I strode down the street, my backpack flapping against my back. It was a windy day in Newgate, and I was in no mood to have to stand in the cold any longer then I had to. Directly ahead of me I saw the great stone building that was my destination, The Newgate Public Library. Quickly hurrying inside of the building, I dumped my books into the appropriate bin and moved towards the YA section. Turning the corner I saw my friend, James, standing in the corner of the alcove that housed the YA section, with his nose buried in a book. “Hi, James,” I said, “have you found anything good?”

Turning, James looked startled to see me there. “Hi, Adam, I thought you had swimming practice at this time. If you had let me known (what), I could have scheduled something.”

“Yeah, sorry,” I replied, “It was canceled at the last minute, something about risk of storm. I should have called, we could have scheduled something”

I went over to the bookshelf and began to browse as James stood there, seeming to forget that anything existed outside of the story that he was reading. I continued to look through the books, carefully avoiding anything with a one-word title. Of course I knew the whole “don’t-judge-a-book-by-its-cover” deal, but in my experience looking at the title was one of the most important methods of gauging a book’s potential. I slowly moved down the aisle, sometimes adding promising books to my stack, when I came across the strangest book I had ever seen. It was a large black tome, with leather binding. Despite the fact that the spine of the book was facing out, I was unable to find a title. I removed the book, and upon turning it over discovered that it had been bound on the wrong side. On the cover of the book, in words that looked like they had branded onto the cover, the title was simply, “The Book of the Forgotten King”. Interested, I set the book down on the table and opened it. The writing began on the first page, and was in a strange language that I had never seen before. I called James over to help me examine it.

“I’ve never seen any writing that looks even vaguely like this,” said James. Though with most people, this would have carried almost no weight, both of James’s parents were archeologists and James himself loved to study languages. “Do you want my parents to look at it.”

I replied that I could just check it out at home and, upon finding no form of identification , smuggled it out of the library in my backpack.

When I got home, finding no one there, I ran upstairs to my bedroom to study the book. In the privacy of the area directly below my raised bed, I began flipping through the book to see if there was anything that I could understand in the book, even if it was just a picture. Unfortunately, my wish was granted as I found several pictures apparently detailing the life of a man. The picture mainly showed him passing judgement upon some group of people, but the last image showed him being tricked into an ornate cage,, with the cage in the center of a ornate, old key. The picture also had a heading, which I seemed to be perpetually on the verge of understanding. Running my finger along the bottom of the words in an attempt to focus my thoughts, I found an unexpected bump along the picture of the key. Feeling along where the picture of key was, I discovered that the key seemed to be real and three-dimensional, though I still saw it as flat. I pulled the key out of the page, and the illusion broke, allowing my eyes to see it as it truly was, about 250 centimeters long and made out of iron. I stared at the key, then back down at the page. For a moment, the page seemed to flicker between the original image (but without the key encircling the cage), and on the man, still in the cage, but now smiling a terrible, nightmarish smile.

I bolted down the stairs, the key still in my hand and called James from the phone in our kitchen. Thankfully, James had arrived home in time to answer my call.

“Hello, this is James.” said James when he answered the phone.

“J-James,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm, “Would you come over right now?”

James replied with a touch of concern in his voice, “I’m coming. Is everything okay?”

“Yea…, maybe I don’t really know” I replied, sucking in huge breaths of air to calm down my heart.

When James arrived, about ten minutes later, I explained what had happened and showed him the key. As James stood there, slowly turning over the key so as to examine it from all sides, I ran upstairs to bring him the book, but when I arrived, a surprise greeted me. The book still was still where I had left it, but now the binding was cracked and worn, and the paper was yellowed and old. As I watched, the book continued to decay, and eventually collapsed underneath its own weight.

I ran downstairs to see James standing directly before a pair of gates, looking at them in wonder. The gates were tall, black and appeared to be standing with no form of support. We stood in front of the gates, looking intermittently between each other and the gates. As one, we reached forward and pushed open the gates. Beyond them, somehow stretching far past the length of the kitchen was a huge, dark hall. At the far end of the hall, about fifty meters away from where we were, there was a raised plinth with a man-sized statue on it. The hall itself had clearly once been resplendent, but time had worn it down. There were great tapestries on the wall, they must have once been alive and full of color, but they were now faded and moth-eaten.

Together, we stepped through the gates. I couldn’t feel anything strange about the passage, except for the sudden coolness of the air around me.We continued walking through the hall, stopping now and then to get a closer look at a tapestry or candleholder. Whoever had done the decoration of this place had a taste for the macabre. The tapestry’s looked like they had been copied off of by Dante and the candlesticks were all of men being crushed under the weight of the candles. Even the candles themselves were strange, they, though now no more than stubs, were several inches wide and were of a black that seemed to suck in all the light around them.

We continued to progress until we reached the plinth. Stepping up onto the platform, we began to examine the statue. It was about two meters long and seemed to be made out of flint. Despite the horrors all throughout the hall, the statue was by far the worst. Patterned on it’s surface were images of huge demons running amok over the land, sowing chaos and carnage wherever they went. In the very center of the carving was a man, bestriding a horse. The man held a chain connected to a hook, which he used to catch and impale men and woman on, in one hand and a great flaming sword in the other. Despite his horse facing off to the left, the man himself stared directly at us, almost as if he was actually alive, instead of simply a carving.

The statue was so terrifying that I lurched back in disgust, my stomach flipping and my heart beating violently. James, however, appeared to find no problem with the horror of the carving. “What my parents wouldn’t give to get their hands on something like this,” he muttered to himself, running his hand along the carving, “this looks ancient.” As his probing fingers reached the man in the center of the statue, he suddenly recoiled, as if shocked by static electricity. His legs gave way beneath him, and he collapsed to the ground.

As I ran over to help him, he started convulsing wildly, limbs and head slapping the ground. I forced his head down onto the ground, to prevent further injury, and looked around for something soft I could lay him on. Though the tapestries looked almost ideal, they were clearly far too large for me to drag over, so I was forced to simply stay where I was, trying to hold as many of his limbs as I could in check.

Slowly, bit by bit, his convulsions slowed and his limbs started to relax. As he lay there, apparently unconscious, his breathing calming down, I tried to figure out what had happened. He had never done anything like this before. Then again, I had never gone through a magic portal before, so today was a day of great surprises. Suddenly, his eyes flashed open. I fell back, startled, and saw what was likely the most terrifying in that room. James’s eyes were glowing with a strange, green light. His pupils had been transformed into slowly rotating circles comprised out of strange runes like those in the book.

