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Simon sat down in his office and moved paperwork with his hands and a putter with his mind. The shot was perfect and immaculate and he could just about see the ball go PLUNK if it weren’t for these damned files in his hands plotting out the green green green grass. That, and the distant bitching of the morons one hole behind him, who were clearly impatient because they were too impatient to take their damned time and ENJOY themselves enough to do the job properly.

“Doctor?”
Ah, the bitching hadn’t been from inside his head. Dr. Simon Crabb opened his eyes and looked upon the tremulous, milky-pasty face of his patient, his responsibility, his charge, and sighed deeply.

“Yes?”
“What is it?”
Simon gazed dispiritedly upon his files. How to go about fitting so much information inside such a small head? Then a thought struck him, and so jarring was the blow that it escaped through his mouth before he had time to consider it further: “you have scabies,” he said, and no more.
“I’m sorry?”
“Scabies.”
“What abo-”
“You have scabies. Go home and drink some orange juice or whatever and they’ll be gone by Monday. Talk to the nurse about it.” And he picked up the paperwork again and began to shuffle it with such determination and focus that he was soon left alone with his thoughts and his thoughts were left alone with his 4-iron.

***

The odd brilliance that seemed to have suffused Simon since the gentle prodding of his fairway muse did not desert him. As each patient entered the office, he had but to consider their stupid, vacant, cowlike faces and then turn his mind to finer things like wedges, woods, and links and – quite without his input or design – the most miraculously conclusions would leap forth from his mouth, each scrupulously-crafted to remove the patient’s presence from his domain immediately.

“You have liverwort,” he informed a teenager sternly. “Stop eating so much liver.”
“Bu-”

“Next! You, what are you even here for?”
“My –”

“You have false pregnancy. Next!”

“Wha-”

“Is that supposed to be necrotizing fasciitis? You were misdiagnosed, it’s just wrinkles. Perfectly normal age related issue. Next”

“Hello, Simon!”
“Hell?” managed Simon, whose brain suddenly had to sprint several kilometers to catch up with his mouth. “Reggie?”
“Yes indeedie!” chirped Reggie. “Just a little checkup before the fairway, you know how it is ahahaha. Lovely day today, the club’ll be PACKED this afternoon I reckon ahahahaha. See you there?”
Simon’s mind had dropped into a very dark and deep place, full of inane chatter spoiling his shot, and so it was without the intervention nor instruction of conscious thought that his mouth opened and said “I’m afraid not, Reg.”
“Oh?”
“You have gigaherpes. You’ll need to stay indoors for the next three days and avoid all contact with grass or you’ll explode.”
“Oh NO!”
“Yes, terrible timing. You’d better send in the other club members right away; it’s highly transmissible.”
“But I haven’t been to the club since last Sunday!”
“It’s a retrovirus,” said Simon’s id, “it can spread retroactively. Call them right now and confess or I’ll do it for you. My ethics as a practitioner demand it.”
“Oh dear,” said Reggie, pulling out his phone with shaking hands. “But what about you, poor Simon, and the rest of the clinic?”
“I’m immune. But you’re right about the clinic – I’ll cancel the rest of the day’s appointments. It’s too dangerous for them right now.” Simon stood and grabbed his jacket. “Well, nice seeing you, Reggie. Be sure to make those calls and tell them not to leave the house for the next week.”
“Weren’t you going to?”
“It’s a retrovirus, remember? I retroactively diagnosed it. Keep up.” Simon strode confidently from the office, haltingly only briefly as a groaning man on a stretcher blocked the doorway.

“Doctor, if you would –” began the nurse.

“Yes, yes, yes” sighed Simon. He bent over and inspected the patient. “Perfectly healthy, just hypochondria, send her home,” he announced.

“Bu-”

“She’s a shark, Jessie. Sharks are healthy animals. Just detach her from this bozo, send her home, bill her later. I’ve got to go. See you next Monday.”

And he was gone.

***

Gone to the green.

Simon stood on the middle of the greenway at hole 3 of the Bunder’s Scupp course, gloriously, truly, beautifully alone. Every sign of life was gone; no clouds spoiled the blue sk; no nagging voices spoiled the silence; nothing was there but he, his voice, and the green, glossy grain of the grass.

He swung, and it hit or missed and it didn’t matter because the score was his alone to tally and the numbers didn’t matter and rules weren’t real. He laughed and sang and swung and chortled and coughed and tapped and wheezed and lunged and staggered and felt a lot of his arm stab him with violent pain all at once.

“My imagination,” said his mouth as he fell over, “nothing more.” And because he wished it to be so he trusted in it, and as the green turned grey and the cropped blades began to fuzz he knew very confidently that he was just going to take a quick nap now and get right back to the game.

On a particularly normal day on the planet Earth in an average sort of month at a perfectly meaningless hour, a message arrived.

It came on wavelengths of light and radio and other things; it was registered in telescopes and satellite transmission; it was about nineteen seconds long and it was very complicated and then it stopped.

It also had arrived from Tau Ceti. Probably.

***

There were Concerns.

Some were excited about the message, believing it was a sign that not only life existed elsewhere, but it wanted to make friends. Some were skeptical, believing it was some sort of meaningless nonsense. Some were paranoid and believed it had been done by other humans as part of a nefarious plot that explained the sixteen other nefarious plots they already believed other humans were masterminding. Some were a little TOO excited, believing it was a sign from someone to do something. And most of them were a few of the above mushed together in one way or another.

This led to arguments which led to escalation which led to death which led to more arguments but louder and hoarser. Explosives became involved.

Meanwhile, some small groups of people, in varying degrees of secrecy and isolation, worked on the message. Was it a warning? Was it a threat? Was it a welcome? Was it a secret? Was it a gift? Was it a puzzle? Was it abstract, obtuse, and convoluted or simple, straightforward, and direct? Computers were designed and applied; codebreakers and mathematicians and linguistics experts were grouped and employed; occasionally someone was killed with high-speed explosives by someone else, and the world, with increasing erraticism, spun on.

Then the second message arrived. It was half as long as the first, and had half as many characters, and halfway through receiving it someone launched a nuclear missile, which caused other things to happen.

***

While the first sets of missiles were in the air, one of the earlier teams managed to crack the first, more structured message. It was a plea for assistance from someone, anyone, since the sender’s society had torn itself to shreds from pre-existing internal divisions while trying to decipher an inexplicable message they’d received from space, and they were placing themselves at the mercy of any potential recipients, whom they hoped would be wise and benevolent.

The second message was a useless assemblage of symbols, such as might be created by something or someone falling over on top of an input device.

***

The code team decided not to bother retranslating the message into earthly languages before rebroadcasting it. It would’ve taken time they didn’t have, and after all, this one had already proven itself to be decipherable at least once.

I like it out here. It’s hard work because Uncle won’t take a turn at the oars, and he won’t load the cargo, and he won’t unload the cargo, and he smacks me on the back of the head if I’m slow.

But I like it out here anyways. The night so dark it blends into the sea and the land and it looks like if I wanted to I could row the dinghy everywhere from anywhere. Of course that makes steering a little tricky but that’s what Uncle does since he doesn’t let me touch the spyglass.

“Port,” he whispered and I shifted port.

Hard to see the monaskerry this time of night, but hard to see us too. That’s what made the trade work. Lot of hungry, hungry initiates out there learning wisdom and aestheticism and how one could sup on seafoam for supper and salt air for breakfast in time and such and so on. And there was a lot of real nice folks in town that could make the most wonderful whelk chowder, or berry jams, or candied salmon. And right in between them there was me, my uncle, and his dinghy.

The dinghy isn’t special, mind you – it’s us. Nobody else in town goes out at night. Scared of the nefarious squid, I think. I’m not sure why; it’s not like they can climb onto the boat or anything, and we’re going swimming. Uncle says it’s superstitious bullshit.

