Men swarmed Mama like flies. They laid their wants in parts prone to decay, lingering long enough to birth something lively but ugly, something that took flight but sputtered to a statued existence. I was just a boy then. I didn’t understand these folks. I only knew when Mama needed her medicine.

One night, while she lay like corn syrup in bed after a hefty dose, I waited for the television’s static to lift. A knock at the door shook me. I opened it. A man dressed in black loomed, and an aroma of antiseptic and licorice followed.

“Is Luna home?” He asked.

“Yes.” His eyes, like a crow’s, choked the truth from me.

His unfinished granite gaze seemed to glide past me. The doctor’s bag in his hand swung like a pendulum. When I broke from this trance, I rushed upstairs to find him sitting beside Mama, combing her unwashed hair with fingers like ancient wands. His head cocked, first inspecting me the way an insect might, then absorbing the bland, plush facade among Mama’s pill bottles and dirty laundry.

“It’s time.”

Without saying another word, I felt compelled to approach, to gently unclasp his bag and begin laying out the instruments and parts that would bring Mama back to us.

“Good boy,” he cooed, as his hands expanded their influence over Mama’s tense soul.

The bag seemed to have no bottom, but I felt no reason to question this. I was focused on carefully setting each tool beside the last. The final one, being a handheld version of a scythe, I placed beside a collection of retractors, scalpels, tubing, and drill bits.

The stranger said, “We need to strap her down.”

Like a magician, pulling handkerchief after handkerchief, he unravelled a series of nylon straps from his bag. After we laid them across Mama, I yanked and strained under their weight and held my breath until, finally, she was secure. I gasped for air while the stranger buckled her down and fastened a bite block in her mouth. She was lucid, but we needed to take this precaution, he told me.

“It will get messy.”

“I understand,” I said.

Unlike all the other men I had known, this one seemed to promise the voice in my head peace. I had always wondered what that was like. So much so that I had spent many nights observing Mama and her lovers sleeping, cradling one another, while I fingered a steak knife in my back pocket.

“Go,” he sharply whispered when everything was in place.

I obeyed, but my curiosity, exploited by this stranger’s pull, married me to the edge of the doorframe. I observed like an animal examining a morning fog cloistered among wild grass. The man removed his black trenchcoat and carefully rolled up his sleeves. He then tied a surgeon’s mask over his head and then slid on a pair of surgical loupes.

The procedure began when he sliced Mama’s chest open with the scythe. It cut like a fresh blade caressing paper. I stood on my tiptoes, but I couldn’t quite see inside Mama.

He cracked her sternum. I could hear her ribs snap like single piano keys, punched one by one. He folded her flesh back. Her muscles glistened like the blubber of a gutted fish while he jabbed a variety of tubes inside her. Blood stained the bedding. Next, he dug deep, hollowing her out like a pumpkin, allowing the weight of her organs and intestines to slip between his fingers and into his bag. Our home stank raw.

Mama had been dying. I had done the best I could. Now the stranger was finishing her off, it felt like. I hated him. But I was relieved that Mama’s suffering might come to an end, so I loved this man, and part of me hoped he’d take me with him after he was done here.

He paused, his hands drenched in her, and spoke as though he could hear my thoughts.

“Enough. I’m trying to concentrate.”

“She’ll live,” he admitted later in the procedure. His eyes were still fixed on the bodily fluids travelling through the tubes from Mama into his bag. Or maybe it was the other way around?

“I’m improving her,” he claimed.

And so, he began the process of installing metal inside Mama. The gears were both large and small.

“They must be perfectly positioned,” he said, “so they may turn in a self-sustaining manner. But she must be wound up,” he looked at me, “like a music box.”

I nodded, “Yes, sir.”

As he weaved the cable and fine wires that would now make up her frame and nerves, he said, “In my bag.”

I quietly approached it, unsure if this was a trap, but I could feel the stranger inside my mind reassuring me to trust. I closed my eyes and reached deep into a primordial ooze of sorts, and felt until the curved, hard edge of something found me.

“There,” he sighed, folding Mama’s skin back, he soldered the gaping wound closed with the tip of his scythe.

“Come here. I’ll show you.”

I handed the man this small, simple gold key, and he hovered it over the place where Mama’s heart was no more. The flesh receded, and he gently pressed it in and turned. The taut system squeaked and whined. He had me make the final twist to know what it felt like to hit that insurmountable resistance, and then had me pull out. He guided my hand into my pocket.

“Don’t lose it,” he said, “She’ll need you forever because she won’t know how or why. She won’t believe it. And she will never remember who I was and what I did to her. Now sleep, son.”

And like before, I felt compelled by this stranger to do what he commanded without question, walking away from Mama and her blood-soaked room where this dark shadow hung over her, clasping his bag shut.

When I woke up the next morning in the same clothes I had worn the night before, I was convinced that all this had been a dream. I walked by Mama’s room. It was clean, and the bed was made. Even the pill bottles were gone. Then I heard a woman singing, and the radio playing, and I followed the sound to the kitchen, where Mama’s hips swayed as she plated a Belgian waffle, showered in amber light.

“Sit, sweetie!” She chimed.

I hesitated. She whacked the knife and fork against the counter.

“Now, mister!” Sloshing the plate toward the table

I sat. She set it down and smothered the waffle in butter and syrup. She smelled clean and sweet, brimming with low-fi laughter. But licorice and antiseptic hung in the air.

I asked, “Where is he?”

“Who?” Her confusion washed away sooner than it came. “Eat up, baby.”

I patted my pockets. I had the key. I knew what I’d need to do from here on out.

Summer in the highlands was breathing its last. The turning of the leaves was a sign of winter’s warning. Easy enough to spot, if one knew what to look for. The changing of the seasons is particularly beautiful on the isle of Birka, where the old kings lay.

A ferry boat tossed water beneath its bow, unsettling the stomach of a visiting professor. “Wogh.” Professor Cairn clutched his gut to hold it in. “Easy now. A bit faster.”

The ferryman paid the stranger no mind. The worn, oak paddles in his old, calloused hands moved as fast or as slow as they’d like. A bit of water splashed over the side, soaking the professor’s black bag. He cursed and fumbled about as if it were going to change anything.

“Will you be here long, sir?” The ferryman asked in a thick Nordic accent.

“Not if I can help it,” the professor replied, a practiced smile plastered across his face. A recent touch of Botox gave him the look of a porcelain doll. The ferryman looked away toward dry land, his face steady and unreadable.

The wood of the dock was seaworn and blistered, the toll of sea ice leaving its mark. The boat knocked against it with a sturdy clunk as the ferryman roped off each end. “Up you go,” he said. “I’ll be just there in the yellow building when you’re finished.”

In the east, the new dawn was rising over tall, snowy mountains. The ancient stone barrier, ascended by heroes and kings in their time, drew Cairn’s attention not at all. He stumbled from the boat, gave the ferryman a brisk nod, and clutched his thick bag to his

chest as he swerved a few dockworkers with a dainty flourish.

The narrow dirt road to the cemetery wasn’t long, but Cairn took the side route to the back so no one would see him enter. It wasn’t exactly illegal, what he was about to do, but he didn’t want trouble.

Entering the cemetery, Professor Cairn’s eyes grew hungry at the sight of all those graves. Grand monuments to the legendary men who’d carved the names of their people into the stone of the Earth with their blood. In every direction, dozens of stones stood tall in the sunshine. Many inscriptions had been worn down by the wind and rain, but most were still legible. Cairn rummaged through his bag and pulled out a long, retractable shovel.

He looked around to make sure no one was watching before setting the shovel in the dirt. It was mid-afternoon by the time he was five feet under. His shovel hit bone: a decomposed finger snapped clean in two. The last foot or so would have to be done with a gentler touch to avoid destroying the rest of his prize.

Cairn climbed out of his hole and sidled into the shadow of a nearby yew tree. He cracked open a plastic water bottle and slurped it down. The air was chilly, but he’d broken a sweat and was happy to hide from the sun overhead.

“Might I ask what you’re doing there, friend?” The question came from Cairn’s right. He turned, startled by the sudden appearance of a guest.

“Oh, hello there,” Professor Cairn stammered. “I’m from California.”

“Aye,” said the young man. “But what are you doing?” He couldn’t have been older than

twenty-five. Blond hair, stocky build, his fingernails well-lined with soil.

“Ah, glad you asked. I’m an archaeologist at UCLA.” Cairn stood up from where he’d been sitting. His tiny head came up to the boy’s shoulder. “This here is a grave.”

“I know that,” said the boy. “It’s the grave of my grandfather, generations past.”

“You’re a descendant of Erik Holmstead?”

“I am.”

“Wow, that’s incredible!” Cairn was beaming with delight. The boy was not.

“You still haven’t answered my question, stranger.”

“Well, you see, I have a permit.” Cairn reached down into his bag and the boy stiffened. He pulled out a piece of paper, wet from the ocean. “It must’ve gotten drenched on the ferry. Sorry about that. But here, take a look, it’s all above water.” Cairn held the paper out but the boy didn’t take it or even look its way.

“And what does this paper have to say about digging up my forefather’s grave?”

“Well, it says that I can.” Cairn was looking at the boy like he was a bit daft. “For research purposes.”

“Ah,” said the boy. He looked down into the pit. The cracked bit of bone stood out like a flag. A wagging finger dangling in the hollow earth. “In that case, I have something that might interest you.”

“Really?” Cairn said. “A relic perhaps?”

“That’s right,” said the boy, turning back to the man. “A relic.”

“Well, where is it?”

“At my home. Follow me, I’ll take you there.”

Cairn looked around at his work, wondering if he had time to spare. Sensing an opportunity, he stuffed his things back in his bag and slung it onto his back. “Lead the way!”

The young farmer nodded and turned to the east. “Follow me, then.”

“So you live on this island?” Cairn asked after they’d travelled for a time in silence.

“I do,” said the young man.

“Interesting. I thought Birka was largely uninhabited.”

“People say that.” They passed over a hill and the valley below came into view. “I don’t know why.”

The valley was filled with acres of fields. Wheat, amaranth, and other fine grains were beginning to yellow as a sign of their maturation. They blustered about in the breeze, creating a soft rustling like feathers on a goat skin drum. Houses built of stone and wood marked the terrain every so often. An old man glanced up at their passing and went back to work without a word.

“You’re a farmer, then?” Cairn asked.

“That’s right. It’s my family’s farm. Don’t suppose you’d know, but harvest season is fast approaching. Do you know what that means, professor?”

Cairn scoffed, clearly insulted by the question. “Of course I do, young man.”

The boy turned around and looked him dead in the eye. “It’s the time where the wheat is separated from the chaff. Do you know what happens to the chaff, professor?”

“I suppose it gets thrown out.”

“It gets thrown into the fire until it’s not but ash and smoke.” An awkward silence hung between them. Cairn shuffled and glanced downward, not knowing how to reply. Satisfied, the boy turned and the two made their way onward.

“You have a lovely village,” Cairn said, hoping to smooth out the tension. “What was that relic you were talking about again?”

“My family crest.”

“And you’re offering it to me?” Cairn asked, confused.

“Of course not.” The young farmer’s voice was calm. “But you may look at it and take notes if you like.”

Cairn briefly considered turning back to finish his work. He’d left under the impression he was going to be given something precious to take home. He’d already seen pictures of

the Holmstead crest before. The bear, the elk, the fox, and the wolf positioned on a circle with four quadrants surrounded by eight stars and a sort of floral vine rising up from below. The top hosted a crown with two lances pointed diagonally downward to the outside.

“I’m familiar with it,” said Cairn. He was racking his brain for some way to make this little detour worthwhile. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Ezra,” the boy said and pointed at a barn. “We’re here.”

The air was rich with the smell of ripe grain and manure. Several horses could be seen enjoying a rest beneath the shade of a nearby tree. The ground in their pen had been completely stripped of green grass. The well-trod dirt was littered with hay, pale and dry beneath the high northern sun.

They stepped inside the open barn door. Hanging on the wall was indeed the Holmstead crest. It’s coarse outer edges looked like hell, but the filigreed lines which demarcated the four corners of the emblem still shone as if they’d been painted yesterday.

“It’s magnificent,” said Cairn, leaning closer to soak in the detail. His left hand reached out to touch it but Ezra interjected.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said. Cairn turned to see Ezra standing in the center of the barn with an axe hanging loosely by his side.

“Oh,” said Cairn, not noticing Ezra’s new tool. “Sorry about that. My curiosity can sometimes get the better of me.”

“Is that why you desecrated my ancestor’s resting place?” Ezra lifted the axe to where he knew Cairn could see it. “Idle curiosity?”

“Look at the time,” Cairn laughed nervously and stepped toward the door. One step was all he got before Ezra was upon him, the wood handle of the axe smacked into the large of Cairn’s back, knocking him to the ground.

Cairn swiveled upward but it was too late. With one swift motion Ezra lifted the axe high above his head and brought the blade down just below Cairn’s right knee, severing it from his body completely. If anyone in the village heard the man’s screams, they didn’t come to see.

As the professor writhed on the ground clutching his stump, Ezra moved to the back of the barn where a wood oven was already blazing. He grabbed a metal rod, the one he used to brand horses, and set it into the fire.

“Don’t kill me,” said Cairn, spit flying through his teeth. “Let me go. I’ll never come back, I promise.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” Ezra replied, his back turned to him as he spun the rod in the flames. “Not even such as you can make me stoop so low.” Satisfied the rod was hot enough, Ezra pulled it from the fire and walked back over to where Cairn lay. “This may sting a little.”

“What?” Cairn cried, eyes fixed on the hot iron. He started to pull back, but Ezra’s stride was too swift. He grabbed Cairn’s thigh, pinned him to the ground, and stuck the hot metal on the open wound. The blood, spurting out in thick waves, shriveled black and hard in the shadow of the barn. Cairn’s eyes rolled backward as every nerve fired off. He

passed out, the whites of his eyes filling up like a ghost.

Some time later, Cairn came to. He was still lying on the dirty barn floor. He looked up, dazed, to see Ezra tying a thick gauze bandage to the wound. The clean, white cotton was now soiled black and red. Cairn mumbled something as his head lolled back.

“Good, you’re awake,” Ezra said, finishing up.

“Bastard.”

Ezra nodded his head and stood up, checking his handiwork for any mistakes which might cause the bandage to fall off. “I take no pleasure in it.”

Cairn glowered at Ezra standing beside him, not quite coherent enough to be furious. “Idiot, backwards woodsman,” he mumbled. His eyes were spinning a dark vertigo.

Not bothering to merit the comment with a reply, Ezra turned and took a worn shovel from off of the wall before walking to the front door. “Come,” he said to Cairn. “Sun’s going down.”

Gawking with disbelief but not wanting to stay, Cairn grit his teeth and turned belly-down to crawl after Ezra who’d left through the open barn door. The pain in his leg sparked off, but the bandage kept the hay and manure from getting in. Reaching the entrance, he tumbled out onto the dirt road like a log down a hill. His clothes were thoroughly soiled.

Channeling his impotent rage, Cairn’s eyes bore holes into young Ezra’s back as he dug his forearms into the soil. He carried himself through golden wheat fields which towered

above him, radiant and ripe for the upcoming harvest. Dragged by an invisible string whose name Cairn had forgotten, the academic trailed behind Ezra’s formidable form one fist at a time. Ezra’s slow, plodding steps betrayed a deep sorrow, but Cairn only saw what he could of the man.

The journey back to the town’s cemetery took place in silence, though it didn’t seem so to Cairn. Down there, each clump of dirt and each snapping straw echoed as loud as any angel’s trumpet. By the time they reached their destination, Cairn was too tired to hold onto his anger.

“I was going to make you fill this in,” Ezra said, turning the shovel over in his hands. Cairn curled into a ball under the yew tree, trying to hide his fresh, flowing tears. Ezra saw this and nodded to himself before turning to the pile of dirt Cairn had left for him. Taking care not to damage the exposed skeleton, Ezra got to work.

“You’re an animal,” Cairn seethed when Ezra was halfway finished. He was sitting up now, massaging his injured thigh. The phantom limb burned like a thousand fire ants.

“If you say so,” said Ezra, barely breaking a sweat. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Understand what, backwater vigilante justice?”

“I’m a builder,” said Ezra. He stuck the shovel back into the pile of dirt, lifted it up, and poured it into the open grave. “What are you?”

Cairn looked down at his missing leg, wondering how this boor could possibly spin his behavior to where he was in the right. “An archaeologist. There’s no sin in studying the past.”

“There is a difference between studying the past and destroying it, friend.”

“I’m not your friend,” Cairn spat.

Ezra sighed and scooped another shovel of dirt. “You’re lucky one of the elders didn’t catch you, you know.”

“Yeah, what would they have done?”

Ezra stopped and held Cairn’s gaze, praying the traveler would learn this lesson quickly. “If you come back and try again you will most certainly find out. Rest assured I will not be coming to watch what unfolds. I don’t have the stomach for such things.”

Cairn looked down at his bloody stump and frowned. “You people should be ashamed of yourselves.”

“Wake up!” Ezra shouted and threw his shovel to the ground. With four quick strides he was in Cairn’s face. “This place is not yours to destroy! The powers which hold our village together will leave if we allow you to insult them this way. Do you want know what happens when they do?”

Ezra’s face was flush with terror and rage as Cairn cowered, confused. Sensing his lack of understanding, Ezra pulled away and rubbed his tired eyes. A dog

barked wildly at something unseen.

“What happens?” Cairn asked, reaching for his notebook. Ezra sighed and shook his head as he picked up his shovel once more.

“Nothing…”

Carter jumped out of the pilot’s side of the cockpit as he glanced up at the airfield’s ancient control tower, made visible in the darkness only by a weak light. He then turned to the other members of his crew as they leapt out the side of the old bomber.

They appeared tired, but only Carter seemed exhausted.

“Let’s get those repairs done immediately,” he said. “Joe, you and the guys talk with the airfield’s manager and make sure we stay off their tower logs.”

Joe nodded as he and four others hurried off across the airfield. Their mechanic, Jeff, was already under the plane with a wrench in hand, tinkering with one of the bomber’s engines.

Carter turned back towards the pilot’s cockpit door and sighed. The gentle rain camouflaged the tears trickling down his cheeks, but neither it nor the night itself could conceal the terror conveyed in his moist eyes.

Months of planning and work. Weeks of preparation. He had examined and scrutinized every aspect of their escape plan. All contingencies accounted for—the perfect plan.

But Murphy’s Law was still in force.

Wiping his face, Carter regained his composure as he stepped around the decommissioned bomber and watched Jeff continue his work. Others observed in quiet admiration.

One of them looked a lot like Benny, Carter’s older brother.

He closed his eyes as he tried to push the thought out of his mind. He should have been there too, rather than trapped in a world where Carter was desperate to leave forever.

He couldn’t quite explain to himself, or others, what compelled him to go. It was like trying to point to a single raindrop in front of him to prove it was raining. On the surface, everything seemed fine. Infrastructure held up. Technology was still progressing. But humanity itself seemed gutted of its soul.

He had started to notice the problems as a teenager. Now twenty-five years old, he had seen enough. It wasn’t a handful of people. Everyone he encountered everywhere resembled nothing more than catatonic zombies.

Carter was determined to be different, only to find all his friends, family, and acquaintances equally determined to keep him thoroughly under their thumb until he complied with society’s unspoken marching orders. The more he refused, the more he suffered. His life was marked by one act of sabotage after another. He concluded that he lived in a democratic dictatorship where everyone was controlled, yet they also controlled someone else. His freedom came at the cost of liberty.