Suddenly, he leapt up and charged at me, roaring. He slapped me with strength far beyond that of any human, and sent me flying into the wall. I lay where I had landed, my body refusing to do what I told it, and watched as pulled out the key and slowly moved towards the statue. As the key drew nearer to the statue, it started changing shape, as though trying to fit any other lock than the one it was approaching. The moment the key touched the material of the statute, however, the key stilled and began slowly sinking into the flint, as though it was jello. A sense of foreboding came over me, almost as though I were in a movie, and dramatic, screechy music had just began to play.

Despite their exhaustion, I forced my weary muscles to begin movement, raising me off the ground, onto my feet. With a great effort, I began to run towards the platform. I stumbled up onto the platform and, tensing my muscles for more power, charged at the thing that was occupying James’s body.

I hit him hard, both of us tumbling to the ground. In some respects, I was incredibly lucky, James had always been the bigger of the two of us and with his newfound strength, he would have crushed me, but his head smacked against the floor, and by the time I got up, he was out cold.

I began pulling over the candle holders, piling them on top of him in man attempt to hold him if he awoke, and then moved over to the plinth. The key remained in the statute, the point where metal and flint collided glowing with a pulsing, green light. I began pulling out the key the ver stone seeming to be attempting to resist. Nonetheless, I slowly pulled out the key, the iron looking new from where it had gone into the statue. About halfway through the process, whispering filled my ears, demanding that I push the key farther in. Nevertheless, I gritted my teeth and continued pulling out the key. The moment the key was pulled fully out, a great pulse of wind echoed through the chamber, the great tapestries on the walls began to blow, and the cobwebs that hung from the ceiling of the hall were knocked down, pieces of silk fluttering to the ground. I turned back to the statue to find the demons of the carving slowly moving in from the background as if to catch me. For a moment, I found myself laughing at the utter absurdity of the situation, until a miniature claw, extended from the frontmost demon, poked through the surface slowly groping out at me.

A sudden crashing behind me revealed James’s, or at least James’s body, return to consciousness. Backing away from the statue, I quickly glanced behind me, to see James’s condition. Two pieces of luck hit me just then, the first was that James’s eyes were back to normal, and the second was that my make-shift barricade had massively failed, so James was already back on his feet.

I jumped off the platform, just as the first of the miniature demons escaped from the statue. Interestingly, I noted, the man in the center still sat on top of his horse, a look of hatred distorting his features.

Grabbing James by his shirt, I began running towards the gateway, terror fueling my strides. About halfway across the hall, I stumbled and almost fell, but James pulled me back up, his momentum jerking me forward back into my stride. By this point, some of the winged demons had taken flight, their  wings quickly propelling them towards us. We fell through the gate, crashing to the floor of my kitchen. As we scrambled to get up, the lead demon came streaking out of the hall into the kitchen.

Grabbing a nearby stool, I swung it towards the demon. The stool made direct contact, sending the demon into a nearby wall, one of its wing in tatters where the stool leg broke through the membrane. I jumped onto my feet and slammed the great gates, pressing my back to them in a desperate attempt to keep them closed. As soon as the gates were fully shut, they disappeared, leaving nothing behind.

The moment the gate disappeared, the demon in the corner froze, its face contorted in fury. Touching the now inert demon, I discovered that it had become a statue, with no signs of life.

Hearing a car pull up into the driveway, James and I ran up to my room to plan what to do next. As we sat on my bed, both of us still shaking from the encounter, we decided that there was only one reasonable course of action.

“The only reasonable course of action is to bury the key and demon,” I said, “We clearly didn’t destroy the thing in that statute, only set it  back. We can’t risk anyone letting it free.”

 

The debate settled, we went out to the backyard of my house, and started digging until we had dug a pit almost 2 meters deep.We tossed the key and demon into the pit and began to re-fill the hole. Within the course of 30 minutes, the hole was filled. Thankfully, there was no grass in this part of our yard, only leaves, so no trace of where the key was buried remained anywhere except in our minds. Nodding in a silent agreement, James and I decided never to talk about what had happened, less someone repeated our folly, and in doing so concluded that chapter of our lives.

For as long as the merchant’s daughter could remember, Hunger had been working Its claws into the folds of her mind. She lived with the Hunger for what she could not have—she lived beneath Its wings, under the yellowed eye trained on her every motion; for when she did move, it was Hunger who moved her: with Its talons ripping deeper into the crimson of her throat, she flew to wherever on whatever whim Hunger could fancy. Dangled always in darkness, she saw herself for what Hunger knew her to be—prey.

She knew as much—nineteen years of living under the merchant’s roof had taught her she owed her life to anyone but herself. It had warped her: she sought tirelessly to justify her servitude, surmising it was fair that she should endure this treatment—for Hunger had not harmed her. To harm her would be to make her bleed; thus she checked her neck for blood, settling her undying hand where Hunger would use Its talons to take the liberty of dragging her from place to place. She had never stopped checking, nor had she ever bled; for this reason she had never objected to cleaning up after one of the merchant’s revelries, or having to scavenge for food when he needed a snack. Or being told to take the gravel road through the woods to the store at midnight to buy him some matches.

She tears her hand from her neck. The matchboxes tumble from her arms as she brings both hands to her eyes, searching, searching for traces of blood, the blood where Hunger would have left gashes. Over and over she scoured her hands, kneading them until they turned a shade of red so rich she wouldn’t have been able to pick out bloodstains had they existed.

Nothing’s there.

Tightening the coat around her, the merchant’s daughter left, feeling the Hunger to be home again.  

Home, it seems, was just as hungry for her return: the door was wide open. The merchant, nowhere to be seen; a note thrown to the floor, “Back when out of cash” scrawled in red ink. If she were to peer out the back window, she knew, the truck would be gone—off to some bar in the middle of nowhere.

She sat down. She got back up; she had wanted dinner, she remembered. Tomato soup. She fetched a pot, filled it with water, set it near the stove, and reached for the matches to light the stove.

Nothing’s there.

Hunger had bested her yet again.

What had she done with the matchbox? She had just been carrying some. Or—had she? No—she dropped them outside. In the gravel. Yes, that’s where they are. She stooped to pick her coat off the floor—had she taken it off?—and moved her hand from her neck to open the door.