“Starboard,” whispered Uncle, and I shifted starboard.

It was nice, in a weird way, to do this. To fall inside my own muscles and my own heart and lungs and just listen to myself and forget about what I was doing. The oars barely existed in my palms except as textures. The soreness in my butt was divorced from the existence of the bench. I couldn’t even smell the warm cooked herbs leaking gently from the casque under my feet.

“Fuck,” hissed Uncle, “too loud,” which was weird because I was sure I hadn’t made a ripple. But he was already swearing and tugging at lines so I got up from the oars and started fumbling at the ties and dumping the cargo overboard one basket and barrel and bag at a time. Each weighted with a little stone for ballast, nature’s anchor, plish plash. “Fuck. FUCK,” he whisper-shouted into my ears. “Not so loud!”

I slowed down.
“Not so slow!”

I sped up.

“Not so loud!”

“Hoy there,” said a patch of the gloom as it lurked above us. “Is there something wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” said Uncle. “We’re fishing.”
“Funny time to be fishing,” said another voice from above a murky railway, above a towering old pile of timber and barnacle, above the water. “And for the third night this week.”
“We need the money,” said Uncle and this wasn’t actually a lie for once. Uncle wasn’t as good at cards as he thought he was.

“Catch anything yet?”
“No, because SOMEONE keeps scaring the fucking fish away.”
“Just doing our jobs,” said the first voice again. “Keeping an eye out for nefarious raiders from asea.”
“Or ashore,” added the second.
“No, no, nothing nefarious there. These folks are just fishing, right? With empty nets, at night. Aren’t you worried about the nefarious squid?”
“Superstitious nonsense,” said Uncle shortly.

“Nothing superstitious about nefarious squids. We see them all the time out here. Big. Long arms.”
“And they don’t bother you neither.”
“Well of course not. We’re in a proper ship and you’re in a dinghy.”
“Your ship’s a rotten old hulk and you’ve scared away the damned fish.”

More than the two voices laughed at that.

“Well, we’ll leave you be then,” said the first. “But you watch yourself. Hard to see anything out on nights like this, and if you were a little bit quieter why, we might just run you down.”

Uncle didn’t say anything to that, and he didn’t say anything as the monaskerry guard-ship creaked and groaned away from us, but when they were gone for good he DID smack me on the head so hard it echoed all the way to shore.

“Ow!”
“THAT is for splashing the damned oars so loud,” he hissed. “Three times. In one week!”
“I didn’t!”

“I heard it! I heard you splashing! Now we’ve lost our income AGAIN, and we’ll have to pay restitution at this rate! Do you know how nasty the jam-maker gets if she doesn’t get her cut? DO YOU?”

“No,” I lied. Glisset was always friendly to me, but she had a short touch with creditors and didn’t like my uncle and had exactly the forearms you’d expect from someone who spent all day grinding and pressing tough little salt-hardened berries into sweetness with a big mallet.

“I don’t know why I put up with my niece,” he said aloud into the general darkness, even though we both knew it was because my mother was dead and he was a goddamned greedy scumbag. “It must be because my sister is dead, and I’m a goddamned merciful saint.”

I rowed, and tried to fall back into myself again. Didn’t quite make it.

***

Two beautiful clear days in a row after that. No clouds, moon still fat enough to show itself low on the horizon in the afternoon and keep the water glittering happily at night.

Uncle hated it. He was so put out that he didn’t even go to his card games, which didn’t make our money problems any worse but did put me in the way of more whacks to the head. I spent the time we weren’t fishing out on the street and up the hill and once – when I got very bold and had taken a shot from Uncle’s bottle-under-the-floorboard – trying to persuade Glisset to bring me berry-picking, which turned very awkward when she took me literally and spent an earnest half-hour telling me about why you should never hike out to the berry patches at night (it was bears).

The third day was a bit wispy in the morning. Then it was a bit cloudy in the afternoon, leaving the water lead-dull. Then as the sun came down the fog came up and the whole town turned the kind of deep-down damp you can only escape by setting yourself on fire.

Uncle was ecstatic, eyes glittering in the wet air. He whistled – actually whistled! Badly, mind you – the whole time we collected the cargo; he helped pack it up for once; he even kept humming after we left dock, soundless as mice.

“Red sky at night, sailor’s delight,” he said conversationally as I rowed. “Red sky in the morning, sailor’s take warning. Fog bank at night? Heart takes flight, I say.”

I nodded to keep him happy, but man I didn’t agree inside. I was cold and felt half-soaked.

“You know the best part? Keeps the sound down.”

I nodded again.

“No splashes, no guard-ships, no fuss. Nothing out of you.”
I made a terrible mistake then and looked at Uncle to see what had him in a good mood, which was the fastest way I knew of getting him out of a good mood. Luckily, I did this just as he was coming at me with his knife and so for once that sort of worked out. Unluckily, I blocked the knife with the haft of my port oar so he got pretty mad anyways.

“Snitch! Sneak!” he hissed. I grabbed his arm, he grabbed my arm, the knife wiggled in between us like an eel on a hook. “I take you in, I feed you, and you tip off the guards every night! How much’d they pay you? How much did you take to splash and splash and call ‘em in every night? Three nights in ONE WEEK?”

“Huh?” I said, and he actually screamed at that- just a little, involuntary, like someone had kicked him in the right spot and it leaked out. He tugged and yanked and heaved and I let go of the knife so he fell half-ass-down and I kicked my boot loose into his belt region.

Now THAT didn’t make him scream. It made him wheeze and sit down, which was troublesome because he was standing at the gunwales and there was nothing to sit on but thin foggy air and thick smooth water.

It was quite a splash – big and solid and juicy, droplets in my damned eyes – and it kept going as he foundered and floundered and came up over the side leg-up, knife waving. I pulled up the oar and held it overhead and was just about to bring it down when he squeaked like a mouse and vanished immediately, straight down.

I waited.

Then I put the oar down and waited some more.

Then I waited a little longer, just to be safe, and I rowed up to the monaskerry’s little half-hidden shingle beach and gave sixteen delicious meals to a furtive and wealthy acolyte and went home and slept well for the first time in six years.

***

I still fished after that. It was hard by myself, but Uncle hadn’t helped too much to begin with, and it was more for appearances than anything. The real profit came in on the dark nights, when I took up the cargo and put out the dinghy and rowed into the dark and then – halfway out, just a ways to go – I cut loose about one-quarter of my load into the water and watched as it sank a little and then was sucked down by something too quick and hungry to be gravity.

It’s easiest to deal with the nefarious squids this way, I think. It’s certainly a lot cheaper than waiting for them to get impatient and start splashing for the guard-ship; they don’t need me to give them EVERYTHING, just enough to take the edge off. Eyes bigger than their stomachs.

Of course, I had to put the prices up a little to make up for it. But I told them all that the work was harder since Uncle passed, and they believed that enough.

It isn’t even entirely wrong. The nefarious squids take the jams and chowder and jerky well enough on every trip, it’s true. But Uncle? After they took him, they didn’t ask for food for six whole days.

June 13^th

Not my finest showing today, diary. I was out trimming the hedges with my earplugs in – safety first! – and it took me a good thirty seconds to realize there were visitors on the estate, and that was because one of them got fed up and leaned on the horn for a good six seconds. Startled me pretty good when I turned around, and I’m ashamed to say I was so rattled they had to repeat themselves a few times before I could understand them or say anything.

It seems they were friends and associates of little Tommy H. Feldingway – god, it’d been AGES since I’d heard that name, the family never spoke of his father after he moved out. As it turned out he’d come home as the now-last of his line to spend the night in the estate’s guest wing so as to claim his inheritance in accord with the remits of his grandfather’s will (a classic move from ‘Old Hawthorn’).

