PSYCHIC STEAMPUNK PARADE

Gray Kane

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Gray Kane

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CHAPTER ONE

Ten-foot pink chopper. Sword backrest. Eagle hood ornament. On a turn, the foot peg hit the pavement. The 300 rear tire slid out from under her. Josie felt alive.

She had long legs. White tattoos of thigh-high vine-and-leaf stockings. On her inner right ankle, a tattoo of an 1869 Brass Knuckle-Pistol Combo tied by a thin leather strap. In a tattoo universe, she could fight even on her back. On her outer right thigh, an 1851 Colt with a gold-finish 7.5” octagonal barrel and golden grip. On the left, another tattoo of a white garter. Tucked into it, a Remington Double Derringer. Hanging on her outer hip, an 1874 Schofield with an engraved nickel-plate 8” barrel and ivory grip. No matter how she fell, how she kicked her legs—in a tattoo universe, she could draw and finish the job, and still look stylish ...

Which she practiced when she wasn’t out riding … or if who she was riding would play along. She had decorated not just these, but all of her tattooed weaponry, and even their real counterparts, with silencers. As she told one male visitor, “Don’t think of a silencer as a muffle.” Standing over him in a bathrobe, she traced his lips with her high heel. “Not like a man's putting his hand over my mouth. Some call silencers ‘suppressors.’” She hooked the heel in his mouth. “A silencer doesn’t suppress anyone.” Slowly pulled the corner of his lip.

His tongue licked her heel.

“A silencer frees up air pressure, like you wanted to say something really big, but couldn't open your mouth wide enough to get it out."

His thick hands gripped her tattooed ankle.

"Not enough room to escape. The pressure. It's going to explode." Josie bent her knee, flexed her calf. "But the silencer expanded your mouth,” Yanked his lip wide to the side, “by twenty or even thirty times.” (He made an inarticulate attempt to say “ow.”) “It's given what you had to say room to breathe. It's given what you had to get off your tits enough freedom—.” She looked not at him, but inside herself. Her glossy eyes stared towards the popcorn ceiling. “Your cheeks don’t have to explode. You don’t have to yell anymore." She looked down at him. "You can speak softly.” She snapped his lip back against his teeth.

“You make it sound like the silencer is doing the gunshot a favor.” He rubbed his unshaven cheek.

“Kind of romantic, isn’t it?" She stabbed her heel into the pillow by his head. "Guns are romantic. They’re about rights and freedom. But without a silencer, that freedom is loud and obnoxious.” She looked down at the man under her satin sheets, between her tattooed legs. “True freedom doesn’t have to draw attention to itself. Making a statement isn’t the point. Just the statement is. True freedom speaks softly.”

“And carries a big stick?”

“Shut up. Some guy made that up.” She jabbed her high heel into his crotch. The man groaned. “True freedom just speaks softly." He grabbed her leg. He struggled to push it from him. "Because there’s never any threat of exploding.” Her gesture became gentler. His hands relaxed their grip.

Josie bent down and retrieved from her purse a six-shooter with a silencer. His eyes widened. She unscrewed the silencer from the barrel.

“I made this one at work. Inside, there’s an extension with holes. The holes allow heat to escape the barrel into a larger chamber.” Her slender fingers handed the silencer to him. “The bullet passes through a caliber-specific hole in a divider, called a ‘baffle.’”

“Baffle,” the man repeated, like a child learning a new word.

Josie smiled at him. “The spaces between each baffle let the air expand—like my arms, spreading open a hot robe.” She spread open her robe, exposed the white tattooed wings that cupped her breasts. An eagle's talons clutched out from her ribs, as if kicking to free its head from the cleavage. “The baffles are like beaded curtains that brush the robe from me.” She pushed her breasts forward, wiggled her shoulders until the robe slid down her back onto the mattress.

“A warrior princess.”

“You’re going to regret you used that word.” Josie descended. “Say it. Warrior goddess.”

She accelerated into the sunrise. Unbraided strands of her hair fluttered behind her like flags.

Someday in the not-too-far future, she will tell a friend, “I got the tattoos before I knew what they were for.”

“What did you think they were for?” her friend will ask.

“To scare off weak men. Challenge the ones who thought they were tough. While I speed past them in a bikini.” Her right hand will rev an imaginary throttle. “Vroom, vroom.” Then she'll wrinkle her nose and show her teeth.

Josie wore a leather bikini top and matching shorts, so that in a motorcycle accident, at least she’d protect her T&A. People told her sleeves and pant legs retain moisture and protect from dehydration. But South Florida's summer sunrises offered enough moisture. And she liked scars. A scar blurred the Remington rifle on her back, as if life's shutter speed were too slow to capture her withdrawing it.

When she downshifted, Josie backfired flames. She knew she needed to clean her carburetor, but then what would she do to the cars that tailgated her? How would she replace that orange and black shotgun blast to the front bumper?

Only hours before, a little girl giggled.

Josie referred to herself in third person when telling stories to her niece. On Saturday nights, Josie's sister provided dinner without interrogating Josie about her lifestyle, and in exchange, Josie tucked Isabella to bed, telling her stories without letting her sleep, so that Josie's sister and brother-in-law could spend both Saturday night alone and Sunday morning free.

“Then one night she had a dream that started her great awakening. She crawled under her satin sheets, her mind racing." Josie crawled into bed with Isabella. "Not about anything in particular. Her mind leapt from topic to topic. Her mind moved too fast. Hopped from thought to thought. Then her mind landed on thoughts she didn’t recognize. They weren’t her thoughts.”

“What do you mean?” asked her niece, curled under her Strawberry Shortcake comforter. "Whose thoughts were they?" Isabella grabbed the comforter, crumpled it by her lips.

Josie withdrew a small aluminum ashtray and a pack of Winston’s from her purse, placed the ashtray on top of the scratch-and-sniff stickers on the nightstand, drew a cigarette from the pack, lit it, exhaled, leaned the cigarette against the ashtray. “I know this doesn’t make sense, but she was jumping from mind to mind.” On this particular night, Josie had something she needed to get off her chest. She pulled a pack of candy cigarettes from her purse and offered one to her niece.

Isabella put it between her lips and puffed. Her breath pushed powder smoke into the air.

“Don’t get me wrong. She knew she was asleep." Josie leaned into the little girl. "But her thoughts weren’t her own," she whispered into her niece's ear. "She was in someone else’s mind." Josie pulled back. "And she could tell by how different the thoughts were that she wasn’t staying in any one mind. She kept jumping from mind to mind. Even the languages were different.”

“She could read other people’s minds?” Isabella puffed her candy cigarette intensely.

Josie nodded. She grabbed her own cigarette and took an equally intense drag. She rolled the cigarette’s ash along the ashtray's edge. “Her mind was racing faster and faster. Then suddenly she realized she wasn’t just in one mind anymore.”

Josie looked at the candy cigarette, the way the girl uncomfortably adjusted it in her lips, like a foreign object she could never make comfortable, no matter how much she feigned otherwise.

“I know this doesn’t make sense, but she was in multiple minds at once.”

The little girl shook her head.

Josie nodded.

The little girl shook her head.

Josie nodded. “Her mind kept racing. And the faster her mind went, the more minds she was in at once.”

“Nuh-huh.”

“Uh-huh. And then she realized she wasn’t the only one doing this. There was something else there, and it noticed her.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“She was scared, too. She had no control over what she was doing. She felt like a little girl running faster and faster just to keep from falling. Have you ever done that?"

Isabella nodded. "Once—. There was this time—. When I ran so fast—. I went 'eeeeeh.' I couldn't even talk. I could only go 'eeeeeh.'"

"That's really fast. So you know what I'm talking about. You were running so fast you couldn't control your words."

"I couldn't control my words. I could only go 'eeeeeh.'"

"But this other thing, it didn't speak, but if it did, I bet it could control its words. It was in complete control. It seemed infinitely old. I don’t think it was human. I don’t think this thing even had a body. It seemed really upset she was there. And she thought for sure it was going to get her.”

Isabella wrestled with the covers. “Was it evil?”

“Have you ever been to another family’s house and they had an attack dog? The dog sniffs you, runs around the house to see where everyone is, runs back to see where you are, the direction you’re going in, and then it runs back to see where everyone else is, always trying to map where you are in relation to everyone else. This thing was like an attack dog. I know this doesn’t make sense. The closest I can describe it is to say it was focused on the same three or four minds, but it kept rushing over to her. Then it raced ahead to see where she was heading next, then back to her, then back to the same three or four minds. Always mapping out where she was in relation to them.

“Her mind was racing faster and faster, in more and more minds at once. The attack dog got smaller and smaller. Suddenly her mind went from infinitely fast to a complete stop."

The little girl bit into her cigarette. "Why did she stop?"

“She was in all minds at once. She still knew her position in bed, same as you know your position in bed right now. She knew she was asleep. But she wasn’t just in bed; she was in all minds at once.

“And then she felt this collective mind move, like over here," Josie touched the girl's temple, "as if the whole right side moved, but she knew she didn’t move it. There was something else there with her.”

“Was it the attack dog?” The girl crunched her cigarette in her teeth.

“You know how the attack dog seemed infinitely old? This thing wasn’t like that. It seemed like an infant. Like it barely knew how to move this body. And she could feel its anxiety. It was scared. It was reaching up, like a baby in a crib.” Josie's hand reached into the air and closed its fingers around nothing.

“What happened?”

Josie grabbed her cigarette. “She got scared. She worried about that attack dog and her body, because she wasn’t there to protect it." Josie took a deep drag.

Isabella puffed on her half-eaten cigarette.

"Suddenly her mind went from completely still to infinitely fast again, and she fell from all minds at once to racing through multiple minds, only slower and slower." She mashed the cigarette into the ashtray. "The attack dog followed her again. It seemed really concerned about what she was doing, always mapping where she was in relation to those same three or four minds." She leaned back into a squatting position. Her tattooed legs folded beneath her leather shorts. "As she got slower and slower, the attack dog got bigger and bigger.” Josie expanded her arms, lay back at the foot of the bed, and held a huge imaginary object over her head.

“And then what?”

“She woke up. No, but that’s not all. She sat up.” Josie sat up. “There were four people standing at the foot of her bed: you, a teenage boy, an old woman, and me.” Josie touched the little girl’s button nose. “She was lying there looking at you and me. We didn’t look like people in a dream. We were really there. We were staring at her. The old woman looked amused. I don’t know what I looked like."

"What did I look like?"

"You looked really, really concerned."

"I was concerned."

"Yeah, and then she realized something. Not that she was us, but that we were her. I know this doesn’t make sense. But she had this distinct feeling. She wasn’t us, but we were her.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know what I mean. How am I supposed to know what that means? Then she fell back into a short but deep sleep. And she woke up as if she hadn’t slept a wink. She was exhausted all that day. I mean try welding silencers with no sleep.”

"You weld silencers."

"Yes." Josie nodded and pinched her cheek. "I weld silencers."

Just before dawn, she climbed from her niece's window, knocking over the Hello Kitty alarm clock. "Go to sleep," she said before closing the window. "And don't let the attack dog get you." She slammed the window shut.

The sky turned from purple to pink, pink to orange.

That dream hurt Josie's mind. She had hoped to pass that horror onto someone else, someone who couldn't understand it but could take it from her anyway, so she could relax and just enjoy the moment. But she couldn't. At least her niece didn't seem to have the same dream, didn't seem to recognize what Josie was saying. That would've been too much.

She popped the clutch. Downshifted. Backfired flames at the dissipating darker sky behind her.

The old woman from her dream was Mrs. Kurtz, the next person she usually encountered on Sunday mornings. Part of Josie wanted to take a different route home. But the rest of her knew she had to find Mrs. Kurtz, verify once and for all it was just a dream—as much as she could verify from an Alzheimer's victim.

Josie knew the old woman only from finding her in the middle of Harajuku Street every Sunday morning. And from what Josie could tell, her weekly attempts to corral Mrs. Kurtz morphed into the same recurring nightmare in the old woman's mind. Now, before Josie could say or do anything, the old woman always already had started running.

Josie reached the roundabout on Harajuku Street, leaned left, accelerated, leaned more, accelerated some more, leaned some more. She scraped her left heel and foot peg. The rear tire bumped up and to the right. Josie smiled as she straightened the bike. She glanced at her frayed heel and shook her head. "Good shoes or good times." She revved her engine. "Good times."

Josie slowed to navigate the cosplay teens who hung out there on Sunday mornings. In their world, it was still Saturday night. In their world, everyday was Halloween. They clogged the street in front of the comic shop, Kigurumi Pajama Outlet, Gurololi Latte .... In Japan, Harajuku was where U.S. occupation soldiers lived with their families. Japanese teens visited to experience a different culture. After occupation, Japanese teens visited to become that different culture: often disfigured representations of the West. In Bogotá, Columbians adopted this Western grotesque, and it quickly spread to Miami. Here on Harajuku Street, Caucasians now became global distortions of themselves: platform shoes accentuated their Western height; knee-high socks; Victorian-style knee-length dresses, blouses, petticoats, headdresses; Catholic school-girl uniforms; artificially orange tans and bleached blonde hair; white undershirts, sleeveless denim jackets, greaser haircuts; Elvis jumpsuits; Elvis haircuts; anime body suits in bikinis; anime body suits in French-maid outfits; masks with excessively large, round, blue eyes; vampire-pale complexions .... The teens accentuated traces of Japanese culture, too: its samurai and geisha heritage, post-nuclear fears of genetic mutations, rapid technological modernization to replace the wiped-out national infrastructure .... Robots with katanas. Maiko hairstyles. Octopod genetalia. Every Sunday morning, Josie rode down Harajuku Street, and every Sunday morning, the sea of cosplay teens parted to stare at her. Josie idled to stare at them.

As the crowd parted, Josie noticed Mrs. Kurtz standing in the middle of Harajuku Street. She wore slippers, bathrobe, curlers. If she weren't bent over from age, she would've fit right in—especially since she was surrounded by a pack of teen emulators: blue, green, pink slippers; knee-high stockings; blue, green, pink bathrobes over white nightgowns; blue, green, pink curlers. Their costumes were lampoonist versions of Mrs. Kurtz. Their costumes were lampoonist versions of elderly house moms.

Josie hit the breaks, cut the engine, pulled the bike back onto its kickstand along the side of the road. "Mrs. Kurtz, please tell me you have your keys this time. Is your daughter not awake yet?" She stepped from the bike, but the frayed heel snapped. Josie kicked her heels from her feet. "Don't make me chase you. I'm not in the mood. And if you scratch my face again—." She rubbed the thin, faded scratches on her cheek.

But Mrs. Kurtz always already had started running—or at least waddling, quickly shuffling her slippered feet through the crowd of teens.

The emulators blocked Josie from following. They patted their palms with rolling pins. "Why you got to take obaasan?"

"She's not your obaasan. She's someone else's okaasan." Josie turned to see Mrs. Kurtz's daughter, a woman in her thirties wearing suit pants, robe, curlers, pushing through a crowd of Pokémon, calling out the word mom. "And here she comes now."

"Moralfag."

Josie took the hint. This whole street was a live-action message board, and she had to play by its rules. She withdrew her phone from her leather shorts, logged into the Harajuku Street forum, and monitored the real-time photos: Josie from the left, Josie from the right, Josie from behind, a close-up of her ass. People posted "fight," "my monies on roadwarrior," "FINISH HIM," "All your base are belong to us," "She may be tough but shes no ninja," "your mothers a ninja," "LOL roundhouse isnt a kick, its a description of teh johns round ur house," "can my mama haz ninja skills pleaz?", "the only martial art ur mama knows is abortion," ....

Mrs. Kurtz's daughter reached Josie, but the teen emulators blocked her, too. "That's my mother," she argued.

They patted rolling pins into their palms. "But she's our Original Poster."

"Your what?" She opened her eyes wide and blinked incessantly. "Listen. Whatever. I don't care. I'm taking my mother."

The emulators' faces creased. Their fists clenched their rolling pins.

Josie grabbed Mrs. Kurtz's daughter by the elbow and yanked her away. "Let's take a walk." The woman struggled to free her elbow, but Josie gestured to her phone: the real-time photos posted in the Harajuku Street forum. "We can't bully our way through them. Too many witnesses."

"Too many witnesses for what?"

"Violence."

"What violence?"

Josie used the photos to orient herself without making eye contact.

A bear suit molested a fifteen-year-old girl in a British phone booth. Dora the Explorer socks folded around his fur. Knee in his meshed eye. Calf across his back. Under her leg, his plastic snout sighed, fogged the glass.

Josie stayed focused on her phone. "They’re pretending to be your mother. They're replacing her." She shook her head at her phone.

"What?"

"She's the image of a stay-at-home mom. They’d probably never seen one in person. They have to give her image meaning in their world." Josie shook her head at her phone.

"Dude, they're just fucking with her," Mrs. Kurtz's daughter said mockingly.

Josie looked up at her. "And I'm fucking with you." She returned her attention to the forum. "Sort of."

Mrs. Kurtz's daughter looked disheveled, mostly because she hadn't finished dressing yet. "I'm calling the police."

"What are you stupid? You live upstairs. Your mother gets out regularly. You don't think they'll retaliate?"

The woman lowered her head full of curlers. She let out a sigh. "Why are you helping?"

With her phone, Josie mapped her surroundings. "I always help."

"No, today's different."

"Yes, today's different." Josie searched for free copies of a song. "Look. I have a plan. Do you want my help or not?"

"Yes. Please. I don't know what to do."

Josie uploaded a song to the forum. "Then sit back and wait for the chaos. And then follow my lead."

Josie heard the sounds of a snare drum from someone else's phone. Some tall guy with jet-black, highlighted, razor-cut hair—not shaved, but thinned, blunted ends, messy—shouted and waved everyone over. The cosplay teens gathered around his black trench coat. He smiled porcelain fangs. They laughed and synchronized their phones. Soon the sounds of the snare drum and short pitch-enveloped percussive "ahhh" blared throughout the street.

Girls bent over in their gothic lolita dresses, rubbed their panties, licked their fingers. Boys in tight black jeans lifted legs and thrust their pelvises. Pedo Bear pulled his fifteen-year-old partner from the British phone booth, bent her over, bounced his furry belly into her. An emulator in pink curlers climbed the phone booth, dove spread-legs into a declined boy's groin.

"Now's our chance." Josie grabbed the woman's elbow. "Stay close. Walk meekly with your head down. Don't make eye contact." They maneuvered through the crowd. Josie thought she had seen Mrs. Kurtz wander into Gurololi Latte.

A teenager with long, wispy highlighted muttonchops, patchy black goatee, white base on his face, black paint on the tip of his nose and around the lining of his nostrils, a black spot over one eye, a light-brown hoodie with black dog ears—he stopped them from entering. "Yo dawg, I heard you like guns." With the smooth side of an acrylic claw, the boy brushed the tattooed Remington Double Derringer on Josie's inner left thigh. "So I got you some guns to put over your guns so you can fire when you're on fire. And baby, you're on fire right now, so why don't you and I go let off a few rounds if you know what I mean."

Josie opened her purse and pointed at the six-shooter. She tapped the silencer. "When I talk with this one, no one will hear the conversation but you and me." She leaned into him, focused on the backs of his puppy eyes. “I’ve put down dogs before.”

The furry raised his claws in surrender, but blew a kiss.

Josie smiled. She liked his confidence. But he was too young, probably sixteen. Too young to even tease.

Josie and Mrs. Kurtz’s daughter entered Gurololi Latte. The two cashiers wore uniforms of bloody eye patches and designer-bloodstained Victorian dresses, hemmed to expose more thigh and buttocks than the Victorians would have, at least in public. Maybe the cashiers were supposed to say, "Welcome to Gurololi Latte," or something corporate like that. They didn't. But they still greeted people generically, with a humph and a show of their asses.

Three emulators sat around Mrs. Kurtz while she talked not with them but at them and they heard but not listened. One of the emulators noticed Josie. "I thought I told you, you ain't taking our O.P."

Josie pointed outside. "They're daggering."

The emulators and surrounding room of gurololis, anime characters, and vampires giggled, clapped their hands, and rushed outside. Even the Emo kids golf clapped, feigned dissatisfaction, and slowly sauntered through the door.

Mrs. Kurtz's daughter looked at Josie. "That was easy."

"Not over yet. And worse, your mom's got headphones on."

"Where'd she get an mp3 player?"

Josie looked at the mp3 player, read the track name, "Dystopic Dream." She shook her head. "They're i-dosing her. Digital drugs."

