“Right.”

“I’m starving, but what I really need is a smoke. I’ve found a few fag-ends but I’ve no paper. Then I see this scrap blowing down the road towards me. Like, just skipping along. Beautiful. I grab it. And then, as I’m rolling it up, I see it’s a lottery ticket.”

He’s told the story a hundred times, of course. The young blonde woman sitting at the bar next to him sips her cocktail. Death in the Afternoon. Her long red fingernails are wrapped delicately around the bowl of her glass.

“Just like that.”

She smiles a beautiful smile, her earrings sparkling. Her legs are crossed and he finds it hard not to look at the silky stretch of her thigh. He thinks about running his hand along it. He knows what she wants, of course; he knows how it is. If it wasn’t for the money she wouldn’t look twice at him. His ruined teeth may have been fixed but his sun-ravaged face is still a mess. Still, he doesn’t mind.

“Well, yeah, you can guess the rest. I check the date and it’s today. I turn to look at the screens next to me — I said it was a branch of TV World, right? — and there are my numbers coming up on the screen, one after the other, bam, bam, bam. Suddenly I’m a millionaire. Ten times over.”

“It’s incredible.”

“Enough to make you think there is a God after all.”

She smiles a little smile to herself.

“Of course, there’s the little matter of the price,” she says, as if it’s something that has only just occurred to her.

“The price? Don’t worry about that, love. The drinks are on me.”

“I didn’t mean the drinks.”

She glances sideways at him. There’s something different in her face then, something he catches a glimpse of beneath that immaculate exterior. A hint of red in her eyes, a red that has nothing to do with her make-up. A look of ferocious hunger. For a moment, the elegant fingernails wrapped around the glass are more like claws. She smiles and the beautiful woman is back there next to him.

He sips his drink, ice clutching his stomach. He sees how things are. The piano continues to tinkle away in the background. The hum of conversation around them doesn’t pause.

“But that’s not how it works,” he says. “I’ve seen the movies. You’re supposed to tempt me first, offer me a deal.”

She stares into the depths of her cocktail, as if fascinated by the streams of bubbles in the milky liquid.

“That’s how we used to operate. These days we’ve polished up our marketing skills, raised our game. Now we give you what you want up front, then take it away if you don’t agree terms. It’s still technically within the rules. We find it gives us a better strike rate.”

“So it’s, what, my eternal soul or back to the old life on the streets? Starving, freezing, being beaten up?”

She smiles sweetly as if it’s the simplest thing in the world.

He doesn’t really have to think. He waves at the barman and orders them both another cocktail.

“Seems like a bargain to me,” he says.

Then Evan moved in next door and Terence was no longer comfortable.  He began harboring “what-ifs”:  What if he invited Evan over for dinner?  What if he accepted Evan’s invitation to join him at the pool?  What if, instead of letting his gaze slither away when he passed Evan in the hall, Terence returned the younger man’s smile and engaged him in conversation?

From the safety of his second-floor apartment, Terence sometimes watched Evan at the pool.  He envied the sinewy confidence of the young man’s muscles, the total lack of hesitation when diving from the undulating surface of the spring board.  Evan would leap into the air and hang there in defiance of gravity (Terence felt his heart stop during those endless seconds/minutes/hours), his long form parallel to the water.  Then, at an angle so oblique that it was barely discernable, Evan’s hands would slice the water and he’d submarine into the depths.

Terence went online and ordered a pair of swimming trunks.  When they arrived, he breathlessly stashed them in the bureau under his neatly folded tee shirts.  For the first time in his life he owned swimming trunks and they weren’t black or dark blue, but a vivid look-at-me green.  He was in awe of his own daring.

California summers are long and the summer of the hidden swimming trunks seemed particularly so.  Terence graduated from watching Evan through the blinds to sometimes sitting on his balcony in prescription sunglasses.  He couldn’t see distances well through the corrective lenses, but he didn’t mind.  The important thing was that no one could see his eyes.  To the smooth gold bodies at the pool it might appear that Terence was staring at the palm trees across the street, or reading the pool rules sign on the fence, or perhaps dozing in the summer warmth.  Sometimes Terence held an open magazine.  No one need know or even suspect the real object of his watchfulness.

One day he sat on his balcony long enough to sunburn the top of his feet.  Perched on the edge of his bed that night, Terence stared down at the bright red half-moons, studying them for signs of melanoma.  He could already feel the disease metastasizing a savage path up his legs and he visualized the oozing lumps that would invariably form on his vital organs.  This was his punishment, Terence realized glumly.  This was the dark reward for a fascination he had no business indulging.

