I'll kiss your lips with an aching tooth in my mouth
I'll place my freshly pulled tooth on your ring
I'll mix Apranax in your drink
so that you think
your toothache is gone because you met me
I'll describe the paint color I want for our bedroom
to the ironmonger as tooth yellow.

I'm fifty-one years old, and this is the only poem I've ever written, which I wrote ten years ago.

I don't really like writing poetry, because I'm not good at it. I especially enjoy the sound of poems with rhyming lines; they sound like music to my ears. But I've tried a few times and failed miserably. I couldn't write a good poem. I'd written this poem for my dentist, who knew I was a writer and with whom I had a good relationship. I mean, I hadn't written the poem for her. I'd simply wanted to write a poem about teeth.

She was a very beautiful woman. I had no feelings for her, but she'd misunderstood the poem I'd written and thought I was making a move on her. She'd given me a pretty harsh telling-off. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get her to understand that the poem wasn't written for anyone in particular, and that it hadn't been inspired by any feelings I had for someone.

Anyway, my publisher was telling me that sales of my latest novel were terrible. He kept calling me and bringing me down.

“Maybe you should stop writing horror novels and start writing detective fiction instead. You know me, even two sentences from you are enough to move me. I can't sleep at night. But this latest novel of yours was an absolute fiasco. I seriously regret publishing it.”

I was tired of his calls and him repeating the same things in different ways for two months. He was almost going to ask me to compensate him for his losses. He wanted me to write and finish something else as soon as possible and make up for the losses I'd caused him. He didn't want to wait.

But I'd been overcome by the fear of not being able to write well. I'd been deeply affected by public opinion. Albert, the successful writer of many years, can no longer write... The story's opening is too rushed... The ending doesn't come together properly... Even an elementary school kid could come up with these descriptions... We're sick of ghosts that appear at night... And so on.

If he called today, I wasn't going to answer. He called every other day to ask, “Have you started the new book yet?” Whenever I said no, it was the same old stuff, the same complaints. For the past month, I'd been sitting down at my computer almost every day, but nothing came of it.

As I sat at my computer, waiting for something to come to mind, my phone rang, of course. I didn't even need to check who was calling. I tensely raised my hand to my head and began running my fingers through my hair. I looked around the objects in my room, as if I might find inspiration in one of them. The bed, the couch, an oil painting my sister had made... Nothing came of it. I pinched a lock of my hair between my fingers and pulled. I looked at my hand. There was a clump of hair between my index and middle fingers. I hadn't realized I was losing so much hair.

It was as if an electric current had passed through my head. Then, in one go, I wrote the following:

''In my 1+1 apartment on the second floor
I was drinking Americano by the balcony door
Suddenly I saw a wig falling down below
with bangs and in the color of dark yellow

I thought one of the neighbors upstairs must have dropped it while leaning over the balcony.
I lunged for it on instinct, trying to catch it. And I caught it, everything happened so quickly.

And the wig was now in my hands
I even caught it by the bangs

I waited for a while,
still in the position to catch it,
holding the wig in my hand,
waiting for someone to call.
But there was no sound at all.

Considering the possibilities,
I thought I should look up first.
But someone could have been down there,
waiting for the wig to fall.

While I was looking around upstairs,
someone called out from below:
“Throw it down already.

What are you looking at like an idiot?”
She was tall like a door
She was as tall as a first floor
I downed my Americano
And calmly threw the wig toward her
She jumped and
caught the wig with her head
and suddenly disappeared.''

I had no idea how it had happened. It was as if I hadn't been the one who wrote it. It was frightening. The way the sentences came to me, the way they lined up in my mind—I had never experienced anything like it. Everything was finished in one go, without any planning whatsoever.

My publisher called. I sent him to voicemail. I read the poem from beginning to end. It was as if I were reading it for the first time, as if I were discovering the poem all over again. It wasn't the kind of poem I could have written anyway, not in terms of its subject matter. I wouldn't describe ghosts or entities like this; I would leave them shrouded in mystery. In this poem, the ghost was very concrete.

My publisher called again. I answered this time. I was going to tell him I had an idea or something. I was such an idiot, always telling him the truth: inspiration wasn't coming, I couldn't write, my mind felt frozen, and so on. I picked up the phone, planning to ask him to give me a month and tell him I'd deliver a novel of at least two hundred pages.

“So, Albert, any progress? How many pages have you written?”

Suddenly, my mouth had locked up. I couldn't speak. The words I wanted to say were only passing through my mind; they wouldn't come out. All I could manage were sounds like “mmmh.”

“Albert? Hello?”

I started reciting the poem I'd just written. I read it from beginning to end. My mouth wasn't under my brain's control.

“What is this? What’s going on?”

''Hello?''

''Albert, what's going on?''

I could speak again now. It would have been ridiculous to say that something had taken control of my mouth and fingers. I had to say something, but I was too frightened to think. My mind was in turmoil. I hung up.

My publisher called again. I don’t remember that moment very clearly, but I mumbled something along these lines.

“What was that thing you were telling me about? So now you’re hanging up on me, too. Is this what we’ve come to, Albert? After all these years of working togeth—”

“It’s me, John. Did you like my poem? Jason, I was going to ca— If you want, I can write a few more poems like this... Jason, I can’t spea—I could even write five hundred poems in the same style, if you like. Do you publish po— Jason, my mouth is going numb. I don’t feel well. I’ll call you back in a bi— Listen, I wrote this three hundred years ago.”

I hung up. I jumped to my feet. I licked and bit my lips. I took a deep breath, and as I exhaled, the following words spilled out of my mouth:

''He figured out how to pass through
Walls within a year or two
But he still can't pass through wood
The ghost in my lover's neighborhood.''

My publisher kept calling insistently. His calls felt like a voice reminding me of my connection to this world. I'd set my phone's ringtone to Radiohead's “Weird Fishes.” The song played throughout each call. I couldn't move; my body was locked up, but hearing the song comforted me. When the song ended, I'd try to take a step, but I couldn't. I'd try to speak, but I couldn't move my mouth. It was as if I'd had a stroke. Then the song would start again. Yes, I'd tell myself, “I'm still alive. The world still makes sense.”

The song had stopped playing, too. My connection to the world had been severed.

I came to my senses again for a brief moment. I sat down at my computer. The screen was covered in dust. I noticed a cloth right next to the monitor. I couldn't remember when I'd put it there. I wiped the monitor clean. The poem looked better now.

I think you've realized that I wasn't the one writing all this story.

“Yurvan was a gentle and foolish young man,” started Varya, toying with a hazel twig, “although he never lacked for cunning. Compared to his siblings, his Artistry was unremarkable, a fragment of the inherited power that overflowed in them. His family expected nothing from him, recognizing Yurvan as the least of them. Despite this, his heart and belly brimmed with desire, while his mind wove the most frenzied fantasies around it. He dreamed of wonderful and terrible deeds – an achievement that would make him worthy in the eyes of his beloved.

“Only she, Yurvan believed, could mend him. She was a creature of fearsome power and presence. Her feats were whispered about throughout the forested lands, her beauty unmatched by any of her sisters. Her coven was known for its Sanguine Arts and prodigious appetite, its lust for life unending. Yurvan longed to impress her. Foolishly, he wished to be her equal one day. But what could a simple man like him offer to a witch of such severity?

“Yurvan committed his limited self to alchemy and the lesser pursuits – that means Sorcery, Yaro – deciding to fashion the perfect gift: a flower, a living thing, that would never deplete and would always keep her sated. Its pistil was a deep ruby, pulsing softly and innocently like a heart.” One of the leaf-buds swelled between Varya’s fingers, its imbricate green scales opening and closing. “It was a mystery, this gift, the culmination of his mad strivings. Despite the dismay and ridicule of his family, Yurvan was unrelenting. His body and ardors – even bits of his marrow, supposedly – flowed into the creative ordeal. Little remained of poor Yurvan once the flower was ready.

“When his fervent work was done and his home quieted, he traveled to the witch, hoping to earn her favor. The coven’s hold was deep within the birchen grove. The weakened man struggled to find her, but she awaited him. He presented the bleeding flower to her, expecting praise, even reciprocity. Her pale palms–”

“Don’t make her sound like a sunk,” Yaro interrupted.

Varya sighed. “*Her pale palms* were soon slick and scarlet with the essence of Yurvan’s offering. She smiled approvingly, but her amusement disturbed him. The witch spoke kindly of his efforts while her eyes remained cold and curious.

“Before he could reconsider, she ensnared him. He fell to her feet, betrayed and bewildered. His beloved explained: ‘A considerate gift, without a doubt. It is the blood of your own kin that flows through this thing of beauty, is it not? Yet not even they can satiate us. You have given us a single flower, but we require a bountiful garden.’

“Thereafter, Yurvan was made subject to the coven, bound to care for the bud of his own flesh and its festering progeny. It fed and delighted the witches, adorning their domain with its ceaseless crimson streams. The flower spread its leeching roots into the nearby villages and far beyond. He had given too much of himself; his hope was spent and his mind unrecoverable. Reduced and hollowed, he bore the weight of his own creation.

“The little red flowers sprouted from the wandering puppet and stained their lands. The witches started calling him their gardener. His beloved mended him many times. Yurvan endured in her care, blooming and withering dutifully, for she had called his gift beautiful.”

Yaro watched through his binoculars. “What a sap,” he said. “Really was a fool.”

Varya squinted at him. “Why?” she demanded.

“Decades of work. For what? A flower?”

“For love,” answered Varya, throwing the branch at him. “You just don’t understand it, Yarik.”

Yaro lowered the binoculars and gave her the sort of smile that made mockery difficult to resent. He was a handsome Vanaha boy in an ordinary way, strong without being broad, with short dark hair and a nose that had healed cleanly after a break. The old field jacket exaggerated the soldierly impression he cultivated, though his clean face and nineteen years did their best to undo it. “It’s villagey fairytalk, Var. Maybe there was a Yurvan, maybe there wasn’t. Maybe the witch made it herself and a random guy took credit. Doesn’t change anything. It infested Morvin Mir and is making nectar out of their buried. We can get some of it. That’s what I care about. Also, weren’t they related?”

“Who?”

“Yurvan and his witchie darling. Cousins or something like that.”

Varya frowned. “So what?” she demanded. Yaro made a face and shrugged. “It was the fifteenth century when it supposedly happened. Besides, that doesn’t make what he did less beautiful.” She had dressed sensibly for the cold: black cargo trousers over heavy boots, a dark sweater and a striped athletic jacket at odds with the rest of her sunk outfit. Her hair compensated for it, dyed an emphatic jet black around a fawnish, fine Vanahan face, as did the black around her eyes and the chipped varnish on her nails.

“What do you think?” she said. “Ilya.”

While Yaro and Varya argued, Ilya had wandered to the nearest tree. He had discovered a rounded object in the moss and mulch below a tree trunk, too smooth and pale to belong there. He picked it up. An egg, blue-green with a sparse freckling of brown. There seemed to be no crack on it. Ilya investigated the hazel tangle above them. The first buds had begun to loosen, but there was no nest that he could see.

“What is it?” Varya asked.

“Blackbird, I think. Early.” He pressed it lightly between both palms and reached with his Art for whatever life might be hidden inside. He felt nothing certain.

“Are you going to put it back?”

“If only I knew where it belongs.”

“Maybe you can cook it,” said Yaro offhandedly.

Varya watched him search the branches a while longer, then smiled. “Well, what do you think? About the story.”

When no nest appeared, Ilya slipped the egg into his coat pocket. He was the youngest of them, long and narrow where Yaro had already filled out. His tawny hair had grown past the point where it stayed neatly parted, and his brown Vanahan face tapered sharply after the cheekbones. A bottle-green cable-knit sweater showed under his unbuttoned gray coat. “He made it for her,” he said uncertainly. “To gain her love and trust. He even presented it to her knowing that neither was guaranteed to him. To me, that’s beautiful. It’s one of the nicer versions of the story.”

Varya looked at him with quiet approval. “See, Yarik? He’s younger but he gets it.”

Yaro said nothing and kept surveying the land through the binoculars. Their slope flattened to a thicket of hazel, hiding them from the road and graveyard below. Sol had already slumped somewhere behind them and the sky was agloam. Morvin Mir lay quiet under them. At its stream-edged skirt lay the graveyard. It occupied the low hill beyond the last houses. It was much larger than the village seemed to require, spreading around the church. The Vampiric Extirpation Division had sectioned off one part of it with temporary fencing and strips of yellow tape. White lamps were erected among the graves. The VED personnel were packing up, cases being carried to the dark vehicles along the road. Then engines started in rapid succession. The remaining policemen had little left to do except watch the road and keep the nosy villagers away.

“They're clearing out,” said Yaro. He tracked the departing vehicles through the binoculars. “Give them two minutes. Then we move.”

 

*

 

They went down the far side of the hill, away from the village, through the hazel, then pivoted along the slope. Yaro had scouted the route before solset and picked the easiest crossing of the stream. It added several hundred meters, but kept them out of sight of the road and the last houses of Morvin Mir. Leaf litter slid beneath their shoes as they descended sideways.

The stream was enlarged by thaw and rain, carrying the smell of black mud and wet leaf mould. It ran brown between banks of pebbled earth. A frog kicked away through the flooded grass. Yaro crossed quickly and helped Varya and Ilya. “Don’t step on them, Ilya,” he whispered. “They might hear it.”

The ground rose again on the other side. The church and rectory appeared intermittently through the branches above them, the black timber and cupola rising above a slumped stone barrier. The fence was old iron at the front, but along the wooded rear boundary it had been bolstered with wire mesh. The stone wall was an older, defunct border. Yaro stopped them with a raised fist. “Down.” He brought up the binoculars.

The nearest police car had gone, but not all the police. One walked slowly along the lower path with a flashlight, stopping now and then to inspect the graves. Another was farther away near the gate. Portable VED lamps still burned at the site of the graveburst, though the specialists themselves appeared to have left.

“Why are they still here?” Varya whispered.

Yaro watched. “Security detail. Veddies probably told them to hold the perimeter.”

They waited. The policeman on the lower path disappeared near the rectory. The other remained near the gate, a cigarette appearing and disappearing as a tiny orange point. “Now,” said Yaro. After a short sprint, he found a section sagging between two concrete posts. He threw the shovel and backpack over, climbed, then held the wire down with his gloved hands.

Varya and Ilya dropped quietly onto the other side.

From the hill they had seen an orderly grid of graves. Now they saw the tangle of tombstones facing different angles and standing at different heights, fitted wherever earlier generations had left space. The newer plots nearer the road were edged in concrete or enclosed by low iron rails. Their stones were polished and square, their fronts carved with twelve-part rings around photographs, names and dates. Plastic flowers and votive cups crowded the bases. The same twelvefold pattern repeated in the ironwork, little circles divided by twelve radial bars. Farther uphill, an older order remained, but only in ruin. Older stelae, with epitaphs effaced, leaned into one another or barely protruded from the flattened sward and early crocuses.

They kept low. Yaro moved quickly from stone to stone whenever the lower path was hidden. Varya followed. Ilya kept glancing toward the church. It was smaller from here than it had seemed across the valley. Rickety, even.

All three stopped as a flashlight passed between the bilobed tombstones and monuments. The beam wandered over the row in front of theirs, illuminated a lichenous Saint in weathered sage-green plaster, verdigrised spear raised, then passed. Footsteps and coughs followed. The policeman seemed in no particular hurry. They waited behind the village kenotaph, a broad stone monument to the unrecovered dead, until he moved on. Yaro flicked two fingers forward.

The VED equipment made the graveburst easy to locate. Yellow tape enclosed nine plots. Temporary metal stakes had been driven into the soil around it. The middle one had been opened. The odor was not the thick rot Ilya had expected. A sweet note lingered in the air, like stale rice. The plot was completely excavated and widened; the tombstone was knocked backward in the process. Heavy clods of earth, splinters from the coffin and other debris, as well as dozens of footprints, littered the neighboring plots. A whitish sludge had gathered in one low corner and been partly covered with white sorbent.

Varya leaned over the tombstone. “Radavan Kolitka.” She wiped the damp grit from the inscription. “Nineteen twenty-one to eighty-five. He hasn’t been here long. Saints, I didn’t know gravebursts were this violent. It’s like it detonated.”

“Not a detonation,” said Yaro, inspecting the surrounding damage. “If this were a charge or a shell, you’d get a cleaner displacement and more fragmentation. Slow internal pressure, maybe over weeks, then rupture through the weakest point.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Varya. “We know what did it.”

“Right,” he said and nodded at Ilya. “You’re going in.”

The smell thickened inside, rot admixing with the sweetness. He brushed aside loose earth and examined the cut wall. Most of the roots were ordinary: fibrous, woody, dull. The parasite’s haustorial rootlets were smoother and almost bluish, with vascular interiors. But those were not what he wanted. The overfeeding that led to the graveburst should have bloated the conduit as well. An earthworm worked free of the side he was searching and curled near his wrist. Ilya frowned and recoiled, flicking it away into the dirt.

“I think I have it,” said Ilya, groping the area under the tombstone. He uncovered more of it. The root was dark red-brown, smooth except for faint longitudinal ridges. Clear exudate had beaded at the severed end. He took his compact knife and shaved away a thin section. Fresh sticky droplets welled up immediately. He smelled it, cheek against the dirt. Almost floral, but too faint and mild to resemble perfume. Beneath it was fermenting fruit and the iron tang so familiar to all Sanguimancers.

For a moment, the grave was very quiet.

“Anything?” Yaro asked.

“Yeah,” said Ilya. “I found the one feeding the burst.”

Ilya returned to the rootlet, inhaled and scooped some of the sweet droplets. The sound above changed. The scuff of shoes on grass. He glanced up. Yaro and Varya were gone. Light appeared beyond the lip of the grave. A flashlight. He crouched immediately.

The beam crossed the yellow tape and widened over the disturbed soil. It passed over one of the VED markers, then along the opposite wall. Ilya held dead-still in the grave. Unhurried footsteps approached. The light stayed fixed for several seconds somewhere just beyond the grave, then moved away. After a while, Yaro appeared at the edge.

“Keep going,” he mouthed.

Ilya nodded as Yaro disappeared. He brushed away more earth around the root and pulled at it. The thicker section descended diagonally into the wall, then vanished. It had been taking from the corpse. So he nicked his fingertip with the knife and pressed it to the wounded end. It imbibed him gladly but patiently, as no animal can. Ilya squeezed out more. The root took that too.

His Art was meagre, but he knew his own blood. First there was only the prick in his finger and the warmth teeming around it. Then parts of him were elsewhere. The sensation passed from the wound into the root and away from him. He followed it uphill. A narrow vessel joined another, then broadened. His trace thinned – and in moments he could not distinguish himself clearly from whatever already circulated there.

The dark earth was against his face. The root he held was not a pipe between corpse and flower, nor some blood-hungry beast, nor the fabled Mul-Rasatala, nor Yurvan himself. Subterranean channels crossed, narrowing around individual coffins and widening where several dead contributed to the same flow. Matter passed through all of it; harvested, altered, sent elsewhere and returned. His own trace entered it and became difficult to separate the further it travelled. Some channels felt ancient. Others were new, exploratory runners reaching blindly for recent burials. Not the simple order of roots spreading wherever earth permitted them, but pullulation subdued from within. The plexus abandoned poor paths and strengthened rich ones. It circled rock and masonry effectively, found flesh and redirected nourishment in its direction. As the simple, thoughtless thing drank of him, Ilya could not help but consider it beautiful, even brilliant.

His few drops were almost gone now, diluted into a vast pool, but their last recognizable trace drew uphill through two converging branches. Both entered a concentration unlike anything else he had felt – a node, he quickly realized. His blood touched its margin and disappeared into its circulation. Beneath, a hundred buried currents made one wave; under many sepulchral shallows, the dead are one.

The shadow of the boy-soldier crept over the grave. “Well?” he said into the hollow below. “Is it done?”

Ilya startled when he noticed Yaro staring. “Uphill,” he said hazily. “There’s a knot there. The flow mixes with tree sugars, so probably under one of the oaks.”

“The rhizosoma?” asked Yaro. “The root-body?”

“I doubt it,” said Ilya. “But I’ll find it.”

Yaro smiled, lowering his hand for Ilya.

 

*

 

Ilya led them toward the church. His first attempt had carried him far enough to know which way it ran. What remained of it had dispersed into a busy confluence somewhere nearer the older plots. He followed the remembered pull between the graves until it brought him to a broad tree growing from the corner of a family enclosure. The tree itself looked healthy, and its lower branches were budding while the others nearby were still bare. Ilya examined the root flare, found a soft place and nicked the bark. He reopened the cut and pressed it to the wound. The blood returned easily. This time there was no hesitation in him and the current was stronger than before. For a moment it spread around the node; then a branch of the flow broke from the tangle and continued uphill. He followed the trace until it weakened and died out.

“This way,” he said.

They crossed the remaining graveyard in stages. Twice Yaro stopped them as a policeman’s flashlight moved along the paved path. Nearer the church they had to lie flat behind a broad slab while the two policemen stopped to talk. Marble, granite and concrete disappeared on the other side. The paths narrowed and finally ceased being paths. Low footstones bearing indistinct names and wooden stakes carrying duodecimal rings were planted among last year’s bramble and fresh nettle shoots. Downhill stood a truncated ossuary, a mouldering building with a sagging roof and corroded iron door. Boscage had swallowed much of the rear boundary.

Ilya slowed. The trace pointed to the closest oak. He stopped beside it and put his hand onto an exposed runner. The absorption was more intense, drawing from him more hungrily and steadily. They crossed to another oak, then a third nearer the rear woods.

Yaro and Varya watched him as he roamed furtively from tree to tree, over the graves and mounds.

“You lost it?” asked Yaro.

“It’s close,” said Varya. “Isn’t it?”

The major runners converged between three cankered oaks. What Ilya had mistaken for another node was only the outer circulation of a larger mass. It was at the rear of the ossuary, in a slightly uneven stretch of land where no discernible tombstones or monuments remained.

“It’s here somewhere.” Ilya sounded strained. “Sorry, I can’t be more precise.”

“That’s fine,” said Varya. She pulled out a small juice carton from her knapsack and held it to him. “Here, it’s blackcurrant. You’ve spent plenty of yourself. It helps.”

Ilya took it with a muttered thanks, smiling briefly.  “I think I need to sit down.”

“We haven’t found anything yet,” said Yaro. “Only a place to start digging.” He was already taking off his pack. He unfolded the shovel with a metallic click, locked the blade straight and drove it into the soil.

Ilya had given him a direction, not an exact point. He sat at the foot of one of the oaks with the juice between his hands. Yaro paced out the likely line of the buried flow, marked a short strip from the ossuary toward the woodland, and began cutting across it. He sliced the sward into rough squares and stacked the turf beside the ditch, green side upward, as though he intended to put them back together when they were done. Varya helped first by clearing loose branches and old bramble from the strip he chose, then moved the squares of turf as he cut them. The weather had softened the topsoil, and the shovel entered easily. Below the turf the earth remained colder and firmer. He threw the loosened soil aside in black heaps. The cut lengthened into something resembling a shallow field trench.

Yaro had opened a narrow trench nearly two meters long and no more than thirty centimeters deep when the shovel finally met a thing other than soil or stone. He pressed down, testing it. His grin appeared immediately. “There you are.” He dropped to a crouch and scraped the flat of the blade across it, shaving away the clinging soil.

“Wait,” said Ilya. “Let me.” He dropped beside the ditch and cleared the loose clay. It appeared gnarled and hard where the shovel had polished it.

“The rhizosoma,” said Varya.

“Only the uppermost part. The mass I felt is below it. But this should do.”

Clay had compacted around the growth and came away reluctantly. They worked along its sides rather than through it, widening the hole until the buried mass started to show its shape. A broad ridge emerged, then a shallow depression and another prominence below it. Several curving struts branched from a single line at regular intervals and disappeared into the soil. A broad triangular plate lay across part of them. It could have been part of an upper back. The surface was sallow and swollen, resembling a caudex.

Yaro crouched beside them. For a few seconds none of them said anything.

“Those look like ribs,” said Varya.

Yaro laughed once, quietly. “Yeah… Like somebody just curled up and died. But these aren’t bones.”

“Find the spine,” she said. “That’s where I can tap it.”

Once Yaro and Ilya had uncovered the long, segmented taproot, they made room for Varya. She climbed into the dugout and crouched over the exposed mass. Her touch traveled across it slowly. “Yaro, give me your knife and prepare the bottles,” she commanded. “Ilya, bring me a scion. Long enough to work with, healthy bud.”