"What?"

"Each earpiece plays a different but coordinated pattern to alter her brainwaves."

Mrs. Kurtz's daughter took the earpieces from her mother and held them up to her own ears. "They do!" She put the mp3 player and earpieces in her pocket. "That's so cool. Mom, it's me. Katie. Can you hear me?"

"He's trying to save her," Mrs. Kurtz whispered to her daughter. Mrs. Kurtz looked at Josie. The retracted eyes looked like they struggled to find Josie through the folds. "You thought he might attack you, but he was trying to protect you."

Josie's mind briefly receded from its surroundings.

Katie shook her head. "She has no idea what she's saying." Katie gripped her mother's shoulder. "See if you can stand up, Mom."

Mrs. Kurtz stood but wobbled.

Josie snapped out of it, rushed over, held Mrs. Kurtz’s other shoulder. "It's the i-dosing."

"He was trying to protect you," Mrs. Kurtz insisted. Katie and Josie led her away from the table to the door. Mrs. Kurtz clasped Josie's arm. "He's your guardian," the old woman insisted.

Josie ignored her. "Is there a back entrance to your apartment? We shouldn't walk straight through them. That song's pretty short."

Katie nodded her curlered head. "Around the back of the building."

They exited Gurololi Latte and maneuvered through the dry-humping stragglers at the end of the street. Josie, Katie, and Mrs. Kurtz turned the corner. It wasn't a corner so much as a wall of a boy no one wanted to hump. He struggled to pull his Superman T-shirt over his gut, licked his hand, reaffirmed the Clark Kent part in his black hair. He readied himself for these potential dance partners. Josie, Katie, and Mrs. Kurtz ignored him. His smile faded.

Around him, the cobblestone alley opened up to loosely affiliated anti-socialites: teens who didn't want to associate with the cosplay kids, but who needed to be close enough for the cosplayers to see their refusal to associate. The fat Clark Kent-Superman also didn't participate, but wanted to. Periodically, anti-socialites grumbled and spat at his back for making them look like they had a hidden wish for acceptance.

Josie hoped that once the emulators realized Mrs. Kurtz was gone, they wouldn't follow—because they wouldn't want to get spat at. A tall skinny girl already spat at Josie. She imagined twisting the anorexic bitch into a pretzel, but didn't follow through with it. Josie refused to waste any more time.

On the backside of the building, they dodged mothers who speed-walked with strollers; colorful flag-laden spandex-dipped bicyclists; men in their thirties who jogged or stretched in excessively short shorts, one with a leg up on a fire hydrant—exposing more than his inner thigh.

Between a health-food shoppe and a smoothie café, Katie punched her code into a kiosk to enter a glass door to her marble-coated stairway. Josie and she helped Mrs. Kurtz up the stairs. On the second floor, Katie unlocked three locks and invited them inside her apartment: wooden floors, yellow brick walls, a kitchen with a collection of empty fast-food bags, a faux chimney that supported photos of the president that someone had cut from grocery store magazines, a desk surrounded by and covered in stacks of paper, the keyboard on one of the stacks, the flat-screen monitor hidden behind the papers, the computer's tower presumably between and under other stacks, warped wooden doors that provided peep-show glimpses of an excessively clean room with a militaristically made bed, another room with piles of clothes likely blocking the door from fully opening, and an intensely yellow bathroom cluttered with used yellow towels.

"Excuse the mess," Katie said.

"I imagine it has to be tough living with someone who suffers from Alzheimer's."

"No, she's a neat freak. My mother worked as a secretary for the Armed Forces during the Korean War …. Isn't that right, Mom? … She tried to instill a military ethic into me. She even framed pictures of the president. She hoped I might value authority and order. But it just never took." In the kitchen, Katie retrieved three coffee cups from the painted white wooden cabinets, grabbed the pot from the coffeemaker, and poured them each a cup. "She'd die if she knew she took digital drugs." Katie laughed. "How do you take your coffee?"

Josie looked at her cup, smelled it, cringed. "Like my men, old."

"He's going to test you," Mrs. Kurtz shouted.

Katie laughed. "Sorry. The coffee must have burned. So what's got you so interested in my mother? Does one of your parents suffer from Alzheimer's?"

"He's already testing you."

"We never knew our parents. My sister and I are orphans."

"That must make the two of you really close."

Josie shook her head. "We always grew up in different foster homes. No, my family has nothing to do with this. Your mother—. She was in a weird dream I had. That's all. I wanted to see her. I guess just to make sure the dream wasn’t real."

"Want to tell me about it?" Katie escorted her mother to the recliner, handed her a photo album and her coffee, and pulled a couple of stools to the kitchen counter.

Josie sat and leaned against the counter. "It doesn't make sense. I traveled through other people's thoughts. They were mostly partial thoughts, unintelligible sounds, sometimes only alluding to meaning. But as I moved through multiple minds at once, they created a tapestry, and creatures lived there. It was pretty freaky."

"Like moving through another level of meaning?" With a finger, Katie stirred the cream in her coffee. She shook her curlered head. "Too much serendipity for one day."

Josie looked at her. "What do you mean?"

"Oh look, here's George. He was so handsome then," Mrs. Kurtz said to the photo album.

"Yes, mom. Dad was a handsome man," Katie called back without looking. "I don't know if it's truly serendipitous, but I study sound systems and how they attribute and redistribute meaning in language."

"Are you a linguist?"

"Sort of. Most linguists look at phonemes or parts of words. But I look at sound patterns and how they orchestrate attention." Katie stared at her coffee, the swirls of cream. She pulled her finger from her cup and wiped it on a paper napkin from a fast-food bag. "How they determine what is meaningful or even a 'complete' thought. Just because a group of words make a sentence doesn't mean that sentence feels like a complete thought. Most sentences can't stand alone. They're part of a—like you said—a tapestry."

"I don't get it."

"I got the idea from wandering around Dadeland Mall. There's a store there called 'Mimi Maternity.' Beyond the repetitive sounds, I wondered why it seemed so poetic. I mean think about it: even though it isn't a complete thought, it sounds complete. Say it: Mimi Maternity."

"Mimi Maternity."

"Sounds complete, doesn't it?"

"Yeah."

"If you divide the consonants and vowels into two separate sound systems, you notice something interesting. Ignore the 'r' for now. Think of the 'r' as a mute on a horn: 'er.' Organize just the other consonants, according to where the sounds are formed in the mouth. The consonants divide into two separate, balanced sound systems: m, m, m—a balanced system; and t, n, t—another balanced system. What holds these two systems together is a third system, that of the vowels.

"Think of the vowels in terms of pitch. The vowels also form two systems, only integrated, what they call a 'chevron wave' in music. Like the m, m, m; t, n, t; you've got ee, ee, ee; eh, er, eh. Only that last ee is postponed until the end: ee, ee, eh, er, eh, ee. In the end position, that final 'ee' ties the four systems, the two consonant and the two vowel systems—it ties them together into a single complex system: 'Mimi Maternity.' Does that make sense?"

Josie nodded, shook her head. "Sort of." She rubbed her forehead. "So it's all about balance?"

"Well, in that example it is, but when you apply this interpretive method to a larger system like a poem, you notice other things going on, like the setting up of expectations, sounds of expected return, which then become sounds of desired return, and then subverting those expectations, frustrating desire, setting up alternative expectations, forcing readers to accept a replacement sound in lieu of the original one, changing not only what people desire, but also the way they desire, like the weaker desire for a variety of sounds versus the stronger, more concentrated desire for a single one. When you reorganize the way people desire, like a drug does—." Katie pulled the mp3 player from the pocket of her robe. "You reorganize their brainwaves. How did you say this works?"

Josie opened her eyes wide at the proposed connection with i-dosing. "Each earpiece plays a different but coordinated pattern to alter brainwaves."

"A different but coordinated pattern, like the four different but coordinated patterns in 'Mimi Maternity,' only through prolonged exposure—the longer the exposure, the more intense the effect?" Katie looked at the earpieces and mp3 player in her fingers. "Do you think anybody ever goes to sleep with this on repeat? Listens to it daily? For extended periods of time? When you take—I don't even know what to call them now—live-action drugs? When you take live-action drugs like that, they reorganize the way you desire, your brain patterns, your biochemistry. When live-action drugs organize a demand for immediate satisfaction, you become increasingly frustrated with prolonged means of achieving satisfaction: work, school, relationships .... Anything you have to put a lot of effort into for a more gradual rate of return."

Josie tasted her bitter coffee and grimaced. She pushed the cup away from her. "I get it. Drugs make you lazy."

Katie put the mp3 player on the counter and raised a finger. "Not all drugs work the same way. Some make you more productive." She lowered her finger, tapped Josie's coffee cup. "Some drugs give you drive. Alleviate anxieties. Stabilize hormones. And when it comes to these linguistic systems, they organize not just your frustrations and the way you desire, but also what you desire. Think what would happen if you aligned certain sound systems to decrease or even increase the value of certain words, corporate names, political phrases."

Katie leaned back from the counter and smiled with almost ironic pride. "You know how many offers I've gotten from pharmaceutical companies, corporate management consultants, marketing firms, the entertainment industry, special-interest groups, politicians, even the Pentagon?" Katie chuckled. "Everyone wants me to rework my descriptive method into a prescriptive software. Something that can churn-out audio books, commercials, T.V. shows, videogame narratives, speeches—." Katie pushed the mp3 player away from her. "Seemingly innocent background music." She slapped her hand on the counter and laughed. "With a hidden effect."

"What about the need for prolonged exposure?"

"That's the beauty of this. The words are irrelevant. I can pump out thousands of orchestrations about soap, fast food, fighting aliens, whatever. So long as the right patterns are there to continue what the previous exposure had set up."

"I sort of get what you're saying, but what does this have to do with my dream?"

"Oh. I guess I lost track of my point. Sorry." Katie giggled. She tapped the mp3 player. "I mean obviously the i-dosing was serendipitous. But yeah, your dream. I don't know. Some soldier from the Pentagon mentioned dream software. They wanted to use my method to navigate larger, collective thought systems."

"Navigate?"

"Yeah, the Pentagon was the only one that didn't ask me to design some sort of mind-control device that you'd blast through every T.V., monitor, or earphone. This soldier said they had 'collective brainwave data' that, unless they developed some sort of navigation software, would continue to corral them down certain collective neural pathways. The poor guy didn't understand what he was talking about enough to be any clearer than that. He was merely inviting me to talk with their scientists. But what you said about your dream and moving through multiple minds at once, finding those creatures living in that realm. Combine that with these musical brainwave manipulators." Katie tapped the mp3 player. "It's got me swimming in that soldier's words."

CHAPTER TWO

Josie spent the rest of the morning rehearsing choreographed movements in the ocean and watching the douchebags colonize South Beach. She rose and fell in the slow swell of the warm surface while practicing her kata in the water. After she returned her leg from a kick, the cool gulfstream swirled around her ankles and feet. Baitfish brushed against her thigh. Douchebags oil-slicked the neighboring waters.

On the beach, they waddled as if their muscles were too large to lower their arms, their testicles to close their legs. Josie couldn't tell if they blew kisses at her, or if their lips were just stuck that way. Sweatbands protected their blue contacts from the mineral solutions that melted from their stalagmite hair. They were wet, red rocks ...

Who colonized the beach. From Josie's perspective, New Jersey must have sent representatives to Miami. These representatives convinced the natives that they lacked what they needed to be whole: steroids, hair gel, fake tanning solutions, Botox injections. Natives now covered their real tans with tanning solution; injected Botox into los bembes.

Josie recognized a teen walking onto the beach. The sixteen-year-old furry from Harajuku Street sauntered between the douchebags. The wet, red rocks pointed their angular limbs at him. Chuckled. Snapped photos with their phones. He peeled the dog-ear hoodie from his pale body, covered himself in fake tanning solutions, removed a black marker from his jeans, drew six-pack abs on his thin but soft tummy, spread his arms and legs like he couldn't close them, and waddled into the ocean.

The douchebags whistled, applauded, cheered. Someone who looked like Adam Sandler pointed with his whole body and shouted, "Now there goes a real man!"

The furry's wispy muttonchops floated on the surface. The white paint on his face and black spot over one eye melted from him. Pink patches of skin flushed between the dissipating parcels of his identity.

Josie smiled. His defiance made her smile.

Just above the water, the furry's lips parted to speak. Josie put her finger to them. "Shhh. If you say, 'Yo dawg,' you're going to ruin it."

The teen smiled.

"You followed me here?"

He nodded.

"Bad boy." She kissed an exposed morsel of his cheek. “That’s all you get.”

He opened his lips. She put a finger to them and shook her head. "Right now you're a bad boy. When you're a bad man, find me." She winked, dunked under the surface.

Josie searched underwater for a quick exit so she could get away—before this flirtation with an underage boy got worse. She watched sand billow up from the ocean floor. Sand clouded the water. She swam to where the cold undercurrent cut beneath them. A strand of seaweed flushed past them. Josie breached the warm water for the cold undercurrent for a quick getaway.

The current gripped her. Josie barely kept her feet behind her head. She tumbled along the ocean floor: nose, elbow, hip, knee, eye, shoulder, breast, shin .... Each bump popped a bubble of breath from a lung. Josie flailed until she freed herself from the current.

She surfaced twenty yards from where she had dunked her head. Josie gasped, coughed up water, leaked salt water from her nostrils. Her eyes stung. She waded to shore with pale, salted, exposed wounds. She looked down the shoreline until she saw the furry still searching the water for her.

Josie discretely exited the ocean and ran across the hot sand into the parking lot. The pavement burned her feet more than the sand had. Her chrome was worse. The leather seat burned between her legs. Josie kick started the bike. She peeled from the parking lot.

Only down the road did the ache ease from her head. The wind whipped her wounds. She felt her scratches filling with fluids.

Josie pounded the handlebars.

She pulled off A1A, unlocked her saddlebag, pulled the darkest pair of sunglasses from her purse she could find, covered her eyes, and cried. She didn't know why.

She hated boys. Boys sucked. Furries were worse. Costumes like that accentuated their immaturity. With men, real men, she felt their indifference. It was contagious. Confidence was contagious. She wanted to ride the waves, not get drowned by them.

Josie spent the rest of the day sipping PBR's at a tiki bar watching the three-o'clock rain come and go. To absorb the alcohol, she ate a grouper sandwich on Bimini bread. As the day waned and steam rose from the streets, she played Bahamian ring toss. Soon after sunset, she rode the rest of the ride home.

Her headlight flickered on the road.

She pulled into the driveway of her tropical yard. Josie rented the master bedroom in an old Florida home. The other bedrooms were for rent, but still unoccupied. She had the whole house to herself, but still, she cared only about her room. Walking in her bedroom never ceased to amaze her. An entire wall of sliding-glass doors to her right, French doors from the corner of the wall to her queen-size bed, French doors from her bed to the other corner. Another wall of sliding-glass doors to her left. The bathroom, its Jacuzzi tub and brass fittings, to the left of her; a double row of closets to the right. The room usually made her spin with happiness, but not tonight.

Tonight, her head spun with shame and self-doubt.

Streetlights shone through both sets of sliding-glass doors. On any other Sunday night, Josie would have lain in bed with the lights off and marveled at the way the streetlights reflected off the tropical yard. But tonight, she closed the blinds, shuttered the French doors, crawled into her freshly washed satin sheets, and let her sore muscles settle into the mattress.

She ignored her stinging scratches.

She hadn’t purchased night tables yet, but there wasn’t space for them. They would have blocked the French doors. But she wanted them, or at least a better solution for her lamp and alarm. Once tucked in, she couldn’t see what time it was and had to sit up to see the alarm on the floor.

Tonight that was a blessing. Josie didn’t want the alarm’s light or its reminder that sleep ends and work starts. She lay back and fell into a deep sleep.

Josie awoke abruptly. She sat up. It was 3:05 a.m.

As she lay back, she saw a shadow run by the blinds to her left. She popped forward. Her heart raced. She turned. The shadow ran past the French doors. She turned the other way. It darted past the other French doors. It approached the sliding-glass doors to her right. The human shape raised an arm. She waited for it to smash the window.

It knocked.

What kind of intruder knocks? It must have been a friend who needed, Josie didn't know, help, a place to stay, someone to console her. Or maybe it was that furry.

The shadow moved through the glass and blinds, but without opening or disrupting them. “Holy shit,” Josie shouted. The luminescent figure rushed at her. It reflected light. She leaned forward. The sheets caught her kicking legs. The creature’s long limbs slithered at her. She reached to hold it back. Its hand met hers. Its cold hand pressed her skin. Its long fingers dwarfed hers. The creature pushed back her hand. Cold, slimy fingers gripped her face.

It was dancing. It rolled her over. It smothered her face against the covers.

The creature disappeared.

Josie scrambled for the lamp on the ground. The alarm said 3:06.

Her hands trembled. She grabbed the six-shooter from her purse on the floor.

She braved the walk to the sliding-glass door. It was locked. No visible prints on the window.

She climbed back into bed, leaned to the floor, fumbled through her purse for the cigarettes—never releasing the gun from her grip. The alarm said 3:06. It was the only evidence that anything had happened.

CHAPTER THREE

Her coworkers had more "scientific" minds than hers. They argued that two machines made their silencer-manufacturing company so successful. A Circumferential Seam Welding Machine created 360˚ welds. (Josie told clientele, “We use lasers and shit.”) And the Wire Electrical Discharge Machine used spark-erosion drilling to cut a straight aperture.

The electrical wire never moved. A computer maneuvered the tray of silencers to the settings of a specific caliber. Best part: no shavings. The Wire EDM evaporated the metal. A water bin flushed the aperture clean.

Josie brass-plated a .44 caliber silencer and engraved it with vine-and-leaf designs. She threaded the barrel of a Colt single-action six-shooter and fitted it to the silencer. Then she engraved the Colt’s cylinder and hammer to match the silencer. Periodically, Josie flipped her braid over her smock, turned to her coworkers, and argued that as much as scientific precision kept clientele coming back, the artistry attracted them first. She insisted her artistry had a vital place.

Amygdala shuffled his Converse shoes along the concrete floor, tucked his hands in his smock. She called him "Amygdala" because he was so impetuous. "Don't get us wrong," Amygdala responded. "We do appreciate you." He barely contained his grin. "We appreciated you in that customer-appreciation calendar." The smile burst from his fat cheeks. "And those rug burns on your face only make you sexier."

"That's gross." Maligdula set the Wire EDM to standby. Josie called him "Maligdula" because he was like Amygdala's bizarro twin: similar in shape, size, and dorkiness, but more moral. Maligdula hefted his body between Josie and Amygdala. "Stand down, toy soldier. Josie is like our sister."

"Like that stops you from appreciating her in a bikini."

Maligdula scrunched the fat in his face, pulled an imaginary ball to his side, and thrust his thick palms forward. "Fireball!"

Amygdala tore off his smock. "Oh, you want to play?" He yanked a box of homemade snappers from a pocket in his Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment (MOLLE), searched for efficient exit points and tactical combat locations. He maneuvered between Maligdula and the closest exit.

Panic struck Maligdula's eyes. He abandoned Josie, circled behind the workbench, fumbled to untie the smock from around his gut.

Amygdala lobbed tiny bundles of tightly wrapped gunpowder over the workbench. They popped, flashed, and smoldered against Maligdula's thinning hair, narrow shoulders, and hard gut, which he carried like a barrel chest that had fallen with premature age. Streams of ignited paper floated to the concrete floor.

Maligdula patted his thinning hair. "Dude, not the hair." He managed to get the smock off his MOLLE, fumbled through its pouches.

Amygdala laughed. "What? You finally made your own snappers?"

"No." He grabbed a pair of leather gloves from the worktable and put them on. Maligdula manhandled each pouch. "The only way to beat you is to top you." His gloved fingers pinched a spiked ball from a pocket.

"What is that?"

"Your demise." Maligdula threw it.

Each turn of the spiked ball gave different pins more access to the light. Tiny rotating reflections traversed the height of the warehouse. At its apex, the homemade weapon could have decorated an invisible Christmas tree—the way it hovered briefly, as if never descending. A gentle star.

It descended. It plummeted.

It pierced Amygdala's MOLLE. "Bastard, you could have stuck me in the face." He lowered his head to look at it, but his double chin stuck to the pins. He popped his neck from the needles. "Fuck."

Maligdula pinched another spiked ball from a pouch.

"If you stick me in the face," Amygdala raised one of his thick fingers, "the guns come out. And not to play."