He went to the medicine cabinet and took a Xanax.  After a moment’s consideration, he swallowed a second one.  Detouring to the dresser on his way back to bed, he found the swimming trunks and tossed them into the trash.

The drugs callously and abruptly pushed Terence over the edge of wakefulness.  From lying in the dark with his feet on fire, Terence transitioned directly into dreams.  He sat on his balcony and stared down at the pool that pulsated unfamiliarly under pinkish light.  It was deserted except for a long shadow beneath its lavender surface.  Terence stared as the shadow wove its dark path across the pool and emerged from the other side.  It was a monstrous snake.  Its brilliant green scales gleamed under the pastel light as it slithered onto the cantilevered deck, coiling its impossibly long body behind it.

Terence watched helplessly as the snake slid over the pool fence and disappeared into the hedges directly below.  He could hear its approach.  The huge reptile made surprisingly little sound as it wound its way through the hedges and up one of the palm trees that the complex management always insisted on decorating with lights for Christmas, but he could hear it just the same.  It whispered his name.

“Terence…” the snake lisped, “Terence…”

It came into view, twisting its way up and around the palm.  When it was even with the balcony, the snake stopped and regarded him silently.  Its eyes were the color of pool water.

Terence tried to scream himself awake as the snake’s head came to rest on the railing.  It kept coming, pulling its wet coils over the railing with mesmerizing grace.  He felt the first touch of its hot body on his feet, then around his legs and eventually wrapping around his shoulders.  He realized with shock that it wasn’t slimy at all.  The snake’s embrace was warm and firm and somehow comforting.

Its head was inches from his face.  “I have something for you,” the snake hissed.  Its slender tip of its tail was coiled around an apple.  “I have something for you,” the reptile repeated.  “I have something for you, Terence…”

In his dream, Terence gasped.

He was making a green salad with fat free ranch the next day when he was surprised by a knock on the door.  Evan was outside on the landing.  “I’m grilling burgers down by the pool,” the young man said.  “Are you hungry?”

“Absolutely ravenous,” Terence replied.  “Just give me one second.”

He returned to the kitchen and snatched the swimming trunks out of the trash can.  After a short consideration, he dumped the salad, bowl and all, into the garbage.

Today is Every Day Fiction’s third birthday.

Back in 2007, when we first launched EDF, our grand long-term goal was to make it to our third birthday. Given that the longevity of fledgling magazines is measured for the most part in months rather than years, that seemed impossibly far off — a good moon to shoot for, but it hardly seemed real at the time. Today we are standing on that moon and taking aim at the stars.

So please, wherever you are in the world, if you’ve been along for the ride from the beginning or if you’re only just joining us now, eat some cake for us today and raise your glass to celebrate all that we’ve achieved so far — together, because we would be nowhere without our readers, writers, commenters and friends — with this toast: “Three years is only the beginning.”

And now, here are the stories to begin our fourth year…

September’s Table of Contents

“We could watch TV,” Mike suggested.

“There’s nothing on,” I said.

“We could play some more video games.”

“I’m tired of video games.” We’d been playing video games for the last hour. Mike was over at my house, because his house was boring.

We sighed.

The doorbell rang. “Jacob,” my mom called. “One of your friends is at the door.”

We went to the door. It was Kevin. “Hey,” Kevin said. “You want to do something?”

Kevin, Mike and I stood around in a huddle by the front door. You wait the entire school year for summer vacation to roll around, and at first it’s great, but by August… no one would ever admit it, but you kind of want school to start again.

“We could — ” said Kevin.

“Or maybe — ” I said.

Long pause. I could hear Mom in the kitchen doing something — sweeping, throwing stuff away.

“I have an idea,” she said, poking her head out of the kitchen. “You guys could help me clean the refrigerator.”

“Mom,” I said. “It’s summer vacation.”

“Okay, then why don’t you go down to the park and feed the birds?” she said. “You can take these bags of stale bread. I was going to throw them out.”

I groaned. “Mom, that is so lame. We’re too old for that. I mean we’re almost in seventh grade.”

“Suit yourself. But you guys either come inside or go out. Don’t stand there in the doorway; you’re air conditioning the whole neighborhood.”

