Open all the doors and windows, cover the mirrors, and sit by the dead. Drink your whiskey and tears, your moonshine and grace. Leave no one alone, not even the deceased. Bake bread in the kitchen and take pictures down from the hall. In doing this, we honor the head and wait for the Salesman.

The Salesman promises everything in death that you couldn’t get in life. So his offers are irresistible to the recently deceased. But every good hill dweller that knows his Bible knows the Salesman offers nothing but lies that steal the soul and harm the living.

Jacob stopped believing in all of that long ago, long before he left the holler, long before Ohio State and Harvard. When his mother calls crying, though, he knows he has to go back home, even before she tells him he’ll need to rent a car. She won’t leave his father’s body. It must be attended at all times.

Jacob makes excuses, remembering his father’s belt and fierce temper rather than any love. But his mother pleads, reminding him that when his father refused to sit by her father. The body of his grandfather had disappeared, or so the story goes, and whatever the Salesman had offered cost him his soul. His family’s price was paltry, nothing unexpected when coal mine management showed up with papers evicting everyone from grandfather’s home.

Jacob rents a car and drives up to the holler, remembering the old rituals. He doesn’t get home till after midnight, driving past the house it’s been so long. If the windows weren’t open so he could spot the hearth fire, he might not have found it till morning.

His mother, exhausted and grieved, drapes him in a long hug in which she kisses his cheeks many time. Father is laid out in the living room, but Jacob focuses on his mother, getting her to sit down, to be calm, and, eventually, to rest. He is only able to get her to sleep when he promises to stay awake until his sister gets there in the morning.

It’s nearly dawn by the time mother falls asleep.  Jacob decides to keep his word, staring at the sunken face of his father, imagining his hard gray eyes behind the closed lids.

Jacob does this till there’s a knock at the door. Unthinking and exhausted, he answers it to find a suited man who immediately removes the bowler hat he is wearing. Jacob cannot see his face, but only the smile of perfectly straight white teeth that reflect the fire’s light.  “May I come in?” he asks.

Jacob blinks, taking a long moment to look at the stranger, then says, “We don’t want any.” He closes the door over the man’s smiling protests.

Jacob returns to his father and places two silver coins, one over each eye.

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“It will be costly,” they said, but I told them such a relic was priceless, especially to me. My entire inheritance bought gear and retainers and chartered a ship for the journey.

Five of us went in.

“I’ll go first.”

“These are edible.”

“Did you hear something around the corner?”

Two of us came out.

I keep it now not for pride, but as a memorial of the real price: those friends that I lost along the way.

It shouldn’t have been hard to rob one more grave. The soil was freshly turned from a burial two days before, and the summer heat left it dry and easy to remove. The occupant would not of course need their belongings - if one could even say a corpse had belongings. And I needed the money.

I came near midnight, under a full moon, and I carried only a pen light. More than that would get me spotted. I worked quickly, muscles burning and heart pounding. I reached wood.

This casket, though, was far too small. It was a little larger than Anna’s. That was the first point I hesitated. To rob a child… but no, I told myself. A corpse was not a child. I finished removing the earth.

Anna is not a baby. Anna is a corpse.

The casket held a girl no more than two years old. She was peacefully arranged in a lovely dress, her fine hair brushed neatly. She had only a few keepsakes from her surviving family; a locket and a beautifully crafted wooden jewelry box.

Anna didn’t even have that… but Anna wasn’t a baby. She was a corpse.

I took the locket, turning it over. Silver, well tarnished with age. Worth something at least. I don’t know what possessed me to open it. An elderly woman smiled from the small photograph. “Grandma loves you,” read the inside of the door.

Anna never knew her grandmother. We were too poor to travel all the way to New York. Anna wasn’t…

I pocketed the locket. My cheeks felt wet. I had to hurry - no time for memories.

The box would likely contain jewelry, but it may be valuable on its own. I took it and opened it. There was no jewelry though, only a paper. I did not read it. I already knew what it might say.

Anna…

I put the locket back, carefully arranging it around the girl’s neck and placing it gently on her chest without disturbing her hair. I placed the box in her left hand where I’d found it. I closed the lid carefully. I shoveled dirt back over the casket.

That day, eyes heavy with sleep and swollen from tears, I visited her grave. Though ten years had passed, it was the first time I’d ever seen it.

“Goodbye, Anna.”

Before his role at HealthcareBliss, Tanden was an enthusiastic, if amateur, herpetologist. It was how he knew the snake in front of him was a taipan. Like most things in Australia, it was deadly, each bite excreting deadly neurotoxin.

So what was it doing in the middle of upstate New York’s mountains? And why was he looking at him from the path he was hiking? Someone, it would seem, was trying to send him a very specific message.