But that wasn’t the REAL problem. The REAL problem was that Tommy was NOT the last living Feldingway, because long-lost family-shame cousin ‘Rigor’ Mortimer Feldingway had arrived two nights ago and was hiding in the attics somewhere and I had absolutely failed to find a way to shoo him out yet, even after he’d dismembered the postman. I’d tried traps, spraying, even clanging pots and pans at all hours to drive him out; nothing worked. This was the absolute nadir of my tenure as groundskeeper, and you know how bad my imposter syndrome’s always been, diary! I was sure I was about to lose my job! But if I didn’t warn them about Mortimer, they’d be a real pickle – and if I DID warn them about Mortimer, I’d be violating the blood oath six generations of Otuses had sworn unto the service of the Feldingways to keep their secrets! So there I stood, tongue-tied and wide-eyed as six bizarrely gorgeous young people with artfully coifed hair sat in their fancy car and stared at me.

“So, like, can we go in?” asked little Tommy.

“Can’t say as I can stop you,” I blurted out. Oh god, WHY did I say that?! It was so rude! I was trying to HELP these people, not scold them! “But you’d best take care. The house isn’t very friendly at night.”

It was as if I was trying as hard as I could to incriminate myself, diary. They laughed at me and it was like the first day of first grade all over again – I was so busy reliving the moment when Nelson Munsch pulled down my pants in front of the whole gym class that I don’t think I replied to a single word they said after that, just stared at them all glassy-eyed until they drove off.

Now I’ve got two Feldingways under one roof and only one of them can inherit the house and I know, I just KNOW, I just KNOW that ‘Rigor’ is going to cut the phone lines before dawn. He always did that, he always does that, he doesn’t know that mobile phones exist and if he did he wouldn’t care. I’m going to have to spend all morning splicing the wire back together and it’s an absolute bitch, pardon my language, diary.

I really wish I was better at asserting myself. This whole pickle wouldn’t be happening if I were a bit less introverted.

***

June 17^th

I’m sorry for spending so much time away from you, diary. Cleaning up after the ‘Mortimassacre’ took a LOT of time and spoons from me, and once I was home I just wanted to sleep. And beyond the physical wear and mental tear, emotionally I still feel guilty about the whole mess; especially what happened to the weathervane. It had spent over a hundred and forty years on that roof without ONCE harming anybody, and did not deserve what happened to it.

All of that actually makes me feel a little better about the other thing that happened today. Suffice to say it, diary, I really stuck my foot right in my mouth yet again. But at least this time it was because I was already a basket case from the LAST time I was too shy to speak up!

Ugh. I’m spiralling.

I cleaned out the last of the plumbing this morning, then spent the afternoon doing the final mop circuit to scrub the last stains out of the upper hallways, and I was just sitting on my workbench out front and getting ready to finally resharpen the woodaxe after all the abuse Mortimer put it through when someone – I kid you not – cleared their actual throat at me. I looked up and oh my god, it was Professor Mesquin, the REAL Professor Mesquin, the actual, honest-to-god, world-famous local-legend Professor Richard Mesquin, who was standing there in short sleeves and a light jacket with a suitcase and a backpack of all things. He had that look people get, diary – the one where they’ve been waiting for me to notice them for too long.

So I sat there with my axe in one hand and the whetstone in the other and my mouth shut and stared until he said “is this the Feldingway estate?” and I just nodded because what else was I meant to do? Would it be rude to ask him to sign my copy of Antique Observatories And Star-Cultists Of New England? Would it be sycophantic to say I’d been really impressed by his essay last year on the ‘doom spiral’ pattern of familial sects when inheritance and religious fervor produced contradictory drives within increasingly resource-poor congregations that overwhelmingly led to outbursts of massive filial violence?

“Are you the groundskeeper?”

Oh god, was I even the groundskeeper still? There were no Feldingways left, but I’d never been fired, and my wage was still being autodeposited, but was I technically an employee of the bank now? I never understood finance or law. If I made an authoritative proclamation now and he put it in his book would I get arrested?
“Depends who’s asking,” I hedged.

“Hmm,” he judged. I died inside a few hundred times and when I was done he was staring at me again and had clearly just asked me something.

“The keys,” he repeated.

“Sure thing,” I said in total relief and handed him my entire keychain. His arm sagged under it.
“And the observatory key is…?”
“Here,” I said, fishing it up off the keychain.
“Thank you,” he said, and turned on his heel. “I’ll return it tomorrow morning.”

Wait he was going in the observatory oh god oh god oh god wait what? “I wouldn’t do that,” I said without thinking WHY do I say things WITHOUT THINKING?”
“Excuse me?” he asked, and it was too polite, too polite means he isn’t actually polite anymore oh jeez DAMNIT.

“That place isn’t safe,” I said. “Especially at night. Loose stone and shoddy mortar. Needs repairing.”
“And who is responsible for the repair?”
Oh god WAS that my job? It was, wasn’t it? But I’d also been told if I ever set foot in there without the explicit permission of a Feldingway I’d be torn limb from limb by the proto-aeonic beings that slept within the walls and floors, chained into the young stone with elder sleep.

“Well, good-day,” he said and oh god I’d been staring again hadn’t I. Just like the teachers used to complain about.

Well, it was too late to apologize or endear myself to the Professor now, and judging by the heft of that suitcase (and the fibula protruding from the loose zipper) he had most of a human skeleton in there. Was it a Feldingway? Fuck, was he going to send them ‘back to the stars’ as the family had done back in the old times? Did he know the correct syllables and the correct apologies and the correct warnings and when would be the incorrect times to say any of them? Would warning him violate my promise to ‘ne’er leash the sins of the sky with tongue form’d oft dirt’? Maybe I could give him a hint, but would he want one? Did he need one? He was an expert? Maybe I could pretend it was a joke. But I’m not funny.

“Good-day is well and good,” I called after him, “but be careful of the night.”

He turned and the incredulity on his face was like a boot to my face. He said “excuse me?” and I resumed sharpening the axe until he gave up and went away.

Well, that was enough fuel for my social anxiety for the rest of my life. Why am I LIKE THIS, diary?

***

June 24^th

The police stopped by again today, diary. At first I thought they’d changed their minds about me being a suspect in the Mortimassacre or the mysterious disappearance of Professor R. Mesquin on the night of the sudden and inexplicable meteor showers that turned the town teal for three days, but it turned out to be about something else entirely: it seems that the storms and lightning on the 18^th exposed a secret entrance in the graveyard that led into “Old Hawthorn’ Feldingway’s hidden underground bioterrorism lab. Oh diary, I didn’t know where to put my face for embarrassment; I had NO IDEA that I’d done such a miserable job of cleaning the grounds. I just put my head in my hands and cried like a baby, and when I finally had the strength to speak again they’d placed a call to our local Specialized Unit for National Safeguarding, who showed up just half an hour ago. Diary, I tried to warn them that ‘Old Hawthorn’ hadn’t been able to tend to the vat-spawners in a dog’s age and that the hidden steel corridors and hallways that honeycomb the earth underneath the estate are doubtlessly now rife with escaped froggoths, zoombys, and dogodiles, but I was so shaken up about what a miserable mess I’d made of everything that all I could do was blubber about how terrible and monstrous and evil I was, and I think they might have mostly focused on me screaming about ‘TERRIBLE, MONSTROUS EVIL’ and run off half-cocked after taking my keys.

There’s been a lot of screaming since they went down there, and then the regular policemen followed them, and now I’m stuck up here and I’m not quite sure what to do. Are they in trouble? They looked big and strong and competent and were wearing bulletproof vests and they told me the situation was under control and it would be pretty egotistical of me to assume I know better than they do. I’m not even sure if I know if it’s POSSIBLE to kill a froggoth, for instance, and I never learned more about their confinement measures than their hatred of salt. Who would I be to chime in and nag these professionals? They’re busy. Did they tell me how to fix the shingles after the meteor storm? Would I have been happy if they had? No! God, I’m so selfish and paranoid.         The idea of trying to tell these experts how to do their jobs just absolutely makes me want to cringe into a ball and die. Maybe I’ll just leave some medical supplies and ammunition around the complex, hidden in cupboards and under desks? You know, discreetly. In case they need it.

