2.00 erebus

Sephira, Season 2: Bloody December

Prologue Episode 2.00: Erebus

Sacrifice, wasted life, destiny redefined

Someone chooses you, lucky one

Close your eyes, your family knows you're here.

akira yamaoka - one more soul to the call

I wake up carried, my legs dragging along a cold metal floor, arms aching where they're bound and held up by guards. I strain my eyes into operation for just a moment before a sudden searing pain rises up in my head and I choke down a gasp. I let them carry me a minute or two longer (how far am I going, anyway?) and then begin to focus. An image forms in my mind of a snow-filled waste, driving sleet, and crystallized, frozen corpses scattered across the drifts. I can't feel the cold, but the guards obviously can. One of them says "It's waking up," and the next thing I know I'm on the ground being kicked in the stomach, pressed down by bodies, a long needle sliding into my arm. I reach out for consciousness and it slips away.


Some time later I can think again, and with the awareness comes feeling. I keep my eyes shut for a while, trying to picture a lack of pain, but something is fuzzing up my mind and I can't do it. I try to grit my way through the ache the old-fashioned way, by clenching my jaw as hard as I can, and it works just enough to let me see again. I'm hanging from a steel wall, arms and legs chained tightly by heavy manacles, in a large cell filled with unidentifiable laboratory equipment. Bodies in white coats and dark glasses buzz in front of me. They almost pass for real doctors.


"We are righteous." A voice from somewhere, loud, speaker-fogged, somewhere between mayoral and military. "We are victorious. We are freedom." Suddenly, I realize nobody's noticed I'm awake yet, so I shut my eyes again, carefully sag into my restraints, try to gather myself all in one place.


I step down into sand. West is running ahead of me, like he always is. Sunset bears down through a cloudless distance. I feel every hot grain crack and grind beneath my sandals. I don't need to look back to see the perfect random sequence of shallow prints in the drifts of ochre grit. There's a chaos of rocks and water down in the slow beating of blue against gray.


"Come on, we're almost there."


My mouth moves, but the sound is lost in fog.


"What do you mean, I talk too much? What's that all about? I'm serious. Where's that coming from? You really have to bring this up right now? I'm  completely serious. If you've got a problem, can't it just wait?"


Here the beach is sloughed seaward and hollow. He slides and stops. The sand moves in time to his will. He is a shadow against the evening, the sun off the surface, the white line of the horizon, the sea, the sand, early stars, what else there is, below flux. He raises his arms high.


"These are your new gods!" he shouts out to the water. "This is what the future looks like!" He turns back to me and is blacker than the coming night. "You and me, we're going to rule the world."


"We are truth. We are justified. We are the future."


That voice jars me back into where I am, and I know now is the only chance I'll have, while I have the presence of mind to lash out, before the needles come again and sleep takes me. The snowdrift rises up inside, filling the empty space in my head, and I send it spinning outward. One of the "doctors" screams for a second before he dies. The last sound he makes reminds me of stained glass breaking and falling to the floor. My restraints are deathly cold against my skin, but it's been years since I've had to worry about frostbite, so I push until they start to crack apart.


"Move aside." It's the man on the speakers, in the flesh. I open my eyes and prepare for a slaughter, but suddenly I'm alone with him. He's tall and lean, with a face like a forgotten president.


"You have been chosen," he says to me. "You should consider yourself lucky that an aberration of your kind is allowed to continue its existence at all." His hair blows in a howling wind, little crystals of frost forming on his face. He doesn't seem to notice. "In pain you will come to serve this country. Be proud. You were human once. You were American."


"I am a god!" I scream, and he should become nothing, shatter and blow away on my wind. He grimaces.


"You are a lab rat," he says, "and nothing more." A red light burns into me, sirens of liquid agony winding through my brain. The doctors file back in and somehow through the fugue of pain I feel the stinging in my arms and legs as sterile metal enters my veins.


"We are righteous," he says, his speakers roaring from everywhere at the same time. "We are victorious. We are freedom. We are the future." I watch him turn and leave. The needles stay in, and I notice with the last of my bleeding attention that they connect to long, thin tubes of fluid running into the machines to my side. I almost understand what that means, and then I'm nothing at all for a very, very long time.

Dave

DAVE

A short story by Michaela Catalano

He stands on one side of the door. On the other side, the man with three eyes is rolling one of them, Dave can see, his almost normal face bulging through the fisheye of the narrow peephole.

"Look, dude. Just let me in, all right?"

"No. Are you kidding me? Get the fuck off my porch."

"Man, what are you afraid of?"

Dave doesn't even dignify this with a response. He removes his eye from the hole and leans his back up against the door's cold wood. Sweat runs down his brow and into his eye. He curses.

"Come on. It's cold out here, man. It's snowing. I don't even have a jacket. Look at this shit. Let me use your phone. This is ridiculous."

"Use somebody else's goddamn phone.”

"There's nobody else for miles. My car's busted. I walked like a mile in the fucking snow before I saw your house. Let me use your phone."

"It's not snowing. It's July. It was 85 out today, you crazy fuck."

"Jesus! Are you okay in there?"

"What do you mean, am I okay?"

"I mean, July? Really? It's December. It's December 13th. It's fucking snowing, man."

Dave is quiet for a while. The man with three eyes is obviously lying or insane. He looks out the peephole again. The man is standing on his porch, arms wrapped around his waist, shivering. Snowflakes shimmer in the afternoon light before collapsing into the white waste surrounding the house.

