Christopher Tully Bloodworth

The little ferret named Bandit arched his back dramatically to better show off the bright pink gash cut lengthwise through his fur.

“I’m telling you—its teeth were three inches long, at least! It’s a miracle I escaped with my life! I mean, just look at this. I’m done for!”

Isaac knelt down to inspect the injured Bandit who, along with Noodle, was one of two ferrets that Isaac kept as pets in his back yard—a strange choice of pet, especially in the country. Isaac grimaced.

“Will … will he be all right?” asked Noodle, his voice even squeakier than usual, betraying deep and earnest concern.

“I hope so,” said Isaac. He did not want to make any promises he couldn’t keep.

The gash had come from raccoon attack during the night, and it wasn’t pleasant to look at. It would probably need treatment to prevent infection, but overall it seemed like Bandit would recover, and Isaac said so. He then picked up Noodle to make sure he was unharmed.

“No, no, I’m ok. I was inside when they attacked,” the ferret assured him.

By “inside,” Noodle meant the small, two-foot “house” Isaac had built for the ferrets when he first moved them outdoors in an attempt to improve the air quality in his room—ferrets are delightfully cute and playful creatures, but it was an unfortunate and immutable fact that they smell to high heaven, as Isaac’s parents could have and did warn him.

Bandit padded up next to Isaac and looked up gravely. “This is the fifth time they’ve come around this month! And you know now they’ve got a taste, they won’t quit on this deliciousness! I’m never gonna get a peaceful night’s sleep as long as they’re out there!” Bandit jutted out his side with the cut on it. “I mean, just look at this thing!”

Inwardly, Isaac rolled his eyes, though he couldn’t help smiling warmly at the ferret—Bandit’s antics were always reliably theatrical. But Isaac also knew the ferret was right; the raccoons had found a gold mine—a bowl of free food, refilled each and every morning. And if they could get ahold of something a fresher? Well… Isaac was all but certain that they’d be back, likely that very night.

“I … I have an idea.” Isaac considered solemnly. This wasn’t his first idea. He had attempted once before to deal with the raccoons by trapping them—the old box-propped-up-with-a-stick that he’d seen in cartoons when he was younger. It had been laughably unsuccessful. But looking at the still-glistening gash on Bandit, Isaac decided it was on him to finish this once and for all. “My dad has an old .22 rifle in his closet. I’ll stay up late tonight. Then, when they come for the food, I can … take them out.”

Bandit and Noodle cheered. They didn’t know what a gun was, but if Isaac said it would get rid of the raccoons, they were for it.

And so, that night, Isaac did just as he’d promised. Retrieving a flashlight and his dad’s rifle, he set a ladder against the house and clambered atop the roof. From the high vantage, he could keep watch over the back yard—a small space enclosed by a brick wall and white metal gate. Bandit and Noodle were safe in their shelter, dutifully following Isaac’s strict instructions not to emerge again until the business was over.

Isaac clung tightly to the .22 caliber, squinting against the encroaching darkness while he waited for his eyes to adjust. His ears were hot from nerves, straining to listen for the rustlings of leaves amidst the sounds of the wind blowing through the woods beyond the perimeter and the indifferent hooting of owls and cricket chirps, discordant accompaniments in a wild nocturnal symphony.

Isaac shook his head, willing himself to stay focused. He’d prepared himself to sit through the night, but it had only been minutes before he felt as if he already had. Time expanded on that rooftop, making his muscles ache and stiffen with unnatural quickness. It was only by checking his watch that he realized how short a time he’d actually been waiting before the raccoons, bandit-ghosts of the woods beyond the gate, made their haunting entrance. He raised the gun and put his finger on the trigger. Isaac saw two. They were sitting around the food bowl, whispering back and forth to each other as they grabbed armfuls of pellets. They stuffed their cheeks with as much as they could manage. Isaac looked down the barrel and held his breath, his heart drumming a primal rhythm as all creation held its breath with him.

Bang!

Bang!

The raccoons moved like lightning, bolting for the wall. It was over as quick as it had started. Isaac exhaled.

Dang it, thought Isaac. The raccoons were gone.

Shaking slightly from adrenaline, Isaac exercised extra caution descending the ladder. He leaned the gun against the wall and turned on the flood lights to inspect the yard. Bandit and Noodle were peeking out, their black eyes glinting with curiosity and anticipation in the bright light.

“Is it over?” asked Noodle, Bandit craning his neck past him to get a better look at whatever they were supposed to be seeing.

“I … I’m not sure. Just … stay there a minute.” Isaac was looking at the grass. Between the food bowl and the wall, he saw blades of grass glistening bright red. He hadn’t missed after all. So why could he feel his heart sinking?

It was because, he knew with growing certainty, his grand idea, like the cartoon box trap, had been only half-baked. He had assumed he would either hit the raccoons and succeed, or else he would miss and fail. Why had this horrific in-between never occurred to him?

As a child, Isaac had often imagined himself at war, playing with his green army men or popping out of bushes firing his wooden pop gun. Eventually, he would hear that real war is hard and ugly, a fact he had accepted. But he’d also believed in the nobility of war, of fighting for your country, your freedom, or whatever else you might love. What Isaac loved was Bandit and Noodle. Now that he’d fought for them, the only thing running through his brain was No, no, no.

Pulling out his flashlight, Isaac followed the trail of blood to the gate and flung it open. The raccoon hadn’t made it ten feet past the wall, a lone grey and black bundle in a pool of dark red. Its companion was nowhere to be seen, deep into the woods—not a surprise, considering. 

He knelt to be close to it, the wet ground cool against his knees. Isaac noticed that the raccoon’s cheeks were still stuffed with uneaten pellets. It was odd thing to fixate on, perhaps, wondering over the animal’s last choice to hold onto the food even after its injury. The answer to this mystery was soon made clear as at the edge of the woods, Isaac heard a quiet rustling, reinvigorating his brain’s loop of no, no, no. Huddled under a bush, shivering with fear, was a young raccoon cub, too young to have even found its voice. Isaac cried at its innocence as he scooped up the cub into his arms.

He had broken something irreparable, creating an imbalance in the universe that would be inexplicably known and felt by no one else. But this cub would feel it. Isaac would feel it—was feeling it now, barely managing to walk back through the gate with this delicate bundle, the only two souls unsteadied by a world knocked violently off its axis.

As Isaac made his way through the yard, Bandit and Noodle ogled at the cub in his arms.

“Is that…?” started Bandit.

“Would you both look after him for me? I need to go do something. I’ll come back when … when I’m done.”

The ferrets didn’t understand, but they did as he asked, saying nothing as they climbed down from their home to stand by the cub’s side, unsure what else they could do; maybe unsure of what they should do for a raccoon.

Isaac fetched a shovel from the garage and returned to the baby raccoon’s mother. He buried her right where she’d stopped, at the edge of the woods, pouring tears onto each pile of earth he shoveled.

As he worked, Isaac’s mind wandered to what would happen next. This wasn’t the city—there was no animal rescue out here. He’d taken the cub’s mother away from it, something he would never be able to make right. He knew that. And so? He’d take it in. He’d give it a new family.

Isaac finished the burial, exhausted from the exertion and the late hour, yet he returned as promised to the ferrets and their ward. He looked at Bandit and Noodle, their small black eyes staring back at him quizzically.

“I made a mistake,” he said. “It was my job to protect you two—it still is. But I should have found another way. I thought I was doing the right thing, but right now, the surest thing I know in this world is that what I did was wrong.”

Bandit nuzzled against his leg, and Isaac smiled in spite of the weight in his heart.

“I can’t change what I did, but I can try to make it right. Bandit? Noodle? Would you be ok if we added one more to the family?”

They looked at the baby raccoon, considering, then, “Yes.” The two had answered in unison.

“We’ll look after him,” Noodle said. Bandit echoed the affirmation.

“We can call him Shadow.”

“It’ll be like he was meant to be here.”

Isaac smiled. There would be much to figure out, but they would figure it out together, growing old, laughing, playing, learning…

That’s the story I want to tell—the story about how we added Shadow to our little family, the story of how I made a tough choice and learned a hard lesson about how fighting for what’s right isn’t always so clear cut—sometimes there are costs, but there can be redemption, too. That’s what I wanted to say in this story. My story.

I kept it a tragedy—there are just some things I can’t change about my choices that day. I try to have compassion when I look back at myself, taking that gun onto that roof. I was young and ignorant. I didn’t know better when I pulled that trigger—not the first time. But there are other things, regrets, that I would do anything to forget. To change. Like how I walked back to the house after finding the mother’s cub to pick up the rifle. Like how there is no Shadow, because you don’t give a name to an animal you don’t keep. I still see its eyes at night when my eyes close, its body trembling as it pleaded with the barrel of that cursed .22, the last thing it ever saw.

2023

Author’s note: This is the kind of absolutely ridiculous story that can only exist in the strange world of short story competitions with strict word limits and outlandish prompts. Still, it was one of the more enjoyable stories to write that I’ve actually completed, so I’ve decided to include it here in spite of its shortcomings.

Summoning some last vestiges of energy, the “farmer” reached up from the bed and grabbed Cam’s collar.

