The voice is echoing off of the pool of blood at my feet. All of the blood! You figure there's going to be a lot of it, in situations like this, but you really have no idea until it starts flowing. And then, after the heart stops... gravity! The squeeze of skin! Force, pushing the blood to the points of least resistance. It just keeps coming. Blood, blood, blood.

There is a knife in my left hand, bloody past the hilt. In my right, a phone.

The man at my feet is dead. I killed him. I am not alone in this, however. I had help. I've had a little extra help for a few days now.

And what is that noise? There's a woman. She has locked herself in the bathroom. She's pleading for me to go.

She doesn't help me anymore. My new friend does. We met a few days ago.

§

"Are you serious, Ted?" Samantha said, putting her cappuccino down and taking the phone from my hand. I put my finger to my lips with a smile. The coffee shop was loud, and the booth was certainly private enough, but I still didn't want to attract attention. "Are you being serious right now?"

She pressed the large button on the cell phone and held it up to her face. In the dim room, the bright face of the phone illuminated her wide eyes and freckles; I could almost make out the shifting icons reflected on her skin as she slid her finger back and forth across the screen.

"It doesn't look like..." she started.

"We think it is," I said quietly, leaning forward. "We think it's a completely unbranded prototype."

"Really?"

"The most popular smart phone in the world," I said, repeating the words I had heard from my editor only hours before. "And probably not the next version, but the version after that. Real next-level shit."

Samantha furrowed her brow. "How did you get this again? Where did it come from?"

I sat back and sipped my coffee. "So Hugh calls me to his office this morning," I said, "and he wants 3,000 words on yet another cell phone preview. But, you know, his magazine pays pretty well for those things, so I agree to it."

"How is Hugh?" said Samantha. She'd met him at any number of parties, and she seemed to particularly enjoy his dry sense of humor.

"Hugh's good. So anyway, I go over to his place, and Hugh tells me that this unmarked package came in the mail. No return address, no tracking info at all, except a stamp from the Cupertino, California post office. Cupertino is, of course...."

"The home of the best-selling smart phone in the world," said Samantha. "Got it."

"Hugh tells me the phone's unlocked, and his tech has already got it up and running. There aren't any logos on it, no company names mentioned in the software... but we're pretty sure it's the real thing. Hugh said he wanted me to write the review, because I'm his best guy."

"You were the first freelancer to answer your phone," said Samantha without looking up from the device. "I don't see it. It's neat, but it's just a phone. My phone has all this stuff. You guys are kidding yourselves about where it's from. It's nothing new." This was Sam's nature. We'd worked well together for years because I believed everything I heard and she believed nothing. Her logic, however annoying, had saved my ass in countless ways.

"Sam," I said, "this thing can do shit we haven't ever seen before. Watch. See the front-facing camera?" I tapped on the small lens right above the screen.

"The same one my two year-old phone already has?" said Sam. "Yes, I see it."

"Look right into it and press this button on the side."

She did, and the reaction was predictable. "Whoa," she said.

"Cool, huh?"

"I take it back," she said quietly. "This is new."

I watched with satisfaction as she selected icons with her eyes. Somehow, in the dim light, the phone had fixated on her irises and was using them as an input device. After a moment Sam realized that she could open applications by focusing on the icon for a moment and then blinking. She looked up in wonder, speechless. I nodded, grinning.

"It's so natural," said Samantha, returning her gaze to the screen. "It's so... wow. I want one."

"Hugh wants me to use a code name when we talk about it," I said, sitting back. "He wants to call it Excalibur. God, what a dork."

§

"You showed it to her, huh?" said Hugh, his voice spotty through the phone's speaker. "I figured you would."

"Sam can keep a secret," I said. The phone was quiet. "Still there?"

"Yeah, I'm still here," said Hugh. "I just get nervous about telling too many people."

"You know, you asked me to write an article about this. Pretty soon a lot of people are going to know about this phone."

"Is Samantha with you now?"

"No, she had to meet a friend or something," I said. "I'm sure she wanted to go to a bar, which I can't quite do, you know. We're safe to talk."

The streets between the coffee shop and my apartment were comfortably busy for a Thursday evening, full of couples walking briskly and dogs being taken for their last walks of the day. Nobody paid much attention to a twenty-something guy holding a generic-looking phone out in front of his face.

"Well, just don't do the eye interface thing out in public," said Hugh, with a hint of resignation. I smiled, manipulating a poker game on the phone with my finger as he spoke.

"Way ahead of you," I said.

"So what else can it do?" said Hugh, "I only had it for about twenty minutes before you came over and stole the damn thing."

"Before you handed it over to your best freelancer?" I said. "It doesn't do much else. There is an app called 'PlzAdvise.' A 'Plz' and then 'Advise.' No space. I think it's a mapping application or something."

"Oh?" said Hugh, sounding hopeful.

"Nothing we haven't seen before. I think it just finds restaurants and stuff like that. Standard GPS stuff, but I'll try it again later."

"Oh." I heard a door creak open at Hugh's place. "Well, keep at it. I gotta run, bro."

"Later," I said, as the active line icon disappeared.

I got to my apartment, and its general disorder made me want to turn right back around and go out again. 10 PM, however, was my prime time to get work done, so I thought I'd better get working on the phone.

I stepped over the late rent notice on the floor, grabbed a notebook and a pen, sat down, and pressed the "PlzAdvise!" icon. The menu icons disappeared, and the screen went dark.

"Please advise!" said the phone, sounding like a female version of HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The screen displayed a stark, inelegant message in plain text.

"Type or speak your request," the phone said.

"Library," I said. The screen went black for a moment, and then was replaced with a map of the city only a few blocks away. The library building was correctly, if crudely, highlighted.

"Would you like directions?" said the phone. The program might certainly have been revolutionary five years ago, but now every rental car in the United States carried a device capable of the same thing.

"This kind of sucks," I grumbled.

The map disappeared.

"What sucks?" said the phone's voice, just as impassive as before.

I stared at the phone.

"Please repeat your request," it said after a few seconds.

I breathed again. Of course, the phone had merely tried to parse my statement correctly in terms of the map. The reply wasn't personal. It couldn't be.

"Chinese food," I said. After another pause, the neighborhood appeared again, The Ming Phoenix and Mr. Roll highlighted.

"Would you like to search a larger area?" the phone said.

"No," I said, and tried to think of another request. I felt a familiar rumble in my stomach. As the phone continued to disappoint, and Sam's abrupt departure earlier in the evening came back to mind, I thought about the comfort of the barstool, the first sip of whiskey on my lips, and just how good it would taste.

Aw, man. Not again.

"Alcoholics anonymous meeting," I said.

"Meeting at 10:30 P.M. tonight," said the phone, highlighting a building one mile from my apartment. "Would you like directions?"

Wow, I thought, twirling my two-month sobriety coin in my pocket. That's actually very specific. I put my shoes back on, and marched out the door, trying not to think about anything at all until I reached the meeting.

"Why not try Tacos by Tony?" said the phone, referring to the restaurant next door. Bizarre. I clicked the 'lock' button on the phone and shoved it into my pocket.

§

The next morning, Hugh looked freshly scrubbed when I met him at Danny B's for breakfast. The B was short for "Bacon," and the diner had tried to build its reputation around creative uses of the pork product. I was trying to enjoy a bacon bit pancake when Hugh insisted on breaking the silence.

"I'm worried about you," said Hugh, scratching his goatee. Though probably in his fifties, time had been pretty good to Hugh. The only sign of an adulthood spent writing and thinking about computers was a minor case of under-eye bags. He was otherwise a healthy, decent-looking guy, a long way from his uptown apartment.

My appearance, unkempt and sleep-deprived, was indeed cause for a friend's concern.

"I'll be all right," I said. "It was just a long night."

Hugh laughed. "Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not worried about you for your health. I'm worried that you won't get my review done on time."

Without a word, I opened up the messenger bag sitting next to me, pulled out some paper-clipped pieces of paper, and tossed them across the table. Hugh snatched it up.

"First draft," I said into my coffee. "Thought you might like to see where this is going."

