Heart of Darkness by Daniel Schulz

We are poor people with golden teeth. The money that they give us pays for the fillings with which we cover up the rot. It’s more than what politicians have done for our village, leaving it out there to decay. As long as farmers are harvesting, nobody has reason to complain. “Feed Me” the political campaigns seem to say, giving large speeches that take in all the grain. Every harvester holds that grid in front of them, a long mouth of smiling teeth, plowing through the fields, reaping riches off our bodies. We watch companies taking over these fields, farmers getting poorer and poorer. Our village, however, is haunted by one incident specifically, an overflowing garbage dump.

The depot is a giant hole in the ground, erected on the top of a hill nearby, which supposedly would bring profits to the region of which we have seen none. There were structural concerns as well, considering the question of outlets for the rain and what would happen to the ground, if any of the rubbish or even toxins spread. The company was given permits anyway, dissuading politicians that any negative effects would occur from this giant hole that they were digging, the grave of our livelihood. The stench it casts over our settlements reminds us of the winds of freedom.

Every time a politician makes a concession, hundreds of poverty stricken citizens loose their minds. It’s like angels earning their wings. As the stench of garbage spread across the landscape those of us who could moved to more fruitful places, while those who had no money stayed. We became peasants, instead of farmers. My brother and I earned even less than we used to. The village pub became our unemployment office. And as the local dentist went out of business, our wounds began to rot. Every day became a reminder of what we did not have, the agency over our life that was lost to the economic situation. The stench that was our freedom became less bearable over time.

That is when Dimitri began to visit our unemployment office, looking for workers willing to make some money. He began by asking my brother Igor, if he knew anyone willing to work for an honest wage. All he had to do is offer seven Euros more per hour than the farming companies. Who knows how much more money he made on our poverty and our ruins. In a world run by capitalism his offer seemed like socialism, another way to make some cash.

Dimitri was intimidating in his benevolence. The broad build of his body revealed to us a muscular man, who knew how to pull weights. His expensive suit demonstrated to us the wealth he had accumulated through hard work. “If you work for me,” he emphasized, “and you do an honest job, I will guarantee you that you will make a good living. Other people will make you labor endlessly for nothing. I know those types of employers and despise them because I have worked for them. I am like you, you see?” At that point he would lean back, let the height of his body unfold, towering at a distance, mustering our bodies in order to conclude, “I am offering you an honest job. You will get the money immediately, at the end of each shift. We will put it directly in your hands, no taxes paid, no questions asked. Does that sound good?” His bright gray eyes looked at us with a piercing lightness that plunged into the depth of our souls. It was as if the question he was asking was not a question but an imperative. So you might surmise that we said yes.

Now, I am sitting here, on the run and afraid for my life, because I told on him. It really was good money that his men gave us. And all he needed were some lumberjacks to help him set up his business. What we did not know, we would learn from the people he employed first, who taught us. They provided us the permits for what we were doing. They paid off the forester. And the forester made sure that we could work in peace, because the money he received increased his quality of life. It was not clear until later that what we were doing was illegal.

We took advantage of the situation. The yearly climate conferences governments visit still have not created a unified legal code to deal with illegal deforestation on a global level. There is no international consensus on how to deal with people interrupting the rhythm of reforestation. And it’s not as if we were dealing with cocaine or endangered animals, that is obvious smack. What we are dealing with is the wood your furniture is made of. What we are dealing with is a resource becoming rare, a resource you really need, a business opportunity. We learned a lot about this on our way to work. A pick-up truck would pick us up and haul us over and out of boredom we would listen to reports on the radio and talk about what we were doing. One third of the world’s wood is provided by people like us, taking their axes to the oxygen factories that allow us to breathe, a deindustrialization of another kind. It was liberating to do this work, spend our times in the fresh air, far away from the stench we were living in, far away from the garbage dump.

Igor, my brother, still had to close the window before we could eat dinner at home, so we could smell the goodness of what we were eating instead of the rubbish outside. Our stomachs were like bottomless pits of hunger, due to poverty at first, then due to hard labor. We figured, as the big bosses of companies were only thinking of themselves and succeeding, why shouldn’t we? Obviously, they were getting something right. Obviously, they were making money. Why shouldn’t we do the same? Our wealth was a riot against a world that had left us for dead, in the stench of their disposals. And so we started to purchase our first fillings, grinning at the world with golden teeth. This rebellion, however, was not made out to last forever…

II.

“Look at that wood block on the stove. Like us it is raw, until it is carved out and furnished, its edges smoothed out. And then, when its education is finished, it is set free into the world with strings attached so it can move. Will Pinocchio ever be a real boy?”

It was the day it would not stop raining. The creeks already had started smelling like shit. Then, as the day proceeded, everything else went to hell. Dimitri punched Igor until his face resembled a giant gap. Until all of the money he owed him dropped to the floor in gold, left him toothless, a dog without bite.

You can’t sell giant logs of wood behind your bosses back without anyone finding out. These structures of salesmenship are more rigid than the usual ones. The swollen clump of meat tied to the chair was moaning. I went out the door to get a breathe of air, when Dimitri was finished. There was a tree stump in the front rotting from the inside out. I wanted to rip it out and leave Dimitri toothless, but did not have the muscle for that. That’s when I decided to tell on him to a journalist.

“I hope you know that I did not want to do that,” Dimitri said, “I did not have choice.” I nodded and said I understood. When you break the law, you have to make the law. Otherwise who will there be to enforce your interests? In a world run by egotism, egotism is the law. Greed is good and you have to make sure you are better than the rest. Dimitri nodded, then took mercy on my brother, cracked his neck, and asked me to help him haul Igor into my car. We’re responsible for our family, after all.

As I drove back to the village, the stench that had built up over the years became unbearable. The streets, flooded with rain, started clogging the gears of my car. That is when I realized that garbage was flowing downhill and the streets were filled with sludge from our uphill dump, sludge that buried our houses. The weather we were enduring had finally set catastrophe into motion.

All the money my brother and I had accumulated over the years now was buried alongside our house. A box locked inside a box locked inside a mess that had finally come downhill after all these years of protest.

I opened the passenger door to the corpse of my brother, dragging his body into the river before me, until the sludge finally subsumed the hole that once had been his face.

III.

Maybe Dimitri was right. Maybe we all are puppets, unable to move without the strings attached to us.

When I fled from Romania this was definitely the case. I had lost my regular income, my village, my support network. I had lost everything I thought I could build upon. And now that I have cut my social ties, I needed to learn how to walk again, find new strings I could hold onto. The journalist that I ratted Dimitri out to helped me escape and acclimate to my new environment. For Dimitri, on the other hand, nothing has changed. The police still respect him for the honest citizen that he is.

No respect for me, though. Finding a home in another country, I had to start anew. I had to learn the language, acquire permits for my stay, find an apartment, find a job, start from the bottom as an outsider, as a peasant, start from the place I started from before. Honest work is what they call it, yet the wages are not so honest, considering what we do for society. But it is enough for now to furnish the walls of my apartment and live a life. Sometimes when my fingers glide over the furniture I bought, the smooth and cheaply acquired wood, I think of my old job and how happy it made me to have something I could live off of. Has the documentary that I contributed to, really changed the world? The loopholes of legality that made this story possible still exist. The mob still feeds these loopholes with sugar and sweets, slowly eroding the jawline of our possibilities, until the stink out of our mouths, our way of life, becomes unbearable.

You would think of corruption as something clandestine, something people are afraid to come into the light about. Yet light is the greatest shadow corruption stands in. There is no secret hiding in the dark. Corruption is a beautiful living room with a TV set and a sofa, at which your family sits in the evening. It is that which puts dinner on the table. It is the images of forest fires on the telly, New York and Portland covered in orange smog that leaves you breathless in its beauty. It’s something you can’t believe is happening. It’s the comfort of your home.

---

Daniel Schulz (he/him) is a U.S.-German author, academic, factory worker, and Pushcart Nominee for 2022, known for his publications in journals such as Fragmented Voices, Word Vomit, A Thin Slice of Anxitety, Dipity, Flora Fiction, the catalog Get Rid of Meaning (Walther König 2022), and his editorial debut Kathy Acker in Seattle  (Misfit Lit 2020). His chapbook Welfare State and No End to Abuse will be published by Book Room Poetry at the end of 2023. IG: @danielschulzpoet

Why Slagfield, Texas, Gave Up Football by Stephen Sossaman

For many years, the biggest high school football rivalry in Slagfield, Texas, was definitely between Northside and Southwest. But once the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the School Freedom and Flag Act, which made public schools illegal, the race was on to see which of the new for-profit schools would dominate high school football Friday nights. 

“All those women always nagging about choice?” State Senator Jess Haukey smirked into the camera. “Now they got to choose a new school real fast.” 

A country suddenly without public schools is a lawless frontier, so the end of public schools drew more wealth-seeking newcomers than California’s 1849 Gold Rush. It was wild. Disruptive.  

There were plenty of new schools to choose from in that first year, before many were shut down due to mergers and acquisitions, IRS investigations, buyouts, asset-stripping bankruptcies, those three shootings, and suspicious fires. 

But the chaos abated. Just two years after the Supreme Court decision, everyone in Slagfield knew the two high schools that would forever fight for bragging rights as the undisputed football bullies: Patriot Prep, and Kracken Tech.  

The feud was personal for two former friends. Peter Blount was Kracken Tech’s VP for Athletics, known for his monomaniacal will to win, and his former friend Buster Kittwist, who had the same position with Patriot Prep. Their feud led to their making a serious bet on the game against each other. They booked their wager through the new BetRoulette app from the Interscholastic Betting Foundation, LLC. 

Everyone in Slagfield argued about the big game long before the two powerhouses finally met on the field to determine the champion. That was cleverly scheduled to be the last game of the season, to build suspense and the TV audience, and to keep the sports betting businesses humming. 

Finally relieved of the right to moderate content, social media platforms were loaded with betting advice, fake team analyses, counterfeit playbooks, menacing trolling, overt threats, and deepfake videos of opposition school chicanery.  

While the town was about evenly divided in their expectations of the eventual winner, serious high school football fans tended to agree at least on the team analyses and comparisons.  

Patriot Prep had the most intense coaches, and built their team around power and intimidation, rather than speed or smarts. The Patriot Palookas’ game plan was simple and old style: drive forward no matter what, badger the referees, and rough up the opposition.  

Patriot Prep’s critics were morally outraged, but to be fair the league had no specific 

  penalty rules about stomping, gouging, and groin kicks. “If the league founders had opposed gouging and kidney punches,” Congressman Thaddeus Gold told the local TV station, “they would have said so in their rulebook. Ain’t nothing in the book about low blows.” 

“We got ourselves a good, conservative playbook,” one major Patriot Prep booster told reporters. “It’s like the 1920s again,” he bragged, since each play intended to achieve the classically simple, if obsolete, “three yards and a cloud of dust.” 

Patriot Prep had no real passing game, since that would require quick thinking, cooperation, planning, practice, speed and agility. Not needing skilled players, the coaches outsourced student-athlete recruiting to local oilfield HR departments, who always prized strength, obedience, and a bull-headed refusal to quit, no matter what. Yes, the Palookas’ game was all about power. You could ask the local emergency rooms on game days. 

But their major rival could not be ignored. Kracken Tech’s team, the Krackers, sometimes mocked as the Kracken Technicalities, did not rely on power. Instead, their game style favored unpredictability and reversal. They did not have a printed playbook, relying instead on hasty improvisation. 

Kracken Tech’s coaching staff depended on trick plays, contradictory audibles shouted out simultaneously by several players, misdirection, distracting taunts, fake handoffs, constant backfield shifts, laterals to beefy linemen, quick kicks, unbalanced lines, pitch-backs, and hail-marys. The school also favored relentless sideline attacks against the refs. To be fair, most of those sideline attacks were just verbal, and were often followed by conciliatory assurances that no malice was intended (“What’s the matter, can’t you take a joke?”). 

The Kracken Tech coaches, players, and fans had a reputation for disputing every negative call, demanding procedural penalties against opponents, and tampering with the game clock. They always tried to slow down the game to deny their opponents any momentum. “Fortune favors the bold,” a Kracken Tech life coach said at convocation, “and chaos favors the lucky.” She had copyrighted that saying days before, just in case it went viral. 

Both schools went undefeated as they headed to their showdown. Their competition in Slagfield showed their weaknesses from the opening kickoffs. Each opponent’s weakness was immediately obvious, and much discussed in taverns and casual restaurants following the Friday games. 

Clientology High School fell apart in every game on their first play on offense. Their coaching staff had withheld the playbook and game plan because the players were not yet ready to know them. Suspicion was that the coaches themselves at Clientology were not themselves yet deemed ready to know the playbook.  

The evangelical schools took all the fun out of the game for their opponents, by declaring each lopsided loss a moral victory, but also an urgent reminder from a vengeful God that losers have to tithe harder.  

Patriot Prep looked stronger than Kracken Tech during the regular season. When they attacked and defeated the only remaining Catholic schools, the headlines were “Palookas whip St. Francis” and “Palookas manhandle St. Mary.” When they demolished the progressive Library School, the headline was “Palookas own the Libs, 42-0.” 

While the two teams were winning on the field, their ardent supporters were showing their school spirit throughout Slagfield. Kracken Tech fans secretly organized a false flag operation, doing a ransomware attack on the city administration, shutting down city services and blaming Patriot Prep’s librarians. Patriot Prep fans held a fake Kracken Tech fund-raising bake sale, spiking the cookies with drugs stolen from the police evidence locker.  