“Listen here, you little turd, they’re gonna take it. They’re gonna take it all away.”

Cam removed his dad’s firm grip from his shirt. My god, where does he get the strength?

“Come on, Dad, I came all the way out here to pay my respects. Don’t be an ass.”

“Cam, for once in your stupid life, would you just listen to me? They’re gonna take everything I’ve built if you don’t take over.”

Cam rolled his eyes inwardly. “Take ‘everything’? Dad, it’s just a farm.”

“Just a farm?!? Blueberries the size of tomatoes! Tomatoes the size of pumpkins! Pumpkins you could slap wheels on and pull with horses! Son, this ain’t ‘just a farm.’”

It was true that his dad’s farm was special, but to Cam, a blueberry was a blueberry, even if it was big enough to fit snugly in the palm of your hand. Sure, his dad could charge a fortune for access to his orchards, but they were still just orchards.

“Look, Dad, we’ve talked about this. I don’t want our last conversation to be a retread of an old fight. Farming’s your thing, not mine.” He paused, then added, “You don’t even like me. Why would you want me to run the farm? Let someone else have it.”

“This isn’t about liking you, you turd sack. This is about who you are, and where you come from.”

“What, Ohio?” Cam asked sarcastically, trying not to let his hurt show.

“No, idiot, I mean your lineage. You’re my son, which means …” There was a lengthy pause while the farmer decided how to say the words he knew must be said, but that felt … unallowable. “Well, it means you’re descendent from the Anakim, just like me.”

Whatever Cam might have expected, it wasn’t this. “Descendent from what now?”

“The Anakim, the Anakim! Jeez, boy, do you never listen? Must have told you their story before bed a hundred times when you were a kid. Maybe if you ever actually read your fucking Bible. The Anakim were an ancient race of Nephilim—sons of angels and the first women. Gods among men, boy, and they had the ear of their fathers who made sure their sons lived in abundance. The book of Numbers says it took two men to carry a single bunch of grapes from the land of Canaan. Two men for one bunch, Cam! Now what does that sound like to you? Afterward, the Bible says Joshua ran the Anakim out of Canaan, but their descendants—and their blessings—continue on, scattered across the globe. You and I—and this farm—are living proof.”

Cam was stunned by this utterly bizarre story.

“Dad, you … you sound crazy.”

“Not crazy, son. Chosen.”

Cam’s brain felt like it might break. Everything in him told him that his dad had lost his mind—no doubt the product of some end-of-life chemical dump from his brain that was making him say insane things. But then … why did it all feel so true?

“So your farm just … what? Grows big? Because you’ve got ancient giants somewhere in your family tree? Come on, Dad, how am I supposed to take that?”

His dad laughed. “Heh, I wish it were that easy. But it’s more than just genes. You’ve got to believe. You’ve got to pray. Over each and every plant, every day. You have to earn the angels’ ear. They’re our kin, but that ain’t enough. To bless your labor, they gotta feel honored by your work.”

Cam felt he was standing in front of a stranger. Sure, they’d sometimes read stories from the Bible before bed like his dad had said, but he’d never thought his family particularly religious. And now this man had the audacity to insist they were descendants of angels? No. He wouldn’t entertain such obvious farce. His father’s days of manipulation were over.

“I’m sorry, Dad. It was … good … seeing you, but I learned long ago how to be happy without your love, and I certainly don’t need your farm and its overgrown tomatoes now.”

His dad glared, emanating utter disdain from his bed. “Then you’re the fool I always thought you were.”

Cam blinked, threatening to release the wetness gathering in his eyes, but he managed to keep any tears at bay and turned to leave. He made it as far as the door before stopping short. “Hey, Dad, you said ‘they’ would take everything away. Who were you talking about?”

The farmer’s manic paranoia returned. “The Rivals. Enemies of the Nephilim. Religious fanatics who think we're abominations that should never have existed. They’re everywhere—hundreds of them for every one of us. All these years, I’ve kept us and the farm safe, praying over the land. I’ve seen them at the borders at night, clutching their holy books, calling on their God to free the land from us. That’s why you’ve got to accept the truth and take on my responsibilities. You can save it, Cam. Believe what’s right in front of you.”

“I’m sorry, Dad. I … take care.”

Saddened, Cam left the house surrounded by the giant orchards and his father’s words daring him to believe the wild story. Stopping at an apple tree, Cam kneeled. “Dear … angels? Please grow this, uh, plant? Um … big?” He shook his head. What am I doing? He walked to his car and drove away. Had Cam looked back, he might have seen the figures descending on the farm, weilding their holy books and torches as they set it ablaze. He might have heard his father's screams lost to the inferno as the farm's legacy—and the blessings of the Anakim—burned to ashes, vanishing forever.

2023

Eric took a deep breath as he approached the blocked-off street corner and shrank unconsciously into his high-collared jacket—a futile instinct given his height. At his mother’s insistence, he’d relented and agreed to attend the neighborhood’s annual Spring Block Party, although “block party” was a bit of a misnomer. It was the pride of the neighborhood and probably compared favorably to some state fairs.

“Everyone will be excited to see you,” his mother had told him. “It’ll be all the old faces.”

Which, of course, was precisely what Eric was worried about. But how do you explain to your mother that after four years of college, there was something about home and “the old faces”—people who’d known you when you were a different person—that was more haunting than alluring.

“Also,” his mother had continued in an all-too-casual tone, “I talked to Mrs. Ellis the other day, and she mentioned Grace is back in town. I’m sure she’d enjoy seeing you.”

Eric wasn’t so sure.

Passing the barricades, Eric waded into the animated crowd. The street lamps were just kicking on, bathing game booths and buffet lines in that golden glow that contrasts so beautifully with the saturated blue-black of early evening. It hadn’t changed a bit.

Stopping in front of a table he recognized, Eric smiled at the sign reading Homemade Soaps $5—the same sign he’d seen five years prior. He picked up a plain bar and held it to his nose. He bought it.

Inhaling the block party’s odd bouquet of soaps, home cooking, and funnel cakes, Eric found that he was eighteen again, navigating the games and crowds with his friends. Friends who, one by one, paired off to say hi to others or to be with their families until, at last, there was Grace.

“Hey,” she said playfully, “I want you to win me something.”

A younger, shyer Eric blushed with pleasure at this command. He would remember that moment forever—the confusing amalgam of butterflies and self-doubt turning in his stomach. Grace was a school friend, but he’d always felt he was too quiet for her, too awkward, too… tall. But here she was flirting with him. Or at least…wasn’t she? Suddenly, Eric felt panicked as he tried to instant-replay the way she’d sounded, what she’d looked like when she asked him. He wondered whether that light in her eye had always been there.

He grinned, nodding towards a game of balloon darts. “Ok, try over there?”

“Wait,” she said, tugging his arm in a different direction, “I already have one picked out!” Eric laughed.

“Hmmm. This feels like a set up.”

“Nah, it’ll be easy peasy. Come on, it’s so cute. You’ll love it!”

Amused, Eric was content to let Grace lead him by the arm. That spark in her eyes had set light to something in his imagination, and he thought it wouldn’t be so bad if she never let go. At last, she stopped at a ring toss game and pointed to the prize table.

“It’s that one,” she said, pointing at a white teddy bear holding a red heart sewn between its paws.

“Aww, it is cute. But you realize this is ring toss, right? I’m ninety-nine percent sure they precision-engineer the rings to not fit over the pins.”

“Hey, if you don’t think you can win, just say so,” she teased.

“Ok, ok. I’ll try.” Eric exchanged a couple of bills for rings. One after the other, they bounced off the pins and onto the grass. Eric shrugged apologetically as Grace laughed. It was a sweet laugh.

“Guess I’ll have to win it myself,” she said, handing over two of her own dollars.

Eric rolled his eyes playfully. “Pfft. Yeah, good luck.”

Minutes later, the two were walking side by side, the white teddy bear in Grace’s arms. That was when Eric spotted a sign—Homemade Soaps $5.

“Wait one sec, I need something from here.”

Grace raised an eyebrow as Eric carefully inspected the soaps before selecting and purchasing a plain white bar.

“This’ll do,” he said.

“Wow, you’re really serious about your soaps.”

“Oh definitely,” he said, winking, “but actually, this will be a gift when I’m finished with it. See? Look.” And unclipping a pocket knife from his belt, Eric proceeded to whittle away at the little block as they walked.

Eric would remember it as a magical night—they simply walked together, and, maybe for the first time in Eric’s life, he talked without fear of running out of things to say. Later, when the crowds were thinning and the moon was small in the sky, Eric held out the intricate Tiffany-styled heart he’d carved for her.

“Here,” he said. “I might suck at ring toss, but I made this for you.”

Grace blushed, and Eric’s heart sank as he saw that light leave her eyes. “Oh, Eric. This is amazing. You’re incredibly talented, but I… um…Sorry, I’m not sure what to say.”

“Oh, no, it’s ok,” he said, pulling back his hand. “It didn’t mean anything, I just… Sorry, don’t worry about it,” and the delicate heart cracked as he closed his fist around it.