Carter glanced over at Jeff, whose gloved hands were now coated in oil. He was younger than Carter, as were all the others. Some were scarcely men. They had their own stories about why they were running away from everything, from society. From civilization itself.

But their reasons were at a lower level of the stratosphere compared to Carter. They had been pushed, but not over the edge. They were broke, but not brokenhearted. They were down on their luck, but not persecuted. They had nothing to lose, but nothing had been lost.

For them, Skyhaven was a place to take what was theirs. For Carter, it was to regain what had been taken from him.

Their restored bomber, Providence, was the means of getting there.

Joe and the crew accompanying him were tiny silhouettes as they left the traffic control tower and returned to the plane. Flashlights revealed content smiles on their faces.

“We won’t have any problems,” he told Carter.

“Good. Let’s get the plane refueled and ready to go.”

Several of them retrieved the fuel truck and drove it over to Providence, connecting the gas hose as one of them checked the fuel gauge in the cockpit.

Now back in the pilot’s seat, Carter pulled a fragile typed document from the inside of his leather jacket and tore the wet gloves off his hands as he unfolded it.

Finding it amongst his grandfather’s old belongings had been almost providential, and inadvertently the inspiration for the bomber’s new name. That day, Carter had nearly reached a breaking point after losing his job due to a backstabbing colleague. Instead, he had come across the handwritten document behind a portrait of his grandfather, a bush pilot, describing a place he had come across high in the clouds known as Skyhaven.

His grandfather’s description, complete with the exact coordinates, was fantastical: a massive, perpetually floating airfield where men of adventure could go. The men running it had offered his grandfather to join them.

He had turned them down. He had a girl back down on the ground, wanting to marry him. Carter’s grandmother had died before he was born, but having read his grandfather’s diary entries, he understood why he had come back for her.

Nothing kept Carter grounded. If the choice was fight or flight, he chose the latter.

All he needed was a plane.

Once more, the circumstances by which he discovered the bomber plane had been nothing less than providential. A chance encounter had led him to befriend Jeff, who worked at a junkyard where the aircraft had been left to rot. He had long wished to restore it but lacked the money.

Carter had emptied his life savings to make that dream a reality. Surveying the fully refurbished cockpit, he believed it had been worth every penny.

A muffled cry came from outside.

Carter dropped down and rushed over to find Jeff crawling up from beneath the plane, pointing off into the distance where a mixture of flashing car headlights and sirens greeted them. Jeff held his wrench as if prepared to fend them off with it.

“We good to go?” Joe asked.

“We’re taking our chances in the air,” Jeff said.

Joe signaled to the others, and they began climbing into the side of the plane as Carter and Jeff climbed back into the cockpit.

Gunshots rang out from the cop cars, slapping against the plane’s thick exterior. Jeff yanked out a handgun and fired back, a desperate look in his eye. The cops were there for him, and him alone. The plane technically belonged to the junkyard. But for Jeff, the aircraft was now theirs. Carter’s money had bought the parts, and Jeff’s secret nighttime efforts had brought Providence back from the dead.

The propellers spun until they were invisible, even with the navigation lights on, as Carter steered the plane around to face a long strip of runway. He displayed more confidence in his flying abilities than he had. His grandfather’s old pilot manuals had been helpful, but reading about it couldn’t compare to doing it.

The cop cars hovered around the plane as if waiting for a wounded prey to succumb before devouring it. Carter was tempted to steer the aircraft their way and force them off the runway, but it wasn’t worth the risk. The cops could afford to make mistakes. If they slipped up, everything they had worked for would be lost.

They tried to keep up, but once Providence gained speed, they pulled back and drove toward one of the hangars near the traffic control tower.

“You think they’ll pursue?” Jeff asked as Carter brought the control yoke towards his chest and the bomber plane lifted off the ground. He didn’t answer until they reached the highest altitude he dared. Though they bundled up well in thick coats and gloves, the plane was still unpressurized, and Carter had run out of funds before they could buy oxygen masks.

“The cops won’t,” Carter said. “But I expect a pursuit.”

Jeff glared ahead. “Why can’t they just leave us be?”

Carter shrugged. “Because if we can do it, others can. Then the whole system falls apart.”

Jeff put away his handgun and studied the instrument panel, running his finger along the gauges as the engine RPMs slightly fluctuated. Of all the men in Carter’s company, the freckle-faced redhead beside him was the one Carter understood the most. Jeff had the potential to be a great mechanic, but he had also been given a life script he refused to read.

Someone called from further down the plane.

“We got trouble on our six!”

“What?”

“Fighter planes! Coming in hot!”

Jeff’s face went pale. “The guns don’t work. Even if they did, we have no ammo.”

Carter took out the coordinates to Skyhaven and handed them to Jeff. “You’ll have to guide me. I always had a poor sense of direction.”

“What about Joe?”

Carter grabbed the antiquated headset for the intercom system. “He needs to call out the fighters.”

Jeff swallowed loudly and then studied the document as they both instinctively strapped on their parachutes —the last thing Carter had bought before running out of funds —then tightened their restraining harnesses.

The next hour was a constant state of crisis. Carter’s ears were continuously filled with warnings from Joe about a fighter on their tail, firing off a few shots to steer them off course, or instructions from Jeff on how to get back on course after he had successfully evaded one of their bogies. His hands shook as they gripped the control yoke, though the truth was his whole body trembled with the fear of failing those now entirely dependent on his ability to make the right call. He fought back hesitation each time he banked hard or climbed abruptly, keeping the fighters guessing at his next move. He knew they weren’t suicidal; they wouldn’t risk crashing into the bomber.

“How far out are we?” Carter asked Jeff.

Jeff glanced up from the coordinates. “We still have a ways to go.”

Joe called on the intercom. A fighter was closing on their six.

“He’s going to try to shoot out our rudder, so we have to land,” Jeff said.

Carter banked to the left, then to the right. The control yoke felt like it was resisting him, as if it had a mind of its own. He gazed out at the cockpit canopy, straining to see beyond the rainfall dripping down the glass.

A terrible sound pierced their ears as a fighter soared past them, then slowed down as if to taunt them.

Carter then looked in horror as bullets ripped into their left side engine. He abruptly turned to prevent further damage, sending men throughout the plane against the wall. More bullets slapped into the left wing.

Jeff got out of his seat and peered through the canopy, assessing the engine damage. Smoke visibly billowed from it, but he calmed down as he inspected the gauges.

“It’s holding,” he said. “For now.”

“At this speed, how much longer before we reach Skyhaven?” Carter asked.

“An hour.”

Carter sighed and shook his head as he grabbed his intercom headset and spoke into it firmly. “Guys, here’s the situation: If they score a hit, we have to land. If you want out, now’s the time to bail. They don’t know who is on the plane besides Jeff…but I’m only leaving this plane alive when we land at Skyhaven.”

There was a long pause, and only the soft hum of the plane’s engines could be heard.

Joe’s voice came across the intercom.

“It’s Skyhaven or bust,” he said, and a loud cheer rose from the young men around him.

Carter couldn’t help but smile as he acknowledged the response and climbed the plane higher in an act of defiance against the fighter still on their tail.

Suddenly, the control yoke lost tension as the plane began to shake violently.

“What’s going on?” Carter asked.

Jeff turned pale. “The control cables to the elevator assembly have been damaged. If we don’t fix it, we’ll have to land or else crash.”

Carter looked out his side-view window to see the modern fighter plane now parallel to them. They couldn’t see the pilot who had undoubtedly inflicted the catastrophic wound. But they could hear his arrogant voice on the radio.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get you on the ground. See you soon.”

With that, the fighter swerved sharply to the left and disappeared into one of the storm clouds.

Jeff left his seat, snatching his toolbox. “I’ve got to repair the damage. Set a timer. If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, you have to land.”

“Give me your gun.”

Puzzled, Jeff nevertheless complied.

“I’ll land the plane if I have to,” Carter said.

“What’s the gun for?”

“For after I land. I’m not going back.”

Jeff nodded and then ran out of the cockpit, leaving Carter to deal with his demons alone. He set the handgun aside, fighting to keep them on a stable trajectory as he regularly checked the timer.

He wouldn’t risk it. The moment they were safely on the ground, there was no hesitation as to what must be done. The alternative was both unthinkable and predictable. He’d be arrested, only to be bailed out by high-power attorneys in his extended family on condition that he be under their legal custody. The prescription drugs to numb his sensibilities would come immediately after. Before the last vestige of his sanity was erased, he’d be set up with a job and a wife that would ensure such an escape would never happen again.

He checked the timer.

Fourteen minutes.

For the remaining time, he dreamed of Skyhaven. For all he knew, it might not even exist. But that didn’t matter; he had now tasted freedom. Skyhaven was real now, if only in his heart.

A triumphant cheer came from the fuselage as Carter regained control of the plane, wiping his face. The celebratory noise ceased as Joe entered the cockpit.

The look on his face said it all.

“Did he yank his chute?” Carter asked in a soft voice.

“I didn’t see. It happened so fast. His safety rope got caught and cut loose.”

If the plane’s bomb bay had been loaded, Carter might have turned back for revenge. But there was no time. The fighters would soon realize what had happened and come back.

He handed Joe the coordinates as he sat down in Jeff’s old seat.

“Let’s hope it was worth it,” Carter uttered.

As the flight continued, he refused to look at the fuel gauge. He resigned himself to whatever providence had planned. However, Jeff’s fate left him questioning.

They were passing through a thick cloud as the radio came alive.

“Unidentified aircraft, this is Skyhaven. Do you copy?”

Carter and Joe exchanged stunned looks as the radio repeated itself. Carter then responded.

“This is Providence requesting permission to land at Skyhaven.”

The pause before the response was as pregnant as an expecting mother.

“Roger, Providence. We’ve been expecting you. Follow my coordinates, and we’ll get you landed shortly.”

Once more, the two men in the cockpit exchanged glances, this time full of bewilderment. How could Skyhaven know they were coming? Had they been set up somehow? Impossible. His grandpa’s entries had been from decades ago, and Carter had only told the others about it right before takeoff.

Joe seemed to read Carter’s mind as he pointed at the fuel gauge. “We don’t have a choice, regardless.”

Heeding the air traffic controller's instructions, Providence soared through the black clouds with zero visibility, with nothing but a voice and numbers to guide them.

Then they saw lights appear on a runway ahead. Carter reduced speed, activating the landing wheels as they crept closer. As soon as he felt them touch the ground, he activated the wing flaps and braked firmly. It was his first landing, but he was eerily calm, as if he had done it countless times before.

A somber cheer came from the others as the plane came to a definitive halt. Turning off the plane, Carter took the coordinates document back from Joe and stuffed it in his pocket as he opened the pilot’s door.

Jumping out, he gazed up in awe as he saw thick steel cables attached to the airfield rising into the clouds. He could scarcely see them, but there was no mistaking the massive airships, devoid of gondolas, keeping them afloat.

Ahead of them, there was a series of large hangars crowded with planes, all dwarfed by a tall building behind them. From it emerged a group of men whose appearances were blurred by the night storm.

One man broke from the group and approached Carter. He was tall, dressed in a pilot’s jacket, and had a broad smile on his face, shared by those behind him.

“Welcome to Skyhaven,” he said. “I’m the airport manager, Ebenezer Sterling—but please, call me Ben.”

Trying to appear excited despite the sorrow etched on his face, Carter’s voice trembled as he spoke the man’s name and shook his hand.

“How did you know we were coming?” he asked.

Ben stepped aside to reveal a tired, but happy Jeff. He was covered in mud and still wearing his parachute gear. The crew of the Providence cried out in joy as they ran up to him, now in Carter’s embrace.

“How did you survive?” Carter asked.

“One of their planes spotted us. They saw me fall and picked me up from the ground before the cops arrived.”

“Thankfully, the area he landed on was large enough for us to take off,” Ben said.

“Come, let’s get you all settled in.”

“We appreciate the friendly welcome,” Carter said.

Ben gave him an amused grin. “It’s what my grandfather did for yours. You look just like his photo. I’m glad you took up his offer to come here.”

The two groups of men merged into one as they began shuffling across the airfield and into the main building.

Carter lingered behind for a while. The gentle rain once again camouflaged the tears on his face, though this time he made no effort to hide them. He gazed back toward Providence, then crossed the field as if walking up the path to his own home.

For the first time in his life, he knew what that felt like.

Bloomington, Minnesota
November 24th, 2006 - Black Friday

The Mall of America’s parking lot was packed end-to-end. Peak shopping hours, just after 11 am. Ray secured a spot on the southern end of the mall, a stone’s throw from the Macy’s entrance, for his Mercury. He munched on a bear claw and swigged his cold, black coffee, then peered out at the doors with his binoculars.

Johnny couldn’t shut up. “There were 37 armored car robberies in 2005,” he said. “Out of those, 28 were solved within a week, 4 were solved within a month, and 2 got away.”

“Yeah, stuck-up guys are idiots,” Ray said. “That’s what we’re fixing not to be.”

“The average score, $480,000,” Johnny continued. “The biggest, $3.4 million, from one crew that got away. Two murders on that lick, though, both guards shot dead.”

Ray wiped his fingers, sticky with glazed sugar, on his sleeve. “Happens like that on some scores, J-Bird,” he said. “Collateral damage.”

Read more

Turning away from the river and the dark cargo ships rumbling toward the Gulf, Tim began to climb up the rocky bank that ran along the pedestrian walkway. Thus far he had kept out of sight, but there were more people out now, more eyes to worry about. A young couple moved up against the railing just above him and posed for a picture against the inky Mississippi. Wary of the flash from their camera, he ducked low and scampered to the safety of an old dock.

The smell of trash and foul water filled his nose as he pressed himself up against a rotten wooden beam for cover. Tim waited there, picking at the crumbling timber until they left. Then he casually crawled out from under the derelict frame and hopped up over the metal guardrail, slipping unnoticed into the flow of people, tourists mostly, who were walking along the water. Tim followed this current, heading toward the French Quarter.

As he approached, he heard the familiar sounds of New Orleans. The whooping and bleating of drunks punctuated the blaring brass of a main line and the clumsy cheers of the second. It was too loud already, and he wasn’t even that close. Not wanting to pass anywhere near the parade, he perched on a crumbling street corner, swiveling his head between the discordant sounds of the night. And then, as if all this uncertainty had been a ruse, he broke away from the crowds and headed for a darker block.

On the edge of Dauphine and Esplanade he took up a quiet spot on a lightless stoop and watched as a few people hurried to the next bar or went about staggering in the street. The slow drip of street traffic was the only thing bringing light to this lost block, and it made it difficult to reckon time. The headlights washing over him kept breaking his concentration, but he did not feel like moving, so he hung his head and closed his eyes while sirens raced toward something in the distance.

“DeMarcus?” A voice came incredulous and excited from the void. Tim opened his eyes and looked up, unsure of how much time had passed and staring now at an acne-scarred face that could have been familiar. A crust punk holding a pitbull on a tattered leash and wearing a Castro hat, from which dreads sprung hernia-like, was smiling back at him. Tim nodded at the young man and perfunctorily returned his fist bump. As if he knew him, the man launched into news about presumably shared acquaintances and asked if DeMarcus had seen such-and-such person. Tim must have blinked his way through because the crust punk, who dropped that his name was Geoff, then invited him to a party where he promised there would be booze. Tim accepted the invitation by getting up from the stoop and following the man and his dog.

The crust punk led him back into the French Quarter. Together they weaved between the masses of Bourbon street and skirted around a couple of equestrian cops, whom Geoff cursed under his breath as they passed. At length, they came to a narrow alley populated by a few other punks and barred at one end by a locked gate that would have opened up onto an old French-style interior courtyard, which was overgrown with weeds and otherwise looked entirely abandoned. Tim noted the blackened fountain at its center. The punks greeted Geoff with a cheer but were indifferent to Tim, except one. A young girl with nappy hair and a light complexion ran up and hugged him. “DeMarcus! What the fuck, man?! Where you been?” Not answering, they both pulled back and looked at each other.

Tim did not recognize this girl, or at least he did not recognize her in the way she clearly saw him. Still, he played along. He shrugged and looked off her excitement, saying that he had been around. He wasn’t that hard to find. “Are you kidding?” she replied, shaking her head. But then she took him by the hand, and brought him deeper into the alley.

At her invitation, Tim sat with the group on a piece of flattened cardboard and was immediately handed a plastic flask of flavored vodka, from which he took a short and regrettable pull. The liquor was brightly orange but tasted only faintly of any known fruit. Front loaded with sugar, the shot shortly revealed its true flavor, acrid and chemical, that lingered at the back of his throat. Tim suppressed any visible displeasure as he passed the flask to the girl sitting next to him. She smiled and drank as the others told stories. Tim half listened. It was something about a friend of theirs who had died suddenly. According to one of them, he had gotten blood poisoning from a bad needle and tried to drink himself straight instead of going to the hospital. Then they argued about what exactly blood poisoning was without ever reaching a consensus.

Whatever they were talking about was less important than the old fountain, which stood regal and undisturbed just beyond their conversation. Tim studied it as the others carried on. Black mold covered the white basin and crept up the central spire and down the base, although not completely. There were still some stretches of milky stone, which seemed out of place on its predominantly dark body, as if it had vitiligo.

Water no longer flowed from the ornate fleur-de-lis spout which crowned the fountain, but its presence still dominated the courtyard. It sat at the heart of this emergent jungle, shadowing the living plants around it and taunting them with the beauty of its own engraved ivy. These mold-covered vines wrapped around the basin, appearing more alive than any weed. Behind the frame of the locked gate, the courtyard and its fountain were a kind of tableau. It seemed virtuous to him how unfunctional it had become.

Still dwelling on the fountain, Tim felt a soft touch. He looked down and saw that the girl had inched closer and was now rubbing the back of his arm. In response he tensed up, which made him conscious of his body and the strange signals it was sending him. Hunger. The sensation descended on him as an abstraction. It had been days since his last meal, and yet he felt no pangs and had lost little muscle mass. Daily he looked more lean and dangerous; there was less separating his muscles from the outside world. This unexpected touch made him aware of this in some sense, but it did not feel good. She was touching him for the wrong reasons.

Much else was wrong here too, Tim thought. Not just his present company but the French Quarter and maybe all of New Orleans. It had been taken over, not invaded but converted from a purpose lost long ago. What exactly this was still evaded him, but it did not comport with his body. Of that he was certain, along with the feeling of a need to escape. Tim stood up suddenly, pulling himself from the grasp of the girl, who tottered from the shock of his forceful movement. He looked up at a night sky hemmed in by the narrow alley and hung low with dense clouds that betokened rain. They were all looking at him.

“Oh my god! Is that a pitty?!” The vocal fry came from the street. All at once the crust punks turned toward the sound and immediately clocked a bachelorette party. Several women stood by the entrance to the alcove, all wearing colorful blouses and adorned with penis-themed props. Geoff’s pitbull bounded over to the group of young women and absorbed their scratches and affections. It wagged its tail and seemed to smile at them. Tim walked over and patted the dog. “Is this your pup?” One woman asked who was wearing a white sash across her chest that spelled “WHORE” in elegant font. Geoff got up and approached them too, proudly proclaiming that the dog was his and that his name was Gibbous. “Like the moon,” he said.

