“I don’t need to hear this,” she said. “It’s warm for December, the beach is empty and I am enjoying myself immensely.” Indeed, there were only one or two people on every hundred yards of sand. The boardwalk arcades were closed until Memorial Day. The gulls haltingly stepped aside when John walked too close, and danced elegantly away from breaking waves as though they were practicing the minuet.

“I wasn’t going to quarrel,” he insisted. ”You had a good idea coming to Seaside. Reminds me of the cross-country trip we made in May of ’98.”

“1999,” she corrected. “The year you retired…and began getting in my hair.”

“That’s what I love about you, Lydia.” He laughed. “You’re right about dates and hard facts but never remember personal things. Places, for example. Remember the time I took you to Tillamook, overlooking the Oregon Coast like this, and you said you’d never been there before? Well, you’d forgotten the time ten years earlier we drove down the coast after my conference.”

She shrugged indifference, using her hand to dismiss a wisp of hair that was beginning to turn gray. Her symbol for waving away his arguments never failed to amuse him. These small gestures—the way she wrinkled her nose or ended a laugh with a rise in her voice—were endearing. If he looked closely he could still see the woman he had married 42 years ago. He had come back to this country after two years in Europe, realizing within a few months that he’d left the best part of himself behind. Doing things the hard way—the only way under Byzantine immigration laws—he’d returned to England, married her and waited until her visa was issued.

“The doctor called and asked me to come back,” he said.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Lydia was angry now. “We share these things. Don’t you ever think of the children? They worry.”

“I know, but I thought it was better if I saw him alone.”

She stopped and put her hands on her hips. “Well, are you going to tell me what he said?”

“The bad news is he thinks it’s Alzheimer’s or senility. I forget things. I told him I stick Post It notes on the kids to remember their names—and he could forget about me paying his bill.” He let out a bark of laughter.

“That’s not funny!” Lydia said, punching him on the arm.

A man passed a few yards away, stepping aside in a self-conscious way to give John a wide berth.

“You looking at something?” John challenged. The man shook his head.

“Don’t be obnoxious, John. Mind your manners.”

“I didn’t like his look. He has the whole goddamn beach and he nearly walked into us.”

“You were talking to yourself. Carrying on like a coot. Next thing you’ll wave your arms and howl at the clouds.”

John ignored her. “I like to think this beach just goes on and on—sort of like Yucatan or something. A symbol of immortality.”

“It ends at the Delaware Bay.” Lydia stated the obvious.

“I said I wished it just went on, that days like this won’t end. We’ll go on forever.” He stopped and turned, while a quizzical expression crossed his face. “It’s weird, but you ever notice, sometimes when we walk together, there’s only one set of footprints? Right now. Look back. It’s like I’m alone. Weird.”

Lydia smiled and linked her arm in his. “It only seems that way. When you’re married as long as we’ve been, two people become one.”

Ω

A blizzard in sunny San Diego?

Tasha was in as much disbelief as anyone else when the snow began falling, but when it continued for twenty-four hours straight she decided it was the apocalypse, only the coming of days wasn’t all fire and brimstone, but a sudden, devastating ice age.

That’s what she thought a few days ago. Then survival instinct set in. Her water supply dwindled down to a gallon, the water in the pipes haven frozen during that initial twenty-four hour period that shocked a vacation city into frigid submission.

Food was plentiful, but she had to find out what was outside, what became of the city. There were sounds out there, perhaps people trying to shovel fifteen-foot piles of snow from front doors to release the victims of the Great Blizzard.

Unable to budge the front door or open a window, Tasha decided to break a window and shovel her way through the seemingly endless wall of snow, and what she saw on the other side was something she never could have prepared for.

She witnessed sheer brilliance. A city cloaked in white so solidly it appeared that she was surrounded by snow-covered hills. They were houses, and very few of them had been touched. As a matter of fact, there was only one house she could see that had a path cleared to the front door.

Crouched in a small snow tunnel with her legs dangling in her house, Tasha witnessed something that took her breath away. There was a sound coming from her left. It was in her blind spot because the hole she broke in the snow pack to look through was only a foot in diameter, but when the shape came into view, she was thankful to have not shoveled a larger hole that would have given her presence.

There were three of them, tall and foreboding. They were pale blue like frigid corpses, their structure like some form of humanity that has adapted to extreme temperatures, yet there was something alien about them. Something in their faces wasn’t the slightest bit human, but Tasha couldn’t get a very good view and didn’t want to do anything that would arouse their attention.

