Nightmares

Gnuri sits up quickly, the echo of her scream bouncing off the metal walls. One hand clings to the chest of her shirt, over where the spray flesh has since bonded on, the other clamping over her mouth. Her eyes drop down to her chest, peeling the shirt away from her skin to check her scars. The edges of where the spray flesh was applied are still slightly raised, only noticeable because she knows it’s there. No movement seems evident inside, nor from the outside, so she lets go of her shirt, the oversized neck hole making it drape off her shoulder. “Fuck…” she mutters, rubbing her face with both hands. “Fuckin’… Bullshit ass nightmares.”

She drops down silently, shuffling in the darkness toward the bathroom, where she splashes her face with water, rubbing her palms over it like she could wash off the trauma. It takes a few tries of washing her face, but she manages to calm herself and her breathing, so she walks quietly back into the hallway. The familiar sound of tank treads clanging on the floor heading in her direction spikes her anxiety a little bit, but she steps forward anyway. “Sup?” She asks the SRO rolling toward her, raising her hand in a shitty wave.

H4CK rolls closer, starting on the word vomit that is his conversational style. “Oh, Gnuri, I heard you yell. So I checked on you and you weren’t in your hammock. I was worried, and you weren’t there so I came over here, and—”

Gnuri stops him, holding up both hands and making a quiet shushing sound. “I’m fine, just had a real bad dream again. I got up and I’m really fine now. I’ll talk to the Doc later, probably. I’m going back to sleep, though.” She steps around him, the faintest sound of her feet slapping on the floor as she runs, avoiding the nagging. It only takes a few seconds of her running, but she makes it to her room and locks the door behind her. It’s tranquil, the little beeps and hums filling the dark room with soft noise. She climbs up, flopping herself into her hammock. She wraps herself up tight, her black and pink nails digging into the pillow she’s clinging to. She kicks her feet, legs shifting restlessly. She lets out a sigh, rolling over in the other direction. She stares into the darkness of the room, watching as monitors change and small bulbs blink on an off. Her eyelids droop, but she can’t find a position that stops her mind from running in circles. Part of her brain keeps insisting that she could get attacked by one of those face grabbing things again, and being alone could be a risk. Her eyelids fly open, even though she figures that none could’ve gotten on the ship. She glances around, untangling herself from the blanket and hammock before she can fall. Her pillow falls, an she follows it, her blanket falling onto her a moment later.

She lets out another loud sigh, gathering up her stuff. “Fuckin’ stupid smart brain…” Wrapping the blanket around herself, she bends to pick up her pillow. “This is stupid.” She lets the blanket drape over her chest and the pillow, the edges nearly dragging on the floor. “I’m not a scared little baby anymore. Fuckin’ face eggnators.”

standing at her door, she listens to the sounds of the ship at night, hearing the treads toward the opposite end of the ship from where she’s going. She steps quickly but carefully, using every bit of her experience sneaking out as a younger Goblin to keep her steps silent. “I hate this dumb shit.” She mutters under her breath, “I’ve always been the strong one.” She slows when she gets to the bedrooms, walking straight to one and raising her hand to knock.

Her hand hovers for a moment, about to knock, but anxiety eats at her. “What if he says something shitty to you?” Her brain asks, practically laughing at her. “He probably thinks you’re a baby for being scared, scared baby.”

She lowers her hand, down to the key pad on the door. It takes a second for her to remember it, but she types in the passcode for the room after only a single failed attempt.

“Mmm, who’s there?” A voice asks, softened by sleep. “If you’re here to kill me, can it wait until morning?”

Gnuri rolls her eyes, closing the door behind herself. “I’m not gonna kill you, ya crazy fuck. Go back to sleep.” She whispers, tossing her pillow at him.

“Gnuri?” Ben asks, rolling more onto his side so he can look back at her easier. The red flecks in her eyes stand out in the dark, growing closer as she throws his blanket back, scooting into his bed. “Alright, sure, you can join me.” He huffs, a bit grumpy from being woken up.

“Had the fuckin’ autopsy dream again.” She mumbles, crawling closer to him. He lifts his own blanket, tossing her pillow in front of his chest to invite her close. “I fuckin’ hate waking up like that. Feel like I woke up in a tub of ice like someone stole my kidney.”

Ben yawns a little theatrically, exhaustion evident in his voice. “Do you actually know what an ice bath after you lose a kidney feels like?” He asks, like she’ll answer. When she drops next to him, he reaches out, untangling the ball of her blanket with one hand and her help. He tucks it in around her, keeping her close to him. “Never mind, it’s far too late to discuss hypothetical organ theft.” He lets his arm fall across her, its weight a little much for Gnuri to be comfortable but reassuring regardless. His wing folds in, letting his blanket cover both of them.

She rolls onto the same side as Ben, scooting backwards so he’s holding her pillow more than her and there’s not pressure on her chest, just in case. “I’m only here because you’re warm, Ben, so don’t get any stupid ideas.”

Ben chuckles, his mouth near the top of one of her ears. “Of course, of course, for my warmth. Not because you want to be the littlest spoon, that’s silly.” He shifts, getting his own pillow situated now that Gnuri’s tucked up closer.

“It’d be fuckin’… stupid to think that.” Gnuri huffs, her back and feet pressed against Ben’s front. “Just for the warmth,” she yawns out, words barely sounding like common. “G’night,” She mumbles, eyes fluttering closed.

He chuckles again, pressing his lips to the top of her head. “Yes, yes, I know. You don’t have a massive, raging crush on me. You don’t blush when I compliment you, you don’t enjoy holding my hands, you don’t spend the night in my bed because you want to snuggle. It’s all for warmth. Strictly to maintain your ideal temperature, of course.” The small snore coming up from the bundle makes him smile a little more, “And you don’t always fall asleep the second I hold you because you feel safe with me, like you have a crush on me or anything so ridiculous.”