In the end, we went to the park. No one could come up with a better plan. We sat on a bench and threw crumbs at maybe six or seven birds—some pigeons, a couple robins, a cardinal.

“This is stupid,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Kevin. “That one’s not even real anyway.”

Mike said, “Kevin!”

“It’s not,” he insisted, pointing at the cardinal.

“Kevin, I don’t want to know which ones are real and which ones aren’t,” Mike said. He sounded testy.

“But it’s so obvious,” Kevin said.

We all stared at the fake cardinal pecking away at the bread as though it was following a metronome. It bobbed its head exactly every two seconds. Up, Peck. Up, Peck. On every fourth peck, the bird paused and warbled a song. It sounded strangely canned, like a recording of a bird singing. Which of course it was.

“Roboto-bird,” Kevin said, then. I laughed, but Mike got really mad.

“What?”

“Kevin,” he said.  “Why can’t you just let me pretend, okay? I mean if you hadn’t pointed it out, I would have been perfectly happy to convince myself it was a nice wild bird out in the sun.”

“Sorry.” Kevin backed down. “I was just saying.”

“Well these robot birds creep me out,” Mike said. He looked at a robin — a real one — struggling to dismantle a huge crumb. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, it dropped the crumb and flew away. “I always just like to think of birds as free, you know? Not programmed.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Kevin said, without much enthusiasm.

“I don’t know why the government wants to make all these robots anyway,” Mike said.

I cleared my throat. “Well, I guess they figure it’s better to have robot birds than no more birds at all.”

That nearly killed the conversation. I hadn’t meant to say it; it just popped out of my mouth.

I was about to change the subject — to talk about the new phone I wanted, or something, anything else — but then Mike spoke up in a grave voice: “I saw this TV show the other day about the birds. This science show on public television. It had a theory about why they were all dying off.”

There it was. Dropped like a bomb. Out in the open.

We were quiet for a few minutes.

“These scientists on the show, they called it the ‘canary in a coalmine’ effect,” Mike resumed, at last. His eyes were huge. “They said back in the old days, coal miners used to take canaries into the mines with them, because the birds had more sensitive systems than people did.

“As long as the canary kept singing, they knew the mine was safe. But if there were any toxic fumes in the mine, the bird would stop singing, and even die. The miners would know they had to evacuate.

“And then, you know, the scientists went through all the statistics.”

He didn’t have to explain “the statistics.” We knew what they were. You couldn’t log on to the Internet without confronting a new headline about toxic air pollution levels in Shanghai, or mutated flu in Sao Paulo, or yet another U.S. national park closing to make way for urban development. “We’re safe out here in the suburbs,” our parents would say, whenever the news came on. But then they’d give each other dire glances when they thought we didn’t see.

A robot sparrow landed near my foot. It pecked monotonously at an enormous crumb, unable to ingest it, yet still going through the motions of bird-like eating.

I thought about what Mike had said, and I wondered: What if the miners couldn’t evacuate when the canary gave its warning? What if they were trapped in that mine, with nowhere else to go? How long did they have before—

Kevin broke the silence. “God, Mike, you’re such a dork,” he said. “I can’t believe you watch public television.”

I took a deep breath. “I know,” I added, lightly. “I mean, we’re on vacation. What are you doing watching educational TV?”

“Yeah.” Mike shook himself, affecting a laugh. “I guess I was pretty desperate. There was nothing else on.”

Kevin said, “Let’s go play video games again.”

“Awesome,” Mike said.

“Great!”

We got up and headed back to my house, joking carefully about inconsequential things. Anyone who saw us would think we believed the summer was going to last forever.

Friends, I must tell you, I have been there. I have seen their meetings, sat inside the production center and witnessed first hand the vileness of their treachery. An example: say, as it is common to do, you want to take your family for a well-deserved trip to the beach. You and your wife want to know what attire will be needed, and whether or not to bring an extra set of clothing in case of rain. You turn on the computer while your darling wife who no doubt just had breast enhancement surgery (this is hypothetical, so we should make it realistic) concentrates her attention on the television. Well, that is, after you turn it on for her of course. The internet and weather station both claim that the sunniest of skies is all that you will see, so you and the missus gussy up in your best clothing, swimming attire concealed beneath, and pile your 2.5 children into the stylish sport utility vehicle with leather trim and fold-down third-row seating. On the good advice of these “professionals,” you take the journey. The day is indeed beautiful, that is if you were a wind gust. A nasty storm takes you by surprise, blowing in over the lake, engulfing you in its turbulence and spitting your family up like dead fish littering the beach at sunrise. After the ferocious weather passes, you even notice that the .5 child is missing, a casualty directly attributed to the weatherman. No longer can we stand by and let more and more of our half children be swept away by an errant gust when all of this could have been prevented.

