Friend

Keiko followed Marissa down the hallway, but at a safe distance. She blended into the crowd of other girls changing classes. If Marissa had looked back, she would have seen Keiko just standing there, the one still point in that flux of bodies. She would have stood out. And Marissa would have seen her odd stare.

But Marissa didn't look back. She entered the girls bathroom.

Keiko waited as the girls aflutter with conversation, with graded papers in their hands, vanished into the doors of classrooms up and down the hallway. They broke up quickly, like a cloud of butterflies or a snow squall that is over as soon as it's begun

Only Keiko was left standing there. Like a statue in the hallway.

She slowly made her way to the door of the girls bathroom. She made no more sound than a cat. That's how she visualized herself as she looked down at her shoes while she walked.

She managed to open the bathroom door as quietly as it was humanly possible and crept inside.

Marissa was standing at one of the sinks, combing her hair.

"Hello, Keiko," the older girl greeted her. She never turned her head to acknowledge the other girl, and there was no way she could have seen her in the mirror. She was just always aware of everything like that.

Keiko advanced but remained silent.

"Oh, silly me. I forgot to flush," Marissa said. She still hadn't looked at Keiko and continued to fuss with her hair.

Keiko walked to the toilet stall opposite the sink at which Marissa was standing She went to flush the toilet and then realized something was swimming around in the bowl.

She gasped.

"Disgusting, I know," Marissa laughed.

It looked like a salamander. But not quite. It wasn't any animal Keiko had ever seen and she loved to look at books filled with photographs of animals. Then she got a better look at it. It looked like several seahorses glued together.

"You're not going to tell anybody, are you?" Marissa's voice was pure sarcasm. It was a threat.

Now, finally,  Marissa turned and in one quick jump was at the toilet. She used her hand to scoop out the creature swimming around in there, and brought it up to Keiko's mouth, as she forced the younger girl against the wall of the toilet stall.

Keiko tried to fight her but Marissa was so strong. She forced the creature into Keiko's mouth, and by using her hand to nearly suffocate her, forced her to swallow the slimy, jagged creature.

Keiko felt the creature scrambling around in her mouth. Then she could feel the thing making its way down her throat. She knew the moment when it reached her stomach. Marissa stepped back and smiled.

"No, you're not going to tell anyone." She smiled.. It was the same wicked smile which had first attracted Keiko to her, which had made her want her for a friend. Though her other friends had warned her. Even her mother, who liked all children, had disapproved.

"Be good and I'll tell you what it eats. Be even better and I'll tell you how to get rid of it. Are you going to be good?"

Keiko nodded in fear.

"Good. Now you better get back to class. Social studies, isn't it?"

Keiko ran from the bathroom, feeling like she was going to throw up. If only it were that simple, she thought.

A Man Woke Up

A man woke up holding his wife's hand. He hadn't opened his eyes yet, but he was contemplating asking her for his favorite breakfast. Or was it his turn to make breakfast? He felt waking up was harder than usual that morning. Instead of using his eyes, he kept them closed and let his fingers explore his love's dainty hand. His fingers "read" the unusual setting of the wedding ring they had spent such a great deal of time picking out, designing together. The baby must still be asleep, he thought. He smiled at the quietness of the moment with his eyes still shut. It was nice. His fingers lingered on that strange asymmetry of diamonds.  But she was not in bed with him. Why was she standing next to his bed? As he continued to trace a curve in the ring's setting, a harp of diamonds, he opened his eyes

When he did see her, confusion came flooding in.  His wife was many years younger. She was smiling, but there were tears in her eyes. How could she be younger? His mind briefly entertained the ridiculous notion that he had traveled back in time. He searched his mind for what had happened the previous night, before he had gone to sleep, but there was nothing. It was a blank. This nothing disturbed him greatly. He felt a chasm of dread opening up. He spoke his wife's name and watched as one of the tears which had gathered into her eyes made its escape and traveled down her lovely, impossibly young face.

He tried to rise to comfort her, but something was holding him in the bed. He saw the machines then, he heard one of them, he realized where he was. It was a hospital room and a cheerless one.

"Dad, I'm Rebecca," the woman he had at first seen as a younger version of his wife sobbed as she bent over to kiss him on the forehead. "Mom's gone. You've been in a coma for nineteen years. She died in the auto accident. You survived, but they weren't sure if you would ever wake up. I told them you would. Eventually. I promised myself." A smile broke through her lovely face. Her mother's face.

He saw the ring on her hand as it came up to caress his face. It was indeed his wife's ring.

Doing

Doing something selfish to hide from terror. All the "good days."

Interview

Job interview in which the first mental task is to differentiate the meanings of instantiate and reify. "Give examples."

(groceries)

The seventy-four year old child with the long white hair had gotten separated from her parents. She had gone skipping down many aisles of the grocery story, singing out the names of products at random. This is not a good thing for a "special" to do.

Looking over her shoulder, she ran until she crashed into the stern arms of a forty-four-year-old woman who had been turned into a witch by things which happened to her in high school. She still engaged in behavior unseemly for her age, personal level of attractiveness and socioeconomic status, things like barhopping and bubblegum.

"Well, what have we here?" she asked sardonically as she sized up her catch, her shining prize. "I bet you are mommy and daddy's little princess, the little apple of their eye? Aintcha? I can tell by that little red coat you have on that looks like it came over here from England on a slow boat that came through many fogs. I bet you like to suck toffee and read magazines, dontcha? I bet you have a record player. I bet you have a bedroom all to yourself. I bet..."

The girl turned her head, hoping her ninety-nine year old parents were close behind. She heard with gratitude the squeaky wheels of her parents' cart turning the corner of the aisle where she was presently being held (if we accept that this next word as one loosely construed) captive.

"Mummy! Daddy! This harridan has accosted me, this terrible hard-on of a woman," the little princess explained in her best pretense of calm.

Her parents took out their weapons at the same moment and pointed them at the middle-age woman stocking the store's shelves.

"We are frail. Our bones are more like the bones of birds every day," Mummy said. "But we do believe in our (what is the number again?) amendment rights. And we like to shoot interlopers. So please unhand our child."

(dripping escher gifs for the middle of the night)

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.