When they passed, she decided that she would have to make her way to the house across the street with the shoveled walkway. Something terribly wrong was happening, and survival would depend on grouping with other people.

—§—

Tasha watched for several hours as the creatures passed like common folk walking down a busy street. They weren’t common, and the streets were anything but busy.

From what she saw, they walked in groups of three to five in twenty minute patrolling intervals.

She had to make a move, had to cross the white street to the house with the shoveled walkway. It was her only chance at survival, and perhaps others have congregated there, planning the next move...

The next move?

Four pale beasts trudged by, their malformed faces tilted down as if they bore a great deal of burden. Tasha knew the burden was on her, the weight they seemed to carry on their back twice as great on hers, and as she contemplated her next move, backpack strapped on and filled with food, supplies and photographs, a sinking feeling of hopelessness gripped her heart.

After closing her eyes for a moment in prayer, Tasha crawled through her window, pushed her hands through the snow wall and slid out. Birthed into a white world, she slid down the powdery white slope to the street.

Adrenalin pumped through her veins as she stood in the silent white city, fearing the beasts and what they would do to her. Fortunately they were out of sight.

The chill bit her face but couldn’t yet penetrate the layers of clothing she wore in anticipation of a life as a snowbound refugee. The house with the cleared walkway called to her, and without further hesitation she bolted in its direction, careful not to slip on the ice.

At the door, Tasha knocked causing it to swing open as if it had been closed but not enough for the lock to catch.

“Hello,” Tasha called out lamely. There was something about the door opening that that set off alarms in her mind. Something was wrong. She could feel it deep inside, but she wasn’t want to remain in plain view were a patrol of snow creatures to walk by, so she slipped into the house and closed the door behind her.

She smiled at the people sitting in the living room, relieved, then her eyes widened and a mere whispering of the words “Oh God!” escaped her mouth as the realization that she had walked into a trap set into her tumultuous mind.

The living room was furnished with mannequins.

Behind Tasha, the front door opened.

Shivers rolled down her spine from the draft and the foreboding doom. She didn’t turn as they walked in, too petrified to face her fears. She knew they were behind her. They had been watching all along, waiting for her to seek refuge in the promising house with the cleared walkway.

As they closed in on Tasha, she could feel the chill radiating from their pale skin. One of them breathed down her neck, its breath cold and reeking of a faint slaughterhouse odor.

Ω

"Harper in '16."  White letters, blue background, the numbers in red.  A photo in the corner to remind you of his wink.  But the posters didn't capture the essence anymore; the shadows in his smile, the hunger in his eyes.  The posters didn't show you the iron in Harper's stance, or the way he went crooked when his rider took over.

Ted drove on slow and easy, sign after sign pointing to his polling place.  He listened to the speeches, highlights and buzzwords counting down to the truth.  It was the station's umpteenth before and after piece—Harper in Connecticut, solid and demanding; Harper in Washington, erratic threats and the whimpering of the crowd.  The disc jockey prefaced each sound bite with fear.

They had come down to Earth from the harvest moon, in the year that ended the Mayan calendar.  They were whispers and rumors, ugly murders in forgotten rooms; they were hints of slime and mouths painted in smoke, more mind than body, until New Year's and the start of the possessions.  They took the pious and the damned, the destitute and the educated; they took any who dared to stand unprotected.  But no-one ever thought they would take Harper.

Now it was Harper who stood tall, though waxy and drawn, while Brautigan was ragged and desperate.  Every speech was the same, hoarse and troubled and dying:  "A farce."

The streets near the polling place were lined with protesters, stabbing the air with burnt effigies and signs.  Some wanted no election; some wanted  anamendment; they bore signs about the Apocalypse, calls for a new Inquisition, and pictures of Harper next to the number of the Beast.  Across the street stood the sick ones, bone-thin men and crook-backed women with glossy dead eyes, gallows humor behind hooked and broken teeth.  The grass around them lay colorless and limp, and the front of every house was hidden in shadow.  Ted locked the doors as he drove past.

"A farce," Brautigan growled, almost silent through the speakers.  "We proved in 2008 that this election was not only for whites, not only for men; but this"—and he faltered—"this is a joke."

There was a brief silence, an electric murmur; and then the pained, effortful tones of Harper, frail but still sharp as diamond.

"This isn't about that," he said, and the crowd fell silent.

Ted pulled up across from the polling place.  His ears were on the radio, and his eyes were on the sick.

"This isn't about these things," Harper said.  "This isn't about that struggle.  This is…an election like any other."  His sentences ended on dry and rustling breaths.  "This is an election about principles."

