Date Night (Part 2)

Jacob felt panic sharpen his mind, raising his awareness to a level he rarely bothered to obtain, and then going still further until his awareness felt thin and brittle, like a still pond’s surface after a night’s hard frost.  The apples he was holding tumbled from his hands, landing in his backpack to join the bread by merest luck alone.  What could he say to escape?  What excuse could appropriately explain his presence in the kitchens?  While his mind raced, his hands and feet solved the problem for him.  Well before he knew what he was doing, a fifth apple was pulled from the barrel and thrown at the Dean’s head; simultaneously, he whirled and ran for the door.

Moving away from the light so quickly made the small white rooms grow darker disproportionally.  A mere two turns later he felt sure that the dishwashing machine was directly ahead, but he could see nothing at all.  The room felt limitless, as if he could run forever ahead without finding either the door or any other impediment to his headlong sprint.  His heavy boots slapped the tile, but the sound seemed to drift away without the echo that had been so obvious just moments ago.

Jacob shook his head and came to a sudden stop.  There was no question he was still in the kitchens, and there was no reason to think otherwise.  The door simply must be nearby, and running into the dishwashing machine could break his legs with little difficulty.  The logical action was to proceed carefully, no matter what the danger behind him was.  No sooner had this thought crossed his mind than the Dean, somewhere behind him, came close enough that the light from his lantern began to spill into Jacob’s room.  Impossibly, it was not the dishwashing room, and he found himself only an inch from a white-tiled wall.  Another instant of running would have knocked him out cold.

He threw his gaze around the unfamiliar room, looking for exits.  Directly behind him, in the direction he thought he’d just come in, were three doors on ground-level, and a ramp leading up to a fourth.  He no longer had any idea where the Dean was.  The room grew steadily brighter, as if lanterns were slowly approaching from every entrance simultaneously, herding him towards the ramp.  Jacob’s mother had a saying: “When you’re out of other options, take the one you’ve got.”  And so he did.

The ramp, which had looked wooden, made a metallic sound as he stepped on it.  As he threw himself at the door, the room lightened and he felt sure his pursuer was right behind him.  Desperately, he grabbed at the handle and was surprised that it opened without resistance.  A few frantic moments later, and he had exited the kitchens through the cafeteria and was back in the icy freedom of the outdoors.  Burying himself in the anonymity of darkness, he took off in a random direction across campus, remembering to stay on the sidewalks to avoid leaving a clear path of destruction in the crusty snow.

Just as his heartbeat began slowing, the clocktower struck one o’clock.  Jacob shifted the weight of his backpack and sighed.  Besides not getting the food he needed, he apparently was unable to stay focused even long enough to tell the time.  He could have sworn that he left his dorm at ten, but surely no more than forty-five minutes had passed.  He kicked himself mentally: it was a wonder he was even able to function.  Cursing under his breath as the adrenaline began to fade, he straightened his course and began heading back to his dorm.

The next day, after missing breakfast and sitting dejectedly through lunch, Jacob Bale began performing triage on his plans for the evening.  He had no money to take Miss Swenson anywhere, he had cooked nothing the night before, and the only supplies he had been able to steal were a single loaf of bread and some apples.  The apples were meant to be the pièce de la resistance, but were a poor excuse for an entire meal, much like wearing a gold monocle instead of a gentleman’s suit.  His disguised dorm room no longer seemed like a virtue made from shortcoming, and instead just felt pathetic.  And he still had no horses.

Still, something had to be salvageable.  The hurdles he knew, but it was time to look at his resources: bread and apples.  Unbidden, a memory came back to him from a time before his father had disappeared in the European War.  He and his parents were in a grassy valley of some kind.  The sound of water came from somewhere nearby.  And they had bread and apples.

A picnic.  If the setting were good enough, it might compensate for the poor table-spread.  Thank goodness for the recent rise in temperatures; there was still no melt during the day, but the dead of night was still only a modest drop to just under 25 degrees.  With a little bundling, a starlight picnic could be just the thing.  It would be memorably different, anyways.

But to really pull off a nighttime picnic, especially one that was trying to hide its desperate roots, Jacob knew he needed at least one extra component.

                Jacob swallowed.  Hard.  Then again.  He wouldn’t have considered this a short time ago, but the previous night made him feel that his priorities – no, his very world was unraveling.  What better time to press your luck?  He knocked on Henry’s door, and stepped quickly back as if the door might take offense.

                Henry Flint was a student of indeterminate age whom everyone recognized and everyone left alone – unless you had business with him.  He had come to Bemidji from Chicago, and had no interest in higher education.  His entire college career was based on having access to students seeking alcohol and willing to pay handsomely for it.  Of course, every third student’s relatives ran a secret still somewhere in the woods, but there was always a chance that those beverages would make you go blind or explode in the bottle.  Henry had a seemingly limitless access to the real stuff: the best of the best.  And if that’s not what you wanted, you stayed out of his way.

                  Jacob licked his lips, and knocked again.  He felt the invisible eyes on him in the hallway, watching and judging him, and waiting seemed to make it worse.  He longed to move, to hide in some scrap of darkness, to be looked over.  When he heard a voice from within, he took the initiative and let himself in, closing the door quickly behind himself.

                Only once he was inside, his eyes struggling to adjust to the darkened room, did he truly think about what a strange thing that had been for him to do.  What was wrong with him these days?

               Heavy, expensive-looking drapes were firmly drawn against the two windows, and the room was covered in deep shadows.  A figure stirred somewhere in the depths, and for one horrible moment it looked like the Dean; then the silhouette solidified and it was merely another student – but it still wasn’t Henry.

                “I, I wanted to speak with… Isn’t this Henry Flint’s room?”  This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

                “Henry?”

                Jacob’s eyebrows raised of their own accord.  It was a woman speaking to him from the shadows.

                “I’m sorry, ma’am, I must have the wrong room.”

                “Ma’am?”  She gave a gasping laugh.  “Henry’s gone.  He does that sometimes.  Haven’t seen him all week.  You see him, you tell him Daisy’s looking for him, you hear?”

                Already thrown off-balance, Jacob was having a hard time thinking straight.  The air in the room was thick and hot, oppressive and smothering.  The room smelled like burning sage, and it irritated his nose.  He wanted to leave.

                “Yes, I will do that, of course.”  He turned to leave, then paused.  He had to see this through.  “You don’t know anything… this is awkward, you understand, but someone had told me that they’d heard from someone that Henry might have, uh, for sale, um, things.”

                A pause, and another gasping laugh from the darkness.  “Sweetie,” the voice began.

                “Of course not, I’m sorry, never mind.  I can show myself out.”