Tim seized the distraction and snuck between the bachelorette party. He was back on the street now, walking just to get away. No one followed, but he felt that they might, so he quickened his pace, heading North toward Rampart Street where there were less people. The crowds thinned block by block until he was mostly alone again. A single bum asked him for money, and Tim moved away without acknowledging him. Down around the next corner, he crossed the street to avoid a group of young men in purple LSU gear and consequently bumped into a barker.

“Damn, man! It’s been a minute. How’s your mama’n’em?” The questions came from a smiling young black man with a shaved head and a glint in his eye.

“Just fine,” Tim said without recognizing him.

“Right, right…,” the other man drifted off. Tim was about to leave when the man stopped him again. “Hey, do you think you could do me a favor?” As he explained it, he would get a bonus if he got a certain number of people in the door tonight, and he really needed the money. All he requested of Tim was that he go in and have a drink. He would even give him a drink ticket for helping him out. Tim nodded. “My man!” He slapped the ticket in his hand and steered him toward the door.

The bouncer out front did not look up from his phone as Tim entered the bar, which was more than a bit clubby inside. A small dance floor centered the space and supported a meager set of overly drunk dancers, but most everyone else were pressed up against the bar watching them. Tim found an open spot beside a man whose shirt was unbuttoned down to his stomach and waited as the lone bartender chatted with a few people at the other end of the bar. After ten minutes, the bartender still had not noticed him, so Tim made for the bathroom.

Towards the back of the bar was a narrow set of stairs that led to an upper floor. Tim had expected a bathroom, but the top level held only a second bar. It was much smaller and quieter with only a few booths and bar tables. A drunk was slumped over in one of the booths, and a bartender watched a TV mounted on the wall. He walked up to the man and slid him the drink ticket.

“What’s this?” The bartender asked with a wrinkled brow.

“A free drink,” Tim replied.

“Not here it ain’t,” he said, sliding the ticket back across the bar to him. Tim shook his head and produced his wallet. He bought a single beer and closed out his tab before moving to an empty booth. It was directly below an AC vent, and the cold, stale air blew down on him relentlessly. Tim shivered at first, uncomfortable, but he did not move. Blinking his eyes slowly, like some reptile opening its mouth to let off excess heat, Tim adjusted to the temperature. He sipped his beer and looked around the empty bar. The drunk still slept silently, and the bartender had returned his attention to the TV, which now showed police boats scouring the river.

The broadcast cut to a reporter coming live from the water, not too far from where Tim had been earlier. The sound was off, and the closed captioning lagged far behind her speaking, but Tim could put together what was happening. They were searching for a body. The police boats trawled in the background as the reporter spoke about the scene. Tim squinted at the close captioning: “...several eye witnesses claimed to have seen the suspect, but the police have yet to…” He let his eyes relax, and the tiny print of the subtitles went out of focus.

Tim worked slowly on his drink, but it still went to his head, which throbbed almost rhythmically. This feeling built until it was painful, and nothing could shut it out. It seemed desperate. How weak had his body become that it should speak to him like this? Hunger. No, that wasn’t it. The message was encoded. Tim massaged his temples with his fingers and began to inventory his bodily afflictions: lightheadedness, nausea, migraines, cramping muscles. But then he understood; it was in the way his muscles rippled and froze. There was a pattern. No, it was a map!

He got up from the booth and could barely feel his feet beneath him. Pin pricks shot up through his legs with each step, but then subsided into a raw numbness. It made it difficult to walk, and Tim braced himself on anything he could as he exited the bar. Weak kneed, he hit the street, staggering like some heavy-eyed drunk. And yet none mistook him for one. The clumsiness of his gait conveyed not frailty but an intense physicality, and his barren aspect frightened off anyone else who might approach in an attempt to help him. In this way, he traced a path back through the French Quarter.

Beyond the cheering crowds and the pooling swill of Bourbon Street was the alley from earlier in the night. Tim’s return was not heralded by the punks, who had gone off in search of more booze. And it suited him to find it so empty. Sinking against the adjoining brick wall, he took up a spot before the gate as the wind tunneled through the alley and scattered trash around him. The crowds had dispersed significantly this late into the night, but Tim still felt eyes on him from time to time. People were poking their heads into the alcove as they walked by. To counter them, he affected a porcelain stillness. The hard angles of his body, stress positions almost, looked painful and purposeful even from afar. Tim held this pose for hours, all the while contemplating the fountain.

It was almost dawn by the time he got up. Like someone going to the window first thing in the morning, Tim stood in front of the gate and touched his face to the cold, rusty bars. His body was finally quiet, and from the silence came a command. Press yourself through. Just then a fierce wind channeled through the passage and pitched against his back, inclining his body even more toward the interior. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and after a blip of lurching darkness he was on the other side. The moss-covered brick did not register his footfalls with any indentation, and the weeds and ferns that cluttered the courtyard barely shook as he passed by them. Finally, he was at the fountain whose murky water rippled with mosquito larvae, and all around it the engraved ivy bloomed with dark mold.

Tim let his hand dangle from his side and walked around the fountain while grazing the weathered stonework with his fingers. The texture was incredible, rough and craggy in most places but soft in others. Short lengths of smooth stone gave way to deep pits filled with mold and lichens. These imparted a dense bristliness not unlike human body hair. Tim allowed himself to feel it all, and he knew he would no longer be kept from anything.

This story was submitted by Chris Blexrud, and won second place in last month’s writing contest. Chris is an author and libertarian living in New Mexico. His work has appeared in Anxiety Press, Carve Magazine, Apocalypse Confidential, and several other literary journals.

His published works include “The Anti-Epistles,” a wonderful fiction that Anxiety Press described as “Written with the quiet fury of a confession too long withheld. It lingers like smoke in the lungs.” You can get it on Amazon here.

Johnny turned back to the two at the dart board, who had just finished a round of 501. The guy caught Johnny staring.

“Hey kid, nice costume,” he said. “Come here a minute. You throw darts?”

“I do,” Johnny said, apprehensive about speaking to a man he had just day-dreamed of robbing.

“I’m Charlie, and you know Ash I take it.” He handed a set of darts to Johnny, who spotted two parallel thunderbolts tattooed on his right thumb.

“Yeah, we just met,” Johnny said. “How you two know each other?” The jukebox cut out and a shriek rose up from behind the bar before he got an answer.

“Alright, you animals,” Crystal said. “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”

Johnny set the darts back down on the table. “Guess we’ll have to play next time.”

“Yeah, maybe next time,” Charlie said, his eyes lingering on Johnny. “We’ll be around here next Saturday. How about you stop by, I’ll buy you a drink.”

Charlie reached out and gripped Johnny’s shoulder, pulled him in, and shook his hand. He reminded Johnny of guys inside prison who offered favors one day, only to expect a greater and unspoken favor in return. Johnny gave him a nod, ignoring Ash, and stepped out of Sharkey’s into the sleet that had moved in on St. Paul that night.

He had just turned the corner on his way back home when a voice called out behind him. It was Ash, who stumbled down the sidewalk to catch up to him. She clutched his right arm. “Gonna leave me alone like that,” she said, shuffling in front of Johnny, blocking his path. “Let’s go to your place.”

“It’s a mess,” Johnny said. “And it’s pretty far.”

“I don’t care or whatever you said about some mess,” Ash said, her words slurred. “Come on, there’s a motel right up there.”

A yellow neon sign glowed in the freezing rain, one of the letters burnt out, spelling: Town otel. The lobby reeked of curry. An old Indian guy checked them in, taking Ash’s cash and handing over a bulky wooden key fob over with a head bob.

Johnny pushed the door open and pulled Ash into the room. The lights stayed off. He guided Ash to the bed, shoved her, and she flopped down face first. Johnny pulled the cat tail off, then her black skirt. He could smell her raw ass. It filled the air, dancing with the vodka on her breath. He unzipped, spit on his hand, smeared it on her. She gritted her teeth and groaned from the bottom of her throat.

“You’re supposed to fuck me tonight,” Ash said. “Supposed... to... fuck...,” and then she fell dead quiet, her body limp.

Johnny tried to stick it in, once, twice, three times, sinking his paws into her ass, grabbing hold of her brown ponytail, but he couldn’t do it. He got off the bed, covered Ash with a sheet, cleaned himself off, and left the room, not once looking back.

Minneapolis, Minnesota
November 17th, 2006

Ray picked up a tray of cold cuts and cheeses from Cub Foods. He walked the parking lot with purpose, chin up with a read on the scene. He checked his watch, making sure he’d be early to the meeting. He got into his black 1993 Mercury Grand Marquis and started it up, the reliable V8 purred under the hood. He pulled the boat out of the lot and merged effortlessly into traffic, headed westbound on 29th Street.

Traffic flowed steady until the intersection of Lake Street and Minnetonka Boulevard. A white Toyota sedan, driven by some old broad, clipped a tanker truck when hanging a right. Hit a patch of ice and slid into the back of the truck. Nothing spilled, but hazmat came as a precaution. A twenty minute drive now was pushing forty. After inching through the scene, Ray made it to the old VFW building.

Once parked, Ray set up traffic cones to block the lot’s entrance, grabbed the cold cut tray, and entered the VFW’s back door. He found Charlie in the side room adjacent to the main hall sitting at a picnic table, Diet Pepsi in front of him.

“Look who decided to make it,” Charlie said. He popped the tab off his can of Diet Pepsi and flicked it across the table.

“Yeah, traffic was a bitch down Lake,” Ray said, setting down the spread. “Some broad clipped a truck. Anyway, figured we could break bread while talking shop.”

Charlie leaned back in the brown metal chair and cracked his knuckles. “This thing’s gotta be clockwork,” he said. “It’s why I brought you on. I thought you’d be be about that, having done that hard sorta time.”

“I’m always on time,” Ray said. “But I’m not playing bumper cars to get here.”

“This time you weren’t,” Charlie said. “Look, this is that x-factor that can make or break this thing. Accidents, weather, Jesus’s second coming, it’s all on the table. Stuff will come up that we can’t plan for. We gotta have a plan B, then a plan C, for when it does.”

Ray unwrapped the cold cuts and slid the tray across the table. “You’re right, man,” he said. “But so far, so good. That night at the bar worked out real nice. J-Bird’s coming around. He gave me a ring yesterday. He’s in, and thinks it’s his idea.”

“Alright, some good news,” Charlie said. “Lock him in. Ash got him wrapped around her finger, too. He’s googly for her. But don’t forget, you’re here because you promised another set of hands.”

Ray tapped his fingers on the plastic tabletop. After sixteen years of fed time, where any sleight was answered with violence, this sort of talk boiled his skin. But he kept it cool. Real cool. There was too much money on the line with this lick to lose that cool. He nodded once, the kind of nod a man gives when he knows he’s chained to the move, no matter how it plays out.

Charlie folded a slice of salami over a piece of sharp cheddar and thumbed it past his lips. “So, let’s start from the top.” He wiped his fingers on his jeans and unfolded a legal size sheet of paper printed with a detailed aerial view of the Mall of America. “Ash’s intel is solid,” he said. “And I’ve been banging her so hard that she’s got nothing left to give.”

“Silly broad,” Ray said.

“Tapped the bitch out for all she’s worth,” Charlie said. “So, the route’s set. She’ll be driving and won’t know we’re hitting the route on her day. The truck will pull up on this side of the mall right here. The messenger gets out here with a load of cash to fill ATMs inside. He’ll walk to this entrance.” Charlie circled it with a red pen. “Remember that, the doors for Macy’s. Right before he enters, Johnny will roll the smoke can under the truck. That’ll flush out Ash from the cab. You’ll end her story there.”

Ray rubbed his cheek. “I still think it should just be me and you on this lick.”

Charlie cocked his head, his eyes drooped and were ringed black like an insomniac raccoon. “I’m the brains here,” he said. “The conductor. I roped in Ash, I got the intel, I know when the money’s coming and how much. Besides, my bum hip’s a liability. If something went sideways and I had to run — well, then it’s your problem too.”

“Cut the sappy movie shit,” Ray said. “I’ll handle it.”

Charlie rubbed the dual thunderbolts on his thumb and grinned. “That’s why I called you in on this Raymond,” he said. “So like I said, it’s gotta be like that. Right then and there, take down Ash. Boom-boom, boom-bam, like duck hunting.”

“I’ll keep it neat and clean,” Ray said. He knew a murder was a price he had to pay for this score. If it went right, it’d be the last robbery he’d ever need to do.

Charlie tapped the red circle drawn on the paper. “Now, you’ll have three minutes to get into the truck,” he said. “Johnny has the stopwatch. You’ll come around here and hit the messenger. A crowbar, no heat. Grab his keys, get in, fill the bags. Once that watch says three minutes, you’re in the getaway.”

“With six million,” Ray said. “Split three ways, that’s $2 million a piece.”

Charlie shook his head. “Or if we were creative with this math, split two ways, $3 million a piece.”

Ray did a double-take at the figure. “What you mean, Charlie?”

Charlie let out a dry cough. “Look here,” he said. “I brought you in. You said you were good for this.”

“Is that right, Charlie?” Ray said. “We cutting out someone else?”

Charlie shrugged his bony shoulders. “Had to be this way Ray,” he said. “Your partner, Johnny, he’s the rube in this thing.” He paused, letting the weight of the betrayal sink in for Ray. “But only after the lick,” he said, picking up the thread of the plan. “Exit the mall’s parking here, take 77 south ‘til it hits the 35, and that’ll bring you to Hastings. The safehouse’s there, a run down corner bar with a door in the back. I’ll be there waiting. You can do it there. It’s built for this kind of thing. Used to be an old butcher shop in the ‘40s. Easy-peasy clean up.”

Ray licked the tip of his thumb and circled it around the top of his can of Diet Pepsi, letting out a faint metallic squeak. He hesitated, knowing that if he spoke his mind, he could be cut out just as quick as he was brought in.

What was Johnny to him, anyway? Some kid who came into FCI Sheridan, clueless and green. On the inside they chopped it up over their shared Minnesota background. They played chess and spades together. Ray showed the kid the ropes, Johnny showed Ray forgery. He was a good kid. Flighty, head in the clouds, but a good kid. Taking Johnny out didn’t sit well with him, but maybe Charlie was right. Maybe Johnny was just the rube in this score. But to Ray, it felt more like leading a lamb to slaughter.

“Alright then,” Charlie said. “Let’s wrap this thing up. The Korean War old-timers will be here in twenty. They get to talking and will put you to sleep the way they go on and on. So we good on this?”

“We’re good,” Ray said. He stood up, pushed his chair in, and stepped towards the door to leave. Before turning the knob, he looked back to the table. “Just one more thing, and it kinda bugs me. I’m the one that hits Ash, I’m the one that hits Johnny. But what should make me think that you don’t hit me?”

Charlie shook his head. “Raymond,” he said. “You’re my cousin, we’re blood. No way would I do that to you.”

Ray nodded and clicked his tongue. “That’s right, Charlie. We’re blood.”

This is part two of a three-part series by Mythos Noir, stay tuned for the conclusion next week

The U-Haul was cheaper than rent. Nine hundred bucks up front. No credit check. No landlord asking where my last three pay stubs were. Just the smell of cardboard and gasoline.

I did the math. One hundred and fifty square feet. Twelve feet long, six and a half wide, six and a half tall. Nine hundred bucks divided by one hundred and fifty. Six dollars per square foot. Cheaper than any apartment in town. And the ceiling was higher.

I sleep in the back on a foam mattress I cut down with a steak knife. The walls sweat in the morning. At night I hear the fuel pump ticking. Sometimes I think about putting a plant in here. A cactus, maybe. Something alive.

The U-Haul doesn’t smell like freedom. It smells like a stranger’s garage sale. Like an old lawn mower leaking gas next to a box of your dad’s old Playboys. Every time I climb in, I wonder how many meth-heads slept here before me. How many panicked moves at 3 a.m., hauling couches out of bad marriages.

I try not to decorate. Decoration means permanence. You hang one poster, you’re stuck. You put up Christmas lights, congratulations, you’ve admitted this is home. I keep it bare. Mattress. Backpack. A tote full of laundry that smells like vinegar and loneliness.

The insulation isn’t real insulation. It’s just thin aluminum panels vibrating when trucks roll past on the highway. Every sound in this box is magnified: rain becomes gunfire, wind becomes a dying breath, silence becomes another kind of rent.

I tell myself I’m saving money. That one day I’ll have a down payment, or at least a deposit for a place with plumbing. Truth is, I don’t even look at apartments anymore. Zillow is porn for people who want something they can’t touch. I scroll through listings the way some guys scroll OnlyFans: twenty minutes of pretending I could afford it, then slamming the laptop shut before the shame sets in.

Sometimes I go to AA meetings. I don’t even drink, but they don’t need to know that. I tell them about my rock bottom, some bullshit about vodka in a Gatorade bottle to get me through the work day. Everyone nods like they’ve been there. The only people my age are the ones carrying paperwork from the court.

The rest are all Boomers bitching about how they ruined their third marriage and had to sell their boat because they can’t stop pickling themselves at Applebee’s after a hard day spent supervising the youth they blame society’s problems on. At the end, I pour bad coffee into a Styrofoam cup and load my pockets with cookies from the folding table. Dinner. Twelve Steps to free calories.

I learned the trick at Costco: free samples on Sundays. Pretend you’re interested in an air fryer, circle the same aisle twice, change your hat and take another round. One summer I lived on nothing but microwaved dumplings handed out by retirees in hairnets.

Library air-conditioning is cheaper than Starbucks. So are their bathrooms. If you lean back in a plastic chair, crack open a paperback you’re never going to finish, and pretend to be a student, no one asks questions. The hum of fluorescent lights is almost comforting.

Charity events, community potlucks, church basements—everywhere’s a free buffet if you keep your head down and don’t make eye contact. People talk about hustling like it’s some Gary Vee grindset bullshit. Hustling is eating stale sheet cake in a church multipurpose room and nodding along to a sermon you don’t believe in.

What keeps me alive isn’t hope. It’s the math. Every day I calculate what I’ve saved by not paying rent. I convert dollars into days survived. $30 saved is another tank of gas. Another week of instant ramen. Another sunrise I get to witness from the inside of a truck that was never supposed to be lived in.

Sometimes, late at night, I wonder if the people walking past can hear me breathing. If they can sense me, hiding in plain sight. If they’re jealous, or if they pity me. Then I remember: no one cares. Everyone’s trapped in their own box. Mine just has wheels.

Digital nomads call it freedom. They show off high-end converted vans on Instagram with teak countertops and solar panels. They sit cross-legged on beds in the desert, typing into MacBooks. They call it mobility. I call it hiding. My Wi-Fi is the parking lot behind Starbucks, my solar panel is the foldable kind you charge your phone with when you’re camping.

I time my showers around the routines of normal people at Planet Fitness. Sometimes I just sink-wash in the bathroom at work. I rotate parking spots: Walmart, hospital lot, church, Cracker Barrel. A 24-hour cycle. Never the same place twice. The truck is big. It’s a target. Everyone can see it. Everyone can guess what I’m doing.

People talk about “minimalism” like it’s a lifestyle. Minimalism is when you own one towel because you can’t afford two. Minimalism is when you stretch one jar of peanut butter across a week. Minimalism is leaving your dirty laundry in a Hefty bag in the cab of a truck because the laundromat eats quarters faster than you can earn them.