That was five years ago. After that night, Eric had avoided Grace. They graduated, went to college, moved on. At least, that’s what he’d thought. But now that he was back here, Eric wondered something that he never could have imagined back then—whether that younger Grace might have been just as scared and unsure as he’d been.

And so, using the height he used to feel awkward about, he scanned the faces of the crowd until… there, he found her, as sweet and beautiful as she ever was. He waved. She saw him above the crowd and waved back enthusiastically. Relief flooded through him, and he thought he saw that light rekindled in her eyes. Eric took another deep breath as he approached, and, holding out the bar of soap, said, “Hi, Grace. Would you like to go on a walk with me?”

2022

Paulo groaned as he rolled over, making long, slow blinks against the sunlight as he came to. He was surprised to find himself in a corridor of shipping containers. Where the hell … ? Was that … the ocean? He sighed in resignation: a boat. He was on a damn boat. Suddenly, he became aware of several pains across his body, most notably his left hand, which had been severely burned. With his right, he reached to touch the knot on the back of his head and winced. He didn’t even bother checking for his gun, which, along with his phone, he knew would be long gone. But he hoped that … Paulo bent over and ran a hand along the sole of his left shoe … yes, it was still there—the little compartment still hid the micro SD card.

“Com licença. Você parece terrível.” Excuse me. You look terrible.

Paulo clambered to his feet in surprise. A girl, no older than nine, was standing just feet away from him. How long had she been standing there? He addressed her likewise in Portuguese.

“I’m sorry, young lady, if I alarmed you. I would explain myself, but to be honest, I don’t know how I got here.”

“I do,” she said simply. “A man dropped you off.”

“A man?”

“Yes. He asked my father to bring you with us. Sometimes my father takes temporary passengers.”

‘Temporary passengers?’ Paulo did not like the sound of that.

“I believe he intends to drop you before we meet the coast guard at the border.”

‘Drop me? ‘Coast guard’? Paulo cursed under his breath. His wallet and legal documentation had been taken with his phone and gun. Although he didn’t believe being processed would create an incident—he was trained for situations like this after all—he knew he could get lost for weeks in the system as they verified his story, and that was a long time to keep track of one tiny data card. But if they intended to “drop” him before that, well …

“I see …” Paulo thought about how to put this next question. “So … why have I been allowed to roam?”

“Where would you go? If you would like to be locked up, I could ask my father for you.”

“N-no. But, I mean, what if I were dangerous?”

The girl eyed him critically. “You do not seem dangerous to me.”

Paulo laughed. What was he to say to her? ‘No, trust me, I’m very dangerous!’ Instead, he said, “Your father seems an irresponsible man, letting you roam the ship with a stranger around.”

“My father is a good man! One day, I will be just like him.”

He had touched a nerve. Paulo held up his hands, apologetically.

“What happened to your hand?”

Paulo looked at the newly burned flesh, courtesy of a makeshift flamethrower he’d cobbled together to use as a distraction while escaping the compound. The fuel had not been properly compressed and leaked onto his hand.

“Burned … cooking.”

“Oh,” she said.

He shrugged as if to say, “Life happens,” and turned away, feeling that he’d already wasted too much time with the girl. He needed to find the freighter’s lifeboats—not a great option, but perhaps better than his alternatives. The girl did not protest his abrupt departure, but Paulo noted that she shadowed him closely, watching thoughtfully. It unnerved him.

The ship, he quickly discovered, was enormous. Rows upon rows of stacked containers lined the ship, and Paulo thought the whole of 5th Avenue would probably fit inside it—with room to spare. At last, he found his escape—a free-falling submersible suspended maybe 30 meters high on skis at a 55º angle. Using his unburned hand, he fumbled to disconnect and unhook various cables and plugs to prepare the launch, careful not to manually disengage the plates holding the craft in place. The girl, still behind Paulo, did not try to stop him, but neither did she offer assistance. When all else was ready, however, Paulo found his way blocked, the door sealed by a wheel valve he could not turn. Paulo needed two good hands. Merda! He’d screwed this up just like he’d screwed up the flamethrower.

“Um, young lady—”

“—Yara.” The girl had brightened at being addressed again.

“Yes. Yara. Listen, do you think you could help me?”

The girl raised an eyebrow.

“Desculpe, Senhor. My father does not like me to interfere with his business.”

Paulo leaned in, speaking confidentially.

“Yara, can I tell you a secret? I’m with the government. You know ABIN, yes? Of course you do. I’m an undercover agent, and I must get off this ship.”

It was close to true—a different agency, but otherwise … Paulo was banking on the fact that the best lies are always rooted in truth, and he prayed it’d been enough. He was sure he could trust in her help if he could just convince her. He held his breath. Without speaking, she walked forward, put two hands on the wheel, and turned it. It opened. He breathed in relief.

“Thank you, Yara!” he said, thinking to add with a wink, “Brazil owes you.”

Paulo was already halfway through the door—an impressive feat to accomplish one-handed—when he heard the girl reply.

“Your accent is very good, by the way. You speak like a real brasileiro.”

Paulo’s eyes widened.

“But I … I am brasileiro. Wait!”

But the girl Yara had already pulled the manual rip cord holding the plates that restrained the boat. For such a distance, the lifeboat fell incredibly fast. At that speed, the surface tension of the water made crashing into it like hitting pavement, and she figured anything not strapped down had likely come to an abrupt end.

She would catch it from her father for letting the lifeboat go without the painter cable attached—they would have to retrieve it later. But she did hope he might find it in his heart to be proud of her. She had to start somewhere, after all.

2021

Author’s note: Not my personal favorite, truth be told—too sentimental for my tastes. But it performed well in the competition it was written for, so I’ve included it in this collection.

“Next.”

The long line shuffled forward as the next person walked to the post office check-out. Preston clutched the envelope in his hand tightly as he moved up, sandwiched between two adults more than twice his height. The one behind him, an older man with a salt and pepper mustache, eyed his letter with interest.

“Mailing a letter, son?” the man asked.

Preston nodded.

“Good for you. In a world filled with thoughtless digital words, nothing quite beats a letter. How old are you, son?”

“Seven.”

“Wow.” He paused before adding with a wink, “Maybe there’s hope for your generation after all.”

Preston wasn’t sure what to say, so he simply nodded again.

“Next.”

Preston breathed out a deep sigh and stepped forward. The postal worker, a middle-aged Black woman, looked over Preston’s head as though searching the line for someone who might be the boy’s guardian.

“Hi, sweetie, are you here all by yourself?”

“Yes, ma’am. It’s not a long walk from my house.”

“I see. Well, how can I help you today?”

Preston looked down at the letter in his hand.

“I’ve lost someone, and I need help to find them.”

“Lost?” said the woman with some alarm.

“I just thought … The post office knows where people live all over the world, so I wrote a letter to him,” said Preston, holding out the envelope.

The woman reached for it and felt her heart drop as she made out a single word, “Dad,”on the front of the envelope.

“I can give you his name, though,” said Preston, as though he’d suspected “Dad” might be an insufficient address. “It’s Preston Winters. We have the same name.”

The woman looked down at Preston apologetically. “I’m so sorry, sweetie, but to deliver this, we would need at least a partial address.” She studied the envelope in her hand before offering it back. “Maybe … have you talked to your mother about where he is? She should know how to write an address for you.”

Preston reluctantly took back the envelope.

“She says she doesn’t know. She doesn’t talk about him much. I just thought … since she told me we have the same name … You’re really sure you can’t find him?”

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said again, but she was looking now at the lengthening line behind the boy. “If you get a proper address, you come back and we’ll take care of you, all right?” And looking up to the man with the mustache behind Preston, she gently said, “Next.”

Letter in hand, Preston began walking dejectedly past the people in line, but he stopped suddenly as someone grasped his shoulder.

“Hold on there, son.”

The mustached man turned back to the post office worker. “We’ll take a book of stamps, please.”

The woman pointed to a glass case behind her.

“Got a preference?”

The man looked down at Preston. “What’ll it be, son? Like any stamps in particular?”

Preston pointed to a sheet of stamps featuring an airplane writing a cursive “love” across the sky. Paying for the book, the man indicated that Preston should follow him outside where they took a seat on the concrete steps.

“Preston’s your name, right? I’m Daniel,” he said, extending his hand to shake.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Daniel.”

The man chucked at the boy’s formality, but he didn’t correct him.

“Well now, you can’t mail a letter without one of these. So you like airplanes, son?” he asked, handing a stamp to Preston, who eagerly fixed it to the envelope.

“Kind of. My dad is a pilot.”

“No kidding! Well, son, in that case, we may be in business. I don’t want to get your hopes up, but with a name and an occupation, we just might be able to find an address for your dad.”

“Really?”

“Sure! The only thing is …” The man called Daniel looked sideways at the boy. “I should ask … do you know if your mother’s ok with your looking for your dad? You know, there may be a reason she hasn’t told you where he is.”

“It’s ok. I know she misses him a lot.”

The man looked at the boy sympathetically. How did one explain to a child that it wasn’t always so simple?

“Well … then let’s take a look, shall we?”

Pulling out his phone, the man typed in the relevant information and studied the pages of results.