It is with great passion that I present to you the very reason for your loss: meteorologists. Think about it. They sit pretty, high in their ivory towers, and watch computer models and satellite data, they eat celery sticks and drink fancy fruit juices while tabulating numbers and checking figures dealt to them by their central command, the National Weather Service. It is too great a task, however, to start by attacking the home base. Instead, we will begin by holding our local weathermen accountable for their misgivings and false hopes. They will pay for continuing to provide us with temperatures that are “within five or six degrees.” No more can they get off saying “there is a fifty percent chance of clouds” when you and I can look outside and see them. See them? The clouds, right there out the window above the sofa. To think, they went to school for this. Or perhaps they didn’t. No matter, we the people will rise up and tell the network executives that hire these swindlers, “No more!” Protests will spring up throughout the nation and then, my friends, we will be strong enough to attack the center of it all, their proverbial eyes of the storms, and make it a final resting place for these foul beasts of burden. Down with the weathermen!

Wait, who is that? My God, she is beautiful! She is reading something, and pointing to… to us. She’s pointing at me, my house, I know it! Thank you, network executives, for hiring this wheat-haired vixen to dictate the changing nature of our atmosphere. She wears her AMS seal like a badge, courageously predicting the manner in which my day will unfold. Let the winds howl, the rain form torrents coming down off the roof. Let the sun burn holes in our skin and let it all happen when something else has been forecasted! Provided that this gorgeous woman is the vehicle in which we receive it. No one needs .5 of a kid anyway.

Suppressing a shudder, he enters the motel parking lot. The Dream Daze Inn is a dump. Even the sign is decadent, bright red plastic pocked with jagged holes, garish fluorescent bulbs within. Shards litter the ground.

Reggie sighs. It cannot be helped. His butler salary might afford a better hotel, but taxis to and from the city’s sights, especially the zoo’s famous penguin collection, would be stretching things beyond comfort. The Dream Daze is within walking distance.

A truck stands near the office door, engine idling. He sees a girl sitting alone in the passenger seat, a young, pretty thing with silky hair and a noble profile. No older than his daughter. What is she doing here?

He mounts the raised walkway fronting the hodgepodge of rooms, each marked by a slanting window and door painted with remnants from a faded rainbow. He strolls closer to the truck, meaning to offer its underage (surely!) occupant a smile and make eye contact. In his years of service he has learned to learn a lot from that small gesture.

She glances away. She’s frightened. Out of her element.

When he blinks, it is his daughter he imagines, blond hair streaked purple, pouting lips, eyes so blue they hurt. His jaw clenches. He recalls finding her sprawled atop the master’s bed, beneath the tiered chandelier Reggie has come to inspect. The master lies face up, manhood fully engorged.

It had taken all Reggie’s composure to walk out without violence. Then, later, “He likes me, Daddy. He really does.” Fifteen years old and she knows these things. “Daddy, you’re such a prude.”

He wonders what new humiliations the master will heap upon her while Reggie watches penguins. I should have called the authorities. If he had a cell phone he might jolly well use it now.

No. It’s not as if this was accomplished against Cindy’s will. She made that patently clear. And who will hire a butler who betrays his employer? No one he knows of.

A man barges from the office door, toward the truck. Reggie reads a lot from his clenched jaw and clenched fist, the way he glares. This is a violent man, a man with violence on his mind.

In that instant, Reggie imagines the rescue, plots it out, move by move, how he’ll wrench open the truck door and pull the girl to safety just as the violent man steps onto the running board. When he opens his door, he’ll find Reggie waiting, Reginald B. Mills, butler by day…

But, no, discretion is too deeply rooted. It is not his place to intrude. He fishes through his pocket for the room key, eyes seeking the girl through a windshield glazed red with reflected lights. Their eyes meet, cling. He feels his hackles rise, feathers standing from his skin. He swallows. He tenses. He takes a step.

The truck’s headlights blast on, forcing him to avert his gaze. Even before the vehicle backs away, Reggie has the motel door open and closed again behind him.

Outside, plastic crunches on gravel. Reggie falls to his knees, imagining shards glimmering from a shattered chandelier.