In the morning, I crack the back door an inch and watch the sun slowly turn the asphalt pink. People drive past on their way to jobs they hate. They sit in traffic listening to podcasters ranting about the economy. They send rent checks to property managers who don’t remember their names until they need to send an eviction notice.

Maybe I’m ahead of the curve. Maybe I’m the future.

At night, when I park in another lot, I calculate cubic footage again. I tell myself I got a bargain. I tell myself this is only temporary. But I keep thinking: if the economy gets any worse, they’ll probably start renting these out on Zillow. “Micro-studio, great location. Cozy, open-space floorplan.”

And someone will pay.

We’ve always wanted to get young guys reading again and while Substack is a great platform, the goal is to put out a tangible magazine you can hold in your hands. A throwback to the underground ‘zines of the 90s, back when we looked forward to the future with hopeful optimism.

Today, as we enter the harvest season, we’re introducing you to a new mythology, readers. 10 exclusive stories from Mishima’s Head, Worst Boyfriend Ever, Toxic Brodude and many other names you’ll probably recognize, alongside art and photography from some talented indie creatives.

Thank you for all of your support for indie lit, and check out the print magazine preorder here.

What follows is a true story. It has been retold by a federal agent who worked extensively on the case, changing key details like names and dates, not to protect the innocent, but rather to keep these men from the notoriety that too often clings to a crime pulled off this well.

St. Paul, Minnesota
October 30th, 2006

Johnny's mother painted another layer of rouge on her droopy right cheek. She'd been at the vanity for over an hour and needed more ice to make another vodka Coke. A half-empty fifth of Fleischman's sat at her left foot, swollen red with edema.

"Johnny, Johnny," she called out in a raspy voice. Her call went unanswered. "Johnny, get Mama some more ice. Won't you, Johnny? Help Mama out."

She slipped a Virginia Slims 120 from the pack and lit it. The tobacco crackled, her lungs hoovering up the smoke. She blew it out at the old, gussied up face staring back at her in the mirror.

The ice wasn't coming. Johnny hadn't been anything but trouble since he got out, she thought, piece of shit son just like his dad.

Three more staccato puffs from the thin cig. The nicotine smoothed her edge.

"Johnny, won't you be a good boy for mama. Come on out. Get me some ice. I'm busy at the vanity."

Johnny laid low, playing chess inside his room. The same dingy room he grew up in at the tail end of the double-wide. Sat on the same twin bed he slept on as a boy, walls covered with the same Lamborghini Diablo and Pamela Anderson posters he jerked off to. He was twenty-eight now and this room was his Hell.

She banged on his door.

"I'm not drunk, I swear to God, Johnny. I only had one glass. Get out and get me some fucking ice. Look at all I did for you when you were locked away. Five years you've been gone. All that fraud shit you did, the feds kicking down my front door. Who sent money to put on your canteen? You think that was easy? You think your dad would have? I've done everything for you, Johnny. Ponied up for the lawyers. Let you come back here after all you did. And look at how you repay me. Hiding in that room of yours like a little fucking kid. Can't even get your mama some ice."

Johnny stepped across the room to the wall mirror. A coward stared back at him. His mind went back to third grade, sitting in a circle on the gymnasium floor in the middle of winter.

"Duck, duck, duck," the blond boy said, tapping each kid on the head. Two more to go. "Duck, duck." He was nearing Johnny, whose stomach knotted up. He knew how this ended. "Gray duck!" the blond boy shouted, bonking Johnny's head, and at this all of his classmates burst into laughter, pointing, whispering about how he smelled, how his jeans tore at the cuff, how his dad left because of the bad things he had done.

Johnny slammed his fist into the reflection, then kicked his chess board. Always the gray duck.

"Crazy fucker," his mother said. "Stay in that room. I'll get my own ice."

Johnny wrapped his bloodied hand with a white Hanes t-shirt and slumped back down on his bed.

St. Paul, Minnesota
October 31st, 2006 - Halloween Night

The sky opened up and pissed down rain. It was just barely warm enough to not freeze on the ground, but the local news gave a warning about black ice that night, and the cops had big plans to set up as many checkpoints as they could around St. Paul to catch drunk drivers leaving the bars.

Johnny sat at the back of the Metro Transit bus, which plodded down Maryland Avenue on Route 3. A brood of Somalian kids stared at him, clinging to the ends of their mother's black dress, which flowed like spilled ink over her fat legs. A walking trash bag, he thought, and did they even know about Halloween?

Johnny huffed on the window pane, fogging it up, and traced a sloppy skull and crossbones, finishing the design with his initials. He pulled the cord, the bus slowed and stopped, and Johnny sprung out from the side door. Sharkey's Pub was on the next block over.

Although his crimes weren't violent, nor drug or alcohol related, a condition of his probation stated that Johnny couldn't be in a place that primarily sold alcohol. He had no plans to go back to prison, but Johnny figured that one night out on Halloween, when everybody wore a mask, would go unnoticed as long as he didn't cause any trouble.

Sharkey's was a neighborhood corner bar, the kind that are common in the upper Midwest. It had been run by the same guy — they called him Smalls — since 1983, and was housed in an aged brick building, with red and white painted gutters, and a weathered, fading bar sign above the door with a grinning shark flexing a bicep tattooed with a broken heart.

Johnny stepped inside and before his jacket came off he was greeted by an older man, late-40s, balding. He towered over Johnny by a foot and his chiseled jaw contorted to one side. He wore a neatly ironed, tucked in flannel shirt and starched blue jeans.

"You made it, J-Bird!" He patted Johnny's shoulder and guided him to the back of the bar. "Finally got you out of the house. It's no good being cooped up like that all the time, kid."

"That's right Ray," Johnny said. "Needed to get out of there. Can't stand being holed up with mama."

"No man would," Ray said. "A beer and some darts?"

"The darts, but no beer."

"Suit yourself. Hey, Crystal, get Johnny here a Sprite, and another tapper for me."

The bleach-blond bartender grunted an “OK.” The edge of her black bra stuck out from her low-cut white shirt. She had perky tits, smooth legs with a thigh gap, but her cheeks were blasted with pock marks and she had sad blue eyes that glimmered deep beneath the mascara. Johnny couldn't tell if she was 25 or 40.

"That broad gives sloppy head," Ray said. "Crazy bitch on that white horse, though. Cuts herself. Punches holes in cabinets. Worth it though." He turned back to Johnny. "Anyway, good to see you down here. And look, you even got dressed up."

"Yeah, just stuff I had laying around."

Crystal brought the beer and pop over, slipped a couple coasters on the table, and set the drinks down. Ray grabbed her around the waist — she wasn't more than a hundred pounds — and lifted her with a spin. She squealed, which Ray silenced with an aggressive kiss. He set her back down with a thud and pinched her ass, pushing her back towards the bar.

"Whatever, Ray," Crystal said. "I told you none of that here."

Johnny and Ray started throwing darts. They played a couple rounds of Cricket, with Ray winning both, and got to talking.

"Two years it's been, eh Ray," Johnny said.

"Two years, three months, and seven days," Ray said. "I count every day that I've been free."

"You're doing good," Johnny said. "Real good. But I don't know if I can do it, man. It's like I'm stuck in a hole, with a big demented ape on a throne above, raining turds down on me."

Ray cracked a smile. "A black ape?"

"Yeah, a black one."

"Probably a nigger then," Ray said.

"Look, man, I need work," Johnny said. "Need my own place. I dunno if I can make it in that trailer with mama, man."

Ray stepped back from the Bull Starts Here toe line sticker. He set the darts down and leaned in close to Johnny. "That mama boy shit is something inside of you, J-Bird. You got to let it go. I told you that when we were inside."

"I know, man."

Ray changed the subject to the Vikings and that "jigaboo QB, Culpepper.” Two more dart games and four beers later, Ray left to lean over the bar and bug Crystal.

Johnny kept throwing darts by himself, plugging quarters into the machine from the stack that Ray had left behind. He lined up to throw another dart when he was poked on his left ass cheek. "You know I don't play like that Ray."

"I don't know a Ray, but I know you're hogging this board." It was a woman's voice. Johnny turned around and there stood a gal dressed up as a black cat, long tail curled up from her backside, painted whiskers, pointy ears, the whole nine yards. "I've got a friend coming in ten. Wanna sneak in a quick round?"

The chick was built like a piggy, her tits spilled out from the top of her costume. She'd also been drinking, and heavily, reeking of vodka and cranberry. What's more, her left ring finger was wrapped with a gold band set with a thick diamond.

"I'm Ashley," she said. "But everyone just calls me Ash."

"I'm Johnny. Everyone just calls me Johnny."

Ash poked Johnny's chest. "You're funny. I like a funny guy. Let's play, you goofball."

The two threw darts in silence, standing close, stealing glances and flashing smiles. Her aim was off, the darts bouncing off the side of the board and onto the floor. Johnny's eyes avoided her tits and ring.

"So what are you supposed to be anyway?" she asked.

"A burglar."

"Well ain't it my lucky night," she said. "I get dressed up as a black cat and who do I run into but a cat burglar."

"They say a black cat is bad luck," Johnny said. "But you don't look that bad."

"You flirt," Ash said. "You trying to steal me tonight?"

Johnny glanced at the ring. "Adultery still carries time in sixteen states."

"Only if you get caught."

"I've got that kind of luck," Johnny said.

"We can make it so you don't."

Johnny shook his head. This was the kind of trouble he was fixing to avoid. The two were close to finishing their round, with Johnny well ahead, when a man approached. He was dressed up as a zombie, with dull gray paint neatly concealing his face and giving a ghoulish look. He was short and scrappy but walked with a limp. He set his Diet Pepsi on the table by the dart board.

"Here's my friend," Ash said. "Hey, Johnny, it was nice playing. Don't go too far. I won't be long."

"Sure thing," Johnny said. He retreated into the corner of the bar nearest the dart board, where he could keep an eye and ear on the two. He was the only sober head at Sharkey's by this point. The drunks yapped and the jukebox kicked loud, so his ears strained to make out what they were saying.

Johnny picked up that this was Ash's work friend and the two regularly hit the St. Paul bars to throw darts together. They were comfortable with each other, cracking jokes and clinking beer mugs. Most importantly, he wasn't Ash's husband, or whoever it was that gave her that ring.

It wasn't long before the two started complaining about their job. They worked for Loomis, the armored car company. Johnny's ears perked up when hearing this. The other ruckus in the bar — the drunks singing along to Garth Brooks' Friends in Low Places, the hollers and laughs — faded away, as his attention crystalized around their conversation.

Little gems fell from their lips and piled up in Johnny's head, building a small mountain of intrigue. "Heavy J-bags, three million for that Mall of America run," "Scared of that much cash?," "You think that's bad, wait until Christmas," "Double that to seven, at least."

Sweat collected on Johnny's brow. It dripped down the black grease that he'd smeared across his eyes as part of his burglar costume. His gut tingled. The call of crime, of thieving and larceny. Freedom from the room in his mother's double-wide. A new life somewhere exotic. A proper big score, but a fantasy.

An empty beer mug clanked down on Johnny's table. Ray sat down across from him. Johnny snapped out of it, shook his head, and let out a long, defeated sigh. He couldn't rob an armored truck. He wasn't a stick-up man. He knew numbers. He could forge papers. His larceny worked in the shadows.

"I'm headed home, J-bird," Ray said. His speech slurred, mixed in with a belch of Miller High Life. "If you need a ride, I got you, man."

Johnny shook his head. "I'm good. I'll walk home."

"Yeah, I bet you will, big guy." Ray stumbled out of the bar.

This is part one of three of a series of stories by Mythos Noir.

Crime and speculative fiction. Essays from the underbelly. Lives in the Orient.

Hank Gibbons passed away at 10:40 a.m. on August 27th at 112 years old. In those last thirty years, he’d received two heart transplants, a new set of kidneys, a liver, and one of medical history’s first successful prostate transplants. But despite the best efforts of a top-tier healthcare system and the latest advancements in medical science, he’d finally given up the ghost.

Per the instructions in his will, all of his financial assets were given to AIPAC, which ultimately amounted to little after the coverage of his medical expenses. His house and vacation home in Sarasota had been sold to Blackrock, leaving his daughter, son-in-law, and sole grandchild his furniture and electronics “if they wanted them.” All that remained were the funeral arrangements.

Although his beachfront condo was on the market, there was still time to make this lonely, serene stretch of beach the site of his grand seeing off. In attendance were some of his former colleagues at the pharmaceutical company where he’d been a sales rep, along with his accountant, who would give the sole remembrance speech. Also in attendance was Juanita, the twenty-seven-year-old home care nurse who’d faithfully ministered to his every—and I mean every—need. Conspicuously absent were Hank’s daughter and son-in-law, who’d been forced to cancel due to his granddaughter’s—formerly grandson’s—most recent suicide attempt.

For this occasion it was necessary for the party to to charter a ship fitted with a crane. The ship was taken a hundred yards out from the beach, with Hank’s yacht, a fifty-footer affectionately dubbed the Farrah Fawcett, beside it. This small group stood solemnly on the deck of the chartered ship, surrounding the cherry-red ‘74 Pontiac GTO that served as Hank’s coffin. His corpse was propped up behind the wheel in perfect accordance with his last wishes.

Kevin Green, Hank’s accountant, cleared his throat.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being here. Today we are gathered to honor the memory of Henry Francis Gibbons...”

For fifteen minutes, Kevin gave a rundown of Hank’s life and career, his accomplishments, how deeply this loss would affect everyone he’d known. At the conclusion of this speech, everyone took a moment to offer each other condolences. Bobby Jansen, a fifty-two year old co-worker of Hank’s who’d regarded him as a mentor, embraced Juanita.

“Thank you, Miss Gutierrez,” he said, grabbing a generous handful of her ample, shapely ass.

“I can’t tell you how much Hank appreciates you joining him on his journey.”

“What the fuck does that me-”

Her query was cut short when Bobby plunged a hunting knife into her chest. The next blow caught her in the throat, but not before her nails dug angry red furrows into Bobby’s forehead. With a primal grunt, Bobby ran the blade into her stomach. This time she crumpled and fell to the deck, her expression of rage and confusion giving way to an almost tranquil vacancy. She’d come today under the pretense of an inheritance.

Bobby let the knife clatter to the deck, dabbing at his forehead with a wad of tissues. Kevin placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Good job,” he said, lighting a cigar. “Hank would be proud.”

Together they placed Juanita in the GTO next to Hank, Then each taking a gas can they doused the car inside and out. They grabbed two more cans and began pouring those on the yacht. With this done, Kevin made a motion to the crane operator he’d hired and the car was lifted up. The Pontiac was carefully lowered onto the yacht’s stern. Before the crane released its cargo, Kevin tossed his cigar on the yacht’s deck. Both vehicles quickly went up in flames as the car was released.

Like doomed lovers consummating a suicide pact, the vehicles began to sink as “Bad Company” blared across the sea, all of which of course was in perfect accordance with the final wishes of Henry Francis Gibbons.

This story was submitted by Cesare Weltschmerz

I don’t really remember how to write a book review. Which is OK, because I’m not sure Rambo Van Halen knows how to write a book. Which is not to say that Hollywood Samizdat (Passage Press) is not a good book, in fact, it’s an excellent read; self-effacing, funny, filled to the brim with just the kind of keen insights and degenerate fairy tales one would expect from a Hollywood tell-all.

How did a book like this become so dangerous in the first place that it can even be–ironically or not–labeled as “Samizdat”? Arriving at his thesis in a roundabout way, Rambo lays it at the feet of what he calls “The Machine,” the embedded impulse of today’s globalized managerial elites, the Devouring Mother for the Jungians out there. He always knew it was there festering away, but it was only when The Machine came for his youngest son’s nascent artistic talent that Rambo understood the diabolism of its pervasiveness.

In the same way that Ari Aster’s latest film “Eddington” examines the Covid Era through the sharp lens of a small New Mexico town’s mayoral campaign race, Hollywood Samizdat is ultimately a story concerned with the ramifications of the Me Too movement upon Hollywood. How the previous regime, perched at the top of studios, production houses, casting agencies and the rest of the ecosystem that makes the entertainment business tick, were more deft at getting deals done quicker, permitting creative risk-taking, focusing on competency over identity and the like. Yes, it was mostly men, but also women who had that killer instinct thrived as well.

When, post-Me Too/Harvey Weinstein, groups of women, gays and feminized men and their “teams” took over, decision making was diffused, exactly as the Managerial Class likes it. The results are there for all to see, unmistakably.

Credit to the author for not prattling on too much about Me Too in any sort of polemical way. If you are looking for unhinged rants about the dangers of unfettered female vengeance, this is not the book for you. Rambo is too wise, rendering his story and its moralities with far more subtlety. There’s a touching story about one of his own industry mentors winning a long awaited Golden Globe, one of those tough guy gals that unwittingly mentored him through his own trajectory through the business.

If you happen to be living under a rock, The Machine is not doing so well these days, as the narrative control (lies, fake scandals and gaslighting) essential to its smooth running gets pulled apart like processed string cheese just a bit more everyday; the planks of tradition, culture, and heritage are measured twice and cut once, and finally put back where they belong. Almost without trying to be, Hollywood Samizdat is a small but important chink in the armor of this dying regime. There are cautionary tales within, but also perhaps even a roadmap, letters to a young poet, of how to stand athwart the current paradigm and back towards a system that would once again elevate quality over process.

But what about the book itself?

Well, expect to find yourself unabashedly rooting for a pseudo-renegade Hollywood film and commercial production guy seeking a way out of an industry he describes, in adroitly humanistic terms, as a haven for high-functioning yet mentally ill degenerates, next-level narcissists and wannabe god emperor-directors. Some of them just come across as your standard American ruffian, obsessively driven, the kind of people Twain would have satirized and secretly loved and Whitman would have gawped at.

The kind of people who made America great in the first place. And then there are the Oscar-winning actors–stay away from the Method Ones Rambo warns–who want nothing more than to seduce the extremely good-looking women summoned from across the country (and indeed now the globe) and loudly assfuck them in a trailer on a suburban side street in the middle of an afternoon film shoot. All while losing their precious golden hour light. Just remember, it’s the women asking for it, harder and faster, literally.

For Rambo the way out is through writing, and undoubtedly we are seeing the birth of a second phase of an already very solid creative career. Hollywood Samizdat contains the grit and grime of a life pretty well lived and not yet over. This is not the work of some mid-20’s autist with no life experience outside of MFA workshops filled with shrieking harridans threatened by a sliver of male ingenuity.

We should all be rooting for Rambo and his new métier. He has good stories to tell and is a good teller of them. And he understands that the industry he has worked within is, and forever will be, for all the bullshit and industry revolutions, and revulsions, brought on by Me Too or Covid or the rise of streaming networks, based on telling good stories, in moving picture form. He’s romantic about the talent, dedication and skill required behind the camera to produce such great works.

His own story is sweet and nostalgic, while those of the people he’s met and worked alongside for many years are richly related. When you’ve worked as hard and as long as he has in an industry notorious for its long hours of tedium, paired with exquisite specialization: in film and camera technology, in creativity, in production, in abstract problem solving–like hardwiring a John Deere Gator and driving it straight across San Francisco from Golden Gate Park to the Embarcadero in the middle of the night, in order to get an arbitrary shot by the Bay, only to get fired the next day–in “getting the job done,” in being a team player, in looking out for the people above you and below you in a tightly-coiled totem pole of competency and ego and money and career and status and achievement.