“I’m … I’m sorry, son. I shouldn’t have gotten your hopes up. It doesn’t mean he’s not out there, but I didn’t see anything about a pilot under that name.”

Preston, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his wrist, nodded. “It’s ok, Mr. Daniel. Thank you for looking anyway.”

“Sure, son. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help. I … I hope you … Well, I’m sure that wherever your dad is, he misses you very much.”

Preston simply nodded and turned to walk home, leaving the man called Daniel to his thoughts. After a few steps, however, the man noticed the boy turn around, walk to a trash bin, and throw away the envelope before resuming his journey home.

Watching the boy until he was out of sight, the man walked to the trash bin and picked the letter up off the top. He paused to run his thumb over the unpracticed handwriting—“Dad”—on the front of the envelope before carefully breaking the seal. Inside, a child’s drawing in colored pencils depicted a family of three: a mom, a dad, and a little boy. Next to the family was a little black dog, and all of them were standing in front of a white shingled house. Above the house were four simple words.

To: Dad
From: Preston

The man wiped a tear from his eye as he turned his attention to the mom. The kid wasn’t likely to grow up to be an artist, but he had drawn her red hair in just the right shade. If only, he thought, things were that simple.

2022

“You need help finding something?”

The thickly accented question came from the middle-aged gas station attendant. Leaning back in his chair as he scrolled absent-mindedly on his phone from behind clouded plexiglass, the attendant did not seem in a hurry to get up. Miles considered saying yes just to call the man’s bluff, but he didn’t want the extra attention. Besides, it was New Year’s Eve. He just wanted to get in and out.

“I’m good, man, thanks. Just looking around while my girl fills the car.”

The attendant briefly looked up from his phone with raised eyebrows, as if to take issue with the kid's possessive reference to his wife or girlfriend as "his girl," but he quickly shrugged and resumed scrolling.

Miles rolled his eyes. Old people were always stuck in their ways. And he knew Mia wouldn’t have minded. That’s what she’d been pestering him for, after all—to finally make her his girl. He’d started saving for a ring a few times, but something always came up—that summer’s water bill (who knew how much water a running toilet could use?), the new Play Station, the new TV that could actually show off the capabilities of the new Play Station … and a hundred little things beside that seemed to put him further behind than when he’d started. Not this year though—Miles was going to propose even if it meant putting a piece of string around her finger. Not that that was plan A, of course, he thought wryly. New Year’s resolutions weren’t really his thing—that was more Mia’s department. But Miles loved Mia, and more than proposing, he had resolved this year to be a better man.

Miles stopped on an aisle with stuffed animals, a dozen different kinds, all of which had the same adorably huge sparkling googly eyes. He picked up a bedazzled green dragon that made him think of Mia’s dragon tattoo on the small of her back and smiled. The smile was short lived. Twenty dollars. He set the dragon back down resentfully—just because Mia might accept a piece of string in place of a diamond didn’t mean he could waste money on garbage. She deserved the real thing. This was a new year and a chance to finally do things right.

And yet … he eyed the dragon thoughtfully. It could be nice to give Mia something small to tide her over while he saved enough for the ring she’d left clues for all over her browsing history. And so, with a quick look about the room, Miles casually picked up two stuffed toys in one hand and, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible as though he were simply considering the toys, slipped one dragon into his coat sleeve and placed the other back on the shelf. Then, walking away with an air of nonchalance, he stuck his hands in his coat pockets where he transferred the green dragon.

Upon moving the dragon to his pocket, Miles felt a pang of guilt—not so much for the gas station owner, whose pricing he viewed as tantamount to highway robbery, but more because he knew Mia didn’t like him to spend money on frivolous things—even if it was to give her a gift. Making his way to the checkout, he gave a visible shiver, as though by doing so he could shake off his guilt. He wondered what price he should say it was when Mia asked him (she always asked him), landing at last on four dollars, which he hoped would be cheap enough that she wouldn’t chide him, but expensive enough to be believable. He grabbed a box of gum and threw it on the counter.

“Just a pack of gum, please”

The attendant looked up from his phone and stood grudgingly.

“Three seventy-five.”

Miles balked. What was with the prices in this place?

“Here,” he said, handing the man a credit card.

“We don’t do cards for charges less than five dollars.”

Miles sighed through gritted teeth in protest before pulling out his wallet to dig for cash. On the up side, he was finding that any guilt he’d had was quickly vanishing.

“Thanks, man,” he said—not with a little irony. And with that, Miles pushed through the door and out into the cold where Mia was waiting on him.

The first indication Miles had that something was wrong was that the cold from outside never seemed to hit his face. Instead, the ding of the door opening had been accompanied by a rush of cold against the back of his hands and neck. Miles looked around in confusion. He was still inside the store, the parking lot now behind him.

The attendant must have moved at lightning speed because he was already reclined back in his chair and scrolling. Miles shook his head, shrugged, and exited once again into the cold.

Ding.

Miles looked around. The attendant hadn’t moved, but there he was—still inside, just like Miles. He stepped back to look at the door. It wasn’t a revolving door. Not that Miles had thought that it was. He just … what was going on?

Miles stuck his hands in his coat as he turned to go back once again through the door when he realized that the dragon was missing from his pocket. Presumably, it had fallen out of his pocket somewhere between the aisle and the register. He thought about forgetting the dragon and just getting the hell out of there, but then he thought about the audacity of paying $3.75 for gum, and he turned around. To Miles’ surprise, the dragon wasn’t on the floor.

“You need help finding something?”

The thickly accented question had once again come from the middle-aged gas station attendant who, still reclining in his chair, seemed uncaring as ever as he continued his scrolling.

The hell?

“No thanks, man. I just thought I dropped something.”

The attendant briefly looked up from his phone with raised eyebrows as though something about Miles’ claim didn’t add up, but he quickly shrugged and resumed scrolling. Dispensing with the nonchalance, Miles grabbed another dragon and stuffed it once again into his coat pocket.

He was about to go back through the exit but stopped short.

“Hey, there a trick to this door or something?”

Without getting up, the attendant shrugged.

“Just push.”

Miles rolled his eyes. This guy. But he pushed nonetheless, and with the bell chime of the door, he found himself looking once again into the interior of the convenience store. In a moment that marked a change in Miles that would last the rest of his life, the mounting tension of the past few minutes and the weight of his mounting suspicions that something was amiss flooded out of him.

“Ok, man, what the hell? Let me out!” Miles shouted at the attendant.

Bolting to his feet, the attendant looked alertly at Miles, his hands raised palm-side out in manner that said “Calm down, we can sort this out,” despite the alarm in his face.

“Just take it easy. I can help, yeah? Whatever it is, I’m sure we can make it ok. OK?”

“What? Is this about stuffed animal? Just take it! You can have it. Take it back and let me go.”

Miles reached into his coat pocket, but once again, the dragon wasn’t there.

Oh. Oh no.

Miles’ thoughts upon realizing the very beginnings of the truth were simple, but they carried the profound and mind-breaking understanding that whatever cosmic powers were at play, the world was now set against him. All Miles knew was that he needed to get out—to somehow reach Mia. Everything would be ok if he could only get to her. Again and again he threw his body at the doors, his madness increasing with each ding of the door chime as he was deposited right back where he’d started on the wrong side of the door.

“MIA!” Miles shouted her name louder than he’d shouted his entire life, banging against the glass of the door.

“MIIIAAA!”

“Hey! Sir, please don’t shout in here, yeah?” The attendant, who somehow had once again been calmly reclining, stood up from his chair to address this crazed shouting man. “Is there a way I can help you?” Miles heard a tone of compassion in his voice as he went on. “You…need me to call someone?”

Miles sank to his knees, not taking his eyes off of the parking lot.

“I left my phone in the car. I…I don’t know her number.”

“How ‘bout your phone? I could call that, yeah?”

Miles didn’t even bother answering. As a habit, Mia never remembered to charge her phone, and one of the quiet ways he loved her was to plug up her phone even when his own battery was dying.

“I’m sorry, buddy,” said the attendant. “I don’t know what you’re going through, but whatever it is, I’m sorry. If you’re here to buy something, I’m happy to help. Otherwise, if you don’t mind doing your shouting outside next time…” The attendant shrugged apologetically and smiled, like they had an understanding between them.

Miles laughed at the irony in spite of the tear on his cheek.

“I can see her right there,” he said softly. “She’s just…waiting for me.”

Miles hadn’t really been talking to the attendant, but the man leaned over the counter to look through the glass door towards the parking lot and nodded as though he understood.

“Go talk to her, buddy. Tell her you’re sorry—that always works. You’ll be ok, yeah?”

But Miles didn’t move. From the window, he could see the shadow of Mia’s head in the driver’s seat, waiting for the car to finish filling up. He sat there for an age watching Mia, willing her to come inside. He reached out for her, placing his hands on the cold glass until several inches of fog had formed around them. Suddenly, he shot up, his eyes wide, and he looked at the attendant with a new light in his eyes.

“You could go out there and get her for me!”

The attendant looked uncomfortable as his friendly disposition faded away. He shook his head.