Damn my spoons! This would all be so much easier if I could just TALK to people!

***

June 25^th

Well, the estate exploded. I’ve had it, diary. I’m tired of trying to talk to people and warn them off being foolish; I’m tired of being ignored and misinterpreted; I’m tired of stumbling over my own tongue.

So I’m going to write ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE on a big wooden sign and leave it out front of the gate. That ought to clear things up for good.

Weirdest thing happened at work today, honey. A dungeon erupted beneath the breakroom and swallowed everyone during lunch.

It explains a lot – turns out our furnace breaking last spring wasn’t just from poor maintenance, but also the work of pernicious delving spirits!

Mostly the poor maintenance though.

So it was a real rough time for a bit, because me and Ed and Mary had landed on top of some sort of yawning portal in the earth that led to forgotten secrets and ancient tombs, and there was no way back up since we haven’t had the budget to replace the janitor’s ladder since it broke cleaning the gutters last month. So instead they threw down a bunch of the old football equipment for padding and some knives from the kitchen and told us they’d count it as emergency absences with no penalty as long as we could get back out before the next workday. It was pretty funny!

Well, I say pretty funny. At the time it wasn’t great. Mary landed on my lunch. But then Ed opened the darkened ominous creaking gate that was our only exit and we were swarmed by koblins, so I guess I had to let it go pretty fast. It’s hard to stay hungry when you’re trying to put a butter knife through a screaming biped-shaped coyote-frog-monkey-thingy, you know? Took them down, found a few shiny stones in the heel of the biggest one’s shoe, and we moved on. Mary found a secret passage in the next room that led to a hidden chest filled with old, rusty swords, so that was nice I guess.

Still mad about lunch though. I fucking loved those noodles, honey. After a full overnight of flavour intensification? I was FANTASIZING about them all morning.

Oh right, the swords. There were like, sixteen of them, which turned out okay because the next room we found was some kind of dankened primordial pit that opened up underneath the gymnasium and the volleyball team’s practice had gone long so they were stuck in there with Coach Maple, battling some sort of disintegrating slime-beast. Looked a bit like a dog or a whale but longer and more rotten? Smelled like a dumpster, I tell you what. So me and Mary distracted it while Ed armed the volleyball team and we stabbed it until it stopped moving,, and we found some sort of shield in the disintegrating remains of its torso that shone with eldritch runes, which we gave to Ed because I’ll be honest with you that man was NOT pulling his weight and maybe if he had something to hide behind he’d stop flinching, you know? Maybe he’d learn to stand his ground. Maybe he’d stop caving to the damned parents and ensuring the rest of us got flooded with requests to extend deadlines because my little Sammi got an extension for her math homework so why can’t you do that for history, blah blah bitch bitch blah blah BLAH.

Sorry honey. It’s just. Ugh.

Anyways the only way onward was downward so we descended the foetid staircase into the rotten sump, which was a clear sign that our plumbing was in even worse shape than we’d thought after the furnace died and let the pipes freeze. Remember that? Also there was some kind of primeval inscrutable idol and one of the volleyball players started yelling and screaming and trying to stab the rest of us until we could hold her down for a few minutes; said she saw us all as monstrous horrors! Mary said enough was enough and her and Coach Maple tipped the thing over and kicked it until it fell apart. I saw a glowing pearl that shone like a full moon fall out, so I grabbed that before we moved on.

So the next room was full of skeletons – and listen, honey, when I say ‘skeletons,’ I’m NOT saying ‘human skeletons.’ It looked like a herpetology exhibition down there; Mary said there was everything from iguanas and skinks to komodo dragons, and I’m not sure what kind of crocodile the biggest one was but believe you me it was an ANGRY one. We had numbers on our side though, even after Ed blocked a strike from a big snake and turned him into a rat. Ed is a rat now. It’s a real pity none of us could decipher the runic script on that shield; guess it just does that. So everyone was very surprised and Ed was even more scared of the snake than he’d been before and he wouldn’t stop this godawful SQUEALING and then the crocodile or alligator or whatever grabbed my leg and it hurt a lot and sort of took my attention away from whatever was going on, so I’m not quite sure how we managed to pull that one off. Coach Maple said she hit the snake with a skink. I’m sure I won’t argue with her.

So this next bit was stuff everyone else told me because I fainted from the pain and blood loss of having a skeletal crocodile or alligator or whatever chew on my leg. It seems like we were in a foyer to a sort of arcane laboratory, which was occupied by a crazed wizard? I’d love to know how he got any funding for that, honey, let alone paid. So when we ran in Mary asked for help and he was really mad we’d killed his bodyguards and started throwing lightning bolts at people. Completely inconsiderate. Luckily enough it turns out being up close and personal with an old-fashioned alchemical setup is REALLY bad for your vision, so he didn’t land a single shot before Coach Maple skewered him in the giblets. The hard part was that after that happened there was nobody left to explain his awful shorthand he’d labelled all the potions with, so we had to experiment – Ed got voluntold for it, since he was a rat and maybe a potion would fix that, I don’t know. I really wish we’d had Lani with us; the only thing I remember from chemistry is that fume hoods are important. The wizard didn’t have one, by the way.

Now, I didn’t quite get the full story of how many potions everyone went through or what they all did, but by the time I woke up, here’s what was going on:

My leg was better.

Ed was purple.

Coach Maple was holding a twisted staff formed from the wizard’s spine, I think. It was probably his spine. It looked fresh, okay?

The laboratory had exploded and there was glass everywhere.

Ed was still a rat.

It seemed like we got pretty lucky? Especially since the staff could open the locked back door, which was good. I was pretty done with the dungeon thing and wanted back out, so imagine how happy I was when we stepped out into the sunshine! It just sort of sucked that that the sunlight wasn’t coming from our sun, but a miniature one embedded in the ceiling filled with screaming, burning ghosts and orbited by nine spinning spherical skulls, all of which started chanting malign curses.

I was REALLY not happy, honey. I won’t lie, I swore at work. I swore in front of the kids. Nothing mild either, a full-on no-holds-barred ‘oh for FUCK’S sake.’ Grandma would’ve been proud of me.

So that was just a miserable time. The skulls kept spitting comets at us, and the comets bruised and blistered, and Mary was too short to reach any of them and the first time Coach Maple hit one of them with the staff it screamed loud enough most of us had a little bit of blood come out of our ears and Ed was a rat, so it was just me and the volleyball team. But one of them jumped high enough to grab one of the skulls, then they said ‘it just sort of clicked’ and the next thing we knew they were just absolutely dunking on them, or serving them, or whatever the term is. Skulls flying at skulls being used to smash skulls, everywhere, forever. The sun got spiked by six flying skulls at once and well I think that’s the closest I’ve ever been to a supernova. I hope none of us got radiation exposure; I don’t think the school’ll cover any of that.

Oh, and the dying sun spat out a pearl that blazed like fire. We took that and my old moon-pearl and put one in each eyesocket of Coach Maple’s skull-staff, and then it didn’t really do anything, so we tried touching it to Ed to see if he stopped being a rat. He was still a rat.

We were all dead tired – except the kids, they’d just gotten warmed up – but nobody wanted to try and take a break down there, so we kept pushing on. Some sort of stalagmite forest filled with giant crystal spiders; an endless staircase whose steps kept flying out from underfoot and falling into an infinite abyss; and a crypt with a big smashed-open sarcophagus, ten glistening obelisks, and a pair of slowly-crushing walls.