She squirms, hands finding his arm in her sleep and pulling it closer. He lets her, holding his arm awkwardly to keep her comfortable. She lets out a little giggle in her sleep, pulling his arm again, and she gives it a kiss, the smack of her lips loud in the silent room. “Haaa,” she mumbles, placing another kiss. “Fuckin’…” she starts, the sentence going nowhere as she wiggles in her sleep. Ben pulls her closer, holding her tight. She lets out some little noises, but nothing obviously words.

Ben wraps himself around her more, his tail draped over her legs. He finds a comfortable position that lets him still hold Gnuri close, and  he lets out another yawn. “Good night, Gnuri.” He tells her, well aware of how deeply asleep she is from the snores she lets out.

A brief peek at Remus “Remy” LaRoux of Croix, Louisiana.

The wind whipping past and through the shed echoes the sound of the souls shrieking on their own plane of existence outside the swamp. Only a few yards away, the miasma of the swamp muffles the screams of whatever lurks in there.

Hanging just inside the doorway of the shed from a hook shoved into the wall is an oil lantern, burning both normal oil and some combination of oils that only Memaw Marge knows anymore, and even that’s in debate. Her big book of recipes, half in the French of her ancestors and half in English with their spelling from the way she pronounces it.

The downstairs, the size of a large living room, is sectioned off with chunks of particle board, some taller than others. In front, when you first walk past the lantern, you can see a small TV with a built in VCR sitting on top of a milk crate packed with VHS tapes, most the dull black of a bootleg tape, and a few stickers decorate the side of the TV, covering up the edges where duct tape holds the broken plastic of its case together. The tape is painted black with the same paint as the particle board, and there’s a gradient from the tape out to the dark gray of the rest of the TV’s case. The stickers are a few fuzzy unicorns, some stars and rainbows, and some colorful smiling faces. The screen has dust caked into the edges, but seems otherwise as clear as a TV of its age should.

In front of it is a three-seater extra large couch and a few more crates with a sheet of wood on top. It looks like a table had its legs removed and instead, the crates are used to balance it. Rings stand out on the wood, along with bleached or burnt spots from nail polish remover and Memaw’s cigarettes. A cup nearly full to the brim holds the cigarette butts, and there’s rarely not a snack or two on the table or in the crates.

Often, the dark wood holds up the huge feet of a nine foot tall man, overalls straining to hold all of him back. He reclines against the dingy beige and navy couch, picking his many teeth with a sharp nail. His alligator head seems like a decoration, until you see it move and react. That’s just Snappy, though, and he’s surprisingly sweet for a demon from the depths of hell itself.

In the other direction from the door is a particle board wall that leads to a curtain, and pulling the yellowed tablecloth turned curtain aside lets you see Memaw and Momma Sofia’s room. Their beds, one with an actual metal frame and with a nice sheet and quilt combo, and the red futon in its black wooden frame take up most of the room, the only free space between the futon when in couch form and the bed to make a path to the doorway. At the foot of the bed is a window, and Memaw often opens it and sits, just listening to the wind.

Past the living room is a kitchen, mostly a mini fridge and a hot plate as far as normal kitchen things go. A wire rack normally for over the toilet holds the pots and pans above the hot plate, and an apron and the oven mitts hang from one side.

A bench made to have storage, covered in scratches and dents, and a name that looks like it’s meant to be “Edward” but spelled “Edwrd” is carved into it, but that doesn’t bother anyone living there. Inside are boxes of food, anything non-perishable they could get from the local food bank, and the bench is where they typically sit, a metal folding chair placed for Snappy so he doesn’t break the bench, and Remy sits on a milk crate with a couch cushion balanced on top, from a couch they’ve never owned. The fabric is red with flecks of gold, and Remy feels like a king when he sits on it.

Back in the corner, hidden from view by another dingy curtain, is a small area, only big enough to fit a thin adult or a few kids, with a ladder in the middle of it.

Climbing it up leads into a small room, only maybe five feet high at the top of the slope. A hole in the roof is patched with colored plastic cut into designs, and a kaleidoscope of light decorates the floor during the middle of the day. Thumbtacks hold posters, crinkled and worn from being passed down, up on the walls. A small felt image of a unicorn, colored with markers, is pinned above the lawn chair cushion and sleeping bag combo that Remy calls a bed. The cushion is dark green with strips of lighter green and only slightly longer than him, but for now it works fine. The sleeping bag is yellow on the inside and purple on the outside, with more brightly colored stickers decorating it. His floor is painted in spatters of light blue, from him having taken paint to the ceiling of his small room. The white clouds, done with a sponge, seem to have run but not quite dripped.

His iPod Shuffle, red with another kid’s name covered with a sticker of a happy panda, sits with a pair of oversized headphones next to the bed. His radio, made of cheap plastic with a brightly colored crank handle on the side, stands out against the laundry basket Remy placed it on.

Next to the basket are his clean clothes, folded into two milk crates, one with his underwear and socks folded up neat on top of the few shirts he owns, and the bottom one is stuffed with heavily patched overalls, his shoes set next to the crate with the one sweatshirt he owns, made for a young teenage girl, folded on top.

On one wall is a mirror about the size of his head, with a length of wire and holding the top half of a broken pencil box under the mirror. Inside is a hairbrush, a few hairpins he’d stolen from the lost and found at daycare, and a couple pieces of costume jewelry that he plays dress up with.

In a small bag under the mirror is his toothbrush, tooth paste, 3-in-one shampoo/conditioner/body wash, and a clean but stained washcloth. Every day, he has to walk down the paths of the woods towards the nearest campsite, and the owners take pity on him and his family, letting them use the outside showers. In his one pair of bathing suit shorts, made for a boy a few years younger, he stands in the mud and showers, no matter how hot or cold it is. Snappy enforces Remy’s privacy, protecting the little boy practically with his life.

Remy uses a cup and a slab of cardboard to rinse his feet off, put on his socks and shoes, and he uses a bathroom stall to change into his clothes for the day.

With everything tucked back into the bag, he walks, hand in hand with Snappy, home before grabbing his backpack, given out for free, and his scooter, one of the few gifts he’d gotten in his life that was purchased, and scooting to daycare.