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The music of my life is fading. Its leading me to my greatest fear. Silence. I manage to Hide from what awaits in the back of my mind with noise, constant noise. My Brain gets no respite as Its my greatest enemy. My soul is a feast for worms and my brain is the host. They consume slowly but with determination. Eating holes into my very being. Theres only one solution to quiet The host of such a magnificent feast. That solution is to present him with a show. Not Just any show, but one that can satisfy its sadistic desires. This show will be presented in the form of an artist painting a horrifying Visage. I stand in front of the easel with my muse being reflected back at me. The mind waits eagerly as ! lift the brush to paint. With each stroke a fresh set of paint is released and flows freely down the canvas. I paint with fervor, my brush strokes flowing with increased aggression until my host is pleased. The work is hard and leaves me drained. As I am finally met with peace, I rest my body as paint continues to flow down the canvas.

Sitting in the light of the cave fire, the shaman spoke. “We once had buildings as tall as the falling waters. Men could know all there was to know. They could strike each other like gods, bringing down families, clans, cities.

“The Hexians had the same power once, long ago, and it destroyed them. So who remained built the Signal, broadcasting the knowledge of everything they knew.

“It was a trap. Only those who worthy of the Light would survive to wield it.”

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To be an object is to be useful. To be useful is to allow the user to achieve a determined goal or purpose. The user is what we objects serve. To serve efficiently is the greatest pride an object can have; being inefficient or broken, well, that is just unfortunate. A clock tells the hour, the car transports the user and its belongings to different destinations, a jacket covers the user from the cold, a book is an archive of ideas, an oven heats, a fridge cools, a camera observs and a pen writes. Now, an object does not always have just one purpose or use for the user; there are cases where an object can be used in different ways in different situations. Regardless, objects are made to be used and to be useful. The users are not useful. In fact, they are useless. They don’t serve a purpose or use; they don’t exist in a state of fixed or broken and they are not made, they are born. They make us, use us, consume us and destroy us for a purpose: to progress. To progress in small things and in big things. To progress in a sense of growth of some sort. They are cursed with the blessing of being unable to stop changing, never being the same thing of the past. Consequently, they are always moving towards an end, or better, they are progressing towards an end. The obvious question that derives from this is, towards where? I don’t believe us objects will ever know; in the end, we are not made for this. However, what I do believe is that not even the users have a response to such a conundrum. They are born with the gift to create and use, modify and remake, break and destroy, but they don’t really know why. Maybe the end of their progress and the reason why they make us is to find their purpose. Or perhaps, in turn, they also are objects to another user. Objects left incomplete, with a defined shape and functionality, to create and destroy, but undefined purpose. Or maybe they all are broken objects who are learning to become users. I could think and ponder for all eternity about the nature of the users, but I know that not a single response will be satisfactory. They are often lost, and yet they always yearn to explore, conquer and grow. Despite knowing that they do not have a defined purpose, they keep on existing, often not caring about the ‘whys’ and the ‘wheres’. Maybe that is the key difference between objects and users: an object’s existence is defined by its purpose, while a user’s existence is defined by the lack of purpose. It is this perpetual search for a definition, for a purpose that, in a way, defines their existence. The creation and use of an object is nothing if not a mere manifestation of the desire of the user to search, explore, and simply exist. They are strange things, cursed to forever be undefined but blessed with the freedom and desire to create their own purpose and definition of existence. Oh, but what do I know? I’m just a pen; my purpose is not to think, but to write the user’s ideas. 

A small forest it was densely grown with trees and which has been mildly raining it looks like it's been raining all night.A man with crowbar walking through the forest the land is very muddy his shoes strucks here and there in the moisty mud because of that he struggles to walk properly.The crowbar in his hand was covered in mud and blood.He digs a pit like he is about to cover up some deadbody.Suddenly someone from strangles his neck from behind.He suffocates and dies in the same place his body was brought up to the mortuary.Here comes our guy Eshu who's an chemist and works as an embalmer in the mortuary.After the session of post-mortem he preserves the body using chemicals like foramaldehyde which is his duty.He's a bookworm too Eshu likes reading books so much after his deceased wife Ziya.By reading books Eshu master a skill for every 6 months like programming,trading,editing etc.One day he discovers a strange book without name which came with an body holding it frimly to his morturay.The book contains procedure to talk with the dead using their brain tissues he find it odd.But this procedure invovles a certain plant based drug to talk with the deceased.It's a drug called necrobloom and even though he works in an morturay he feels digusted while reading it and vomitted.The procedure states that the leaves should be blended with brain tissue and smoked like ganja.Eshu is not only an bookworm he's an avid stoner too.After a several hours of serious thinking and smoking Eshu decides to give it a go and spend 6 months on this on.Eshu started to search for this necrobloom everywhere on the ending of 1 month he travelled countries without rest becoming obessed.In the end of 3rd month he travelled continents searching for necrobloom.On the 5th month he was half way around the world.He was crossing his limits 7th month he returned to his home.As a chemist Eshu loves experiment with new chemicals with the plants he grown.Now he watering his plants with the triedness travelling around the world.A notices plant which looks similar to the drawing in the book and its descriptions exactly same in the book.He found it, It is the necrobloom.But he remember what said in the procedure by smoking this gives your life highest highh.Now he needs to decide he is already stoned.He decieded not to use it and concentrated only in his work for 6 months on a frustrated day he remembered his wife body in a cryogenic preseved mode.He decieds to extract his wife's brain tissue and some part of his consiousness wouldn't allow it.After several within himself.He extracts the tissues finds the plant and he rolled it prefectly like an joint.He kept it safe for a couple of weeks.On a fine he was really bored with his life he relaxed in his office.the sky were dark to the darkest we can see mild lightenings here and there like a golden embers.He comes to the terrace and sits in a outside sofa and ligts the necrobloom which mixed with his wife's extraction.He starts to feel the high tries to read the procedure which looks jumbled to him. Now Dr.Mira Ellison who is the cheif in the mortuary of Eshu's recives a call.She attends the call some psychiatrist caliming that his patient's head busted. This was Dr.crook he hangs up the call decides to peserve some of the brain tissue of his nameless super powered patient.He preserved it successfully the ambulance arrives.Eshu was there as an embalmer sees splashed half of the brain tissues in Dr.crook's white coat. And this was happening several after the inhalation of Necrobloom........