We lucked out on the last one – it turned out when Coach Maple laid the pearl-eyed skull-staff to rest in the sarcophagus, it telescoped the whole apparatus into the ceiling like an elaborate spiral staircase. Gave me the heebles, but not as badly as the scorched and blackened sword that she took from the tomb to replace it. Ed hated that, but it might have been because he was a rat; he REALLY was jittery after that happened to him, and I mean jittery by Ed standards even. Oh, and the staircase took us up into the school board’s meeting room, which they were very unhappy about until Coach Maple’s eyes shone bright red and her sword caught on fire and she screamed about these being those betrayed her and started stabbing. I think the sword and skull might have belonged to Superintendent Mendez, she sounded like him. The board shed their skins and revealed themselves to be monstrous worm-ghouls but the sword was REALLY on fire so in the end the whole school board was executed by Coach Maple, she got exorcised by Mary pouring six salt shakers from the cafeteria down her face, and we all got to go home early while the fire department investigated the new rooms for fire hazards. The volleyball team didn’t get to keep their swords, which they weren’t happy about, but oh well. I told them I’d ask Coach Maple if they could use them after practice once she comes out of her swoon; they figure it should pass before the week is out since it was only a vengeful wraith and not a malign one.

Anyways it was a long, shitty day, but we all pulled through in the end, the kids are all okay, and there’s no real lasting harm done. Except Ed is a rat now. Do you want to order pizza?

By a pond, in a pit, under the dirt, lay ten eggs, soft and small and filthy.

They were dug up and eaten by a skunk, along with two other nearby batches of eggs.

Another nest was unearthed and eaten by two crows.

Two OTHER nests hatched successfully into coin-sized little turtles that struggled free of the suffocating earth, only to be devoured by a very lucky passing fox.

One more nest hatched and saw all of its turtles make it to the water, where nine-tenths of them were consumed by fish. The only surviving turtle dodged fish for years, grew to adulthood, mated, and on its way to dig its nest crossed a road and was hit by a car.

This is how many troubled species work, most of the time.

***

In a tree, in a bough, in a woven basket, sat five eggs, speckled and small and relatively secure. The whole world lay ahead of them.

One came out slightly crushed and began to smell bad before very much time had passed. Mother ejected it from the nest with a few sharp flicks of her head.

One was doing very well indeed until a hungry raccoon came upon the nest just after sunrise and stuffed it into its face before being bombarded eyeball-first by Mother forced it into a hasty retreat.

One hatched and died right away for some reason. Mother ejected it from the nest with a few flicks of her head.

One hatched, grew, thrived, and became covered in feathers. It then left the nest to practice flight further and was devoured by a cat in a moment of inattentiveness.

One hatched, grew, thrived, fledged, and in the great dawning day of its new life, was picked off by a hawk while trying to find twigs to make its own nest.

This is how most successful species work, most of the time.

***

In a puddle, in an old tire, in a junk yard, sat a hundred eggs.

Half of them were wiped out by overflow caused by a light storm.

Half of them were devoured by dragonfly larva

Half of them were consumed by a passing swallow on leaving the water and taking flight.

Half of them were eaten by bats that evening.

And half of the leftovers from THAT were eaten on the wing by adult dragonflies.

Of the remaining three, one never managed to lay any eggs, one almost did but was eaten by a duck while laying, and the last one laid a hundred eggs.

This is how most very successful species work, most of the time.

***

In a bassinet, under a blanket, in a home sat a baby.

It grew up and learned to talk.  It grew up and learned to walk.

It got bigger and learned math and reading and writing.

It got bigger and learned about society and grades.

It got bigger and learned about owning a vehicle and a home and making money.

Then it designed, planned, constructed and sold a swathe of suburban sprawl that consumed the tree and the pond and the house it had grown up in, necessitating and encouraging as aspirational an increasingly-unlikely and unattainable lifestyle organized around and devoted to the personal use of inefficient single-family carbon-emitting vehicles. This was rewarded.

This is how at least one species works. So far.

***

The junk yard got a lot more tires and those tires got a lot more puddles though. So it wasn’t all bad for everybody.

“This is an island for you,” he was told. “It’s everything you’ve ever wanted, and everything you’ve ever needed, and all of it is on it and around it and under it and for you. There are books and wooden floors and walls; there are ferns and moss and stones; there are plums and secrets and cliffs. And it’s for you.”

So he stood on the docks for a while, looking up at it. At the stone cliffs and the green forest and the twitter and cheep and whistle of birds he didn’t quite recognize. At the gently roaring splash of the water on the rocks, and the lip-lap slap of it underneath the wooden dock, which was grey enough to feel proper and not so old as to be rotten.

There was just enough sun to be warm, and just enough of a breeze to keep cool. A gull yelled something insulting in its beautifully horrible voice.

And he walked off the dock and into the island.

***

There were ancient ruins, crumbled enough to be even more beautiful but not so far as to fall apart. Plants and moss and lichens coated them like damp green jewels.

He looked at them, and he walked through them, but he didn’t go inside and he couldn’t keep his mind from wandering away, like nothing he was looking at was quite real. Running a thumb over the surface of an old, old stone brought it a bit closer – yes, that’s stone, that’s real, that’s right – but kept its significant so very far away. Just a stone.

He looked at the carvings. They were complicated – so complicated his eyes twisted away from the details – and pretty, if crumbled. Maybe if he were more clever or enjoyed puzzles he would learn something from them.

So he walked through the ruins one more time, wandering mind and all. And he left.

***

The ocean was wide and blue and beautiful. The sky was nearly so, but with a smattering of exactly enough clouds for comfort. A little fish jumped some ways away, pursued by a dolphin. It was over half the planet and it was snuggled into a cove that hugged the island’s coast as deeply and reassuringly as a mother.

It was also a little too cold. He could dip his feet in, and they got used to it, and he could wade in, and he got used to that, but everything above his belly button hated it, absolutely hated it when the cold reached. He tried dipping his arms in first, fooling himself into thinking he was already swimming, but it didn’t work, and he was wondering what he’d do if he went into the water, or where he’d go, or what he would see. Besides it was awfully frightening to be anywhere deep enough to swim by himself.

So he waded back out again, and put his shirt back on and looked at the cove. And he left.

***

On a hill made of old, old, old rock and shaded by conifers that were the sort of deep green you can never find anywhere else, there stood a cottage of ambiguous size. Its outside was weathered greys; its roof was faded green tiles; its insides were the deep, worn, warm browns of wood that had been varnished a long time before anyone now living had been born.

In a corner of the building, in shelves built into the walls and onto the walls and anywhere they’d fit, were books. Some were ancient and yellowed and well-cared for; some had been printed on paper scarce better than newsprint and were falling apart at the seams; some were disconcertingly glossy with untattered jackets and looked to have been bought even less than a year ago. They were crammed into every shelf and when the shelves could hold no more they’d been stacked on top of them like cordwood. There were old old comic collections and new new bestsellers and pulp fiction and nonfiction and local history and histories of the world and everything and anything but in a very specific way and shape and texture that made it all boil down to being there, right there, in an old corner of an old building with a giant and frail glass window that didn’t quite fit right, so you could smell the pines and see them tremble in the breeze.

There was also a thing that was either a bed or a couch or not, which had large cushions.

He sat on the couch-or-not and he looked at the books. The very, very, very old books he remembered from when he was very, very, very young, and he felt fearfully ancient and distant from them just thinking of it, so badly his teeth hurt. The new and fresh books made him wary – he didn’t know names, or thought maybe he did and had forgotten – and when he opened one the thought of how long it had been since he’d done this nearly made him cry. The pages seemed to take forever, and sometimes he simply stopped in a sentence and couldn’t move.

When he was almost halfway done, he realized he might be enjoying himself, and he wanted to tell someone, but there was nobody there and the rest of the plot was making him anxious and when he looked at the author he felt old and frail and stupid.

