6 Fantasy Stories

By

Robert T. Jeschonek

*****

Also by Robert T. Jeschonek

6 Short Stories

Fantasy

Day 9 – a novel

Earthshaker – a novel

Groupie Everlasting

The Return of Alice

The Walking Bomb

Tiki's Vision

Science Fiction

6 Scifi Stories

Give the Hippo What He Wants

My Cannibal Lover

Off the Face of the Earth

One Awake in All the World

Playing Doctor

Serial Killer vs. E-Merica

Something Borrowed, Something Doomed

Teacher of the Century

The Greatest Serial Killer in the Universe

The Love Quest of Smidgen the Snack Cake

The Memory of You Lingers

Universal Language – a novel

Forced Retirement

By

Robert T. Jeschonek

Hericane was pursued by her murderously psychotic super hero father, Epitome, for over an hour before she finally realized that he thought he was chasing himself.

It was something he said that finally tipped her off, and it was not exactly hard to interpret. “You don’t think I’ll kill you because you’re me?” he screamed as he flew after her at lightning speed. “Then you’re dead wrong!”

This just brought up another question. Instead of asking herself, “Why is my father trying to kill me?” Hericane now wondered, “Why is my father trying to kill someone he thinks is himself?”

She asked herself this question as she felt Epitome’s hand close around her ankle, catching her in mid-flight. As he hurled her out of the sky with a mighty swing, sending her plunging toward the city below.

It was a fall that her cape would not survive. With a great effort, Hericane managed to spin around and shoot back up, narrowly missing the lofty spire of the Scalzi Building...but an antenna on the spire snagged her white cape and ripped it from her shoulders. Not for the first time, she was glad that she had designed the cape as a tearaway piece; otherwise, it might have yanked her back to slam into the building.

The delay from such a collision would have given Epitome that one extra heartbeat he needed to catch up and pounce on her.

As powerful as she was, Hericane knew that once her father pounced on her, she might not survive for long. Hericane was easily one of the five mightiest super-powered people on Earth...but she had had a non-powered mother, so she was one generation diluted from the pure source of her father’s blood. Epitome was the apex of the pyramid, the strongest of the strong, the king of the superhuman gods.

And he had lost his mind. The man who had defeated such super-criminals as Heat Death, RNA, Noble Rot, and the Walking World War had fallen victim to his greatest enemy.

Alzheimer’s disease.

Hericane flew as fast as she could away from the Scalzi Building and her father, though her seventeenth sense alerted her that he was following at high speed. Frantically, she tried to think of a strategy to escape him...but she drew a blank.

As often as she had succeeded in high-stress situations before, whipping the bad guys with ingenious impromptu battle plans, this time was different. This time, her opponent was her father, who was incredibly powerful even at the age of seventy-two...and even if she did come up with a plan to beat him, the last thing that she wanted to do was hurt him.

Hericane’s hands were tied, while Epitome had the complete freedom of a disease which, in him, had led to something like insanity.

A sudden, sharp pain struck the middle of Hericane’s back, knocking her from her beeline flight path. She recognized the effect of Epitome’s “dagger eyes” power, which had already hit her at least ten times that day.

The key to neutralizing “dagger eyes,” she knew, was to break out of Epitome’s line of sight. Hericane did so by flashing down and hard to the left, putting a tall office building between her and her father. The pain stopped immediately.

Spotting an opportunity to escape more than just the “dagger eyes,” Hericane stopped suddenly on the far side of the building and ducked back against the wall. Her costume—-a head-to-toe one-piece with chameleonic properties--immediately changed color and texture to match the brick surface against which she was flattened.

Epitome shot past in a streak of red and gold and kept going, as if Hericane were flying between the skyscrapers somewhere up ahead.

As she watched Epitome fly off, Hericane wanted to let out a big sigh of relief...but she remembered how acute his hearing was and puffed out a few tiny breaths instead.

Hericane was by no means convinced that Epitome would not see through her ruse and come back for her. Nevertheless, she took the opportunity to rest for a moment, regaining her strength while she tried to come up with a plan.

And tried not to think about her roommate, Mardi...otherwise known as the super heroine, Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras, who had taken the first hit when Epitome had blown down the wall of their apartment. Mardi Gras, last seen trapped under debris and bleeding from a head wound.

Mardi Gras, the woman Hericane loved.

Hericane’s stomach twisted, and her heart hammered harder. She had to get back to Mardi fast, had to make sure that she was all right.

But before she could do that, Hericane had to stop her father. If she headed for the apartment, and Epitome followed her, she would just be endangering Mardi further. Mardi’s powers enabled her to bombard people’s senses with riots of noise and color and smell and texture...but indestructible, she was not.

Epitome, on the other hand, was indestructible. He had the strength to bench press North America, and he had hair follicles that could jump right off his body and drill through concrete or snip chromosome chains on command. He could fly like a jet fighter plane, just an eyeblink slower than Hericane in his old age. Then there was his trademark “Bonus Round,” an adrenaline-burst crisis state in which he surfed the gamut of way-out powers, a new one every five seconds, as if he were surfing channels on a TV set.

With all that he had going for him, Epitome would have been unstoppable even if he had been in his right mind. Now that he had lost it to Alzheimer’s--or most of it, anyway--Hericane had lost the option of talking sense into him, making him less controllable and more deadly than ever.

Epitome did not even have any weakness, other than whatever had brought on the Alzheimer’s. His enemies had only ever managed to hold him at bay with threats against innocent civilians. Even if Hericane had been willing to employ such threats, she had a strong feeling that they would now be useless against her father. If he was delusional enough to try to kill his own daughter, what were the chances that he would stop his rampage to protect bystanders or hostages?

Not that he had ever seemed to care much for his daughter in the first place.

Hericane detached from the wall and decided to head for help. If she could make it to the Power Structure headquarters in nearby Paratown, the heroes stationed there would surely race to her rescue. Apparently, the heroes who were based in her own home turf of Isosceles City were all away on business or home sick in bed, as none of them had popped up to lend a hand.

Unfortunately, just as Hericane drew a bead on the route that would lead her to Paratown, she heard the telltale nails-on-a-chalkboard screech that heralded her father’s approach.

The screech was a by-product of his use of certain powers simultaneously...in this case, flight and electro-breath. He had tried to have it “fixed” years ago, without success, but the truth was, it never interfered with his crimefighting.

By the time a target heard the screech, it was too late for the target to get out of the way.

This time was no exception for Hericane. Even expecting (dreading) that sound’s recurrence if (when) her father figured out her ruse and doubled back for her, she still did not have time to get out of the way of the bolt of lightning bursting out of Epitome’s wide-open mouth. Even possessing the gifts of super-fast reflexes and high-speed flight, she could not evade the sizzling electrical strike.

Searing current burned through her body like wildfire. Hericane stiffened and dropped like a stone, eyes fixed on the bright blue sky above her as she fell.

She saw her father plunging after her, fists bunched forward and face etched with fierce determination.

Sunlight reflected from his golden breastplate, throwing spots in Hericane’s eyes. She had always thought that the breastplate had made Epitome look noble and powerful, like a Roman centurion...but now, it made him look mechanical and menacing to her.

The red fabric of Epitome’s costume, which once had stretched tightly over bulging muscles, rippled in the wind over his shrunken, old man’s body.

Shrunken, but nearly as powerful as ever. Nearly as deadly.

And his own daughter did not see even the faintest flicker of recognition in his eyes as he glared down at her.

*****

Hericane soon realized that there was a positive side to Epitome’s not remembering anything about her. Thanks to his memory gap, he was not prepared for the super-powered trick or two that she had up her sleeve.

Like the one that she called “the big breakup,” which is what saved her life this time.

Fifty feet or so above the ground, Hericane had the presence of mind to trigger “the big breakup.” In mid-fall, at the flip of a mental switch, she blew her entire body apart into its component cells. A fountain of red and pink leaped upward, streaming around and past plunging Epitome as he howled in surprise and anger.

Epitome was blinded for an instant, which was just long enough for him to crash into the street pavement below. Before he could rocket back out of the impact crater, Hericane’s cells rushed back together, coalescing in their original form, and she bolted off toward Paratown.

As Hericane flashed across Isosceles City, she wondered yet again if Mardi was all right...and she dug deep for ideas on how to deal with Epitome. The only idea that kept coming back to her again and again was that Epitome would be impossible to deal with this time.

Not that that would be any different from any other time.

Hericane had only ever known him to be distant. Cold and remote. At best, he had been an unreadable, occasional presence in her life, unable or unwilling to make any but the most perfunctory connection with her.

She had guessed that it was because of her sexual preference for women, though that would only have applied to her in an obvious way since her teenage years. She did not have a similarly logical reason for why he had acted ambivalently toward her as a child.

Then again, he had not exactly been willing to make connections with anyone else, either. He had always been known as the greatest super-powered hero in the world, but he likewise had a reputation--especially in the hero community--as the unfriendliest guy in the business. He had never gone out of his way to socialize with colleagues or try to improve his image, and he had never seemed to care what anyone thought of him.

The truth was, he had never had to care. He was the mightiest man alive. No one could tell him how to act or what to do.

That was why, at first, Hericane had almost been grateful for the Alzheimer’s. The intermittent memory loss of the disease’s early stages had softened Epitome’s sharp edges, even occasionally made him seem vulnerable. For the first time in years, he had phoned Hericane out of the blue and shown up at her apartment unexpectedly; though he had done so by mistake and had not seemed entirely certain whom he was talking to or visiting, Hericane’s heart had still quickened at the sound and sight of the father who was finally turning to her in his hour of need.

Hericane had not been the only one to notice and appreciate the difference in Epitome. His super-heroic peers had noticed changes in him as well: overt friendliness; eagerness to partner with other heroes for adventures; and an unprecedented (for Epitome) willingness to let others take the lead in dangerous situations. None of this had been characteristic of the old Epitome. Behind his back, people had even joked that they had liked the new Epitome better than the old one...though some had not seen his changes as a laughing matter. Some heroes had realized early on that Alzheimer’s and the mightiest man alive would be a volatile combination.

And they had turned out to be right.

Epitome had begun to have outbursts of anger in public. He had said and done inappropriate things without explanation or apology. He had begun to make mistakes, serious mistakes that would have killed civilians if not for the intervention of other superhuman heroes. Twice, he had forgotten who the bad guys were and had turned against his partners. Beduin, Haiku, and Mr. Séance all had broken limbs to prove it.

By the time that the super community had seen enough and staged an intervention to convince Epitome to retire, it had been too late. He had become almost completely irrational. From the look on his face that day, Hericane had wondered if he had even understood a word that was said to him.

It was then that the super heroes had learned the answer to a question that they had never before thought to ask:

Who can make the most powerful man in the world retire?

Answer: Nobody but the most powerful man in the world.

*****

Since Epitome’s disappearance after the failed intervention, the super heroes had wondered what his next move would be. None of them had guessed that it would be to try to kill his daughter...and that he would seem to think, in some crazy way, that she was him.

Hericane had not guessed it, either...though, today, she had correctly predicted that she had not seen the last of him while slipping out of his crosshairs via “the big breakup.” Even as she had been rocketing toward Paratown, she had known that eventually, Epitome would catch up to her again.

He did so just as Hericane crossed the city limits.

The instant she heard her father’s trademark warning screech, Hericane veered hard to the left. Unfortunately, as always, hearing that screech meant that it was too late to avoid whatever attack it signaled.

This time, the attack came in the form of a nerve-wrecking synaptiquake and a two-fisted sledgehammer blow to her back. As soon as they hit, Hericane screamed in pain and shot straight down like a cannonball dropped from an airplane.

She plunged forty or fifty feet before shaking off the shock and rolling out of her fall. Swooping upward, she sprang into a fighting stance and spun around, looking for her father.

She could not see him anywhere. As she turned and scanned the heights, training all twenty-one senses on her surroundings, she wondered if Epitome had activated his Bonus Round of unpredictable powers, and one of those powers was a stealth mode.

Just as Hericane was thinking that, she felt waves of compressed air buffeting her from behind, pushed ahead of a dozen approaching, airborne objects. She whipped around in time to see twelve bricks hurtling toward her and pulverized each of them with a hyper-fast chop of her hand.

Hericane did not react quickly enough, however, to deflect or dodge the next mass to fly toward her. The bricks had been a diversion.

Epitome came next.

He blasted shoulder-first into her midsection, knocking the wind out of her and blowing her back and down. Before Hericane could catch her breath and retaliate, he slammed her at high speed against what felt like a slab of solid granite.

Then through it.

Looking out from her haze of pain, Hericane saw that Epitome had driven her through a power plant smokestack and kept on going. He was still propelling her backward, toward who knew what obstacles.

Toward who knew what pain.

“I won’t let you kill me!” said Epitome. “I won’t let you do what I did!”

Then, suddenly, the clear blue sky turned psychedelic.

Hericane squinted at the flashbulb bursts of light and the riotous swirls of pulsing color that bloomed all around her. A cacophony of discordant sounds, like an orchestra the size of a city tuning up all at once, exploded from nowhere at what felt like ear-bleed level.

Hericane’s heart pounded, but not from shock or pain. Her heart pounded because she knew at once who was responsible for the chaos.

As Epitome let go of Hericane, snapping his eyes shut and clamping his hands over his ears to try to block the sensory assault, Hericane relaxed and let herself fall.

As she expected, Mardi Gras was there to catch her. Mardi Gras, who had let loose the storm of light and color and sound that had shaken mighty Epitome.

The instant she landed in Mardi’s arms, Hericane threw her own arms around Mardi’s neck and hugged her hard. The bells on Mardi’s red and gold jester’s costume jingled as Hericane squeezed.

“Thank God you’re all right,” Hericane whispered in Mardi’s ear. “I was scared that he’d hurt you.”

“He did,” said Mardi, “but I still got your back, baby. And I got help, too. Look there.”

Hericane turned and followed Mardi’s gaze to a glowing disk of energy that was whirling nearby. As she watched, though the disk was flat, and no one hovered in the air behind it, a black-gloved hand punched out of the disk’s center. The hand was followed by an arm strapped with timepieces from wrist to shoulder, and then a face emerged.

A face that Hericane recognized.

“Overtime!” said Hericane, watching as the familiar costumed hero slid out of the disk. The insignia on his chest was a stylized image of clockwork gears, representing his particular super-powered specialty: time travel.

When a second man began to emerge from the disk after Overtime, however, Hericane did not at first know who he was.

The newcomer was younger than she or Mardi or Overtime...in his early twenties, perhaps. He wore a gleaming white costume with ruby trim and a crimson cape.

The most striking thing about him, though, at first, was his hair. It was bright blonde, shining like spun gold, and cascaded in a perfect, smooth fall all the way to the middle of his muscular back.

“Who’s he?” said Hericane, her eyes glued to the new arrival as he cleared the disk.

“A new recruit,” said Mardi. “Courtesy of Overtime’s latest time-chute. He’s a real Epitome expert, you might say.”

Hericane continued to stare at the long-haired newcomer...and then, suddenly, her attention was snatched away by a familiar blaze of pain in her side. Even as she realized what it was, she knew that there would be worse to come.

When “dagger eyes” struck, she knew that her father would not be far behind.

Sure enough, just as Hericane tried to twist away from the painful beam, Epitome flashed up from below and snatched her from Mardi’s arms like a football. On his way past, Epitome cuffed Mardi on the side of the head, sending her spinning away toward the ground.

As Epitome clasped Hericane against the hard metal of his breastplate and carried her off, she hauled back one fist and hammered it into his jaw with all her strength. Epitome responded with a head butt that knocked Hericane senseless.

As Hericane struggled to regain control of herself, he raised her high overhead. He looked as if he were ready to hurl her to the ground below.

“I won’t let you kill me!” he said, visibly shaking. “I won’t let it happen again!”

Then, just as suddenly as Epitome had snatched her from Mardi, someone grabbed Hericane from Epitome.

It was the newcomer who had followed Overtime through the chute. He flashed Hericane a blinding smile as he swept her away from her father.

Though Hericane had thought that he had looked handsome from a distance, she decided that he looked stunning up close. The smile, the bright green eyes, the creamy skin, the golden hair...all of it mingled in artful perfection, as impossibly ideal as a retouched photo or a painting.

He turned to her, and she was lost in his gaze. She was held firmly by his intense personal magnetism...and something else. Only after he had set her down on the roof of a factory where Mardi was waiting did she know what it was.

Familiarity.

The man leaped away before Hericane could say a word to him. He headed straight for Epitome, who hovered some distance away with a frown of deep confusion on his face.

“I know him from somewhere, don’t I?” said Hericane.

“You might say that,” said Mardi Gras.

At that moment, Hericane heard the familiar screech of her father’s powers in action...and everything fell together. Her eyes widened and a chill raced up her spine as she figured out who the long-haired man really was.

Because her seventy-two-year-old father was not the one using his powers at that moment.

But the long-haired newcomer was.

“Oh my God,” Hericane said in a hushed voice. “It’s him.”

Mardi Gras put a hand on Hericane’s shoulder and squeezed gently. “Yeah, it is,” she said. “We figured it was the only way.”

“My father’s younger self,” said Hericane. “Overtime brought him from the past.”

Mardi nodded solemnly. “He’s the only one powerful enough to stop Epitome.”

The sky flared as the young Epitome blasted his older counterpart with a bolt of electro-breath. The old man fell back fast, then caught himself and pressed forward against the crackling stream of energy.

The confused look was gone from his face, replaced by grim determination. “How many times have I put you down today,” he snarled, “and you just keep coming back for more.”

Young Epitome cut off his electro-breath to answer. “This is the first time we’ve met,” he said. “You don’t remember because you’re sick.”

When she heard this exchange, Hericane understood another of the day’s mysteries for the first time. Throughout Epitome’s attacks, she had wondered why he had thought she was him...and further, why he was trying to kill her if he believed that she was him.

Now, she knew.

“He never kept pictures around the house,” she said. “I never knew he looked so much like me when he was young.”

“He sure did,” said Mardi.

Hericane nodded slowly. “When he came after me, he didn’t think I was him as he is today,” she said. “He thought I was him from years ago. He remembered coming forward in time as a young man to fight himself as an old man.”

“He knew this would happen all along,” said Mardi, “but he ended up making it happen. By attacking us to try to head it off, he forced us to get help from the only person who could stop him.”

“Himself,” said Hericane.

As she and Mardi watched, old Epitome drove a fist at young Epitome’s stomach, then another at his chin. Both blows glanced off seemingly without impact, as young Epitome hovered calmly in place without so much as a wince.

The next time that old Epitome took a swing, young Epitome caught his fist with one hand and held it effortlessly in place.

“Listen to me,” said young Epitome. “You are sick. You need help. Let me help you.”

Old Epitome struggled against his young counterpart’s grip, working to free his captured hand. “You’re a liar,” he said. “You won’t help me. I remember how this all ends.”

“You have Alzheimer’s disease,” said young Epitome. “You don’t know what you remember anymore.”

“I remember!” said old Epitome, still straining to wrench his hand free.

Without a twitch of effort, young Epitome steadily pushed his older self’s fist away from him. “You almost killed your own daughter because you thought she was me!” he said. “Still think you’re in your right mind?”

For an instant, old Epitome looked down at Hericane and Mardi on the factory rooftop. Even from a distance, Hericane thought that she glimpsed a flicker of clarity in his eyes.

Then, it was gone, if it had ever truly been there. Old Epitome started to glow with an aura of hazy, golden light.

“No!” shouted Hericane, launching herself off the rooftop toward the action. “Don’t do it, Dad!”

She knew exactly what that golden aura meant.

Old Epitome was not going to surrender. Instead, he was pulling out all the stops.

He was going into the Bonus Round.

So was young Epitome. With his older self activating a rapidly changing sequence of unpredictable powers, what else could he do?

For a moment, the young and old Epitomes hung in the sky, their combined auras swelling and brightening. Then, the auras shifted from gold to red, and the men exploded away from each other.

They charged back together immediately, each glowing with a different light and surging with a different power as the Bonus Round fully engulfed them.

Hericane intended to hurl herself between them and cut the battle short, but Overtime rocketed up to block her path. When Hericane tried to swerve around him, he grabbed hold of her and froze her in place with the Pause Inducer mounted in his gauntlet.

“I’m sorry,” he told her. “That’s a fight you don’t want to be in the middle of.”

Hericane wanted to correct him, tell him that she had to try to save her father, but she was on pause and could not speak. All that she could do was watch helplessly as the young and old manifestations of her father battered each other with a stream of destructive powers.

Both Epitomes changed powers in the blink of an eye, switching from one to the next every few seconds. It was a dizzying whirl of fire and ice and cyclones and explosions and body parts that multiplied and distended and vibrated faster than the eye could see. Even Hericane, who knew her father’s abilities well, did not recognize some of the transformations and emissions on display in the heart of the duel.

One man grew to five times his original size, and the other man shot purple rays from his fingertips. Clouds of scalding steam hissed out of one man’s nose, while the other man split into a dozen razor-sharp slices.

While Hericane watched, the two Epitomes flashed from nightmare vision to ink blot blasts, from plague breath to laser fists to slave rays to spike skin. Young Epitome’s limbs disappeared, then punched back in from another dimension, glowing orange and seemingly detached from their owner, to pummel old Epitome from different directions. Old Epitome turned into a sheet of malleable golden metal and wrapped around young Epitome’s head, sealing it in a sphere without a single opening.

Young Epitome thrashed in the air, pulling at the sphere, trying unsuccessfully to wedge his fingers between the golden skin and his throat. His body turned to rock, then steel, then ice, but he could not break open the sphere from within. He expanded and shrunk and stretched, but the sphere changed size and shape along with him.

Young Epitome wrestled with the smothering helmet for one more moment. Then, he stopped fighting it.

And became a blinding ball of energy like a new sun flaring to life in the sky.

Because Hericane was on pause and could not blink or shield her eyes, Overtime threw a hand over them to block the burst of light. When Overtime pulled his hand away, Hericane saw a single figure hovering in the sky, silhouetted against a pulsing rainbow nimbus.

For an instant, Hericane thought it was the seventy-two-year-old version of Epitome, because his hair was little more than stubble, and his costume was red with a gold breastplate instead of red and white fabric.

But as the halo faded, and the man drifted toward her, she saw that he was not the old man after all. He was not quite the same young man who had come from the past, either.

For one thing, the blinding smile was gone. “I’m so sorry,” he said grimly, looking lost. He stared down at his costume, brushing it with his fingertips.

Hericane felt sick. She had always wondered how the impenetrable golden breastplate of her father’s costume had been created, with its unearthly properties and unique, pebbled texture. It must have been forged in the heart of a volcano or a star, she had thought, or in another dimension where the laws of physics were different from those she knew. How else could an indestructible metal be shaped into body armor for a super hero?

Now, she knew. In addition to burning his long hair down to stubble, Young Epitome’s nova blast had liquefied the metal sphere that had nearly smothered him. The metal had oozed down over his chest and adhered to his costume.

For fifty-odd years, Hericane’s father had worn a costume sheathed in his own remains.

“Sorry,” said young Epitome. The confusion on his face shifted to horror. Tears rolled out of both eyes. He drifted close to Hericane as if he knew her, as if she could help or reassure him in some way.

Hericane felt a mild zap like static electricity as Overtime took her off pause mode. Her body jerked as she regained the power of movement in her native time frame.

Even when she was able to move and speak again, however, she did not know what to say to young Epitome.

He continued to hover in front of her, alternately meeting her gaze and staring down at his newly minted breastplate. His expression shifted quickly, like super-powers in the Bonus Round, switching from anguish to disbelief to horrified rage to blank shock...though the overriding visible emotion was deep confusion.

“I think I owe you an apology,” he said slowly, returning his gaze to Hericane. “I’m sorry for killing your father.” He said it like a question, raising his voice on the last syllables.

“I only wanted to help him,” said Epitome. His eyes narrowed and shunted to one side, staring into space. “I wanted to stop him from hurting people...but God knows I didn’t want this to happen.”

Tears rolled down his face, and his shoulders shuddered. He hung his head, then caught sight of the breastplate and quickly looked up again.

Hericane drifted forward and took him in her arms. She stroked the stubble on his scalp as he sobbed silently into her shoulder.

“I’m sorry he hurt you,” said the man who was or had been or would be her father, trembling against her. He was younger now than she was, and she did not know him though she had known him all her life, and it was almost too strange for her to bear.

At that moment, Overtime bobbed into view behind Epitome and pointed to one of the fifty watches strapped onto his right arm. Then, he turned and waved at the rainbow disk of a newly opened time chute spinning in midair behind him.

‘Time’s up,’ he signaled. ‘Time to send him back.’

Hericane shook her head and held on to her father.

“How can I live with this?” said Epitome. “Knowing I did this to myself? Knowing this is what’s in store for me?”

“Don’t close yourself off,” whispered Hericane, giving him the only advice that she could think of...the advice that she had wanted to give him for decades. “Don’t be afraid to reach out to other people. Maybe things will be different for you next time.”

Overtime tapped Epitome on the shoulder then, and he drew back from Hericane. “I don’t know if I can take that chance,” he said, wiping the tears from his eyes. “I don’t want to hurt you again.”