                “Henry’s been gone for nearly a week, and there’s no telling when he’ll be back.  Sometime it suits him to lay low, you know?  Check back Monday.  All I know is I ain’t seen him and I ain’t gonna give you anything that’s not,” her voice lowered, became almost conspiratorial, “mine to give.”

                Something about her words seemed odd to Jacob’s ears, but he was anxious to go.  He was sure the air was choking him – and, impossibly, it kept getting thicker.  A few minutes more, and he feared the weight would choke him and he would simply drown standing up.  He turned to the door and froze for just an instant.  The voice came to him once more, low and dripping with amusement: “Aww, I didn’t mean to startle you, Rabbit.”

                But it wasn’t her words or the room which made him pause, it was the nail driven into the door.  A thin spike of metal, flashing slightly as it reflected some light which had no source and illuminated nothing else in the stinking, crushing darkness of Henry Flint’s room; but the brief glint gave him the answer to his problems.

                “You said he might not be back for days?”  He asked.  Metal would be his salvation.

                “When Henry goes for cover, only the devil himself knows when he’ll come up for air.”

                “I’ll talk to him then,” Jacob said, and opened the door just enough to escape into the yellow light of the hallway.  He had to check behind the dorm, and there was a window at the end of the hall.  Pressing his nose against the cold glass, he looked down and felt a reckless surge of adrenaline.  He never found a horse or carriage with which to pick up Miss Swenson, but there were five cars on campus; and the owner of one of them had vanished on cue.

                He raced up two flights of stairs to his own room, and grabbed the supplies he’d spent the morning preparing.  It wasn’t far to the Swenson farm, and the car would be back that evening after dark.  No one would ever be the wiser, and if anyone noticed it gone they would assume Henry hadn’t gone quite as far as normal – or perhaps that “Daisy” or someone had borrowed it.  He raced back down the stairs and outside, ignoring the one last thick strand of air that tried to close his throat as he passed by.

                The car was beautiful.  Twice Jacob walked by it with exaggerated casualness, even though it appeared no one else was nearby.  Each time he sought the crank in vain with his eyes, hoping to look practiced and confident if anyone should oversee him from a distance.  It wouldn’t do to look puzzled at the operation of his own car – no, no, nothing suspicious about this man of the world out for a drive.  It wasn’t until he walked right up and stared at the front that a thought occurred to him: Flint had spared no expense, and had purchased a top-of-the-line motor with electric start.  Sure enough, there was the black button on the dashboard.

                Jacob’s nerve was almost shaken: what was he doing messing around with a car like that?  But inside he knew that somewhere along the line, perhaps without realizing it, he’d already cast his dice.  There were no decisions to be made anymore; all that was left was to wait and see how things played out.  He slid into the driver’s seat and held down the button until the engine roared into life.  For just a moment, time seemed to slow as he wheeled the car onto the road and turned north.

                Had he looked behind him, his last view of the campus might have shown him the silhouettes of the watchers, scattered throughout the buildings and staring silently, pressed against the windows while he remained vulnerable in the light of day.  But that was merely paranoia, he knew; he refused to look behind.  Besides, his date was waiting.

The Short Straw

Alex washed his hands and started walking toward the bathroom door. He heard a scream from down the hall. God damn it, he thought. It was Friday the 13^th of September and his residents were living it up again. He couldn't go in and bust them until someone complained, but he didn't think there was anyone in the building besides him that wasn't partying. “Can I be the person who complains?” he said to no one in the hallway.

The music had now escalated to the point where he could no longer hear any of the words. As he got back to his room, he thought bitterly about how he lost rock, paper, scissors to every other RA in the building and was forced to have the only Friday the 13^th of the year. If only I had done paper after the third tie!, he thought tom himself. He sat down at his desk and tried to get some homework done. He might as well do something, since he couldn't have fun this evening. After he had read three paragraphs about how Israel could have peace within the next decade, he heard another sound. This yell seemed to have fear in it. It was definitely not the guttural yell that he had heard earlier.

He decided to do some investigation. The boys probably wouldn't tell him anything, but maybe he could scare them just enough to turn down the music a little bit. He got down to the end of the hall and knocked on Jordan's door. Large amounts of shushing could be heard from inside. No response. He knocked again, this time adding, “I heard somebody scream. Are you boys okay in there?” The door opened just enough for Jordan to show the right half of his face.

“No one in here screamed. We're just playing some Halo. Maybe that was it,” Jordan said.

“Glad to hear that I don't have to save anybody's asses. Let me know if someone gets killed by something other than a Warthog,” said Alex before walking back to his room.

Alex got back to his room, sat down at his desk, and stared at his textbook. “I am going to read you,” he said to the $150 book before him. He flipped through it, looking for the part on Israeli peace. He found the paragraph where he had stopped the last time and then gave up. It was 10:30 on a Friday night and his brain could not care less about whatever the hell, bullshit plan Jimmy Carter had come up with this time. He decided that his time would be better spent facebook stalking that cute girl that sits in front of him in World Relations. He started to sort through his friend's friends looking for a picture of her or a name that jogged his memory. Why didn't he pay more attention during roll call? Was it Christine? That kind of looked like her. Or maybe was it Molly? That picture could be her with a different hair color. All of these questions raced through his brain, only to be shot down by limited profiles with no information. “Aha!” he said, accidentally, much louder than he would have liked to admit. Luckily, everyone in the rooms around him were empty for the weekend. This girl had the right age and hair color, but little else could be discerned by her only picture. It was a picture of her standing on a rock on Lake Superior far away from wherever the person who took the picture was standing. He was just about to continue his search when he heard another noise from down the hall. This one sounded suspiciously like broken glass. “Damn them and their Halo!” he thought to himself, “Why couldn't alcohol make people less rowdy?”

He could feel a draft as soon as he got a short distance from his room. They must have broken their window and had opened their door. Or maybe they had seriously messed up and accidentally broken the window in the hall. He got up to the door. “Fuck!” was all he managed to get out before his tongue gave up speech and sat motionless at the corner of his gaping mouth.

The door lay in four pieces. There were two chunks still hanging on the hinges. One of the other pieces was jammed into the mini-fridge and the other was just visible underneath the desk. All that remained of the window were a few pieces along one edge. Dan was hiding under the desk next to the piece of the door mumbling quietly too himself. Chase was stuck to the wall next to the closet with what was probably his own blood. Adam was sitting on the couch still trying to play the game, even though the TV had been tipped over and was now in two separate pieces. The left side of his face was covered in blood . Jordan was lying in his bed above the couch with the covers pulled over his head. He was mumbling, but with a volume normally attributed to yelling. Alex couldn't make out anything that either he or Dan were saying. “Are you guys okay? What the FUCK happened here?” Alex finally managed to say just before throwing up at his own feet. No one seemed to acknowledge his presence after 15 seconds, so he ran back to his room to call 911. After he got word that there were the police and ambulances were on their way, he called the front desk and had them get all of the RAs that they could to the fourth floor as soon as possible.