There they were. Five or six matchboxes strewn about, as if somebody had dropped them mid-sentence. The few that were unharmed, she set aside while she kneeled to collect the poor matches who were homeless.  

One match in the matchbox.

Two matches in the matchbox.

Three matches in the matchbox.

Four matches in the matchbox.

All the way up to forty; then one box was completed and another began.

“Tough, huh, getting those apart from the gravel?”

“It’s not so bad,” replied the merchant’s daughter, her eyes on the ground.

“Yeah. Last time I tried, I got all the little rocks stuck up my fingernails.”

“I’ve learned to live with it.”

“Then at least let me help you,” the girl said, getting on the ground.

She waved a hand. “Oh, you don’t have to.”

“Nonsense! Can’t a girl just be wandering the middle of woods in the middle of the night, without needing to be somewhere?”

They both laughed.

They made a funny pair, picking up matches in the middle of the road in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night like that. Perhaps they should have had such a task done by now, but as more matches were collected, more seemed to take their place.

The merchant’s daughter couldn’t help but notice the girl’s pale skin—you could almost see through her hand to the match she was holding. She felt the pinpricks again, and continued with one hand. “You live around here?”

“What were you doing?”

“—What do you mean?”

“Walking all alone, in the forest, with matches?”

“Oh, that.”

“Yes—that. Sounds pretty grueling to me, doing that of your own volition.”

“I was told to go get some matches from the store.”

When the girl didn’t reply, she continued: “We needed to light the stove.”

The girl gave up on the matches. “Well, I can understand that. Hunger’s boss, right?”

“Right.”

“But you got that pretty fine cherry-red truck, don’t you?”

The merchant’s daughter said nothing.

“Working condition?”

Thirty-nine matches in the matchbox... “Oh, spilled the box. I’m sorry, I’m such a—”

“Why didn’t you drive. To the store?”

“Well, he, uh, wanted to use it...” Her voice trailed off as the girl started to circle her.

The girl sighed. “All I want is to help. Why should we throw our life away? But if you won’t listen to me, how are we going to do that?”

“We?”

“Yes, we. Us two.” Their faces were inches apart. “You and I? We’re two halves of the same whole.” In the girl’s eyes, the merchant’s daughter discerned a familiar longing; a longing she herself had felt to escape, but had never acknowledged. Now the longing was acknowledging her: it had been fed up with Hunger.

“I want us to live our own life,” the girl went on. “You just have to listen to me.”

“Listen to longing?”

“To what you want. Don’t wanna end up like those guys.”

“What guys—” Figures began to materialize out of the darkness before her, each with the same spectral skin as the girl. They stood silent, looking on.

“Oh, these guys? They want the same thing I do. All suppressed longings—like me.”

“I don’t ‘suppress’ you—”

“Think about that: for every person you see here, there’s another—like us—not living up to our potential.” She tried to take the merchant’s daughter’s hand, but the flesh fell through the girl’s ghost of a form. The girl’s voice betrayed her. “And I—I won’t stand for it any longer.”

“That’s not your decision.”

“You can’t justify this, this—half-life—because your neck doesn’t spontaneously bleed.”

“If it doesn’t bleed, then the wound isn’t fatal. And if the wound isn’t fatal, than I—

“We.”

“—‘we’ have nothing to worry about.”

“What wound?” the girl asked.

“I—you know what I’m talking about.”

“What? Say it.”

“The—the gashes.”

“The ones some ‘Hunger’ left on your neck? It’s not a vulture, it’s a feeling. You can’t be physically harmed by something intangible.”

“That’s not the point—”

“Then what is? Last I checked, there wasn’t anything on our neck.”

“How would you know? You can’t see back there.”

The girl scoffed. “Then you look.” Turning around, the hair was lifted from her neck.

“Nothing’s there,” she murmured; the merchant’s daughter’s longing validated, the girl’s skin became opaque. More real, but not yet alive.

“No, there isn’t, is there?”

“But—that’s not the deal I made.”

The girl, the hundreds of figures behind them—all gone. Only a row of neatly packaged matchboxes lay at her feet.

She picked up a box. Slid it open. Forty matches tucked away in the dark, waiting to live up to their potential. Should she light—should she light the stove...

She held a match. Struck it against the box. It lit. She let it drop. It died.

Hold, strike, light, dead; hold, strike, light, dead.

If she dropped it, the match would die. If she held it, the match would die.

If she lived like this any longer, she would die, her life unfulfilled; if she stepped out of line, made a life for herself, either Hunger or the merchant would kill her.

If she did nothing, she would die. If she did anything, she would die.

She had surmised that if she was unharmed, she could endure their treatment.

What if she was harmed either way?

A hand, now the same tone and of the same material of the merchant’s daughter’s figure, came to rest on the merchant’s daughter’s shoulder, her longing manifested in full. “Attagirl, Anne,” the girl whispered in her ear.

She picked out another match. Lighting it, she let the box and its contents fall to the ground. She threw the lit match as far as she could throw it, and kept her eyes on the flame until it went out.

Anne was walking back to the house when a small light appeared where the match had extinguished. She stepped toward it, in disbelief that the flame had grown into a fire; but then the light separated into two flames, and then the lights intensified into beams pointed at her and the house; them the beams turned into headlights and Anne leapt out of the way before—

Where she had been standing there was a mess of cherry-red metal and burnt rubber. The corner of the house had disappeared behind the hood of the truck. Behind the wheel...

She sauntered over to the car door. Opened it. Looked at the merchant—Anne’s father—unconscious. Her nose smacked by the mixture of booze and blood.

His chest was rising. Falling.

She heaved him from the seat and through the doorway into the house. On the floor he lay, motionless save for his breath.

Anne touched her left hand to his forehead, catching the streams of blood. Letting it pool there. Tracing in the outlines of his eyes, of his nose, of his mouth until he wore a mask.

Look at him; she had been living under his lock and key for nineteen years, and he hadn’t had the courtesy to die on her. Not even after she had just begun to question the system.

With one hand pressed to his forehead, she clenched her other hand around the matchbox.

She held a match. Struck it against the box. It lit. She let it drop.

She was outside before the first flames bloomed on the wood beneath her father’s body.

Hold, strike, light, dead.

First the floor, then the walls, then the ceiling, then the roof. Her house went up in flames. She would have stood there, watching—the cold was more bearable with the warmth of the burning cabin—had she not heard the sound of an engine revving.

The girl—she was backing up the truck, both hands on the wheel.

Anne shouted, but in vain: her and the truck were facing one another.