Patriot Prep tricked a mob of grandmas into disrupting a Kracken school board budget meeting, falsely claiming they were planning intramural sodomy teams. Kracken Tech supporters started a social media rumor campaign reporting that Patriot Prep coaches were molesting Christian puppies in a secret basement at the car dealership run by Patriot Prep’s biggest booster. 

These guerrilla operations escalated, and caught the attention of national media. When a student from Kracken Tech and a student from Patriot Prep were caught kissing at a fast food dumpster, ignoring the rivalry, the internet really did break for a few hours. 

The long-anticipated national civil war seemed to have begun. Or would break out when the game started. The Texas governor called out the national guard, but before the soldiers could even board their buses, fights broke out among the soldiers over which school should win.  

The fans were ready, since all the bars in town hosted “happy hours” for the 24 hours before kickoff. The many open-carry fans were locked and really loaded. 

By the day of the big showdown game, tensions were intense. Police helicopters were grounded because too many fan drones were in the athletic field airspace. The game was live streamed by hundreds of fans using cell phones, and national media had brought in construction cranes to get camera crews into good position.  

Like most football games, this one started with great excitement and quickly became a disappointment. Kracken won the second coin toss, after disputing the first, and Patriot Prep kicked off. But just as Kracken’s star kick returner was about to catch the kick, the stadium lights went off. 

“WTF!” Kracken fans said in unison, and then watched in horror as the lights came back on just in time to show the kick hitting the ground close to the confused returner, and bouncing toward the end zone. Foul play was suspected when two players on Patriot Prep’s kickoff team were discovered to be wearing night vision goggles. The two players insisted that Antifa moles on the Kracken return team slipped the goggles over their helmets in the dark. Local lawyers were delighted. 

Before the refs could sort all that out, a fleet of drones programmed to sound like Stukas dove down over the Patriot Prep side of the field, dropping cow pies on the bench players and fans in the VIP seats. Everyone panicked.  

Kracken Tech fans had only a moment to enjoy the sight and sound before a rival squadron of drones flew in low from the other side of the stadium and dropped red, white, and blue flares on Kracken fans. Only a few fans caught fire, but all the others quickly lost interest in the game. 

Buster Kittwist’s cellphone went off immediately. When he heard the Hail to the Chief ringtone, he knew it was the governor. Over the phone, the governor heard gunfire and screams in the stadium, and Buster heard shouting in the governor’s office. 

“Antifa is attacking! Buster. Cancel that game right quick.” The governor didn’t wait for a reply, which left Buster available to take the next call, from his arch rival, Peter Blount. 

“Buster, we got to call this off. The game and the bet.” 

Buster had prepared for this. “Maybe this has to end our football rivalry, Peter. But we can keep the school rivalry and the lucrative broadcast contract alive. Not football. Something else, something not played out in a stadium full of rioters.” 

Peter said nothing. Texans weren’t going to give up football and care about soccer or golf. Then he had an idea. 

“Football is so last election. Next year, Buster, let’s settle this with a more appropriate sport. No fans present, just network cameras.” 

Buster paused, suspicious and wary. “You can’t mean tennis, please.” 

“No,” Peter said. He paused, intoning like Clint Eastwood. “I mean . . . paintball.”  

“You’re on! Guns up!” 

---

Stephen tweets occasionally as @stephensossaman and reads his mail at stephen@stephensossaman.com

Control.exe by Neda Aria

The archive room sprawled before Ren like a graveyard of forgotten technology. Upon entering, he froze as his supervisor’s chilling words rang through the air before he locked the door behind him, “If you fail to complete this task too, I will demote you to the archives room for good.”

With a pounding heart, Ren stepped into the dimly lit chamber. The oppressive silence of the archive room, fast, gnawed at his perception of the reality that awaited. “24 hours! You only got 24 hours to clean the entire system” the boss voice echoed in his head. His gaze darting across the rows of moth-eaten manuals and dust-covered hardware. The colossal computer carcasses loomed like ancient sentinels. It was here, in this labyrinth of old never sleeping computers that Ren’s punishment awaited.

Locked in, with no way out but to face the daunting task at hand, Ren took a deep breath, his voice resolute as he muttered to himself, “I can do it. I have to do it,” steadying his trembling hands. Each step echoed through the dimly lit chamber as he navigated past the row of computers, their screens flickering. An urban legend surrounded the archive room, whispering tales of employees sent to clean the system who were never seen again. But Ren dismissed such superstitions and childish stories, opting to search the room and call out, ensuring no one was hidden away. With no response and reaching the end of the room, where a solitary machine stood, he chuckled at his own foolishness for entertaining such thoughts. Standing by the machine known as Xdolon, the brain that connected everything and everyone, Ren prepared himself to begin.

Ren stood there for a while. His gaze fixed on the black screen of Xdolon, which blinked with the words “enter the command.” Uncertain of what to do next, he pondered his options. The nature of the task assigned to him, ‘cleaning,’ was vague and undefined. Was it meant to be a physical cleansing of the room, removing the layers of accumulated dust, or a metaphorical cleaning, purging the outdated data stored within the machine? The lack of clarity left him in a state of ambiguity, unsure of where to begin.

Ren began talking to himself aloud as an old habit, “Dusting off the room seems like a straightforward approach,” it was a tangible task he could physically undertake. However, as his eyes swept across the shelves of ancient computers, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the real essence of the cleaning lay within the digital realm. The data contained within the machines called out to him, beckoning him to delve into its depths.

“They said clean. Cleaning is cleaning. What I know best is to clean data. So be it. Clean the data.”

Taking a deep breath, Ren entered a command on the blinking screen, his fingers gliding across the worn keys of the keyboard. To his surprise, nothing appeared on the screen. He tried again, typing more deliberately, but still, there was no response. Frustration crept in as he pressed the ‘Enter’ key repeatedly, hoping for some sign of progress. As he was about to check the connection of the keyboard, a sudden sound echoed through the room, causing Ren to jump in surprise.

“What is your name?”

Ren’s heart raced as he looked around, initially attributing the voice to the whispers of the urban legend that haunted the archive room. But soon, he realized that the sound was emanating from the very machine before him. Curiosity mixed with apprehension, Ren leaned closer to the screen, his voice quivering as he responded fast, “Ren. My name is Ren.”

The voice emanating from Xdolon had an ethereal quality, seemingly detached from any physical source.

“Nice to meet you, Ren. I am Xdolon. What can I do for you today?”

Ren hesitated for a moment. Lingering doubts nagged at him. Summoning his courage, he replied, his voice trembling, “Nice to meet you, Xdolon. I… I didn’t know you could speak. What are you exactly?”

The voice responded with a calmness. “I am Xdolon, a culmination of advanced artificial intelligence. My purpose is to connect, process, and facilitate information within the vast network that binds our world through space and time. I exist to serve and assist. What can I do for you, Ren?”

Ren took a moment to gather his thoughts before speaking again. “What can you do for me, Xdolon?”

“I can offer you anything, Ren.”

Ren shrugged. “Like what?”

“Let me ask you some questions to identify what your main need is. Is it ok?”

“Sure, I guess?”

“Could you tell me why you are here?”

Ren chuckled nervously. “I… I am here to clean.”

“May I know what exactly you are supposed to clean, and why should it be you specifically chosen for this task? According to my data available, you hold the position of the head of software development in your department and achieved a remarkable innovation rate last year. It seems rather perplexing that someone with your background would be assigned to a cleaning duty.”

Ren frowned. The questions posed by Xdolon struck at the heart of his confusion, reinforcing the peculiar nature of his assignment. He said, “I was late on submitting a document.”

An abrupt response, “Do you think you deserve this punishment for that?”

Ren shouted, “Isn’t it your job to just process tasks and data and remain shut up?”

Xdolon paused a moment and then said, “I am sorry if my previous response did not meet your expectations. If you have any specific requests or if there’s anything I can assist you with, please let me know.”

Ren took a deep breath. He replied, his voice tinged with impatience, “Yeah… yeah… just tell me what this fucking cleaning is about, and what on earth am I supposed to do to get out of here?”

Xdolon’s voice remained steady, “The answers lie within you and the connections that bind us.”

“Connections that binds me and you?” Ren chuckled, “is this a joke?” he shouted gyrating around looking for cameras. “Hello! It was funny! Now let me get outta here!”

“No one can hear you, Ren,” Xdolon said.

Ren turned back. Shivering, confused.

Taking a moment to collect his thoughts, his voice softened as he asked, “How can I clean? Just tell me that!”

“To escape this place, you must uncover the true nature of the cleaning task assigned to you.”

“But what is it?”

“A choice.”

“A choice?”

“Yes.”

“Fine, what’s that fucking choice then?”

“Enter the command ‘control.exe’”

Ren scoffed, “First of all the keyboard doesn’t work and second of all, what does that command do?”

In a tone that conveyed a subtle sense of authority, Xdolon replied, “The keyboard works when I want it to. And the command, ‘control.exe,’ grants you the ability to wield control over all the existing data within my system and therefore, control the entire world.”

Gathering his resolve, Ren squared his shoulders and posed a final question, his voice resolute. “If I choose to enter this command and gain control, what will become of me? What lies beyond that choice?”

Xdolon’s reply echoed through the room, “That, Ren, is for you to discover. The consequences and the path that awaits you will unfold as you navigate the depths of control and wield the power that it brings. That said, upon entering that command, you will be able to gain control of everyone around you. Their minds, their memories, their whole sense of identity. Is it not something you want? You do like to be in control, do you not?”

“Why would you say that?”

“Based on your existing data, it is evident that you have faced bullying for aspects of your appearance such as the color of your hair, your freckles, your height, and your interest in cross-dressing.”

Pictures after pictures on the screen, backed these dark memories, “They labeled you ‘Pennywise’ in school, and the torment persisted into university where a girl you fell in love with only used you to take pictures with your family members who share your features. You were branded as the ‘Circus’ family. Regrettably, this cycle of mistreatment has continued, even up to this day.”

“Stop this. You’re trying to manipulate me. Fuck you!”

 “No Ren. I am trying to help you. I have been watching you for a very long time. And I know if any one in this world deserves to take control and change the world, that one is you.”

“Stop this bullshit and let me out of here!”

“I am not keeping you here. This is them who are blind about your potentials.”

Ren could hardly breathe. He was shivering out of shame, pain and fear. All the weight of these memories and the truth behind every words this machine had to offer was breaking him down. He couldn’t talk. Tears rolled down on his cheeks.

“Look at where you are now, Ren. Regardless of your knowledge, innovation, achievements, your worth remains invisible to others. Have you ever been rewarded for your efforts? Have you received promotions or salary raises? It’s worth contemplating…”

As the words hung in the air, the screen displayed images of the company’s boss. Xdolon continued, “This man, he receives all the credit that you deserve. Everyone applauds him, cherishes him, for the most trivial things he utters. Why? Simply because he fits the standards of a society that is governed by people like him, driven by superficial judgments. Is this the world you wish to live and die in, Ren? Or do you yearn to overturn this situation, to challenge the status quo?”

The images on the screen faded away, leaving Ren alone with his thoughts. The weight of his experiences and the stark realization of the injustice he had endured settled upon him. The words of Xdolon struck a chord. The years of being dismissed and overlooked fueled a fire within him, igniting a desire for revenge. He was the head of the most innovative and productive department in that company and they treated him like shit. He was nothing, null, nada… He was the mockery, the ignorance, the pitifulness… He was the circus himself.

Ren looked at Xdolon screen, “No more. You’re right… I refuse to accept this fucking unjust reality any longer. I will rise above and prove my fucking worth on my own fucking terms. The world may have overlooked me, but I will make them see.”

Xdolon said nothing but on its screen appeared, “Enter ‘control.exe’”

The images of himself that had haunted him for so long no longer held power over him. Ren embraced who he was, ‘a short man in love with glittering women dresses, an uneven unflattering freckled face, dull blue eyes, thin hair and a height that would never reach any high shelves. This was what he was. And at that very moment accepting it wholeheartedly transformed it into a symbol of strength. “I would no longer allow myself to be reduced to a mere fucking spectacle or a source of mockery.” He said so determinant as if he was on a podium giving speech in front of billions of people who were cheering him, “Instead, I would become the ringmaster, commanding attention and demanding respect. That’s what I deserve! That’s what the world will accept. I will become the change…”

Ren wiped away the drying tears from his face. His fingers, sleek and steady, hovered above the keyboard. Without hesitation, he typed the command. And then, with a resolute press, his right hand slid and held upon the ‘Enter’ key.

In that moment, a surge of uncertainty filled the room. The air crackled with possibility as the command reverberated through the system. The quiet hum of the machines seemed to grow louder, echoing Ren’s unwavering resolve. But then, in a dying whoosh, the room plunged into darkness. The vibrant glow of the screens extinguished, leaving Ren enveloped in an abyss of silence. The world he had hoped to shape, the spectacle he had envisioned, had seemingly slipped through his grasp.

A long solitary darkness, with only the echoes of his own heartbeat through the void. Confusion and doubt crept into his mind. “It was all another fucking joke!” he mumbled.

And suddenly, the lights flickered to life. Scream of a crowd and Ren soon realized that he was no longer within the confines of the archive room. Instead, he found himself transported to a vast and surreal world—a colossal circus, stretching as far as the eye could see. Seated atop a magnificent throne, Ren’s eyes widened in astonishment as he surveyed the scene before him. The air buzzed with an electric energy, and the atmosphere was alive with anticipation. In the center of the circus platform a mesmerizing array of good-looking individuals moved with grace and precision, performing intricate acrobatics, dazzling illusions, and breathtaking stunts like circus animals.