The screen rattled as flecks of gray paint came off on his knuckles. No answer.

He pounded again. This knock reverberated throughout the house, answered by a “the hell?” from somewhere inside.

A chair squeaked on a tile floor, a drawer clattered open, then heavy footsteps.

The man appeared at the end of the hall, a shadowy figure through the mesh. “May I help you? Say, you’re one of them boys from down the road.”

“Good eyesight, mister. But I don’t like talking through a screen. We need to talk face to face.”

“Man to man, eh? Well, why don’t you come in then?” The man swung the door open.

Barry grabbed the door and held it, but didn’t enter.

The old man’s hands were thrust into the pockets of a tweed jacket. He was tall, looking down on Barry. His gray hair was unkempt. Underneath the jacket he wore patched khakis and a t-shirt. He may have been way over the proverbial hill, but he was solid, a threatening presence on his home turf.

Barry shucked that feeling: he would not be intimidated by this geezer. “I just come to deliver a friendly message. Mind your own fucking business. Grow old in peace. Any more calls to police, harassing us, there could be an accident. Understood?”

The old man nodded sagely. “Understood. Eloquent, in its own way — I especially liked ‘grow old in peace,’ though that’s a challenge with boys like you living down the block. I would dispute your characterization of the message as ‘friendly,’ though.”

“What are you, a professor? Fuck the fancy talk, old man. You should be apologizing to me — I had to go to court because of you!”

“An interesting assessment. Funny but I don’t remember being around when you drank to excess, then chose to drive. I was looking out that window when you drove into my parked car, but I don’t think I had anything to do with your decision to drive off hoping no one saw you. What am I apologizing for?”

Face reddening, Barry raised his fists. “You’re apologizing so I don’t beat the living shit outta you.”

“I see. Not only is your reasoning flawed, you’ve also miscalculated your position of power at this moment. I have a .38 special pointed at your chest.”

Registering the bulge in the man’s jacket, Barry began to spew “take it easy don’t want trouble” words — signifying nothing except “I don’t want to be shot.”

The old man cut him off. “You came to talk. Now it’s my turn. Your choice of words — you had to go to court not because you ran into my car, but because I reported it — suggests to me that you belong to the one percent of the population who are clinically psychopathic.” He spoke in the monotone of an instructor lecturing a disinterested student. “Oh, that doesn’t mean one out of a hundred people is a serial killer. Only that they’re narcissists who don’t have a developed sense of conscience. Basically, they lack empathy. That’s really all conscience is, isn’t it: being able to imagine how others will feel or be affected by your actions? Conscience can be a liability. If you aren’t burdened by one, you can go far in business, or in a gang. Let’s go into the kitchen.” He waved the bulge in his pocket, motioning Barry to walk ahead of him.

The décor was creepy-old, permeated with that old-house smell.

“Open that door, would you?” The man indicated a door by the pantry.

Barry did as told. Rickety steps sank into inky blackness. A damp, moldy smell wafted up from the basement.

“Down there, I have a chair with straps on the arms. If you sat in that chair, I would pull those leather straps tight, and then oh what a time we would have.”

Barry’s jaw dropped. He started to protest, but averted his gaze when he met the man’s dark eyes, which were lit with an intensity suggesting pure bestial rage just barely confined.

The man drew near and, in something between a hiss and a growl, began to describe in vivid detail the time they would have: “…long, sharp straight razor… just that much pressure and the eyeball pops out of the socket nearly intact…”

As the man droned on, Barry felt light-headed, like he might lose control of his bladder, on the verge of fleeing despite the gun.

Reciting his slow-torture mantra, the man’s wrinkled face contorted into a relishing, demoniac grin. “…lick the back of your own eyeball. How many people could say they’ve done that?”

Barry wanted to run, but the man’s maniacal eyes riveted him. Barry’s voice quivered and broke as he pleaded again.

Leaning in toward Barry’s ear, the man spoke just above a whisper. “Here’s how it will be. I don’t ever want to see you again. If I do, I’ll think of the fun we could have. You see, you’re crazy… But I’m crazier.”

Barry whimpered.

“Best you forget all about this visit. Don’t think about me. And never, never say my name. The Devil has ears. In the deep dark of the night. And I’ll come fetch you. It could be three a.m.. I’m your new Bogeyman.”

Barry dashed to the front door and stumbled headlong down the steps.

