Marc and Annette lie on the bed, staring up at the tiny white topographical map of ceiling above the bed. A single sheet stretches between them, covering the odd angles of their naked bodies.

“I don’t know how you can say I’m being selfish,” says Annette.

“Bullshit.”

“Fuck you, you prick.”

“Cunt.”

Annette drags on her cigarette, taps the ash into the small dish between them on the bed. “Yeah, “ she says. “I’m a cunt. That’s what I am, right? Just a cunt for you to fuck. Now that’s selfish.”

“You can’t even understand. Don’t even try. I’m so…fucking sick and tired of…explaining…”

“Maybe you’re not doing a good job of it, then. Because, I don’t know…I think I get it.”

“Oh, you get it. You get it. Fuck. Yeah. You’re not the one taking the pills so you don’t get sick while you take the other pills.”

“Ha. You get the irony of that, right?”

“Don’t condescend to me.”

She lifts up, the sheet falling away from her breasts. Marc watches the pale breast, the thick red nipple as it hangs. He wants to bite it.

“Shut up…stop whining like a little…think about it. Think about it. Think about what I have to do.”

“I’ll be there,” she says. He doesn’t want her to talk anymore. He’s rubbing his temples. He wants to take a shower and forget he ever brought it up.

“For what? The nine months? You’ll help me get fat and do those stupid breathing exercises and say ‘you can’t do it honey, push!’ and then when I’ve got a two year old child and I have to say, this is why you don’t have a daddy—“

“What do you want from me? Isn’t it…isn’t it better to have something…to leave something…? Don’t you want that for us? You say you love me, right? Well. I want there to be something of us…I won’t have anything. I have nothing else to give.”

“Shut the fuck up. Don’t even make it seem like something noble, you fucking nimrod.”

“I’m not even supposed to be alive.”

“Whatever.” He’s told her about the plane crash many times. She’s seen the burns, the scars on his arms and legs. The two-year old who lived as a plane crashed into a cornfield in Buttfuck, Kansas. His mom had shown her the news clippings.

“I hate you. I goddamn hate you.”

“I guess that’s why you broke up with me, then. Except, here we are fucking, and then you ask me that.”

“I can’t make you understand.”

“Try a little fucking harder then.”

Marc sighs. She leans back, and he’s still staring at the nipple, the flesh of the breast the way it slides against her ribcage. He feels himself growing harder and shifts his legs under the remainder of the sheet.

“My parents will help, you know.”

She laughs and rolls back. “Christ on a stick. Yeah…oh, that’s good. Your parents hate me. They fucking HATE me, Marc. And what do you think they’ll say when I go to them with little Marc Jr. asking for a hand-out?”

She turns away, pushing forward with her arms. Going to get up. He wants to turn it back. Undo this. The room is washed out, pale in the sun. He reaches out grabs her upper arm. She yelps. “Get the fuck off of me!” she turns to slap at his arm with her other hand. He can’t help it; he likes the way her breasts move. He tries to focus on that while the blood rushes up into his head. He feels the pinprick pressure at the back of the skull, now it’s blossoming outward. He freezes, hand still tight on her arm.

“Fuck.”

“Marc? What? Are you OK?”

“Yeah…” his voice trails off. They sit there in the quiet. Neither speaking. He can hear her breathing. She doesn’t move, but he can feel the pulse of her heat, beating rapidly, pumping blood through her veins.

“Marc?” she says again. He doesn’t answer. Instead, he breathes in deep and smells something sharp and musty. Neither of them had noticed that the ashtray had tipped over into the cotton sheets. Smoke is rising from the bed.

“Oh Jesus, oh shit,” says Annette, suddenly rising up and back, away from Marc’s grip. “Fuck,” she says, “Fuck.” She’s trying to pat it out with a shirt now, his shirt, stopping the slow brown creep of the singing flame. “God fucking damn it,” she says, leaning back. “I just washed these, too.”

The fog in his head begins to clear. Color bleeds back in to the room little by little as he watches her, leaning back on her knees, afternoon sunlight filtering through the blinds across her pale breasts and big nipples. She’s panting a little, her ribcage rising and falling, and he wants to capture that moment and paint it and live in it for as long as he can.

