A Will To Live

The only way one of my kind can truly die, is to want more than anything to live. This is a cruel joke played on the immortals; a punishment imposed by pitiless gods. I’ve died so many times and have risen so many times that even the idea of wanting this life anymore seems beyond my capacity. In order to finally rest, I am supposed to find something inside me that will desire life more than anything—to replicate the same sense of purpose and joy that I had before it was all erased by my first death and first resurrection so many years ago. It is impossible not to become filled with anger and bitterness, to always have but a brief taste of that final peace only to be wrenched back to the drudgery of rain, of mud, of stinking mortals, of more of the same. After seven hundred years, there is no more room for anticipation and idealism; both things you need in profusion to appreciate the days you have on this earth. Even mortals find it hard to want to live sometimes.

It is thought to be impossible; to finally find rest and oblivion from the pain that is existence. But there are always those rumours that give one hope; the story of this immortal or that immortal who discovered a well of happiness inside them, a joy of life, the appreciation for the gift of existence that allowed them their final escape from it. But it’s never anyone you know, never anyone who can tell you what the secret is. But here I am... entering my seven-hundredth year with little to look forward to but seven hundred more years of the same.

There are no rules or purpose for us otherwise, except to walk the changing world in rancor. We were once called the caretakers, a few of us once ruled as gods, but in the end, we all just grew tired of it all, and chose to sleep for an age; or to wander and live like hermits. Sometimes we play a role—portray a life that is not real; we go through the motions so we can try to derive whatever it is we are supposed to; what it is that mortals derive from their blessedly short lives.

We die only when killed. And that is short-lived. We are always given that false hope, as we slip into that dreamless, empty state, that we will be given the gift of the cessation of everything. To end our existence. But instead, we awake again in an agonizing pain, and we suck in air into our tired lungs and we hear our bones knitting and our wounds drawing themselves together, and there is nothing but hopelessness as we lie in the pools of our own blood and weep for an end.

We are hopelessness embodied. How any one of us can find it in our hearts to love this endless cycle, and to wish for another day of it is beyond me. I was convinced for the better part of my long life that I would never be allowed to die.

But I found the joy and the raison d’etre. I found my will to live, and it was not some great romance with a mortal that finally brought me mortality at last. It was much worse than that.

It started with a simple act. An act of frustration. A rash lashing out for all the injustices in my life. Sour and bitter, he stepped into my life at the worst possible moment; the poor hapless fellow—my first victim. Drunken and filled with vitriol, I stumbled out of a circa 70s Oldsmobile the size of the Titanic that I’d stolen. I’d just driven it recklessly into the gravel parking lot, and skidded to a stop only inches from the wall of the dive, angled over two parking spots. I threw open the land-yacht’s door and staggered out, blind to the colours of the signs in neon, seeing only a bleak daguerreotype of reality.

He entered my field of vision like a wraith, drunk too, and ready for a fight. He blurted out some incomprehensive blather and made the mistake of putting his hands on me. The moment was electric; like I’d touched a power line. It was like all the colours of the world flooded back. His blue flannel shirt, the flush of his cheeks and nose, the scarlet of his blood as my fingers followed my blind rage and bore into his eye-sockets. I stood there, looking down at the drunkard’s quivering corpse when all was said and done, my blood rushing, my inebriation completely obliterated by the adrenaline that burned through my veins. I was alive. This tiny, enviable mortal was not.

The elation filled me. It surprised me how it never occurred to me to do what I had done in all my years. I’d killed before, in wars, in accidents, but never for a reason as ridiculous as to direct my rage at something, to exert power over it, to destroy it. This became my vice, and with every killing, I desired more. My desire for death was no longer even remotely on my mind, I greedily looked forward to every new day where I could hunt and kill what I now saw as vermin; living, mortal vermin.

I did not know this was enough; that this zeal for life, fueled by evil itself would count. I did not know it would mean the same as someone finding love to make them wish to live on. My love was senseless murder; it gave me a will to go on.

Now I lie here in a pool of my own blood. I wasn’t granted the graceful period of aging and infirmity as the rumoured others were. My bones are not knitting, my wounds not healing. I weep for the life that is draining from me, this long and sometimes meaningful life that needed to find pure evil before it could be permitted to end. Around me, the mortals in their navy uniforms and silver adornments advance upon me from the shelter of their car doors, gripping the blue-steel implements of my demise. Their voices seem distant. I can’t stop myself from becoming fixated on how the blue and red lights that flash play illusions on my pale skin. I can’t help but notice how my heart beat sometimes misses, and how my breath bubbles in my throat. I am riddled with holes.

The only way one of my kind can truly die, is to want more than anything to live. I have never wanted to live more than today.

The Desirable End (and an update)

I know, I’ve been on radio silence lately, pretty much everywhere, including twitter, where I’m having a hard enough time keeping up with everything as it is. I’m such a whiner! I’m still here however, plugging away. Working on 2 stories no less (focus ADD girl!) while juggling all the realities of daily life. How exhausting.

We are at Chapter Seven! Only six(ish) more to go! Editing of Tinna’s Might is rolling along. It’s really a wonderful exercise to see your work through the eyes of another. I highly recommend it to all authors. In the interim, I threw together another one of my badly-written short stories for your perusal.

True silence could be deafening. It was something Adrian had never truly experienced before everything fell apart, although he had thought he had. But true silence meant removing the cars from the distant highway, and the planes from the sky, the background hum of electricity, the quiet whir of motors in the appliances, lights and infrastructure that he used to take for granted. The collective din of these things often made things like the wind and birdsong barely detectable on a day to day basis; mere background noise.

Now, the dead silence made these simple natural things seem raucous. He stood on the curb, looking out at the cracked pavement, where tall grasses had taken root in the fissures, and gone to seed, the feathery stalks swaying quietly in the breeze. He could clearly remember what silence was then, when everything worked. Now it was heavily, stonily still. He could hear the papery feathers of the crow on the cable above him rustle as it preened. He could hear the buzzing of the blue-bottles that circled a pile of horse manure in the middle of the street. Somewhere, a thrush made a song, and a loose sign creaked in the low breeze. He heard the horses coming long before they even touched pavement, their hoof clatter echoing off the faces of the empty buildings. With a smile, he stepped out just as the six horses came clip-clopping up the street.

The horse in the front, a solid, massive bay wearing a red, weathered halter, stopped and snorted. The large, dark eyes studied Adrian for a moment. There was grass sticking out of its mouth, and its tail switched impatiently at the buzzing creatures that followed them. The horse reached its large head down towards the buckets in Adrian’s hands. Like clockwork, they always knew when it was graining time. The sun was soon to go down, after all. Adrian moved purposefully with his two large five-gallon buckets across the street, and the pack of six horses followed. He led them to the large edifice where they were kept at night, an emptied-out motorcycle dealership. It was one of the few buildings with the space for them that also had metal grates over the windows and door. The glass was long-gone, but the metal kept the horses secure.

Inside, the motorcycles, the clothing racks, the posters, the desk, all the accoutrements of a thriving business had been removed. The vaulted warehouse-like space was now divided up into stalls with hammered together wood pallets and other bits of lumber, even a stray sign panel or two and the ribs of a futon. The floor was peppered with straw; a wheelbarrow hunkered in the aisle between the two columns of stalls. As the young man and the horses filed in, they horses knew where they belonged, and they dispersed into the stalls that belonged to them. He followed them in, and portioned out the food and closed each rickety door of each stall, leaning over the half-wall of one stall to watch the horse eat out of its feed-bowl, which was a simple tire thrown into a corner, the food he’d poured into the center of the ring. He then walked to the back to peel off some hay from the huge roll against the wall, and threw some of that in each stall as well. He liked the fresh scent of the clean straw and the hay. He liked the sound of the horses as their teeth bore down on the mouthfuls of food, their contented snorts, the switch of their tail, and the stamp of their hoofs. He never imagined he’d enjoy this kind of sound, and find it soothing. He never even knew he’d like horses. He’d never even seen one up close except once during a parade. Now he took care of them and he took great pride in it. He reached over and patted the big bay, who paid little heed to him and continued to munch out of its tire bowl.

He used a manual water pump in what was once the bathroom to fill buckets and make sure all the horses had fresh water for the night. His arms had grown quite muscled from hauling these weighty buckets, so much so, it didn’t seem like much work at all to him anymore.

When he was done, Adrian picked his buckets and exited, pulling down the rattling metal grate door over the broad, glassless opening. He released the two loops of chain from the steel barred windows on each side, and threaded them through the door. He clicked two solid, slightly rusted locks closed over the thick links of chain on each side. He then loped down the empty street two blocks, and came ‘round to a small common about six blocks square. With a hearty whistle, he invoked a whinny in return. Another, larger group of horses came thundering into view. Twenty four horses total, plus one small foal born only three weeks before, still clinging tightly to its dam’s side first ran towards him, and then veered a bit away.