***

A woman entered the kitchen through the back door, wiping her hands on her garden apron. “Jim, was someone here? I thought I heard a knock.”

Jim pulled a potato peeler out of his jacket and dropped it back into the drawer. “One of the boys from down the street stopped by.”

Concern registered on his wife’s face. “What did he want?”

“Oh, selling something.” The man shrugged. “I don’t think he’ll be back.”

It’s been years since the sword came to me. At first I thought it the result of an overactive imagination. Months later, with the sword coming and going like a ghost, I figured it was an obsession. Not my first, you see, so I ignored it. Now, well, I don’t know what it is.

Though I’ve never seen it, I could describe every part of the sword. It’s short, like a katana, with an elaborate guard, a weave of metallic lace. The tiniest curve shapes the blade, and it’s bigger at the end than near the hilt, scimitar-like without actually being one. Online research doesn’t help; this invisible sword of mine seems one-of-a-kind. And yes, I typed “invisible sword” into the search engine, too.

Okay, the point of the story is this. I live in Boulder, have for years and years, since way before the rich kids moved in and started pretending they had no money. Dreads and patchouli only take you so far if you’ve got a Lexus in the driveway.

Be that as it may, Boulder’s a nice little town. It’s off the beaten path, forty minutes north of Denver, and the only thing further north is Wyoming. It’s not as if the place is attracting a lot of riff raff, the real kind anyway. You can go for a walk, day or night, and there’s nothing more menacing than drunken college kids.

Dinner on Pearl Street was at a little crepe place filled with just students and me; try the chicken Florentine if you’re in town. I duck down the alley at 6th and bang a right between the backs of the shops and the first residential street, the one near Mork and Mindy’s house. I did say years and years, right? There’s a sort of parking lot that holds about twenty cars and a dumpster. Middle of summer, the sun’s just going down. The whole place is stretched with shadow, so I don’t see the guy until I’m right on top of him.

Here’s what sets him apart from the lazy college dropouts sitting on the street with their tambourines and their hands out: he’s looking in the dumpster. Everything else is the same. He’s wearing a nondescript tee shirt underneath an open fatigue jacket. Jeans are worn. Needs a shave and a haircut. But he’s looking in the dumpster and not the half-hearted, hey-what’s-in-here kind of look. It’s a real search, like he needs whatever’s in there that somebody threw away.

It’s obvious I startle him as much as he startles me. He regains his composure first.

“Got any change?” he says. His hand’s not out, unlike the palm-up kids in their year-old Tevas. And he says it like it’s not a request.

This is hindsight, mind you. Everything I’ve told you so far happened in the blink of an eye. It was afterwards the thoughts and feelings gelled. Because in that space, that fractional moment between me coming up on him and him asking for change, I go from startled to normal. Change, got it. Guy’s a bum, like all the kids, just a little older.

“Nope.” That’s it. No apology, no excuse. Just plain nope. I keep walking and don’t freeze up until I hear the switchblade flick open behind me.

“You look like you’ve got change,” the guy says.

I can see why some people wet themselves in this kind of situation. I felt the fear wash over me like I was in the shower, cascades trickling down my body, on the inside instead of on my skin. I drained, pure and simple, right up until the wave reached my hips and touched the sword.

It was there, cold steel, alive with presence, begging me to put my hand on its hilt. I’m staring straight ahead, vision pulling down into a point centered on an honest-to-God sky blue Volkswagen van lovingly restored by some millionaire hippie. My left forearm brushes my body and touches something forged.

I don’t want to look for fear the sword will leave me. So I just grab it. Spin, lift, both hands on the hilt. Diagonal cut, high to low, shoulder to hip like I’ve done it a thousand times. The blade hits his collarbone and offers some resistance, but not much. It’s a clean stroke, perfect, meant to cut him in half. Follow through, blade down. Perfect.

He’s standing three feet away with the knife out. I’ve got my hands together. They’re empty.

I know I’m dead. He’s going to put that knife in my gut and take the forty-eight bucks out of my pocket, and I’m going to die behind Armando’s Tattoo and Pizza next to a dumpster that smells faintly of potpourri.

The guy drops the knife, a simple opening of his hand as if he forgot what he was doing. He makes a baby-with-bad-gas kind of face and falls like his puppet strings were cut. He doesn’t so much as twitch, and I run like hell.

It was in the DailyCamera the next day. Heart attack. Unidentified, but the cops were working on it. I figure I’m going to get a knock on the door, but a month of waiting and it never comes.