"Well what do you want me to do about it?"

"What?"

"So what if it's December. How is that my fault?"

"How is... what? What are you talking about?"

"Don't blame me just because it's snowing. I don't control the weather, asshole. I'm not the Weather God."

"Nobody's saying you're the... Weather God. My car is broken down. I need to use your phone."

"Go to somebody else's house!"

“There’s. Nobody. Else. For. Miles. We’ve gone over this. You live here, man. Listen. I don’t understand why you won’t let me use your phone.”

“You have three eyes!”

Nobody says anything for a while. Dave is leaning against the door again, although he doesn’t remember moving. The man with three eyes sighs. Dave slumps down onto his ass, and in the process bangs his head, producing a loud thump.

“...Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Okay.”

“Just leave me alone.”

“My name is Greg.”

“What?”

“It’s my name.”

“I don’t want to know your fucking name.”

“Well, now you know it. Listen. I could die out here. It’s really, seriously fucking cold. I just want to use your phone and call somebody.”

“I’m not letting you in my house. You have three eyes.”

“I don’t have three eyes, man. Are you high? Is that what’s going on? Because that’s cool, whatever. I just need to use your phone.”

“I’m not high. I’m high? You’re the guy with three fucking eyes!”

“I don’t have three eyes, man. Just look at me.”

Dave groans, struggles to his feet and lowers his eye to the peephole yet again. Greg is staring pointedly at the other side of the door. His third eye twitches shut and opens again mischeviously.

“You winked at me!”

“I didn’t wink.”

“You did it with your third eye!”

“Oh for fuck’s sake.”

“What, are you trying to psyche me out? D’you think if you keep saying you don’t have three eyes I’m just gonna believe you? I looked out the door, man! I saw your eyes. All three of them.”

“I don’t know what the fuck you think you saw. I’ve got two eyes. I’m just like you. I’m a regular guy. I’m from Chicago.”

“Where the fuck is Chicago?”

“What do you mean, where’s Chicago? It’s in Illinois.”

“Illinois, where?”

“Uh, America?”

“What the fuck is America?”

“The country we’re in? Right now?”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“Oh my god. Oh my god you’re fucking crazy. We’re in America. We’re American. This is... I’m going to die out here. You’re gonna let me die. It’s fucking freezing and I’m gonna die because the only house within miles is home to a FUCKING PSYCHOPATH!”

It’s quiet for a while. Dave stands there thinking until Greg starts beating on the door with his fists, then steps back. The door shudders and groans. Greg is yelling and knocking and bashing his hands and feet against the door.

“LET ME IN! LET ME IN! JESUS PLEASE LET ME IN!”

Dave ignores him. Eventually Greg stops his assault and begins to sob. This goes on for a while. Dave sighs.

“Will you promise not to do anything but use the phone?”

“... What?”

“Promise not to do anything but use my phone and leave.”

“Christ, of course. I promise.”

Dave opens the door and Greg walks in. As he moves in, looking for the phone, Dave notices that he has four arms. He’s not quite sure how this fact slipped by him before. Greg picks the phone up off the wall and dials.

“Hey, John. Yeah, it’s me. No. No, listen, my car broke down. Yeah. Some bumfuck place out off the 78."

There is a halo of hot light forming around Greg's body as he talks. Dave watches it, his mouth slightly open. The space above Greg's head is twisty and blurred with heat, the ceiling's wood boards beginning to smoulder and blacken.

"Just go northeast for a while, you can’t miss it. Only car for miles. I’m gonna run back there and wait. No, I’m calling from somebody’s house. My cell’s dead, that’s why. Shit, I know, you don’t have to tell me. All right. All right. See you.”

He turns to Dave. A narrow, ragged hole has burned its way through the ceiling, and standing beneath it, Greg shines with gray winter light and his own blistering aura.

“Thanks, man. You’re a livesafer.”

He reaches out his hand. Dave takes it. It feels cool and dry. They shake.

"No problem."

Greg walks back out into the snow. Dave stands in the doorway, watching as he slowly fades into the distance. His arms are opening as he walks, multiplying and spreading out in a fan, four becoming six and then eight and then ten and then twelve, flakes of white turning to rain and plummeting as they brush up against his radiance, the wet furrow of melted snow in his wake glittering under the dull and distant light of the evening sun and the seven pale circles of early moon.

Dave shuts the door, locks it, slides the deadbolt into place, opens his closet door and picks up a bucket. He stares up through the hole in his ceiling for a while, letting the snow settle on his cheeks and in his hair, then sets the bucket beneath the hole. He sits down on his couch, fishes the remote out from between the cushions, leans back, and turns on the TV.

Unknown Story Prototype

This was an attempt at a short story that, after I spent some time fleshing out the characters and situation elsewhere, has burst, gray-goo-like, into what could easily become a novel if I actually write it somehow. In the main work, this would be set early on (probably within the first few chapters), and eventually will be rewritten in first person (probably).

A final note: "Unknown Story" is not a placeholder, it is the actual, deliberate title, since the story (and future novel) are set (mostly) in the world of the Unknown Armies tabletop roleplaying game.

---------

Through the warm niches of flesh

And through the glittering chemical light

Through the blade, kiss and caress

And through the warm scents of the night

Through the terror of chemical darkness

I have scrambled in my frantic flight

alymysto - essence

-----

Doug came home early from work that night, and she should have been home, but he didn't see her anywhere, and she didn't respond when he called her name. When he came to the bedroom door it was shut and there was a low sound from inside that he couldn't place. He felt a weird nauseous thrill when he thought about it. Hadn't he seen this a hundred times in movies, on TV? He'd open the door, saying something like "Honey, I'm home," except that Doug never said things like that, and she'd be there, flushed and pink on top of (under?) some strange man, or worse, some not-so-strange man.