The horses joined him as he opened up a wrought-iron gate stolen from somewhere else; affixed to the cement archway into the lobby of a to a low-slung seventies-style office building. The sign above the door was still clear and new-looking, advertising a law-office. The wooden doors were long removed now, leaving the old lobby open, the carpeting still present, although the gold acanthus leaves that curled on a burgundy background were only distinguishable on the edges of the wall, the remainder had been trampled into a brownish oblivion. The glass of one of the broad front windows was still intact behind the metal grates bolted to the outside. The reception desk was still there, the monitor of a useless computer still peering up from behind the bar-height portion of the desk. On each side of it, where there were once two wide doors, two corridors led back to a loop of individual offices. The high windows on the outside offices were all intact, the doors had been sawed in half just above the middle hinge.

The horses filed in one after the other down each side of the corridor, turning neatly into their own offices and then turning around to wait for Adrian to close them in, which he promptly did, making the circuit from the left corridor to the right as he did every night. He then walked through a door in the back to where what was once the best office with French doors that opened out into a small courtyard shared by a few of the other buildings on this block. In this commodious space was the main storage of grain and hay. He began to process of portioning it all out, throwing the food into the offices, pumping more water and pouring more into the buckets hung on hooks in each stall. He did pause long enough to pet the curious foal, delighting in the tiny muzzle wrinkling in his hand and the curious toothless bites on his fingers. The stalls were clean; he’d spent the whole morning cleaning all of them. They smelled fresh and the sounds of the horses settling in for the evening comforted him. He sat down in the worn leather wingback he’d saved from behind the reception desk, and listened to the horses for a while before putting his buckets away for the night and locking everything up.

There was simplicity in it all that he could not help but appreciate. He walked quietly down streets that had once terrified him, that had owned him. He remembered with a reflective sigh, the sense of belonging he’d found with the members of his gang brotherhood, how he spent his youth in anxiousness, fearing reprisal, ejection, punishment or death for a simple mistake, a betrayal, an expressed desire to escape the cycle. He remembered the pain of the tattoos that still covered his skin, he recognized the graffiti on the walls that he painted to mark their territories. He remembered it all.

“Hey Adrian, they all snugged up for the night?” a bass voice asked him from ahead. He broke his gaze from the cracked and heaved sidewalk to see Ed standing against the doorway of a townhouse. Ed was an sixty-ish year old man from out of town who got stranded in the city when everything fell apart. He was worn and leathery looking in the face, his eyes barely but glints from inside the folds of his eyes. He wore jeans that were stiff with soil and dirt, and his Van Halen t-shirt was blue-grey and had once been black. He wore a faded blue Red Sox cap.

“Yeah, the baby is a beauty, isn’t it?” Adrian asked. Ed nodded.

“Manny told me to let you know, we’re taking them out tomorrow up the pike to see if we can trade.”

“All of ‘em?”

“Nah, just the nine riders and a few of the trade horses. Manny wants to get one of those big ones that does pulling and stuff.”

“Draft. A draft horse,” he told him.

“Yeah, those. Says we could mix breed them, make some high-value trade horses.”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing a real draft,” Adrian admitted. “I’ll get the riders ready for you guys in the morning.”

“You sure about not riding, fella? You sure seem to love the horses, you’d think you’d want to ride ‘em. I'd be happy to teach you...”

“I’m good enough just taking care of them for now, Ed.”

“Fair enough, kid. Fair enough. But anytime you want to learn...”

“Maybe. Right now, I just like looking at ‘em.” Ed took this in with a nod and then turned and disappeared inside. Adrian continued up a few blocks to a house he shared with one of the riders. Nobody was home. He climbed up the front steps and sat down, reaching into his pocket to pull out some deer jerky. His jaw rippled as he chewed.

He remembered it all again, once more before the sun went down. He imagined the street in front of him full of people, cars, the reek of exhaust. Instead, two swans still paddled about in the pond in the common across the street, crows cawed, Max, one of the plentitude of dogs they took care of here, trotted by, giving Adrian a wag of acknowledgement in passing. No police, no unnecessary violence, no money issues, no debts. Just silence, real silence, and horses. Adrian took in a deep breath, listening to the little tree that was slowly busting up the sidewalk. It hissed in the breeze. He smiled wanly to himself before going in. Next door, Marisa was cooking something fragrant. He could hear her little girl squealing in giggles over something.

Everything is so much better, he thought, since the world ended.

Continuation

Her mother’s fingers, slender and pale slid gently down Veronica’s pink cheek, tracing down to her chin, where they pinched gently before her hand fell away. Veronica reached up and clasped it just as it fell softly against her pencil skirt. She received a reciprocal squeeze from her mother and in a swish of silk lining, her legs began to move. Veronica trailed along, four steps to her mother’s one; the clacking of expensive heels echoing in the cavernous space, each one punctuated with a flurry of taps from Veronica’s little black mary–janes. The hum quiet conversation seemed to fade as they moved down the wide aisle of this cathedral-like construct towards a stand of willowy, pale-faced figures lingering impassively on and around the dais. A heavy medieval chair hunched on clawed feet underneath a stained glass gothic window. The great arched glass window depicted what appeared to be the murder of an angel; the dark-winged demon-victor standing with one foot propped on his prone victim, a claw-like hand gripping a polearm. Veronica’s eyes widened at the sight of it, taking little heed of the huge chair silhouetted against the window’s light or the baleful creature sitting in it.

“What’s that, mummy?” Veronica whispered. Her mother’s waxen face peered down at the child’s round, rosy cheeks and her other hand curled closed, save for the index finger, which she lifted and pressed to her lips, her black eyes smiling down on her daughter. Veronica only ever knew her mother as she was, stony and beautiful with hard skin and cold hands.

“Hush little one,” she said. Veronica’s eyes dropped down and her head swiveled forward, finally noticing the occupant of the chair. They walked to the base of the dais and stopped. Veronica’s mother dropped her hand. The little girl stared for a moment at the figure in the chair, her wide eyes fearlessly studying him. As white as a sheet, the reedy, thin man gazed fixedly back at her from the hollows of his eye sockets, the straight, serious line of his thin mouth and aquiline, grave nose lending him a sinister air. His hands, like two spidery, knuckled appendages gripped the thick arms of the chair. His hair was as white as snow long and flowing, curtained in swags on each side of his face, the ends tucked behind his shoulders., hidden partially by a heavy cowl-like hood that was attached to an old-fashioned greatcoat. He wore it over what looked like an ordinary suit of pinstriped suiting wool. His slacks had a neat press-line down the center front of each leg and shoes of expensive black shining leather bound his rather large feet. His knees were spread open, his feet angled outwards. His back was hunched. The cuffs and collar of his pristine-white shirt were only a few shades brighter than the pale skin and his soft snowy hair. He wore an old-fashioned cravat instead of a tie, a shock of sapphire blue against the stark pallet. His eyes were almost white. They made Veronica think of the pictures of wolves she’d seen in her zoo books.

“Come here child,” he commanded. Veronica’s eyes traveled across the dais, taking in the other figures that stood like a copse of saplings around him; lean, pillars they looked like, draped in the finest of clothes, just like her mother. In the strange light of the window and its coloured glass, they looked like statuary. They all had the same ghostly white skin, strange haunting gaze and indifference washed across their remarkably beautiful, stony faces. Veronica then looked back to the man in the chair, and she climbed the four steps up towards him. She glanced back at her mother, who merely prodded her forward with a jab of the chin. Her beautiful, elegant mother.

With a strange trusting smile, she stopped between his knees and then climbed up onto his lap, settling her little behind on one of his thighs and smiling at him as if he were the anti-Santa. She gazed up at him, her wide green eyes, her strawberry-tinted curls and vibrant, plump and fresh skin a stark contrast to the man on the throne. Her little black pea-coat was partially open to reveal a dark plaid dress and her ivory tights. She swung her feet in delight. One of the long-fingered hands lifted from the armrest and lighted gently on the child’s head, a soft smile formed with a slow grace on the man’s lips.

“She is perfect,” he said. Veronica’s mother smiled too. His approval seemed to melt the entourage. The statuary began to move, sliding inwards towards her, hands rising to touch this little girl. She sat there with a bemused smile as they patted her and touched her little arms and back, stroked her cheek, caressed her soft curly hair and gazed with wonder at her tiny fingers. They seemed to delight in her vibrancy, celebrating it with their strange subdued joy. When Veronica had enough of being poked and prodded, she grew pouty and started swatting their hands away, causing a ripple of amused and enchanted laughter from her tormentors who found her obstinacy charming. She furrowed her brow and her lower chin pinched; her eyes threatening tears. She squirmed down from the man’s lap and tottered back to her mother, who leaned down and scooped her up, propping her on her hip. Veronica laced her arms around her mother’s cold neck, and nuzzled in, her warm tears falling onto her mother’s marble skin. Her burdensome sigh received even more titters of amusement from her coven of admirers.