All of which is small potatoes. You see, yesterday my right hip started getting heavy while I walked to the market. It feels like a revolver, a Wild West kind of gun with the long barrel and grip wrapped in leathers. I haven’t a clue what to do about it. Do you?

I was fourteen and bored shitless.

In an attempt to alleviate the boredom I’d taken to mildly terrorizing the neighbours, developing a series of ritualistic habits designed to irritate rather than traumatize. Each morning I’d move the gnome from number 45, steal the milk from 50 and place the daily paper in 48’s birdbath. Each evening I’d flash Ms. Jenkins in 52, place an empty can on the car outside 46 and drop three empty crisp packets outside 54. They all knew I was responsible but had the good grace to avoid telling my mother.

The days normally passed without event. Then one Tuesday while returning home from flashing Ms. Jenkins I noticed 54 sitting outside in her car. She was early; I hadn’t even had time to drop the crisp packets.

I watched for a bit and was about to leave when the door opened followed by a rush of vomit. She stepped out, swaying slightly before hitting the ground. I buttoned my shirt, trying to make a plan, reasoning that if I left now no one would be any the wiser but then I’d probably go to hell.

I was still undecided when she sat up, ridding me of plan A. I helped her inside and into a chair and was about to leave when for some reason I couldn’t.

“Maybe I should stay. You know, just for a bit. Because you banged your head and sometimes that means you get concussion and if you don’t know and fall asleep, then — well, it’s not great. Sometimes you die. I should stay.”

She agreed. I stayed. She told me she had cancer and that I was the first person to be told. I suggested maybe she tell someone else, cautious that her admission might lead to me having to clean up the sick outside. Go home, she said. I’ll be fine. I’m always fine. Fine is what I do.

I should have gone but I waited and when I did finally leave I asked to return. She was surprised but agreed. There was no one else around.

I was intrigued, I’d never seen anything die before except a fly and they don’t really do much, just buzz around then drop. Our cat died and our goldfish but I never saw it. Dad took them to the animal graveyard, roughly translated as a cardboard box out the back garden for the cat and a trip down the toilet for the goldfish. I started visiting on the way home from school. I’d pretty much given up my morning rituals, along with the can and the crisp packets, but I couldn’t resist continuing to flash Ms Jenkins, although gradually even that came to an end.

I thought she should go to hospital. They give you more drugs if you move there. My Nan did that, gave her six extra months. But she said it wasn’t for her. Later they gave her a nurse. A girl who came twice a day, once in the morning and once at night. The girl was okay, boring and quite fat but she wasn’t nasty or anything. She hated her though. She’d say I don’t want to die with some stranger. I’d rather die alone than have to pay someone for their pity — but I don’t think it was true. No one wants to die alone, except maybe gerbils or cats.

She wasn’t great. Not really. But then I’m never really sure if anyone ever is. She didn’t change the world, broker a peace deal, save lives or even feed the hungry. She didn’t paint a masterpiece or publish some groundbreaking academic thesis. She wanted to but she didn’t. She was just normal, I suppose, but she was dying and she did answer my questions so I stuck around.

We didn’t really do emotion. She didn’t really do emotion as a rule. Die on the inside, smile on the outside. But we talked. We talked a lot. Well she talked, I just asked the questions. No one ever answered my questions before. She was posh. Well maybe not posh. Americans can’t really be posh, can they? Although she wasn’t really American, I mean she was but she wasn’t. She was born there, upstate New York to two high-flying academics. She was privileged but hell someone had to be, she’d say. She moved to England at the age of seven to attend some boarding school. The same school her family had attended for generations. The expectations were high, the praise scant. Through time she flourished, over-achieved, did what was expected but then her parents died and suddenly there was no one expecting any longer.

I suppose she was lonely but isn’t everyone, she’d say. She didn’t really like to be touched. She liked to know you were there but she’d sort of flinch when you touched her. But then when she did hug you, she’d sort cling to you in an uncomfortable sort of way. A bit like a baby monkey. Desperate. There wasn’t really much middle ground. It was all or nothing. I suppose it was better with the nothing.

Six months later she was dead. I held a pillow over her head. It wasn’t murder or anything like that, she asked me to do it. My first real dead thing, only this time there was no dad to take it to the animal graveyard. So I left.