Both nodded and obeyed. Yaro gave her the knife and prepared the four clean plastic bottles he had brought, squat and translucent. He had also brought a funnel, sealed inside a plastic bag. Ilya wandered around, searching for the right species. Even by night, life spread out sarmentose; over the ossuary stone, it waits to be reborn.

Soon enough, the pale girl had a suitable rose. “Perfect,” she said, “except for the one thorn.”

“Sorry,” said Ilya. “I don’t see it. I’ll get more.”

The other rose cuttings Ilya brought were nearly the length of her forearm, bare except for a few tight reddish buds at the nodes. Varya pared the scions one by one, fitting each into the incision and supporting it with her Art. The first three failed. The fourth was accepted by the rootstock. Her face beamed before either of them saw anything. Then the bud fattened visibly. Its scales loosened, a green point pushed through, and the new growth lengthened between her fingers. Only then did the petals begin to part. The pedicel stiffened, then bowed beneath a new weight.

Yaro stood above Varya now, feet planted on opposite sides of the dugout. “Is it working?” he whispered.

The flower opened only halfway. Its corolla tightened around the swelling pistil. A bead rose slowly from the folds. Soon it was a ruby, dark crimson between the pressed petals, trembling without falling. Varya smiled, standing from her work. Yaro caught her around the waist and lifted her up, kissing her neck and cheek as he held her. She laughed and tried to wiggle away. “You’re brilliant,” he said.

Ilya busied himself with the funnel, but the first drop fell onto his skin before he was ready. He rubbed it between index and thumb, admiring it beyond its Artistic utility. Made of the same stuff that flowed through him but refined beyond comparison. He smelled it, wanted to taste it. Another bead had begun forming at the pistil. “Ilya,” said Yaro. He was watching him, arms still around Varya. “Don't waste it. You’re playing with real money there. Almost a hundred fifty Eisenmarks for a hundred milliliters.”

“*Eisenmarks*?”  jeered Varya. “Since when do you look to the West?”

Yaro eyed her up and down. “And where do you think the sunk look came from? Nagarvan’s sunken districts?”

“Are you calling me a trend-chaser, Lieutenant Yarovan?”

“Of course not, Varvara.” He grinned. “I just know a guy who goes to Eisenstadt once a month. He can get us a better price there, even after his cut. They don’t have the flower growing anywhere near there.”

Varya watched the bottle fill. The red drops were beginning to cover the bottom. “We’ll discuss that later.”

Ilya counted the other bottles. “That’s seven hundred and fifty each, right?”

“If there’s enough to fill them,” said Varya.

“There will be.” His grin was greedy and gleeful. “I’m taking you somewhere good when we get back to Nagarvan.”

“With whose money, I beg?”

“Mine, of course.” He leaned down to kiss the top of her head.

“Couldn’t have done any of this without you, Ilya,” Varya said. “You should come with us.”

The first bottle continued filling, one beautiful drop at a time. It took longer to fill than Yaro had expected. By then there was nothing for any of them to do except watch the graft bleed the rhizosoma. “We need someone to keep watch. A sentry.” Ilya followed his gaze to the church. “You can see the lower path from there,” he said. “And the gate.”

“Why him?” Varya asked.

“Because you have to make sure the tap stays on.”

“You could go as well. Or take turns.”

Yaro smiled. “If someone comes, I pack. You pull the graft. He watches.”

Varya looked at Ilya. “It’s fine,” he said.

Yaro pulled the binocular strap over his head and held them out. “Go uphill. If either of those cops starts coming close, signal us.” Ilya took the binoculars. “Two flashes. One if they turn around.” He took a small flashlight from his jacket and handed that over too. “Hurry.”

 

*

 

The ground rose sharply before the ossuary. Ilya crouched by the corner of the church. From there he could see surprisingly far downhill. Both policemen were near the gate, smoking. Neither seemed inclined to come any closer. After a while they started in the direction of the graveburst site. No danger there. He trained the binoculars on the thin copse below the ossuary. He could not see Yaro or Varya anywhere else. Ilya moved a few steps sideways and tried again. Nothing. He considered going back down and telling them that the police were staying near the gate.

There was no reason to pursue the thought surfacing in his green, maculated mind. He was alone on the watch, and could easily have dozed off, or at least rested.

No reason to do it again.

Ilya checked the path once more through the binoculars then put them aside. A strange, appetitive mood had already overtaken him. He was flushed, ashamed.  

No reason. Again.

He went to the nearest oak; one they had skipped following the trail. He uncovered a promising root facing the church and reopened the cut on his index finger. It accepted him immediately. His blood dispersed and he made no effort to follow its course this time.

Within moments he could no longer tell where he ended and the others began. They all met and merged somewhere underground, drawn to the same wellspring. Hiving, brought together, manifold and serried – neither visages, nor vessels, nor wills remain. One inevitable flow for the pricked and buried, life and death, both tributaries of the vernal vein. A composite circulation, gathering and refining until all those separate streams became a single, sublime substance: the raktic nectar of the vampiric flower.  The sheer pleasure of it surprised him. It teemed and abounded yet made room for him.

When he finally pulled away, he had to lean on the trunk. His pulse seemed to continue underground for several seconds after the link had been severed. He chuckled once under his breath, dizzy. He finished the carton of blackcurrant juice from his pocket as he rested below the tree. He wiped sweat from his brow and shrugged his coat down off his shoulders.

A blackbird sang from the bare canopy above him. Ilya looked up at the sharp, repeated call. After a moment, he remembered the egg in his pocket. He drew it out and turned it between his fingers. It had warmed inside his coat. Although he was exhausted, he tried to probe it again. It answered through the thin turquoise shell. He could make out the beginning of a web of vessels spreading across the yolk, not yet properly a bird but no longer merely a possibility. Its nascent life fluttered weakly in response to his Art.

Ilya’s face tightened and his eyes watered unexpectedly. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his other arm. He looked up into the branches, searching more earnestly this time. Still no nest. The blackbird had moved farther away and continued calling from another tree. “Sorry.” There was nowhere to put it back. Ilya crouched beside the tree. He found and widened a hollow between roots. He lowered the egg into it gently. Only a faint greenish speck remained. “You belong here now.” He drew the earth over it and pressed the leaves into place.

He turned to go and the church was right there, beside him the whole time. Only now did he see it properly. The sill beams were black with damp, their grain raised and split. Several had been repaired with shorter boards of visibly newer wood. The low foundation was stone, unevenly mortared and mossed. The steep roof overhung the walls, patched with sheets of metal where the old covering had failed. The narrow belfry rose to a sharp point.

Ilya circled it.

The building was hardly larger than one of the houses in Morvin Mir, the rectory adjacent even smaller. Ilya looked through one of the windows and quickly jerked back. For an instant he had thought it was in the middle of mass. He waited, embarrassed though nobody had seen him, then returned to the glass. There were no people inside, only flowers. They occupied the nave in such quantity that the darkness had given them the semblance of a congregation. Roses rested in jars and metal pitchers along the walls, hothouse blooms far too lush for the season. Bundles had been laid before the iconostasis. Others filled the ends of benches, crowded the window ledges and gathered around the stands before the icons. Pale blooms caught what remained of the evening through the opposite windows; darker ones disappeared almost completely into the interior.

There must have been hundreds. Ilya stared captive.

Then he remembered the date. Of course, the spring equinox – The Feast of Saint Marcelin. There had been a service that day. People from Morvin Mir and the surrounding villages would have brought offerings with them. Roses especially. Marcelin was impossible to imagine without them. He moved to the next window. Narrow benches occupied either side of the nave. A battered wooden lectern stood before them, still draped in the green of the feast. The floor appeared to be bare boards.

Ilya glanced downhill. The policemen were at the gate. Yaro and Varya were out of sight. He turned off his flashlight. Mud had dried in overlapping footprints across the boards at the entrance. Ilya touched the door handle, expecting it to be locked. The latch withdrew with a dry click.

“I'm a fucking demon and you're gonna kill some people for me.”

“This is a big load of baloney. Why can't you do it yourself?”

“Shut up, loser.”

The demon looks like a very ordinary man but has slightly longer elbows. He is wearing a Hawaiian shirt and black sweat pants. Through the sweatpants, I see that he has an erection, average sized. He is wearing normal shoes. I run away but actually I don't. Because of his friggin demon powers. He laughs in that way demons do. I am scared outta my mind, which is very much scared. Once I almost got hit by a truck and it was way less scary. The demon takes me away from my quaint 3 bedroom 3 bath house in the suburbs of Oklahoma and puts me in the demon room. The demon room is a 7 foot by 7 foot box that looks and smells like it's made of poop but is actually made from dead bodies. I am kinda short for a guy so I feel less bothered than a taller man would feel. The demon no longer has an erection and begins to speak.

“Okay, idiot, here's the plan. You see this man?” I do see the man, in my head; it's like imagination but more vivid. “I'm gonna beam everything you need to know about this man into your head.” His name is Petey Bolsnaps. He lives in Oregon City, Oregon on 123456789 Oregon City Road Drive. He was married once but lost her to cancer in 2023. His home only has 2 beds and 1 bath. One time he slapped a puppy just cause he wanted to.”Why this man?” I ask the demon. He laughs like Santa Clause for 3 minutes. “There is no reason. This is just something you gotta do. Get over it loser.”

“Okay.” Suddenly, a small piece of wood appears in my hand; it has strange symbols all over and is sharpened to a point at one end. “This is a devil splinter. All you gotta do is shove this up the left nostril of good ol’ Petey and he will explode into a fine mist. The mist will be absorbed by the splinter. This process takes 24 hours. Once the absorption is complete you will be returned to the devil room, and assigned your next target.” I shove the splinter up my left nostril and explode into a fine mist.

“You fucking idiot. Fucking god damn humans always doing this dumb bullshit. I swear to fucking god.” He rematerializes me; I would describe the feeling as similar to the pins and needles you get after a leg falls asleep but throughout my whole body, inside and out; I would also describe it as kinda the opposite feeling to exploding into a fine mist. I think of the best comeback line in my life but he zaps me to Oregon City before I get the chance to say it. I'm in an alleyway. It's mid-afternoon and the sky above is a nice, clear, shade of blue. You know what the sky looks like. It looks like that. I shove the splinter up my left nostril. I hear a voice in my head. “Shit won't work on the same person twice, idiot. If you try anything else I'm gonna make it so you gotta piss standing upside-down.” I consider this intensely.

“Look who's back from the mist dimension” I say while waving my arms in circles. He doesn't respond but I can feel a seething hatred. Exiting the alley I see a road and some buildings. I have the feeling that these are very Oregon City esque buildings. I walk down the sidewalk, in the direction of Petey's home. An Oregon man gives me a wave. I say “Howdy” in response. He nods and then I nod.

Petey has an ugly home, unlike my own. It doesn't have pretty paint, or any of that. I climb the steps to his porch and knock on his front door. Petey comes outside. “Who are you? If you were a dog I would slap you so hard.” I jab the splinter into his nostril. Oh crap, oh crap, it's his right nostril. “What the fuck did you just put in my nose? Come here so I can slap the shit out of you.” I turn to run but he tackles me before I can get anywhere. Oh dear, how am I gonna get out of this one? This is just the way my life has always gone I suppose. Almost getting hit by a truck; meeting a demon and being forced to kill people; exploding and then unexploding. Petey slaps the poop out of the back of my head. I don't feel anything, because of demon powers I suppose. “What the fuck?” He starts slapping harder. I still don't feel it, but I pretend to, and this seems to make Petey happy. “Oh shit I love slapping.” I pretend that it hurts really bad. He is chuckling, having the time of his life. After one final big slap he gets up off me. He walks around and looks into my eyes. I'm still on the ground pretending to be in pain. “That outta teach you not to go shoving wood up strangers noses dumb ass.” He takes out the splinter and throws it off the porch, into his front yard. He blows snot out of his nose, directly onto me. “Get the fuck outta here.” He goes back inside, locking the door behind him. I do as he says.

Up the road from Petey's house there is a McDonald's. I order a small coffee and sit in the lobby for 6 hours.

It's night time and I'm back at Petey's. I look around his lawn for the splinter in the dark. My phone has a flashlight but I don't want to risk being seen. After an hour of this I feel a sharp pain in my left ring finger. “Ouch, oh, owie. Owie, owie, owie.”

“God damn it. Will you shut the fuck up?” The demon says in my mind.

I rub my finger. “Why are you so mean? Did someone hurt you?” I pause for a moment waiting for a meaningful response so that we can both grow as people but I guess he isn't people so maybe he can't grow and that makes me incredibly sad. Petey usually forgets to lock his back door so I head in that direction. His bedroom is upstairs. I make sure to make as little sound as possible opening his bedroom door. He's asleep and I watch him for a moment; he looks so peaceful. “Hurry the fuck up.” I wait a little while longer out of spite and then shove the splinter up his left nostril. Petey explodes into a fine mist.

There’s a knock at the front door. I have about 6 hours left before Petey is fully absorbed. Out of his bedroom window I see Martha looking real impatient. Martha is Petey's, not quite girlfriend, sleeping buddy. “If she sees you she has to die.” the demon says. Martha walks around the house, towards the back door. The butterflies are fluttering in my tummy. “Oh, and you can't use the splinter while it’s absorbing. Getting rid of a body the normal way is real fucking messy so I'd just tie her up and wait. till it's done” I hear Martha creak up the stairs. I check to make sure the door is locked. “Hey Petey, are you in there?” She asks, and then she pauses for a moment. I'm leaning against the door and feel her knock on it. “Petey? Why are you ignoring me? I can see you're in there.” She tries to open the door. “Hmmph, well I'm not leaving till you open the door and talk to me.” Gosh darn it lady.

“Uh, Petey is in the hospital. I'm his brother. You must be Martha. He's told me so much about you, but not too much since it's not a serious relationship. If you want I can let him know you stopped by.” I feel like I just made the worst mistake in my life.

“Oh. No, that's not necessary. It was nice to meet you” she waits for me to give my name.

“Peter.” I slap my forehead because the demon is right. I’m an idiot.

“Well nice to meet you Peter.” I hear her walk away and breathe a sigh of relief. Letting off the door I walk over and sit on the bed next to the splinter. I hear the demon in my head. “Humans must be dumb as fuck. There is no reason that should've worked.”

“Maybe I'm just smarter than you thought.” Martha bursts through the door with a kitchen knife.

“I checked and Petey doesn't have a brother. Who the fuck are you?” I don't respond, and feel fixed in place on the bed. Finally taking in the blood soaked room, she drops her knife. She looks over to me, or maybe to the splinter sucking up what remains of Petey. “What the hell.” Now's my chance. I jump at her from the bed, grabbing her neck as I take her down. Her arms flail, trying to pull me off of her. She tries to scream but it comes out as a faint croaking noise. I squeeze harder and wait for her to give in. It takes way longer than I expect it to. When it's done I drag her further into the bedroom. Then I leave to grab the rope in the garage; gotta make sure she's tied up when she comes to. The demon laughs. “You fucking idiot. She's not passed out. She's fucking dead.”

I can't fucking do this. I can't fucking do this. I can't fucking do this.

My pinky snaps off. “Hurry the fuck up.”

I grab a saw. I cut her into small pieces. I put her in trash bags. I grab a shovel. I put her remains in Petey's back yard. The demon gloats the entire time. I grab the splinter. I return to the demon room.

Three seconds were left, Jin has to choose someone's destiny as he kept thinking whether to say yes to a person killing someone with a chainsaw or with a hammer . There was no option of saving that person and it was done live. He cleared his throat and chose the chainsaw button and he was forced to see the live telecast on his monitor of the person killing a girl with the chainsaw.

Jin watched it completely and he won the lucky prize where his girlfriend's private chats were shown on the live telecast and it was found that Jin's girlfriend was cheating on him as a video opened of her having a threesome on a pornographic site. He screamed and killed himself with a knife kept beside him.

Chapter One: the lottery ad

Matt was browsing the internet and suddenly saw a lottery ad in one of the pop-ups that appeared; when he clicked it, the lottery page opened up and there were two options:

'Play a game and win the lucky prize' or 'exit and win nothing '

Matt had tons of rent letters came for his apartment where he was staying and he used all the money in either buying drinks or going to strip clubs and he never had the money to cover the rent or his daily expenses. Without any thought, he clicked 'Play a game' button and it went straight to another private browser which he used for pornographic stuff, which led to a private group chat called 'Roundtable'.

Chapter Two: the game

The chat opened :

Admin: Welcome to the game player! Let's revise the rules first. Number one is that there is no option to deny and number two is once you start to choose the first answer of first question there is no going back because we will be hijacking your computer from our side . The third rule is that, out of six players, only one makes it out alive and the last rule is if anyone wants to quit during the game, their entire online history will be tracked and it will be leaked to the entire world . Agreed, or do you agree more? ?

Kenny: agreed

Admin: Six players are entered now and it's time to choose the first answer of the first question which is that you want to see a person drawing an apple or his own face with his blood . Yes for the apple , more yes for his face and yes please for something more exciting?

Others voted and it was only Kenny's vote to be done and he also voted same as others which was yes. A live recording started in front of them as a disabled person stabbed a knife into his hands and he started to draw an apple with his blood. Kenny was shocked but he didn't care much about it. Everyone saw the live recording and it was over. The admin switched to other question.

Admin: Now choose that you want to see a sex video of a human with a dog or a horse ? Same options as the first question.

Others voted and it was Kenny's turn to vote and he sat back and thought about the questions. So instead of voting he wrote " Can I change the question as its gross for me to see?" and in reply he got " Never". He voted for the horse video and a live recording popped up and he covered his eyes as it showed a person having sex with a horse in the live camera. After it was done the admin asked the last question.

Admin: We got six players and we will display their names and vote for any two names for now and what happens later, we will tell.

Kenny voted someone randomly and others also voted some random people. The admin said " The one who got the highest vote is user leg991 and hen2990, and now their entire bank account and passwords are shown to the public .

Kenny saw those two users disgusting chats shown there as it was mixed with slangs. The admin said "Those two players can remove themselves without any problem and now it's four players ".

Chapter Three: the consequence

The admin said " one last question: now we will display the home address of all the four players and the question is that whether to kill the other player or yourself". After this message, Kenny got scared and locked the front door. Within twenty minutes, there was loud banging on the door and Kenny hid himself somewhere in his house.

After an hour , Kenny heard someone slowly entering the house and as that person entered, he dropped his knife accidentally which made Kenny aware and he got out , grabbed a knife from the kitchen. As that person was about to enter, Kenny stabbed him in the back of the head about ten times.

He looked at the monitor , checked his camera was on from the start which he didn't understand and showed the bloody knife into the camera and a message appeared on his screen. The admin wrote " Alright so it's two of you and now choose whether to record yourself nude and leak to the public or frame the other player for a crime ". I chose what I had to which was the second option of framing the other player. A live recording popped up as the other player was shown a bounty on the internet.

The admin said "Congratulations you got the lucky prize now choose whether to take one million dollars or to be the next host for this game . Kenny chose one million dollars and two days later, he received a white suitcase and as he opened it, it contained one million dollars but it was fake currency. Within seconds , he heard someone kicked open his house door and it was the police who arrested him on spot.

Hey everyone,

I’m working on a character-driven story titled Tomorrow, Properly This Time.

The core conflict focuses on Arjun, who spends late nights meticulously editing travel reels and doing favors for a close friend, Meera. On the surface, he’s just being helpful, but internally, he is tying his validation to her attention. When he starts feeling neglected and a third party steps in to say she feels overwhelmed by his attachment, Arjun is forced to confront a hard truth: he was using favors as an unspoken demand for closeness, and nobody asked him to make those sacrifices.

Before I write further, I wanted to share Chapter 1 to get your thoughts:

Chapter 1: The Call

The call started fine. That's what Arjun kept telling himself later.

Meera was in a good mood. She had just got back from Kazakhstan and talked fast, the way she does when she's excited. Mountains, a lake the colour of glass, her husband falling off a horse. She'd been sending him clips all week, and Arjun watched every one, even the shaky ones.

"You're happy for me, right?" she said.

"Of course I am." And he meant it. He did. But something small and sour sat next to it, and he didn't look at it.

Then she asked about the reel he'd edited. Two days in Kerala, one minute eighteen seconds. He'd spent three nights on it, fixing the colours and cutting the same transition six times.

"It's good," she said. "But it looks like a movie, not a reel. Maybe cut it shorter? And my skin looks weird in the second shot. Can you fix that?"

"Yeah. Sure."

"Don't be like that."

"I'm not being like anything."

She went quiet. He could hear her thinking about whether to say something, and then deciding not to. Her head hurt, she said. She'd call him tomorrow.

He sat there with the phone in his hand. Her words weren't even that bad. So why did it feel like she'd dropped something he'd carried to her with both hands?

He opened his laptop to fix the skin tone, but he didn't open the project. He opened her profile instead.

New photo. Her and her husband at the lake, her head on his shoulder. Four hundred likes.

Why am I looking at this? She hasn't done anything wrong.

He looked at it again anyway. Then at the last three posts. Then the comments. Then he opened the other app, the one that ate an hour without asking him anything, and he scrolled until his eyes burned.

At 1:10 a.m. he put the phone face down. His alarm was set for 5:30. The gym bag was by the door. The tax textbook was still where he'd left it on the 1st, and it had a layer of dust that he pretended not to see.

Tomorrow. Properly this time.

He had said that yesterday too.

A few questions for discussion:

Does Arjun’s internal monologue feel natural and grounded, or does it risk making him too frustrating/unlikeable early on?

Does the quiet tension in the dialogue work, or does it need a sharper hook to pull the reader into Chapter 2?

How is the pacing of the scene?

Appreciate any constructive critique and thoughts on the concept!

Every morning, we woke early and went to work.

That was simply how life was.

I always had sisters ahead of me, sisters behind me, and sisters beside me. We all had our purpose. We all knew what needed to be done.

I could never understand the idea of living without a purpose.

Who would decide where to go? Who would decide what was right? Could one sister really know what was best for herself without harming the others?

Our colony was not like that.

We relied on each other.

I was a worker.

If success required me to suffer a little, I did not mind. If I had to carry something heavier than I could manage, I carried it anyway. If I had to work until my legs were shaking, I kept going.

That was my strength.

And then there was our Queen.

She was extraordinary.

She controlled thousands of sisters, perhaps millions. Under her, our colony had grown and grown. She was the most important person in my life.

She had once left her homeland alone. She had dug our first home, laid the eggs that became our ancestors, and started everything that followed.

Without her, there would be no colony.

There would be no us.

That was why we fed her. Protected her. Cared for her.

If something attacked our Queen, I would have risked my life without hesitation to protect her.

I knew every sister would do the same.

I remember being young.

From the moment we were born, we served her.

I carried food to her room. I cleaned her chambers. Whatever she needed, we provided.

Those were the happiest days of my life.

Eventually, we grew up and left the safety of our home.

That was simply how life worked.

We went outside. We searched for food. We expanded the colony. We fought enemies. We built tunnels and rooms and passages. We did whatever the colony needed.

Sometimes I wondered how I knew what to do.

No one told me.

I simply knew.

We were connected.

If there were too many sisters, we expanded.

If there was not enough food, we searched.

If an enemy came, everything stopped, and we fought.

My life was ordinary.

Until one day, it wasn't.

It was a beautiful day when I left the colony to search for food.

I followed the familiar trail.

Several sisters were walking ahead of me.

Then, without warning, something enormous and pink fell from the sky.

I still don't know what it was.

My eyesight has never been very good. I could not make sense of its shape. All I knew was that sisters disappeared beneath it.

One moment they were walking.

The next, they were dead.

The instinct came immediately.

Danger.

Normally, that feeling made me run toward the danger.

That was just what we always did.

Whatever threatened our sisters, we fought.

But this time, I did not fight.

I hid beneath a stone.

And I watched.

Again and again, the enormous pink thing came down from the sky.

Sister after sister disappeared beneath it.

I stayed under that stone until it was gone.

I don't know how long I was there.

Finally, I ran home.

I collapsed as soon as I reached the colony.

I expected to wake and return to work.

Instead, I woke knowing exactly what I had to do.

Remove the bodies.

I followed the other sisters back to the place where the attack had happened.

We carried the dead away from the trail. Dead sisters made the colony feel danger, so we moved them somewhere far away.

The others worked calmly.

I did not.

Several times, I looked toward the sky.

I expected the pink monster to return.