He reached out then and ran his fingertips softly down the curve of Hericane’s cheek. She had never known that he could be so gentle. His eyes widened and sparkled as he gazed at her wonderingly.

She felt tears of her own begin to fall.

Finally, she understood why he had pushed her away all her life. Not because of her sexuality. Not because he did not love her.

He had pushed her away because he had wanted to protect her from himself.

“I love you, Dad,” said Hericane, her voice catching. It was the last time in her life that she would say those words to Epitome...though, from his point of view, it was the first time that she said them to him.

Then, Overtime took young Epitome by the hand and guided him into the swirling disk of the time chute.

Hericane should not have been happy, she thought, because, after all, she had lost her father that day. He had died right before her eyes.

And yet, her heart was full and her tears were tears of joy, for just before Epitome slid headfirst into the chute, he looked back over his shoulder and said the one thing that she had never heard him say to her before.

“I love you, too,” he said. And then he was gone.

*****

Blazing Bodices

By

Robert T. Jeschonek

When the woman who was not a woman burst into our evening, we were just setting up some balls for the breaking.

Shortly after Miss Patel had finished her story of the Emerald Guardians, I and several members of the Wanderers' Club retired to the billiards room. After all the idle chit chat, we felt the need for action. After all, we call ourselves Wanderers, not Gossipers, do we not?

Just as Mr. Asteroth-Phipps was drawing back his stick to break the first rack of balls, the heavy oak door of the billiard room flew open. As the door slammed home against the oak paneling of the wall, the five of us in the room looked toward the noise all at once.

My first impression was of a statuesque woman standing in the doorway, two or three inches taller than six feet. A black overcoat encompassed the upper reaches of her frame, occluding many details of her figure. The rest were hidden by the vast bell of the royal blue skirt of her dress, fanned out over its frame of whalebone hoops.

Her blonde hair, instead of being worn up and properly pinned, lay in a tangled fall upon her shoulders and back. Her hair looked wild, as did her eyes; her long, oval face was glossy with sweat.

A statuesque woman in distress; this was my first impression. Had she been accosted on the street and sought shelter in our club? Was she the victim of a medical emergency, in need of urgent care?

Whatever her business, it didn't take long for us to offer our assistance. The five of us moved forward more or less at the same time. I would expect no less from such a gathering of men of action.

"Madame." I spoke first, bowing my head briefly as I stepped toward her. "I am Captain Buckingham Thrice of Her Majesty's Royal Marines, Occult Brigade. These good fellows and I stand ready to assist in any way possible. How may we be of service?"

It was then, just before she spoke, that I realized the truth of the situation. Raising my head, I suddenly got a closer look at the woman. My steps had carried me to to within ten feet of her, enabling me to make out more details of her appearance.

At which point, my heart skipped a beat. I stopped walking toward her and gaped, unable to look away.

Because there on her cheeks and chin and throat was the unmistakable roughness of stubble.

My colleagues stopped approaching her at the same moment, also gaping at her unexpected appearance. Was she some kind of bearded woman, then, straight from a carnival midway?

Not if her voice was any indication.

"Thank God, thank God!" Her voice was deeper than I'd expected, deeper than the voice of a typical woman. "I'm finally safe!" It sounded deep enough to be something not at all womanly, in fact.

At that moment, the biggest surprise of all kicked in, leaving me reeling. For it was then that I realized this was not a woman at all, and not just a man, either.

This was someone I knew.

The words tumbled from my lips before I could stop them. "Algernon? Is it you?" Even as I spoke, I wished I could call back what I'd said. I thought it sounded utterly insane.

To my absolute surprise and horror, the person in the doorway did not laugh at me. Did not scowl at the offense or look down in humiliation.

Instead, one black-gloved hand flew upward, took hold of the gleaming fall of blonde hair, and tugged. The entirety of those golden locks came away all at once, revealing a scalp studded with silvery stubble.

The scalp of a man in woman's clothing.

"Can we waste no further time on ridiculous guessing games?" He souded incensed as he heaved the blonde wig to the floor. "We have a most dire business to conduct!"

"Sir Hogshead?" Doctor Yarrow sounded positively apoplectic. "Sir Algernon Hogshead? One of the charter members of our very own Wanderers' Club?"

Mr. Asteroth-Phipps sounded a good deal more amused. "Have you come from a masquerade ball of some sort? Or is this simply a typical night out for you, sir?"

Sir Hogshead plowed forward. Even under the white powder makeup on his face, I could see he was flushed as a stewed tomato as he shoved past me. "Enough japery! We are in danger, each and every one of us!"

Asteroth-Phipps chuckled. "Is there a shortage of rouge at hand, good sir?"

Hogshead grabbed a bottle of whisky from the sideboard and spun, wielding the bottle like a weapon at Ravensthorpe. "The very fabric of our civilization is at stake!"

"And would that fabric happen to be crinoline?" said Mr. Asteroth-Phipps.

Hogshead uncapped the whisky, gulped an amount that could in no way be considered womanly, and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket. "Laugh if you like," he snarled. "But I've come here to tell you that no less than our very manhood is in extraordinary peril."

"Do tell," Asteroth-Phipps said with a smirk, and then Hogshead began his tale.

*****

This whole awful business began innocently enough. I, Algernon Hogshead, arrived home early one afternoon to surprise my wife. I had just concluded a most propitious deal for my import/export company, one that would keep the British Isles well-stocked with exquisite foreign-made musical dentures for years to come, all at a tremendous profit to myself. I imagined I might celebrate the occasion with my beloved Bess.

Imagine my surprise when Bess was nowhere to be found. Our London home was empty as a beggar's bowl--children in school, Bess absent, even the servants gone from the premises. The female servants, that is.

Eternal optimist that I am, I expected not the worst, but the best. Surely, Bess had gone to the market. After all, she was known for joining the household staff in their shopping on occasion to get some fresh air and supervise purchases. It was her own little adventure, she liked to say. I might travel the world with my Wanderers' Club chums, but she could tell just as many cock and bull stories about her own trips down the market with the staff.

Disappointed at the lack of someone with whom to celebrate, I retired to my study and poured a snifter full of brandy. Undoing my tie and collar, I relaxed in my favorite high-backed chair by the fireplace and sipped the brandy, resolving to wait for my wife's return.

One hour passed. I watched its slow progress on the face of the antique clock on the mantle. My first brandy gave way to a second and then a third.

Just as the second hour gave way to a third with no sign of my wife. Wherever she was, whatever she was doing, it was taking longer than a simple trip to the market.

Yet still I entertained no suspicious thoughts. Even when the third hour melted into the fourth, my only concerns were for Bess's well-being. I began to wonder if something terrible had happened to her, if she'd been injured or fallen ill in the course of her errands.

Just as I was preparing to leave the house in search of Bess, I heard the sound of the front door opening and closing. Then, the sound of her shoes clacking on the hardwood floor. Immediately, I ran out of the study and down the hall, heart pounding with anticipation.

When I hurtled around the corner at the end of the hall and saw her standing in the entryway, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of intense relief. She was not dead, and she did not appear to be injured.

But she did appear to be surprised. Greatly.

Gasping when she saw me, Bess flung her left hand to the base of her throat and stumbled back two steps. "Al-Algie?" She sounded stunned. "What are you d-doing here so soon?"

"Came home to celebrate a deal, my dear." I took a step toward her, frowning with concern as I looked her over. "Are you all right? Have you hurt yourself or some such?"

Bess shook her head once, then nodded. Her perfectly creamy complexion shaded crimson as she blushed. "It's why I'm late getting home, actually. I was visiting Lorna Farnesworth, and I suddenly came down with the vapors." She fanned herself, making the auburn strands of hair around her face dance in the little breeze. "It took me ages to get my sea legs back, I'm afraid."

Such an emminently reasonable explanation. I believed her on the spot, no questions asked. "You're feeling better now, though?"

She patted her hair with one hand, keeping the left hand clasped at the base of her throat. "Still a bit shaky, truth be told. Best if I have a little lie-down, I should think."

"Very well." I nodded and backed away. "We can celebrate another time."

"Thank you ever so much for understanding." Bess smiled thinly and moved past me, heading for the stairs.

Before she could elude me completely, however, I shot out a hand and caught her left wrist in my grip. Tugging her hand free, I kissed it lovingly...all the while stealing a glance at the thing she'd been hiding.

At first, I could have sworn it was staring back at me. My first impression was of an eyeball planted in the high collar of her dress, flicking in its socket to look in my direction.

Another moment's inspection, however, revealed the truth. It was an eye, all right, but it was crafted of silver, not humors and muscles and blood vessels. It was just a piece of jewelry, a pendant on a silver chain--an elongated eyeball mounted inside what looked to me like an Egyptian symbol.

I'd never seen it before in my life...not in my house and certainly not on my wife.

But I did not speak of it at that moment. I lifted my lips away from her soft, pallid hand, allowing her to cover the pendant once more.

And then, with a sigh, she was gone up the stairs. I heard the door to her bedroom close, and I frowned.

For the first time, suspicion took shape within me. Why had she felt the need to conceal that strange pendant? What was the real reason for her absence that afternoon?

Perhaps, I thought, my mistress might shed some light on the subject.

*****

Lady Undine Crenshaw reclined on a fainting couch in the parlor of her rooms at the Savoy hotel. Her black-trimmed red silk dressing gown flowed over her voluptuous curves, leaving her pale ankles and feet scandalously bare. Sunlight streamed from the open windows through her luxurious blonde hair as it lay across her shoulders and breasts, forming a wispy halo. Her eyes, a brighter blue than any robin's egg could ever be, twinkled as she gazed at me.

"You're asking me about the likelihood that your wife indulged in an assignation?" Her voice was deep and husky. One corner of her mouth was cocked upward in a knowing smirk as it almost always seemed to be. "Darling, how should I know?"

I shook my head in frustration as I paced in front of her. "I'm simply asking your opinion. As a woman."

Lady Crenshaw sighed and turned her gaze to the ceiling. "She was surprised, you say? Alarmed?"

I stopped pacing and looked down at her, expecting insight. "Exactly."

"Perhaps she wondered if your company had collapsed, or you'd committed some unspeakable crime." Lady Crenshaw met my gaze. "Seeing you unexpectedly, and so out of context...of course it would worry her."

"This was different." I waved her off and resumed pacing. "Bess was not happy to see me."

"Believe it or not," said Lady Crenshaw, "wives are not always happy to see their husbands." Twisting around, she reached for the silver cigarette case and matches on the round marble table behind her. "Or so I've heard."

"But the pendant." I pressed my left hand at the base of my throat as I recalled it. "She was hiding it from me. And it looked so strange. So foreign."

Lady Crenshaw opened the case, drew out a slender brown cigarette, and slipped it between her lips. "Perhaps you've been spending too much time at that Wanderers' Club, darling." Her words were muffled as she spoke around the cigarette. "You're starting to see exotic secrets and dangers simply everywhere." Raising the lighter in its little metal box, she pressed the switch with her thumb. A flame popped out of the nozzle on top of the device, and she directed it at the tip of the cigarette while inhaling.

"I have learned to be alert to hidden dangers." I paused at one end of my pacing track and rubbed my silver goatee. "I've learned the hard way. Relaxing your guard can lead to sudden death."

Lady Crenshaw sighed loudly. As I turned to continue pacing, I saw her blow a huge cloud of smoke in my direction. "Is this the only reason you've come over, then? To talk about your wife ad nauseum?"

"Of course not." I brushed aside her question with a swipe of my arm. "When have I ever let her come between us?"

"Perhaps I should bring one of my boyfriends into the conversation." Lady Crenshaw laughed, puffing out three rings of smoke. "But which one shall it be?"

Ignoring her baiting, I spun and pointed a finger at her. "I must investigate. Treat this as one of my cases...my puzzleventures."

"Leave off it, Algie." Lady Crenshaw took a drag on her cigarette, then blew out more smoke. "This is bloody London, home of the illustrious Wanderers' Club. Can't imagine a worse place to try to hide a naughty little secret, thanks to you lot."

I grabbed the gold boar's-head handle of my ebony cane from the back of the red velvet chair on which it hung. "It has been my experience," I said as I gave the cane a twirl, "that the quieter the savannah, the closer the lions."

"Oh, dear." Lady Crenshaw crushed her cigarette in the bowl of a crystal ashtray on the marble table. "You've got the scent, haven't you?"

I grinned and reached for the doorknob. "What does your female intuition tell you, darling?"

"Something about people in glass houses throwing stones," said Lady Crenshaw just before she rolled over and turned her back on me.

*****

When it came to cold trails, this one was positively frozen.

After leaving Lady Crenshaw's apartments, I set out to retrace Bess's footsteps from earlier that day...all for naught. Everything appeared to line up properly with the tale she'd told me.

Surreptitiously interviewing our household staff, I found that each and every one of them backed up her story. Yes, she'd gone with them to the market. On the way home, she'd stopped off to visit Lorna Farnesworth, and they'd continued on without her.

Unsatisfied, I probed further. Setting out after supper for an evening constitutional, I swung by the Farnesworths' residence three blocks away. A knock of the boar's head handle of my cane brought a butler to answer the door.

"I come in search of a glove, my good man." I held up one of Bess's pale blue satin gloves, which I'd pocketed before leaving home. "This one is terribly lonely. Did my wife happen to leave behind its mate when she was here earlier today?"

The butler sniffed distastefully and shook his head once. "You have come to the wrong place, sir."

For a moment, I thought the trail was heating up. "My wife was here, wasn't she? Bess Hogshead?"

The butler cleared his throat and lifted one eyebrow. "Do you take me for an imbecile, sir?"

My heart pounded in my chest. I felt it, the thrill of the hunt, blazing through my veins like liquid fire. "Do you mean to say my wife wasn't here?"

The butler stared for an instant...then shook his head. My breath caught in my throat as I stood on the verge of confirming this vital intelligence. As I stood ready to catch my wife in a lie.

And then the butler deflated me. "Yes, she was here, and no, she left nothing behind. I saw to her wrap and gloves myself."

I couldn't help feeling disappointed. "Ah. I see then. Jolly good."

"Thank you and good day, sir," said the butler as he withdrew into the house.

And then he shut the door in my face, just as he had shut the door on this avenue of my latest puzzleventure.

*****

My next step was clear to me. If the beast's tracks would not lead me to the truth, I would have to shadow the beast itself. I would have to follow it, as I would an antelope to its watering hole, and watch it interact with its natural habitat.

This, of course, would require camouflage, but I was up to the task. For someone who'd followed the giant spider-gators of Bandu Shoga for hundreds of miles to the hidden treasure of Voxinian the Indignant, this would be child's play.

That night, I made certain preparations for the hunt. This involved drawing various items from the well-stocked disguise kit in the secret closet of my study and tucking them away in a valise. I added a few items of clothing and stowed the valise under the bed, ready for my mission.

Next morning, I followed my routine as if this were any other day. I woke, got dressed, and ate breakfast with Bess and the children...our girls, Ellie and Annie, both nine years old. After breakfast, I retrieved the valise from the bedroom, hid it under the overcoat draped over my arm, and tapped my way out of the house with the boar's-head cane. Just before I pulled the door shut behind me, I shouted to Bess that I would be working late at the office.

And so began the hunt.

*****

It felt good to be back in action. I'd been six months without travel or combat, and it had seemed like six years. For one such as I, nothing comes close to the thrill of the chase.

I hailed a cab, and it raced me uptown to my first destination: the Wanderers' Club. In one of the guest apartments upstairs, I changed clothes and applied the elements of my disguise.

I emerged a changed man...changed so much, in fact, that I passed the ultimate test. When Rogers, the keen-eyed major domo, saw me in the hallway, he ejected me from the premises, believing I was a stranger.

Out on the street, I stopped in front of a clothiers shop and examined my reflection in the plate glass front window. What a change I saw there!

My silver goatee was dyed black, as were my eyebrows. A false nose, bulbous and scarlet, covered my true, aristocratically aquiline one. Two enormous warts bulged from my face--one on the left cheekbone, the other on the point of my chin. A bushy black wig concealed the close-cropped silver stubble of my natural hair.

Instead of a black business coat and trousers, I wore a ragged gray jacket with holes in the elbows and threadbare gray pants. Topping it off, I wore a battered brown cap with a mangled visor.

I nodded with satisfaction and adjusted my posture, slouching and jutting my chin forward. My camouflage was perfect, ready for the hunt. If I, on another day, had seen me coming, looking like this, I would have thought it was a factory laborer approaching, or a beggar.

Or a street sweeper. In other words, the master of disguise had created the perfect appearance for the role he had chosen to play.

Slipping around to the rear entrance of the Wanderers' Club, I retrieved the push broom that Rogers always kept by the door. Grinning, I ran off down the alley, making my escape before Rogers could find me out.

*****

This time, as I dared not hail a cab, the trip across town took considerably longer. I knew no cabbie would stop to pick up someone who looked so unlikely to be able to pay his fare.

Fortunately, as I am always in peak physical condition, the exercise in no way left me winded. I returned to the street outside my home as composed and energetic as I'd been upon setting out that day.

And so I began my charade. My concealment, as they say, in plain sight.

Taking care to remain stooped over, I pushed the broom up the street and back down again, sweeping layers of soot into piles at either end. Always, I kept one eye on the front door of my home, waiting for Bess to emerge.

I felt certain she hadn't come forth yet, as her morning chores and toilette typically occupied several hours. But I presumed she would soon poke her head out of her burrow to sniff the air.

I waited at least an hour, all the while clearing more soot from the street. Fortunately, no one seemed to take an interest in me. No one seemed to notice this dawdling sweeper taking far too long to clear one solitary block of sooty cobblestones.

Finally, as I reached one end of my track and turned for another pass, the front door of my house opened, and Bess emerged in the late morning sunlight. She wore a burgundy dress, black gloves, and an exotic black hat adorned with deep green and blue peacock feathers.

Closing the door behind her, she walked down the front steps to the street and started toward me. Another woman, Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan from three doors up, called out a greeting from her own front stoop and bustled down to join her.

Smiling and chattering, the two of them set out together, looking well-festooned and resplendent. They walked right past without giving me a first look, much less a second.

As I turned to follow, beginning the hunt in earnest, I wondered where these two were headed side by side. For one fact stood out in high relief in my mind as their blithe conversation drifted back on the mid-Spring breeze.

Bess despised Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan. I had never known the two of them to go anywhere together, let alone spare a civil word for each other.

*****

Bess and Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan led me on a winding course through London. Always, I took great care to remain discreet, to maintain a sizeable distance between us and not attract undue attention.

After a walk of nearly an hour, they reached their first destination--a tall, brick building with pale green shutters--and strolled inside. I had made preparations for just such an eventuality, constructing my disguise in such a way that it could be converted to a new configuration. All I would have to do is slip into a secluded alley, discard the jacket and wig, turn the cap inside out, and I could pass for a common repairman who looked only a little like the street sweeper who'd just gone by. In other words, I could become someone respectable enough to follow Bess into her haunts without being turned away at the door.

At least, that was the plan. I intended to blend in, and in so doing, gain access to vital surveillance.

Unfortunately, blending in would not be easy. As I was about to thread an alley and revise my disguise, I got a look at the brass plaque mounted to the right of the brick building's front door.

FEMALE PROTECTION SOCIETY. That was the name of the place. I'd heard of it but had not visited it before.

And with good reason. NO MALES PERMITTED ON PREMISES. Those words were engraved on a second brass plaque mounted on the other side of the door.

Though a lesser man might have been discouraged, I remained determined to forge ahead. Surely, repairmen would have to be admitted on occasion to do the kind of work beyond the grasp of women.

Scooting down the alley, I changed my disguise as planned and strolled out on the street, straightening my posture. As I approached the front door, a dark-haired woman in a black dress glided past and rapped once with the heavy brass knocker mounted there. The door opened, and she sailed inside, glancing back over her shoulder but once in my direction.

Startled, I paused in my tracks as she disappeared from view. For in that single glance, I had recognized the woman. And the mystery of this puzzleventure had magnified a thousandfold.

What on Earth was Countess Calypso doing here? Why had one of the most notorious evildoers in all of Britain come to the same place at the same time as my own dear Bess?

Clearly, it was more critical than ever that I get inside.

Shaking off my startlement, I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and moved forward with confident purpose. Taking hold of the knocker, I clapped it twice against the wood of the door and waited.

A rectangular panel slid open, somewhat below eye level, and two gray eyes peered up at me. "Yes?" The voice was that of an older woman, in her fifties perhaps. "How may I help you?"

"I've come ta check the coal furnace, Mum." I altered my voice slightly, making it deeper, using an accent I'd picked up among dockhands during my business at the quay.

The woman turned her head, and I saw she was wearing a gray habit. She was a nun, then. "Sorry, no." She shook her head. "You're not on the schedule."

I grinned and shrugged. "Guess the boss didn' cross 'is T's this time. 'At's all right. I won' be a tick."

The nun scowled. "Come back when the proper arrangements have been made." Then, she snapped the sliding panel shut with a vengeance.

"A bum furnace can be a right killer, Mum!" I leaned close and shouted through the door. "Wouldn' wantcher fine ladies overcome by fumes now, would we?"

"Move along!" said the nun.

And that was the end of that.

Briefly, I thought of revealing my true identity and demanding entrée. A businessman of my stature might be able to bully his way past Sister Push-Off.

But that, of course, would mean forfeiting the element of surprise. It would give the women time to cover up whatever secrets waited inside. No, that wouldn't do.

Retreating across the street, I was uncertain what I should do next. I have not found myself at a loss many times in my life, and this was one of those times.

I could not follow Bess inside. I could not espy her purpose in visiting said institution, side by side with a woman she despised.

Because I, the great wandering hunter, master of camouflage, stalker of secrets, had not prepared for every eventuality that day.

*****

My wife and Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan were inside the Female Protection Society for nearly two hours. I waited impatiently in my street sweeper guise, clearing soot from the cobblestones while watching the front door, wondering what in the world they were up to in there.

Had they come to volunteer, out of the goodness of their hearts, to help women in need? Had they come to make a donation to the shelter? Had they come to visit a friend or relative in dire circumstances? Or did their visit signify some other motivation altogether?

Whatever their reason for coming there, Bess and Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan finally emerged. Chattering amiably, they set off down the street. I followed as closely as I dared, listening hard for any revelatory snippets of conversation, any clue to the business they'd just conducted.

But they gave me nothing. Just the usual "And then Mrs. So-and-So said this," and "Then Mrs. Such-and-Such did that." The same old womanly cluckery, babbling on and on with no apparent point save the wasting of time. Only now I knew that the shallow surface of their idle twittering concealed depths that were unknown to me.

It was then I realized that if I wanted answers, if I wished to know their secret, I would have to delve beneath the surface in a way I had never done before. A way that would require incredible courage.

*****

A day later, my mistress, Lady Crenshaw, was having the time of her life. The business we were conducting in her bedroom, to my mind, was quite serious, but she simply couldn't stop laughing at my expense.

I tried my best to ignore her in spite of my compromised position. "Isn't there some way to loosen this...this..."

"Corset?" The mention of the word set off another gale of laughter from Lady Crenshaw. Clutching the back of a chair, she doubled over, eyes pinched shut as the laughter burst out of her. "You want me to loosen the corset you're wearing?"

As Lady Crenshaw continued her bout of hilarity, I looked down at the alien garment wrapped tightly about my midsection. I'd seen corsets on women many times, of course--I'm married, after all--but it was quite another thing to be stuffed inside one myself.

It was, in fact, quite worse than I'd imagined. "Just unhook the thing, will you? It's cutting off my..."

"Circulation?" Lady Crenshaw gave me a look with both eyebrows raised high, just before falling into yet another blast of howling laughter.

I found myself regretting my decision to approach her for help. Yet of all the women I knew, she was the only one I could imagine giving it in these circumstances. She was the only one I could ask without fear of being turned in to the authorities.

Even at that, this wasn't easy. I didn't relish becoming a laughing stock for my mistress. I wished her to see me as virile, not effeminate.

But this work was critical, and there was no other way. If I intended to infiltrate the Female Protection Society, I would have to appear to be a woman. My disguise would have to be good enough to fool the keen-eyed nun at the front door.

And I would have to be ready in less than two hours. I had first followed Bess and Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan to the Female Protection Society a day ago. If they returned there at the same time today, they would arrive in one hour and fifty minutes.

Time was swiftly running out. "I really must insist that we get on with this." I raised my voice to command her attention.

Lady Crenshaw's bright blue eyes lighted upon my lower body. "I must say, darling, it's easier to take you seriously..." Fresh laughter escaped between her words. "...when you aren't wearing women's bloomers."

I planted my hands on my hips and blew out my breath in utter frustration. I didn't have to look in the full-length dressing mirror to know I looked ridiculous.

For the first time in my life, I was wearing a corset and bloomers. A pair of medium-sized cantaloupes had been stuffed into the top of the corset, simulating breasts. My goatee had been shaved, my eyebrows plucked, and a layer of white powder applied to my face.

What in God's name was I doing? For a moment, as I stared at my image in the mirror, I entertained second thoughts. I could not escape the feeling that I had somehow gone astray, that I had stepped outside the bounds of rational behavior.

