The Dropouts

The county is as rural as rural gets. Its population is exceedingly small, 328 people according to the census-derived info on the internet. But there’s actually just under sixty more, hidden away where even the drones don’t fly.

Og was screaming. Several of his tribe were trying to remove a spear from his leg. This was tricky work. The only halfway appropriate tool the half-naked medics who were treating Og’s leg had was a rusty old saw. Just then, the busy saw teeth made it through the shaft of the weapon penetrating the old man’s leg.

“Got it, Og!” Daryl crowed.

Others rushed in to clean the wound and apply healing herbs.

“Any whisky left?” Og begged.

“No, they got our still last week, old man. Remember?”

Indeed, the two tribes were often stealing from each other. Raiding each other for women. And, of course, killing each other. Cops were never called. Nobody ever went to a hospital. Everything was off the grid and off the record.

It had started as a dare between two rival factions of survivalists who knew each other on the internet. It was a couple of extended families of survivalists from the Midwest and the Pacific Northwest. It was going to be a long weekend survivalist challenge, a contest between two tribes. Many of them were fans of the grittier reality shows, like Survivor and Naked and Afraid. But those shows never went far enough, everyone agreed.

Things soon got out of hand. Someone died in an honest accident a few days before the thing was to end, but the other tribe didn’t see it that way. They thought one of their own had been murdered. This triggered a blood feud. Harsh insults were lobbed. Group pride was injured. Another gauntlet was thrown down. All the members of both tribes swore a pact to stay on. They sent their last text messages to family, giving their bogus excuses for their staying on, and then the phones were switched off and locked up again. They went back to their respective caves and huddled around their fires. Somebody was pregnant. It would be the first baby born in the new Stone Age.

It had been two months and change out of civilization by this time.

The spearing of Og was a really dirty thing. Og was the oldest member of the Red Ford Explorer Tribe. He wasn’t harming anyone. True, he had sticky fingers and was making night raids over there around their stores and animal pens. But they could have just thrown a rock. There were revenge grumbles going around the cave.

Nobody in the Red Ford Explorer Tribe knew that Og had killed a twenty-four-year-old man the previous night when he had tried to stop the old codger from stealing some coyote steaks. Og wasn’t offering that part up.

So over at the Pabst Blue Ribbon Tribe they were planning a massacre. One of the woman suggested they return to their (forbidden) vehicles and retrieve their (forbidden) modern world weaponry. This was roundly shouted down. There was to be honor among caveman. There might be a massacre, but it would be done with the correct tools.

While Og was being treated, Jeremiah was being buried in a very private grave alongside a creek where he loved to catch crayfish the tribe all enjoyed together in an improvised broth. His young widow (stolen from the other tribe) cursed her own parents in the enemy tribe as the young man’s body was placed in the hole which had been dug with a shovel secretly retrieved from the Vehicle Field (totally cheating).

Two men from the Pabst tribe were nearly a hundred miles away in a small town, watching a suburban street. It was early morning. They were watching students walking to high school. The man on the passenger side beckoned a boy with a blue backpack to come over to their S.U.V. He was holding a road map out the window, waving his bait. All the other kids were gone now. The blue backpack was the last walker on the street.

“Yeah, he’s got nice muscles. A nice solid build. Probably a wrestler. He’ll do,” the driver mumbled, while smiling at the boy the whole time through the windshield.

Once the tall young man reached the S.U.V., it was over in a minute. Bound on the floor in the back, tears soaked his face.

The guy on the passenger side rifled the kid’s phone, caught up briefly on the news in the outside world, then took the battery out and chucked the phone.

The kid was pleading by now through the duct tape across his mouth, but those weren’t words coming out. The shot he had been given was starting to take effect. It would soon be lights out.

“Don’t worry, kid. We ain’t a couple of perverts. We’re taking you to a great place. You have a destiny to fulfill. You’re gonna be a warrior. Old school warr-i-or! Much better than whatever shit you were going to do when you went to school today. Trust me.”

It was true that the tribe had a 100% success rate so far with abductees. They adjusted after a short period of rebellion. Usually only a few days, really.

Of course, if you wanted to leave, you had to go for a walk in the woods with Psychopath. He was the least nice member of the Pabst tribe. Psychopath would always come back from that walk alone, and the other members of the tribe would be told that the member who went with him was “restored to civilization.” Everyone knew what that meant. So people didn’t ask to leave. The Ford tribe also had an enforcer. Her name was Margaret.

So MISSING posters continued to go up on telephone poles and in storefronts in the small towns around the state. But never any too close to the caves. Always they drove far out to find the young men and women they needed.

The tribes had initially numbered only 51 people combined. A net increase of eight bodies had been realized by the time of the second casualty. There had been three whiners taken out between the two enforcers from the separate tribes. There had been some wife swapping and some agreed contractual hunting for additional warriors on both sides, both male and female. It kept the contest interesting.

“You want to stop at Mickey D’s?” the driver asked the rider. “Before heading back and drawing up them battle plans? That boy’s totally out cold.”

“Shit, that’s cheatin’ and you know it, Sam. But alright. Don’t tell a soul and get rid of all the trash, for sure. Fast food is capital punishment now, remember?”

“Don’t fucking burp or fart around any of the tribe, either. Get us both killed. But I’d like to hunt them son’a’bitches on something more solid than plant roots. And that coyote gone bad tasted like shit. I think I got Lyme Disease or some shit like that.”