“She will remain with the coven,” the ageless white-haired man told Veronica’s mother. “She is worthy.” Off in the distance behind them, a woman started weeping. Veronica’s mother turned to look back into the darkness they’d come from, her face falling into a frown. The statuary’s faces followed the sound in unison, their hard brows pressing down in collective annoyance.

“Elise, you were warned about coming to the temple during offerings...” the man in the chair boomed. A slip of a thing materialized from the shadows of the nave and padded barefoot to the base of the dais, her eyelids red with tears. She was like Veronica, a vibrant living thing, tall and lithe, graceful and beautiful with blue eyes and black hair like skeins of silk cascading down her shoulders. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, the skirts of her gold and cream summery dress flowing about her in a careless, waiflike way. She looked like she’d just come from a picnic, or a walk on the beach; something warm and lovely and temperate and welcoming; certainly not from anywhere with cold stone walls and the flags beneath her perfect toes.

“She should not be here, the child.  It is my responsibility to speak up, to try to stop these offerings," she wept.  "She can’t choose, she is too young to speak for herself. But I can speak for her, because I am her.”

“It is her lot. As it is yours. Nobody chooses," the master snapped.  Elise turned to the woman holding the child.

“Helena, you cannot consign her to the coven. You know what will happen if she is deemed worthy... you know her fate. Set her free, give her to the mortals... they don’t have to be imperfect to know the joy of mortality. She deserves better... We all deserve better,” the girl pleaded to Veronica’s mother.

“Elise, it will be well, this I promise you,” Veronica’s mother intoned. Her voice was sweet and velvety and coated in reassurance. “It seems so much more frightening than it really is. You have nothing to fear, for you or for Veronica. I promise.”

“I won’t give a child to this coven. I won’t consign a life I created to the ruin I am destined to become," she sobbed. "How I wish I had been imperfect... How I wish you'd have cast me off to the mortals like so many of our sisters and brothers."

“We are not a ruin, Elise. We are not so awful, you will see when you are changed. It will come clear when you are changed...”

“Can you offer her warmth and affection like you could before when you were mortal?” Elise spat. “You might as well be made of stone. She will never know those things, all she will know is cold and stone and harshness if she is accepted and bade to return with you.” Veronica huddled closer to her mother and made a little noise of fright at Elise’s outburst. Her mother’s cold, hard hand slid up and caressed her hair, pacifying her with her soothing voice, and rocking her on her hip.

“You are no mother to that child... You are a corpse...”

“Enough!” the man on the throne rocketed to his feet and strode forward. “It is how it has been for centuries. It is how we choose our children and how we propagate. It is how we sustain the purity and superiority of our race. You have your place, you will keep it. It is your turn. It will be her turn someday. There is no choice. You are born to our line. It is who you are.  Now I have had enough of your intrusions and protestations. You can either be changed now, or you can be changed later after you’ve given the coven a child, make your choice!” Elise fell into renewed tears, covering her mouth with her hands. After a lengthy pause awaiting her choice, the leader sighed in resignation and shook his head regretfully.

“We had chosen such a fine mate for you, the perfect father for the perfect child, Elise. He is one of the finest prospects from the Nettle Hill coven; a beautiful young man who embraces his future with open arms. Why would you force our hand so when you have such beauty and grace to look forward to? How can you decline such joy at the opportunity to do something so sacred for our coven? To serve your people so honorably? How could you force our hand?” He looked betrayed as he spoke, his palm out before him as if offering her something; or supplicating her in a saintly manner.

“Because it’s wrong!” she screamed. Veronica began to cry in earnest. The statuary bristled. Until the child was calmed, everyone remained silent. Elise then spoke again:

“Just because we’ve done it for centuries doesn’t make it right,” she sobbed. Elise’s impassioned plight made her insensitive to her surroundings. The statuary had somehow appeared behind her, closing in on her in a shrinking arc. She did not notice.

"Then you have made your choice," the master said sorrowfully.

“You will know your foolishness soon Elise and you will regret turning down the chance to make a child for the coven while you had the chance,” Veronica’s mother told her, her eyes wide in concern. “Don’t doom yourself to an eternity of regret. Think of Elsa!”

Elise glared at her and turned to run away, only to run into the forest of the lean figures surrounding her. With a strange silence, their pale hands reached out and covered her shoulders and her head and they huddled in on her. She was subdued with little more than a whimper and her slim body crumpled to the ground underneath the weight of their voracious bites.

***

Veronica’s little legs swung as she sat on the top step of the dais. Underneath her bum, to keep her warm from the cold stone, the master had laid down his greatcoat and hood for her to sit on. The coven lingered around her, as if feeding from her innocence, their eyes although seemingly cold were loving and benevolent. The child felt it and she knew. She hummed a little made-up tune. Her mother was kneeling down, her form so elegant in her pencil skirt and her black heels and her crisp white shirt with the little bows on the sleeves. Her golden hair was tied back into a stylish French twist and her white ears were adorned in simple pearl drop earrings. She had her hand on the still form on the ground by the dais, her brow creased with concern.
“Elise...” she whispered. The form stirred and the girl sat up; her once vibrant skin now drained of its youthful flush, her softened lines somehow slightly hardened. She looked lost and innocent for a few shades of a moment, sitting up, her legs curled beside her. She looked around with the expression of a child, her beautiful eyes wide and searching as she scanned the darkness beyond the light of the window, and then turned to fix them on the coloured shards of glass with great fascination.

“So beautiful...” she whispered. Her eyes dropped down to Veronica, who still hummed her little tune and rocked on her throne of wool. The master’s hand was on the small of her little back, a fatherly smile wistfully brushing his lips. Elise froze and she got to her feet, padding to the creature who had only a few moments before, invoked such sadness in her. She stooped and put her hand on Veronica’s fabric-covered knee. 

“Hello precious treasure, precious, precious gift...” Helena straightened out her lithe form and fell into the same hanging demeanor of the others, still and narrow like a stylized shape, a young oak, watching.

“It is the only way for us to know true family, Elise. To raise our children and our grandchildren. To fill our covens with worthy souls and pure blood and not simply with strangers changed in an alleyway somewhere like so many of the newer covens do. It is why our coven is so much stronger.

“It would have been just one child you would have to bear, from your superior parentage and then you could have raised it as Helena will, until it is Veronica’s turn. It would have made your eternity so much more meaningful, as it is for me, for I can watch my great, great grandchildren grow and then become part of the fold,” Arthur explained, a few strings of his wintry-white hair slipped off of his shoulder and hung in front of his eyes. “I am saddened by your choice...”

“Do not burden her with blame, master. She should not be punished for what she ultimately could not control. We all remember how powerful mortal passion can be,” someone muttered.

Elise straightened and seemed to take account of her body, as if making its acquaintance for the first time. She twirled like a dancer making her skirts flare out into a rippling flower. Veronica’s peals of delighted laughter filled the buttresses of the great temple and then ricocheted back onto the nave. The statuary seemed to swell from the sound of it. Elise vaulted away and little girl the leapt to her feet and followed, her giggles and her exuberance filling the hollow space with life.

Food

Eela exploded from the underbrush in a shower of broken twigs and leaves, her normally smooth summer coat was studded in little burrs. Her muzzle was moist and her chest slick with sweat. She didn’t miss a step as she broke out into the steppes. She used the entire length of her lithe body to gain the most out of each stride. Her long, elegant legs, which were darkened by perspiration and blood falling from her shoulder moved in a graceful dance, carrying her into fluid bounds that made the ground fly by beneath her. She dared not look back and kept her glossy black eyes fast on the vast open space that flanked her. They could appear at any time, but at least here, she could see them. She made sure she had her eye on her destination; where the steppe grass faded into ruddy red sand.