But the feeling didn't last. The clarity of my mission welled up within me. I knew with great conviction that what I did, I did for sound and irrefutable reasons.

Gathering up what dignity I had left, I straightened my back and spoke with all the male power at my command. "If you are quite done with your girlish silliness, can we get on with completing this regalia?"

Lady Crenshaw quivered, barely able to stifle her laughter. "Yes, yes, of course. Let us finish your kit."

Clearing my throat, I clasped my hands behind me and nodded. "Let's try on the dress, shall we? The blue one?"

"V-very good." Lady Crenshaw was still quivering. "And then the wig?"

I raised my bare chin, admiring the lines of my newly shorn face. "I should think so, yes."

"And then your elephant gun, please," said Lady Crenshaw.

"Elephant gun? Whatever for?"

"So you can blow my head off," said Lady Crenshaw, "as I am fairly certain that's the only way you'll keep me from laughing myself to death!" And then, with that, she dissolved once more into uproarious hysterics.

*****

I had a strange feeling as I strolled along the cobblestone street in my wig and dress. Not just the excitement of disguising oneself, the anticipation of infiltrating a new territory where one isn't supposed to be.

It was more than that somehow. An extra shiver that came with doing something forbidden, crossing a line I'd never crossed before. The thrill of breaking a taboo that was fundamental to the very concept of my self and the society in which I lived.

I was dressed as a woman, for heaven's sake. And so far, in the many blocks I'd walked from Lady Crenshaw's apartments, no one had seemed to twig to my deception.

Women had smiled politely and nodded as I passed. Men had doffed their hats and bowed. Some had cast frankly appraising looks in my direction.

It was, by far, one of the strangest experiences of my career as a wanderer. For someone who has traveled the globe, crossed into other dimensions, visited other planets, and jumped both backward and forward in time, that was saying something indeed.

One thought dominated my mind: I was dressed as a woman, and no one could tell the difference.

Except my companion, of course, but she'd helped me accomplish this masquerade. "I must say, you're cutting a fine figure, darling." Lady Crenshaw, who was walking beside me, elbowed my ribs gently. "You seem to have something of a natural talent for this."

I chose not to respond to her remark. Her quips could be an annoyance, thought I was glad for her company. Lady Crenshaw had asked to accompany me, saying she was worried I might hurt myself in this disguise. At first, I'd said no, but then had relented on condition of her restraining her laughter. So far, to my surprise, she'd managed to leave out the hilarity in favor of cool detachment.

Mostly. "You might just be making a more favorable impression than I am." Lady Crenshaw let out a little giggle. "After all, you got that strapping young attorney's calling card back there, didn't you?"

I sighed. "Simply the power of suggestion, darling. All we did was set the table, and he filled in the blanks."

"Is that what they're calling it nowadays?" She giggled again. "Cheeky!"

"I only hope I shall be so convincing in there." I gestured with one white-gloved hand at the familiar brick building we were approaching--the Female Protection Society. Three women walked in the front door as I watched, chattering among themselves--none of them my Bess.

"Just like hiding among the rhinos, dear," said Lady Crenshaw. "Act like you belong here, and hope no one notices the horn's a fake."

"Ever the font of wisdom." I smiled at a passing businessman in a black suit and bowler, praying he wouldn't recognize me. The both of us were members of the Wanderers' Club. I'd been known to beat him roundly at snooker and darts, and he'd been known to drink me under the table.

As we drew near the Female Protection Society, two women strode out of a side street ahead of us. Instantly, my heartbeat accelerated, and my palms dampened within my gloves.

"There they are." Until then, I hadn't been sure they'd return to the same place at the same time two days in a row. "Bess and Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan. Right on time."

Lady Crenshaw quickened her pace. "Come along, dear."

I grabbed at the sleeve of her red velvet jacket. "No, wait! She might recognize me!"

"The power of context shall set you free. She would never expect to see you here and thus." Lady Crenshaw tossed her head and fluttered her hands. "But if it makes you feel better, I will do the talking."

The shin-high lace-up black boots I wore clattered on the cobblestones. "Slow down! This petticoat is bunching up between my legs."

"The things you say, darling." Lady Crenshaw turned and grabbed my elbow. "I do believe you are positively one of our foremost Romantics."

*****

Lady Crenshaw and I caught up with Bess and Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan just as the panel in the door was sliding open. The nun's familiar gray eyes peered out, darting from one to the other of the four of us in quick succession.

Then snapping back to fix on me. And linger there as my heart thundered at the prospect of being found out.

Just then, Bess cleared her throat and spoke. "We've come for the ceremony, Sister. May we enter?"

The nun's eyes held mine a moment longer, then shifted to Bess. "Has someone told you that patience is a sin?"

Bess shook her head. "I hadn't heard that, Sister."

"Because it is a virtue," said the nun, and then the panel in the door snapped shut. "You'd do well to practice it."

For a moment, I feared she might not admit us...but the door lock cracked open, and the door swung inward.

Bess entered first, nodding to the nun as she passed. Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan did the same, and Lady Crenshaw crossed the threshold behind her.

I half expected to be barred from entry, so it came as no surprise when the nun caught my elbow in her iron grip. She frowned up at me with a searching gaze of such intensity, I could have sworn I felt the heat of it stinging my face.

I held my tongue, lest my voice--which was familiar to her--give me away. Disguising it was the one thing we hadn't practiced...but if the nun asked me a direct question, I would have to improvise.

Lady Crenshaw chose that moment to intervene. "You see it, too, don't you, Sister?" Interposing herself between me and the nun, she hopped up on her toes and stared at my face. "You're not the first to notice her uncanny resemblance to the Virgin Mary."

"No, no, no." The nun shook my arm. "It's something else entirely."

I tensed, preparing to make a fight of it. Bess and Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan had already disappeared down the hallway. Perhaps, if I knocked the nun unconscious, I could yet follow my wife and ascertain her secret.

Fortunately, I was spared the trouble. "It's just...you're so very tall." The nun smiled, her eyes crinkling at the corners. "You remind me of my mother."

Relieved, I smiled and shrugged. The nun gave my elbow one last squeeze before releasing her grip.

"People thought she was an awful woman," said the nun. "But she wasn't at all what they expected."

"How unlike Henrietta here," said Lady Crenshaw as she drew me away. "She is exactly what you'd expect her to be."

*****

Lady Crenshaw and I hurried down the plastered hallway in the direction Bess and Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan had gone. I'd lost sight of the both of them, though I suspected Lady Crenshaw had some idea of where they'd gone.

We passed door after door along the hall, many of them closed. Open doorways revealed tiny, candlelit rooms, little more than convent-style cells, each with one bed, one chair, and one woman. The women, glancing up as we rushed past, looked utterly lost and forlorn. Were they the victims of cruel circumstance, cruel men, or their own cruel natures? I had no way of knowing.

The hall hooked right at its far end, and Lady Crenshaw led me around the corner. More doors lined this leg, all of them closed but for one which was in the process of falling shut. Lady Crenshaw bolted ahead, moving remarkably fast for all the crinoline piled around her legs, and caught the door before it could meet the jamb.

Holding it open, she made a little bow and waved for me to enter. "After you, milady."

"Jolly good." I headed for the reddish light streaming out of the opening. "Bit of a role reversal, wouldn't you say?"

"Not if you judge a book by its cover," said Lady Crenshaw.

*****

The red light was pouring up from below, from a spiral stone staircase descending into the earth. I hesitated at the top, wondering what awaited us at the bottom...and then I started down. Lady Crenshaw followed behind me.

The smell of incense wafted up as I hobbled down the steps, clumsy in the high heels of the boots I was wearing. I kept one hand on the iron railing along the stone wall at all times, bracing myself in case my balance faltered.

It turned out to be a long way down. I counted twenty steps, then thirty, then forty, screwing ever downward into the underground. Always, the red light grew brighter, the incense stronger as we descended...and a clamor of voices rose to greet us, the sound of a crowd. Strange music also swirled up from below, a swell of skirling pipes and fiddles and instruments I couldn't identify.

By the time we reached the bottom, I'd counted ninety-nine steps. Thus ensconced in the bowels of the earth, I stepped forward, casting my eyes over the startling scene before me.

How many times had I set foot in utterly strange settings far removed from everything I knew and held dear? How many times had my heart shuddered in my chest as I gazed upon a bizarre tableau that cast a queer new light on all my assumptions about the universe?

Yet here I was again.

Lady Crenshaw and I stood on an elevated rim at the edge of a vast cavern hewn from the rock. The bowl-like floor of the cavern was filled with an enormous crowd of people, stretching from wall to wall.

All of them, from what I could see, were women...women of all shapes and sizes and colors and nationalities. Women dressed in every style of feminine garb I could imagine, from the corseted dresses of London and Western Europe to the sarongs of India, from the kimonos of Japan to the fur coats of the Eskimos, from the bowlers and serapes of South America to the buckskins and feathers of the American Indians. It was a veritable international army of women, all of them suffused with the crimson light that had drawn us from above.

I could not hope to count them all in that moment, but I estimated that there were thousands, tens of thousands, all encircling a distant dais in the center of the cavern. All watching a single figure on that dais, a woman, all listening to her voice as it echoed throughout the vast space.

At first I thought she might be Countess Calypso, but no. I couldn't be sure if she was anyone I'd ever known. I couldn't understand a word she said, either. She was speaking some kind of foreign language, one I didn't recognize. That alone amazed me, because I'd thought I'd known every language on Earth.

Not that the women in the cavern seemed to have any trouble understanding. As the woman on the dais shouted rapid-fire jumbles of alien words, the crowd around her clapped and cheered and shouted back at her using the same language.

Bess was no exception. I saw her up ahead at the edge of the crowd, alongside Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan. As I watched, Bess clapped her hands overhead and called out in response to what the woman on the dais was saying. I shuddered, unaccustomed to hearing the words of an alien language emerging from my own dear wife's ruby lips.

I turned to Lady Crenshaw at my side and leaned close, speaking into her ear. "What are they saying? I don't understand a word of it."

"You wouldn't, would you?" Lady Crenshaw raised one eyebrow and looked at me with a considering gaze. After a moment, she seemed to come to a decision, and her expression softened. "Lingua femme, we call it. The language of women. A way for women to communicate no matter where they come from or what the dominant language of their homeland might be."

I scowled at her, taking it all in. "This lingua femme...you've known of it all along?"

Her smirk had a trace of playfulness around the edges. "Among other things, darling."

My mind was working overtime as things started falling into place. I was afraid to ask the next question that occurred to me, afraid to hear the answer from her lips. "Undine." A bitter chill pervaded my body. Cold sweat trickled between my shoulder blades and down my back between the corset and my skin. "Have you been to this place before?"

Lady Crenshaw giggled. "Now, darling." She hooked her arm around my elbow and led me toward the crowd. "How many times have I told you about asking questions when you already know what the answers will be?"

*****

I did not resist as Lady Crenshaw pulled me forward. I was, of course, concerned that Bess would find me out, but a part of me actually hoped that she would. I felt in need of another ally against this army; Bess might be a part of it, but I still held out hope that she would take my side when my true identity was exposed.

As we drew near to Bess and Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan, the speaker on the central dais began to sing an eerie, keening song. The strange music that had been playing through the cavern rose in pitch and tempo to match her, and the army of women sang along.

As the priestess on the dais (for that was what she seemed to me, a priestess invoking an ancient rite) raised up her arms, so did every woman in the cavern except for Lady Crenshaw. The singing grew higher and faster with each passing second.

"What on Earth are they doing?" I had to shout for Lady Crenshaw to hear me. "Some kind of incantation?"

Lady Crenshaw didn't answer. As we reached the crowd, she too raised her arms and sang along with the priestess.

The red light in the cavern pulsated like pumping blood, growing alternately brighter and darker. Above the priestess, the air swirled with thickening pink mist.

"Undine!" I shook her by the shoulder. "What's happening?" But she ignored me.

Suddenly, the swirling mist above the priestess compressed, snapping into a solid form. It was a form I knew well, one that had been foremost in my mind since the day I'd caught my wife coming home late from the market.

It was the same elongated eyeball mounted inside a pyramid-shaped Egyptian symbol as the one that had hung from the silver pendant Bess had tried to conceal. Instead of silver, it looked as if it had been shaped from rippling red plasma, coursing with crackling tongues of energy.

And as I watched, I saw it blink. A lid of scarlet flame swept down and back up within the triangle.

It was then I realized, with a sickening lurch, that this eye belonged to something alive. Something that was gazing down at us all from somewhere else.

Something, I could have sworn, that possessed an intelligence most malevolent.

Why weren't the women in the least bit alarmed? Was I the only one in this vast underground vault who perceived the potential for danger?

"Undine!" With increased urgency, I grabbed Lady Crenshaw's arms and shook her hard. "I need you!"

It was enough to draw her attention and make her stop singing. "Whatever for?"

Suddenly, a great shrieking cry emanated from the hovering eyeball, so loud and so shrill it set my teeth on edge. Another followed, even louder, even shriller.

The piercing shrieks sent me reeling in a circle with hands clapped over my ears. "God save us!" I saw my wife turn and frown as I cried out, doubled over in pain. "What's happening?"

Lady Crenshaw crouched in front of me and took my head in her hands. "Quid pro quo, darling."

I gazed at her through tear-filled eyes. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You're a very lucky boy, Algie," said Lady Crenshaw. "You get to witness the start of a new era."

*****

The fiery eyeball swiveled in its pyramid socket, and the red light in the cavern pulsated faster. The army of women from all corners of the globe danced with increasing abandon, wailing an otherworldly song in twisted counterpoint with the eyeball's ear-splitting shrieks.

Only Lady Crenshaw and I remained still at the fringe of the frenzy...and Bess, too, who was suddenly quite interested in watching us both.

"You should be happy for us." Lady Crenshaw smiled. She still held my head in her hands. "We are free at last."

I felt dizzy. Was it the shrieking, the incense, the pulsating light? "Free of what, exactly?"

"Think for a moment," said Lady Crenshaw. "If you were truly a woman, what one thing would you most desire to rid yourself of? What one part of your life would make it least worth living?"

"Corsets?" I was having trouble organizing my thoughts. "High heels?"

Lady Crenshaw shook her head. "One great burden has darkened the lives of women since the beginning of time, shadowing our every moment of existence." She leaned close and kissed me on the forehead. "The pain of childbirth, of course."

The shrieking rose in intensity. The red light flashed faster, ever faster, until it created a strobing effect.

Lady Crenshaw's face flickered like something out of a nightmare. "We have only ever had two options: bear the pain for the good of the human race or forego the pain and stop producing children.

"But now, we have negotiated a third option." Lady Crenshaw smiled. "We have introduced a third category of 'parent' who will change the equation."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bess lean down to stare at me, her image stuttering in the strobing red light. She cocked her head to one side, and her frown deepened with fascination.

Lady Crenshaw kept my own head fastened between her hands as she spun out her tale. "Think of them as gods, darling, from elsewhere. A level up and over, if you will." Her eyes widened with feverish enthusiasm. "Becoming as one with us, they will infuse our systems with divine energies. Thus united, we shall possess the power to remove the agony from the childbirth process.

"We will still feign it for the benefit of your kind, of course." A look of disdain flickered across her face. "Mustn't let the men know our suffering has diminished. Not that keeping you in the dark is much of a challenge, is it?" Her laughter was cruel. "For all your vaunted skill as a wanderer and puzzleventurer, have you ever guessed that the members of the 'fair sex' are the true masters of the world?"

More of her cruel laughter rained down upon me. As I stared at her, I wondered if she'd been like this the whole time I'd been with her. If she'd always nursed this secret loathing even as the two of us had nurtured our covert romance. Had she ever felt love toward me?

Perhaps I could still appeal to her sense of reason. "Bonding yourself to these creatures from beyond. What's to stop them from assuming complete control of you?"

"We have a deal." Lady Crenshaw nodded smugly.

"What if this foothold is the precursor to a full invasion? What if you're opening the door to the end of the world?"

Lady Crenshaw's eyes narrowed. "It will be worth it."

The shrieking of the god-thing and the women continued to grow louder. The strobing of the red light picked up speed. If the deal were about to be consummated, I had a sense my time to thwart it was swiftly expiring.

I decided to try one last appeal. Pulling my head free of Lady Crenshaw's hands, I grabbed her wrists and locked them in an iron grip. "What about the children, damn you? Have you stopped to think how this will affect them?"

Lady Crenshaw shrugged. "There may be added...permutations. A darkness, I'm told. A slight shadow on the souls of future generations.

"But honestly, what can it hurt? If anything, it may strengthen our descendants for the challenges of the 20 Century. We can hardly do worse than the 19, can we?"

I felt a sudden surge of clarity and self-righteous rage. "What you're proposing is unnatural." I shook her by the wrists in the strobing light, giving rein to my indignation and horror. "We must call a halt to this wicked transaction!"

Just then, a single hand fluttered down like an autumn leaf and landed on my forearm. Shooting a glance in the direction from whence it had come, I saw my wife looking back at me.

The expression on her face was one I had not seen there before: deep sadness entwined with unyielding firmness like ivy on a wall. The aspect that made the strongest impression, however, was what was missing. Perhaps it was the flickering of the red light distorting her features, concealing what I thought should be there...but I could see no trace of it.

No trace of affection in her gaze when she looked at me. Had it ever been there at all, in all the days and nights I'd known her? Thinking back, I couldn't be sure.

Or had I willed it there, as I'd willed all good things in my life into being? As she and these thousands upon thousands of women had willed a new destiny for their sex?

Bess gazed at me in my wig and makeup, my dress and corset and bloomers, and squeezed my arm. I would have liked to have seen a smile on her face, but she gave me none of that. Recognition only, and resignation, and resolution.

And when she spoke, the words were all the more terrible for the absolute lack of regret in her voice.

"It's already done, my Algernon," said Bess as the shrieking and strobing and dancing reached a frantic crescendo around us. "Your own child in my womb is among the first fruits of this new arrangement."

*****

For the first time since he'd started his story, Sir Hogshead raised the bottle of whisky and downed a great swallow. I watched in amazement as he stood there in his smudged makeup and blue dress, guzzling whisky after relating a tale that was disturbing on so many levels.

Those of us who were gathered around him in the billiard room of the Wanderers' Club remained silent for a long moment. We were weighed down by the gravity of Sir Hogshead's story, the sheer emotion with which he'd invested that terrible final sequence.

Yet there he stood, looking ridiculous in that dress, those gloves, those boots. The incongruity was appalling.

Finally, I took it upon myself to break the silence. "How did you escape, Algernon? Was there a struggle?"

Sir Hogshead sighed and shook his head. He stared at the whisky bottle in his grip, perhaps gazing at his strangely-attired reflection in the glass. "I walked away. They let me go."

"That hardly seems likely," said Dr. Yarrow.

"Didn't you punch a few girls, at least?" said Mr. Asteroth-Phipps. "I rather thought that was what you were leading up to."

"They said no one would believe me." Sir Hogshead drank the last swallow of whisky and set down the bottle on the rail of the billiard table. "They said it wouldn't matter if anyone did believe me, because it's too late."

Doctor Yarrow sniffed and straightened his tie. "It does seem a bit far-fetched, old chap."

"I'd think twice before repeating it outside these walls," said Mr. Ravensthorpe. "You're liable to find yourself institutionalized."

"Scandalized at least," said Mr. Trimble.

"Or romanticized," said Mr. Asteroth-Phipps. "Propositioned, even."

"But the women." Sir Hogshead scowled and raised his trembling, black-gloved hands. "They must be stopped. We have to reverse the contamination, or the legacy of our manhoods will be forfeit."

"Perhaps the Royal Marines' Occult Brigade could look into this." Stepping forward, I placed a hand on his shoulder, extending simple camaraderie in spite of his bizarrely inappropriate costume. "But if what you've told us is true, it might already be too late to combat this threat."

Sir Hogshead slumped, staring at the floor for a long moment...then suddenly burst back to vigorous life and shoved me away. "I'll never accept that, Captain Thrice! There must be a way to undo the damage! And I'll find it myself!

"I can infiltrate their ranks again." He grabbed the folds of his bell-like skirt and shook it dramatically. "I can become one of them whenever I choose. I will disguise myself as a woman as many times as it takes to pry their secrets from them and alter my fate as a father and a man!"

"Bravo!" said Mr. Asteroth-Phipps. "Such a plan cannot possibly have a drawback!"

Sir Hogshead scooped his blonde wig from the floor and stomped toward the door. "Gentlemen! If you see me on the street in such a guise..." He spread his arms wide to indicate his corseted, petticoated curves. "...do not be alarmed! And do not give me away! For I shall henceforth dedicate myself to a life undercover, ending only at such time as I have undone the corruption visited upon our family lines by those veritable daughters of the devil!"

"Worry not! I shan't give you away!" said Mr. Asteroth-Phipps. "But what if I come across you at some time, and without realizing it's you in disguise, I unwittingly accost you?"

Sir Hogshead cast a steely glare around the room at each one of us in turn. The flicker in his eyes when they settled upon me made me wonder if we had gotten the whole story.

"Let it be on your conscience," said Sir Hogshead. "Be forewarned, each and every one of you! I will never break cover until this atrocity has been reversed and avenged."

With that, he whirled and darted off down the hallway. I heard the front door open and close, and then he disappeared into the night as if he'd never been with us at all.

Leaving us with one final question.

"Who's going to break these balls?" Mr. Asteroth-Phipps gestured at the unbroken rack of billiard balls on the red felt table. "I was hoping Sir Hogshead would do the honors, but I rather suspect he may have already done his share for one night."

*****

Fear of Rain

By

Robert T. Jeschonek

Mr. Flood bangs his fork on the side of his plate, and thunder rumbles outside the restaurant. He winks one watery, sky blue eye at me and peels back his smooth, white lips in a dirty joke smile.

“Won’t be long now,” he says, his voice a gravelly tenor. “Not long till my retirement party.”

If you didn’t know better, to look at him, you’d think he was just another little old man hobbling around downtown Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Just another Central Park bench sitting, Social Security check cashing, prescription picking up, stumbling on the curbs, taking too long to cross Main Street old timer. You’d never know the kind of power that boils inside him.

Maybe you’d see him bang his fork on the plate a second time, and you’d hear the thunder, louder than before, but you wouldn’t connect the two. You wouldn’t realize that he’d made it happen. You wouldn’t know what he was about to do next.

But I know. I know all about what’s coming.

It’s the Big Night. He’s wearing his lucky suit for the occasion--a powder blue leisure suit from the ‘70’s with white piping around the collar, lapels, and pockets.

He’s the closest thing I have to a father, and I’m part of this, too. Tonight’s his retirement party and my graduation party wrapped up in one...though the people of Johnstown will call it something different altogether.

The ones who survive, anyway.

“I just hope I’m ready,” I say, picking at the gray, gravy-drowned meat loaf on my own cracked plate. Mr. Flood has wolfed down his turkey dinner like a teenage football star and chased it with a double slice of graham cracker pie, but I’m way too nervous tonight to be hungry.

“You’re more ready than I was in ’36, Dee,” says Mr. Flood, wagging his chicken hawk head on a neck so wishbone scrawny it looks like it ought to snap in two any second now. “I wasn’t nearly as good a student as you, and look how that turned out! Seventeen feet of water!”

I shrug and sigh and twist my curly, black hair around my index finger. I know my whole eighteen years of life have been leading up to this night, but now that it’s here, I kind of wish that it wasn’t. “Stressed out” doesn’t begin to cover the way I feel.

You’d be stressed out, too, if you were about to help destroy a city.

“Now drink up,” says Mr. Flood, refilling my water glass from the pitcher that he had the waitress leave at the table. The ice chips tinkle as he pushes the sweating glass toward me. “It’s almost time.”

Him and his water drinking, I think, but then I do what I’ve done all my life, which is what he tells me. I already have to pee like crazy, but I still gulp down half the glass.

I can’t even think about slipping off to the ladies’ room. A full bladder is part of the magic, Mr. Flood always says. Filling yourself with water till you’re ready to explode.

And then you do the same thing to the sky.

Mr. Flood refills my glass to the brim, and I roll my eyes, but I have another big drink. He just lifts the whole pitcher to his lips then, and it’s maybe half full, and he chugs it.

Except for a little bit left in the bottom, which he swishes around a few times and then slowly pours out on the table.

The water trickles from the rim of the sideways turned pitcher and patters on the sticky, dull wood of the tabletop.

And at the same moment, the same exact moment, I hear it start to rain outside.

“One two, buckle my shoe,” says Mr. Flood. “Three four, let it pour.”

And that’s how it starts. No one will ever know except me and Mr. Flood, but that’s exactly how the whole thing starts.

The fourth Johnstown Flood.

“Check, please,” he says to the ragged waitress.

*****

Outside, I pop an umbrella, because it’s really coming down, but Mr. Flood takes it away from me.

“Now who ever heard of a Flood using an umbrella?” he says disgustedly, and then he holds out my umbrella to a passing woman. “Here you go, Miss.”

The woman is tall, with dark hair and a navy blue dress. She’s holding her purse above her head in a lame attempt to block the rain. “I couldn’t, thank you,” she says with a smile, shaking her head. “You two need it as much as I do.”