Then he shook his head. Stupid, paranoid. She wasn't like that. Why did he always have to think the worst of everything, she was saying in the back of his mind, in that too-calm voice she used when she was angry. Stupid. He reached for the doorknob but something stopped him. There was something weird about the door. The wood was the wrong color, he thought. Just so slightly. Just the faintest shade darker than he remembered. He shook his head again, but it still seemed off. Then he thought of her. Not this again, she'd say if he told her, please. Just let it go. You know how you get.

Well, she was right, wasn't she. He did know how he got. When he opened the door he saw she was curled up sleeping alone. The window was open and the afternoon light was blowing through, tousling the curtains, which seemed to hang a little bit less straight when they settled. Her clock radio was turned on, that was the noise he'd heard. He sat on the side of the bed quietly, watching her slow breathing.

"Well, good evening, listeners! This is Radio 4, reporting on the day's events. Late this morning, a dog was hit by a car in La Mirada. The dog's name was Buddy. He was small and brown and once somebody loved him, but the car came from clear skies like God's own cruel thunder. Buddy spent three hours panting and bleeding in the shadows of a filthy alley. At the last moment, he thought he saw a red ball rolling across the mouth of the alley, and he dragged himself out, but the ball was gone and the sun was hot and Buddy died there on the sidewalk at 3:40 PM. A man in a suit saw his body and he smiled. He kicked that little dog back into the alley, into the dark."

Doug stared at the radio. His mouth was half open and he wasn't sure what he was feeling. Clouds shifted in the sky out the window, and the curtains moved again, lashing quietly inward. The wind was cold on Doug's skin. The voice on the radio turned into two voices. They sounded like a young man and a young woman, laughing in that professional way.

"Well, Abe," the woman said, “I think it’s time for tonight’s forecast!”

“Absolutely, Janet,” the man said. “Tonight’s forecast is shallow sleep for many, red hands for a few, and a man with stars reflected in his eyes.”

“That’s right, Abe,” the woman said, laughing. “His eyes go on forever. Walls are as air before him. Blades are turned aside, shields fall to rust beneath his gaze.”

“They sure do, Janet,” the man said, and a sound effect played loudly, jarringly, the sound of a cartoon spring and a tinny giggle. “There were dreams after all. God help us, there were dreams. He moves among the legion, and they see him not.”

The broadcast cut short as the clock’s alarm went off without warning. Doug swallowed a gasp. It hurt. He fumbled with the clock and shut off the alarm. The time was 4:44 PM. Beside him, Scarlet was stirring.

“Hey,” she said, voice thick with sleep. “What time is it?”

“Four-something,” Doug said. “How come your alarm was set for now?” She shook her head, looking confused, then yawned.

“God,” she said, “I just laid down for a second. Dunno how I got so tired.” Doug turned and leaned against the bedframe, put his hand on her head, ruffled her hair. She sighed and rolled over, laid her head in his lap, looked up at him. “I dreamed I killed you,” she said. “You came through that door with a long piece of driftwood in your hand, and I tried to wave at you, but there was a gun in my hand and it went off. I dragged your body outside to hide it in the woods, but then I remembered we lived in the city, and I was dragging you along the sidewalk, crying, but nobody seemed to notice.”

Doug put his arms around her, and she shut her eyes. He sat there for a while, holding her, stroking her dark hair until she fell asleep again, then got up, gently laying her head back on the pillow, trying not to wake her. He went into the kitchen.

The fridge was almost empty, and he ended up just microwaving a couple of cheap TV dinners. He sat down at the table when he was done, waiting, and after a minute she came in like he’d known she would, rubbing the quiet from her eyes. They ate for a while.

“How was work?” she asked him suddenly.

“Stupid,” he said. “Some fuck tried to lift a bag of cheetos. He looked like he was forty, and he ended up down at the station for a bag of fucking cheetos."

"Was he homeless?" she asked.

"Didn't look like it. He had on a pretty nice suit and expensive looking shoes. Shiny." He looked back down at the plastic rectangle, picking at the remaining half of a cheese enchilada. "How about you? How was work?"

"Stupid," she said. "Just stupid."

"Aw, don't say that," he said. "Come on, tell me." Something clicked against his fork and he pulled it free of the tortilla. It looked like a chicken bone.

"Really," she said. "I can't get anything down at all. I can't even finish the chapter. I keep having these nebulous great ideas and then when I get to the keyboard, I can't find a place for them." She twirled her fork through the crust on top of her little compartment of beans.

"You'll get it," he said. "You've done it before."

"That was ghostwriting," she said. "It's not the same at all. There's no soul. Anybody could do it." They spent the rest of the meal in silence, her looking down, him feeling as tired as she looked.

After dinner she went in to write and he sat down to watch TV, but there was nothing on, nothing but news and re-runs of shows that weren't funny the first time. He might have spent the rest of the evening there, except she came out of the bedroom after an hour and a half. He heard her footsteps behind him and an image of her holding a knife to his throat flashed through his head before he could stop it. He steeled himself to turn around, and when he did, he saw that she wasn't wearing nearly as much clothing as he had expected, and they went back into the bedroom together.

After that there was not much left to do, and she told him she still couldn't write anything, so they just laid in the dark together, talking.