The hairs on Ted's neck spiked out.  He reached across to the passenger seat, and brushed his fingers against the spine of the Bible.

"It's true"—Harper fought for each word—"that the problems of the President are the problems of his people.  But this is already one of the problems of the people.  We learned that after the convention.  We learned that when we saw what happened to Standish and his cronies while they waited to stand trial.  We learned when I spoke of the rain of maggots; when I spoke of the cries of your daughters."

Then from outside came the burst of motion, sick laughter from distended jaws.  Ted kept himself under control, but reflex brought him a glimpse of the sick and giggling men as they rushed at the door of his car.  Ted grit his teeth, and held up the Bible.

"And we learned"—a papery rustle, the susurrus of the crowd—"that a man can stand against this.  That a man can be taken and still be himself." 

The sick ones fell backward, their mouths letting out screams that had nothing to do with their tongues.  They scrabbled alongside the houses, scuttling away from motion-sensitive lights.  They hid in the shadows, and did nothing but glare as Ted opened the door.

"Democracy stands above men.  Democracy stands above gods.  Democracy stands above demons."  The fervor was back, the hardness.  "And democracy stands above this."

One of the women stared at Ted, eyes feline and glassy.  He held out the Bible, and whispered his prayers.

"He will start the machines," she spat.  "You will be the mortar for our tombs."

Ted coughed, and behind the cough was silence.

"Do not fear this," Harper demanded.  "Do not fear its threats.  A vote for me is not a vote for the Apocalypse."  A long pause, too long for normal radio.  "A vote for me is a vote for mankind."

There was a silence then, and a collective drawn breath; and then, cheering.  To a man, the sick ones smiled. 

The cheering faded into the background, replaced by a forced sign-off from the announcer.  Ted turned off the radio before she could finish. 

He stood next to the car, Bible in hand, and watched the polling place.  Two men stood outside the garage, silver medallions trailing from their hands.  They wore American flag pins and ashen faces, their shoulders rock-hard and their faces strained.  Ted looked over his shoulder, and saw the possessed man scuttle forward.

"He will lead us," the man said.  His words oozed through Ted's mind.  "He will claim this land and the sun will go dark from the smoke."  His eyes went thin and beady, a rat's face above a ragged, unkempt mustache.  "We will burn your bodies after we've taken your minds."

Ted looked again at the polling place.  His fingers wormed against the Bible.  He looked back at the rat-faced little man, and he smiled.

"Don't vote your fear," Ted said, and the words turned to ash in his mouth.  He gave a steely grin.  "Always vote your conscience."

He marched into the polling place, as blood red filled the sky.

Ω

I heard one, squatting on my right shoulder, ask his neighbor, “When does she turn into a witch?”

The neighbor snorted. “You fool, that doesn’t happen for years.”

“Oh, right. I forgot.”

Ω

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

Or rather, he passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

Ω

Drowning in the unblinking gaze
Of a summer sun,
The light evaporates,
Water into hazy sky.
Tiny bodies huddle close,
Mouths puckered into silent screams,
Failing to gulp oxygen from air.

Nymphs and larvae,
Dart amongst the empty pockets,
Of a waterlogged anorak.
From an unlaced shoe,
A leather tongue protrudes,
Like a panting dog,
Dying in the heat.

An open mouth,
Yawns slack-jawed grin.
Fish-chewed fingers,
Hold nothing within.
Risen from the depths,
Staring blindly at the sun,
Is brought to light,
The uncovered corpse,
Of a drowned child,
Seaweed for hair.

Jagged stones upthrust from sand like bones,
Pebble shards grind like tearing teeth,
Uncovering buried secrets.
Meat beneath the sand.

A mother’s tears,
Are mixed with salt,
Crystallizing within the depths.
A new life,
This child of grief is born,
Dragging itself ashore,
On brittle legs.

The beach turns over in its sleep,
Its shingle grinds against dead flesh,
And two dozen policemen,
And a hundred press,
Descend the promenade,
Like seagulls, hunting for scraps.

Ω

When I turned around on my seat to face it, it was already too late.

Ω

Clara was a wolf in wolf’s clothing. She saw them for what they were, animals dreaming of individuality and power. She saw the tricks the shepherds played, and played them back: dominance a fuzzy thing when both sides knew the rules.

And so they, none the wiser, trained her as she saw fit. The San Francisco desert became her plaything, and she culled their guardians, her competition, as they expected. She learned the secrets of their power, one by one—the isolation, iconoclasm, but most of all, the paucity of resources. This they did not control, but they allowed, and they did nothing to ease it.