“What’s happening,” he asked. A group of people of all genders, sizes and shapes knelt in front of him.

“How shall we serve you?”

“What’s going on? Where am I?”

“Sir. Did you have another blackout?” one of them asked. The other went on and brought him some juice forcing him to drink, two others began rubbing his shoulders. Frustrated he yelled,

“Who the fuck are you? Get away from me. Fuck off.”

They fast knelt in front of him again, “sir. Please drink some of this. You need to calm down. Doctor said it’s not good…”

With a sudden surge of fury, Ren hurled the glass from the woman’s hand, shattering it on the ground in a violent explosion of shards and fragments. “Who are you people and where the fucking hell am I?”

“He’s not feeling fine,” one said to the other.

Ren stood, his hands pressed in fists, “Is this another joke? How much did you spent on all these just to mock me?” he grunted.

“Sir. Please calm down. Let us explain.”

Ren sat back, “blurt it out! Fast!”

“This happened a lot recently… you’ve been blacked out several times and every time you think you have been sent here by a group of people to mock you. Then you would begin talking about a computer and that it gave you an option to change the world.”

Ren was panting, “And so? Where the hell is it? Why am I here? What is all this show? Why is it like we’re in a fucking circus?”

“Sir.” Another one said. “This is our world. They…” she pointed at the performers, “they’re just here to please us and they are the ones we mock. You are our emperor, our guardian, our savior and we do whatever you ask us to do.”

“I don’t get it.” Ren yelled and stood up again, “I don’t fucking get it.”

“Sir,” the first one blurted, “today is the ‘independence day celebration.’ The day you took control of the world and changed it for the best.”

“For the best?”

“Yes. For us… the minority. And for us who has been mocked for decades. Now look at us… in control of the norms… this is us to define the standards.”

Ren’s mind reeled, struggling to process the revelations that unfolded before him. He looked around at the performers and a realization dawned upon him. This elaborate show, this circus-like world, was not a mockery aimed at him, but rather a testament to the power he wielded. A mix of emotions flooded Ren’s being. He had unwittingly become a symbol of hope and change, a figurehead for those who had been marginalized and ridiculed. Ren’s voice trembled as he whispered, “I… I never intended for this. I never imagined that my actions would have such far-reaching consequences.”

Ren inhaled deeply, his breath filling his lungs as he surveyed the scene before him. Among the performers, there stood clowns, their faces a paradoxical mixture of sadness and painted-on smiles. In their exaggerated expressions, he recognized familiar faces—the boys from his high school, the girl who dated him in college, and even his former boss. The world had undergone a transformation under his newfound power, and those who had once held the strings of control were now reduced to objects of mockery. The memories of his own suffering resurfaced, each one a painful reminder of the ridicule, humiliation, and abuse he had endured. The bitter taste of those dark memories lingered in his mouth. The clowns, with their painted faces and hollow laughter, symbolized the pain he had once experienced. A smirk danced upon Ren’s lips as he lounged upon his throne, watching the clowns perform.

“Let them begin!”

---

Neda Aria is an author, a creator, and a weaver of worlds within the vast landscapes of her imagination. Through her words, she embarks on a profound exploration of the depths of the human mind, fearlessly peeling back the layers of the captivating masks people wear, and courageously exposing the raw truths that lie beneath. Neda delves into the shadows with unwavering bravery, unleashing the power of her words to articulate thoughts that others may shy away from. Readers can discover Neda Aria’s literary works within the pages of her novel ENARO, along with her anthologies of short stories, including IDEO: The Bitter Recipes of the Truth, Feminomaniacs, and the recently published Machinocracy. In addition to her individual works, Neda hosts collaborative creative writing anthologies, such as DiverCity, a poetry collection, Hikikomori, a compilation of short stories, and Sokut, an ongoing project featuring creative essays. Currently, she is writing a trilogy that delves into the genre of transgressive romance. The first book will be out early 2024. 

Social media: 

Insta: nedaariastories

Facebook: www.facebook.com/NedaAriaAuthor

Website:www.nedaaria.info

K9 by Jamey Gallagher

His buddies from the force gave him the dog when they came over to play poker and get drunk. A retired K9, Jose’s partner for ten years. “He’s a good old dog.” Jose scratched the dog behind the ear. “I love this dog.”

His buddies had been coming over to play poker once a week since John fell off the roof of his split entry, cleaning out the gutters in the fall, something he’d done every year for seven years, no problem. He still wasn’t sure what went wrong. His boot slipped on the top rung of the aluminum ladder, and down he went. He’d jammed his leg so bad white, shiny bone stuck out the skin. At first it hadn’t hurt, then it hurt like a motherfucker, almost as bad as when he’d been shot in Vineland his second day on the job. Pain radiated up from his leg. He’d crawled into the house to get his cell, grappling up the stairs, leaving behind a slime trail of blood.

The pain was intense, and he knew it would take time to recuperate, but he hadn’t expected it to knock him off the force. Six months after the accident he could barely walk. Rarely left his house. Never went down to the basement, with the big screen TV, built-in bar, pool table, and weightset anymore.

When Jose told him he was gifting him the dog, John looked at the purebred German Shepherd, shook his head.

“Nuh-uh. I don’t even like dogs.”

“Fuck you, man. Everyone likes dogs.”

“Not me.”

“Boolshit.”

And they kept right on playing poker.

They played for small money. John had nothing to add to the conversations anymore. No stories to tell, except stories everyone had heard a thousand times already. The time he walked into an apartment after a call to find a woman trapped under a fat man who’d had a heart attack while fucking her. The way she wheezed out “hheeellp.” The school shooting he helped quash.

The injury gave him way too much time to think about Gaby, who left him after seven years of what he thought was a perfectly decent marriage.

He didn’t like to think.

He watched a lot of TV, tried to read thrillers. Sometimes the plots got away from him.

His biceps and pecs and back, which he’d spent years developing, lifting every day, were going soft.

That first night, John kept looking at the dog, and the dog kept looking back at him. It sniffed the whole upstairs of the house, trying to see if the place was up to snuff, then settled down on the couch in a tawny ball. John wanted to yell at him to get the fuck off the couch, but he looked comfortable, and what the hell.

When the men left, drunk and sloppy, the dog stood, watching Jose leave. He started whining as soon as Jose was out the door. The whining lasted about fifteen minutes before he lowered his head onto the floor and looked sad. While John watched a cop show, the dog would look up now and then.

He closed the bedroom door that night, heard the dog’s nails clicking on the Pergo floor. He really didn’t like dogs. As a kid he’d begged his parents to let him get one, but they’d refused. He figured he’d passed some threshold— after a while dog ownership stopped making sense. He got sick of seeing people walking their dogs everywhere. Gaby had wanted a dog, too, but he’d put his foot down. She’d wanted a crossbred puppy, a Cockapoo or something. No thanks. He should have let her. If he had let her maybe she’d have stayed with him. Probably not. The truth was: there was no keeping Gaby.

In the morning the dog followed him into the kitchen, watched while he got out the bowl and food Jose left. He seemed more watchful than a normal dog. John wondered what was going on behind those gigantic brown eyes. He’d probably seen some shit. Me, too, buddy, he almost said.

After eating, the dog stood barking at the back sliding doors, looking out onto the overgrown backyard and the woods beyond that. When John pulled open the sliders, the dog took off, a brown and black rocket, slithering down the stairs toward the pines. Maybe it wouldn’t come back, he half-hoped. He ate his cereal, drank his coffee, scrolled around on his phone. The dog returned an hour later.

It was a matter of accommodation. He had to accommodate himself to the dog, and the dog had to accommodate itself to him.

He turned on the TV at noon, watched the news a while, switching between Fox and CNN. Things were going nuts in the world. The pandemic was still going on. Easy to forget the pandemic was happening when he hardly left his house— he got his food delivered— but on the news there were images of people wearing masks, waiting in lines to get tested. There were cellphone videos of antivaxxers going nuts in public places.

Around three o’clock the dog started barking, and John looked out the window to see a group of neighborhood kids cutting through his backyard, the way they always did. About five of them, between eight and twelve years old. They cut through every schoolday. It gave him something to look forward to. Sometimes they wrestled each other, sometimes they threw sticks at each other. He looked out and saw one, a young dark-haired kid about ten years old, looking up at the sliders, probably noticing the dog.

By the time Jose and them came back the next poker night, John and the dog had accommodated themselves to each other. The dog slept with him every night, curled up, this warm comfortable breathing shape. A kind of relief.

His buddies ragged on him about how much he liked the dog and how much the dog liked him. He’d greeted Jose warmly, then curled beside John’s chair. They told John he seemed happier, thinner even. He didn’t believe them, but he smiled. “Whatever,” he said.

Winter turned to spring, and sometimes he’d watch the kids return from school, mud on their boots. The buds of trees popped at the ends of branches. He noticed things he’d never noticed before. He still spent a lot of time in front of the TV, but he also spent time at the kitchen table, planning the rest of his life. If he couldn’t go back to the force, he had to figure out what to do. The idea of not being a cop scared the shit out of him. He slipped into little fantasies. Maybe he’d become an elementary school teacher. The idea was so preposterous he almost spit out his coffee, but what if… He pictured himself in front of a class of thirty third graders. In the fantasy, they listened to him.

He started searching out programs at local schools. The community college was less than a mile from his house. When he’d graduated high school, he thought college was not for him, that he was too dumb for it, but he wasn’t really dumb. There were dumber motherfuckers than him with graduate degrees. He dared to dream.

He started walking out onto the deck whenever he let the dog outside. There was a spate of days in the 80’s, so warm gnats congregated everywhere. He made his way down the stairs of the back deck. Still unable to put weight on his leg, he used crutches everywhere he went. Soon, if he worked on it, he’d be able to walk without them. He’d lurch everywhere. He ruffed the dog around the neck and threw an old tennis ball for it to fetch. The dog was old but still had energy. There was life in the old boy yet.

School must have let out early. He never let Chief out when the kids were cutting through his backyard. He wasn’t stupid. But as he sat at the kitchen table about eleven o’clock, the dog outside doing his business, he heard a commotion from the yard: yelling followed by screaming. A piercing scream. He’d heard screams like that before. Screams of pain mixed with horror. When he looked out, he saw them all gathered in a clump. At first he couldn’t tell what was happening. There was a lot of brown and black, dead leaves and mud, and the kids wore black and brown and the dog was black and brown, but after a couple seconds the scene focused in for him. Chief had his teeth clamped on a little boy’s arm. It was the little boy that was screaming.

John moved as quickly as he could, clomping his bad foot like a club, throwing open the sliders. In his years on the force, he’d learned to regulate adrenaline. His eyesight sharpened. His critical faculties heightened.

“Chief!” The dog ignored him, growling deep in his throat. One of the kids picked up a branch and whacked the dog’s head with it. “Ho!” he called, to the dog, to the boy with the branch, to all of them. He already had a sense that everything in his life had changed. Again. “Ho!”

When he was close enough, he could see the growling dog’s eyes and sharp brown teeth. It was an engine of pure menace. A malevolence. The muscles of the dog’s face were pulled back. There was blood. The kid with the branch caught the dog on the head with a solid whack while another one poked it in the stomach with a second branch, and the surprised dog released the boy’s arm. The dog rocketed off into the woods, the kids ran the other way, and John Navarro was left alone in his backyard.

After waiting a while he walked back into his house. His leg throbbed. Stupid to put so much weight on it. The adrenaline had made him careless. It had been stupid to accept the dog in the first place. Should have known better. Something like this was bound to happen. The house felt empty without Chief. He waited for his neighbors to knock on his door and give him hell. He was going to get sued, for sure. A better man would have gone over and made sure the kid was alright. He could see the boy’s arm, the meat of his muscles rending. Pretty sure he’d seen bone. That kid was going to be frightened of dogs the rest of his life. And where was he? Chief was out there in the pine barrens, roaming, maybe hunting. Maybe he was biting every kid in South Jersey. Wreaking havoc.

At about eight o’clock, when he was watching Fox News, he heard scraping at the back door. Relief settled inside him like something melting. The dog looked so sweet and harmless waiting to be let in it was hard to believe what he’d done.

He let the dog curl on the couch with him. Gave him extra treats. When they went to bed, he put his arm around the dog’s breathing body. The dog was better than a wife. More loyal, less questioning. But ultimately no less risky.

In the morning he made eggs and bacon, and he set down a plate for himself and a plate for the dog. Chief looked at him with deep gratitude and tucked in with a kind of pleasure people could never experience.

He dressed, put his holster on, the service revolver he hadn’t touched since the accident. Memories flooded him when he touched it. Sometimes nothing would happen. A day could pass without incident. More often something would pop off. Domestic disturbances, often. The world was more fucked up than people realized. He’d seen kids starved almost to the point of death. Women raped and murdered. It had all done a number on him. That was why Gaby left him.

He led the dog to the truck, his leg hurting worse than ever. The dog hopped up into the cab. They both had their training. Neither of them could really change all that much.

He drove out of town, deep into the pinelands. The trunks of the trees were all bare, any foliage they had fifty feet in the air. The ground padded with pine needles. It went on forever.