Josie raised her hands and wandered between them. "Use a silencer." She raised a finger to her lips. "You two are loud and obnoxious."

During their breaks, Josie usually practiced her kata on them or touched up their tattoos. Today she focused on the latter. But Amygdala and Maligdula lacked imagination. They failed to notice details in even their own tattoos. Their requests never extended beyond "a cobra" or "dragons and shit," and when Josie finished, that's all they saw.

But Josie gave them what they didn't know how to appreciate, because they were like dorky brothers. She wanted to aid their entry into where tactical interpretations of space precluded them: girls, society, the human race ....

"I don't know why you don't like my dragon. It's big. It's green. And it's a fucking dragon. It blows fire and shit." Amygdala unveiled his soft pasty back and lay his manboobs on the workbench.

Josie pulled a shader and liner from her kit. "It's a flat black outline with solid-green filler." She lined up the ink bottles. "Same with the flames. A black outline with orange filler."

Amygdala lay his head to the side and tried to get comfortable. "So what are you saying?"

"It's stupid."

"Should I dare ask how you got those rug burns on your face? Interesting sexcapade?"

Maligdula crossed his arms and hovered over Amygdala's head. "Stand down, inflatable soldier."

Amygdala looked up at Maligdula's crotch. "Can you please move your inflatable soldier away from my face?"

"I was referring to your inflatable soldier."

"I don't care if you were referring to your mother's inflatable soldier when its boat takes on water. I'm telling you to get yours away from my face."

Josie shouted, "Don't move unless you want a hot ink carved across your back." The electric needle hummed.

Maligdula lowered his camo pants on Amygdala's face.

"Josie, you're conspiring to let him sexually harass me."

She never removed the needle from his skin. "I'm trying to create an opportunity for something other than sexual harassment. How do you expect to attract women with this tat?"

Maligdula cupped his hand across the back of Amygdala's head.

"Revenge doesn't become you, Josie."

"You want to know how I got those scratches on my face?"

"No. You'll give him a chub."

"I went swimming in the ocean with a cute, underage furry." With a rag, Josie wiped the excess ink from Amygdala's back.

Maligdula caressed Amygdala's hair. "Was she naked?"

Amygdala leaped from the bench. He grabbed a wooden plank from the floor and swung it at Maligdula's MOLLE. The board stuck to Maligdula's chest.

Maligdula widened his eyes and looked down at the plank. His large face reddened. Sweat ran down his forehead. His meaty hands gripped the board. He managed to rip the spiked balls from his chest, but not the board from the balls in his MOLLE. He leaned forward and sighed. The plank dangled from him.

Amygdala pointed at Maligdula. "Don't make me stomp that board into your heart."

Hunched over, Maligdula waddled with the plank over to his workstation. He propped the plank onto the workbench. Maligdula squatted down until the board ripped the spiked balls from their pouches. He fingered his exposed, bleeding chest through the holes in his MOLLE. Maligdula gripped the spike-laden board and swung it at Amygdala.

Amygdala jumped back. His glistening manboobs and belly narrowly flabbed past the plank. He looked at Josie.

Josie raised her hands. "If you do, silencers."

Amygdala grabbed his MOLLE from the floor and his gloves from the workstation. He put on the gloves and peeled the spiked ball from the MOLLE. One glove pointed at Maligdula, the other cocked the ball behind his head.

Maligdula positioned the plank over his shoulder like a baseball bat.

Josie noticed the clock on the wall. "Thirty seconds remaining to break time. Then back to work."

Amygdala maneuvered around his workstation and closed in on Maligdula.

"Fifteen seconds."

Maligdula approached Amygdala. The two circled each other.

"Five seconds."

Maligdula rushed Amygdala, swung the spiked plank at Amygdala's head. Amygdala threw the spiked ball at Maligdula's face.

The plank clapped against and clung to Amygdala's cheek. The ball pierced and clung to Maligdula's ear.

"Break's over. Back to work."

The men stumbled back, the ball and plank still dangling from them.

Josie giggled. "You know the government legislated mandatory breaks? Congress thought it would improve worker morale and efficiency."

The plank clattered against Amygdala's workstation as he fumbled to peel it from him. "The government was wrong."

That night, Josie exhaustedly stumbled into her rented master bedroom in that old Florida home. She glanced at the wall of sliding-glass doors to her right—the way the street lights reflected off the greenery and the dust on the windows. Her mind absentmindedly acknowledged the French doors from the corner of the wall to her queen-size bed. As she thought about the alarm, she looked to where she couldn't see it, at French doors to the left of her bed. She disrobed and crawled across the bed to the alarm. Josie watched the shadows of plant life dance along the sliding-glass doors on the other side. She leaned off the bed and set the alarm on the floor. She grumbled at the realization she hadn't brushed her teeth yet. The bathroom, its Jacuzzi tub and brass fittings. If she had more energy, she would have taken a bath and stared mindlessly out its bay window into the privacy garden. The thought usually filled her with happiness, but not tonight.

When she exited the bathroom, she noticed the streetlights that shone through both sets of sliding-glass doors. Josie closed the blinds, shuttered the French doors, crawled into her satin sheets, felt yesterday's sand in them, let her sore muscles settle into the mattress. She ignored her now scabbed scratches.

Josie awoke abruptly. She sat up, looked at the clock on the floor. It was 3:05 a.m.

As she lay back, she saw a shadow run by the blinds to her left. She popped forward. Her heart raced. She turned. The shadow ran past the French doors. She turned the other way. It darted past the other French doors. It approached the sliding-glass doors to her right. The human shape raised an arm. She waited for the nightmare to come.

It knocked.

Next to the clock, Josie fumbled for the six-shooter in her purse. She aimed it at the window. She stepped towards the shadowed figure. Her bare foot entered into the light between the blinds. The shadow moved and covered her foot. Josie walked deeper into the figure's shadow.

It knocked.

Josie aimed the six-shooter at the figure's chest. Her left arm crossed under the pistol. Her fingers unlocked the sliding-glass door. She gripped the door's handle. She swung open the door and pulled the blinds.

The figure stepped through the blinds into the six-shooter. Josie pressed silencer against his chest. The figure's head bent down to look for what he must have felt but not seen. Shadowy fingers tapped and wrapped around the pistol. Nails clinked its steel frame. An elongated sharp nail touched the skin on Josie's hand.

A breeze brushed through the blinds. At the bottom of the blinds, the metal weights clanked together.

Josie grabbed the figure's stubbly neck. "Struggle and I'll shoot." She stepped to the left and twisted the figure around her into the light. Her shadow covered half his face. But she could see the other half, its wispy muttonchop. The patchy chin hair. The adolescent mustache.

"It's me. Michael."

"I don't know a Michael."

"We met on Harajuku Street. We swam together at the beach. You dove underwater and disappeared."

"Michael the furry?"

He laughed.

She pushed him. He stumbled back, tripped on the alarm clock, and fell to become a dark shape hanging off her bed.

"You're stalking me?" She raised the six-shooter with both hands and aimed it at the dark shape. The warm humidity oozed behind her through the air-conditioning. Her left hand released the pistol, fumbled through the blinds to find the door. She slid the sliding-glass door shut and locked it. “You’re stalking me.”

"No. Am I? I mean I followed you to the beach yesterday. But that's all, dawg. You disappeared."

"How do you know where I live?"

"Yo, I worried about you. Your bike wasn't like in the parking lot. Last night I could barely sleep, and today I was so filled with anxiety." His acrylic claws imitated tearing motions across his chest. "I crashed early, but something in my dream, dawg—. And this ain't no normal thing in a dream. It was real as steel, and I don't think it was human. It showed me where you live."

Goosebumps pushed through her flesh. On the backs of her thighs. Backs of her arms. Her neck. Josie returned her left hand to the pistol. She steadied her aim. "What do you mean something in your dream showed you where I live?"

The dark shape moved.

"Don't move."

The shape settled back into its previous position. "The dream, yo. It was like I was moving through other people's thoughts. Pretty freaky, eh? Something rushed up to me. It dragged me to you. It dangled me over you. You were like a thought in the thoughts." His voice sounded uncertain of itself. "Then that thing yanked me back to my body. I woke up panicked in my bed. Yo, I ain't never had a dream like that." He spoke in unsteady intonations. "I snuck out of my house. Didn't even paint my face or put on my hoodie. Got in my car. I just had to drive, dawg. Just wanted to clear my head. Didn't know where I was going. That dream was—. Who would've thought that a dream with you could've been so bad?"

"How did you find my house?" She steadied the six-shooter in her nervous grip.

"Certain turns, you know, they just felt right. This house. It seemed familiar. I knew it was creepy, like I was trespassing, and I didn't want to be no peeping tom, but I had to get out of the car and take a look. Yo, even the way I moved through the yard seemed familiar. Not the yard, dawg, but the way I moved through it. Even standing at your window felt familiar. I swear I didn't know it was your house, but I felt I had to knock. I was prepared to run away, until I saw enough of your face to know it was you. Yo, please don't shoot, dawg. I'm not stalking you. But I can't leave until I know what this means."

Her ears burned hot.

Palm fronds rattled. On the other side of her bed, the tile floor captured leafy shadows swaying in the breeze.

"I swear, dawg," the figure insisted. "I didn't come here for the peepshow. Feel free to get dressed."

"You've seen me in a bikini." But Josie knew this was different. This fabric obviously meant something else to him, especially since they were alone in her bedroom in the dark. His shadowy face fidgeted. He switched to a profile. Josie didn't care. Other concerns preoccupied her.

She lowered the six-shooter, but didn't put it away. She sat on the bed next to him, tapped the silencer to his jeans. Josie knew she had told only two people about her dream, her niece Isabella and Katie Kurtz. Josie told only Isabella enough of the dream to make up Michael Furry's story, but Isabella lacked the ability to repeat it, at least enough for Michael Furry to construct his own story from it. Josie tapped the silencer to his jeans—lost in rhythmic thought.

She needed a distraction. She felt out of control. She had questions, but she knew he couldn't answer them. She tapped the silencer to his jeans. He looked ahead. He looked away. She tapped the silencer to his jeans.

"What?" he finally said. "Yo, I'm totally not making this up."

She needed a distraction. She raised her feet. She silently stared at their outline against the light from the window.

"Your toes look like an Englishman's teeth, dawg."

Josie kept her feet in the air. "I liked it better when I thought I was going crazy." She held her legs still to hold her mind in place, to stop it from running wild.

"What are you talking about?"

"I was able to ignore it," she said to her feet. "Nobody notices unless you change your behavior. So don't change your behavior. Don't even acknowledge it." She tapped her feet together. "When you're a kid trying to sleep and you see a shadow in the chair, whatever you do, don't devote thought to it, don't evaluate it, don't try to figure it out. You'll only create it. Make a demon out of it." Josie tapped her toes. "Just walk away. Just walk your mind away."

"Why did you think you were going to crazy?"

Josie leaped from the bed, turned, poked Michael Furry with the silencer. "But you're not going to let me walk away."

"Yo. What are you talking about?"

"I ignored it, but how am I supposed to ignore you? Breaking into my home to show me it's real? I didn't change my behavior. You did. You turned the shadow into a demon." She pushed the silencer into his chest until he fell backwards onto the bed. "No. You didn't come here for that. That's just an excuse. You came here because you wanted to fuck me."

"No, really—."

"Shhh." Josie pressed the silencer to his lips. "No. I'm not asking. I'm telling. Say it. I don't care what goes on in your mind, Michael Furry. Just say it, act it out, make it real.” Her mind gave into the intoxication of disrupted thinking. “You came here because you wanted to fuck me." Her eyes widened from her shock at what she had said, what she was saying. But her focus narrowed, blurred. The feeling rippled through her thoughts.

"No, dawg. I thought it was just a dream, but you sound like you had experiences with that thing. I just want to know what you know."

Josie pushed his legs open with her knees. "Shhh.” She pressed the six-shooter against his ear and caressed his neck with the extra fingers. “It's just a shadow." Her left hand pushed his T-shirt up his chest. "You came here because you want to fuck me." She rubbed the fabric up and down his chest. Her unconscious spoke, "Say it." Her right knee grazed his groin. "Make this real." She felt him swell against her thigh.

“I shouldn’t do this,” she broke her upper body from him, like gasping for air while drowning.

She caressed his ear. She didn’t know what was wrong with her, except she didn’t want to think. It hurt too much to think. She snapped her teeth at his hot breath. She sucked his bottom lip. She licked the corner of his mouth. "You came here to fuck me." Josie unfastened her bra. She gasped. But her mouth said, “No going back.” She slid the straps from her shoulders. She sighed. Released her tattooed eagle's wings. Lowered its talons on his chest. Lifted his shirt. Glided her nipple across his. Spread her breasts around his neck. Led the eagle's beak to his throat. "Feed."

Her hand clasped his, drew it to her ass. He squeezed. His other hand grabbed the other cheek. He squeezed. She felt the humidity radiate from her thighs. Her breasts grazed his collarbones. His moist breath brushed against her neck.

She grinded against him. Found the swell, rubbed up and down the length of it, parted herself around it. Her left hand scratched fingernails into his chest. Her right hand squeezed the six-shooter against his neck.

Josie leaped from him. She unbuckled his belt. She unzipped his jeans. She heaved his shirt from him. She set the six-shooter on the floor. She pulled his pant legs until his jeans slithered off. She yanked down her panties, stepped from them, kicked them from her foot.

Josie cupped him. She climbed around him. Her hand gripped him. Her fingers guided him. She slowly slid back. Pinched. She grimaced.

She relaxed. Her soft insides unfolded. She felt him swim through her. He sent pulses up her spine.

Josie closed her eyes. She rocked slowly on an ocean. She tried to forget the reason they were together, that she and he even existed. Her sense of self shrunk to the nerve endings on fire. She focused only on building the fire, by being it and burning the boat. The fire spread. Her flames fluttered. They twitched.

The flames drowned. Josie was gone. She didn't exist.

A hand spread across her cheeks—forming them, pushing substance down her neck, caressing her breasts into existence. A luminescent creature shaped her thighs around its waist, a calf against its back. Its penis gave her insides. Who is this? Where am I? Do I exist without him? Is the rest of me empty? Its hairless skin. Its red eyes.

She tried to push it away, but the creature never gave her arms. Her bald shoulders thrust forward. She tried to scream but lacked vocal cords or a tongue.

The creature rose from her.

Josie tried to scream. She had most of a face that she didn’t know how to use. Breasts, hips, thighs, one calf, but no feet. She saw through eyelids she could neither open nor close, pupils she couldn’t focus.

Her incomplete body trembled.

Josie managed to blink.

Michael Furry lay beneath her.

"What the fuck just happened!" She recognized his body, their position, what they had been doing. "What the hell?" She looked for him to respond, to explain what had happened, to at least be freaked out. He showed no emotion. "Tell me what happened," she insisted. She pounded his chest, but he didn't respond. She watched the stoic intensity of his eyes. He wasn't Michael Furry.

She leaped from him, it. She knew from his eyes that the creature had followed her back. The creature rose from the bed in Michael Furry's body.

Josie's whole body shook. She scrambled to the floor, searched for the six-shooter.

The creature grabbed it with Michael Furry's feet and kicked it under the bed.

On the floor, Josie crawled back from the creature. "What do you want from me?"

The creature examined Michael Furry's acrylic claws, arms, chest, legs. The creature marveled at its body like a new tool.

"What do you want?"

The creature looked down at her. It almost smiled. "Zalgo."

CHAPTER FOUR

Amygdala and Maligdula drove Josie home from the police station. The '83 Buick LeSabre swayed through 6 a.m. Tuesday traffic. Amygdala glanced at Josie in the rearview mirror, met Josie's eyes, blushed, looked away.

Josie pulled the police blanket tighter around her shoulders. "Mirrors work both ways, Myggy."

Amygdala smiled at the traffic. "You chose a strange time to go streaking."

"I wasn't streaking. I was jogging. It was too hot to wear clothes. And I love the way the breeze brushes my breasts and curls between my thighs."

Maligdula writhed in the passenger's seat. "Gosh, Josie. Let me keep my innocence."

"You don't want to hear about my un-incarcerated butt cheeks? The coppers thought my bouncing butt was so sinful they had to re-incarcerate it."

"Okay, okay, okay." Maligdula raised his arms. He looked over his shoulder at her. "You're my coworker. You're my friend, Josie. I don't want to think about you in that way. I'm out."

Amygdala laughed. "I'm in. I can listen to this all day." He looked at Josie in the rearview and winked.

"Well you're not going to." Josie leaned against the fabric backrest and closed her eyes. "I'm taking the day off. Not going to weld or cut steel on cell-block sleep."

When they arrived at her house, Josie asked them to wait in the driveway. She told them, because she had left her sliding-glass door open, that she wanted to make sure everything was okay before they left.

Josie walked around the house and identified footprints both to and from her sliding-glass door. In the soft, wet dirt, she distinguished larger prints from those her bare feet had made when she ran. The footprints sent shivers down her spine.

She clasped the police blanket tightly around her.

Josie peeked into the sliding-glass door, moved the blinds to the side. Their metal weights rattled against each other. She cringed from her lack of stealth.

Josie leaped inside. The blinds brushed the blanket from her. She raised her fists and kicked her naked legs at nothing.

The room appeared empty. The creature had taken Michael Furry's clothes and shoes. Her own clothes were still strewn on the floor. Next to her purse, she poked her head under the bed. The six-shooter was gone.

Still naked, Josie tiptoed to the bathroom. She swung open the door. The curtain covered the Jacuzzi. She took a deep breath. Josie yanked it open and swung a fist.

Nothing but the bay window overlooking the privacy garden.

Josie dressed in the previous night's clothes, exited the sliding-glass door, and waved Amygdala and Maligdula away. She turned before they could say anything, ask anything.

She went inside and paced her room. Josie stared at the bed, at the ruffled indentation from Michael Furry's body—all that was left of him. She was tired but couldn't crawl over or lay next to that spot.

Josie took a shower to clear her mind. But her muscles refused to unclench. Her mind reenacted whatever had happened, whatever she had seen in her mind. Her imaginary body had no arms, but her real hands formed fists. Her imaginary body had no feet, but her real foot kicked. She stomped and punched at nothing. Her real chest, throat, mouth fought back the scream her imaginary body couldn't form. She wanted the creature, so her body could have a target. Josie climbed out of the Jacuzzi and towel dried her body.

As she rubbed her legs, she contemplated her tattoos. To her, they represented the struggle for freedom. But they were just thoughts—like that creature, nothing she could grab. She was sick of thoughts. She wanted something she could grab.

She realized that by coming to her window, Michael Furry had lost maybe not his life, but his soul. That creature—those creatures? They easily maneuvered through people's interior lives. They owned that world.

But this one was in her world now. Michael Furry had imposed on the creature something for her to grab.

Josie dressed in lightweight, flexible clothing and stretched.

The creature had taken her six-shooter. She put on her bulletproof vest.

As she pulled a trunk of weapons from her closet, Josie contemplated what she was doing. If she killed Michael Furry’s body, would she really have killed the creature? Or merely freed it from his body so it could torture her mind again?

Josie didn't know if she could save Michael Furry's soul, but at very least she could capture his body. From the trunk, she collected a taser and two pairs of handcuffs for the creature's wrists and ankles. Maybe she'd keep it alive in a storage unit, so she could live out the rest of her own life in peace.

Damn that's cold, she almost thought, leaving Michael Furry to suffer forever, but her lack of clear alternatives suppressed the thought.

Josie zipped a windbreaker over the bulletproof vest and stuffed the cuffs and taser into its pockets. She practiced punching, kicking, jumping. A little slow and off balance.

She told herself, First mission: get the gun from him. Second: get this crap off so she could take him out with her bare hands.

She practiced unzipping the windbreaker, yanking it from her arms, unfastening the vest, pulling it over her head. Too slow. Too exhausting. She could no longer reach the handcuffs and taser. By the time she'd be ready to confront him—.

No, she had to take her chances without the bulletproof vest. The vest would have enabled her to get close enough for hand-to-hand combat. Without the vest she needed mid-range weapons—something to discourage sustained focused fire, something that would slow him down should he run.

She examined throwing knives. But they could penetrate too deeply, pierce vital organs, kill Michael Furry, and send that thing back to feed on her mind.

Small throwing stars wouldn't divert much fire, but they might slow the creature. Still, they might hit something vital and kill him, let the creature feed on her mind again.

What would discourage focused fire?