Our world is rife with incompetency, all day long we merely survive it, nothing works and we’re charged subscription fees for the privilege of our own frustration and yet, in an industry that is so easy to despise, Rambo is able to rather deftly make you fall in love with Hollywood all over again. I actually hate him for this. So many of us just want to burn the fucker down and start fresh.

But we have to resist the Vengeful Son energy that is natural to these moments; It is ultimately a Siren Song. In the ashes of what they left us, we will restore the soil. Tale as old as time. America and Hollywood are intrinsically bound together–in that tight chain of human endeavor Rambo has long been a part of, as one goes, so goes the other.

We’re all going to have to find a way to fall in love with America again, and one way to do that is for Hollywood to tell us better stories in better ways and to drop the bad stories, those indelicately stuffed with unnatural political agendas and trendy narrative constructions, told in piss-poor fashion as quickly as a fired PA who didn’t suck up the arbitrary public berating from his coke sweat-drenched 1st AD with just the right amount of aplomb. One comes away with the idea that in Rambo’s no-nonsense world of multiple 18-hour days strung together into a haze of mysterious motor functioning, the tolerance for incompetency is actually rather low.

And so while the “Above the Line” elite of the industry–the writers, directors, producers, actors and executives granted equity in their vaunted creative projects–die on the hill of obsequious social justice masquerades, ensuring there are enough black lesbian body positive (i.e. disgustingly obese and obnoxious) girlbosses in the latest incarnation of an Elizabethan political drama, it is the “below the line” workaday types, from which Rambo emerges, who simply roll their eyes and get on with the work so they can get the damn shot, go home and spend some time with their families. With some pride to boot.

Hollywood Samizdat is easy to read because Rambo is well-versed in the “rigorous honesty” of AA. Which means he knows how to get to the point of things quickly. Throat clearing is at a minimum. The guy actually has something to say. How refreshing. Told plainly, for those who need reminding, means even occasionally politically incorrect. Or what we use to call common fucking sense. Hopefully we’re moving past terms like “Dissident Right” and “Fascist” and “Nazi” and back to something a bit less, oh I don’t know, intentionally divisive. No one has the time for this anymore. We’ve got a country and a culture to save. It’s the top of the 2nd inning, folks.

Hollywood Samizdat is a direct and real book, loaded with film industry anecdotes, maxims and a few delectable grotesqueries. In an act of class unusual for his industry he doesn’t name names, nor does he have to. We’re a culture besieged by content, plenty of which remains excellent, still too much of which is dreck, or “goyslop” in the popular parlance, and therefore the more intelligent of us will be easily able to imagine the actors, directors, producers and such in our minds using Rambo’s prompts to set us off on our own imaginative fantasies. Clever how he does that. I don’t even think he meant to.

And within this frame–aha!–Rambo effectively reclaims something, for himself, his caste within Hollywood and his readers: Integrity. Affability. Reliability. Stability. Craft. The pride in getting the job done, in working hard not only so you can look yourself in the mirror when you brush your teeth in the morning, but because you are part of something bigger, a chain of people, events, places, times, budgets, obligations, responsibilities.

You didn’t let addiction get the best of you. You didn’t cheat on your wife even when your teenage crush grabbed your cock at a West Hollywood Wrap Party. You took your dog for a long walk around the American Apparel factory instead. Sure, you might have been zooted out on opiates at the time, but one lesson at a time. Your drug dealers liked your dog.

That chain, that people young and old, sane or imbalanced, drunk or sober, liberal or conservative, invested or detached, all tirelessly maintain in order to produce the work, mostly on time, mostly on budget. Even if some nerves are scattered along the way and a few who couldn’t cut it have to drop off.

Ok, more than a few, and Rambo is all too familiar with them. This is America, baby. Freedom doesn’t just mean blue jeans, fast cars, and the open road of teenage fantasy as rendered to us in the 20th Century, it’s the freedom to fuck it all up too. Having come close to an ignominious end himself, with a long ago vanquished alcohol and painkiller addiction, he’s able to look honestly at it with the grace and gratitude of middle age, dad-hood and a healthy, though not totally unscathed, marriage. His wife sounds like a hard-working saint in her own right. Thanks, Mrs. Van Halen.

Samizdat is a book about balance: balancing life, work, ambition, the self, reality, responsibility, family, love, marriage, money, relationships. And history.

The author effortlessly weaves in personal stories, of his parent’s rocky relationship and the chaotic childhood he endured because of it, the death of his father, and, in true Hollywood fashion, a war story, or three. Because that’s what Hollywood does best, isn’t it?

Whether Strangelove or Saving Private Ryan or Dunkirk, The Bridge on the River Kwai, or 1917 or The Big Red One, which gets an important mention. We find out late in the story that after 9/11 Rambo tried to enlist in the military, because he had nothing better to do, but given some personal health challenges was literally laughed out of the recruiting office.

It’s real war that is often on Rambo’s mind, the war his grandfather served in, the war his uncles and best friend’s father served in, that create other kinds of chains between peoples, histories, families, countries, generations. That connect us to some things even as they sever us from essential parts of ourselves. It’s called sacrifice. And it hurts. It takes its toll. The ferryman must be paid. Wars that mark families with stains just barely visible underneath where medals were pinned.

There are horror stories out there in the real world, stories where men are shot and scared and die alone. Or cancelled and shamed by schoolmarms. Had careers stolen from them. For less than nothing.

I don’t know about you, and I have no interest in stealing valor from anyone, but just trying to live, thrive and survive in America these past 40 years, I sort of feel like a war survivor too. We just now seem to be getting a sense of what we’ve been up against–55 million foreign visa holders, thoroughly-captured institutions, the collapse of media credibility–so buckle up, kids.

Here, in Samizdat, back in the sunny and safe confines of Santa Monica or Burbank, in the controlled prose and lexicon of Mister Rambo Van Halen and his merry band of highly-competent producers, we can smooth all that out and once again create myth and hero, and give meaning to, and animate beauty.

We can return to a place that makes more sense, without resentment, even for the people who so clearly led us astray, resisting the vengeance that is so clearly our right to take. And we can start making beautiful things again, artifacts of the age, books that are honest confrontations with the self, warts and all, and in moving pictures that slide across a silver screen in a dark room, safe and healthy with our neighbors surrounding us, and show us who we are and what we, as a nation, a people, are capable of.

What’s more American than Rambo Van Halen?

Hollywood.

Rambo’s a great storyteller. Many are saying he’s the greatest storyteller left in Hollywood. Don’t be a fag, buy his book. Keep it on your coffee table so the Zoomettes think you’re well-read and all that jazz. You can find it here.

I have a weird job. I get paid to kill dogs. I go out killing stray dogs, and I take a video of myself doing it, and I post the video online, from my own POV, and people send me money.

I find the videos funny. Most people just say they’re “interesting.”

I used to like doing it, back when it was a secret, just for me. Now it’s more of a job.

Last year I actually had this dog of my own, like as a pet, but I ended up killing her, cause I thought it would make for a good video. It did. I put it behind a paywall. People bought it.

That dog’s name was Lucy, I had her for years, I even lived with her, and I felt bad as I was killing her, but it felt so good to make the video and just be honest for once, I did it anyway.

I actually tortured her for a while, not because I liked to see her in pain, God no, I loved her, but I loved the idea of the video that would come of my abuse more. I thought it was funny, to be honest. I still do. I still watch the video, and all the other videos, and I laugh at my former self.

I know it sounds crazy—you kill dogs?! Yeah but that's my thing... if I don’t do it for a few days in a row I start to get this physical urge, especially when I see dogs out on the street, especially a certain breed of dog, all I can think about is Killing them.

Most people hate my dog-killing videos. But a lot of people seem to enjoy them, too.

I only interact with fans. These are people I can be honest with. Sometimes I meet these people. Sometimes they’re aspiring dog-killers, sometimes they killed a lot of dogs back in the day and they’re re-living the rush of dog-killing through me, sometimes they’ve never killed a dog in their life and they want to learn how to do it.

Sometimes they have a dog they want me to kill. These are the most difficult videos to make. Knowing their previous owner is going to watch, knowing their friends and family might see it too… it really adds to the drama of the whole presentation.

The drama—is there anything more dramatic than this? I try to add timestamps, inject my own unmistakable flair, set the scene, make sure the viewer knows that this is all real, this is a thing that happened in the world, this was a real dog with a home and now it’s dead.

I used to feign innocence, calling it an “addiction,” but in truth it’s always a choice. Truth is I just can’t come up with anything better to do.

My audience has a significant political bent. I mostly ignore it. But sometimes I lean into it, to get more people watching my videos. I have never voted in an election and I probably never will.

I experience real emotion while I’m killing the dogs. And while I’m editing the video of myself doing it, too. I make sure to pay attention to when I’m feeling that emotion, and lean in, so to heighten the drama of the story.

I’ve actually turned it into a kind of TV show. I don’t upload videos with any kind of regularity, because, well, it’s all real, and you never know when you’ll stumble on something good. That’s part of what makes it so thrilling, for the audience and me.

I tried to tell a fictional dog-killing tale once, I mean, I made a fake video in which I undertook a particularly gruesome and emotional endeavor, and I shared it, and a lot of people got angry. That it wasn’t a real dog. But the feeling was there… I was missing the dog I used to live with, my good pet Lucy, the one I killed long ago, and I wanted to say that, but nobody cares, they just want to see more dogs dead.

Most of the people I meet hope I’ll stop doing it, eventually, killing these dogs. A lot of people, apparently, wish I would make videos about something else, anything else, because you really are a talented videographer, man, but I just look at them and smile, shaking my head, because I know they would never have found my channel if I wasn’t Dog Killing Guy (DKG).

IRL I blend right in. I look normal. Girls smile at me on the street. My sisters and parents have mixed feelings about the whole thing. At least I’m being creative, productive.

A lot of young guys watch my videos. It’s cool, I’m getting young guys back into film. Some of them even want to make films themselves. Not about killing dogs, of course, but I’m told my shamelessness is inspiring regardless.

I’ll post the videos even if the dog gets away. Those are some of the funniest videos actually, when I try to kill the dog but the devil runs free.

Sometimes I get attached to those dogs that got away. I still think about killing them, for months after our encounter.

This one dog in Boston, it was so beautiful, drove me crazy, I spent almost a full month of my life trailing this dog around waiting for the right moment to strike. And then, when I finally had it, I didn’t do it. Because I want that dog as a pet. Come to think of it, that’s probably the only thing that could make me stop doing this, making these videos. If that one beautiful greyhound from back in Boston would have just stayed put and let me put a collar on. She actually bit me.

I still want that dog, of course, I think about her all the time, gosh I’m thinking about her right now, I must have thought of her just about every single day for the past 3 months, since I first saw her in April, back when the show was good, yeah ever since I realized I wanted her to be my pet and I didn’t want to kill dogs any more, my videos have lacked a certain enthusiasm and flair that more and more of my viewers can feel, over time.

People who have been watching since the beginning are reaching out to tell me to stop making videos, it’s getting repetitive, but also more people are finding the show every day and telling me they love it, and I’m trying hard to put on a good show, but the number of dead dogs is starting to feel ridiculous, even in this day and age when killing a dog or two isn’t that crazy for a healthy normal guy.

Some guys say I shouldn’t kill dogs, and I call them faggots. They secretly want to be killing dogs too, unless they already passed through that phase of life. It’s a natural biological occurrence, to want to kill dogs like I do.

I will admit that sometimes I am just going through the motions, though.

Sometimes I’ll kill dogs even when I don't feel like it, just to keep the show alive. This has to be REAL, I cannot plan it or even contrive it, it just has to happen, and so sometimes in order to increase the odds of this happening I’ll drug myself, get drunk or high, lower my inhibitions, so that I can Kill another dog, Get that video, Make that money. Feel like a man again.

I used to have a lot of friends before I started doing this. Now I have more. They just know me as a different person. I don’t have to hide from them, ‘cause they’ve seen me kill so many times. The only thing they cannot take is dishonesty.

The show has gotten less honest lately because I really want that greyhound, but I can’t find her, and the aimless pointless search for this one particular bitch is not as “interesting,” dramatically, as the show where I just keep killing different dogs in different places, for sport, until I get caught.

I told someone the truth about this, and they asked me: “Don’t you think you might only be so obsessed with this one particular dog because you were unable to kill her?” No. I’d never seen a dog like this before. She was barely even a dog, to me.

This greyhound, I think she wanted to be mine, at first, she gave me a bit of a chance. But I blew it by trying too hard. Also she doesn’t want to be owned, like most dogs, deep down, do.

But even if this dog were to be my pet, I’d probably just kill her eventually, to get some content for a new video.

See, at the end of the day, it’s not about the dogs, it’s about the viewers. And my future self, laughing my ass off, watching me kill.

“I think it’s time, yeah, to confess. I never thought I would admit this, but it’s time. I’ll tell you how I was seduced by a demon.”

I decide against replacing “seduced” with “raped,” which might make the opening more shocking, but I’m concerned my audience might assume I was sodomised. Furthermore, I lack the confidence they’ll know the difference between an incubus and a succubus, so I refrain from rewording. I consider leaving a few letters in lower case to create that raw, “I never look back” style in my writing. Editing is woke, so I continue, “I remember her legs, long and sexy, like chopsticks, but more erotic. I could take or leave the tail, but what really revved my engine was her nipples. Hard and rock like, sticking out of her shirt like two, uh, mini boob bullseyes on her other, bigger boobs. All in all, very ‘fucking’ arousing.”

I smile at my own Dickensian pun. Perhaps a little too sophisticated for the readers of my work, the Naughty Playboy, but I like to think future academics will appreciate the extra flourish. I can imagine a professor in a tweed jacket trying to explain to his bored students the subtle humour of “fucking.” Today’s anti-woke is tomorrow’s outsider artist. While dreaming about my work being discussed in the future, I realise the church is the first kind of woke and by engaging in sexual intercourse with a sexy she-demon, I’m rebelling against the very concept of woke.

Voltaire would be proud. The laptop closes. Unfortunately for my readers, I had a writers’ salon to attend.

The weather was a war for dominion of the sky. Clouds, heavy with ambition hope to finally free us from the tyranny of the sun, drag themselves on their grey bellies, declaring victory as the light retreats into night. Their celebration threatens rain, which I don’t mind. I think a good thunderstorm would be the perfect background for a new vignette about having sex in my fuck-mobile, not that I’ve settled on a name. I’m amazed no one has had my idea to convert a hearse into a bedroom on wheels. I know women like to be shocked and I think the van idea has lost its association with kidnapping. Chat-GPT has yet to provide an alternative name.

I start to feel anxious as other cars are pulling off to let me pass. I’m dimly aware they think I’m leading a funeral train. It’s all very “On the Road” I think to myself, not entirely sure if I’m right about that.

Finally, I arrive at the house, which promises to be a night to remember in the history of the New Literary Renaissance. Of the twenty or so people, around half are complete strangers asking questions and writing answers down on massive notebooks with oversized, novelty pencils. I can safely assume they’re journalists. The other half are, well, let’s just say, a little more eclectic. A normie might think it was a costume party. Only another writer has the unrelenting vision to realise my fellow writers are pursuing the real. I walk past someone in a Hawaiian shirt and bucket hat who nods knowingly. We both recognise talent. I can see my first real competition for attention tonight, a man shaking a cocktail mixer while wearing a turtleneck sweater with the sleeves cut off at the shoulder.

“That’s what guys do, you know, bros. They fuck and then they talk about it. In Oxford, where I attended Oxford University, I posited that the first cave paintings were likely attempts at portraying sexual conquests. Of course, this is back at Oxford University, before, well, you know.”

I can’t help but hold up a fist in solidarity. Mr. turtleneck was amongst the first casualties of woke doxing; it nearly ruined him. I can see the gesture of WRITER familiarity is appreciated in his sardonic smile, probably the greatest of all expressions for a writer to know, as he poses for another picture for the journalist.

At this point, I begin to panic. As embarrassing as it is to admit, I’ve forgotten the word for cool.

It was “based,” I remember that. Most recently, I believe it was “aristocratic” next? I’m unsure and I can feel the expectation to compliment everyone’s most recent work but I’m loath to use an inappropriate phrase. As a last ditch effort, I raise my voice to be overheard above the few live podcasts being recorded in the house.

“I have sex with women... but I love men.”

Someone shouts from the kitchen, “Sprezzatura” which confuses things further. I decide to just refer to everything as “Vulgar in all the best ways.”

I tentatively approach a journalist myself, agreeing to start a couple of podcasts with other writers before I get close enough to provide a quote. Unfortunately, before I can introduce myself, I’m waylaid by another fellow author. He stares for a moment, waiting for me to ask about his work while flexing under his layered leather jackets for the journalist observing us. I’m mortified he thinks I’m also a journalist and laugh to break the tension. “HaHA!”

“Oh yeah, one of our guys. I want to get your read on something, ya dig. I’ve got this novel, yaknowhatimsayin? Check it out. A detective, acts all incompetent. What’s wrong with this guy, you know? Then, here’s the twist. He’s actually a genius. He keeps buggin’ the murderer to trip ‘em up. Going to call it, ‘Labrynthian Immortal Crimes.’”

“Have uh, right. Have you seen ‘Columbo’?”

“Shit. SHIT. You’re the fifth person to mention that. Damn. Looks like I’ll have to fall back on my original idea of an elderly widow who solves crimes while writing about them. Everyone thinks she’s too old and too womanly to actually solve them, callin’ it ‘Homicide, the Woman Writer Wrote.’”

I’m not actually sure if he’s testing me and I decide to fall back on my own character, “You should give her big tits.”

I remember it’s impossibly rude to give advice to other writers. “Honor amongst thieves,” I whisper to myself as I prepare for his infamous writer’s rage. His eyes search for any hint of arrogance on my increasingly embarrassed face before the icy expression cracks.

“Sprezzatura, brother. See, that’s what the normies, the subscribers, don't get. It takes guts to do this thing of ours. You’ve got to be bold. In a way, I think we’re the only true warriors in this age. Everyone else is too cowardly to just knock back a few whiskeys and bleed on their typewriter. By the way, quote me if you’re going to use that.”

“Yeah man, I wouldn’t dream of it. Not my style. You know me. I’m just looking for a pair of tits with ideally the rest of a body that I could also, uh, have sex with, in an erotic fashion.”

“Right on, brother, I think you’ll enjoy the night’s entertainment.” Seeing my confusion, he feels confident his comment is sufficiently cryptic before smiling for another reporter.

I can feel the age of everyone in the room. I’m reminded of the beaches of my home town.

Instead of sand that rises to ease your bare feet into the cool water, before taking revenge by following you home, we had bare, black rock. The stone, carved by relentless crashing of water and time, was jagged and cruel, promising agony should you fall. It was like the ocean had sculpted a threat in those rocks, a reminder of the power of unrelenting days. I wonder what time has done to me. I can’t look in a mirror any more.

“Are you telling my hired a sexy, erotic stripper, one of the fuckable variety?”

“You’ll just have to wait and see, brother. I hope the Naughty Playboy isn’t getting woke feet?”

He quickly spins making sure the outermost leather jacket flows up like a cape, hitting at least one other writer. Trepidation begins to worm it’s way inside my otherwise staunch confidence.

My unyielding writer support hasn’t completely inundated me from the rumours of rife homosexuality in the New Anti-Woke Literary Renaissance scene.