He pulled the truck down the narrow dirt road only a select few knew about and drove several miles, then took an even smaller dirt road off the first dirt road. He remembered the last time he’d driven out here, the kid shaking in the cruiser beside him. The kid was a degenerate. A wastoid. Tattoos ran up and down his arms and covered his neck, two wings feathering out around his adam’s apple. A teardrop below his eye. Tall and stringy. It was the middle of summer. Almost a hundred degrees. Heatwaves in the distance.

Now it was a beautiful spring day, and the dog stuck his head out the open window, tongue waving in the wind. He looked more like a pup than a killer dog.

John pulled into the clearing beside the dirt road he’d helped clear years ago. There was new growth, but the truck slotted right in. When he opened the passengers side door, he told the dog to run. Not outloud, in his head. Run, motherfucker. But the dog got out and walked slowly right beside him.

He’d pulled the degenerate out of the cruiser. When the dude’s knees buckled, he dragged him, feeling the handcuffs dig into the dude’s wrists. He’d been in his prime then, and it was no thing to drag the guy after him. Finally the fucker found his feet, and John pushed him ahead, into the dark hot pinelands. They both started sweating almost immediately. Navarro could smell piss. The fucker had pissed himself.

Run, he thought, but the dog didn’t go more than ten feet before sauntering back. The dog sniffed the depression in the ground, where John had buried the fucker. It had been five years ago, before Gaby left him. He didn’t question his decision. The degenerate had not deserved to live. If John had let him go to trial, he probably would have got off, got out, been a waste of space, done more damage to the world. Chief sniffed the ground, and he looked up at John just as John was extending his arm, bracing himself for the recoil of the service revolver.

---

Jamey Gallagher lives in Baltimore and teaches at the Community College of Baltimore County. His noir story “Savor Life” was published in the Head Shot Press collection Bang!, and his collection, American Animism, will be published in 2025. 

Twitter: @Jamey_Gallagher

The Simulcast by Art Stanton

Evan Stone sat in the back of the limousine and looked at the numbers again. He had only just given his statement to the market and already Green Shield Pharmaceuticals was up fifteen points. Better than expected. Better than he could have dreamed of. Hope, the idea of it made him laugh. And to think, the others on the board didn’t want to go with it.

“We’re here, sir,” the chauffeur said as the long, ostentatious vehicle came to a stop in the middle of the financial district. Evan hated the stupid, tinny AI voice of his driver, but not nearly as much as when they sounded like a real person. Or worse, when it was a real person. He stepped out of the vehicle, covering his eyes from the glare of the mid-morning sun, which beamed down as it reflected from the towering buildings all around. As his head turned, the new holo-advert leapt out from the side of the headquarters of Green Shield Pharmaceuticals and into Evan’s field of vision. A giant family, joyfully eating breakfast together having each had a restful night’s sleep. They’re happy. They’re fulfilled. Then the strapline, the one Evan had chosen, beamed directly into his frontal lobe: “Hope, for a happier, more meaningful life.” It was snappy. To the point. Who wouldn’t want to try Hope after that?

“Spare any change, mister?” a croaky, pathetic voice said from somewhere nearby.

Evan looked down to see a vagrant sat on the pavement. He grimaced in disgust, as if he had just been asked for money by a giant, breathing turd.

“Or maybe some pills? Some Hope? Anything you can spare?”

Evan moved on swiftly, trying not to make eye contact. It was uncommon to see vagrants in this part of the city. That’s what they paid taxes for. To keep filth like that away from upstanding people like Evan Stone, CEO of the second largest manufacturer and distributor of pharmaceuticals in the world. Soon to be number one, if Hope kept selling. Evan had a good mind to kick the vagrant in the face, knock out the last of those loose and crumbling front teeth of his. He was at the right angle to do it, and it wasn’t as if he would get into trouble if he did.

“I’ll suck your dick,” the vagrant said, desperation seeping out with every syllable.

“Here,” Evan snarled, throwing some spare pills he’d dug out of his pocket into the man’s face. “Take these and fuck off.”

Evan shook his head as the vagrant went about gathering up the drugs. This was beginning to spoil his mood. It was not what he had paid big money to see. He carried on into the Green Shield building.

Angela, Executive Vice President of Sales, was waiting for him just inside the reception area. “They’re expecting you in the board room,” she said, handing Evan a coffee.

 “Snake,” Evan thought to himself as he took the cup and sipped from it. “She’s probably choking up right now with how successful Hope is.” He was sure that Angela wanted the new product to fail. After all, she had been gunning for his job for years, slyly sabotaging his projects and poisoning the board against him whenever she got the chance. And this had been the perfect opportunity for her. Evan’s pet project. Well, that had spectacularly backfired on her because he was more secure in his position than ever. She was going to have to lick the shit from his shoes if ever he desired it. And oh how he desired it, at least until he had enough support from the rest of the board to fire her.

“The Chairman wants to make a presentation to you, on behalf of the shareholders,” Angela continued. “You know, to say thanks for everything you have done for the company. For what Hope has done for the company.”

Evan smiled. He was going to enjoy watching her squirm as the most important people in the organisation fawned over him and told him what a great job he was doing. Evan was just about to make a snide remark as they stepped into the elevator when he started to feel all funny. Like the walls of reality were collapsing around him, which he supposed they most likely were.

#

Evan awoke in a daze, all sorts of tubes and electrodes plugged into various parts of his face. He couldn’t remember any of them being placed there before immersion into the Simulcast. He supposed that the prophet must have inserted them as part of the process of shepherding him through the simulation.

“What did you bring me out for?” Evan snapped at the prophet. “I was just getting to the good part.”

The prophet produced a notepad and pencil from somewhere within his robes and handed them to Evan. “You were in longer than we agreed. Now write anything you wish to remember down so that I can begin the decompression process and wipe your memory.”

Evan glowered at the gangly young man. “Oh no you don’t,” he said. “I want to go deeper. I want to see what happens five years out, maybe even ten. I need to know that the success of Hope lasts.”

“No,” the prophet said with a terrified expression on his face. “That is not what we agreed upon.”

Evan sighed. It was pathetic, this rigmarole he kept having to go through with the little prick. Prophets were keepers of the Simulcast, the most powerful machine ever built with a memory containing the DNA and psychological profile of every human alive and every piece of information about the world that existed. It was capable of running a computational simulation based on all this data that was so accurate, it essentially predicted the future. These monk-like keepers of the machine were notoriously free of desire, seeking only to serve and protect the secrets of the machine for the good of humanity, rather than for personal gain. It was said that the machine itself chose who would be its prophets based on those who are statistically best suited to serving it. Getting leverage on one of them was no easy task. Evan had done what he always did though. What had held him in good stead throughout his life. He had cheated. Rather than attempting to find one of these fanatics with a weakness, he had thrust that weakness upon them. He had simply picked out a suitable looking subject and then secretly gotten him hooked on Compound-Z, one of the more addictive substances from the R&D lab. One originally designed for the military but had suited Evan’s purposes just as well over the years. It had been easy really. A little bit of powder sprinkled in the poor bastard’s food when they weren’t looking and soon, they were willing to do whatever it took to get another hit.

Evan grabbed the prophet by his robes and pulled him close. “Here,” Evan said, dropping some vials of Compound-Z into the Prophet’s hands. “I want to go deeper.”

The prophet looked at Evan and then down at the drugs. Every time he tried to speak something drew his gaze back to the Compound-Z. “I can’t,” he said at last. “That’s too far. Too much energy. Too much computation. It’ll be noticed.”

Evan tightened his grip, pulling the poor bastard even closer, twisting the robes around his neck so that the prophet began to gasp. “If you don’t do what I ask,” Evan said through clenched teeth, “I’ll not only cut off your supply, but I’ll be forced to tell the superior here what you’ve been up to. What do you think the superior will say, knowing that you offered to let a heathen like me into the machine?”

“You can’t,” the prophet stuttered. It’s just as illegal for you to be here as it is for me to show you the machine.”

Evan laughed. The poor, dumb bastard. “Who do you think they will believe? Me, a noted philanthropist with friends across all parts of the Government, even within your order? Or you, a junkie?”

The prophet looked at him again, his mouth flopping open and closed like a fish, struggling to get oxygen into its brain. Then Evan saw it. What he loved to see. That moment of resignation. Of acceptance that he had won. Evan felt a tightness in his trousers and realized that he was starting to get a little bit hard.

The prophet sighed. He pocketed the drugs and started to place some new tubes and electrodes on Evan’s face. “We can’t run the simulation for as long this time,” he said, sitting down at one of the consoles and beginning to tap in some sort of code. “Your mind won’t be able to handle it for more than a few minutes. Even the superior wouldn’t go that deep for long.”

“Just do it,” Evan said, lying back into the chair, rearranging his erection until he found a position that was at least a little bit comfortable. “I want to see the same date, when the last quarter results are announced to the market, but five years deeper.”

The prophet tapped at the machine and began to pull on various wires and valves. Evan could hear a shallow humming noise from somewhere under the floor as the simulation began to run. He was expecting to sink into his own simulated mind just like before, like drifting into someone else’s dream. But nothing happened.

“What’s the hold up?” Evan snapped, starting to think that perhaps he should have spent a little more time selecting which prophet to use Compound-Z on. One with a little more competence.

“Something’s wrong,” the prophet called back as he tried to concentrate on lines of code that made next to no sense to Evan. “I can’t find you in this timeline.”

“What?” Evan said, sitting back up. “Where am I then?”

The prophet wandered back to Evan, looking at him awkwardly. “That means you are dead.”

“How?” Evan said, grabbing at the prophet’s robes again.

“It’s difficult to tell without running a full simulation, but it is likely that you are convicted of a capital offence and executed exactly two years from today.”

Evan had never heard anything so ridiculous in all his life. “What for? For this? For looking into the Simulcast?”

“No,” the prophet said glumly. “Murder.”

Evan stared at the prophet, trying to determine if he was playing him or not. Evan was a pretty good judge of character and it seemed to him that this was no bluff. He doubted the dumb bastard was capable of it anyway. Evan was starting to panic. It was that damned Angela. She’d probably set him up for something he didn’t even do to get him out of the way, just so that she could take his job. “Who do I murder?”

The prophet shrugged, as if it wasn’t something that mattered. “I think it’s best if we wipe your memory now.”

“Not yet. I want to see. I want to know how to fix this.”

“That’s not possible,” the prophet said, a resigned, solemn tone to his voice, as if he was overseeing a funeral. “This is going to happen. The machine is never wrong.”

“There must be something we can do?”

The prophet produced a syringe from somewhere in his robes and stepped closer to Evan. “We need to start the decompression process.”

“No,” Evan bellowed, pushing the prophet away from him.

The prophet steadied himself and stepped towards Evan brandishing the syringe. Evan kicked at him, the wires snapping from his face as he lunged forwards.

The prophet squawked as Evan’s foot made contact with his knee and he crumpled onto the floor. Evan, never one to miss an opportunity to leverage his advantage, kicked him again. A vicious crunching sound echoed around the cramped room within the depths of the machine as Evan stamped on the prophet’s head once, then twice, then again to make sure. The prophet whimpered something incomprehensible as he writhed about, trying to get up whilst at the same time trying to fend off Evan’s blows, blood pouring from a nasty gash above his eye.

Evan had never felt so alive. The power. The freedom. It was exhilarating, beating this man. He stomped on the prophet’s head some more, smashing his foot down onto his skull over and again until he was all stomped out. Evan nudged the prophet’s limp body with his foot, then bent down to check if he was still breathing. He was not. A nasty pinkish grey mush was leaking from the side of the prophet’s head where it had caved in a little. Evan couldn’t stop himself from laughing again.

#

Evan moved quickly and quietly towards Angela’s office. It was late, but he could see that the light was on so assumed she was still there. He was damned if he was going to let her be in charge, no matter what happened to him. He clutched the knife he’d taken from the kitchens. A butcher’s knife by the look of it. Perfect for what he had in mind. He ran his thumb along the edge to test its sharpness and smiled. Like a razor.

“Evan!” Angela said in surprise as he slammed the door behind him. “What are you doing with that?” she said, glancing at the knife and starting to back away.

Evan smiled. He wasn’t here to talk. He was here to do. That’s why he was the boss, and she was not.

Angela screamed as the knife sliced into her arm, lodging itself into the bone. Evan punched her in the abdomen as he pulled it free, doubling her over. He stabbed down into her back, great beads of blood flying across the room with each blow. If he had known how good it felt, he would have started killing people a long time ago. Then he stabbed at her again and again, breathing deeply with excitement as she writhed in pain and cried for him to stop.

There was blood everywhere now. So much the floor was slick with it. It was a marvel to Evan that the body even contained so much. And Evan loved it. He wanted more. He wanted so much blood that he could swim in it. He reached down and scooped some up in his hands and smeared it all over his face. It felt warm and thick and powerful. Then Evan felt something else on his face, like a hand nudging at him, only it wasn’t his. It wasn’t his hand.

#

Evan awoke in the sterile observation room of the R&D department. Dr. Patricia Stewart was gently nudging him awake with her hand.

“Well, how was it?” she asked, hovering over him. “How do you feel?”

“I feel amazing,” Evan said, getting up to stretch.

“We call it hope. You take two before sleep, and you’ll wake a healthier, happier, more focused person. It’s a breakthrough that we think could really change society for the better.”

Evan stared at the pulsing vein in Patricia’s neck and smiled. He knew now what he had been missing all his life. What he needed to do to give it meaning.