She recognized it when she saw it. It was so simple it made her laugh. Josie grabbed a laser pointer. A direct hit to the eyes could prevent the creature from aiming. She put on the windbreaker, slipped the laser pointer into her pocket, zipped the pockets for the ride.

Josie started her investigation on Harajuku Street. She assumed someone there would know Michael Furry. She could follow details about him until she caught up with his body.

"Have you seen Michael Furry?" she asked a vampire.

"Who?" his thin lips awkwardly shaped around his porcelain fangs. He was a mouth breather. Maybe he was panting. He wore a trench coat during the summer in Miami.

"Michael the furry. He says 'yo dawg' too much. He wears acrylic claws, face paint, and a hoodie with dog ears. Have you seen him?"

The vampire nodded. "Only now he looks more like Michael the Gay Teen Wolverine." His fangs forced him to accentuate the “w.” "You know that moralfag was proselytizing in Gurololi? He should turn in his claws like a betrayed uniform. Preying on repressed religious sentiment.” He spat as he talked. “Bastard's working it. Becoming tween porn with it. Just ain’t right. That’s an abuse of power."

Josie smiled. Not only did she not have to stalk him down, but Michael Furry sounded like he's back in his body bragging about what happened.

A thought struck her. Josie's smile contorted. Her eyes widened. She realized that the creature was back where it could torment her. It was back in people's minds.

Josie thanked the vampire and rushed into Gurololi Latte hoping to find Michael Furry. She wanted to gleam more information from him.

The eye-patched cashiers humphed and showed her their asses.

Awkward girls and even more-awkward boys congregated in the corner.

Josie sat near them and listened. She waited for a break in their conversation to ask them about Michael Furry.

"Newly reborn. Bringing the message of his father who," a teen in a schoolgirl uniform paused to figure out the right wording. Her feet tapped in frustration. She raised her hands. The girl nodded enthusiastically, closed her eyes, lowered her hands. "Who is not of flesh and blood but of mind and soul." The girl nodded, smiled, patted the table.

"No. You got it wrong. Born. Not reborn. He didn't have sex with that nasty biker chick. Michael did." The boy raised his large hands like he was cupping even larger breasts. "But that guy's heavenly father made love with the only part of her that wasn't cum-soaked into confusion. He made love with her mind. You think that guy was born of flesh and blood—from stinky, dirty fornication?" He licked the imaginary breasts. He lowered his hands and laughed. "No. He was born in filth, but not of it."

"You've obviously never had sex before," the teen in the schoolgirl uniform scoffed. "I guarantee you her mind was in confusion."

The boy laughed. "I wouldn't know because I'm not a dirty ho."

"You mean yo mama didn't pass down every gene?"

The boy laughed. "There was nothing left of her jeans to pass down. My daddy tore her jeans off with his teeth." He giggled. "Yes, I was born not just in filth, but also of it."

"Anyways, he was born into another guy's body," the girl continued the story. "He calls himself, Zalgo."

Anxiety rose through Josie's chest and neck. Zalgo. That's what he had said. The creature still had Michael Furry’s body, concocted a nativity story, and proselytized it to Harajuku teens. Josie grabbed her phone, logged into the Harajuku Street forum, and skimmed the posts about Zalgo. Debates erupted. Sides formed. Believers and Non-Believers. It was like watching Punch and Judy.

This was a distraction. Why would he—it. Why would it come to Harajuku Street? It obviously had Michael Furry’s memories. But why come here? Maybe it needed followers. The creature came from thoughts. Maybe it needed their thoughts, like prayers. Maybe it needed humans to think about it in order to thrive.

But maybe it didn't. And why start here?

These creatures moved through minds. She thought of Katie Kurtz. "Navigate collective thought data," Josie mumbled. That's what Katie had said. The Pentagon solicited her help to navigate collective thought data. Zalgo came here because Katie lives here. Josie stood. "Zalgo is after Katie." The awkward teens looked at her.

"Hey, it's the biker chick."

Josie ran through the alley, between the scoffing teens, around the gawkers who watched the paramedics and police. Paramedics wheeled Mrs. Kurtz on a stretcher and lifted her into the ambulance. Josie asked an officer, “Where’s Katie? Where’s Mrs. Kurtz’s daughter?” The officer shrugged, acknowledged that a report of a disturbance brought them here, and said they found the door open and Mrs. Kurtz unconscious on the floor. From one of the paramedics, Josie gleamed which hospital they were taking her to: Jackson Memorial.

A report of a disturbance brought them here? Josie maneuvered between the police and passersby into the building. She walked up the marble stairs, passed the police tape that crossed Katie's open door. Police tape? Josie peeked at the officers talking inside. She realized the police weren't focused on Mrs. Kurtz's collapse so much as on the reported disturbance. Josie looked at the door, noticed the splintered wood on the doorframe. Did someone knock Mrs. Kurtz unconscious?

Neighbors stood in the hallway and doorways. Josie asked loudly, "Where's Katie? Does anyone know what happened?" Everyone stared at each other, waiting for someone else to answer. She persisted, "Who called the police?"

A skinny old man pivoted on his cane. "One of those dodgy pikeys broke into their flat." His arm clutched a black box that resembled a homemade radio. He turned his back to her and waved her away. “I’ll stop them with this.” The old man mumbled something about a 'two-bit bint' and shut his door to her.

"Oye, don't you mind him," a little old woman took Josie by the arm. "Cuando la salsa blancha ...." She swatted the air before her nose and cringed. "Is Señora Kurtz okay? I knew her before she—." The woman touched her temple. "You speak eh Spanish, no?"

Josie shook her head.

"Señora Kurtz was a good woman. But she now eh speak con los ángeles y demonios iguales. Her brain no tell the difference. You understand? I no eh speak this in English. Maybe you understand Spanish. Demonios pecaron, pero de esa raiz nacieron otros pecados. They eh born there. Cada demonio tiene su psicología, su forma de ser.” She tapped her temple with a red fingernail. “Not the same. Todos se apartaron de Dios, pero unos son más malos que otros. You understand, no?” One hand held Josie’s. The other patted the back of Josie’s palm. “De ángeles, es más como si formaran coros que cantan las alabanzas de Dios. Su cantico no es de la voz, sino es la alabanza espiritual. You understand?"

Josie shook her head. "No, I don't understand."

The little woman broke from Josie's arm. She stepped into her apartment, held the door, and smiled through excessive makeup. "Do not worry. You eh will."

CHAPTER FIVE

That evening, Josie visited Mrs. Kurtz in the hospital and asked nurses if anyone had managed to reach Katie. No one had. Josie learned very little about Mrs. Kurtz's condition, only that no one had knocked Mrs. Kurtz unconscious. She lay perfectly healthy in a coma.

Her face had lost its wrinkles, at least the curled folds. White lines crisscrossed her slackened face. At first Josie thought the lines were thin scars. After noticing how much unfolded red and brown skin hung from Mrs. Kurtz’s features, Josie understood. Not scars. Tan lines.

Half-consciously, Josie’s mind meditated on this unfolded face, how it enabled Katie to judge herself, her own features, even her responsibilities to their family, her roles in society. Katie must have measured her self-worth against her mother. And that vantage point changed, constantly transforming Katie’s fantasies for herself, especially as Mrs. Kurtz relinquished the role of caretaker to become the recipient of that care. Josie shook her head. She doubted that last change happened without resistance from both of them. Many of these tan lines likely marked Mrs. Kurtz’s forced retirement. Josie wondered how many wrinkles surfaced then in Katie.

Josie thought about her own sister.

Mrs. Kurtz’s face clenched. Her torso slung forward. Her mouth, nostrils, eyes opened as if to swallow Josie through as many openings her face could create.

Josie stumbled back. She fell onto the rubber tiles. In the hallway, her head tilted to look for a nurse.

From the neighboring room, an I.V. pole tumbled onto the floor. A legless woman crawled from the room. Her face swallowed the hallway with its senses.

Josie looked back at Mrs. Kurtz. The old woman slung the covers from her limbs. Her every muscle clenched.

Josie scrambled to her feet as she fumbled into the hallway. She heard the legless woman drag the I.V. pole behind her. Josie heard the legless woman rip and untangle the I.V. from her. Josie heard the legless woman’s hands patter along the linoleum floor after her.

At the corner, Josie looked back.

A male nurse pinned Mrs. Kurtz to the floor. Her hands clasped the air. Her facial features swallowed her surroundings.

Josie’s eyes traced a brownish liquid from down the hall, under the male nurse’s and Mrs. Kurtz’s flailing bodies, dribbled along the linoleum floor, ending at Josie’s pant legs. The legless woman clung to her pant legs.

The legless woman clutched Josie’s ankle and calf. She yanked herself up Josie’s thigh. Her eyes, nostrils, and mouth opened wide.

Josie tried to scream but only gasped.

The legless woman clasped Josie’s windbreaker. She swung herself to Josie’s shoulder.

From the pocket of her windbreaker, Josie grabbed the taser.

The legless woman pulled Josie’s hair and neck. She positioned her stretched face over Josie’s.

Josie blindly tasered. The shock ripped through her own face. She felt her legs twitch, her knees give, her body fall into blackness.

She landed on a shadow of the hospital floor. A shadow of the legless woman lay next to her. Nurses’ shadows ran down the hallway. A nurse’s shadow checked the legless woman’s vital signs.

An alabaster creature climbed from the legless woman’s carcass.

Josie stared in horror.

The shiny humanoid turned to Josie. It snarled. Its red eyes blazed.

Josie recoiled.

The creature dragged a blurred figure from the legless woman’s carcass. Josie recognized the legless woman’s features in the blurred form. Josie saw terror in the woman’s blurred eyes.

Josie tried to scream, but there was no sound. She heard no sounds. Shadows of nurses ran soundlessly.

The shiny humanoid snarled at Josie, as if Josie had threatened to take its prey.

A nurse’s figure walked through them, bent down through Josie. Confused, Josie’s eyes followed the nurse’s hand as it reached through Josie. Josie watched the hand pass through what she thought was her body.

The nurse placed two shadowy fingers on the body that Josie had left behind. Josie felt the nurse’s jumbled thoughts, among them, “This one’s alive.”

Josie realized these shadowy floors, bodies, clothes, syringes, walls, cabinets, curtains, beds—they weren’t real. They were thoughts. Panicked, Josie ran through them, down the thought of a hallway.

She stood over the thought of Mrs. Kurtz.

An alabaster creature wrestle with a blurry Mrs. Kurtz inside the old woman’s body. The body moved with the alabaster creature’s gestures. Mrs. Kurtz struggled to grab her arms, bite her mouth, reclaim her body. But she had lost. Alienated from it, Mrs. Kurtz clung to the thought of her body.

A male nurse injected her with a sedative. Mrs. Kurtz’s blurry figure lost even more of its grip.

She looked up at Josie. Her eyes pleaded.

Josie tried to grab the alabaster creature’s head. She fumbled to get a hold of its clammy skin. She struggled to yank the shiny bald beast from Mrs. Kurtz’s body.

It held tight. Its red eyes stared at her through Mrs. Kurtz’s eyes. The creature’s serrated teeth snarled through her dentures. Its claws sawed through Mrs. Kurtz’s nails.

Beneath the thought of a male nurse pinning them to the floor, the creature swung. Its claws cut through Josie’s blurry movement, leaving four stripes of skin where nothing had been.

Josie stared at the striped skin. Where the nothing had felt nothing, the new skin now stung.

She thought of her rape, of the creature’s slapping substance into her, only partially forming her, just enough to take advantage of her. Josie recoiled. She stumbled back from the creature’s reach.

Mrs. Kurtz’s blurry mouth slackened. Her blurry eyes widened. They pleaded.

Josie’s eyes retreated from Mrs. Kurtz’s.

Josie stared through the thought of the floor. On the floor beneath them, a nurse injected a female patient. As the patient’s body relaxed, an alabaster creature tugged at the blurry form in it. When her blurry image no longer aligned with the thought of her body, the creature climbed in with her.

Josie feared for her own body. She left it unprotected. The thought, the feeling—they slung her back to it. Josie woke up in her body with a panicked gasp. “Stop sedating the patients,” she shouted.

Startled nurses rushed to her.

Josie raised her head. She shouted at the male nurse on Mrs. Kurtz, “Give her speed. Give her amphetamines. Wake her up.”

He ignored her.

Two of the three female nurses around her held her arms and legs. Josie noticed the third nurse preparing a sedative.

Josie struggled.

The nurses’ hands tightened their grips.

Josie’s hand clutched the taser. She zapped one of the nurse’s ankles. The nurse screamed and fell back. Josie swung the taser to the other nurse and shocked her. Josie leaped from the trembling nurses and tasered the one with the sedative.

Josie stared at the struggling male nurse and the raging beast in Mrs. Kurtz’s body. She had lost Mrs. Kurtz. Josie stood in a hospital teeming with sedated or even unconscious bodies, unmanned vessels waiting to be hijacked.

Josie turned for the nearest exit and ran.

CHAPTER SIX

Josie rode her motorcycle into the sunset. Because of the glare, she hated to be on the road. Not only could she not see, but other drivers couldn’t see her.

But she had worse things to worry about. Josie didn’t know if across South Florida—or worse, across the world—those things crawled into every unconscious or even semi-conscious body they could find, wrestled inhabitants for their bodies, transformed patients and friends and loved ones into screaming, aggressive beasts. If they did, then Josie needed to break into a pharmacy, arm herself with amphetamines, and drag her sister and Isabella wherever they would be safe from sleepy neighbors. Hopefully this would blow over before Isabella would die or suffer brain damage from sleep deprivation or the drugs.

But there was another possibility. If Josie’s presence encouraged those things to crawl into weakly controlled bodies near her, then she was a liability. She would have to stay away from Isabella. Maybe away from everyone.

The glare got too bad. Josie couldn’t see. She pulled into a Chevron’s parking lot to wait out the sun.

She pulled her phone from her pocket and called her sister to ask if she had noticed anything unusual in the news. Josie paced the parking lot. “I can’t explain why. You’ll know it when you see it,” she said into the phone.

She observed the gas-station attendant behind the window. He put up his feet on the counter, leaned back, and stared at the setting sun. His eyes rolled into the back of his head. His mouth slackened.

Josie watched him through the window. “Check the news. I’m not being irrational. Why do you need a reason for everything? Just check the news. Why won’t you just check the news?”

The attendant jolted from his sleep. His eyes, nostrils, mouth stretched open. His legs kicked the Slim Jims and energy drinks from the counter. His body sprung to its feet.

Josie watched him through the window. “Shut the fuck up and check the news. I’ll call you back.” She hung up, backed away from the window. She shoved the phone in her pocket, grabbed her keys. Josie ran for her bike, put the key in the ignition, kicked its starter. The bike didn’t start.

She heard the gas station’s glass door burst open behind her. In her side mirror Josie watched the attendant’s figure grow larger and larger. OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR.

Josie kick-started the bike, revved the throttle, felt the attendant’s hands grab her windbreaker. He pulled her. The bike wobbled. She tapped and squeezed the breaks. She elbowed his face.

The attendant fell back.

Josie peeled from the parking lot into traffic. Cars honked, slammed their breaks. Josie straightened the bike into the left lane.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket. Josie looked for a place to pull off the road, somewhere people wouldn’t be asleep or fall asleep, somewhere without elderly, homeless, or minimum-wage employees.

But this was Miami. She would have been lucky to find a place that met even two of those requirements. And they weren’t the only potential problems. Josie didn’t trust the greater self-medicated, anti-anxiety, pill-popping population. Their souls might have weak grips on their bodies.

Josie pulled into a Dunkin Donuts’ parking lot and returned her sister’s call. “Anything funky in the news?”

“Just that shit you pulled in the hospital.”

Josie paused. She got off her bike so she could pace. Oh yeah, the taser. Damn hospitals for their video cameras. “Nothing else?”

“You did more?”

“No, I wasn’t looking for anything that involved me. Did anything weird happen that didn’t involve me?”

“Look. You need to turn yourself in.”

“Ah shit, you’re not going to tell me. Okay, you didn’t see anything else. Whatever. Do they know my name?”

“They know what a grainy version of your face looks like, and they know what your bike looks like. There’s a nice parking-lot shot of your rear tire peeling out. Sword backrest and all.”

Josie closed her eyes and sighed. “Did they get my tag?” Josie opened her eyes and stared through the Dunkin Donuts’ window at the cops inside. She backed away from the window.

“I can’t tell. You know how the news is. Reporters speculate even when the police don’t tell them. So what happened? Tell me step by step. Because this looks bad.”

Josie positioned the phone on her shoulder and wheeled her bike away from the window. “Some other time. Call me back if you see stuff that makes you believe—.” She paused. “If you believe something weirder than me is going on.”

“Josie, don’t you hang up on me.”

Josie hung up and stuffed the phone into the pocket of her windbreaker.

She pulled her bike behind the store, opened her satchel, grabbed a Philips screwdriver and a crowbar, unscrewed and pried the eagle from the handlebars, unscrewed the sword from the rear seat. She tossed the eagle and sword over the fence, next to a tire. Josie closed her eyes. She sighed. Her mind said goodbye to those accessories to her identity.

She emptied the pockets of her windbreaker into the satchel, pulled the windbreaker over her head, peeled the pants from her tattooed legs. She thanked God she wore shorts and a sports bra. Josie stuffed the foul-weather gear into a random plastic bag from the parking lot, tied the bag shut, and tossed it into a dumpster.

She became conscious of her fingerprints. They covered everything. Hair samples in her clothing. She shook her head. The muscles around her eyes cringed.

Maybe police would be too busy with raging sleepwalkers. The implications of that thought hit her. Her temples flexed. The muscles in her face tightened. “My only hope is my greatest fear,” but she never admitted that fear out loud; her lips and tongue twitched, but her jaw never let the words out.

Josie’s mind shifted to the lesser problem of the police. She imagined a grainy black-and-white photo of her sword backrest. She expected people she knew would turn her in. She predicted her sister would turn her in.

Josie blocked that thought. She took a deep breath. She relaxed. Her mind searched for a thought that would free her from anxiety.

Whatever. It’s not like I killed anyone. Her eyes glossed. Josie’s mouth fell open. “My taser killed the legless woman,” this time a meek voice escaped. Her sister had asked Josie to turn herself in. Her sister wasn’t talking about confessing to a fight. Josie cringed. Shame pained her heart. “The media already has a hold of this.” She told herself, Maybe the sleepwalkers will show everyone what really happened. Josie shook her head at that horrible thought. Josie’s mind escaped into abstractions, which she mistook for understanding: I tasered that woman; the creature yanked her from her body. There is no truth to what happened. I live in a world of thoughts about thoughts, and evil creatures live here—plotting.

PART II

CHAPTER ONE

While the video loaded on her phone, Josie stared out her bathroom window at the privacy garden. The warm water relaxed her muscles, but not enough for her to feel relaxed. Bright bromeliads had bloomed from their leafy pods. Under the moonlight, the blooms seemed a more sinister red than orange. Not even the privacy garden could settle her nerves, at least not in this light.

The video started. “What is the connection between the deadly skirmish at Jackson Memorial Hospital and the sudden disappearance of teenagers at a popular teen hangout on Harajuku Street? That’s what police want to know.” Josie sat up in the bathtub. She adjusted the earphones and watched impatiently as the news report streamed on her phone. “Miami-Dade Police traced the suspect of the murder at Jackson Memorial Hospital to another incident earlier today in an apartment here on Harajuku Street.”

Josie gasped.

“According to hospital staff and other eye-witness reports, the suspect was visiting an elderly patient who had been the victim of a break-in and assault in this apartment here.” Josie remembered she did not sign a visitor’s log, but she did speak with nurses. Nobody could have known her name, but a lot of people could have known who she visited. “The victim’s neighbors had assumed the break-in and assault had been perpetrated by one of the hundreds of teens who loiter daily on this street. However, lurking in the crowd, asking questions of response personnel and neighbors alike, was a person whom authorities now believe was the Jackson Memorial Murderer.”

Josie burst with uncontrollable, nervous laughter.

“Of course, now that the police have a suspect for the Harajuku Street incident, they would like to re-question the teens who frequent this area. Eerily, all of the teens on Harajuku Street have disappeared.”

“All of the teens have disappeared?” Josie parroted.

“Even the teens who were scheduled to work at the popular Gurololi Latte, according to the owner, called in from the store to quit. As you can see behind me to my right, the lights are off and the store is closed.”