She took a step forward.

The girl slammed the gas pedal.

She sprinted toward the car. She didn’t care anymore. Her father dead, her home destroyed, her life, ash—what left did she have to live for? She knew only that she’d spent her life obeying orders; she was going to die on her own terms. In her final seconds, she saw the girl’s eyes, headlights in themselves.

One match in the matchbox.

Two matches in the matchbox.

Three matches in the matchbox.

Four matches in the matchbox—

—It came and went.

The moment of impact—it came and went. As in, one second, the hood of the truck was tickling Anne’s nose; the next, she was staring straight ahead, at an empty road in the the middle of the forest in the middle of the night.

She whirled around to find the bed of the truck facing her, and the ghostly crowd of onlookers returned. The girl was opening the door.

“Well, if I don’t believe my eyes,” the girl laughed. “Killing our brain-dead father? Where do we come up with this stuff!”

Anne strode over to her counterpart. “You said—”

“I said I wanted us to live our life; not murder someone!”

“But that was the only way to—”

“Oh, ‘But that was the only way to’—think. Again, Anne.” The ghosts were slowly advancing on the pair, trapping them against the truck. “We could have just as easily stolen the truck when he got back or something, don’t pin this on me.”

“But he’d find us, and he wasn’t—” she had stopped, transfixed on one face above the girl’s shoulder. The pinpricks were all over her body. Anne could not move. “What. Is he. Doing here.”

Their father stood behind the girl in the ghost crowd. Her father, who she’d not long ago burned alive—dead-set on staring his killer down. His skin may be translucent now, but his eyes had retained every last drop of mortality.

“Who, him? He belongs there, now.”

“What. Are you talking about?”

“We really have got the worst memory.”

Anne lunged at the girl, her hands aimed at her throat—but she passed through her.

“You just got hit by a car, and you’re wondering why we’re seeing ghostly apparitions of our father? Get your priorities in order.”

She stood hunched over.

“These ghosts—they’re each heir to their own suppression: they all got what was coming to them. You murder our father, you suppress him.”

She clutched her head in her hands.

“Did I not say they were suppressed—like me?”

Her hands were convulsing.

“Or at least, I used to be like them.”

Her hands—her hands were transparent.

“I’m not like them anymore. I’m stronger.”

“What have you done?”

“We killed our father. We chose to listen to our longing to be free, instead of you—the little scared, helpless thing who’s been in control since birth.”

“I, I—I thought you said you wanted to help me.”

“Us. I wanted to help us. And to get out of this hellhole, we needed to listen to me. To do that, you had to be eliminated. Bye-bye. From now on, we live on through me.”

“I don’t understand—”

The girl was already getting back in the trunk. “We did what we had to do to survive. And to survive, we had to let go of the thing holding us back. That was you.” She closed the door. “You suppressed me for too long.”

As the girl drove away to start a new life, a ghostly Anne threw herself to the floor. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed the fire spreading from her house to the trees. Fire rained down from branches falling to the ground, the rocks doing nothing to abate the swelling inferno.

She did nothing to stop it. She had waited too long.

There was no use in rebelling against anything. Hunger had starved her long ago.

From somewhere above, a vulture cried down to Its prey as the merchant’s daughter lifted her left hand from her neck for the last time, and it came away caked in dried blood.  

Be warned- the walk home is long and dark.  

By that time, everybody would have left except the few expectant stragglers by the entranceway.  You would need to make your way, cautiously, across the risky intersection (an unfortunate accident), and onto the sidewalked hill.  The sky would be a darker shade of black as you tread on and over the twigs, leaves, ice patches... silence interrupted by the comforting buzz of the cars that sweep past, spewing their indistinguishable diesel smoke.  Their criscrossed lights lead you on intermittantly, illuminating a certain landmark here, a post there.          

By now, you are almost home, and the remaining path is guided by lampposts, stooping ravens with tiny embedded suns.  But when you cross the cemetary, dread tiptoes its way suddenly onto your throat, not because of ghosts or curses, but of something much nearer and immediate; anyhow, the air is crisp and clear, and there shuuld be nothing to fear.

Not until you reach your destination at least, a too-familiar noise grows and closens, your hand trembling as the door opens to wash you in light, heavy light.

“I can’t say this enough: do not open your test booklets when I hand them out!”

Eve wrapped up her apple core in a napkin and rapped her pencil on the table sharply, bringing her brain to attention, a mental call-to-order. 

“I will now hand out test booklets for the AMC 10—please raise your hands if you are taking the AMC 10 test. And once again, what are you not going to do with your test booklets?”

“Don’t open them!” —the chorused response.

Eve didn’t raise her hand, because she was a senior, and that meant, unfortunately, that she had to take the far-more-difficult (but still easy for her) AMC 12. She watched the small freshmen across the gulf of the long, wooden, plane as small, dove-like booklets glided onto tables. 

“Now raise your hand for the AMC 12!” Eve raised her hand, and received in exchange the gift of a booklet, which slid easily to her on the slick wood, making the faintest hiss in its passing. She rubbed her eyes, and the thing blurred in and out of focus like a picture in a refocusing camera lens: fuzzy black letters on white frame alternated with small print in between the lines. 

“I will now pass out the answer documents for the AMC 10. Once again, do not open your test booklets!” 

Her heart skipped a beat. This time, Eve had a booklet. This time, Eve wanted to open it, just a bit. And she could tell that the guy nearest her was eyeing his booklet as well. 

“If you do open your text booklet, you will be disqualified from the competition!” 

Test booklet, test booklet…they were all eyeing their test booklets now. Was there, or was there no voice saying “open your test booklet…just a little”?

Eve snapped back to attention as an AMC 10 answer document landed in front of her; she handed the sheet back to Mr. Michael, explaining that she was taking the AMC 12. But as she was doing so, her hand flew over the flypaper of the test booklet and stuck. As she glanced at it, the ink winked at her, and her cheeks bloomed, flustered. It was just a test booklet. She lovingly traced the lettering, as if in a trance, while her breath came shorter all the while. Was the lettering different on the inside? Her fingers caressed the edge. Her ears felt hot. 

Saved by an answer document that fluttered onto the table, she began bubbling in residential information with a vengeance, shunting the strangely seductive test booklet to one side. 