"You know what?" he said. She shook her head. He could feel it move against his chest. "I found a fucking chicken bone in my enchilada. My cheese enchilada." She laughed, and he smiled at her through the darkness and she moved in tighter and he forgot about everything for a while. He was about to fall asleep when he remembered the alarm was set all weird, and he fumbled with the clock radio in the dark, navigating by its dull red light. But when he checked, he saw that the alarm was set for 7:00 AM like it was supposed to be, like it had been all along.

At last he fell asleep, and in deeper corners of the night he dreamed long and low. He moved upon the face of a body of rushing black water below a dull felt sky and a laughing moon, and in the darkest curves of the current he could see the stars.

Gray

Gray

A LONG SHORT STORY POSSIBLY IN PROGRESS BY MICHAELA CATALANO

----

Allow me to clarify. This was my final for my creative writing class, and for the most part I'm happy with it. However, I'm not sure if it's finished. There is about another page and a half after what I've posted, but I'm not happy with it, and I'm not convinced there needs to be any more. For now, consider this the full story. If I ever come up with a way to end it, I'll edit this post with the new ending.

I would also like to mention that this is related to a larger work, and really understanding it would require knowledge that no one could possibly have at this juncture. However, I still think it is an enjoyable piece, so I'm posting it.

*Edited more recently*

It's been a while since I read this through, but I think it's safe to say that it is no longer representative of the current quality of my work, although I doubt it's awful, either.

I also want to note here that anything earlier than this is *particularly* not representative of the current quality of my work, except perhaps for Deep Blue, which was one of those gems that comes out far ahead of one's current level.

----

I might have been humming out loud. My eyes were shut. A pleasant rumbling was moving through my body up from my shoes and down my outstretched arm as it hung from the pole. All of the seats were taken.

I didn't think it was possible for anyone to hear me, even if I were humming out loud. I couldn't hear anybody else over the clattering of the wheels. I ignored the slight ache in my legs. The last eight hours had felt more like sixteen. Home hadn't sounded this good since yesterday.

"What's that?", somebody said. A kid, by the pitch of the voice.

"What's what, honey?" Vaguely interested, I opened my eyes and looked over. The girl was staring out one of the windows. Then, as quickly as her interest had been caught, it was lost.

"Nothing."

A few minutes later, the station came up and the car screeched to a halt. People filtered out. I took my time. I'm not a big fan of waiting in lines, and I enjoy bumping into people even less. As the last few people left, I yawned a bit too deeply. There was an odd haze to my vision. For a moment I thought my glasses were fogged, but that wasn't it. I wiped them off anyway and blinked a few times. It was gone.

From the station it was only a few minutes to home: my apartment. I resisted the urge to slump against the door and fumbled with my keys. After what seemed like ages I found the right one, and before I knew it I was inside. I shut and locked the door, stumbled into my room, kicked my shoes into a corner and flopped down on the bed. I suppose most people as tired as I was would have fallen asleep, but it's been a long time since rest has come easy to me. Usually, I have to make a conscious and protracted effort to fall asleep, and this night was no different. After a few minutes of squirming around on top of the sheets I felt a lot better.

I sat up, laid back down again, then rolled off the bed and made my way to my desk on my hands and knees before pulling myself up into my chair. I turned my monitor on, pushed the power button on my laptop and waited for a minute or two. Finally I was at the log-in screen. The only option was a small rounded square containing a picture of a chessboard. "Allen" was written in small letters, sans-serif, next to the icon. I clicked it and punched in my password. No one else ever used my computer; I lived alone. Even so, protecting it with a password made me feel better.

From there it was another minute or so before I touched anything. My laptop was pretty good (a few years prior, it had been very good), but I had it stuffed so full of crap that startup took an eternity. When I was satisfied that nothing would crash if I messed with it, I scanned my desktop. It was heavily cluttered and last night I had somehow randomized the arrangement of icons. Eventually I found what I was looking for. I opened Skype to the only log-in option available and waited the few seconds it took to process. I don't normally mind small delays but at that particular moment I was feeling impatient.

There! My friends list. Thirteen offline, six online. The fifth name from the top was the one I was looking for: "M Gray," adorned with a small image of a silver gear. I grabbed my headphones, turned up the sound, switched on the microphone, and double-clicked the name. It rang four or five times before she picked up.

"Hey," she said, sounding tired. "Long time no see." We hadn't spoken since... Well, since yesterday. Lately that had begun to seem like a long time. I laughed.

"You sound tired," I said. Her icon had changed, I realized. A wavy black line ran through the hole in the center of the gear. It looked like a piece of dark thread.

"Yeah." She yawned, and I fought the urge to follow suit semi-successfully. "Just a little beat. How are you?"

I was dead fucking tired. "Pretty good," I said. "What are you up to?" By this point in a conversation I was usually opening Firefox and beginning to wander my bookmarks looking for updated sites, but I didn't particularly feel like it then. I leaned back in my chair and stretched.

She didn't say anything for a moment, evidently distracted by something. "Not much. Just hanging around, talking to people." I stretched again and my back cracked satisfyingly. "How was work?"

"Ah, you know. The usual. Shuffling through papers and typing things. Got no complaints, I guess." Actually, I did have a few complaints, but I didn't bother reliving them. I could have talked about how Ted from the cubicle over continually made a mysterious slurping noise that became extraordinarily annoying after the first four hours. I could have talked about how my boss had come in and begun a lecture that I lost track of after about a minute and hadn't stopped until I was about ready to drag him over to the copiers, stick his head in one and bash the lid against his skull until pictures of his brain came out. I could have mentioned the fact that my coffee had tasted eerily like ass, and that every time I took a tentative sip, I could hear someone giggling nearby, until I finally just chucked the whole thing and washed my mouth out in the sink.