Josie raised the phone to her face to get a better look at the darkened Gurololi Latte.

“The owner said his employees called frantically, not only refusing to explain, but in his words, ‘screaming without listening.’”

Terror moved up Josie’s spine. Tears welled in her eyes.

“Miami-Dade Police refuse to comment on the on-going investigation. When we called the employees’ homes for a comment, in both cases their parents declined requests for an interview. It seems they just want to be left alone.”

Josie noticed a strange headline and immediately selected the video: “Sudden Spike in Schizophrenia Concerns Local Authorities.” While the video loaded, Josie started to look out the window but soon gave up. She couldn’t focus on the flora outside—for the forest of fiery thoughts in her mind.

“Schizophrenia, paranoia, and other mental illnesses have always plagued our jails. Yet, local authorities are concerned about an undeniable spike in delusions in just the last 24 hours.” Josie stopped the video. She heard all she needed to know. Those creatures were taking over people’s bodies, acting like they did in the hospital, getting arrested.

Her sister hadn’t called yet. Until it was on her sister’s terms, Josie knew she’d never be able to drag Isabella into hiding. Besides, where do you hide from your own mind?

Josie searched the Harajuku forum for information about the teens’ disappearance. She saw references to an annoying buzzing or clicking sound on Harajuku Street that older people didn’t seem to notice. Some posters diverted the conversation into jokes about the elderly. Someone without a sense of humor pointed out that pedestrians as young as twenty-five failed to hear the noise. “Moralfags” aggressively defended the elderly. Their comments solicited a barrage of sexually explicit responses about their grandmothers.

The comments incensed her, even to the point of distracting her from her real concerns. Josie feared age transforming her from an object of desire into an object of ridicule. She imagined herds of dumb virgin boys cleverly devising ways to stomp on the image of her saggy tits or droopy ass. She thought of traveling through minds, dragging them from their conceptions of self, and crushing those now empty conceptions of self like half-smoked cigarettes.

Josie snapped out of her daydream. The thought crossed her mind that these creatures were just like she was in her fantasy: using the supernatural to deliver an untraceable ass kicking. She shook her head and refocused on the forum.

Someone named “sh8nlubsu” started a thread under the heading, “presbycusis victoms t8k vantage of u.” According to sh8nlubsu, businesses purchase up to seventy-five-decibel sound emitters that project seventeen kilohertz onto unsuspecting passersby. Only teens hear the frequency, and after ten minutes, they find it increasingly annoying. British businesses use these devices to discourage teens from loitering.

Josie thought of the skinny old British man in Mrs. Kurtz’s building. He had a small speaker box under his arm. He had pivoted on his cane and said, "One of those dodgy pikeys broke into their flat." Then he called Josie a “two-bit bint.”

Josie laughed. Maybe those creatures had nothing to do with the teens’ disappearance.

But she needed to find the teens. She had to find Zalgo.

Zalgo’s possession of Michael Furry’s body differed from the other possessions she had witnessed. It or some other creature not only yanked Josie from her conception of self, but it confined her to a partially conceived body and then raped her. Josie saw nothing like that in the hospital or gas-station parking lot.

And Michael Furry’s eyes, nostrils, and mouth didn’t expand across his possessed face. She saw in his body only a stoic intensity. Zalgo studied Michael Furry’s limbs, its new tools. Then Zalgo spoke. It said its name.

Josie didn’t see any of those behaviors in either the hospital or the Chevron parking lot. She saw only what she could equate with drowning bodies surfacing to breathe again: gasping, flailing panic. In the thought-world version of the hospital, she saw only the panic to survive. Those creatures were too disturbed to contemplate raping their victims.

Josie rethought what she knew. Zalgo traveled to Harajuku Street, proselytized to the teens, and likely abducted Katie Kurtz. But Zalgo didn’t possess Mrs. Kurtz. He abandoned her.

She was a cursory victim, tossed to the demon dogs. The demon dogs got so riled up by the offering that their possessiveness spread to other bodies—to the legless woman.

Then what happened in the Chevron parking lot? Josie didn’t know the answer to that one. For all she knew, the answer to that question might overturn all of her answers. She just didn’t know.

CHAPTER TWO

After a sleepless night, Josie checked the news one last time before deciding to go to work. Sure, more disturbances plagued the homeless shelters, prisons, retirement facilities. But she found no indication that the authorities were any closer to identifying her as the Jackson Memorial Murderer, and no governmental official had declared today to be an apocalypse day off from work.

She re-braided her hair, threw overalls over her leather bikini top and shorts, and slipped into a pair of running shoes before braving early morning traffic.

At work, Josie studied Amygdala's and Maligdula's facial expressions, but neither indicated that they even heard of the Jackson Memorial Murderer, let alone suspected her. Instead, they took turns bragging about and ridiculing each other over their performance in Halo 3. Josie suspected she was reasonably safe—at least from the police.

During their break, Maligdula asked Josie if she wanted to spar with them.

Amygdala swatted him in the arm. "Do you like getting beaten up by a girl?"

Maligdula rubbed his arm. "I like the exercise."

"Masturbate harder. That helmet doesn't protect my jaw enough for me to just up and volunteer."

Josie placed her hands on her hips. "Myggy, are you turning down a challenge from little ole me?"

Amygdala stood up straight. "I said that helmet doesn't protect my jaw enough for me to volunteer. If you're challenging, I ain't saying no." He shifted in his stance to look taller than Maligdula.

Josie smiled. After multiple days of poor or even no sleep, Josie didn't want to spar, but nor did she want to give Amygdala bragging rights. Also, she wanted to be in top form for the granddaddy of all street fights: the big sleepwalker outbreak that she felt sure was about to happen. She responded to Amygdala by kicking off her shoes and striping off her overalls. Josie stretched.

Amygdala and Maligdula shuffled to their lockers, withdrew their staffs, and put on helmets, padded vests, and shin guards. As Maligdula bent over to pull his other shin guard over his pant leg, Amygdala whacked his staff into the back of Maligdula's helmet.

Maligdula rubbed his helmet. He stood up straight. "What was that for?"

"I like the exercise." Amygdala grimaced and shook his head.

Josie ran at Maligdula, leaped, pressed her right leg against his chest, and kicked her left leg into Amygdala's neck.

Amygdala stumbled back, hacking.

Off balance, Maligdula steadied his feet. He raised his staff with his left arm.

Josie moved to his left so he'd have a more restricted range of motion to strike.

He pivoted to reach her.

Josie slid behind his left leg and squat. She slammed the back of her head into the back of his knee. His left side folded. She pivoted around his leg, planted her right foot on his bent knee. She pressed down with her right side, leaped, stretched her left side to gain footing on his right shoulder. Josie pressed down on his shoulder and swung her right knee up through his falling head.

Maligdula's bones seemed to disappear from his flesh. He splashed onto the floor.

Josie regained her footing to face Amygdala. She heard Maligdula’s moaning and stirring behind her.

Amygdala swung the staff with his right arm.

Josie moved forward under it. The end of the staff struck the floor. Josie gripped the staff, swung her legs around Amygdala's arm. She arched her back to raise the staff, contracted her legs to bend his arm.

Maligdula stumbled to his feet.

Josie propelled her body towards Maligdula. The propulsion carried Amygdala's arm and staff with her. His staff stabbed Maligdula in the face.

Maligdula screamed. He slammed his eyes shut. His hands swatted blindly. Tears ran down his cheeks. "I'm out. I'm out."

Josie unfolded from Amygdala's dislocated shoulder.

Amygdala's arm hung like a giant sausage stapled to his side. "Had a little aggression you needed to release?"

Josie looked at her badly hurt coworkers. "Sorry. I lost my head."

Maligdula wiped the tears from his face. "But how can you lose your head and still be so effective?"

Josie shrugged. She was embarrassed by what she had done, but tried not to show it. "How do you daydream, forget what you're doing, and still drive to work without missing a turn?"

"But you haven't messed around with martial arts long enough to develop that level of habit, Josie."

"That wasn't martial arts. That was parkour."

Amygdala laughed. "You were into parkour? So lame. So where did you learn what you were doing on my arm? Pole dancing?" He chucked. "I almost put a dollar in your underwear."

Josie winked at Amygdala.

He blushed. He swung his lifeless arm to and fro in its socket, as would a coy school boy his satchel. "Mind helping out a young chap here, darling?"

"Oh, sorry!" Josie rushed over to him. She propped his arm over her shoulder and locked her hands over its socket. Amygdala squat and shifted until the arm popped back in place.

Tears still ran down Maligdula's face.

Josie turned to him. "Awe, Maligni. Your face still hurt?"

"Why did you do it, Josie?"

"I was tired and frustrated, and I wasn't thinking right."

His tears never waned. "Why did you kill her, Josie?"

CHAPTER THREE

"I don't think I did kill her."

Amygdala laughed uncomfortably. "Well, you did. The double amputee died." He moved his arm. His face grimaced.

"No, I know. I'm just not sure I'm what killed her."

"Kind of a reverse of the NRA slogan, eh?" Amygdala could barely contain himself, but he didn't seem to be enjoying his laughter. "People don't kill people; tasers do?"

Josie sighed. She turned to Maligula. "Did you guys turn me in?"

Maligdula stopped crying, but he had trouble looking at Josie. She struggled to make eye contact with him. After that failed, she waited patiently for his answer. After what seemed like an eternity of silence, she redirected the question to Amygdala.

"We decided to wait and hear your side of the story." Amygdala mumbled through tight lips to avoid laughing, "And let me tell you, she would have died anyway is an extremely compelling argument."

"Then I can tell you now, you might as well turn me in." Josie turned to Maligdula. He refused to make eye contact with her. She reached for his shoulders, but he was so much taller that she clutched only his arms. He looked away. She shook him. "You might as well call the police. You won't accept the truth so there's no point in my explaining, and I want you to know—." Maligdula turned from her grip, but she re-clasped his arms and shook him. "I don't blame you, Maligni, because that image is far more rational than the truth. If I told you the truth, you'd think I was either lying or insane." Josie's grip lost its strength. Her hands fell to her sides. "Because the truth is insane."

"Then," Maligdula lowered his voice, "tell us anyways." He looked her in the eyes. "If you don't explain, we'll think you're crazy anyways."

"Even to tell you would be insane. Words have no meaning here. And images offer only lies." Her eyes glossed over their surroundings. "We're looking at lies. When reality interrupts what you see—. You won't understand, but at least you'll know I'm right."

Amygdala giggled. "That was cogent." He bit his lip. "In a Nietzschean sort of way."

"Really?

"I don't know. I've never read Nietzsche." Amygdala smiled and winked. He took off his helmet and opened his locker. "But I knew someone who had." He hung the helmet in his locker and started taking off his shin guards. "According to her, Nietzsche would have never asked for anything to vindicate him." He placed his shin guards and staff in the locker. Amygdala shut the door. "Nietzsche would think you're a pussy, Josie."

"Who was she?"

"Who?"

"Your friend who read Nietzsche."

"Just some stripper." He grinned. "Gum Wrappers is a classy joint. Just don't touch the all-you-can-eat raw-oyster buffet." Amygdala shivered. He refocused on Josie. "Don't worry about what I think. I love madness." He chuckled. "Madness reminds me a gift doesn't stay neatly packaged. The gift ain't a gift until it ends up completely unwrapped." He patted her on the head. "So I'm game. You can't explain. But can you show us? How's about we take a little field trip and you show us the gap between what we can see and what we can understand."

CHAPTER FOUR

Josie scanned the forum for clues. "If we find the Harajuku teens, then we might be able to find Zalgo."

"Who is Zalgo?" Maligdula ran his fingers through his thinning hair.

"He's—." Josie looked up at Maligdula but then stared at Amygdala. "He's the gap between what you can see and what you can understand." Josie smiled. "I like that." She resumed scanning the forum. "The teens have moved to a place called Planet 9." She scrolled through the forum. "Nobody is posting directions. Do either one of you happen to know where Planet 9 is? When I look it up, all I find is some Porsche dealer, and I'm pretty sure they're not hanging out there. I'm guessing it's some underage club."

"You know me so well, Josie." Amygdala grinned. "I prowl the underage clubs looking for tang. I even keep my fly unzipped and wear a low-cut push-up ball bra."

Maligdula covered his ears. "I'm going to be sick."

"Like Teen Wolf," Amygdala could barely get the words out he was laughing so hard, "only that ain't Michael J. Fox's face poking through all that fur."

Maligdula pressed harder on his ears. "Na Na Na Na Na Na."

Josie pocketed her phone. "Bring tasers and whatever else you can think of. You want to incapacitate without killing."

"I've got something better than a taser."

Josie raised a finger and shook her head. "Please don't show me Michael J. Fox's face."

"Although that would work, too, I had something else in mind." Amygdala walked to the office. "It just came in." He returned with a small black box. "It's a ghost machine."

"A what?" Maligdula tried to grab it from him, but Amygdala dangled it beyond his reach.

"An infrasound emitter. 19 Hz not only makes you feel uneasy, but it also ever so slightly vibrates the eyeballs. Makes you see optical illusions: ghosts." He aimed it at Maligdula and turned it on. After a couple of minutes of Maligdula’s arguing the machine didn’t work, that it was yet another waste of money, not unlike the x-ray glasses on the desk—he became visibly distressed. He swung his head as if he saw something in his periphery.

Josie patted Amygdala on the back. "Bring tasers, too."

He turned off the ghost machine.

Maligdula wiped his pasty face. "I totally saw something." He inhaled deeply. "And I could barely breathe."

Amygdala turned to Josie. "So how are we going to find this place?"

Josie grabbed a cattle prod from her locker. "We're going to kidnap a teen."

CHAPTER FIVE

Amygdala weaved his 83' LeSabre through traffic on Bird Road. They hoped to find a few teenagers at A&M Comics.

"We really should be going to Villains in North Miami. It's a better store."

"Maligni, honey, did you forget what we're doing already?"

The LeSabre turned onto Red Road. The landscape transformed from barren concrete to lush trees that almost hid the suburban sprawl.

"Oh right. I know. But it is a better store." He turned in the passenger's seat to look back at Josie. "Speaking of remembering, remember this: Ask; don't kidnap. Just cause you're on the lamb don't mean you've got to do everything like a dirty criminal."

"Actually, you're the one who's going in there. I can't run the risk of anyone having seen my mug on T.V." She patted her face.

Maligdula turned back and pressed his face against the window. "Can we eat at Allen's Drugstore?"

Josie and Amygdala responded in unison. "No."

"I love those classic diners."

Amygdala pulled into the parking lot. "You just love to eat. Oooh look. Sexy Secrets." He turned back to Josie. "Want to try on some stuff while he's getting directions?"

Josie punched him between the eyes.

Amygdala's head snapped back. He palmed his head. Maligdula laughed. Amygdala pushed Maligdula into the passenger's door. "Go get directions already."

After Maligdula returned, he barked two words, "Coconut Grove." He climbed into the LeSabre and slammed the door shut. "I hate comic-book snobs. Every conversation is a contest for dominance."

Amygdala stared in disbelief. "They've got an underage club in the Grove?"

Maligdula shook his head. "It's an abandoned building. Planet 9 is the 9th floor." He turned to Josie. "3rd is the crackhead floor, and 5th is the homeless sex-offender floor. Great place for teens."

"Not sex offenders. They're under the Causeway."

"How do you know?" Maligdula looked back at her incredulously.

"It started with city laws preventing sex offenders from approaching a certain radius of schools. Then that radius expanded until there was no house or apartment they could live in. The only address not prohibited by the law isn't an address. It's a bridge."

Maligdula laughed. "That's absurd."

Amygdala laughed, too. "Serves them right."

"Serves them right? Myggy, I've seen you gawk at high-school girls. The fact that you're close in age doesn't matter either. If you had consensual sex with a seventeen-year old, that would be you. Police would drop you off there when you get out of prison." She struggled to mask her agitation. "The government would condemn you to a life of homelessness and confined mobility, even after you've quote-unquote, served your time."

Amygdala laughed. “Josie’s trying to protect her Constitutional right to bang underage teens.”

Josie’s face flushed red.

"So why did they leave Harajuku Street?" Maligdula refocused the conversation.

"Sound emitters, not unlike Myggy's ghost machine."

They both stared at Amygdala.

Amygdala returned their stares. "What? So now I'm the bad guy?"

In Coconut Grove, Amygdala parked the LeSabre in front of a headless meter at the abandoned building. He plugged a blinking red light into his car lighter to simulate an alarm. After they exited the car, he pressed his key chain. It imitated the squawk of an alarm's activation. "I love how they try to gentrify this area. These homes go for close to a million, but not five blocks away on Grand Ave, Jamaican drug dealers are warring with Haitians. And I'm not talking about irie, Ja-loving Jamaicans either. They break into gun fights pretty regularly at that run-down apartment complex." He looked at the fenced property. He ducked under a palm frond and found a gap in the fence.

"Uh oh," he said. "I don't think Maligni and I can make it through, and we sure as hell can't climb this fence without ripping the whole thing down."

"So rip the whole fence down." Josie shrugged her shoulders.

Amygdala handed Josie the ghost machine and taser. He pushed his upper body through the gap in the fence, but the lower half of his gut got stuck. Maligdula grabbed him by his jeans and made humping movements and grunting sounds.

"Why is it whenever I'm incapacitated, you try to hump me?"

Josie rolled her eyes. "Just push him through."

Maligdula raised Amygdala's legs and pushed. Amygdala screamed, "My gut. You're tearing my gut on the fence!" He tumbled through the fence into the grass. Amygdala lifted his shirt. He revealed the red abrasions on his sagging stomach. "You son of a bitch."

Maligdula handed Josie his taser. He poked his upper body through the same—only now much wider—gap in the fence. He caught his stomach on the same spot.

Amygdala straddled his back and hopped up and down. "You like that? You like that? Am I cowboy if I ride a big fat cow?"

"No. Please stop. You're ripping my gut on the fence."

Amygdala grabbed his upper body and yanked. "Revenge is a bitch."

Maligdula screamed. His body tumbled into the grass. The fence had torn shirt around his stomach. Blood lined his shredded shirt. He looked at his stomach. He looked at Amygdala. He looked at his stomach.

Amygdala chuckled. "Sucks to be you."

Maligdula charged and tackled him. The two rolled in the grass, punched each other's wounded stomachs, and tried to force each other to eat dirt.

Josie sighed and tossed the ghost machine, three tasers, and cattle prod through the now wide gap in the fence. She stepped through the fence and collected the weapons. "We've got a job to do."

Maligdula rose from Amygdala's back.

Maligdula panted too heavily to stand up straight. His wrinkled, bloody belly hung from his torn shirt.

Amygdala wiped the dirt from his face and neck. "Now I'm going to be all itchy." He rolled to a seated position.

Maligdula gave him a hand and pulled him up. They retrieved their weapons from Josie.

The three walked into the abandoned new construction: concrete foundation, concrete exterior walls and support beams, concrete stairs and floors, but nothing else except empty cement bags, abandoned soda bottles, crumpled fast-food wrappers, crushed beer cans, cigarette butts, urine stains, and human excrement. The condominium's naked frame stood twelve-stories tall, a miniature high rise amidst the zero-lot-line residences.

As they passed the third floor, Maligdula pointed at reclined groups of drug addicts. "Those elitist bastards at the comic shop said there's an unspoken agreement between the different floors. They won't bother the teens if the teens stay off their floor."

Josie noticed the skinny people with skin lesions. The skinny people watched them as they ascended the staircase.

On the fifth floor, Maligdula pointed at a few homeless people picking cigarette butts from the concrete floor. "Punks hung out here before the Harajuku teens joined them. One of them got drunk and wandered onto this floor in the dark."

"What happened?" Amygdala stared at a man sleeping next to an empty forty of Colt 45.

"She got gang raped. You know, because there are no sex offenders besides under the Causeway." Maligdula grimaced at Josie. "The punks heard the commotion, rushed down here, and got into a brawl. People went to the hospital. There’s a truce, but now the punks escort people downstairs at night. The punks don't like the Harajuku teens, but the punks did the same for them last night."

When they reached the ninth floor, they stared at the graffiti along the empty walls and floor: indecipherable tags, Nazi symbols, spray-painted stencils of ninjas fighting pirates, brief poems about having sex with "yo mama" and "yo sista." Josie's frustrations flustered her. "Where are the teens?"

Amygdala laughed. "They just visit this world, Josie. Unlike the people on the other floors, they don't live here."

Josie's eyes creased from frustration. "Zalgo can't have a normal life during the day."