Charlie sets the notebook computer down on his lap, slides the clasp, opens it. Presses the power button. The machine grinds gently to life as Charlie sips from the steaming cup of green tea on the bench beside him.

As the computer screen runs its epic start up screens, Charlie sighs through his nose impatiently, as a child would, in that way that would have caused Gina to roll her eyes and say in that motherly tone she had, oh ok what’s wrong now?

“Nothing,” replies Charlie, “nothing.” And nothing has brought him here, on a Monday, just a Monday.

He leans back on the bench, the thick wooden plank firm against his back, cold seeping through his too light for weather jacket, a simple polyester windbreaker, but it’s the one that looks cool and just a little hip – dressed to impress. He just has to make sure he doesn’t raise his left arm over his head. The stitching under the arm has come loose just under the armpit; Charlie can’t sew, tried maybe once or twice but his clothes ending up unraveling after three and a half hours or, on the other extreme, looking like the inhuman creation of a mad scientist bent on created a glorious new jacket from the remnants of great old jackets, thick stitching, patchwork, crazy quilt, multi-colored thread when the black spool runs out. So, don’t raise the arm.

The air is cold and sharp and dry, it’s like inhaling glass, like icicles, it cuts but the lungs tingle and release and breathe. Charlie hasn’t breathed like this. White cotton ball clouds sink across a bright blue canvas sky.

Unseen, a car rumbles up and a hand brake is thrown back. A car door opens, then closes. There is movement, heavy, slow steps on wooden stairs, up to the front door of the old stone structure.

It’s the post office; had been for as long as Charlie had lived there. Now, on his return arrival, he’s delighted to find it still there, still the same, though strip malls and sprawling complexes have turned up where empty fields once lay, the changes to not interest him. They are the same stores that have appeared like crop circles in cities and town across the nation, signs of an imminent invasion.

And so Charlie revels in the post office, the oversized granite block with a portrait of the town’s founder carved into the second story. It reminds him of Mrs. Berry, the librarian who ran the adjoining public library here, boarded up now, books moved off, redistributed or sold. Charlie wonders if Mrs. Berry died and no one else wanted the job.

He’s avoiding the truth. It isn’t the library that brought him here. It wasn’t even the post office.

The footsteps stop. Charlie turns.

A slightly heavyset blonde woman fumbles through a large burgundy handbag. Charlie hears the sound of pill bottles chattering. She pulls out a ring of keys, opens the door to the post office. Only then does she look at Charlie.

“Hi,” she says with a weak and weary smile.

Then she pauses. Charlie scratches his bald head. He searches her eyes. She’s stopped now, keys still in the door, body frozen in half-motion, routine interrupted. She’s thinking something. She blinks.

“Mailing something?”

And Charlie searches her narrowed eyes, the furrow of her brow. Her eyebrows are neatly waxed, her eyeliner thick and black. Her face had widened, lines dissect, the eyes sunken, the chin gone. If she recognizes him, she doesn’t let him know.

“Just give me a minute to…just give me a minute to open everything up.”

“OK,” says Charlie, “sure.” And he turns back to his computer and his tea, and he doesn’t know why he’s here, why he came back, why he wanted to see what she looked like now, the object of such fantasy when he was 10, 11, 12, when he was so excited to dance with her in the school gym, in her big pink dress, his palms sweaty and his heart beating, and now here he is, once again unable to talk. He shuts the lid to his computer and looks to find a way to slip away as she walks into the dim post office and begins to turn on the lights.

Midsummer oily heat haze on the black asphalt roads when the devil came to Rockville, and Henry was the only one who noticed, out of breath, pushing his black-and-chrome silver Huffy bicycle across the sidewalk and into the flat gray parking lot of the Savings Corner Market. Out of breath, pumping up and down the gentle wave of Snipes Road, hot air scorching his mouth and lungs, watching the shimmering obsidian heat mirage in rhythmic time, foot down, breathe in, foot down breathe out and finally, the Exxon station comes into view, then Harmony’s ice cream stand, then the post office, and then the Savings Corner market.