“Tell me about it. We’re going to have to go on more of these people runs, ya know. After we take out as many as Sondra is planning. I don’t want to wipe ’em out completely though. Would ruin the fun, know what I mean?”

“No, I totally agree. We can seed the other tribe with newbies after it all goes down. Man, I really don’t miss my job back home. Not one fuckin’ bit!”

He laughed.

The other man laughed too.

“Me neither, man. Me fuckin’ neither.”

“We have a special on the new egg sandwich today,” the nerdy female voice coming out of the menu board offered.

“Give me ten,” said the driver. “And two milkshakes as cold as you can make ’em, sweetheart.”

Housewife

Every morning, he wakes, turns to her, and asks her the same question: “How did you sleep, beauty?” And always she shows him the same contented smile. The comfort of all those years spent together is apparent in the curve of those lips. No words necessary. And then he is able to face the world. That’s all he needs. “Get your rest,” he says. “I should be home around six. But I’ll be thinking about you all day.” Oh, make no mistake. Once, there were bad times, very bad times, and they used to try each other greatly. Marriage counseling didn’t work. An open relationship didn’t work. Nothing did. And then he stumbled on the solution. Now they’re just perfect together. She feels it too. Just look at that face. He can’t resist doing so, one last loving glance, as he stands dressing before the closet. Mummification makes the heart grow fonder.

Pound

“Timmy’s missing again,” my wife sighed as she lorded it over the stove top, stirring a wooden spoon slowly in a pot. “And dinner will be ready in less than an hour.”

I sighed back, “I’ll check the pound.”

As usual, the parking lot was packed. It wasn’t a long drive, though, so I was there in fifteen minutes and walking past all the children whose fingers were invariably wrapped tightly around the wires of their cage fronts or poking through those wires, as they eyed me and shouted out, “Pick me, Sir! Pick me!” A pasty-looking girl in a ridiculous pinafore barked, “I get straight As! I’ve only had one B in my entire life!” As I drew closer to give her a second look, she snarled and then bounded out through the hole at the back of her cage into the exercise yard, presumably to bite another child.

I saw Timmy consorting with the child in the cage next to his. They were trading something, some sort of contraband. Timmy smiled up at me broadly and asked me what’s for supper. I won’t reproduce the string of invective that flowed from his mouth as I called the kennel tender to open the cage of the child next to his. I didn’t look back once as we three went off together, to sign the papers and pay the fine.

I arrived home with three minutes to spare. The large empty bowls were on the dining room table. My wife smiled much more peacefully as she ladled out the mix of vegetables and who knows what else.

“Welcome home,….?” she said to the boy sitting in Timmy’s chair.

“Ralph,” he finished her sentence. He had heard the question mark.

“Thank you, Mother,” he chimed as he began spooning the stewy muck into his mouth.

“I’m Mom, but I’m also Doris,” she explained, pointing to her chest with her expensively manicured index finger. Her apron had “Fran” stitched on it in red thread.

“I love my family so goddamn much!” I barked in my gruffest dad voice. “Let’s go pass a football after dinner!”

“Indeed, father,” Ralph said, as casual as any psychopathic child. “Footballs are the super-glue of families.”

Mr. Bully Boy, our pit bull, came trotting into the dining room just then and took a chunk out of my wife’s leg, then threw his huge body against the screen door out in the kitchen, which gave way, and ran off to enjoy it somewhere.

“He doesn’t know her yet,” I explained to the boy as my wife went off to bandage her gaping wound.

“Maybe you should take him to the pound, Dad,” Ralph wisely suggested. I liked this kid already.

“Actually, how do you feel about a new mommy?” I asked, as I stroked the chip-off-the-old-block’s hair.

“It sounds like a capital idea, Sir.” my son whispered ingratiatingly. “The spicing of this stew is pedestrian at best.”

But as I went to pee, I heard my wife on the phone in the next room, in total darkness. I could hear the pretend panic in her voice. We’ve all gotten so good at that pretend panic voice now.

“Is this the pound? Listen, there’s a strange man in my house. He’s impersonating my husband. Please hurry. And bring the right goddamn sedatives this time. The last husband ruined my china before you got him to the van. What sort of amateurs are you hiring these days?”

I went into my bedroom and started packing, loading my pockets with a few of my favorite things.

And then I thought about how to say goodbye to my son. I tried to remember words from a television movie I really hated.

Too bad she beat me to the dial. I’m going to miss that kid. One more call and I think we could have had the family just right. The dog knew she was wrong for the role. Dogs always know. I’m gonna miss that dog.

I heard the van brake loudly out front just then, so I sat on the edge of my bed and prepared to act surprised and emotionally wounded.

An Ear for Crime

Hickory, dickory dock,

I selected the Hickory family. I had to choose the right one. There were several families with the surname Hickory in this city, in its suburbs. I drove and drove. So many days, so many nights. I scouted. Studied houses and yards patiently. Until I saw the ones with the clock. Right there in their backyard. I knew then. They were the ones.

The mouse ran up the clock.

It was the sundial in the backyard. The clock. I placed it against the wall which I knew had the best window for a stealth entrance. By then, I knew the Hickory family’s schedule. I knew when the kids went to bed. When the parents did. The rooms were all dark that night when I stood on the sundial and leaned against the wall, next to the pretty trellis. I used the glass cutter. I unlocked the window. I was in to do my business. I must say it all went beautifully. Not a whimper, not a pleading out of place.