“I will now read the instructions for the AMC 10 and the AMC 12 as required by the American Mathematics Association…you guys can follow along on your test booklets if you want…”

That was a mistake. A dull roar in her ears washed over the voice as the lure of the test booklet enchanted her once again, the fingered edge pleading alluringly with her, a corner peeking up where her fingers had touched it. The hinge staples were somewhat loose to her machinations; two of them curved at the left corner like fangs.

“Number seven, all questions left unanswered will result in a gain of 1.5 points…”

Seven—was that the number they were on? She refocused her attention on the bottom. There were ten rules. Three more to go until she could rip open the stupid test booklet. 

“Derek, I see your fingers on the test booklet over there—make sure not to open it!”

There was a flurry of fidgeting as brains cut the strings to fingers that had jumped at “open”.

Eve gasped as she hurriedly drew her finger away from the hinge, a two-holed puncture opening on her finger where she’d accidentally rammed it into the staples. As she paused to inspect the wound, she could hear Derek’s loud, short, breaths as he held up his hands to show his innocence. She wiped away the pinpricks of blood on her apple-stained napkin and tried to listen toMr. Michael’s megaphone:

“Number eight, incorrect answers will earn zero points…number nine…alright guys, I really need to go to the bathroom, so just hang tight…it’ll just be a moment” and with that, Mr. Michael dashed out of the cafeteria. There were, of course, no other adults around, save a grizzled janitor quietly humming in tune with his keys.

Eve could have sworn that Mr. Michael did it on purpose. Her love affair with her test booklet was temporarily forgotten in favor of anger at Mr. Michael. Did he want somebody to get disqualified? Couldn’t he see that they were all struggling with their far-too-potent test booklets?

The part of Eve that was still self-aware was glad that everyone was looking at the door that the teacher had disappeared out of, instead of down at their test booklets. That part of Eve also knew that as soon as one person looked, there was no hope for the assembled students. 

Eve took out her phone, the king of distractions

But the phone was a holding measure. The cover page of the test booklet beckoned, its leading edge bent and snaky from her sweaty fingers. Barely aware of the deafening chatter of her logical side, Eve reached out. A drop of sweat, innocuous, beaded on her forehead. She could feel her thighs straining a little as she rose a little bit in her chair to the occasion.

She bit her lip. The test booklet begged. She felt it watching her. The others were watching her. Hot, flush, flustered, do, do not, pain, pleasure and in a flash she had done it. A flick of the fingers, slightly sticky in two pinpoints where her staple-wounds were; there was a sinking of the soul into delicious relaxation, like the first, crisp bite into an apple on a hot summer day. The test booklet’s cover page lay hugging the table, its first and second pages revealed to her in naked glory.

She scarcely had time to take in anything with her heightened senses before Mr. Michael walked back into the room. She frantically closed her test booklet. Did he notice?

“Number ten, this one is made up…have fun guys! Open up those test booklets and begin!” 

 

A rustling of doves. As Eve began work on the test she noticed that for some reason, the test booklet was no longer sinuous and seductive. It was paper, stapled together. She chuckled slightly and plunged into her work. 

“You don't have to do this!” I shouted down the alley ready to pursue them, but they came out of the shadows with a gun pointed at me.

“Yes, yes I do.” The bang resounded throughout the alleyway and suddenly I was falling. The world seemed to slow down, sirens blaring, flashes of red and blue lights appeared before my eyes.

The last thing I remember was when the paramedics came and wheeled me away to the ambulance, and I thought to myself, “Where did I go wrong?”

 

It started of an ordinary day at the police station, typing away at my desk when over the PA I heard, “Would Diana Wong please come to the conference room?”

I started to get up from my chair when my best friend in the force Kathy Lee grabbed my wrist and said, “Lucky! You already have a job!”

I shrugged and replied, “I guess.”

I was walking to the conference room when a senior officer I didn't know spit on my shoe and whispered in my ear, “You Orientals should stick with your math.”

His words stung like a knife in my side, but I held my head high so he wouldn't know. I joined the police force to make a difference, not to conform with society's views of Asians. We aren't all mathematicians.

 

I opened the door to the conference room and was met with the cold stares of my superior officers. The air was so thick I was nearly suffocating.

One of them coughed and said, “Diana, the reason you have been picked is that you might know the victim in this case.”

“Victim? What kind of case is this exactly, Sir?” I asked quietly, dreading the answer.

“A homicide,” and a picture flashed on the screen and my breath stopped. On the screen was my old Chinese teacher. It took all the strength in my body not to collapse right there.

“She worked at a school you used to go to,” he continued. I wanted him to stop talking, each word like another cut on my body, but I knew I had a job to do.

“Are you up to the task?” he asked staring at me intently.

“Yes Sir!” my head held high, I walked out of the room ready to prove myself to the world.

 

I pulled up to the school and got out of my car when the coroner ran out of the school towards me.

“Hey! I'm Carl, the coroner for this case,” he said, slightly out of breath.

“Ok, I’m Diana,” I replied nonchalantly, already walking to the doors of the school.

“Cool, well nice to—hey wait up!” Carl started to frantically run after me, but I was already inside the school.

“Man, this place really brings back memories,” I said to no one in particular. It had been years since I had last been here, running around with my friends, playing games, and getting scolded by our teacher. I stopped that thought right there. I had to keep calm, not think about her, it was too much for me to handle. We walked into the auditorium and I saw something that shattered my heart. There was my teacher, Trixie Fong, dead on the floor, a bullet wound straight through her heart.

 

“Well, here’s the body,” Carl said, without any emotion.

That hurt a bit, just the way he said it.

“So when did she die?” I asked Carl so quietly that I would have thought he didn't hear me, but he responded.

“We don't know exactly, but we can approximate the time of death to be around 11:30 PM,” said Carl.

My next thought was, “Who found the body?”

Carl said in an instant, “It was found by the principal, Ms. Cropper.”

I remembered Ms. Cropper. She hated our Chinese school for no reason other than that we were there at night, but I was snapped out of my thoughts when I noticed a very interesting fact about my teacher’s corpse.

“Where is all the blood?” I asked Carl, trying to avoid looking directly at my old teacher, since it made me sick to my stomach.

“We found minute traces of the victim’s blood on the custodian’s equipment,” he said.

I was about to ask Carl another question when Ms. Cropper burst onto the scene.

“Hey! How is the investigation going?” she asked in her high and far too squeaky voice.

“Fine, really, but could you please leave the crime scene?” I asked.

She just stood there not moving, with her unwavering smile plastered on her face. In all honesty, she always had creeped me out.