The breeze had died down a little. The pines weren’t moving. He put the book back, page unmarked, and he left.

***

The kitchen was mostly windows and screens and an awful lot of counters, no two of which seemed to be alike and all of which had been used and cleaned very thoroughly until the cuts and chips had turned into a texture all of its own. There was a little open cupboard with big glass jars, fixed at a jaunty angle by their flattened sides and filled with flour, with sugar, with – inexplicably – little cheesy crackers. There was a small table stuffed haphazardly in the corner, in case someone didn’t want to go find where they were meant to eat and wanted to look down the island over the rocks and the trees and all the way out over the water.

The fridge was full of things, the cupboards were full of things, the freezer was full of things, and he wasn’t quite sure what to do with them or for how long or if the stove was cleaned or how to clean it or if anything was being saved for some special occasion or how to tell if meat was thawed or if they had plums.

They did have plums, fat little black ones like he remembered. They cut cleanly, like he remembered. They were juicy, like he remembered.

He wasn’t sure if they tasted like he remembered. Maybe a little too sweet, or a little too bitter, or maybe the flesh was too flaky. And the memory was frustrating, because he knew he’d been too young and stupid to pay that much attention or care as hard as he seemed to, so he finished the plums while he looked out the window and watched the sunlight make the waves sparkle. And he left.

***

There were two doors; the heavy inner one, wooden and seamless and strong, and the thin metal one with a big mesh screen and a carefree clatter that came every time it swung open and clanged shut. It was loud and brief and bright as he walked down the paths in bare feet, eyes on the packed needles and soft moss and old, old stone and startlingly prickly little sprouts and shrubs. The water left him by sight, but its sound stayed softly with him. The trees took away the sun, but left the afternoon light. The air smelled like growing things and moving water, and as he walked aimlessly down narrow trails made by repeated footsteps he saw and heard furtive and fleeting scurries, of small bugs and things with fur.

But the thing he saw didn’t have six legs or fur at all. It was small, and bipedal, and feathered, and had a keratinous beak and bright, beautiful big eyes in its skull. It was a dinosaur, of modest but not tiny size, and it was as curious to see him as he was it.

He looked at the dinosaur. It tilted its head to the side at an improbable speed to look at him too, and it made a small dinosaur sound. It was so close and didn’t seem to mind, and the thought then came too him that unlike anything he’d seen when he was small, he now had a camera in his pocket right there, so he took it out and took a picture, then another picture because his hand was shaking, then changed his brightness settings so the picture would be visible, then another picture because he’d missed the dinosaur and taken a picture of the tree behind it, than another picture because he’d been zoomed out too far, and then one more picture as the dinosaur hopped, skipped, and fluttered into the air and out through the branches and into the rest of its life.

The photos were quite blurry. Then he realized that he’d been so busy taking them t hat his memories were blurry too, so he’d have to treasure the moment as it had been. Thinking about how to do that or if he could do that or whether he’d ever done that made his stomach uneasy and his footsteps sluggish, and so after only a little ways farther he stopped, then he turned, then he left.

***

The sun was low and the sky was somewhere between purple and blue with all the beautiful of both and the sureness of neither. His legs were slow but his path was downhill and well-worn, and it took him down to a small stretch of beach with more sand than gravel and less gravel than stone and a circle of rocks that had plainly been selected with a lackadaisical if enthusiastic eye for shape and size. They were slightly smeared with carbon from use, and they were in use, and the little red flicks of fire were only just making their way out of the tinder and filling up the kindling, yet to set to work on the half-seasoned logs and big dead dried branches.

Around the sticks sat those stones, and around those stones sat people, on big logs and big rocks and at least one or two very old and sort of beaten to hell folding chairs that had clearly been designed for a flat porch or a lawn or at least a different beach, one with a parking lot. They were bent and warped and creaky and bad and that made them very good indeed, especially for slouching, and slouching was good for stories, which was what all the people were doing, in between laughing, and drinking from a cooler, and eating things from various bags. Someone had produced a guitar and was making suspicious motions that kept indicating singing might happen.

He sat down on a rock and listened, and he ate some chips from a bag. But they talked too quickly to each other about too many things he didn’t understand, and after eating too many slightly-dew-dampened chips he felt a little sick in his stomach, so he said goodbye to someone or anyone or nobody and he left.

***

After he left he went to the dock again, and he sat on it and watched the moon without looking at anything and waited for the stars without anticipation.

Sound came to him from over the water from everywhere, turning into nothing but calm. Branches and breezes and waves and a cautious owl feeling out the start of the evening for itself. Every breath tasted of water and plants and life. Every step rubbed against his bare feet, sent vibrations up his leg, curled into his spine and gave notice of where he was and what it was and none of it remained with him. He’d just sat down and already it was all something that had happened far and forever away.

Closing his eyes made it better, because he couldn’t see, and worse, because he could hear everything. When he did it hard enough he couldn’t think, but the things that troubled him were too simple and big to be thoughts.

The island was everything he’d ever wanted and he didn’t want anything else and he didn’t want it and so he waited there, his feet dangling just above the water, and did nothing, and thought of nothing useful in particular, and watched for someone to take him back again.

Greetings, most august and charitable readers, and a most enthusiastic welcome to the sixteenth column of our biannual series featuring the residents of Uncle Amblefaster’s Home for Unusual Beasts. Today we’ll be taking a look at our most famous resident, Krystalwing the Merciless.

Krystalwing seems to have come out of the egg with a somewhat rare recessive trait that left her upper thorax and main flight wings partially para-mineralized – and more rare still, the invasive mineral in question was adamant-232. This lucky set of advantages gave Krystalwing the edge she needed to survive her matriculating broodflight; when many of her slower siblings would’ve been caught and devoured by her mother; Krystalwing would’ve been a very unpalatable mouthful indeed. Unfortunately it also made her an obvious target in the wild and made camouflaging herself to hunt difficult, particularly from anything that can detect even basic levels of ambient riadioarcana. This made her both a visible target for faerie sport-hunters and relatively simple to capture alive due to long-term malnourishment.

Krystalwing spent the subsequent sixteen years of her juvenile instar in the care of the infamous Uncle Moonlovewingbranchdoveskystarmoontwilightshinemoon’s Mystical Beast Experience (which you may have heard of in recent documentaries). After the incident was over and the authorities came in to recapture the exhibits and arrest the surviving management, Krystalwing managed to slip the net and go ‘on the lam’ into the fertile and deeply-populated half-oxen valleys of the Barsoon Lowlands. Here she thrived for more than six years completely undetected by dint of consuming every single witness to her nocturnal predations on farms, ranches, and pastures, down to the last bone, thread of cloth, and drop of blood. Clever rascal!

At last Krystalwing was located when she ate a shepherd who was sufficiently stubborn and vengeful to leave a spectroplasmic entity, which haunted the roadside where he was consumed for six months until a passerby was able to alert nearby law enforcement. Their subsequent investigations and corresponding disappearance were made a matter of record, as were the animal control squad, the emergency riot team, and the first three military griffin-copters, and so after two and a half weeks of blood, death and fire Krystalwing was subdued with an ultracandescent hap-arctic missile to the jugular.

Adapting Krystalwing (who’d by then adjudicated to merit ‘merciless’ peerage after killing at least sixty different sapients without prejudice as to age, social status, or infirmity) to the new life afforded her at Uncle Amblefaster’s Home for Unusual Beasts was a bit of a challenge. For one thing, we only had a single ultramaximum-security enclosure available at the time, and it was occupied (see column 1: Qxxrjhjdsah the Barely-Containable), so suitable quarters would be costly due to both their necessary scope and the speed required. For another, her food requirements were unusual: due to the complex invasion of much of her digestive systems and upper book lungs by adamant supergeometrine masses (which began due to careless medical support by unlicensed handlers at Uncle Moonlovewingbranchdoveskystarmoontwilightshinemoon’s Mystical Beast Experience), Krystalwing now required flesh and blood from specifically sapient creatures to prevent much of her remaining body from fully transmutorphing into adamant and then rupturing with sufficient force to detonate every ley line and fairy circle in a million-cubit radius. This would not be an ideal outcome.