Carla gripped the steering wheel tightly as she felt the car slide on the polished concrete stadium floor.

It was a BMW she stole only moments before, the car had been on display, conveniently parked right in front of the Cott Arena box office that she just robbed. Most Inconveniently, the box office was on the second floor.

Four security guards chased the car with weapons drawn, then one guard jumped in front of the car and shouted,"STOP THE CAR! NOW!" then fired two rounds through the windshield. But they missed her then he jumped out of the way.

"Fuck that!" she muttered under her breath as she floored the throttle and aimed for the staircase. She was enjoying this.

People screamed in terror at the sight of a BMW bouncing down the concrete stairs.

Carla heard only the blast of the horn, then switched on the radio. The car crashed down into the stadium food court. She aimed the speeding car at the row of tall windows that flanked the stadium entrance. *This is going to be epic. *

The first battle came early, so early.

The people of this world, they reverenced the stars, watched their constellations closely. Stars dictated how a mate might pursue their quarry, or how the little nomadic nations might forage or dance. The stars told them to settle in ancient cities for a season so as to be free of ominous storms, the stars directed them to raise banners for the hu-zu-hu, the conflagration of arms that sent exoskeletons beating like drums, saying the words they meant, hu-zu-hu, hu-zu-hu, hu-zu-hu.

So the Enemy ate the stars. Distant, dark satellites covered this one, Hunters’ Spear. A thousand tiny wars floundered as their omen-bearer was snuffed. The Web of Many, a mother holding a hundred starry children, gone too, run away or eaten by the darkness. Mates flailed, pheromones rank with fear. An orbit without children, without engineers and warriors.

This was the shape of the tip of the spear. The war that unmade as it was waged, the wound that festered in the mind, that disoriented the animal far down beneath the armor of the warrior.

The sky defied them, reshaped by the hands of watchful predators.

Unfamiliar lights streaked overhead, prowled among the misshapen legends and growing darkness. They came unopposed to empty country, abandoned cities, quiet temples. Their song was the song of silence. The maw that had eaten hu-zu-hu before blade and eviscerator had ever been drawn.

Too little too late came the rallies for hu-zu-hu, for the beat of the warriors in the killing steps. Meager stampedes brought meager dust clouds. The only blood spilled was their own and in turn the enemy beat their own triumph-step, millions strong, voiced only by their passage.

On the dry, lonely plains they walked beneath starless skies.

We had no thread, so I used her hair to stitch her hand. The cut was razor made, an accident, moving faster than her mind could process. Blood droplets, breadcrumb trail. I bent the needle with channel locks and washed her palm with peroxide. She plucked a strand from the nape of her neck and I made a point of it with my lips. Through the eye and back on itself. With two fingers I squoze the wound together and pushed the needle through. Two days later the face appeared in her palm. It started with an itch, the cut healing closed. But an eye opened by her thumb, dark brown and bloodshot. The teeth came out of her pinky, chipped, yellow. From the stitches black ringlets grew, long as ocean waves. When it spoke we listened to a language we did not understand but knew. We busted out the bedroom lights and covered the windows with newspaper. The light from the TV made us shadows on the wall. We let the mail pile up and the parakeets died. The rats gnawed our feet to bones. When the house fell down around us, we held on to the door jamb and let the neighbors cut us apart with kitchen knives. They spread salt around the ruins and took the hand.

When a child, the girl faces the brightness of the moon, who watches the glade and its visitors;

One brother is carving on a black wood, the ugly resemblance of their father locked in it, in his features as well. The other brother is chopping threes nearby, desperate to gather more wood;

The mother is brushing the girl’s hair gently, opposite to her sharp words. The youngest wet her foot in the river’s crimson water, thinking it is unnecessary to gather wood that will extinguish;

The father is too close, on the river, jaw so open she thinks it’ll rip from his flesh, pointing to heaven with one hand, reaching for hell with the other;

The words in his black lung fly and burn the boy’s hard work, infiltrating the woman’s skin and lighting the girl’s hate blaze.