What would be a long walk for a young boy is a normal journey for Remy since he travels it so often, and Snappy carries the scooter until they get onto pavement that isn’t totally cracked. The two wheels in the back make it easier for Remy to balance and kick himself along, with Snappy walking at a normal pace alongside him.

The sun rises fully as he makes it into town, where the pavement is fresh and unblemished. Sidewalks line both sides of the street, marked only by the chalk drawings of the kids that live in the modernized houses, many built in the past decade or two.

Only a few streets down, though, the houses seem to boom in age. It’s like looking at a high school and then suddenly a retirement home, some of the older houses being many generations old. Some of the oldest have been around since the times when slaves fled and colonized the swamp, killing and hiding the bodies of anyone who tried to return them to subservience.

Down these streets, sidewalks begin to only be on one side, and the attempts at repair come few and far between, Remy weaving from sidewalk to road where there’s dangerous sections. Finally, outside a former boarding house or inn of some kind, Remy stops at the gate, opening it and letting himself in. Snappy locks it behind them, and he follows the boy to the shed beside the house, helping Remy fold the scooter and put it into the locker, and spinning the lock for safe keeping.

Up on the rickety porch, Remy rings the doorbell, waiting politely with his hat in his hands. Giggles and screams of joy rise up from the otherwise loud house as Miss Lucinda, a startlingly tall and thin woman with long, dark braids interwoven with beads clack as she turns her head, and a grin breaks out on her lips. “Oh, little prince Remus, I’m glad to see you!” She calls theatrically, guiding him into the house and nodding at the tall man, squashed nose and beard making him look like a cartoon, who always seems to be with the boy.

Snappy leaves, letting Remy stay as long as he’d like to. The sun is often down, leaving Remy alone with Miss Lucinda, when the boy finally walks out, and Snappy walks over from the local buffet to take him home. Remy chatters on and on about everything he did, what he learned, his interactions, and all of the things that seem important to a little boy. He asks repeatedly if he’s annoying Snappy, but he just shakes his head, letting the boy ramble.

Back at home, Remy hugs his Memaw and heads upstairs, pinning up his latest drawings. The light from his improvised skylight hits the wall, and he sits down with his radio, cranking it to listen to his favorite program, a local station all about monsters and how to take them down. The voice is faintly familiar outside that context, but listening to the show is like coming home, with the hosts voice caressing him like a hug. It’s just soothing in the best way, and he often falls asleep to it, dreaming about taking out the monsters on his own with only the power of his mind.

The thing is, he doesn’t realize some of these dreams could absolutely come true. He also figures that the reoccurring man in his dreams is only a guy from some movie he’s seen repeatedly or maybe a picture he saw once. If he knew the truth, though, he’d probably appreciate the dreams with the man by his side as they fight monsters quite a bit less.

Autumn’s Diary, Latest Entry.

January 30th, 2010:

The snow has come up to my knees so fa, and it seems like more is to come. At least, Mariah seems to think so. We were shoveling for what felt like days, until Mariah could get the quad out and make paths.

The customers aren’t too happy, but I don’t have the foggiest fucking clue what they expected, coming to Maine in the winter. It’s like they had no idea that snow comes down in the cold months way up north.

It’s been so hectic that Mariah sent Vanity to stay with Lenora for the night. I swear, that woman is an angel. Anything we need, she’s there with bells on and only wants a hug or some fresh food in exchange.

She got Vanity just after dinner, and it’s a good thing, since its gotten louder and crazier. I swear someone howled earlier, and I’m not trying to deal with that.

Mariah usually keeps me from doing any Magic things in frront of the guests, but it’s been so tense that I’m almost waiting for her to ask me to cast something huge to make people chill out.

~~Unfrazzle Tea~~

Chamomile Flowers

Lavender Spikes

Lemon Balm Leaves

Marjoram

valerian Flowers

Water, Moon or Snow preferred

The guests drank the tea with no complaints, except those shitheads that expected some of my good whiskey in it. I had my mouth open to argue when I saw Mariah shake her head, and I figured it wasn’t worth it, so I let them waste good whiskey in otherwise good tea.

I set up a few jugs in our room to catch the moon light and charge the snow water, Mariah just shook her head. She’s not crazy about my witch stuff, especially around a little one like Vanity, but she knows me enough to know that you don’t make it fourty six years on this planet without learning to be stubborn. She kissed me in front of the guests again. It’s been so long, but I know it’s because she’s worried me being a loud and proud lesbian, and her being an unapologeticly black woman, would kill the business

It’s silly, though, the business is thriving, and

I just heard that howl again. I told Mariah it’s a full moon, and she only rolled her eyes.

Snowberry Manor is packed, with some locals even staying. I guess the heat’s out in some apartments, and a house burned down recently. We’ve never had full occupancy, and I know that and the storm are stressing Mariah. She never drinks anything but water and coffee, maybe tea if it’s something just for us, but she had two big glasses of my fancy whiskey, and I’m a little worried.

That fucking howl is driving me crazy. I sent our housekeeper up to check, because this is ridiculous. It sounds like a low budget horror movie.

I hear screaming, one of the voices is our insurance lady. Hellen? Holly? Something like that. She’s loud, but I can’t tell what she’s saying.

I’m gonna go check it out, and hopefully let Mariah get started on sleep without me. Text field

[WP] We set out to answer the question, “What happens to a zombie when it is offered an unlimited supply of fresh human brains?”

They always told us that they needed brains to spread the disease, that it helps give them energy, that it helps get the virus right into the spine, with the cerebrovascular system being what it is, but that never seemed like the full truth.

A zombie had been following us, my wife and me, and stepped right into the trap, a simple basement with the stairs broken and removed. He could never climb out on his own, the hole to get out is much too high and the walls are perfectly smooth.

So, we left him in there. When we came across dead people, we harvested what we could. It started with livers, kidneys, hearts, all the things humans have eaten out of animals. Brains were hard to transport, requiring an almost airtight container because the smell would lure most zombies in as soon as they got a whiff of them.