None of these things seemed like a big deal any more, though. I didn't feel like ranting about anything, anyway, especially not to Gray, who had certainly done nothing to deserve any more irritation than she seemed already to receive on a day-to-day basis. "How about yours?", I asked.

"Oh, fine, I guess," she said. "Wes was being kind of a jerk."

"Who's Wes?", I asked, interested. Gray had never spoken about her work except to acknowledge that she did, in fact, have a job. She was usually really evasive about it. I wondered if she had let something slip she hadn't meant to, or if she was just inexplicably opening up to me about it.

"Oh, uh, just -- well, sort of my boss," she said, sounding slightly panicked. Let something slip, then. I still didn't know why she avoided the topic of her job. I didn't really care. I've had a few jobs I was ashamed of. Still, though, it was impossible not to be curious.

I knew better than to press my luck. "Oh. Well, that sucks." Wes. Wes. I decided to remember that name. Wes. It had to be short for something. Westley? Wesker? Was Wesker even a real name, or just a video game character? It occured to me, not for the first time, that I still didn't know Gray's real name, or even what the "M" in her screenname stood for. She wouldn't even tell me where she lived, except that it wasn't here.

"It's no big deal, really. Hey, listen to this." A window popped up. She was sending me a song, probably pirated. Neither of us had much problem with stealing music. Well, if she wanted to change the subject, that was okay. I listened to the song when it was finished, and it was pretty cool. We talked about it for a while.

Eventually, night came on properly, and not long after I felt a need to use the restroom. "I'll be right back," I told her. I muted my microphone. I don't really like thinking people can hear me when I should be alone. Sometimes I talk to myself or make weird noises without realizing it. I could hear her typing. Suddenly I felt like looking something up online, and I had no immediate desire to say anything, so I left the microphone off.

Listening in on her felt sort of voyeuristic and wrong, but at the same time, it was a little exciting. Maybe that says a lot about the boredom of my life. I guess it does. After a few minutes I had something to say, so I turned the microphone back on and told her I was back. We struck up a new conversation.

Later, after she had gone, I turned on the song she had sent me. I lay in bed, still wearing my headphones, and listened until I fell asleep.

----

Wednesday. Three hours into my shift, Ted starting making his goddamn slurping noise again. Intermittantly, like a fridge turning up and down. No one seemed to have messed with my coffee, though, and my boss left me alone. By comparison, yesterday seemed absolutely packed with thrills. All for the best, I suppose.

"Hey, Al." Ted hadn't been slurping in a while, and it was apparently because he was standing behind me. I almost jumped out of my chair.

"Jesus, you scared me," I said, unnecessarily. I swivelled around and looked at him. "Well? What do you want?" There was no outward sign of what was responsible for that awful sound that had emanated so ominously from his cubicle. I briefly wondered it could have been him drinking coffee, but I didn't see how he could make that much noise and have the coffee last so damn long.

"Heard about these people having seizures, Al?", he asked. Why had he just said my name again? God damn it, I hated people who did that. You have my attention! It's not going to waver so fast that you need to keep addressing me formally.

"No," I replied.

He nodded significantly. "It's some weird stuff, Al."

"Don't call me Al," I snapped. I hate being called Al. My last name is not Bundy. I'm not a redneck. Allen isn't a long name. It's not hard to say it.

"Sorry, man," he said. "Anyway, this stuff has been all over the news. Heard there've been random outbreaks of seizures among people all around the city. Pretty weird, huh? I think I saw it happening on the way home from work. A couple guys just standing in the middle of the crosswalk." I wasn't sure why he was bringing this up. I never get bored enough to talk to anyone at work, especially not bored enough to gossip.

"No, I hadn't heard," I told him. "I haven't seen any of it, either." Except maybe that wasn't true. There was that girl on the subway... But she was a kid. Hell, I space out once in a while, and by once in a while, I mean constantly. "Well... is that all you've got to say?"

He looked hurt. "Uh, I guess." He stood there a little longer, maybe expecting me to say something, and when I didn't he went back to his cubicle. I turned back to my work, and sure as shit, less than five minutes later, the slurping sound resumed.

On the subway again, I found my mind wandering to the seizures Ted was talking about. Now that I thought about it, it was kind of worrying, although, living in America, I'd seen my share of scares, few of which ever panned out. I had known enough about computers to see that Y2K was bullshit, though I will I confess, as the moment arrived, I had felt a twinge of anxiety. Most other events of that sort had fallen equally flat.

This time, I had been lucky enough to get a seat, and the subway car seemed oddly quiet, subdued. Of course, that was probably just me being paranoid. The little girl from the other day wasn't there. I wasn't sure why I had expected her to be. I watched the other people in my compartment with idle interest. There was a middle-aged man across from me reading a newspaper. A young woman off to the left staring at the floor. A man and woman who looked like they were together who occasionally muttered things to each other. The compartment was fairly empty.

For a little while, my thoughts turned to Gray, and I wasn't sure why. I found myself wondering what she looked like. She wouldn't send a picture, but she certainly wasn't the sort to have low self-esteem, and her voice seemed as though it had to belong to an attractive person. I wondered if it was connected at all with her reluctance to talk about her life. I really didn't know much about Gray except for her personality, likes, and dislikes, which I knew almost too well.