I think number 46 were a little relieved to find the can back on the car roof, Ms. Jenkins had certainly missed discussing the various colours of my underwear and I always suspected that so long as it wasn’t raining Mr. Josephs in 48 always appreciated those extra few minutes alone whilst scooping out the newspaper.

The MasterSmith didn’t answer, just grabbed me by my bound hands and heaved me out of his way.

I landed hard up against a pile of scrap metal. The lumpy ache forming on my right ear was a reminder of the smith’s strong arm, and kept me still in the corner.

On the far side of the room, next to the roaring furnace, stood the iron horse that the smith intended me for. An immortal steed, that was what the smith sought, and I was to provide the life force he needed to animate the metallic beast. The smith had to have a magician so the soul could be guided into a new body, but he needed a lousy magician who had little value to the academy. He thought he had the perfect candidate in me, and had slipped a bit of Inress powder into my drink. The small trickle of magic I could usually access was out of my reach, like the warmth of a hearth fire seen through a locked window.

The smith held a long rod with a bit of molten glass stuck on the end. He spun it at a steady pace inside a smaller hole at the top of the furnace. He pulled it free, swung the glassy end in a pendulum arc, then worked it with a tool before returning it to the flames.

“You know, your skills are quite admired at the academy.” I shifted, and laid the flattery on a little thicker. “The Head Magician himself has spoken of commissioning you to make a metallic spider, perhaps as a prototype for a whole army of spiders.”

The smith grunted, but continued his work on the glass.

“In fact, we’re quite close to a breakthrough. A way to sustain the magic thread while inside a metallic creation. Soon you’ll be able to animate your horse without risking the wrath of the Academy.”

The smith shook his head. “Don’t want the magicians to animate my horse. A beast that’s not self-sustaining and independent is a flawed product. Your soul will do much better.”

At the mention of his plans my head began to throb painfully. I took refuge in logic. “It’s not a comparison of one imperfect possibility with a perfect one, it’s a question of which goal is attainable. The Academy will never let you get away with the abduction and disembodiment of a magician. And even without their retaliation, how do you know it will work? This is beyond your experience — a risky venture from every angle.”

While I spoke, the smith fitted bits of glass into the eye sockets of the horse. When he finished he clamped a pair of tongs tight over a red hot metal hex and turned toward me.

I heard myself babbling. “You’ll never get away with it, they’ll hunt you down, take your — ”

He shoved a gag in my mouth. The hex loomed before my eyes. I kicked, thrashed. The smith dragged me to the furnace, and I felt the heat flare against my back.

The smith pressed a knee into my chest and heated his hex to a searing white, then slapped the fiery brand to my skin. I screamed into the gag, but my mind quickly passed into a numbed state, bringing distance from the pain. I felt myself rising out of my body and looked down upon it.

The smith moved the hex and my sense of self followed. He smacked it against the iron flank of the horse and I mentally flinched in sympathy. Then I was within the horse and the pain on its flank was my pain.

I tried to kick and found myself to be hobbled, tried to bite and discovered the bit in my mouth was tied to a ring. Then the pain lessened, and I saw that the smith had run to the small window across the shop.

The sound of a troop of horses approaching came from outside. Help, at last!

The smith grabbed a pack which he threw across my withers. He removed the hobbles from my feet and I kicked, my hooves ringing against the stone of the furnace surround.

The smith came toward me with a red-hot poker from the fire. He jumped on, yanked my head free, then slapped the poker against my flank. My soul flinched inside the hot metal casing of the horse’s body.

I leapt forward and charged through the back door, out into the smithy yard.

The smith twisted my head around to face the road.

The horses I’d heard were ridden by a group of merchants, traveling together for safety. They paid us no attention.

The smith laughed aloud, and slapped the poker against my flanks, driving me forward. But as I approached the stream running behind the yard I stopped short and flung my hindquarters up into the air.

The smith sailed off, his poker flying, and landed in the stream. I felt for my magic, and discovered that without my puny human body blocking its flow, the small glow had become a sun at noonday. Never had I dreamed of having access to magic like this.

I looked around me at the discarded metal creatures the smith had left in the yard, and sent sparks of magic into the metal creatures closest to the smith. They filled with the glow of magic and shuddered to life. A tiny monkey snatched up handfuls of nails, while a half-finished gargoyle shook a sharp fragment of scrap like a sword.

My army of metallic creatures marched toward the smith.

I laughed, the snort half human, half horse. “An independent and self-sustaining beast, that’s what you wanted. Aren’t you glad you got away with it?”