Henry eyed the devil carefully. He was sitting on the old wooden bench just outside the market, He looked like a pack of chamois stitched together and slung over a pile of wire clothes hangars. The angles of his face were wide and plentiful, and the skin was almond leather stretch tight almost to breaking. The devil was eating a banana, slowly peeling down the yellow strips of skin. His jaw, jutting out sharply, was moving like he was talking to the banana. Henry pushed his bike up against he wall on the opposite side of the automatic double doors. He jammed his hands into his pockets, fumbling for the two quarters there. Enough to get The Mighty Avengers comic book where the Black Panther fought the Man-Ape, the book he read on the stand last week while his mother was picking up eggs for quiche night. And twenty-five cents left over for a blue cream soda to dampen the dry stickiness in his mouth.

The devil looked up at Henry and stopped peeling his banana.

Howdy, said the devil.

Hi, said Henry.

Hot enough for yeh, said the devil, like it wasn’t a question at all.

I guess, said Henry.

Yep, said the Devil. Cooler in there. He nodded to the glass doors.

Henry’s fist clenched around the quarters in his pocket. He liked the way it felt, squeezing as hard as he can.

Y’look thirsty, said the devil.

An overweight woman with a wide brown perm and a formless blue and brown housedress pushed past Henry to walk into the market. She didn’t pay mind to the devil; which surprised Henry. He looked at the devil, at the small, white bone bumps protruding from the skin there.

I know who y’are, said Henry in a quiet voice that surprised him a little.

Oh, do yeh? The devil’s face stretched into something that looked like a smile made by a a person who had only ever heard the description of a smile. This time it was actually a question the devil was asking.

Yeh, said Henry.

Then the devil did something that really surprised Henry. He reached out a thin hand, his fingers quick to slip around Henry’s wrist like a noose. He lifted Henry’s hand, pulling his arm toward him. Henry didn’t move. The devil examined Henry’s arm, his pale blue eyes scanning from wrist to elbow, turning over the freckled brown bits to inspect the pale underneath. And where it purpled and yellow up near the bicep. The devil looked up at Henry. Henry tried to swallow, but his mouth was too sticky now and his tongue just clicked and he made an odd mewling sound.

He did that to you, did he? Last night?

Henry didn’t move.

I could hear, yeh know. When my porch is quiet and the summer night is still. Yeh aren’t that far away. Just up past that ring of oak trees where you like to play, right?

Henry managed a nod.

I could hear him screaming something awful, said the devil, and then he let go of Henry’s arm. He leaned back on the bench, his head lolling back against the wooden paneling of the storefront. He regarded Henry. His eyes never seemed to blink. They were full of liquid.

Well go on and get y’r comic book, said the devil.

Henry dropped his hand back to his side. The quarters still pressing into this flesh. Stinging . He stepped to the side and pulled open the door. The cool blast of air conditioning washing over his face. He could feel the sweat on his brow start to dry. He entered the store and walked slowly over to the rack of comics just past the three lanes of checkstands. He thought he’d get The Mighty Avengers, and maybe a Master of Kung-Fu, too. Or a Legion of Super-heroes. He’d have to flip through to see which one had more fighting, but he wasn’t in a rush.

When there is nothing left between two people, the physics of the room appear to change. A stillness overcomes the space between them, lazy dust motes trapped in a shaft of light.  There is movement, of course — the nervous fidget of fingers, the swaying of legs, the tilt of the head to a slightly sharper angle.  A yawn.  But these movements become infinitesimal in the void between the occupants of the room.

Also, there is silence.  Not true silence, of course.  Conversation occurs in small, precise rounds, ticking in time to an invisible clock.  In these moments the dialogue doesn’t falter; it simply ends, resets, begins anew.  But beneath these mechanical sounds, one can hear the silence. It doesn’t come from the speaker — it emanates from the listener. This silence is deep; it is the practice of hiding oneself completely from a conversation so as to eliminate any echo or reverberation.