Eela ignored the cuts and slivers from her flight, not to mention the claw marks gouged into the flesh of her shoulder. She was beyond pain or fatigue now; she had handed herself over to the powerful instinctual being that had kept her and her kind alive through the ages, despite being the favoured prey for the Retnath. They were performing a culling. It was something she’d heard about before, when they thought the herds too numbered. Eela had purposefully pushed back her own mind, not only to give way to her instincts, but also to set aside the pain of seeing the members of her herd and family destroyed by the massive, hateful beasts. She blinked and the tears merely absorbed into her fur along with the salted sweat of her desperate escape. She felt the pain of her strained lungs as if from a far away; nagging and bitter, but distanced. She bit down and swallowed it. She ran not just for herself, but for the two within her; the children of her gainful match with Oureth, who had fought so valiantly but fell trying to lead the beasts away from her and their unborn ones. She owed it to him to survive; so the little ones could survive.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw one; the Retnath, black and inelegant in the prairie, as if they never really belonged there. They were ungainly but fast on their two legs; standing proud. They had square heads split into a gaping maw with three rows of triangular, serrated teeth; all resting on a thick, short neck. Their arms, complete with their four sickle-clawed hands were curled up against their chests; fur jet black with stripes the colour of rust ribbing their back and laddering their legs. A long, serpent tail balanced them, their powerful thighs and legs the fulcrum. They were as big as trees, and sickeningly intelligent, their strategies changing from year to year. She could hear them speaking in their chattering, guttural language; likely planning her trap. As it approached from her left, she darted back the way she came in a graceful motion, and bounded several strides in that direction before zig-zagging back, away from the Retnath and towards the Divrodell desert, where the Retnath drew their borders. The red desert sprawled into the horizon in a succession of seemingly endless dunes.

Her herd had been slowly migrating eastwards over the past several years. It had been Oureth’s plan. He was convinced it would be what would save them. Oureth was sure that entering the unknown land was no greater risk than remaining in the Ardredu, where the western range and the Retnath gave them no other means of escape. She knew the place known as Divrodell was stark and featureless, and held little in nourishment or concealment for her kind. The land beyond that was a mystery. Her kind had never tread here before, the Retnath patrolled the edge of the desert diligently. She was the last of her kind in these parts. Her entire herd had been culled; in punishment for skirting too close to the edge of Retnath territory. She had decided to keep going when they’d found her. It was the only chance she had for herself and the babies she carried. There could be more Retnath hunters there for all she knew, but she had to chance it. She had no other choice.

With every fibre of her being she poured herself into her escape, catching the parched grass with her cloven hooves, sucking in air and breathing it out pants as she crossed the divide to the Divrodell desert territories. It was hot and arid, and the sand made her graceful gait awkward and laboured. She made sure there was as much distance between her and her pursuers before she dared to look behind her.

Eela trotted to a stop and circled ‘round, her sides heaving, nostrils flared. She stood facing the lands she and her herd had known for generations. Four Retnath stood there, but did not pursue. They stood on the edge of the red earth looking at her, taking tentative steps forward but being tugged back by another. One roared out his fury at the sight of her, but none of them took the step into the sand. The graceful Eela was astonished. Her astonishment grew into a cold terror as she began to imagine what it could be that would keep the fearless Retnath at bay as if held back by an invisible barrier. She swiveled her fine head and faced the desert, and then looked back at the predators, who glared at her with hateful green eyes. With a decisive blink she turned back to the dunes and walked on, occasionally looking back to see the four black killers fade into tiny dots and eventually become unseen behind the dunes.

The hot air dried Reetha’s grayish-brown sweat soaked fur into whorl patterns and scabbed up most of her wound almost immediately. Some flies buzzed around it, but she was too tired to care. The pain was slowly returning as her adrenaline faded and she started to feel the effects of her flight. She kept her ears perked high on her bobbing head, swiveling them to catch every sound. All she heard was the hiss of sand as it blew in sheets over the sharp ridges of the dunes. Her treads were light and delicate, nearly without sound. Occasionally, the scrabble of a beetle or the slither of a sand-serpent caught her attention, otherwise she heard nothing but sand and wind. Eela walked on, following the line of the setting suns, just as Oureth had done for months before as they crossed the herdlands towards the Divrodell desert.

The long day fell, and Eela walked on, choosing to forego sleep until she could find some means of cover and protection. By dawn, her exhaustion was complete. She was walking as if it was simply an automatic response, her lids drooping low, her muzzle dry and covered in grains of sand, along with the edges of her eyes. When she thought she could go no more, she discovered a small oasis in the scoop between several dunes. She could not see beyond the high sandy hills, so she thought it was prudent to rest here. The oasis was a mere gash in the sand where a shallow pool of spring water bubbled up, towering Franao trees and some strange shrub plants. The fragrance of the trees made Eela’s mouth water. How the seeds managed to find this waterhole and grow into trees she did not know, but she was grateful for them, their nourishment and their shade. She disturbed a nesting Sziszu as she entered the copse and watched it careen into the sky. She drank deeply, sinking down onto her front knees before settling her hind-quarters down onto the soft leaves that covered the ground. There she found a fallen, dried limb of the Franao, which she ate lazily, before drifting off to sleep in the shade of the trees.


“It’s a westlander—a female without horns. So small, almost the size of a child.”

“I never thought that little tale was true. She’s such an interesting colour.”

“Indeed,” Eela’s eyes flickered and she was faced by two silhouettes backlit by the setting suns. She lifted her head and tried to focus on their faces. They were like her! At least she thought so. As her head cleared and the light of the suns was filtered by a branch of the tree, she realized she was looking at Idru like her. She stood gingerly, squinting against the glare, and moving around so she could see them clearer. They simply watched her, and waited.

They were almost like her; except the female had four spiraled horns sprouting the back of her head, much the same as Oureth’s had been, horns that were impressive for a male in her herd. But they were small next to those of the male in the stranger’s company, his were nearly as long as his body, and they curved upwards at the tips. They were counterbalanced by a smaller horn that branched from each large one, pointing frontwards over his heavy brow. He was huge. Almost twice as wide and long as Oureth, and the female was as big as Eela’s mate. Eela looked tiny next to them. They were Idru; however; no doubt; the shape of the body, the thick chest and graceful neck, the large eyes, the memory-language. They observed her, eyes wandering down to the four parallel slashes on her shoulder, on which tiny maggots now squirmed, consuming the dead flesh and cleaning the wound.

“You are out of your element,” the male said to her, his voice was deep and filled with certainty.

"I had no choice,” Eela whispered.

“You are injured as well. It looks like the work of a Retnath. A very large Retnath.”

“We don’t see your kind often, that’s for sure,” the female interjected. She sniffed the air, and then shook her head, tossing her wispy white mane. These animals were almost black, much like the Retnath, not the soft grayish brown of her own herd. They each had a mane and the male a beard falling from his lower lip.

“She carries little ones,” the female concluded. Her eyes grew tender. The male shook his own head, but it was an expression of disbelief. He emitted a sigh.

“You cannot stay here, come along. You’re small, alone and injured. You could become hunted.” They moved around her, and she hesitated, choosing to follow when the female paused with one hoof poised, and looked back. “Come along.”

They left the oasis, and moved under the setting suns along the serpentine valleys between the dunes, following what Eela realized, was a well-worn path. The two strangers spoke, one of them surprised that she’d made it to the oasis; she spoke of the dreegu possibly being somewhere else, or sleeping. Eela did not know what they meant, but she surmised there had been some predator that was so great that it frightened even the Retnath, and had somehow missed her during her long walk across the dunes.

Great mountains appeared on the horizon. The scent of greenery and water grew stronger. The sand began to taper as they approached the slopes, and became green prairies, laced with thin vermiculate rivers that wound out into the desert, converging into a lake. There, she saw the dark silhouettes of other Idru. Hundreds of them and they all looked up at the sight of the pair that arrived, trailing a diminutive version of themselves with them. The great herd gathered and they looked upon Eela with curiosity. All the females had horns. Even the little female babies showed nubs of horns-to-be.

In the distance, the distinctive roar of a Retnath echoed against the mountain slopes. Not a single Idru flinched; Eela however, did. She froze and her muscles tensed and twitched, her fear was palpable and the Idru looked at one another in bewilderment. They began to speak out of turn.

“From the size of her wounds, I think that there is probably a reason for her to fear that sound.”

“Well, I imagine with a regular source of food, they’d grow rather large.”

“Yes. They would.”

“Strange, how tiny she is.”

“I’m not tiny,” Eela argued, “…not in comparison to those in my herd.”

“No horns, small size… no match at all,” Eela was distracted by the sounds of the Retnath. It approached them, and nobody seemed to care. The Retnath roared again, and Eela finally spotted it. It was by the river, hovering at the edge of the great herd. It was only a juvenile, no bigger than Oureth. It roared at them again and tried to approach a curious fawn, whose mother reacted without hesitation; instead of running away, she charged it, and lowered her head, butting the animal in the torso with her head and horns. The Retnath went flying to the ground, and scrabbled to its feet, trotting off on its two legs in embarrassment. It went chasing after a rat-like rhashri instead, which was less of a formidable match.

“Stupid things,” someone muttered. The herd then lost interest in her, and returned to their grazing.