“No, buddy, are you crazy? I can’t leave the store unattended. If you remember that number, I’ll make the phone call for you, but I’m not leaving this station until I close up tonight.”

Miles looked back out at Mia. Why wasn’t she coming in to look for him? How long had he been in here? Twenty minutes? He looked uncertainly at the door and nudged it open. A cold draft poured through the crack and made Mile’s eyes water. He looked back at the attendant, who, still standing, was looking at Miles with pity.

“Hey, you got another door in this place? Anything out back?”

The attendant shook his head. “Not for you, buddy. Nothing personal. I just can’t be giving out keys like that.”

Miles didn’t have the heart to even be annoyed at this guy anymore. He thought pensively for a minute before, screwing up his courage, he pushed once more through the glass door.

Ding.

“GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!”

—————————————

It had been weeks since Miles had walked through the door. He’d killed the attendant on the first night of this loop and had been living on the food and bottled drinks from the station ever since. On that first night—the very first night—when there had still been a fire in him, he had wrestled and tied up the attendant, whereupon he’d taken the keys to try various exits. Each time he passed the threshold, he found himself thrown back in, time reset. There were multiple locked doors and windows leading to the outside, so Miles began finding more efficient ways to shorten the scuffle for the keys between himself and the attendant until it really wasn’t a scuffle at all. In the end, he found himself resetting the room just to have someone he could take his anger out on, to hear the crunch of the fire extinguisher breaking the attendant’s skull.

He tried getting clever—he’d lost one of their scuffles on purpose so that the attendant would call the police. They’d marched right through the front doors and arrested Miles, but when they marched him back out, he found himself still inside—the attendant seated to his left, scrolling, and Mia in the parking lot behind him.

He wasn’t sure why she never came for him. He wondered if she was somehow stuck too, trapped in an infinite hell loop that separated her from everything she loved. He hated thinking that she might be going through the same thing, but, in his lowest moments, the idea that really tormented Miles was that she was free and had left him behind simply because she had a chance to. Would things have been different if he hadn’t put off getting her that ring? The question hurt to think about.

Miles thought about going back through the door again just to see Mia one last time, but he wasn’t sure that he would be able to handle it—seeing her and knowing that he would never see her again. The idea of giving her the chance to walk in this time only to have her leave all over again…it was enough to torment Miles into madness.

He’d spent this last day preparing—pouring motor oil over the tiled floors, placing bottles of accelerants in key locations… He had been avoiding getting a lighter, but the time had come. Making his way to the wall of cigarettes and lighters behind the plexiglass, he tried not to look at the attendant’s decaying body that he’d shoved into a corner against the checkout counter.

Miles quickly found that setting fire to a building of metal and linoleum was more difficult to burn down than he’d expected. It seemed that even in his final act of rebellion against it, the universe mocked him. But he had time, and he had learned patience.

As he watched the tongues of the flames lapping up the walls all around him, he wondered briefly if he shouldn’t reset—make a mad dash through the door and rethink things—chat with the attendant, wait a little longer for Mia, hold a loop of string up to the window. But there was no purpose in it. He hadn’t been stuck in this loop to learn a lesson or to become a better person. He simply was stuck, and there was no moving forward and no moving back—like a video game that’s frozen, leaving you with no alternative but to turn it off. There was no purpose to any of this, and that lack of meaning made the flames feel hotter, the smoke burn his lungs more cruelly, and the release of death that much sweeter.

Ding.

2021

My whole life, dreams have eluded me. I know I have had them, but only because I am so well acquainted with that maddening sensation of feeling my mind, still feeble from waking, grasp vainly at the dream I had known so intimately just moments before. I may as well try to catch smoke in my hands. On my therapist’s advice, I began keeping a journal and pen by my bedside (this journal and pen, in fact) to record these dreams “while they’re still fresh,” but after one attempt, I knew even before the pen touched the paper that it was a futile exercise. The harder I tried to recall it, the more completely my mind was wiped clean.

Thus imagine my astonishment last night when I “awoke” in a dreamworld unlike anything I have seen in my waking life. Is this how other people dream? I don’t know. Before me lay a landscape dotted with crystalline lakes, lush with grasses and wildflowers. Craggy mountains rose majestically above the horizon all around me, wholly engulfing this little kingdom my unconscious mind had created for me to explore. Indeed, if not for the wild, otherworldly colors that saturated this world, I might’ve thought myself in verdant Ireland or some pristine Icelandic prairie. Heading in no particular direction, I began to walk.

I had forgotten about this life—my real life. I still knew that my name was Bryden, but of the fact that I code for a living from this cramped, lonely apartment with slashes and dots for company, I had no memory. In hindsight, a relief.

I therefore did not find it strange that a sword and shield should be slung across my back or a knife on my belt, but what I would need them for, I had no idea. Wondrous as this world was, I did have strange feelings looking to the edges of the horizon. There were shadows behind the hills that held some abstract dark promise. Yet each time I came to another crest expecting to lift the veil of this mysterious darkness, I found no trace of it. Even so, I was gradually (or was it suddenly?) overcome with a primal certainty that monsters lurked in this land. I continued searching.

I came to a towering forest along the edge of the prairie that I had not seen when I first arrived. The journey, I believe, should have taken days, and perhaps it did—time seemed to flow strangely in my dream.

I peered into the trees. Like time, light seemed to play by different rules because I found I could only see about twenty feet into the forest past which it became as dark as night. Except that wasn’t completely true. Just beyond the blanket of darkness, something light—emissive almost—lay on the forest floor. Thinking of monsters, I unsheathed my sword and approached it with my jaw set, sword gripped so tightly that I can almost feel it in my hands even now. I had almost reached it when I heard something else—an evil, rasping breath hovered above the light bundle. I couldn’t see it, but I knew that this monster, this nightmare, was about to feed on the thing at my feet.

On instinct, I swung my sword and landed some kind of blow to the creature. With a breathy gasp, I heard it step back. It shrieked at me in defiance, and I prepared to swing again, but then I heard it turn and run deeper into the forest until there was nothing but silence. As it faded away, so did the blackness. Light began to filter through the canopy above, allowing me to see what I had rescued from that dark fate, but what I saw, I could not believe. The bundle on the ground was, in fact, a woman. It was the woman. Hannah, for whom no day passes that I do not think of her. My Hannah, whom I thought I’d never see again. And then—perhaps it was the shock, but, I awoke. Awoke into this world, this apartment, and I don’t think I’ve ever resented it more. I hardly dare to hope that I might go back, but I know this: whatever darkness I might find there, it would be worth it to see her face once more.

—————————————

Last night, I returned to the strange dreamworld, and, what’s more, Hannah was still there! I “woke” up with her by my side, running her fingers along my arm in a way that would certainly have made the real Hannah blush. It hurts to admit even in writing, but in our brief almost-courtship, she had never been able to muster the same love for me that I had for her, and when she left everything—left me—behind, her leaving created a cavity in me that has never healed. Yet here she was, the Hannah of my dreams lying by my side, smiling at me like she used to when I fell in love with her.

“I’ve missed you,” I said, and although a sadness touched her smile, she did not otherwise respond. What else was there to say? Could I expect her to account for her other self? We stood and began walking together hand in hand away from the woods and into the sunlit prairie where I had awakened on my previous visit. We did not talk for a long time. We didn’t need to. Walking by her side in this place was…how else to put it? It was enough.

At length, however, we encountered a sight that ended our quiet bliss. It was a dry river bed that ran across the prairie like a scar, and nothing grew within fifty feet on either side. “What is this?” I asked her. “I didn’t see this last time.” “It’s new,” she answered. “Like the thing you rescued me from, it arrived very recently.” This revelation worried me. I hesitated to ask, but I had to know—“Hannah, what happens when I am gone. Are you…will you be safe?” That same sadness I’d seen earlier touched her eyes. “Safe…” she repeated. “You mean from the nightmares?”

‘The nightmares…’ It felt like a summons. And, indeed, even as the word reverberated through my brain, I saw a sight in the distance that filled me with dread. Gathering in the sky above the dry riverbed, unnaturally dark clouds were coming together in a kind of superstorm before pouring all at once into the river and rushing towards us like angry rapids. We felt its approach through tremors in the ground and heard what sounded like thousands of cockroaches writhing angrily together, making me sick to my stomach. I pulled Hannah behind me and used my free hand to unsheathe my sword. “Stay behind me,” I said. She gripped my hand tight.

In another moment, the river storm was upon us, pulling light away from us like a black hole. Like the creature in the forest, I perceived that the storm had form and a body. I can’t explain exactly how, but in that dreamworld, it was both big as a skyscraper yet small enough to see eye to eye. It lashed out with one of its inky limbs not at me but at Hannah. I brought my sword down through the darkness, but not before she was knocked back, a searing cut across her forehead. The strike had cost it, however, and I listened with satisfaction to the creature’s howl of rage as its severed limb landed at my feet. “LEAVE US ALONE!” I cried. I set my stance to defend against another attack, but I was astonished instead to hear a strangled reply that could only have come from the nightmare.

“Leave you alone? You brought usssss here. We are you.” I shivered at these words, and not only because of the unnerving, rasping breath that uttered them. “Let usssss take her,” it demanded. “Let usssss take her, and you will be free!”