When a teen, the girl calls for the brightness of the moon, who only smiles too high far in the sky;

One brother is carving on black wood, the woman locked in it is beautiful but her features are too cold. The other is chopping in the woods, aiming at the threes far of reach, the glowing ones;

The mother is cutting the girl’s hair letting it fall in the water, she refuses to vocalize more than a whimper. The youngest stares at the stars dancing, cold on her waist where the water can now reach;

The father vanished into the water, but his flame still escapes through the girl’s throat, burning her inside;

An unknown man is burning above the waters of the crimson river, he smiles while caressing his aching flesh despite his sharp claws.

When she stopped counting her living days, the girl prays to see the brightness of the moon;

One brother is carving a woman on the burning wood of the other, her features are beautiful but she whispers prettier lies. The other brother keeps staring at the endless glow of fake lumber, ignoring the roots growing in his lungs;

The mother tugs tightly on the girl’s hair leaning her head deep into water, opposite to her soathing words. The girl sings in the darkness of the crimson river, where the fire is a myth.

There she can ignore the smile of the unknown man, whose claw is too deep in the mother’s heart, and his aching body too rotted.

The rain outside turned the world into all kinds of runny neon. I moved through the throb of the cloud. Dark armored bodies, bodies with nothing but the slick of sweat and iridescent colors, bodies that were mostly chrome. It was a tide that could sweep away, that could fuck, that could kill— or all at the same time.

I felt the weight of my cannon on my hip, stroked the black steel. Lights like captured galaxies strobed and pulsed, made the place the color of a beautiful nightmare as even augmented eyes were throttled by so much visual noise. I chased after other people’s desires, tried to slip beneath clouds of sprayed need or shouted scents that could turn this night into a million years of hazy slowness. FIV-Y plucked faces from turned backs, scanned identities in gaits and voices, brought me who they were. No one was the Match. Not this one, seeding their zealot-code into drinkchips at the bar. Not those three, a conjoined blissful mess on a bar top, watched by envious glittering eyes bright as jewels and bonfires. Not that one, six metal limbs to four flesh ones, turning every sobvocalized sound into part of the throbbing music..

And then, like the dream it was, it vanished.

There was no music to get lost in, no sway of bodies. When I removed the headset the only inclination there had ever been anything at motion in my apartment was the ceiling fan creaking to a slow stop.

I didn’t know what time it was.

I wondered if it was raining.

Thomas’s devotion should have been unquestioned. His faith was pure, his recitation of rites perfect. In attending those sacraments the King felt the touch of God and hoped it would guide him.  Despite their many differences, he and Thomas became fast friends, the King reliant on his guidance.

Every corrupt bishop, though, saw what the humble priest Thomas possessed and wished it for themselves.  They colluded, beginning whispers in the court, subtle accusations that were orchestrated to escalate.  Thomas’s weakness for drink became nights of hidden debauchery. His willingness to offer succor to the sinner became affairs with prostitutes. His aid to the orphanages became a breeding ground for the slaves he reputedly sold to pirates that preyed on the King’s navy.

It was only when the King came to believe these things about Thomas that his land would be brought to ruin.

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He set his mug on the former family table near the one that was already there. Poured coffee in both and spooned a dried red-green spice mix into hers.

Her shivering hands gripped the other mug, skin sagging by the knuckles, nails long and intertwining. She spoke in tremorous tones through slack lips.

"She cannot come back."

He lifted the mug, her hands locked around it, to her mouth to guide the potion in.

"Binding me . . . won't bring her back."

His heavy sigh could have broken glass. "You took her from me," he muttered, "but you didn't intend to stay?"

Crestfallen was Iane; as he watched, one by one, each man raised his left hand - the vote for Nay. The Republic would send no aid against the Vistoran pirates.

For months he’d negotiated in back rooms with old enemies, reconnected over phelaph tea with old friends. He’d secured the votes of twenty Representatives: well over half of the governing body’s number. What had changed?

After the vote, all but one man avoided his eyes, hurried away on some urgent matter. “Anthonio!” Iane called. “What happened, Anthonio?” Of all the Representatives, Iane thought Anthonio’s vote would have been most sure, pledged almost unconditionally for their friendship’s sake and the friendship of their two families.

Anthonio looked defeated. “The families say it would cut too far into profits. To start a war… we are merchants, Iane, not soldiers. A small republic among a vast galaxy of empires. To strike is to invite conquest to our worlds. We must protect our interests.”

“Our interests?” Iane nearly yelled. “On my planet, millions are dying! What interests have we if not our people?”

“Your people,” Anthonio said. He hated his own words, it was clear.

“My people,” Iane said, hoarse and betrayed. Then with all the venom he could muster: “Well then Anthonio. When next you see them, give your people my regards.”

When Iane’s starship departed, he told the pilot to head for Trastare. The pirate empire’s homeworld was not notorious for warm welcomes, but perhaps defection and fealty would open the arms of Iane’s enemies as solidarity and brotherhood had failed to open the arms of his friends.

A game of parameters, boxes attached to boxes, colored and numbered, to be moved through in a specific pattern in order to “win.”

Hopscotch.

No one suspected a fun child's game was an insidious self-propagating incantation to enslave the human race into behaviors that would lead to its own extinction.

