daddy at church. Momma asked what such a fine young man was doing without a wedding band? He said he just hadn't found the right girl yet. He looked to me and smiled.

He never asked me out, but he asked Momma. Momma agreed, and he took me on a date. He took me on a walk down a nature trail and talked to me about God while he did things to me I thought God should never know about.

Marriage

I suffered morning sickness on my wedding day.

The Honeymoon

I sat down on a toilet seat that was cold and wet with his urine. Before going to bed, he put a fresh roll of toilet paper on the roll. He made it go under. I prefer the paper to go over.

Birth Pains

Still newlyweds, he would not come to the hospital with me. I was there all alone while I miscarried that first time. It was the same the other three times. He said his parishioners needed his comfort, and he had God's duty to perform. My stillborn infants' dead eyes never saw their father. Perhaps that was for the best?

The Parishioner

Cathy Jacobs, a single mother, kept having children out of wedlock. All three of her children looked like Jason.

Insomnia

There were recurring dreams of my children. They looked like me, not Jason. They looked nothing like Cathy's children.

I woke up sweating and feeling an empty pit in my stomach. I touched the scars from my last C-section, and went to the bathroom to cry. Once again, the toilet seat was wet and the toilet paper went under, not over.

The bastard!

The Request

I asked for a certificate of divorce the next day. He quoted, "What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." I mention that divorce is permitted in the case of infidelity. He claimed there was no infidelity, and even if there were, a Christian woman would forgive.

Trapped

He refused the divorce. I talked to Momma, and she told me I was being ridiculous, that Pastor Jason had opened up so many doors for the family. She told me to stop being so selfish.

"Besides," she reminded me, "you don't have a job. What would you do?"

I had no answer.

Jason moved us to a big house in the country. I was only allowed to leave the house on Sundays. I sat on the front pew, listened to him preach, and forced a smile on my face.

Bruises

He no longer slept with me. The only time he touched me was when he hit me. As lonely and isolated as I was, I made him hit me a lot. I know it was wrong, but I enjoyed the touch.

A New Day

There was a new parishioner. A middle-aged man named Charley. He was a tall blonde with an athletic build. Despite his age, he looked younger than me. Before coming to town, he used to play football in the city. He's retired now.

He smiled at me. I smiled back and uncrossed my legs.

A Second Request

I asked for a divorce again. Charley promised he would provide me a way out.

My husband refused, quoting "And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery."

He hit me and called me a sinner before leaving me alone in the house. Jason drove away to be comforted by his parishioner.

Salvation?

Reading the Bible, looking for a way out, I read "And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into Hell." I didn't want to sin. I understood I had to cast off the hand.

A Bonfire

I got up to go to the bathroom. The seat was wet and the toilet paper went under, not over.

I had enough.

I took the roll of toilet paper into the bedroom. I straddled Jason, used the sheets to hold him down, stuffed the toilet paper roll into his mouth, and lit it on fire. His screams were muffled as the sheets caught the flames.

The firemen found me laughing in my nightshirt while I watched the blaze burn the house to the ground.

The Caged Bird

On Sundays I am surprised by how free I feel despite being enclosed in my cell. I sing and write long love letters to Charley.

He never writes back.

Perseids: 1861

The sun set long ago, yet the heat of the day lingered and radiated upwards from parched rocky soil. My bare feet were burned and blistered and open sores wept. I did not feel any of this. I did not feel anything beyond an inner emptiness and a tinge of loneliness. A harsh dusty wind moaned as it picked up sand from the desert floor, and my dry eyes burned. A dull ache throbbed in my head; I touched it with my hand, and my fingers came away wet with blood.

In front of me, the moon glowed large and looming on the horizon. A Joshua tree stood before me casting long, dark shadows.

Bats fluttered overhead, and, above them, an occasional star fell and trailed lines of color and light. The falling stars increased in number, and it seemed as if the sky itself might fall down.

I grew dizzy and faint and sat on the ground. I pulled my pistol from my holster and touched the steel barrel to my neck. It felt cool and refreshing in the hot night.

A scorpion crawled on a rock in front of me. I took aim and fired. Faster than the eye could register, the scorpion was gone. Smoke drifted up from my gun. The barrel was hot to the touch now.

Life one moment, gone the next.

It all seemed so fleeting, so meaningless. I thought about my girl. I had wanted to marry that girl. I thought about the burning farms. I thought about the flying arrows and bullets and screaming and blood – so much blood. The ground was muddy with blood once it was all done and over, and what had any of it accomplished? What was the point? After all, it was only land, and there was so much of it. Why couldn’t it be shared?

So many lives were lost in the confusion. A panicked horse trampled a toddler – she was my neighbor’s kid – but I had been helpless to stop it. Soon afterwards, that same horse bucked and kicked me to the ground. I lay unconscious and bleeding in my cotton long johns beneath some scrub. Once I awoke, the massacre was over.

I looked, but there seemed to be no survivors, just bodies and blood and acrid smoke. This morning, the sun rose, and birds sang just like any other day. By midday, the life I knew was gone forever.

In the present, a coyote howled in the distance.

I looked towards the horizon behind me. Beyond the ridge – where the land was moistened by a cool mountain stream, and the soil was fertile – thin lines of smoke snaked upwards into the empty night while vultures circled. My cheeks were suddenly hot and wet with tears.

I lay back down and looked back up to the sky and watched stars fall. They burned up before ever touching this cursed land, and I envied them.

All at once, everything grew fluid around me. The land beneath me encircled me as it became a canoe, and I felt myself float downstream. The falling stars became floating candles. They flashed by as the currents grew stronger, carrying me down into a widening and endless waterway. The mouth of the darkest ocean opened up and devoured all I ever was or would be.

Then I became aware – at the final moment before this world faded into the next – that the stars continued to fall, and I knew they would always fall, year after year, oblivious of us all.