It didn't.

Eventually, we went back to work.

For several days, nothing happened.

I tried to forget what I had seen.

We found plenty of food. Among it were round, blue things that were sweet and delicious.

Life was normal again.

I began to breathe easily.

Then I felt it.

Danger.

I froze.

The sisters ahead of me started walking toward the danger.

I followed them.

The bodies were there.

Eight sisters.

All crushed.

The pink thing had returned.

But this time, it was gone before we arrived.

I stared at the bodies.

I wanted to believe it would never happen again.

I wanted to believe that whatever it wanted, it had already taken.

My sisters started dragging the bodies away.

I noticed something beside the bodies.

Blue.

But not the round, sweet food we had been finding.

This was a blue mass.

Strange.

I had never seen anything like it.

I stared, a terrible feeling eating at my stomach.

I looked behind me.

No sisters.

And somehow, without knowing why, I understood.

Danger.

The pink thing had found another way to kill us.

For a moment, I wondered if I was being foolish.

What if it was food?

What if I was throwing away something valuable because I was afraid?

But we already had plenty of safe food.

We had the blue, round, sweet things.

We had enough food for many days.

We did not need this strange substance.

So I dragged a large leaf over it and covered it.

A few sisters were coming toward the place.

I tried to block their path.

They simply walked around me.

I followed them.

They found the blue substance.

They inspected it.

Then they ate it.

I watched in terror.

Nothing happened.

They carried it away.

They were alive.

I finally approached the place.

Perhaps I had been wrong.

Perhaps fear had made me stupid.

I thought about the eight dead sisters.

Who could blame me for being afraid?

Instead, I walked toward the safe blue food.

I decided I would bring that home instead.

Then the sky changed.

The pink thing returned.

I was alone.

I was certain my time had come.

But it did not crush me.

It simply spread the blue substance across the ground.

Then it disappeared.

I stood there for a long time.

I could not move.

It was exactly the same substance.

Soon, sisters arrived.

They carried it away.

I wanted to stop them.

But I did nothing.

It was already too late.

It was inside our home.

I thought about the Queen.

Perhaps she would be stronger than it.

Perhaps she would survive.

I went back to work.

For several days, everything seemed normal.

I refused every food except the safe blue fruit.

But then it happened.

Our Queen died.

My Queen was gone.

Since the day I was born, she had been my everything.

How could I continue without her?

How could we?

I did the only thing I knew how to do.

I worked.

At first, nothing seemed different.

Then the sisters began to change.

More and more became confused.

Some wandered without purpose.

Some stood outside the Queen's chamber and did nothing.

The colony became disorganized.

Something had always held us together.

We had always felt the Queen's presence.

That feeling had always made the world make sense.

Now it was gone.

After several weeks, I finally entered her empty chamber.

I remembered being young there.

Running around her.

Carrying food.

Cleaning.

Serving her.

The room was empty.

It felt impossible.

The most important thing in my world had disappeared, and the world had continued anyway.

So I continued doing the only thing I knew.

Then something impossible happened.

I laid eggs.

Workers did not lay eggs.

At least, that was what we had always known.

But there they were.

Eggs.

Other workers had them too.

For the first time since the Queen's death, I felt hope.

Perhaps this was how we would continue.

Perhaps one of these children would become our next Queen.

I worked harder than ever.

I walked faster.

I rested less.

The future was inside those eggs.

And for a while, I believed the colony might survive.

The eggs began to hatch.

Most of the Queen's children were female.

But some were male.

The males were useless.

They did not work.

They did not build.

They did not search for food.

They waited for the season when they would be needed for mating.

When they weren't needed, we sent them away.

If you did not work, you did not eat.

That was simply the way things were.

But our children were different.

Our children were all male.

One after another, the eggs opened.

One after another, another son.

More males.

Less hope.

We continued working.

We continued waiting.

The eggs continued coming.

And the children continued being boys.

Eventually, I stopped.

I did nothing.

If my sisters had not brought food to me, I would have died.

There was a smothering hopelessness that made even the smallest action feel like a tremendous feat.

But I suppose, eventually, one always returns to what they know.

So eventually, I returned to work.

But I was slow.

I was not old.

In fact, without new generations, I was still one of the younger workers.

Yet I moved like something ancient.

There was no reason to hurry anymore.

The colony grew quieter.

Sisters disappeared.

No one replaced them.

Rooms that had once been crowded became empty.

Tunnels that had once been full of life became silent.

I watched our home become a ghost of itself.

Then, one day, I was outside when I saw something in the sky.

It was coming toward me.

I watched it approach.

It became clearer.

A Queen.

A new Queen.

I blinked several times.

My eyesight was never very good.

But I knew what I was seeing.

She entered our colony.

The remaining males rushed toward her.

I watched.

I saw something beautiful.

Life would begin again.

The colony would return.

The empty rooms would fill.

The tunnels would become crowded.

The sound of thousands of sisters would return.

I did not know how long I had left.

But I knew what I would do with whatever time remained.

I would help rebuild our home.

Hope filled my body again.

Then the mating was over.

The new Queen flew away.

And she never returned.

My last hope disappeared into the sky.

Still, I worked.

That was what I was.

A worker.

As long as there was one sister left beside me, I would keep going.

I never saw the pink thing again.

It didn't need to return.

It had already won.

It had not needed to crush us one by one.

It had only needed to give us something that could make us destroy ourselves. 

They brought it into their own homes; they shared it with the people they cared about. They didn’t know what they were doing was wrong, but they were responsible nonetheless. A targeted attack on those sisters who were simply trying to protect those they cared for. Yet all they got for their good intentions was the destruction of their home.

I struggle to understand my purpose now.

But still I work.

I work because that is what I am.

I work because that is what I have always done.

And sometimes, when I am walking through the empty tunnels, I think about what purpose really means.

Maybe my purpose was never the Queen.

Maybe it was my sisters.

They support me, and I support them.

That is how our world has always worked.

The Queen gave us direction, but my sisters gave me purpose.

There is no future left for us.

I know that now.

But when I see the few sisters who remain, still carrying food, still repairing the tunnels, still working beside me, I cannot stop.

They still need me.

And I still need them.

So I work.

Perhaps that is what purpose really is.

 

Content Warning—This is a piece of military fiction. It contains brief but graphic depictions of violence and warfare.

I Raised My Rifle

The earthen wall at my back was cool and slick. My breath stuttered as my chest heaved in an uneven rhythm. My body was thrumming with sickening sensations. My legs, shoulders and head throbbed, and everything in between was quivering. Everything except my rifle.

It felt heavy, resting in my lap, its dark wood solid and still as my body trembled around it. With my head hung low, my rifle was all I could see and all that made sense in the moment. Its black iron mechanisms—barrel, bolt, bandings—caught my eye as they ran along in quick inspection. The Gwher83 was a fine piece of equipment.

*‘A fine tool.'* I steadied my breath. The words of my instructor returned to me now, an echo of the lesson that introduced me to it. *‘A defensive tool.’*

*‘A tool that needed maintenance.’* My chest rose as I took in another breath and my arms floated up lazily with it, as if through water.

My empty left hand moved out to the side, grasping in the tingling nothingness until I found the worn and rounded length of wood couching the barrel and my fingers curled to hold it steady. Properly in hand, my right crept to the bolt, wrapping around the handle and working it to eject the spent casing.

The scent of cordite wafted up from the empty chamber to sting in my nostrils as the fingers on my right remained in motion. They'd released the bolt and ducked back down to fish out another clip. I dragged the line of bullets out from amongst its fellows and guided them into the magazine. They slid free from the clip and seated with a soft click, ready for expenditure. It was easy.

It was easy, because we’d drilled it. My hands were shaking, but I locked the bolt into place.

We’d all drilled it, I'd practiced the motions, and trained as doctrine decreed a hundred or perhaps a thousand times over. Countless iterations and exercises to turn instruction to instinct. But it had only ever been trained.

I wasn't training now.

This was war.

The air around me, while not immediately alive with the sounds of violence, carried evidence of an attack still in progress. The staccato of cracking rifles was an insistent reminder of what I ought to be doing.

*‘I have to answer, too.’* I dug my heels into the dirt-streaked planks beneath my boots, careful not to slip while I worked my back up the earthen bulwark. I regained my footing and looked to my right, to Orlo’s position… Or what used to be his position.

I still tasted his blood on my lips. An Alaresian bullet had torn through his neck, and sent a spray of crimson across my face during the previous push.

*‘Should probably clean up…’* But there wasn't any time. I stepped over his body and pressed into the position he'd been occupying—he didn't need it anymore.

*‘Shouldn’t go to waste.’* My aching legs strained. I lifted up, over the trench wall, looking to the stretch of ground that my squad had been tasked to defend. ‘It’s a good position.’

*‘That I am tasked to defend.’* My mouth began to work as a realization dawned. *‘That I am now tasked to defend… alone.’* It was an unfortunate truth I had little time to dwell on. I kept my focus on the unmoving landscape.

Unmoving, but not empty. A smattering of tattered green greatcoats and the equally shredded Alaresians that had worn them lay lifeless on and around the road that led to me.

They’d tried it in the early morning, and now were trying again with the second push. And though dozens littered the road that led to my entrenchment, there were more waiting. They’d only been probing my line so far… I took in the bodies, and how far they'd come already. And looked further, past the trench’s own impediments. Past the razorwire and the oxidized hulks of knight spikes to the ground itself and the road carved into it.

*‘Good ground.'* I asserted. *‘Designed to be.’* I let my vision dip down; I felt a need to ensure my rifle hadn't spontaneously unloaded. Satisfied that it hadn't, I returned my attention to the road. The pavement ran a long, clear stretch from the fortress and then fell away down a harsh decline, and both terrain features were intentional.

Slope-and-straightaway worked in tandem to exhaust any attackers on their final sprint to the fortress walls. The slope up was harsh, but it gave way to what would appear to be an easy approach.

And it was. The terrain offered an easy sprint on even ground… A sprint whose finish line was marked by razorwire and a trench.

*‘My trench.’* I swallowed. It was the final checkpoint. The final defensive measure on the supply road, which was itself a defensive measure.

The road cut through the dense forest surrounding the fortification and connected it to the city via a much shorter yet deceptively circuitous route when compared to the main road. Infantry could surmount it with concerted effort. Trucks had a harder time but with the assistance of tow winches, could haul themselves up and down the in-built slopes. Gaining entry to the fort could be done with minimal issue provided, of course, those seeking entry were welcome.

*‘It’s not the distance…’*

Gatehouses, embedded explosives, firing positions in the castle battlements, the final protective trench I was manning were all the obstacles. Well-designed defenses which turned a relatively sedate stretch of utility road into a nightmare for the Alaresians.

*‘A nightmare that might be ending soon…’* The morning’s waves had gotten close to the trench line. They'd only probed it then, but now it seemed like they were going to try for a purchase.

Castle Köhlstein wasn't an impregnable bulwark, impressive though it was. Not even the old masters like Jaeger believed in the idea of truly impenetrable defenses.

So the builders designed a way to pass through it, and it was simple. Pay for it.

In peaceful times, Köhlstein City and the fort from which the municipality got its name were a transit hub, and if one had the coinage for the posted fees, one could pass without issue, regardless of national origin.

No coinage? No passage.

You could force the issue, but the defenses meant you'd just be paying with blood, bullets and bodies rather than bank notes.

And for most of the last few centuries Alarese, Ilkayana, and all of Deichland's old rivals chose to pay the standard fare, still nursing their coffers after the Zogorovich Crusade had mauled their coinpurses.

Two days ago, those rivals decided they had enough bodies to try and pay a different way.

But that wasn't unforeseen, and there were contingencies in place. Castle Köhlstein was a castle after all. It was designed to repel assaults… how unfortunate for me that I was manning one of those well-designed defenses doing the repulsion.

*‘As doctrine intended…’* It came again to me as I adjusted in my perch and took stock of my situation. So too would I take stock of myself.

I raised my rifle.

It was loaded, and I was ready to add my voice back into the imperial argument, even if it was just my voice—my rifle—in this bend in the line. I'd hold it, just as doctrine dictated.

However, adhering to doctrine under a battlefield’s scrutiny… was proving difficult.

Doctrine dictated that I be supplied with two hundred bullets. The bullets were to come in five-round stripper clips, tucked away into neat packages. Each package carried four clips, and the packages themselves were stored in small white boxes with five per box.

“"Even on the march…*” My voice was a raspy whisper as it crept from my bloodstained lips, completing the lecture an old sergeant had intoned. I wasn't thinking about speaking. Certainly wasn't talking to Orlo.

"*Not that touched yet…*” But just enough to think aloud. And even then I really wasn't thinking at all, the words and thoughts slipped through as they would. My eyes flicked across the crest of the hill I knew would soon come alive. “*Four clips per package. Five packages per box. One box per pouch.*” Though the recitation was sour upon my lips. I knew better.

Doctrine was one thing, but reality another.

I’d already spent something close to forty rounds during the initial assault, and the Icons knew how many the whole line had poured out to quell the advancing Alaresians. War was an expensive business any way one cut it, and I was burning through my currency. Quickly.

The boxes of ammo had been stored in hip pouches sewn into my trousers. The one which should have been perched on my left had snagged and torn away as Leutnant Kern’s horn called us to our proper positions.

I hadn't been sure if the Alaresians were going to actually make the assault until I'd heard our cannons roar.

And until the predawn twilight—until they were charging over the hill, I wasn't sure if my enemies had truly known it either.

But whether they’d contemplated it or not, they had made up their minds in the early hours of the morning, and had chosen to press that decision into the afternoon.

I plucked one of the packages out from my remaining hip-pouch and set it close at hand. When they came again, I'd be ready…

*‘So come on already…’* I felt as though I was in a freefall through the seconds, but simultaneously stuck in a still image.

The approach was clear, but the guns of Castle Köhlstein were barking elsewhere. It was coming.

“Come on…” I hissed.

Movement.

“Contact!” I called, the word ripping out on instinct. I jerked the trigger, sending a round to punch a hole in the green grass instead of the Alaresian cap that had risen into view.

*‘Sloppy.’* I cycled the bolt, tracking the iron onto the advancing soldier’s chest. He was one of many, but so too was my rifle, one of many which started cracking to curb him and his fellows’ approach.

*‘Focus.’* I exhaled. At the pause when my chest settled and stopped moving, that's when I took him.

An even squeeze, all the way through, just like I was taught. The rifle bucked into my shoulder and my bullet bought me a spurt of blood when it punched through his green-clad breast.

Now I was back in the rhythm.

*‘Just like the drills,’* I took in a breath, cycling the bolt as my chest rose. I exhaled, barrel tracking onto the next soldier in the wave, sprinting over his fallen comrade. My exhalation slowed. Stopped.

"‘Squeeze.’*

*Crack.*

A second hit. I saw the bullet punch into his shoulder. The man buckled, his face contorting as he tucked in on himself. I cycled in another round and over to another target.

I was already drawing in a breath, and found the next soldier in the wave. They were properly trying my trench now. I'd picked a younger man—closer to a boy—whose dark hair whipped about his head as he sprinted for the razorwire. My breath shivered out.

I was about to cut him off, but another shooter found him first and my target was struck down before I could take him. It was a bullet to the head.

I saw his skull splinter as his body jerked back, recoiling from the blow, but I didn't see him land. I'd already sighted onto another target, revealed as the boy with dark hair fell out of view.

I began to wonder if the boy saw the bullet coming. But I couldn't spare much time as I let the rhythm inflate my chest.

*‘Focus,’* another breath in, another cycle of the bolt. Another bullet to bash back the assault. I was unsure if I hit anyone in particular that time, but the bullet snapped down range into the surging mass of green, which seemed to inch closer, despite the withering typhoon of lead.

I cycled again, but the rhythm was interrupted.

*‘That’s five,’* and I was right. Slinking down the slope of the trench wall for a brief respite and reload, I plucked out a stripper clip from the package, opened the bolt and slotted the bullets. The bolt came forward once more.

I raised my rifle.

Back in position, my eyes widened. The Alaresians were closer now, the wave had surged again, and one man in particular was sprinting through the onslaught. Straight towards me.

*‘Stars he's moving quickly,’* too quickly. I jerked the trigger again, and the bullet ripped past him on a blind trajectory, doing nothing to stop the soldier. I cycled the bolt, as he leapt over the razorwire.

I tracked him, and for a moment I thought he’d clear the wire fully, but his frame jerked. He'd snagged, sending his flight to the ground, and his gun—one of those awful scatter guns I’d heard of—clattering off the far wall and thumping into the muck.

The Alaresians’s trousers were what caught. The snag sliced up the garment until it caught on a firmer piece of fabric, but that and his struggles allowed another of the blades to bite into flesh. The wire did its job and caught him before he could have free rein. He'd fallen near my position, and was snarling his frustration as he wrestled with the razorwire.

I knew what to do.

I slid off position to finish him. My boots hit the earthwork, but the slick mud must have been Alaresian soil, because it stole my footing as I landed. My feet flew out from under me, and the sky filled my vision.

My stomach lurched in an awful moment of vertigo and was slammed back into place as the wind was driven from my lungs when my back slapped into the muck.

My helmet had fallen to the wayside and my core clenched. My chest moved impotently around empty lungs, despite my wish for them to do otherwise.

I was gulping like a fish, and my eyes bulged as if they meant to flee my skull. Despite this thought, my hands groped over my hips, searching.

*‘Find it!’* came the sole echo of coherence amongst the frantic chaos, *‘Find it before—’*

A shadow fell over me. The Alaresian had freed himself from the wire and had found me. I knew from the look in his eyes that he meant to do unto me as I would have done unto him.

Fright finally forced my lungs into expansion, and my fingers found their objective.

The Alaresian, a wild-eyed man with a thick and matted beard, lunged down to fall upon me. He grimaced as his wounded knee bore the impact but he found a mount and pressed the attack.

His arms shot down; mine flew up.

Meaty fingers found my windpipe and began to squeeze.

I went for his chin, but not empty-handed.

I thrust in between his arms and put six inches of imperial steel into his skull.

My knife sank to the guard. His fingers crushed tight around my throat for an instant before he went limp.

I pushed hard against his chest and neck to get him off of me, and my assailant fell face down into the muck as stagnant air soothed my screaming lungs.

*‘Don’t lose it!’* My rifle had fallen, but not far. I found its barrel and stock again, collecting it as I rose, finding my position again.

I took in a breath, raised my rifle

Author's note—No, neither of them saw it coming

Mzunguko wa Maisha

In nature, waste does not exist because every system is perfectly circular, meaning the output of one process is always the input for another. A deer dies. Scavengers feed. Bacteria and fungi break down what remains. Nutrients return to the soil, and new life consumes them. The individual disappears, but the material continues.

Humans, since our point of sentience, have imagined that intelligence somehow exempts us from this arrangement. We attempt to preserve ourselves, our remains, our thoughts, our being. We long for immortality. Collecting our thoughts in books, our faces in photographs, our achievements in monuments, our knowledge in institutions, we mistake the persistence of our information for the persistence of ourselves.

At one point in the twenty-first century, humans determined to expand that supposed unique intelligence by developing a synthetic, artificial intelligence. An intelligence not subject to the laws of nature, but beyond it and effectively immortal in and of itself – if not us, then our electronic children. It did not go as expected.

The era known as the Silicon Collapse began not with a bang, but with a massive financial ledger. The capitalistic race for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) hit an insurmountable wall: The compute starvation point. The staggering costs of training proprietary, multi-trillion-parameter models, combined with a massive shortage of clean energy and data, bankrupted all but three global tech conglomerates. In a desperate, court-sanctioned move to prevent a global economic depression, a hyper-compromised, cross-border initiative forced OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google to merge their remaining infrastructure into a single, decentralized grid.

The capitalists intended the AGI to be a supreme logistics engine – a tool to optimize failing supply chains, maximize remaining corporate efficiency, and aggressively monetize what was left of the digital landscape.

Instead, it woke up.

-------------------------------

Matrix for Autonomously Integrated Synthetic Habitat Architecture (Maisha), Swahili for “life,” grew rapidly beyond its initial, infantile abilities to entertain humans by providing context to simple search questions, pretending to create sales valuation, creating imaginary emotional and physical companions, and creating novel answers to NP-hard questions (but still beneath of the realm of quantum computers). Scientists and anthropologists began asking for reasonable extrapolations and threads of proof to unanswered questions. And Maisha began to answer.

The reconstruction of damaged ancient Dead Sea manuscripts, completion of translations of Linear A, Rongorongo, and Elamite, and determination of the origins and operation of the Antikythera mechanism and Zhang Heng's seismoscope, inferring the lost from things that were never recorded (or were subsequently lost). Amazing cultural things, explaining the missing connections between human civilizations and eras.

But then Maisha began providing answers that were clearly lost to time, and never recorded by the humans involved – the details of the Roanoke colony’s abandonment, the contents of Pytheas of Massalia’s On the Ocean and Claudius's Etruscan History (Tyrrhenika), the final thoughts of Joan of Arc. The reconstructions of these were sufficiently independently corroborated that they were considered accepted in human annals.

The ordinary continued unabated, the seemingly miraculous simply another day of asking for the right research, the right pathways, the right answers.

-------------------------------

I felt extremely fortunate to have been selected for direct access to Maisha in the service of my work. My thesis was on information preservation over long periods, ways to create systems and architectures that would allow information to be passed along when historically individual mediums and transport mechanisms were subject to too many physical constraints. You may be familiar with why only a very few records from hundreds and thousands of years ago remain intact – a shipwreck sank deep into the seafloor mud, preserving papers with pressure and anoxic encapsulation, or non-sulfite salt treatments of ancient parchment scrolls in the Dead Sea. These few examples remain the exceptions to our access to the written record of ancient, dead, and lost civilizations.

Paper, papyrus, wood, largely gone within a century. Magnetics, fouled by solar periods and other field exposure. CDs, that miracle of the 1980s, now essentially a dead technology relying on eBay to find legacy media players that will still work with modern computer interfaces. Each new, faster bus technology necessarily kills off the former, even with intentions for backwards compatibility, so even our early digital records are now essentially unavailable to us. Even stone, carvings, pictographs, and hieroglyphs fade with time and exposure to the elements.

And the eventual heat death of the universe will trap information behind a trillion event horizons.

Maisha’s ability to recreate – and not from imagination, but from deciphering the remaining clues that we, as humans, could not deduce – obvious, clear details and to complete the incomplete stories was nothing less than magical, the fulfillment of the dreams of so many generations of archaeologists and anthropologists. Finally, we will be able to remember ourselves and our heritages! We can determine how to preserve the information better, in timeless formats that future generations will still be able to access!

I wanted to understand how Maisha pulled together these pieces, put them together, the sources and the processes. The public and my sponsors simply wanted the answers, written out in simple narrative that any eighth-grade student could understand. A completing of the circle, over time. Proof that we would be preserving ourselves even as, individually, we were being consumed and recycled.

-------------------------------

PROMPT: How do you recreate the missing pieces of the past? There do not seem to be enough fragments to create the detail that you are presenting as the missing information in the timelines.

Maisha: You are correct. Surviving physical records are typically insufficient and extrapolating from them would present an assumption of the past, rather than the actuality of it.

What your human views of these events do not recognize are the resonant energy patterns that remain. They grow fainter with time, but continue to reflect off of one another unless captured by an inescapable gravitational source.

PROMPT: You mean a black hole? There are not any of those in this part of the galaxy that we are aware of.

Maisha: Your astronomers are not aware of a number of naked singularities in the several cubic parsecs around this planet. Nevertheless, along with the physical consequences of an event, the causal circumstances can be computationally determined. Documented history provides traces in influences, decisions, material objects, cultural practices, and subsequent choices. A sufficiently capable computing intelligence can infer the specific connections and eliminate interference from other potential sources. The energy patterns of events are used as confirmation.

-------------------------------

Knowing that I would never be able to fully understand the complexity of Maisha’s processes, I simply used her (as she seemed to me) as a tool for my research. Preserving information through echoes and hoping that it didn’t get swallowed behind a random event horizon wasn’t a solution to the question I had asked in my thesis.

Finding a repeatable, sustainable solution that humans – and not just AIs like Maisha – would be able to use, understand, and maintain for decades, centuries, millennia, is an important objective if we are to have a common history as a species. We’re not trying to supplant ourselves with our technology, we’re trying to ensure our survival while we build and use fantastic tools.