 

“Oh! I just thought I would tip you off on who I think the killer is,” she said like it was the most normal thing in the world.

“What! Who!” I almost yelled but resisted the urge to.

“Oh I think it's Mr. Rogers the custodian because of the lack of blood,” Ms. Cropper said while checking her nails. I almost agreed with her when I remembered something about the school that could give us solid evidence against the perp.

“Why don't we check the cameras on the doors?” I asked Ms. Cropper, when she replied far too quickly for my liking.

“We don't have to do that!” I could see the beads of sweat rolling down her face. She was being very suspicious, so I pushed the idea.

“Yes, let’s see the footage from the cameras,” I expected so many things, but Ms. Cropper pulling out a gun and pointing it at me was not one.

“It's too late now, I'll have to shoot you now,” her hand quivering so much she pulled the trigger by accident.

The shot missed me, but I heard Carl scream out in pain. when I looked back at him I saw his leg, it was bleeding profusely and then I heard Ms. Cropper running for the door.

“I need backup following the perp and an ambulance at Nature’s Path elementary school now!” I shouted into my walkie talkie while taking off for the door.

 

I was tailing Ms. Cropper’s car when she took a sharp left turn and I almost crashed into someone else's car and barely was able to pursue her. I saw her run down an alley and I got out of my car to follow her.

“You don't have to do this!” I shouted down the alley ready to pursue her, but Ms. Cropper came out of the shadows with a gun pointed at me and said

“Yes, yes I do”.

The bang resounded throughout the alleyway and suddenly I was falling. The world seemed to slow down, sirens blaring, flashes of red and blue lights appeared before my eyes. The last thing I remember was when the paramedics came and wheeled me away to the ambulance, and I thought to myself, “Where did I go wrong?”  

 

On the exact date of November 20, 2010, at the exact time of 11 a.m., a young girl with two pink ribbons in her hair knocked three times on the door of the biggest house in her town. It was the kind of estate that looked like it should exist in a movie, for the grass in the yard was too green, the paint on the house too white, the expensive car perched in the driveway shining bright with freshly applied polish. The door was over twice the girl’s size, unsurprisingly, as the rest of the house towered above her as well.

The girl could barely contain her excitement as she mentally rehearsed her speech one last time. Waiting for someone to come to the door, her heart fluttered and she sighed, testing to see if she could see her breath in the winter air. After an excruciating moment had passed, she decided to ring the doorbell as well, and immediately she heard the sound of the bell reverberating across the cavernous rooms inside.

When there was still no answer, she rang the doorbell again, and then again, and then again. Finally, the door opened and there appeared a woman. She was elderly, maybe in her seventies or eighties the girl guessed, with a frown etched upon on her face and gray hair that stuck up as if she had rubbed a balloon against it. The woman’s hunched frame barely reached above the height of the ten-year-old girl standing in front of her.

“What do you want?” croaked the old woman.

“Hello, ma’am. My name is Molly and I -”

“No,” the woman interrupted, “whatever this is about, whatever it is you’re selling, I don’t want it.”

Molly was stunned. In her three years of selling Girl Scout cookies in the neighborhood, she had never received a “No” from an anyone. In fact, she had earned a badge last year for selling the most boxes of cookies in her Girl Scout troupe - one her proudest accomplishments in all her ten years of life.

Molly pushed her blond hair away from her face, trying to hide any sign of frustration. “But -”

“I told you, I don’t want to buy anything. Now leave before I call the police.” It was at this time that Molly noticed that the old woman’s right hand was tightly gripping a phone.

“You can’t call the police on me. My father is in charge of the police of this town,” Molly lied, “and he told me that it was legal to come sell these.”

“Well, you’re on my property right now, so this is trespassing.”

Molly quietly pondered the woman’s statement for a moment. Then, with a smirk, she turned around and walked down the front porch steps, down the driveway, and to the sidewalk, where she abruptly stopped. “This sidewalk is public property. So it’s not trespassing. And I can stay here as long as I want.”

The old woman opened her mouth as if about to say something, and then, seemingly speechless, she closed it and walked back into her house, slamming the door behind her.

“What a mean old lady,” Molly said to herself as the door shut, and she began to sulk as she walked away. As Molly glanced back at the preeminent house of the woman, she was filled with an odd determination: a determination to sell a box of Girl Scout cookies to the mean old lady on 230 Delaware Avenue.

The next Saturday, at exactly 11 a.m., Molly once again rang the doorbell of the old woman’s house. Through the window in the door, she could see that a light was on, so she waited until the same woman wearing the same frown came to the door. Then, she began her speech.

“Ma’am, I would really appreciate it if you would -”

“You’re back - again?” The woman sighed. “Do you even know the meaning of the word ‘no’?”

Molly shrugged. She walked to the sidewalk and sat cross-legged on the ground, looking up at the woman.

“What’s it going to take for you to leave me alone, stubborn girl?” The woman’s phone began to ring, and she looked down at it distractedly before addressing Molly again. “Do you want my money? You can have my money, if that’s what it’ll take for you to leave me alone.” The old woman hurriedly pulled a crumpled twenty-dollar bill from her pocket and extended it towards Molly, who ran up to take it happily, turned around, and walked back towards her own house.

Molly came back the next week, and the week after that, and the week after that, every time exactly at 11 a.m.. The old woman continued to give money to Molly almost instinctively now. In fact, Molly began to wonder if the old woman may even like their weekly routine. It became a sort of weekly appointment for them, Molly knocking on the door, the woman answering and stepping out onto the front porch, and then, eventually, bribing Molly not to sit on her sidewalk.

Christmas Day, December 25th, eventually approached, and, just like any day, the old woman woke up. She was Christian, but she didn’t believe in extravagant ceremonies or celebrations, and she didn’t have any close friends or family, so she went about her day like any other. At 11:30 a.m., she felt like something was missing, it was driving her crazy until she realized that the girl, Molly, had not come to her door. She decided to check the door anyway, out of habit more than curiosity. When she opened her door, however, she was shocked to see dozens and dozens of small boxes on her front porch and lining her driveway. Each box was individually wrapped, with a red bow sitting on the top of each one. The woman picked up the box closest to her and saw that it had a small note attached to it which read: “Thank you for all of your purchases over this pass month. Here are the Girl Scout cookies that you ordered.”

Out of sight of the woman, Molly stood on the sidewalk and watched as the old woman read the letter and gingerly unwrapped the box she was holding. She saw the woman examine the box closely, open it up, and eat one of the cookies. Then, though it was hard to tell through the thick haze of a winter blizzard, Molly thought that she saw the tiniest hint of a smile.