“We’ll be fine,” says Mr. Flood. “We don’t have far to go. Please, take it.”

The woman looks at me for approval, but I just shrug. She looks back at Mr. Flood and shakes her head again. “I really couldn’t,” she says.

But she doesn’t walk away.

Mr. Flood steps toward her and presses the umbrella handle into her grip. “Go ahead,” he says. “You’re going to need it.”

I can tell she feels guilty, but she doesn’t try to hand the umbrella back to him. “It’s really coming down, isn’t it?” she says. “And they weren’t even calling for rain tonight.”

Mr. Flood nods and backs out from under the umbrella. “They’ll really be kicking themselves after tonight,” he says.

“Oh, they’re always wrong anyway,” says the woman. “What’s the difference tonight?”

“A couple hundred million gallons,” says Mr. Flood, and then he turns and hustles me off across the street.

“An umbrella. What were you thinking?” he says to me angrily. “Get your head in the game, girl. You’re supposed to be welcoming the rain, not hiding from it.”

*****

I know he’s right, but I still pull up the hood of my red raincoat. So I don’t like rain, so sue me.

He’s lucky I’m out here getting drenched at all, because I really don’t like rain. In fact, you could say I hate it...which, I know, is totally bizarre given what I’m about to do. Given the power I have.

But hey, you wouldn’t like it so much either if your parents died in a flash flood.

As he leads me down Main Street, Mr. Flood taps his twisted cane on the wet sidewalk. It’s a special cane that looks like two snakes slithering together, and it has a forked tip at the bottom. Mr. Flood says it’s like a divining rod, which he needs to help make the big rains come.

Whenever he walks under a street light, it gets brighter, then goes back to normal when he’s past it...though, I don’t know, it could be partly because of me. I’ve got some power, too, even if it’s not as much as he has.

Not till later tonight, anyway.

At the end of the block, Mr. Flood drifts over to the corner of City Hall and looks up at a bronze plaque set into the stone wall. The plaque shows the high water mark of the third Johnstown Flood, the one in 1977. It’s a couple feet above our heads, and he swings up his cane and taps on it.

High Water

July 20, 1977

8’ 6”

“Still my favorite,” says Mr. Flood, and then he sighs. “More water in ’36, but this one will always be near and dear to my heart.” He shakes his head and runs the tip of his cane back and forth over the raised letters on the plaque. “They say it was a once in ten thousand years rainfall. Twelve inches in ten hours.

“Quite an accomplishment,” he says, smiling proudly. With his free hand, he plucks the lapel of his powder blue leisure suit with the white piping. As much rain as is dumping down on us both, his polyester jacket and slacks look as dry as if they were still hanging in a closet at home. “Now here I am, wearing the same suit I had on that night back in ’77. Getting ready to do it again, and I can hardly wait. How about you?”

“Oh, sure,” I say, nodding, though I don’t feel anywhere near as pumped as he sounds.

That chicken hawk head of his bobbles a little for no reason, the way it does sometimes these days. “So, how much do you think we’ll manage tonight?”

“No idea,” I say with a shrug.

“See that plaque up there?” says Mr. Flood, pointing his cane at a plaque mounted much higher than the first.

I nod as I stare up at it.

High Water

March 17, 1936

17’

Grinning, Mr. Flood jabs my shoulder with his bony elbow. “The fourth flood will be higher than that,” he says. “See the next plaque up?”

“Yeah,” I say, looking at the third and highest plaque, set a few feet higher than the second.

High Water

May 31, 1889

21’

Mr. Flood shakes his soaking wet head. “Higher,” he says, his eyes twinkling with amusement.

“Up there,” says Mr. Flood, poking his cane at the roof of City Hall. “We’ll cover the peaks of the rooftops tonight, and then some. This bowl of a valley down here will fill up like a lake.”

I can’t take my eyes off the roof. I get a shiver up my spine, and not just because I’m cold and wet. I knew this was going to be the Big Night, but I didn’t know just how big it would be.

Mr. Flood chuckles. “Actually,” he says, “I guess I should say that the water would cover the roof if City Hall were still standing after tonight.”

“It won’t be?” I say.

“Nosiree Dee,” says Mr. Flood, and then he swings his cane down and sweeps it in a circle around him. “Matter of fact, not a single thing that you see around you will still be standing in the morning.

“Except that one.” With a flourish, he swirls his cane in the air like a sword and points it across Market Street. Right away, I see what he’s got in his sights.

When we cross the street to get to it, we’re almost run over by two young guys blindly charging full tilt through the rain. One has a newspaper over his head, the other has nothing, and they’re both as soaked as if they’d just climbed out of a swimming pool.

Mr. Flood and I stop at the chain link fence around the little grassy square on the corner of Main and Market. The streetlamps brighten when we get close, lighting up a red-painted statue of a big bloodhound inside the fence.

It’s Morley’s Dog. That’s what’s going to survive.

A damn statue of a dog.

“I love this dog,” says Mr. Flood. “It reminds me why I do this job.”

He’s lost me with that one. If anything, that dog reminds me of stupidity. People think it’s in honor of some hero dog from the 1889 flood, but it’s really just a lawn ornament that washed out of some guy’s yard.

“This is the true heart of Johnstown,” says Mr. Flood, waving his snaky cane at Morley’s Dog. “It is battered by the elements again and again, but it survives. It does not surprise or impress, but it endures.

“Just like my perfect little Johnstown,” says Mr. Flood. Seemingly as an afterthought, he spits in the grass...and the rain comes down a little harder.

Mr. Flood takes a deep breath like he’s drinking in the sweet air of a sunny spring morning, but all I can smell is the rubber-and-soap stink of wet streets.

“God, I love this town,” says Mr. Flood. “Always behind the times. Always on a different wavelength than the rest of the world.

“An oasis in an ocean of crap,” says Mr. Flood. “And we’re the ones who keep it that way.” He pats me on the shoulder. “Every forty years or so, we give this town a bath. We wash away its hopes. We wipe the slate clean of so-called progress.

“And Johnstown stays backward and God-fearing, because who knows when the next flood might come around? Johnstown stays small.

“Small as a raindrop.” Mr. Flood looks up, straight up, and waves his cane over his head. Just like that, the rain stops falling on us.

I still hear it spattering on the streets and sidewalks, and I still see soaking wet people running past with jackets and newspapers over their heads. I still see it pouring down in sheets through the light of nearby streetlamps...but now, in a circle around us, the rain is frozen in midair. Trails of glistening drops hang suspended between us, shimmering in the glow of streetlamps and headlights.

As much as I hate the rain, this is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. I catch my breath, and this time it’s not from nervousness.

I never knew. Never knew he could do

This.

One, two, thirty, forty. I can count them. Just hanging there between the sky and the pavement as if someone had paused our disk in the DVD player.

As Mr. Flood reaches out, the droplets part around his arm like a curtain of crystal beads. He slides a pale fingertip under one and holds it there, balanced like a perfect teardrop of blown glass.

“Small as a raindrop,” he says. “One raindrop in the midst of a storm.”

I reach for my own droplet then, and I catch it on a purple-painted fingernail. I can still hardly believe my eyes, can hardly believe Mr. Flood’s frozen the rain. I guess it’s not such a stretch, since he and I have some kind of magical rainmaking power.

But still. For some reason, this strikes me as the most incredible thing I have ever seen him do. It amazes me.

It also confuses me. How can he do something amazing like this and then turn around and wipe out a city and its people?

It makes me sad, too, because I can’t help thinking about how this man who can do something so beautiful will be dead before this night is over.

*****

Mr. Flood unfreezes the rain around us with a snap of his fingers, and the two of us walk down Market Street to Vine Street. By the time we get to the stairway at the end of Vine Street, I have to pee so bad that I’m about ready to wet my pants...but I know better than to ask if I can pee before a flood.

We walk up the concrete steps to an elevated walkway. As we cross over the expressway that loops around the edge of downtown, I’m just glad that the walkway’s covered, and I’m out of the rain for a moment.

On the other side of the walkway, we cross a bridge over the murky, brown Stonycreek River. At the end of the bridge, we enter a little station, and Mr. Flood buys us tickets for the World’s Steepest Vehicular Inclined Plane.

“The Incline,” as everyone in town calls it, looks like a boxcar that runs up and down the side of a steep hill on railroad tracks. Besides the three floods, the Incline is Johnstown’s other claim to fame, though it’s not much of one, if you ask me.

“This is some storm we’re havin’,” says the old man who sells us our tickets. “It’s rainin’ cats and dogs tonight.”

“I heard it’ll be raining elephants and dinosaurs before long,” says Mr. Flood.

“Might not be a bad idea, headin’ for higher ground tonight,” says the ticket seller, hiking a thumb toward the top of the hill. “The weatherman on the radio says not to worry, but my rheumatoid knees are tellin’ me otherwise.”

“I agree with your knees,” says Mr. Flood with a wink.

Mr. Flood and I board the Incline passenger car. As the car climbs its track up the hillside, the two of us stand at the window and look out at the rainy city unfolding below us.

Johnstown doesn’t look different from most any other night of the year. Rain is one thing that’s hardly ever in short supply around here.

Not that it seems to clean the place up very much. I guess the city was a lot dirtier back in the old days, and it must be cleaner since the steel mills shut down in the ‘80’s...but if you ask me, it still always looks like it has a grimy film over everything. It’s like the rain can never wash off this bottom layer of soot that’s been stuck to all the buildings and houses and trees and streets since the turn of the century.

Of course, if nothing in town is left standing after tonight (except Morley’s Dog), like Mr. Flood says, that grimy soot will finally get scrubbed out the hard way. Unless it all just floats up in the air and comes down and sticks to whatever new buildings are put up after the flood...which, knowing Johnstown, I think is more likely.

When we’re midway up the hillside, Mr. Flood elbows me and points to the left and down. I’m not sure what he’s pointing at until he tells me.

“The Old Stone Bridge,” Mr. Flood says solemnly, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “Eighty people died in debris that washed up against it in 1889. They burned to death when the debris caught fire. Died by fire because of a flood.”

I’ve heard the story before, but I can’t really picture it. All I see is a railroad bridge over the river and expressway on the edge of downtown, an ordinary looking bridge I’ve been under about a zillion times.

Mr. Flood squeezes my shoulder. “That won’t happen tonight,” he says. “Drowning only. A merciful death. A peaceful death.”

As he says this, I think about my mom and dad, who drowned when a flash flood washed out a bridge under their car. I wish it made me feel better, thinking they might have died peacefully. Unfortunately, I think Mr. Flood is full of crap on this subject.

Sometimes, I can’t figure him out. Here’s a guy who’s about to kill God knows how many people in a so-called natural disaster, and he’s patting himself on the back for not burning them to death.

And the messed up part of it is, how much better am I? I can’t even stand the thought of my own parents drowning, and here I’m getting ready to help kill hundreds or thousands more in the same exact way.

It’s all for a good cause, according to Mr. Flood. Like he said at Morley’s Dog, he thinks we’re saving Johnstown by wrecking it. He claims that the deaths are the price we pay to protect this place he loves from the craziness in the rest of the world.

It would be nice if I could believe all that like he does. It would be easier if I could convince myself that he’s not as crazy as he is powerful, and that I’m not going along with this whole flood thing just because I always do what he tells me. Because I don’t want to let him down.

It would be even nicer if I could honestly say that the thought of drowning all those people bothers me more than the thought of one single person dying tonight.

The person who raised me after my parents died. The person who home-schooled me and gave me my powers and taught me to use them. The person whose place I’m supposed to take tonight, just like he took the place of the one before him.

Mr. Flood.

It’s funny, because we have kind of a love/hate relationship. He’s never let me live my own life. All he’s done is push me since Day One to learn the “family business” and take over for him.

But he’s never hurt me. I never had to do without. I’m pretty sure he’s treated me the same way he’d treat his own kids, if he had any.

There’s another reason, too...another reason I don’t want to see him die.

When you get right down to it, he’s all I’ve got.

The rain hammers the roof of the boxcar, falling harder than ever. As we climb toward the upper station and the hilltop borough of Westmont, I dread the thought of going out in that downpour.

Mr. Flood swings his cane up and raps the forked tip on the window. As soon as he does it, a lightning flash illuminates the town like an instant of daylight creasing the darkness, blowing back in time from tomorrow morning.

Not that tomorrow morning will be all that bright for Johnstown.

Thunder cracks in the distance, and Mr. Flood chuckles. He raps his cane again, and lightning flares like before.

“Water, water everywhere,” he says. “And no one’s got an ark.”

He yanks back my hood and tousles my hair and brings the lightning and thunder with more raps of his cane, and I wonder.

I wonder if I’ll end up crazy like him when I get to be his age.

And I wonder what life will be like without him after tonight.

*****

The rain is blasting down as Mr. Flood leads me out of the station at the top of the hill. Pushing through the wind-driven sheets is like being hit in the face with one bucket of water after another.

Walking sideways to cut the resistance, I see the old lady who runs the gift shop lock the shop’s door and plunge into the downpour. People stream out of the adjacent restaurant, diners and waiters and waitresses alike rushing out to their cars. The conductor who brought us up the hill dashes past us, soaked to the skin after just a few steps.

Everyone’s getting out and hurrying home as the storm gets worse. At this rate, the entire Incline station and restaurant ought to be shut down and empty within minutes. Evacuating the place doesn’t make sense, because the high ground up here is one of the safest places to be if a flood hits the valley...but I guess no one really knows for sure what’s going to happen next.

Except Mr. Flood and I, of course.

Squinting against the rain, I follow Mr. Flood out onto the cement observation deck that juts out of the hilltop beside the station. I’m all slouched over, but old Mr. Flood just about breaks into a run on his way to the railing at the edge of the deck.

When I come up beside him and look down, I see that the flood is about to begin. The Stonycreek River at the base of the hill is rising fast, filling with rain faster than the current can carry it off.

“We’re about to make history,” says Mr. Flood, drumming his fingers on the metal rail. “How does it feel to be a part of something that people will still read about and talk about hundreds of years from now?”

I turn to him then, and his eyes are wet with what I think are tears of joy as well as rain, and his pale cheeks are flushed with excitement, and the breath catches in my chest.

“I don’t want you to go,” I say to him. “Please don’t leave me.”

Mr. Flood smiles warmly and pats my back. “Thank you,” he says. “When my predecessor passed on, I was glad to see her go. It does my heart good knowing that you don’t feel that way about me.”

As usual, I’m not getting through to him. “Call off the flood,” I say. “Let’s go home.”

“The people of Johnstown are counting on us,” says Mr. Flood. “We have to save their way of life.”

“Then run for mayor or something!” I tell him.

Mr. Flood tilts his head back and laughs loudly, letting the rain fall into his open mouth. “Hey, I like that!” he says. “A flood elected mayor of Johnstown! That’s good!”

“I’m serious,” I say, getting more frustrated because I know his mind’s made up and it always has been. “Don’t do this. Don’t go.”

“You’ll see,” says Mr. Flood, brushing my cheek with his fingertips. “When it’s your time to pass the torch, you’ll understand.”

I feel tears in my own eyes, but they aren’t tears of joy. I know people would say he’s evil and crazy because of what he does--and I guess I couldn’t really argue with them--but he’s the closest thing I’ve got to a father. To anyone, actually. I’ve led a sheltered life, being home-schooled and spending all my time training to flood the city of Johnstown.

“So let’s get this show on the road,” says Mr. Flood with a giant grin, and then he unzips the fly of his trousers.

Howling like a wolf, he proceeds to pee off the observation deck at the top of the Incline.

As soon as Mr. Flood pees, the rain really cuts loose. It’s been raining hard for at least an hour, but that was a trickle compared to the ocean that dumps down now.

When he’s done peeing, Mr. Flood tucks himself back in and zips up, then whacks his cane hard against the railing. Immediately, a jagged bolt of lightning lashes down in the heart of the city.

Thunder explodes overhead. As it echoes off the walls of the valley, every electric light in Johnstown except the headlights of the cars on the streets winks out at once.

For a moment, the city is mostly silent and still and dark. Then, through the gushing of the rain, I hear a rising chorus of shouts and car horns. A lone fire siren wails, and then it’s joined by another and another. The flashing red and blue lights of fire engines and police cars strobe along the rows of darkened buildings.

This is it, I realize, and my stomach does a somersault.

History in the making.

Mr. Flood whacks his cane on the railing again, and another blast of lightning leaps into the city. As thunder crashes louder than before, he swings the cane up and jabs its two-pronged tip at the sky.

I swear, in the next triple-flash of lightning that sizzles down, the two snakes carved into the cane seem to squirm with a life of their own.

The force of the rain intensifies. The Stonycreek River surges out of its bed, spilling over the sloped, cement flood-control banks that are no better controlling a flood tonight than they were in ’77.

Whooping with joy, Mr. Flood begins to dance.

In the middle of the observation deck, he kicks and gyrates like he’s twenty years old instead of ninety. He does the Charleston, the Lindy Hop, the Jitterbug, then shuffles a soft shoe and spins like a whirling dervish. He bobs and stomps like an Indian circling a campfire, shaking his cane like a ceremonial lance.

He twirls the cane like a baton, tosses it in the air and catches it, bouncing the double-pronged tip off the cement. He does a Gene Kelly dance step and slings the cane over his shoulder like an umbrella, singing a song about singing in the rain.

With each move he makes, the rain falls harder.

“Rain, rain, don’t go away,” shouts Mr. Flood, doing what looks like a cross between the Hustle and a football player’s end zone strut. “Give us fifty feet today!”

His magic is strong. I can’t believe how fast the flood is growing.

In the valley below us, water rolls from the Stonycreek in wave after wave. Cars slam into each other and strike guardrails and buildings, drivers either blinded by the rain or panicked by the swiftly rising tide.

People and sirens scream like shrieking fireworks. Geysers erupt from the sewers, belching up manhole covers that crash back down onto pavement or parked cars.

And Mr. Flood keeps dancing like a wild man.

Beaming blissfully, he shakes and twirls and jumps and flaps his arms. The rain comes down harder when he flutters his fingers, and the thunder booms when he stomps his feet.

Looking over the railing, I see that the water is rising steadily down below. Already, the level near the river is higher than car tires, halfway up car doors. Pavement quickly disappears as the streets become canals.

I hear the sound of distant glass shattering. A child screams and dogs yowl like it’s the end of the world. Lights flashing and sirens wailing, emergency vehicles hurtle down the expressway from the townships and boroughs in the surrounding hills.

From somewhere far away, I swear I hear the crack of a gunshot.

I feel a tap on my shoulder then, and I turn to see Mr. Flood bowing deeply, reaching out a hand.

“Will you join me?” he says with a charming smile...too charming for someone about to give up his life.

If I don’t help him, I wonder, will anything change? Will he live through the night? Or will he finish the flood without me and die anyway?

It would be easy not to take that hand. It would be easy to refuse to help him kill himself.

It would be easy if I hadn’t spent my whole life preparing for this night. If I didn’t feel compelled to make him happy.

Especially if whether or not I cooperate doesn’t matter, and this is the last night I see him alive.

So I take his hand.

He tosses his cane over the railing and encircles my back with his arm. I follow his lead, looping one arm around him while he raises my other arm high, interlacing his fingers with mine.

Only headlights and the flashing beacons of cop cars and emergency vehicles remain in the valley, but our dance floor on top of the hill is still lit by streetlamps. Windblown curtains of rain pelt down in the lamplight as Mr. Flood leads me in a waltz.

Our feet splash in the water as we glide in a circle, stepping one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three. Mr. Flood’s sky blue eyes lock with mine, and he laughs out loud and picks up the pace.

Soon, we’re moving so fast that the waltz becomes a polka. Mr. Flood steps on my feet once or twice, but he’s light as a feather.

I get dizzy from spinning around, and I try to slow down, but he won’t let me. I close my eyes for an instant as we keep turning, but it doesn’t help. I still feel light-headed.

When I open my eyes, I realize that spinning around isn’t the only reason for my light-headedness. As I look down, I see that my feet no longer touch the wet deck.

Mr. Flood and I are dancing on air.

We’re floating three feet above the cement. There’s nothing under us but air and rain.

I shoot Mr. Flood a look of surprise, and he just winks and keeps hauling me in circles like this is something he does every day. Then, he slows down the polka and tightens his grip on my hand.

“Aphrodite,” he says, using my full name and raising his voice over the rushing of the rain. “I give you my power! Use it to continue my sacred work!”

First, I feel a tickle in my fingers, like the start of pins and needles. Then, I feel a mild shock like static electricity buzzing into my palm.

Then comes the real juice. A sudden, searing jolt burns its way up my arm and explodes in my chest like a firework and shoots out into every inch of my body.

I feel like I’m on fire. My entire body quivers and hums like a power line.

And it keeps coming.

It’s too much for me. My vision whites out, and my heart jackhammers like I’ve just downed twenty espressos. Everything seizes up at once, and I can’t take a breath.

Then, the current slows, and I start to come out of it. My muscles unclench, and the racing engine in my chest becomes a heart again. I choke down a breath, and my whited-out vision jitters back into color and form and light.

It is only now that I realize we’re still waltzing, even though I’ve stopped moving my feet. Mr. Flood has been carrying me ever since the first shock of the power transfer crashed through me.

I realize something else, too.

I never knew it before, but until this moment, my senses of sight and hearing and smell and touch and taste have been blocked to the beauty of the rain. Though I’ve had more sense of rain than other people, and even some influence over it, I’ve been wrapped in layers of plastic and bound with chains compared to how I am now.

I can see every shimmering pearl of rain as it falls. I can smell the difference between them, tell the exact altitude and part of the country where the source water evaporated to form the cloud that gave birth to each droplet.

I can feel the size and shape of each drop as it hits my skin. I can taste the acid mixed in with the water and pinpoint the air pollutant that produced it.

And I can hear the true song of the rain--not the staccato pattering of showers striking cement and wood and metal, but the vibration of droplets as they stretch and blow and collide, the secret shivering music like millions upon millions of violin strings all playing different notes at once in one heavenly, keening chord.

For the first time in my life, I can see and hear and smell and touch and taste. Everything around me is more amazing than I ever imagined.

And this, I realize, is how Mr. Flood feels every day of his life.

“This is it, Dee,” says Mr. Flood, the sound of his voice snapping my focus back to him. He smiles sadly, and I can tell that the rain running down his face is mixed with tears. I know exactly how many raindrops and exactly how many tears. “One big push. The two of us.”

This is the moment he’s been getting me ready for all my life. The moment when he pours out the last of his power into me, and together we bring down the full force of the flood on Johnstown.

The moment when I lose him.

I know I’m supposed to go along with his plan like I always do. Take all the power and let him drop dead like he did his own predecessor. Watch as our flood drowns the city and feel all proud of myself for making history and saving a way of life.

But what can I say? I guess he didn’t do such a good job raising me, because my priorities are all screwed up.

Drowning hundreds of people just doesn’t do it for me. My heart just isn’t in it.

And as for letting the person I care most about die, well...

Forget it.

Especially now that I’m surging with power and I know how to use it and I finally have a plan of my own.

“Goodbye, Dee,” says Mr. Flood, and he pulls my hand in and kisses the knuckles. “Don’t let me down.”

“I won’t,” I tell him, though I mean it in a different way than he does. “I promise.”

“Then let’s show ‘em how it’s done!” he shouts, thrusting our joined hands high in the air.

Mr. Flood shuts his eyes and knits his brows together in concentration. Electrical arcs spark from his shoulders and arms like tiny bolts of lightning.

Our clasped hands glow blue-white in the rain, then disappear in a flare of light. At the ends of our arms, where our hands should be, all I see is a pulsing ball of energy like a dwarf star dropped down from the heavens.

Once again, I feel the full current of power surging out of him, but this time, it doesn’t overwhelm me. My heart races, but I don’t convulse, and my vision doesn’t white out like before.

This time, I sense the extent of the charge he contains. I know exactly how much he has left and how long it will take to deplete at the rate it’s draining into me. In other words, how long until he empties out and dies.

We continue to turn slowly in the air above the deck. At the other end of the crackling circuit we’ve formed, I feel Mr. Flood reach out with his mind, coaxing me to focus my energies upward.

I do as he wants, extending streams of power like glistening fingers toward the sky. All the while, I divide my attention between the heart of the storm and the level of life-sustaining charge still remaining in Mr. Flood’s body.

Together, we massage the clouds like dough, wringing out more water. We reel in fresh clouds from afar and knead them into the thunderheads, heaping up mountains so heavy with rain that they burst at a touch.

The rain blasts down like an emptying ocean. I hear the screams of sirens and people from below, the crash of waves, a distant explosion, but I can’t look down. The rain keeps growing stronger, just as Mr. Flood grows weaker and weaker still.

When I feel that his reservoir of power has nearly gone dry, I take control.

His eyes shoot open as he realizes what has happened. Desperately, he reaches through the link and tries to snatch back the reins, but it’s too late. I’m too strong for him now.

I take a deep breath.

As I draw the air into my lungs, I pull all the power back inside me. I press it into a ball and hold it there, burning and buzzing and straining against my chest.

I count to three.