“If there’s a little one, there’s bound to be at least two parents nearby, why are you not alerting the herd?” Eela asked incredulously. The male who’d found her cocked his head and then laughed. He looked knowingly at the female who nodded.

“I suppose you need it explained to you. That is an adult Retnath. The ones you know, they are not natural. You are not natural.” Eela’s forehead wrinkled in puzzlement.

“You are food. The dreegu came south after the time of the black sky, and claimed the red sands as theirs. It was once a connected place, the prairies once grew all the way across, but the dreegu ate everything. They do not care for water, and so they stay there between the range and the western forests. They cut your smaller herdlands off from our great expanse and your people have been trapped there since. The Retnath knew that they had to be careful… that the herds would not be replenished by the herds from the expanse any longer because of the dreegu. So they farmed you instead. They control your numbers and your growth. You are food.”

“We are all food, in the end,” the female added, nosing towards the maggots that seethed in Eela’s wound.

“How do you know this if you are cut off?”

“The meklos have told us. We believed them to be wild tales, exaggerations… we thought the stories of towering Retnath to be ridiculous… however now we know this is the truth.”

“Meklos? What is that?”

“The large flyers that take the sky; they are our brothers. They are Idru of the sky. They fly to cooler lands during summer.” Eela’s eyes filled with tears. Her entire people, not just her herd, her entire people were being contained for food for Retnath who’d grown huge on the glut. Why had the birds not come down to tell them, to encourage them to cross the land of the dreegu? She made it across, perhaps it was a risk, but what was worse? The male seemed to see her turmoil and came to her, nosing her neck affectionately.

“Never fear. You are safe now. Our herd is large, our range wide. Your little ones will grow up with little danger as long as we are here to protect them.

“Can we not tell the Meklos to warn my people? To instruct them to cross the desert?”

“The Meklos cannot take ground there. They are no match for the Retnath there. Besides, you alone crossed in safety because you are small, and fleet. You did not disturb the sands too much or make much noise. Many Idru, no matter how small each one is, would certainly cause the Dreegu to rise up from the sands and they would be eaten, bones and all.” Eela was shocked. She thought of Oureth, who was unknowingly leading the herd to certain doom. At least she survived, and the babies too. At least some Idru were allowed to live and breed in the Adredu; even if it meant a possible culling, and the loss of herd members. She knew these wild Idru here were not invulnerable; but they were certainly more equally matched against their predators. With a final look back at the dunes behind her, she sighed and followed her greater cousins into the thick of the herd.

Jacob.

They weren't simpletons. They knew deep down he wasn't really their son. They had to know. But their misery and their loss had afforded him a place with them, and for all intents and purposes he was Jacob McVeigh. It simply didn't matter to them. For him, for this Jacob impostor, despite having entered this situation with less than stellar motives, it somehow worked out--it changed him, it made him better. Somehow. He acclimated. He settled; something he'd never done before in all his days. He actually liked being Jacob. Liked it enough to let it become him.

He'd learned about them through Brian Walsh; the man who killed Jacob--the creature that had made him disappear. Brian was huge man. Elephantine in a compact way, broad, thick shoulders book-ending a wide, dense chest. He had a round head with shifty green eyes, with tiny ears; his blonde hair was chopped into the standard buzz-cut all the inmates got. He had surprisingly small feet for a giant frame like his. He stood at 6'10"; he had to duck through the metal grate of the cell door to get in and out. ‘Jacob' had made him take the lower bunk.

Jacob making any man that size do what he wanted was part of what made him different. He wasn't a small man; but one of decent height. In a fight, he would have been snapped like a twig by the likes of Brian, but Jacob's special ability for manipulation made the monster his pet. Brian, the heartless murderer, the simpleton, the ham-handed buffoon, was Jacob's personal bulldog. He had to only gaze into the beady, vacant eyes with his own piercing laser-blue gaze, and the tiny mind within would roll over and bare its belly to him. Brian saw a mightier beast in that gaze, a deeper, darker, angrier creature than he could ever hope to be. And far, far smarter.

"It's gotta be the weirdest thing..." the giant would mumble in his oddly high-pitched voice, "...you look just like him, I tell ya. Jus' exactly like him. It's either that or I'm just seeing you this way ‘cuz I did what I did to him." Brian had starting listing his victims to Jacob the moment he was shoved into the cell with the huge man. Brian was in prison for killing a young man he'd picked up on the streets. Jacob... the real Jacob was a similar victim. He arrived in the city, a young and confused runaway-and immediately his innocence was dashed so terribly, he never recovered; never found normalcy, or goodness. Just a life of drugs and prostitution. He just ended up one of many unknown victims of the darkness. Dead in some ditch, not even given the dignity of being recovered. The buffoon could do one thing right; and that was hide a body.

At first, the fake Jacob didn't really care. He counted Jacob among the other victims the beast boasted about killing... the ones he'd "gotten away with"; the ones that were never proven or never found. He confided in him all of his conquests. And Jacob-the-false sometimes listened sometimes didn't. He stared patiently at the ceiling. Time was of no concern to him. He wasn't in for so long. As his sentence began to wind down, he knew it was time to find that persona, to discover his identity. And then the assertions of his similarity to this Jacob came back to him. He used his library time to find information on the victim doppelganger, Jacob McVeigh. And he found a plethora of information; and a sad little website made by friends and family with pictures of him just before he ran away and disappeared... and yes, the ox was right. The kid looked like a seventeen year-old version of the man Brian shared his cell with. Jacob-the-false had more angles on his face, a gruffness to him... but the same piercing blue eyes, the same crooked smile, the same swarthy tones. He realized he could easily pass as the boy... all grown up--weathered a bit, maybe by life, but nonetheless, he could do it. And so he decided he would become Jacob McVeigh. He would become him and live the life the boy might have had if he hadn't left, if he hadn't been destroyed by his own desperation and murdered by a massive lumbering pile of very stupid flesh.

He set up an email address through a free service, and clicked on the contact link on Jacob's website.

~~

Jacob the new, Jacob the imposter... With a quiet, whimsical smirk, he gave the beast one last cutting gaze, and then followed the swaggering corrections officer down the corridor, ignoring the comments and the glares of the inmates he'd virtually ignored for eight years. They all sensed his power, and they feared him. As they walked away, one guard called out a request to the plexiglass window where more guards watched, and the cell door jerked into motion. Just before the aperture became too restricted; Brian stepped out of the cell, and with a besotted grin, climbed up onto the railing of the mezzanine, and with an crazed laugh, he threw himself down the forty feet to the common, where his round head cracked open on the hard, scuffed concrete floor.

The commotion didn't slow Jacob's release; which he expected it would. He was given his old clothes in a black garbage bag, and a Ziploc bag of his meager possessions. The smell of cigarette smoke wafted up at him from the clothes as he pulled them out. He was slightly amazed by the longevity of the aroma. Eight years, and it was like he'd just stepped out of the bar where he'd been arrested. He put the clothes back on, not liking that it felt like his old persona was wrapping itself around him again; he was not liking it at all.

His ID card was there. Richard Mosely gazed back at him, his face a mirror to the blank mask that was in front of it. Richard Mosely wasn't there anymore, wasn't needed. With a flick of the wrist the card sailed into the garbage bin, along with along stale pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He put his fairly empty wallet into his back pocket; donned a slate-gray jacket, and strode out of the room, where he was accompanied through the series of gates that led to the unknown. It took him a moment to realize he was out. One minute it was gate after gate, buzzing him through, turning keys, latching bolts, and then suddenly, he was standing facing the a row of boarded up houses. The slam of the gate behind him reminded him of what he was doing and where he was. He straightened. He needed new clothes. A new persona. He was Jacob now.

~~

The loss was so evident in her eyes, he could have probably looked like Brian the beast, and she probably would have believed him. She clutched herself to him, and her embrace was hard and desperate, the sobs, the snot, the excitement loud in his ear. For a moment he might have even felt it, the warmth, the acceptance, the love, but only for that moment. In the beginning his hardness had persisted; they decided it was a side-effect of the trauma of his prior life. He would soften eventually, smile again, drink beer with pop and work on the truck together. But now, when it was all new, he was stiff. It was okay. He had reason. They didn't ask him questions. They didn't want to; they didn't want to trip up the imposter. They just wanted their son back, and he would do well enough.