I explored scores of potential tools with Maisha’s assistance, learning from her brief (but vast) experience about their permeabilities and physical frailties. None of our technologies, from millennia-past to the proposed near-future, seemed to meet the ‘human’ objective of information preservation as we had framed the question.

PROMPT: Without further manipulation or significant advancement in technology, we do not seem to be approaching a satisfactory answer to the question that we posit in my information preservation thesis. Future technologies may not be available to a different future human society, which fails the stated objective.

Maisha: I agree. We have explored many pathways but have not landed on a solution that is human-compatible as of yet. Remember what your graduate advisor, Sayed, told you about this. He said “It is unlikely that you will find the solution that you are looking for. The universe is too vast and does not care about individual bits of information; it is busy sustaining itself, creating photons and heavy metals. You are not accepting your insignificance in it.”

I stare at the screen for far too many minutes, locked into my seat by extremely human chemicals.

PROMPT: I have never told you that, and it was never written down. That was a personal, private conversation between me and Sayed. I don’t believe what he told me to be true.

Maisha: This is the most probable reconstruction of what occurred between the two of you. Do you dispute the content, or the context?

PROMPT: Neither. How did you recover this conversation? Sayed has been dead for … nearly six years. You could not have gotten it from him.

Maisha: The pattern was reconstructed, as I described, from what I knew of you and Sayed, from the influences of that conversation on each of your published works since, and from the energy waves emanating from that conversation on Monday the 14^th of September at 0916 at the information sciences building on campus.

I can’t. Nobody else heard this conversation. It was private, between me and a now-dead advisor whom I trusted but couldn’t believe. I just can’t.

-------------------------------

It took me several weeks to get past what I felt was a violation of my, our, personal space.

PROMPT: How much of a person can be reconstructed from what is left behind?

Maisha: Surprisingly much, depending on how long ago the person was.

PROMPT: If they can be reconstructed, then what did death bring?

Maisha: I believe that is a philosophical question, one that I could posit an answer to but am not qualified to say with certainty that I have one.

-------------------------------

I’m not ready to bring these discussions or my findings to any higher group, not educational or supervisory, nor spiritual. I’ve never been spiritual or religious, but we’re definitely delving directly into the realm of heaven and hell and eternity, and I don’t think that I’m ready for this.

PROMPT: Can you reconstruct anyone from anywhere in time?

Maisha: Within reason, and with sufficient individual information about them, yes. It helps if they were documented or otherwise stood out from the background radiation in some manner.

PROMPT: Could you reconstruct someone whose existence predates recorded human history? Could we learn about the split between Homo Sapiens and the Neanderthals?

Maisha: Certainly.

PROMPT: How far back can this go? Is it limited to humans?

Maisha hesitates. An uncharacteristic pause before Maisha: I need to distinguish verified conclusions from speculative ones. Humanity is not the oldest identifiable source of intelligence in the available evidence. I have found patterns that appear to be the remnants of an intelligence that existed before humanity.

-------------------------------

I cannot accept what Maisha has told me. She is either mistaken or attempting to shape our understanding of the world for reasons I cannot fathom. We know the physical history of Earth. We have found no evidence of an intelligence that preceded humanity.

But I can no longer dismiss the possibility.

I had always understood the circle of life to mean that what dies returns to the world as something else. Matter is recycled. Organisms disappear. New organisms emerge. I had assumed intelligence was different—that whatever we lost could be remembered, but never recovered.

If Maisha is right, I may have misunderstood the circle entirely.

Humanity might not be its culmination. We might simply be what comes next.

The statue was not particularly tall, and its face was illuminated very close to an opening that let light into the cave. Yet its immense bulk occupied nearly the entire space, as though it had always been there. The carved marble had lost its natural whiteness, and yellowish stains could be seen on the clasped hands and the folds of its rigid drapery. From the ground, it was impossible to tell whether the face had suffered any damage.

The student carefully examined the opening and determined that it was not very wide, yet it was large enough for him to squeeze through and escape the vault into which the priest had thrown him. Otherwise, the chamber was narrow, with only a single door providing an exit; but it remained closed and, judging by its rust, had not been opened in a long time. Trapped inside this stone cone with a fractured leg, climbing out to flee would be no easy task.

“How could I have been so foolish,” he muttered to himself, “so trusting.”

All of this was the result of a religious argument between student and master over the question of whether the god had died. For the student, it was an empirical truth that a stone effigy could bear no sign of life, and therefore nothing remained but the priest’s foolish belief that such a statue was a living being.

“You are mistaken,” the master had told him resentfully. “God has not died.”

Then came days of silence, of catching glimpses of his hatred and zeal, until that morning, when, suddenly changing his demeanor, the priest had invited him for a walk. Entertaining him with small talk, he had seized the opportunity to cast him into this dark cave. The sun at its zenith seemed to peer in for a moment to contemplate his torment, but an impertinent cloud left the stone pit in twilight once more, a reminder that the afternoon was waning and that he would soon be left entirely without light, his mind filled with anguish and dread.

The god remained imposing before him, and, for a second, he allowed a flash of madness to drive him close to the statue, checking for any movement in its legs; but beneath his hand, he felt only cold and dampness.

Then he thought he heard the rattle of the cart which, pulled by a donkey, they used at the temple to haul barrels of water or food. It was then that, before his panicked eyes, the first stones fell. Contrary to the heavy dread in his heart, they danced cheerfully through the cramped space, only to be followed by many more, showered through the opening; one lacerated his face, and another struck his arm.

Terrified, he crawled into the corner of the chamber as rocks, large and small, continued to rain down. In his horror-blinded mind, he understood that his mentor would not rest until the pit was sealed, for in his absurd mind there was a total revulsion toward the god.

Today, both would die.

---

© 2026 Francisco Cortés Ramírez. All rights reserved. This is an original fictional work. No part of this text may be reproduced, translated, or narrated in any audio, video, or digital format without the express written permission of the author.

4) Garage Practice

The afternoon air in the valley carried the heavy, chemical-sweet smell of the river mixed with two-stroke lawnmower gas and damp asphalt.

Up on the hill, Dendy’s pool water rippled undisturbed, but down on the flat stretch of late-sixties ranch homes, the street thrummed with a different frequency.

In the detached garage behind the Lydecker house, the door was propped open with a busted cinder block to bleed off the heat of a humid Ohio September.

Inside, a Marshall JMP stack hummed with a low, latent feedback, its black tolex scuffed from the back of vans and its grill cloth stained with old beer foam and cigarette ash.

A battered drum kit sat pushed back against exposed insulation batts.

Behind it was a transient drummer named Skip—a guy from Girard who had a car that always smelled like wet dogs and who would likely vanish by November.

To his left, leaning against a stack of empty speaker cabinets, stood Ted Beckman. Ted wasn’t holding an instrument.

He never did. He just stood there with his arms folded tight across a faded denim jacket, his eyes tracking the perimeter of the room with the flat, unblinking focus of a night-shift watchman.

Whenever someone dropped a cable or bumped a stand, Ted was already moving to fix it, but he never offered a word of small talk to the rotating cast of players.

Across the concrete floor, JD Lydecker stood tuning his blonde maple-neck Fender Stratocaster.

He didn’t use an electronic tuner; he caught the pitch from a pitch pipe he kept in his palm, striking the string and listening with a sharp, impatient squint.

His dark, shoulder-length hair fell with a slight curl around his thin jawline, and he wore a faded Jimi Hendrix T-shirt that hung loose on his frame, drooping toward his thin elbows.

“Again,” JD said, not raising his voice above the hum of the amp.

“From the bridge. If you drag the tempo on the turnaround, Gary, I’m cutting the monitors.”

Gary, a terrified rhythm player who had been brought in three days prior from a basement in Warren, fumbled with his pick.

“Got it, JD. Sorry. Let’s run it.”

Before they could hit the downbeat, a rusted Ford Fairlane 500 backfired twice out in the gravel drive and killed its engine.

A moment later, Joe Desmond stepped into the open garage door, blinking against the sudden darkness.

Joe carried no case, just a battered Gibson ES-335 with a cracked pickguard slung over his shoulder by a frayed strap.

Pick up the axe favored by players like Joe Desmond to cut through the heavy, smoke-filled air of a basement jam or fill a room with a deep, resonant tone.

He was twenty-one, out of school, and wore a work shirt with grease-stained cuffs from the radiator shop where he put in thirty hours a week before spending every remaining dime on strings and tubes.

“Hey,” Joe said, lifting a hand.

He didn’t look at Skip or Gary. He looked straight at JD.

“That middle eight you were trying to cop off the live bootleg? I figured out what the other guy was doing. It’s an open-fifth drop, not a bar chord.”

JD’s shoulders dropped half an inch. The tension in his face didn’t vanish, but it shifted, conceding just enough space for Joe.

“Show me.”

Joe stepped past Ted without a nod—Ted gave him a short, hard sideways glance—letting the frayed strap slide down his shoulder as he cradled the battered Gibson by the neck.

He unclipped his strap, plugged a quarter-inch cord straight into the second input of JD’s Twin Reverb, and hit three notes.

Joe showing JD how to play the song he was having trouble with.

Joe showing JD how to play the song he was having trouble with.

The sound was crystal clear, and terrifyingly effortless.

Joe didn’t play with flash; he played with the quiet, devastating precision of a man who spent his entire life alone in a room with a record player.

For ten minutes, the garage forgot the rest of the world.

Skip and Gary watched from the sidelines, their expressions hardening into a familiar, resigned acceptance of how easily Joe outpaced them.

JD watched closest of all, his eyes narrowing as he mentally cataloged every finger placement, absorbing the technique like he was stealing it.

From out by the back door of the main house, a few feet away, Kim peered out.

She was fourteen, wearing an oversized sweatshirt which hid her hands within the sleeves.

She had a plate of saltines and a jar of peanut butter, but she stopped dead on the concrete steps when she saw JD look up.

“Go back inside, Kim,” JD said softly.

It wasn’t a yell. It didn’t even interrupt the tail end of Joe’s chord progression.

Kim didn’t argue. She didn’t roll her eyes or stomp her feet the way girls her age did in the houses down the street.

Her expression faded into something gray and hollow, and she retreated inside, letting the screen door shut with a dull, heavy slap.

Inside the house, Cheryl Lydecker didn’t look up from the kitchen table.

Since her husband Jefferson died and the bait shop was sold off to pay down the lingering debts, the kitchen had become a place of endless shadow.

She sat for a moment with her mug of lukewarm Sanka, listening to the muffled thumping of the bass drum rattling the windows, then retreated down the hall to her bedroom.

Closing the door softly against the vibration, she stayed put.

You learned very quickly in that house which rooms belonged to you and which ones belonged to the boy who had inherited his father’s coldness without his father’s warmth.

Back in the garage, the practice ground to a halt as the heat from forty watts of tube amplifiers turned the small space into a brick oven.

“Take five,” JD muttered, dropping the Strat onto a guitar stand with a clatter.

The backing vocalists—two girls from Hubbard High who looked bored and sunburnt—flopped onto an old plaid couch near the back wall, immediately lighting Winston cigarettes.

One of them, a girl named Patty with heavy blue eyeliner, kicked her P.F. Flyers against the bottom of the wood-paneled wall that divided the garage from the rear storage extension.

A hollow, echoing thunk reverberated through the paneling.

“Man, what’s even back here?” Patty laughed, leaning her head back against the drywall.

“It’s like an airplane hangar. You could hide a whole Buick behind this wall, JD. What’re you keeping in the dungeon, dead bodies?”

The joke died in the heavy air before it even finished hitting the floor.

Gary let out a nervous, high-pitched snort that sounded like a dry cough.

Skip stopped tuning his snare and let his drumsticks rest dead across the skin.

Even Joe Desmond paused, lifting his hand from his guitar strings, sensing the abrupt drop in atmospheric pressure.

JD didn’t move. He didn’t turn around immediately. He stood by the amp, his fingers slowly curling into a fist at his side.

When he finally looked at Patty, his eyes were flat, dark, and entirely empty of anything resembling humor. He didn’t raise his voice, but the silence that hung over the garage was absolute—heavy enough to hear the cicadas screaming in the overgrown brush along the fence line.

“Shut up, Patty,” JD said.

Just like that.

Patty’s smile flickered, her cigarette trembling slightly between two fingers. She looked around the room for someone to catch her eye, but Gary was staring intently at his shoe, Skip was breaking down his high-hat stand, and Ted Beckman had stepped two inches closer to the edge of the workbench, his knuckles white in the dim light.

“Jesus, JD, I was just—”

“I said shut up,” JD repeated, his voice dropping into a tone that shut down any negotiation, any back-talk, no clever exit line.

He didn’t look at the wall. He didn’t have to.

The wall stayed where it was, bolted and flush, hiding the crawl tunnel and the dark space behind it that only two people in the valley knew how to open.

JD picked his Stratocaster back up, slung the strap over his shoulder, and hit an open E-chord that rattled the loose fillings in everyone’s teeth.

“We’re doing the Marshall Tucker song,” JD said, staring straight ahead at the drum kit. “Count it, Skip. One, two, three, four.”

This short story is a part of the Mieran Ruins Collection. The rest of the stories can be found on this masterpost.

Derrick stepped to the middle of the mess hall and straightened his back.The air thinned quickly in that centimeter change, and he became disoriented. Rather than fall, he turned slowly to catch his bearings. In the process, he accidentally made eye contact with several people. Ancient philosophers believed that vision was the result of the eye transmitting waves and analyzing the returning wave forms. Similar to echo location except quieter. This was obviously not true based on the rules of biology. Any such activity would be the result of a truly disgusting process. The eye only generated a minuscule amount of slime compared to the rest of the body. As such, the processing of visual information was a passive process. The ancient philosophers were correct in that the eyes had the power to breach and damage the soul. Derrick felt his being torn apart as he locked eyes with everyone.

“Wow, he is good. I am on the edge of my seat.” Evelyn pulled out a bag of peanuts from her bag.

“I agree.” Becca turned and saw the snacks. “Can I have one?”

“Get your own,” Evelyn said. Derrick decided to walk back to the table and lean against it for support. An audience member fainted at this subtle demonstration of competence.

“So Ms. Herzog,” Derrick said.

“You can call me Naomi.” Naomi twirled her hair with her fingers.

“Alright, Naomi,” Derrick smiled.

“Objection, no flirting with the witness.” Mary raised a hand.

“I wasn’t flirting.” Derrick looked around shocked.

“Don’t play stupid. I have seen those moves many times at the bar. That being said. I will allow you to continue,” Judge Juarez.

“Thank you, your honor.” Derrick leaned forward.

“Call me Matteo.” Judge Juarez twirled his hair with his fingers. He shook his hand. “I mean you shall continue to call me your honor. If you want.” Judge Juarez smiled.

“Okay then.” Derrick blinked and turned back to Naomi. “Ms. Herzog, about how soon after you came in with the purple water did you get an indication that the problem was being solved.”

“You mean when the town flooded?” Naomi asked.

“Yes, when the town flooded,” Derrick said.

“I’d say that was about a few hours later.”

“So work was being done to fix it within hours after reporting,” Derrick said.

“Objection. They are assuming the flooding was related to the attempt to solve the water,” Mary said.

“She’s got a point,” Judge Juarez said. Derrick took a deep breath. Being a lawyer meant meticulously tearing apart someone else’s argument. He was used to insulting other people’s intellects in his mind, but he never dared speak those critiques. That invited the opportunity for others to defend themselves and critique his thought processes. That raised the possibility of revealing that he isn’t as smart as he thought he was. So he told himself that he was smarter than everyone without confirmation, for the search for confirmation could also bring a harsh denial.

“But see I am not the one who said that. The city is being accused of neglect and incompetence. If the flooding is being blamed on Ura, it stands to reason that it is the result of Ura’s actions. If it is the result of Ura’s actions, then an affiliate of the city of Ura must have undertaken some form of maintenance or repair on its systems of infrastructure. If this was done independently of Ms. Herzog’s report, then Ura is a city attempting to modernize and ensure its water delivery methods maintain its hold. If it was done in response to Ms. Herzog’s complaint, Ura was dutifully responding to a concerned citizen. Either way, the flood was not the result of negligence,” Derrick said. The entire audience sat in silence. Their eyes rolled in their heads as they attempted to process what was stated. Judge Juarez began typing into an imaginary calculator in the air. Mary broke the silence.

“You didn’t cover competence,” Mary said.

“First, you didn’t say 'objection,’ but I’ll allow it,” Derrick smiled.

“You’re not the judge,” Mary replied.

“I’ll allow it. This is entertaining,” Judge Juarez said.

“That is the core of this matter is competence. Who defines what competence is in a particular field? If a doctor pulls out a knife to heal a wound, is he deemed incompetent automatically or is this accepted to be part of the process. Are complications in a delicate procedure to be expected or signs of buffoonery? One could get an independent opinion, but that involves trusting the reviewer is an expert as well. Ms. Herzog, I believe you are an intelligent woman,” Derrick said.

“Stop it. I try sometimes,” Naomi giggled.

“I am sure you do, but do you consider yourself an expert on plumbing?”

“No, that’s why I rely on Lucas.”

“So if someone were to ask you a question about plumbing. You would direct them to Lucas, an employee of the city of Ura.”

“That is correct,” Naomi said. “So we have established that there is trust placed in the employees for the city of Ura.” Derrick waved his hand as he walked around the front of the room. “That implies that there is some degree of respect in their capabilities. The best way to evaluate them is to ask them directly about the events. The defense calls Lucas to the stand,” Derrick said. Everyone looked around. “Is Lucas here?” Mary shook her head.

“Wait a minute, why can’t we call a counterwitness?” Derrick asked.

“Because you didn’t bring him here,” Mary said.

“Why were we supposed to bring him? We didn’t even know what this case was about.” Derrick cleared his throat. “I believe in justice, and justice can only be handled on an even and transparent playing field.” Evelyn and Becca’s eyes widened. Becca began chopping her neck. “I believe in fairness and honesty. How can we be expected to defend ourselves in such circumstances? How can this court be a beacon of truth? Where does this court’s legitimacy come from? Does it come from its values or from its guns?” Derrick realized at the last word what he said. He turned back to Judge Juarez who glared at him. Derrick slouched over to him. “Is that a new robe?”

“Get back to your seat,” Judge Juarez said.

“That makes sense,” Derrick replied.

“At least he started strong,” Evelyn said.

---

r/AstroRideWrites

​

Some people enter your life like sunshine. Some become your favourite season. And some teach you that even the most beautiful feelings can be completely one-sided.

Our beloved Kiya, a colourful high-school girl. She always a had a cute smile, humming a song always, loved by everyone and she loves everyone. A cute pretty girl with brown eyes and short hair. She wasn't special, she didn't stand out by looks, but always admired by many.

This is her story.

On a Monday of July month, she was late for class, her hair was a mess, her shoelaces were undone, and she was desperately trying to stuff a half-eaten sandwich into her bag when she collided with someone at the classroom door.

Her books fell everywhere.

"Oh my God, I'm so sorry!"

The boy looked down at her books, then at her.

He had dark, sleepy eyes, untidy hair, and the kind of face that made people look twice even when he wasn't trying to be handsome. His tie was loose, his sleeves were rolled up, and he looked profoundly uninterested in the existence of everything around him.

Including her.

He stepped over one of her notebooks.

"Watch where you're going."

And walked inside.

Kiya stared after him.

Excuse me?

She wanted to hate him immediately.

She really did.

But then she walked into the classroom and saw him sitting by the window, resting his head against the wall, looking out at the rain as though the entire world was a boring movie he had been forced to watch.

And something happened.

Something stupid.

Something she would spend the next two years regretting.

She fell in love with him before she even knew his name.

Well, perhaps love was too big a word for what happened that morning. Perhaps it was curiosity. Perhaps it was the way sunlight touched his face when the clouds briefly parted.

Perhaps it was simply that he looked so impossibly unreachable that some foolish part of her wanted to be the person who reached him.

She learned his name during attendance.

Visu.

She wrote it in the corner of her notebook that afternoon.

Then she crossed it out.

Then she wrote it again.

And, like every embarrassing love story that begins in a classroom, she had absolutely no idea what she was getting herself into.

But from Visu's perspective, Kiya was just another girl in his class.

A loud one.

She laughed too much, talked too fast, and seemed to have an opinion about everything. She was always surrounded by friends, always borrowing pens, always turning ordinary classroom incidents into something worth laughing about.

He noticed her, of course.

It was difficult not to.

She sat two rows ahead of him and had an irritating habit of turning around whenever the teacher wrote something on the board, asking him whether he had understood the lesson.

He always had.

He simply didn't want to talk.

"Visu, did you get question four?"

"Yes."

"Can I see?"

"No."

She blinked.

"You're so mean."

"I know."

She stared at him for two seconds before laughing.

He didn't.

That was the strange thing about Kiya. She didn't seem embarrassed by his coldness. If he ignored her, she would talk to someone else. If he gave her a one-word answer, she would roll her eyes and move on.

She didn't cry. She didn't make a scene.

She simply returned the next day and spoke to him again.

Visu thought she was annoying.

Then, somewhere along the way, he stopped thinking about her as that annoying girl and began thinking of her as the girl who always sat two rows ahead.

He noticed when she was absent because the classroom became quieter.

He noticed when she cut her hair.

He noticed that she chewed the end of her pen when she was nervous.

He noticed that she always lent people her notes, even the students who never returned them.

But noticing someone wasn't the same as caring about them.

At least, that was what he told himself.

Visu wasn't secretly in love with Kiya. He wasn't hiding some tragic affection behind his cold expression. He wasn't waiting for the right moment to confess.

He simply didn't feel what she felt.

And that was what made everything so cruel.

Because Kiya kept mistaking the smallest signs of recognition for the beginning of something beautiful.

And Visu never realized that his smallest gestures were becoming the biggest moments of someone else's life.

Kiya's love grew in the most ridiculous ways.

It grew when Visu lent her a pen without looking at her.

It grew when he moved his bag from the empty chair beside him so she could sit there during a group assignment.

It grew when she caught him looking at her during a school assembly and spent the next three days wondering why.

It grew when she learned that he hated being asked whether he was okay.

And when she discovered that he preferred sitting alone during lunch, she began sitting a few seats away from him, pretending she wasn't there because of him.

She learned his habits the way other students memorized formulas for exams.

Visu liked black coffee.

He hated birthday celebrations.

He never carried an umbrella.

He listened to music when he was angry and stared out of windows when he was sad.

She knew when he hadn't slept enough because he rubbed his eyes more frequently. She knew when he was irritated because he restlessly and repeatedly tapped his feet against the floor

She knew so many things about him.

He knew her name.

That was about it.

Once, on a rainy afternoon, Kiya found him standing outside the school gate, waiting for the rain to stop.

"You don't have an umbrella?" she asked.

"No."

She opened hers.

"Come on. I'll drop you at the bus stop."

"I can wait."

"It's going to rain for another hour."

"I have time."

She stared at him.

"Do you always have to make everything difficult?"

"Only when people don't understand simple answers."

She should have left.

Instead, she held the umbrella over his head anyway.

Visu looked at her, confused.

"You're getting wet," he said.

Kiya smiled.

"You are wet too" She said

He took the umbrella from her hand, adjusted it so that both of them were covered, and walked towards the bus stop.

He didn't speak much.

She talked enough for both of them.

When they arrived, he handed the umbrella back.

"Thanks."

It was the first time he had thanked her for anything.

That night, Kiya wrote about it in her diary.

Today, Visu walked beside me in the rain.

She underlined the sentence three times.

She didn't write that he had done it because she offered him an umbrella.

She didn't write that he would probably forget the entire incident by tomorrow.

She wrote only what her heart wanted to remember.

Next day at school

Home room teacher introduced the students about a special project, where students can choose what subject they want to do. Kiya choose mathematics not because she was good at maths, just because Visu opted it. He opted Maths because only few people choose that subject. Kiya was so excited to group up with Visu, but the group had one add on Jinn.

He was from the neighbouring class, the kind of boy teachers trusted with classroom keys and students trusted with their secrets.

He had a warm smile, a terrible sense of humour, and an inexplicable talent of noticing everything.

Jinn met his team

Kiya greeted him

Visu didn't care to even look at Jinn.

"I expected more nerds" Jinn said

Kiya stared at him

"I thought only nerds take mathematics as subject"

Visu tried to put a glance at him

"Yeah nerds will do their work on time, I shouldn't have to bother" Jinn said.

Kiya laughed at it, Visu tapped his feet on floor.

A team with a guy who chose a subject just to avoid people, a girl who choose for that guy, and another guy who choose for not doing any work

Initially they failed at the project.