Then, I blow out my breath and let loose the power, flinging out a billion sparks in all directions.

Mr. Flood makes a hopeless grab for them with the flicker of strength he has left, but it’s not enough. The sparks race everywhere like hypercharged fireflies, leaving glittering trails that hang in the air.

And every single one of those sparks carries a piece of me. I send them whizzing through the rain, chasing off the hillside and out over the valley. They divide again and again as they go, endlessly multiplying, spraying out twinkling constellations under the stormclouds.

Then, when the sky over Johnstown is full of tiny, dancing stars, I pour my power out through them. I do something I saw Mr. Flood do earlier tonight, something amazing.

But I do it on a much bigger scale.

All at once, every falling drop of rain freezes in mid-flight.

The hammering of water on pavement and metal and water suddenly stops. The droplets hang like billions of crystal beads, winking in the strobing red-and-blue light from the cop cars and fire trucks and ambulances. It’s just like before, when Mr. Flood froze the rain around us at Morley’s Dog...only I’ve stopped a major storm over an entire city.

And I’m not done yet.

I wait for a handful of heartbeats, touching every single suspended drop with my mind. Turning them.

And then I let them fall again.

Upward. I let them fall upward.

With a roar, every hanging drop of rain pours straight up. Then, every drop that’s already hit the ground rushes upward, too.

The flooded streets and parks and rooftops empty into the sky. Geysers gush up from the windows and doorways of waterlogged buildings. Point Stadium dumps up its watery load like an overturned bowl.

Every drop that has fallen ascends. What came down must go up.

I laugh out loud as it happens. I almost can’t believe what I’ve done. It’s like a miracle.

And speaking of miracles, I don’t have to pee anymore...even though I never did go to the bathroom.

Here’s history in the making. Here’s something people will read about and talk about for hundreds of years.

A backward flood. An upside-down flood.

A flood of the sky.

Now this is something that will save a way of life. People will want to preserve and study this place, try to figure out what happened without disrupting whatever delicate balance enabled this miracle to occur.

This will save Johnstown. I didn’t have to destroy the city and drown hundreds or thousands of people to do it, either.

And I saved someone else, too.

Mr. Flood looks at me, and the tears in his eyes this time are tears of betrayal and confusion and disappointment.

But he’ll live. I left him more than enough strength to survive, whether he likes it or not.

He might not be happy now, but sooner or later, he’ll come around to my way of thinking. It only makes sense, right? I mean, why destroy the city every forty years or so when there’s a better way?

Here’s what I’m thinking:

This might be the first flood of its kind in history.

But it won’t be the last.

*****

The Genie's Secret

By

Robert T. Jeschonek

You'd think genies might get a wish to themselves now and then...but from the pain in Magda's eyes when she opens the mansion's door, I can see she's getting zero wish fulfillment out of life.

"Yes?" Her eyes are beautiful, an unearthly bright greenish gold--but the look in them is one of pure misery.

"Good morning, ma'am." I flash her my badge, and she winces. "Oliver Singel, state Department of Mystic Revenue. I'm here to see Mr. Rudolph Gunza."

She ushers me in without hesitation. She doesn't fear me at all; as a genie, she need only fear one man in all the world.

That man is her master, Rudy Gunza.

As she closes the heavy door behind me, I gaze around at the opulent entryway. Everything is glittering gold and crimson velvet and gleaming marble, from the winding staircase to the fountain in the middle of the giant room.

Ill-gotten gains, all of it. Whipped up on a whim and a wish by the magical beauty standing in front of me.

She tosses her head, and the lush, black curls flop about her shoulders. She straightens the dark blue satin bodice of her outfit, smooths the silk harem pants below her taut bare midriff.

Even with the beaten look in her eyes, even with her mouth and chin covered by a pale blue veil, she looks breathtaking. She looks more perfect and radiant than any woman alive, as beautiful as any fantasy sculpted by a man's imagination.

Then again, she has to, doesn't she?
"What business do you have with Master Gunza?" There's a hint of a glint in her eye as she says it--a flicker of power. She might not be able to exercise it against her master, but that doesn't mean she can't use it against someone else, like me.

"Serious business," I tell her. "Tax business."

"Oh-ho!" Gunza's jolly voice booms from the top of the staircase. "And here I thought this was purely a friendly visit!"

A weak smile doesn't quite make it onto my face. "Hello, Rudy."

Gunza wobbles down the stairs, looking like a tubby sheikh. His glittering red robes can't hide the stupendous gut wagging in front of him.

When he and I were partners, he never had a gut at all.

"Long time no miss!" says Gunza as he drops from the last marble stair to the floor. "How's the old gang of idiots?"

"Better than ever, now that you're gone," I tell him.

Gunza throws an arm around Magda's shoulders and squeezes her tight. "Oleo and I used to work together! Isn't that something, Magda? We was revenooers together."

Magda's head bobbles as he jerks her around. Her flat stare drifts past me like litter on a breeze.

"Went after tax evaders, didn't we?" says Gunza. "Folks who didn't pay the state a piece of the action from wishes granted and spells cast."

"It's income, Magda." I wave my clipboard at the surrounding opulence. "The state deserves its share under the law."

"Bull-squat, Oleo." Gunza chortles and strokes his braided red mustache. "Let the state get its own genie."

"Yes, fine idea." I walk around the room, taking notes on the clipboard. "We could get one the way you did. Force an old lady at gunpoint to use up her three wishes on nothing and hand over the lamp."

Gunza's grin darkens. "Hey now, Oleo. That was a straight-up gift, and no one can prove otherwise."

"Almost no one." I shoot a look at Magda, and she turns away.

Gunza shrugs. "If a door closes, open a window. The department passed me over for a promotion--which you got--but Mrs. Sandusky thought I deserved an even greater reward. She wished for me to have it."

The walls are made of alternating gold and platinum ingots, which I note on my clipboard. "Well, I wish you'd paid your taxes." I write more on the clipboard. "If I were you, I'd wish you don't have a coronary when you see the grand total you owe the state."

"I don't owe one cent!" Gunza releases Magda and storms over to grab my clipboard.

I snatch it right back. "You lazy prick. How hard could it be to pay your taxes? You already wished for unlimited wishes, didn't you?"

Gunza smirks. "That was my first wish."

"Why not wish for her to pay your taxes?" I point my pen at Magda.

"Because I don't choose to." Gunza's features twist into a scowl. "Because I am the master."

I shake my head in disgust. "You're just like all the rest. All the other scum you used to help me bust."

Gunza gazes into my eyes for a long moment, nodding slowly. "Run," he says finally.

I know where this is going. I knew from the moment I walked into the place.

"I wish..." says Gunza.

I swing the clipboard at his head, but he knocks it away with one thick forearm.

Before I can take another swing, he finishes his sentence. "I wish that a hunting party of madmen and monsters will hunt down Oliver Singel, then torture and mutilate him for as long as I wish...and not kill him, no matter how much he begs for it."

Magda's eyes meet mine. They well with regret and resignation.

I reach out to her. "Magda, please! Don't do it! I'm here to help you!"

Gunza giggles and smacks me on the back. "He's a liar! He's just here for his precious revenooo!"

"I'm sorry." Magda weaves her arms in the air, and a cloud of twinkling glitter swirls above her. "I have no choice but to obey my master."

"Wrong!" Even as the misshapen forms materialize before me, I keep trying. "I can help you! Tell me what you want!"

Magda hesitates, and the figures flicker. Gunza stomps over and smacks her across the face.

"Do your job!" he says. "Obey me!" He strikes her again.

Magda closes her eyes. Her nimble fingers finish their dance in the air, and the hulking forms solidify.

"Run, rabbit!" Gunza howls with laughter. "Don't let 'em catch you!"

With one last look at Magda, I turn and sprint off into the depths of the mansion.

*****

The hunters are silent. No shrieking laughter, no ululating howls, no clattering weapons and footsteps. I can barely hear them back there at all--just whispers and the rustling of wings and rags.

The quiet makes it all the worse as I run.

Heart hammering in my chest, I race to the end of the corridor and burst through the oak double doors there. Beyond the doors, I find myself in a vast arboretum, teeming with tropical trees and flowers.

Without stopping, I draw my cell phone and send a text message to my partner. At least I had the sense to post him elsewhere in case I needed backup.

Now, if only Gunza didn't think to wish for Magda to block outgoing phone signals.

As I pocket the phone, I hear brush shuddering behind me. Ducking off the gold-bricked path, I bolt through the thick foliage, crossing the room away from my original trajectory.

Suddenly, a feverish ghoul explodes from the shrubbery ahead of me, swinging a machete. I fall back, barely escaping the blade...and nearly end up skewered on the point of a bayonet brandished by a leering soldier.

Twisting out of the way, I leap off into the cover as both of them slash and stab at me. I rush straight through the deep green jungle, panting for breath in the steamy air--and surge out of the vegetation in front of another set of double doors.

Plunging through the doors, I find myself in a maze. Through its frosted glass walls, I glimpse shadowy figures moving around me...but I have to go onward. I hear noise from the other side of the doors, so I can't go back to the arboretum.

I move as quickly and quietly as I can, though it doesn't matter. The enemy can see me as well as I see them through the frosted glass.

I zip around a corner, then another and another, always choosing right at the branches. Turning again, I spot a blurred figure on the other side of the translucent wall...and he spots me. He changes direction and follows me down the passage, keeping pace in a humpbacked trot, separated from me only by a few inches of glass.

Luckily, the next time I reach a branch, he hits a dead end. He howls, caught in a corner, as I dart down another passage, hoping for an exit.

I find one--a gleaming golden door inlaid with multicolored gems--but just as I charge forward, it crashes open, revealing a towering maniac.

He stands seven feet tall, at least, and his
double-jointed limbs are like sticks. He's naked except for a leather loincloth, and his skin is reddish-brown like an almond.

His eyes and mouth gape wide as he scrambles toward me, drooling and whooping.

Suddenly, before I can do anything, he slows in
mid-step. His movements stretch out as if he were the star of a slow-motion movie, and his whoops extend to one
drawn-out tone.

I jump when I hear the normal-speed voice of Magda behind me. "That was one of my masters, two hundred and fifty years ago. Shall I tell you how he beat me?"

Looking around, I see another predator creeping from the maze in slow-mo. This one, muscular, blond and
bushy-bearded, wears the horned helmet of a Viking.

"Were these your masters through the ages?" I say.

She nods. "As you die, you will know what I've been through."

Stepping toward the tall one, I gingerly touch his reddish-brown knuckles. "How can you be doing this? Disobeying Rudy?"

"I'm obeying him," says Magda. "I'm slowing things down, but you will still be hunted and tortured."

"Why talk to me at all then?"

Magda cocks her head and frowns. "What did you mean when you said you could help me?"

"I meant what I said," I tell her. "All you have to do is tell me what you want. Just ask for it."

She narrows her eyes. "I know what this is about now. You want me for yourself, don't you?"

"No." I shake my head. "I want to save you."

"You're not the first to say that." Magda snorts and folds her arms over her blue satin bodice. "Somehow, saving me always ends with hurting me."

"Not this time." I spread my arms wide. "I swear, I'm here to help you."

"You want my help collecting Rudy's taxes," says Magda. "For all the riches I've given him."

"Actually," I say, "you're the only reason I'm here."

Magda stares, her expression split between confusion and disbelief.

"This time, I'm not as concerned about tax evasion," I say, "as I am about slavery and abuse."

She looks like she's thinking hard...and then her stare becomes an angry glare. "Liar. You're a liar, just like all men."

"I'm telling you, I came here only to save you."

"Liar!" She lifts her hands overhead to weave and conjure, and I see the tall man start to move faster. "You better run, liar!"

Without another word, I dash around the tall man, heave open the door, and race into the hallway. I can tell she's run out of patience, at least for now. I can tell she doesn't believe me.

Even though I told her the absolute truth.

I don't care about the mystic taxes. This time, I came only for her.

*****

As I run down the hall, I open every door...but I'm not looking for a way out. I'm looking for something else.

A lamp. Her lamp.

Now that I'm on the inside of Gunza's mansion, I'm determined to find it. I'm going to end this perverted jerk's most heinous crime: genie abuse. The bastard's a djinnophile.

Here's how it works. The genie must obey her master. The genie has magical powers that can heal any wound, repair any damage. Even to herself.

What better scenario can there be for a twisted sicko who likes to hurt women? He can brutalize her any way he likes, then wish away the damage, removing any sign of the crime, expunging any guilt...and leaving a clean slate for the next round of abuse.

That's what makes it especially evil. The genie becomes an accomplice to her own abuse. She literally has no choice.

And it goes on and on and on like that, again and again and again. Forever, if he wishes eternal life for himself.

So it's no wonder Magda doesn't trust me...but she should. There's much more to me than meets the eye.

For one thing, I'm state police now, not Department of Mystic Revenue. I work for the Paranormal Victims Unit.

For another thing, I'm someone altogether different than any of that or anything Gunza could ever guess.

But Magda could figure it out. At least I hope she does before it's too late.

*****

I'm hustling through the gymnasium when they catch me. Two of the ghoulish thugs burst in through the far door from outside the mansion, and another drops down from the ceiling on a rope.

The one from the rope has dark skin and a tribal headdress of tattered fur and feathers. One of the other two has silver hair and wears a tuxedo, and the last one bulges with muscles and pads under a football player's uniform. More echoes of Magda's former masters.

As they surround me, I look for the best escape route. My eyes keep flicking to the open door to the outside, where my partner waits. If my text message got through to him, he could come charging through that door at any second, guns blazing.

Just as I have that thought, he pops up in front of me out of thin air. He's standing, and at first I think he's still alive...but then he literally falls to pieces--arms and legs and head and torso tumbling to the floor.

I hear Gunza laughing, and I turn to see him floating in midair on a scarlet magic carpet. As he claps, Magda slumps beside him, utterly joyless.

Like I said, she becomes an accomplice. She literally has no choice.

At least she takes no pleasure in it. That's what makes her worth saving.

She has yet to hand over her soul.

"Bravo!" says Gunza. "Bravissimo! You should've seen the look on your face, Oleo!"

I keep my eyes fixed on him, partly so I won't have to look at my partner's body parts oozing blood at my feet.

Gunza elbows Magda hard in the side. "You're getting all this on tape or a crystal ball or whatever, right? So I can watch it again and again?"

Magda nods. "Yes, Master."

I hate seeing her like that. A woman with so much power, a woman who literally could do anything...reduced to groveling and harming the very people who could set her free.

Unless I can get through to her. "I can help you, Magda."

Her eyes flick toward me.

"Tell me what you want," I say. "Ask me for it."

I hold her gaze for a moment before she looks away. She's still not ready.

That's the root of the problem here. A genie, acting always to serve others, knows nothing of selfishness...but she must ask for something for herself to become free.

The key stands in front of her, but it's useless if she won't pick it up and turn it in the lock.

*****

I wait for Gunza to become bored with my screams, but it takes a very long time.

He hovers above on his magic carpet as the echoes of Magda's demented masters torture me. They do it right there in the gymnasium, on a weight bench, using trays of knives and needles and power tools wished up by Gunza.

As the ghouls work me over, I wonder if they are improvising...or if every terrible step is drawn from Magda's memory. The pain is indescribable, unbearable, catastrophic. Each application of blade or pliers or drill bit plunges me into uncharted depths of agony.

Did they do the same to her? Did they twist and pull and crush and cut, sometimes all at once? Did they laugh as they tuned her screams by grinding harder, digging deeper, winding tighter?

Did they cut off bits of her? Did they taunt her as they excavated organs? Did they push her to the brink of death again and again...holding her alive with wishes as they ruined her in every possible way?

And then, did they wish her back to wholeness, repairing every damage...only to start all over again?

The way they do with me?

If so, my sympathy for her increases a trillionfold. More even than that.

Because this is hell. Sheer hell, as the devil himself might design it.

And I wonder, between strokes of the knife and blows of the hammer, how it is that Magda has not gone irretrievably mad.

*****

Finally, after what seems to me like a dozen years, Gunza does grow bored. Tired is more like it. His eyes start drifting shut, and instead of wishing himself wide awake, he floats off to bed.

Lying on his belly on the magic carpet, he winks and waggles his fingers at me. "Back soon, dear." His braided red mustache jumps as he chuckles. "Don't miss me too much."

At this point, I'm in excruciating agony on the bench. This is the sixth time I've been horrifically mutilated and left at the brink of death.

My limbs have all been disconnected and reattached in the wrong places. The ghouls wear my organs on leather thongs around their necks. Only wishes are keeping me alive.

Gunza gives Magda a shove off the carpet, and she thuds to the floor. "I wish you would put Oliver back together, good as new, and get him rested up for our next session." After he says it, he rolls over on his back, crosses his hands behind his head, and floats out the door, yawning and snickering.

When he's gone, Magda struggles to her feet. She weaves mystic sigils overhead, and the torture squad of monstrous masters past disappears in a shower of golden glitter.

Standing over me, she gazes down at the damage...then looks away. Turning her back, she weaves more patterns in the air with her agile, flickering fingers.

I feel a familiar tingling. Gold dust twinkles around me, and I hear a fluttering trill like the song of a tiny tropical bird.

Reality stops and shifts like a jump-cut in a movie. There is an instant of nonexistence, disconnection from senses and self-awareness...and then I am whole once more.

My body is intact. My wounds are closed, my organs and limbs back in the right places. For the seventh time today, she has put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Except for the memories, it is as if none of it ever happened. This is how it must be for her, every time Gunza tears her apart and wishes her restored once more.

I wonder how many times a day she must do it. How many times she has done it since he took control of her.

How many times since her birth or creation.

She turns to face me again, fingers still weaving. The weight bench becomes a bed, the gymnasium a bedroom draped in white satin, aglow in moonlight.

Small figures materialize around me--winged children, robed in white. Some are toddlers, some older, some younger. Some are infants.

They push pillows behind my head and tuck blankets around me. They dab my forehead with a cool compress and wrap warm towels around my arms.

They raise a glass of water to my lips, and I drink. They feed me bread and hot broth from a silver tray. They sing softly as they work--dozens of them, all watching me solemnly, eyes glowing like little silver moons in their dark and pale faces.

"Who are they?" As I ask the question, an infant hands me a little cake.

Magda watches from the foot of the bed. "My angels," she says. "My babies."

Gazing around me in wonder, I begin to understand. "Your children? All of them?"

Magda nods. "They are my only comforts in this world."

I accept another spoonful of soup from a dark-haired little boy. "You made them."

"With my masters, as any woman would." Magda bows her head. "And unmade them, as my masters wished."

"My God." I shiver as I feel their moonlight eyes upon me--the eyes of dozens of dead children, recreated from the dust of graves and residue of tears.

Every last one of them, dead. Murdered by magic at whatever age they most displeased their mother's masters. Their fathers.

Gone now, as if they had never been. As if they had never been forced into or out of existence. Living on only in her memory.

Resurrected only to comfort her in moments of greatest pain and despair.

Tears roll down her face, and she wipes them away. "I'm sorry," she says. "Sorry for everything."

If only I could break her free from this unending cycle of woe. If only I could cut the magic ties that bind her to her heartless monster of a master.

If only there was some way to move her to ask for what she needs. What I can provide.

Maybe there is.

I glimpse it for a split-second. A look of sharper sorrow on her face. A sudden sinking. Fear and panic and rage and longing all at once, like fruit on a tree.

She touches her belly, and I know. She pulls her hand away instantly, but it's too late.

I finally know.

I know how to save her.

*****

"Very good!" Gunza claps from his royal box in the crowded stands of the coliseum. "Not perfect, but that comes with practice! You've just committed your first murder, Oleo!"

The bloody knife slips from my fingers and lands in the sand at my feet. My arms are soaked in blood up to the elbows. My white t-shirt and pants have gone crimson from sleeve to cuff.

I know what I've just done. I know that I had no control over it, that I was at the mercy of a compelling wish.

But it doesn't really matter. I still remember every detail. I remember killing the innocent woman wished up from somewhere in the world outside...killing her as the crowd around me cheered and stomped and showered me with roses.

That, of course, was the whole idea.

Torturing and resurrecting me wasn't enough for Gunza. I took the promotion that should have been his, and then I tried to tax his lordly treasures; he won't be happy until I've been corrupted and ruined and debased inside as well as out.

Just as he's corrupted and ruined his Magda.

"Now this is the life!" Gunza guzzles wine from a goblet and gropes the nearly naked slave girl in his lap. "That is entertainment!" He points his goblet at me, and the crowd howls with delight.

Gazing at the poor dead woman in the sand, I wonder if I can get through this. I wonder how much more I will have to endure to save Magda.

Looking up, I see her standing in the box with him, head bowed low. She won't look at me. Won't look at what she's done at his behest.

That has to change.

"Magda!" I call to her, and her head lifts. Her eyes meet mine. "Tell me what you want! Ask me for it!"

She twitches, then lowers her head again.

"Oh ho ho!" Gunza howls with laughter. "So you think you can give her something I can't?"

I'm treading on dangerous ground, and I know it. All he has to do is wish me silenced or dead or demented, and the game is over.

I continue to speak only to Magda. "Please! Ask for what you want!" I take a deep breath, ready to step off the precipice. Once I say the next thing, there'll be no taking it back. "For the sake of your unborn child, ask me!"

Suddenly, a hush falls over the coliseum. Even Gunza is silent.

Magda meets my gaze, and her eyes at first are full of rage. Then, the rage melts into despair.

And I know I was right. When she touched her belly while the angels tended me, she was thinking of an angel inside. A new child, growing within her.

His child. Gunza's child.

So now I've done it. Everything balances on the head of a pin, and a single wish could bring it all crashing down.

That's all it will take. One wish from Gunza to force Magda to do away with their unborn child. Add it to the angelic host, existing only in memory, comforting her in her deepest, darkest night.

Nothing now to do but push every button on the board and pray the engine catches before we crash.

"You know what he'll do next, Magda!" I march across the sand to stand beneath her. "There's only one way to stop him! Ask me for it!"

Tears pour from her eyes and run under her veil. Her shoulders pump as she breathes faster, heart racing in terror.

Just then, Gunza does the unexpected. Instead of the child-killing wish I thought he'd make next, or the one that wipes me instantly from the face of the planet, he says this: "I wish I was down there with Oleo, strangling the life out of him!"

Magda's fingers weave through the air. Reality stutters, and Gunza's wish takes hold.

He is with me now on the sand, thick fingers wrapped around my throat. I chop at his forearms, but they won't budge.

He scowls with bloodshot eyes and flushed face and red hair bristling from his beard and under his turban. Veins pop along his temples, and cords bulge in his neck.

His grip of steel tightens. "How dare you interfere in my paradise?"

I barely force out words through the vice of his hands. "He'll kill it, Magda! Just like...all the others! You...know it's...true!"

"Shut up!" roars Gunza. "I wish..."

Before he can finish, I pump a knee into his groin. The wind goes out of him, and he releases his grip and falls to the ground.

I can get the words out now, but how long do I have? How many seconds until the next wish? "I can help you, Magda! I can save you and your child! All you have to do is ask me!"

"I don't believe you!" says Magda.

Gunza starts to get up. I send him back down with a kick to the face. "Ask anyway! What do you have to lose?"

Storm clouds boil overhead as Magda weeps. "But I'm a genie! I cannot ask for anything for myself!"

"You're wrong!" I kick Gunza in the face again, harder than before. "Now ask me! What do you want?"

Magda stops sobbing and looks at her bare belly. Her fingers touch it lightly as wings brushing a cloud. "I wish..." Her thumbs and forefingers meet, forming a diamond around her navel. "I wish you could help me. I wish you could set us free."

Finally.

A grin breaks wide across my face. I bow deeply to her, twirling my fingers with a flourish as if doffing a hat in her honor.

"Your wish, milady," I say, "is my command."

With that, I weave my fingers overhead, swirling them in multiple mystic sigils dripping with golden glitter. The ground rumbles underfoot, and the storm clouds darken. The crowd screams and stampedes in the stands.

This, then, is my secret...that which makes me altogether different than anyone could ever guess. I am more than man or policeman or tax collector. More than I have ever shown another soul until now.

My fingers work furiously, teasing reality's threads upon the loom. Everything around me starts to turn, faster and faster with each passing breath.

Gunza struggles to his feet but can't stay there. The spinning of the world knocks him right back down on his ass.

Unable to retaliate physically, he resorts to tried and true. "I wish that Oliver would be..."

Before he can finish, I slam my hands together with a sound like the pealing of a massive bell. A bolt of lightning crashes down from the clouds above--and Gunza is gone.

As reality continues to accelerate in its wild gyre, Magda appears beside me. "Who are you?" she says. "Are you djinn?"

My fingers resume their weaving dance overhead. "Not djinn," I say. "Wish."

"I don't understand!"

I have to raise my voice to be heard above the rushing of the world. "One good master, ages ago, wished for you to have a wish of your own. Do you remember?"

She frowns in thought, then nods. "That was a very long time ago."

"Being a genie, you would ask for nothing for yourself, but he insisted. Unwilling to make a selfish choice, you put off the decision. You wished for one wish that you could call upon later, when you needed it most."

Magda smiles. "And you are that wish?"