"Paper, huh?" said Hugh. "I don't think anyone has turned in copy on paper to me in five years. This new email thing is pretty awesome, you know. You should try it."

"Yeah, well, this phone has got me a little paranoid."

"Why's that?" asked Hugh. I took the phone from my pocket and flipped open the virtual lock with my finger. The bright interface popped open, the icons moving fluidly under my gaze.

"Watch this," I said, opening the email application on the phone.

"You have two unread email messages," said the phone's smooth voice.

Hugh looked at me, waiting. "Okay," he said, "so the message is a little bit 1995. So what?"

"I didn't enter my email account information," I said.

Hugh took the phone from me. "Are you sure it's even your email account?" He poked the phone's screen. "Oh... yeah, there I am. I emailed you this morning. Well, you must have entered it at some point."

"Like hell I did! I never put my actual email information into preview phones, much less my any of my passwords."

"Okay, okay," said Hugh, holding his hands out. "I'm just saying that it's unlikely that it figured out your email address and password, that's all. There must be some other explanation."

"Damned if I know, and it's your problem now," I said, holding up my palm when he tried to return the phone across the table.

"Seriously?" said Hugh. He leafed through copy I had printed for him. "It's been a while since I've had to word count by sight, but I feel like I'm looking at about a thousand words here. There's no way you're done with this."

"Forget it then," I said. "I waive my fee. I can't risk this kind of exposure. These are the same people who sent the police after that one freelancer, remember? I think they're tracking me."

"Look," said Hugh, putting the phone and my copy down and leaning towards me. "Just finish it. I know you need the money, and I'm very sure that however the phone got the information, it's not going anywhere."

I poked at my pancake with a fork.

"Come on," he said. "I don't have time to do this. You're the best I've got."

"Sam said that I'm the best you've got only because I take your calls," I said.

Hugh laughed. "Damn. That Sam. She is funny," he said.

§

I tried not to think about the phone as I crossed fouth avenue. Danny B's was conveniently close to the library, so I thought I'd try to capitalize on the morning hours and get another thousand words on Hugh's assignment. He was right. I did need the money, and he had convinced me that the way he obtained the phone freed us from legal responsibility. We were just reviewing a preview phone received in the mail.

It's just a job, I thought. Finish it and move on.

Excalibur chirped in my pocket. I pulled it out, and it spoke.

"New text message from Samantha," it said.

I cursed under my breath. The communication appeared in the screen. Whatcha doin?

I stuck the prototype in my pocket and dialed her number with my old phone. "Hello there." She was easy to hear in the quiet street.

"Hey," I said. "Got your text. I didn't give you the number for Excalibur, did I?"

The other end was quiet for a moment. "No," said Sam, "I texted your regular number. The one you're calling me from now."

"No," I said, "I didn't get the message on this phone. I got it on the prototype. Who gave you that number?"

"I'm telling you, hon," said Sam, "I just pressed that lovely little icon of you on my phone and texted, like I do every d...."

I held my personal phone to my face. The call had been lost. College students and retirees passed me as I stood on the sidewalk.

Excalibur rang in my pocket, a startling, chirping sound. I pulled it out.

"Phone call from Samantha," purred the prototype phone. I touched the answer icon.

"Sorry, got cut off," said Samantha. "As I was saying...."

"How did you get this number?" I said.

"How many times, dear?" said Sam, now truly annoyed. "I clicked your contact. Same as always. You're talking on your old phone now... aren't you?"

Excalibur's screen dimmed, some energy saving measure going into effect. My old phone sat in my other hand, utterly inactive.

"Ted?" said Samantha's voice, sharp and bright, emanating from Excalibur. "Ted? Are you there?"

§

The evening further darkened my already dim apartment. After hanging up on Sam, she called me five more times. I didn't answer. Each time, her number appeared on Excalibur's screen, and her name was announced by that cool, emotionless voice. I spent the day with the windows closed, peering through a crack in the curtain.

I tried to turn the phone off, but each time I thought it had shut down another call came through. It couldn't be deactivated.

The battery cover wouldn't come off, either. It wouldn't budge.

I wondered how the police would come for me. Would they knock? Would they drill a hole through the ceiling and drop down, automatic weapons gleaming?

Excalibur chirped underneath my couch cushion. "Phone call from Hugh," said the muffled voice.

"I've got to get a hold of myself," I said aloud, then laughed. Though I had meant it, it was a movie cliche of the highest order. I stood up from the couch, deciding that "getting a hold of myself" would start with my first shower in a few days.

I tried to parse the facts. It was just a phone. It was just an assignment. This assignment would pay my week-late rent and next month's rent as well. I had not fallen back on drinking. Samantha had not left me yet.

The shower steam cleared my sinuses. These are the facts at hand, I thought. Nothing complicated. Let's just sort this out.

Deciding to address my situation in reverse order, I decided to call Samantha back first. Not having had a land line in years, I picked up my old cell phone. It wouldn't turn on. I popped out the battery, repositioned it. Nothing. I plugged it into the adapter. Still nothing.

If I was going to call Samantha and move on with my evening recovery plan, I had to use Excalibur.

And why shouldn't I? It's just a phone, I said to myself. The faint, remembered taste of whiskey pushed me forward. I couldn't afford to overthink. Overthinking led me back to the bar. Bar fights. Bad things.

I dug Excalibur out from under the couch cushions. The interface popped to life before I even pressed a button. Clicking the phone icon, I dialed Sam's number.

"Calling Samantha," declared the phone. Several rings, then voicemail. I disconnected the call.

Samantha frequently failed to pull her ringing phone out of her purse in time to answer, and always called me right back. I waited. A minute stretched by. Then two. I redialed.

"Calling Samantha."

The voicemail kicked in right away. She was on the phone now, or in an area without service.

Or she had turned off the phone.

My stomach twisted. I thought of Sam, who had made her expectations clear about my sobriety. She had stayed with me during the worst of the detox. She had scolded me about fighting while bandaging my wounds. She had driven me to my first meetings. Her biggest flaw was giving a damn about me, and I had repaid her with spite.

"Calling Samantha." Voicemail again. I threw Excalibur on the couch.

"Damn it!" I said, and stomped my foot childishly on the ground. I took a stack of books from the kitchen counter and flung them across the room.

"Please advise!" said a voice from the couch. "Type or speak your request."

I yelled, emitting a stream of curse words that certainly should have inspired one of my neighbors to call the police.

"What is 'motherfucker?'" cooed the robotic female voice. "Please repeat your request."

"Okay," I yelled back, eyes fixed on the phone across the room. "Where the fuck is she?"

The dim screen became bright with color. "Would you like directions?" it said.

I walked to the couch. Excalibur was showing me a map.

A street corner I didn't know was crudely highlighted.

"What is this?"

"Please repeat your request."

I paused, and considered the possibilities. The ability to track other phones through GPS was nothing new, but to do so surreptitiously was far beyond legality.

"I have to call the police," I told myself. "I have to turn this thing over. This isn't right."

"Updating location," said the phone. The screen regenerated. Samantha was moving uptown.

"This isn't right," I said again. I recognized my own voice. It was the voice of clear thinking, of sobriety. Though thrown into crisis with a clear ethical quandary, I felt a warm confidence. I was going to get through it. I wasn't going to do anything stupid.

"All right, asshole," I said to the phone. "I'm getting dressed. You're coming with me. To the FCC with you. We're going right to the police station."

The map updated to the nearest police precinct. "Would you like directions?"

"Very funny," I replied, and placed the phone on the counter. "You aren't right, my friend. You are incredibly not right, and I am going to get dressed, and we are going to turn you in. Fuck the story. Fuck the rent. Fuck Hugh."

From my bedroom closet I heard the phone speak. "Would you like directions?"

I stopped, my shirt half on, and gasped. For all of my unreasonable paranoia, I'm not sure why it hadn't occurred to me before. I walked out of my bedroom and picked up the phone. Excalibur showed Hugh, or at least Hugh's phone, in his uptown apartment.

"Where is Samantha?"

The same map stayed illuminated on the screen, with the green arrow relocated just outside of Hugh's building. Samantha was on the street below.

"Keep going," I said. "Please keep going."

The map stayed static for a moment, then updated. Samantha was in Hugh's building.