The ruins that she had claimed gave her many things: most importantly, ideas, and the means to make them happen. Old technologies grew themselves inside her, giving her more strength and more capacity for those ideas and their solutions.

Clara read in books of times before, and technology. Technology not scavenged, but made; and she learned the difference, to see it. The shepherds still made their own tech, though they seemed to not push the boundaries of what the time before them knew. The wolves, they used what tech they could find, and it was a rare one that could put two things together to renew what had been drained or broken.

She was rarer still, of course. She made her own tools, finer than anything the shepherds left for them to find. Those tools made her other tools, and information was unearthed deeper than the shepherds scoured. She fell one day upon the answer to it all: rain, falling from the sky. If she could make that happen, the shepherds’ hold would wane. Communities could form, more than gangs, and not sutured to the shepherds’ teats.

She poured herself into that one vein of research, then, opening information from times and places gone—and from places far away, though she could not make sense of every piece: putting seeds into the sky to make the water-bearers grow.

Seasons turned, the inevitable montage of trial and error, made all the more difficult by the need to keep the shepherds from growing suspicious. But finally she had her device. Several, because she knew that though she might have another chance to fire them, perhaps fine-tune them, she would be a hunted wolf. Her abode, her way of life, forfeit.

She dispersed them as eggs about the city, buried, waiting for her breath of life to hatch and fire.

To her credit, the first went off without a hitch—a flare of iridescent beauty in the early twilight. It flew with design and alacrity, burst into uncountable particles, squiggles, written in the sky like newsprint. It was a story, a prayer, a command: make the rain come. The sky shimmered orange, red, brown as particles blocked the sun, reflecting and refracting. Dry rainbows sparked and died.

And then the rain came, dirty, muddy, wet. Life-giving.

Ω

How unhappy he had been before the coming of the Master. So much pressure and so many expectations—too great for a weak creature such as himself. The Master, in his kindness and infinite compassion, took the burden of leadership from him and showed him a new way to think, to be. The Master taught his unruly mind what it meant to be free; unattached to suffering, desire, responsibility.

Now he had only to rake the gravel and feel the peace of the order he creates. Once upon a time he had power, he had influence. All women wanted him, all men wanted to be him and he thought he had everything figured out. He surrounded himself with people who believed everything he said. He was worshiped as a prophet, the Voice of God and they kissed the hem of his robe, begging to give him everything they had—their money, their bodies, their very souls.

But it was too much. The Master revealed to him the error of his ways; how he had lost himself in the welter of power and possession. The Master took it away, giving him the rake and the soothing whisper of the gravel in return. A tear trickles down his cheek at the magnitude of such generosity.

Blessed, blessed Master.

Someone crunches upon the gravel. Footsteps destroy the careful swirls and ripples. His mind screams at such desecration. He whirls around, bringing the handle of the rake crashing against the head of the defiler.

He stands over the body, wondering why the Master looks so surprised—his mouth open, eyes unblinking. He digs a trough to place the Master in, smoothing and furrowing the gravel again and again, until there is no trace of any disturbance.

He rakes the gravel. His mind is calm—washed clean of all that is not pure and perfectly parallel.

Ω

Ω

She used to not be so nice. She would call the cops when I danced naked under the sprinklers, and played my violin on the roof, and even that time that I painted my house purple. She doesn’t understand, I just do what my guides tell me to do; I’m not hurting anyone. My guides have always talked to me and helped me out in life. I do things differently from most people, but that’s the way I’m supposed to be; that’s what my guides say. They say I have a purpose, a mission, a destiny that’s not clear to me right now, but if I stay on the path, I’ll discover what it is. People tell me that my guides aren’t real, but I know they are. I see them, I hear them, I smell them. I touch them, and they touch me. They’ve been around for a long time, that’s what they told me.

Mrs. Yasovich doesn’t care; she just wants me to act normal. That’s why she called those people and told them I was dangerous to myself and society, the last time that I decorated my house with beach balls. They came and took me away.

But I’m much better now, since my stay at the “behavioral care facility”. Everybody says so. I tried really hard to take my medications every day and check in with my counselor once a month. But when I took the pills, my guides were hard to understand, their voices were muffled. So I mostly don’t take them, only now and then when I feel very anxious. I have to act like everyone else and sometimes ignore what my guides are telling me to do. I like how I feel when I go with my own flow, and I like doing the things I do; if only Mrs. Yasovich would leave me alone! Why should I have to put out my flame to please others?