Eventually, one of them will leave.  The woman will stand, leisurely, and stretch.  She will reach for her purse.  She will do this neither too slowly nor too quickly, yet the timing will still be incorrect, vastly noticeable, and completely ignored.

“Well,” she will say, “I should go.”  Her tone is as flat as the statement.

He will glance up, taking one more sip of coffee to give himself an extra moment.  He will set down the mug, arrange the newspaper so it aligns to the edge of the table.  He will — in this order — look her in the eyes and then smile.  But these two acts will not align; they come one after the other, eliminating the warmth from either.

He will say something, but the words are irrelevant; in this space, words undergo an alchemical transformation, are rendered inert.  They become meaningless.  In this space the silence has deafened her.

Allen talks, a little too loud, a little too fast. A little too much. He’s telling Dawn something, and she’s listening, really she is, but more to the rhythm and cadence, wondering if he’s going to stop and take a breath. It may sound annoying, but Dawn doesn’t mind; she doesn’t really want to contribute to the conversation, and Allen doesn’t appear to require any collaboration.

Allen leans forward on the couch. He’s trying to lean closer to Dawn, but she’s in another chair, separated by a glass end table containing a lamp. He’s peeking around the shade. He sips his vodka, the vodka he brought, and he sweeps back a sheaf of longish hair that Dawn doesn’t quite understand because Allen is balding, and who at the age of 39 in 2009 attempts a comb-over? She smiles a little at this, not because she doesn’t like the baldness but because she can’t fathom why he doesn’t just shave his head. It wouldn”t make him attractive, but it would make him less of a caricature. Allen catches her smile and increases the speed at which he’s telling his story. He thinks he’s got her hooked.

Dawn knows Allen likes her. She knows he won’t leave until he’s asked to leave. It’s already after one in the morning, but he’ll keep talking until she says she needs to sleep, and he’ll either pretend he’s had too much vodka, wait a few seconds to see if she offers him the couch, or — if he’s really optimistic — her bed. She knows this because Allen is a nice guy, and he does that thing that nice guys do when they’re trying to get laid: they persist. They stay as long as they can in the hope that when she’s drunk enough or tired enough, that one moment will present itself, that one moment that — in their eyes — will change everything. She’s gone to bed with a few of these nice guys. It never works out. She feels bad about it, but right now Allen’s telling her something about the different kinds of high definition video, and that’s just fine with her.

Her phone rings, hopping slightly on the glass table as it pelts out “Your Heart is an Empty Room‚” by Death Cab For Cutie. Allen notices it mid-stream, tries to work it into his conversation with barely a breath, shifting suddenly from his insight into HDMI cables to noting, “…and oh hey someone’s phone is ringing, ah-ah-ah-ah-ah.” He even laughs like a child firing a machine gun.

“Yeah‚” says Dawn. She doesn’t look down at the phone, just stares straight ahead, “I’m not going to answer it.”

Allen pauses for a moment, glancing down at the phone, then back to Dawn. He smiles. His front teeth are crooked, but it’s not a bad smile. “Okey-dokey‚” he says, and then resumes his conversation.

Dawn takes a long drag on her cigarette, watches the tip flare orange. The phone goes silent, but Allen does not, and she lets the sound wash over her as she exhales.

By David Accampo

May 24th

Dearest Emily,

Forgive me for not having written sooner. Your father has me up at all hours of the night, running the strangest of errands! Last night, we had to convey a large steamer trunk from the docks to the ramshackle hut in which our dear Admiral has taken refuge. Not so odd, I suppose, except for the ungodly hour and the nature of the contents of the trunk. I shall not inflict the gruesome details upon you darling, as they are not fit for man, let alone the delicate constitution of a woman. Suffice it to say, the trunk reeked of offal; and Hendricks and I were forced to wear kerchiefs over our noses to stifle the acrid stench.

Still, I should not complain. Your father is a good man, and my induction into the Order is necessary for us to live as man and wife, a dream well worth the unusual regulations placed upon it.