“I’d be in agony!” I cried, squaring myself between Hannah and this nightmare.

“Truth isss agony, but it will ssset you free.” I bristled at the allusion.

“You’re wrong. Being here with her is the only place I’m free!” Hannah’s hand squeezed mine tighter.

“No, thisssss isss your prison.”

With a mighty roar, I pulled my hand away from Hannah and charged the monster. For a moment, I was the one as big as a skyscraper, and my sword cut clean through its neck. Almost immediately, the monster lost its shape and pooled into an inky liquid that seeped into the earth, leaving no trace of it. Sheathing my sword, I walked back to where I’d left Hannah, whose hand was raised to the laceration on her forehead.

The departed clouds revealed an effervescent sunset that did not disappear, and in the time until I reawakened, the two of us spent many happy minutes, hours, and days together in that spot.

—————————————

I think I’m beginning to understand this dreamworld, more purgatory than paradise. For five nights, I have returned to Hannah only to find the world in further decay and the monsters more plentiful. Although I have kept her from further harm, the scar on her forehead has not healed and her vivacity is fading. And yet, although there is a sadness in her, I can tell that she loves me as deeply as I love her. But I am beginning to admit to myself that the monsters were telling the truth. I did bring them with me. They are my nightmares—manifestations of my fears, my self-doubts… But they are also something else.

—————————————

How many weeks ago did I first see that lush sunlit prairie, now a cracked and barren wasteland? Night after night I conquer them, push them back, their essences seeping into the earth, poisoning the land. Night after night, they return. I realize now that I have been at war with myself, that the nightmares want Hannah because I want Hannah. The harder I fight for this life here with her, the more I can see it slipping from me. But how can I just move on? I begin to see that my pursuit of her is the prison the nightmare spoke of. But if they take her from me…is it really any different?

—————————————

This will be my final entry. I now realize the end has been inevitable from the start. I “awoke” last night beside my Hannah—desaturated and careworn, but no less sweet to me for it. In the pre-dawn light, I asked if she would follow me. Together, we made for the mountains and began the steep climb. The sun, sensing the end, would wait for us.

At length, we reached a lush, beautiful overlook that knew nothing of the poisoned landscape below. We sat letting our legs dangle over the ledge as the sun obligingly peeked over the horizon. “Hannah, I love you.” She responded with that smile I adore. “This has been…well, a dream. If there were a way to be with you—to truly be with you—there is no army of nightmares I would not fight to do it. I could have stayed here forever. I’m scared to go on without you, but I have to try.” I gently ran my thumb across the cut on her forehead. “However you remember, remember that I loved you.”

And having kissed her, I stood on the ledge and jumped. Soaring through the air towards the prairie, I spotted what I sought—a thousand little black holes roaming the wasteland in search of an obsession, but they would not find her. My landing shook the world and a thousand breathy rasps turned and screeched at me, “Give her to ussssss!”

“You cannot have her,” I shouted, unsheathing my sword, “But I’m letting her go.” And casting aside my sword and shield, I walked into that writhing storm of pain and regret, arms open wide.

“Embracccceeeeeee usssssssssss.”

2022

“Shhhhh! Careful!”

Kayla, whose body was already halfway through a downstairs window of Beau’s house, looked up at him in alarm.

“What? What do you mean, ‘shhhhh?’ You said your parents were gone!”

“They are,” he whispered. “But the camera in the foyer sends them alerts when it hears voices. Hence entering through the window instead of the door. Hence shhhhhh!”

Kayla rolled her eyes as the slender, sandy-haired boy helped pull her the rest of the way through. Walking backwards, Beau held a quieting finger up to a smile. Pulling her playfully into the kitchen, he opened a high cabinet, and Kayla’s mouth fell open at the sea of liquor bottles.

“Holy … You weren’t kidding. They really do have a lot.”

“Yeah,” whispered Beau, who, having selected and unstoppered a bottle of rum, drank a mouthful of the dark liquid. He screwed up his face and shook his head like a dog shaking off water. “The crazy thing is that they don’t even drink anymore. Here.”

Kayla grabbed the bottle and took a deep swig, coughed, and imitated Beau’s head shake. She'd never had alcohol before but had heard of its supposed ability to calm nerves, and she was certainly nervous about that evening. She swigged again before passing the bottle back.

The teens tiptoed out of the kitchen, up a flight of stairs, and into a room with a king size bed that made Kayla raise her eyebrows.

“Ok, we can talk normally up here,” a grinning Beau announced.

Kayla looked around the ornately decorated room.

“Wait, is this your parents’ bedroom? Why aren’t we in yours?”

“Well, mine’s downstairs, but it’s by the foyer, so the camera might pick up our voices. You can’t hear anything from up here though.”

“Oh. Well … ok.” Kayla took another swig from the rum, which was starting to give her an airy kind of feeling. She thought her vision seemed enhanced somehow, as if someone had turned the sharpness slider all the way up. Perhaps it was a placebo, but she was relieved to find that the rum seemed to be helping her nerves. Kayla glanced around and picked up an expensive-looking painted glass vase from atop a dresser.

“Wooow, your parents’ stuff is so nice!”

“Haha yeah … That’s kind of one of my dad’s favorite pieces though, so maybe just put that back.”

“Oh. Oops.” She pronounced the “oops” with extra o’s as she replaced the vase haphazardly.

Kayla was basking in the silliness quickly taking the place of her nerves, and she felt little restraint as she began opening drawers, pulling out undergarments with a giggle. Beau looked bemused but didn’t stop her.

“Uh, whatcha doing? You know I have to clean all that up before my parents get back in town, right?”

“Shhhhh. I’m snooping.”

“Riiight.” Beau put the cap back on the rum. “So I think we’re all done with the rum. There’s a delay from when you drink it and when it gets in your bloodstream, so the sensation’s only gonna keep building.”

“Aww. But I like the sensation. But ok, I’ll trust you,” she said before brightening. “Come on, help me out. I’m looking for your parents’ sex things.”

“Ew, gross. I don’t want to find that.”

“Whoa, look at this!”

Kayla delicately held up a shiny black pistol she’d pulled from the bedside table.

“Whoa! Kayla?” Beau used a balanced tone you might adopt to coax a toddler into handing over scissors. “Any chance you want to put that back? Maybe? Please?”

“Sorry,” she apologized, showing more presence of mind as she returned the gun to the drawer. “Why the eff do your parents have this here anyway?”

Beau shrugged, “It’s my mom’s. It’s for break-ins, and I’m definitely not allowed to touch it.”

“Riiight.” Kayla rolled her eyes, but quickly regretted it—Beau was now looking decidedly uncomfortable on the other side of the bed. “Well … anyway, forget it. I shouldn’t have snooped.” He didn’t respond other than to shrug. Wanting very much to shift the mood, Kayla tried to adopt a fiery look and bit her bottom lip. “So … should we do this?”

Beau looked up, a little surprised, but he couldn’t suppress a smile.

“What, just like that?”

Kayla kicked off her shoes suggestively. Crawling towards him on all fours across the bed, she leaned over and whispered, “Just … like … that,” and lightly nibbled the edge of his ear.

Beau closed his eyes in anticipation and melted beneath her. Not bothering to remove clothes, the two wrapped themselves in each other’s limbs. They kissed passionately, and it wasn’t long before their hands were exploring, searching out those coveted prizes—holy grails of hormonal youths.

As Beau slipped a hand down past her belly button and under the elastic of Kayla’s shorts, she reached out of habit to pull his hand away—a much-practiced tradition of their physical relationship. Typically, there was seemingly no end to the number of such attempts Beau was willing to make, but as she pulled his hand back this time, she felt his body tense a little, and she realized that he was no longer kissing her back.

“What’s wrong?”

Beau lifted himself into a seated position and shrugged.

“Is it because I stopped you? That was just out of habit.” She grabbed his hand and put it over her shorts. “It’s ok—you can touch me there.”

Beau pulled his hand from hers. Kayla looked like she’d been slapped. His eyes moved to her, around the room, and then back down.

“Maybe now’s not the right time,” he shrugged again.

Kayla scoffed.

“For real? This whole thing was your idea.”

“I don’t know … maybe it was the gun; maybe it’s the alcohol …” he glanced over at a family portrait. “Maybe it’s being in my parents’ bedroom? I’m just in a weird headspace.”

“Fine.” Kayla stood up and grabbed her shoes. “Whatever.”

Beau looked at her in surprise.

“Look,” she said irritably, “I’m gonna walk home, and you can just sit up here and mope or whatever you’d rather be doing without me.”

“What? I didn’t say—Kayla, wait.”

But, despite an intoxicated unsteadiness, Kayla was already halfway down the stairs. Beau jumped out of the bed, hoarsely whispering her name as he bounded down the staircase after her.

“Kayla! Wait, please!”

She’d reached the kitchen before turning around, allowing him to catch up and grab her hands. He sighed deeply before continuing in a quiet whisper.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he said, relieved to see her hard look soften a little. “I just got in my own—”

CRASH!

The teens looked around in alarm at the sound of broken glass, instinctively moving closer together.