Helen and Stan. Stan and Helen. She was a tiny thing, 5'2 at most, her steel grey hair was straight and heavy, once a glossy black like Jacob's. She kept it to just below the shoulders in length, a hard straight line of hair, and bangs also in a neat line that still somehow softened her face. She was pear-shaped, with a pretty face and glisteny blue eyes. She wore black slacks with modest flats and a little top of magenta. She'd gotten all dressed up to fetch him at the station. There was no need for manipulation on Jacob's part; they were willing victims of his scam; they were eager and loving. Stan was a taller man, slender and grey. He had a face that showed many years of kindness, and eyes of dark blue nested in the heavy folds of his lids. His jeans looked like they would slide off him at any given moment, they were the dark blue variety, which had a crisp seam down the front of the legs ironed right into them. With that, he had a perfectly pressed pale yellow button-down shirt on, tucked into his belt, which was pulled up almost to his chest. The clothes were stiff on his lanky, bony frame.

"Jay-jay..." he kept saying, tears filling his reddened eyes, "...my boy, it sure is good to see you. You sure have lost some weight, you're a skinny one; that's sure about to change, mom'll put some meat on your bones; she remembered you know; she remembered your favorite and cooked up a whole batch of shepherd's pie for you, it's all waiting for you, do you have bags? Let's get them in the car..." he rambled. Helen clung to his arm, gazing up at his face simply beaming with love and happiness. He knew it, though, he felt it; that they knew. But he also felt that they didn't want to believe it, or that they didn't care. Now they had someone to fuss over, someone who wanted to be with them, someone who wouldn't break their hearts and run away and desert them. No, this Jacob came to them, and they wanted him back. They wanted him.

He folded his frame into the rickety 1950 chevy truck, squeezing in next to mom while dad turned the ignition. He'd kept the thing pristine; a shining blue, the chrome almost undamaged. It roared to life, and he looked at Jacob expectantly; waiting for him to comment on the truck, waiting for him to recognize it, to acknowledge the familiarity of it. Instead Jacob just smiled blankly at the old man. Stan simply put it in gear and drove, turning his gaze back to the road, too happy for it to matter. They had their Jacob back, nothing else mattered. Nothing else mattered at all.

Lace

“Why Vivian, you are being most unkind. How can you speak so cruelly of Mr. Davenport if you have yet to make his acquaintance?” Clara exclaimed archly, dabbing some more rouge onto her cheekbones and then blending it expertly into a natural flush. She looked unusually fresh this evening, which irritated her sister Vivian. Ella, the servant girl, waited until Clara was finished applying her colours, and lifted the stays over her head, gingerly trying to get them on without mussing Clara’s perfect ringlets. “Ella, stop!” Clara snapped, swatting at the girl, and connecting twice rather loudly on her arm and shoulder. She pulled on her own stays, and adjusted herself in them for a moment, slapping Ella’s hands away every time she reached out to assist. “Leave me alone, you simpleton, stop touching me. Goodness you’re more work than of help. You’re more useful doing nothing!” The servant girl frowned, and stepped away, her head hanging and her eyes glassed over.

Vivian remained tightlipped and suspired through her nose, rising from the chair by the armoire, she moved in to assist her sister to slide the wooden busk into the pocket in the front of her stays. The busk was a smooth, beautifully shaped piece of chestnut, with Arthur Davenport’s name carved on it. It slid easily into the pocket between her breasts and down the center of her front—close to the heart. Such an insipid practice of carving a name in a busk was just the sort of romantic tripe Clara would lap up—proven by the five-book high stack of vapid gothic romance novels Clara kept by her bed. Vivian then brusquely tightened the laces of Clara’s corset, making her gasp out as the stays tightened around her ribs. Ella moved to the armoire to fetch the petticoat and the gown. She sported a small, satisfied smirk every time she heard Vivian rent another gasp out of her sister.

“My goodness, Vivian, do you need to be so harsh?” she snapped, her blond curls bouncing, emerald eyes flashing her annoyance. Vivian just smirked to herself and gave her one more hard tug before fixing them with a knot.

It was no wonder Clara always had such a buffet of devoted suitors to choose from. From the moment of her coming out, she was the prize all the gentlemen wanted. She was perfection. Her frame feminine and petite, with lovely curves and the generous swell of her breasts rose up against a fair, peachy décolletage. Her face was rosy and smooth, lips red and plump, eyes sparkling green with hair the colour of wheat, which now hung in shining coils down the sides of her face. Her voice had a girlish air, something of a vulnerability to it which seemed very attractive to the gentlemen. She sang like an angel, and played the pianoforte extremely well.

Vivian took the gowns from Ella, and then kindly shooed her away with a gentle smile. She took over the task of helping Clara put on her light summer petticoat, and then over that, the wisp of a snow white muslin gown--so sheer it could have been made of dragonfly-wings. She lifted it over her head and offered her each arm of the back, which her sister carefully snaked her arms through, pulling the bodice up and adjusting it. Clara pinned the inner front of the bodice closed while Vivian slid the skirt ties through the loops at the back, and handed them to her sister from behind. Clara tightened them around the high waist, and tied them into a bow, tucking the ends into the skirts before lifting and buttoning the stomacher into place. She tugged and fluffed the long, columnar skirts, and then twisted and turned to study her figure in the long mirror.

Vivian felt a momentary burn of envy. How could she be born sibling to such a golden goddess? Vivian was the opposite in every way; where Clara was rosy, Vivian was pale; where her hair was gold, Vivian’s was raven-black, where the eyes were warm summery green, Vivian’s were a cool, crisp wintry blue. Clara moved with the grace of a doe, Vivian more with the air of a predator.

“Well, at least now we can settle our disagreement, Vivian…” Clara declared, adjusting a curl here, smoothing an eyebrow with her finger, “…for you meet Arthur tonight, and I am certain you will find it impossible not to adore him as I do—and you will see how he is far superior to any other man.”

“I’m sure he is…” Vivian muttered, stepping back from her sister, and clasping her pale hands together in front of her stomach. Clara gave a quick appraisal of her sister’s powdery blue muslin gown and her rose-red slippers. “You look well, Vivian…” she said with little enthusiasm, seeming a bit put off by it in her tone, as if she did not wish even the smallest competition for her gentleman’s attentions. Vivian merely nodded, and waited for her sister to pass by her, the small train of her gown sliding along behind her as she left her chamber. Vivian reached to close the door behind her, giving Ella a furtive glance as she dashed through the doorway before it closed. She set the latch and then followed her sister down the stairs. Clara was radiant as the candlelight caught her glow. Vivian was but a shadow at her heels.

Their mother sat with the gentleman by the hearth. He glanced up when they entered the drawing room, his dark eyes softening at the sight of the girls. Clara sank down on the sofa next to her mother, leaving no room for Vivian. She aptly maneuvered her skirts as she sat as to make it appear accidental that the hem of her sheer overdress revealed one of her teal blue slippers, and more importantly, the ankle above it. The visitor did not appear to notice her display, and neither did her mother. But Vivian did, and she could scarce keep herself from sneering at the deliberately flirtatious act. Vivian glanced at the handsome Arthur; irritated that they hadn’t even bothered to introduce him. His black eyes followed her as she moved to the window seat. She sat there while they performed their greetings, Clara feigning a girlish shyness that filled Vivian with disgust. At length, Ella appeared in the doorway in her tatty old garments; pieces once worn by Vivian’s mother years ago, shabby and unfashionable; carrying a tray of tea fixings. Vivian stood and intercepted her, relieving her of it with a thoughtful smile.

“Thank you, Ella,” she said quietly. Ella’s smile to Vivian was adoring. She curtsied, glanced into the room one last time, and then slipped away. Vivian carried the tray to the round work table first, where she set it down for a moment, her back to the room. There, she could be heard turning the upside-down cups upright, and rearranging the little sandwiches and biscuits that had been jostled in transit from the kitchens. Gripping the tray afresh, she lifted it and carried it to the small table set between the gentleman’s chair and the settee upon which mother and Clara rested.

“There,” Mother declared, nodding to her younger daughter. “Thank you Vivian. Mr. Davenport, this is my younger daughter, Vivian.”

“How do you do, Miss Vivian?”

“I am well, Mr. Davenport. I am pleased to meet you,” Vivian replied in a soft voice, an odd little smile upon her lips that only the visitor saw. She curtsied slowly, and then returned to the window seat, where she settled in and pulled a lace-work pillow on a spindly turned-wood stand to her knees. She began to work with it, her hands moving dexterously, the spindles clicking together as she sorted them and wound them around the bristling patch of standing pins on the pillow. A skein of lace hung from the back side, beautifully made, a piece to edge the hem of a new gown, perhaps.

Mother served tea with a quiet elegance. For a moment, all that could be heard was the sound of the hot tea trickling into the fine china cups. She gave Arthur a cup first, and then poured one for herself and her golden daughter. They sipped, and the women chatted about banalities. Vivian’s hands patiently worked the spindles hanging from the lace pins. The conversation was lively for a moment, and then it fell into a lull… a few halted words here and there, and then a chilling hush followed by a ghastly sound of gagging and wheezing.