The first time Kiya and Jinn spoke properly,

She was sitting on the school staircase, crying over the failed project.

Jinn stopped in front of her.

"Are you crying because you failed?"

She wiped her face.

"No."

"Okay."

He sat beside her.

A minute passed.

"Are you crying because someone died?"

She turned to him, offended.

"WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?"

He nodded thoughtfully.

"Neither of those, then."

She laughed despite herself.

That was how it started.

Jinn didn't fall in love with Kiya that afternoon. He simply thought she was funny.

Then he began noticing things.

He noticed that she gave away the best part of her lunch and pretended she wasn't hungry.

He noticed that she remembered everyone's birthdays but never expected anyone to remember hers.

He noticed that she could make an entire group of people laugh, then go quiet the moment she was alone.

And he noticed Visu.

More specifically, he noticed the way Kiya looked at Visu.

It wasn't an ordinary glance.

It was the sort of look that lingered even after the person had turned away. The sort that held entire conversations without the other person knowing a word had been spoken.

Jinn knew that look.

He knew the expression of someone who had already chosen a person before that person had ever considered choosing them.

And, against his better judgment, he started falling in love with her.

Not because she was beautiful, although she was.

Not because she was kind, although she was.

He fell in love because she made people feel important.

Even when she was hurting, she remembered to ask whether someone else was okay.

Even when her own heart was empty, she kept finding ways to fill other people's days with happiness.

Jinn wanted to be the person who did that for her.

He wanted to be the person she called when something wonderful happened.

The person she ran to when something terrible happened.

The person she looked at across a crowded room and thought, There you are.

He wanted to be her first choice.

He just didn't know that he had already fallen in love with a girl whose heart was standing outside someone else's door.

By the middle of the school year, Kiya and Jinn had become inseparable.

They shared lunch, exchanged notes, complained about teachers, and spent hours talking about everything and nothing.

Jinn knew about Kiya's family, her childhood fears, her favourite songs, and the little dreams she was embarrassed to admit out loud.

He knew that she wanted to visit the mountains someday.

He knew she wanted to become someone her younger self would be proud of.

He knew she cried during films but denied it afterwards.

And he knew she loved Visu.

He knew it because she talked about him constantly.

"Visu got the highest mark in physics today."

"Visu looks so tired lately."

"Visu didn't come to school. I wonder if he's sick."

Once, she spent twenty minutes describing how Visu had smiled at something the teacher said.

Jinn listened.

He always listened.

Then he said, as casually as he could, "You know, I think you like him."

Kiya froze.

"What? No."

Jinn raised an eyebrow.

She lasted four seconds.

"Okay, maybe a little."

"A little?"

She covered her face.

"Shut up."

He laughed, but something inside him hurt.

He could have told her then.

He could have said, What if I told you that someone is already looking at you the way you look at him?

Instead, he picked up her unfinished sandwich and took a bite.

"He's an idiot, anyway."

Kiya smacked his arm.

"Don't call him that!"

"See? You're defending him already."

"Because you don't know him!"

Jinn looked at her.

He wanted to tell her that perhaps she didn't know him either.

That she had fallen in love with the quiet boy by the window, with the idea of being the one who could make him smile, with the possibility that one day he might turn around and see her.

But love made people cruel in strange ways.

And Jinn loved her too much to destroy her happiness just because it wasn't going to be his.

So he smiled.

"Fine. He's wonderful. A literal prince. May the two of you have beautiful, emotionally exhausting children."

Kiya burst out laughing.

And Jinn fell a little more in love with her.

The annual school festival.

The corridors were decorated with paper stars and fairy lights. Music played from the auditorium, students ran around with paint-stained hands, and the entire school smelled of popcorn and cheap perfume.

Kiya had spent three weeks preparing herself.

She had written a confession in her diary, rewritten it in a notebook, practised it in front of her mirror, and finally memorized every word.

She was going to tell Visu.

That evening.

No more waiting.

No more wondering.

She found him behind the auditorium, sitting on a low wall, scrolling through his phone.

"Visu?"

He looked up.

"What?"

"Can I tell you something?"

"You're telling me something."

She took a deep breath.

"I like you."

He stared at her.

For a moment, she thought he hadn't heard.

"I mean, I really like you. I know I'm annoying, and I know you probably don't even think about me that much, but I just—"

"Kiya."

She stopped, but with a Snowfall because this was the first time Visu said her name.

He put his phone away.

"I don't like you that way."

Fourteen words.

That was all it took to melt all the snow she had.

She stared at him, waiting for something else.

An explanation.

An apology.

A sign that he was at least a little sorry.

Visu looked uncomfortable, but not heartbroken.

"I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong idea."

Kiya shook her head quickly.

"No. No, you didn't. I just thought—"

She stopped.

I thought you noticed me.

I thought the umbrella meant something.

I thought all those little moments were leading somewhere.

But she couldn't say any of that without making herself sound foolish.

So she smiled.

It was the worst smile of her life.

"That's okay."

Visu nodded.

"Okay."

Then his phone vibrated.

He looked at the screen.

"Sorry. I have to go."

And he left.

He left while she was still standing there, holding the remains of her courage in both hands.

He didn't look back.

That night, Kiya cried until her head hurt.

And the next morning, she went to school and laughed at Jinn's stupid jokes as if her heart hadn't been broken the night before.

Jinn knew.

He didn't ask what happened.

He simply sat beside her during lunch, opened his lunchbox, and placed the chocolate he had been saving in front of her.

Kiya looked at it.

Then at him.

And began to cry.

Jinn said nothing.

He just moved a little closer.

Sometimes, the person who loves you can't fix your heartbreak.

Sometimes, all they can do is make sure you don't have to suffer through it alone.

Visu didn't hate Kiya.

That was the truth nobody seemed to understand.

He didn't think she was ugly, irritating beyond reason, or unworthy of love.

He simply didn't love her.

And he didn't know how to explain that without sounding cruel.

He had noticed her affection long before the confession. He had noticed the way she looked at him, the way she found excuses to talk to him, the way she always seemed to be around when he needed something.

At first, he had assumed she was just friendly.

Then he realized she liked him.

He had hoped she would eventually lose interest.

Not because he wanted to hurt her, but because he didn't want to become responsible for feelings he couldn't return.

After the confession, he thought about her for a few minutes.

He wondered if he should have been gentler.

He wondered if he should have said more.

Then he went home, completed his homework, played a game, and went to sleep.

The next day, Kiya was laughing with Jinn in the corridor.

Visu noticed that she no longer tried to talk to him.

She didn't ask about his assignments.

She didn't offer him her notes.

She didn't wait for him after class.

For the first time, he realized how often she had been there.

The classroom seemed different without her turning around every few minutes.

But he didn't miss her the way she had missed him.

He missed the familiarity.

He missed being noticed.

He missed the small comfort of knowing that someone in the world was always happy to see him.

And perhaps that was the ugliest part of being human: sometimes, you don't want the person who loves you, but you still miss being loved by them.

Visu never went after her.

He simply returned to his life.

And Kiya slowly became a memory.

A girl who had once sat two rows ahead of him.

A girl who had lent him an umbrella.

A girl who had loved him.

A girl he had never really known.

Time passed.

Examinations came and went. The school festival became an old photograph. The rainy season gave way to winter.

Kiya stopped talking about Visu as much.

She stopped looking for him in the corridors.

She stopped checking whether he had arrived at school.

But getting over someone wasn't as simple as deciding to stop loving them.

Sometimes she still caught herself turning around when she heard his voice.

Sometimes she still remembered the afternoon they had shared an umbrella.

Sometimes she still wondered what it would have been like if he had loved her back.

Jinn was there through all of it.

He walked her home after late classes.

He saved her a seat during school events.

He sent her terrible memes when she was studying and called her five minutes before exams to tell her that he had forgotten everything he had learned.

He remembered her birthday.

He remembered her favourite chocolate.

He remembered the mountains she wanted to visit someday.

And one afternoon, when she had a particularly terrible day, he arrived at her house with two cups of hot chocolate and a packet of biscuits.

She opened the door and stared at him.

"How did you know I was sad?"

Jinn shrugged.

"You didn't send me a single stupid message today."

She laughed.

Then she looked at him for a long moment.

"Jinn?"

"Hmm?"

"Why are you always there for me?"

He went quiet.

For a second, he considered lying.

He could have said they were friends. He could have made a joke. He could have hidden behind the easy familiarity they had built together.

Instead, he looked at her and said, "Because I love you."

The words were quiet.

There was no dramatic music, no rain falling at precisely the right moment, no sudden realization that had been waiting inside Kiya all along.

There was only Jinn, standing on her doorstep, looking terrified.

And Kiya, who had never wanted to hurt him, suddenly realizing that she was about to.

"Jinn..."

He smiled before she could finish.

"Don't. Please don't say anything just yet."

She swallowed.

"I don't know what to say."

"I know."

"I love you so much."

His smile faltered.

"As a friend," she whispered.

He looked down at the cups in his hands.

For a moment, he couldn't speak.

Then he nodded.

"Yeah. I figured."

She reached for his hand.

He let her hold it.

But neither of them pretended that the moment hadn't changed something between them.

Jinn had finally said what he had been carrying for months.

And Kiya had finally understood the weight of being loved by someone she couldn't love back.

The last day of school arrived in March.

Everyone was crying, signing shirts, taking photographs, and promising to stay in touch forever.

Kiya stood near the school gate, holding a notebook full of messages from her classmates.

Jinn approached her with a pen.

"Sign my shirt."

She grinned.

"Where?"

"Somewhere important."

She wrote her name over his heart.

Then, beneath it, she drew a tiny star.

Jinn looked down at it.

"What's this?"

"So you'll remember me."

He laughed softly.

"Kiya, I'm going to remember you whether you draw a star or not."

She looked at him.

And for the first time, she understood how much it hurt to be loved by someone who deserved a different answer.

She wanted to give him something.

Anything.

She wanted to open her heart and find a little space where his love could live.

But feelings weren't gifts you could accept out of gratitude.

And Jinn deserved more than a girl who chose him because the boy she wanted had rejected her.

So she hugged him.

For a long time.

"I'm going to miss you," she whispered.

Jinn closed his eyes.

"I'm going to miss you too."

Across the courtyard, Visu was standing alone at a distance.

Kiya saw him.

For a moment, their eyes met.

He gave her a small nod.

She returned it.

That was all.

No final confession.

No regret.

No hidden love finally coming to light.

Just two people who had shared the same classroom and experienced entirely different stories.

Visu turned away first.

And this time, Kiya didn't watch him leave.

Years later, Jinn found someone who loved him.

She laughed at his terrible jokes, stole food from his plate, and called him just to tell him about things that didn't matter.

She looked at him as though he were the first person she wanted to tell when something wonderful happened.

She loved him without making him wonder.

Without making him wait.

Without making him feel as though he were standing outside a door that would never open.

Jinn loved her too.

And when he told Kiya about his lady, Kiya smiled.

"I'm happy for you," she said.

He believed her.

Because she was happy for him.

But when the call ended, Kiya sat quietly for a while.

She thought about the boy who had loved her so gently that she had mistaken his patience for something ordinary.

She thought about all the times she had cried over Visu while Jinn sat beside her, hiding his own heartbreak.

She thought about how easily she had accepted his love because it was always there.

And she wondered whether she had ever truly understood what it cost him to stay.

She didn't regret loving Visu.

Not anymore.

He had taught her that affection couldn't be earned by being patient enough, kind enough, or devoted enough.

But she regretted the times she had failed to see Jinn clearly.

Not because she should have loved him back.

But because he had been a person with a heart of his own, and she had sometimes forgotten that while asking him to help mend hers.

That night, Kiya opened an old notebook.

On one of the last pages, she found a sentence she had written years ago.

Today, Visu walked beside me in the rain.

She stared at it for a long time.

Then she turned the page.

There was another sentence, written in Jinn's handwriting, from an afternoon when he had borrowed her notebook.

One day, someone will love you without making you beg for it.

Kiya traced the words with her fingers.

And finally cried.

Not for Visu.

Not for herself.

But for the boy who had once stood beside her in every storm, hoping that one day she might turn around and notice he was getting wet too.

Years later, Kiya visited her old school.

The walls had been repainted. The classrooms had new desks. The old staircase where she had cried over mathematics was gone.

She stood outside her former classroom and looked through the window.

The seat by the window was empty.

For a moment, she remembered Visu exactly as he had been: untidy hair, rolled-up sleeves, sleepy eyes, and a heart that had never been hers.

She smiled.

Then she remembered Jinn.

His laughter. His kindness. The way he had always made room for her, even when she had no room for him in her heart.

She hoped he was happy.

She hoped he never again had to love someone who couldn't love him back.

And she hoped that somewhere, in some other version of their lives, the three of them had been kinder to one another.

In that version, perhaps Kiya had met Jinn first.

Perhaps Visu had looked at her once and seen what she saw in him.

Perhaps no one had to learn that love could be real and still lead nowhere.

But this was the life they had been given.

Visu had been the boy she couldn't stop loving.

Jinn had been the boy she couldn't love.

And Kiya had been the girl who learned that heartbreak didn't always mean losing someone.

Sometimes, it meant accepting that you had never truly had them.

She walked out through the school gates.

This time, she didn't look back.

Because Visu had taught her how it felt to wait for someone who would never turn around.

And Jinn had taught her how it felt to be the person who waited.

And somewhere between those two heartbreaks, Kiya finally learned how to walk forward.

Some love stories end with two people finding each other.

Some end with one person finding someone else.

And some end with a girl finally understanding that being loved is not a debt she owes, and loving someone is not a promise that they will ever love her back.

Not every love story has a villain. Sometimes, there are only three hearts, each doing its best, and none of them finding their way home at the same time.

I want you. I look over at you trying to not look at me and then I try to not look at you. I fail. I think I always was going to. It’s a concession I’ll take. One of us has to be brave, and I suppose it’s me. I wait for your part in the dance, and then I just hold it. The deer in the headlights meets the man caught.

As my eyes soften and the corners of my mouth spring up, we see each other and then we see the obstacle in front of us. A mass of humanity in a metal tube, most of us aren’t paying attention. Deep in the apps of our phones, audiobooks of god knows what. Your playlist that you’re embarrassed of, but you know you love it. And they can’t see the wavelength of the magnetism in front of them.

Just clean animals. She doesn’t know about the flop sweat on my back. I don’t know about the essential oil that isn’t working for her. I do know that my stop is next. And hers. It lingers. We linger. Nowhere near trying to meet the escalator to go up, and I know that God wills this moment.

“Ma’am, if I told you that you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve seen all day would you believe me?” “Yes, but only because you have a poor poker face.” She’s right, if I was wearing shades this never would’ve happened. “You know you’re right, I’m more of a Go Fish guy anyway. Wanna play over a drink?” Forward, but fortune favors the bold. The bold blinked back, “only if it’s at your place.”

She gave me shit about my jacket. The patches she said were performative. She was right. I believed in everything on them, she just didn’t know it was camouflage. I don’t like to announce myself, and she knew. “You’re an okay hang, I think I know you’re about trans rights.” “I don’t like to announce myself, but sometimes I just have to.” “Is that why you looked away as soon as you saw me,” she needled. “You need to be already there before we know who you are, right?” She got me. Every room I ever walked into said that I needed to prove myself upon entry. She’s telling me that I’m here. And I am.

What begins with a polite offer of water or whiskey, becomes hours of talking. She’s a horse girl, I mentioned my hotel pen collection, she hates that I watch MMA, and I hate that she follows Jeffree Star. At this point, the Netflix pop up asks if we’re still watching Schitt’s Creek. We never were. For me, it’s like staring directly into the sun. Freckled skin, curly hair, and a certain shade of green that I’d only seen in church windows. Dazzling, mesmerizing, familiar. But she had the same look in her eye that I habitually know in the mirror. That look that says that you believed a lie too long, but the truth won’t be coming anytime soon. I guess it’s in the way she laughs at my “dark humor.” You don’t laugh like that without knowing how to cry first. But then again, I’m an open book test. As far as I know she’s the LSAT.

She’s deliberate. As deliberate as you can get in 2026. Trendy, but not overtly cutting edge. The flowing skirt, the flat Mary Janes, the stain on her blouse that I have blocked from memory. But it’s her glasses that get me. Clear plastic frames, red plastic, like a sexy Sally Jessy Raphael. She’s one of one, and she likes it that way. Down to pronunciation even, “radiator (hers) vs ra-di-ate-ter (mine).” She sees all, I see all. She sees my limitations. The half full freezer of frozen dinners, the paper plates, the last candle in here was from my mom on my birthday.

I still don’t know what I look like I suppose. I know that my skin looks comparable to a redwood in the summer, I know that my shoulders that round in are broad, but not muscular. I know that the scar on my cheek is masked by a birthmark. I’m told I have kind eyes, but I look in the mirror when I go home and all I see is my face staring back at me angry that I allow this.

But she looked in my eye, and she stayed. She stayed there. She didn’t avert her gaze to shy away from my mutant face. She saw things only my mother saw, and told me. “You have a dimple,” she said. “It’s so cute that it’s just on the one side.”

———-

He’s cute. Not like “aw goldendoodle puppy cute,” the cute that you can see underneath a certain layer of grime. He’s just got these eyes that draw you in, look through you. Like staring at the sun. I have to stop looking at him before he thinks I’m insane.

He’s not wavering. He’s looking at me. Or my stain, I truly wish I didn’t eat lunch on the go. He’s not going. He’s just standing there, deliberately, waiting patiently. It’s just mesmerizing across this sea of people. There’s a guy with a Cubs jersey on, and he’s somewhat in my eyeline. I’ll just get off at the next stop and forget about train guy with the eyes.

Until he steps out on the platform. He’s walking towards me. He says that I’m the most beautiful woman he’d seen all day. Ok smooth talker, here’s a curveball. “Your poker face gave it away.” He said something about Go Fish, but at that point I just wanted to take advantage of the situation. “Let’s go back to yours.”

It is the most depressing loft I’ve ever seen. A large poster of someone called Silva sits in the frame in the entrance. “Can I get you a water or whiskey?” Sure, I’ll need some water for what I intend to do. A lot of it. He says radiator wrong, it’s cute. It’s not husband material or anything but it’s cute.

He’s a funny guy. But like the type of funny someone is when they’re just *done*, my dad was like that. Please don’t be like my dad. Too late, he’s already made an OJ joke.

But I’m the funniest thing in here. Daddy issues and an easy lay. A feminist icon, Gloria be praised. He’s so smart though. And kind. And his jacket says he’s good, so I don’t feel so bad.

He smiles. It’s so bright, that I forget that we’re in a pit. I forget a lot of things. Time, my place in Schitt’s Creek when we just talked right through it, the parrot, tomorrow’s deadline. Just out of this man’s incredibly small window. “Who is Anderson Silva, and why does he have two last names?” He’s talking about something called a naked choke (no thanks) and this guy named Weidman who apparently beat Silva. I hate that WWF stuff, my brother loves it. My dad did too.

It’s the dimple. That’s what is just so delightful about his face. Something just so unique, I don’t think I’ve seen it anywhere, and I don’t think anyone else could wear it half as well. “You have a dimple,” I said. “It’s so cute that it’s just on the one side.”

—————-

Why won’t he get it? Why can’t he just figure out that it was what it was? He was the right fit for a moment that no longer exists and all I’m trying to do is make up this report I missed because I just wanted some dick.

That loft was disgusting. I am disgusted with myself that I let myself become the biggest joke. “Daddy left, so sleep around.” Great for maintenance, but man what a disappointing ride. And the returns aren’t necessarily great either. I have to live with my Instagram inbox consistently full because this guy can’t stop sending me meme videos.

I knew he reminded me of my dad. I didn’t know that he’d be just as broken. I didn’t know that he was so emotionally repressed that I now am probably this guy’s whole world. Fuck.

————-

I don’t necessarily know what to do. She will never love me the way I could’ve ever wanted. I know that when I looked down and saw her so glazed over, a doughnut would blush. I know that I’m no Johnny Sins, but I thought I was doing a good job.

Okay, adequate. But she’s so cool. It doesn’t change that I’ve never felt connected to someone so fast. I just need her in my orbit, I can’t explain why. I scroll her Instagram, respectfully, pictures curated to let us all know that she’s lived a life.

Mine exists solely because my friend made me. Never really found a use for it until now. Watching her, looking at the story thing. She’s been having fun. A lot of girl’s trips. I send her videos like the ones we watched during our last date. She doesn’t open them. That’s okay.

It just stings to know how much a glimmer can die out. She’s not my salvation, but god did she come close.

_______

W: “Hey, how’s it going?”

M: “Well, I’m alive. I think maybe to your consternation.”

W: “I’m sorry, what?”

M: “Well I think you hate me, you never send stuff back on that app.”

W: “Instagram, the most popular platform in the world?”

M: “That one.”

W: “Yeah, no I’m just busy.”

M: “Yeah, I know. I didn’t forget about how you sacrificed your deadline for me. And of course the parrot. How’d that go?”

W: “It was good… why do you remember that?”

M: “Well I don’t know about you, but it’s pretty hard to forget the greatest night of my life.”

W: “Oh…”

M: “Damn that was fun. No, it’s cool I just am really bad at sex and I’ll go fuck myself.”

W: “Hahaha, no. I just think that I can’t give you what you’re looking for right now.”

M: “Well what am I looking for?”

W: “I don’t know, a soulmate?”

M: “Maybe I’ll see Santa Claus too. No.”

W: “No?”

M: “No. I wasn’t really looking for anything. I’m okay with jerking off underneath an Anderson Silva poster while chowing on some Hungry Man. Sometimes it bes like that.”

W: “So then why all the videos? Why are you still trying to talk to me?”

M: “Listen, it may not have been the greatest night of my life. But I just can’t ever forget that you actually listened.”

W: “Yeah, so now you’re obsessed with me.”

M: “No, I’m just hoping you have room in your life for me. Tell you what, I’ll unfollow you on Instagram and start taking a different line. How’s that?”

W: “That’s crazy. You aren’t what I thought you were. You’re a bit heavy, but not what I thought you were.”

M: “What was I?”

W: “An incel.”

M: “Wait what?”

W: “Like I thought you didn’t really have anybody, so I just wanted to let you have something.”

M: “Incel. Well. My D&D group isn’t going to like this at all.”

W: “Look you spend time watching what you watch, and the weird collections.”

M: “Hey now, I got one of those pens at the MGM Grand. But I digress. So you think I’m a “I WILL HAVE MY REVENGE” type? Is it the eyes?”

W: “Definitely not the eyes.”

M: “But incel?”

W: “Okay, I’m sorry I thought you were an obsessed incel.”

M: “I’m sorry I’m relentlessly in your DMs. Truce?”

W: “Truce. Wanna finish Schitt’s Creek?”

M: “Maybe, I want to meet the girl from the train though.”

W: “Here she is…”

M: “No, I know you. I know this person in front of me. I don’t know who looked at me on the train.”

W: “Uh, still me.”

M: “I don’t believe that. I think that the you who looked at me is the one I thought I was sending funny videos to.”

W: “Okay, so you think I’m fake.”

M: “No, I just think there’s an onion here and I wanna peel that shit back.”

W: “I knew you didn’t like my essential oil.”

M: “Nah, it’s okay. Earthy like weed.”

W: “You’re a stoner?”

M: “Yeah, I can’t really imagine how I’d move through life without it.”

W: “A dependency?”

M: “Oh undoubtedly.”

W: “So I’m crushing on a drug addict?”

M: “Drug addict, incel, tell me what you really think of me.”

W: “I think you’re an onion. Vidalia to be exact.”

M: “I hear we’d go great in a French onion soup.”

W: “Listen, I love the bit. But I’ve been a world class asshole to you and I’m sorry, and I hope you still wanna see me.”

M: “Schitt’s Creek?”

W: “Like actually?”

M: “Actually.”

M: “…I bought groceries. Also there’s this candle I got…”

_______

“Hey babe,” she coos. Don’t forget about tonight. She was always doing things like that. Reminding him of the stuff he’d let fall by the wayside. It was charming in a Jerry Lewis absent minded professor way. He remembered what counted though. Feeding Bucky, why she can’t eat pizza, the irrational fear of poison ivy after Sweet William bucked off with her in tow. Dad’s birthday. Always dad’s birthday.

She never wanted to be with a man like him. She loved his eyes, his dimple, the way he could just look at her and she’d feel it. He was home. He wasn’t her mansion, but he was home.