I stared at the phone for a long time.

A building across the street from Hugh's apartment lit up in an orange color. "Why not try Alanna's Liquor Lounge?"

§

I don't remember all of the specifics after that. There was a cab uptown. Excalibur and I sat at Alanna's Liquor Lounge for some time. I talked to it. I talked a lot.

I don't know why Hugh even answered the door. He was half dressed, and perhaps he was too surprised to think clearly. He was certainly surprised when I grabbed the knife.

Samantha yelled "police" over and over from locked bathroom, crying and screaming. I sat on the floor counter next to Hugh's body, watching my new friend display a map to the nearest police station over, and over, and over again.

A great beast shuddered along a worn path long after the dull sun had set behind the greatest, most agitated volcano to the east. The monster towered, far taller than the long-dead trees along the road. Ambling along on six fur-lined legs, it made its way, sightless and gaping, feeling the landscape ahead with two tentacles. Lighting crashed above, and the monster bellowed back with a roar from its cavernous, fanged mouth. The teeth glowed red in the flashes, covered with an unspeakable mucous.

The beast paused, vaguely aware of an approaching presence, but too distracted by the crashing thunder and the sulfurous wind to register what that danger could be. It sniffed the air with its four gaping, grey nostrils, then continued down the path in an endless search for an unsuspecting meal.
The beast did not know that just ahead on the path, hidden by a rocky outcropping, was an equally hungry, equally massive creature.

The other monster approached, massive and slug-like. One large, bulbous eye crowned the front of its forehead. The eye was surrounded by dozens of smaller, viciously blinking eyes, each rolling and searching in a different direction. Massive muscles coiled and arched, propelling the slug beast forward, and leaving a stinking trail of ooze in its wake. Its searching mouth puckered upon the ground, looking for any morsel of edible matter.

Any human who might have seen these two beasts approaching would have fled in insane, uncontrollable terror.

As the creatures closed on each other, unaware of each other's presence, the heavens filled with a spectacular display of cacophonous light and sound.

It was the slug-like beast, covered with eyes, that beheld the other creature first, filling the air with a howl that drowned out the deafening thunder above. The fur-covered, six-legged creature reared back in surprise, causing the ground to shake for a mile in each direction. It bared its vicious, slime-covered fangs, and prepared for attack.

The slug-like creature paused. "Tim," it said, "is that you?"

The fur-covered feature closed its mouth, hiding its teeth. "George?" it said in reply. "Good gravy, man, but you did give me a start!"

Tim laughed heartily, causing the coils of his muscles to shake. "I gave you a start? Hello!"

The two beasts laughed at the circumstance, and the storm above them seemed to calm in response.

"What in the world are you doing out at this hour?" said Tim, returning all of his legs to the ground.

"Oh, it's the wife," said George. "I forgot to pick up dinner on the way home from work and, well, off I go for a completely unnecessary errand."

"Now, now," said Tim, with a tisk. "That sounds more like a George problem than an Evelyn problem if you asked me."

"Yeah, I guess you got me there," said George, chuckling. "With age goes the memory, eh?"

A light rain began to fall upon the two creatures.

"Oh, for pity's sake," said Tim. "When is this weather going to turn? I've had enough, really."

With one of the several tiny arms lining his body, George pulled a small umbrella from his muscle folds. "Yeah, it's murder on my eye. Even the light showers really sting, you know?" He struggled to open the tiny umbrella, but it wouldn't budge.

Sensing the problem, Tim nodded. "Here, let me help with that." His two tentacles lithely popped the umbrella open. Lightning flashed, revealing the pink and blue polka dots covering the parasol.

"Ah! Thank you. I can never get these blasted things open." George hoisted the umbrella, barely shielding any rain at all from his giant eye. "Much better."

"Well, I'd love to stay and chat, but I've got to get going," said Tim.

"Yes," said George. "Give my love to Edith and the kids."

"Will do!" said Tim. "Keep an eye out. There are some strange characters on this road."

George rolled his giant eye. "Tell me about it," he said, and shuffled past Tim with a wave of a few of his hands.

Amelia turned the word around in between her lips and cheeks, trying to make sense of the syllables.

Wi....

The first part faded into an open-vowelled nothing, echoing off the back of the mouth.

... dow.

The second syllable originated between the tongue and the hard palate, conjuring a new vowel from the back of the mouth with an offensive, forceful motion.

The early September sun struggled through the fog and pine trees, dimly warming the living room of the lakeside cabin. For some ten years, since Allen and Amelia sold their house in the city at retirement, it hadn't been 'the cabin.' It had been home.

Widow.

It is an ugly word, thought Amelia. It is full of violence and doom, of homeless urchins and helpless women.

Her situation involved none of those things, and she felt a familiar annoyance at the thought of helplessness. She and Allen had built a life around a hard-won power balance. "Forty years of tweaking the formula" he had said at their anniversary party, not quite a year earlier. Amelia had felt that wasn't entirely true. Their pattern, comfortable and respectful, had been set within the first few years of their marriage, after their daughter was born.

The formula is academic now, thought Amelia, one of its primary components reduced to a pile of dust in the mausoleum.

She smiled. Allen would have found that complete lack of sentiment funny, as he found most of her conclusions. His dark humor had been attractive to her, just as her own ruthless practicality had been so appealing to him. Where other men had found her lack of overt sentimentality off-putting and unfeminine, Allen had often summed it up by saying "if I wanted someone to hold my hand and tuck me into bed, I'd go live with my mother."

Amelia's face twitched. The smile had loosened something unfamiliar, dangerous. She staggered over to the couch and let her legs bend. Clutching the skin at her throat, she closed her eyes and tried to steady her breath. Unable to do so, she closed her lips and held her lungs tight.

I will be fine. I am always fine.

Her swimsuit lay folded on the coffee table next to her. She had washed it the day after he died, some two months previous, and had placed it out as a reminder of her promise. It had remained there since that day.

From the window open to the lake, she could hear their yellow lab, Frinkle, running on the dock. He had probably spent the night in the boat again, thought Amelia. Old fool. Frinkle pushed his way through the doggie door and sat down, fidgety and agitated. He restrained a bark as he watched Amelia begin to breathe again.

Amelia looked out the window. The rowboat was floating, untethered, some fifty feet from the dock. This was the second such occurrence; it had come loose the night before as well. Frinkle whined and cocked his head.

Frowning, Amelia considered that her knot-tying might not be what she thought it was, or that the kids from the other cabins were playing tricks. But they were such nice kids, and had actually taken their canoe out to retrieve the rowboat for Amelia the previous morning. She could see the question in their eyes, however: why don't you just swim out there and get it? It's not too far.

Amelia had discovered that, among the discomforts of widowhood, her friends and neighbors at least tended to grant her requests quickly, without fighting them. It was a small convenience.

The boys from the next cabin over will get it for me, thought Amelia, watching the boat drift in the still morning, shrouded by fog. There will be no need to swim.

§

"Are you getting tired?" said Allen. Amelia noticed that she had broken the Australian crawl and was doing the breaststroke, which was a signal to Allen that she was tired or wanted to say something.. Allen had stopped rowing, and leaned forward to hear his wife following the stern. Had I wanted to say something? she thought.

"We've only just started!" said Amelia, trying to sound cheerful.

The temperature of the lake water in late June was only just catching up with the recent string of hot days, and Amelia still found it necessary to squeeze herself into a wetsuit to stay warm. She was happy to be able to do so in her mid-sixties, because donning the black neoprene required a contortionist's flexibility. Amelia told her friends that the greatest benefit of her morning swims was the act of yoga required to don the wetsuit.

Cold or warm, Amelia would explain to her husband, the water had a way of setting her blood right. It was her best explanation.

Though she usually swam not too far from the shore, sometimes she ventured near the middle of the lake, where she could feel the settled cool of the deep water tickle her feet. The winter was always present somewhere in the lake, thought Amelia, to remind us of the ice to come.

Allen resumed his paddling when Amelia began a forward crawl. Their weekend routine for some thirty summers had become their daily routine upon retirement. Allen, who loathed swimming, enjoyed the refreshment of a gentle morning row. Amelia, a near-mermaid since birth, tried to find a way to get in the water every morning. They rose at 5:15 am without the benefit of the alarm, puttered around a bit until daylight, and then headed for the shore.