As I thought of these things, I stared at the tunnel wall through the far window. The train was moving too fast to make out any details but sometimes the wall flickered lighter or darker. The dim lights along the ceiling were fairly far apart, but they still flashed by regularly. At one point, just as I was beginning to space out again thinking about Gray, I could have sworn I saw one of the lights, dimmer than the rest, shoot by on the floor of the tunnel. Maybe one of them had fallen down? But if it did, it couldn't still be working.

The train slowed and shuddered into the station. This time the passengers filtered out much quicker than the previous day, seeing as there were a lot less of them. As I exited I heard an excited babble off to my left. Four or five people were gathered around a young man who was standing completely still, staring with his head cocked at one of the concrete pillars in the station.

"Is he okay?", a voice said. "Is he having a seizure?"

I was tempted to take a closer look, but I didn't give in. As I was leaving, I heard another voice, much clearer.

"He's moving! Hey, buddy, are you okay?" I turned back. The young man was staring at the onlookers, baffled. "You been standin' there for two minutes."

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, looking confused. The little crowd around him moved away as he left, occasionally glancing back at them, clearly put off by their seemingly unwarranted attention.

I went home and repeated my ritual of recouperating from the day's events in bed.

"So, how was work?", Gray asked me later, during a slow point in our call. I decided not to mention the mystery of Ted's supremely odious personal habits, or his bizarre attempt at conversation. I found myself wondering about the seizure thing.

"Okay, I guess. Nothing exciting happened. Not that I expected it to." After a moment, I began to feel the strange desire to mute my microphone like I had the other night. "I'll be right back," I told her. I flicked the switch to the off position and leaned back, eyes shut, relaxing. I sat there for a while in silence and listened to her breathing, which was faintly audible. You can call me creepy if you want. I won't argue. I had been stressed out all day for reasons I wasn't completely in touch with, and even though we weren't talking right then, knowing she was there made me feel calm and content.

A couple of minutes later, I heard a phone ringing on her side, to my slight surprise. I couldn't recall her ever getting a phone call from anyone before, which, in retrospect, was a little bit weird. Then again, I hardly ever get phone calls, but maybe that's because I do all my talking online. She sighed and the phone stopped ringing.

"Yeah? What do you want?" There was silence for a moment. "Are you kidding me? No it's not okay. I know you're trying, so am I -- how can you be so nonchalant about this? Listen, Wes. I'm not sure this was a good idea after all. No, I --" She sighed, sounding resigned. "Fine... Fine, but only because we're finally getting close. Yeah. No. Yeah, I'll see you tomorrow. Good night." She set the reciever down with an audible click.

So that's what it was about, or at least partly about. I should have known. I felt slightly sick to my stomach, and actually a little bit angry, which just made me feel worse. I didn't have any right to be angry.

It was a while before I could bring myself to talk to her again, and I faked my way through another ten minutes or so before lying and saying that I was tired and going to get some sleep. I turned on her song, and lay in bed until I couldn't think any more.

----

"You look like shit, Al." Ted, oh, Christ, leave me alone, you asshole. Once again he had somehow managed to appear in my cubicle without alerting me to his presence. I didn't want to talk to him, of all people. The Slurping Wonder was the last person I needed to be bothered with. I ignored his comment, hoping he would take the hint and just go back to his damned job.

"Al? Hey, can you hear me?" I turned to face him.

"Yeah, I can fucking hear you. What do you want from me?"

His eyes narrowed a little. "Hey, you don't have to be a jerk. You were spacing out something fierce. I thought maybe, you know..." I had a feeling I knew what he was talking about. How would he even see me from his cubicle? Did he just walk around at random, watching people? Actually, he probably did, come to think of it.

"No, Ted. I'm not having a seizure. I'm having a shitty day is what I'm having. Just leave me alone." I turned back immediately to my desk and pretended to work on something. When I looked back again a minute later, he was still standing there. He wasn't staring at me, though. He was looking at a paperclip on my desk as though it were the most amazing thing he had ever seen, standing there perfectly still.

The subway car's rattle was weirdly comforting that day. Why now, of all times, I felt the need to cling to familiarity, I couldn't say. After a while, I began to hear two people talking quietly, and I took a casual look around the compartment. There were five people in it this time.

Off to my right, two teenage girls, reading books. Score one for the literate. To the left, what might have been the same woman from the other day, sitting in a different seat this time, still staring idly (but not fixatedly) at the floor of the car. Across from me, a man and a woman. Maybe the same couple from the other day, I couldn't be sure. Occasionally they spoke to each other, but I couldn't hear what they were saying.

I took to staring out the window at the subway wall again. The same flicker of light and dark wall sections flowing by, almost hypnotically. The smear of lights lining the ceiling, flashing, coruscating white suns, writhing in the dark.

I started suddenly. I must have fallen asleep. I must have been in worse shape than I even knew. All day long, though, I had been unable to think about Gray. Or was it that I had been unable to think of anything else? There was the sound of screeching brakes, and the station slipped into view. As I was disembarking, the young couple passed me by, and I happened to catch the eye of the man. He held my gaze for a moment, and then grinned a strange sort of half-grin, muscles barely contorted but teeth still showing. Then contact broke and we went our separate ways.

It was raining, raining hard. The short walk to my apartment had never seemed longer. Looking up, the rain was like a shower of stars falling from dark nebulae far above me. I loved rain, but today I felt what most people feel in such weather. Cold and gloom.