The clock struck one,

They actually had a grandfather clock in there. Imagine that. I heard it strike one a.m. And people say there’s no such thing as fate. There was one Hickory left alive by then. Her eyes pleaded with me. Her mouth couldn’t. Not with that gag. I had recited the rhyme enough by then, that she must have known what was coming, what that sound from the downstairs clock meant. She must have known that it was time for me to leave. Finishing time. And so I did.

The mouse ran down!

I went out the way I came in. Down to the clock and off through the backyard, racing into the shadows of the bushes and the trees. Then through dark neighboring yards. My car was parked several streets away, where it would not arouse suspicion. I must say I was pleased with the way it all went down. It was the night of the new moon. The cool dark of that night on my skin felt so nice. Thank You, Moon. It took everything I had not to steal peeks at the videos I had recorded of the Hickorys. Such fun we all had. But I waited until I got home.

Hickory, dickory, dock.

The obituaries for the Hickory family were sanitized. The news stories splashed across the front pages, and all over the airwaves and internet, were more sensationalized. Television’s talking heads were fascinated by the murders. They loved that I had left the nursery rhyme behind. They loved that I had left a sprung mouse-trap on each of their bodies. That sort of thing plays well in the tabloids.

But not all the details were released. The police like to hold some gruesome facts back. I get it. They have to play the hand they’re dealt. They have to hold those cards close. To see who knows what. So the darling public didn’t get to learn that the dearly departed indeed showed signs that a mouse had visited. None of the news stories mentioned the gnawing.

For those following my work in the press, they’ll have other rhyme crimes to read about in the near future. Unfortunately, some will be discovered out of sequence. There’s Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, that old battle-axe who writes those letters to the editor constantly. I finished that one months ago. But Mary has yet to return to her gardening . Come spring, when she finally gets back to tending her silver bells and cockle shells, she should find them. I mean those pretty maids all in a row.

I hope she writes a letter to the editor about that one.

Library Amnesty Day

One rainy spring afternoon in Baltimore, a young man walked into one of the city’s smaller libraries. He drew a little attention to himself since he was wearing a burnouse. It was Library Amnesty Day, which meant that patrons could return overdue library books and have the fines for those books waived. He explained that he wanted to take advantage of this amnesty. “This book is wonderful and everything in it is true. I am living proof of that,” he half whispered and smiled. “But I think I have been wrong to keep the book so very long.” The librarian asked him for his library card . He replied, “I have none.” She tried to get more information but he fled. He was in and out of the library in under three minutes. The librarian tried to place his accent but she couldn’t. At first, she thought it must be a prank since he left no book. He did leave a plastic tube on the counter of the librarian’s station. This tube was discovered to contain an ancient papyrus. Obviously, this had not been borrowed from the small library in Baltimore. It was forwarded to one local university and thence onward to several others. Eventually, it was determined that the origin of the papyrus scroll was the Library at Alexandria, burned when Caesar himself strategically set fire to his own ships during the siege of that city. The fire spread from the ships to the docks and then reached the vaunted library and consumed much of it, Plutarch informs us. Other historians insist the fire (or multiple fires) happened earlier or later. But all agree that the library and its precious volumes perished by fire. Had the Library at Alexandria ever collected such penalties, the overdue fee the mystery man was seeking to have discharged would have been astronomical. Even a modern robber baron would have difficulty paying such a fine. The scroll the mysterious man dropped off contained text in ancient Greek and hieroglyphics. The title of the work, when translated, was revealed to be How to Live Forever.

(science fiction)

A NEW BLITZKRIEG



American Airlines’ Flight AA2497 departed Atlanta in the early evening, just after six, bound for Dallas-Forth Worth. It took off into a warm July sky. No storms waited in its flight path. The passengers felt mostly relaxed. It had been expected to touch down on earth again at 8:33 pm. local time. But it didn’t happen.

At 8:33 p.m. the flight was still circling, refused permission to land or continue on to any other airport. The United States Air Force had scrambled an E-3 Sentry alongside two F-22s. These interceptors waited to see what word would come down from on high. They were fully prepared to destroy civilian aircraft and snuff out American lives.

This is because Flight AA2497 had become two Flights AA2497. As the flight approached DFW, it had morphed into a set of mirror image twins. Both flights contained the exact same crew and passengers. And both craft were in a panic, as visual contact had been made between the two planes in mid-air. That is, passengers had seen their doppelgangers looking out the windows of the plane flying next to them. Transmissions from the pilots and co-pilots of these dual cockpits were nearly identical. Nobody was sure which plane was the “real McCoy” or whether such logic could even be applied to what had happened. The air traffic controllers were bewitched into stunned silence when they heard the same pilot transmitting from two different planes, his voice overlapping his voice.

The secretary of defense and the president were conferring. Since a state of war existed between the United States of America and that nameless species which had lately announced its existence as interdimensional beings living with us, able to travel right through us, interpenetrating us like photons, the decision was not an easy matter. They had already attacked our infrastructure and information technologies. There had been human casualties. Nobody really knew what “they” were. We had found ways to block them, we had used the best code we could finesse. But increasingly they made new incursions. They were able to interfere with the natural progression of time. They were able to use backdoors in space. We were at war. And yet nobody had ever even seen the enemy.

Everyone knew this anomaly of Flight AA2497 had been caused by them. But nobody knew the meaning of it. The President and the Secretary had to make the judgment call. The flight was running out of fuel and refueling mid-air was not an option. It was ultimately decided to let both planes land. The military was evacuating the airport of civilians and all other flights were diverted elsewhere.