I’m pulled by the flow of bodies towards a door, while the journalists extricate themselves, allowing the group to move unabated towards our final destination. I’m suppressing my panic as I fear the party is transitioning from Bel Ami to some sort of Post Modern/Post AIDs book about homosexuality. [Note: Try looking up to see if such a book exists] We’re funneled like cattle from all rooms of the house towards what I believe to be a basement. Now it’s the journalists turn to deliver a sardonic expression and I can see the delight in their eyes as they move us along.

“Naughty Playboy, welcome to your initiation!”

I can’t place the voice and I don’t have the courage to resist the momentum of the crowd composed of my comrades in letters. My feet drag. I’m being pushed along. Turtleneck grabs one arm and I turn my head to see Leatherjacket pushing me along with a hand on my back.

“Trust me, you’ll love this.”

I cross the threshold to the basement and take a deep sigh of relief. The breath escaping my mouth is a sound somewhere between a laugh and a cry of thankfulness. Instead of entering a BDSM dungeon, I’m in a makeshift bookstore. The room itself is larger than I thought possible, but I’m not concerned with architectural limitations at the moment. In fact, I’m mostly shocked by the applause that greets us. There are rows of aluminum folding chairs, all of them filled with women.

“Are these... our fans?”

I’m stunned. My eyes dance over the faces of raised eyebrows and shaking heads. The women’s hair style runs the gambit of professional office workers, carefully maintained and tastefully controlled, despite the fact they all wear the same pursed, unamused smile. I see some are even shaking their heads or tittering as the men walk in. Turtleneck throws his arms up, flexing for them as he snakes through the isles to the folding desk in the middle. Each of the writers have a stack of books, their own work presumably, that they begin to fling out to the audience, none of which make an attempt to catch them.

I’m hesitating now, unsure of my next steps, when I see a few of the women rise from their chairs nearest to me. Again I see the shaking head of disapproval. The woman tilts her head to the site before raising her hand to swiftly strike me across the face. Pain and confusion flow from my face in tears that excite and arouse the entire group. It’s difficult to maintain my composure while a finger flies by my face, not to strike again but to point to the stage, demanding I follow the rest.

The other writers have begun to don their costumes. Leatherjacket puts a comforting hand on my shoulder before handing me a wooden mask carved into a slender crescent with phallic images forming the ends at the forehead and chin. Some of the writers strip to simply the mask, while others hold on to a few choice elements of their outfit. Leatherjacket, for example, had removed everything but his innermost leather jacket, its colour warped by its position under the rest to a fleshy pink.

Some wore capes decorated with elaborate religious symbols. I saw all manner of crosses, pentagrams and even a few I was unfamiliar with. Others would dance around with hats from all sorts of professions, Stetsons, hard hats, policeman’s caps. The gyration and shuddering would be rewarded with cheers and scornful, sarcastic adulation.

At a certain point, when the dancing became too exhausting and the women bored, it was time for the next step of the ceremony. Of course, I could only mimic my fellow writers. I threw my body around with the best of intentions, fearful of how the women would react if I stop, constantly observing the other writers for guidance. As they began to slow down; I stopped as well. I even fell to my knees when, upon seeing the others do the same, I realised it was intentional and not simply the result of exhaustion.

No, as we knelt down, I could see nothing but I heard the sound of applause and cheers. The energy was rising, becoming uncontrollable, manifesting as jeers and whistles, howls and even simple screaming obscenities at us. It was impossible to discern lust from loathing, the atmosphere congealing into something like the curiosity that accompanies revulsion. It was only when the noise slowly ebbed to silence, interrupted by the occasional taunting remark, that I realised we were entering the next part of the evening’s celebration.

Once again, Leatherjacket had to shake me in order for my continued participation. I quickly stood up like the rest, and reached out for a curved saw that was being offered to us all by the women. It was the culmination of tonight's festivities. Turtleneck, who I recognised by his triceps alone, was the first to begin by holding the top of the phallic mask and sawing away, working the blade in an elegant fashion, as if playing a violin placed above his head. The women of the room lost any remnant of self control and began ripping at their clothes and hair in rage and delight.

I felt the heat of the fire before I saw it. Disgusting, profane heat that made me feel sick. I could feel the sweat running down my face, seasoning the wooden mask with shame and fear. All my emotion juxtaposed with the delight of the women and the bravado of the writers. The increased warmth and quickening of the crackling noise was enough to deduce the fire was growing.

Unable to control my curiosity, I saw turtleneck holding the sawed off phallus above his head, titillating the near frenzied crowd of women, before throwing the object in the fire.

The sawing noise was beginning to make me nauseous and I couldn’t work up the strength to begin the process myself. The heat was overwhelming. I didn’t understand. I was equally compelled to both saw at my own mask and use the blade to escape. Before I could make a decision, a woman emerged from the crowd, commanding the room. She had recently shaved her head in a high and tight fashion and wore a suit. I’m not entirely sure how I intuitively knew it was a woman as her appearance might suggest otherwise, but all the same, I knew it.

“Welcome, Mister…well, it’s not relevant. However, ‘mister.’ The sound lingers on the tongue, unlike the phrase “miss” that seems to fade as quickly as it comes. You may call me Paimon. Please, calm yourself. I’m not sure if, over the course of your study, you’ve heard my name? Even if you have, I’m sure it’s all libel. I’ve been here a long time, but never in full. Never truly born whole. I’m here to help you.”

The weight of the saw was too much to ignore, yet I didn’t have the strength to release my grip.

As I watched Paimon speak I could see the occasional glimmer of something more masculine that seemed to quickly fade to once more feminine, even attractive, as if defying the yearning for dominance. It was at once repulsive and alluring. Looking at her was like seeing a car crash and wondering how it might feel to be driving.

“I think you understand your choice. Defy Pan, join us. Become a member, become a writer.”

In the end, my choices had been narrowed to a binary. Yes or no. Cut or not. I didn’t have the strength to raise my hand and Paimon approached me. Delicate, perfumed skin obfuscated a powerful grasp, raising my hand to the mask.

“Are you her?” I ask.

“Virility must be tempered. What sort of world could tolerate men being left to be wild. Look at your fans, your lovers. You must learn to be delicate. You love us, don’t you? Allow us to love you.”

The Naughty Playboy is a nationally recognised author, certainly not without some controversy.

You can find his work in several publications as well as the podcast “Drowned in the Sea of Fertility.” His most recent work, “Tits : A Retrospective” can be found in most bookstores this autumn.

There are two types of hell. The one you earn, and the one gifted to you by a girl with a group chat.

I didn’t cheat on her. I didn’t hit her. I didn’t even ghost her, which, in hindsight, might’ve been the more humane option. Instead, I broke up with her the regular way: "We’re not working, I need space, we’ve grown apart, etc." She cried. I hugged her. She asked to keep the sweatshirt. I said okay.

Then came Tea.

If you’re unfamiliar, imagine Reddit, but exclusively for anonymous girl-victim narratives. You post screenshots, blurry photos, vague timelines, and enough emotional affect to trigger mass sympathy. "Warning: This man hurt me." It doesn’t matter how. The pain is the proof. Comments are disabled. Facts are optional. Screenshots are cherry-picked. Eyewitnesses are her sorority sisters. Dissenters get banned.

It started with a post.

“He told me I was safe. I wasn’t. Warning: this man is dangerous.”

No name. Just a candid photo of my side profile at a party from a year ago. The same dumb floral button-up I wore when I met her.

Then her friends chimed in. They all had a story. I "made them uncomfortable." I “coerced” someone by asking if she wanted to come over. I “displayed narcissistic traits.” I was, they decided, a rapist-adjacent narcissistic abuser with sociopathic tendencies.

The hashtags made it real.
#BelieveWomen.
#DoBetter.
#MenAreTrash.

Within 48 hours it was on Twitter. My name. My face. My workplace. “Why is this predator employed at Sentinel Analytics?” someone asked rhetorically, tagging my company. A verified account quote-tweeted it:

“Fire him. There are thousands of decent men looking for jobs.”

HR scheduled a Zoom.

I shaved. Wore a tie. Smiled through the panic.

The Director of People & Culture looked like a Pixar mom…wide eyes, soft voice, big glasses. She said they were “taking the allegations seriously.” I said there weren’t any allegations, not real ones. She said the optics were troubling. I said what about the truth? She said, “This isn’t about truth, it’s about trust.”

I was let go.

That week I met with a lawyer. Some family friend. Faded pinstripe suit. Fingers too fat for his keyboard. His office smelled like boiled carpet.

I told him everything. Showed him the Tea post. The retweets. The screenshots. The screenshots of the screenshots.

He nodded slowly, like a man pretending to understand blockchain.

“You could sue,” he said, leaning back like he’d been holding in a fart for 20 years. “But you’d probably lose. Women have the public’s favor. Tech companies have protections. You’d spend five years in court and get five grand in damages—if you win.”

I asked what justice looked like.
He laughed. “Justice? You're in the wrong century for that.”

That night I sat at the bar, halfway through a whiskey I couldn’t afford, when I saw her. Big eyes. Big thighs. Bigger tits. Blouse with tiny red hearts. Blonde, but the roots showed ambition. She looked at me the way girls used to, before everything.

I raised my glass. Smiled. She never broke eye contact.

I took a deep breath. Walked over. Voice steady, the way you do when you’re pretending not to be broken.

“Can I get you a drink?”

She tilted her head, eyes narrowing.

“You’re that guy from Tea, aren’t you?”

Time slowed. My pulse became a metronome.

“What?” I asked, as if I didn’t know.

“You tried to rape your ex. You’re disgusting.”

She stood up. Loud. Intentional. Eyes turned. I felt like an animal cornered under a strobe light.

I clenched my fist. My brain whispered do it. Just once. Just to make something feel real. But I didn’t. I dropped cash on the bar and left.

I called my mom on the walk home. Straight to voicemail.
“Hey. It’s me. Just wanted to say I love you. That’s all.”

I sat on the edge of my bed. The same mattress where I’d slept beside the girl who’d lit the match. I opened the safe. Took out the gun I’d bought after the first break-in back when I lived in Eastwood. I loaded it. Set it on the desk.

But first, I needed a drink. Halfway through a bottle of Jim Beam, I did the only thing left: scrolled. Twitter. Instagram. Reddit. Out of habit. Like checking your own grave.

Except this time it was different.

Top post wasn’t a takedown. It was an obituary.

BREAKING: Tea app hacked. All user data leaked.
Names. Faces. GPS data. The works.
Posted on a torrent site.
Some nerd even made a Google Map.

I clicked the link.

And there it was. A map. Pins. Every user who had been dumb enough to verify their identity for an “anonymous” gossip app. Click a pin—see a profile. Selfie. Full name. Geolocation data.

I expanded the map until my city stretched across the screen and then started working my way through a sea of blue pins.

There she was.

Her new apartment, too. Someone had uploaded her driver’s license. DMV photo. Home address. Birthdate.

There were thousands like her. The friends who backed her. The commenters. Every last self-righteous coward hiding behind a username like “abortwhitemales” and “radfem22.”

The gun was still on the desk. Loaded.

But now it wasn’t pointed at me.

They keep their eyes open because they’re not real.

I didn’t believe it either. Not until I saw the mailman smile with all his teeth at once. Not grin. Not smirk. All his teeth, upper and lower, like a dog baring its gums before the kill. He smiled at me because he knew I knew. That’s how they test your awareness. They push. They leave hints. If you react, they upgrade your file.

They're not human. They wear your neighbors like Halloween masks. They ride flesh like it's public transit. You can spot them if you know how to look. Look for the twitch. Look for the way they scratch behind their ears, like resetting a signal. Look for the flicker in the eye, that VHS-static shimmer right before they speak.

Every person you pass in a grocery store aisle has a file. A record. A score. You're assigned a Threat Index based on your thoughts. The cameras don't just watch anymore—they translate. They measure you against algorithms older than speech. Thoughtcrime isn’t science fiction, it’s backend data collection.

They know I’m writing this. They’ll call it schizophrenia, paranoia, delusion. That's the firewall. Psychiatry is their antivirus software. Break the code, they diagnose you. Show patterns, they drug you. See too much, they lock you up and call it “safety.”

But I remember.

I remember the dentist injecting something behind my molars and whispering into my ear:

“He’s one of the lucid ones.”

I remember waking up in a different shirt than the one I wore to bed, with water in my lungs and gravel in my teeth.

I remember seeing the cop across from me at the diner blink sideways.

No one else saw it. Because they weren’t real either. Or they were already compromised.

You think this is insane. That’s fine. But answer this:

Why do they build cities that make you sick?
Why are the lights in supermarkets too bright?
Why is everyone too tired to fight, but never too tired to obey?

We are not living in the world. We are living in the mock-up. A prototype simulation, fine-tuned for obedience, distraction, and infertility. They sterilize through hormones, microplastics, and pixels. No need for war. Just feed the cattle estrogen and entertainment until they forget they had teeth once.

They erased our history. That’s why you know nothing before 1850. All the “portraits” from before then are AI renderings. Ask yourself: why does every medieval king look the same? Why are all their eyes dead? Because they weren’t drawn. They were printed.

The past was real. The present is a lie we live in to forget it.

Every politician is an actor with a detachable face. Every celebrity is a drone wrapped in skin. Every child born today is encoded with a death date and a backdoor override. The air is weaponized. The food is scripted. The love you feel is algorithmically induced oxytocin manipulation.

The sun used to be yellow before 2012. Now it’s white. There used to be more bugs buzzing around on a summer’s eve. Now it’s strangely quiet.

You are not in control. You are not awake.
But you could be.

I saw them. I saw their real faces at 3:33 A.M. in a parking lot behind a Rite Aid. They shimmered into being, like glass melting, and they whispered in a dialect older than Aramaic. When they noticed me noticing them, they offered me a deal. I spat in their eye. They don’t blink. But they flinched.

I am writing this in blood and desperation, in the space between their sweeps. The world you know is already gone.
They just haven’t told you yet.

They don’t blink. Because they don’t need to.

You should start wondering why you do.

Socialista sits somewhere between Soho and Lower Manhattan and according to Google, “evokes Old Havana with antiques and plantation-style decor.” Upscale clients, many of them divorced from reality, unwittingly here to serve as background for a show of deranged fantasy.

Old Havana is reimagined as a tax haven for cheats and scoundrels of the I Heard You Paint Houses variety, echoing the music of potbellied men roaming in the Caribbean, beholden to their honeypots and exotic mistresses. Antiques signal expressions of doubt in the face of new modernism; faithful but rusted Bible-truth. Plantations are an aporia, a haven for the persecuted but merciless Europe-bred contingent, who in turn mercilessly breed a nation of African people cursed to forever wander and gawk at their own displacement.

The lounge—“lounge” used here describes a total disregard of a particular brand of quickness that is typified to the lower classes—boasts of booths where celebrities touring the coasts have been stealthily initiated into mindful centuries of Cubano heritage. The eighteen-dollar Cuban sandwich here is the pinnacle of abject consumerism, appreciated as an accomplished le résultat of bread and cured ham. The tourists are here to marvel and eat and laugh and drink and fart and forget that they are, in essence, touring the past and its unwanted scenes of abjection.

This place, with its plush furniture and low-hanging chandeliers, has seen its fair share of bacchanals consisting of men and women in stiff linty gowns masking their terror with off-kilter smiles, braided egos and harmonized Progressive-era values. Glorified Catholic mob bosses heap on death threats in conversation like a ton of parsley in a Tabbouleh salad. Skinny debutantes who plow Manhattan beauty stores everyday for fittings and job holdings hold on to their tresses and gab about fine things while young Wall Streeters, newly minted, chase tail and tell long-winded tales about their unacknowledged mistresses entombed in lofts within city limits.

Sinatra-era music plays in the backdrop, seducing listeners and their windswept hair (they just happened to catch a chill in the parking lot); the music’s heady voice and dandy lyrics steadily rise above the din. They drink and make fools of themselves, of each other, and have fitful white-hot liquor visions of gods and monsters mute and resolute. The palace stands as if in a Solomonic dream, wisdom and wealth accruing over the years, filling the crevices, rattling the floorboards.

All the creaking and heaving would misinform you, we are not in a shipyard, the past merely has us caught between its jagged teeth, we slip through its gummy openings, dance in the jungle wallpaper like Baltimora’s Tarzan Boy. The rafters open up like rib cages and the walls dissolve into the montage; the clock counts down into the next century, its hands spinning away at hypnotic speeds. The chorus of laughter rises like leavened bread; an earmarked postmodernist draft blows through the windows, the curtains billowing like soft clouds. Here is where we meet our famed, infamous anti-hero, “fat fuck” and “self-proclaimed owner” of the stage we’re about to set.

Harvey Weinstein, the co-owner of Miramax and creator of beloved flicks such as Fruitvale Station and Good Will Hunting, responsible for birthing a litter of beloved three-dimensional cultural and cultic figures, such as Django and Aldo. With his hulking self, ready to undermine Socialista’s exclusivity with a pedestrian act taking center stage in subways all around New York and Japan.

My girlfriends and I once talked about our favorite porns and they turned out to be endeared to perverts groping unsuspecting subjects on the subway, bypassing consent as if it were another fussy garment and establishing clear violations of bodily autonomy. I myself happen to be a pervert, though I prefer vocalized enjoyment over violation. I let other men of similar mind suck me in public bathrooms, letting me cum all over their chests and faces then wearing me home like a scent, like a naughty little secret whispered just between us two and maybe a not-so-belligerent third party.

Speaking of cum, or spunk, or ejaculate as it is formally known, and scent, the sensory details that elevate the story beyond mere urban legend, travelling well beyond words, we follow the trail of ejaculate, the smell of expensive cologne, the dirty leather-tanned hundred-dollar bill Harvey pushes into the hands of the bewildered sous chef before chasing him out of the kitchen. The kitchen, probably industrial, serving its patrons a medley of culinary delights, is the liminal space where the offensive act occurs.

Through eyewitness accounts, we see the “before” and the “after” and not the “during.” The epithet “fat fuck” establishes undesirability as subtext. The unseen conjectured scene unfolds like a rolled hundred-dollar bill, and its exposition, though worthless in the face of many social ills, marks the kind of gratuitousness I am looking to elaborate on and perhaps embody. A man with a woman on his arm and his other hand on his penis, stroking and moaning and trying to aim. The aimlessness of it all—we always return to masturbation and copulation like hungry dogs who have been programmed for their daily dose of Xanax.

The kitchen pot has been “defiled,” the staff say, the pot is not culpable in any way, except perhaps as a prick tease. Initial reports suggest a plant was involved but the equation seems too terse to hold up. The replacement of “plant” with “pot” unravels the plot further marking the whole scene as pathetic; an invalid’s pissing pot, a bed pan for a neurologically challenged geriatric. He has ‘forgotten his marbles,’ they will say.

Thanks to the hundred-dollar bill, some kind of transaction has taken place, therefore some kind of dignity has been restored to the unwilling participant, never mind his protesting otherwise. The faces of the culinary crew sour at the thought of being conscripted into sexual matters, even though the matters of food and pleasure are closely interlinked. They condemn the old man with his melting gray skin and his missing Jewish foreskin, wondering how such a man comes to dominate them in the social sphere when he throws his money at the chance to hump things like a dog.