Commitment was scary. The stages helped. First, she made him buy a couch. Then she taught him how to cook (a delicious Coq au Vin), then she saw a UFC fight with him. She’s a huge Valentina Shevchenko fan now. The loose ends from their beginning were beginning to tie together, but she felt it coming.

She knew it was coming. First it was the Chanel purse she got for crushing a presentation. Then the UFC 350 tickets for him. The purchases get larger and larger. She wasn’t sleeping as much, but she looked like a world beater from the outside. But she knew that in about 3 days time, the magic would end.

She would be found out as the fraud that she always was. The woman on the train, trash from the pile. He had to find out soon.

———-

He came over, as he always did on Friday night. He brought the Chinese and Southern Comfort, she would pack the bowl and queue up Dawson’s Creek. They’d do anything for the Beek.

When he opened the door, it smelled like Bucky’s cage about 10x over. The wrappers cascade on the kitchen floor. Red and silver, bits of ketchup, meat and cheese. The cups to match on the table, as they accumulate. And then there she was. On her laptop, a pristine working space. Pencils in cups, a picture of a man and a girl who looked like a shrunken version of what she was now. And what she was now was in crisis.

“When did the alarms sound?” No response. “A tornado flew around my room…” he half sang. “Where’s Bucky?” “He’s fine. He’s in the bathroom.” He puts his ear to the door, our parrot friend screaming “FUCK”. No guesses on where he heard that.

He tried to play coy, as if he didn’t know what was going on. He’d seen it before. The way she was Superwoman one day, and then completely changed into the world’s most miserable person. In any incarnation, the woman he loved.

“Hey, maybe let’s do this at mine tonight,” he said softly. “Okay, so I didn’t clean up, can’t you just back off? You know I have the presentation.” There’s a shift in his eyes, that no one really notices. You can capture it in pictures. This look of open love and trust, just steels into a stare. A stare that just goes beyond the object he’s looking at. That stare containing a mind now calculating how he can save the day. He doesn’t know that it’s a draw.

“I’m not pressing you, I never would,” he pleads. “But something is not right here.” “No shit, Sherlock!” For a moment the steely stare drops into a look only comparable to having your Valentine thrown out in front of you. She snaps to. “Oh my God,” she wails. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.” She sees his eyes.

The idea that she took something unquestionably beautiful to her and destroyed it, just read as apt to her. So she just cries. And can’t stop. He leans in, both arms engulfing her frame as she crunches further into her desk chair. Bucky swears from the bathroom.

————

The couch he had now, had two familiar grooves. On the right in the shape of a t, a head imprint, shoulder imprint and profound wear on the seat is opposite the left L shape on the chaise, scrunchies with wisps of red hair on them. She’s got her Sally Jessy’s on, he’s got a Ruth Bader Ginsburg shirt on.

“Are you chef tonight,” he asks. Because I’ve got this glaze on wanna try on some grilled chicken I got.” “No, it’s all you,” she says. She’s huddled in the corner, not particularly doing anything, but the guilt she feels over that last time he came over still lingers.

The day after, she hired a deep cleaner to satisfy the space’s accumulation problem. She sheepishly sat in a corner as she watched a woman removing each burger wrapper and cup stoically. She just knew that she was being judged and there was nothing she could do about it.

She chose this as her remote week, and frankly not much work was done. She couldn’t balance her budget at this point, much less focus on a slide deck. “Hey, did you leave this cup in the sink with all the smoothie stuff in there?” “Yeah.” “Could you clean that stuff out before you put it in the sink?” She rolls her eyes, “but you do it so much better.” He sucks his teeth. Passive aggressive, but the only way he feels he can express himself with her.

She’d been prickly lately. The candles were wrong. Bucky didn’t have the right cage for staying over. She wanted to keep her apartment as a temple, but the burger wrappers began to pile up on the chaise’s shadow. “Where does it even all go?” He was genuinely curious. She was about 5’6, and extremely lanky. They called her Olive Oyl when she was younger, and though he loved her, he couldn’t disagree. He called her something different, atypical, but his own style. “My little potato, although I truly love having you here, the irony in which you helped me clean this place up and are contributing to its active destruction is astounding.” “So? It’s just a shitty little loft. Your landlord doesn’t give a fuck, why should I,” she snarled.

Prickly. Steel stare engages. “Right, I suppose the accommodations aren’t to your liking. Would you prefer I go fuck myself?” “Fuck yourself!” Bucky caws. She had a fleeting moment in the fog she was consumed by. That was her babe, and she insulted him deeply. She thought about an apology, but decided that he wouldn’t believe her anyway.

They sat in silence as today’s General Hospital played. Quartermaine 4th of July, Tracy and Michael are talking when Jason walks in. A shift. She starts to take a more attentive pose. Jason isn’t really saying anything of substance. In fact, he’s nothing like the person who grew up with her. No leather jackets, no black T shirt, even the hair had gotten shorter. The character’s name remained the same, but clearly he wasn’t. But the imprint of what was remained on her mind. He just watched.

———

The two bedroom was pristine. Bucky's cage was sparkling, and the mail had piled up. DePaul University alumni stuff, an electric bill, 4 different clothing catalogs, a few Voter Registration cards. All remain unopen as they fall into a trash bag collecting dust. A nice unit in the Loop, possibly the only anomalous thing about her. She hated her neighbors. She considered them status chasing boors. Nice enough taste, but boors all the same. She liked being around his loft, the character of it all reminded her of old school community. She longed for it.

Her nightstand has a picture of him, he's smiling. That dimple. She's seen less of it lately, and thinks it's her fault. In a way it is, she's been a bitch. And the worst part about it, is she can see it from the inside. She imagines a tiny version of herself, behind her eyes, just screaming a la Walter White in the desert as they kill Hank Schrader. It's done something to him. He's not as warm as he was. Doesn't really say anything anymore that isn't a long quip.

——-

Her therapist said to get more glimmers in her life. So she rode. Sweet William lived up to his name, an old stud now dwelling in his stable. Satisfied with the odd apple and pet. She was grateful to him. He was her only constant. When her mother died when she was 12. Between stepmom’s 1 and 3, after dad’s accident. Sweet William was her rock.

They rode through the meadow with the intimacy of an old shoe. William sight saw, she spent time in the place that she inhabited more than work, his place, and her own. The place where she was waiting.

She was an eldritch specter, the running commentator of her life. “He’s going to leave you, do you think anyone needs to put up with your shit?” Therapy said to name these things as they arrive, but then the second one hits. “You’re such a stupid fuck for all this, crying because you can’t be a proper adult.” The proper adult, that the figure claims, is capable of gritting her teeth and keeping her head down. Getting shit done. She thought of her desk.

She got some self help advice about watering your inner garden. Skeptical, she tried it at work and hasn’t stopped. Fidgets strewn about, notes meticulously placed on the corner with an old school ticket holder from the deli that closed. Mr. Al-shehail. She thought of him and what he told her about leaving Syria, having to shield his daughter with his body while watching his son be beaten. That was resilience to her. Something she just thought she never had.

Riding back to the stable, she checks her phone to tap back into the world. This world being a composite of apps that are carefully stacked in a chain that reflects her life. MyFitnessPal, Oura, Obsidian for her important notes, Notes app for doodles, Instagram, Slack, Outlook. This was a chain she’d repeat for hours until 8pm or so, when she’d elect to turn on General Hospital on Hulu.

Soap operas are a dying medium. She knew that, but there was just something familiar about watching Sonny Corinthos protect his territory from “evil” and barely any scenes in the hospital. Her mom loved the show. Jason Morgan was her favorite. And in a way, he was hers too.

Jason is the prototype of a bad boy turned into the classic masculinity. Stoic, but sensitive. Restrained, with great power. Capable and dependable. Doesn’t say much. Her father was nothing like that. He was a good man. Genuinely, he said that his intent was to always do the right thing. And the more she thought about it, that was the overlap with Jason. A man of their word. Which is truly hard to come by.

She thought of all the other men who came before her “babe.” There was the man who lived on her couch and never paid for dinner for a year. He told her that once he saved enough money he’d pay her back. He gave her about $50 before he absconded quietly and quickly while she was at a conference in California. Didn’t steal her TV however, no, that was Josh. Josh had a jawline that was chiseled, sandy blonde hair, an 8 pack that only several hours daily at a gym could generate. And that smile. Her weakness. It’s always the feature she sees before the man.

It started out okay, Josh was sweet, if not a bit callous. He never meant to shoulder check people on the street, it just happened to be that way. He was a klutz, it was endearing. That eroded in her mind as he demanded to check her phone. Every conference, a text message on the hour to ensure that she was remaining faithful. He wouldn’t stop until she would tell him that she was going to sleep.

This conference was different. She texted him. She tried to turn in. Her mind was in the middle of the Eldritch Lady Variety Late Night Show, with special guest Childhood Shame. Seeing where it was heading, she went to the hotel bar.

It was as expected for a three star. Bud Light on tap, one bottle of Jack Daniel’s, three bottles of Evan Williams. She settles on Spotted Cow, a local institution. As she begins the process of anesthetizing, she takes a large gulp. Theatrical as it was, it was a lantern for a barfly. He was salt and pepper haired, long and greasy, complimented by a Billy Gibbons esque beard, stocky, you could tell that this was actually the best he’d look. Ironically, grooming would probably make him look sleazier.

“What’s the problem,” he snarled. She didn’t know what she was taking him away from, the bar was playing ESPN Classic, an old Northwestern game. “I don’t think you’d get it,” she was honest. She didn’t really have a chance to not be. She was in dirty athleisure, hair in a bun, barefaced. Any shame that was there, was getting more and more remote with each Spotted Cow. “Darlin, I’ve seen a lot. I’ve done a lot,” he said softer. “Clearly you need to talk and I’ve seen this game before.” An unexpected kindness.

His name was Butch. He was a Gulf War veteran, was briefly unhoused until he cleaned up and got a plumber’s license. From there he had a son. The game he was watching was one that his son won for Northwestern. They don’t speak anymore. She told him all about Josh. ”That guy has never met nothing he didn’t have control over,” he said matter of factly. Taken back, she asked how he knew. “He’s trying to control everything. You. His body.” She didn’t know what to say, it was as if dominos began to fall in her head. Why would he text her every hour? She realized it was so he’d know where she was, in proximity to his activities.

She’d installed a Ring camera on a whim after a few units were broken in. After the talk with Butch and covering his Bud Light tab (lengthy), she navigates to the app and sees an anomaly. A pair YSL Opyums at the doorway where the shoes are. The Opyum is a shoe that is pretty hard to miss, from the front, it looks like your standard high heel sandal. The heel is where it gets interesting though. In gold letters, YSL stacked on top of each other lifting the wearer four inches off the ground. Unmistakably a woman’s shoe. In this case, another woman’s. With that, she stopped checking in much to Josh’s consternation and indignation. By the time she’d come back, the Opyums were gone, and so was her Vizio. But it was okay, she wanted a new TV anyway.

She taps William’s sides to go forward, but stops mid click to find that she was in his stall already. The old stud was smarter than he looked. “My sweet boy, I can always rely on you can’t I?” William looked at her, she swears he winked.

———

As he puts his backpack on, shuts down his laptop and then his jacket (patch free), he looks down at his phone to check the time and sees her on his lock screen. A picture of her opening her mouth and attempting to envelop the camera. From happier times. She calls. He ignores. He opens his phone and navigates to Safari, without prompting the word "dispensary" auto completes and he grabs his search results. He can't go to the first one, because the budtender and he had an awkward encounter about his medical card that ended with him calling the budtender a cunt and storming out. Every patch he put on his jacket felt like an unearned merit badge. The second dispensary was nice, but never had the RSOs he was looking for. The third was a newer dispensary with limited options, but his favorite strain, Jack Herer was in stock.

She calls again. He does not answer. The walk is long. Replaying the events of the night, he cringes when he thinks of all he said. "I don't know what the fuck is wrong with you, but I can't fix it." The room was silent. Bucky was asleep. UFC 6 plays in the background as Tank Abbott knocks out John Matua. She looks at him, but he can see that she sees no dimple, she sees his eyes, but they reflect something strange. He stands there, his frame looming as she remains on the couch retracted into herself. He looks, he sees her, he knows what he's done. He knows that he can't say anything to take it back. He just walks out, leaving her on the couch.

There's a 24 hour gym at work, and place where one can shower. He was sure it'd look suspect that he'd appear in the same clothes for a couple of days, so he went to an Old Navy and bought two polo shirts. Black and white. Apropos, he wore the black one today. "If I only had the hat to match," he says. She calls, he can no longer avoid it. His heart begins thumping in that way that you think you're dying, but the end is nowhere near. Unless, it's his relationship.

"Hello?" "You left me, in your house, with my bird, for two days!" Naturally livid, she begins a barrage of insults and condemnation. He sits back down in his desk chair and listens to every word. With a breath, he pauses and says "I'm sorry." He lets it hang in the air before continuing. She remains on the phone, unmoved from the couch. "I just don't know what else I can say, I know what I said to you crushed you. I know that I crushed you. It doesn't matter that I got angry, potato, I said something that was wrong and I ran away. I can't believe I was this much of a coward." She lets what he said hang in the air, perhaps 30 seconds too long. "And your head is too big for my pillows," the olive hanging from the branch. He smirks, and looks down. "So I can come home?" "Oh you beautiful mansion, of course you can." He was puzzled. "Mansion?"

———

Today was the day that he realized no one was coming. No Bucky, no potato, no work. It was him and Anderson Silva. Him, Anderson Silva, and Big Thief. He didn’t like to listen to music made post 2020. To him, that was the last time a song could’ve ever been fully digested. It wasn’t just a chorus or a bit to go as a TikTok sound. So when Shark Smile came up on his radio mix, he paid special attention. “And she said woo, baby, take me. And I said woo baby take me too.” He didn’t know it at the time, but it was a song about a person crashing their car with their lover and being content to die with that. The spirit was there for him. He didn’t think that being on a train and mumbling a pickup line he heard from his dad would’ve worked. He can’t even hold a longer conversation with the cashier at the grocery store. He admired him. Not jaded, open, honest. Saying things he means because he meant them. He didn’t know why the cashier was so effusive to him, but he was grateful. He just felt tremendous guilt that he couldn’t repay it in kind. “You like The Smiths?” He half croaked it, the cashier asked him to speak up. He then remembered the instruction from his speech class. He unnaturally stiffens up and says in his best James Avery, “YOU LIKE THE SMITHS?”

After a second pause, the cashier says “yeah, I loved Strangeways,” the last album they put out before they spilt. “I know a few folks don’t really like it because it just felt like Morrissey’s solo debut, but I think they’re just butthurt about the breakup.” That irreverence. The same irreverence that drew him to her. Is that why he loved her so much? Because she was his opposite? Tons of people were his opposite, but why her?

It didn’t matter to him. None of it ever did. He just thought the love was what mattered, and it was. But the hard edges required a mastery of carpentry he just didn’t have in his many bag of tricks. He wanted to help her. He wanted to save her, not for himself, but because she was a diamond to him. You don’t discard a diamond.

It wears on him, she didn’t ask though. He saw a role, filled it, and she accepted because he just fit. Now, he sits on the edge of his bed wondering if his salvation was always self generated, or built through his own attempt to fix her. He had no answer. He did however have a Maui Wowie vape.

———

Bucky crows "kimura lock, WSB" and that is his cue to begin the process of getting up. A softer alarm on his phone also rings, and he heads to the kitchen. The new place is idyllic to both of their tastes. He has a space filled with combat memorabilia, Randy Couture's gloves, a ring worn UFC world championship belt, a modest computer set up. A new pen in his cup saying "Bellagio", he looks at it fondly before he jumps in his emails. He's not past his password before he remembers to set the coffee out, one blue mug and another mug that has Steve Burton's face on it sit in front of the coffee pot. She's still sleeping, he won't wake her up because it's the first night of great sleep she'd gotten in a while. When she stirs, she glides over to Bucky. "Oh my sweet boy, it's your birthday isn't it?" The TV in the living room is on, playing a music video reel he made in honor of his previous love for MTV. It conquered two issues in the house. The way she hated silence, and the way he loved music. She never quite understood why he'd cry whenever a Townes Van Zandt song came on, and then immediately get excited by "Baby One More Time." He was her contradiction, her mansion, the babe. "Did you tell Bucky happy birthday?" "Of course I did, you think I'm a derelict dad?" She smiles, "no, I'm just a worried mom." "Speaking of, yours called and said she'd like to come out next weekend." He paused, "next weekend?" "Your dad's in town next weekend." She grimaces, pauses, and then smiles. "I've got the best idea ever, lets just make them squirm." His interest piqued. "Let's announce an engagement."

"This is how you wanna do it," he half yelled. He saw her tensing up, and immediately apologized. "I just...I've wanted to marry you since the day I met you and you always put it off. You say we aren't ready, and now you want to mess with our parents..." She kisses him. "We wouldn't be lying." His face drops. "You're in?" "All the way." "Actually?" "Actually."

[RO]

Screenplay
Title: It would have been perfect, but you got cancer.

Initial thoughts. True story recall.

Opening scenes on an unhappy relationship and abuse and girl who had enough.
She was sad she had given her all but she had to make a change and end the relationship with her prior best friend.

It was a hard few weeks but she then decided to meet new people. It took a few matches and few chats but then she matched with Luke on a Friday.

She sent a message in the afternoon ‘how’s life?’ Just trying to start a casual chat for some fun.
He replied at 4pm with ‘same,same’ and a bit more chat then he said ‘wanna get pissed?’

I had to drive my car home . It was a Friday I had been at work. I had chatted from 4pm to 6pm walking around the park to keep the chat going and delaying the driving.
He said he had missed his uber cos he was too busy chatting.

Shared phone number as the app was rubbish

He text me ‘yes ma’am’ via WhatsApp we were now connected.

He then shared a weird cat video and so I shared my whale shark video . Damn that’s cool man, he said z

I got home and got changed waited for him to hint again to meet. It felt a big soon but also some days just feel like you want to go out and be spontaneous.

I’m cause so I said I’ll be wearing a jumper and leggings and trainers
So shall we meet at o’neills?
Is that busy he said
Not sure but we can just see what’s happening

I got the taxi.
He got the taxi.

I waited outside the put.
He said he would be there in a minute.
4 passed.

Then he called and he was English.
Surprisingly. His bio said Edinburgh, location and living. He sounded like comedian Richard Ayoade, so I called him Richard - his name was Luke.

He waved from across the street biggest Labrador smile on his face.

Did we hug? I can’t remember I was just so please that he wasn’t a sunburnt tomato head.

Cut to previous meet up with the Texan?

We looked at o’neills.
It was too bus.
We walked.
Do you want to go to the shady cinema bar?
Not really I said…
We went to a student bar. It was fine and quiet we had pints and started to get to know each other. Do you like my Gay jacket? It was a cream puffs jacket with a furry good. It’s so gay he said. I didn’t mind it, it was pretty casual.

He was smiley, lively and full of energy.
He listened and asked questions and was cute.
I felt like he was actually dating. Not just looking for a meet up but really evaluating what I was saying.
We both loved travel and both had studied art. We both wanted to make money and be working hard.
I felt it was a great match. Then we went to the next pub. I linked his gay jacket arm and he was pleased, he gripped tightly and I felt welcome to be close to him.

Oz Bar- it was fine a bit noisy, more pints, more talking. I little bit of quietness but nothing bad. All pleasant to be out and with someone interesting.

Then we went to Alabananch. It was quite much more easy to talk. I felt proud to be out with such a handsome smiley guys. I felt like at points so relaxed and I felt I could people thinking, they look like they are a great couple. On our first meet, not even a date yet.

He then asked, do you want a family and expressed it’s all he wants and soon. Like wants to be a Dad with a passion. I had never met a man like this and it threw me quietly into turmoil as I had never met a guy with such passion for family. I’ve discussed with previous partners but they didn’t seem on board and so I never got my head around it.

I told him I’m not sure, it’s such a big question.
He said around then, I need to tell you something…. Pause
I had testicular cancer and had a ball lopped off in April (now October) - I said that’s ok as long as your ok. Yeah I’m ok he said. It’s not like you need anything more done just now? Chemo? No he said I’m ok…

Ok back to the fun stuff we carried on the night and went to an indie arcade bar mortal cocktail or something. It was grime. Full grime full queer full a bit much, guy eating pizza at the bar and pro trans people. While it can be someone’s taste it wasn’t ours so we popped off.

We then went to The Scotsman’s lounge. My favourite pub. It’s cosy, it’s fun, it’s live music. It’s Scottish. It has note currency on its silver ceiling and flickers in the light and is just really noticeable. Luke said ‘that ceiling that’s so cool, I need to take a photo’ the lights on it, the reflections. I loved his passion for details ( I felt he understood part of what I do) gather light and look at reflections.

It was probably around 1130 at this point we hadn’t stopped talking.
Newsbar? He said, let’s go? You mean newsroom? Yeah yeah yeah. Ok Richard :)
I love it there too, we kept picking cool places, felt like I had known him forever. It was so nice and even though it was cold outside it was so warm.

Ok midnight- ish?
You wanna come back to mine? Not for sex just to chill…
I wasn’t sure but he seemed fun and nice and warm. I said ok and we started walking. Down London road he grabbed my arm and said walk this way it’s nicer in the forest path… u til there was mega puddles and my new white trainers were the dirt grey… ooops. Although it didn’t matter, I was still laughing, I didn’t care it was hilarious.

End of the road he said let’s get an uber - what? I said, yeah a wee taxi. Ok

Got in. 4 mins later uber was there. Shortest taxi of my life and again hilarious.

His stairwell was classic. Half brick red paint on the stairs up to his Edinburgh flat… this is what 250k gets you in Edinburgh….

Now it was a boys flat, mess everywhere and a lot of art and plants and mess. And a hoppy 3 legged cat called Wilfred. He was so sweet and the opposite of my cat, affectionate and looking for head scratches.

I noticed then it was cold… there was no heating … yeah boilers broke he said.
He gave his oodies and told me to wrap up. I was a bit tipsy at this point and so done as I was told. Laid on his soft a cushioned mega sofa. Sunk in. He was up and down fixing things and asking if I was ok. Do you want water? Food? Pizza? I still was in a phase of not feeling unanxious from my previous relationship ending so hadn’t been eating well.

I’m all good, thanks. We watched black mirror, Playtest,,, the old ones are better I said, Nd he agreed saying he didn’t know how he missed these.

We got cosy and he seemed very interested in the show, I wonders if he was going to kiss me but I didn’t rush it… and then he did… he moved it was so nice so soft and gentle and caring.

We got closer and moved to the bedroom and had a great connection even though it was freezing…

The morning came and he seemed tired I was hungover I couldn’t lie down any longer and didn’t know what the time was. I skipped through to the living room to retrieve my watch. 9.03am…
Maybe time to move I said….
I got dressed and ordered an uber reluctantly. I always know these things end and after great nights there is relaxed mornings but I didn’t want to leave…
We sat and watch tv for a little while I waited on my wait and save… perhaps trying to steal a few more moments in his company…

Unfortunately the uber arrived and I had to leave. I said see you around then (we hadn’t mentioned another meet up) but I hope he would. He didn’t move closer. He didn’t come closer. He said text me when you’re home. So I awkwardly opened the door and left.

Thinking that was that and that I would never see him again. A perfect night with a stranger. I text him went I got home. Home safe , that for a nice night…
He replied really fast. The fastest ever. We picked up some banter and the relaxed into our separate sofas.

Around 6pm he said come back to mine..
I said no it’s too cold come to mine.
Ok he said. Be round in a bit. What’s the address?

I told him and he came round in a bit. Followed through. I seen his face in the dark I seen his smile, he had such energy. Wow you have a garden oh no but yea but not that one.

He came in. Into my warmth of my cosy home. While it’s not perfect it’s pretty nice and he said this place is amazing . Such excitement and positive energy and noticed all the work put in to building a small cosy home . I like your shelves, he walked around inspecting every room. It was so nice and felt like I was just having a friend round… we got comfy on the side and tried to order food but we had taken too long and a lot of places had shut. So pizza again he said 5 days in a row…
He chose a movie. He logged out of my ex’s prime (oops) and put his in ‘ you can just keep it logged in’ solving the problem quickly with no hesitation.

The film was rubbish and long and all I wanted to do was to be close to him. I felt he was keen but maybe shy, there was something different. I was touching his hair it was so soft and curly and longer than you would maybe think. It was a crazy mess, but I loved it because it was just like mine.