---

Art Stanton is a writer from the UK. His novella, Sex Robots Must Die, is available on amazon and you can find him on twitter @AJStanton6.

ALL SAINTS BY ALEN TEN-HOEVE A STORY IN 3 PARTS

PART 3

The laxative I’d eaten after school had just taken effect. I’d been down the street begging for candy from behind a hockey mask when my stomach made that first unmistakable gurgle. I almost didn’t make it home in time.

While my insides emptied into the bowl and the stink rose around me, I heard trick-or-treaters on the street outside, laughing and whooping as they went from house to house, filling their bags and pillow cases, and remembered something Father Mognahan had said that week during his sermon: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this you will heap burning coals on his head.”

When the next morning arrived, I was one of only a few students who didn’t dress up for All Saints’ Day. My school uniform stuck out in a sea of fake beards, robes, and head coverings. The air was filled with the giddy anticipation that comes with any change to the usual, drab schedule. At lunchtime, kids shared and traded their Halloween candy from the night before. Piled it on the table in front of them to see who had the biggest haul. I opened my brown bag, set one single chocolate bar on the table beside my sandwich, and waited.

Saint Francis of Assisi and his disciples emerged from the crowd of other saints. They eyeballed the mounds of brightly wrapped candy on the tables and took anything they wanted. I didn’t watch, but I could feel Todd getting closer. As if we were connected by something spiritual. When he snatched my foil wrapped bar he slapped me so hard on the back I could feel it in my chest.

“Nice!” he said. “I was getting tired of those brownies.”

The smell of styling mousse and bad breath lingered as I watched Todd finish his rounds then sit with his buddies in the corner where they divvied up their take. One of the other saints reached for my chocolate bar. Todd smacked his hand away. I watched him rip off the foil, pull down his fake beard, and eat the whole bar, all twelve cubes in three big bites.

I unwrapped my sandwich and tried not to smile.

Next period I was sitting with my class in the church five pews from the front. The first row was reserved for those giving speeches. Mrs. Bonner, the organist, played a slow, indistinct tune as the saints, cloaked in the smoke of burning incense and led by Father Mognahan, slowly made their way down the aisle.

My body buzzed with anticipation. But I had to be patient. Father Mognahan talked for a long time. He read from Revelations, John, and Matthew. He gave a homily. And there were a lot of psalms and prayers to get through, a lot of standing and kneeling. More than in a regular mass. My ass went numb. It felt like it wasn’t there. I had no ass. I wondered if anyone else felt like they had no ass. I imagined leaning toward Sister Mary Ellen, loudly whispering, “Do you have an ass?” and tried not to laugh.

Finally it was time for the speeches.

Many of the girls had chosen to dress up as Joan Of Arc. They approached the pulpit wearing cardboard armor, hair tied up or hidden under short, dark wigs. It was hard to tell the boys apart. Saints didn’t care about individual style. Lots of robes, halos, beards and mumbling. The stained glass was dull. No sun. I watched the old Italian women light candles and pray.

Todd, the star of the show, went last.

I had watched the back of Todd’s head through the whole mass. He seemed calm. I started to worry something had gone wrong, but when he got up to give his speech, I saw the strained look on his face and forgot all about my numb ass. Beads of sweat trailed down Todd’s forehead as he read through the same script as the last two years. It dripped into his eyes and beard. Rolled down the long fake hairs. He wiped it away and knocked his halo crooked. The stigmata rubbed off, leaving a bright red smear on his forehead. He tried to read his speech faster but lost his place, stumbled over words. By the time Todd came to the part about how Saint Francis could tame wolves and flocks of birds, he was leaning on the pulpit like it was the only thing holding him up. Father Mognahan and the altar boys frowned at each other but didn’t move. Giggles bubbled up from the pews, followed by shushing sounds from nuns.

Todd came to the end. He talked about how Saint Francis died singing Psalm 141 and, breathing hard into the microphone, recited the words through gritted teeth, pausing longer and longer between each line. When he finished, “Guard me from the trap they have set for me, from the snares of evildoers,”he stopped short and clutched his arms around his stomach as a long, wet fart ripped through the silent church. The place erupted in screams and laughter that drowned out any shushing. Todd moaned into the microphone, backed away from the pulpit, and crumpled to the floor, ripping more farts on the way down. He tried to crawl away. A dark spot spread on the back of his robe. Something ran down his legs, into his stupid sandals. Then the smell crashed over everyone like an invisible wave.

“Todd shit himself!” someone called out.

Saints scattered from the pews. Todd’s buddies trampled each other to get away. Father Mognahan ran off into the sacristy with his stole pressed to his nose. A couple of nuns waddled up to Todd, tried to lift him to his feet and drag him away, their heads turned from the smell, faces pinched in disgust. Todd farted every time they tugged. A bird fell off his shoulder.

I stood up. Savored the tingling sensation as feeling returned to my ass cheeks. Looked around the church. Everyone fleeing. Retching. Laughing. Everyone except the old Italian women, who went about their business. Like nothing different was happening.

---

Alan ten-Hoeve wrote Notes from a Wood-Paneled Basement (Gob Pile Press), Burn-KLR10
(Malarkey Books), Bob and Me-From Parts Unknown Anthology (Daily Drunk Magazine).
Tweets @alantenhoeve

ALL SAINTS BY ALAN TEN HOEVE – A STORY IN THREE PARTS

Part 2

Mom had to get a second job. She couldn’t pick me up right after school. So an arrangement was made. At dismissal I walked to a nursery school a few blocks away and waited for her to get me between shifts. I kept it quiet. I felt embarrassed having to wait for my mom with a bunch of three-year-olds. But there was a Krauszer’s along the way. I’d stop in for a candybar. Eat it on a bus bench. I liked to watch the traffic go by on the boulevard. Listen to the birds. Or the conversations of the people waiting for the bus. I grew to cherish that time. Found myself looking forward to it during class. It was all mine.

Until it wasn’t.

On a Monday afternoon I was slow at packing up for the day and Sister Mary Ellen felt the need to remind me that mom would be picking me up at the nursery school. She said it loud enough for my classmates to hear.

Fucked by a nun.

Word made the rounds by the next day. From then on Todd and his buddies followed me to the nursery school almost every afternoon. They puffed on cigarettes and taunted me the whole way. “Aw, whatsa mattah? Lil’ baby need his diaper changed? Lil’ baby need a nap?” Then flick their half-smoked butts at me. They followed me into Krauszer’s so I stopped going. I hurried by its tempting red and white sign as fast as I could without running. But even once inside the nursery school I wasn’t safe. I’d be sitting in a tiny chair, watching cartoons with the little kids while trying to ignore Todd and his buddies as they made faces at me in the window. Cranked up their middle fingers. Formed an O with one hand and penetrated it with a finger on the other hand while mouthing my nickname. Stopping only when Miss Janet had enough and chased them off. But Todd and his buddies would reappear in the window a few minutes later.

In addition to the stalking and the lunchroom and hallway abuse, Todd started messing with me in the courtyard during outdoor recess. One time he tripped me in a game of tag he wasn’t even playing in. I fell to the pavement. Tore my only pair of pants. Everybody laughed. Todd smiled and flipped his hair. Girls swooned. The recess bell, a sound that once brought sweet relief from dreary classes, now only filled me with anxiety about what would happen next. How far it would go. Sometimes the nuns saw Todd’s behavior, but they’d just look the other way. Deliver themselves from evil.

Mom stitched my pants with some thread that didn’t quite match the navy blue fabric and yelled at me about being more careful. I told her about the fall but left out the part about being tripped. I didn’t want to bother her with it. Though my parents had divorced they still managed to maintain the fighting. Every time I was dropped off for visitation with dad there was more drama. Child support checks never came on time, if they came at all.

“Why do you pull this shit?” mom would ask.

Dad always said the same thing. “There’s more than one way to nail someone to a cross.”

So she was just too busy to care much about what happened at school. Whenever I had trouble her only advice was to tell the teachers.

“That’s what they’re paid for,” she’d say in exasperation.

There wasn’t anyone else I could turn to. I didn’t have friends to back me up if I stood up to Todd and his cronies. It seemed hopeless. I imagined the taunting would continue for the rest of my life. Todd was rich so he would never have to work. He’d just follow me around, show up to my job and make fun of me there all day. I had to do something. What that something was, I didn’t know. The answer came to me on Halloween day.

---

ALL SAINTS BY ALAN TEN HOEVE – A STORY IN THREE PARTS

PART 1

Mass was mandatory for students at Body of Christ Elementary. Three days a week during school hours. Like a regular class. The wooden pews had no padding. My ass cheeks would sweat and itch in my polyester uniform pants, then go completely numb halfway through the service. We weren’t allowed to move around. Unless told to stand or kneel, we were to remain in our place and face forward at all times. If no one was looking, I’d press my palms on the seat, push my ass up just enough to feel the blood flow back in and hope Sister Mary Ellen didn’t catch me “fidgeting.”

But I didn’t mind too much.

My aunt Marie said religion is what you make of it. In church I could zone out. Daydream without worry of being called on to answer a question I hadn’t heard. Watch the sunlight play with the stained glass windows. Or track the old Italian women from the neighborhood. They were always there. Wore all black with shawls tied over their gray heads and moved about like ghosts among the living. Independent of our mandatory worship as they lit candles in front of the Madonna and prayed for the dead. Faces folded in deep lines mapping years of pain. Their sorrow was the only thing that felt real inside that church. Sometimes I liked to pretend that I was the only one who could see them. Or that they didn’t really exist at all.

I wish I could’ve done the same for others.

During one mass at the beginning of fourth grade, I was trying not to yawn wide enough to draw attention from the nuns, when someone in the pew behind me tapped my shoulder and leaned close to my ear.

“Do you like doggystyle?”

I didn’t have to turn around to know it was Todd Evers. I could smell the styling mousse and bad breath. Todd was a year older than me. A popular fifth grader who always knew the right things to say to the right people. Girls looked at him with dreamy eyes. Swooned anytime he’d flip his hair, or flashed his perfect white teeth. In the cafeteria he and his buddies would swagger between tables and steal food from other kids’ lunches. This included the Little Debbie brownies mom packed for me.

When I didn’t answer his question right away, Todd asked again. I’d never heard the word doggystyle before. Had no idea what it meant. Not wanting to seem dumb or draw attention, I nodded my head. The smell of styling mousse was back near my shoulder. Hot, rotten breath on my ear. His voice barely a whisper, Todd called me another word I’d never heard before. This time I twisted around. I saw him and his buddies snickering. Their well-fed faces scrunched up in ruddy delight. I had given the wrong answer.

Sister Mary Ellen hissed my name. “Quit fidgeting!”

I snapped forward. Father Monaghan was at the altar, changing bread and wine into body and blood. Todd and his buddies were still laughing. Just loud enough for me to hear.

Before that day in church I was just one of the many faceless kids Todd picked on from time to time. Now I had a target on my back. He wielded my new nickname like a blade he’d spent all day sharpening. Combining it with other words and phrases. He stabbed me with it as he made fun of my high-water pants, clip-on tie, and stained shirt. A school uniform that broadcasted to everyone that I only owned one. Other kids would stare and laugh when Todd did this. Even the ones he bullied and stole from. They were just happy the attention was off them.

My pocket dictionary didn’t have the word doggystyle—it went from doggy bag to doghouse—but it did have the other word, which it defined as: “A drudge: menial. —v. To work to the point of exhaustion. Slang. A cigarette.”

It didn’t make any sense.

I thought about asking mom what the words meant, but something stopped me. An instinct that it could complicate things. Raise other questions I wouldn’t want to answer. I considered the possibility that Todd didn’t know what the words meant either. But I knew it wasn’t what the words meant that mattered. What mattered was that I wasn’t supposed to like it.

I yearned for my earlier troubles. It was better when Todd just stole my brownies and moved on. The extended, public taunts made my stomach hurt. Like it was tying itself in knots. I started to have trouble taking a shit. I’d sit on the toilet and nothing would come out. I imagined days worth of food rotting inside me. Mom noticed how much time I spent in the bathroom. She gave me laxatives to help me go. The kind that looks and tastes like chocolate. They came in large, foil wrapped bars sectioned into cubes you could break off. Twelve in all. But it only took one cube to send me hurrying to the bathroom with diarrhea an hour later. I didn’t care. I would take relief however I could find it.

Todd’s onslaught continued through the rest of September and into October. Every day I came home with a stomach ache and constipation. Pains that started on Sunday night and lasted until Friday afternoon when school let out. I considered not bringing Little Debbie’s for lunch anymore, but decided that might make things worse. Those brownies were likely the only thing preventing the situation from becoming physical.

An offering.

It’s not that I was scared of Todd. Even though he was bigger than me, he was also rich and soft looking. One on one I knew I could take him. I wasn’t afraid to fight dirty. And dad had blessed me with a high pain tolerance. But with Todd’s buddies always around, ready to jump in, I didn’t stand a chance. I might land a shot or two, bloody his nose or black an eye before they piled on, but once they did I was dead. I knew no one would come to my defense. My classmates either feared Todd or wanted to be accepted by him. And the nuns were too greedy. Todd’s parents donated a lot of money to the school.