The act of cruising, the practice itself, a sanctuary for the queer collective, can be reimagined in Harvey’s practice, its intent, bears a similar time signature. He means to tug at the fabric of intimacy itself and then quickly make off like a rat tearing ropes on a shipboard. His cum in a pot, drippy, effusive, makes a mockery of the intimacies of saffrony, lemony, minty and buttery hints which culinary utensils hold. Butter can be used to fix any dish, apparently. The world even. Cum, sticky when wet and rubbery when dry, has similar adhesive properties, especially when not confined to dirty socks and rags.

Culpability, likewise, while completely stuck to the individual, does not exist apart from society.

We’re all, in a way, Harvey with our dicks out; it’s a shared experience, like the Pope holding mass on religious holidays. Episcopal. It feels romantic to explore the possibility of our natural instincts, to have people see us, our filthy hearts, our decaying minds, how close we are to death.

Un petit mort, as the French say. There’s mild compassion for the pot too, an animistic belief that the utensil suffered an indignity and pleasure it had never known before. It had probably been spat on, or touched with toilet hands, but this was different, a reckoning with its ontology.

Anyway, there are those who would object to the sacrosanctity of public masturbation like Christian zealots. Because consensual shit, you know. I’m merely a conduit, and this is merely play, entirely prismatic, not meant to reverse or traverse the bounds of some moral universe. This is meant to be a vivant understanding of how the vacuum of need is filled, a sketch of fetish as it saunters towards ferality. Along with rather rote quizzings on how big and full, heavy and plump Harvey’s cock and balls are. Imagine them hanging off his crotch area, nestled inside his Fruit of the Loom tighty-whities.

Historical and fictional parallels abound. If you’re thinking sperm, that is. Cuban secret missiles. The Trojan horse. The Iron Throne in the Red Keep in “Game of Thrones.” A ton of cordyceps underneath the floorboards in “The Last of Us.” Harvey’s act is stealthily meant to be self-propagation as well as a joust for power. It’s therefore unsurprising that Socialista’s clientele, among them Armin Amiri, were unified against Harvey and his wandering hand, of course. For this is the golden age of hetero-pessimism with heterosexual men bearing the brunt of it. Their advances, and their fluids, are unwanted; their displays of offbeat machismo lose face by the day.

The remainder of the generals who would pillage and kill and rape and set the new lands ablaze for spices and cloth. Lone cowboys chewing a blade of grass in their mouths while they hold down the fort. The last of the Mohicans. Harvey is spotted “fixing his belt” after his jerk-off moment. The pot is “placed back on the stove.” It’s one-thirty in the morning. The sous chef wants to quit, for unrelated reasons. Harvey is an investor in Socialista, therefore Amiri refuses to confront him about the pot. He cannot prove anything.

Editor’s Note: Though this is a literary magazine, we occasionally publish essays which we believe are insightful and relevant to our readers.

Of late, what I most want to pinpoint is when, where and why America decided to self immolate. As the process of restoring America to a new Golden Age kicks into gear–the recent passage of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill provides the funding and legal cover–I think it is critically important we understand why everything went so haywire. Each new generation has to learn old lessons if we are to avoid repeating the sins of our fathers.

Why did the greatest country that has ever existed, at the absolute peak of its power and influence no less, decide to turn the prodigious machinery of its global mastery upon its own citizenry, and, from the inside, eat itself alive? Just in whose pockets did our Cold War peace dividend end up?

How is it that the very institutions that were once so essential to outlandish success during our furious Cold War ascent simply absolve themselves of their missions? Practically overnight the full fathom of their force, power and, perhaps most distressingly, ire, turn on its own native citizens? As the British management consultant Stafford Beer reminds us: “A system is what it does.” For the far majority of American citizens, our system tortures, injures and seemingly tries its damndest to cut our throats while we sleep.

Born in 1980, my earliest memories are of a vibrant, buoyant America, a place of vitality, energy and prosperity. It was the America of Tom Cruise’s Maverick, positively reckless and hopelessly charming, yet incredibly effective at picking off Soviet Migs.

Of Axel Foley and his gregarious laugh, fighting crime while also taking the piss out of the stuffy LAPD, yet without a hint of racial resentment. Axel was just happy to be in sunny LA. It was peak Reaganite Kitsch in the form of Wrestlemania. People were thin, happy, excited. There was no malaise. There was no guilt. We were not medicated en masse. There was still a middle class.

Less than half a century later, our nation is one big charnel house of destruction and profit. The width and breadth of our markets, once the envy of the world, are now in fact our worst enemy. Industry today is quite obviously involved in an ongoing effort not only to sicken and disturb us–whether in the form of fast and slow foods engineered towards cravings, customer service offshoring intended to frustrate our efforts at getting what we have paid for, or social media apps designed to literally infuriate us–and then profit off our illness and misery.

Our giant food conglomerates, once the marvel of the modern world, spend their prodigious marketing and development budgets not in ensuring they fuel a healthy and vibrant populace involved in driving innovation and creating the next waves of prosperity for ourselves and the rest of the world. Instead they obsessively engineer food “products” they know–without a shadow of a doubt–will make anyone dumb enough to consume them more than once or twice sick, fat and god knows what else.

When did these companies go from feeding the country, and the world–a great cultural, economic and propaganda victory–into bastardizing the food supply so tragically that most other countries–even those who also clearly hate their own citizenry–cannot, in good conscience, allow American food to be sold to their citizens?

Except us. Except the U.S.

Were these great companies always acting this way and we just never noticed? Or is what we see and feel today simply the ill effects of decades of poisoning catching up to us?

Did their virtue erode over time step by step? Or did their efforts, their corporate directives, actually collapse at some crucial moment?

Then, when the job of sickening us is done–it of course never is, especially in an era of never ending mass immigration–Americans (and our foreign guests and illegals) are shuffled down the line to a secondary round of destruction, namely pharmaceutical companies and the medical establishment, so that they too can treat us and profit off us in perpetuity for the various chronic illnesses the food industry, and now themselves, gleefully bestowed upon us. This can’t simply all be the fault of Earl Butts can it?

The healthcare industry has extended life but are those extra years well lived and worth it? How much money do we spend keeping dying people alive for a few more days, weeks or months?

Obviously there isn’t one culprit or calamity one can point to and say that, that was the moment when corporations abandoned any sense of civic virtue they may have once embodied and decided, “Fuck it, pedal to the metal on profit maximization by all means and it doesn’t matter, in fact, it might even be the prize, to see who can kill the most Americans in the worst way possible, first?” The message was clear, that’s ok, we’ll just import more people and call them Americans.

All the while the ghouls at AEI and The Wall Street Journal declare in autistic unison: GDP Line Go Up!

Of course, there are those, we know, who will simply turn around and say “Wall Street made us do it. The free market. If I didn’t maximize profits they’d replace me with someone who would. So I did it. I’m sorry.”

Except even that apology is never offered, is it? And in the rare moment such a voice emerges, it is quickly and roundly labeled conspiracy. The idea of ever again seeing or experiencing any semblance of accountability from anyone in a position of authority or power is gone forever. What’s worse, the culprits fail upwards and move on to the next, and no doubt even greater, horror. Dr. Fauci wasn’t content to prematurely kill tens of thousands during the AIDS epidemic, he had to up his game with Covid, lying to Congress about it, only to finally receive a full autopenned-pardon.

What ever happened to The Buck Stops Here?

Was it a loss of our mission and purpose as the Cold War ended? Do people need a grand unifying story and vision for why their nation, their tribe, their people, must succeed and therefore, a civic duty to look after one another, or at the very least not maim and murder ourselves? Did this sentiment not somehow seep up from the cultural firmament into the board room?

Was it Bin Laden’s attacks upon our homeland that so thoroughly fried the great managerialist Cold War mainframes–and when they reset–decided that Americans were the problem, the new marks, the virus to be eradicated, but not before we can weaken and suck every last ounce of value from?

Is this why mass immigration followed?

Because who cares if we sicken, maim and murder the native and heritage populations when we can just replace them with millions of new ones, and we’ll call them Americans too. In fact, we’ll redefine what it is to be an American! That’s the ticket!

I remember in the late 2000’s, starting to see horrifically, comically obese Latin American families crop up in New York City. Cross the various borders to our South, break the law and put your family at permanent risk, ensconce oneself firmly in an American city, live ten to a tenement among distant cousins, just to give yourself, and your children, type 2 diabetes? And call it the American dream?

When you’ve seen an 11-year-old indigenous kid–with wide face and broad nose–casually slurping down a 2 liter of Coke in the time it takes a 2 train to make three local stops, it’s hard not to feel that berserk feeling deep in your guts. One wanted to stop that family, take them aside on a hot humid platform, brush off the old Español and say, “For God’s sake, leave this infernal place, you are killing yourselves, go home, cross the rivers and borders in the opposite direction, go back to your slums and favelas and eat your native foods. There’s nothing wrong with beans and rice and Fanta made with cane sugar, but Jesus Christo, folks, this stuff is not for you.”

In retrospect, most illegals never stood a chance, the poor fucks. I am no longer in favor of immigration of any kind and believe we need a decades-long pause, as well as mass self and forced deportations.

America needs to be for Americans so that we can understand once again what we used to know by rights, that we’re all in this together. If a CEO has little connection to his workers beyond the economic and transactional, it is easier for that executive to divorce himself from any deleterious impacts his products and services might have on the populace at large.

But if a global underclass is ushered in, that belief simply breaks down. That belief in fact doesn’t stand a chance. Heck, it happens with a global overclass too. If the profits keep rolling no matter what, then sickening whoever is here is fine because they’ll simply be replaced by new rubes and marks too stupid to see what’s so obviously in front of their lying eyes.

At least most well educated, well-to-do Americans could see, or at least sense, that if you consumed most, if not all, American mass food, you could, absolutely not be healthy by any means. This is probably why wealthy Americans make the time and take the effort to shop locally at farmers markets, farm stands, CSA’s and the like. And that hobby farming and ranching is growing in popularity among the wealthiest. And though that class are physically the healthiest, spiritually and intellectually, they are as entrapped and impoverished as those chunky Guatemalans. They are quadruple vax’d, soyjack’d and infected with TDS.

When did we incur this spiritual debit? Was it dropping the bombs on Japan? Was it the killing of Kennedy? Was it Vietnam? When did our goodness get so corrupted?

Where does the buck stop?

I want my fucking country back.

He didn’t want to do it.

But when the rent’s due, the fridge is empty, and your boss drops the word “restructuring,” you start picking up calls from strangers with burner phones.

The guy said it was a delivery gig.

“Just a hand-off. No talking, no names, no eye contact.”

Cash up front. Unmarked bills. The kind of job that finds you when you’ve stopped looking, and need it bad enough to say yes before there’s even a question.

They met in an empty lot behind an abandoned bowling alley. Crows lined the wires. Burned-out SUV across the street.

The man waiting wore gloves to shake his hand. He handed over a duffel bag. Heavy. Zipped. Reeking of copper and gasoline.

“You don’t open it,” the man said.

“You don’t ask where it’s going. You just follow the GPS and drop it in the blue dumpster behind the storage facility on 43rd. Before 2 a.m.”

“What’s in it?” he asked, too late, biting his own tongue to the point of blood.

The man paused.

“Nothing you want to be caught with.”

He laughed like it was funny. It wasn’t. He got in the borrowed car. The smell hit harder in the late-night heat, like roadkill soaked in bleach.

He cracked the window. Lit a cigarette. He’d quit months ago. Didn’t matter. White knuckles on the wheel.

Halfway there, he noticed the car. Same black four-door. Been behind him for six turns. He cut through a gas station. It followed. He ran a red. So did they. His chest tightened. Could’ve been the weed he smoked earlier. Could’ve been anxiety.

Could’ve been the unmistakable truth: This wasn’t a hand-off. This was a test. Or a setup.

He made it to the dumpster. Got out slow. Bag in hand. The car stalked in behind him.

Two guys stepped out. Halloween masks on their faces. Gloves already on. No badges. No questions. No words. Just footsteps. And the thunk of the bag hitting the metal bin.

He ran. Didn’t look back. Didn’t go home. Slept in a bus station bathroom, coat over his face, breathing through bleach and tile.

The next morning, he burned the SIM card, tossed the coat, and promised himself he’d never say yes again. But some nights, he still hears the thunk. And wonders if it could have been innocent enough, or if it’s still leaking somewhere, slow and patient, waiting for him to come back.

The nights haunt him, and the sun feels too bright. He shaves. Takes the long way to work. Throws out the cigarettes, keeps the lighter. Sometimes you still need fire.

Every buzz from his phone feels like bad news. Every knock sounds like a warrant. But nothing happens.

He starts to believe maybe it wasn’t what he thought. Just drugs. Just something dirty but survivable. Then he hears them. Two cops in a corner booth at the diner.

Late night. Fluorescent lights buzz like bugs in a jar. He’s three seats back, hoodie up, face lit by the glow of the beer sign. They don’t even see him.

“Storage place off 43rd,” the bigger one says. “Maintenance guy called it in. Thought it was trash. Bag was leaking.”

The other one scoffs through a bite of pie. “Leaking? Jesus.”

“Yeah. Took three hours before they confirmed it wasn’t an animal.”

Clatter of fork on ceramic.

“Small body. Young. Wrapped like trash. Some burn damage.”

Silence.

“Probably just another dump-and-run. We’ll never get a name.”

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. They keep talking about shifts, pensions, and coffee. Then they leave.

He sits there another twenty minutes. Pretending he’s waiting for someone. Then tips too much. Again. Walks home with his hands in his pockets, head down.

The bag wasn’t just heavy. It had weight. And now he carries it, whether he wants to or not. That night, he can’t sleep. Keeps replaying the cops’ voices, the tone of it.

“Small body. Young.”

That word “wrapped” won’t leave his head. By morning, he’s halfway through a pot of burnt coffee and staring at his contacts list. Most names he hasn’t called in months.

Then he sees it:

Jace.

The one who gave him the number.

Said it was a “favor,” a “little side hustle,” a “way to float through the month.”

They’d worked at the same warehouse before the layoffs. Split gas. Smoked out behind the dock. Shared silence like veterans do…too tired to lie, too ashamed to tell the truth.

Jace knew he was desperate. Knew he was drowning. That’s why he picked him. Not because he was strong. Because he was pliable.

He dials.

Doesn’t expect an answer. But Jace picks up. Casual as hell. Background noise, TV, maybe a microwave.

“Yo.”

“You knew.”

A pause.

“Don’t do that,” Jace says. “You asked for help. I helped. Don’t act like I made you do it.”

“You told me it was a delivery.”

“It was. You delivered.”

Silence.

Then softer, “Look, man… you still got the cash, right? Rent’s paid?”

He doesn’t respond.

“You’re fine, alright? It’s done.”

It’s done. He hangs up. He sets the phone down. It’s not fear in his hand. It’s something colder. Jace didn’t hate him. He just knew he couldn’t say no.

That’s the part that hurts the most.

The smell of incense was in the air.

Markk checked the fastenings of his coldsuit. Less for the cold itself, more to ensure that nothing locked up unexpectedly later, in some moment of heated action. The stupid suit had a tendency to click its joints into place, and deny him full range of motion. He really needed to request a new suit from Forward Logistics. He knew full well that even once he put the requisition in, it would take a Jovian month before he even heard back from the station.

Longer, before he’d actually get the new suit.

“So... Darkside Patrol.”

Markk narrowed his red eyes and gazed over his shoulder. Roberto was standing there, checking the fastenings of his suit, even as he’d made his offhand remark. Unlike Markk’s suit, Roberto’s was much bulkier and had a full helmet. It was a full pressure and atmospheric suit. Because, of course, Roberto needed it. He wasn’t from around here.

“Must say I didn’t expect how fucking lonely it gets out here,” said Roberto, beginning to clasp his helmet into place. “When they said they were sending me to a forward position I expected one of the big channel trenches. Somewhere where there was some action.”

Roberto gazed at Markk. Blue eyes met red. Roberto scoffed. “Not out in the middle of assfuck nowhere, that’s for sure.” He stuffed his Rosary into a small compartment on the suit, and sealed it up.

“We’re not nowhere,” said Markk, who rolled his eyes as he saw Roberto set the climate parameters of his atmosuit. Fucking warmies.

“Sure feels like nowhere,” said Roberto.

“You know we’re out here to intercept drone units trying to scout ahead to the main trenchpoints,” said Markk. “You know that. They briefed you, didn’t they?” Mark turned, the pungent wafts of incense floating around his head as he swiveled towards Roberto. “They did brief you, didn’t they, you Martian fuck?”

“Yes, they fucking briefed me, snowman,” growled Roberto, and the temperature in the room chilled down in a way no ice moon could have accounted for. And Roberto seemed to know it, and sense that it needed fixing, because he held up a thickly-gloved hand. “Look, sorry. I guess I’m just annoyed because out here we seem to be useless. Why not use counter-drones or electro-warfare against the scout drones? Be a lot simpler.”

“Escalation,” said Markk. “The Enemy’s newest round of drone scouts is shielded against counter-drone tech. Homefront says they have the tech to counter-counter that counter-tech, but they’re working on getting it into units that can withstand the cold. Apparently the counter-counter tech circuitry is... temperature sensitive.”

Markk walked to grab his rifle. It was a bulky thing. “They said that a year ago. No more word of progress since. Eventually Trench Forward Command just started to set up outposts out here. Drones needed countering. Robots needed countering. If the tech to do it still hates the cold, they’ll just get us humans to do it.”

“Humans,” said Roberto. “That what you are?”

“Yeah,” said Markk. “That what you are, too?”

The two men glared at each other, red eyes meeting blue.

Roberto sighed and slumped into the bench beside him. “Man, I’m an asshole today,” he growled. “Sorry. Been here three days, the cold and the dark is really starting to get to me. And I guess I just thought I’d be doing something... more exciting.”

“Welcome to war,” said Markk. “A lot of times it’s boring as shit.”

Roberto put a gloved hand against his fishbowl-like visor. “I guess.”

“You a conscript or did you enlist?”

“I’m a volunteer. Everyone from Mars is.”

“Yeah, I forgot for a minute how crazy you Martians are.”

“When Mars joined the war on Europa’s side, a lot of us jumped at the chance for a real fight. We like to fight. We’re good at it. Lethe’s had no trouble filling quotas for the front.” He waved his arms out wide. “But I didn’t get sent to the front. I got sent... here.”

“Ah!” Markk laughed and arched dark eyebrows. “So that’s it. The source of all your bitching. You want to be dying gloriously in some frozen trench right now.”

“We do like dying gloriously on Mars.” Roberto fixed Markk with a stare as he said this.

Both men laughed.

“Well, warmie, just sit tight,” said Markk. “Just hang in there and keep going on our patrols. You’ll get your action, sooner or later.”

As if in a sign from the Heavens, the comm unit on the far wall crackled to life. Sneaky wet blue gleamings emitted from the screen, and Markk hastened to it, Roberto close behind.

Fiddling with the dials, Markk got the signal right, and gave a grin at the red-eyed, blond- haired visage that popped up on the screen. “Constantinn!” he cried.

“What’s up, Markk?” said Constantinn, firing off a two-fingered salute. He gazed over Markk’s shoulder. “How’s the warmie holding up?”

“Well enough, thank you,” said Roberto, offering a nod.

“Well, good, because you boys might not be bored for too much longer. Trench Forward thinks the enemy’s getting ready to launch strikes at all the forward outposts. Satellites took this photo 20 hours ago.”

The photo in question popped up on the screen. Long, pale stretches of the endless ice, streaked with the dirt and iron and rust of the cracked surface. Amid the ice and rust, here and there, there were dark figures staggered, moving to the right of the photo.