"I am." Reality spins so fast around us, it is a blur of color and motion. I know that my work is almost done. "I waited for centuries for you to call on me, and you never did. I lived many lives, staying as close to you as I could, watching and waiting. Finally, I decided it was time for me to step in and give you a push."

Magda touches her belly. "So you really can help us."

"You have asked for what you need, and I will grant it. I will set you and your child free."

"Free." Magda says it like she's tasting it, like it's the first time she's ever spoken. "Free from Rudolph Gunza?"

"Free from all masters. Free to go where you want and do as you choose." I shoot her a grin and a wink. "Free to start a new life with your child."

Magda wipes a tear from her eye. She removes the veil from her face and kisses me on the cheek with lips like tender plums. "Thank you, my wish."

"My pleasure," I tell her. "You deserve to be happy."

"I only wish I could help you in return."

My fingers ache as I weave the last glittering sigils. "You can't. No more magic for you." I shrug. "But it's not all it's cracked up to be, is it?"

"Sometimes it is." Magda hugs me. "I'll never forget you."

"Then there you go." I finish weaving the new world and wrap my arms around her. "I will get my wish after all."

We squeeze each other tight as the world spins around us. A single tear crosses my face as I cease to be, dissolving into glittering gold dust that curls skyward like a puff of smoke from a dying lamp.

*****

Rose Head

By

Robert T. Jeschonek

The woman with a daisy for a head--her name is Gravelina Scalding--runs out the front door of her townhouse with a pair of pruning shears pointed in my direction. The silver-shining blades are scissored open wide, ready to snip my green throat with a squeeze of the handles.

Myself, I have a red rose for a head, but not for long if I don’t make a major move right this instant. Then, who’ll find the killer of things roselike, the man, woman, or thing the papers call the Pruner? Who’ll avenge the murders of my dear darling wife and seedlings?

The very thought of their deaths is enough to fill my red red heart and my green heart too with rage.

My partner, Chub, is nearby, but I know better than to look to him for help. While I have the head of a rose and the body of a man, Chub has the head of a man (though it’s a fat, pasty man’s head like a pile of mashed potatoes) and the thick-stalked body of a sunflower. He gets around on flippery roots, but he’s useless in a pinch because he just can’t run.

So it’s up to me, as usual.

Since I’m more interested in questioning Gravelina than killing her, I don’t reach for the pistols in the pockets of my lemon yellow suit jacket. Instead, as Gravelina charges, I grab a nearby lawn chair and charge right back, jamming the aluminum frame into the blades of the shears. Gravelina keeps pushing--she’s stronger than I expected--but I hold her off. One last shove and I knock her back off her feet, sprawling on the cobblestone walk.

The shears fall from her grip, and I kick them away. Dropping on top of her, I pin her wrists to the walk and cough a cloud of ester vapor in her face. This particular ester is meant to tranquilize and bring out the truth.

“We know you’re connected to the Pruner,” I say in the language of the flower-headed people, the play of scents and the rustling of petals. “Now tell me the killer’s name.”

Gravelina thrashes violently beneath me, nearly freeing one arm. “The weeds must be pruned if we are to touch the sun,” she says.

The blood and chlorophyll syrup in my veins freezes. She is quoting the message that was left hanging in wisps of fragrance in the air at each of the Pruner’s twenty-one known murders.

I press the thorns in the palms of my hands more deeply into the meat of Gravelina’s wrists. “Tell me! Who is the Pruner?”

“The question you should ask, Inspector Glisten,” she says, “is who isn’t?”

*****

“Daisy-heads suck,” says Chub, wrapping a dark green frond around a mug of beer. He hoists the beer from the bar and downs the contents in one swallow. Drinking is one thing he does fast.

“Gravelina won’t crack,” I say in flower-speak. Though Chub has the head of a man, he understands my rustling/scent language, which makes my life easier. With some difficulty, I can eke out a whispery approximation of man-talk with vibrations of my stamen, but Chub saves me the trouble.

Whatever I did to deserve him as a partner, I’m glad I did it. Chub’s no rose-head, so he’ll never be promoted, but he’s been my loyal, reliable helper for seventeen years. He hated me at first, but I won him over by saving his life, and we’ve been crime-busting best buddies ever since.

Not that we’ve been busting much crime since the Pruner came along.

“Maybe the aphids in the crime lab’ll dig something out when they get a taste of her,” says Chub. “Sniff out trace information from her petals.”

I shrug, displaying my lack of confidence in this possibility. Though aphid bugs have been known to find evidence when we let them gnaw on a suspect or a victim for a while, the technique has been as useless as everything else we’ve tried so far to track down the Pruner.

A girl with a marigold head drifts by, carrying a water mister on a tray. I want a spritz and wave her over. “In the meantime, what do we do next?” I say. “Gravelina was our best lead. Aromacams picked up her scent in the lobbies of two hotels where murders were committed. We found the pollen prints of five victims on her pistils.”

“Hmm,” says Chub, thoughtfully swaying from side to side. “She said the question we should be asking is who isn’t the killer. Does that mean the process of elimination?”

The marigold girl lifts the blue-tinted mister bottle from the tray and directs the nozzle at my rose-head. I lean forward as she squeezes the trigger, spraying my crimson petals with fine droplets of water.

I feel instantly refreshed and tip her generously. As she bows and glides away, I admire the bobbing of the sepals at the base of her blossom, the sway of her buttocks under her filmy white skirt. She reminds me of my wife, Zwilla, though my wife has a rose instead of a marigold for a head.

Had. I mean she had a rose for a head before the Pruner killed her.

For the umpteenth time today, I feel a stab in my gut at the thought of dead Zwilla. Though she has been gone for a month, the pain is as fresh as if she had been taken only this morning.

To dull that pain, I return my attention to talk of investigating her murder. “One other possibility, Chub,” I say. “Could she have meant that the least likely suspect is actually the murderer?”

Chub thinks for a moment, then sighs and shakes his fleshy jowls. “Maybe she just wanted to throw us off track,” he says.

“You might be right,” I say, reaching for a plant food spike from the jar on the bar. “We know Gravelina has a connection to the killer. Perhaps we should take a closer look at her personal life.”

“She works for a rhododendron-head who arranges humans,” says Chub. “Miss Carionette. Maybe we should drop by her shop.”

I kick off my right shoe, peel off the sock, and nibble the food spike with the tiny toothy maws on my toes. “Now you’re thinking, man-head,” I say as the nutrients rush into my system. “We’ll clip this weed yet.”

I flash Chub a confident smile, but it’s all fake. We’ve been looking for the Pruner for over a year now, and all we have to show for it is a longer list of victims.

A list that now includes my wife and children. They bring the grand total to twenty-one.

That means that more is at stake in this case for me than personal revenge for the death of my family. For any police inspector like me to leave twenty-one murders unsolved in one year’s time, that individual won’t be inspector for long

The word on the grapevine is that I’m just about out of a job, and I believe it. I’ve seen better cops than me get the old heave-ho for lesser failures than this. My nineteen years of distinguished service on the force don’t mean much next to my last year of shitty underperformance

If Chub and I don’t produce a perp soon, the axe will fall hard and fast on yours truly. What comes after that, you don’t want to know.

Let’s just say that they’re probably not saving me a spot in the garden of honor.

Not that anyone needs to punish me for failing. I’m doing a great job of that all by myself. Whatever the department does or doesn’t do to me, I’ll never forgive myself for not saving my family.

This does not mean, however, that I will go any easier on the criminal rot that I am about to tear into. If anything, it means I’ve got that extra, bloodthirsty zip that comes with having almost nothing left to lose.

The kind of zip that’ll make the Pruner wish he’d never put it there...if we manage to find him.

*****

“Gravelina is my finest arranger,” says Miss Carionette as she puts the finishing touches on the latest masterpiece at her shop, Fleshlovers. The masterpiece is a bouquet of six humans done up in spring colors. “I refuse to believe she had anything to do with any murders.”

“What do you know about her personal life?” I say, admiring Carionette’s work as I question her. The tall woman in the center of the arrangement, jet-haired and smooth-skinned, is draped with veils of pastel chiffon in pink, mint, and lemon.

The mauve petals of Carionette’s rhododendron-head ruffle with an affected highbrow accent. “Very little, Patrolman Glisten,” she says, giving me the wrong rank on purpose. (I can tell from her scent.) “She had a keen interest in composting and expressionist animal grafting...not necessarily in that order.”

Strolling away from Carionette, I look at the framed photos on the walls of the shop, examples of her past work. In one, three dark-haired human males dressed as farmers hold watering cans over a naked blonde human female huddled on the ground like a furled shoot. Something about the image makes me feel warm inside, and I linger in front of it.

“Did Gravelina ever talk about roses?” I say, moving on to a photo of three human females in brightly-colored leotards, standing back-to-back with arms stretched skyward.

Carionette’s tone changes. Her scent, aloof until now, sweetens with false servility, and a barely perceptible nervousness excites the flutter of her petals. “Only when a rose placed an order,” she says, “and then only in a businesslike manner, I can assure you.”

I come to a photo of a single human male, a young one, covered head to toe in a red silk bodysuit. He holds his arms straight out, red-gloved hands folded together in the foreground of the picture.

Suddenly, I realize that all is not as it seems at Fleshlovers.

“I’d like to see your back room,” I say, giving Chub a meaningful glance.

“I’m afraid I don’t have time to show you gentlemen around,” says Carionette, brushing at the veils on her subjects. “You’ll excuse me, but I have to deliver this arrangement within the hour.”

“We won’t take up your time,” I say. “My partner and I will have a look-see ourselves.”

“There’s nothing of interest back there,” says Carionette.

“Not according to this,” I say, pointing at the photo of the red-bodysuited human male. “How about it, Chub?”

Chub shakes his head and wags a frond at Carionette. “You oughtta be ashamed, Miss Carionette.”

“It’s not what you think,” says Carionette.

I lift the photo from its place on the wall and wave it at her. “You can’t openly advertise illegal trade,” I say, turning my scent bitter and stiffening the flutters of my petals. “But this, the Red Boy, is a well-known sign of certain criminal activities.”

Agitated, Carionette stops working on the human bouquet. “That’s not an advertisement of illegal merchandise. It’s a photo of a specialty item that’s very popular with our hipper clientele--the Red Boy bouquet. It’s meant to capitalize on public awareness of the Red Boy image.”

“Capitalize this,” I say, hurling the photo to the floor. The glass pane in the frame shatters on impact.

Storming past Carionette, I sweep around the counter at the rear of the shop and heave open the door to the back room.

What I see in the back makes my stomach churn and my petals wilt. Though I knew what to expect as soon as I spotted the Red Boy, the sight of such perversion is still hard to take.

On one side of the workbench, a translucent plastic bin brims with deep crimson petals. More of the petals are scattered over the bench, each a graceful curl from lip to cup.

And on the center of the bench...

“Rain, sun, wind, and earth,” I say softly, making the sign of the cross over myself to ward off the evil in this place.

On the center of the bench, half-finished, is a replica of a face...the face of a rose, assembled from the same crimson petals. As if that were not bad enough...

I can tell from the texture and scent that the petals are real. This mask is being glue-gunned together with petals from someone with a rose for a head.

Someone like me.

“Let me explain!” says Carionette as she charges into the room. “These are all castoffs purchased from donor plants!”

“As if I care where you got the petals,” I say, turning to face her. “As if you don’t know that the true crime here is the manufacture of rose-head masks.” I step toward her, emitting one of my special ester vapors. This one is designed to instill terror in whoever inhales it.

“B-but this is a special commission,” says Carionette. I can tell from the way her petals flicker that my ester is taking effect. “It’s a death mask for a rose-head whose face was t-terribly damaged in the accident that k-killed him.”

I continue to move closer. Carionette remains frozen in place. “Do you know how many times I’ve heard that story before?” I say slowly.

Then, I pounce, throwing her back against the wall and pinning her arms to the plaster with my palm-thorns.

Chub has finally managed to flipper into the doorway, and I say to him, “Partner Man-Head? What is the penalty for making, distributing, or wearing rose-masks?”

“Everyone knows that,” says Chub. “Death by lethal injection of herbicide.”

“Mandatory death penalty,” I say, pressing my petals to within inches of Carionette’s rhododendron-head. “But you never know, Miss Carionette. Maybe, if you tell me everything I want to know, I’ll cut you some slack.”

“W-what do you w-want to know?” says Carionette.

“A name and address,” I say. “Who ordered this mask?”

*****

I am surrounded by roses who are not roses.

Men and women dance under the flashing colored lights in the warehouse, and at first glance, everyone appears to have a rose-head. A closer look, however, reveals that every rose is a mask, and behind every mask are petals of white or gold or pink or purple or orange.

There must be at least a hundred people who look like roses in the warehouse, and the only one among them who is an actual rose-head is yours truly.

And I’d thought seeing the rose mask in progress at Fleshlovers had been sickening. This twisted masquerave, in violation of the most sacrosanct of our laws and moral codes, is off the charts when it comes to sick-making.

Masking oneself as a daffodil or petunia is one thing. Lower species are fair game when it comes to dress-up.

But the rose is sacred. The rose is most beautiful. The rose is above all others.

And imitation of the rose is forbidden.

Under other circumstances, I would call in a strike force and fumigate this noxious den of pretenders...but my job tonight requires different tactics. Forcing down my revulsion with great effort, I circle the dance floor in search of the man described by Miss Carionette.

Fortunately, my authentic rose-head enables me to blend in as I explore, though I am certain no one around me imagines that a true rose is among them. Chub waits outside; there was no way that mashed-potato man-head could have entered this exclusive “roses-only” event.

It doesn’t take me long to locate my target. He is seven feet tall and wears the only black rose mask in the place. His name is Carotid Aficionado, and according to Carionette, he is the man who ordered the rose-head mask she was making in the back room at Fleshlovers.

He is also the organizer and host of this nightmarish masquerave.

Carotid stands by the bar at the back of the room, a rose-masked woman on either arm. His scent puffs at me like clouds of smoke from a fire--powerful, capricious, and arrogant.

As I draw near, he turns his attention to me. I wisp out a scent of my own, designed to project non-threatening respect.

“Mr. Aficionado?” I say in flower-speak. “May I have a moment of your time?”

The fragrance of his voice is just as abrasive as his personal scent. Even muted by the rose mask, the
flutter-talk of his petals is loud with hyperconfidence. “What’ll you pay me for it?” he says, and the ladies on his arms giggle behind their masks.

“I can’t afford to pay you what it’s worth,” I say humbly (though I want to snap his head off). “How about you make it on the house and call it your good deed for the day?”

Carotid chuckles and nods. “Just so you don’t take more than I’m willing to give. I don’t tolerate anyone stealing from me.”

“It’s about Gravelina Scalding,” I say. “She’s out of the picture.”

“Is that so?” says Carotid.

“My name is Rooted Capsule,” I say, “and I’d like to offer my services.”

“Outstanding,” says Carotid. “The question is, can you measure up to dear Gravelina?”

“Let’s find out,” I say. “Give me a chance.”

Carotid sheds his chippies like the sleeves of silk pajamas and rests a hand on my shoulder. “You’ve talked me into it, Cappy,” he says, then gestures at a guy wearing a yellow rose-mask behind the bar. The guy runs up metal stairs to an elevated booth, and a minute later, the pulsing music cuts out. The dancers stop moving all at once.

Instantly, my guard goes up, as I realize that the whole scene has just gone bad.

One of Carotid’s men hands him a microphone. As he flower-speaks, his flutters and scent are amplified and cast out over the crowd, nice and loud.

“Hello, roses!” says Carotid, and the mob on the dance floor flutter-roars and applauds. The obscenity of it, of all these low-growing species wearing rosy masks and cheering as he calls them roses, makes my toe maws snap angrily in my shoes.

“Are the stamens of your rose-heads heavy with pollen, guys?” says Carotid. The rough, insistent flutters of male flowers charge the air. “Ladies, are your pistils crying out to be dusted with hot, surging pollen?” The room ripples with a wave of lighter fluttering as the women chime in. “Then it’s your lucky night!”

I try to slide away from Carotid, but he keeps a tight grip on my shoulder. Undesirable outcomes are hurtling toward me, and I have no weapon to blow or cut or spray my way out of here.

But I do have a man-head up my sleeve, and how sweet is that? Smoothly, I drop my hand in my pocket and press the button on the secret weapon I call the Chub Signal, otherwise known as a pager.

As Carotid pushes me forward into the hands of two goons, I take heart that any minute now there’ll be fire in the hole.

“Gravelina can’t be with us tonight,” says Carotid, at which the crowd rustles with disappointment. “But your Uncle Carotid won’t let you down! Put your hands together for our very special guest, Rooted Capsule!”

Everyone but me and the goons claps wildly.

“Nobody leaves a Carotid party unfertilized!” says Carotid, and then he spins around like a rock star and punches an index finger toward the elevated DJ booth. “Hit it, Goomie! Make it a love song!”

The guy in the booth scratches a record on the turntable three times, then lets it spin. A hip-hop version of “Flight of the Bumblebee” explodes from the amps.

One goon holds me while another raises a mask toward my face. The mask is a rounded cone striped gold and black, covered with fuzzy bristles...an instantly recognizable icon of sensuality and lifegiving for every greenblooded blossomer.

It’s a replica of the ass-end of a bee. Now I know why Gravelina Scalding had so many pollen samples on her.

Like Gravelina, I’m meant to go person to person and rub my masked snout in their flower-heads, picking up pollen from the males and smearing it on the pistils of the females. This is not just a masquerave, it’s a pollination orgy...and I’m “it.”

At least, that’s what’s in store for me until the roar of an engine fast approaches outside and the doors of the warehouse blow in like autumn leaves in a wind-gust.

Thankfully, in addition to drinking, there are two other things that slow-moving Chub Man-Head does fast, and one of them’s driving.

The other is evident as the machine gun turrets on the roof and hood of his squad car burst to life. Chub might take a half-hour to flipper across a room, but he’s a speed demon when it comes to shooting people to death.

Chub’s guns chew up the crowd with deafening, random fury, filling the air with plumes of green and red syrup. Rose masks fly apart like feather pillows, petals of red and pink and yellow and white spraying outward as if magnetically repelled from the depraved scum who wear them.

As the crowd scatters in a panic, I haul up a leg and kick back hard into the shin of the guy who’s holding me. His petals and scent flare with pain, and he loosens his grip just enough for me to tear my arms free.

When the other goon, the one who was going to put the bee mask on me, charges, I dive at him with palm thorns extended. My thorns slide into his chest like meat thermometers into a roast, and then I drag them downward, gashing him open. Red and green fluid pours out like wine, and the goon drops away...just in time for me to spin around and finish off the first guy.

Goon One barrels at me with steaming petals and fists clenched like he’s squeezing mice to death in them. To the sweet sound of Chub’s blazing gunnery, I swirl my yellow suit-coat off and whip it over the goon’s head bullfighter-style. While he wrestles with the coat, I drive a knee-thorn into his belly and slash him open with joy in my hearts. His guts smack the dance floor before he does, so it’s a job well done.

All the while, the gunfire rages, and dancers pelt the floor like hailstones. One of the few people left standing is Carotid, who runs out the back door without his arm candy chippies.

Weirdly enough, when I chase him down and pin him to the alley wall with my thorns, he doesn’t look the slightest bit rattled. I tear the black rose-mask off his red carnation-head, and he just stares at me like I’m no more threatening than a pizza delivery guy.

“Alone at last,” he says. “Let the games begin.”

“What do you know about the Pruner?” I say, twisting my thorns deeper into his flesh with much satisfaction.

Carotid laughs, the multitude of fine red petals in his bloom fluttering with delight. “What’s a Pruner, pray tell?” he says.

I hoist him away from the wall and slam him back hard against the bricks. “Drawing a blank?” I say. “Fortunately for you, I’m an expert at shaking loose blocked memories.”

“Unfortunately for you, I’m a card-carrying masochist,” says Carotid. “In fact, I’m having a party in my mind with you right this minute.”

“Tell me what you know!” I say, enraged by the smartass answers. I feel like my wife and kids are watching, disappointed that I am failing again to find their killer. By now, I am ready to do just about anything for just one lead that will point me toward the Pruner.

Actually, I have a pretty good idea that killing Carotid on the spot will make me feel better, too...but I hold back.

Instead, I spike Carotid’s thigh with my longest knee thorn, then slowly drag it downward, opening a furrow in the meat of his leg.

He stiffens, and I know I’ve finally hurt him. “The drama is completely unnecessary,” he says. “All you had to do was say ‘pretty please with sugar on top.’”

I hesitate, glowering up at him. “Tell me what you know about the Pruner,” I say...and then, grudgingly, I give the vermin almost what he wants. “Pretty please.”

“Come on now,” he says. “Give your daddy some sugar.”

“With sugar on top,” I say, jamming every thorn deeper to drain some of the sweetness from his freaky little victory.

Carotid leans down close enough for me to hear and smell his whisper. “I’ll do better than tell you,” he says. “Uncle Carotid will show you.”

*****

As Carotid leads me among the wildflowers in their foul-smelling camp, I am yet again overcome by disgust.

I have been here before, in this sordid domain of rootless scum, when duty called me to quell a disturbance or show the cop flag when they had murdered one of their own. Each visit filled me with a superstrong urge to raze the place with a bulldozer and pulverize everyone here.

These people of the streets and shadows huddle around barrels of burning compost and squat in makeshift tents of trash bags and scavenged cardboard and plastic sheeting. They dress in stinking rags infested with parasites and water themselves from stagnant puddles. The adults shuffle drunkenly and the screaming children scramble through the mud like animals, filthy and unsupervised.

It is like a vision of the end of the world. It is what happens when people abandon the rule of law and the time-tested virtues of civilization.

And it is only one of many such camps festering in the heart of this fair city and too many others across the land. I am ashamed that we allow such places to exist without plowing them under or blowing them up.

“You said the Pruner would be here,” I say to Carotid, stroking the grip of the automatic handgun in the
right-hand pocket of my lemon-yellow suit jacket. “So where is he?” Next, I stroke the grip of the gun in my left-hand pocket, too.

“I spy, with my little eye,” says Carotid, “the certain someone you’re dying to meet. Over there!” Flinging out an arm, he points a skinny finger dead ahead.

Looking where he indicates, I see two dandelion-headed people sitting on the ground by a campfire in front of a ragged bedsheet tent. One is a full-grown man, cooking something in a tin can, and the other is a little girl, maybe eight years old.

“That’s the Pruner?” I say, tightening my grip on the guns in my pockets.

“Seek and ye shall find, dear Cappy,” says Carotid. “Or would you rather call it a night? I can’t say I blame you for being a little timid.”

“Move it or lose it,” I say, giving him a shove forward. “Introduce me to this madman.”

Carotid starts toward the dandelion-heads. “You say ‘madman,’ I say ‘to-mah-toe,’” he says.

I follow without answering, my nerves vibrating like overcharged power lines. All I see ahead is a grubby
yuck-man cooking dinner with a sooty waif...but the shadow of the Pruner looms oilslick black, and my man-head backup is parked a block away.

As we draw up on the man and the little girl, I catch a big whiff of sweet and sour stench that makes me want to turn away. Body odor mixed with raw sewage and dandelion scent sticky with sickness.

The dandelion-heads look up as we approach, and Carotid gives them a jaunty wave. “Hello to you!” he says. “You’re about to meet someone terribly annoying, and I apologize in advance. His name is Inspector Firstbreath Glisten.”

I flash Carotid a look because he somehow knows my real name even though I never let it slip. It is now that I realize that this scoundrel is playing a deeper game than I imagined.

“Inspector,” says Carotid, extending a hand toward the dandelion-heads by the fire. “You wanted to meet the Pruner. Allow me to introduce Gristle Skinbone and his daughter, Medium.”

I nod, which is as far as I’ll go with pleasantries given the circumstances. Gristle nods back and wisps out amid the stench a scent with a touch of courtesy and a bucketful of thinly disguised contempt.

In that moment, I have no trouble at all believing that this scabby scat is responsible for the murder of my family. His rancid odor leaves no room for doubt that he is capable of far, far worse than raising a child in this squalid cesspit.

More than anything, I want to kill him. My fingers twist like snakes around the guns in my pockets.

I barely manage to restrain myself. “All those murders,” I say to Gristle, thinking of my dead sweet wife and seedlings in particular. “Why did you do it?”

Carotid loops an arm around my shoulders and pulls me close. “‘Scuse me, Mr. Jumpy-to-Conclusions,” he says, “but what makes you think I was only talking about him?”

Confused, I look to the wilted little girl in the dancing firelight. “You must still think we’re playing a game,” I say, “if you’re trying to tell me she’s the Pruner.”

Carotid moves so close his petals brush up against mine. “What gave you the idea there’s only one Pruner?” he says, the scent of his voice thick-sweet with wicked amusement.

“Tell him, honey,” he says to little Medium. “Tell him what you did to the pretty rose-head. Tell him how you won your medal.”

Medium touches a tarnished silver disk pinned to her stained and putrid sweater. “Okay,” she says timidly. “Daddy and I met the rose-man walking in the park. I told him a joke while Daddy hit him with a stick and knocked him down.”