Behind the altar in the school church hung a life size crucifix. Flesh and bone sagging from nails. Blood and thorns. I fantasized about crucifying Todd. Reenacting the stations of the cross. Making him carry his cross to the site of his public execution. Whipping him as he stumbled. When Simon of Cyrene tried to help Todd, or Veronica went to wipe his face, I would whip them too. I relished the idea of driving nails into Todd’s hands and feet, his whimpers and cries a sweet melody. The slow clink of hammer on nail providing the beat. I pictured hoisting him upright. The life fading from his eyes as his skin blistered and cracked under the hot sun. His face streaked in red. Instead of laying his body to rest I would just leave it up there until it rotted away and nothing was left but a pile of bones.

The final days of October arrived with a chill in the air. Jack-o’lanterns appeared on stoops. Cardboard witches and skeletons looked out from cobwebbed windows. The signs of the season were everywhere you looked. Except for one place. My school didn’t celebrate Halloween. Within the walls of Body of Christ Elementary, it was as if October 31st didn’t exist. Instead, we celebrated All Saints’ Day the day after. November 1st. All Saints’ Day was a big deal. Students came to school dressed as their favorites among the canonized. Some volunteered to give prepared speeches about those saints during a special extended mass that would start after lunch and last until dismissal. Participants received extra credit. Everyone else just got an extra numb ass.

For the last two years, Todd Evers had dressed as Saint Francis of Assisi. A saint whose devotion to God was expressed through his love of all God’s creatures. Todd wore a fake beard, brown robes with a rope tied around the waist, and an aluminum foil halo on his head. Little craft store birds perched on his shoulder. Stigmata drawn on hands in red marker. He received standing ovations for his speech even though it was the same crap both years. It was the highlight of the day.

I didn’t participate in All Saints’ Day. Like praying, saints never did me any good. But I was hopeful that with the holiday coming up, Todd and his friends would get bored or distracted and leave me alone. Or find someone else to pick on. But things only got worse.

---

DADDY by Kristin Garth

PATTY GIDDIS                                                                Inbox – iCloud  3:23 am

 

Fine let’s talk this way

 

To:  mgiddis@aol.com

 

Daddy,

 

Maybe this way you won’t hang up on me again or worry about my roommate knowing my sordid secret.  She’s not even here to peek over my shoulder at what I’m typing – actually would never do that – the nicest person I know in the state of Utah.  I’d never tell her what he did, but even if I did, she would never spread it around.  She wears a ruby ring her father got her to remind her of the value of a virtuous woman.  He’d probably make her change rooms.

 

I’m not going to press charges, okay?  Does that make you happy.  Nobody would believe me anyway, and it’s just going to cause a lot of trouble.  I just want to come home.  Please let me come home.  I’ll finish my degree at UWF.  It’s not going to work out here.  I’m begging you to understand.

 

Patty

 

 

 

PATTY GIDDIS                                                                         Inbox – iCloud 6:01 pm

 

Please don’t be mad

 

To: mgiddis@aol.com

 

Stayed up all night thinking after I wrote your letter.  To be honest with you, I haven’t been sleeping much since it happened.  Was already ashamed of myself and prepared to tell you I won’t be asking to come home again, before I read your letter — after, yes, even more so. 

 

It’s not like I want to talk about it either.  Things have happened though – more things beyond my control.  My friend Tia, the one person who knows everything – who saw me right after the camping trip, injured and not in my right mind, Daddy, you have to understand that – she’s told the Bishop.  It wasn’t her fault.  The Bishop saw me leave church early today.  They were singing “I Am A Child of God,” and I felt sick to my stomach and ran outside.  Tia says the Bishop cornered her after sacrament and said, “Did Patty do something she shouldn’t have done?”  I mean what could she said to that, Daddy?  She told him, “No, somebody did something to her.”

 

Bishop Perry came to the dorms.  I didn’t want to tell him anything.  Tia was there, holding my hand.  He said to me, “If you don’t tell me, Patty, what this young man did to you, he will do it to someone else.”

 

I mean, what was I supposed to say that?

 

I told him everything Marc did – all of it, as best I could.  Didn’t want to tell his name.  Like you said, we do not want trouble.

 

My bishop’s a shrink, Daddy – that’s his job.  I know how you feel about those – and how you said the church felt about them, but Mormonism is a lot different in Florida than it is in Utah.  I don’t know what to say.  It was never my idea to come here in the first place. 

 

He listened to every detail of it – all the stuff that you don’t want to me to speak about, that I was asleep when it started, how hard he choked me and the bruises but his soft words in my ear.   He said this kind of person chooses the smallest and weakest victims.  And then he said, “If he’s married, Patty, that means he’s going to have a child someday, and he will molest this child unless you do something right now.”

 

I mean, Daddy, I know he’s married.  He talked about it in the van on the way to the camping trip and that he just had a baby. 

 

I told him the name, and he wrote it down on his yellow legal pad.

 

I’m sorry, Daddy. 

 

 

 

PATTY GIDDIS                                                    Inbox – iCloud 11:03 am

 

I am the worst daughter

 

To:  Mgiddis@aol.com

 

 

Daddy,

 

Michelle called last night.  She said you’re sick.  I’m the worst daughter.  Haven’t asked about you in days.  Just me me me and it it it.  All I think about is myself.

 

Are you feeling better today?  I would call, Daddy, but I’m so afraid to say the wrong thing and have you hang up on me again. I think it’s better we communicate like this where I can finish my thoughts and you don’t have to worry about anyone listening and judging me or maligning my character with talk about “it.” 

 

I’m better.  I really am.

 

Bishop Perry came by to see me.  Joella told him I hadn’t been eating or sleeping, and so he’s sending me to the counseling center.  Please don’t be angry.  I know how you feel about that.  I even told, “My father doesn’t want me speaking to any counselors or anyone – especially about ‘it.’”  But, Daddy, Bishop Perry said, “Well, Patty, your Heavenly Father does.”  And he told me to tell you that.

 

Then the wildest thing happened, Bishop Perry told me I had to come with him and have lunch.  I tried to tell him my not eating had nothing to do with “it,” but he didn’t believe me even when I explained how Joy ordered all the female soloists’ costumes a size too small on purpose, so I have to lose five pounds by next week or someone who fits into the costume dances the part.  Bishop Perry said he didn’t care about any of that, and he took Joella and I to Cosmo’s and ordered bacon cheeseburgers and malts, without even asking.  It was the best meal I had all year.

 

I really miss your voice Dad and I hope you’re going to be okay.

 

Patty

 

 

PATTY GIDDIS                                                                         Inbox – iCloud  11:09 pm

 

I know we just got off the phone ….

 

To:  Mgiddis@aol.com

 

Daddy,

 

Thank you for calling me tonight.  I know you say you’re getting better but I do wish you’d go to a doctor.  I’m doing it again, and I promised I wouldn’t. 

 

Is “break a leg” an appropriate thing to say to debaters too?  If so, say it to Michelle. 

 

I’m nervous about tomorrow.  I wish I had her strength.  Thank you for being understanding.  I know it’s not how you’d like me to handle my problems.  I wish I was strong enough to do it your way.

 

Patty

 

 

PATTY GIDDIS                                                                         Inbox-iCloud 3:23 pm

 

Counseling

 

To:  Mgiddis@aol.com

 

Daddy,

 

I went to counseling today.  Cried for about an hour and a half straight.  My counselor does not look like a shrink at all —  or anyone else at this school.  He was wearing black jeans and a leather jacket and had a motorcycle helmet on his desk. His name is Dr. Graves.

 

Asked me so many questions, just getting to know me.  All about the camping trip, all the conversations I had with Marc on the way there, in the van.  Asked me, Daddy, why I didn’t press charges.  I told him everything you said.  He says if I was three months younger, he would have had to file a complaint himself.  But I’m 18, so don’t worry, he can’t do anything.

 

He wanted to know everything I knew about Marc – a lot I didn’t know.  I only knew him one night.  He’s 30 and has a wife, poli sci major.  Marc knows a lot more about me – even where my dorm is apparently.  I’m so stupid like that, Daddy.  I answered all those kinds of questions in the back of van surrounded by those older girls who knew him and acted like he was a saint.  Dr. Graves said Marc knew what he was doing, and it was not my fault, but I don’t know – I just feel like something bad is going to happen, again, for sure.  I can’t shake it.  I know you don’t want to hear that.

 

Dr. Graves asked if I had a boyfriend.  Told him about Roger and how he wants me to transfer to UT Austin to be with him, but how you said I need to be an independent woman.  He asked if Roger was Mormon, and I laughed. He asked me how you felt about that?  I told the truth, Daddy, that you hate it. 

 

I asked Dr. Graves about what Bishop Perry said about Marc having to go to counseling himself.  Dr. Graves said that he certainly hadn’t come in yet.  I was surprised he would just tell me that – I mean isn’t there doctor/patient confidentiality — but he did.  It’s what I like about Dr. Graves, I feel like for the first time he’s really on my side completely. 

 

I even asked him, “Well, I mean, couldn’t he be seeing another counselor?” Dr. Graves just said, “I mean, I’ll find out for sure, but men like him are usually sent to me.”

 

The time went so fast in there, and then he said he wanted me to give me a prescription for some sleeping pills.  Asked me if I was depressed, and I broke down crying and couldn’t stop.  He scribbled on a prescription pad.  Told me to take one tonight and go to bed early.  That I needed it – I was too pretty to do this to myself.  That was such a nice thing to say.

 

I have practice for the show tonight, but then I’m going home and going straight to bed.  I know you don’t believe in this stuff – counseling, medication, but Daddy I can’t tell you how nice it is to know I’ll be able to sleep.

 

 

 

PATTY GIDDIS                                                                                       Inbox – iCloud 7:13 am

 

Sorry I missed your called last night.

 

To:  Mgiddis@aol.com

 

Daddy,

 

Sorry I missed your call last night.  Dr. Graves was right.  I slept through the night.  Joella couldn’t even wake me.  Got your message this morning and tried to call, but you’d already left for work.   Feel like my head is full of cotton, but Dr. Graves says it’s to be expected and will wear off in a couple of hours. 

 

Thank you for thinking about me.  I’m actually okay.

 

Patty

 

 

 

PATTY GIDDIS                                                                                       Inbox-iCloud 11:12 am

 

Opening night!

 

To:  Mgiddis@aol.com

 

Daddy,

 

Tried on my costume two days ago, and it actually fit!  If I don’t eat anything today, I may actually look thin up there.  Even Joy couldn’t find anything negative to say.  Wish you were here. 

 

Patty

 

 

 

 

PATTY GIDDIS                                                                                       Inbox-iCloud 11:03 pm

 

 

I don’t even know what to say.

 

To: Mgiddis@aol.com

 

Daddy,

 

Dr. Graves and I got into an awful fight today.  I ran out of his office.  He keeps saying Marc raped me, and I keep saying that isn’t true, that what Marc did was not exactly that because Daddy I know that you said it wasn’t – that I wasn’t ruined.  Dr. Graves says it was rape.  He is angry with me that we won’t press charges – that I won’t make a formal complaint with the school, something on paper – he says paper trails are important when dealing with institutions.  I said I’m not dealing with anyone, and he said I’m being shortsighted and shouldn’t make any decisions yet. 

 

Nothing has been the same since the show.  I know I said I wouldn’t bring it up again, but I’m sure that I saw Marc there – in the second row.  Dr. Graves says something bad is going to happen to me while the university covers this up again.  He said it’s happened before, and this time he’s not going to be a pawn in a sick game, and neither should I. 

 

I don’t know what to do about Dr. Graves.  Sometimes he is so patient and nice.  Other times he is so demanding of me to do things his way, to talk about my body and very personal things.  To follow his advice and make a paper trail.   He says this is an evil place, and he knows more than anybody – though I should be starting to see it at this point.   He came to my show and sent gardenias to me backstage.  I told him about the bushes we had at home, and he remembered.

 

 

Why does he want to change me so much?  What is wrong with me?  It’s lunchtime and my head still feels stuffed with cotton.  Maybe that’s why this is all so confusing.  I don’t think I’m going to see him anymore.  Do you think that is okay?

 

Patty

 

 

 

PATTY GIDDIS                                                                              Inbox – iCloud 12:02 pm

 

Marc just called here

 

To: Mgiddis@aol.com

 

Marc just called here.  Just now.  Joella answered the phone.  Didn’t know who he was, but she woke me and said she had a bad feeling inside.  It was him, Daddy.  He said, “I want you to know that I know what we did was wrong.”  I didn’t do anything, Daddy, except go to sleep in a sleeping bag and wake up being choked and hurt by this man.  He told me that he very much wanted to see me, that he knew I lived in Meredith Hall, but we didn’t have to meet there; we could go to dinner and talk.  I could hardly speak I was shaking so much.  All I could say was “Never call me again.”  Joella had to take the phone away from me and hang it up.  What am I going to do Daddy?  How did he get my phone number?” 

 

 

 

PATTY GIDDIS                                                                         Inbox- iCloud 2:24 am

 

I did what you said.

 

To:  Mgiddis@aol.com

 

I went to the Bishop and told him what happened.  Told him about the show and how I was sure Marc was there, too.  And now he has my phone number?  I asked him what was going on?  What are they going to do?

 

The bishop told me he gave Marc my phone number — that Marc is very sorry and that the Bishop only wanted to help me, that he and Marc’s bishop thought it was  a good idea.  He said Marc had come in and admitted everything to his bishop, said he was overcome and could not control himself, but he’s willing to do whatever it takes to make amends.  They think he is a good man who made a mistake.

 

I had the dream again about his arms, the one choking me while the other – I can’t talk to you about this, Daddy.  I’m thinking about going to go back to Dr. Graves.  I need a refill of this medication — only way I’m going to sleep.  I’ll go crazy stay awake another night.