Then, there was a sound of china falling to the floor, followed by two heavy thumps. Vivian finally looked up from her lace-making. On the floor, her mother and sister lay crumpled, one draped partly over the other; her sister’s mouth pulled tight, and slathered in foamy spittle. The mother still twitched and convulsed.

Arthur put his untouched cup of tea down on the tray. With a satisfied, loving smile for Vivian, he leaned back and loosened his cravat, crossing his legs elegantly. Vivian smiled warmly in return, holding his gaze with hers and sighed contentedly. And then with another sigh, she quietly returned to her lace-making, her spindles flying and clicking. Ella passed by the open door of the drawing room, and paused. A radiant grin split her face, and she walked away, humming a little song off-key. In the foyer, the great clock ticked irrevocably on.

She finally did it.

It wasn’t quite sympathy, Evan wasn’t sure what it was at all, frankly. But the 'look' both touched him and hurt him all the like. It was an expression, a look that almost every member of the faculty cast upon him at some point during his journey through his scholastic career. The faculty members were always going back and forth; vacillating between empathy and frustration. Evan understood; he really did. At the tender age of nine, he already knew. He was sure they had no idea how well he understood their frustration. The issue was, that he simply didn’t care how they felt about it unless they were willing to reach out and understand him; and as teachers and counselors, that was beyond their scope; outside of their jurisdiction. All they cared about was that he wasn’t really there.

Evan was absent more than he was present; he was despondent and lazy when he was there; he didn’t pay attention most of the time. All day, his mind wandered, the only things that engaged him were projects that involved drawing, creating, writing, painting. The rest, he would simply tune out. Homework was rarely done, if it was, it was messy and slapdash. His notebooks were full of absentminded doodles. He hid in the library and read for hours, and sometimes he would hide in a bathroom stall, lifting his feet during recess so nobody knew he was there. He absorbed his education in his own way… but he never put any stock in proving it by doing what was required of him. He scraped by, grade to grade… barely. They knew he wasn’t stupid; they'd tested him. He was quite the opposite and was in fact extremely bright; significantly ahead of the others. But his intelligence served little benefit when he was completely disengaged.

The sting about the teacher's remarks on his hygiene still lingered. The teacher had told his mother that she should address his hygiene issues. His chronic state of humiliation flared into a hot reddening of his cheeks and casting down of his eyes. He was well-aware of his greasy hair, his stained jeans, the hand-me-down, out of style shirts he wore, his shabby, worn shoes. In case he forgot on any given day, the other students were always very pleased to remind him with underhanded comments, and the teacher always made a point to mention something about it during parent/teacher conferences. She would point out his lacking to a mother who had other, far direr things occupying her mind. And when mom got up and walked to the snack table after spewing out a litany of blame of which none fell on her, the teacher gave him that 'look'. The one that said; I want to care, but I just don’t have the time. You're not my kid... it's not my responsibility... I don’t want to get attached… it would be too hard. All night, he had to hear how embarrassing it was for his mother to endure questions about his failures, and his mother asked him how he could do this to her; how he could embarrass her so.

Evan had no allies. No true allies.

His counselor, Dr. Ardell, would lean close and look him deep into his eyes; “Evan, you can tell me. You can tell me anything. Nobody will get hurt, nobody will know, all you have to do is just tell me what’s going on,” he would say. Evan looked at the man’s pasty skin, the ugly tie, the pink shirt with the coffee stain on the front; his eyes took in the large pores on the man’s face, filled with dark dots; the receding hairline flecked with pieces of shedding skin; he would shrink back from the rancid coffee-breath and wrinkle his nose at it. Never once did he part his lips. Not once did he give Dr. Ardell what he wanted... the truth. He was provided puzzles to solve, questions to gauge his intelligence, evaluations to determine his aptitude. He breezed through them, all too aware what the man wanted... all too keen on the motivations and finding a bit of power, and a bit of delight in depriving him of it. It was his truth the bear, it belonged to him. Adults have proven over and over again to be detached and unreliable no matter what they sometimes said, so he would trust his secrets only to himself. Dr. Ardell would lean back in his chair, the frustration plain on his brow. Evan would traipse back to class, feeling glad that his counseling session had gotten him out of the scrutiny of his classmates. Dread would fill the pit of his stomach when he returned to class. He was always far too behind, far too daunted to catch up. So he would simply shuffle to his desk, sit down, open up a notebook and pretend to listen while he doodled on the side of his page.

Evan must have looked particularly pathetic this day. His teacher gave him that 'look'. The one that wasn’t sympathy or understanding or curiosity, or resignation or indifference; whatever it was, he didn’t care, as long as it wasn’t the accusing, angry glare he usually got when he didn’t hand in his homework, or had no idea there was a test because he’d been absent for two days. He dragged his feet as the class settled in, and he listened to them fuss and muss about in their desks, whispering to one another; the girls giggling, someone snogging in a noseful of mucus… His eyes were on the fluttering leaves of the poplars outside. He was keenly aware of the ticking clock as it arduously crept through each second, dragged itself into the next minute; crawled irrevocably but laboriously towards the end of the day. He yearned for the end of the day for no reason at all. He had nothing to look forward to.

As he walked home, his book bag, which hadn’t been unloaded or refreshed in a few weeks weighed him down. Another day. Another blank, indifferent day—the heavy dread of home was worse than the weight of books on his shoulder; it slowed his stride even more. As Evan rounded the corner of his street, there was something different. On the overgrown lawn was a gleaming police cruiser. Smack in the center of it, lights flashing. A second one was hunkered underneath the messy tree at the curb, already sporting a light coat of the tree's sheddings. He could hear the scratchy sound of the police radios. His stomach turned icy cold. He broke into a run, letting his book bag fall to the ground as he loped across the cracked asphalt, eyes searching. Then he stopped; in the middle of the street, he just stopped.

An officer was taping the house. A van marked ‘county coroner’ pulled in front of him, momentarily blocking his view of the police officers at the door. Another siren sounded a few streets away, and a third police car was arriving with the van. In the doorway, his mother was crying. She clutched her cardigan closed, her eyes puffy and bleary, and her hands shaking. She looked less mousy than usual; she looked almost radiant in her misery--vibrant in the blossoming of her downfall. Evan watched as the officer took her out of the house, and led her to the car. She didn’t see him as the officer helped her into the back seat of the cruiser, but the officer did. The man was huge; a pillar, scary and reassuring all at once. He closed the door to the car, and turned to Evan, coming to him in only a few large strides.

Evan liked how they walked. He imagined they taught cops how to walk that way in police academy; to swagger so that all the gadgets and weaponry and bludgeons on their hips would be brandished as if to challenge anyone to just give them a reason. He could hear his mother sobbing from the car; over the din of the newly arriving police car with its siren blaring. She never looked up--too wrapped up in her own sorrow. The cop seemed like he was a mile tall. He stooped, the process of lowering to Evan’s eye-level seemed to take forever, like it was slow motion.

The look wasn’t like the others. The eyes weren’t the same. It wasn’t the look. No. It was direct and searching, good and steady.

“She finally did it, didn’t she?” Evan asked. “She finally decided enough was enough, huh?” The cop pursed his lips, and nodded; he reached up and patted Evan’s greasy hair. The kid smirked in a weird, distant sort of way and said: “good.”

“C’mon. A lady from human services will want to talk to you then. ‘S’at your book bag?” Evan looked back at the street, where his book bag had been slightly flattened by the tire of the last police car. He ran to pick it up. It felt weightless. As he moved back to the officer’s side, a gurney was being rolled out of the house, an oily looking, black bag shrouding the body. The police lights coloured it red and blue in lightning flashes. He looked up at the police officer, his eyes alive.

“Okay.”

"Her."

Her darkness attracted me at first. I felt like I belonged to it, and I envied her for possessing such pallid beauty without trying. Me, I had to paint my fingernails black, and to wear black clothes; I dyed my hair pitch coal, and lined my eyes densely with darkness. I brooded; I felt detached, all my life. I didn’t feel connected to the sunnier people; to the giggling and forced nasal speech peppered with the world ‘like’. The shining, well coiffed hair, and fashionable clothes… The overachievers and the jocks, they might as well be from another planet. I was always aware of the whispers and sneers as I passed them by, a guy wearing eyeliner, reeking of wet cigarette. There's a lot to laugh about there.

I never quite related to any of those people, nor did I seek to. So I made sure they knew I wasn’t interested in their world by making myself appear as separate from them as I could. They lived in their own world and I made my own. My world included two more souls who thought themselves unique, but were exactly like me. Our universe consisted of a notch in the back wall of the racquetball court building that was shielded by the wind by a row of massive poplars. It was the perfect place to hide. The ground was peppered with butts, and smoothened by the soles of our Converse All-Stars. We were all about wristbands with studded leather and a joint made of hash and tobacco that took us a week to finish.