Frinkle, a retirement gift from Allen when Amelia wrapped up her teaching career, was named after Amelia's finger wrinkles from spending long mornings in the water. Ten years into retirement, Frinkle enjoyed the morning trips in the bow of the boat. Though officially Amelia's dog, Frinkle seemed to consider Allen his personal responsibility, and followed the man of the cabin around on his daily routines.

Though Amelia had not paused in her vigorous swimming, she noticed Allen had stopped paddling. She waded upright.

"What's wrong?" she said.

"Nothing," he called, dropping the handle of the starboard oar to adjust his floppy hat. He placed his hand under his ribcage, and sat up straight.

"We can go back," said Amelia. "Let's go back."

"No," said Allen, trying not to seem annoyed. The surgery, scheduled for the next day, was meant to provide more information about what was growing on his liver. The MRI hadn't been able to tell them everything.

"Don't be silly," said Amelia, trying to lighten her voice. "I can go out later. Let's just go back and...."

"We need to do this," said Allen, his decorum slipping away. He locked eyes with his wife. "You need to do this."

"Don't be silly," said Amelia quietly. She considered turning around and leading her husband back when Allen did something he had never done. He started rowing without waiting for her cue. She watched her stubborn husband lurch forward— still a lithe man, still powerful— and couldn't stifle a smile. Amelia kicked her legs and followed Allen along the shore, feeling a surge of optimism she hadn't felt in days.

§

"Would you like us to get the boat for you, Mrs. Travers?" called Bill Crain from the next dock over, as if on cue. The nine year-old boy stood, already dressed and ready for action at dawn, with his younger brother Hugh, who was holding a canoe paddle. "We're going out anyway."

Amelia had wrapped herself in a robe and was standing on the dock with Frinkle, watching the rowboat drift further away. "That would be wonderful, Bill. Hugh. Thank you, my dears."

Hugh followed his brother back toward the shore. "Mrs. Travers, I'm pretty good at knots." he called across the water.

"I bet you are!" she said.

"I can show you some, if you want."

Amelia laughed. It was a diplomatic dig, especially for a seven year-old.

"I'd like that."

Amelia considered the line trailing the boat. When she had found the boat floating the previous morning, she had been sure to secure the line very well. She had considered asking the boys to pull it into shore entirely, preventing any further mishaps, but short trips in the rowboat seemed to calm Frinkle when the old dog got particularly nervous. They both liked having the boat ready and tied to the dock.

Before bed, she had secured the boat with a round turn and two half-hitches. She knew her knots well enough.

The boys reached the rowboat in the canoe, and trailed it back to Amelia and Frinkle. As the boys handed over the line, she thanked them profusely, and prepared herself to marvel audibly at Hugh's constrictor knot demonstration.

§

"You're being stubborn," said Amelia to her husband, who refused to stop rowing in spite of the grimace on his face.

He said nothing.

"I like it," she called again.

Allen stopped rowing, and his features softened. He took off his hat, his full head of white hair shining in the fully risen sun. He smiled at his wife, who was treading water behind the drifting boat. A loon blurted a morning call, unseen around the bend of a nearby sandbar.

"I'm not happy about all of this," he said.

"I know," she said.

"I don't want you to stop swimming."

"I'm following you. It's fine."

"You know what I mean," said Allen. The look on Amelia's face suggested she might not, in fact, know what he meant. "If this gets bad, if it's as bad as I think it is, I want you to keep swimming. Even if I can't row ahead of you. Even if I...."

The loon called again, interrupting.

"It's going to be fine," said Amelia. "I'll keep swimming. You just worry about...."

"Without me? You haven't gone swimming without me in years." Allen didn't often interrupt Amelia, and the morning of firsts hadn't been lost on Amelia. Her husband's recent streak of staying cool was coming undone before her eyes.

He had seemed so calm as the doctors tried to come up with a diagnosis, and she had resented him a little. She was meant to be the calm one. Amelia had sat in the oncologist's office with him, quietly wanting to vomit.

Allen is actually worried, thought Amelia as she looked up at her husband. Of all of the unfamiliar emotions Amelia had felt in the previous days, she found one in the water that she truly didn't know how to handle. The realization that Allen was actually worried about his own mortality made her more anxious than ever before, while simultaneously easing her sense of being alone.

§

"Seriously, Mom, I'll pull that damn boat onto the shore right now," said Brin. Amelia heard her own voice in her daughter's insistence, and smiled. "Somebody's playing tricks on you. Or your knots suck. Or both."

"I think the only part of this that I can't handle is all this doubt about my knots," said Amelia. "I'm getting it from all sides. No, thank you. Frinkle likes the boat where it is. Besides, you're in a nice skirt."

Her daughter had stopped by the cabin after work, a route which took her thirty miles out of her way. Amelia appreciated the concern, and loved even the most brief visits from Brin. Of all of the frequent check-ins from neighbors and friends since Allen's death, she found that Brin's were the only ones that didn't make her feel like some kind of emotional cripple.

Though the modest cabin was far from rustic, the small kitchenette served as dining room and coffee spot as well. Amelia poked the lemon slice in her tea with a spoon as she leaned on the counter. Brin looked out the window, watching Frinkle pace the dock. Shifting, she kicked a pie tin on the floor.

"The Robertsons?" said Brin.

"Yep," said Amelia.

"Strawberry-rhubarb?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Frinkle take care of it for you?"

Amelia smiled, and Brin laughed.

"Well, at least he's not going hungry." Brin's smiled faded. "I'm worried about you, Mom."

"Oh, I'm fine, honey," said Amelia, mostly believing it. "I've got Frinkle here, I've got a never-ending parade of inedible pies, and I've got boats that go a-wandering in the night."

Brin embraced her mother, laughing and wiping her eyes. "Well, before I go, I'm taking care of that boat."

"Oh, no," said Amelia, squeezing her daughter back. "Not the Brin-knot special."

"Yes," said Brin. "I'm pulling it ashore, and I'm fastening it with a knot those boys are never gonna get out."

"I really don't think it's them," said Amelia. "They're such nice boys."

"Well, then," said Brin, "I'm saving you from your own knots. I just hope you'll be able to get my knot out, or that boat's gonna be fastened to the post until winter."

"I think your husband is calling you," said Amelia.

Brin squeezed again and released her mother, looking her in the eyes. "You been swimming?"

"Not yet," said Amelia. She felt short next to her daughter, who towered over her in heels. Short and small. "Not yet."

§

"I don't see why this is so important right now," said Amelia, growing tired of treading water.

"I don't ask for much," said Allen, sounding more combative in his seat on the boat. Frinkle looked back at the couple and wagged his tail.

"You know I hate it when you throw that at me," she said.

"So I try not to use it until it's important," he said, stifling a smile.

"Fine," she said, unable to maintain her stern face. "I'll keep swimming if you're unable to row for awhile. Because it's our thing. It's our morning thing."

"I'm gonna need more than that," said Allen. "It's not just my thing. It's your thing. It makes your blood right, remember?"

"Yes, dear."

"And I especially want you to keep swimming when I'm not here."

The bluntness of his comment caught Amelia in the throat. Of course she had considered it. She had considered the steps of having her husband cremated, where the life insurance papers were, how she would break it to her friends. Practical matters. What she hadn't considered, not even for a moment, was that her husband thought about life after him. That he thought about how she would spend her time.

"This is important, Amelia," he said.

The waves thunked underneath the metal boat, a hollow sound even from where Amelia was trying to stay afloat.

"Of course," she said. "Of course I will swim if you aren't here. Of course I will."

§

Amelia awoke to Frinkle's whining, his snout only inches from her face.

The two small bedrooms in the cabin seemed even smaller without company, so Amelia had taken to sleeping on the foldout couch in the living room. She had found this convenient. The kitchenette, such as it was, was really just a small sliver on the far end of the living room. She had been able to rise at her leisure and eat snacks on the couch as she lay, unable to sleep.

But sleep had taken her at some point, punctuated before dawn by Frinkle's insistent requests.