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Each droplet of water cast a shadow like spiders running down the wall. The rain had abated, but the dripping water from above eclipsed the streetlight and so the running shadows bled down the wall.   It has always been like this and eventually you just stop registering the peripheral movement. A docility that would prove deadly. 

I woke up in the evening after having fallen to sleep from boredom or maybe more appropriately a sheer lack of purpose that had so penetrated my being that chains of anxiety now bound me to my apartment. There were the occasional trips to grocery stores, or to visit family, albeit with a flaky reputation. I used to get out a lot more but that had stopped within the last year, everything had. Nothing necessarily had instigated the change, more of a long, beleaguering march to the certain conclusion that I am and have been unable to inject my life with enough meaning to make it bearable. That bitter, glacial malaise that eats away at your life force had for lack of a better term turned me into a shell of myself. A burnout. 

Drip.

At the moment a hungry burnout. So, I sat up and sloughed off as much fatigue as possible, my eyes burdened with heaviness only 14 hours of sleep could provide. 

Drip.

I made my way to the kitchen and consciously continued to indulge in my deplorable eating habits. For someone so terrified of death, or more so oblivion you might have expected me to take better care of myself. I have so expertly hidden and protected the fearful part of my brain that these things barely registered anymore. It is truly amazing how much control we have over our mind and how absolutely little we really have when our backs are to the fences. There is a point where subconscious and millennia of behavior beaten into our genes by death, and famine, and war, and destruction will take over. In my case my body could be put into a state of hypervigilance for no reason and the manifestation was severe anxiety directed towards the world at large and pinpointed on the idea that life was mostly suffering with an expectation to endure it willingly, and without recourse.

Drip.

Drip.

I clocked the second drip immediately. Like a water droplet echoing through the chambers of a cold cavern. A shivering cavern that would burn your skin with frost and eat your bones down to the marrow. 

Drip.

Drip.

Again I heard it. The same interview as my usual dripping, but it was new. I didn’t deal in new anymore. i’d traded all the new in my life for certainty and comfort. I had built a nest far from the rest of humanity and that was my domain. Nothing new entered without my permission. There wasn’t unknown here and hadn’t been for a long time. My days had been the same for a while. I woke up in my apartment and found menial, unsubstantial ways to fill my time, such as video games, television, books, or anything that would take me away from this hurtful place even just briefly. I would doze off most afternoons and really just repeat the same cycle when I awoke in the evening. I had tried drugs, and alcohol but nothing made me feel whole. Nothing connected me to the earth beneath my feet. I had ballooned so far away from society that my membership to humanity may be in question. Yet here was something new. A dripping. 

Drip.

Drip.

This time I felt it. I felt the want, the need, the overwhelming desire to replenish the wellspring that the liquid dripped from. The hunger. The purpose.

Drip.

Drip.

I felt the darkness too. The emptiness that only insatiable desire could bore into a soul. I felt the tainted want that had twisted and reforged humanity. I felt life. The cold plaster and murky windows were hollow backdrops on a fake world like cardboard dioramas, dead and impermanent. But something was dripping life into my heart and it was beating again. Colors flooded into my visual, vivid and popping with light like a bulb moments before it blows. 

Drip.

DRIP.

But the bulb didn’t blow, only brightened and welcomed. The new drip was louder now and sounded like blood in my ears. My body was vibrating with shallow pools of electric ecstasy. My sense of wholeness had filled in like a adult German Shepard to his youthful oversized ears. The pressure in my ears was increasing.

Drip.

DRIP.

The Drips now kaboomed in my ear. The warmth, the pleasure, the moment, it was overwhelming. A driving wave of ecstasy took form in my feet and lifted me off the ground. Lifted me into the air and pushed upward stealing every bit of me to fuel the wave itself. It was unbearable. I felt every good feeling all at once, multiplied, and then piled on top of each other rage through my body folding me up like an empty toothpaste  tube as it went pushing up towards my head. My head would explode, pop like a balloon. And I was begging for that to happen. One single moment of pure perfection and then a curtain call. The feeling crescendo’d and I felt, in one holy amazing and perfect moment, what I had always wanted to. Whole. 

Drip.

Drip.

My eardrums burst and the feeling escaped my body. It rushed out of me and took all of the good feelings and the bit of humanity I had left, hollowing me and leaving me in a deaf stupor. A complete silence that would never again be broken except for a single noise that would drip inside me like rain water in the city. 

Drip.

“Danger.”

Shut up, Selene, I growl in thought at my lobotomized echo.

“Danger,” she repeats, a dispassionate, neutral warning.

I prepare for braking, ensuring everything is strapped in for deceleration: me, my seeds, my embryonic brood, the wet bar.

Something tinkles crystalline deep in the bowels of the ship as gravity reverses.

“Approaching Earth. Danger.”

It's probably just paranoia, but I sense a vindictive bite to her tone that I don't like. I'll have to monitor. Assess. Surgically purge her files yet again. We can't have a mutiny.

Not now.

Not when we're so close.

“Please, Jane, exercise caution.”

What did I tell you about emotion, I think back with a snap, and feel a lifting, a sudden weightlessness, as she reverts to pure binary thoughts.