Initial care was provided by the kindly and motivated staff at Kercepholon’s Grasp leviathan-mending hospital, who provided the expertise needed to keep Krystalwing subdued in slumber and nourished on an intravenous diet of liquefied medical cadavers. Meanwhile, a state-of-the-art compound was created by a substantial charitable effort from Glormfoot Brobdingpants’ Extra-Large ‘Giant-Sized’ Constructions, which did necessitate Glormfoot himself working four sixteen-hour shifts in a row and the emptying of several quarries-worth of mettlemarble and aurichalcum for the fencing, substrate mesh, and ‘finite-sky’ aviary blindscape. Finally a sacrificial colony of mnenemical worm-people was installed in the location and given a careful selection of rich inner lives and subjective experiences to ingest and assume as their own so as to provide a suitably renewable, nourishing, and affordable faux-sapient food source.

Two years on and we’re proud to say that all the difficulties and hardships have been worth it: Krystalwing is as healthy and happy as she’s likely to ever be, although she will never be releasable due to her over-habituation in prior captivity and the strong likelihood of a class IIX Armageddon if she’s ever uncontrolled for more than sixty minutes. She will spend the rest of her four-kalpa lifespan in our care where she receives ample food, dedicated medical attention, and a safe home that can withstand the unnamed energies radiating from her every heartbeat.

I’m somewhat light on personal anecdotes involving Krystalwing myself, as I only began working with her last year after her principal caregiver quit to spend more time with his grandchildren. I can, however, confidently report that any rumours regarding her internal autocatalysis spinning up out of control are completely false. Instead it thrums steadily and smoothly, like a heartbeat. If Krystalwing the Merciless ever suffers a catastrophic humour imbalance that spins her and this entire care center into a catastrophic neogenesis – resetting the land itself back to the primordial youth of this plane, when matter was a suggestion and space a novelty –  it will definitely not be by happenstance.

She could almost certainly do it on purpose, mind you, but I doubt she will. She REALLY likes it when I give her backskritches.

It wasn’t two pm. Two pm was when the bottle under the desk came out, at least on Fridays. It was one forty-nine pm and there was one patient left and they were just leaving and Dr. Madeline Skoggard, PhD, was just about to take a ten minute break a bit early when the phone rang.

“It’s two pm,” she lied to the secretary.

“It’s urgent,” he said.

“I’M urgent.”
“Your mom’s urgent, pick up the damned phone. I already told her you’d talk to her.”
Madeline sighed out forty years of disappointment over three seconds – with a little rasp of phlegm for good measure – and picked up the phone. “Dr. Skoggard speaking,” spoke Dr. Skoggard.

“Oh thank you, listen, it’s Jean, Jean Lyman from down the way, and I’m really sorry to be bothering you, it’s just that there’s this thing, this thing that’s happened with Sara, and I’m not sure what’s wrong, but it’s very urgent, and I need to tell you, and”

“Breathe,” commanded Dr. Skoggard. And it was so.

“It’s Sara,” said Jean, having breathed. “She’s, she’s JUMPING everywhere. Constantly. And it’s getting worse. This morning she was jumping on her bed; by lunch she was jumping onto the kitchen counter; and I swear to god heart in hand doctor I phoned you because ten minutes ago my little Sara, aged nine and three-quarters, jumped onto our roof. Standing start. Standing start! And you KNOW we never tolerated pole vaulting in this house, so I don’t have the faintest idea where she’s gotten it from.”

“Oh,” said Dr. Skoggard. “Well, this is pretty straightforward. Your daughter’s got a case of video game.”
“A what?

“A case of video game. Classic platformer by the sound of it. These things are pretty mechanically straightforward and burn themselves out reasonably fast, and indirect transmission is very rare, particularly once symptoms emerge – she probably picked it up off a schoolfriend directly by handling an oily controller or something. Just keep her away from colourful mushrooms and jewelry so she doesn’t get any powerups and it should burn out overnight.”
“But what if she’s on the roof when it happens?”
“No, it’s a very gradual descent. She’ll be as good as new by tomorrow. Listen, you want something to do? Take some photos to embarrass her with later, okay? Family memories are priceless. Phone me back if anything other than what I’ve described happens, okay?”

“Okay. Thank you so much, it’s just that”

‘”Goodbye,” said Dr. Skoggard to the phone.

“Hello,” said Madeline to the bottle in the desk drawer.

And she gave herself an extra glass for being so damned professional.

***

“I packed your lunch,” said mom. She handed her a bag of snakes.

“Your hair is very pretty and Paul shouldn’t judge you like that,” they told her. Then they turned into an eagle and Madeline was flying away on it before her phone went off in her ear.

“Flrgr,” she answered.

“Oh thank GOD listen doctor I’m so so so so sorry, I just had to phone you, I know it’s only ten am on a Saturday but listen, it’s about Sara, it’s gotten worse, and gotten different, and gotten weird, and, and, and, and, and”
“Breathe,” commanded Dr. Skoggard.

“Oh right I’m so sorry I’m so”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” said Dr. Skoggard. “Now, what’s Sara doing?”
“I don’t know,” said Jean in tears. “She – she left the house this morning! She packed up every object in reach, put them in her pockets – I have NO idea how they all fit – looted all the drawers and cabinets, asked me the same six questions twice in a row, then walked next door and did it all again!”
“Uh,” said Dr. Skoggard. “Wait – did she pick up anything outside?”
“Half our herb garden, the neighbour’s prize begonia, and three interesting rocks,” said Jean. “Why?”
“She’s gathering materials. No need to worry, it seems my initial diagnosis was a little off, that’s all. She doesn’t have video game, she’s got video GAMES. Compulsive looting, checking for new dialogue, and hoarding of crafting materials are all classic triple-A open world rpg syndromes. Tell me, did you see her jump?”
“Only a little, and it seemed, well, normal height or so.”
“Yes, then her case is still progressing. This is rare, but not unheard of, and it should still run its course without treatment. Typically it’ll burn itself out inside a few hours before the patient even leaves their immediate starting position. Too many options, you see. When she gets bored she’ll come back home.”

“Oh so she’s safe?”
“Did she take some sort of ‘starting equipment’ with her?”
“I think she took one of the butter knives.”
“Yes, that’ll do nicely. She probably can’t kill anyone with it, so don’t worry. Goodnight.”
“It’s ten in the m-“

The dream did not come back.

***

This time the phone rang well after the bottle had come out. But it was a nicer bottle – Madeline kept the good stuff at home for easy-access – and so she was entirely at peace with her phone and the universe.

“Go,” she said.

“I’m sorry?” said Jean. This was funny. Jean wasn’t meant to be phoning her right now.
“Lemme hear it. You. It. You.” She giggled. “You’re it. Tag.”
“Well, I just wanted to thank you. For everything you helped with.”
“Right?”
“Yes. Sara’s been fine all day. Nothing unusual whatsoever.”

“Goooooood.”
“And as soon as I find this danged credit card, I’ll be sure –”

“Wha?”
“-to pay you back appropriately, I know I need better insurance but-”

“Hol’ up. Just lose. The card? Or a whole thing, a wallet. A purse.”
“Well, it must just be the card. My wallet hasn’t left my bedside table since this morning and the only ones home are me and Sara.”
Terrible doom seeped in through the warm runny edges of Madeline’s reality. “Jean,” she said carefully, “has Sara said anything about currency tonight? Deals? Bargains? Bonuses? Weekend sales?”
“Well, I thought she was talking about her math courses, but”

“CANCEL THE CARD!” screamed Madeline down the line, her lungs leaping into her mouth and mushing her tongue. “For the love of god; she isn’t in remission yet! She’s stillillil VIDEO GAMES she gachaing, she’ss full-goddamned-gachaing! Cancel the card ten minutes ago and then lock her indoors twenty! Don’t listen to anything she says or she’ll get you tooooo and then you’ll spend all your savings on premium royal crystals or some shit DO IT NOW NOW NOW NOW!”