"Who is this Zalgo?" Maligdula sounded irritated.

"You'll see." She refused to look him in the eyes. "He's what I can't explain."

They walked up the remaining three flights of stairs. All three floors were empty.

Amygdala chuckled, but appeared agitated. "Look, Josie. Not that I mind ignoring back orders and playing hookie, but if we don't find whatever you're looking for, are you going to give up this madness and turn yourself in?"

Josie didn't respond. She wandered away from them, as if looking for something unseen.

A summer storm darkened the skies where windows had been planned but never installed.

Amygdala pulled out the ghost maker and winked at Maligdula. Amygdala set it on the ground, turned it on, and then repressed a giggle as he backed away.

Shadows darkened the empty room. Josie wandered aimlessly, occasionally poking her head around pillars. Thunder cracked. Josie jumped back.

Amygdala laughed.

She ignored him. Something didn't feel right about this place. She reached into her overalls and felt the taser, but then she pulled her hands out without removing it. She swung the cattle prod absentmindedly. The storm's cool air sent a shiver down her spine. The hairs on her neck stood on end. Her stomach felt queasy.

Rain burst from the sky. It pelted the palm fronds and concrete outside. The constant impact echoed throughout the concrete room. It absorbed the sounds of her footsteps.

Her head swam with uneasiness. She thought she saw something in her periphery. Josie swung her head to get a better look at it, but there was nothing there. She walked through a cold spot. Goosebumps peppered the back of her neck. She felt something touch the back of her arm. Josie turned abruptly.

There was nothing there.

Her stomach felt not hungry, but hollow. She experienced a shortness of breath. She saw something luminescent run to her right. She turned, but it moved more quickly than she could turn. Her skin tingled. Josie raised the cattle prod. "They're here."

Amygdala laughed. "Who's here?"

Maligdula raised the taser. "No, I see it, too. Turn off the ghost maker. This isn't funny anymore."

Josie shouted at Amygdala, "You turned that damn thing on?" She dropped the cattle prod and stomped towards him. She saw something to her left and swung her fist at it. "Shut it off!" But this time she got a good look at it: its silvery skin, hairless body, excessively long limbs .... Worse yet, as it curved around her, Josie saw the red pupil of its nearest eye. She tried to turn with it, but it moved faster than her head, neck, hips, knees, feet could turn.

Her eyes reached Maligdula. He had been tossed off his feet. His arms and legs spun around his body like yarn from Raggedy Ann's head. The taser slid across the concrete.

Josie sprinted. A burst of energy struck her back and sent her tumbling. From the concrete floor, Josie stared at Maligdula's body. The creature yanked him. She could see Maligdula's eyes no longer centered with his body's eyes. Josie scrambled to his side.

The creature hissed. It coiled.

Josie's open hand swung, but she swatted only air.

She realized she couldn't fight it while in her body. Josie stood over Maligdula's body, waved her arms. "Take me. I'm the one you want!"

The coiled creature sprung. Its excessively long limbs wrapped around Josie. The creature tore Josie halfway from her body.

Her head, shoulders, arms hung from her flesh like a partially skinned animal.

The creature pivoted. It leaned back and raised its excessively long fingers. It grinned. It leaped.

Josie turned from her body. She pulled the creature's wrist. She guided the creature through the air. Josie yanked its nearest leg as the creature sailed past her. She spun the creature, released its leg, twisted its arm, and snapped it like a whip.

The creature folded on the ground and stretched its mouth in pain.

Something came over Josie. A tidal wave of rage surged. It swelled her. It curled her. It reshaped her. She bit off the creature's arm and shoulder.

She felt the force of its presence in her mouth but tasted nothing.

Her eyes glossed over the creature's agonized face. Its remaining hand clawed at the concrete.

She noticed Maligdula. He watched in horror.

Her periphery detected movement. She glanced back at the mutilated creature. Its shoulder reformed. Its mouth gaped and snapped. Its arm sprouted from the socket. Its newly formed hand clutched at what Josie took for air. The creature stretched up. Its red eyes stared at her. The creature laughed soundlessly.

She looked back at her body dangling from her. It stood still. Its head hung from its slumped shoulders. She noticed the blemish on its forehead, partially covered by the few strands of hair not woven into the braid. Josie reached to push the hair from the forehead, but she didn't have a hand. She looked into her eyes. They were blank. Her body was unoccupied.

She forgot where she was. What she thought was her skin tingled, but she didn't have skin or even a body. She thought it felt like anxiety, but she didn't remember what anxiety felt like.

She felt Maligdula's concern. She felt him want her to turn. She felt his thoughts pull her attention.

The creature's head leaned against her. She felt Maligdula's fear.

Josie felt a force. The creature spun into her body. The creature's shiny forehead blended with the blemish. The forehead rose. The creature's red eyes faded behind the brown pupils. The vacant pupils focused. Veins swelled the temples. The crows feet deepened. Veins surfaced on the neck. Muscles on the neck clenched. Her body curled. It ripped the rest of itself from her. Its arms flexed. Its mouth stretched. She watched her molars. Her body's nostrils flared. Its eyes bulged. She felt Maligdula's thoughts scream.

Amygdala bent down, turned off the ghost maker. His mouth laughed. No sounds came out.

She felt Maligdula's anguish.

She stared at her body as it rose.

She felt Maligdula's thoughts as he watched her fade. She felt herself become invisible to him. She felt his fear as he watched her possessed body jerk towards Maligdula. She felt his thoughts scream in his head. She felt his thoughts scream at Maligdula. She felt his thoughts scream, Run.

CHAPTER SIX

Thunder cracked. Maligdula trembled on the concrete floor.

He watched Josie's body run for Amygdala.

Amygdala giggled.

Maligdula wanted to shout, Run. He broke free of his paralysis and scrambled for the taser on the floor.

Josie's body shoved past Amygdala and stumbled down the stairs.

Amygdala burst into laughter. He pointed at Maligdula but couldn't control his laughter enough to speak. He pointed down the stairs. His red face gasped for breath. "You were rolling on the ground, and she flipped!" Amygdala panted. "She totally face planted ...."

Maligula couldn't make out the rest of what he said over the rain. "That wasn't Josie." He fumbled to his feet. "Those ghosts are real," but he was sure Amygdala couldn't hear him.

Amygdala's mouth moved, but the sound of rain drowned his words. Humidity swamped the open room.

Maligdula felt he had watched his hero die. He retrieved her cattle prod and shouted, "We have to get her before she hurts someone." He felt sick inside.

"She'll calm down," Amygdala's voice was barely audible. He chuckled. "She's really spooked. She looks like a blind person on crack." He patted the ghost maker and smiled. His eyes twinkled. "Let's try this on the crackheads."

The rain lightened. Instead of pounding, it tapped.

Maligdula shuffled over to the staircase. He looked down the steps at Josie's tense, uncoordinated body. It paced the stairwell on the floor beneath them—clearly wanting to try but unsure it could navigate the next flight of stairs.

Amygdala stared at her with a puzzled look on his face. "What's wrong with her? She's completely lost it."

Maligdula grabbed and shook him. "You killed her." Maligdula pushed him away and raised the cattle prod. "That's what I've been trying to tell you. That's not Josie. We've got to capture that thing before it gets away with Josie's body."

Amygdala raised his eyebrows. He looked at the ghost maker in his hands. "I think this thing made both of you crazy."

Maligdula pointed the cattle prod at Josie. Her body risked the next flight of stairs and disappeared down the stairwell. "She's getting away." He rushed down the stairs after her.

Amygdala shook his head and followed.

When they reached the fifth floor, they noticed a few of the homeless people had followed Josie's body, only they were just as clumsy as she was, two of them tumbling down the stairs. By the time they reached the third floor, several of the crackheads had joined the pursuit. Uncoordinated, stumbling homeless people and crackheads clogged the stairwell.

Maligdula tried to maneuver past them, but their eyes bulged, their nostrils flared, their mouths gaped, their veins roped around their necks and faces. They terrified him.

Amygdala tasered his way through them. "Excuse me. Pardon me. Coming through." He grabbed the cattle prod. "You going to use that?" He shocked a fallen crackhead who had clung to his ankles. He returned the cattle prod to Maligdula. "Am I the last sane person alive?"

"The demons are possessing everyone."

"I repeat. Am I the last sane person alive?"

They continued down the stairs.

The rain stopped.

At the bottom of the stairs, they saw Josie's body climb the wet fence. A homeless man tried to pull her off the fence. Two crackheads struggled to pull the homeless man from Josie's body. The homeless man held Josie's foot as he kicked one crackhead and smacked Josie's foot into the face of the other.

Amygdala crossed his arms and shook his head. "Where is her parkour martial arts now? That homeless dude has got better moves than her."

Maligdula watched the homeless man swing from Josie's leg to kick one of the crackheads in the eye. "I think that homeless dude is Josie."

Amygdala looked at Maligdula and grimaced. "Barking bat-shit crazy."

Maligdula ran over to the fight, raised the cattle prod to Josie's body, and shocked her until she fell.

Amygdala raised his hands and swung at the air. "Shock her attackers, not her!"

The homeless man continued to fight the crackheads. Maligdula thought he moved like a ninja who wore an untrained, differently proportioned body. The form of his kick was beautiful, but he underestimated the length of his leg and how much space he needed to straighten his knee.

Maligdula shocked the homeless man's opponents into submission. "Josie?"

The homeless man's eyes bulged, his nostrils flared, his veins swelled. He opened his mouth, but he looked more like he choked than spoke. He smacked his lips and enunciated like a deaf person, "Ma-li-ni."

Amygdala squinted. "Maybe I'm the one who's insane." He looked up at the cloudy sky. "How do I even know I'm here?" He stared at his arms. "I could be in a straight jacket in some padded room."

The homeless man focused on Maligdula. "Goat us." He pointed at Amygdala's ghost machine and pulled Maligdula over to Josie's writhing body on the ground. "Goat us. Goat us." He lied in the mud next to Josie's body and held it from escaping. He pointed at Amygdala's ghost machine.

Maligdula nodded. "Ghost you. I got it. You want us to ghost you so you can get back into your body."

The homeless man nodded. "Goat us."

Maligdula turned to Amygdala. "You heard the little lady."

Amygdala shook his head. "No, I heard the big man. And what the big man said was that they were goats." He looked at the ghost machine in his hands. "I'm thinking this thing causes schizophrenia or something."

Maligdula ripped the machine from his hands. He aimed it at the homeless man and Josie's body and turned it on.

Amygdala shrugged his shoulders. "Whatever. It's not like you can rescramble an already scrambled egg."

After a few minutes, the two bodies convulsed. After ten minutes, Josie raised her hand. "Stop."

Maligdula turned off the machine.

The homeless man panted. He turned to Josie. "You stole my body."

Josie patted him on the leg. "No, just borrowed it." She wiped mud from her forehead. She looked up at Maligdula. "So." Sweat ran down her forehead. "Did you see the gap between what you can see and what you can understand?"

Maligdula looked back at Amygdala. They both returned Josie's stare and nodded.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Amygdala pounded the LeSabre's steering wheel. "I don't know how you got all those people to play along, but I still say you're fucking with me." He turned onto Red Road and headed to Picnics at Allen's. He was hungry, and they needed to talk.

"So did I stage all that at the hospital, too? Am I running from the law just to fuck with you?"

Maligdula turned back in his seat. "Right. So that's what happened at the hospital!"

Josie nodded. "That's also what happened when the cops found me running naked."

Maligdula's eyes widened and mouth gaped. "Jeez, Josie. You involved in some kind of holy war?"

Amygdala pulled the LeSabre into a lawn and slammed the breaks. He threw the automatic into park and swung his body around in its seat. "Stop. There's no holy war. There are only machines that make you feel uneasy. Machines that quiver your eyeballs until you see shit." He pointed at Josie. "The rest is just crackheads and your own mental instability." He redirected his finger to Maligdula. "You play in crack houses, then crackheads will come after you. The end."

Maligdula shook his head. "You didn't see what I saw. Creatures yanked people from their bodies. One of them took Josie's body. That's why she couldn't walk a flight of stairs, let alone fight. It wasn't her."

"Do you know how retarded you sound?"

"You saw only the effect of what happened. You didn't see the truth. You saw only an effect of the truth."

Josie interrupted, "When the teens show up tonight, it's going to be a slaughterhouse in there."

"Then they shouldn't play in a crack house." Amygdala swung the LeSabre back into gear and yanked it back into traffic.

At Allen's, they sat in a booth under a poster of James Dean, near Marilyn Monroe.

Josie ordered a cheese burger and vanilla malt. Amygdala, an omelet and coffee. Maligdula, just coffee.

Amygdala shook his head. "Aren't you always starving? You're the one who insisted on coming here."

"That was before a demon tried to steal my body."

"Right." Amygdala shook his head. "Probably wanted to sell it for steaks. There aren't many cows in hell."

Josie fiddled with her silverware. "Well, I need to eat."

Maligdula fidgeted next to her. "What's the plan, Josie?"

"Eat and go back to work." Amygdala sighed heavily. "We have to return whatever phone calls we missed, respond to emails, get to work on those back orders. This field trip ends here."

"I'm going back there tonight." Josie arranged her silverware. She polished her knife in her napkin. After a couple of minutes, she said, "I have to find Zalgo. He's the key to all this."

"Who is this Zalgo?" Maligdula grabbed Josie's knife from her. He placed the knife on the table. "I think I've seen enough for you to start explaining."

"First off, I don't know anything. All I know is that Zalgo possessed a Harajuku teen's body and knew how to use it right from the start."

"So he's one of them. You're hunting one of them?"

"No, he wasn't like the rest of those things. He even talked. And I can tell you that's no easy feat. All of your muscles clench because you're not even sure how to work another body's lungs, let alone its eyes, nose, mouth, tongue. Every movement is an effort, and you're always overdoing it." She noticed her hand had made a fist. She relaxed her fingers. "And I had my own body as a model to work from. Those creatures—." She gripped her fork and rubbed it in her fingers. "They probably never had a body. They live only in that dimension. They're figuring it out from scratch." She tossed the fork onto the table. "Zalgo never had to figure it out."

Amygdala let out a big sigh. He stared out the window at the clouds. "Oh look, a bird." He raised his middle finger. "Or maybe it's a bull with wings, because it sure is raining bullshit in here."

Maligdula ignored him. "But how did he do that? Is he some sort of a demiurge or something?"

Josie's hands slapped the table. "Stop thinking in terms of D & D. Think about what you experienced out there." She turned to him. "When you were getting yanked from your body, what did you notice? What was your body? Was it real?"

Maligdula opened his mouth, but nothing came out. After a moment, he said, "No, it was a thought."

Josie nodded. "Right. It was your conception of self." She looked at her fork. "None of this is real. This world we live in might be nothing more than a collection of thoughts." She closed her eyes. She tried to imagine what she was saying. "I think when you leave your body, you're leaving your own personal thoughts. You're moving between or through other people's thoughts." She remembered that homeless guy lying next to the forty of Colt 45. "You can take someone else's body when that person—through alcohol, drugs, sex, a weak disposition, whatever—when that person loses touch, when that person loses—." She thought of having sex with Michael Furry. She thought of her orgasm. "When that person loses her conception of self." She opened her eyes.

Amygdala suppressed a frustrated laugh. "You guys are so gay."

"No, wait. So what are you when you leave your body?"

"I don't know." Josie shook her head. "I mean you could see me, right?"

"Yeah. Same as I saw that thing."

"But I couldn't see myself. I reached up with my hand." Josie raised and examined her hand. "But it wasn't there. And when that thing hit me, or when I bit him, I felt the force of it, the way you would feel a strong wind or current." She lowered her hand and turned to Maligdula. "But otherwise it didn't exist."

Maligdula shivered. "When you bit him, how did you do that with your head?" He cringed. "I really thought you had turned evil, that you had become some sort of monster."

"You see, I don't think I even existed." Josie stared at her hand. "From my perspective, I was there only as a sense of unity, a unified body. A sense of self, but not a conception of who that self was." Josie thought of the creature slapping substance into her, but not giving her arms or a whole face, forcing an incomplete sense of self onto her. She fought to not get caught in the memory but to draw something from it. She paused to compose herself before the memory could unravel her. "We didn't see that creature for what it was. You saw only one of them, but let me tell you, they all look the same." Her eyes widened. Her mouth opened. "Oh, like other races do when you don't get to know them personally. We saw, I don't know, a stereotype." She directed her excitement to Maligdula. "And you saw your conception of me. And because I wasn't confined to what you saw, I must have stretched and moved in ways—." She opened her mouth, but the thought had to finish forming before coming out. After a pause, she enunciated each word like she shaped its specific meaning in her mouth, "I disrupted your perception of me." She clutched his arm. "That's got to be it. Because I bit off that thing's arm, and when it continued to move, I saw that arm grow back. I didn't bite it off at all. It didn't grow back. After I interpreted it to be gone, I created an interpretation of how it could still move. That's it. This is making sense."

The waitress brought their meals and asked if they needed anything else.

Amygdala nodded. "Some more napkins, ketchup—. Oh, and a psychiatrist."

CHAPTER EIGHT

At the warehouse, Amygdala walked to the office and pointed at the other two. "I'll return phone calls and emails. You guys pack and ship the completed orders. Then we'll get back to completing the next set of orders."

Josie paced. "We need to train an army." She stared at her shuffling feet but noticed little more than the thoughts in her mind. "If we shackle our bodies, then we can run training and intelligence operations in that—. Whatever you want to call it. In the gap."

Amygdala raised his voice. "Hey. Pay attention. You're at work now."

Maligdula focused on Josie. "The gap?"

Still looking at her feet, Josie nodded. She raised her eyes to him. "The gap between what you can see—."

"And what you can understand." Maligdula nodded. "The gap." He furled his brow. "What happened to finding Zalgo?"

"That's still a top priority, but we can't do anything about that until tonight."

Amygdala shouted and waved his arms. "Hey. Over here. We've got work to do."

"We're going to recruit and train an army and go on intel missions before tonight?"

Josie hid her eyes from Maligdula's and resumed pacing. "Every moment we don't stop them, another innocent person loses her body. We can't just sit here and do nothing."

"Nobody is asking you to sit and do nothing. You're being asked to stand and do your job."

"My job?" Josie returned Amygdala's stare. "Really?"

"Nobody cares what you do during your free time. You can chase optical illusions, murder double amputees. Your hobbies are yours to do what you want with, but only on your own time."

Josie turned to Maligdula. "He needs more proof."

"Take him with you. Gather intel. After I cuff you and set up the ghost machine, I'll recruit as many homeless dudes as I can and meet you back here in an hour or so. You think you can survive in the gap that long?"

"I don't know if we can die there. I don't know if those creatures can be killed. I don't even know what death is anymore. How long do you think our bodies can go unoccupied before they completely shut down?"

"You said you have to figure out how to breathe when you take over a body. If your body's not breathing without you—."

"But the body is just a conception of self, an identity, an idea."

"We don't know that, Josie, and even if we did, we sure as hell don't know what that means."

"Right. Then we need to coax those creatures into our bodies, turn off the ghost machine, and trap them there until we get back. I doubt we can coax them into chained-up bodies. Who would hot-wire a car with a boot on its tire?"

"No handcuffs. You go first. I don't want to chase down two of you at the same time."

"Wait a minute." Amygdala laughed. "Let me get this straight. Josie is going to sit there against the wall until she gets all shaky, stands up, and acts like a crackhead. And then we get to taser her, beat her into submission, and cuff her to a pillar or something?"

Josie looked at Maligdula. He nodded. Josie raised her eyebrows. He nodded. "Yes, Josie."

She looked at Amygdala and nodded. Amygdala raised his eyebrows. She nodded. "Yes, Myggy."

"Screw the back orders. I'm in."

Maligdula prepared the ghost machine. Amygdala gathered the taser, cattle prod, brass knuckles, bullwhip, nunchucks, and handcuffs.

Josie grimaced at him. "I do have to live in this body." She sat and leaned against the wall. “Capture it. Don’t break it.”

Amygdala fitted the brass knuckles onto his hand. "I'm just going to give you a dead arm." He winked.

Maligdula turned on the ghost maker and aimed it at Josie. After a few minutes, she felt discomfort. The hairs on her arm stood on end. She reflected on how inaudible sounds shook her from her sense of self enough for her to—. She didn't know what to call it. She knew she disassociated from her sense of self to escape discomfort. Or did sound play a more important role? Katie Kurtz analyzed sound patterns. The military wanted her to use her skills—to what? Navigate collective brainwave data? Josie thought there must be a connection between sound waves and brainwaves, or at least—.