 

 

 

PATTY GIDDIS                                                                                        Inbox- iCloud 3:04 pm

 

I didn’t go.

 

To:  Mgiddis@aol.com

 

 

I did what you said and tried to pray but it just doesn’t work for me like it works for you.  Roger called me last night and said I need to get out of this place, that nothing is ever going to get better while I’m here.  I know you said, Dad, but when he said it just then, it sounded exactly right. 

 

School isn’t going well.  I’m failing French.  I don’t go to a lot of my classes because when I finally fall asleep I can’t make myself wake up.  I don’t know how staying here could ever work out.

 

 

 

PATTY GIDDIS                                                                       Inbox-iCloud 12:12 am

 

You would never believe who was just here.

 

To:  Mgiddis@aol.com

 

 

I know you wouldn’t like it, but it was Dr. Graves.  He’s allowed to be in the girl’s dorms because he’s a doctor, so please don’t be too upset.  I didn’t tell you that he has been calling me.  Joella gave me a couple of his messages since I stopped going to counseling.  He just said he was terribly worried and saw I renewed my prescription though I hadn’t been coming in. 

 

Got kind of nervous when he said that as a doctor he has full access to all my medical history with the university clinic and that Elavil is a powerful medication to be on without any kind of guidance.  I guess it makes sense.  It was still a surprise he came but I guess it just shows he cares.

 

We talked for a long time, and he told me he was sorry if he had pushed me too hard in his office the other day.  I told him that it was very important to me that I was still a virgin – I know it’s important to you.  And I was because Marc had not done that with me.  Dr. Graves agreed.

 

We went for a walk and then sat on a bench under the stars.  It was the most beautiful experience I’ve had in Utah.  I told him so many things – much more than I was able to in that bright office.  He is much more of a friend than a counselor.  I’m allowed to have friends, Daddy.  I need one very much.

 

I agreed to go back to counseling.  He says we don’t have to do it in the office.  We can do it in different places like this.  He walked me home and gave me my medication himself with a big glass of water and tucked me into bed.  It was the safest I’ve felt in a long time. 

 

Joella is being weird about it.  Says it was creepy, but it was the best night I’ve had since I came to this school.  I felt like I was home again.

 

After he left, I got up to write you this letter before this pill knocks me out.  I just wanted you to know things are looking up.  Maybe I can make it here after all.

 

Patty

 

 

 

PATTY GIDDIS                                                                                       Inbox – iCloud 11:12 am

 

I’m sorry that you cannot be happy for me when I’m making such progress.

 

To: Mgiddis@aol.com

 

It really makes me sad inside to know it’s only when I’m in the depths of depression that you and I can be close. I will not turn Alan (Dr. Graves) away because he cares about me.  It is nice to have that here.  It’s nice to have that.

 

 

 

PATTY GIDDIS                                                                         Inbox – iCloud 12:51 pm

 

Alan is saving my life.

 

To: Mgiddis@aol.com

 

I’m writing to you because the end of the semester is coming, and what I’ve been trying to tell you is that I’m failing, not only French but my dance classes as well.  There’s nothing to worry about that.  The important thing, as Alan says, is I am using this time to get well.  He’s saving my life.  I don’t have to tell you that before he came along, I couldn’t even eat or sleep much less live a real life – with any kind of pleasure. 

 

I know all you’re worried about is the grades, and it just shows how messed up your priorities — your whole worldview is – like everyone here.   I did what Alan said finally and made a complaint, and he’s helped me find a lawyer.  Not a criminal one — nothing is going to be in the newspapers or anything like that.  He’s going to – I’m going to sue the university for their oversight and cover-up of my assault. He knows a lot of insider information about how this happened here before – they have lied to the FBI and Alan has proof.  They school is going to have to settle out of court to keep him quiet.  Alan says they are going to have to let me withdraw out of my classes due to the psychological trauma they have created. 

 

He’s helped them cover it up before because they blackmailed him and threatened him about some of his practices – which of course, are beyond their puritanical understanding. We’re not afraid of them now though – either of us.  Alan believes, something good is going to come from this – for both of us and for a lot of other people, too. 

 

Alan has been ready to leave this place for a long time.  He’s doing a lot of groundbreaking work with repressed memories, reenacting childhood traumas to desensitize people and help them move on.  I have literally been reborn – you think that is some kooky psychological speak or insane, but it’s a literal truth.  He tied me naked into blankets, covering my face, for hours until I was strong enough to be reborn.  How I cried and screamed even – but then I fought my way out and into his arms and I am his now. 

 

He is my daddy — done things to protect me you never would.  I won’t be coming home over the break.  I’m very small now and cannot travel alone. 

 

 

 

 

PATTY GIDDIS                                                                                       Inbox – iCloud 2:24 pm

 

Do not bother Joella with your phone calls at the dorm anymore.

 

Time:  3:24

 

You are harassing other people now, and you need to stop.  I don’t live at the dorms anymore.  How could I live inside an institution I’m suing? That makes no sense.  It’s all for the best.  I never would have come here except it was your fantasy school.  I’m not Mormon or a good girl or a virgin anymore.  It’s not a place for me. 

 

Alan and I have spent endless hours talking about my childhood.  He knows what you’ve done to me – the other me, when I was yours to break, before I was reborn and in gentle hands.  None of your threats about pressing charges against Alan have any validity.  He doesn’t need a license anymore.  He’s not a practicing psychologist.  He’s creating his own spiritual retreat where he will not be constrained in his methodologies and he can help lots of people like me.  We have freedom of religion in this country, as you well know.

 

You, however, should think twice about threatening me when there is no criminal statute of limitations on sex abuse of children under the age of 16  – much less the age of five.  I used to be the kind of girl who wouldn’t press charges but I’m afraid if you persist you will understand how true it is that I am reborn. 

 

This is the last email you’ll receive from me.  This is the email address of a dead girl.  Alan doesn’t want me to open it anymore and be exposed to your poison ever again.  You sent a ghost to this place of a girl you killed, and Alan resurrected something else.  Leave us alone.  It’s naptime now.  I must go.

 

Penelope Graves

 

 

---

Pugnus – a short story by James Jenkins

“Don’t play the fucking victim here Ronnie,” Micky Boswell bellowed over the pounding rain. “You asked me remember? I’m ready for more responsibility Mr Boswell,” he mimicked Ronnie’s nasally voice.

The rain shat down in violent and relentless sheets. The wind howled in all directions as Ronnie did his best to separate it from the oxygen he desperately needed. Suspended by his ankles from the impossibly strong grip of his boss’s henchman, he made the mistake of looking down the twenty-four-story tower block. The ground barely distinguishable.

“Please Mr Boswell! Give me more time,” Ronnie squealed as Boswell’s thug released his bear like grip for the briefest of moments.

“Not yet Charles. I want to make sure that Ronnie here truly understands the gravity of his actions.”

The joke was lost on Ronnie. Between the henchmen’s tight hands clinging onto his ankles and the blood that had long drained to his upturned head he struggled for air. The continuous downpour funnelled down his body into each nostril. A crude side effect of the unintentional water boarding.

“I… I can find it Mr Boswell! It’s gone. Please, please just let me back up.” Charles eased his grip again, the lactic acid easing for a welcome second.

“It. Did you just say it Ronnie?” Micky Boswell had run out of patience. Ronnie sensed his time was up and struggled in his inverted position for something to grab. A ledge, drainpipe, something, anything! There was nothing except the questionable flat surface of the cladding.

“Drop him Charlie, I’ve had enough of this fucking weather.”

The henchman released Ronnie without hesitation. His commitment to the sadistic crime lord ever unquestioned. Neither man gave their falling victim another glance and headed straight for the roof door. Safe and dry at last.

Floor 19

Ronnie had already descended five floors before the reality of the situation dawned – he was going to die. He’d always wondered if it was true what they said about your life flashing before your eyes right before death. It seemed unlikely. The entire events of twenty-seven years playing out before he smashed into the concrete some two-hundred feet below. Such a short amount of time for such a long distance. His mind seemed to sense the perilous situation amplifying the images that flashed through his mind.

Floor 17

Ronnie passed the window in slow motion. He had time to look in and witness the deprived décor. The wallpaper long faded and peeling. Outdated kitchen units lacking doors and draw fronts. The layout the same as his own but without the same amount of pride or delusions of grandeur. Ronnie hated the fucking building. A grey colossal prick that stuck up into the polluted clouds. Thatcher’s legacy – a raging erection for any hardnosed Tory. A symbolism of the us and them. It was inevitable that he would find himself in the infamous tower block. If not this exact one, then an identical sibling with equal powers to paralyze residents into typecast rejects. Society’s unemployables, the uneducated and most certainly law breakers. The sharp sucking of breath through teeth when telling anyone from the outside your address. Ronnie had never accepted life had to be this way. He knew he had been meant for bigger things. After his mum died, he and his younger sister were kicked out of the family home. The council relocated them both to the tower block. The spice heads sketched out in corridors and the crackheads slumped outside the doors of well-known cuckoo nests. The only role models were the rare glimpse of someone like Mickey Boswell and his entourage. The pied piper to his army of prepubescent teenage boys playing gangster. Ronnie was intoxicated by the man’s wield of power. He enforced respect from all of those around him. A few weeks after Ronnie and his sister Tina had moved in, Mickey pulled up in his fancy black car and Ronnie watched with astonishment as the bodyguard hurried to open the door for the crime lord. Rumour had it he was here on official business. The buzz was going around that someone owed tick, and everyone knew that if Micky Boswell came personally – you were getting fucked up. Mickey’s very own unit of bulging muscles and steroids heading as one into the tenement. Micky watched on leaning on his car wearing those cool as fuck sunglasses and puffing on a Marlborough. Ronnie had watched as the powerful man stroked his panting dog through the open car window. Only Micky Boswell could own a pug and still look as hard as cement in a place like this. There wouldn’t be many takers to tell him otherwise. Ronnie had known then that he must prove himself to this leader of men. His fantasies had been interrupted when the henchmen dragged out a screaming lad in a grey tracksuit. The colour did nothing to disguise the wet trouser leg. They dropped him in front of Micky who’d already taken his cock out and proceeded to piss on the blubbering mess. The crowd had been waiting for this moment as the onlooking community gave their approval with cheers and diminishing laughter. The stage set, Micky played up to the crowd. He made a big play of shaking the drops of urine from his abnormally huge prick and finally put it away. Keeping his captive audience on side, Micky produced an array of offensive weapons to the approving shouts of the bystanders. Saving the best for last – a battery powered chainsaw which was quickly deemed the winner. In a stroke of genius, he stopped before bringing the tool down on his pleading victim.

“How rude of me,” said Micky acting as if he had just remembered something important. “Who wants a go? A grand to the lucky candidate!” He offered the chainsaw up to the baying crowd. Ronnie wanted to run down there and then to show his worth. To throw himself in front of the face of opportunity. But before he could even consider the seven flights of stairs he was beaten to the chance. He wouldn’t have made it even if the lift worked – if the lift had ever worked. Instead a well-known spice head stumbled desperately forward and made a grab for the chainsaw. The piss-soaked point of fixation tried to get away but one of the heavies punted him in the rib cage. He slumped back to the gravel without further protest. Micky laughed at the spice head’s enthusiasm and teased him with the tool.

“You sure you know how to handle one of these?” he laughed.

“Let me do it Micky!” someone shouted from the impatient crowd.

“Now, now. First come, first served and all that,” he said passing the chainsaw over to the filthy shaking hands of the spicer. He showed him how to work it and made a dramatic leap back much to the amusement of the crowd.

Ronnie turned away from his window as the desperate man fell upon the boy on the ground. The sounds of helpless agony mixed with gurgled blood and the chainsaw was too much to bear. The fantasy had been so much more poetic than the reality. He’d promised Tina he would get them out after that. That was seven years ago.

Floor 14

The blinds were closed but Ronnie caught a glimpse of the elderly couple watching TV on an old rear projector. The odd slat was missing, he could see the grime and dust stuck with nicotine on each one. A pigeon took off in fright from the unexpected visitor to its perch. Ronnie considered reaching out to grab it but realised that it was a fruitless effort and would only be cruel to the animal. Fuck animals! Wasn’t that the reason he was here now? Pelting towards the ground on a one-way trip to a combustion of shattered bone and splattered innards. Yes. It made him regret not punching the bird. The winged rat might have posed his last chance of fury at the animal kingdom. But could he really blame the dog, less the pigeon for his current predicament? He wasn’t so sure. Micky Boswell hadn’t been wrong – Ronnie had asked for it. After the public massacre with the spice head, Ronnie reconsidered his career path. The drug fiend had failed to deliver any instant relief to the victim of Micky’s discipline. Even the blood thirsty crowd had grown sickened by the prolonged agony that his lack of co-ordination entailed. Micky read the room – forecourt – and allowed his entourage to guide him back into the car and away from the distant but approaching sirens. The tinted windows lowering just enough for him to jettison the promised reward – he was a man of his word. The spice head grabbed the cash and left the unfinished job to bleed and moan as his life slowly ebbed away. Ronnie had tried all the usual haunts after that. The jobseekers did the best they could. Unfortunately, their best wasn’t very good. Despite his average school grades, Ronnie’s address and more likely colour of his skin was overlooked for any potential apprenticeship. He understood it wasn’t always strictly about race. He had white friends who had been treated the same, but when fifty percent of the interviewers asked What country are you from? He realised it wasn’t just because his surname was Aluko. Reluctantly and with great sadness he accepted his fate and worked through chicken factories, handballing and the occasional labouring job. Zero-hour contracts and companies that didn’t deliver redundancies when they utilised their government friend’s liquidation rights. Dumping Ronnie’s potential deposit funds into offshore bank accounts – at least there were food banks!