Yours,

Stephen

***

June 7th

Dearest Emily,

You can’t know how I’ve cherished your most recent letter! Days on this infernal island have begun to wear upon me. It is only the strength of your love — displayed so proudly in your letters — which keeps me moving forward. Wearing the uniform in this oppressive tropical climate is rather less than bearable, but with every step I take through the sand, my saber rattling in its scabbard, the stiff wool chaffing my sides, brings me closer to you.

Sadly, I’ve nothing to report on your father. The Admiral sees no one now, and delivers his messages through stained parchment letters slid beneath the door of his make-shift cottage. He claims the ritual is well underway. My induction into the Order is nearly complete. I have been given the Ostrich feather to carry on my personage at all times. I’m told this is a symbol of both good omen and grave import; I endeavor to keep it close to me at all times lest the Admiral believe I’ve strayed from his words.

Hendricks has taken ill. He rarely rises from his cot. His skin is clammy, his features jaundiced. I awoke one night to the sound of wheezing and a hacking cough. I don’t suspect he will finish out his stay on the island. The Admiral informed us, via letter, that another ship would soon arrive. Hendricks and Tennyson are expected to depart on it.

They have been deemed unworthy of the Order. That leaves only myself and Albertson as the newest inductees. A part of me wishes I could hop on that steamer with him and find my way back to you. But we both know that would only be folly.

Yours,

Stephen

***

June 19th

Dear Emily,

Forgive the tardiness of my reply, my love. The Admiral has kept me quite busy, making arrangements with the natives for the final feast and induction ceremony. I have completed the Serpent’s Path, and the Admiral, who I confess has grown rather bloated on this strange island diet he keeps, has emerged from his isolation. He told me today that he is proud to call me a son of the Order. I take that to have two meanings, my dear, and they both bode well for our bright future!

I was rather surprised to read the revelation in your last letter. You must heed these words: Hendricks is not to be trusted! Your father has informed me that Hendricks betrayed the Admiral’s good name. I realize it must have seemed good fortune for the fellow to seek you out at your family estate, but you mustn’t believe his agenda was purely sociable. Hendricks is a jealous man, and despite what he claims, his infirmity was not brought on by unnatural forces. His illness is mere human weakness.

I beseech you — stay away from Hendricks. The man only wishes ill upon your father and his presence brings nothing good to your family.

Yours,

Stephen

***

June 30th

Emily,

We are on the eve of the final ceremony. Oh, the wonders I have seen! Your father has opened my eyes to the world, opened the inner eye, if you will, to all manner of spectacle unseen by mortal man. This new world is a thing of complex beauty, of radiant light, shape and colour. I cannot wait to introduce you to this heaven on earth.

Alas, this is not the reason for my letter. I was shocked and a bit betrayed by your recent confession, my dear. I asked you to steer yourself clear of the madman Hendricks, and yet it appears you haven’t heeded my words. I am sorry the old fellow met his untimely end, and in such a ghastly fashion. I did once call him friend, and his passing does fill me with melancholy. Surely, his illness was one of untoward carnal activity, and not due to, as he so claimed, some malignancy brought on by the Order and our ritual. I assure you, the Order seeks an end to all misery, all war! Your father has only the most benevolent intentions.

I confess, the means to this end are unusual — and often repugnant — but as the night gives in to the inevitability of the sunrise, so to is the beauty of the Order revealed.

We shall live in eternal bliss. This is my promise to you. Please, put Hendricks and his final, twisted visage from your mind. We shall brook no further talk of the putrefaction of flesh.

Soon,

Stephen

***

July 6th

Emily,

I have not received reply. Please, I am worried. I received my sash as a full-fledged member of the Order. Your father beamed with pride as if I were his own son!

Unfortunately, any festivity was cut short by a terrible native uprising. Apparently, these ragged savages have lost several of their womenfolk, and they believe the Order is responsible. Clearly, they do not have the blessed insight of Those Beyond The Sky.

The Admiral has called for swords to be drawn.

I go to my duty.

Love always,

Stephen

***

July 16th

Dearest Emily,

I haven’t the words.

Our battle was hard-fought and won. Arrow and spear are no match for sword and rifle and good old English strategy, you see.

There is more to say, and I do so now with heavy heart.