Things are going to get better though. My guides told me. Won’t Mrs. Yasovich be surprised when the cops come to visit HER, alerted by an anonymous concerned citizen, and arrest her for growing marijuana? She’ll deny it, but that’s what’s growing in her back yard. And once they dig up the plants in her yard they will find that special fertilizer that made them grow so big and tall; pieces of her husband that have been buried there for awhile. She told everyone that he left her and moved away, but I knew that wasn’t true. They were always fighting, and she has a bad temper. My guides showed me right where he was buried, so I made sure to put a few seeds in that spot. The plants are sprouting so tall! My guides make the ground fertile. They’ve always helped me out; I’m not going to send them away just to make everyone else happy.

So I guess Mrs. Yasovich will be in big trouble. I don’t think she will be coming back to the neighborhood any time soon, and I can go back to living the way I want to, listening to my guides, following my path.

I’m glad I’m better now.

Ω

“Can I come in?”

It has the size and shape of a person, but it could never be mistaken for one. It has dark hair and dark clothes and light skin, but there is something moving just under that skin, something sharp-edged waiting to slip free. The thing bares its teeth in a smile, but she knows those are not its real teeth, just camouflage, and that there are other bigger sharper teeth somewhere underneath. She can tell even through the distorted view of the peephole. She can tell because the thing stands in such a way that she can see directly into its eyes, and no human ever had eyes like that.

“Can I come in?”

The peephole cover is a thin brass circle about the size of a quarter. It is attached to the door by a small screw, so that the peephole can be revealed by pushing the cover out of the way with your index finger. All it would take for her to sever the connection, for the thing to disappear from her sight, for her to regain her freedom, would be to lift the tip of her finger just enough for the cover to swing back into place. But even that is too much. She tells her finger to move, but it stays pressed firmly against the circle of brass. Her eyelids refuse to close. Her lungs continue to breath, but she knows this is only because the thing on the other side of the door chooses to make it so.

“Can I come in?”

She is screaming now, even though she makes no sound. Her screams echo through her own head, building as if looking for a way out, but her mouth and throat are silent. A tear escapes from her paralyzed left eye, and this is her only act of protest as her hand obediently reaches for the knob.

Ω

Ω

Her painted face, cracked and dirty,
watches over a graveyard of rusted frames,
dead machines, and twisted cables.

Something brought her back to this place.
Awoken by a sound after all this time
of being alone, she still stands
a statuesque queen atop her float.

Behind the crumbling carousel
a muted neighing can be heard
and the ghostly figure of a white horse,
once intricately painted and gilded,
slowly rises on stiff and weather-worn legs.

A loud crack and the screech
of rusted nails drawn from wood.
The heavy thud of hooves.

Then the moonlit glimmer
of a ghostly horse and its regal rider
disappearing into the distance
of another plane.

Ω

But you are easily convinced that they are real. I often am—there is one whom I meet; last night it was in an art gallery, and he stood before me, staring at a painting. His back was turned towards me and he wore a rough gray jacket made of a tweed-like fabric. Upon trying to touch his sleeve, though, upon drawing closer to him, it was disappointing to me that I might only be trying to approach a part of myself with which I rarely dealt. In real life, when you meet another entity you comply with, are repelled by, or fit into its presence like a curious pattern of puzzle pieces that you could not have possibly contrived yourself. In your dreams it is never that way. You can afford the luxury of brashness, of love without remorse, and it will be gone before you can recall, but even its memory soon grows dull, and boring.

When I touched his sleeve, he simply smiled at me, and I assumed that, as usual, he had nothing to say. I wanted to live for a moment inside his soul, for there is little time that we usually spend together. I had hoped to charm him with my talents and ask him the impossible questions, like ‘what are you to me, and I to you, and what do we become upon waking?’ and ‘to which side of this four-cornered universe do I really belong?’ but as he opened his mouth to speak, I found he had little knowledge of my innermost thoughts, for he was responding to another question that I had not even raised.

It was a trivial matter, and I could not understand its importance even in my sleep; in fact it annoyed me. He was supposed to know me, for I was him and he was me, and we were not real; he should have given me the word I so desperately wanted to hear so that I could have gone on believing this farce, this fancy that dream-people are so unlike their real counterparts. But he did not, and I could not, and I am left only to conclude that he is not me, and I am not him, and I could just as easily belong to the dreamscape as the real world, for there is little difference between them after all.

Ω