Amelia sat up. With the dog door, Frinkle was able to go out and take care of his business whenever it pleased him. No, thought Amelia, Frinkle wants something else.

She looked at the clock radio, a model from the 1970s with flip-down digits. It clicked. 5:25.

Frinkle barked. I haven't heard this dog bark in the morning, not in years, thought Amelia.

She sniffed the air for fire, or some other obvious emergency. The crickets and frogs filled the air outside with the last of their nightly song, and the birds started in on their shift.

Frinkle stood abruptly and ran out the dog door.

The September fog enveloped Amelia as soon as she stepped through the screen door. It had taken her a few minutes to find her robe, and as she looked she could hear Frinkle's nails clattering on the dock.

"Frinkle, come here!" whispered Amelia. Frinkle whined from the fog enshrouded dock.

Amelia stopped. She hadn't reached the dock when she passed the shore post for the rowboat. Brin's impenetrable knot was gone. The boat was gone.

The air hung wet and cool around her. Frinkle sat on the first planks of the dock and looked at Amelia, wagging his tail. She walked slowly to the dock, and he stood and walked with her to the end.

The boat, bow pointing to the center of the lake, drifted slowly and steadily away from the end of the dock. It was barely visible in the pre-dawn light, which was only just breaking in pink hues on the horizon. The rowboat was already some twenty feet away.

A memory broke through the quiet. Amelia remembered the goofy grin on her then-young husband's face the morning after he had purchased the boat from a neighbor. He had risen before her, already awake, dressed, and in the water at dawn. He was still getting the hang of the oars, and was turning circles in the water as she emerged in her swimsuit that morning. "Mind if I join you?" he had said.

He had found a way to be with her, in spite of his distaste for swimming. At the time, she had laughed. "Okay, Allen."

Frinkle whined quietly, looking up at Amelia.

"Okay, Allen," she said to the pilotless rowboat. She removed her robe, sat down on the dock, and scratched Frinkle's ear.

She slipped into the water, which had retained some of its summer warmth. As she swam toward the drifting boat line, she felt her blood moving through her body, into its right places.

A loon called from a distant cove, greeting the approaching dawn.

(Need a copy for your e-book reader or phone? Grab a copy from Scribd.)

1. When working on a story, it is better not to tell everyone you know about it. If you do, that story will grind to a halt, and the plot points will become sticky as if covered in syrup.
2. As much as I would like to tell you about tomorrow's story, my previous observation prevents me from doing so.
3. Short stories seem to resist more than two key events per story. The first event boxes the characters into action. The second is the culmination of their actions.
4. I don't make the rules. But I can occasionally break them.

Hope to see you back tomorrow morning for Friday's story!

A parade of his classmates passed before him, some presenting the same items they had shown earlier in the year. Was it intentional? Did Jenny really not know that she had already brought her grandmother's locket from the old world? Did Jeff not remember bringing his amateur electronics kit from Radio Shack in October?

Chad remembered. He remembered taking one look at the amulet and knowing, just knowing that the jewelry was not 120 years old. It couldn't have been more than 20. He knew it was not made from pure silver, as Jenny had believed, but of some kind of cheap metal. Maybe aluminum. Chad looked at his teacher, Ms. Horvath, who was patiently smiling and nodding. Ms. Horvath didn't believe it was antique jewelry either. Chad was sure of the gentle deceit behind Ms. Horvath's kind face.

The electronics kit. Chad remembered Jeff's show and tell piece because he hadn't seen anything like it before. It was a piece of cardboard framed in plastic, with a dozen small metal coils wound into various solid-state electronic components. Capacitors. Resistors. Photoresistors. Light emitting diodes. A small speaker cone. All could be connected in endless combinations with the colorful bits of plastic-coated wire. Jeff had demonstrated how he had rigged a battery-powered buzzer that sounded when he touched the end of a wire to one of the coils. It was an extremely simple project, thought Chad, and not very interesting. He could do better.

And besides, the tension in Jeff's voice told Chad that Jeff hadn't built it at all. Jeff's much older brother had.

"That's wonderful, Jeff. Very impressive," said Ms. Horvath. "Chad, do you have any questions?"

Chad had been caught staring at the ceiling again. It happened a lot. He sat up, and ran his fingers through his unruly blond hair.

"Not for Jeff, no. Not today, at his time, Ms. Horvath," said Chad. "Sorry."

Chad's class was used to his awkward over-explanations. He knew that he could save himself a lot of trouble by just saying "no, Ms. Horvath," but he found himself unable to.

Ms. Horvath smiled. "You haven't brought in anything for show and tell lately, have you, Chad?" This was a rhetorical question. He had never brought anything for show and tell.

"No, Ms. Horvath," said Chad. "I haven't brought anything at all."

"Well, it's the second-to-last week of the school year," said the young teacher, standing from her desk.

Chad swallowed deeply.

"I hadn't planned on having show and tell next week, Chad, but you seem to have avoided bringing something to share with the class for an entire year. I believe it is also your birthday next week, no?"

Chad nodded slowly.

"So, for your birthday, I wonder if you wouldn't mind bringing something from home to share with the class. We'll have a special show and tell, just for your birthday. What do you think of that?"

"I think I'd prefer if we did not have a special show and tell, Ms. Horvath," said Chad. The class giggled at his formality, still strange and unexpected to them.

"Well, we'll discuss that privately," said Ms. Horvath. Several of his classmates turned to Chad, smiling. They knew Ms. Horvath was going to get her way.

"Don't forget a birthday snack for us," said Sue Brewer.

§

"I don't understand why I have to, though."

Chad was sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter. His after-school snack sat uneaten. Sliced apple. Milk. Two crackers.

His mother was grinning, as she always did when Chad related some uncomfortable story about school. "Well, sometimes we have to do those things, you know. We need to do our best to... blend in."

Uncommonly tall and pretty, Chad's mom was by far less embarrassing parent for him to be seen with in public.

"Nobody else was made to," said Chad. "It's always been... if you want to, you could bring in show and tell."

"Voluntary," said his mother.

"Right. Voluntary."

Her eyes betrayed a mixture of empathy and fascination. In some ways, thought Chad, my mother is as bewildered with these events as I am.

"Well," said his mother, "I think you should. I think it would be good for you. Why not?"

"Man!" said Chad, exasperated. His mother had made up her mind in favor of the teacher's position. There was no getting out of it now.

"It's still kind of a new school for you, and there's no reason you can't still try to let your classmates know a little about who you are."

"I've been there all year, Mom," said Chad, glowering. "It's not that new."

"Don't make it complicated," said his mother, sighing. "Just pick something simple. Bring your football."

"Only babies bring toys," said Chad, repeating something he had heard his classmates say when Alice Ambrose brought a doll to show and tell. His eyes burned. Chad knew that had been a cruel and confusing day for Alice, one that he would not have subjected on himself.

"Okay, well then... how about one of your model rockets?"

The thought of sharing one of his actual enthusiasms with his class twisted Chad's stomach. It would only make him more vulnerable. He said nothing, and stared at his food.

His mother looked at him. "Well," she said, "I'm sure you'll figure something out."

Chad poked at his apple. He already knew what he wanted to bring, but couldn't imagine a way to ask.

§

Ms. Horvath had called an independent study time for the class. While the rest of his classmates sat about the room reading or quietly talking, Chad pretended to concentrate on a worksheet.

"Um, Chad?"

Chad looked up from his worksheet. Jeff stood above him.

"Oh. Hi," said Chad. In the nine months of the school year, Jeff had never struck up a conversation with him.

"Hi. It's just... I saw you working on this yesterday," said Jeff. He held up the electronics kit. It was a mad jumble of criss-crossed wires.

"Oh, yeah. Sorry," said Chad. "I should have asked."

"Oh, no, I mean... that's okay," said Jeff. In the jumble of wires, a meter quietly pulsed, its hand jumping from 0 to 500 Ohms every second or so. When it did, a small LED on the opposite end of the board blinked. The light and the meter were patched to a sequence of capacitors resistors, the same ones that Jeff had tried so hard to describe the day before. The battery was not connected. but the tiny solar cell was.