The planes taxied down separate runways only moments apart. The passengers and crews on both airplanes were told they could not deboard. They were to be quarantined for an indeterminate amount of time — until the matter could be resolved. This was depressing news, but the passengers on both aircraft were genuinely relieved that they had managed to finally touch down, reach the ground alive. They had seen the armed interceptors tailing their planes. They knew they had survived a close call.

The president breathed a huge sigh of relief when he was apprised that no earth-shattering disaster had occurred when the planes landed.

“We just have no idea what to do with all the extra humans,” one general joked. “And which ones are the originals and who are the copies?”

They were still laughing about this when the call came through from the military brass on the ground at DFW. It was a panicked voice that relayed the information: “Sir, it’s the worst possible scenario. Nuclear option tenable. We no longer have two identical planes. We had two….then we had four identicals..then eight…sixteen…you get the picture. They’re just materializing and destroying the airport. It appears to be some sort of virus…some sort of spatial virus! There are hundreds of them if not thousands already. I have to evacuate because….”

There was a huge crashing sound of twisting metal and a scream. Many screams. Then silence.

And the mitosis of planes went on through the landscape, that warm summer night in Texas. Flight AA2497 went on duplicating, horizontally, city to city, and vertically, jets piled atop jets up into the clouds, even to the asscrack of doom.

And the passengers wondered and wondered and wondered as they watched and sometimes caught a glimpse of themselves through the wreckage, looking back at themselves in terror and hoping, hoping to get off the plane as soon as possible.

Warm

Jim was hunting with his two older brothers on what the locals called Jawdrop Mountain. Though he was only sixteen, he had convinced his brothers to let him go it alone, at least for a few hours at a stretch. The guys had gotten a late start that day, so it was around one o’clock when the three brothers set out hunting in different directions. This was to have been a separation of two hours before a final rendezvous at a marker tree on the path which the three young men had used to ascend the mountain. And then the brothers would head back down, deer or no deer.

It was a severely overcast day in midwinter. Several inches of snow lay on the ground from recent storms. No significant snowfall had been predicted for that day. But the weatherman had been wrong and a surprise storm brewed up on the mountain. It began as a squall, near white-out conditions. Jim panicked and stumbled around until he realized he could walk right off a precipice. This thought scared him so badly he froze in place under a sheltering stand of trees until the squall degenerated into a normal snowfall.

Then the boy realized he was lost. He had sprinted and walked much further than he had realized in his panic.

He looked at his cell phone, but without hope. He knew there would be no reception. Ridiculous even to look. He cursed himself for having wandered so far in his initial panic. He had lost all his “mental markers” in the landscape. He was calling out to his brothers, to anyone really, at the top of his voice. But no one replied. And the terrain already looked totally unfamiliar. All the trees looked the same in any direction. The snow continued to fall.

Just as it was getting dark, the boy saw a form in the woods which gave him hope. There was a cabin in its own little clearing deep in these woods of the tallest trees. He raced to it, realizing it was his salvation.

As soon as he arrived at the front door and knocked, he knew it was empty. It just felt that way. He looked in the windows, which were actually very dusty, and knew then that the cabin had probably been empty for a long time. He did a cursory inspection walking around the small structure, and saw it was intact. This was a secure place to hole up until help arrived. Though he had his rifle, he did not want to be out in the night. He realized it was hypothermia he should fear, but a primal part of him feared the other things too.

He couldn’t believe his luck in finding an unlocked window in the rear of the cabin and squeezed his svelte body through. He actually ended up falling to the floor and that was the scariest moment, when he felt most vulnerable. Lying there on the floor in the dark cabin. He froze and waited for whatever horror lay hidden in the cabin to fall upon him. He breathed a sigh of relief, right there on the floor, when he realized it was silent throughout the rooms. He could actually hear the sound of the snow falling outside through the still open window. But he wouldn’t close his exit behind him. Not before he really saw the whole cabin and knew he was safe.

“Hello?” he called out. “If you can hear me, I’m not an intruder. I’m a hunter. I’ve gotten separated from my brothers and I’m lost. Don’t be afraid.”

No fearing soul answered him or came forward to greet him.

Jim ran to the front door and undid the locks. He threw open the door and this let in a little more light. It was the wan light of snowfall which was cast into the living room of the cabin. Jim discovered that there were two other bedrooms and a small bathroom. These bedrooms were the scariest rooms to enter, since they were the darkest rooms, windowless. His eyes adjusted, but he could not be sure that he was seeing everything in those rooms. He saw enough to realize no one could be in those rooms. Not unless they were hiding under one of the beds. This was just a little too much of a risk to check right now. He could smell the dust in the cabin. Jim took it on faith that he was the only occupant of the cabin. It had surely been empty a few years, at least.

He ran out the front door and couldn’t believe his luck in finding a woodpile under an old, wind-torn blue tarp. He loaded up the fireplace and had never been so happy to be a smoker in his life. His Bic served him nicely. He prayed the chimney wasn’t blocked or sooted up beyond use. But the fire roared up and he slammed the front door shut and locked it again.

He felt terribly guilty when he thought that his brothers might be risking their own lives looking for him. He worried about them. But he figured they would descend the mountain and return with a search party. They sure would be pissed though. What more could he do but sit and wait until the morning. At dawn, he would try to find his way back to the path and maybe even be able to meet any searchers on their way up the mountain.

He decided to keep the window by which he had entered cracked open just a little bit, in case he could hear his brothers’ voices. He wondered if he should listen for search helicopters flying overhead. Or was that unrealistic? If only he could tell everybody he was alright, sitting now in front of a toasty fire as the sun died off the mountain.