He ran back to the room. Chase had now fallen off of the wall and was in a crumpled heap. Adam now showed the same wounds as Chase, but still had blood enough to bleed against the faded upholstery. Jordan was still under his covers, but was now thrashing around, mumbling louder than should be possible. Dan was no longer anywhere to be seen.

Alex withdrew from the doorway and threw up again. As he rose from his heaving, he saw a dark shape standing of the middle of the room. It was dark green and looked as though someone had crossbred an iguana with a minotaur. It was holding Chase's left hand in its teeth and was ripping the remaining limbs from his torso. Alex looked into the creature's eyes and wiped the vomit from his mouth.

Alex turned and ran back down the hall, “Yhastghunotgh!” he yelled as he ran. He bumped into Hannah, the RA from the second floor as he ran, nearly knocking her down the stairs. Alex sped up as he approached the window, running straight into it. He hit the railing first and his momentum carried him headlong through the window and onto the bike racks below.

Hannah grabbed onto the door handle and pulled herself up. She rubbed her arm where she had fallen and walked over to the end of the hall to see what had become of Alex. She leaned out of the broken window. From the glow of the streetlights she could see Alex's mangled corpse amid the broken bikes and threw up all over the window sill below her.

In the Cold and Dark

It was the middle of January and it was fucking cold. The days were slowly getting longer, but it was still dark by 6 pm. Milly lived about ten blocks from the Walmart where she worked as a greeter. Her entire income was spent on food and shelter for herself and the nine cats she had collected over the years, so she couldn’t afford a car. This meant that Milly had to walk anywhere that she needed to go. Usually that wasn’t a problem – except in the middle of January when it was fucking cold.
Milly had lived her entire life in the confines of this rural Midwestern town so the word “acclimation” had never been applicable. But as she approached her fiftieth birthday, the chill seemed to have developed the ability to wedge fissures in her joints. Her accustomed walk to work became increasingly longer and she needed more time with her hot water bottle to recover.
Milly sighed. It was easy to tell when food stamps and WIC were dispersed because the store was always doubly busy on that day. Women who couldn’t afford babysitters because they had spent all of their money on beer and cigarettes went shopping with their ten children in tow.
Milly had just finished a double shift. She felt tired and increasingly racist as she navigated the crowded aisles between the staff room and the front doors. A small boy wearing dirty jeans and a ripped t-shirt ran into her side and almost knocked her from her feet. The boy’s mother shot Milly a glare as she walked past as if to say “Why didn’t you get out of his way?” Milly finally made it to the door and was nearly swept from her feet again when she stepped outside and was assaulted by the frigid wind. The cold instantly wormed its way up her back from under her coat and down her neck through the loose knit of her scarf. Hairs all over her body stood to attention in a vain attempt to trap warm air next to her skin. Milly’s aching joints audibly groaned as she tucked her mittened hands into her coat pockets and turned towards home.
After the first block Milly started noticing that something was wrong. She had walked to work in all kinds of weather – snow storms, fog, forty below wind-chill factor, you name it – and knew what to expect. But tonight was different. The digital billboard outside of Burger King had said that it was five degrees outside with a negative ten wind-chill. Cold, but nothing she hadn’t survived before. Tonight, however, she was having trouble breathing and her footing was completely obscured by ankle-high, windblown eddies of snow. She had stumbled several times and had to stop every few yards to catch her breath. Usually, Milly could keep herself moving enough to counteract most of the cold, but tonight it seemed to be remarkably tenacious. Fingers of cold caressed her skin before plunging through to her muscles and bones. Three layers of insulation did not seem to deter these attentions. Rhythmic spasms traveled all along her body and Milly felt a painful ache throughout. Once, when she was nine, Milly had gotten a patch of frostbite on her left hand. The skin had gone numb and rigid. This was nothing like that; she felt everything.
The street was completely exposed and Milly was buffeted by every errant gust. As a native of northern Minnesota, she had a crippling fear of depending on others for anything as well as a modest dollop of social anxiety. So, despite her increasing distress, it didn’t occur to Milly to simply duck into a business and ask for help. Instead, she simply pulled her arms out of her sleeves and wrapped them around herself as she trudged on.
At the halfway point, Milly had to turn off of the main road to a side street. This street had both fewer streetlights and hardly any passing cars. There was also no foot traffic besides Milly herself. By this time, Milly had become insensible to everything but putting one foot in front of another. The moon was obscured with clouds and the houses shed only feeble light that didn’t survive to reach the sidewalk. The cold had encased Milly thoroughly and she moved with the jerky, painful motions of a Parkinson’s patient. While she was concentrating on forward momentum, she paid very little attention to her actual direction, trusting routine to guide her home.
Suddenly, Milly pitched forward into a snow bank. This was enough of a shock to break up her congealed thought processes. For some reason Milly was reminded of the day she had gotten frost bite when she was nine. She had been out playing with her older sister, Edie, down by the waterfront. After a while some of Edie’s friends had passed by and Edie had run after them. This was no cause for concern because in 1969 it was still safe for a nine year old to walk alone in the early afternoon. Other than vague feelings of uneasiness when passing the Paul Bunyan statue, Milly wasn’t worried about being left alone.
A slim, fallen branch proved an engaging toy which she used to draw dirty pictures in the unbroken snow. Milly became so engrossed with her fun that she did not notice how much time had passed until it became dark. At this point she was worried, but only that her mother would be angry. The moon had been full and brilliant that night, so finding her way home hadn’t seemed risky. The streets were practically deserted as she walked home. Far from being fearful, Milly was intrigued by the dark, fathomless shadows cast by the moon. As she passed a large oak tree, movement in its shadow caught her attention. She stepped into the shadow, straining her eyes to see what it was, but all she found was a snow cyclone. Then, as now, she abruptly fell into the snow bank concealed by the shadow. Being buried in the snow bank was relatively warmer than standing in the wind. It was also quite fluffy and soft. Milly found herself quite comfortable and for a few moments was reluctant to get up. She imagined herself to be an ice princess resting in her snow flake bed. She giggled at herself. The sound of her laughter brought Milly out of her reverie and she was quite embarrassed. What if someone had seen?
As she started to pick herself up, another movement to her left caught her eye. Her father called the long ribbons of snow driven by the wind snow snakes and that is what seemed to be in the shadow. But it was behaving much differently than a normal snow snake. The thing was indeed made of snow and not quite substantial, but it moved out of sync with the wind, seeming to go where it pleased. Tentatively, Milly reached out her hand. The hoary creature twined itself around her small arm, swirling continuously. Milly stared at it; she had never even heard of anything like it before. She slowly started to turn her body to bring her arm and the creature into the bright moonlight. When the first bit of the snake was brought into the light is convulsed and seemed to strike down at her hand. The blow traveled through her glove and into the flesh as if it were unprotected. Milly winced and the creature swiftly glided away from her. She walked quickly the rest of the way home and managed to forget that anything unusual had ever happened to her.
Now as Milly lay in a snowbank for the second time, she clearly recalled this event and wondered how she could have forgotten. With this recollection she realized that the ground was not covered with eddies of snow, but with thousands of snow snakes. She couldn’t see them, but she also discerned that the fingers of cold inside her clothing were in fact snow snakes that had wormed their way in. The breath that was short before now came in terrified gulps and every inch of her began to spasm. The snakes had found tender prey and they weren’t going to allow her the breath to scream.