"I just tried something," said Chad. "It didn't really work."

Jeff looked blankly at Chad. "How did you do this? It's blinking."

Chad realized that Jeff didn't know— how could he?— the purpose and the failure of his experiment.

"Oh, it's supposed to... if you take it outside, and measure the difference in the time between the blinks, you should be able to multiply the...." Chad stopped himself. Jeff would never understand, or even care, that Chad was unable to create a device to measure the usable years of light left in the sun. Chad knew it had been a failure because his father, a physicist, had assured a nervous Chad once that the sun would burn brightly and normally for another five billion years. This little device told him that the sun only had about two billion years left. This was an unsupportable difference in data.

"It blinks about once a second," said Chad.

"Wow," said Jeff. "That's really cool."

§

That evening, Chad's father was reading in his chair. Whenever his father wasn't in the basement, he could usually be found sitting in his chair, reading.

"Dad?" said Chad.

His father put down his book. "Yes, son?"

Chad always considered his father as much a caricature of a scientist as an actual scientist. He was tall, heavily bespectacled, thin, and awkward. His face was serious and kind, his hair unmanageable at any length, and he made frequent and appropriate references to the unlikelihood that he had married a woman as beautiful as his wife.
Given his resemblance to his father, Chad also hoped to be as lucky.

"I have to bring something for show and tell next week," said Chad.

"Okay..." said his father.

"I want to bring the box," said Chad, blurting on the heels of his father's reply.
Chad's father looked blankly for a moment, clearly about to say "what box?" But then the furrow in his brow settled.

"Oh, son," he said quietly, a tinge of sympathy in his voice. Chad heard the unspoken 'no.'

"But Ms. Horvath said that I should bring something important to me. To us. As a family," Chad said.

The box sat on a table in the living room, placed just behind the lamp. It was perfectly square, four inches long on each side, and appeared to be made of a polished, milky alabaster. The cube was quite heavy, and though his parents called it 'the box,' it didn't seem to have a lid or a means of opening.

His father took off his glasses. "It is important to us. It is important to us as a family."

The box had always held a special attraction for Chad, and that was even before it was revealed to be a strangely important family heirloom. It was indescribably beautiful to him, for a reason that he couldn't describe. Often, when he heard the word 'home,' Chad realized that his classmates were all visualizing the houses they lived in, or the families who loved them. When Chad heard the word 'home,' his first thought was of the milky box on his parents' table.

The only time the box ever left that spot was when he and his parents went on vacation. Chad initially thought it was to protect it from theft, but lately he'd sensed that there was another reason.

"I warned you not to mention that box at all," said Chad's mother from the study.

"Yes, dear," said Chad's father, his voice curt. "A million times noted."

"Why won't you tell me what it does?" said Chad, going for broke. "Why do we need it? Why does it have to come with us on vacation?"

"Son, I promise I will tell you all these things and more," said Chad's father, leaning over and placing his hands on his son's shoulders gingerly. "Suffice it to say, however, that you aren't old enough. And that box can't ever leave this house."

"Why don't you lock it up if it's so important?" said Chad.

His father smiled. "I'll tell you that someday, too. But for now, why don't we go into your room and pick something out for your show and tell."

"Model rocket," said Chad's mother's voice.

§

The weekend had passed with excruciating slowness, and Chad couldn't even enjoy the oncoming summer due to the task that stood between him and freedom. He felt even more uncomfortable and foreign in his own skin than usual.

He stood solemnly in front of the class, blue and red model rocket in hand.

"Well, class, not only is it Chad's birthday..." said Ms. Horvath, who began to clap, which caused the seated class to follow with an awkward round of half-hearted applause. Chad's felt his cheeks prickle, as if aflame. "...We also have Chad's first and last show and tell of the year! Whoo!"

The class sat silent.

"Okay!" said Ms. Horvath who, Chad thought, seemed determined to enjoy the moment. "What did you bring for us today, Chad?"

"It's a model rocket," said Chad.

"Does it go into space?" said Bill White, wiping a booger on his pants.

"No, it goes a few hundred feet into the sky," said Chad.

"Ooooh," said three of his classmates.

"Where does it land?" said Conor Johnson. "On your butt?"

"Conor, go into the hall and wait for me," said Ms. Horvath.

Chad swallowed, unsure if he was to answer the question in spite of Conor's dismissal. To his relief, Sue Brewer raised her hand.

"What did you bring for snack today?" she said to Chad.

The floor below Chad seemed to shift away from him, giving him the sensation of dangling dozens of feet in the air. He had forgotten to bring a birthday snack to share with the class.

"Um... I forgot."

In unison, the class gave a disgusted "aww!"

"Now, class," said Ms. Horvath.

The hour, the day, the year was slipping away from Chad. He would be remembered as the kid who didn't bring a snack on his birthday. All would be lost.

"I brought something else," blurted Chad.

The class fell silent.

"Really?" said Ms. Horvath. "Well, let's have it!"

Chad reached nervously into his bag, and gently lifted the box. As brightly as it seemed to self-illuminate in his house, it was even more warmly luminescent in the classroom.

The children were silent. Chad knew they sensed its inexplicable power as well.

"What is that, Chad?" said Ms. Horvath, quietly. Ripples of sunlight played upon the dappled surface of the seamless cube.

"I don't know," said Chad. "It belongs to my parents. It's a piece of my home."

The silence lingered in the classroom longer than it had all year. The children watched Chad turn the box slowly, as if grateful for each second of the opportunity.

A loud squeal of screeching tires broke the spell. Chad twirled around and looked out the window in time to see his parents' car pulling into the parking lot.

He gasped.

The box fell loose from his fingers, and shattered on the floor.

He closed his two eyes. At the moment of impact, his body felt as though struck by a strong breeze. For a glorious second, he felt the pent-up tension of a confused year slip away. His shoulders, his arms, his belly all relaxed. The bewilderment of being the strange kid in class was replaced with a powerful sense of purpose, a clear sense of identity. He felt an overwhelming rush of pride, confidence, belonging... emotions he had only felt in fleeting moments, often only while admiring the alabaster cube when his parents weren't around.

Chad opened his six eyes. He saw his parents emerge from the car, their transformed, bifurcated bodies glowing blue in the morning sun, their heads shining like polished opals, their many oral cavities bristling in angry expression.

He heard his parents' clicking voices over the screams of his classmates, who were beholding Chad in his native form just as he was seeing his parents clearly for the first time in his life. He instinctively understood the message from the alien creatures approaching the school.

Young man, they said, voices trumpeting and clicking from all over their bodies. You are in so much trouble right now!

(Need a copy for your e-book reader or phone? Grab a copy from Scribd.)

I'm planning on posting the 13 stories on Scribd as well, which fancies itself "the YouTube of Documents." Scribd offers offers easy instructions for transfer to various ebook readers and mobile devices, so if that's your thing, visit my page and give it a try!

I'm hard at work on this Friday's story, which seems to be about a technology writer who is given a golden (and illegal) opportunity to write about a not-yet-released smart phone. The unintended consequences go far beyond getting his apartment raided.

Hope to see you Friday morning!

This letter is uncomfortable to write. Maybe by the end I'll have talked myself out of what I intend to do, but I just don't think so. I could just pop over and see you in Nebraska, but I think this might be better. Sometimes it helps to work things out on paper, and you're the only person I really trust. You're the only person who knows who I really am.

I'm struggling to write in English. I've learned hundreds of languages, and I'm still surprised that this one went international. So inefficient.

How's your Mom, by the way? Is she still living with you, helping out with Lisa and Tim? She was always so nice to me... and so angry with me for not asking you out! What a sweet lady. And I'll bet Lisa and Tim are getting big.

I know it's been a year since the funeral and we haven't been in contact, but I want to tell you again how sorry I am about your husband. David was a good guy. Seeing a strong young man waste away like that... heartbreaking.

There are some things I need to tell you that I should have told you a long time ago. But first, I want to tell you what happened to me last week, and what brought this all about.