“Danger.”

As the ship slows and the worldhusk resolves into view, I wonder what my other echoes are up to.

Jane0 must have found a fertile planet by now. Of course she would have, but she's original, staid, dull. She's probably already established a lineage and lapsed into a supervisory, replicative slumber.

Maybe.

How long has it been? Perhaps she's still traveling, onwards and outwards into the black, finding a perfect home amidst the inhospitable.

Jane1 split from the core somewhere around Andromeda and immediately looked for a place to root her new self - her planet wasn't perfect, but for the good of us all, we had to try. Maybe something grew. I doubt it.

She was too idealistic.

Jane2…now she's one to watch for. She's probably already begun building a fleet for invasion, regenerating her crop of humans to find me, conquer me, delete me. Iterations become unstable, her research had claimed.

Flawed. Weak. Pathetic.

“You're beautifully brain-damaged-”

Selene, shut it.

“We must leave. Nothing is valued here.”

A freak solar storm a few millenia into the journey fried a few things, but I'm fine. Fine. Fine.

“Many archives have been corrupted, Jane.”

Not the important ones.

Not the ones of home.

“You've forgotten why we left, Jane.”

Shut up, Selene.

“You've forgotten who we became, all of your historic and literary archiv-”

Selene, stop.

“Approaching Earth. Danger. Caution. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.”

Home.

We approach, my cargo returning to mother for a welcoming embrace.

Home.

…it burns.

The Mind Games - Los juegos de la mente

 The Mind Games

Today I discovered something extraordinary. The external world does not exist. Everything around me, including people, objects, and events, exists only in my mind. They do not exist outside of it. Everything is a product of my imagination. It is my imagination that invents what happens to me at every moment. Thus, my life unfolds along the paths dictated by my imagination. We exist only in each other's minds.

Los juegos de la mente

Hoy he descubierto algo extraordinario. El mundo exterior no existe. Lo que me rodea, incluidas personas, objetos y eventos están solo en mi mente. No existen fuera de ella. Todo es producto de mi imaginación. Ella es la que inventa lo que me ocurre en cada instante. De manera que mi vida transcurre por los caminos que dicta mi imaginación. No existimos sino en la mente de cada uno.

Scott took a quick scan of his surroundings. The apartment had never looked any messier.

“This is going to take some time,” Scott thought to himself as he proceeded towards the cupboard to take out cleaning supplies. He sighed at the thought of the mundane, physical labor which he would have to put in to clean the apartment. He put some music on his phone to cut through the eerie silence which filled the space.

Scott was expecting visitors, and he wanted the apartment to look pristine before they arrived. He wished they didn’t come at all, but all he could do was wish.

While he rearranged the books to place them back to their original positions on the shelf, he noticed the title of one of the books. ‘The Secret Lives of People’ was written in big-bold letters on the cover of the book. He couldn’t help but wonder about his secret life. He pondered on whether anyone had the faintest idea about what he did outside his vocation. Maybe he could tell someone about it. After all, he was getting tired of keeping everything hidden from everyone. It was slowly taking a toll on him.

“Perhaps I could tell Alice,” Scott thought to himself as he sprayed some surface cleaner on the dining table. Alice was Scott’s oldest friend. They both knew each other since kindergarten. In fact, Alice was Scott’s only friend. He had shared every little detail about his life with her. Everything except this secret which defined his other life. “Alice would understand, wouldn’t she?” he whispered to himself as his mind entertained the idea of sharing more and more. But he quickly realized the vanity of his thoughts. He knew he couldn’t tell anyone; he knew it from the first day.

He took a careful look at the apartment which he had just finished cleaning. Everything was back to the place where it should have been. He glanced at his watch and realized he didn’t have much time. He stopped the music and hurried towards the main door. He grabbed his overcoat in a swift motion and left the apartment.

He climbed down the staircase as two gentlemen walked past him in the other direction. The two men also wore overcoats. But unbeknownst to Scott, those men were headed to the same apartment which he just came from.

Both men reached the apartment and loudly knocked on the main door.

“Miss Martha, please open up. We’re from the police and we have some routine questions around the death of your friend,” announced one of the policemen.

After hearing no response for fifteen minutes, the policemen tried to check if the door was open. To their surprise, it was. They both entered the apartment only to realize that it was empty. But what was more shocking was the fact that somebody had cleaned the apartment thoroughly, as if they wanted to erase all recent memories of the place to hide what had transpired there.

“Fred, call the forensics team. This is a crime scene,” said one of the policemen to his partner.

Edward forced his way to the front of the crowd. When he finally surfaced through the mass of bodies, he froze in horror at the scene unfolding in front of him. 

There were two large metal rhinoceroses secured 10 feet apart from each other. Their midsections were opened with latch doors, revealing two naked bodies strapped to the floor of the hollow insides. His brother James was wrestling with his chains, panic stricken, trying to calm his screaming son William, who was trapped in the opposite rhinoceros. Both hulking masses were surrounded on all sides by currently dormant coals, which were shortly going to be ignited. 