Your father, our good Admiral Wellington, has passed on. The old man fought bravely, as best he could in his engorged state, but the cunning tribesmen brought him low with a cowardly arrow’s shaft. For a moment, all seemed lost, as the Admiral dropped to his knees in the dust, his jacket stained with crimson.

However, we in the Order have been prepared for the moment of transmogrification. What a glory to behold! It must have seemed a terrible thing to these dim savages as the Admiral’s skin split, as his true personage was revealed, sloughing off his old fleshy casing as though it were nothing more than a long coat taken off on a spring day. The tentacles burst forth, crimson and sea-green. His vengeance was swift and terrible.

I am proud to say that we passed the final test. The Order, brothers all, rallied behind this fearsome new leader, this great king descended down from beyond the sky as our ages-old prophecies have foretold.

Your father will be missed, but his passing brings about a new understanding. A new world! We are not alone. A time of great prosperity is at hand, dearest Emily, and it begins on this small island. We must prepare the way of the Others. The time has come for you to join me, my love. On this island, we shall be married, in honour of your father. I have sent a man named Hickory to fetch you. He should be there shortly after you receive this letter.

I tremble with anticipation to think we shall finally be together! We will finally begin our life! What will you think when you see me, I wonder? I have begun the slow transformation already. My skin is softening, loosening. It loses some of its colour and resolve. I will have no use of it before long. I am larger than you will recall, but it’s the steady diet of meat I must consume. I admit, I didn’t think my tastes would change quite so drastically, but I can already feel the delicate flutter of tendrils within my body. It is a marvelous sensation, and one I am sure you will quite enjoy.

Be courteous to our man Hickory.  I have instructed him to treat you firmly and ensure your passage to the island. I realize you didn’t expect our new life to begin in quite this fashion, but I know you’ll soon come to understand the beauty of this life.

I count the days to your arrival, my love.

Yours in eternity,

Stephen

By David Accampo

Finding no further answers, I called Mrs. Macready. Phone picked up on the second ring.

“Oh, Bill — I was just thinking about you.”

“I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Macready–”

“Please, call me Helen, Bill. No one except the kids at school call me Missus. Haven’t felt like a Missus since Tom died anyway, really…”

“Helen…sorry…listen…I found something at the house today. I’m…I’m not sure what to make of it.”

“You know old houses. They do tend to collect little histories, don’t they? If they could talk, I wonder what they’d say.”

“There was something…buried…in the backyard.‚”

“Ah. I see‚” She stopped then. I could hear rustling. After a moment, she spoke again, “Well I’m sure it’s nothing, Bill. Just old buried treasures, you know? One man’s junk, all that.”

“Listen, Helen…would you…would you maybe like to have tea? Over here?” It was a dirty trick, but I knew it would work.

“Oh, well. Yes, of course, Bill! When…when…do you mean now…? I mean, I could, I just have to, well, sure, I mean…”

“Now would be great, Helen. I’ll put on a kettle.”

“Oh! Yes. Yes, sure Bill. I’ll, uh, I’ll see you in a few!”

I rummaged through the boxes, still packed. Wasn’t even sure I had a pot for tea. It was dusk; long shadows crawling across the cluttered living room, still dim from the lack of electrical lighting. A brisk wind rattled the old windows, blew open the flimsy screen door to the back yard. I wasn’t used to it all, the space, the wind, the shadow. Nothing’s every truly dark in the city. Someone shines a light on everything. Here, lights are just dim stars on a black canvas. A mirror to the night. Somewhere, a dog barked three times and was quiet again.

I was still fidgeting with the gas stove when Helen came rumbling up her her dead husband’s old Chevy. The bald tires slid across the dirt and gravel as the truck clanked to a stop. It was already a sound I was beginning to hate.

We sat. Drank tea. Helen did most of the talking. She asked a lot of questions. About the city. About what it was like working on Wall Street. About how I liked the country now. My answers were brief. I spent the rest of the time fiddling with the old coffee mug I was using for the tea. She wasn’t going to say anything unless I brought it up. You could see it in the way she’d watch my face as I answered, and then, when I was done, look away quickly, trying to form a new question before I could say anything else. It was awkward and a little sad.