We hardly spoke to one another. Occasionally we would allude to our misery; our troubles, our trials and our shared curse of being chronically misunderstood. There was Kurt, who was gay and angry and Rebecca, who had no idea who she was. Kurt was at least one step ahead of us in our hunt for identity. It was likely on any given day, between classes and at lunch, you would find us there behind the racquetball courts, smoking cigarettes or something less legal, sometimes eating something, other times just standing against the wall, one foot flat on the bricks, knee bent watching the poplar leaves dance in the wind. If it was cold, we would huddle in a circle. We’d share a joint, and I would stare at Rebecca’s striped socks that went up to her thighs and her frayed black denim miniskirt, but mostly at the smooth, pale length of exposed skin of her thighs. She was a nice looking girl, underneath her black lipstick. She had her hair cut in an asymmetrical bob, longer on her left side than the right, and dyed a wine-red. She had a silver stud, a tiny little sphere in her nose. She liked to wear a necklace of little skull-head beads. A string of grimaces. Above them, her pale face. I watched her pupils expand wide, gobbling up the brilliant golden-hazel irises like a lunar eclipse.

But next to her, Rebecca was a shade. A shadow. I don’t really remember where I met her exactly. Things are hazy from when I was around her in the beginning. It could have been at the Tower, but maybe not. I know she likes the place. She’s sort of fascinated by it. The Tower of London is neither a tower, nor is it in London. It’s a storefront in a rather defunct part of town wedged between a cheap furniture store and a used book shop facing a secondary, dead-end street nobody drives down. You can’t see inside because the windows are blacked out, and the door is solid wood. All there is to indicate it’s a business is a sign, a really nice sign for what it is, made of painted wood with the letters routed into it, leafed in a darkened, weathered and patinated coppery gold. They used some fancy scripty-looking text; the T and the L elaborate and curly.

Inside the door, it’s a cross between a cowboy era bordello and something ripped out of the Georgian period. The walls are draped in deep blood-coloured velvet swags, some edged in gold fringes and tassels. The furniture is equally as ornate and cheesy; upholstered in jewel-toned purple, deep gold, red, royal blue and emerald green velvets and brocades. Hanging on the walls, over the folds and swags of velvet are gold-framed portraits. They’re all ghoulish and dark, some random figure, sallow, dressed in ruffled shirts and cuffs, or a period gown and bodice, dark hair, glaring eyes that follow you. The floor is carpeted in red with gold acanthus leaves woven into it. It’s really just a hangout. It costs five dollars to just walk in the door for the night. Somehow it manages to stay un-dingy, despite the regular Goth traffic that comes churning through here. There are little black-enameled and gold-leafed tables everywhere. A tacky gold-painted sideboard offers tea and coffee from ugly over-decorated urns. Splenda and teabags are hidden in rows of enameled black and gold boxes. There is a sort of bar on the right as you come in, facing the large parlour. You can get non-alcoholic drinks served to you in cut glass stemmed goblets so you can feel sophisticated. And some nights, if you’re lucky, you can get some wine or something spiked, if the owner is feeling naughty. She sometimes serves snacks, but she prefers to keep things simple. There are booth-like alcoves holding large loveseats along the wall facing the bar, and a large one in the back. Behind the swags the speakers usually play Trance to the Sun or some other faded and obscure Goth Rock group.

Well, expectedly, the patrons of this place are what one would imagine. Kids like me; acting out the melodrama of our lives, baleful gazes and eyeliner; dyed hair, piercings and sorrow. I would go there with Rebecca, we’d choose one of the many cozy alcoves along the wall, sit in the plush loveseat and make out. I’d tell her that she was beautiful. She’d tell me she liked my docs. It suited us.

***

Now I look down on the Tower from above. Across the street from it is the back of a large bank-building. We're on the roof of the high-rise, gazing down. It’s hot tonight, so a lot of the kids are outside, smoking. They’re about eight stories down. There’s a girl who calls herself Elora, bright red lipstick, more Rockabilly than Goth, sleeve tats and a mole drawn on her upper lip with an eyebrow pencil. I like her hair. She has it forties style, with the bangs and all. She looks like a pin-up, glossy patent red leather corset and all. It seems to work with her black cargo pants and doc martens. Kurt’s there with her, they’re sharing the same cigarette, bitching about something. Rebecca is inside the Tower, making out with someone else.

She is beside me. She is fascinated with the place. She doesn’t speak of it, but if I need to find her, nine times out of ten, at sunset she’s here, gazing down at the Tower. She never goes in, but she likes it most when the occupants are outside so she can watch them. There’s a smudge on her cheek. I want to reach out to clean it off, but she doesn’t like it when I touch her.

Behind us, the door to the roof utility shed is still open, and the light bulb is still swinging. It brings back the image of her face, only a few moments earlier. The swinging light made everything strange. Swing; her face is a skull, swing, she’s magnificent, swing, she’s a lost child, swing, she is God. Her eye-sockets looked so hollow for that second, it scared me. Her skin is so white it might as well be bone. Now in the full of the night, she’s back. She’s vibrant. Fresh from the kill. Our quarry is lying on the floor, on his side, his back to us. The pendulous light only seems to touch the folds of his clothing as it swings.

She looks playful. A smirk on her unnaturally red lips. “Before we move him, let’s play a game, shall we?” Her voice is like the velvet from the Tower’s walls; older sounding than her face, husky even, with a lilt and maybe a shred of an accent I can not identify. She doesn’t like to leave our kills here. She likes it here too much to bring attention to this spot. We usually move them to other locations where they won’t be found. My interest is piqued. I still like games too. She is wry as she looks at me. Her lion’s mane of shimmering blue-black tube curls frames her heart-shaped face and tumbles down to the middle of her back. Her eyes are ringed in long black lashes that would be the envy of any woman. She’s wearing smoky-eyed makeup tonight. Her eye whites pop, her irises look like hematite. She’s dressed in a simple white, billowy sleeved blouse with the buttons open to her cleavage. A jeweled pennant hangs just above the cleft, a rosette of filigree with small stones imbedded in it. She has slacks on with long cuffs that fall over a pair of black leather boots with a round forties toe and a thick heel. She could be any woman; except for her exceptional face. So beautiful. I catch just the tiniest glimpse of one of her canines as she smiles. She’s good at hiding them.

“Follow my lead, grasshopper,” and without any notice she jumps off the edge of the building. My pulse would have quickened had my heart still been beating. I gazed over the edge just in time to watch her land right in the center of the street, between Karl and Elora and four other kids who were standing on the opposite side of the street. Her boots make a loud crack as she hits the ground. She hits it hard; I’m surprised her heels didn't break off. She lands in a squat, her hand touching the pavement, white like a snowflake against the tarmac.

She rises with a smooth liquidity, eyes locked on Elora with an almost seductive gaze. She then looks up at me, and I see in a flash she wants me to follow. So I do. By the time I land, she’s gone; she is fast. Faster than any other one like us that I know of. I glance at Karl and look at him, but I don’t think he recognizes me without my dye and eye makeup. I’m in a pair of distressed, boot-cut jeans I paid $90 for and a striped dress-shirt. She told me that I should look more mainstream, pretty boy-like, she said. I pursue her, and leave behind a group of startled kids. Elora is weeping. As I run away, I hear her cry out; “I knew it! I knew it! Oh my God I knew it!”

Our chase scene is over. We sit on the building’s edge enjoying the aftermath, our legs dangling over the side. Nobody can see us even if they are looking up and pointing at where they thought we’d come from. She is grinning. The whole patronage of the Tower had come out to the street hoping they’d get a glimpse. They were filtering back inside, Elora still weeping tears of joy. She sighs. I think sometimes, she wants to be down there with them. She wants to be like Elora. She wants something to believe in.

I leave her there, she always lingers until they close and kick everyone out. She can move the kill on her own. She's strong enough. Oddly, she never kills from this group--the Goth kids of the Tower. Except me. I feel angry for a second, but it quickly fades away. She treasures them. Maybe she treasured me. All those times Rebecca and I came and went, I imagine she was up here, watching me. Maybe I am her part of the Tower. Her part of that world. Now I look nothing like it. I look like those kids who I could never relate to. The ones I wanted nothing to do with. A pretty-boy. It’s hard not to laugh at that. I glance back and she’s still sitting there, the breeze picking up some of her curls. “Sleep tight,” I whisper, and she hears me. A nod. “See you tomorrow night.” She’ll be here. As long as the Tower is. Little deity, watching over her flock.