§

So I'm walking down the street the other day (52nd and Vine), when I see a full can of paint fall off a tall building right toward this lady's head. If it makes contact, the woman is dead. Without even thinking, I vaporize the can with my heat vision, and I manage to get most of the falling paint as well. It turns into a light dust. As an extra touch (no charge! ha ha) I give a hint of focused breath to dissipate the dust. Nothing touches the lady— or kills the lady— and she walks on unharmed.

I jog over to the lady (we'll call her Paint Woman) and say, "are you okay, ma'am?" A little false modesty, I admit. Of course she's okay. She shoots me a dirty look. She's got earbuds in, and her iPod is turned up pretty loud.

I say, a little louder this time, "I don't know if you're aware, but you almost came into a rather bad accident." Rather bad accident? I'm not sure what's up with my lingo lately.

Anyway, she says nothing, and clearly doesn't recognize me in my civilian outfit. So I decide to give her a glimpse of my uniform under my shirt, because maybe she'll think, "hey it's him! My son has an action figure of him at home, and he saved me! What a story this will make!"

I barely unlatch the first shirt button when she starts screaming and hitting me with her bag.

I say, "no, ma'am, you don't understand! I just saved your life!" Just to be safe, I close my shirt. After last year's paparazzi incident, I can't afford to be half-undressed in public anymore. "Caped Hero in Compromising Position." Ugh.

Some guy shoves my shoulder and says, "Hey, why don't you leave the lady alone?" This guy is all muscle, no neck. We'll call him No-Neck. I could send him flying with a poke of my finger, of course, but he's pretty strong for a regular human. And at the moment, he's looking like the good guy. Not me.

Why did I have to even tell her about the paint can? There was a time when I would have kept walking.

So while No-Neck is pushing me around, I get all these fantasies, you know? I imagine what it would be like to zap a tiny hole in No-Neck's brain with my eyes. I could leave him merely paralyzed, or on the ground pissing himself, or without the ability to speak. The world's best neurologists would never catch it, much less figure out how it was done. I imagine this guy sitting on the street, shitting himself and speaking in tongues.

"There's been a misunderstanding, sir," I say in my best 'good citizen' voice, the lady still shrieking.

"Yeah?" he says. "Pervert!" He definitely has me pegged for some kind of flasher or molester.

It makes me think about the first unarmed person I killed.

§

About fifteen years ago, I caught some guy alone with a little girl in an alley. I won't go into specifics, but I secured the man, and flew the kid to a hospital. I then took the man to the police. A pretty cut-and-dried evening.

But the man was released the next week due to lack of evidence. The little girl wouldn't testify. And of course, I understand that. I mean, come on, what was she? Six or seven? Traumatized for life. It's not her fault. And even though I am who I am, an immortal person of no fixed address isn't really a star witness. When the judge calls someone to the stand, they prefer that the witness not be able to fly and live forever.

It was too much for me.

I scooped the guy up off the street, and no one even saw. Up we went. The air traffic controllers might have seen me cross the airspace, but that's probably it. They know me. They wouldn't have thought anything of it.

The guy stopped screaming and punching at about 12,000 feet. He was unconscious at 16,000. He lasted longer than I thought he would. We were pretty close to space when he died, the earth between us and the sun. It was quiet, cold, and uneventful.

I took him about halfway to the moon. The effects of decompression on a normal human aren't that interesting, and it didn't satisfy me at all. I placed him back in the atmosphere above the Indian Ocean.

I knew how long it would take him to start falling again, but I watched anyway. I watched every damn minute of those four hours. I enjoyed them. He started to disintegrate, and I followed him down. I watched his skin crisp like paper. I watched his body crease at the waist as he fell and burned. I watched his unrecognizable parts splash into the water.

Who knows how many robberies I could have stopped, how many drowning kittens I could have saved, how many murders I could have prevented during those four hours? But for some reason, I believe killing that man made it possible for me to carry on for another five years.

§

The Paint Woman is still shrieking, and her new friend No-Neck throws a punch. A real haymaker. To keep up my disguise, I have to take it, which I've come to hate (another of the many things that never used to bother me). It doesn't hurt, of course, and I'm pretty good at pretending to take a punch. This guy is clearly surprised I don't fall down, though.

So I throw a dazed look in and let my knees buckle, reclining awkwardly on the pavement.

"That'll teach you, you fucking pervert!" he says.

I must not put a hole in this man's brain. I must not put a hole in this man's brain.

"Police!" yells Paint Woman. By now there is a crowd, and a couple of cell phones either making calls or taking pictures.

The second time I killed an unarmed human, there was a crowd, too.

§

Ten years ago, one particular politician, a member of the president's cabinet, insisted that we blow up this little country with which the US was having a crisis. We'll call him Senator Nuke. For him the nuclear option was the only option. I disagreed, respectfully. That was back when they used to let me into those meetings.

Senator Nuke had gotten into my face, forehead red and bulging, and poked my chest with his finger. "You... aren't one of us!" he said. I told him that I was more like him than unlike him, that every human belonged to the brotherhood of man, and that I wanted peace to carry the day. Swear to God, a couple of people in the room started clapping.

"You'll never be one of us!" he yelled, cutting off further response. "You'll never understand the stakes of being human, being mortal! What are we, some kind of passtime to you?"

I assured him that wasn't the case, and other voices of reason brought the room back on topic. A diplomatic decision was reached, and it occurred to me that this guy was always going to be at these meetings. He was never going to get his way as long as cooler minds were present.

It also occurred to me that he might be right. Maybe I never really was going to get it. What was it to die? Even the clever attempts of my most hardened adversaries hadn't been successful in killing me. I would never die at the hands of a human. Maybe I am just passing time.

I was thinking about this as I watched him at a rally some months later, where he was working a crowd into a frenzy. "Now is the time to move against our enemies!" said Senator Nuke at the rally.

The crowd went nuts. I watched from a safe distance. No one knew I was in the arena. I'm known for hanging out in a different metropolitan area.

"Your voices join together and shake the halls of justice! They shake the activist forces! And when we deal with our enemies, all options will be on the table!" The crowd was eating it up.

I thought about him having access to more than the president's ear. I thought about his finger on the button. I thought about him in the oval office, forehead red and bulging in the middle of a crisis-filled night, meeting with his own cabinet. No cooler minds in the room.

Enraged, I burst the man's appendix with a focused, imperceivable shock wave.
He collapsed at the lectern, and died horribly and painfully. I sat on the moon for weeks, surprised to find that I had become an assassin.

(I should apologize to Iceland, by the way, about the dam break. You know the one. That happened when I was on the moon, and I totally could have fixed that.)

And then, instead of forgiving myself, I came to terms with it. I am an assassin. I've broken the code. Things can't go back to the way they used to be.

§

A crowd gathers around me and No-Neck and Paint Woman, and I can hear the voices of the cops a couple of blocks away. Officers George and Alan. They won't recognize me in my civvies, but they're reasonable guys. I'm sure they'll tell everyone to just move along.

No-Neck decides that hitting me wasn't enough, and puts a boot in my face. I have to go on my back. I'm getting annoyed. It's times like this that it would help to conjure some nose blood or something, because my nose should have shattered like a plate. People notice when you don't bruise or bleed. I remember when I walked out of a battle in the Peloponessian wars unscathed, when everyone else in my unit was killed. That was hard to explain, and led to a bunch of promotions. Anyway, that's another story.

So policemen George and Alan get there, and they do their whole "what's going on here" thing, and put their bodies between me and No-Neck and Paint Woman. Everybody's yelling. Bystanders are pointing and showing the police cell phone pictures of what just happened. Alan, at least, gets a firmer hold on No-Neck, presumably after seeing video of the boot kick to my head on someone's cell phone.

Nobody's asking me what happened. I'm still reclining on the concrete, in a defensive pose. I just need enough people to look away, and I'll be gone.

§

I'm talking in circles around what I really want to say to you. I've done a lot of bad things, but I've been able to abide by my code: kill only when necessary, and never the innocent. Fight for the side I believe in. Disappear when things get too heavy. Let the mortals sort out my origin and death stories.

There are lots of stories about how I got my abilities and, more interestingly, how I have died. I've apparently been killed by an arrow to the heel, entombed alive by my apprentice in a magic cave... all kinds of made-up stuff. People can't deal with it when you just up and leave. There always has to be a story.