Date Night (Part 1)

Location: Bemidji Normal School Dorms
Date:    1920s

Jacob Bale’s shortcoming in life, he had decided, was that his prodigious knowledge was not in any meaningful way counterbalanced by ability.  From childhood, he had a marked tendency to pick up a subject – say, cooking – and simply absorb the facts surrounding it.  Then, laden with wisdom, he would venture forward and nothing would materialize.  He knew the secret béarnaise recipe of the most snobbish French chefs (1/2 tsp of Russian “dragon’s herb” mixed with the finer-grain French tarragon), yet he ate the same meal nearly every day of his life: whatever was cheap, easy, and nearby.

And now, he reflected bitterly, this abortive tendency had stained every important facet of his life.  Three years ago, when asked what he wanted to do, he had shrugged and asked if there were any more skill tests he might take to find an answer.  There were not.  On paper, Jacob would be an excellent politician, lumberjack, attorney, horse breeder, FBI agent, or accountant; each of which was more impossible than the next due to his paralyzing inability to speak in public, paralyzing tendency to get demoralizing slivers, paralyzing dislike of actual living animals, etc. etc.  His mother had used the money they’d gotten from the government to make sure that Jacob had a first-hand view of a wide variety of possible careers; but outdoors he tended to find unusual allergies, when moving indoors he demonstrated a remarkable capacity for spraining his ankle and quitting, and when confined to a completely stationary position he became terribly listless within ten minutes.

And so, confounded by opportunity, he had not chosen a career.  There seemed to be nothing left to do but further schooling until he developed some kind of aptitude, so his mother obtained application papers for ivory towers across the country.  Filling out the application papers was difficult, however, so Jacob taught himself how to read palms until only one deadline remained unbroken.  Then he decided that Minnesota was too cold a state to live in, and threw the last application away.  Somehow, everything would have worked out -- except that his mother chose this time to check in on the application process and, long story short, ended up furiously holding Jacob down in a chair until the paperwork was complete.

And so he found himself in Bemidji, a worthlessly cold piece of nowhere, preparing to become a teacher, as that was the curriculum they happened to offer there.  And that had defined the last three years of his life.  That wasn’t what he was unhappily reflecting upon, however, nor the reason why he had turned his gaze briefly inwards to discover this pattern within himself.  After all, he might not like Bemidji, but he might not like somewhere else, either: might as well be here as anywhere.

No, what was upsetting him today was women.  Not any particular women, nor even any unknown women, just the vague general concept of “women.”  He knew all about them, of course; at least, as much as any man can know.  He was up-to-date on how to treat them, knew which rules of chivalry had survived to the 20th century and which ones had not, had heard nearly two dozen different theories from other students about how to demonstrate attentiveness, and was painfully aware of all the other salient details.  And, just to be prepared, he had even ransacked the library for a little-used medical textbook -- which contained facts of its own.

Irritably, he slammed the book shut.  He had, of course, checked it out so as not to be seen reading it in the library, and probably should have returned it a week ago.  But why bother returning it?  For all the good it was doing him, it clearly was worthless and might as well be removed from circulation.  As the resident expert on women, it simply wasn’t right that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually spoken to one.  It was infuriating.  All it would take would be for one girl to notice his superiority, and the rest would be by-the-book.  “By-the-book” being a general sort of phrase, meaning routine or planned; not, you know, the medical book in front of him.  Not that it would be, I mean, when men and women are together, it’s the natural thing, but that’s not really the type of, well, not at first anyway, unless she wanted to, of course.  That he would be good at; he’d listened both to the whispered stories and to the obnoxious bragging and felt he knew just what to do.  Stupid book.

In a rare fit of inspiration, he decided it was worth returning the book.  Or, if not “worth” returning the book; at least he might as well do that as anything.  Graduation wasn’t all that far away, and he knew he was going to leave this place as alone as when he’d entered it.  “Accomplishment” was overrated – his father had been a tremendous doer of deeds but, for all that, wound up simply disappearing in the “Great War” anyways – but a lady friend still seemed like an accomplishment worth having.  But it didn’t matter.  Girls didn’t recognize his knowledge, so nothing would come of it.  Just like carpentry.  It was really the fault of all those birds that the birdhouse kept killing them.  He had followed the instructions perfectly.  Maybe if that hammer had been more like the ones he’d learned about… well, what was past was passed.

Wrapped in dark thoughts, and surrounded by an even darker night, Jacob walked right past the library and continued going beyond the limits of campus and into town.  When he realized his mistake, he probably would have begun thinking about how the map of campus had inadequately prepared him for actual navigation, but he never had the chance.  A path had been cleared in the road for Bemidji’s few dozen cars, and horses had long-since packed the snow down into ice.  The rising temperatures of the last few days had left the top of the ice sleek and treacherous.  Before he had grasped what was happening, he had fallen onto his back and lay dazedly staring at the infinite black of the night sky.

“Laws!” he heard someone exclaim, which was shortly followed by footsteps, then by a much more muted “oh.”  His view of the stars was interrupted by the silhouette of a face above him.  “I think this is yours, sir,” he heard, as the young lady handed him his textbook.  “Are you hurt?”

The textbook, of course, had by ill fate opened to a page that some might consider incriminating.  Of course, it was only facts.  And it was too dark to see anything but the vaguest of shapes.  Surely, no one who was not already familiar with the illustrations would be… “I take it you’re to be,” she hesitated, “a doctor, then?”  Damnation.