“Beau? What was that?”

“It … it sounded like someone broke a window.”

“Oh my God.” Kayla covered a gasp with her hands, her eyes already glistening as she sank to the floor. Her heart was beating so loud that she could hardly hear. Why had she drunk all that rum? “Beau, call 911.”

“Hold on.” Though whispering, Beau tried to sound firm and in control, “We don’t know anything yet. We can’t call 911 just because we heard a scary noise.”

“Beau, someone is literally breaking into this house!”

“Let’s just—everything’s gonna be fine. Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna go to the bedroom—my mom’s gun’s in there. We’ll be safe. Everything’s … everything is going to be fine.”

“Like hell am I going upstairs. The sound came from there!”

Beau shook his head, pointing out of a doorway in the kitchen “It sounded like it came from my dad’s office. We’ll be safe upstairs.”

Kayla shook her head resolutely. Beau looked back and forth between Kayla and the bedroom before making up his mind.

“Ok, I’m going for the gun. Stay here, and don’t make a sound.”

“Beau, no!”

“I’ll be right back. Just stay low and wait here.”

With that, Beau disappeared, leaving Kayla utterly alone.

Tears fell unbidden from her eyes as Kayla looked around the kitchen. She felt that everything before her was humming with a vibrant intensity. It was as though the world were vibrating at such a frequency as to create the illusion of stillness. How long had she stood there? She tried listening for the sound of Beau on the stairs or of creaking floorboards, but it was no use. All she could hear was the overwhelming thud of her own heartbeat. Beau should be back by now. Or had he just left? As long as she stood still, the flow of time seemed unmeasurable to Kayla, and she determined that only by moving could she take her fate into her own hands.

Kayla’s stomach turned as she crawled on all fours, inching around the kitchen island until she could reach the knife block. She grabbed a carving knife and sat against the cabinets, clutching the knife to her chest with both hands as she heaved. She wanted to throw up. Where was Beau? Should she call out for him? No. He’s ok, she thought. But was he? She had been sure the glass breaking had come from the direction of the stairs. Could he have been ambushed? Everything’s gonna be fine, she repeated Beau’s words to herself. Maybe he had to load the gun? Did that take a long time? Kayla didn’t know.

All she knew was that illusion of stillness was breaking down, the room spinning around her as she tumbled helplessly like sheets in a dryer. The kitchen was too big. She needed somewhere confined to stop the spinning—a bathroom, a closet … a pantry! On the other side of the kitchen, she could see her haven. She just had to move. She just had to—

Bang!

Bang!

Kayla screamed. The gunshots had frozen time. Two shots. Beau was dead. He’d shot first, then been shot. And she would be next. Would it be long? She needed to hide. She needed to call 911.

Kayla did her best to crawl to the pantry. At the sound of gunshots, the room had stopped spinning around her, but she now seemed to be tumbling through it of her own accord. Holding the knife in one hand, she reached with her other to pull out her phone. It fell to the floor, and she couldn’t seem to pick it up. Why wouldn’t her hands work? She pushed it along in front of her for an interminable amount of time before reaching the pantry, closing the door behind her. The killer would find her soon. How much time did she have?

Kayla didn’t bother fumbling to pick her phone up. It seemed to be all she could do just to punch 911 and press her ear to the phone on the floor.

“911, what is the nature of your emergency?”

Shit! Why hadn’t she realized she would have to speak?

“Hello? There’s an intruder in my boyfriend’s house. He’s been shot. I’m—”

“Ma’am, can you give me the address? Ma’am?”

But Kayla wasn’t listening. With her face to the ground, she felt it—the footsteps that stopped on the other side of the door. She was about to die, but she would die resisting. It took everything she had to fight the inebriation, but she pulled herself to her feet, still clutching the carving knife. The handle turned. Kayla screamed, instinctively closing her eyes as the door opened.

“Kayla? It’s … wait—”

Beau stepped back, a shocked look on his face as his hand fumbled for the carving knife in his side. Slowly, he dropped to the floor, Kayla screaming again—this time in horror over her mistake.

Kayla was in no condition to make her way upstairs, but if she had, she might have found the source of the confusion—the broken glass vase on the floor, which had fallen after a time, as things do, after she’d set it down precariously on the edge of the dresser. Beau, in a dark twist of fate, hadn’t noticed the shattered glass on his father’s side of the bedroom. Instead, he’d retrieved his mother’s loaded gun and, inexperienced with firearms, discharged it twice in his search for the safety.

Downstairs, Kayla sank beside Beau, placing her hands uselessly against his side as the operator repeated her questions, “Ma’am? Ma’am, are you still there?”

2021

Author’s note: Fun fact—if I had to let someone judge me on a single story, I would pick this one. Also, the title is a silly and playful reference to Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See.

“Gerald, would you please grab two eggs and a box of butter from the fridge?”

Gerald was six.

“Yes ma’am.”

Gerald, who was—despite his best efforts to live up to the maturity implied by his name—still only half the height needed to reach these perishables, dragged over a kitchen barstool and clambered up to retrieve the eggs and butter for his mother. He paused just before closing the refrigerator, his eyes having landed on the milk.

“Here you go, Mum. Um, can you pour me a glass of milk, please?”

“Sure, sweetie,” she said, and, having transferred the items to a space on the counter where she was shortly to prepare the cookie dough, she pulled out the milk and poured Gerald a glass. He set it aside.

From his barstool vantage point, Gerald watched and encouraged his mother as she expertly whisked together all of the ingredients for the cookies that were a Christmas Eve tradition in their household. One might have assumed these cookies were intended for Santa, but Gerald, on the advice of his parents, didn’t believe in such things. The cookies were purely ritualistic—a holdover of his mother’s own childhood traditions—for Gerald’s was a modern family, and his parents did not hold with telling lies to their children, whatever the reason. And so, on Christmas Eve, they made cookies and left none for Santa.

Of course, Gerald had complete faith in his parents, and they had never yet given him reason to doubt their wisdom. His confidence was without question—absolute. Although, he did find there were times when, despite his certainty… it was difficult to say. Children are nothing if not outspoken about their opinions on things, and Gerald was finding that at school, his seemed far and away the minority opinion. Not that he could be so easily seduced by something as banal as peer pressure. It was just that the only other child willing to dismiss the legend of Santa so readily was a new kid—a little atheist boy named Samir, and Gerald wasn’t certain he wanted him as his only ally.

When he first experienced these doubts—no, not doubts. More like follow-up questions—Gerald had decided to seek clarity on the matter from his father, who seemed to live in the family’s reading chair and was, therefore, an authority on most subjects that could be found in a book.

“Dad?” he had asked tentatively, thinking how to frame the question as nonspecifically as possible. “How do you know if something is real?”

“Mmm? If something is real?” Even though he was sitting in his armchair, his father still had to look down at Gerald over the top rims of his reading glasses. “That’s a pretty big question.”

His father had looked up thoughtfully at the corner of the ceiling, a practice Gerald had learned not to interrupt.

“Well, I suppose the easiest way is to look at it—to get your hands on it, or even taste it if you have to. In fact, they used to test whether gold coins were real by biting on them to make sure they weren’t actually gold-plated lead, which although heavy like gold, is so soft that your teeth would leave a dent in it.”

Gerald wasn’t sure biting Santa was an option.

“Ok. But what if you can’t see it?”

His father had looked at Gerald as though thinking very hard.

“That one is a bit tougher. There are things we know are real even though we can’t see them. We can’t see air, for instance.”

“But we can feel air, right? Isn’t that like seeing it?”

His father laughed.

“Very true! Well, how about this? There’s something in space called a black hole. It’s a collapsed star where the gravity is so strong, light can’t bounce off of it or shine from it, which means it’s invisible. They’re totally black, just like the space around it, so we have no way to see them or feel them, and they’re so far away that you could travel for hundreds of millions of years and never reach one.”

“Then how do we know they exist?” Gerald had asked skeptically.

“Precisely the question! The answer is that we know they’re real because of the effect they have on the things around them! We cannot see them directly, but their gravity is so strong, it influences the stars and gasses close to them, and we can see those. It’s like knowing it’s a windy day without going outside because you see the trees swaying through the window. So even when we can’t see something, we can know it’s real because it has an impact on the things around it.”

Gerald had thought for a moment before simply saying, “Ok. Thanks, Dad.”

It wasn’t that his father’s answer wasn’t helpful; Gerald had thought the answer quite good. So good, in fact, that he was tempted to drop the matter entirely simply because a man who knew all that about black holes in outer space millions of light-years away would certainly not be mistaken about the existence of Santa Claus. However, there was still the matter of his classmates’ overwhelming opposition, as well as his skepticism of his ally, who was new and who was an atheist, and whose name was Samir. And so, with the balance of these things in mind, Gerald had decided to settle the thing in the manner suggested by his father: he would stay up and see for himself.

In the time it took for his parents to go to bed on Christmas Eve, Gerald felt like he might have completed several round trips to one of these “black holes.” But, at long last, they retreated to their bedroom, and Gerald emerged from his.