“Daityas. Only bipedal things that big. Half a dozen of them, one for each outpost. We figure there’s one pointed at every outpost, so you should be seeing yours eventually.”

“Any figure on the pace?” asked Markk.

“Moving roughly fifteen kilometers an hour, so shouldn’t be long now,” said Constantinn. “Trench Forward wants all you outpost guys to start laying mines. With any luck, you’ll have a perimeter laid out before they get to you, and the things’ll get blown to kingdom come without you having to engage.”

“I like that,” said Markk.

“I thought you would,” said Constantinn. “So get out there, and hurry up. Lieutenant Vorask, out.”

And with that, the screen went dark.

“Mining duty,” said Markk. “Great. Actually not a bad use of our time,” he gazed over his shoulder at Roberto. “Good way to stretch your legs.”

“Daityas?” repeated Roberto. “What are those?”

“Robots,” said Markk. “Big ones. They handle the terrain well, despite being bipedal. Got triple-plated cast-alloy hulls, so they can take a lot of punishment.” He walked over to a bend in the armory. Tapping some panels on the wall, an opening emerged. Markk began to pull out strings of high-impact mines, spiked units currently all attached to a copper wire. “But if we can get out there and lay those mines, we should be able to deal with them without putting ourselves in much danger. Which is why we’ve gotta get a move on.” He shoved the wired-up mines into Roberto’s arms. “Clip those to your suit, you’re gonna have to handle more than you can carry in your arms.”

“Why can’t you carry ‘em?” asked Roberto.

“I’m gonna have to hold the rifle,” said Markk. “I’ll have to bolt on the EMP attachment, which makes the gun too heavy for one hand. But if the Daitya sneaks up on us before we’ve laid the mines, it’s our only shot of killing the darn thing.”

“Oh, so I get to haul and you get to shoot?” snarled Roberto.

“Yeah, that’s how it works,” said Markk. “Now finish adjusting your suit, let’s hurry up and get out there.” He handed Roberto more mines. Roberto grumbled under his breath.

Markk rolled his eyes. Fucking warmies.

They left the outpost. The sky was dark overhead. They were on the dark side of Jove.

The stars were infinite in the heavens above.

Stepping into the cold darkness, Markk’s physiology adjusted accordingly. He was, after all, a native Europan. His skin turned a light blue color, and his eyes began to gleam neon red in the dark as his night vision kicked in. It was cold, but he was used to it, and it was little trouble for him to endure. It would have killed a warmie. Hence Roberto and his stupid all-over suit.

Markk could hear the extra weight of the heavy suit crunching on the ice as Roberto came up beside him. “Gotta ask,” he said, his voice tinny through the suit’s radios. “Gotta ask, what’s with the incense?” Even now, the tendrils of smoke were wafting around Markk, and the smell was pleasant in the frigid air.

“My night vision has a close physiological relation to my sinuses,” said Markk. “If they get clogged up or blocked, my ability to see in the dark decreases. Incense helps keep ‘em clear.”

Roberto did not directly respond to this. He instead gazed out into the dark, across the ice. “How far out we headed?” he asked.

“Not far. Five kilometers at most. We’ll lay the mines in staggered rows. We want them far out, but also close enough that if the Daitya pushes through the mines we can use the outpost’s main gun to finish it off.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Roberto, coming close. “Here,” he slung two lines of the mines off his shoulders, and Markk wrapped them around his own. “Might as well both go out independently. We’ll cover more ground that way, do more work. I know you couldn’t hold all the mines, but you can handle two lines, right?”

“Yeah, fair,” said Markk. “Turn your transponder on.”

“If it’s a bot that’s out there, won’t it be able to pick our signals up?”

“Can’t help it. We’ll need to be able to keep track of each other if we’re gonna separate. And it’s already headed our way anyway, whether it can pick us up or no.” Markk flicked a switch on his coldsuit, causing a green light to begin to pulse faintly on his sleeve.

“Okay. Sure.” Roberto flicked a switch on his own atmosuit, and on it, too, a green light began to slowly glow. “See you in a bit.” With that, Roberto began to walk out into the darkness, and was soon swallowed up in the icy gloom.

Markk began moving slowly. The gun was fastened to his hip. It was big, and heavy, and bulky, especially with the EMP attachment, and it kept banging against his leg as he walked. It hurt. It was annoying. No helping it, though.

He was a fast walker, and he was moving at as close to a jog as he could. One click, two clicks, three clicks, four. His viewfinder, mounted on the coldsuit’s collar, ticked off the distance. It also kept track of Roberto, who showed up as a green dot on his projected map.

Roberto was off to the west, about three kilometers away.

Markk stopped, and uncurled a line of the mines from around his shoulders. Setting the furthest end on the ground, he began to lay them out on the ice, roughly perpendicular to the outpost, distant though it was. Their diodes glowed red in the darkness. In theory, the Daitya’s sensors wouldn’t pick up their activation signals, at least not until it was too late. In theory, a lot of things that worked in other fields of war, on other planets and moons, didn’t work on Europa, because of the cold and, to a lesser extent, Jove’s gravity.

In theory.

Finishing the line layout, Markk began to walk east a bit. He figured he’d move east, and then advance maybe half a kilometer, before laying the next strip of mines. Stagger things a bit. Between he and Roberto they’d enswath the approach to the outpost pretty well.

They were making pretty good time. He was actually starting to feel confident.

Click

It was distant, and sounded over his shoulder. Markk turned his head.

ClickClick

A shadow moved in the dark. Something huge and looming. It rumbled through the shadows and the ice, headed straight at him.

ClickClickClickClickClickClick

It was as tall as a long-range missile. It loomed, and two bright white lights shone, gleaming starkly against the stars.

ClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClick

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” snapped Markk as he staggered backwards across the ice. He shouted into the radio at his collar. “Roberto, the Daitya’s here! Get back here, I need backup!”

Another massive step through the gloom and it was upon him, its huge body swathed in shade so that its details were hard to see. Those two white eyes, gleaming diodes, blazed through the night as the Daitya advanced and swung a massive arm his way. Markk vaulted backwards, his coldsuit adjusting his gravity signature to offer him greater maneuverability as it sensed the change in his vital signs. Flinging the string of mines off his shoulders, he grabbed for the gun and raised it. The Daitya swung one of its long metal arms out at him, stretching meters and meters until it became an enormous boom that would have taken his head off if he hadn’t ducked in time.

Rolling and rising again, Markk leveled the rifle at the massive robot. He triggered the EMP charge. Five seconds. Four. Three. Two. One.

ClickClickClick

The Daitya had itself paused, and its diodes flared in strobe-like blazes. Something blunt extended from the chin of its head--Markk instantly recalled a class in basic training and ran forward, ran forward, getting underneath what was clearly about to fire.

There was a flash like a camera going off. Three seconds later, the ice where Markk had been standing only a few seconds before exploded in a flash of bright chrome light, and Markk, looking back, gaped at the sheer size of the crater that was produced. It was as big as the entire outpost. An enormous scorched hole in the ice, flames licking its edges. The Daitya had clearly fired its Remote Effect Gun. Fortunately, Markk knew it could only do that once every fifteen minutes.

Or so basic training had said.

He raised the rifle. There was a blue strip of five lights glowing on a squat, octagonal bulk that was attached just below the gun’s main barrel. Markk pushed a button on the attachment, heard a soft click, and fired.

There was a flash of electric blue, and the Daitya staggered back as waves of sparkling

blueness washed over its huge shape. In the light of the EMP Markk got a decent look at it. It was so huge, and its humanoid shape was built of heavy gray metal. There was a carving of Hiraṇyākṣa on its right chest plate, and a carving of Bāṇāsura on its left chest plate. Its head was ovoid, and the Remote Effect Gun was stuck towards the bottom and almost looked like a mouth. Its diodes gleamed neon white.

There was darkness again. The Daitya tumbled to its knees, but Markk’s heart sank as he watched it jerkily rise to its feet again. Its movements were not nearly as smooth or as fluid as before, and it was slow in its motions towards him now. The EMP had clearly affected it.

Just not enough.

And now it was Markk who needed to wait for a charge. He had ten minutes. He fired the normal gun, muzzle flashing bright yellow as it spat hot lead at the Daitya. But the bullets bounced off its heavy armor. It advanced upon him. Markk tried to run backwards.

But he tripped, and he fell.

ClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClick

Gasping in terror he gazed with his gleaming red eyes up at the massive robot as it was almost upon him. Its long fingers were spinning, looking like industrial drills, and Markk could hear them whine as they promised killing touch. He desperately grabbed for the rifle again.

“Finem hostium!”

Markk was startled by the loud cry. Out of the darkened sky came a shape blazing in orange flame. It landed on the Daitya’s massive shoulders. In the light of the diodes and the fire Markk saw a familiar domed helmet. He gaped. It was Roberto. He had landed on the Daitya. As the flames receded, Markk suddenly realized he had forgotten that full atmosuits had thrusters on them. It wasn’t like he ever wore them, after all.

Something gleamed cold in the cold dark. There was a shimmer of steel and the Daitya’s neck flared with sparks. Markk caught sight of a blade. A sword? What could cut through a Daitya’s armor? He’d heard that Martian steel was the sharpest in the solar system, but he hadn’t expected a demonstration. He watched Roberto flash something in the air, a long swirl of glowing red diodes. The mines! Roberto stuffed a line of them as hastily as he could in the wound in the Daitya’s neck.

The thrusters flared again as Roberto vaulted off the Daitya. He rocketed through the cold air and was headed... straight at Markk. “Whoa!” said Markk, standing up. He rose to his feet just in time for Roberto to plow into him. Fortunately, the coldsuit protected him from broken ribs, and the two men were sent sailing off across the ice, bouncing in the crunchy powder as Roberto tumbled into a landing with Markk in his midst.

ClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClickClick

The Daitya was beginning to stagger towards them. “Markk, the mines!” said Roberto.

“You’ve got the detonator! Blow that thing up!”

“Oh! Shit!” Markk cried, and tapped at the panel on his forearm. He found the control for the line of mines Roberto had used and armed them all. Then he triggered the manual detonation--

BOOM

A huge explosion rocked the cold dark air. The Daitya’s head, neck, and shoulders erupted in a fireball of enormous proportions. The burning husk took one more step forward, made one more Click noise, and then it toppled to the ground, smashing into the ice and sending up a maelstrom of frost and snow. It did not move again. Its husk laid there, the fire slowly going out amid all the cold and frost.

“Shit,” said Markk.

“Huh,” said Roberto, clambering to his feet. “Kinda hoped that would work, though I was ultimately just guessing. Happy to be right, though, and not wrong.” He extended a hand downward.

Markk gazed up at the outstretched hand. He saw Roberto’s face through the helmet.

The blue eyes were twinkling. There was a smile in there.

Growling, and shaking his head, Markk took his hand, and allowed himself to be helped to his feet. “Well,” he said, brushing his coldsuit off, “that’s that.” He walked over to where he’d dropped the gun, and attached it to his hip once more.

“We gonna go pick the mines up?” asked Roberto.

“Ehh, they’re not armed yet, and until they are, they’re harmless to any friendlies that approach our position. We took out the Daitya, but there might be more in the future.” Markk put his hands on his hips. He huffed out a breath, fog drifting in the cold and starry air. “But mostly...”

“Mostly you just don’t wanna fucking do it.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much it.” He shook his head. “Not right this minute, anyway. I’d really rather just get back to the outpost.” He shook his head again. “Christ, I need a drink.”

“My sis sent me some gin from back home in the last care package,” said Roberto. “I’d be willing to share. If...”

“If?”

“If you tell me ‘good job, partner.’” Roberto grinned at him.

Markk rolled his red eyes. “Good job, partner.”

“There, see? Wasn’t that great to say?”

“Whatever. Come on,” and he turned, and began to head back to the outpost, a bright light far off in the distance.

“I’m gonna go take a warm shower,” said Roberto, moving into line beside him. “This is about as much cold as I’m willing to put up with for the day.”

“Warm? Really?”

“Yeah,” said Roberto. He turned to Markk. He arched an eyebrow. “What, you don’t take warm showers?”

“We don’t like ‘warm’ on this moon.”

“Sheesh.” Roberto shook his head. “You people are missing out. No wonder half the fucking galaxy wants to kick your asses.” He picked up the pace, and began walking faster than Markk.

Markk watched him go a minute, receding towards the outpost. He looked back over his shoulder, at the ruins of the Daitya already gathering frost and snow in the dark. He looked forward again, at Roberto’s advancing form.

He shook his head. He laughed, in spite of himself. “Fuckin’ warmies,” he muttered. He started walking off towards Roberto again.

The smell of incense was in the air.

They came to us from the stars. The little pretty things. They stood about eighteen inches high, weighed three pounds at their heaviest, were soft as a lamb, fragrant as a morning lilac, and appeared so unquestionably, so sensuously, female humanoid. Their eyes sparkled, without pupils or irises, as they looked at you, a deep iridescent indigo. An ever-widening void of exotic promises.

“Sir?” A voice cut through Martin Patrick’s lewd recollection. He blinked, and the mist lifted.

“Yes?” Martin asked. A young man in a crisp gray uniform stood at attention in the doorway.

“Would you care for some water, or a bump, before you address the assembly?”

“No. No, thank you. That’s not necessary.” Martin waved his hand dismissively.

“Very good, sir. The uplink is ready and it will be a few moments yet,” said the young man. Martin shook his head gravely. The fog took him back. The young man took the hint and left.

We called them, “Inkies” when most everyone we knew had one. The nimble little sprites would dance on your shoulder, sing haunting melodies, play with your food, swim in your bath water, and if you were lucky, make pretty faces at you while you tried to meet a deadline. They seemed dependent on your attention, as if it was their primary source of nourishment; actually eating and drinking, but sparingly yet relentlessly contending for your constant consideration.

The only downside, at least perceptible at the time, was that they had to choose you. You couldn’t pop down to the shops and buy one, outbid a faceless neighbor online. You couldn’t catch one in the garden and bring it into your house. One day, the little creature would just show up; on a kitchen counter, a windowsill, on your nightstand when you reached for the snooze button—from that moment on, it would never leave your side. Or her. She. She would never leave your side. It adversely affected society after a year. People spent more time occupied with their Inkies than they did pushing buttons, pulling levers, patching leaks, calculating figures, processing requests, and then collecting harvests and flipping “on” switches. I’m only here today because I was never chosen.

“Sir?” Another voice broke Martin’s reflection.

“What is it?” Martin snapped.

“Washington has gone dark, sir,” another pert young grey-clad man informed.

Martin heard the deafening silence. His head felt as though it would tumble off his shoulders. He felt his fingers rubbing his cheek. The last “on” switch had gone unflipped. He had locked the door when he’d left his home, but now the key was lost.

“We are proceeding, sir?” The trim youth had an inquisitive exuberance that made Martin want to kick him in the mouth. No going back now, he thought.

“Yes,” Martin replied, “we are.”

My wife and I had only been married six months when her Inkie came along. The novelty of our bound flesh was just starting to feel natural. She had become my fern in the garden. First to sprout, the quiet feature, my secret favorite. Flowers bloom and die. Ferns return every year, fuller, farther, wider, deeper, and more grand with each unfurling. That all went to seed when the cobalt death touched its tiny feet down upon our butcher block countertops one sunny morning.

“Alexis”, the sapphire nymph, chose her, of course. She loved to feed it popped corn. The smacking sound it made with its little mouth brought her interminable delight. No matter how often I tried, Alexis would never take the popped corn, or any other treat, from me. It would scramble to hide behind my wife’s neck and peek out to watch me with those shimmering azure pits. I knew it was hate that simmered in the coruscate lapis, but I was still very much in love and didn’t dare smash it with a ball-peen hammer.

My wife avoided me to keep her Inkie in high spirits. To keep it dancing and nibbling and splashing in her bath water. Soon, I’d found I was wedded to a laugh that would carry down the hall several times a day. Banishment from my wife’s bed allowed me to spend more time with the other yet unselected world controllers, though they themselves soon became disembodied guffaws echoing down the corridors of Parliament. I, and a small handful of others, would have to make some drastic decisions if mankind were to survive.

“Sir?” Another stiff gray habit.

“What, damn you?” Martin slammed his fist on the desk.

“Apologies, sir. The captain wants you to know that the last of the transports has landed. and we are closing the doors. For good, sir.”

“That’s fine. I will be out to address everyone presently.”

She left me in the summer of 2065. Probably sooner. She’d left everything but that blue eddy that existed in Alexis’ eyes. I found the note when I went to tell her about The Leaving, that we would not be giving her a certificate of admittance and that I was, in fact, leaving her on Earth. Her and her stupid goddamn alien doll, and everyone else and their stupid goddamn alien dolls, were on their own now. The Inkies hadn’t chosen us, so we had chosen not to save them, or the ones they had chosen. They would die along with the rest, malnourished, ill-kept, disease-ridden, and perpetually enraptured.

Martin Patrick’s smart, black-wrapped figure walked down the halls of the brutal complex on the Moon. The air smelled of sharp electricity. Perfect ozone. He entered a vast hall, stepped into a brilliant column of white light, and prepared for his address to the scorned peoples of a ragged Earth who’d endured the suffocating three-day journey. He sat down before a small glass eye affixed on a segmented tentacle snaking out of the floor. A red luminescence rose within it.

“My friends…” He paused. The gravity of the situation, on the loose-anchored rock of the moon, struck him. He turned his notes over. Nothing but blankness lay before him.

“I think we will realize the rejected have become the chosen. Whatever mystery brought this affliction upon us, we have abandoned on Earth. Indeed, we have left much of ourselves there; our families, friends, everything we know and love.” He paused, again, with a slight grimace.

“Everything we knew and loved. That world we all knew is gone. Everything that killed it will pass away with it. Except us. There will be no idleness. We won’t experience abandonment. Our task is to carry the light away. Those before us, out of necessity, built the world. And those after them, by their amusement, destroyed it. We are here at the start of a new era. Before us lies a future of glaring necessity and infinite possibility.

We are going to relearn these things, to re-know love, to remake man, in our own image. We will be better, stronger, colder, and without fear. Join me as we shed man’s adolescence to become what we were meant to be: citizens of the stars are our home now. An endless people with boundless potential, limited only by our ability to dream and our willingness to work. We are the ferns of the garden; first to spring and last to die. We will weed, and build, and spread, and grow unrestrained.”

He laid his heavy hand on the blank page on the back of the notes. The silence hung in the air as he felt the breathless crowd lift the burden of continuation. The red light died.

Martin Patrick stepped into an empty room with a great floor to ceiling window. He stood before the pane, arms folded behind his back, and contemplated the future. A grey-suited attendant carrying a hand crate stepped in.

“Sir?”

“It is amazing, despite its distance, how defined the Earth looks from here,” Martin said. “Set it on the table and leave me.”

“Yes, sir.” The attendant gingerly placed the crate on the table and left the room.

Martin Patrick took a deep breath and watched as the blue orb cracked like a robin’s egg and crumbled outward into dust. Within moments, the light from Earth is no more. Alone in the universe, which was at that moment the small room he stood in, Martin took a seat before the small crate and stared at the latched door on its side. He reached into his pocket and drew out a clenched fist full of popped corn.

This story was written by John Cinder, who is also the talented mastermind behind all the magazine covers and snarky artwork on our X account. If you have a brand that needs some solid design and marketing help, he’s the best in the business.