“Well, yes,” he said, as he blushed and scrambled to his feet, “and that’s an important book.  So.”  He didn’t know where to go with this thought.  “So, that is that.  And there’s no need to mention anything about it…”  Oops.  This was the wrong track.  “about me falling.  To… other doctors… students.  Doctor-students.  I’ll thank you to remain discrete.”

Unexpectedly, she giggled.  “You talk real funny!  I’m Amanda, but Pa calls me Mandy.”

Mentally, he noted her obvious mistake: ‘Mandy’ would not be an appropriate form of address if he wished to show respect.  She should know that.  “I am Mr. Jacob Bale.  I am a student.  You are, Miss…?”
There was a silence from Mandy: puzzlement, perhaps, or hesitation.  Just then, a break in the clouds lit the streets with a shaft of moonlight.  She was prettier than he had imagined, with red cheeks even in the comparatively warm night.  Her hat featured large dog-like ear flaps; he’d never cared for those hats before, but suddenly felt he may have not given them their due.  The effect of the ridiculous flaps was simultaneously one of both bitter winter hardiness and child-like innocence.  It was over for him: he was smitten.

“Miss Swenson,” she finally answered, “Pa and me work the big farm between the Jensons and the Yerbiches.  I was just out here to pick up…”

“Miss Swenson,” he interrupted, “would you like to have dinner with me next week?”  He felt his face stick in place while every other part of his body melted backwards towards an increasingly distant point and his mind closed in on a few closely-linked thoughts.  What had he just done?  He was doing it!  What was he doing?  Did he really just…?

 Miss Swenson, on the other hand, underwent an entirely different kind of change.  Her face lit up before splitting into a big grin that somehow made her eyes larger than they had just been previously.  “Stars!  I’ve never really spoken with a doctor before, uh, student doctor.  I mean, I don’t really talk to anyone.  On the farm I mostly just talk with Pa.  But that’s, I mean, I’d love to!  I don’t have anything to wear, but maybe I can make something real pretty.”  She put her hands to her mouth, suddenly frightened.  She did not wear gloves, and they were clearly the hands of someone born and raised on a farm – but also the hands of a real-live woman and that was more important.  “But… you wouldn’t kid, would you?”

“Not a bit of it, my dear lady.”  That sounded about right.  “I’ll pick you up Friday, at four o’clock sharp.”

“Oh, such the gentleman!”  Backing up slowly, she began dragging the heel of her right foot, leaving a broken rut in the hard-packed snow of the road.  As Jacob watched, confused, she made three sharp kicks, gouging the ground with her heel.  “This here is Movil, and this is Little Turtle, and you’ll find me and Pa at the farm right here!”

“Then, Miss Swenson, I eagerly await the honor.”

She cast her eyes down bashfully.  “Mr. Bale.”  The clouds, now tired of their adopted obliging nature, suddenly covered up the moon and thrust them both into darkness.  Jacob stood a moment in darkness, wondering if he should say anything else.  When his eyes began to adjust, he could no longer make out her shape in the night.  He couldn’t remember what he’d learned about ending conversations of this sort, and he wasn’t about to start talking to someone who might not even be there anymore; the best course was simply to disappear silently, himself, and he stepped lightly back towards campus, away from the silent, possibly-empty street.

Jacob felt ill.  Some was a curiously pleasant nausea – he couldn’t believe what had just happened, and was pleased at how well he’d followed the patterns.  Some of his expertise must have been lost on the girl, she was clearly country stock and fundamentally uncivilized.  Still, no master of the art could have found fault with his adherence to the form.  Which, tragically, led to the other type of queasiness threatening to overwhelm him: “I’ll pick you up?”  What was he thinking?  He was a student, and neither had horses nor knew anyone who would be likely to put their team on loan to an inexperienced driver.  And to show up with someone else holding the reins?  Unless it were clearly a servant, it simply couldn’t be done.

Still, he’d done the best anyone could ask.  It was a relief to finally have a chance to exercise his research.  Stubbornly forbidding himself to think about what he was doing or why, he hurried past the library without returning the book.

The next few days followed a set pattern.  In the morning, he woke from a restless sleep and skipped classes to continue his list of people who might have horses he could access.  After lunch, he would contact the one or two or zero people he’d thought of, and would be sent away empty-handed.  On the worst day, he walked all the way to the Stone farm – relatives of a former roommate – and wasn’t able to get back home until well after nightfall, and all for nothing.  The evening, on the days time remained, was spent reading cookbooks.  He simply hadn’t the money to take her anywhere, but a demonstration of culinary skill was an acceptable gambit in and of itself, so the loss wasn’t too great.  He had nowhere to serve food but his dorm room, but a few trips to the library allowed him to decorate in such a way that it actually appeared he might be bound for the medical field.  It would have to do.

Getting access to the kitchens would be a problem, so he carefully chose foods that were served cold and planned to break in Thursday night after the cooks had gone home.  It was foolproof, and excuses could be made for the lack of transportation.  She clearly was used to making the long trip on foot already; while a shame, walking would not be an insupportable burden.

Thursday night came and Jacob was as ready as he could be.  He had a few recipes memorized and covertly learned the layout of the kitchens from a former employee.  The real gem was going to be the vegetables.  A few pounds of fresh produce were brought in once a month for the higher-ups and for honorary ceremonies.  By this point in the winter, there was already no price that could be put on a taste that didn’t come from a can.  For most people, and certainly for countryfolk, everything was preserved – or freshly slaughtered.  A taste of fresh would elevate his status in ways no other trick could.

Slipping out of his room, he was immediately struck by the difficulty in appearing innocent.  He was planning on breaking into the kitchens, yes, but for now he was simply walking across campus.  No harm in that.  Not a common activity for anyone during winter, true, but neither discouraged nor incriminating.  Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that unseen eyes were following his every step; it was painfully difficult to keep from glancing over his shoulder every few steps.  The pools of light spilled by the lamps made him feel exposed, on display; but the darkness in-between was filled with invisible watchers which made him hurry to the next lamppost as quickly as he dared.  He felt himself oozing a sinister glow that would proclaim his guilt to anyone whose eye he caught; soon it became as difficult to keep from wiping himself clean as it was to keep from continually looking back over his shoulder.  And he’d done nothing wrong yet.

Just as it threatened to become overwhelming, he found himself already at the icy stone steps that led to the underground entrance of the kitchens.  He couldn’t remember crossing most of the distance between his room and these steps, but at least he had arrived.  It was time to commit the crime he was already paying for, and sinking into the ground was a perverse relief.

The lock, a simple in-door springbolt number, was child’s play to pick.  It was one of the few things learned from books that wasn’t too difficult to apply, not that it suggested any reputable careers for Jacob.  The door was doubly-thick and pulled back with the weight and momentousness of a freezer door.  It was almost surprising that the air was warmer once he’d slipped inside and let it settle behind him, sealing the kitchens off from the outside world.