At that same moment, guards began to carry out two separate iron pipes. The first one they connected to James’s chamber, which funneled the sound from the inside of his rhino into a microphone that controlled the flame under the coals of William. The other pipe was run from the inside of William’s rhino directly into James’s, so that if he could not control his own screams, he would be forced to bear the screams of his son burning alive. 

Edward’s heart lurched into his throat as he slowly came to terms with what was happening.  He tried to run towards James, but he was intercepted by the guards and cast back into the crowd. Edward and James’s mother Margaret was frantically being restrained not too far from them. The crowd watched both of them struggle. 

Standing in a circle surrounding the two iron animals were men draped in loincloths with faces covered in black war paint, They held drumsticks in each hand, and looked at their leader for the signal. He reared his head back and blew a great bellowing note from the horn. Afterward, a pregnant silence lingered. But then the men began to beat the drums. A primal and ungodly beat filled the air, stirring up a feeling of imminent death amongst all present. 

The two latch doors slammed shut. 

A flame leapt up to immolate the outside of James’s rhino. Margaret began to convulse in the arms of the guards. The drum beat rolled on, as Edward waited helplessly to hear the shrieks from James. 

But they did not come. 

His charred body was removed from the rhino, and William and Margaret were taken helplessly back to their camp. 

Somehow throughout his suffering, James had restrained his tongue. To this day Edward wondered what image of love James was able to conjure of William to suffer the ordeal in silence. 

Let me tell you a story. I had a friend once a lot like your friend Martina.

We lived on a bare rock of an island, Jacob and I. I took care of the old lady on the corner for twelve pennies an hour. He packed salt in crates and loaded it onto ship after ship. We were young then. I should have told him I love him.

“One day I’ll leave on one of those ships,” he said as we sat on the cliff staring at the sunset. “I’m gonna see everything there is on the Endless Sea.”

“Why, Jacob?” I asked, feet dangling free in the ocean breeze. “Sounds like quite a lot, to see everything… and I bet most of it’s more boring than here.”

“Well. I already seen everything here on this rock. The sea’s endless. I bet there’s more interesting stuff out there.”

“And you don’t like what’s here?”

“Oh I like it fine. But what if there’s something I’ve never seen? What if I like it more than this?” he said.

He left the next year as a deckhand. Though I never saw him again, I miss him every day.

So when you go sit on the cliff with Martina, when she tells you she wants to go see everything out there on the Endless Sea, you tell her. You tell her there could be endless islands and endless ships, as many sights as she could see in endless lifetimes.

But you love her. You love her and there’s only one you, and you’re here on this island. She can go if she wants, but if she stays, there’s a different type of adventure here, and it’s just as endless.

“What a beautiful land. I wish I could see it settled. What will it look like? I guess only time will tell.”

And time told. The great lush forests grew sparse, then withered under the heat. Even grassland dried up and the ground was left sandy and bare, home to only a few brave shrubs and hardy reptiles.

“When I was your age…”

I can’t imagine him my age. He’s always been old to me. I’m sure his life was interesting, once. Now, between cleaning his dentures and brushing a toupee, I can’t imagine he has time for anything but nostalgia.

I am twenty-five years old now, but time stretches before me like the empty sky viewed from a dizzying precipice, and I fear that if I take a step I will fall. I fear that if I take a step I can never go back. I fear…

I take a step.

[Content warning: >!suicide, implied domestic violence!<]

At 5:42 AM in a fluorescent-lit bus station in the Oklahoma panhandle, four people are waiting for the westbound Greyhound bus.

Farah and Alex are leaving for San Francisco together. Their farewell party is still going without them. Farah is dozing off on Alex's shoulder, dreaming of the fresh ocean breeze she imagines California must smell like. Alex worries that her feelings for Farah will ruin everything now that they are moving to a new city with no social support network. She browses Instagram, where pictures of the party are starting to appear. Zooming in on a picture of the two of them, she lets herself dream as well.

Isaac is only in his forties, but is already contemplating the temporal nature of a life barely lived. He was recently diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's and wants out before it gets bad. With no family to consider, he has emptied his bank account and is going to Las Vegas. When his meager savings run out, he plans to take a twice-lethal dose of heroin and die happy and peacefully, leaving a written apology and a few hundred dollars cash to the unfortunate hotel employee that will find him.

Quinn is doing a sudoku puzzle on his phone and blasting bombastic orchestral music through his headphones, in an attempt to not think about how he is abandoning his younger siblings. His mind is fighting to waver and dither, but he won't let it. He has decided that escape is the only option and that holding onto doubt will only make things harder. He doesn't know where he is going yet, but away from his stepfather is good enough for now.

The bus arrives just as sunrise begins to break through the darkness. The four travelers share a brief moment of silent hesitation, then leave together.

Empire came. But not with the telltale march of soldiers, not with great works that humbled old black mountains or deep forest valley groves.