We bought an airtight cooler, then added a tray inside that could sit on the cold packs to keep the brains chilled during transport, and we stockpiled them. A freezer truck, kept running through solar panels rooted from a house, kept them cool while the top scientists across the globe worked as hard as they could, replicating the contents of brains in a slurry that could be frozen in a mold.

My wife bought a jug of that goo, foul smelling, repulsive slop. Our pet zombie refused it, only eating the brainsicle once it had melted into a pile of snot and we gave him nothing else. It seemed to give him a little energy, but not enough to really be useful.

We filled the truck after a while, shelves full of coolers all filled with brains. If we emptied it out, it’d probably barely be a third, but it seemed like so much to us.

We tossed the first few in, using a wok as our slingshot, and he seemed to perk up. After the first two, he was moving faster, less crouched, and his eyes looked less cloudy, which was odd.

We dumped a cooler in, moving the cameras as he moved to get as many angles as possible. He feasted, seeming to smile up at us before going back to the emptying cooler. His movements became more fluid, his chewing becoming less a matter of ripping and more of dainty bites and pauses to chew, and he seemed more capible of emotion.

When he stopped eating, we stopped feeding him. When he laid down in the opposite corner, my wife watched him while I slept.

When I got up, I fast forwarded through the tapes, but saw nothing crazy. He seemed a little less animalistic in his gait, less shambling, less hunching, but otherwise he seemed the same.

I still gathered any brain I could. Scavengers who had less morals than me, killing other scavengers and stealing their bases and supplies, hand delivered me any brains as a trade for any help we could supply.

It took a few weeks, but we noticed a change. Nothing crazy, but it looked like he wasn’t decomposing. He seemed to be staying about the same, skin sliding off occasionally, muscle exposed in some areas, but that looked like it was changing. I stole a good camera, the kind that geeks would have wet dreams about, and got the most detailed pictures that I could. I tracked it, as weeks blurred into months, as his muscles covered bone, as skin covered muscles again, as his eyes cleared, as his expressions cleared, as he seemed to become more human with each brain.

It took months before his blackened nails had fallen off and healthy nails grew in, which his only slightly yellowed teeth bit down to keep them short.

It took a little over a year before his face grew hair again, and he seemed to hate it. We couldn’t risk him killing himself, he was a valuable test subject, so he got craft scissors instead, the kind that’s shaped to create a design. They worked, keeping his head hair very short and his beard slightly longer, until he looked fully human.

That was when the vans came, having gotten our emails. They took a few coolers, our amnesiac we called Geoff, and all the credit.

It only took a few years for a so-called vaccine program to be touted. Six months of concentrated lab grown brain, starting multiple times a day, and they claimed a zombie could be permanently cured.

Geoff wasn’t cured like that, though, and when they stopped the feedings, he panicked.

The best and brightest, all at a conference to talk first-hand to Geoff, were almost all slaughtered by the man himself, and turned into the most exquisite feast.

That’s why there’s the new rules, no more than three people on the Top 350 Smartest People list can be together at any one time.

Geoff has since become more picky, though, and he’s eaten his way to the top of the list.

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Part III. [WP] You live a good life. Caring wife, obedient children and loyal dogs. Little do they know that you are actually a hitman not an accountant. One day your guy hands you the picture of your next target. It’s you. On the back the name of who ordered the hit. “Carla” it says. Your wife.

Through some connections and my role as grieving ex, I got copies of the paperwork. The folder had been left by someone else, the last job given to me by my boss face-to-face.

I met with him at a bar, the kind that doesn’t come to life until well after dark, and he confirmed that Danny had ordered the hit, paid with Carla and her husband’s own money, in a strange twist of events.

The folder was the client’s copy, but the cops came right after I left. That leaves two options.

Either I didn’t see it in the dark, and I was slipping in my old age, or Danny was there, waiting for me to do it and leave.

I patted my former boss on the back as we parted, heading back to my little minivan. They say that the best cover is something that blends in, and the car seats, toys, and crumbs sprinkled throughout the minivan definitely look real.

In the police parking lot, I thought about my girls, about hurting them, about how they would feel, how they would look, and got watery eyed and a little sniffly. Carla had been long since someone I’d forgotten, her infidelity and greed repugnant to me, but my girls could always get me crying.

When I opened my door, a young officer greeted me, yelling a bit. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes, following behind him in the shuffle I’d practiced. My joints may not be young, but they could handle me fine, and an occasional shuffle and stoop wouldn’t change that.

He lead me into the Chief’s office, leaving me to get another officer. Dean, one of the kids saved from abuse by my line of work, came in with a file. He dropped it in front of me, then sat behind the desk, turning sideways and pulling out his phone to play something bright and musical.

I flipped past the pictures immediately, eyes stinging as I pictured my girls again, pausing at the transcripts of the files. Records of Carla giving Danny money, only to turn around and scream at him for taking it, claims of Carla’s husband calling Danny all kinds of awful things, and even claims of them encouraging the girls to say these things were listed.

I flipped through a little faster, reading about any claims made about my kids, and they only got more and more outlandish as it went on. Claims of my daughters stealing from Danny, pushing him down the stairs, claims of my grandkids who had never met him punching and kicking him because Carla asked for it… it was- The only word for it is crazy.

I kept flipping, until I came to a copy of a blood spattered piece of paper, the blood grey from the copier.

“To whoever has the unfortunate luck to find me,” it started.

It seemed like reality and delusion fought hard, throughout the letter his grip slipping. He insisted he didn’t place the hit in one section, then apologized for it in the next. It made my heart hurt, way down deep, imagining the painful existance that Danny must have had to think that he was being targetted by his sister.

The drunken stories Carla shared came into sharp focus in my mind, stories told so flippantly despite everything about them.

The time her hamster “accidentally” got let out and eaten by their cat, and Danny threw the corpse back in the cage, the time he ran over her helmet and tried to get her to wear it as he rolled over her head, the fights, the jokes about holes in the walls and skeletons in the closet… I couldn’t help but shiver.