I took a shower. After I had dried off, I considered just going to bed. I wanted to talk to Gray, but at the same time... I couldn't describe it. I wasn't mad at her or myself. I just felt hollow.

It was only about fifteen minutes before I called her. She sounded tired again, but I didn't ask why. We talked about all kinds of things, and I almost felt okay again. Almost. I was finally getting to a level of exhaustion at which I could barely function, and I thought maybe if I took a break from talking, I'd get some energy back, so I told her I had to go to the bathroom and muted my microphone.

I reclined lethargically in my chair and thought about the day. Now I was beginning to be a little worried about the mass seizure scare. For some reason, the image of the man on the train's grin came back to me. It was a terrible expression. His eyes had been black... Pitch black. There hadn't seemed to be any light reflected by them at all. There was only darkness, as though his pupils opened onto the vastness of space.

----

You have every right to be angry. She hurt you. She injured you, as sure as if she had planted a knife in your back, didn't she? She must have known how you felt about her. She waited until you could hardly stand it and she broke you down. She broke your heart's back on her knee and laughed.

There is light here, in this dark place. There is nothing to be afraid of, here where the walls close in. There is no death here, though a tomb it may be. Can you hear it? The sound of water, dripping, serene. Perhaps someday that water will fill the world. Would you like that? Water to wash away all these people and their games.

I awoke slowly. A minute later, my alarm went off, and I pulled myself out of bed.

----

Midway through the day, I had to go to the copy room, and to my unpleasant surprise, both Ted and my boss were already there, talking to each other. They didn't pay any attention to me except for Ted nodding slightly in my direction, a gesture I ignored. Twenty pages copied and two minutes in, they fell silent.

When I finished my copies and started to leave I realized they hadn't left as I had thought they had. They stood gazing, statuesque, Ted's eyes fixed on the ceiling lamp, my boss staring down at a pin someone had left on floor. The pin was nearly invisible but for the tiny gleam of light reflecting off of it. Several other co-workers came in, and we gathered around, watching in morbid fascination. No one knew quite what to do.

"What do you think is happening to them?" It was somebody I had never bothered speaking to before. I didn't know his name. He looked awed and afraid at the same time.

"I don't know," I told him.

"I guess people really are having these

below the ground, where the echoes on the walls are all the world, where darkness presses in, suffocating. You are here already. Don't you know what you need? She doesn't love you. She will never love you. She is dark. You are bright and warm. There is nothing inside her but night. She will take you in and then you will be dark, too. You will be nothing but

"Al! Al!" Ted was shaking me by the shoulder, shouting my name. "Al, Jesus Christ, are you okay?" I was fine, what was he talking about? Only it felt somehow like he was above me. I could feel the wall pressing against my back, and I couldn't remember how I had gotten there. Hands grabbed me and pulled me away from the wall, struggling as though they were fighting gravity, and I felt the rasp of rough carpet against my skin.

Even the roar of the subway car seemed quieter that day. I hung on to my seat with both hands. Through the window was that ever-present flickering of light gray and dark gray, light and dark.

The only people in the compartment aside from me were the man and woman from the other day. They spoke in hushed whispers and though I strained my ears, I could never make out more than a word or two. Once or twice the man touched her arm as he spoke, and I could tell that it made her uncomfortable. I shut my eyes and fell asleep.

The sound of the train arriving at the station awoke me. I got up at once and headed for the door. As I passed through I noticed a middle-aged man standing outside the car. He stood with his arm hesitantly outstretched, like a character in a movie put on pause.

"It's happening all the time now. You can feel how close it is. We've got it. We're really going to do this." The man and woman from the train were watching him. The woman's face was expressionless. The man was laughing out loud, his mouth open in that half-grin, the hateful smile of a corpse, drawn tight by decay.

Suddenly they were gone and the man who had been having a seizure was tapping me on the shoulder.

"Sir? Sir, are you all right?"

It was still stormy. Water poured down from above. I remembered my dream. I felt as though I were drowning. I felt like the entire world had turned to liquid, swirling around me so that I could never catch my breath.

At home, I called Gray. "Hey," I said. "How was your day?"

"Okay," she told me. Through my headphones I could hear the monotonous tapping of rain.

Not long after, I lied and said that I was going to take a shower, and flicked off my microphone. A few minutes later, her phone rang, and she answered at once.

Leann

Leann

AN EXTREMELY SILLY COLLEGE EXERCISE

----

Let me give some background here. I was taking a creative writing class at Golden West community college and the professor had us all take the first few lines of some other author's work and finish it ourselves. So then let me clarify that the first couple lines of this are not my own work; they are somebody else's. I don't know whose, and I don't want to infringe on anybody's copyrights or whatever, so please don't consider this anything resembling a serious work, and I hope if whoever the beginning of this belongs to ever somehow finds it (yeah, right, I'd be less surprised if I was hit by a meteor and a lightning bolt at the same time) that they will take no offense. If you, reader, are that person, and you want this removed, let me know.

Now! On to the silliness!

----

Leann and I were driving to her father's new A-frame on Lake Nacogdoches, and I was nervous about meeting her folks for the first time.

"Relax," Leann said. "Drink a few Old Mills with Dad, maybe catch a large mouth or two off the dock Saturday. When you get the nerve on Sunday, you can spring the news on the old man about wanting to marry his little girl."

"Are you sure about this?" I asked. "I'm afraid I'm going to screw up. I'm no good at this kind of thing."