“Your daughter lived here before me, isn’t that right?” I asked.

“Yes, yes…‚” she said, “our little Becky, bless her heart. Grew up in our little neck of the woods, and never left it. She and her husband bought this house just a mile up the road.”

“Must have been nice.”

“Oh yes…well, you know the boys went off to school and such. But Becky…she…this was always her home, was always going to be. Boys so often run off, you know, but girls — we do like to settle, don’t we?” She looked at me and smiled as she said this. She was wearing red lipstick. A little was smeared across her yellow teeth.

“She was happy here, then?”

“Even as a little girl, she’d spend all her days out in the woods. We’d have to holler for an hour to get her to come on home for supper! More at peace there than anywhere else at all.”

“Why’d she leave, Helen?”

Helen pats her hair, looks away. She puts her hands in her pockets, the motion of a smoker looking for her pack. She catches my stare and stops. She smiles in defense.

“Oh, Bill…” she sighs. “You know how it always happens. Alex, that was her husband, he got himself a job upstate a ways and they just had to move is all. Believe me…it wasn’t easy for her to leave.”

“Can I show you what I found?”

The smile doesn’t drop on the widow’s face, but I can see the light’s gone out of her eyes. She’s frozen still, one hand still in the pocket of her purple sweater, one hand still holding the tea cup I found in one of the boxes.
Quietly, I rise from the sofa, walk into the kitchen, and grab the box. I return to the living room, carrying it in front of me. Helen is no longer staring at me. She had slumped in her chair. She stares now at her tea cup, tracing one finger slowly around the chipped rim.I tell her I was mending the fence, the one she said was “torn up real good in the last storm.”

The post-hole digger I was using struck something solid. I thought maybe it was a gas line or water pipe. It wasn’t. It was the box.

“It’s old and rusted but I don’t think it was down there for a very long time,” I say.

“You never know in these parts.”

“Had a lock on it, too. Thought that was a bit odd. I was able to snap it off with the post-holer.”

As I say this line, Helen’s tea cup clatters to the ground and shatters. The warm liquid pools on the worn floor, seeps into the cracks in the wood. She apologizes profusely; I wave it off, grab the nearest towel from a box — a bath towel — and throw it over the mess.

“I’ll clean it up later‚” I say. And then I open the box and set it down on the  coffee table.

Helen doesn’t look inside, so I keep talking. It’s my turn for the questions.

“I wasn’t sure what I was looking at at first, Helen. It looks a little like a small animal. But here…these bones…the skeleton here…this is a baby.”

Helen stifles a little gasp.

“Except…it’s not, is it? Look…is this…what was this…? A tail? Is this a barb at the end? This tiny bone? What are these…these…fibrous tumors twisted all the way through the rib cage? And then…and then…the shape of the skull. That’s not a baby. Look at the length of the incisors. And the way it opens…the way it folds out.”

“Some kind of monster,” says Helen.

“Some kind of joke‚” I say. “But who would play such a horrible prank? College students? The local boys? The type who make up crop circles for fame and fortune?”

“Nobody ‘round here would do that,” she says, her voice little more than a whisper now. She twists her hands together.

I reach into the box, pull out something metal.

“And then I found this in the box‚” I say. I hold up the spoon.
“A little baby spoon, right? Is that what this is? I’ve…I don’t have any kids, Helen, so I don’t know.”
“Yes‚” she says, tears welling in her eyes. She coughs as she speaks, “Yes, yes. That’s what it is, it’s a silver spoon. An ornament.”

“The kind of thing that someone engraves, is that right? A message to the baby. This was covered in filth. the box must have leaked. I cleaned it up, though. I cleaned it up. There’s an engraving there.”

”Yes‚” says Helen.

“It says: ‘To my precious little one, love Grandma.’”

“She was so precious,” says Helen, “I didn’t even see the forked tongue or the tentacles. She was just my little grandbaby, Bill. How could we have known? Becky, little  Becky…she loved those damned woods so much. How could we have known the trouble they would cause?”