Dean leaned back, looking at me out of the corner of his eye. “You know he was that crazy””

I shook my head a little, then nodded, then flipped my hand back and forth in the “sort of” gesture. I raised a shoulder, telling him, “Carla kept him from the family, for good reason from what I’ve read. She told some stories, but I always figured they were false memories or just overblown, you know?”

He nodded, looking back at his phone before muttering, “Makes you wonder if the car accident that killed their parents wasn’t just a cut brake line.”

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Part II: [WP] You live a good life. Caring wife, obedient children and loyal dogs. Little do they know that you are actually a hitman not an accountant. One day your guy hands you the picture of your next target. It’s you. On the back the name of who ordered the hit. “Carla” it says. Your wife.

Connected to a shitty mobile hotspot who made my video alternate between 80’s era looks and modern crispness, I spoke to my boss. He insisted he’d work everything out, and I trusted him.

It took 4 weeks for the awful PI that Carla had hired to find me. I was sitting on the fire escape, drinking a beer, when some asshole called up to me. I gestured down, and he disappeared into the building, then I heard knocking downstairs, only to see him come up the fire escape next to me.

He offered me a folder, this one the Camp Rock folder my youngest had been using for school work, and I took it, shaking my head at my wife’s obvious emotional blackmail. I waved the PI away, and read through the demands Carla made. She expected all the things in the house, easy enough to do, and she wanted the house tooen Fine, I never paid a dime for it and she loved it.

She expected half of my income for alimony and child support, though, and I couldn’t help but laugh aloud. She really thought that she could try and use my life insurance to live on, then ask for everything and then some in the divorce?

Putting the folder on the table just inside, I grabbed another beer from the mini fridge, then called my lawyer.

A few hours later, barely on the legal side of sober, I was driving across town to meet a proper PI. He didn’t ask about cash payments, just took the bundle up-front and nodded.

It didn’t take a full day for Carla to mess up. Glossy pictures of her bent over, kissing a man who obviously wasn’t me, showed up on my doorstep with the digital ones in my phone. Like everything, I gathered up the physical copies of everything and dropped them off with my lawyer.

When we finally went to court, her refusing my generous offer of the houses and all their contents, my lawyer smiled at hers. It was the grin of a predator, and I almost smiled myself, staying grim as we entered the court.

My case was nearly perfect, a letter from a friend of hers about Carla seeking a hitman, the “fake” papers, the picture of me, her fingerprints on it, the photos of her cheating in what was still my house… and all she had was “But we have kids together!”

Our youngest, 17, was almost heading off to college, and I assured the judge I intended to support her as she went through college, as I had for all our kids, and I offered to pay off everything for the house, but I refused to support her boyfriend. She had a job, and could easily survive on that alone, and we both knew it.

The judge insisted I pay what I offered, but since my on-paper earnings were closer to her own, she would be expected to make use of a lump sum payment of the 4 months of child support before our youngest turned 18.

The local news sites and online forums went wild, nothing like this happening in our sleepy town or any of the surrounding towns normally. I was called scum for not offering alimony,she was insulted for asking, I was hit on, she was hit on, questions surfaced about the hit man, but it all fizzled out to nothing eventually. My daughter picked a school far away from my wife, I moved to be closer to her, the firm I worked for, on paper, opened a new office near me, and I kept at it until my 66th birthday, when I chose to retire.

My last job, though, was Carla and her husband. I still don’t know who paid five times the fee, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel good to see the look of horror on her face as I stood over her dead husband, gun trained on her. She grabbed him, staring at me, and I blew her a kiss when I pulled the trigger.

I let myself out, reactivating the security system and then breaking a window from the outside. I let the alarm blare as I drove away, back to the highway to head home. I pulled the gloves off, the latex ones folding around the thin cloth ones, before I pulled off the jacket in the truck stop. I pulled each layer, my button up, my tightly woven long sleeve undershirt,the pants over my jeans, then the jeans, and my two layers of socks and oversized shoes, placing the ski mask and face mask on the pile, then grabbed the trash bag on my floor and shoved them in.

Wearing only my glasses, a tanktop and golf shorts, I reached into my back seat and grabbed a polo and flip flops. I mussed my hair in the mirror, looking more like the cooky old man image I’d built up since my divorce. The glasses were thick, but the curve of the lenses matched my actual prescription, rather than what they looked like they should. My black hair had started to look almost white, and I smiled the grandpa smile I’d practiced with the little ones.

Half way home, I stopped by an abandoned camp site, digging out the fire pit with the shovel from my trunk. Then, I emptied everything in, dousing it with gasoline before tossing a match.

I let everything burn, the gloves the only thing obvious after the cotton burned, then used the shovel to scoop the ashes and any burnt bits into the trash bag, before sweeping the beer cans and garbage back into the pit.

It took a few more hours before I had a safe place to dump the bag,adding it to the overflowing trrash behind a chinese restaurant I’d never seen before.

When I finally got home, I couldn’t help but sleep. I woke to my home phone ringing, and rolled over, picking it up.

My oldest was sobbing, and I knew what it was. I played doting dad, let her cry, then opened my laptop, buying tickets on the next flight out. I grabbed my carry-on, already packed, then headed to see my old boss, carrying all my old supplies in a moving box. By the end of the hour, I was officially retired and on my way to see my daughters.

The folder found at the scene, with a picture of each of them, Cara’s older brother’s name on the paperwork, and the brother dead from a self-inflicted gunshot later, and I was not only a free man, but free from the guilt that I held, thinking the job was bought as a gift for me.

My poor girls, though. Them and their step siblings, finding their parents dead, and learning that Danny hated Carla? Must have stung quite a bit.

It’s fine, though, because I’m here to soothe the kids and I’m retired, anyway.

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[WP] You live a good life. Caring wife, obedient children and loyal dogs. Little do they know that you are actually a hitman not an accountant. One day your guy hands you the picture of your next target. It’s you. On the back the name of who ordered the hit. “Carla” it says. Your wife.