Jacob licked his lips, briefly overwhelmed by the reality of his situation.  It was frighteningly easy: he had made choices and was having something like an adventure.  Would it always have been that easy?  An unfamiliar urge to reflect hovered on the edge of his mind, but it was hardly the time for self-evaluation.  He licked his lips again, wicking the cold from them.  Speed would be his only virtue tonight.

The kitchens were not totally dark, which was a blessing.  Had they been completely lightless, he had no backup plan.  He had entered in next to the monstrous machine that somehow cleaned dishes, and needed to move in deeper to get to the food.  He knew that the kitchens were laid out something like a honeycomb, with a large series of interconnecting cells, all white tiled and carefully organized.  The map in his mind told him to exit the room via the entryway to the right, but the smell of fresh bread from the left lured him away from the dishes and into a room lined with wire racks and perhaps a hundred delicious-looking loaves.  This wasn’t part of his plan, but it certainly was best not to look a gift horse in the loaf, such as it was.  He grabbed one and slipped it into his bag, finding something curiously satisfying in the heavy, crusty sound it made landing in the bottom.

It was marginally lighter ahead, and that more than anything compelled Jacob to continue moving forward instead of going back to follow his original plan and raid the vegetables.  The next room was filled with serving and mixing bowls, and several bins with spatulas, graters, and other miscellaneous tools.  One thing didn’t fit, however: in the corner by one of the far doors was a wooden barrel.  He told himself it was likely only for seating, but curiosity compelled him to cross the room and pull up the lid.  Perhaps only Aladdin in the deepest caves could explain the feeling that drove him, but Aladdin was never so richly rewarded with treasure.  The barrel was full of apples.  Real apples, delivered fresh from heaven-only-knew what sunny land far, far from this winterlocked town.  He quickly grabbed two, then another two, before a sound made him freeze: something was terribly wrong.

After a breathless moment, he lowered the lid and looked directly into the next room.  He hadn’t noticed it in his haste, but that room was even lighter: there was a lantern burning very low on the immaculately cleaned countertop.  The floor was a jumble of drawers and tangled utensils: various sizes of forks and spoons lay scattered, and the gaping holes in the counter screamed that violence had been done as their drawers were ripped free.  There were no knives on the ground, however: those were lined up on top of the countertop.  Butter knives, steak knives, filleting knives, butcher knives: every kind of knife gathered from throughout the kitchens lay neatly arranged, each a precisely-measured distance from each of its neighbors, carefully spaced with a mathematician’s rigor by the Dean of the school -- who was standing next to the lamp, staring at Jacob Bale with fury in his eyes.

Butcher's Den (Part I)

You know, I'm not from around here, but I've heard quite a few stories that make me glad of that fact. I've been traveling the states, trying to see the world in all its glory. I spent some years up in Washington State; they say the Bigfoot lives up there. 'course, there's also folks up in Maine claiming to have seen a Bigfoot. I call it balderdash. Bigfoot's just a legend, just like those Dakota jackrabbits with them antlers. Jackalopes, that's what they called 'em. Everywhere I go, everyone's got their stories, their fantastical creatures they're just too damned excited to show off to visitors. Things're just the same here in Bemidji, hell, this one traces everywhere across the map. They've got Paul Bunyan in Akeley, in Brainerd, in Michigan, Wisconsin, hell, they've even got him up in Maine. I bet him 'nd Bigfoot are the best of friends.

Most stories you hear of that giant come off as mere folklore. As another tourist attraction set up to keep the money flowing. I know the difference; but Paul's a different story for some other story teller. Bemidji's got the giant with no axe, but they'll never tell you why. But that's not all that this city's got. Like I'd been saying; I've traveled a fair few miles, but rare are the occasions that I land upon such a city as this.

Many believe that it began solely as a logging town, but this is only partially true. There are those amongst the town's population, and those outside as well, that tell tales of quite a different beginning for this young town. Not many take their words for fact. Alcohol sure is a nice quick way to take and break one's reputation amongst their fellow neighbors. Most blame their families or swindling wives on their misery, others raise their glass to failed business, but there are some that take a drink to save their sanity.

Bemidji used to be a lumberjack's town. Felling trees and hauling cut timber about had been the everyman's method to earning a buck for flapjacks and candlewax. That's what we've been told at least. Back then there used to be a small band of no good crooked cops holding on to the Western ideal of Justice. Hell, y'couldn't even consider 'em cops back then, too civilized of a word for those folks.

These guys had it in their minds to blame troubles on nearby indians. They figured it'd be a good way to relieve the stress of never getting any tale in these godforsaken woods. At first it had just began as scare tactics. Any time they'd have time away from work a band of 'em would get together and go out 'n hunt some indian; all too similar to western films we have today, yet all the more malicious, malevolent and down right disturbing.

Early into their so-called 'expressive' activities, a native would show up to the post-office or what was in a poor attempt to be an infirm beaten and bruised. Bones would be broken and blood covered their chests, and those around the town began to catch on. The men would become hassled, they had thought others may have had the same sentiments towards the indians. They were forced underground by the town. Quite literally an underground series of rooms slowly took shape north of the river on the lakeside. An old beaver's den became the place of torture. The inside was gutted and reinforced. No one noticed from the town, no signs showed above the ground.One man began to live within those walls. Those men began to bring back their captives, to force them underneath and bring about their personal forms of punishment.

The man living below was known simply as Jon. To those brought below he was the hellbringer, the devil on earth. His eyes had gone to adjust to the swallowing dark beneath the earth. Those that looked into his eyes had seen a being soul-less. He was blind, but knew the body well. The earth deadened the screams coming from below. The town and its people had very little connections with those natives that surrounded them. Hardly any had grown to discover what lay under their very feet.

For years it went on. Those victims still fit to walk would be released back to their tribes; a sign to show that they were not wanted. The town had slowly begun to forget those men who had shown up bruised and beaten, believing it only to have been a small blip within their history. Yet underneath it thrived. Men and women would enter, and for days they would be starved; held in captivity. Jon would pick a victim, pick his tools, and pick away at the flesh that held in what should only come loose in war or accident. Skulls would be scalped and salted. Screams would bring joyous laughter to Jon and those with enough stomach to watch. Bones would break and heal to be broken once more. Blood stained the ground and would be washed away through the entrance to the lake. Reeds and weeds flourished outside the old beaver's den and few knew why. The town continued to expand across the lakeshore, and soon the school was under construction.