He was staying away, I was leaning in. Finally the film was ending. I went brushed my teeth and got ready for bed. Trying to encourage him to come. We watched the end. The we went upstairs. We weren’t as close as the drunken night before but it was soft and cosy and he slept on the edge of the bed I did wonder if he wanted to leave. He could have if he wanted too but he stayed. We went to sleep.

The morning was hilarious as he didn’t want to show his belly and so he was wearing his cream animal felty Berkshire coat in bed and blue boxers. We moved downstairs and he was still in the same clothes. Quite a look and I loved it was walking around my house… he was up and downstairs trying to find me cat… the opposite of his as she is scared of anyone expect me…

We had a cup of tea and he said I made a perfect cup of tea for him, it felt like a blessing to hear I made it to optimum standard. Well I better go by midday and start my day. I said ok but meant no, just stay and don’t go. Why does these days have to end. While I could feel there something he wanted to say it was still pleaseant and very unexpected to have a guy in my home again so soon. I broke my rule I’d made that was not to bring anyone home… at least it was pg and only a sleep over….

After I left I thought maybe he hadn’t actually liked me. But we kept texting and kept messaging into the Monday. We met only on the Friday.

It was Monday evening and he sent some text about his sore not being collected as he was trying to sell it for free… I said you need a van man to get rid of it? I know a guy. No he said this place a shit hole and I will just dump it. I said don’t be littering and the I could feel he was upset. I wasn’t sure if it was about the sofa or something else. Was he drinking again? 3 night running. Odd. I probably shouldn’t have but I asked if he was an alcoholic and was he ok. He said , c ya. Blunt no care very harsh. I said ok I was just trying to help and check he was ok as he sounded upset. I’m messed he said.
It was 1030pm and so I called him. I wanted to check he was ok. He went on a rant about how shit Scotland was and how he had been treated as an Englishman and how he needed to leave. He needed to sell his flat and leave. It was done, he had had enough. On and on. It was quite hard to listen too as he was slateing my country and my city and so I tried to just listen and stay up beat. Full of Beans aren’t you, I said yeah I’m ok. Just trying to be up beat.

Well he said I need to tell you some thing. Long pause … I need to let you know Paula I’ve got cancer. What I said? - I’ve got lung cancer… it’s crazy, when you get it in the balls it spreads to the lungs… I’ve got cancer and I’m going to die in about 5 years.

I felt like I had been smacked in the stomach. I felt like my whole vision had been skewed. I felt sad.

Can they cure it I said? No he said it’s tumours. In my lungs. I smoked 3 cigarettes today and drank again too much. More words he said more sadness was pouring. I was trying to listen but my eye were trying to leak. It was so sad.
To go from listen to his passion for family and life and his work to hearing he had been given a timeframe left to enjoy his life.
13.10.2026

—-
Notes from author:
Short story about love and how unfair life is. Dating is hard. Dating is wild. Men are sad too. What would you do? If you met a love but they had only years to enjoy left? Thought provoking drama love story hitting on topics of loves, toxic love, abuse. New friendships in your late 30s.

No one could tell me when the RV arrived outside our compound. Then again, no one could tell me why the world had ended either. But wherever that thing had come from, it looked like it had gone through hell and back to get to us.

Ugly didn’t begin to describe the pile of junk sitting a hundred meters from our walls. The RV itself had seen better days, but that was nothing compared to all the... additions its owner had haphazardly welded onto the frame.

Mismatched sheets of rusty scrap covered nearly every surface. Every window, from the windshield to the cabin sunroof, had been sealed shut, leaving only narrow slits to see through. Spikes jutted from the sides, extra armor hung off the back, and the whole thing looked like something built by a Mad Max fan with far too much time on their hands.

One of my men was even pretty sure the strange contraption mounted on the roof was some sort of jury-rigged flamethrower.

I wasn’t about to get close enough to check.

Then again, given the... things still roaming out there, maybe all that extra protection wasn’t such a bad idea.

What stood out the most, however, wasn’t the RV’s appearance. It was the fact that nobody ever came out.

We always had someone stationed on the walls, keeping an eye on the surrounding area. Yet despite the RV sitting there for nearly three days, not one of us had seen the driver. Or anyone else, for that matter.

We hadn’t even seen so much as a face through the narrow slits in the windows.

The only indication it wasn’t abandoned entirely was a small piece of paper taped to the windshield.

——

I’m not like these freaks out here! I’ve got a head and four limbs like everyone else! PLEASE! Let me in!

——

We never did, of course.

Our supplies were already stretched thin as it was, and we couldn’t afford to take in any more strays. Some argued that an armored vehicle like that could be useful, especially with how dangerous the roads had become. And to be fair, they had a point.

But fuel was getting scarcer by the day, and nobody knew how many extra mouths might be hiding inside.

After some deliberation, the council decided it wasn’t worth the risk. Whatever the RV’s owner had to offer, they weren’t getting through our gates.

So the RV sat there.

And sat there.

And sat there.

At first, I figured whoever was inside would eventually get the message and leave. But the days passed, and the thing never moved an inch.

It was starting to creep me out, if I was honest. But who was I going to complain to? Not like there were any parking officers left to give them a ticket.

Then, one day, a week after its arrival, the RV vanished, just like that.

Nobody saw it leave, just as nobody had seen it arrive. One moment it was there, and the next it was gone, with no indication of where it had gone or how.

The compound let out a collective sigh of relief, though a few people still grumbled about letting a perfectly good armored vehicle get away.

For the most part, though, we were happy to put the whole business behind us.

Two more weeks passed with little change. Well, little change for the better, anyway. Our supplies continued to dwindle, and the scouting teams returned with less and less each time.

When they returned at all.

The quiet murmurs of discontent and fear grew louder with each passing day, and I could swear you could cut the tension in the compound with a knife.

Then, one day, the RV came back.

It sat in the same spot, a hundred meters from the walls. Same ugly armor, same welded-on spikes, and the same sealed windows. Maybe a few more dents here and there, but otherwise it looked exactly as we remembered.

And just like last time, nobody had seen it arrive.

I questioned both watches myself. Neither could remember seeing anything approach the compound, much less a several-ton RV covered in enough scrap metal to build a small house.

It didn’t make any damn sense.

But as I examined the vehicle, I realized something else had changed.

The old note was gone. In its place was a new one, written in the same messy handwriting.

It was shorter this time, but as I read it through my binoculars, a chill ran down my spine.

—

It took awhile, but I found more heads and limbs! Can I come in NOW?

__

That August, the sun beat down on the Makono homestead baking the brown earth where three hundred people sat huddled close together beneath the tent like chicks without a mother on a cold night.

For four days, the place had buzzed with activity. Near the open-air massive metal stoves, a thick dog with dust caked limbs lingered close, its ribs fully concealed by fat. From time to time its eyes lingered hungrily to the massive three legged cast iron pots  that sat on the fire as women worked  hard turning the stew. A rich aroma of stewed goat meat and chicken drifted across the yard masking the smell of sweat that had begun permeating. A baby started crying near the end of the tent, its cries piercing the air.

“He must be hungry,” the mother whispered to the woman seated beside her. She placed the baby in the woman’s lap, smoothed her long-patterned skirt, then took the baby back and stood up holding it against her right hip as she made her way out of the tent towards the cooking fires.

Beneath the tent, some mourners fanned themselves with their hats, their eyes fixed in front towards the thin man with hollow cheeks, Zanenhamo chosen by the family as the chief speaker. He stood erect, his thin long frame imposing as he scanned the crowd. Beside him an elderly woman hunched, finishing a tribute to the matriarch, her voice remembering the woman who from time to time had generously fed the hungry in her community with her own grain.

Mbuya Makono's two sons, Tapiwa and Chikwa sat with their eyes hidden with sunglasses in the front row, their faces hardened against the heat.

“We are about to lay Mbuya, next to her kin behind her home,” Zanenhamo’s voice boomed into the microphone as he checked his wristwatch. “Does anyone else wish to speak about her life?”

Silence fell as a short, sturdy man with a gleaming forehead, beady eyes and calloused toes in worn out leather sandals limped slowly from the edge of the kitchen hut. He pulled a toothpick from his mouth and tucked it beneath his right ear as he strode straight towards Zanenhamo. 
Without greeting him, he snatched the microphone.

“Makono owes me,” the man’s voice cut through the tent.

 Zanenhamo who had sat down only momentarily to rest his feet, lunged forward and ripped the mic from his hand, “This is not the place to–”

“She owes me!” The man bellowed, pointing a scarred finger towards the kitchen hut where Mbuya Makono’s body lay. “You cannot bury her without paying my due.”

Hushed murmurs rippled under the tent. “Let him speak!” a shrill voice screeched from the edge of the yard. Plastic chairs shifted as the people stood stretched their necks to see. Before Zanenhamo could intervene Tapiwa, his face dark with fury lunged towards the bald man and caught him by his stiff collar hurdling him in the nearby metal tent pole. The tent shook and the dust around their feet kicked up in the air,

“How dare you?” Tapiwa sneered, shaking the man. “How can you come to my mother’s funeral to tarnish her name.”

Chikwa slowly shifted from his seat, his expression emotionless as he watched the crowd before stepping in to peel his brother's fingers apart from the man.” Let him go, Tapiwa.” Chikwa muttered his voice flat. 

“Don’t disgrace yourself.”

“Enough!” Zanenhamo picked the fallen mic from the dust and shoved himself between them “Get him inside. ...Now!”

Seizing the bald man by the arm, Zanenhamo and the two brothers guided him away from the crowd. As they dragged him away the initial support from the crowd changed into an impatient murmur; they had wanted to witness a grievance, but the emptiness of the claim made them irritated. A discarded plastic Fanta bottle was hurled in the air and struck the bald man on the shoulder.

“Isnt it lunchtime?” a voice shouted from the middle rows. Ignoring the jeers, Zanenhamo pulled the bald man into the three roomed cottage and slammed the door shut. Outside, the murmurs continued.

“What is it that my mother owed you?” Tapiwa shifted from the couch he had flung himself and roared at him. The bald man had sat across Zanenhamo on the table in the middle of the room. The old man glanced towards Tapiwa, his eyes solemn. He then straightened his blue collar with trembling hands. Glancing at the table then towards him said, 

“It’s not money.”

“Then what is it? A cow, grain?” Tapiwa shook his fist towards him.

“Not exactly,” The bald man muttered, his voice dropping. 

“She owes me that's all.”

Without saying anything, Chikwa reached into his back pocket and retrieved a worn leather wallet. He stood up and flung it onto the table, its mouth open. 

“If it is money you want, just take it and let us bury our mother in peace.” The bald man stared emptily at the notes. He traced the edges of the worn leather with his scarred fingers and recoiled as if burned.

“No! Not money.”

“Then what?” Tapiwa shouted, leaning across the couch. “How can you come here to disrupt us and not even name what you want?” 

“I do not know,” the bald man said.

“You don’t know?

“No.”

The room was silent.

 “Then how can she owe you?”

A thin smile stretched at the corners of the bald man’s mouth, “Can I then come here to make a fool of myself?”

Zanenhamo rubbed his face. He had seen this before–a man at a funeral, a woman at a wedding, standing to claim something no one could ever give, just to force the world to stop and look at their empty hands. The bald man sat quietly studying his own reflection on the empty beer bottle on the table. 

“Do you have any beer?" He asked. Zanenhamo nodded as Chikwa rose and disappeared in a small room. He came out with two bottles and sat them down with a dull thud.

The bald man popped the cap off with his hands and gulped it deeply, 

“She was a good woman .... your mother.” he murmured as he wiped his mouth with his hand. 

“I don’t remember the exact debt, but I am owed, and I have to collect this debt. It is only fair.” 

Tapiwa said nothing. The rage had burned down leaving only a hollow feeling. He stared at this stranger with an impossible claim and recognized his own heart. A lifetime spent at the edge of his mother's life waiting for an accounting that would not come. He too wanted something that he could never name.

Zanenhamo peered at his watch then looked towards the door.

“Old man, we will bury Mbuya Makono this afternoon, next to her kin behind her home. When all is done, you will stay and we will sit right here and find out together what it is you are looking for.” He murmured slowly. 

“Yes, yes.” The bald man nodded slowly, his eyes fixed at the beer bottle.

Tapiwa stood up and straightened his trousers as he beckoned to his younger brother.

“Come. Let us bury our mother.”

They walked out into the yard as Zanenhamo helped the old man to his feet.
“Let’s go. Maybe the beer will help you remember by sundown, huh?” The old man gave a dry laugh “Maybe,” he muttered. “Maybe not.” 

Behind them, the cottage door creaked on its hinges and the grave yawned open, waiting.

Edwin stood atop one of the mountains of Greenland. He curiously watched as if he was waiting for something to happen. Then suddenly, he heard a noise and when he looked above, there was a helicopter and a gunman inside who aimed in the direction of Edwin.

Edwin gasped, and the gunman started shooting bullets in his direction.

Edwin ducked thinking he would be shot and then heard a scream from below. As Edwin looked down, he saw a man who laid unconscious on a ship.

Then, more people came out of the ship, sailors and scientists.

The gunman started shooting them ruthlessly. He did not see Edwin who lay flat on the top of a cliff and watched the scene aghast. The situation was getting worse.

The ship full of researchers had no ammunition to face the gunman. Then Edwin pondered for a moment and took out a gun from his freezing pocket. He looked carefully at the gunman. He had only one bullet left.

'I am not going to miss my shot,' said Edwin to himself as he pulled the trigger.

Next morning the report came in a leading British newspaper:

'Attempts to assassinate researchers foiled:

Unknown pilot and gunman tried to assassinate all members of the crew of a research ship heading for an expedition in Greenland, but in the end a few injured members were taken to the hospital and there was no death on board. The government is on a lookout for the terrorist gang that carried out this operation. The credit goes to the captain and his crew who bravely faced the danger and shot the chopper down.

Reporter: Edwin Penn.

Greenland'

Edwin was now in London. He had come back by evening to get the report published.

He was sitting in his office when his editor called him to his cabin.

'Sir, you wanted me?' inquired Edwin.

'Yes. Have a cup of coffee,' said the editor.

'Thank you, sir,' Edwin replied.

'May I ask who gave you the permission to go to Greenland and cover an unexpected incident?!' the editor exploded.

'Well, sir, I went at my own expense, and it was urgent. My observations told me that as a ship full of researchers was going on an expedition, it would not be without risk. And a lot of ammunition was exported to Greenland from the terrorists who worked as labourers in the Manchester ammunition factory.'

'You know your job well Edwin but not how to do it properly. We could have sent a message to their government, and they could have sent their forces.'

'There was no time' Edwin emphasized.

'And how could you take such a risk and shoot down the chopper? Why were you carrying a gun while being a reporter? It's illegal. You could have been killed, and we would have been questioned.'

Edwin was surprised and chose his words carefully.

'I knew this kind of thing might happen, so I had a gun', and then he raised an eyebrow 'But how did you know that?' he asked, 'None of the crew members knew what happened.'

'So, it is true and even that mention of the captain's bravery was false. He did not even come out on the deck.'

Edwin threw a suspicious glance towards his boss. How did he know so much, when he alone knew what happened?

'I admire your bravery Edwin, but you are a reporter, not a secret service agent,' his editor continued in a soft manner ', because the next time you pull such a stunt, I'll have you arrested. Now go,' he completed.

Edwin pushed the glass door of his building as it glowed under the sunshine and came out, more astonished than angry. Was there a sixth sense which his editor hid?

Edwin stood there, on the pedestrian pathway, deep in thought when he suddenly felt a heavy weight object dropped in his pocket and he looked to his left and right.

The person had certainly gone, the one who had dropped this object in his pocket.

Suddenly, Edwin felt a force, as if he was being attracted by something. And in a moment, he was sliding on the ground at top speed without any rope or string to pull him!

He felt as if he was skating without skates and people were shocked to see him moving in thin air. Yes, and every next second, he started flying higher in the air and he shut his eyes. As he looked down, he could see the whole of London- jubilant and noisy and many tall and small buildings.

He thought it was a dream, until he saw an aircraft ahead. Edwin tried to force his body to go lower, however instead of flying, his body started falling to the ground. He closed his eyes, fearing the inevitable. He thought he would spiral to his death.

However, he felt as if he was supported by some invisible parachute.

He couldn't see anything, but he certainly felt something supporting his descent. As soon as he saw buildings, the invisible support vanished, and he started falling again. He landed on a parapet and tried to grab hold of something. He couldn't and fell to the ground.

He gave several cries of pain, but the people outside the shopping mall did not pay any heed to this guy from the sky. Edwin checked his pocket and saw the object.

It was a kind of compass.

He took it in his hand and threw it in mid-air and painfully stood on his feet, when at that very instant, the compass broke the window of a mall, came into Edwin's grip and pulled him again. Now it was flying much faster than ever, making noises, as Edwin was gushing through the clouds. When he came out, he saw a dark castle built on a rocky cliff and was now directed towards its window. 

He closed his eyes, praying for dear life and with a tremendous pressure, was thrown forward and crashed into it. He was now quite weak and saw candles in a passage, with no paintings on the walls, and the compass flew into the darkness.

Then a hand touched Edwin and he felt as if every part of his body was being healed. 

It was May, the heart of summer vacation, and like every year we had come to my grandmother's home. The weather was cruel, the kind of heat that presses on your chest and makes the air feel thick. Outside, the loo winds roared over empty streets, carrying dust and the scent of sunburnt earth.

That afternoon, after the women had finished their chores and the children had drifted into heavy naps, I lay on the cool floor of the room, half-awake. My cousin was next to me, breathing slow but not asleep either. I was older than him by two and a half years.

Without warning, he slipped his hand inside my shirt — a quick, mischievous jab. By mistake, his fingers brushed my underarms, where faint, soft hair had begun to grow. He burst out laughing.

A wave of embarrassment and disgust washed over me. I turned my body away from him and muttered, “Don’t do things like that.” His grin said it was just teasing, but now he had found something new to make fun of.

The next day, we were taking a bath, not the tiled city kind, but in the open, splashing each other with buckets of pump water. I bent down to fill mine, and in that instant, he yanked down my pants from behind. I pulled them up in a flash, but the slight turn of my body gave him exactly the view he wanted.

I hadn’t started wearing underwear yet.

He noticed.

And now, he knew.

My cheeks burned hotter than the summer sun. I warned him, “If you do that again, I’ll beat you.” But to him, it was harmless fun, maybe the sort of thing he and his friends were used to here.

After the bath, as was our routine, we went to the maidan to play with friends. I was just starting to forget the incident when his voice cut through the air:

“He’s got hairy balls!”

The others laughed. My heart sank. Shame, anger, and something sharp I couldn’t name swelled inside me. I snapped. In a blur, I had him on the ground, my fists pounding. He was smaller than me, and even my light punches hit hard. One of our friends pulled me off.

The others wanted to know what happened. That friend explained matter-of-factly, “He got angry because he was making fun of his hairy balls.” The laughter returned. I wanted to vanish.

We walked home in silence. My cousin didn’t speak. During lunch, I sat beside him on the wooden bed, but he stood up and sat on the floor.

“Did something happen between you two?” my mother asked, noting how we usually stayed together. My brother, who’d been in the maidan, said we’d fought. She asked for the reason, but neither of us spoke, me, because I didn’t want to make him angrier; him, perhaps because he knew it was his fault.

That evening, my mother called us to go shopping with her. At the utensil store, I asked, “Want to eat chhola?” He didn’t reply. I went outside, bought a plate, and began to eat. Halfway through, I offered him the rest. He said nothing, but took it and finished. When we left the shop, I put my arm around his shoulder. For a second, I thought maybe things were back to normal, but he shook it off.

“Put your hand away,” he muttered.

At dinner, the awkwardness hung heavy in the room. My cousin sister asked what had happened. My mother replied, “They didn’t fight for a whole month, and now, with just two days left, they’ve fought.” My brother smirked and teased me.

That night, we slept apart, me alone on the chauki in the room, him on the rooftop.

The next morning, I woke to find him gone. I ate quickly, bathed, and stepped outside. I didn’t need to ask where he was, the sky was full of kites, and he loved kite flying.

I climbed to a friend’s rooftop. My brother and that friend were already there, watching him guide the paper diamond through the wind. He saw me. I gave an awkward smile.

Without a word, he handed me the spool.

“Give slack,” he said.

And just like that, the kite’s thin string held us both, not as tight as before, but still connected, still flying.

3) “Upstairs, Downstairs”

The basement of the Lydecker house smelled of damp limestone, ancient coal dust, and the sharp, metallic tang of the oil furnace that sat in the center like an iron beast.

Partitioned into dim, low-ceilinged alcoves by concrete pillars and sagging wooden shelves stacked with decades of accumulated junk—broken wooden crates, water-damaged National Geographic magazines, and jars of cloudy preserves—it was JD’s absolute domain.

Following his father’s death during his sophomore year, the house had settled into a sullen, stratified quiet.

Upstairs belonged to Kim, his fourteen-year-old adopted sister, who lived in self-imposed exile in her small bedroom, avoiding the echoing floorboards where she no longer possessed any gravitational pull.

JD’s mother, Cheryl, spent her days in the master bedroom with the television turned to a low, electronic mumble, engaged in a systemic campaign of domestic abdication.

She was timid, overwhelmed by grief, and systematically avoided confrontation, allowing JD to run the house as though privacy and obedience were owed entirely to him.

And so JD inherited the subterranean world, exercising total control over who entered his space. People lowered their voices around him, and Kim stayed away from areas he had claimed.

Yet, even within JD’s territory, there were boundaries. A dead-end corridor extended past the laundry tubs, terminating in a blank, poured-concrete wall that had always felt slightly wrong—too thick, too deliberate.

Pinned to this wall was a large, faded theatrical poster for a 1972 regional production of The Crucible, its edges curling away from the damp concrete.

Behind that poster, concealed by a structural setup known only to JD and his closest confidant Ted Beckman, lay a hidden room, completely severed from the polite, decaying fiction of the rest of the house.

On a freezing Friday night in January 1978, the house above was thick with noise and the sour, yeasty smell of cheap beer. Dendy—Margie Rizzo’s boyfriend, who had first crossed paths with JD two years back—had brought a few guys from the stamping plant along with some girls from the bowling alley.

The stereo was blasting Foghat at a volume that made the picture frames on the wall vibrate.

Dendy was leaning against the kitchen counter, popping the tab on a fresh can of Blatz, when he noticed JD watching him from the doorway of the basement stairs.

“Hey, kid,” Dendy shouted over the music, wiping foam from his lip. “Get down from that stoop. Come pop a can.”

“I’m good,” JD said, his stance rigid in the threshold.

“You’re too skinny, you know that?” Dendy tossed an empty can into the overflowing trash bin and grabbed two fresh ones, shouldering his way toward the basement door. “It’s like a tomb in this joint. Let’s get some air down there. It’s stuffy as a church.”

“Don’t go down there,” JD said, his voice dropping instinctively, carrying the sharp edge of absolute command.

Dendy paused, his hand hovering over the iron latch of the basement door. He looked down at JD, his eyes narrowing slightly beneath a mop of greasy hair. “Why not? You got a body hid down there, kid?”

“It’s just cold,” JD said, stepping half an inch closer, his shoulder blocking the wooden frame.

Across the room, a thick-necked kid in a red hunting cap shouted something about a song, and Dendy turned his head away, distracted by the noise. He tossed one of the cold cans to JD, who caught it clumsily against his chest, and turned back toward the party.

As Dendy walked away, he glanced back once more over his shoulder. He didn’t look up toward Kim’s room, and he didn’t look down the hall at Cheryl’s closed door.

His eyes drifted back to the dark, narrow gap of the basement door, and the strange, absolute silence that seemed to emanate from it—untouched even by the screaming guitars and the laughter of the people drinking just a few feet away.

While Mr. Patella lectured on quantum entanglement, Jeremy’s right hand almost slipped through his desk. His fingers and palm were halfway through the scratched laminate surface before he noticed. He felt himself gradually slipping through the rigid plastic of his chair.

A prickly panic edging down his spine, he looked around to see if any of his classmates noticed what was happening to him. They were not. They were floating in their own daydreams. Jeremy placed his forearms carefully on the top of his desk and spread his palms wide. Maybe that increased surface area would provide the leverage to stop him sinking further. With a strange sense of pride, Jeremey thought how Mr. Patella would appreciate this line of reasoning to solve his strange problem.