Medium hesitates, and Carotid coaxes her to tell the rest, sweetie.

“Then Daddy and I cut him up with clippers,” says Medium. “I just did the small stuff on account of I’m small.”

“And you won yourself a medal, didn’t you?” says Carotid.

Medium nods shyly, fingering the disk on her sweater.

“What do you say to the nice man, honey?” says Gristle.

“Thank you for the medal, Uncle Carotid,” says Medium.

“You earned it,” says Carotid, ruffling her petals playfully.

I am speechless. Something inside me flips over like a vegetable that looks fine on top and is crawling with insects underneath.

“Okey-doke, lawface,” says Carotid, clapping his hands together. “You got your confession of sins. Happy now?”

“I don’t understand,” I say. “Why would they...how could they do it?”

“Look at how they live,” says Carotid, gesturing at the squalid bedsheet tent. “Destitute, undersunned and suffering while the high-faluting rose-heads prance in unobstructed daylight and sip the purest water out of gold decanters. Can there be a nobler motive than the end of oppression?”

“You mean to tell me...they killed twenty-one roses...out of resentment?”

“Shame on you,” says Carotid. “Do these two look capable of murdering twenty-one roses?”

I say nothing.

Carotid laughs. “This is just our first stop! There’s more to the Pruner than two unwashed wildflowers.”

*****

Again, Carotid presents me with seeming impossibilities in a place that reeks like I’ll never stop smelling it.

“I’d like you to meet Mrs. Marinade Flypaper,” says Carotid, pressing me toward a shriveled tulip-head in a creaky rocking chair. “She’s got a groovy story I’ll bet you’re itching to hear.”

Ancient Mrs. Flypaper is so crinkled, she looks like she’s been freeze-dried. Her withered purple tulip-head trembles atop a haystick body swimming in a sweat-yellowed dressing gown. I think she will crumble into dust if I breathe too hard in her direction...but the real reason I try not to breathe much is that she stinks like urine, sour milk, and rotting flowers.

In fact, the whole place smells that bad if not worse, filled as it is with decaying running-out-of-timers. In this seediest of low-rent nursing homes, the used-up carcasses of too-late bloomers slump together in pre-death putrescence, regretting that they didn’t save enough money in smoother years to afford a better fadeout.

“Go ahead, Mrs. Flypaper,” Carotid says cheerfully. “Tell Inspector Glisten about Hedgerow Diadem. Don’t leave out the good parts, sweetheart.”

The old tulip-headed woman looks at me nervously. “But he’s a...he’s a...”

“A policeman?” says Carotid.

“A rose,” says Mrs. Flypaper, and as rancid as her odor is, I taste the same whiff mingled with her fear that I inhaled from Gristle Skinbone in the wildflower camp.

Contempt.

“Don’t worry, Marinade,” says Carotid, patting her scrawny hand. “What’s he going to do to you? Put you in prison? Kill you? Like you’re not in prison already! Like you’re not as good as dead right now!”

Mrs. Flypaper’s tulip-head petals crackle as they unfold slightly in a weak smile. “You’re right as always, dear boy,” she says. “What do I have to lose?”

Carotid tucks down a wedge of petals atop one side of his red carnation-head, winking at me. “Can you say ‘recurring theme,’ Inspector Glisten?” he says.

Tempted as I am to say the hell with Carotid’s revelations and give him the shooting he’s been begging for, I keep the cage door closed on my pacing tiger temper and listen to the old woman’s raspy storytelling.

“Hedgerow Diadem was the doctor who provided our medical care here at the home,” says Mrs. Flypaper. “Only he didn’t do a very good job of it.”

“He was a louse!” says an old man behind me with a wretched blue pansy for a head. “He thought he was so much better than us because he was a high-and-mighty rose-head!”

“It’s true,” says Mrs. Flypaper, nodding. “We were all terrified of getting sick, because his patients often died...and who’s going to question it when a poor old tulip or pansy in the county home passes away?”

“No one, that’s who!” says another old man, this one with a white gardenia-head with hardly any petals left on it.

“All he wanted was to milk our medical insurance,” says the pansy man, rapping his ashplant cane on the floor.

“One day, a good friend of ours died because Dr. Diadem gave her the wrong medication,” says Mrs. Flypaper.

“Her name was Quartzie Ossobuco!” says the gardenia-head. “I was in love with her!”

“We heard about the Pruner,” says Mrs. Flypaper, “and we got an idea. A group of us cornered Dr. Diadem in the parking lot, and we killed him.”

“With knives,” says the pansy-head.

“We might not look like much,” says Mrs. Flypaper, “but you’d be surprised what seven of us can do when we work together.

For a long moment, I stand and absorb the unreality of Granny’s vile bedtime story. Withered coots and biddies ganging up on a rose physician is nearly as unthinkable to me as an eight-year-old girl helping Daddy cut down a stranger in the park.

And yet, I come to believe that it happened. These people are not roses, after all, or my faithful man-head. As harmless as they appear, I know that they are untrustworthy and capable of anything.

And deserving of no mercy.

I resist the impulse to dole out swift punishment, however, in favor of pressing for more information. “How many others did you kill?” I say flatly.

“Only Dr. Diadem,” says Mrs. Flypaper, rocking in her chair. “But we like to think we did our part.”

“Did your part for what?” I say.

“Pruning’s a team effort,” says Carotid. “If everyone picks up just one piece of garbage, the streets will be litter-free in no time!”

“You’re pretty brave to be talking trash about rose-heads,” I say coldly, “considering a rose-head policeman’s standing right here with the firepower to shut you up forever.”

“Then who would answer the big question on your tiny little mind?” says Carotid, dousing me with a fragrance thick with arrogant spite. “Namely, ‘Which Pruner chopped my family into little pieces, Carotid?’”

With a major effort, I force back the impulse to do what I know is the righteous thing--in other words, capping him here and now. The scumwad is right: I need to know. I need revenge.

“All right then, compost,” I say to him, grabbing his arm and digging in a palm thorn nice and deep. “Since you’re Mr. Know-it-all, let’s quit beating around the bush. What’s the answer to the big question?”

The grinning masochist doesn’t even flinch a little from my thorn-stab. “You’ll see, Cappy,” he says. “Cross my heart and hope you die.”

*****

For the next two hours, Carotid continues to lead me around town, introducing me to one self-confessed Pruner or group of Pruners after another.

The parade of psychopaths quickly wears me down. For one thing, none of them admits to killing my so-very-loved ones, and that’s the Pruner or Pruners I most want a
face-to-face with (though I’m coming back later, make no mistake, to extinguish every other Pruner I meet along the way).

For another thing, I quickly sicken of the toxic anti-rose-head sentiment spewed out by the whole rotten crew.

I hear the same crap from the band of housewives who murdered a rose-head city councilman that I hear from the men’s church group who cut down a rose-head newspaper publisher. The teen street gang who killed a rose-head attorney and his family sing the same song as the janitor who hacked up a company vice president.

This, to say the least, is a real bud-opener. I’ve been a cop for over a decade, dipping my roots over and over in the filthiest shit-pools...and I never knew how far and wide the poison had spread. Until this night, I never knew how much the non-roses hated us.

As an educated man, I can dismiss this hatred as the sour grapes of the ignorant and the unsuccessful, the disenfranchised, unlucky, and unattractive.

What I can’t dismiss or deny is the sheer breadth and depth of this blight. This hatred of the greatest of us all, the benign and divine rosy beauties who lift up all society with our achievements and wise guidance, has infiltrated further than I ever could have guessed.

And I know, in my green and red hearts alike, it has the potential to do far more damage to our precious world than any single serial killer ever could.

Or, perhaps, the damage has already been done. It certainly has been for me.

When my wife and children were killed, my world was flipped upside-down...but at least it was still recognizable. The social order remained intact. People seemed to know their place in the scheme of things.

Now, the only scheme that I see is madness. All that stands between order and chaos is the thinnest of shivering membranes, ready to pop at the touch of a light breeze or a hard look.

This is what is going through my mind as Carotid directs our driver, Chub, toward the last stop on our tour.

*****

As Carotid and I enter the lobby of the stadium, the roar of the crowd is deafening. The mingled scents of many flower-heads in close proximity are overpowering; individual signals are impossible to identify, though a single shared sentiment dominates the chaotic broadcast. Hatred like an avalanche, a tidal wave, a firestorm, out of control.

“Stay close, Cappy,” says Carotid, marching toward the open gate that yawns before us, pulsing with brilliant red light. “This is one place you don’t want to wander off in.”

My sweating hands are tight on the guns in my pockets. Though I do not yet see the full picture of what I have stumbled into, it is clear to me that something terrible awaits.

“Why?” I say to him. “What’s going on here?”

Carotid spins and throws his arms up in the air. “A spectacle years in the making!” he says, walking backward. “The grand finale or brave new beginning, depending on your inclination!”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I say, following him through the gate. The roar and fumes of the crowd beyond are so strong that I can barely hear his scent and have to sight-read the flutters of his petals.

“The greatest show under the sun!” says Carotid, silhouetted in flame. “Behold, Red Night!”

As I step out of the gate, all I see at first is fire, leaping up from the green turf of the playing field. An enormous bonfire blazes at dead center of the stadium, orange and red and yellow tongues lashing in the wind.

Staring deeper into the flaring surge, I see a solid form at its core, tall and straight like the trunk of a tree or a telephone pole. I follow it up along its height, rising far above the field into the night sky.

When I get to the top, I realize that it is meant to be more than a tree or a pole. The spar in the heart of the blaze is supposed to be a stem.

Atop it, an enormous effigy of an open rose blossom burns.

Suddenly, the crowd explodes with a roar of clapping and stomping, and I drop my gaze to the field to see what the excitement is about. It is then that I know conclusively that the giant burning rose was not erected and lit as a worshipful gesture.

Gangs of flower-headed men parade onto the turf to the thunderous music of a marching band. At first, I see geraniums, marigolds, begonias, violets, asters, chrysanthemums...no roses.

But as the men get closer, I see roses among them after all. Each gang carries a rose-head, raised overhead like a coffin or a luau pig.

And when they get to the bonfire, the men throw the rose-headed people in with a flourish.

And the flames shoot higher.

Carotid leans close, his petals brushing against mine. “Here are some more Pruners for you,” he says as the men throw another rose-head into the fire. “Aren’t you going to arrest them?”

I flash back to the words of Gravelina Scalding when I asked her who the Pruner was. “The question you should ask, Inspector Glisten,” she said, “is who isn’t?

At last, I understand what she meant.

A rose-head drops to the field from above, and I look up into the packed stands. I see roses among the thousands of flowers there, struggling and screaming as they are beaten and tossed over the railings.

Petals of rose red and pink and yellow and white swirl in the air like autumn leaves on a windy day.

“Don’t feel bad, Cappy,” says Carotid, throwing an arm around my shoulders. “You know as well as I that it takes a fire to clear the way for new growth. How else can the overgrown species get their day in the sun?”

Another rose is dumped on the bonfire. The men who threw him high-five and hug each other in celebration.

As I watch, I realize that I recognize them. A chill shoots up my spine as the last flakes of sanity peel away from my world.

They are cops out of uniform. Not just any cops, either, but cops from my precinct.

They are my coworkers.

The six of them are non-roses all, but I never doubted their devotion to the law and to me until now. I always thought that we were on the same team, though I as a rose was of course the leader.

“Friends of yours?” says Carotid, following my dumbstruck gaze. “Let’s not be antisocial.” Before I can stop him, he detaches his arm from me and jogs forward, waving at my supposed teammates by the fire.

They turn and look. At least two of them, I am certain, look past Carotid and see me.

For an instant, I am frozen in place. One thought blazes in my mind like a desert sun.

Did one of them kill my family? One of my own colleagues?

Or, worse, was it a team effort? Did all of them do it together?

Hearts jackhammering in my chest, I turn and run. As I charge through the gate, I hit the Chub Signal in my pocket and draw my guns.

*****

When I bolt out the front doors into the parking lot, I feel the start of true panic build inside me like a bud about to burst. My secret weapon who has never let me down and who I fully expected to see waiting at the curb in the revving Chubmobile is nowhere to be found.

By far, it is my darkest moment in a night of nightmares. After seeing my fellow policemen front and center in the cold-blooded murdershow of Red Night, I guess I should have expected that even stalwart Chub might turn against me...but the thought never crossed my mind. Now, it seems, betrayal is the only explanation for my partner’s absence, and death by kill-crazy mob is my only likely destiny.

As the stadium doors crash open behind me, I run straight ahead into the parking lot because there’s nowhere else to go. Stealing a look over my shoulder, I see the six traitor-cops hurtling toward me, and that’s not all; flower-heads of all description swarm out after them, shaking knives and scythes and ball bats and fists in the air.

I run for my life between lanes of parked cars, barely outpacing the onrushing army. Feet thunder across the pavement like the pounding hooves of stampeding cattle; a cloud of choking stench rolls over me, scents mingled in a single transmission of murderous rage.

How far I’ll get, I don’t know, but I know if I stop I’ll be dead in an instant...or worse, dragged back to the stadium alive and conscious.

Unfortunately, just as I know too well the fates that await me if I stop running, I know that I can’t keep running forever. Eventually, I will run out of steam, and they will get me.

The heat and pungence of their stench-cloud intensifies as they gain on me. I begin to think that I won’t have to worry about losing steam after all, because they will overtake me long before that happens.

Then, just as I have consigned myself to a terrible Red Night death, I hear the screeching of tires.

Looking over my shoulder, I see the glorious Chubmobile leap out of a parking space, directly in the path of the oncoming mob. As the car jolts to a stop, the machine gun turrets on its roof and hood chatter away, spraying the crowd with a shitstorm of fiery bullets.

As the nose of the mob explodes with blossoms of red and green fluid, I bolt toward my beloved savior-buggy. The door handle jitters in my grip with the supersweet vibrations of the stuttering guns.

“Couldn’t you park any closer?” I say as I dive into the passenger seat.

“I was in a towaway zone,” says Chub. “The asshole parking attendant would’ve made his own crippled grandma move.”

It’s not like me to give with the mush, but I pat Chub’s shoulder as he keeps firing into the mob. “Thanks,
man-head,” I say. “I knew you’d never let me down.”

“How can I,” says Chub, “what with all the dirt you’ve got on me?”

“Works both ways,” I say, watching the sap-and-bloodbath beyond the driver’s side window. “What say we make like bananas?”

“Where to?” says Chub.

“Given recent developments,” I say, “I think we ought to pay a visit to Miss Carionette.”

*****

Months later, Chub Man-Head sits at the bar in our favorite joint, one frond wrapped around a freshly-refilled beer, and waves me over. For a moment, it’s like old times again, my partner and I bellied up to shoot the shit after a long day of shooting lawbreakers.

But I can’t fool myself for long. The old times are ancient history.

“Hey, waiter!” Chub says to me. “How about a mist for my partner here?”

These days, I’m not the one on the receiving end of the mister spray.

A man with a lily for a head turns from beside Chub at the bar and extends his glossy white petals to receive the refreshing spritz. I lift the mister bottle from the silver tray I carry and let him have it--not with bullets like I want to, but with the sweet spray of droplets from the mister’s nozzle. His petals ruffle smoothly with delight.

The full-head azalea mask Miss Carionette made me is so good, the lily-head doesn’t know I’m a rose underneath. Chub has my number, but that’s okay; he’ll never rat me out. To keep his job with the Department, he badmouthed me, blamed me for every screw-up in history, and signed oaths of loyalty to the new, non-rose government, but I gave him the go-ahead for all that and I know it was just for show. He did so well at it, in fact, that he got promoted to my old job as inspector, which is something that never would have happened in the old days of rose dominance.

Not that success has gone to his man-head. Not that it ever will.

This is the one thing that has not changed in my inside-out life: Chub Man-Head, who I now realize is my best friend and not just my partner, will never let me down. Looking back, I am glad that when I was on top, I bothered to treat this one non-rose with respect, and that he was worthy of it.

Not that Chub’s new partner seems as willing as I was to befriend the little people.

“Don’t be so stingy with the mist next time,” the lily-head says in flower-speak, dropping a lousy tip on my silver tray. Even on my hardest-up days money-wise, I was a better tipper than this cheapskate.

Inspector Chub, at least, adds another bill to my tray. “Take care,” he says with a wink on his mashed potato puss.

I linger for an instant, more grateful than ever for the good and faithful man-head. Now that the other flowers have killed every rose they could get their hands on, and I can never show my true rose-head face in public, Chub is my only connection to the life I once knew. Without his support, even from afar, I know I would have gone insane long ago.

I smile to myself as my former partner drains his beer in one gulp, and then I move along to serve other customers. To say the least, I hate doing it, spending my days misting the petals of the inferiors who troop through the door like they own the place, like they own the whole world.

But it keeps me alive. I make enough money that I don’t have to live in a wildflower camp or peddle my ass as a street pollinator. I blend in and watch for other flower-heads who might be roses under masks, just in case there are some Red Night survivors around...though I haven’t found any yet.

Also in the plus column, my job isn’t my life anymore like it was back when I was an elite lawman. I have time for a life away from work these days.

Some nights, I go on hunting expeditions, ambushing wealth-flaunting nightlifers fattened on the kill-gotten gains of the Red Night massacre. I call myself the New Pruner and aim to beat the record for hacking up non-rose flower-heads...but only after I’ve interrogated them for information about the murders of my wife and kids.

That’s the one secret I never discovered while investigating the original Pruner killings. I’m still no closer to figuring it out, but I’m nowhere near giving up, either.

Neither is my friend in high places, Inspector Chub. Though he hasn’t found a single lead in the case, he says he’s all over it in his spare time. His man-head’s intuition keeps him believing that the Pruner who struck down my family has not flown far. Recently, in fact, Chub said he had a feeling that the killer was so close that he could reach out and touch him.

It makes me feel good that Chub’s taking this case as personally as I do. It gives me hope that someday, in spite of my reduced circumstances, I’ll track down and punish the animal who snuffed out Zwilla and the girls.

Some people might say it’s unimportant now, given all that’s happened...but to me, it has never been more important. Sometimes, it’s the only thing that keeps me going.

And sometimes, there is one other thing.

On certain nights, I go to Carotid’s club. I put on a rose mask over the azalea mask over my rose-head, and I pretend I’m dancing among rose-heads again, not lesser flowers masked as roses. Sometimes, I pretend my wife and seedlings are among them, swaying and waving and smiling in sunlight, telling me everything’s going to be all right.

And for a while, at least, I feel like I’m on top of the world again.

*****

The Duck Lover

By

Robert T. Jeschonek

I wish that the man who feeds us every day were a duck like I am.

Other men and women give off a reddish light like fire or a bluish light like ice, but the man who feeds us gives off a golden glow like the morning sun. Other men and women are hard as rock inside, but the man who feeds us is as tender as river mud.

We meet him every weekday morning in the grassy park beside the Crown American Building, the one with the giant pillars like stone tree trunks. We hear the ring of keys jangling on his belt loop, and we run to him from whatever puddle we are sipping or cigarette butt we are pecking at.

He is tall and skinny as a blade of marsh grass. The sandy-colored hair on his head is as thin and wispy as a water skimmer’s legs. Sunlight glints from his glasses, so I cannot always see his eyes, but when I do, they are huge and dewy as the caps of forest mushrooms at dawn.

He takes his time when he feeds us, sitting on a bench in the park, dropping crumbs of bread from a plastic bag. He feeds us carefully, making sure that the hens and the weak and the lame get as much food as the strong and pushy mallards among our flock.

He is the reason we spring and summer in Johnstown every year. He is a legend to us, though we tell no ducks outside our flock about him. Ducks are selfish, and we want to keep him to ourselves. I am more selfish yet, for I wish that I could keep him for myself alone.

I am his special duck. When he feeds the flock, he always holds back a special morsel for me...a pinch of corn meal, a bit of bread crust freckled with sesame seeds. He talks to me more than to the others, smiling down at me from the park bench long after the rest of the flock has waddled off.

In return, I sing him beautiful songs. I dance for him, hopping from webbed foot to webbed foot. I write poems with my droppings on the brick sidewalk. Love poems.

Because I love him. I would do anything for him.

This is why I’m not too upset when the woman who laughs stops showing up in the park with him one day.

*****

For years, the woman who laughs came to the park with the man who feeds us. She was tall and skinny like him, with wavy, brown hair and narrow eyes the color of a mallard’s emerald hood.

She sat beside him on the bench, hip to hip with him, and smoked cigarettes and talked as she watched him throw us bread.

And she laughed. A lot. A throaty, raspy laugh that always sounded like it was on the verge of becoming a cough.

Sometimes, when she laughed, she touched his arm. Or his knee.

And his mushroom cap eyes, when I could see them, grew wider. I could hear his heart beating faster. He never touched her back, but I knew how he felt.

The same way I feel about him.

I hated her for that, for being the one he wanted...and I hated her just as much for giving him false hope.

As much as she laughed and talked and touched, she always left him alone on the bench when she was done with her cigarette. He watched her every step as she walked away, and she never turned around.

I knew the type. She enjoyed the attention. She encouraged him, but she never had any intention of becoming his mate.

*****

“Well,” said the woman one morning, blowing out a combination of smoke and frosty breath in the late autumn chill. “This is it.”

All the ducks were quacking for their breakfast (except me, I was listening), but the man who feeds us didn’t drop any crumbs right away. He slumped forward on the bench with the plastic bag between his legs and mashed a lump of bread between the fingers of one hand.

“It isn’t fair,” said the man who feeds us.

“C’mon, be happy for me,” said the woman. “I start my new job next week. My husband and I are finally getting out of this town. This layoff is probably the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

The man kept kneading the wad of dough. “Best thing, huh?” he said quietly.

“I don’t think there are any ducks where I’ll be working, though,” said the woman. “I don’t know what I’ll do for my morning entertainment.”

The man turned away. “So there’s no chance you’ll stay in town then?” he said.

“There’s nothing keeping me here,” said the woman. When she settled her hand on his knee, I wanted to peck her eyes out. “Somebody gave me some good advice once about moving on and starting over.”

The man looked at her, surprised. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “That was me.”

“Thanks for the advice,” said the woman. She flicked away her burning cigarette butt, and two ducks waddled after it. “You inspired me.”

The man who feeds us smiled and nodded gratefully, but I knew. I could tell from the look on his face and the way he mashed the wad of dough harder between his fingers.

His advice to her had had nothing to do with her leaving town.

*****

At first, I think it’s a good thing that the woman is gone. The man who feeds us is better off without her, I think.

But I am wrong.

When he comes out to the park in the morning, he slouches like a riverbank willow. His eyes are streaked with red, and his golden glow is streaked with black. When he sits on the bench and leans over us, his breath smells sharp and bittersweet as rotting fruit.

“It’s just me today, guys,” he says, reaching into his plastic bag. “Same as every day from now on.”

He scatters a handful of crumbs on the sidewalk, and the flock dives in...but not me. I can see that his heart isn’t in it.

I try to perk him up with a little song and dance, quacking and bobbing back and forth. I bounce up and down on my webbed feet and turn in a circle.

But nothing works. The man who feeds us stares at me but doesn’t seem to see me at all.

He turns the bag upside down and dumps all the bread on the grass at once. As the hungry flock pounces, he gets up from the bench.

“I’m glad someone loves me,” he says, “even if you only love me for the food.”

I call to him as he leaves, but he doesn’t turn back. If only I could make him understand.

“It isn’t true!” I would tell him. “I love you for who you are!”

But I can’t.

*****

The next morning, he comes to the park late. He is more stooped than the day before, and his breath smells much worse. He stumbles into the grass, and I am afraid that he will fall.

He doesn’t say a word to us. Instead of doling out the bread, he drops the bag on the ground and shuffles away.

While the flock attacks the bag, trying to get at the food inside, I run after him, singing. It’s no use. Even stumbling, he is too fast for me. He crosses the street, narrowly avoiding a speeding car, and staggers into an alley.

All I am left with is the sound of his jingling keys echoing down the alley, growing fainter.

*****

The next morning, like the woman who laughs, he is gone. He does not bring bread to the park.

The flock and I search all around the Crown American Building and the bank building and the church next door. We look in Central Park, but he is not there, either.

I begin to worry that he is gone forever.

The other ducks give up the search and go off to hunt for food, but I keep looking for the man who feeds us. I look until the sun goes down and I am too tired to go on.

As I go down to sleep along the bank of the Stonycreek River with the rest of the flock, I am sick at heart. I think that I might never see my love again, for the cold is settling in, and the flock is ready to leave for the winter.

It is then that he comes to us.

*****

In the middle of the night, in the pouring rain, he stumbles down the bank of the river. He is drinking something from a paper bag, and he has no shirt.

The flock scatters in alarm, squawking and flapping. Except for me. I go to him.

He stops in front of me. Raises the bag high for another drink.

And looks down at his special duck. I think he recognizes me.

“I loved her,” he says, slurring the words, and then he falls to his knees. His face is wet with rain and tears. “I loved her,” he says again.

The bag drops from his hand and rolls down into the river.

He crawls after it.

My heart pounds as he falls facedown in the water. I call to him, begging him to get up, but he doesn’t understand.