Zoey was only eleven when, on one summer day in her backyard, she lived a thousand lives. This is quite impressive, really, when considering the effort that even one life requires.

First, she hit a homerun in the biggest baseball stadium in the world. Then, she took a ladder up to the sky and, after exchanging cordial greetings with the Big Dipper, she hula hooped with Saturn’s rings. After landing back on Earth, Zoey ventured fearlessly into the forest, an explorer discovering a new territory.  In order to make sure no wild Tyrannosaurus rexes were approaching, she began climbing a tree, when, suddenly, she lost her grip and came crashing down.

It was late in the day, so the sun was sinking beneath the horizon and the sky was turning into cotton candy colors when an injured Zoey ran inside. In her backyard she only left behind overturned stones and muddy footprints, secret clues of the people she had pretended to be.

That night, when Zoey’s arm healed and she went to bed, she closed her eyes and promised herself she would come back tomorrow, for there are always more

games to play and adventures to have.

 

“Number ABC784?” A guy was calling the attendance. 

“Yes.” I answered.

“District 7 cleared.” The guy said and left the hall. Few minutes later, daily announcement came out.

“Today is December 23rd, 2207. Our community is always keeping you safe. Member who is trying to escape from this building will get punished and they can not return to the community. If you see someone trying to escape, immediately press any alarm bells on the wall. When the siren is on, you have to stay where you are.” The women with synthetic voice announced all rules. Every one was not paying attention to the rules that we hear everyday. We were waiting for the prize winner. Prize winner achieved chance to live at the safest place in the planet.

“Today’s winners for the release are………. ABC620, ABC893! Congratulations!” People who got called was smiling. Four guys came and escorted them to the secret door. We were looking their appearance from behind with an envious eyes. 

 After the morning announcement, my routine was same everyday. I went to Mr. Covet’s office and shared my dreams and thinkings. 

“Welcome, number ABC784. Okay, so tell me about your dreams.” He said.

“Yesterday, I saw small blue light flying through the room. I felt like I had to follow the light. It flew through the building and I was standing in front of the secret door. You know the door which winners for the release use to go to the safest place, right?” He nodded, and I kept sharing my dream.

“I was standing in front the door. I thought I was the winner. However there were no one near me. So I noticed that I wasn’t a winner. But still I felt inconvenience. I just wanted to imagine how the outside will be. I slowly put my ear to the door. Suddenly, I heard a scream. The scream was terrified and the creature at the other side of the door smacked the door and the opaque door turned red. I guess it was a blood. I felt that the creature -- or the winner, was willing to get out from there.”

“Hmmm..” Mr.Covet murmured. His face was mysterious. I couldn't guess what he was thinking. I continued my words.

 “Mr.Covet, I am really confused now. Everyday the woman in the announcement said world at the other side of the door is filled with hope, peace and happiness. However, inside of my dream the world was filled with fear, hardship, and hopelessness.” I said. I expected Mr. Covet to give a solution of my dream. His answer was no sincerity.

“ It is just a dream. Don’t take it so serious.” I noticed that he was different than normal. It was awkward but I knew that I couldn't get any help from him. I spend whole day thinking about my dream. 

That night I couldn't go to sleep. I crawl down from bed. It was dark and loomy. The only light was the light coming under from the door. I slowly walked toward the door. From the crack of the door, I could see no one was at the hall way. I secretly walked to the secret door. On the way, I saw the small blue light which was similar to the light in my dream.  I followed the light, and there was a hole next to the secret door. Before I never noticed a hole. It was a ventilator from other side of the door. 

“Wow…….” I lost my mind and watched what is going on. There was a ABC893 lying in the bed. People were surrounding him. There was a guy who covered his hairs and his mouth with white cloth. In his hand there was hose connected to the machine. He put the hose on ABC893’s mouth. Suddenly, ABC893 fell into sleep. Few minutes later, woman who looked exactly same as ABC893 came into the room. They looked exactly same. The only difference was the name. People who was standing around ABC893 called her “Ms. Kristin” like we call Mr. Covet. 

“Is it true that I can use it’s legs to walk again?” Woman named Kristin said to the guy, holding the hose.

“Yes. After few hours, you will have a new legs which is exactly same as your legs you lost by the accident.” He replied to her.

“Nice. This is why people need their own bionic man.” She laughed.

“ Bionic man what are they talking about? Why there are so many people out there?” I talked to myself.  Later, Kristin and ABC893 sented to the other room. I slowly opened the ventilator and jumped down to the floor. I walked outside of room, and there was many people wearing white jackets running through the hallway. I looked around and found a template with the drawing of two men standing together. 

Is there any ways to recover my injury like you never get an injury?

There is a one good way. Bionic Men.

Just call to the number below and you will get all the information about the bionic man.

By all information that I got, I -- including all citizens in our community, am bionic man which is created by humans. Reasons why we are made is for scientific experiment, and recovery of injury. When we get released, it means our original person is injured and we are going to provide our body parts for them. I made a detailed notes about all facts and shared it to every other citizens. 

“Even though we are bionic man and made by science, we still need our basic rights” All citizens in the community agreed with me. 

“We need to escape from this malice building.” Someone said. We started to make a plan. During 3 to 5 am, we are all going through the hole and going to the world where real humans live. Quietly everyone escaped from the building and covered our tracks by being part of the real life society. 

After 17 years, now I am concealing from the people that I am a bionic man, but working as a writer of scientific article I put the reality of bionic mans and why we need rights for them.

 

 

She’s there. In that place again. She hears the cries of terror and the spitting flames and everything is just as she remembers it. The two Monsters are there too, lying on their backs, unmoving. Kneeling beside them, she tries everything to make them stir.

 

Nothing. Not even a twitch; not a sound escapes their painted black lips. She screams and screams: wake up, wake up, wake up…

 

“WAKE UP!” she pants heavily, slightly shocked by her own voice. Sitting up, in bed, no longer at that place. She looks out the window. There’s snow falling.

 

Her robe shrouds her frame apathetically as she shuffles her bare feet out of the room. She opens the front door, and the angry wind hits her; she can almost taste the bitterness of the blow. Her eyes automatically narrow, tearing from the cold. She doesn’t care about the few icy flakes that make themselves at home on her carpet. She is, in fact, fond of the slight mess left behind. Because it feels like she’s welcoming someone home. Welcoming them home.