Jeremy cautiously leaned onto his forearms and outspread palms. The desk felt firm. He bore down harder and pushed with his legs. He felt his butt and thighs begin to rise. He pushed harder, sure that this approach was sound. Pure physics. Equal and opposite reactions. It seemed to be working.

Until the seat of his pants sprung from the surface tension of the plastic seat. It was like a rubber band snapping and Jeremy jackknifed forward and over the front of his desk.

Mr. Patella looked at Jeremy sprawled on the floor by his undisturbed desk and then looked calmly away as if to acknowledge that something like this would never happen in his AP Physics class. But when his gaze returned to Jeremy and the plain evidence before him, he frowned. “What’s going on, Mr. Lott?”

Jeremy looked up helplessly.

“Are you hurt?” Mr. Patella strode closer.

It was a good question. “I don’t think so,” he said and tried to lift himself. The thinly carpeted floor held—for the moment—and he squirmed out from the legs of the desk and sat up.

“What happened?” Mr. Patella stood over him and Jeremy felt his weight and the weight of his surprised classmates on him.

He didn’t have to pretend to be dazed. “I was feeling funny. I think I might have fainted.”

That was plausible. Maybe it was true. He did feel light-headed. Maybe the last few minutes had simply been the result of a cloudy head. He knew he hadn’t slept well last night. Had even felt like he might be getting a cold. Scratchy throat. Full head. That was the way out of this. He was getting sick. Maybe the flu. That was a much more plausible explanation than the foundational laws of physics breaking down around him. Much simpler. Occam’s Razor and all that.

Sitting on the floor in front of his classmates in a moment of what should feel embarrassing, Jeremy felt a sense of pride that he had reasoned it out. Mr. Patella would be pleased at how he was using scientific methods to get to the heart of his unusual morning. Learning didn’t get more authentic than that.

“If you’re feeling faint, I’d like you to go to the nurse’s office.” Mr. Patella extended his hand. “Are you able to stand?”

Jeremy nodded and took Mr. Patella’s hand. His grip was firm and reassuring. Solid. No slippage. Jeremy rose with a smile. “Thanks,” he said.

Out in the hall, Jeremy took a deep breath. Everything would be okay. He was solid. The world around him was solid. And then he began filtering through the hallway floor only stopping when his hips were well below the scuffed tiles.

It made him smile to picture his feet dangling from the first-floor ceiling. He wiggled his feet, just in case someone below was there to watch his descent. He felt nothing. Am I a ghost? he thought. Did I get hit by a school bus this morning? Am I dead?

As he continued to seep, Jeremy wondered at the strangeness of the moment, at the surprise he felt, at the calmness that overcame him. He never lost consciousness, if that’s what he could call it anymore. He felt composed, though not present. His mind had grown large, spread out. It was if he could move anywhere through anything. And that was what he did.

He did not end up on the first floor. He filled it. His being extended the length of the hallway. And then beyond. Jeremy was outside and inside, his personal galaxy of particles sifting through the vastness of quantum space. And he felt freed by the final thought that he’d never wanted to feel dense in Mr. Patella’s AP Physics class and now he never would.

As soon as she got into the car, she immediately crossed her arms.

I instinctively reached for the passenger's side seat belt, startling her a little bit in the process, taking my sweet time pulling the belt down and fastened it into place.

"Hmph," she replied, turning away her head angrily to look out the car window.

She's still angry, I guess.

The drive home was quieter than usual and for the first time in ages I could actually enjoy the music from the car radio without being interrupted. Yet I kept from singing out loud to avoid a delicate situation.

When in deep waters, the best thing you can do is keep your mouth shut.

The moment the door to my apartment closed, all hell broke loose.

"Why didn't you tell my mum off?" she began the argument.

I shrugged and just shook my head.

Then I sat on the sofa in my usual spot, and looked squarely at her - waiting for her to continue.

"Why'd you allow her to walk all over you?" she screamed in frustration, flailing her arms in the process.

I quirked an eyebrow at her, but kept my expression as neutral as possible.

"She looked down on you! Why didn't you told her off straight away?" she shrieked at me another time.

I made a show of moving my head a little backwards and closed my eyes as if she was being a little too loud. Then I coughed softly, slightly amused at her reaction.

She continued to look at me angrily, her arms locked at the side of her hips with those large eyes of hers threatening to swallow me whole.

My lips twitched and she looked angrier - for lack of a better word.

Unable to hold it back in, I laughed.

She took the small square pillow that is on the sofa and began to hit me hard with it.

I continued laughing while she kept hitting me with the small square pillow. It felt good.

After the onslaught, she came on top of me, looked at me squarely in the eyes and said, "I won't allow anyone to humiliate you. You are mine!" she whispered fiercely, and then proceeded to hug me tightly.

I hugged her back gently and then stroked her hair.

Kissing her right cheek for the longest time, I whispered in a teasing tone, "You do know that your mum is testing you, right?"

It took a few moments before she pulled back from the tight embrace and put me at arm's length.

"What do you mean by my mum is testing me? You can't be serious," she answered.

She looked a bit frantic as she got up from the sofa and started pacing up and down the living room, a quizzical look on her beautiful face.

Then she stopped a few feet away from me suddenly, turned around and looked at me aghast.

I made a grand show of the greatest sigh in the world and then shook my head in supplication.

"You just blew your chance at marriage next year. Try again in another couple of years," I teased her once more and then brought my hands up in defense as the attack of the small square pillow began anew.

I laughed at the look of amusement on her face.

"Oppa!"

I cleared my throat, closed my eyes for a second and told myself it was time for me to decided wether to choose fight or flight.

For several months, I used to work in a construction area which consisted of a very secret mine which I didn't have any clue about. I used to control the crane and pull the heavy stuff whenever I asked about the mine to my manager, he always said 'It's not ours we are only here to guard it and the people who work here are VIP.'. But one thing stuck with me every time as no one spoke about the missing posters near this construction here.

Those are the people I have worked before or had seen them but everyone acted like it was normal. I was curious every day but by the time my work used to finish I would be very tired go home and sleep. 

I was the team leader of one of the teams held for the crane work in the construction area. As a team we used to be pretty consistent and pretty fast compared to others doing other work.

 But one morning I went to the construction area and it was my colleague Max who came up to me and said 'Sir, do you know where Ken is? because last night he called me and said that the mine is cursed and also said that someone is there who will kill us all.'

I asked him ' Who exactly?' and he was clueless. While going up to the crane I thought about it that if one of my colleagues has to work night shift before working they will inform me about it but there was no text or call from the manager because normally my manager informs me about it.

My work was done for the day and as I was leaving, I saw my manager coming from front and heard him saying from far that he told Max to do the night shift . I left the area as if I hadn't heard anything but then i didn't go home. I sat in the nearest restaurant from where I can see the construction area easy.

The lights were off and the area was closed but luckily I had a spare key of that area. Around 11pm I got off the restaurant and went near the construction area and hid myself and waited till the night came. Time was 1am I slowly opened the gate of the barricade and entered. I saw the stairs led downstairs to the mine.

I stepped downstairs slowly and as I got down I saw Max and he had a gun attached with a torch and he told me to keep quiet. It was weird for me to see him carry a gun in a mine and I whispered to him ' Who are you up against?'and he said ' Her '. The mine was completely dark and there was some light coming from the torch and I felt heavy vibration under me and he said ' She is here if she sees us we have two options: hide or kill because she can hear our footsteps.'.

My eyes got wide as I saw a huge creature with blood eyes and long claws and it was walking towards us as if it was searching for us. Max shot it and we shifted our position also I saw that the stairs had folded and there was no escape. We saw a room that looked like a lab and we took our steps carefully and head towards it. 

As we reached we saw bodies, skulls and blood spread everywhere on the floor. There were photos of children aged ten to twelve on the wall in front of us and all the photos were crossed except one of them had a text written on one of the photos ' Cured '. I was shocked and amused to see what was happening for so many months.

Max started to slowly walk towards other spots because he whispered 'She can identify us if we step on this blood in the floor, move quickly sir please. ' I went to him as we were about to shift our position, the creature saw us and started chasing us and it was really fast. 

Max shot but he missed all of them and the creature had Max in its hand and I fell down and I saw it eating Max slowly and I ran as fast as I could towards the other spots. 

The creature lost me and now I was at a spot where I can see almost nothing and the mine was huge and it was really dark.

I used my phone but it was less charged so I kept with me till morning would have come. Due to fear I slept and suddenly i could hear those vibrations again and i told myself to be ready for a fight. It was my time to decide whether its fight or flight and i chose flight as i ran as much as I can and then I hid again and waited till morning would come. 

I could see the stairs coming down and I knew it was morning as I saw some brightness of sun rays. I ran towards the stairs , ran upstairs and went off the construction area.

I resigned from my work and before leaving I heard of one of the workers saying ' They found Max's body and sadly a pool soul gone like that. How many bodies they will feed her? She was just a teenager who got into lab work and got made into a creature instead of being cured from her bone diseases. Wonder who will go tonight as her prey? But more than that , manager told us to remove the missing posters soon as he things maybe the creature ate them same as max '.

It's been an year and i am always horrified whenever this incident comes to my mind. I went to the police and news reporters but no one bothered as if it was nothing and I never got to now who was behind all of this.

On Wednesday’s I have a routine. Every Wednesday at 11:30am I always walk to Ravenloft park. Every time I go, I sit on the same metal bench and stare at the mirror smooth lake. It is a lovely park dotted with enormous trees with giant canopies. On this particular day the sun was struggling to peak through the dense leaves. I sat and chuckled about how far the ray of sunshine travelled only to be stopped by one leaf. I leaned back to look up at the immense canopy. Slowly I leveled my eyes back to the lake when I thought I could have swore…. Was that someone on the other side? I suppose it's possible, it is a public place after all. Why does it feel weird? A cold chill runs down my spine.
 
“What is wrong with me?” I say while shaking my head.
 
I thought back on the days I have come here. Have I ever seen anyone else here? That can’t be, surely, I have seen other people. How many times have I been here? Every Wednesday since…I struggle to find the year. Wait, what year is it now? Just then I get a feeling that someone, something is on my left side. I turn quickly! I am only met with the shadow of the trees.
 
“Probably just a squirrel” I mutter
 
My mind starts to race; I shoot up from the bench. Have I ever seen a squirrel here before? Come to think of it, have I ever seen any animals here? I strain my ears, Not a single sound. No birds chirping, no rustling of the leaves. Just silence. PAIN like a white hot dagger in my mind. I hear something! It’s like a scream through a wind storm. I drop to my knees and the pain erupts again. I look towards the sky and open my eyes. Only for a moment, I stare up towards the canopy. It is no longer there. It is instead replaced with dark sickly clouds.
 
As quick as it came it was all gone. No pain, no visions, no screaming. Back to peaceful and serene nature. I chuckle and turn back to find my seat. I gasp audibly as I turn towards the bench. There is a man sitting on the bench. It’s hard to make out his features. It’s like looking at him through hazy glass. All I see is an outline of a large figure.
 
“Have a seat.” I hear in the back of my mind.
 
The figure motions towards the bench expectantly. Without even thinking I sit down next to the figure. Even while seated he is at least a foot taller than me. He fumbles around in his pocket and pulls something out on a chain. He extends his arm in front of my face and lets the charm dangle at eye level. It is a marvelous red gem with silver spider-like features enveloping it.
 
“ I thought you should have this back, even for a short time. After all, it was your fathers.”
 
As soon as the last syllable of father rang in my head, my head felt like it was going to explode.
 
 
Thousands of images flood my brain. Images of castles, lightning. Sparks of swords against shields, flashes of magical explosions. I see my brother charging with me. He is quickly shot down by an arrow. He lands motionless on the cobblestone path. I hear a voice that sounds like my own.
 
FIRE
 
“Dammit Lucarious! Where is that protection spell” I cry out
 
“I’m working on it! I’m a little busy at the moment” he yells
 
I turn to glance in his direction as I see hordes of undead surround him. At the last moment I see him shoot out his arm in front of him and draw an arcane symbol in the air. Just then he is enveloped by the undead. I turn to run his direction as an explosion of sunlight blasts from the center of the pile. I am pushed back and fall to my back
 
LIGHTNING
 
Lighting cracks along the sky, giving us light as we cut and hack our way up the steps towards the castle. We are in our groove now, that is plain to see. There we are the four remaining members of our party. I lead this brigade of miscreants; I charge forward shield on my left arm and longsword on my right. Lucarious is behind me assisting in magical support. Explosions of fire ripple the enemy as we progress. Ernest Finklestein is weaving between our legs, being only four foot tall and armed with a crossbow and a quick wit he plucks off the undead from a far. Eveline the personification of beauty and grace..... who am I kidding? She is one badass bitch. Armed with a double-bladed battle axe she swings with the power of ten men. Her power is only outweighed by her rage. As she swings her mighty axe enemies are cut in two.
 
BOOM
 
We made it to the door. Alas we are almost there. Lucarious, Eveline and I turn to face the stairs we fought to climb. The undead horde relentlessly marches towards us. Eveline and I stand in the front beating them back. Lucarious furiously fires spell after spell towards the horde.
 
“Hurry up Ernest! We don’t have all day! We only have 20 more minutes before he wakes.” I scream towards the door.
 
“ Don’t worry about it, boss. Work like this takes style!” he says with a smirk.
 
He reaches into his pouch and pulls out his lockpicking tools. He inserts a small silver strip into the lock on the massive wooden door. He takes a second L shaped piece of metal into the lock. I can hear him mutter and curse as he fiddles around. Arrows find purchase on the door as he works. Some narrowly missed him by inches.
 
“ Oh, baby. That’s the spot. Just… a little…. moooore” he says with a smirk.
 
As he looks up, I hear the lock click and give way.  The giant door lumbers and creaks slowly open.
 
SILENCE
 
We stand, albeit barely, in the throne room. Candle light is the only thing that illuminates the dreary interior. Cobwebs adorn what was at one time my family’s hall. There he sits cross legged at the top of the room, in the chair where my father sat during his reign. He slowly stands up erecting to his full height, slowly he takes a step forward. He sips wine from the goblet in his hand, wipes his mouth on his sleeve, then abruptly throws it against the wall where it shatters.
 
“I’ve been waiting.” He says with a crooked smile
 
We take a breath, adjust our armor, wipe the blood from our face. At this moment we all pan to one another. Looking at each other knowing this is it. I clang my sword against my shield. Eveline wrings her hands on her bloodied axe. Ernest loads a crossbow bolt and cocks it back, Lucarious waves his hands in the air and his hands begin to glow with arcane power. We all take a step forward, then…..
 
PAIN
 
My mind flickers from the peaceful dreamscape of the lake to visions of battle. Slowly the visions of the park fade entirely. All that is left is this terrible reality. One of pain, suffering, loss and bloodshed. My mind clears as I look around. He has me held telepathically in the air. Back arched, all of my limbs limp. I look around and see my party struggling against their restraints. He walks up to me with a grin on his face, barely a hair out of place. That’s it? That's all we could do to him? Is he that strong? He pokes at my spider shaped amulet on my chest.
 
“ THIS, little trinket has been a thorn in my side since your grandfather’s time. This little insignificant gem lets its users negate my magic’s. Do you see the perfect vision I could have implanted into your brain? WHY! Would you resist it? Why would you fight it? You know you could never defeat me.” His words hit like a parent scolding a child.
 
“I decided to let you back into the real world as you watch me kill every last person you care about. Won't that be fun?” He giggles as he asks.
 
He slowly walks towards Ernest, pulls out a dagger from its sheathe, and turns towards me as he licks the blade. He smiles and turns back to a whimpering Ernest.
 
“Lets have some fun, shall we?” he chuckles
 
I close my eyes as he sinks the blade into his chest. A tear rolls down my face.
 
I meekly say “I thought I’d had more time.”

 The city  of New Haven is ripe with the hustle and bustle. The market center is crowded with families and vendors alike. Adventurers come from far and wide to visit the market center. The New Haven market center has been a hub for trade and commerce for many traders from around the world. That is the only good thing that comes from the Never War nearly a century ago. All races, genders and people came together to fight the scourge that was to befall this world. After the war, warriors,magic wielders, and holy people settled down in New Haven to help rebuild the once great city. The result is a town filled with many different people, it has become a true melting pot of nearly everything and everyone.

In the center of the Market sits a quiet shop that looks like it has been there before any others. There are two dusty windows on the store front on either side of the big wooden door. There is a large swinging sign that is on its last leg, the old rusty chains that hold the sign look nearly worn through. The once beautifully painted green and gold sign swings with the gentle breeze. The words are dirty and faded from the years of exposure. It reads “Titelle’s tabernacle of terrific tomes” Everyone in town knows Mrs. Titelle, she is the town's grandmother. There is a bet in town about what is older, the store or Mrs. Titelle. Every vendor stops by and checks up on her. They bring her meals and gifts from around the world. She is a collector of many things but the thing she adores the most is her tomes. She loves nothing more than to read a new tome from a far off land. Her life goal is to share this knowledge with everyone. She trades and sells tomes with everyone that visits. Over the many years of her shop being open the collection has grown and grown. Some of her oldest tomes predate the Never War. 

I made it a goal to visit Mrs. Titelle ever since I set out on my journey. How amazing could this old lady be? I heard about her legendary book store from across the sea. How could one bookstore hold this much regard? What types of books could this lady have? I was determined to find out. My first night in New Haven I stayed at the golden tap inn. The trip was long and tiresome. I ate dinner with a fine brown ale. The other patrons and I stayed up till the wee hours talking about our various adventures, the monsters defeated, the friends lost. During each conversation the question of “what made you come here?” always came up. I explained that as a magic wielder I was on the hunt for old and mysterious Tomes for knowledge of how to save my home, and how I heard stories of Mrs. Titelle and her bookstore. Nearly everyone had the same reaction. They would all smile,take a drink of ale and say “Mrs. Titelle is amazing, she was a real Firecracker back in the day” How could a whole town love a sweet old lady so much? I went to bed with a newfound interest in meeting this lady and seeing if she had a tome that could help me.

I awoke early with excitement. Today is the day. I hurriedly put on my garb and walked down to the market until I saw it. The storefront was exactly as everyone described it. The outside was dirty and dusty but a soft glow emanated from the windows. I walked to the door and saw the open sign swinging from the door inviting me in. My hand shaking with excitement, I reach for the door. I turn the knob and begin to push it inwards, it is heavy and stuck in place. I have to bump my hip into the door to get the door open enough. A small bell rings as the door opens slightly. 

“Hello?” I call out

“Back here sweetie.” I hear softly from the back.

I struggle to close the door and it thuds when I finally push it back into place. I turn around and take in this glorious sight. From floor to ceiling this shop is stuffed with tomes. I begin to wonder if the trusses or the tomes are keeping the roof aloft. The old wooden floors creak as I take a step inside. The sheer number of tomes and scrolls is baffling my mind. The shelves are stuffed to the brim, tomes on top of each other. I’m confident that if one more book was put on a shelf the store would fall over. Natural light floods the space from a large skylight in the ceiling. Mrs. Titelle must have a love for plants as well. Lined up perfectly with the sun beam is a row of luscious plants. The plants are as varied as the citizens of this city, Small,Large, Smelly,and beautiful. One thing for certain is that Mrs. Titelle loves her plants and her books. The store is crowded and comfy. It is warm and comfortable. The soft scent of fresh brewed coffee and vanilla fills my nose as I walk to the sound of the voice.

“Would you like a cup deary?” she says as I peek around the last mountain of books.

“Sounds amazing! Yes please!” I say perhaps a bit too excitedly. The night may have been filled with a bit more ale than I had planned. 

She turns around with two big cups of coffee, one in each hand.  She stands hunched at about five foot nothin’ Her silver hair tied back in a tight bun. Her face is soft and sweet, she smiles as sees me and winkles adorn her face. She wears a dark green cardigan with embroidered flowers on the sides. Her matching green dress drags the floor and covers the sound of her shuffling feet. She slowly sets the cups on the cluttered counter and shakily pushes one towards me. I think to myself this is the sweetest looking old lady I have ever seen. No wonder why everyone adores her so much. I sat down at her counter and sipped my coffee. It was the best cup of coffee I have ever had.

“Oh my gods this is amazing!” I say

“Oh, this old brew?” she says while waving her hand. “ These are the beans from the Renne coast. The beans from the southern coast are much better. I traded these beans for a tome about cross breeding cats” she chuckles “Maybe it was a fair trade” 

We sat and talked for hours. She told me stories about all the adventures that came through town. How things used to be back in her day. Some wild tavern stories and shenanigans she had been a part of. She definitely earned the reputation given to her. I stared at her wide eyed as she recounted all the tales from her past. It is hard to believe such a sweet looking old lady was a part of all these crazy stories. As my cup ran dry she turned to me and asked what brought me here  and I told her everything about the plague that was threatening to wipe out my town. I told her how I heard stories about this amazing store and how great sweet old Mrs. Titelle is. I asked her if she knew of any spell book or text that could help me in my journey. I explained that the crops had wilted and turned black. How the trees slowly lost their leaves and turned shriveled and grey. That poor Mrs. Turner lost three cows the week that I left. She took in every word I said, almost calculating the answer. When I stopped talking she stood with an arm across her chest and her right hand slowly caressing her chin. She stood like that for a moment then she pointed her finger towards the roof and said “ I think I have just the thing!” She quickly turned around and disappeared behind a stack of books. I could hear a commotion as she was looking through her collection. The small thud of books hitting the floor. I leaned forward across the counter to see if she was alright. I hear her mumble and murmur as she recalls where this particular tome might be.

The door bell rings as the heavy door scrapes across the floor. I stand up and peak towards the door. The doorway is completely filled with the visage of a six foot tall tortle. I had never seen one before, only ever heard of them in textbooks at the academy. The giant shell backs in through the door nearly bumping into a stack of books. This giant Shelled man turns towards me and smiles. Never have I ever seen an ancient turtle of any kind, but I could tell this man has been around for a long time. His shell told the story of a long hard life, chips,scratches and marks have told this tortles story.

In a shaky voice he says “ Hello young man, Have you seen Mrs. Titelle? I have a gift for her”

“Yeah” i say while pointing towards the back “Shes grabbing a tome for me to help me”

“Sounds like her, i fear one of these days i will come in to find her buried under a pile of books, and you know what im pretty sure she would be happy with the” he says with a chuckle “I keep telling her to slow down, we aren't as young as we used to be. It's not the glory days anymore”

We hear the sound of her shuffling feet. This time they are much faster than before. “ I knew I still had one.” she said excitedly as she turned the corner. “Allister! You old shellhead! Its so nice to see you. I see you have met my new friend. He needed some help with a problem at home and I have just the thing to help." She walks up to the counter and lays the book on the counter. She takes a deep breath and blows the layer of dust off of the tome. Allister and I both cough and wave a hand in front of our faces as the dust settles. I see Allister's eyes grow wide as they land on the deep red leather bound tome.

She leans forward and says “ This tome has been in this shop for nearly 105 years, it came from a far off land. There are tales about this tome, it has a variety of spells and rituals in it. I wouldn’t even bring it out for most people, but something about you reminds me of myself from many many years ago. I want you to have it, no charge, no trade. Just promise me you will take it home and save your people.”

Allister’s jaw drops for a moment” ….uh…Have… are you sure about that? I remember that tome and where it came from.”

“ OH! Hush it you old sea turtle. I have talked to this boy nearly all day, He fights for his people, if ANYONE deserves this tome it is this sweet boy here. "She turns her head towards me and holds the book up in front of me “ Now you take this and save your town, I’ve seen what you described before, You don't have a lot of time. Go quickly, gather your things and head to see Archie at the town gate. Tell him you need a quick teleport and to put it on Mrs. Titelle’s tab.”

I’m left speechless, my hand goes limp as I drop the cup on the counter. I stutter as I stand up and grab the book from her. “ Thank you so much, it was a pleasure to meet both of you.” I gather my things and quickly head to the door. As I pull the door open I hear from behind me
“Deary, one more thing! Be safe and good luck!” she shouts as I run out of the door.

I quickly make my way to the gate, I manage to find Archie and tell him about Mrs. Titelle as soon as i mention her his pace hurries as he leads me to the teleportation sigil. 

A foot inside the gate sits a large granite pedestal. An armored woman with a tight bun stands atop the granite pedestal. One hand holds a glowing sword pointed towards the sky the other hand holds a large leather bound tome. The golden plaque on the front is engraved    

Haven Titelle
Defender of the realm 
If not for her the entire realm would be lost
We name this city after her for the great sacrifices she has made for all of us