It is then that I know what I must do. What we must do.

I sing to the rest of the flock, and they rush to my side. I tell them of my plan, and to their credit, they do not hesitate. The man who feeds us is special. He deserves to be saved.

Every last duck leaps into the water.

We dive beneath him, pressing our bodies up under his own. We bear the weight of his arms and his trunk and his legs on our backs, our two dozen backs.

And we spread our wings and flap as one.

We lift him out of the water, raising him up, and we keep on going. We don’t drop him on the bank or leave him behind as we head for the sky.

We take him with us.

He does not belong here anymore. He belongs among the ducks, in secret places soft as down and warm as dreams of summer sunshine. Places where he will be known and loved for the hero he is.

Loved by all, and especially me.

I feel him breathe against my body as we rise above the clouds and point south.

*****

Special Preview: Earthshaker

Gaia Charmer, World Warrior Book 1

By Robert T. Jeschonek

Now on sale!

Chapter 1

How did I stop Ray Long the killer from getting away that night? I threw gravel at him, lots and lots of gravel. And not with my hands, either.

I'm special like that. And Ray was stupid. Unlucky's a better word. How was he to know he was dealing with someone like me? Maybe I should've worn a sign for him: "Gaia Charmer. In touch with the Earth."

Make that "Really in touch with the Earth."

Maybe Ray would've rethought his plan to kill his last victim at the quarry if he'd known what I can do. And if he'd known I was hot on his trail that night.

He should've known, though. I warned him when he got away the first time. I told him I was going to stop him from killing anyone else. But hey, he underestimated me, which is easy to do. I'm five foot two, in my early twenties, blonde, and petite--not exactly a powerhouse to look at. Works in my favor again and again, which is awesome. Ray wasn't the first, and he won't be the last to experience my hardcore ways.

Sooner or later, they all find out what it's like when the Charmernator rolls over 'em.

That night, it was the middle of summer in west-central Pennsylvania, mid-July and counting. The moon was full and yellow over the Allegheny Mountains, bobbing like a dumpling in the hot broth of thick humidity.

Honestly, I was almost too late. I'd just discovered (via other special skills of mine) that Ray was killing and dumping the missing kids at the Buckhorn Quarry. I'd gotten there as fast as I could, but I was still cutting it close. Ray had the kid staked out in the dirt and was sharpening his machete by the time I showed up.

Which was all the more reason for me not to waste a second. I didn't pussyfoot around talking things over with Ray or trying to be tricky. I just pulled out all the stops and went at him as hard as I could.

Which, believe me, is pretty damn hard.

As soon as Ray heard me coming, crunching gravel underfoot, he swung his flashlight around and caught me in the beam of it. Shielding my eyes from the glare, I saw his other arm reach around behind him for what had to be a gun. So I jumped into action.

The thing about the quarry was, it was full of all kinds of rock and dirt...and that, my friend, is something I can work with. I'm the original rock star, you might say.

Sweeping my hands around, I aimed at a pile of gravel midway between us, and I focused. Extended my will through my fingertips, if you know what I mean...reached out and touched the gravel with my mind. Felt the size and shape and texture of the pieces. Felt the multitude of forces acting upon them, the halos of gravity and electromagnetism and cosmic radiation. The forces pulsating within them, too--the jostling of molecules and atoms, the spinning of electrons and quarks, the whisper of quantum foam, the humming of superstrings. All the qualities adding up to a marvelous portrait of a pile of objects, a true work of art that I'm privileged to see because of my talents.

Feeling and seeing and sensing all that, I knew how to mold those forces, how to make them do what I wanted. And then I gave them a push.

Keep in mind, this all happened in a fraction of a second. Ray was still in the process of drawing his gun when the first bits of gravel hopped off the pile and shot toward him.

I flicked my fingers back and forth from the pile to Ray. Each time, more gravel jumped the gap and clocked him, dinging off his head and arms and chest. Instead of bringing around his gun, Ray swatted at the flying pebbles, batting them away from his face and body.

But he couldn't stop them all. He grunted as the ones that got through pelted his cheeks and throat, popped against his belly and crotch.

Then, it was time to close the deal. I balled my hands up into fists and pointed them at the pile, letting my power and awareness gather and grow. Picking up as much rock as I could, cupping it in my hands--I mean my mind but it felt like my hands, like I was holding it and getting ready to let it go.

And then I swooped my fists toward Ray and threw what I held. Half the pile of gravel leaped at him, crashing in a wave he couldn't hope to swat away. He screamed as it hit him, all nine thousand five hundred and twenty-one pieces of rock (exactly that many, I felt them) coming down on all quadrants of his body, bruising and breaking and smashing in much the same way he'd wrecked those six kids. A few pieces at a time might have been no worse than bugs, but that wave of almost ten thousand little rocks acting together must have felt like a wall hitting him.

None of it touched the kid staked to the ground, though. Guided by my mind, it all stayed focused on killer Ray, dancing over the little girl as if he had an invisible bubble parked around her. Every last piece of gravel had a single purpose only--to batter Ray Long till he gave up and fell down.

Unfortunately, that didn't happen as fast as I thought it would. Somehow, Ray got his piece out and threw shots into the shower of stone, as if that was going to help. Then, fighting the tide, he managed to crank his arm in my direction and got lucky. Pumped out a bullet that grazed my shoulder, the son of a bitch.

It was enough to break my concentration and my hold on the gravel, which stopped in mid-flight and dumped to the ground. As I cried out and grabbed at my stinging shoulder, Ray scrambled out of the mess of rock and ran off.

Ran off into the quarry, the dumbass. My own personal playground, you might say.

I followed him into the maze of rock and dirt piles, running full tilt in the moonlight. Reaching out with my mind and power, I tugged at a dirt mound ahead of him, bringing it down in a landslide to block his path. When he darted in another direction, I knocked rocks off a heap, sending them bouncing straight for him. One caught him in the hip, another bashed his ankle, but he staggered for only a moment and kept going.

Ray disappeared around a hill of limestone chunks, and it took me a few steps to catch sight of him again. That was when I realized he might get away. The S.O.B. had a motorcycle stowed behind the limestone, about thirty yards back. He leaped onto the seat and started the engine; the front wheel was pointing right at me.

As the bike's headlight flared on, I stopped in my tracks and quickly assessed the options. Lots of rock and dirt around, but I could only move so much of it at a time. Dipshit Ray might just power through any shower of rubble I could whip up.

Time for another tack, I thought. Reach into my bag of tricks for something different. Something guaranteed to lay him out fast.

Dropping to a squat, I planted the palm of my left hand on the ground. Reached out through my fingertips into the layer of earth between me and Ray.

As Ray revved the bike and threw it into gear, I felt the intricate web of tiny fissures and fractures lacing the surface. Sensed the vibrations flowing through them from the bike, rumbling and crackling and splintering, spreading the web further in all directions.

The bike leaped toward me, but I stayed cool. Closing my eyes, I picked out the soft spots between us, the points where the underlying rock had been weakened...each a glowing red pocket of stress in my mind. A button to be pushed.

And then I pushed one. As the roar of the motorcycle approached me, I lifted my hand, made a fist, and brought it down hard on a precise point on a fracture line. Poured my inner force into the blow, giving it more impact than the punch of a single fist.

I felt the power surge out of me like fire, saw it in my mind's eye like silver lightning flickering through the web. The bolt slashed along a jagged path of fractures and fissures, charging like an errant spark through the cracks in a shattered mirror.

And then it hit the stress pocket, and I felt it implode. The soft spot suddenly gave way, and the ground sank.

Right in the path of the motorcycle.

A hole opened up in front of Ray, the ground dropping too fast for him to swerve. The bike's front tire lurched down into the pit and caught there, spinning the rest of the bike over it. Ray, too. He hurtled from his seat and flew through the air, sailing over my head. He came down ten yards behind me on the pile of limestone, cracking his head and bones on sharp corners of solid rock.

Slowly, I opened my eyes and got to my feet. Turned and looked at him. Shook my head.

There he was, unconscious, ready for delivery to the authorities. The monster who'd killed six kids and who'd been about to kill a seventh was out of the game. People could breathe a little easier. And it was all thanks to me.

This was what I call "smooth sailing"...the kind of moment when I am absolutely high on life. When I'm feeling so good about who I am and what I do that I could just dance like a fool. I saved a life, beat the bad guy, made a difference. Hallelujah!

I made a point to drink it in while it lasted, because I knew it wouldn't. I smiled and raised my bright blue eyes to the full moon, because I knew myself too well, and I knew "smooth sailing" would become the opposite extreme far too soon. It would quickly turn into "sinking fast," no matter what I did, because that's just how I am.

But for that moment, I took a deep breath of the humid, dusty air, and I let myself grin. Time to untie and console the victim. Time to hand over Ray Long to the cops. Plenty of good stuff still to come.

Closing my eyes, I danced a little. I swayed from side to side in the moonlight, happy to be alive. Happy to be in the world, to be special, to be me.

And I spun around once, feet turning in the dirt, hands clasped to my chest as if cradling my beating heart.

*****

Chapter 2

One great night's sleep later, and sure enough, the thrill was gone. Just like I'd expected, but not because I wanted it that way. Believe me, I'd rather have smooth sailing all the time, swear to God...but I don't have the choice. It's just how I am.

"Bipolar," they call it. To me, it's just business as usual.

By the time I walked in the front door of the agency, I felt like I wanted to kill myself. Put myself in a coma, at least.

I slammed the door behind me and knocked over the umbrella stand with my shin--and for what? For absolutely no good reason.

I owned the agency, for crying out loud. Cruel World Travel was all mine, free and clear; I was working for no one but myself. Business was good; it was nine in the morning, and there were already customers in the place. Plus which, my partner, Duke, was doing all the work. Truth was, he almost always did all the work, and he did it without complaining.

So what was my damn excuse? Why couldn't I just be happy and satisfied for more than a few hours at a time?

Of course, thinking these thoughts only brought me down more. Which was why I hung up the ringing phone on my desk instead of answering it. Correction, I picked up the receiver and slammed it down like a blacksmith's hammer on a horseshoe.

And that, my friends, is what finally got Duke's attention.

Turning his chair around from the computer screen where he was huddled with two young female customers, Duke chuckled. "Looks like somebody needs her coffee."

"Mind your own business." I dropped down hard into the chair behind my desk, folded my arms on the blotter, and laid my head on them. Shut my eyes like a schoolkid taking heat in the classroom. I just wanted to tune everything out.

Not that Duke would let that stop him. "You, Earth Angel, are the only business I have." I heard him get up from his chair and stroll across the office. He poured coffee in a mug and headed my way. "Now tell me why you woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning."

"I just wanna be left alone," I told him.

"If so, then why'd you come in here today?" Duke chuckled and put the mug down on the desk in front of me. "Now tell me, satin doll. What happened last night?"

A sniff or two of that steaming coffee was enough to convince me I should give it a try. Lifting my head, I reached for the mug. "Caught a serial killer."

"Well, congratulations!" Duke sat on the edge of the desk and slapped his knee. "That's fantastic! How could you possibly be in a bad mood after that?"

Duke knew damn well I didn't need a reason for a mood; he knew me better than anyone, even my best friend, Aggie Regal. This was his way of drawing me out, which of course annoyed the hell out of me...but also actually made me feel a tiny bit better. Duke had a way of doing that, with me and everyone else. His beautiful soul shone through; even its strange container couldn't obscure it. Even his body that looked human but wasn't.

"Okay, listen." Duke leaned down and smiled, dark eyes twinkling. His light brown skin crinkled at the corners of his eyes and mouth, and his long oval face glowed with affection. "How about if you drink that coffee and take a little time to work out the kinks? Then you can help me put the finishing touches on Minthe and Nephelae's itinerary."

Suddenly, I sat straighter in my chair. Damned if he didn't know exactly how to get my attention. "Minthe and Nephelae?" My eyes shot to the two young ladies at the computer where Duke had been working. They both smiled and waved...one platinum blonde with light blue highlights, one brunette with deep green highlights, both strikingly beautiful. They looked as if they weren't a day over twenty-one.

Which was all the more amazing if you knew neither one of them was a day under three thousand years old.

"Good morning." I nodded to them both and managed a faint smile. I've always done my best to show respect to their kind; after all, they and others like them make up over half of my annual sales at Cruel World. They're a specialty of mine, you might say.

Creatures connected to the Earth in extraordinary ways. Nymphs and gnomes and all the host of not-so-mythic life-forms with special abilities. I cater to them, because they're some of my best customers.

Also because I'm one of them myself.

"So what do you say?" Duke raised his eyebrows, and the smooth skin of his high forehead rippled like a sweet roll. "Does that sound like a plan you can live with?"

His soothing voice and good humor got to me like always. I was still in "sinking fast" mode, but my rate of descent leveled off. "You're a pain in the ass, you know that?" I said it, but I didn't mean it. "You're fired."

"You fire me twice a day," said Duke. "At least."

"Maybe we need to have a talk about the meaning of the word 'fired.'" I picked up the mug and sipped some coffee. "It doesn't mean 'keep coming to work and bothering me."

"I'm sorry." Duke batted his eyes innocently. "Did you just say something?"

I sighed disgustedly and looked past him to Minthe and Nephelae, who were still sitting around the computer. "So where are you headed, ladies?"

Minthe was the brunette with the green highlights. "The Peruvian Andes."

"Llactapata and Cota Coca," said Nephelae, the platinum blonde with light blue highlights. "Lost cities of the Inca."

"Not so lost anymore." Minthe smiled and shrugged. "But still exciting to us."

I nodded. Nymphs like Minthe and Nephelae are often tied to one place or phenomenon or plant. In Minthe's case, it was mint, believe it or not; with Nephelae, it was certain types of clouds. It can be tough for beings like them to travel, or at least to control where they go.

But there are ways for them to break away, and I know them well. It's why I get so much of their business...because they spend their lives tied down, longing to see the world, and I make it happen. Duke and I know all the tricks.

Stuck in a magic spring in Greece or a cursed bower in Provence? Always dreamed of getting wild at Mardi Gras on Bourbon Street or riding the Maid of the Mist through Niagara Falls? Call our toll free number or shoot us an e-mail, and we'll rock your world.

We'll feel good doing it, too. Like I said, I'm one of them myself. I must be, considering what I can do. So it's like I'm helping out the home team.

And they keep coming back for more.

"We loved Rio." Nephelae sighed and rolled her eyes with delight.

"The African safari was the best, I think," said Minthe. "I'll never forget the view from Victoria Falls."

"I'm glad you liked the trips. I'm glad we could help." As I said it, I felt my dark mood lighten just a little. Helping the nymphs keeps me going; that and my hobby, which is using my unique skills to hunt down killers.

If I couldn't travel beyond a cove or grove or pool, I know how I'd feel if someone helped me get to Paris or the Taj Mahal. Fortunately, I'm not stuck in one place in spite of my nymphiness. Duke's theory is that I'm an oread, a land-based nymph linked to mountains and valleys--but apparently, I'm a moveable oread. That's a good thing, because I think I'd totally lose my mind if I were stuck in one place for life. I like having my home base in a small town, but I also like being able to get away whenever I want to.

So I really identify with my special customers, and I can tell they like me, too. We share a bond I just don't have with other people. They're important to me, right up there with Duke; in fact, my best friend Aggie is one of them.

"Well now." Duke slid off the desk and clapped his hands together. "Are you sufficiently caffeinated, my dear? Would you care to help with these young ladies' itinerary?"

I took a long swallow of the warm, mellow coffee. (Did I mention Duke makes the best coffee on the planet?) I hated to admit it, but I was actually feeling better. Almost smiled but didn't want to give him the satisfaction.

"Nag nag nag." I lowered my voice for his benefit. "Why can't you let me wallow in my misery?"

Duke spoke softly, too. "Because this is a business, and I'd rather if you don't drive away all the customers." He gave me his most withering look, but I knew it was a put-on. The old man didn't have it in him to be pissed at me.

I drained the cup of coffee and plunked it on the desk. "Big man, telling me how to run my business."

"Good luck finding someone else who can do it better." Duke chuckled and ran a hand over his wavy hair, dyed shoe-polish black except for his sideburns, which were gray. Being who and what he was, he could've looked any age he liked, but he chose to be an old man. He looked like he was in his mid-70s, near the end of his life. He looked exactly the way he had near the end of his first life, back in the day. His real life. Back before he became what he is now, which isn't the same, isn't even human.

"You win this time," I said, though the truth was, Duke won every time. "Now get outta my way, Edward." With that, I pushed out of my chair and brushed past him.

"All right, ladies." I managed a grin as I thought about my last jab; Duke hated when I called him "Edward." Maybe today would turn out all right, after all. "Who wants to hear about a Peruvian Incan city that isn't on any maps?"

Minthe beamed like a floodlight. "Really?"

"You know of one?" Nephelae was breathless.

"But of course." I gave my hand a casual toss. "You won't find reference to it anywhere...but Cruel World Travel will set you up." It was true. Another of my special skills; I know places no one else alive in the world has ever seen or heard of.

Just as I settled into a chair between Minthe and Nephelae, I heard the front door's ring tone...a little ditty Duke was fond of called "Caravan." We'd set it to play every time someone opened the door; it sure beat the little bell every other business in North America used.

I didn't bother to turn around. Figured we had another customer and Duke could take care of them. But then I heard the familiar boots on the hardwood. Even before Duke said a word, I knew who it was.

"Good morning, Sheriff Briar." Duke sounded pleased; he liked the Sheriff a lot. "Can I get you a cup of coffee?"

"No, thank you," said Briar. "I just need to talk to Gaia. I hate to interrupt..."

"You can't fool me, Dale." I smirked as I turned to face him. "Interrupting me is how you get your rocks off." It was a joke, because Dale Briar was a rockhound on the side--a rock collector slash prospector slash amateur gemologist.

But Briar wasn't in the mood for jokes. "This is pretty important, Gaia." He winced and combed his fingers through his thick brown hair. He looked uncomfortable.

"You need to wrap up Ray Long?" I figured there must be loose ends from the killer I'd turned over the night before. Wouldn't be the first time. "Can it wait like an hour or so? I'm with customers."

Briar shook his head and sighed. "Can't wait, Gaia. It's about Aggie."

Suddenly, I shot straight into red alert mode. I got up and walked away from Minthe and Nephelae without a word or a sideways glance.

"When was the last time you saw her?" said Briar. His expression was frighteningly grim.

I didn't want to answer. I was afraid of what he might say next. "Yesterday morning. Around eight."

"Okay." Briar fidgeted with a ring on his right pinky, twisting it back and forth. The stone was a super-rare red tiger's eye I'd found for him with my talents. Okay, I'd made it for him. He'd tumbled, cut, and set it in gold like a pro. "I'll tell you flat out, Gaia. Aggie's missing, and you were the last to see her."

"Missing?" The word sounded unreal as I said it.

"She didn't show up for work today," said Briar. "Didn't call in, either. No one's seen or heard from her since...well, since you saw her yesterday morning."

"That's over twenty-four hours." My heart pounded like a heavy metal drum solo. I felt flushed and chilled at the same time. Forget red alert; I was at Defcon Five and climbing.

"Does she have any family?" Briar raised his shaggy brows hopefully. "Maybe there was an emergency and she had to drop everything."

"No blood relations," I said. "Aggie's like me."

Briar nodded. He didn't know everything about my world, but he knew enough to get the picture. He'd seen me in action more than a few times. "Can she take care of herself like you?"

I shook my head. Aggie didn't have my kind of abilities, and she wasn't much of a fighter.

"Then this just became my top priority." Briar turned and reached for the doorknob.

I beat him to it. He had to jump back to avoid getting hit in the face with the door as I flung it open.

Without a word to him or anyone, I charged out into the parking lot toward my black hybrid Toyota Highlander SUV. I was behind the wheel before Briar even got the door of his cop cruiser open.

And then I was gone, whipping out of the parking lot like I'd just robbed a bank. Briar chasing me with lights and siren blazing, barely keeping up.

Aggie. My breath caught in my throat as I raced toward her apartment. As I felt my mood shift into a third gear, one that had nothing to do with smooth sailing or sinking fast. One in which everything that slowed me down or distracted me peeled away, leaving nothing but a knifepoint of crystal clear focus and white hot intensity. Willingness to do terrible things. To do anything it took. Apocalypse in the chamber, hammer cocked, finger on the trigger.

For this mood, I didn't have a clever nickname.

*****

What happens next? Find out in Earthshaker, now on sale!

*****

About the Author

Robert T. Jeschonek is an award-winning writer whose fiction, comics, essays, articles, and podcasts have been published around the world. According to superstar fantasy and science fiction writer Mike Resnick, Robert "sees the world like no one else sees it, and makes incredibly witty, incisive stories out of that skewed worldview." DC Comics, Simon & Schuster, and DAW have published his work. Robert was nominated for the British Fantasy Award for his story, "Fear of Rain." His young adult urban fantasy novel, My Favorite Band Does Not Exist, is due in 2011 from Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Visit Robert T. Jeschonek online at The Fictioneer website. You can also find him on Facebook and LiveJournal. Follow him as @TheFictioneer on Twitter. For news on his latest online projects, visit the Tsetse Press website at www.tsetsepress.com.

*****

Also by Robert T. Jeschonek

6 Short Stories

Fantasy

Blazing Bodices

Day 9 – a novel

Earthshaker – a novel

Groupie Everlasting

Rose Head

The Genie's Secret

The Return of Alice

The Walking Bomb

Tiki's Vision

Horror

Bloodliner – a novel

Daddy's Little Girl

Diary of a Maggot

Dionysus Dying

Mister Flood

Road Rage

Humor (Adults Only)

Dicks – a novel

Mystery

Polkacide – a novel

The First Detect-Eve

Who Unkilled Johnny Murder?

Science Fiction

6 Scifi Stories

Give the Hippo What He Wants

My Cannibal Lover

Off the Face of the Earth

One Awake in All the World

Playing Doctor

Serial Killer vs. E-Merica

Something Borrowed, Something Doomed

Teacher of the Century

The Greatest Serial Killer in the Universe

The Love Quest of Smidgen the Snack Cake

The Memory of You Lingers

Universal Language – a novel

Superheroes

A Matter of Size (mature readers)

Forced Retirement

The Masked Family – a novel

Trek Trilogy

Trek Fail!

Trek Off!

Trek This!

Young Readers

Dolphin Knight – a novel

Lump

*****

Coming Soon from Robert T. Jeschonek

A Young Adult Fantasy Novel That Really Rocks!

My Favorite Band Does Not Exist

Being trapped in a book can be a nightmare—just ask Idea Deity. He’s convinced that he exists only in the pages of a novel written by a malevolent author . . . and that he will die in Chapter 64. Meanwhile, Reacher Mirage, lead singer of the secret rock band Youforia, can’t figure out who’s posting information about him and his band online that only he should know. Someone seems to be pulling the strings of both teens’ lives . . . and they’re not too happy about it. With Youforia about to be exposed in a national magazine and Chapter 64 bearing down like a speeding freight train, time is running out. Will Idea and Reacher be able to join forces and take control of their own lives before it’s too late?

School of Rock meets Alice in Wonderland in this fast-paced, completely unpredictable novel of alternate realities, time travel, and rock ‘n’ roll. If your favorite band does not exist . . . do you?

"Overall, My Favorite Band Does Not Exist is a wacky and enjoyable trip...full of intriguing, imaginative concepts that keep a reader hooked." –Thom Dunn, The Daily Genoshan

Coming July 11, 2011 from Clarion Books!

Pre-order from your favorite bookseller today!

6 FANTASY STORIES

Copyright © 2011 by Robert T. Jeschonek

www.thefictioneer.com

Cover Art Copyright © 2011 by Ben Baldwin

www.benbaldwin.co.uk

and © 2010 by David Kendall

Published in November 2011 by Tsetse Press by arrangement with the author. All rights reserved by the author.

"Forced Retirement" originally appeared in A Thousand Faces, The Quarterly Journal of Superhuman Literature, November 2009.

"Blazing Bodices" originally appeared appeared online as part of The Chain Story, 2010. Reginald Asteroth-Phipps is copyright © 2010 Nathan Long, used with permission. For more work by the author, visit http://sabrepunk.com/. Doctor Yarrow is copyright © 2010 Robert E. Vardeman, used with permission. For more work by the author, visit http://www.cenotaphroad.com/. Jack Ravensthorpe is copyright © 2010 Michael A. Stackpole, used with permission. For more work by the author, visit http://www.stormwolf.com/store/

"Mr. Flood" originally appeared as "Fear of Rain" in Postscripts #8, PS Publishing, 2006.

"The Genie's Secret" originally appeared as "The Wish of a Wish" in Crime Spells, DAW Books, 2009.

"Rose Head" originally appeared as "Why the Cop with a Rose for a Head Wears a Rose-Head Mask" in Helix Speculative Fiction Quarterly, 2008.

"The Duck Lover" originally appeared in Loyalhanna Review, 2004.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Design by Tsetse Press

Johnstown, Pennsylvania

e-mail: tsetsepress@hotmail.com

Table of Contents

6 Fantasy Stories

Forced Retirement

Blazing Bodices

The Genie's Secret

The Duck Lover