Holding the manilla folder to my chest, I rushed through the building. My boss was smart, and his intelligence fed into his paranoia and careful nature.

A couple decades ago, he had told me, while we were still in college, about how he was gonna take over an accounting business. Drunk and stupid, I half-jokingly told him,”That’d be a good cover for an assassination station. Like, top floor, murder. Second floor, number crunchers.”

It took 5 years of unfulfilling work, hitting the gym 6 days a week, strict diets, and practice with my firearms before my college buddy called me.

My face had been on the news, I saved a young woman, Carla Roberts, from an attempted rape by putting two shots in the serial rapist’s head, and one in the crotch for my own amusement, using a small caliber handgun. Enough to kill him, but not enough to explode his head like a watermelon.

Two days after the article ran, my cell phone rang. Picking up without stopping my treadmill, I was out of breath and couldn’t place the voice. It took a little banter and an inside joke before I recognized him, then he cut through the crap and invited me to interview at his company.

That Friday, dressed in the only suit I owned, looking like a ’50’s era consiglier, I marched in, built more like a football player than like the other accountants he’d hired, either stick thin or obese, but the woman who greeted me was neither.

I stepped into the building, still wearing my black aviators to match the black suit, handgun on my hip almost hidden under my jacket. She eyed it, then guided me to the elevator, requesting I remove my hat and glasses. I did, but replaced them as I strode into the conference room, my face stony for the effect.

I heard a gasp, followed by chuckles, then the door closed behind me and was locked.

Some tiny man, beady eyed behind his thick glasses, came over to me and shook my hand, waving a plastic and metal device that looked like a tazer but without the prongs over me. It beeped over my phone, and I offered it to him, expecting him to look it over and immediately hand it back. Instead, it was added to an opaque box that had other electronics, and I was told to sit by my friend.

“So, you remember that night, right? Jay’s party, we were drunk, and we talked about certain… things?” he asked, lip curling slightly in a smirk.

I tapped my fingers on the table, thinking hard, before it popped into my head. Against my will, my face contorted in confusion, and I looked at him, waiting for him to continue.

“I’m doing what we planned, as you may be able to guess.” He passed a manilla folder, my first of five that day, over to the person across from me, and when I took it, I flipped it open, reading about a job facilitating business ventures and all sorts of buzzwords.

Before I could grip it, two more folders were passed over. The first was about benefits, vision, dental, a health insurance plan that was way too good to be true, then the actual information on that job. I was only getting more confused, wondering what this had to do with anything.

The next two, though, they explained a lot.

The first explained the pay for my job as a hitman, the pay per job, how often I had to work, how many jobs I could reject, and the like. The second folder, though, had a target.

It was a local shop owner, one who had recently been let off of child abuse charges because the kid refused to testify. There were transcripts of the interviews, and discs showing titles like “Interview 1.” and “Court 1.”

Flipping through what looked like enough evidence to put the man away for a long time, and certainly enough to make my stomach flip, I was startled when a huge briefcase was placed on the desk. Inside was a thin laptop, a pouch to keep my files in, and some false walls. It was made to look as though the laptop was thicker and the walls were too, but after pulling the laptop out, the beady eyed man twisted the lock, and the case popped open, showing another section for files. He slid the last two in, barely able to close it, then slid the other 3 files into the pouch in the briefcase, then the laptop. Shutting it, he offered it to me and I shrugged, pulling it in front of me.

That day, I learned the top floor was only accessible with a key, given a new phone and gun, and offered a safe house to live in, one not in either of our names. It was great, moving out from having 3 roommates to having my own house.

I started dating Carla, letting her help me pick furniture, linens, everything. My house looked well loved, rather than sparse as it had before. Money flowed in, and the secret room under the stairs started to fill up with cash. Hundreds were bundled in stacks of 100, then put into fireproof safes. Several of them were built into the wall, and I had to buy another shortly after our second was born. I was bringing in more money than I could spend, even with Carla dressing to the nines, our kids never going without, and a constant pack of professionally trained and groomed dogs. When I got my sixth safe, I had to talk to my boss about splitting my workload.

It went well, all things considered, and I slowly started draining our funds. On my trips, I broke hundreds as often as I could, bringing back smaller bills from various banks to cover my tracks a little more. I was careful, and everything seemed perfect. Idyllic, almost.

We had the most well-behaved teens, who worked their own jobs, had their own cars, who bought their own luxuries outside christmas and birthdays, and everything was perfect.

Even when my oldest, at 16, had my first grandchild, life was still good. She had the best doctors money could buy, every test, every vitamin, and the little boy who impregnated her stepped up to help rase them.

They had a little house on the far end of the property built, my backup funds making sure everything was perfect, and life seemed great.

I had my 50th and 55th birthdays celebrated, my 30th with my beautiful wife Carla, and everything seemed great.

Until my boss handed me that fucking envelope.

On my home laptop, I clicked around, finding a cruise to some Caribbean resort, and booked rooms for my wife and kids. The grandkids could stay with Carla’s parents, I figured, and gave them a call.

When they got home, I sat everyone in the living room, then showed them the slideshow. They were excited, but my wife faked sadness at seeing that I had a business trip to go on. I could see the glint of happiness in her eye, though, as she pressed me for details to where I’d be.

I lied, of course, and she ate it up. The details pinged to my cell phone a few minutes after I had her packed and ready, before the limo pulled up.

With the home to myself for a few weeks, I found a new safe apartment, in a building where the owner owed me a favor. Safes in hand and the cameras turned off in the building, I filled the second bedroom with secrets, my briefcase hidden in the closet’s floorboards. I moved everything of mine, clothing, pillows,toiletries, anything that would look important to me. I could have replaced most of it a hundred times over, but chose not to.

Carla came home to a man sitting on the steps, waiting with a folder of her own tucked under his arm. “Mrs. Carla Rodriguez?” he asked, holding it out. At her nod, as she tore into the glued flap, he smiled. “You’ve been served. Have a nice day.”