Helen begins to cry then, the old widow, alone in the night in the dim light of my house. I look at the terrible thing in the box, I try to imagine its inhuman, mewling cries. We are  silent for a long time, Mrs. Macready and I, until the wind kick up again and slams the screen door against the wood siding, startling us both. In the distance, in the dark, the woods loom.

Jude’s ability was — in the larger scheme of the universe — rather unimpressive. And yet, he took pride in his ability, as he felt it was something that was solely his, to grow and shape.Jude didn’t tell anyone of his ability. They wouldn’t understand. “Time travel,” they would say, “Bah.”

The way it worked was this: by closing his eyes very firmly, so that he could see nothing at all, Jude could travel into the future. He couldn’t travel very far, of course. A short blink could only get him one, maybe two seconds into the future. But as he became a teenager, Jude realized that longer blinks, with a great deal of concentration, could move him three, sometimes even five seconds into the future. It was at this juncture that he decided two things:

One: he should continue to train and hone this unique power.

Two: he should not abuse this power.

The latter principle came not from his parents, who cared nothing for moral dilemmas (they were cat burglars by profession, Jude would later discover when the police arrived at his doorstep on Christmas Eve while Jude was trying to stay awake for Santa Claus’ imminent arrival — an arrival that never happened and was, in fact, cruelly reversed as the uniformed officers seized his existing toys as evidence and even ate the cookies that Jude had personally baked for the truant Saint Nick). But while his parents had failed to prepare him for this ethical dilemma, Jude had found the answers he sought in the comic books that he read so lovingly. In these magazines, men with powers learned to use them justly and only in appropriate situations. The men who chose not to do so wore dark colors and sinister masks. They often shouted, raising their fists in the air. Jude appreciated this worldview, as he had never suspected his parents of being cat burglars — simply fond of black clothing and expensive paintings and jewelry that seemed to come into the house and quickly disappear.

These colorful comic book stories served him well until adulthood, when he found himself in plots far more complicated than those in which Clark Kent had become embroiled.

His first girlfriend in college slept with his roommate because she “just got high and things happened.” Jude didn’t understand this, but he didn’t like it either. He blinked for a long time, and when he opened his eyes, his girlfriend had left the room. He was still in college, but it seemed different now. His jump in time had given him a new perspective.

Later, when he was fired because his department at the software company was downsized, Jude made his longest jump yet. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, five whole minutes had passed by. And in this strange future, the old maze of cubicles didn’t seem as familiar or as important as it had once been. It was much easier to leave.

His wife left him when his unemployment ran out.  Jude went to sleep and a whole day passed. He realized that he no longer loved Emma; the future was wide open.

And on he went, closing his eyes and letting the days pass him by, moving forward into a distant future where he could start all over again.

This happened when, some four and half days into the future, he met a woman named Sarah at the Laundromat. She was folding pink blouses. She appeared to have at least six of them. Future fashion. Pink was in, it appeared. She wore her blonde hair pulled loosely back. She caught his gaze and smiled. Her front tooth was chipped, but her smile was very warm and he liked the deep angular folds it created in her cheeks. He thought she was a work of art. It made him bold.

“I’ve come a long way to find you,‚” he said, a pair of dirty khakis balled in his fist. She laughed.

“What’s that from?” she asked.

“What?‚” said Jude.

“That’s from a movie, isn’t it?” she said.Jude didn’t answer. He didn’t know how. He paused for a moment, lowering the pants.

“My name’s Jude,‚” he said finally.

“Sarah‚” said Sarah, “Nice to meet you, Jude.”

When he didn’t answer she stopped folding her laundry and looked at him, biting her lower lip quizzically. “What is it, Jude? Is something wrong?” she asked.

Jude trembled as he smiled, “No, it’s nothing‚ It’s just… I’m… trying not to blink.”

“Why not?” She said, breaking into a high-pitched flutter of a laugh.

“I just really don’t want to miss this moment. I feel it might be important,” said Jude.

“Now that‚” she said as she returned to her laundry, “is definitely from a movie. Something…I can’t think of what. But it’ll come to me.”

Jude let her think on it for a while.