Many of those who previously hunted for the indians began to give up. They'd grown old with age and had lost what thrill had come from taking another's life; in making them suffer. No one has yet to discover the entrance to the den, so few even know of its existence, even fewer go out in search. Those that have heard believe the spirits of those who's lives had been taken still linger beneath. Jon the Butcher has a stone in the graveyard, dying the day the he lived underground. To this day, those near the shore may still hear a faint scream, or even still, some may hear that faint laughter that pierces further than the coldest of nights.

Those Damn Kids

Jack stared at the piece of paper. He had been staring at it since the lady behind the counter took his picture and handed him the yellow carbon-copy. Seven minutes had now passed, and the other people at the DMV were getting annoyed with him. This was the most important thing to happen in Jack’s life and he wanted to savor it. Although this piece of paper didn’t explicitly grant his freedom, it may as well have. He could do whatever he wanted, wherever he wanted, so long as he called his mother and she said it was okay––or she didn’t know about it.

Jack pulled out his cellphone and called his girlfriend. “Want to head out to the old Lake Julia TB Sanitarium tonight? I just got my driver’s license.” Jack was hoping he could finish the conversation before he got to the minivan where his mother had been waiting. He didn’t want her to know what he was up to.

“Congrats on passing the test. What time will you be at my house?” Gina replied.

“My parents go to bed at eleven, so I’ll be in the alley at 11:30,” Jack said, hanging the cell up as he approached the minivan. “I had to tell Gina the good news,” he told his mother as he got into the passenger’s seat – not what he wanted, but his mother wasn’t quite ready to let go.

He waited until his parents were asleep, climbed out of his window, put the car into neutral and started pushing it down the block. He waited until he was four houses away to start the car. He pulled up to the alley behind Gina’s house at 11:30 and flashed his lights. Gina flicked her bedroom lights on and off. He went over to the garage and carefully moved the ladder out from behind it and stood it up against her window. He took off of his mittens and climbed up the ladder. He took his Swiss Army knife out of his pocket and picked the lock that her parents had placed on the outside of her window. Once it was open, they climbed down the ladder and got into the car.

The drive north passed in silence. They had been planning this trip since their first date when they snuck in to watch Friday the 13th at the Amigo last month. It had been a cold March and they were both glad. During the warmer months, the owner of the property had guard dogs that would chase anyone that hopped the fence. In the winter, it was too cold for them and he kept them inside, leaving the place unprotected for anyone that wanted to go exploring.

They pulled up to where Gina’s older brother had directed them, killed the engine and hopped the fence. Their feet crunched on the snow as they waded up to the abandoned building, a little louder than what Jack expected, but he figured that the recent cold snap could have caused it. “After you, dear lady,” Jack said as he opened the door for Gina, hoping his humor would be able to hide how scared he truly was.

Gina’s older brother had been telling her stories about this place for years. She loved horror movies and scary things. Jack, on the other hand, couldn’t stand anything of that nature and made sure he spent as much time as possible in the bathroom whenever they went to the movies.

“Mike told me that they used to take the people up to the top floor to get a view of the lake before they died. He said that over 200 people died in that room. We need to get up there.” Jack shined his flashlight around and pointed at the stairs in the far corner of the room, regretting it as he did so; but he didn’t want to seem like a sissy in front of his girlfriend.

The building was creepy, but not scary. They made their way up the floors until they reached the base of the last staircase. The hairs on Jack’s neck pressed hard against his coat. “Wait,” Jack said, “I don’t think I can go up these stairs.”

“You aren’t scared, are you?” said Gina, elbowing him in the ribs.

“I’m serious,” Jack said, his voice shaking and his color going.

“It’s okay if you are afraid; we don’t have to go to the top floor,” said Gina as she took his hand in hers. “We only have to do what you are comfortable with. I was just giving you a hard time before.”

With her hand in his, Jack felt that he could walk to the bottom of Hell. He told himself that it was just an old building that people had died in. Just like the hospital, only without all of the bright lights. Jack swallowed hard as he started up the stairs. Gina followed him up the stairs not knowing what to think.

They walked to the edge of the building up to where they used to take the dying people for their last sight of beauty before death. The window had been sold off by the owner years ago, and they could feel the cold wind against their faces. It was beautiful. They could see the entire lake by the light of the almost full moon. They stood there for nearly ten minutes, just looking at the scenery. Suddenly, Gina bent over and began to shake violently, bumping Jack in the progress. He stumbled backward as he caught himself and fell backwards against the rotting boards, hitting his head. Gina stopped her convulsions after a moment, and began to stand back up, twitching slightly as she did it. “Are you alright?” Gina asked, as she rushed over and bent down beside him.

“I think so, but we should probably go home now,” Jack said, rubbing the back of his head.

“Not quite yet,” Gina said, standing up. “There is something else I need to show you.” She put her put her fingers inside of her mouth as if to whistle, and tore her jaw away from the rest of her body. Jack screamed as he was showered in the spray of her warm blood. He jumped to his feet and started making his way to the stairs. He needed to get somewhere where he got reception so he could call an ambulance.

“What is wrong with you?” he yelled at her from across the room. Without her jaw impeding it, her tongue seemed to grow to enormous proportions and flailed in all directions. Gina lunged at him. Perhaps the police should be the ones he should be calling, Jack thought. He dodged and got out his pocketknife. Not the best weapon he could hope for, but it was better than nothing. She went for him again, her blood spraying everywhere. He chanced a quick motion with his blade and left her right nostril hanging from a flap. She let out a hideous moan and retreated, planning her next attack, flailing her arms and tongue, spitting blood everywhere.

Jack thought he saw a light come on in the woods some distance away. Hopefully the owner was coming and could help him with whatever had happened to Gina. He didn’t want to kill her but thought that he might be left with no choice. He was going to try to knock her out and drive her to the hospital, calling an ambulance if he needed to. “I am not going to be able to carry her down these stairs, so I guess I will have to lure her nearer to the car.” Jack said to himself.

As though she could hear his thoughts, Gina dove across the room and stood in front of the staircase, deliberately blocking the only exit. She bent down and took out an old rusty knife from her right boot. She raised the knife to her nose and cut the left nostril to match the right. She then drove the knife into her chest, tracing the lines between her ribs. Jack bent over and began to vomit blood onto the staircase. While Jack was bent over, Gina charged at him and jammed her knife into his shoulder. Jack collapsed to the ground in pain and she delivered a hard kick to the back of his head.

While Jack was unconscious, Gina took a matchbook out of her pocket and lit it, and tossed it across the room. She bent down and licked Jack’s face with her gruesome tongue. The far wall was now ablaze. She used the knife as a prybar to break Jack’s ribcage open. She cut the connections with the trachea and removed his lungs. Now that she had collected her prize, she began walking down the stairs, the flames spreading across the floor.