He wasn’t really sure how to summon Santa, if that’s what one did, but he tried to go about the thing properly—if Santa didn’t appear, he wanted to be absolutely sure that it wasn’t because of some technicality of failed preparation. Thus, he had stolen his father’s largest and thickest wool socks, and with thumbtacks, pinned them on the mantle to serve as Christmas stockings. Using the platter of leftover cookies and a TV tray, Gerald set about making a handsome display conveniently close to the fireplace, and he even arranged the cookies so that the edge of each one overlapped elegantly with the next. With a finishing touch, he added the milk, which was a simple matter of retrieving the glass his mother had poured for him earlier that evening.

Gerald wondered how long he’d been waiting. He hadn’t thought to check the clock at the outset of his vigil, but it was well past midnight when he began wondering at what time he should declare the experiment a success and Santa a fraud. The seconds ticked away, and the sounds of the house seemed to be amplified in his ears. More than once he thought he heard something from inside the chimney, but nothing happened. The last time, he even went to look up into it but found the flue closed. He didn’t remember any rules about flues being left open or shut, but as with the hanging of the stockings, he decided to open it, just to be safe. It creaked loudly, much louder than he’d expected, and cold air poured down from the opening and flooded the room.

Gerald’s eyes watered against the frigid draft as he peeked up the chimney. Blinking away tears, he thought he could see something. In fact, he was sure of it. It was difficult to see properly, but he was certain this wasn’t Santa. He didn’t know how Santa would fit down the chimney—probably some magic suited to the task—but Gerald was quite sure that Santa would take up the entire cavity if and when he finally descended. Whatever this not-Santa was, it appeared to be stirring, as if Gerald’s gaze had awakened it. Then, much to Gerald’s alarm, something like legs slowly unfolded from the thing’s body, and it began to crawl down the fireplace.

Gerald backed away from the opening, conscious not to turn his back on the creature whose legs were now blooming from the fireplace the way a rose opens its petals in a time-lapse, but black—blacker than any black Gerald had ever seen. He knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was a black hole, and no amount of light could ever escape it.

“You… Um, you’re not Santa… are you?” Gerald asked bravely, with as much strength as his small voice could muster.

True, this creature was not red, round, and jolly—now that it had fully emerged and risen to its full height, it most reminded Gerald of an enormous stick bug—but on the other hand, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t planned on meeting a stranger in the chimney that evening, and it seemed rather a strong coincidence that something else should be making use of the chimney on Christmas Eve.

“… In a way.”

It spoke slowly, its voice like a whisper, and Gerald couldn’t decide if his surprise would have been greater had the creature not spoken. It didn’t look like anything he’d seen speak before, yet the fact that it could seemed somehow… natural.

“If you don’t mind my saying, you don’t really look like Santa.”

“I am not.”

“Oh,” Gerald said in surprise, “but you said—”

“I exist because of your Santa, but I am not him. He is not him. He is not anything.”

“Oh, I see.” Gerald said, although he didn’t. “Then…” Gerald trailed off, unsure of what to say next, and to fill the silence, he opted for common politeness. “Uh, I’ve saved some milk and cookies for… well… I don’t know if you eat these, but… you can have some… if you like.” And Gerald held out the tray.

“Yesssss,” it hissed, “I am hungry.”

It was over quickly, which was nice for Gerald, who would have been sad about his fate. Sad, and not a little confused as well. For as smart as Gerald was, his schooling as a six year old was yet deficient on the subject of evolution, the principle by which this creature’s species had adapted through the centuries to lay dormant in chimneys, hibernating undetected throughout the year, waiting for the one night when the myth of St. Nicholas would prompt children to sneak from their beds and lay in wait by their chimneys.

He might have reflected, had he lived, that his father’s proclamation on the nature of what is true was not quite complete. For though we may pinpoint a black hole by its pull on its surroundings, until we can see or feel it, it will always be unknown to us. Except to those it swallows up—and perhaps even then—its true nature will remain a mystery, certain only to be different than we have imagined.

2021

A brief trigger warning for my family and other sensitive souls—in addition to some strong language for comedic effect this story is, for a lack of a better way of putting it, gross.

“God-fuckin’ damn it! Shee-it!”

The blasphemous words, in all their profane glory, exploded through the woods like a firework for all the neighboring campers to hear. Gary winced and looked apologetically at his wife, Jen.

“You should say something to them, Gary.”

Gary looked doubtfully at the camp a dozen yards away. Evidently, the man who had shouted the string of curses had sliced a finger while trying to open what must have been his twelfth beer by using one hand to wedge the edge of the bottle cap against the bark of a tree and then slamming his other hand down on the top of the bottle to pry the cap. Gary recognized the brand of beer and rolled his eyes. It was a twist cap. The other man was still laughing drunkenly at his injured friend.

“Please, Gary? Just go talk to them. For heaven’s sake, our kids are here.”

Gary groaned inwardly. Jen was a wonderful woman, but she was… sensitive. And if she confessed that her plan for educating their two children on the birds and bees was to hand over a letter on their respective wedding nights—a tasteful letter touching upon just the essentials of the business—suffice it to say, Gary would not be surprised. As for strong language, if Jen had her way, the children of the world would live and die without ever hearing so much as a “piss” or a “crap,” let alone a “fuck” or a “sheeit.”

“I… could talk to them I guess,” he mumbled.

“Well, get over there then.”

“Ok, ok, I’m… I’ll…”

But Gary didn’t know what he would do. He tried thinking of something to say, but the harder he thought, the blanker his mind became. Propelled by the eyes of his wife, he was standing, then walking, then—to his horror—found himself a mere arm’s length from these men who had fallen into perplexed silence at his awkward approach.

“… Can we help you, sir?”

“Hi, yes. How are you?”

They nodded.

“Good. Yes, well… You see, we… We wondered—well, my wife, she wondered. See, our kids are here, for a little family vacation, and we—my wife—she, she wanted to see if you could maybe keep some of the spicier profanity down. A bit. For…for the kids, you know. And… for my wife…”

The drunken cussers looked amusedly at each other, and the man who had cut his thumb replied to Gary with mock sincerity.

“Yessir, we hear ya. We’ll keep it down—Scout’s honor. Y’all enjoy your vacation now.”

“Wow, we really appreciate it, fellas! Thanks, and sorry for the bother.” With a diminutive bow of the head, Gary turned back towards his family. He knew his performance had lacked… finesse. But despite their mockery, Gary believed the men would keep their word, and he felt a deep pride in his accomplishment. Unfortunately, the injured cusser didn’t trouble to keep his voice quite low enough as Gary walked away.


“Shit, if his wife wanted us to pipe down so bad, maybe the bitch shoulda come over to tell us herself.”

Gary froze, face rigid, ears hot with the men’s laughter. He’d barely registered that he was back at his family’s tent until his wife interrupted his thoughts.

“Hey, how’d it go?”

“Hmm? Oh,” he said, coming back to himself, “they said they’d keep it down.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

“Well, thanks for doing that. I’m proud of you for standing up to them.”

“Yeah… no problem.”

But it was a problem. It was a big problem. ‘Thanks for standing up to them?’ He hadn’t stood up to them. But he would. By God, before the day was out, he would.

“Hey, Jen? Any leftover coffee from this morning?”

“It’s in the van.” She raised an eyebrow. “Pretty late for coffee though. Dinner’s in an hour. Won’t it keep you up?”

“Well, I think I just need a pick-me-up. Might even make a bit more.”

Thermos in hand, Gary stared at the cusser camp with blazing intensity, keeping eye contact even when he tilted his head back to drink the warm coffee, which he swigged with the vigor and purpose of an alcoholic.

As Gary drank his coffee, the cussers drank through their stockpile of beers until, running out, they opened the bourbon. Gary smiled.

“Honey?” His brain vaguely registered that Jen was speaking to him. “It’s time for bed.”

“You go ahead. Guess you were right about the coffee,” he smiled, shrugging apologetically. “Can’t sleep.”

She rolled her eyes but smiled back and whispered goodnight as she zipped herself into the tent. He was alone. The time had come.

Rising, Gary walked to the cusser’s camp, unzipped their tent, and entered. There they both lay, their filthy mouths agape in drunkenness. Gary smiled as he felt the coffee roiling through him, shaking his bowels. Quietly, he moved to a squatting position, pulling his pants to his ankles. Holding one hand behind him to catch the deposits, Gary concentrated on pushing. He needed only two—a “shee-it” apiece for each foul mouth whose tongues were unworthy to even say his wife’s name.

One.

Two.

Gary gently placed his shit into their open mouths, pushing until their gag reflexes were activated. Yet through gurgles and chokes, neither man awoke from his drunken sleep. But in a few hours, they would. Would they understand when they did? Would they change their ways? No. And that was ok. Gary wasn’t here to teach lessons.

As Gary wiped up, his face twisted in disgust at the sound of smacking—the man who’d called Jen “bitch” had worked the shit up from the back of his throat and now was gnawing at it like a cow chewing cud. He knew he would need to move his family at first light, and they would want to know why. But he didn’t need to worry about that right now. Leaving the spluttering men behind, Gary departed for his own camp knowing he could rest for a few hours, satisfied in a job well done, his family’s honor defended.

2021