Jim made a bed on the floor in front of the crackling fire. He had taken the pillows and blankets off the rather ramshackle couch that occupied the center of the room. In no time, the exhausted boy had fallen deeply asleep, grateful for the fire and the roof over his head.

When he was suddenly awakened, he had no idea at first where he was, what time of day or night it was, or what the sound that had awakened him had actually been. He thought it had been a knocking. A hard, insistent, series of fast knocks. Had he been dreaming?

Then he remembered his circumstances and he called out his brothers’s names, each one in turn. Had they miraculously found him? He sprang up and ran to the front door. But something in him told him not to open it. Not just yet.

“Hello? Who’s there?” he asked hopefully.

No answer. Only the sound of the wind. The storm had grown emboldened after night fell. He could hear its shrieking on the other side of the door.

“Okay, no one then,” Jim laughed to himself. “Of course, it’s no one. I was dreaming.”

Jim turned to return to his bed. This was just as more knocks sounded on the door: three times more. But this time, they were loud beyond belief. They sounded like the worst type of threat. It couldn’t have been a fist that had done that. It had to be some sort of board or log or….

Jim looked at the open window at the rear of the dwelling. It was still cracked open a few inches. The boy ran to it and slammed it shut. He was grateful there was a swivel lock on the sash. He shot it clockwise tight. He let the thick curtains close on the window, hiding it. But he knew that was only a thin pane of glass separating him from whoever or whatever was out there in the night. And there were two other windows in the cabin.

Panicked, he searched for a weapon. He was so grateful to realize the fireplace’s poker was there. He approached the front door again, weapon in hand, and listened.

His mind began to play tricks on him. What if that was one of his brothers, half-frozen to death, on the other side of that door, unable to speak, trying to let Jim know that he was a human icicle. It seemed improbable. But it was not impossible. He had to know.

Jim counted to three, but silently, in his mind. And then he threw open the door.

No one.

Only the snow innocently falling.

But looking down, Jim saw there was a line of tracks in the snow leading to the front door! Bipedal tracks. The snow had gotten rather deep and the wind was blowing, so there was no way to tell what sort of boots or shoes the visitor was wearing. Yet the weirdest thing was that these tracks stopped right there at the door. Jim looked left, right. No one. The snow was its own light source, so it was easy to see into the night. But there was no one, nothing there to be seen.

“Where in the hell did you go?” Jim whispered under his breath.

And that’s when he heard the sounds above him. Someone was walking on the goddamn roof!

This freaked the boy out. His thoughts ran madly. How did the visitor climb up there. Was it his brother, after all, hallucinating while freezing to death?

Jim couldn’t take the wondering anymore and stepped through the open door, ran out into the deepening snow. He looked up onto the roof, but there was no one. There was a tall pine tree, however, that grew close by the roof. It dangled branches down over it. He saw little miniature avalanches of glittery snow come sparkling down from the tall tree’s branches. Because something was stirring in those branches. He couldn’t see it in the darkness of the tree, but he could see it was climbing. Then the tree grew still.

“Who in the hell are you?” Jim screamed up at the tree.

He waited in a terror he felt was skinning his heart.

Now there was only the sound of the snow, the gusts of the wind picking up and then dying off.

Just as he was ready to run back into the house, feeling all his danger sensors shrilling alarms, he heard a voice come from the darkness of the tree.

“Waaaarm,” the voice hissed out at him. The boy was shocked at how well this loud whisper (for it was a sort of creepy whisper) carried.

“You want to get warm?” Jim asked.

“Waaaarm…..” the voice sighed again ten seconds later.

Before Jim could respond, a black form flew out of the tree, and it was larger than any man, whatever it was, and came sailing down right over Jim’s head, and something touched him there, on the top of his head, as the boy screamed.

But the thing had sailed past and up into another tall tree behind Jim.

So Jim bolted inside the cabin and locked the door in triplicate.

Mere seconds later another knock came on the door. This one sounded much more polite. It sounded almost like a human knocking. Almost. But it was a dragging sort of knock.

“What are you?” Jim couldn’t stop himself asking.

“Waaaarm?” the voice hissed beseechingly.

“What do you want?”

“Waaaarm!”

“You want to be warm?” Jim asked, shaking now.

“Waaaarm meeeeal,” the voice whispered loudly.

“Listen. To. Me. Now. I have a poker and I’m going to beat your brains in if you don’t go away. I’m going to beat your brains in, and then I’m going to eat you. I don’t care what you are. I’m going to skin you and eat you and cook you in this fire. Then tomorrow I’ll shit you out and flush you down a toilet. So consider that before you ask for anything again.”

There came the sound of claws scratching on the other side of the door. This was a very angry sound.

Then Jim was sure he heard wings flapping, flapping away.

He returned to his makeshift bed and he stared at all parts of the cabin over and over, all night long. He paid particular attention to the windows.

Morning came. Morning finally came after that endless night of snow and winds and the unspeakable. Jim looked out the dusty windows. He saw a beautiful sunny morning.

He stared out several of the windows for another hour and then he finally decided it was time to head back out and find the path home.

He held the poker tight in his fist and his breath tight in his chest as he opened the front door.

Four raw scratch marks had gouged the wood. There was a claw stuck in the fourth raking. It was no claw or talon that Jim could recognize. It looked like the sort of claw you saw on dinosaurs in the museum reproductions of those creatures.

Three hours later, Jim heard a member of the search party calling his name. He was reunited with his brothers an hour after that.