* * *

Enos looked at the clock. It was 3:30 AM, again. This was the ninth morning in a row he had not slept the night through. On his trek to the bathroom, he thought about calling Dr. Peterson in the morning and scheduling an appointment to have him check his prostate. These early morning rises were starting to get to him.

Amanda came over and nosed him in the leg. She let out a whine and looked expectantly at the window. “What girl? You can’t go on a walk now,” said Enos, following her to the window and seeing the old sanitarium. “No one is ever in there anymore. I’m just going to the bathroom. After that, we both can go back to bed and enjoy the rest of the night, unless I need to get up again.” Amanda whined again and pawed at the window before jumping out of it. Enos had no time for the bathroom anymore. Instead he moved to the door, put on his coat and boots, and headed out of the door towards the lake, relieving himself as he went.

By the time Enos got out of the front door and around to the back of the house, he could see flames licking the roof of the sanitarium. There was a small shape pacing in front of the flames. “Those damn kids,” Enos said to himself as he walked to his pickup.

He parked next to Jack’s mom’s minivan and walked towards the building. The old structure collapsed when he was about 15 feet away, causing him to stumble backwards into a snowbank. Amanda was unfazed by the collapse and remained at the base of the structure, growling, her teeth bared. “Easy girl,” Enos said, pulling out his cellphone. “Cursed technology,” Enos mumbled as he fumbled with the locking feature and began dialing 911. He was so busy with the phone that he didn’t see a burning body rise up out of the building’s remains. It grabbed Amanda by the neck and snapped it, leaving the dog limp and motionless on the ground.

Then, the figure turned, looked at Enos, and paused before using her skeletal hands to pull the remaining skin off of her bones. The creature bent down and picked up two lumps of meat from the ground and carried them into the woods. The phone call finally went through, but all the person on the other end heard was the sound of Enos collapsing in the snow.

Paul

I’ve stood here for ages, much longer than the current population gives me credit for. They look up at me in amusement, not caring how such a prodigiously sized figure came to be here. It seems a natural human instinct to mentally gloss over things that can’t, logically, be explained. At least, not with normal logic. It all seems infernally logical to me…

Anyway, I’ve had a lot of opportunity to think as I stood here observing the frolic and pause of time. Mostly I think about women. Sexy women, plain women. Little girls with dollies and old women with great grandchildren. I enjoy the play of light on their skin - not that they expose much flesh in a climate like this. Even so, the golden September sunshine caressing the vibrant scarlet leaves of a maple reminds me of a sanguine fountain dribbling on coppery flesh. It’s the colors that get me.

. . .

I remember walking through the forest. It was a much different forest than the one that I was used to. Before I was surrounded by vast oceans of bamboo and inundated with the lusty calls of musk deer, counterpointed by the deep trumpet of an elephant. I was worshipped there. The simple people of the land would throw their virgins and courtesans at my feet when I came through a village. Some of the people are more cultured and civilized than the rest. These found meaningless deaths after they convinced themselves that they could and should withstand my blade. Idiots.

But, that kind of absolute power can become indescribably dull after a few centuries. Or so I thought. I went looking for new places, new challenges. It seems incredibly trite, now, to think how stricken I was with such a “the grass is always greener” mentality. Over the years I’ve seen so many youngsters suffer this same flight of fancy. They leave, searching for opportunity and real life beyond the borders of their current understanding. They usually return once they realize that there is nothing better out there. Those that don’t return sometimes visit so they can refresh a smug sense of superiority. But I digress. Forgive me. One does like to milk a thought when one has nothing but time to kill.

I left my former home and traveled in a random direction for an arbitrary amount of time. That is how I came to this brand new kind of forest. At first I was fascinated by the new shapes, smells, and textures, but that didn’t last long. I was searching for a challenge and nothing is more challenging than humans. They have the most delightful superiority complex.

A new type of people existed in this clime, a quaint hunter-gatherer sort of people. They seemed absolutely precious to me. I have seen large cats toying with small prey and I’ve always found it so wonderfully amusing. That is how I started with this people, playfully. I would catch a small one out by itself and sneak it into the communal stew pot. Or, tempt it with sweets and berries until it could be induced to slit another’s throat. All in good fun. Eventually, I grew tired of this. I started demanding tribute and, at first, they gave it to me willingly. I still remember the first.

She came to me with giant, stupid calf eyes, willing to do whatever I bade. Her hair was long, well past her waist, and had a distinctive, healthy black sheen. It was the same color of the black glass made inside volcanoes and just as silken. It glinted in the light. I told her to spin and I watched it float through the air. I told her to lie on the grass and I stroked it until it became oily with my sweat. This dulled it considerably so I moved on to her skin. It was almost as silken as her hair. All except for her hands; they were the hands of a woman who has scraped deer hide and woven blankets. They were rough and unbecoming of her. I removed them and tossed them aside. This freed her glorious, warm blood and I let it spurt onto my chest and run down my body. She was lovely; she sated me for two days before I needed another.

The next was very young. She was perfectly innocent and still had a sweet childish lisp. I had her sing to me and we played with the red squirrels. I whispered to her for days and taught her such amusing games before I sent her home to her people. Women have a much deeper capacity to influence their social groups than men.
I was just getting a taste for this beautiful, new population when they sent me an old woman. She was very small, I remember that. Her hands were painfully crooked and she limped. Her breath stank. This little, shriveled person bespoke age and infirmity in every detail, enough to make me forget myself. These people were so fascinating and simple that I was lulled into an illusion of security. I forgot what else may come with age besides a crooked back.

This old woman did not have a name. She also did not have a pleasant voice, but I asked her to sing to me. I did not pay attention to the words; I was too intrigued by the wispy rise and fall of her tones. The reedy, gasping high notes and the toad-like lows. When old women sing, you can here the regret of their youth and the labor of their middle years. They weave in experience and embroider with the silvery ghost of forgotten laughter. It is beautiful to realize that you don’t have to feel the pain that they felt. I was completely swept away. She completely transfixed me before I could realize that it was in more than the metaphoric sense.

. . .

The current group of “natives” have progressed past simply ignoring me and have turned me into a kind of folk hero. They have an entire mythos built around me and I have even heard that likenesses of myself have been erected in other places. I guess they thought I looked lonely because I now have a cerulean companion that they have integrated into my story. I don’t mind; it opens up completely new possibilities for the time when I finally can stop watching and act. Over the years I have watched the populations shift around me. New colors and shapes pass by, but I can’t touch; I can’t command. But, I can still whisper.