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[WP] You are the inventor of the most powerful optical microscope. While testing it with some of your own skin cells, you find a tech support number on each of your cells. You decide to call it.

Rolling my chair closer to the desk, fingers jittering slightly as I slid the slide onto the stand and centered it, I brought my face close to the microscope. I’d spent years perfecting it, and today was the first real trial of it with something other than micro-sized images printed off.

I had put a few cheek cells spread out on the slide, and as I viewed the first one, sharper than ever before, I noticed something… weird. Grabbing for my notebook, I copied down the lines and circles. It was… binary, for something. Checking the other cells, the same numbers were written in lines and circles, or 1’s and 0’s. Grabbing a textbook from my junior high days, tucked under the ugly vase my mother had gotten me for her last christmas, I flipped through, finding the page, and set to splitting the binary.

When I figured out it started with 1800, I couldn’t help but chuckle. It hurt my chest, laughter so rare for me, but… a phone number? A corporate number? It was just so ridiculous to me.

Looking at it out of the corner of my eye, though, I couldn’t help but be curious.

Googling it came up with a few vague listings, one for a “Self, LLC,” and another for “Better Body Better Life tech support”

I dialed, hands shaking as they always do, and had to redial 4 times before I got it right. Instead of ringing, that familiar sound that preceded “We’re sorry, but the caller you are trying to reach is unavailable. Please hang up and try again later.” repeated, on and on, in its place.

I locked my wheels, one hand drumming on the arm rest and the other holding the phone to my face, before I heard the noise stop.

A voice, a little like my fourth grade teacher answered. “If you have questions, please press 1. For warrantee claims, please press 3. For voluntary forfeiture of property, press 5. For replacement parts, press 7. To hear your options again, press 0.”

When it finished, I mashed the 1 button, hoping I wouldn’t accidentally press 2 or 4. With the phone away from my head, I didn’t hear the voice until it nearly yelled, but it was just a buzz. Back to my ear, I said, “Hello?” into the phone.

The man, sounding young and a little too cheery, asked for the digits that helped me find this number. A little creeped out, I read the 1’s and 0’s out, figuring there was nothing really for him to do with random numbers.

I was wrong.

“So, Sydney, what can I answer for you?”

I asked the basic questions, the Who, What, Where, Why, and How, but he insisted that he unfortunately couldn’t share that information.

“Was I meant to find this?” I finally asked, and he chuckled, a grin in his voice as he answered.

“I’d say so. Would you like to have a warrantee replacement? I can do that over the phone for you, if you’d like.”

On a whim, I agreed. Shit, shady company, knew my name, what could go wrong, right?

Well, that brings us to today.

I woke up, no pain in my back, no numbness, no discomfort at all. My hands were steady for once, and I felt like I could see in the dim that the night light in the hallway lit up.

Some sort of auto-pilot told me to stand, even though I hadn’t stood in years without help, and I could.

I’m just scared that there’ll be a cost at the end of all this. How does one pay for a body replacement?

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[WP] In this world everyone turns to stone at some random point in their life, for a seemingly random amount of time. For some only a few seconds to a few hour, for most anywhere from a few days to a few weeks… but for a rare few it may be years, decades, centuries, or even millennia.

Growing up was hard for Kel. He hadn’t asked for the attention, for the notoriety, for the awkward stares or blatant paparazzi-style photos of him.

In his earliest memory, he was a toddler, running through the grass, dodging statues and other people, when a woman grabbed him. He jumped, twisting like a cat to kick at her and get free, before his mother got over, carrying his brother.

Years passed, and he never really understood it. It just seemed like life to him, something that happens to you and that you can never understand or change.

When he got old enough to browse the internet, though, he got a glimpse into what made him some sort of celebrity.

Hand on the hard lump of rock jutting out of his llower abdomen, scratching his belly under it, he scrolled through a search engine and typed in his name, like everyone does the first time they can.

He expected to see something weird, like a professor at some crappy college, or a realtor in a jacket that screams mentally unstable, not the collections of photos of him and the articles.

Clicking one that had his mother’s name as well, he waited for it to load, then scrolled down slowly.

Under the title of the article was a photo of some statue. Leaning closer, it kind of looked like his mom, but with a big bump. Pregnant, he thinks, that’s what Willow was.

Scrolling more, he let his eyes scroll over the words, taking in half of them and letting his mind fill in blanks.

“…was struck with Petratis while several months pregnant —

Ultrasound used to create an image of the baby boy —

baby appears to also be struck with Petratis, alth —

Unlike Kimberly Grace of —

Her Petratis ended after the fetus, causing it to perish while trapped ins —“

Kel hit the back button, pulling up one about his birth.

“Kel, as his mother Diane calls him, is the first fetus to survive Bilateral Petratis, with only minor complications. Some parts, such as the placenta and umbilical cord, seemed to stay as affected, although not ceasing their function. The doctors opted to leave a small ball of the stone-like umbilical cord on the infant’s abdomen, rather than risk exploratory surgery to remove any signs of the Petratis—“

Kel gripped the stone knob, twisting it back and forth, feeling a slight internal tug, but nothing coming lloose by any means.

Next, he browsed for information on Petratis, unsurprised when so little information comes up.

At dinner that night, across from the statue he calls a father, and next to his baby brother’s high chair, Kel pretended to wonder aloud, “How long will baby two have petratis? Like mommy and daddy and me, or will he be lucky?”

Little did he know that his brotther had, already, but only for a few minutes, seeming to grow heavier on their mother’s hip as the seconds lagged behind.

His mom’s head shot up, though, when she heard the condition’s name.

That was how he ended up talking his mother into going on some talk show, and how he ended up here.

Dressed in a button up shirt and a bowtie with black jeans, short hair gelled back, cinnamon colored skin made perfect with the layers of makeup, smiling like an innocent child rather than a manipulative little shit of a teenager.

“And we’re back to Karen and Glenn for The Day’s End, with our special guest, Kel Stevens!”

He smiled a little wider, dark grey brackets on his teeth gleaming. He wondered if people knew he picked the color to match the stone affixed to him, or if they just thought he hated color. His pale blue, nearly white, shirt paired with the navy tie seemed to agree with that assertion. He raised a hand, waving at the camera, before turning back to Karen.

“So, how’s it feel to be the first BP baby?” She asked, injecting fake concern into her voice.

He shrugged, hand going to rest on his belly as it does when he’s nervous. He licked his lips, voice cracking as he responded with, “I-It’s… life, you know.”

Glenn, though, couldn’t let it go, and interjected with, “But it almost wasn’t!” His face twisted into some caricature of shock and concern, only making him look crazy.

Kel shook his head, smiling a bit, “I wouldn’t have ever known. Instead, I get instant celebrity from Day One post-BP. It’s not bad, and I have built-in jewelry.”

Their eyes went a little wide, and Kel couldn’t help but laugh, lifting his shirt and undershirt to show off his stone, only to feel it press closer than it had before. He wasn’t soft, but… it felt like the stone could prress in.

When the camera was lifted off its rails and brought in close to his stomach, he knew something was off.

When the stone finally finished becoming the umbilical cord he was meant to have and he clipped it closed, to keep the blood from leaking, he knew something weird was happening, and presumably some good research was being done states over, where the placenta was turning back to a freesh placenta from its stony prison.

For a split second, Kel thought, “Maybe they’ll get some new information for the Wikipedia article,” before tuning back into the questions being yelled at him.

“Uh,” he started, “I think something weird happened to my belly stone, sorry.” He tugged the shirt down, giving a fake apologetic smile before returning to the conversation at hand.

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[WP] If you haven’t found your soul mate by age 30, the government turns on your trackers so you can find each other. Your tracker app has led you to a cemetery.

Carefully combing his beard out to keep it neat and untangled, Rick stares at himself in the mirror. He’s not bad looking, his skin is smooth without wrinkles just like his parents until their 60’s almost, but he’s just… average. He’s not dark skinned enough to draw in women who say they want a “real” black man, or light skinned enough for the women who buy into racist stereotypes.

His hair is trimmed short, eyebrows kept neat, facial hair trimmed and conditioned, his lips are soft and his eyes are a caramel color of hazel that women always claim they love, but yet… he’s still single.

He adjusts his tie, making sure it’s perfectly centered, then pulls on his jacket. It’s not quite raining, nor is it cold like it should be in November, but he figures that it completes the look. He leaves it open, grabbing his keys and stuffing them into his pocket. Checking his phone, he shakes his head. “My soul mate’s dead. She hasn’t moved in at least 15 minutes, and I’m sure that’s the cemetery,” he sighs out, making sure everything’s off. “Story of my life.”

He picks the earbud out of the horseshoe headset around his neck and tucks it in his ear, turning on an audio directions app and playing some music, quietly, under it. He traces each leaf as it falls, pretending it’s his finger sending them down. He counts them by color in his head, trying to figure out which color is falling the most. He’s always been into numbers and proportions, but never got into math equations and number entry. Instead, he works with designs, with colors, with art and with pictures. His knack for detail lead him to a steady job, but a lonely one.

The gate screeches as he pulls it open, his shoes clicking on the pavement. He looks around, seeing slab after slab of rock, some nicer than others, with names sometimes just scraped into concrete, some made from enamel pushed in, and some looking like gold foil cut into the shapes. He gives a polite nod to his grandmother’s, heading up the hill with the sun shining into his eyes. At the top, he squints hard, trying to keep the sun out but failing as it reflects off of the nicer stones. Instead, he looks just in front of his feet, wishing he’d grabbed sunglasses. He walks slow, careful to not trip, and he turns when the directions tell him to. He sees the plot, fresh dirt covered in flowers, before he notices there’s no headstone. He steps carefully, stopping at the foot of the plot. He turns off his music and directions.

“Hello there…” he calls out, trailing off from feeling awkward. “I don’t even know your name.”

From the next row over, he hears, “His name was Jamal.” The voice is weak and shaky, but resonates in him as perfect. He hears a slam, probably a car door, and then she’s coming around the side, walking up to him. Her hair is pulled up in a bun, like she’d been wearing a wig then thrown it into the car. Her skin is dark and unblemished, not even a single scar visible on her. Her dress is vibrant, neon orange and light green zebra stripes clinging to her chest, then exploding out from her waist and hovering a few inches above the ground. Her black leather purse is tucked under her arm, and her phone is beeping rapidly from it. When she offers her hand to him, her gold and diamond ring catches the light, but he takes it anyway, shaking her hand. “I’m Chelle,” she starts, eyeing him as she steps closer. She has a firm grip, and smiles meekly. “Jamal was my husband. He passed last month, but it took a couple weeks for them to bury him.”

Rick shakes her hand, nodding mutely. His mind is screaming, but all he can think to say is, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

She laughs, a full belly laugh shaking her body. “Oh hon, don’t worry about it.” She nods her head over to her parked car, raising an eyebrow to him, and he follows her, careful to stay close but not crowd her. When she opens his door, he chuckles a little, starting to laugh harder when he gets in. “What?” she calls out to him as she goes around, getting in the driver’s seat.

He wipes at his eyes, trying not to laugh. “I thought that… y’know, the… grave. I thought, ‘Well, that’s my soulmate. She’s dead, and life’s gonna just shit on me for the fun of it,’ you know? Then I hear you, and I felt my heart damn near shoot from my chest to my ass. But, then, I saw you, not a ghost or some weird looking mutant, and I think that life’s finally paying off.was

She shakes her head, looking at him before the giggles really hit. When she turns the key and the engine doesn’t turn over, she laughs out loud. The next time, he joins in. The next, they start laughing hard enough to send tears rolling down their faces. “Always gotta take the bad with the good, huh?” she asks, eyes sparkling.

In an answer, he grabs her hand and kisses her knuckles, eyes looking to the side at his phone as he searches for a tow company.

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