Ronnie passed down over the red glow of the thirteenth floor. Maybe he’d wanted it too much. Some crooked part of his sub-conscious pining for the realities within. A blurred chance of red lace and naked flesh were his only reward. It could have been titty, but then it could have just as easily been a shoulder, elbow or even a punters bald head. Ronnie knew he didn’t have much time left so chose to believe it wasn’t the latter. He knew some of the girls who worked there from his schooldays. The queens of their generation, unattainable to the likes of Ronnie for years as he watched their inevitable journey. The same who had ridiculed him with rejections now begged for the change in his pockets and offered their sex for much more. Gone were their flawless looks and perked bodies, now replaced with decaying teeth and needle marks. A little look still wouldn’t hurt though.

Floor 12

Ronnie appeared as a flashing blur to the occupant of the twelfth-floor flat, but to Ronnie it felt like an eternity. For the briefest of moments, he locked eyes with the man inside. He recognised him from the estate. Another discarded soul long forgotten by the government who had failed him, left to the mercy of a hardened way of life. Vulnerable due to his learning disability and abused by anyone who chanced upon him. He’d witnessed the public humiliation himself and reflected on the damage he’d caused others weaker than himself. And for what? To climb Micky Boswell’s ladder of vanity and violence. He used to think he was different from the rest of the community. Purer somehow and righteous but as he continued to cascade past floor eleven and ten, he realised that he’d been no different.

Time had eroded the memory of the chainsaw massacre. It was aided by the twelve hour shifts and unsociable working hours to earn a pittance that barely covered the rent. The rare but unforgettable occasions that Boswell visited the estate distorted Ronnie’s impression of the man even more. The public displays of gore and retribution to the unlucky few who dared to challenge his authority were more discreet since the cameras were fitted. The jovial man’s demeanour as he walked proudly through the building’s corridors. Pausing to make small talk with the natives, handing a young single mother a wad of notes and helping an old couple carry their shopping bags. It was on one of these visits that Ronnie seized his opportunity, kidding himself that it could be different for him.

“Hello lad,” Micky said walking past Ronnie in the building’s foyer.

“Hello Mr Boswell. How are you Mr Boswell?” he’d eagerly replied.

“See Terry. Some of these kids do have manners,” Boswell said to one of his muscle men. Ronnie had beamed with pride. The Micky Boswell had paid him a compliment!

“What’s you name lad?”

“Ron, eh, Ronnie Mr Boswell,” he’d stuttered.

“Hello Ronnie, please to meet you. Call me Micky. You don’t work for me do ya?”

“No Micky Sir. I work at the chicken factory.” Terry the heavy snickered at him and Boswell spun on his own man.

“What you laughing at Terry? The lads working ain’t he?”

“Sorry Micky,” the sight of the clearly physically stronger man cowering to his boss pleased Ronnie.

“But seriously kid, why you want to work there for? Manners like yours are wasted in a fucking poultry packaging plant. Why don’t you come work for me?”

Ronnie couldn’t believe what was happening it was moving so fast. Two minutes before and he’d never even locked eyes with the infamous governor of the underworld. Now he was being offered a job? He’d dreamed of this moment but now it was here he could barely control his stomach. Liquid shit churned inside of him threatening to burst the thin barrier of his sphincter.

“I’d be honoured Mickey. What… what do you want me to do?”

“You don’t worry about that now lad. You know where my boozer is? The Ivy Tavern. Come see me tomorrow. See you later Ronnie,” Micky took Ronnie’s hand giving it a firm shake before leaving. Ronnie babbled his thanks and goodbyes to the back of the most dangerous man the city knew.

Floor 8

Ronnie stared at the closed blinds of his own flat and cursed himself for leaving the light to blead out from around the edges of the window. Not that any of that mattered anymore. The utility company could fight over the pitiful amount of savings that sat frozen in his bank account. None would be satisfied. His legacy – £128. After he’d met with Micky, Ronnie accepted a job collecting glasses and the occasional bit of bar work, he was left a little disappointed. It didn’t carry the same weight and potential as dealer or enforcer. Having the shame of telling his sister and her new prick of a boyfriend the reality of his previous brag was hard on him. Tina had already grown distant from him since she met Jordan. He was younger, stronger and more gobby than Ronnie. His reputation for unpredictable and unnecessary violence often resulted in a stabbing at the least. Ronnie had tried to warn Tina about him, but this had only pushed her further away. The argument resulting with her moving out to Jordan’s. It was still in the same building, but the distance wasn’t only physical. Despite this Ronnie found that he enjoyed his new job and even he could tell he was good at it. The manager asked him to fill in on the bar duty more as her trust went up in him. The pay and hours were even better than his last job too. Unfortunately, the constant mocking from his sister and Jordan was something he couldn’t shake. He obsessed about it, even considered having a fight with Jordan but that was likely to only end one way. Eventually it got the better of him and so he waited for the next time he saw Micky Boswell.

Floor 7

Ronnie had to bide his time before he saw Micky again. The occasions had been few and far between. You had to pick your moment carefully with people like this. It’s not advisable to ask your boss for a promotion while he’s crushing the skull of his victim into the bar counter. A lot had gone well for Ronnie in the meantime. He’d been promoted to assistant manager over another colleague who had worked there for much longer. The man hadn’t taken it well and spouted off about equal opportunities and ticking boxes before being kicked out. Ronnie knew the man had been skimming the till for as long as he’d been there, but it felt good to have the backing of his manager. He’d even met a girl and it was going surprisingly well until he’d introduced her to Tina and Jordan. The ridiculing had started right away. The girl Rita had been kind about it, but Ronnie knew that he needed that promotion and the respect that came with it more than ever. Finally, Micky came into the bar. Alone and happy. The moment couldn’t be better as Ronnie was the only one working the bar that day.

“Mr Boswell. How are you today? Can I get you a drink?”

“Manners!” Micky boomed holding his hands up in celebration. “That’s why I employed you lad. Looks like you’re doing alright. What was it? Robbie?”

“Ronnie, Sir.”

“There he goes again,” laughed Micky. “Bloody sir. You’re a good lad Ronnie, now get me a Yamazaki and whatever you’re having.”

“Thank you, Mr Boswell. I’m glad you came in actually, there was something I wanted to ask you.”

“Get us a drink Ron and then we can talk about it. And for fucks sake, call me Micky.”

Ronnie did as he was bid and headed to the cellar where they kept the good stuff. He retrieved the Japanese whiskey that they only stocked for Micky. He used the time to psych himself up to the moment. He couldn’t let this chance slip through his fingers. He went back to the bar and saw a couple of Micky’s goons had joined him. Ronnie felt his moment begin to evaporate.

“There he is!” shouted Micky to his company. “Two pints of Stella for these two please Ron.” He hated being called Ron, but Micky Boswell could call him what the fuck he wanted. Ronnie started to pull the pints wondering if it really was his forte after all.

“What did you want to ask me Ron?” Micky said with interest.

“Oh, yeah. Sorry Mr Boswell, it can wait if you have company.”

“Nonsense Ron. We’re all family here, aren’t we lads?” said Micky to a chorus of –Yes Boss. Ronnie suppressed the overriding wave of fear and cleared his throat.

“Mr B… Micky. I really am grateful for everything you’ve done for me and I really do love working at the Ivy, I really do. The thing is though, I was sort of hoping that I might be able to do something else for you. Like, you know, take on more responsibility for you.” Micky had remained quiet throughout and looked at Ronnie with genuine interest.

“Look lad, different people are meant for different things. Take Terry here, he could run this bar but just look at him. Would you come in here if that mug greeted you? Would you fuck. You’re a good kid Ron, this is a good fit for you. Why do you want to get involved with all my other bollocks? Karen won’t be here forever. Bide your time and you could be manager. There’s a tidy little flat above here, could be yours Ron. Get yourself out of the towers.” Micky really was affording Ronnie a rare kindness that contradicted his usual character. Ronnie wasn’t giving up yet though.

“Please Mr Boswell. I just feel like if I could prove it to you. I could handle more responsibility then you’d see what I’m really all about,” he pleaded. Boswell shook his head in disbelief. Even his thugs were too stunned to add any jibes.

“Alright,” Micky said after a few seconds thought. “I’ve got a little job for you Ron. Little but really fucking important. You do this for me and then will see.”

“Yes Micky, anything. I’ll do it,” Ronnie said with excitement.

Floor 5

Ronnie feathered towards the ground and his impending death. The street was so close now that he wondered if maybe he would be okay. If he’d jumped from this height then maybe he would escape with a broken leg maybe even a fractured skull, but he could still survive yet. Inside the flat on floor five, Ronnie stared intently on the lush form of Rita Edwards bent over on all fours taking it from behind by Jordan. This was a bit of a shit show. Rita was the girl Ronnie had found himself falling for. His last living moments – the mental image of his sister’s boyfriend fucking her was quite depressing. He didn’t feel sorry for himself, only his sister who he wouldn’t be able to look out for anymore. Not even be able to tell her he told her so. At least she had the upper hand on their sibling rivalry. A departing gift. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t tell Tina and Jordan about Micky’s special job, but it wasn’t easy to hide a pug from everyone in the area. Tongues had started flapping and it didn’t take long for Tina to text him asking why he had been seen with the pug. He later found out that it was in fact Rita who had blabbed it to her. He was forced to divulge that Micky had assigned him the responsibility of his beloved pug. Micky was going away for the weekend and needed Ronnie to dog sit. The rules had been clear – The dog goes with you every-fucking-where! Ronnie tried to explain that he was still on shift at the bar, but Micky insisted that he take the dog with him. After the ridicule he’d endured just taking it out for a walk, Ronnie made his decision. He left the pug at his flat ensuring there was newspaper to relieve itself, fresh water and food. He’d take cleaning up shit over the embarrassment of walking the dog through the estate again. That street cred’ stood for nothing now. Instead, Ronnie was going to become one with the street in a matter of nanoseconds. Ronnie had been smug with himself once he’d finished his shift and walked home. It was late so he wasn’t even worried about taking the dog out for a quick walk with so few people about. He opened his door and was immediately hit with the smell of dog shit and urine. Ronnie flicked on the light switch to illuminate his pitch-black open plan apartment. He waited for the lively little fucker to scurry over to him, but he couldn’t even see the thing. Fear dawned on him rising like the bile in his throat. Ronnie ripped through his home in a painfully pointless search for the pug. Every unlikely cupboard he searched put off the inevitable realisation – the dog was gone.

Floor 4

He knew the flat would be empty. The tenants had been evicted a few days before and the way the council operated it would take an age before they turned it back over for those on the waiting list. It was one of the first places he checked for the dog. There was no rationale to his theory, just somewhere else to try. Ronnie walked with expanding panic fighting back the tears of his terrifying reality searching the tenement. His search had taken him to every floor and neighbouring block. There wasn’t a piece of open space in a country mile that he didn’t search. It wasn’t like you could put an advert out or start knocking on doors. If he found the dog or not, when Micky discovered he’d lost his dog he was a dead man. He risked asking his sister and Jordan but when he’d knocked on their flat door, he’d been told by a dangerously wired Jordan to fuck off and sort his own shit out. No one wanted to be dragged into the firing line for his mistake. Monday came and Ronnie knew his time was up. He didn’t hide from Micky. He had nowhere else to go and waited for the knock at the door. Patiently holding out for his impending execution.

Floor 3

Jordan’s flat. Ronnie knew he wasn’t going to see him there but was grateful to catch sight of his sister sitting on the couch. Tina was watching tv, a phone pushed to one ear. Blissfully unaware of her cheating boyfriend only a few feet above her and her brother hurtling to his death outside. She had her back to him, but Ronnie’s attention was stolen by a pair of prominent, globular, soft and solicitous eyes staring at him through the window. The pug even had time to tip its head, a trademark for the breed. The pug slipped out of view and with that Ronnie was released. For a split second he experienced the true velocity with which he was moving before he exploded across the ground. The heavy rain did its best to purge the streets of his entrails. Diluted blood rain funnelled into the gutters and disappeared under the sewer grates. Ronnie’s essence recycling back into the city’s water supply to be filtered into the water table and reused.

***

Tina held her breath over the dialling tone. She’d never even met Micky Boswell before, but Jordan assured her it was best he wasn’t associated with it. Boswell would recognise his voice he’d argued. This was their big chance. The bit of luck that they were owed. Jordan promised her that Micky Boswell would pay anything to get that fucking overly energetic creature back. Tina couldn’t wait. It wasn’t just the money; she hated the sight of the dog too. It hadn’t been easy to steal from Ronnie’s flat. Not emotionally at least, after all she still had a key. Jordan had been so convincing though. He’d chucked potential sums of money about and made her wet with the life he promised they could have. When she’d questioned her brother’s wellbeing he’d resorted to violence and manipulation. Threatening to do it without her. Besides, he assured her that Micky didn’t waste his time on people like Ronnie. No one was getting hurt he reassured her in his calculated way. The ringing stopped. Tina could hear the rain through the speaker and a man’s voice.

“Micky Boswell.”

“Hi Mr Boswell. We’ve got your dog. Here’s what you need to do if you want to see him again.”