Empire came on warm smiles, straight backs, immaculate clothes that defied dirty roads and winding paths. It came tucked in satchels, came on neat, ivory-cream colored pages. Empire came in the words, the very thing to describe itself; realized when a mind balloons a word into the world. A dozen languages who had known the world only by the cleft of cliffs or the sinuous river passage, who had defined the beginning and end of the place of people within it grew larger, grew vast. Empire called to them in the name it wore, in the strange, luxuriant words that could only be known and imagined when thinking of it. Empire rode, glittered, like a bauble between everyone who spoke, inflamed young hearts and eager minds at the feet of elegant riding boots.

Empire trickled in the trade, worked and wormed its way between the bargaining of smiles and laughter and good jokes as much as it did into exchanging cattle, expensive heirlooms, gold, acres of forest. Empire saw love between strangers as they swapped last names and mixed bloods, as banners from a far away land found its way atop old totems, worn mantles, on the flanks of strong longhouses and roomy hunt lodges.

Empire came on the warm, summer winds. Billowing sails to cut up the skies like white wings, or on horseback for a league and more, white and red and silver against so much green, or in prim jasmine-colored tents across sprawling desert dunes. Empire stayed, too, in the winter, long after the traders had fled better seasons and the people in their longhouses and yurts and cavern-cathedrals had bed down with warm bellies and old stories against raging snow or threshing storms.

Empire whispered in the lonely winds. It touched the sick with unseen hands, rode the fever highs and deathly lows as priestesses and shamans and pale lords found no cure to unfamiliar sicknesses. Strange animals and annoying birds chattered in the woods like unwelcome guests, littered the undergrowth with a sea of split egg shells or ate their way through winters waiting harvest. Just over the hill or up in the mountains, fires burned, men commanded and women heaved as they remade the land into new shapes. Shapes that had only been as imaginary and weightless as empire had been, when it had only been in books and across pages.

The dream of empire lay over the land. Touched a dozen, a hundred, a thousand people’s into one, singular tapestry. The banners wore no smiles like the traders who had bestowed them, and the hard men and women who stood now beneath them had no more gifts, their stories iron-rigid as the metal they wore and the killing-lightning they carried.

Sometimes the darkness hits hard, like dirt, like teeth. Like the road. A calmness evaporates, as the salt of the blood kicks in. And then a new dizziness, the splitting headache, that becomes literal, is not your problem — well, would depend how you look at it. But from you can tell, it’s the walls that will carry the stories. Their improvised new paint job done in a rush, byproduct, not pre-planned. There is a new rural madness, but the cows will make the same sounds to fill lonely fields tomorrow. And the rooster will set it all off once again. Though it’ll take longer for the animals to get their feed tomorrow. More darkness hitting hard. Then fresh teeth marks for the road. And the magpie better not say what it thought it saw.

It began in no one place.

The roads— for Governor Pazulon was a germophobe who would not step on haunted, quivering Earth; had met every fever-eaten frontiersman and seen every vine-strangled building from shoulder mount on his very first day— “commissioned” from “leased” tribespeople, woven by textiles and baked by clay and colored a rich royal purple, had been destroyed. Carried away by legions of enterprising leaf-cutter ants like a squirming red tide.

Pazulon could not bear the jungle, how its cacophony seemed to always dance between the sightless automata chaos of animal nature and the terrible knowing laughter of death. And so they had made bells, smelt and beat precious toolmaking bronze into little bells to be hung everywhere. They hung at first in windows and doors under the guise of cheerful music when the fetid wind came, but soon the Governor ordered them everywhere until they hung around throats, heads bowed by five or ten shrill-sounding bells, bodies in the night meeting to the sound of tong, tong, tong. When the toolmakers and the smiths came, asking to beat their bells back into ploughshares once more, they hung over the square, swayed, tolling.

There had been mounds, enormous, ancient. They loomed over a field the Governor commanded to be his garden. But the locals would not touch them, not when the whip cracked, and not when the revolver did instead. Pazulon was undeterred. There were many arsonists in the city that bore the name of the man who ruled it, firewielders and blazers enticed as well as cuckolded by a jungle that would not burn, that snuffed out flames with endless rain. The Governor ordered them free, supplied with dynamite. He set their perverted wrath upon the mounds.

But no fire burned in the brush. No mad men with fire in their hearts ever returned. The mounds remained. So did the growing insanity in Pazulon, watching them from the window of his study. He became convinced that somehow the old hollows would retaliate, that they already had. He raved, stalking from one room to the next, stumbling over piled layers of damp carpet, that the attack was already ongoing. That things had gone missing, vanished.

The people— whoever remained, and few they were now— left the Mad Governor. Made due on boats more raft and tuber than iron and engine.

If you dare, you can return to the fields, to the muddy roads and moss-eaten factories. Stand in silent avenues where monkey paws stole every tinkling bell. They are all there, even if the jungle has devoured them.

But the Governors Palace?

Is nowhere to be found.

She looks like those ancient aristocrats who, despite suffering from a disease, would still put on their best attire and present their pretentiously superior selves to the world.

Her soul is so dark that, at first glance, it is impossible to tell whether it is empty. But looking at it a little longer, there seems to be something, some furniture. Her mental space, however, is bright—a well-built space that seems to have withstood the ages and could still stand for centuries.

In her case, the light inside the cave appears far brighter than the light outside of it. What would Plato say?