"It'll be fine," she told me. "I'll pick out the perfect shotgun for you. You'll do great."

"But hasn't he had, you know, a lot more practice than me?" I asked. "How many boyfriends have had to do this so far?"

She shrugged. "You'll do great," she repeated. "He's old and slow, and besides, you're motivated."

---

We stood, feet planted firmly in the bottoms of our kayaks, precariously balanced and wobbling in the morning breeze.

"Sunrise, boy," he said, grinning. "Time to meet your destiny."

My fingers flexed. Leann called out from the shore, "Five! Four! Three!"

I shivered as the wind picked up.

"Two! One!"

The old man's hand drifted down toward his shoulder.

"Go!"

In perfect unison her father and I grabbed the shotguns from our backs, sliding them effortlessly from their makeshift holsters. We leveled the guns, lined each other up in our sights, and fired.

---

"W... What..." I tried to speak and found it difficult. I propped my shoulders up against a pillow and tried to focus my eyes. I was lying in a hospital bed, tightly wrapped with bandages.

"Baby, you're awake!" Leann's misty shape coalesced in front of me. "I was worried. You've been out for days."

"What happened? Did I... win?"

"Well, technically it was a draw, but Dad always said that in his book, the survivor is the real winner, and you're definitely a survivor."

"Thank god," I said.

"Now, there's just one thing left to get in order," she said with a smile. "Should we have the wedding first, or the funeral?"

Professora

Professora

A PIECE OF FLASH FICTION BY MICHAELA CATALANO

I stripped, tossed all of my clothes into a corner, and lay down on the table. I lay there for a while, quiet, stilling my excited heart and slowing my breath, feeling slightly sick with anxiety and anticipation. Finally the Professora entered. She was of average height, with a slight build and short black hair. She wore a simple red robe stained with faint dark patches.

"It is time to begin the procedure," she said. "The spells are in place. I will begin with an incision into the abdomen." From a small bag she drew a shimmering silvery scalpel. At the tip of her right index finger a violet light bloomed, and she drew it carefully lengthwise across me. Where it passed it left a faint purple line.

Taking up the scalpel, she set it lightly against the leftmost edge of the line.

"You will not feel pain," she said. "You will feel perhaps a tingling sensation, but no more." I nodded, swallowed.

She pressed down against me firmly, and the blade of the scalpel slipped through my flesh, parting it neatly with little resistance. The smooth metal was cold inside my stomach, but there was no pain. Tugging gently on the grip she laid open my abdomen with one long slow stroke. Blood welled up from the wound. Moving her hands quickly, she traced a series of white symbols in the air, and my blood vanished as quickly as it emerged, reappearing at the bottom of a large basin on the floor.

She traced another line vertically across my stomach and made another swift, sure cut, then pulled the thick flaps of flesh apart and stuck them to my sides with short, slim silver pins.

I looked down across my body, into my opened abdomen, watching the soft and sinuous shivering of organs. She stroked my intestines gently, reverently, then wrapped several loops around her hands and tugged them free of my abdominal cavity.

"These will be the first to go," she said, and then her work began in earnest.

Stranger

Stranger
A SHORT STORY BY MICHAELA CATALANO



"You know, I've always wanted to do this," I said.

"What? I mean, what is this, specifically?"

"Don't do it!," somebody shouted, hands forming a makeshift megaphone over his face. "You have so much to live for!"

"Oh, I'm gonna do it," I yelled back. "I'm gonna do it, I swear to god I will." I swung my legs back and forth over the abyss, watched birds drifting through the distance. "I've got nothing to lose!" I turned, looked at her. She was sitting next to me, legs folded, watching with interest. "I don't know," I said to her. "Not this exactly, you know. The idea of this, that's what I wanted to do."

"The idea?" She raised an eyebrow. "They idea of dying? Or the idea of killing yourself?"

"Neither of those," I said.

"Ma'am!" A cop or somebody was yelling through an actual megaphone. I assumed it was a cop. I didn't know. I wasn't paying attention to the crowd any more. "Ma'am, please, come down and we can talk about this. We can get you help."

"Nobody can help me!" I screamed. "This is it! This is my last resort!"

"So if it's not either of those, then what is it?"

"It's not that important. It was just a thought. You know, you shouldn't be up here. The FBI is after me, they'll get you too."

"The FBI?" she said. "Why, what'd you do?"

"They're after me. They put microchips under my skin, when I was sleeping. After they took out the ones I already had in there, I mean."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, the Illuminati's probably in on it too. They're all after me. I found out their secret."

"Ma'am, please! Come down!"

"Fuck you! I'm not coming down! Christ."

"What is their secret?"

"Man, don't you see? It's so obvious. Area 51, all that shit? It's not a cover up. It's a distraction. All those crash sites and weird research areas, nothing happened there. It's faked. And while they're playing us all for idiots they're perfecting the real secret. And now they know I know."

"So what is the real secret?"

"They're keeping the Anti-Christ golem imprisoned in the Large Hadron Collider."

"Ah," she said. "I always wondered."

"So, tell me about yourself," I said.

"What?"

"I don't know. What kind of books are you into?"

"The ones that are worth reading," she said. "So why are you killing yourself, exactly? If you're on the run from the government, why are you giving them what they want?"

"Oh, I'm not," I said. "I just lie to strangers for fun. Listen, you seem pretty cool. Wanna hang out?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Let's go get some food. You like Indian?"

"Yeah," she said. "Let's get some Indian."