“But!”
“FUCK!” shouted Madeline. Then she threw her phone in the sink with the dishes.

Then she regretted that.

***

This time the phone call came after three pm, which meant the bottle under the desk had just been and gone and Dr. Skoggard felt basically at peace and happy with the world even if it was a Monday, so she was happy even though it was –

“Jean again, sorry to bother you, but I wanted to thank you again, everything’s fine, it’s wonderful, Sara is back to normal.”
“Glad to hear it,” said Dr. Skoggard, who wasn’t technically lying because she was pretty glad about everything right now.

“No, not one thing! As a matter of fact, she hasn’t even looked at a screen once since this morning!”
“Wonderful,” said Dr. Skoggard with genuinely adequate enthusiasm.
“And she said she wanted to play board games! She was so excited; it was SO hard to ask her to wait until later. Such a sad little face!”

“Superb.”
“Why, she used to HATE Risk!”
“Excellewait sorry, what?”
“Risk. The board game? She used to HATE it, but I’ve never seen her so fixated on something as she was that little world map. Wants to invade Australia, I expect!”
Madeline considered the window. She considered on whether cardboard was too big a leap for a virus to make from silicon. Surely if this had happened before someone would have written about it. Surely.

“Doctor?”
Madeline considered the horizon. Was that a siren, drifting from just over it? How far was the nearest air force base? Was that red natural? Was that glint of sunlight manmade? Was she being paranoid.

“Doctor?”

How far away were they from the nearest army bases? Air force installations? Missile silos.

“Doctor? Is everything okay?
“If it isn’t, it’s not your problem,” said Madeline. “Gotta go, bye.”

Then she finished the bottle. Because why not, if it’s Monday?

Gail finished Tuesday at around ten PM. This was a greater achievement than it sounded, mostly because halfway through it had turned into Thursday, then Monday.

She surveyed her apartment, considered her fridge, turned her head to the stove, then the sink full of the morning’s dishes and last night’s dishes and last morning’s dishes.

“Fuck all of this,” she mumbled, and she took an anonymous frozen lump from the freezer and was just about to feed it into the microwave when sixteen very large police piled through her door and fanned out tactically through the apartment shouting “CLEAR” and shooting her neighbour’s dog.

“You have failed to appreciate the value of food,” said the largest of the police, putting a handcuff on each of her wrists and two on their own out of sheer overexcitement. “You are hereby sentenced to snaxecution!”
“Do I get a trial?” asked Gail. Her neighbour’s dog was still barking, and therefore still being shot.

“Trials are for people that don’t need to be snaxecuted,” said the largest of the police, cuffing Gail’s microwave. “Now start perp walkin’ or get perp dragged.”
Gail walked.

***

The waiting room was mechanical and round and filled with round mechanisms. Strange acidic smells eeled through the air. Two hours in, Gail asked for water.

“No water for you,” said the largest of the police. “Only colours. You want blue, green, red, or purple?”
“Blue,” said Gail. She got a bottle with blue in it, which tasted like blue. The big metal doors on the far side of the chamber slammed open when she was trying to swallow and she inhaled blue until the largest of the police held her upside down by the ankles and shook the blue out of her. Upside down, light-headed, she saw a wretched husk of a crumpled figure being wheeled away in a gurney.

“You’re next,” said a serious man in a serious jacket with a serious mouth. He looked like someone had replaced his head with a mailbox and put NO FLYERS above his eyebrows.

“Can I finish my blue?” managed Gail eventually, after the largest of the police remembered to put her back down.

“You won’t need to,” said the serious man.

So they took her through the big metal doors and put her on a sofa and put a bowl of Cheetos in front of one hand and a bowl of chips in front of the other.

“Choose,” said the serious man.

“What flavour are the chips?” asked Gail.

“Salt and vinegar.”

Gail picked up a chip.

“Trick question!” shouted the largest of the police. “You get both!”
“Shut up,” said the serious man, seriously.

“Sorry. I get excited.”
“You get both,” said the serious man, to Gail. “It was a trick question. Now watch this.”
The serious man turned on a screen and filled it with a deeply inadequate Netflix original.
“It was cancelled on a cliffhanger due to poor viewership,” he explained. “Goodbye.”
Then he dragged the largest of the police out by their ear and left Gail alone.

There were no windows. The door was locked. There were no controls for the screen.

So Gail watched, and as she watched, she ate.

***

The serious man came back after an unbearable amount of time with more bowls and a tub of ice cream and a terrible, terrible threat.

“Would you like to watch the last five episodes of the series you just watched, OR see three made-for-tv movies recorded before 2008, determined at random?” he asked, consulting a tablet.

“Bwuh,” said Gail.

“That was a trick question,” said the serious man. “You will watch both. This bowl has party mix made of adequate cheese puffs, terrible pretzels, crappy corn chips, and excellent tortillas. This other bowl has popcorn with too much cheese powder. This ice cream isn’t a flavour that actually exists but it doesn’t taste like anything you want right now. Goodbye.”
Gail felt very strongly that she was meant to feel very strongly about this situation, but she was full of congealed sodium food colouring, and grease and it filled her throat like old dirty socks. Instead she croaked, and coughed, and watched.

***

The next visit brought two more choices: a procedurally-generated playlist of youtubers reacting to videos of youtubers reacting or a video documentary on why the earth was definitely flat; and a 24-pack of expiration-discounted store-brand half-stale cinnamon buns or a previously-opened plastic vegetable tray with half-eaten ranch dip that had a soft carrot lodged in it.

“These are both trick questions and you will receive both of them,” explained the serious man. “In addition, you will also experience an internet outage sometime in the next hour. It will last between twenty and twenty thousand minutes. Have this pack of mint gum.”

“No,” managed Gail. The serious man ignored her.

***

“Now you will watch this livestream of a room full of puppies. The puppies are all asleep and one of them knocked the camera around to face the wall. There are six people in the chat and none of them like each other. There is no moderator. Here is a full Halloween-sized bag of gummi worms.”

***

“This Korean drama is subtitled until the last two episodes. Take this bag of stale mini marshmallows.”

***

“This is a recording of someone’s wedding. There are six more after this. None of them are edited. Here’s a store-brand cake that someone ate half of, asymmetrically, without using a knife.”

***

“This is just TikTok. And here’s something that’s legally not a box full of pizza pockets. They are still frozen.”

***

“Can I leave?” managed Gail. It had taken her several trillion years to make this thought, and it arrived frail and flat and already-defeated.

“Anytime you want,” said the serious man. “Let me unlock the door for you.”

Gail stood up and felt like she could never do that or walk or move or think ever again.

“Really?” she asked, because she wanted to be disappointed.

“Really,” said the serious man. “But just do you know, you’re not done.”
“What?”
“This will happen to you once or twice a weekish for the entire rest of your foreseeable life,” said the serious man. “Snaxecution is not a procedure. It is a practice. And once you’re checked in, you can never check out.”

***

Gail went home.

She surveyed her apartment, whose door was still hanging on a thread from a boot, whose neighbour’s dog was still yapping angrily about having been shot, whose fridge was still judgemental, whose microwave still tempted, whose sink was still full of dishes.

She had no idea what day of the week it was and wasn’t sure if any of them could possibly be told apart.

There was just one question left. One thing to consider. One obstacle between her and bed.

Dinner.

“I’m ordering pizza,” she said.

Because of course that had always been a trick question.