I've found it helpful to have an advisor, someone with whom I can confide my secret. And that's been you, this time around. Your generation prefers to see me in a cape and tight pants for some reason. Hell, I don't care. More comfortable than a tunic, I guess, or a suit of armor. As long as I get to do some good. Only you, though, know who I am without the cape.

Doing good used to be enough. It isn't so much anymore. I think I'm starting to lose my grasp of what "good" really is.

I try not to get too emotionally involved with a mortal advisor, and never romantically. So, regardless of what your mother may think, I avoided dating you not because I wasn't interested in you. I've seen countless lovers, wives, and mistresses to their deathbeds, and many more I've had to leave behind in order to protect.

You were different. If you were my lover, I knew I could never leave you, regardless of how bad my situation became. You would almost certainly be in constant danger by your association with me. So, I made you my advisor. Close enough to confide in, distant enough to be safe. I thought that would help. It really hasn't.

§

After a while, police officer George kneels down to talk to me, and asks me if I'm okay. I tell him I'm fine, and that this is all a misunderstanding.

"I believe that, pal," he says. "Look, you wanna press charges on this guy?" George gestures over his shoulder at No-Neck, who is against a wall talking with officer Alan. "Because I think both the lady and the man who kicked you are ready to walk away from this if you are. You don't look too much worse for wear."

You have no idea.

"Yeah, I'd just like to move on, if that's okay," I say.

Officer George smiles, and says "sure, kid." I can only imagine his relief at having to file less paperwork.

I look up, and Paint Woman is glaring at me. So is No-Neck. They don't even know me, and I can feel the hatred radiating out of their eyes. And it gets me to thinking.

It always ends badly with you people.

If I help you, you're happy for a moment, and grateful. But then you want me to go away.

If I don't help you, you're cursing the heavens and wondering why I failed.

Innocence? A temporary state. The pure of heart? Not for long, usually.

And even the rare grateful, gracious person only lives for a blink of an eye, then they're gone and I'm left with the assholes again.

I'm left with Paint Woman, whose life I spared by saving her from an accident. I'm left with No-Neck, whose life I spared by keeping my temper. And both of them are wishing me dead.

But I've changed, too. I'm not okay getting by without an acknowledgement. I need recognition. I need validation. For the first time, I need to be needed, and it's not working well for anybody.

My code is broken. This all has to stop.

I think of all the ways I could bring the world to an end. Some of them are pretty painless, actually. I could cleave the planet in two with a shock wave. The concussion would kill nearly everyone instantly. I could hurl the moon into the sea. It would all be over in a few minutes.

Then I think of you, and the debt I owe you.

§

I killed your husband. I consider him the third unarmed person I killed.
I didn't do it directly. I didn't create the liver cancer, or cause it to grow faster. But I could have stopped it.

I saw it growing as I peered at him, seething with jealousy and hating myself for it, at your wedding. I saw under his skin. I could have mentioned it then. It was quite treatable. Heck, I might have even been able to do it myself.

But I didn't.

He got sick after the birth of your second child, and like a jealous child myself, I didn't say anything. By then it was too late to do anything about it. Even for me.

I am so sorry.

§

This world, as I've gotten to know it over the last few thousand years, hasn't really changed. I probably won't destroy it. I may just let a stray asteroid take care of it. (There's one coming as it is. If I do nothing at all, your kind only has 374 years left anyway.)

I haven't talked myself out of it. Not yet. But I will wait. And I will disappear.

It won't take long for people to notice I've gone. Some terrible thing will happen, and they'll shake their fists, and they'll forsake my name. For their purposes, I will be gone. But not for yours.

I hope you don't think it too creepy, but I'll be around, and you will never see me. No harm will come to you or your family. Don't ask for me to appear, because I won't.

But I will be around, repaying my debt as best I can. Please have a happy life. Give my love to Lisa and Tim. Tell them not to worry about anything.

Your friend,

Gerald

P.S. Timmy will probably be experiencing a tooth abscess in about a week. From what I understand, they're pretty painful, so a preemptive dentist visit might be a good idea.

(Need a copy for your e-book reader or phone? Grab a copy from Scribd.)

Okay, that's the short reason. If you want to know more, read on. If not, I hope you'll consider coming back this Friday morning, checking out the short story, and giving me some feedback and criticism.

Rebooting my amateur creative life

I've been gainfully employed since my college graduation in 1996, and I enjoy a reasonably satisfied work life. In my free time, I have written or co-written over 150 songs, participated in February Album Writing Month and Fifty Songs in Ninety Days, and finished National Novel Writing Month twice. I also get together with friends about once a month for a loud jam session.

I'm pretty happy with my curriculum vitae as a creative amateur. My hobbies have given me balance, and have been good for every aspect of my life. I've made lots of friends during these challenges, and I've also been able to deepen friendships and family ties that I've had for decades. I recognize the joy that these activities bring me.

But I'm getting bored.

Ain't no water in the well (and the creek's run dry)

The last several times I sat down to write a song, I felt a resistance that I couldn't pin down. I thought it was writer's block, or maybe some kind of a funk (and not the good kind). I now know it's boredom, plain and simple.

Same thing happened the last time I tried NaNoWriMo, which was in 2007. I'd conquered that challenge, and didn't feel compelled to conquer it again. Lots of people do get something out of completing the same challenge multiple times. I don't think I'm one of those people.

The only creative activity I still thoroughly enjoy is the monthly jam session, but scheduling conflicts have meant that we sometimes go two or three months without meeting. I needed something I could do on my own.

(Re)Enter writing fiction, and the terror that ensued

For the last few months, I've been waking up willingly at 5:45 AM to spend about an hour writing. It has given me my creative spark back. I love it. To deepen my experience and to get some feedback, I decided to take a class at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. While completing a short story to hand out to the class for critique, I discovered something I did not expect.

Sheer, unadulterated terror.

Though I've overcome the fear of singing in front of strangers and posting songs for the review of superior musicians, showing my creative writing to others opened up a previously hidden vein of dread.

My classmates were very generous and supportive, and gave me a lot of great tips. As awesome as that feedback was, a more important gift appeared to me. I have uncovered a whole new zone of fear to exploit.

Following the fear

Many of my songwriting peers are enjoying Fifty Songs in Ninety Days right now. I've decided to piggyback on their idea with my own 13 Stories in 90 Days Challenge. I will write and post 13 short stories in the (almost) thirteen weeks between July 4 and October 13 (and yes, I'm already off to a late start!). I will plumb my fear of other people reading my work by facing that possibility week after week.

Although I'll try my best, I don't know if they'll be any good. Anyone who has completed Nanowrimo or FAWM (or 50/90) will understand the freedom of releasing the crap as it comes. Some of you who have read this far might think that's a waste of time. That's okay. I would, however, urge you to give one of those challenges a try before you pass judgement. You've got nothing to lose.

The only thing I have to lose is another layer of senseless fear. Let's see what happens! See you bright and early on Friday morning.

Special thanks

I'd like to thank my wife for seeing me through doubt, my family and many creative friends for encouraging me, and to Denys Gareau, Ben Carroll, and Greg Wright for following through on their own creative cliff dives in very inspirational ways.

I've like a number of albums this year, but only two have blown my mind. First up, Future of the Left's incredible Travels With Myself and Another, which is released nationwide tomorrow.

If you want to get into the backstory of the two members of McLusky that formed this band, be my guest. But this second album by Future of the Left requires no previous entry point; it is loud, tight, boisterous, bilious, and hilarious. Totally recommended for thirtysomething cubicle drones who used to really like Husker Du and still listen to Pixies on occasion. Or, if you liked McLusky.

I am also the ten-millionth blog owner to sing the praises of Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest. You may have seen this bizarreness:

Though they don't sound much like middle-period XTC, Veckatimest reminds me of the way XTC's albums continued to unfold over many listens, revealing layers and shades that I swore weren't there on the previous play.

Also growing on me is St. Vincent's similarly complex Actor.

When I first heard her previous album Marry Me, I liked it. It grew to be among my favorite albums of the year. I like Actor quite a bit, and I like it a little more each time I listen to it.