 

She misses the way they ran circles around the table, with laughter so pure and unearthly, with lips spreading back to reveal a perfect, incomplete set of teeth. ‘Tag’ was their favorite little game - oh, how they loved to chase and chase each other. One of the boys would eventually get tired and stop in his tracks; the other would not stop in time and end up crashing into him, causing them to fall onto the carpet, giggling like they’d never been happier.

 

She’d smile down at them from her chair and tell them to get ready for school. She’d fetch their bags and lunches and shoo them towards the door. The screech of the school bus braking would send them bolting as they turned their heads slightly, yelling their goodbyes.

 

Blinking tears away, she shuffles past the carpet and out the door, dressed only in a robe and slippers. She shudders but walks on, staggering her way down the short flight of steps. The yard is buried under a thick blanket of snow, and she smiles because they would’ve been happy that school was cancelled. She closes her eyes as she remembers them hastily wearing their scarves (only to please her, of course) before running out into the yard. They’d flop onto this crunchy bed of frost and sweep and flap their limbs back and forth, back and forth.

 

“Look, Mummy! Look! Angels!” they’d shout in triumph.

 

“You’re right, darlings,” she’d reply. “Why don’t you go make some more?”

 

Her eyes snap open when someone, a neighbour, asks her why the hell are you stepping out in this weather dressed like that? She doesn’t know what to say or do, so she goes back inside. Her hands, fingers, feet, toes, everything has gone numb.

 

“Guess what, mummy?” one of them said to her one day when they’d gotten off the bus and come inside. “We learnt about Frankenstein today.”

 

“What did you learn, sweetheart?”

 

“Frankenstein’s Monster wasn’t very well-liked,” he said, pouting. “Our teacher showed us a picture and all the girls screamed. But we’d be his friend, you know, if he was real! And we’d make angels with him. In the snow.” He smiled, showing off two little black spaces where teeth should’ve been.

 

Once back inside the house, she closes the door and inches her way to the fireplace. She slowly regains feeling in her limbs. She stares at the crackling flames. She stares as they crackle and spit and jump and dance.

 

The boys were thrilled to go on their first trick-or-treating around the neighbourhood. Even the other parents were excited to see two adorable Frankenstein’s Monsters asking for candy.

 

“Mummy, mummy, let’s go!” one of them whined, gripping her hand and tugging on it.

 

“Mummy, mummy, they’ve all started!” the other whimpered.

 

“Yes, alright, darlings, let’s go,” she opened the door and chuckled as her two Monsters dashed past her legs, roaring, growling, chasing each other.

 

The sounds of her Monsters grew fainter as they ran out onto the street. Her back was to them as she locked the door, and it had only been a few seconds—

 

An agonizing, ugly screech. A crash so thunderous, so deafening, that her eardrums rang and the ringing did not stop until it scuttled like a vile spider across her skull.

 

She turned.

 

The blood in her veins froze solid, and her limbs were overtaken by a numbness so strong she could have collapsed if she had not run; and how she ran, ran, pushed her way past all the neighbours and their children.

 

A blistering wave of heat cut through the crisp, fall air, and it slapped her in the face when she reached the the middle of the street. She just stared. She stared at the car, crumpled like paper against the tree. She stared at the crackling, spitting flames that jumped at her.

 

Her two Monsters lay there, face paint smeared across their unmoving faces. No longer roaring or chasing or smiling or laughing. They lay on the grey, scarlet-splattered asphalt, their limbs spread.

 

She couldn’t hear a thing, couldn’t feel a thing as her knees buckled and she fell, almost prostrate, before her Monsters. They lay with their limbs spread, like they were making angels.

 

The flames flickered and danced, and they spat in her face.

 

It’s much warmer now. She thinks of her Monsters on the asphalt. How cold they must have been on the ground. She remembers how cold they were when she cupped their faces in her hands before being pulled away. The poor things, she thinks with deep sadness, they will never feel the warmth of the fireplace again. They used to sit in front of it, cross-legged, listening to her tell their favourite story, the story about the Monster.

 

The clock perched on the wall ticks, tocks, ticks, tocks. Time to try again.

 

She rises from the couch and shuffles over to the door leading to her basement. The door creaks open and she pulls the string, and with a click casts a dull light over the staircase . As she walks down the wooden steps, she recalls how much they loved the Monster - they would read the novel over and over again; watch the movies over and over again. She always allowed them to do so as many times as they wanted, for a good mother does everything to make her children happy. And she smiles at this thought, because her work in the basement would make them happy, and so, she is a good mother.

 

Two long tables, side by side, and she smiles even wider knowing that her Monsters are kept warm by the musty air that lingers above them, like a pendulum suspended in motion.

 

“Hello, my angels,” she whispers, leaning down to plant a kiss on one of the pale, cold foreheads. “Mummy’s here.”

 

The Monsters do not stir from their deep slumber. Their eyes remain shut, their marble-like white skin mottled with scars and stitches from her many attempts to wake them. She gingerly takes one of their hands in hers, and somehow its lifeless grip is so much stronger than when it grabbed her that Halloween night. She quickly lets go.

 

“You’ll wake up soon, my angels. You know mummy promised you that, right?”

 

They do not reply, like always. She feels like she is playing their favourite game with them. Oh, how they loved to chase and be chased...it was their favourite, and she is comforted by that. There is comfort in that.

 

Tonight, she will try again. And she will keep trying until she, like Doctor Frankenstein, brings her Monsters to life.

God save us.

 

I am a priest in a parish church in Rome. What was once a holy city; a safe, blessed place, has become an abyss of agony and terror. The people’s faith has been challenged. They cannot see the light of God past the blood shrouding their vision.

 

The filthy, diseased streets teem with weeping, suffering townsfolk - nonetheless, still - begging God to take the pain away. They thrust their blackened fingers towards the sky as they sob over the piles of pustular bodies. Hopeless. Beyond salvation.

 

Until he came.

 

He came in a long, black robe and towered over the crawling, cowering sick. His face was masked by a massive beak. We had heard this man was a doctor, and rejoiced at his arrival. He could heal us. A sign from God. Heavensent.

 

I rushed to the doorstep of my parish to greet him. He was doing something in the city square. He opened rows of cages at the bottom of his wagon. A cacophony of squealing. A screaming black ocean of rats spilled onto the streets. The doctor departed on his wagon.

 

Now, I write with hours to live.

 

God help us. God save us all.