She didn't know enough about anything to make sense of any of it. She felt nauseous. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth. She tried to steady her irregular breathing. Josie opened her eyes.

Luminescent faces loomed over her skin. Waves of shiny bodies slithered over each other to get close to her. Their red eyes focused on her.

Anxiety rose in her throat like vomit.

A large creature swam through them. The sea of shiny flesh parted under its palms. The large creature bore down on them until they receded. It refocused on Josie. It smiled.

It took a bow and extended its lengthy fingers to receive her palm.

Josie hesitated to take its hand.

The creature glanced at its empty hand, looked up to Josie.

Josie hesitated to take the hand.

The creature smiled a toothy grin.

"One of you has to take my body," she blurted.

Amygdala raised his hand. "Oh me. Pick me. Me, me, me."

The creature looked back at Amygdala, pantomimed a belly laugh, slapped its knee, and shook its head.

"I don't think she's talking to us, doofus."

Amygdala looked back at Maligdula and shrugged his shoulders. "I don't see anybody else."

The creature looked at Josie and nodded. It rose to its full height, looked back, and waved another, smaller creature over. It handed the smaller creature a piece of red fabric. The smaller creature widened its eyes, smiled, and hugged the gift. The smaller creature put it on.

It was a Star Trek red shirt. The smaller creature furled its brow, frowned, hemmed and hawed, kicked the ground.

The large creature nodded to it.

The red shirt looked back at Amygdala and his taser, cattle prod, brass knuckles, bullwhip, nunchucks, and handcuffs. It again furled its brow, frowned, hemmed and hawed, kicked the ground.

The large creature nodded.

Josie realized this larger one was some sort of leader, a captain of the creatures.

The red shirt lowered its head and nodded. It looked back at the crowd of creatures behind it. It opened its arms and hugged four of them. A short, fat one shed tears. The red shirt patted its head, kissed its temple, and hugged it last. The red shirt turned to Josie, inhaled deeply, and sighed.

The Captain again offered its hand.

She took one of its fingers into her grip.

She and the red shirt exchanged places. Her body convulsed behind her.

Maligdula turned off the ghost maker. Amygdala steadied the bullwhip in one hand, the cattle prod in the other.

Josie watched the red shirt struggle to stand in its new body. It turned to her. Its eyes fought to focus the body's eyes. It gasped for breath through the body's nostrils and mouth. It stumbled.

Amygdala whipped the body's back. After the body hit the floor, Amygdala shocked it in the ass with the cattle prod.

The observing creatures slackened their jaws, held their heads, shook their heads. The fat one covered its eyes.

Amygdala aimed his brass knuckles to give it a dead leg.

The short, fat one pawed at the Captain with an expression of horror. The Captain caressed the back of the fat one's head and wiped tears away from its eyes.

Amygdala tasered the red shirt in the back of the neck. He stepped from the writhing body and prepared the nunchucks.

Maligdula grabbed the nunchucks from him. "Just cuff her already."

Amygdala grumbled, pulled the cuffs from his pocket, and dragged the red shirt's groaning body over to a pillar. Amygdala bent its leg around the pillar and cuffed its ankle to its hand.

"Did you have to cuff her that way?"

"If Josie is fucking with me, I want to send her a message."

"You sent a message all right. I just hope none of that fucker's buddies are hanging around close enough to receive it. Because you're next."

Josie watched the swarms of creatures aim sledgehammers, bazookas, the barrel of a tank's cannon at Amygdala's head. One creature swelled into a giant who rippled with muscles and poised its fist over Amygdala's noggin.

"Things are going down differently this time." Amygdala collected the taser, cattle prod, brass knuckles, bullwhip, nunchucks, and handcuffs and sealed them in his locker. He paced. "You ain't having your way with me. Knowing you, I should lock up the Vaseline." As Amygdala paced, the creatures struggled to keep their artillery positioned on him. "I realize you believe in all of this mumbo-jumbo hoodoo, but you two just got confused by some hallucinations. Don't get me wrong. I'm a sport. I'll sit down in front of the ghost machine and let it shake my eyeballs until I see something terrifying, hopefully not you getting naked. But I don't want you tasering me just cause I lose my equilibrium and my face gets all tense from a headache. You got that?"

"I understand."

Amygdala sat against the wall. Maligdula turned on the ghost machine and aimed it at him. After a few minutes, Amygdala's head swam. He felt pressure on his chest. He experienced shortness of breath. Amygdala closed his eyes and wiped the sweat from his brow.

He opened his eyes to hundreds of shiny, red-eyed creatures aiming an arsenal at him. After he noticed the giant, Amygdala screamed. He crawled frantically towards the ghost machine, but a sledgehammer knocked him from his upper body. Amygdala stared at his own blank eyes staring back at him. He tried to scream, but no sounds came out.

Maligdula turned off the ghost machine.

The Captain pushed Amygdala's face into his body. The creatures closed in on him. They snarled in his face.

They faded.

Amygdala screamed. He scrambled to his feet. Veins pulsed on the surface of his arms and forehead.

Maligdula tasered him repeatedly. "Good thing I brought my own." Maligdula dragged him over to the pillar and tasered him again. Maligdula pulled a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket, stretched Amygdala's arms around the pillar, and cuffed his hands over Josie's quietly watching body.

Maligdula put the taser back in his MOLLE, grabbed the keys, locked up the warehouse, and ventured off to recruit a homeless army.

Amygdala regained consciousness to Josie's body dragging itself on its one free arm and leg around the pillar to him.

CHAPTER NINE

Josie watched the creatures scoop thoughts out of the ether. From the thoughts, they constructed a wall to conceal Amygdala's handcuffed struggle, as he, still hugging the pillar, rose to his feet, and shuffled away from Josie's one-armed, one-legged pursuit of him around the pillar. The creatures built most of the wall from thoughts of brick and cement. But someone included a live chicken and a functioning human eyeball in the construction. The chicken clawed the air. The chicken's stretched neck gulped for air. The eyeball seemed a mere extension of it. The pupil's focus oscillated between Josie and the kicking claws—as if to say, What the fuck.

The Captain gripped one of the small creatures by the neck and shook it in front of the living addendums to the wall. The smaller creature scooped the ether and picked out a few homemade explosives, a pair of satin panties, and a ticket to a Miami Dolphins game. The Captain scooped the ether and picket out a hundred-dollar bill and a torn page from a vintage Playboy. The two looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders.

Josie realized they pulled thoughts mostly from Amygdala's mind, probably because he was the closest. They likely drew the Star Trek red shirt and muscular giant from Maligdula. The sledgehammers, bazookas, and tank could have come from either of them.

Josie reflected on her dream, if it was a dream—the one that clued her in to how her life would change. She traveled through multiple minds at once, but she wasn't alone. She stumbled faster and faster, until occupying all minds at once. And she wasn't alone there either.

But if these creatures existed in multiple minds at once, they weren't occupying a large radius. Their imaginative resources were too limited. Josie understood that with a large enough pool of thoughts to draw from, their powers would be endless.

Terror shook her. She trembled not from that realization, but from a sudden, overwhelming sense of loss. Like if someone had sucked the air from her gut, veins, heart, brain—vacuum-sealed her organs in her dried skin. At any moment she felt she might burst into dust.

The large creature noticed her terror. It scooped a power drill from the ether. It drilled a hole through the eye in the wall. It peeked through the eye. It jumped around and waved its arms. It pointed at the hole in the wall.

Every movement Josie made felt like it would snap her limbs. She neared the gushing eye in the wall. Her hollow hand wiped its mucous and tears away before looking to see what had happened to her body.

The creature stopped her, scooped from the ether, and patted its face. It became Admiral Ackbar and smiled.

CHAPTER TEN

Maligdula returned to the warehouse. He discovered Amygdala standing with his arms around the pillar and blood on one of his boots. Maligdula ran around the pillar.

Josie's cracked skull oozed mashed brain. The eye against the ground bled into a coagulating pool.

Maligdula puked.

Amygdala sobbed through his words, "You locked me up with that demon. That was self-defense."

Maligdula talked through the string of vomit that dangled from his bottom lip, "You killed Josie."

"I killed a demon!"

Maligdula puked again. He panted through his open mouth. "No, you freed the demon. But you killed Josie."

Amygdala cried, "I killed a demon." Slobber poured from his face.

"I'm guessing you saw the gap?"

Amygdala nodded through his slobber. "There were hundreds of them. They had weapons."

"Weapons?" Maligdula wiped his mouth.

"Bazookas. A tank. And—." He huffed through his words, "There—. There was a giant."

Maligdula stood up straight. "A giant?"

"One of them—. He hit me. He hit me with a sledgehammer."

Maligdula squinted, tilted his head. "What?"

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Seeing her head's loss of integrity hurt her sense of cohesiveness. It filled her with abject terror.

That's what the creatures wanted, she realized. They sacrificed the Star Trek red shirt to get Amygdala to brutally murder her conception of self. She looked at Admiral Ackbar. She scooped the thoughts from his face, ingested them, and spat them out, "It's a trap."

The creatures looked at each other in astonishment. Admiral Ackbar tasted his own face and spat, "It's a trap." Another creature clapped soundlessly. It tasted the admiral's face. "It's a trap." Hundreds gathered to eat Admiral Ackbar. They each belched, "It's a trap," until Admiral Ackbar was no more.

The Captain pushed off those who still bit its face. The creature rose unsteadily. It brushed the thought of dust from its excessively long legs. It stared at Josie with uncertainty.

Josie ignored it.

She didn't like her frail sense of self. She feared she might crumble under the thought of a stiff wind. But the Admiral Ackbar disguise had given her an idea for a possible solution.

Josie strained Maligdula's and Amygdala's conceptions of her from the ether. Maligdula thought of her as taller and more muscular than she had imagined herself. She felt her legs. Thankfully, he didn't forget her pistols, and good ole Maligdula, he got them right. Brass Knuckle-Pistol Combo, Colt with a gold-finish 7.5” octagonal barrel and golden grip, a Remington Double Derringer, and a Schofield with an engraved nickel-plate 8” barrel and ivory grip. She reached behind her and drew the Remington. They were real. She cocked the rifle. And they were loaded.

Amygdala endowed her with bigger tits and ass that burst from the seams of her leather bikini. If not for the incredible muscles Maligdula had given her, she would have had trouble walking. Neither conceived of her without blood in her eye or her brains exposed. If she could get to her sister's house, she could upgrade to something a little less cartoonish, more whole.

Creatures crowded her. She aimed the Remington and fired. The blast disrupted the bodily integrity of the nearest creature long enough to discourage the others. The creatures shrunk from her presence.

Josie felt her current body was incapable of making a trip through multiple minds at once. She needed the body in order to maintain even a sense of self, but she doubted any bodily awareness would permit her to travel through multiple minds at once. Her awareness of a body whose tits and ass were obstacles to general mobility—well, that only made problems worse.

Josie mined the thought stream until she found what she was looking for: her motorcycle, eagle hood ornament and sword backrest still intact. Maybe if her conception of self slowed her down, her conception of self with badass chrome would speed her up. Better yet, whoever dreamed of this bike had thought of it with a bigger engine than realistically possible. Josie kick-started the beast. It burned a steady blue jet stream and looked up at her with a fang-toothed smile.

Josie smiled back, petted its furry gas tank. Of course it was alive. And it came with sound: a lion's purr. She holstered the Remington in its saddle.

The Captain waved its arms and danced in front of her. She thought it looked pathetically like a high-school boyfriend she had intellectually outgrown. Her bike growled at it. It stumbled back, obviously shocked by the sound. She saw the shiny creature as someone who longed for her abilities, as if they were equations she could pass on a cheat sheet in class.

That's when Josie realized, These creatures didn't devise this trap. They knew about it, and they executed it, but they didn't devise it. She reflected again on the dream, on the attack dog in multiple minds at once, on the infant in all minds at once. If that dream were real, then other types of creatures existed, and one of them had sent lackeys to destroy her.

She revved the beast between her legs, and together they launched forward into the ether, to see if the dream was real.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Maligdula freed Amygdala from his cuffs but aimed the taser at him. Amygdala leaped away. "Dude, it's me."

"For all I know, you're a highly sophisticated demon assassin."

"Though my ninja skills are great indeed, alas I am but of flesh and blood." Amygdala grabbed his crotch and shook it. "Big honking flesh. Takes up a lot of blood."

"That's gross. And have some respect for the person you murdered." Maligdula paced, covering his eyes. "I swear, if she couldn't just hijack another body—."

Amygdala's eyes glanced at Josie's open skull, the scrambled egg that leaked from it, only to look away. "I thought you were raising an army of homeless dudes." He choked back a puke. He repressed with all his might. He focused on the mission as if nothing had happened, as if he always believed in it, as if it were more important than those lost by it.

"The bums are outside." Maligdula covered Josie from his sight with his hand. "We can't train in here. Once they see what you did, they'll run and call the cops."

"Not if they've seen the gap. Didn't you recruit people who know what they're up against?" His mind saw nothing else but the mission now.

"Nah, they said they'd fight for food. How long before Josie takes another body?"

"This ain't bum wars or a fight club for the homeless. Loser doesn't get a broken nose, bro." Amygdala grabbed him by the arm and dragged him to the door. "Now suck up your hanging chad and tell 'em what's up."

Outside Maligdula paced but refused to make eye contact or speak.

Amygdala patiently waited. Amygdala sighed and shook his head. He sized up the loose congregation of bums. "How many of you have seen a demon possess someone?"

A tall slender man in a dirty Army jacket held his hand out for a cigarette. But his scrawny buddy was too distracted by what Amygdala had said to give it to him.

The buddy twisted his curly hair and nodded excessively.

Amygdala smiled and nodded with him. "Yeah, this guy knows what I'm talking about."

"Man, that's just street jive," A large, heavyset man of comparable size to Amygdala spoke without moving his head from his hoodie.

The scrawny man twisted his hair, shook his head, and chuckled though the gaps in his smile.

The dark hoodie grumbled, "Man, I thought you brought us here to fight someone fo real: each other, a battle of the bums, drug dealers, the mafia, the U. S. Army—but ah hell no, not the homeless boogieman. Shit."

The scrawny man twisted his hair and mumbled something. He opened his mostly toothless grin and coughed out a flemmy laugh.

A leathery blonde woman spoke in a gruff voice, "No, they're real. One of them took mah boyfriend. He walked away from everyone like he was trying to pop 'n lock but didn't know how."

Amygdala looked at her. "How did you know it was a demon?"

"Because I saw the fucker. Had big, red demony eyes. Crazy long-ass arms and legs. You can see them if you're drunk enough or high on something."

Amygdala nodded. "That's right. You can see them if you're all goofy." He turned to the large man in the dark hoodie. "And that's why nobody believes you when you tell them. But let me tell you. You ain't the only Cracker Jack in the box."

The scrawny man twisted his hair and barked out an abrupt laugh. He finally handed the cigarette to his friend. "No, I ah seen them, too."

"Until an hour ago," Amygdala directed his statement to the guy in the hoodie, "I didn't believe in them either, but now we've both seen them." He pointed at Maligdula.

Maligdula still paced without making eye contact.

"And we've got a friend inside who died trying to fight them."

Maligdula shot him a dirty look.

"And we don't want anyone else to suffer because of them." Amygdala returned his friend's stare. "We want to fight back." He redirected his look to the dark hoodie. "But we can't do it alone. And if any of you need more proof—." He pulled the ghost maker from behind his back. "We can prove it to you with this. This is the way we're going to fight them. This will let us fight them in their realm."

The scrawny man twisted his hair, shook his head, mumbled something. He kicked the ground and chuckled at the dust.

Amygdala pointed at the scrawny man. "And this guy is a prime candidate for the next demon attack if we don't take the fight to them." Amygdala concentrated on the big man in the hoodie. "I can prove it you, but it'll be dangerous."

"Dangerous how?"

"One of them might possess you. We could end up fighting your possessed body while you wrestle with its demon buddies in their world. And like our friend in there, you might be lost forever."

"And how's all that gonna happen? We got to smoke some of your PCP?"

Amygdala shook his head. "We'll tie you up for your safety."

The large man shook his hooded head. "Like hell you will."

"And we'll aim this sonic emitter at you for ten minutes."

"No way in hell you's tying me up and microwaving me. Go fish, motherfucker."

"So how are we going to prove it to you?"

"You ain't. You's driving me back where you found me."

The Army jacket raised his hand. "Me, too."

"They've seen it." Amygdala bit his lip, shook his head. "They've seen it take their friends, their loved ones. How long before it takes you?"

"Axing homeless folk if they seen a demon is like axing sorority girls if they scared of ghosts. They sayin yes ain't no proof it exists. And I ain't dumb enough to let you tie me up to give me no proof neither, especially if you's got a dead motherfucker in there you showed the last time. So go fish."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Josie and what she affectionately referred to as her Thunder Cat roared through multiple minds at once. Disjointed thoughts broke across her cheeks like wind. The two rode upstream through Miami's neighborhoods. Some she recognized, like the canvas of trees that arched over a street and obscured homes; some she didn't, like the more humble, treeless neighborhoods that resembled where some of her foster homes might have been, if she had paid more attention.

Josie identified the source of the current: a circle of creatures occupying about six minds at once, poised upwards, their mouths open, singing tangible but unintelligible vibrations. Their incantations formed the ether that Josie previously had taken for disparate thoughts. The singing formed the oceanic substance in which thoughts surfaced like chop.

Josie and the Thunder Cat passed several of these circles on the way to her sister's house. As they approached her sister's home, Josie noticed a similar circle, only instead of emitting the ether, this circle drew it in.

She fought back the anxiety before it completely unraveled her. She already felt less solid, less integrally whole. But she had to save at least Isabella, maybe even her sister. She switched her focus to what she was up against.

The creatures stood in the idea of her sister's walls, encircling the premises, facing inward. Their movement circulated the ether. They stepped nearly broad shoulder to broad shoulder, almost eight-feet tall, wearing crumpled images down their backs, probably dusters.

Josie unholstered the Schofield. She palmed its ivory grip in a loving handshake with an old, imaginary friend. She dismounted.

Her Thunder Cat stopped purring. Its tail flickered as it studied possible prey.

Josie assessed the situation. Unlike the others she had dealt with, these creatures occupied thoughts from the entire neighborhood, or through the current they drew, perhaps even further. These weren't the same types of creatures she knew. More capable. She didn't like the odds.

And their current pulled Maligdula's and Amygdala's thoughts from her—a whirlpool whipping what felt like flakes of skin from her. She wasn't sure of how long she could last out here. She needed to act.

Josie squat behind Thunder Cat, propped the Schofield over its saddle, petted it still. She aimed the Schofield at the nearest creature's back. Josie focused on Isabella, inhaled courage. She found enough peace in that breath to steady her hand. The other hand pulled back the Schofield's hammer. With an exhale, Josie fired.

She watched the red bullet bully its way into the current. A burning ember in water. The stream carried the ember away from its target, but deep into the circulation of creatures. The ember disappeared into the churning ether.

Josie stood. Her braided hair came undone in the wake. She leaned on the Thunder Cat, felt a fresh bald spot on the far side of its tank. The Thunder Cat looked back at her, its muzzle now mangy.

Her bloodshot eye leaked into the circulating pool. The current stripped her of what she took for air.

Desperate, Josie mounted the Thunder Cat. She tried to rev its throttle, but it only sputtered. Its tongue rippled from its mouth, dripping saliva into the ether.

She needed to get into the house.

Out of breath, she leaned the Thunder Cat into the current and let it take them. The whirlpool spun them around the house, smeared them along its green shutters, its white walls—her Schofield pulled from her hand, her hand pulled from its extended arm, the arm pulled from its shoulder. The Thunder Cat lost its muzzle on a doorknob, the right side of its twisted head in the doorframe. Her left eye stuck to a window, watched the right side of her face stretch away from it, her legs tumbling past her face. The Thunder Cat's fur clung to the corner of the house. Her right eye stared blankly through its broken blood vessels, tumbled free of its dismembered body, tore against the rough-textured wall. Her left eye—stuck to the window, smeared with blood and a coagulated clump of brain. The eye watched the creatures scream. They screeched the whirlpool of ether at the head of the table, into Isabella's delicate frame. The vibrations dislodged her from her features, but the circle of vibrations prevented her from leaving them. The eye watched her blur. Without a mind to interpret, the eye watched her glow.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The shadowy figures moved through the wallpaper. Isabella bent over the dinner table, squeezed her tiny shoulders together, scrunched her neck. She clasped her ears. She squinted her eyes to filter out the creatures. But her hands and squints did little to silence them. She had screamed for so long she could barely breathe. She couldn't overpower the noise they made.