He couldn’t say why he never showed the claw to anyone, not even his brothers. Maybe the shame of having gotten lost, of causing so much worry for everyone, was enough embarrassment to shoulder. The story he had to tell would have made it even worse.

But he kept the claw in a drawer in his bedroom for many years, right next to a pistol that he always kept with him anytime he found himself having to enter the woods, whether it was hunting season or not.

The Plant

     My mother's closest relationship when she died was with a plant.

     What can I say? She was a weird woman. And she was old. Old enough to have crotchets, eccentric ideas. I urged her to explore the possibility of a pet, the warmth and personality such a spirit might bring to her apartment and her life. But she insisted the plant was better than any cat or dog. And it was much less work. I say "plant," because when I first saw the green tropical thing in her digs, it wasn't even as tall as I am. It barely came up to my waist.

       Over the years, it grew much larger. Maybe I shouldn't say "plant." Perhaps I should call it what it is: a tree. Some sort of exotic palm tree. It did cut a somewhat different silhouette. If I speak candidly, there was always something about it that I found a little unsavory. I almost used the word "uncanny." What was I thinking? How can a tree be uncanny?  But if you had seen some of the things I had seen! The way she would throw her arms around that tree and whisper in the place where you might expect there to be ears. The way I would see her tip her drinks (Mother loved alcohol) into the plant's pot, as if she were sharing sips with a lover.

        "Won't that kill your beloved?" I would ask.

           "Hardly! She drinks more than I do, the lush," she giggled.

            Crazy old women. You just don't argue with them.

        My mother and I had our difficulties. She thought I didn't see her enough. She called fairly constantly, sometimes several times a day and even at night. I always reminded myself that a widow's lot can be hard. This wasn't easy on Natasha. Natasha is much younger than I am. Perhaps that is what is responsible for the imbalance of power in our relationship. Or maybe it is just N.'s somewhat overpowering spirit.

      Initially, N. played polite during these barrages of calls and exchanged a few perfunctory sentences with Mother before handing me the phone. But it wasn't long until she was answering the phone without saying a word, marching it directly to me, letting Mother guess correctly on the other end at what was happening: a freeze-out. But this was fine with Mother, since there was no love lost on her end for N., whom she considered a gold-digging (silver-digging? aluminum-digging?) wastrel.

         When Mother died suddenly, I was saddened, of course, but I would be lying if I said I didn't anticipate a warming between N. and me, a renaissance of increased goodwill and more charitable feelings, if you will.

            But there was a hitch.

            Mother's estate was rather hefty and she had been quite generous with me, her favorite son (if I am allowed to speak candidly). There was a proviso in her will, a ridiculous proviso, that I must "adopt" her beloved plant. Not legally adopt it. Nothing that crazy. But I must take it. Her tree, which had occupied the very center of her living room, like a performer in a nightclub, was now to be, perforce, relocated to our apartment.

           I looked at the attorney and said, "You're joking, of course."

       He explained that it was no joke. He was required to visit my dwelling to make sure the plant had indeed been relocated before the arrangements could be finalized for the disbursement of assets.

             N. sighed heavily at the news but we did what was required of us. We hired a moving company and soon Mother's beloved palm tree was ensconced in our living room. Its top fronds found themselves crowding up into our much lower ceiling. N. suggested we pick up some shears and "hack the shit out of it."

              So this is what we planned to do.

              Unfortunately, this is where the story takes a strange turn.

               While we were cruising with our shopping cart down the ridiculously wide aisles of the hardware warehouse where we hoped to find shears, a ridiculously handsome, ridiculously young man accosted us. He looked like the sort of chap you'd see on an afternoon soap, dark featured and oh-so-poised.

                He asserted that he was N.'s lover (he had actually followed us to the store in his hybrid, imagine!) and that they were to begin a life together anew. She had promised him. I laughed in his face. Then I saw N's sheepish face.

                She left HOMEWORLD with the twenty-five year old that night, climbed into his hybrid like a tall, displaced princess in a very poorly-written fairy tale, and I rarely saw her again after that.

                 I might have thought briefly about killing myself, but I no longer was in the mood to kill mother's beloved friend.

                                                    *

              I was alone for a few weeks, drinking again. But only for a few weeks, I promised myself. I remembered to share my screwdrivers and other cocktails with Mother's alcoholic tree. It did seem to perk up her leaves even more.

              Why did I say her leaves just now?

                Well, it's hard to tell you this part. It's hard to tell you that I began to see shadows around the tree when the room was dark, when I sat there all alone, sinking into the ugly black couch whose upholstery was always too much like melting butter for my taste. No support at all for a man. That was N.'s choice.

                 True, I was drunk. But I began to see feminine forms, voluptuous shapes, shadow breasts and legs turning. Dark legs, dark arms. Never did I see a face. Just this....woman shape.

                   Whenever I would jump up and switch on the light suddenly, trying to catch her, I would just laugh.

                It was nothing more than a palm tree. And I was a pitiful drunk.

                    I drank on. Once I went over and hugged her in the darkness. I pressed my body against her. I was hard. I heard a moaning. A satisfaction coming from her. My lips slobbered on her trunk. My hand found a wetness. A sort of wet bole. You've surely seen a bole on a tree before that looked like a woman's secret source. You've had to have wondered. When you were a young man. I didn't understand it. Not one bit.

                      And then Natasha came back.

                                                         *


            Natasha came home one night and just flipped on the light switch in my bedroom, found me passed-out drunk. She threw the bottle off our balcony. I heard the crash. She was shameless. She wanted to be taken back with absolute impunity. She took on the role of my savior. With a straight-face. I agreed immediately.

                 She looked at the tree with even more disdain now. She gave me to understand right away that the tree had to go. The lawyer was not going to come back and "check up" on us. He had as much as winked at us and said, "What you do later with that tree is your own business." Natasha had flashed him a grateful smile then. She really hated Mother.

                     So I came home from work one day soon after that and the palm had been lugged out onto the balcony. It was snowing out there. I came in carrying the groceries and set them down where I stood, just inside the front door. Somehow it bothered me so much. And how had she gotten that heavy pot out there? No way on earth she had done it by herself. Could it have been a strapping twenty-five-year-old who had given her the necessary assistance?

                    And there was the matter of my new inheritance. Was it really the fact that her young lover was "impossible" (her word) or was it that he was "practical" (my word)?

                     As the snow continued to become denser and denser throughout that evening, as Natasha and I sat there watching television together like two pilots on a long distance flight, I couldn't help stealing glances at her. By her, I mean the palm. She was barely visible in the white-out now as a squall whipped through our city.

                      Natasha grew furious at me for stealing glances at the plant, for making comments about the brutal weather.

                     "Don't you realize that tree is your Mother? She's in there, somehow. It's the last stranglehold she has on you. And you're...tree-whipped! It's me or her!"

                       People who look like models can generally get away with murder. But I had had a bad feeling, a hunch about Natasha for months now, and our breakup-makeup thing had not done the work of breaking a bad union and then resoldering it. I tersely explained that we were through.

                            N. packed what little of her things she had brought back to our apartment and left within the hour. She showed her usual degree of emotion. Think negative numbers.

                              My first act was to go out on the balcony and drag the palm back into the center of the living room. My living room now. Or should I say our living room still. The tree had been good company in N's absence.

                                                               *

                        I did go on one more brief bender. I did take a few days of vacation from work. But I told myself I was grieving the real loss of Natasha this time. The final goodbye.


                                                             *

                         One morning, after a night of heavy indulgence, I did wake up with that tree in bed with me. I was naked. Was the tree naked too? Aren't trees always naked? I didn't even open my eyes. I was listening to the whisper coming from her leaves. I remained pleasantly blind as a newborn kitten. I told her I wish I could take her to a tropical island, that we could have a getaway vacation together. But I just couldn't see her getting on a plane. We had a special kind of love, one that would work best on a desert isle, perhaps. I stuck my naked feet in her pot of soil and dug my toes in. It made me giggle like a schoolboy who has finally bedded his first crush in her parents' house. The humus was wet and gave nicely. I had nowhere to be for days and it was so comfortable, so real. So real. The earth is one sexy mother, isn't it? 

Happy Birthday

How old was the Eckes boy when he disappeared?

That's what Joe really wanted to know.

Once a year, that creepy old dude who now lived alone in the Eckes house would come into the bakery department and place an order for a customized "Happy Birthday!" cake. Last year, it had been "Happy 9th Birthday!" This year it was a birthday cake for a happy tenth.

"Please just give me your basic, generic boy's cake," the old man had said.

"Who even talks like that?" Joe had muttered to one of his co-workers the second the old creep was gone.

Joe always made the cakes to order and the old man, Edgar, that's all anyone really knew about him, his name, had always picked them up shortly thereafter.

Some of the girls in the bakery said Joe was being too harsh, that it was probably a part of the grieving process for him. It was a way he remembered his son.

"Not son," Joe would correct the women. "It was his stepson."

Joe finally found the article the night the creepy old dude had picked up the "Happy 10th Birthday" cake. It had been archived online by the local newspaper four years ago: "Six Year Old Boy Missing." So the birthday cakes were definitely keeping up with Damian's birthdays. But the date was wrong. Joe read the article again. Damian Eckes was believed to have disappeared somewhere on the walk home from his elementary school. It had only been a five block walk. Joe wasn't convinced he hadn't made it home and disappeared from there. But the police had found nothing which made Edgar anything more than a person of interest, at first, and then he had been cleared. Joe began to wonder if the boy wasn't still alive somewhere in that big house that creepy Edgar had inherited. For the boy's mother had also gone missing. Two years after her son's disappearance. True, there had been a suicide note and her grief at the loss of her son had been crippling. The woman was inconsolable. That had been her only child. So the suicide had been understandable to most. There was little suspicion. Her car had been found parked by a bridge over a river that had been in full spring torrent at the time. But her body had also never been recovered. Joe wondered about that too.

Joe had called the local police and talked to his old classmate Ed Shanks, who was sheriff now, but had been politely told to mind his own business. The missing boy case was ongoing and the case of his mother had been closed. That's all he could tell the baker playing amateur detective and thanks for calling, Joe, see you at the next high school reunion.

Joe decided that wasn't good enough.

It was a moonless night and Joe was creeping around the Eckes house. He couldn't get over how weird the old man was. He saw there was a chicken coop out back now. Everyone put the man's eccentric qualities down to the double loss he had suffered. They all made excuses for him. But Joe couldn't see it that way, and tonight he was putting that serious suspicion into action.

As he crept around the back of the house, he noticed the back door was wide open. It was a warm summer night.  Maybe the guy was baking. The light from the kitchen lay in a long plank across the backyard, nearly touching the edge of a dark cornfield that covered many acres back. There were no other houses in sight back there.

Joe edged along the house and noticed the two basement windows were painted black. There were also rocks piled up against them, blocking all but a soupcon of the basement light, which was so dim as to make one wondered if one imagined it, if there was really light at all.  But there seemed to be a slight flickering. The windows were mostly buried. Flowering bushes and rocks had been banked up against them, curiously.

Joe had made it up to the back door now, edging along the back wall of the house, and he took a quick peek into the kitchen. There was nobody to be seen. The table was covered by what appeared to be a new, attractively colored cloth. There was a centerpiece and the usual assortment: sugar bowl, shakers, cruets, fruit bowl.

Joe could hear music somewhere. He listened carefully. It was "Happy Birthday." He had pulled his head back after that first quick glance, but now he looked again. It was coming from behind the basement door, which was shut.

Joe felt a sudden boiling of bravery that came out of a boil of insatiable curiosity and he charged the door. Just like that. He realized he didn't even have his cell phone on him. How smart a thing was this to do, he wondered. But he knew he could take that old man. He wanted to take that old man.

"Hey!" he shouted as he yanked the door open so hard it banged against the corner of a kitchen counter, scarring the yellow door. "I'm coming down there!"

It was dim and the old wooden stairs were rickety. "Happy Birthday" was coming from an old record player in the corner of the basement. It was a scratchy old record and this version of the song sounded like something from a kid's show in the fifties. It sounded like a television cowboy singing. Joe saw why it was dim as soon as he reached the basement floor. The single, unshaded light bulb hanging from the ceiling had been coated with red paint. It was unbelievably warm. Joe felt himself start to sweat right away. It was just that hot.

He saw the cake on a low end table in one corner of the room. It had not been sliced. Ten small candles were now burning atop it.

"Hey! Kid! Where are you? Damian, are you here?"

Joe heard a rustling in the corner. He saw something there, a gathered mass, but he couldn't make out what he was actually seeing. It looked like a dark blanket. But it looked full and there was a stirring under it. Was it the poor kid help captive all these years by that freak? And where was that freak right now? Joe's eyes searched for the sort of tool you always find in basements, anything that might be used as a weapon, but he saw nothing.

And then he felt it and screamed. Something had reached out and touched his ankle. It was gripping his leg through the thick denim of his jeans. A hand?  It was so dark he couldn't see. It must be the boy's hand, his mind told him. Get the boy up and moving and get the hell out of there, his mind told him.

But now the "hand" of the "boy" was growing longer and longer, winding up Joe's leg, and down Joe went, struggling. He ended up yanking the blanket for which he had been reaching, and that's when he saw the full size of the creature. Coils and coils of it. It was the sort of pet people warn you against keeping. Because they never stop growing and their appetite grows exponentially too. And it was all over Joe now, all through and around Joe now, tightening. "Amazon" was one of Joe's last thoughts as he heard the door at the top of the stairs slam shut. Now he knew why it was so hot. He also knew where Damian and Julia Eckes were. And he knew he was going to the same dark place.

Who Knows?

He had driven Julie out past the edge of town where there was a cherry orchard that had been let go, that had overgrown in new wildness, that was no longer managed by anyone. The farmhouse was abandoned too. The parents of the missing girl hadn't been able to bear to look at one another anymore, after all those years of fruitless searches, all that agony, even though they had been childhood sweethearts and good companions to each other. Although they had been married for twenty years. "I guess they just too keenly reminded each other of that loss," Julie thought. It was a hard thought.

They were standing in that sundered couple's bedroom, actually, looking down on the orchard, which was in bloom, drinking the rain of a somewhat dark spring day. Though it no longer mattered to anyone, it was still beautiful. Like the girl would always be beautiful, Julie thought, when the ones who loved her were all dead, and everyone else had forgotten her. She had seen her photo.

Robert rested one of his hands on the sash of the window that looked down on the trees and gazed through its pebbly bleariness of rain. One of the panes had been shattered. Someone had probably thrown a rock through out of bored mischief. Kids are terrible, she thought. Acts like this were opening the house up to the cycles of nature, beginning the erasure of the fact of the house. Was it what was best now? Julie didn't know. It was a house of pain, she knew. The rain just made it all seem worse. There was still an end table left there, beside where the bed would have been. You could see places in the paint where pictures or photographs had cheered this room which was now so desolate. Looked like someone had smoked there nervously. A long sweating out of years in nicotine. It's strange the ways even walls will talk to us.

"They say when it rains like this, she tastes the earth, what she's missing, what the rest of us have, and she gets up and walks. People have seen her. Who knows? Maybe one of these days she'll even lead us to the one who did this to her. Hell, maybe she'll lead us to her moldering body. They searched for miles around here, dragged that pond, walked the state game lands. Hundreds of people. Dogs too. I don't think they'll ever find her. She could be hundreds of miles from here. Keep your eyes peeled. They say she likes walking through that orchard sometimes. And it's such a dark day."

"What a horrible joke to make, Robert!" Julie said coldly. "A girl died. Practically a child! We're not kids around a campfire."

But Robert chortled as he exited the room, excited again, like a bird dog after a pheasant. "Hey, down this way. I want to show you her bedroom."

Miffed, she didn't follow him right away. Instead, she walked to the window where Robert had been standing.

Her body winced back from the window, nearly involuntarily. Her eyes had given her body a shock. Because down below in the yard there was a young girl, perhaps seventeen years old, who was standing behind the vehicle in which they had arrived. She was only a few feet away from it. Her clothes were torn, hanging off her, her long hair was streaked with mud. She was barefoot. She was resolutely still. Otherworldly still. She was staring at the trunk of Robert's car.