Her mother had one arm wrapped around her, the other's hand flipping through a phone book. The uncradled phone beeped repeatedly. Her free hand stroked Isabella's sweat-soaked hair.

Isabella cried. Her mother teared and shushed her, told her it would be all right.

The blood in the wallpaper not only puddled, but dripped, not downwards but into the center of the room. Each drop splashed on Isabella's dress, her hands, her neck, hair, ear, cheek. It was in her eye, in her screaming mouth. She couldn't stop screaming. The blood ran down her throat.

Her mother was now on the phone: "No, I didn't see her eat anything .... I can't ask her. She's past the point of talking .... I didn't know who else to call. She started talking about the wall people and the blood in the walls and wouldn't touch the walls. She tried to hide in the center of the—.... Pump her stomach? So not anti-hallucina—.... The Emergency Room. Okay okay." She hung up the phone and held Isabella with both arms. "Oh honey, Mommy is going to find you a doctor who can help."

On the ride to the hospital, the creatures were in the car doors, curled around the ceiling. Isabella clamored to get away from her door. She shrunk into her mother's side. One made its way into the seat. Isabella tried to climb onto the dash. Her mother stopped the car, held her daughter in the rain on the side of the road, called the paramedics on her cell.

The paramedics strapped Isabella to the stretcher. Her mother and one of the paramedics tried to calm her.

The creatures were in the ambulance.

In the Emergency Room, nurses sedated her. The sedative muted her ability to scream. The vibrations shook her, pushed her deep inside herself. She tried to look away, but her head didn't turn with her eyes. She watched the souls of dead people get sucked into those things, felt souls pushed into her. Their anxiety pressed into hers. Her arms struggled with theirs. They kneed each other. They curled over each other. Her body became a crowded coffin in which souls got buried alive.

Her mother talked with a nurse who held a clipboard, "Family history? No. I mean, my sister—. I mean she's—." Her hands smoothed the creases in her daughter's sheets. "My sister's undiagnosed." She looked up at the nurse. "But she had a rough life. The poor girl never had a chance at a stable life. She didn't show signs until—. And I don't even know for a fact."

The nurse listed possible symptoms.

Isabella’s mother shook her head at all of them. She fought the temptation to mention the Jackson Memorial Murder.

The nurse scribbled away. "Your parents? Grandparents? Uncles? Aunts?"

Unintelligible voices blared over the P.A.

She looked at her daughter's comatose body. "Maybe undiagnosed." She sighed shakily. She cupped her head. Her hands felt the straps around her daughter's body. "There was nothing in our file."

After the nurse left, she unstrapped her daughter's body, kissed her forehead, pushed rain-drenched hair off the girl's face. "Are you comfortable?" Her hands smoothed the creases in the girl's sheets. The mother leaned her face against her daughter's. "Mommy's right here. I'm not going to leave your side."

She checked her phone. Her husband hadn't returned her calls. She thought about some of the listed symptoms: sleep deprivation, shortness of breath, voices .... She dialed Josie's number to ask. But really she needed to talk with someone.

The number rang. She stepped outside the curtain. The call went to voicemail. She redialed. The number rang.

A man's voice answered.

Unintelligible voices blared over the P.A.

"This is Josie's sister. Put her on. This is an emergency."

A ruckus behind the neighboring curtain interrupted her. A nurse poked his head from the curtain. "Need help in here!"

She covered her other ear. "I said this is Josie's sister. This is an emergency."

Three nurses rushed behind the curtain.

Unintelligible voices blared over the P.A.

"Josie's dead."

"What?"

A metal tray clanked on the floor.

A little old lady in a hospital gown flailed from the curtain. A nurse fell beneath her to the floor. An empty stretcher slid across the room. More patients stumbled from their curtains. Their eyes, nostrils, and mouths flared wide.

"I said Josie died."

Isabella's body stood quietly by her mother's side. Wet hair covered her face.

"Josie?" she shouted into the dead phone.

She noticed her daughter beneath her. Isabella's expressionless face peered up from its hair. The trembling mother bent to her with open arms.

The child's face said, "We are Josie."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The whirlpool around and into Isabella reached a level of self-sustainability. She became a conduit through which all else passed. The council of creatures, discharged from their circulatory march, spread their wings. They sung jet streams of ether to propel away from her current. Their song had no words but only one meaning: God.

Isabella felt the flesh eaters frantically tear the weak from their bodies. They held onto whomever they could to stop from getting sucked into her storm.

But she was the conduit through which all must pass.

Isabella turned from her mother to the possessed. They clenched facial features like fists in gloves, but otherwise rippled in her current. Isabella responded to them as to a part of herself that stubbornly clung to lost causes. With regret and sorrow, she whittled away at their grips—abruptly broke and tore them from their passionate embraces—of that which they could not have.

One by one, hollowed bodies collapsed. The little old lady in the hospital gown raged over a nurse's body. But she folded into an abandoned marionette.

Throughout the hospital, bands from Isabella's storm swiped those who refused to release their bodies. The creatures yanked their corpses with them as the storm swept them. Limbs fluttered like streamers. Her bands tossed torsos like water balloons. Bodies burst against ceilings, walls, floors.

Throughout the hospital, doctors, nurses, staff, visitors ducked, crawled, trembled, screamed. A naked elderly man rolled like a fleshy tumbleweed.

In the Emergency Room, Isabella's mother watched her daughter's wet, listless body conduct a symphony of horror. Not a tiny muscle moved, but her mother knew. We Are Josie did this. And We Are Josie was not through.

PART III

CHAPTER ONE

Amygdala paced over Josie's body. "We have no homeless people. How do we fight a war without homeless people?" His eyes passed over her legs. Slowly they focused on her skin.

Maligdula scanned the news on Josie's phone. "This is neat. I should get one of these." He noticed a news alert on terrorist activity at Jackson Memorial Hospital. "Holy bullfight, Murciélago Man. Isn't this where Josie killed that legless woman?" He handed the phone to Amygdala.

Amygdala nodded. "Josie was the Jackson Memorial Murderer." His eyes wandered from the phone and caught her exposed brains, but he looked away just before thinking about them. "You think there's a connection?" He handed the phone back.

Maligdula skimmed the blurb again. "There's not enough information to go on, so let's go."

"That's the best logic I've heard from you in years." Amygdala spread Josie's legs with his boot.

Maligdula tasered him.

Amygdala fell to the ground. "Don't tase me, bro!"

Maligdula walked to the backdoor. "Now. Let’s go. Before heading back to Planet 9." He stopped with his back to Amygdala. "And you're not turning my memory of a friend into a snuff film."

At the hospital, police cornered off the entrance to the ER. An officer with a bullhorn asked about the status of hostages.

No reply.

From the crowd behind them, Isabella and her mother watched silently. Isabella looked up at her mother. "Mommy, can we go now?"

Her mother nervously looked down at the child. "Izzy, is that you? Are you back?"

The little girl nodded.

Her mother bent down, held her child, cried. She kissed her daughter's cheek. "You want to go now, sweetie?" her voice trembled.

The little girl nodded. "I'm done eating."

"Eating what, honey?"

"Demons and souls."

The mother gasped. She looked over her shoulder at the police. They aimed their guns at the Emergency Room's entrance. The mother stood, clutched the child's hand, and led her through the crowd to the car.

Next to her Honda, Amygdala and Maligdula parked and exited their LeSabre.

The little girl broke free of her mother's clutches and clapped her hands. "Myggy and Maligni!" She ran and hugged Maligdula's leg.

Maligdula looked down at her. "Josie?"

The little girl nodded. She patted his stomach. "Big Stupid."

"What the fuck took you so long? Why didn't you take one of the homeless people we brought you?"

Isabella shrugged. "This body took me." She looked at Amygdala. "Yo, Big Perv. I heard through the psychic grapevine you've been looking between my legs." Isabella wagged her finger at him. “I ate some of your witnesses.” She belched. “Excuse me.” Isabella looked back at her mother. “These are my coworkers, Mommy."

"I see that, honey." She blinked unthinkingly. She focused on no one. "You work with my eight-year-old daughter."

Amygdala offered his hand. "Ma'am."

She took his hand absentmindedly. She turned to her daughter's body, but her eyes never focused. "The one who's been looking between your legs seems like a real gentleman."

Isabella smiled. "Like all men who look between my legs,” she looked back at him, “he was trying not to look at my brains." She punched Amygdala's arm. "You shouldn't have stomped them out on the floor."

Her mother giggled and almost said, “Oh you crazy kids,” but her laughter quickly deteriorated into cries. "I can't do this anymore."

"Mommy."

"Stop it. You are not my daughter."

"We are Isabella."

Her mother nodded. Her mother shook her head. She cried too hard to speak.

Maligdula squat down before the little girl. "Josie, stop tormenting this lady." He held her tiny hands. "You should've taken a homeless person. If you want, I'll go find you one."

"Josie, did you steal my baby's body?" the mother tried to shout, but her cries choked most of the words. After recovering, she struggled to finish the thought, "You've always been a survivalist, Josie. But when you're dead—." She gasped for air. She whispered the complete thought, "When you’re dead, you're dead." Her cheeks grew pale. Her eyes watered and reddened. "You don't take candy from babies, Josie. And you don’t take their bodies either!"

"We are many, Mommy. I am they, but they are not me."

"Stop it." She turned to Maligdula. "How do I get her out of there?"

Maligdula pointed at Amygdala. "We have a machine."

Amygdala nodded. "It's in the car." He turned to get it.

Isabella shook her head, but nobody paid attention to her.

Amygdala pulled the ghost machine from the backseat of the LeSabre.

Maligdula grabbed his arm. "Josie needs another body."

Isabella’s mother shouted, "Why is Josie's life more important than others'?" She threw her arms at the air. "God. I mean I love Josie. I love her to death, but that's where we are, isn't it? Her death means it’s time to let her go." She turned to her daughter’s body, looked into its eyes, and felt hollowed by their shared sorrow. Her head swam in confusion. Her arms and legs trembled. Her knees gave. She swooned.

Maligdula caught her. "Josie, do you even know this bitch?"

CHAPTER TWO

Maligdula convinced Amydala to put the ghost machine away. Maligdula laid Isabella’s mother behind a car in the grass. Isabella placed a water bottle in her hand before leaving with her coworkers.

At Planet 9, Isabella encountered Zalgo at the head of the stairs.

“Mother,” he said. Michael Furry’s wispy mutton chops rippled in the breeze.

“We are Josie,” Isabella responded. “And yes,” she ascended the stairs, “your father raped Josie, so that makes us your mother. What the fuck do you want?”

Zalgo nodded. “You’re my mother. He’s my father. But you and he were only vessels. Only the I Am is my true mother, my true father.”

“The I Am? I got the rest of it. You said, ‘Blah, blah, blah.’ But what’s the I Am?”

“The All Mind.”

Isabella nodded. “Oh that. I’ve been there.” She yawned.

“I know your thoughts well.” The creature stepped aside and gestured for Isabella to join it on the 9th floor. “The I Am is with everyone.” Zalgo smiled. “But yes, unlike anyone or anything else, you’ve been with the I Am. That’s why the attack dog redirected me into you. That’s what you call it, right? The attack dog? You achieved what the attack dog has never been able to.” Zalgo squatted to Isabella’s level. “But has never ceased trying.” The creature winked. “You are who you are because you are Josie.” Zalgo kissed Isabella’s cheek. “You are the point through which all must pass. It is only through you that the I Am can pass.” The creature combed her hair with its fingers. “And here I Am.”

Zalgo stood and offered her its hand.

Isabella’s upper body clenched. She shook her head.

The creature’s extended hand slung back to run through Michael Furry’s hair. “Sike.”

“You’re here to destroy the world.”

The creature laughed. “You and I are here to unite the world.” It aimed an index finger at Isabella. “As the point through which all must pass, you’ve already united many.” Zalgo’s thumb imitated the hammer on a gun. “Let the bodies hit the floor.”

Josie woke up in shadows composed of thoughts, images, smells. She navigated the tight confines of “I don’t know,” “I don’t understand,” “I can’t,” an endless texture of pimply skin, stray body hair, musky odors. She gagged from a gasp of bad breath. Josie threw her elbows, kicked her legs, jabbed her head. Her limbs mingled—no, merged with these points of self doubt. Odors oozed from her gums. Pimples popped from her pores. Ingrown hairs twitched in their pits. “I can’t. I don’t understand. I don’t know” flowed freely from her lips. “Where am I?”

Her question opened a gap.

“Zalgo made this place with the cosplay teens.”

Her answer moved her forward.

“This is what happened to the cosplay teens.”

Her answer kept her moving forward.

“This is where Zalgo keeps his captives.”

Her answer propelled her into a new room. She watched Michael the furry in a fetal position. He swatted and clawed at nothing. Katie Kurtz sat next to him doing the same. They appeared not to notice each other.

“Hey,” Josie shouted. She waved her arms. “Listen. You’re not alone.”

Michael and Katie opened their eyes and struggled to focus. They noticed each other and jumped back.

Josie bent between them and put her arms around them. She noticed Katie staring at the tats on her arms. “I got the tattoos before I knew what they were for.”

“What did you think they were for?” Katie asked.

“To scare off weak men. Challenge the ones who thought they were tough. While I speed past them in a bikini.” Josie’s right hand revved an imaginary throttle. “Vroom, vroom.” She wrinkled her nose at Michael and showed her teeth.

“Where are we?” he asked. The room expanded.

Katie watched the room expand. She looked at Josie. “We’re in a human mind?”

Josie grabbed Katie’s and Michael’s hands as Katie’s answer dragged them in a clear sense of direction. Josie shook her head. “A whole shit load of them,” she shouted. “At once.” Her extension of Katie’s answer shot them forward. “Whoohoooo!”

Katie mouthed without releasing a sound, “Collective thought systems.” She giggled into the wind.

Terror struck Michael’s face. “I don’t get it.”

The three hit a wall of negative thoughts and body images. Josie rolled in sweaty obesity. “Don’t do that!” The fat closed around her. “Shit.” Fat clogged her nostrils and excreted the scent of stale, cheap beer.

From somewhere above her, she heard, “Why don’t the images correspond with our own fears?” The fat shrunk away.

Katie answered her own question. “Oh that’s right. Because these aren’t our thoughts.” She grabbed their hands as the answer launched them back on track. “We ran into collective fears.” The extended answer shot them forward. Katie turned to Michael. “Doubts close minds.” He blurred from the sudden acceleration. “Questions open minds.” Colors streamed from him. “Answers give us a way to move forward.” Katie moved her hands through the stream that was once Michael.

She noticed her own hand distort, lose substance. Katie looked at Josie, but Josie remained the same: loose strands from her braid fluttered like flags in a parade. Katie noticed the details in her steampunk tattoos—and then her posture, always prepared for a fight. With a triumphant laugh, Katie finished the last sentence she ever said, “And now we’re all part of Josie’s parade.”

In the ether, Josie drew a six shooter from her flesh. She fired all six shots into Zalgo. The silencer lowered their vibrations to an unsettling swoosh. One by one, the bullets passed through Zalgo.

The creature didn’t respond.

In a band from Isabella’s storm, Josie led a wave of demons and souls to rush through Zalgo. They clutched for his essence, but the storm churned through him, around Isabella, through him, around Isabella—without effect.

As they circulated through him, Josie searched Michael Furry’s possessed body. It was empty.

Zalgo smiled. The creature’s fingers ruffled up Isabella’s hair. “You can’t knock me from me.”

“I am the point through which all must pass.”

“But I have passed through you.” Zalgo winked. “You’re my mother.”

Isabella churned harder, faster, through more tones, higher pitches, higher frequencies. Her storm became audible to Maligdula and Amygdala on the street. Emptied homeless bodies fell to the floor. Bands from her storm swept up even souls firmly attached to their senses of self. Those most attached to themselves dragged their bodies with them. Animated faces wrinkled, screamed, cried in agony. Their limbs flung over, around them, dragged beneath them. Their bodies circulated Isabella, shredded through branches, splattered against walls.

Maligdula turned to Amygdala. “I have a confession.”

Amygdala nodded. “I know. You’re a Faggotron.”

Maligdula and Amygdala got caught up in the storm. Maligdula’s body flew a few feet before falling soulless to the street.

Amygdala’s facial muscles clenched as if to hold onto its bones. The storm tossed him and his body into the fence. The steel rings folded around him, cut into his cheek, lip, gums as he took the fence with him. His steel-netted body broke through a telephone pole, but his soul wouldn’t let go. His mangled flesh circulated to the center of the storm. His chained, broken limbed, toothless, eyeless body circulated the 9th floor. His soul clung to every fold of himself.

Amygdala’s body broke into Michael Furry’s skull. Michael Furry’s head crumbled, his neck folded. His knees collapsed under his dead weight.

Amygdala’s chained body rubbed around Isabella, his flesh pulled through the fence into her. His blood coated her dress, her face. The bloody fence, torn flesh, chunks of bone fell to the floor.

In the center of the raging storm, Isabella screamed and cried.

Michael Furry’s deformed head stared at her. The body pulled itself up. Its twisted spine kept it from standing erect. Its imploded head dangled from its broken neck.

Isabella couldn’t stop screaming. Thousands of souls screamed through her lungs.

Her storm churned louder, harder, farther. The ideas closest to her started to break down under the pressure. The ideas of the ceiling and floor and Michael Furry’s skin flaked off and circulated into her.

The storm slung souls from their bodies all across South Florida.

Isabella’s mother had been reporting her abduction to the police outside the E.R. The storm blew the gathered crowd into streaming confetti. The storm wiped her and the officers into chunks and stains on the police cars.

Isabella screamed and cried. Michael Furry’s hair, sucked from his deformed face, stuck to her dress, neck, face, eyes.

A partially bald, naked, fleshless Michael Furry smiled. His mouth moved. Its words circulated into Isabella, “You can stop me from satisfying my objective, only by satisfying my objective.” His lips ripped from his face. They stuck to her left nostril and ear. “And ou’re asst the oint ah no eturn.” His naked tongue rippled in his teeth.

His detached flesh dissolved into her.

Terror shook Isabella’s souls.

The more souls she consumed, the more Isabella became frighteningly aware of what traveled just beyond her reach. The more Michael Furry’s body deteriorated, the more she became conscious of another entity. Isabella consumed knowledge of the attack dog.

As the number of remaining souls diminished, the attack dog traveled through fewer and fewer minds at once.

Hatred burned in Josie for it.

Her storm swallowed sailors in both the Gulf and the Atlantic. In Northern Florida, Georgia, Alabama, she slung children from their bikes, preachers from their prayers. A bald man whistling in Mobile got yanked from his eyes. Fat and mucous globbed from his sockets before he fell to the ground. By midnight, all of North and South America, even parts of Northern Africa and the Iberian Peninsula circulated in her storm.

Michael Furry’s skeleton stood before her, its meatless mouth an endless smile, its eyeless cavities a dark foreshadow.

By the next morning, bodies slung through a panicked vigil outside the Vatican. By noon, through another vigil in Mecca.

She consumed demons and angels alike. Isabella acquired an understanding of a larger landscape. The struggle to sing substance into the world. The struggle to dissolve it. Those who were born to sing. Those who abandoned the servitude of singing. Demons born without a voice.

Isabella consumed creatures convinced of an insane god. In her, they came to know instead of the infant.

Sorrow and terror circulated inside her.

She learned more and more about the attack dog’s plan. Only the point through which all must pass can consume the All Mind. Hierarchy will end. Only Isabella will exist, and through her, the attack dog will be equal with the All Mind. Humanity, demons, angels, and God will live out a mortal life in equality.

The attack dog cowered away from the conclusion of its own plan. It clung to a few minds in the center of as-yet unconquered humanity.

A small group of Russians toasted to the apocalypse. As Isabella grew closer and closer to them, they drank and partied and celebrated the end of times. As Isabella grew closer and closer to them, she heard more and more the infant’s cries.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I appropriated most of the Spanish in this novel from “¿Son todos los demonios iguales?” (http://www.fortea.us/spanish/teologicos/todosiguales.htm) in José Antonio Fortea Cucurull’s Escritos Teológicos.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO