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“Come forth, foul dragon!”

The call is bold as brass, as audacious as a sudden sunrise, pure and sweet as a morning trumpet and I know it’s THAT time of week already. 

So I sigh, and I slither, and I coil and eel all two and a half leagues of myself throughout my caverns into a semblance of a slothful slug’s-worth of posture and sally forth to the mouth of the cave. 

“Tarry not here,” I bellow.  “This doth be mine domain, man of soft flesh and frail bone.  Begone and keep thy life,” I add, and that’s surely done it because suggesting they might value their lives at all is like a red flag to these jokers.  Don’t they have any speck of gratitude for all the trouble their mothers went to make them?

“Come forth, foul beast,” he cries, predictable as the turn of the seasons, and I sigh and I belch venomous flame down the entire hillside, scorching it to the bare earth.  Again.  Then I heave myself upright and squint down it, looking for the horse.  I like horses.  They’re good snacks, and this one’s well-trained – see it trembling there, tied to the distant tree on the moor I keep precisely for that purpose. 

I squirm out of the cave mouth, take three long writhing heaves, and am struck by a sudden pain in my rightmost heart, which is coming from the sword that’s lodged in it. 

“Got you, fiend!” cheers the small armour-covered human from somewhere beneath me, hidden in a little foxhole among the network of trenches and gutters criss-crossing the dead soil, which I now realize are filling up with an awful lot of my blood. 

Oh.  He was one of THOSE kind of heroes. 

Christ, what an asshole. 

***

I jolt out of my geography slumber at a godawful shriek, sitting bolt upright so fast that the page I’d drooled over sticks to my face and comes ripping right out of the book, ruining the work and effort of hours of careful transcription from some long-dead monk. 

“Oh DARN,” I swear carefully, employing the strongest language a lady may be expected to keep.  I’m going to get lectured on this for HOURS, and etiquette is already my least favourite class.  But that’s not my only problem – there’s footprints coming, pit-a-pat-pit-a-pat-pit-a-pat, and a big armoured man bursts into my stone cavern, covered in blood and reeking of poison and soot. 

“What ho, fair maiden!” he hollers directly into my face.  “I hath saved thee from thy doom, gadzooks and zounds!  Behold the proof!  Mine sword hath tasted a dragon’s heart, and now it speaks!”
“Hey nice to meetcha.”
“By my TROTH his tongue be as ill-mannered as a hound’s, ‘tis true.  And now we ride for your home and your father!”
“I’m not really sure I’m allowed to leave,” I manage, leaning a little farther back from the enormous blade he’s waving around excitedly.  “You should probably ask my tutor first-”

“Harken and heed, half the kingdom and your hand be my price for the deed, so needs must apace ‘fore the day grows long in the tooth,” he exclaims, grabbing my arm in one hand without asking and towing me apace through the entire cave complex.  The sunlight hurts my eyes.  “To your noble sire we doth return – we ride forth now!”

“How?” I ask. 

The knight stares down the hillside.  At its base, the dragon lies groaning atop the splintered remains of what was probably the only tree for miles.  A single sad hoof juts from underneath its belly. 

“We march forth now,” he admits. 

Christ, what an asshole. 

***

“The princess has returned!” comes the call from the town.

“The princess has returned!” comes the call from the towers.

“The princess has returned!” comes the call from my gate and wouldn’t you know it, right in the middle of court.

“We’ll pick this up later,” I sigh, and the last courtier is barely risen from the seat before the door is slammed open and in comes the smelliest thing I’ve ever seen on two legs, and I’ve observed chickens. 

“What ho!” it hollers, and oh no it’s HIM, helmet in one hand, towing my daughter in the other.  Her expression is my thoughts exactly.  “Mine adventure is successful, mine quest doth be complete!  Your fair eldest daughter is returned from the scaly clutches of that reptilian devil, and mine honour is swollen righteously with nobility and valor!  Praise me with great praise!”

“Did you kill the dragon?” I demand.

“What ho?”
“Did you kill it.”
“Mine sword did taste its heart,” he says, and unsheathes that giant meat-cleaver of his with little a care in the world.  “Now it speaks the tongue of man!  Observe!”
“Hello there, my lord,” proclaims the blade. 

“Have you been talking to this sword?” I ask my daughter, who’s wandered casually as far away from the knight as is polite when you’re one of three people in the summer court.

“There wasn’t much else in the way of company, dad,” she says.  “And I needed the etiquette practice.”

“Yes you do, clearly, since it’s much more mannered than you are.”
“What ho?” says the knight again, and my headache finally bursts. 

“You IDIOT.  You’ve gone and rescued my daughter from her education, horribly wounded her tutor – who has TWO hearts, by the way, and I sincerely bless your lack of brains and dedication in missing that detail – and put my deniable violent-adventuring-moron disposal out of commission!”

“Err.  Half the kingdom?  The maiden’s hand?”
“Megan?” I ask.

She gives him her hand, backside-first. 

“Zounds!  Ow.”
“I wouldn’t give you half the PRIVY.  You’re lucky I don’t call for the executioner right this second.  As it is, I’m going to give you a choice: you can lose your head, or you can undertake a somewhat different quest for me.  And this time I’ll be very, very, very upset if you DON’T do it properly, understand?”

His lip is trembling.  

Christ, what an asshole. 

***

“He’s coming,” my sword announces.  

“Shh!”

“Posture check.  Slump more.  Lean into the wound.  Go on.  You’ve taken a mortal dose of poison  to the face; look more sunken in the cheeks.  Did you smear soot all over your visor?  Your chest?  Your-?”

“Shh!”
“Hark!  A fellow knight!” booms out in greeting, and indeed it is another of my order, a man broad in shoulder and fierce in spirit, with blade in one hand and shield in the other and discipline and grace in both.  “And one laid low!  What has done this to thee, mine brother?”
“The dragon,” I wheeze out from trembling lips.  “The serpent’s doom has doomed me, though I brought it to its last breath ‘fore it took mine.  It groans its last farther in.  You must… the princess.”
“Say no more, noble friend,” he solemnly intones, slamming a fist to his breast.  “I will avenge thee with the beast’s death, and also name my half of the kingdom after thee.  What is thy name, fallen friend?”

“Asuckersayswhat,” provides my sword.

The knight stares at the blade in my hand.  “What?” he asks, and in that moment of complex thought – perhaps the first he’s had in many years, if he’s anything like I was six months ago – I put it through his visor. 

“Good job,” says my sword.  “Now remember to dispose of this one PROPERLY.  You left it near the river last time, and that’s no way to treat your drinking water.”
“Shh,” I repeat, fruitlessly.  There’s no way to silence a tool your job relies upon.  “Shh.”
“Shh yourself.  He left his horse down around the hillside, I can smell it; we’ll have to make a second trip.  Chop chop now – geography class is done in an hour, and after that’s etiquette.  I want to sit in on that again, I think I’m getting the hang of it.  No no, lift with your legs, not your back – do you WANT to pull something?”

I drag away the body of my brother in arms, as behind me the faint echoes of sinister reptilian whispers mutter on hydrography and erosion.  The betrayal weighs heavy on my mind even after a dozen times, though I find the physical mass of this particular brother in arms weighs heavier still.  He could’ve stood to skip more meals. 

Christ, I’m an asshole. 

The phone rang while Marley was in the shower, and it was a relief.  She’d been unable to sleep until past four in the morning, woken up twice before oversleeping, and run out of cereal.  Now that she was fumbling her way out of the nice warm water into the freezing air of the bathroom and dripping all over everywhere things couldn’t get much worse, so the rest of the day had to be pretty good. 

“Marley,” she said cheerfully. 

“Hello there, it’s your aunt Tina.  The peter piper pepper pickers are percolating puppies.”

Marley felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.  “And the kittens are kleaning Kleenex?” she inquired. 

“The dogs are dancing dachshunds in Deutschland.”

“Is the cleaner clapping clutches of the cargo coops?”
“Baseball bats are breaking beef bat batches.”

“SHIT!” said Marley, and hung up.  Her worst fears had been confirmed: she’d have to come in to work today.

That was the problem with working for the Department of Prognostication: your work was so secret that even you never knew what would happen next.

***

Work was a hundred meters underneath a mountain after passing through six separate false entrances inside what looked like an abandoned and triple-condemned mineshaft, each of which was set to collapse and murder you if you put your foot in the wrong place.  It used to be seven but Hodges had forgotten to zig instead of zag a few years back. 

Past the sixth false entrance was a little keypad, which Marley pushed four buttons on to deactivate and then flipped up to reveal the REAL keypad, which needed twenty-six digits forwards and backwards.  At the end of all this the door to work opened up and she went through it and immediately had coffee spilled on her.

“JESUS.”
“Sorry, sorry, shit, sorry, sorry, shit,” said Bruce, as he haplessly watched her wipe scalding caffeine off her arm.  “We’re all a bit nervous right now.”
“And I’m sure cup number six there is helping with that?”
“Eleven.  Things are BAD.”
Marley spoke one of the four forbidden swears.  The air shivered. 

“And now I’m gonna have to report that!”
“Sorry.  They slip out.”
Bruce emitted a kettlelike whine and Marley knew there’d be no speaking to him for the rest of the morning so she left it at that and proceeded into the high security area past the cyberbotomied loborgs. 

High security was a different world.  The walls were bare stone and carefully etched with little things that weren’t words, traced in secretions.  The guards here were blind deaf-mutes who navigated by smell and nodded politely to her as she proceeded past them all into the very depths of the place, past two more secret doors and a deathtrap.

Under the deathtrap was Cell One.  She walked into it, beheld the deep-fields with their careful mushroom farms, breathed deep the fetid air of the sprawling church-settlement, and was barely missed by a hammer. 

“JESUS AGAIN.”

“Hello and good fortune,” said the woman with the hammer, who was a web of crude casts and crooked bones.  “Would you please step aside?  I am trying to break the wall you came through.”

“Escape attempts are prohibited in your contract,” said Marley, seeking comfort in bureaucracy.

“Yes, but there’s nothing wrong with breaking the wall WITHOUT escaping.  One grows hungry for more, you know.  Always more to know from the insides that the outsides keep hidden away.”
“You almost hit me!”
“And that would’ve been very tragic!  Believe me, I’ve broke into enough human insides to see all there is; nothing new would be learned in the slightest.  What good is a breaking without newness to bring?  The candle of the shatterer must be ever-hungry for fresh ruins, for in those remains may be found-”

“I’ve been told you have something to prognosticate,” said Marley, who’d never been much good at dealing with Jehovah’s Witnesses either.

“Oh, yes.  Yes indeed.  We broke open the ceiling and it shattered inwards and broke open all of dorm sixteen, and in the fractures we found something most interesting.  Doom!  Great and powerful and all-encompassing!  Inescapable!  All-encompassing!  The likes of which have not been seen in millions of years!  Why, its cracks run through every crook and cranny of what is to come: not one living thing on this globe will be spared the force of its destruction!  Am I drooling?  You’re giving me that look.”
“Yes.”
The woman with the hammer wiped her mouth.  “Sorry.  But my, the DOOM!  Such a fine doom!  Never heard tell of its like.  It’ll crack the whole WORLD open and spill its knowledge out into every waiting palm.  We’ll all be dead, but we’ll die enlightened as nobody has ever been.  Would you like to know more?  We can start with just a single metatarsal and it’ll all be so much clearer to you, and-”

“Thank you, goodbye,” said Marley, and she locked the door a little faster than necessary. 

“Sorry about your shirt!” called the woman as the seal kicked in. 

***

Cell Two was on another level, past the snakepits and through the caltrops and the deadly mirrorballs whose light brought blindness and sickness and deathness.  Marley could walk it with her eyes shut, which she did out of necessity. 

“Goodbye,” said the man waiting for her inside the door.  His voice was a little muffled due to him wearing his long, tattered set of hooded robes entirely backwards, and facing away from her.  The room he was in was very small, very tidy, and entirely made of simple mirrors.  Opening your eyes was a nice way to nauseate yourself fatally.  They’d lost more than one careless janitor that way. 

“Hello,” said Marley.

“This is incorrect,” said the man.  “I am Hindsight.  You are Marley.   Goodbye to you.”

“I was told you have something to prognosticate,” said Marley, not bothering to hide her irritation. 

“We prognosticate nothing, merely look back upon the inevitable,” said Hindsight with the obnoxious placidity of a lapdog on a pillow. 

“Right.  Yes.  Okay.  What’s inevitable?”
“Everything that has been.”
“What.  Have you.  Learned.”
“Doom.  Its arrival was to be, and its arrival has passed, and it is already upon us.  There can be no stopping it for it is already here and has been for much time.”
“That isn’t helpful.”
“There is nothing to help.  The stakes were set long ago and given up well before our time.  Watch it and you watch what has come before.”

“A little proof you’ve done anything at all might be appreciated.”

A hand was waved, and not for the first time Marley noticed that the palm seemed to be on backwards.  “Your arm was stained and this endorses our accuracy.  We can see its cause by this effect.”
“Predicting things that have already happened isn’t prophecy,” said Marley, who’d thought this many times but not been cross enough to say it aloud.

Hindsight shrugged.  “Who cares about what might happen?  More things have been than will be, and what has, will be.  Or, as you’ve said someone has spoken, ‘those who forget the past are condemned.’”
“’To repeat it.’”

“I spoke correctly and fully.”

Marley wished she could slam the door in his face, but settled for the back of his head.

“Hello,” he called after her affably.  “Hello, hello.”

***

There was no door to Cell Three.  Its inhabitants didn’t believe in them.  Instead a small section of the otherwise solid stone wall was sealed with cheap unpainted drywall, which Marley broke through using the handily provided sledgehammer. 

“So,” she said to the box in the middle of the room.  “You’ve had some prophecies.”
“Yes,” said the box.  It was four feet tall and not very wide.  There was a window filled with unpleasantly sharp barbed wire.  “I looked Inside and saw.”
“Please describe them to me.”
The padlocks festooning the box shook in ecstasy.  “Inside there is disaster already arisen and the shackles are on every neck and in every mind and in every pocket and in every gas tank.  The doom came from within and it ensnared from within and soon we will all be trapped together, gloriously trapped, tied in our carbon chains to a writhing, steaming atmosphere that heaves and pants for air as we all roast in our planetary cell.  This is already here, Inside.”

Marley looked up from taking notes.  “I’m sorry…the doom you forecast is anthropogenic climate change?”
“Not ‘fore.’  Foundcast.  It is with us Inside.”

“Oh.”  She chewed on a nail.  “And the odds that one of the others were prophesizing something different are…”

“Not.”

“Oh.”

“Please reseal me properly next time.  I could feel a draft from….out there.  And take care of that shirt.  It needs to be part of you.”

Marley put up fresh drywall as carefully as she could when she left.  She needed the time to think. 

***

“Report’s done,” she told Bruce tiredly as she got out of the industrial shower.  “Pass it along.”

“Sure thing.  Was it good?”

“You know I’m not allowed to tell you that.”
“All good, just joshin’ yo-“

“And no, it wasn’t.  Just the same old crap.  And you’d better pay me for a new shirt.”

“Right.  Right!  Keep on keeping on, eh?”
Bruce fidgeted with a stapler until about ten minutes after Marley had left, then sighed a long slow wheeze as he fed the report into a fax, which would be picked up in a dropbox in a condemned building. 

That was the trouble with working in the Department of Prognostication: your work was so secret nobody really cared about it. 

The woods were dark at night, but daytime was no slouch either.  There was enough timber between the children and the sun to build a spruce goose ten times over and have leftovers for a good midsummer bonfire. 

“I’m hungry,” said Henry.

“I’m tired,” said Gertie. 

“I’m cold,” said Henry. 

“We’re both cold.”
“And hungry.”
“You already said hungry.”
“Well it’s worth saying twice.”
Gertie could not argue with that, for she had not the energy to spare.  As a matter of fact she had so little energy to spare that she took a root to the toe and fell down and just kept falling, down a slope and over some more (very bumpy) roots and down a small hillock and into a clearing with sun so bright that she squinted and couldn’t have seen which way was up even if she hadn’t just taken a forest to the cranium. 

“Gertie?” called Henry. 

“Guh,” she replied. 

“Gertie, Gertie sister, are you alright?” her brother inquired anxiously as he slid down to her side. 
“I smell bread,” she said faintly.  “That’s a stroke, right?”
“No, I think it’s typhoid,” said Henry.  “Can you feel your arm?  I think your arm hurts when you have a stroke.”
“My arm is fine,” said Gertie, wincing her way upright.  “But I’m seeing a cottage made of baked bread, so that’s not good.”

“Oh no,” said Henry.  “So am I.  Well at least we’re going mad together.”
“Yes,” said Gertie.  “Let’s go mad together with some of that cottage in our stomachs too.”
So they did, handful by delicious handful, dug out with speed that only increased as the nourishing crumbs made their way down from mouth to stomachs that had only taken in stream-water and a few berries, and once they started they couldn’t stop. 

“A bit plain,” said Gertie, chewing carefully.

“A bit crunchy,” said Henry, flicking a flax seed loose from his incisors.

“A bit cheeky,” said the witch, “to go chewing up someone’s doorframe without so much as a word of ‘please.’”

She was most definitely a witch, crone from curly boot-toe and bandy legs to tattered head-shawl and snaggled teeth.  In one hand she held a frog, in the other she held a broom that still smelled of ozone and clouds.  Her eyes were fiercely young for her wrinkled face and her hands were clawed and powerful. 

“Sorry?” tried Henry.

“May we?” offered Gertie.  “We haven’t eaten in days.”

The witch shook her head slowly, tiny bones in her hair clattering like windchimes in a hurricane.  “No, no, no.  You’re doing this all wrong.  My twelve-grain cottage provides many essential nutrients, but you’ll need some protein too.  I’ve butter inside, that’ll help.  And for pity’s sake get some water in you too: the well’s out back and unlike whatever cholera-laden pond you may have found in your wanderings I can promise it’s clear and clean.  Stretch out on the lawn for a minute; I’ll bring out some blankets.”

And so Henry and Gertie spent some time in the woods being looked after while the witch called child support to investigate their stepmother and father. 

In the meantime, she had other projects. 

***

The nearby pond was not fit for drinking water.  Henry and Gertie had been most thoroughly warned off from it many times during their few weeks at the twelve-grain cottage. 

It was, however, rich in many other virtues.  Chief among them were frogs.

“Mine’s biggest,” said Henry.  

“Shh,” said Gertie, who was up to her ankles and poised with a pure and powerful focus that would have made a heron gawp. 

“Hey are you looking?” said Henry, waving his frog.  It blinked with the amphibian lack of fear and forethought typical of its clan. 

“Shhh,” hissed Gertie, snakelike, one hand poised like the viper’s very tooth. 

“You aren’t looking,” said Henry, and threw his frog to her, which she caught with her face. Much water and turmoil followed. 

“You weren’t looking,” Henry defended himself with as they toweled themselves. 

“You weren’t listening,” said Gertie.  “I said ‘shh’ and then ‘shhh’ and you didn’t listen.”
“Have you found it?” asked the witch. 

“This is the biggest frog in the pond!” said Henry, presenting his (recaptured, somewhat ruffled) frog proudly. 
“I saw a bigger one,” said Gertie.  “He screwed it up, though.”
“It wasn’t bigger.  That was just the water.  It was doing refrection.”
“Refraction, Henry,” said the witch.
“Yeah.”
“It looked bigger,” said Gertie, but there was a hint of hesitation in her voice.  “I mean, I think it did.  Sort of.”
“Biggest frog in the pond,” said Henry triumphantly.

“Fine.  Whatever.”
The witch (who was an only child) looked between them.  “Are you both sure?”
“Yeah!”
“Okay.”
“All right then.  Now, watch carefully.”
And the witch put the frog in her cauldron and snapped her fingers and clicked her heels and clucked her tongue and squinted her youthful eyes into the brew. 

“Too much widdershins,” she muttered.  “Can you two whistle three times and dance a little?”
“What kind of dance?”
“Oh, anything will do.”
Gertie did the hokey pokey.  Henry did the Macarena.  The witch reached into the cauldron and felt around. 

“Aha!” she exclaimed in triumph, and then extracted a slightly larger frog.  “Oho?  Uhm.”

“You said it would be a prince,” said Gertie.

“Maybe it was the Hokey Pokey,” suggested Henry.  “That’s not a real dance.”
“And this wasn’t the real biggest frog.  I told you it wasn’t.”
“Jerk.”
“Moron.”
“Children, please,” said the witch.

“Twit.”

“Dolt.”
“Children, PLEASE,” said the witch, clasping both hands over the frog. 

“Dumbass!”
“Shit-for-brains!”

“Children, please please PLEASE step outside for a moment,” said the witch, whose hands were now shining through with an eerie translucent glow that made their teeth ache.  “I think he’s going supercritical.  Jump in the well and use the water as a shield for a little until I say it’s safe, alright?  You can breathe through reeds.”

The two children did as they were told; although Henry did get made fun of by Gertie for how much shorter his reed was than her reed and that he would turn into a frog because of it.   When the witch finally called them back in there was still no prince, but the slightly larger frog had become dog-sized. 

“He’s stable now,” said the witch, “but I don’t think we can release him back into the pond.  You two okay with keeping track of him?”
The frog attempted to eat Henry’s foot.

“I love him,” said Gertie. 

And so it was.

***

Henry and Gertie had never been to a real castle before.  Of course, they’d never lived with a witch before either, but this was almost as interesting.  They’d never seen so many crenellations.  Or a princess, for that matter. 

“Now Henry, you can only help with this if you do exactly as I say, alright?” said the witch. 
Henry nodded. 

“Good boy.  Now, pass me the tincture.”
Henry passed the witch the little jar of tincture, a single tiny drop of which made the princess’s leg as soft and woolly and fuzzy-feeling as a sheep.

“Now pass me the scissors.”

Henry passed the witch her shears, which gently slid through the flesh of the princess without spilling a drop of blood.

“Now pass me my awl.”
Henry passed the witch her awl, which bored a neat little hole into the marrow of the princess’s leg.
“Now pass me the grub.”
Henry passed the witch her little bone-grub, which would crawl inside the leg and eat away all the foulness and leave the healthy marrow and let the princess’s blood run sweet and clear again.”
“Now pass me my thread and needle.”
Henry picked up the thread and picked up the needle and pricked his finger and then fell asleep.  He woke up to a noseful of smelling salts and a lot of sneezing.

“Sorry, Henry – I meant the OTHER needle.  That one’s a sedative,” said the witch sheepishly. 

“Actually, do you have a spare?” asked the princess, who had been taking notes on her operation.  “I’ve had awful insomnia for years.”
“Not this one; it’s too powerful,” said the witch.  “But do you have anything to hand?  I could whip up a little overnighter.”

And so it was that the princess’s sewing machine was bewitched and every evening she pricked her finger upon it and she and the whole castle had a nice refreshing eight hours of deep comfortable sleep with gentle dreams. 

Henry was smug about helping with it, but Gertie was not to be taunted.  She’d had the best time of her life counting battlements. 

***

Gertie opened the door and met the mob. 
“Hello,” she said to the mob. 

“Hello,” said the mob.  They were wielding torches.  Someone had rigged up a little model of a witch and was waving it around on a stick.  “Is the witch home?  We’ve got a bonfire rigged up.”
“Let me ask,” said Gertie.  And she shut the door bit her knuckles a little and then went off to find the witch. 

“Oh yes,” she said, putting down the loaf of twelve-grain bread that Henry had (mostly) not burned at all.  “It’s about that time of year.  Well, let’s get a move on.  You don’t want to feel left out, do you?”

So Henry and Gertie had a lovely midsummer bonfire with marshmallows and suspicious meat products in buns and lots and lots of cold cider.  The witch did the fireworks.  And if nobody involved lived happily EVER after, they at least spent most of their time pretty cheerful and content, which is good enough for anybody. 

Dawn was behind him, coffee was in front of him, the shadows were slowly shrinking from the street and the blood under his nails had finally washed out. 

And then everything was ruined when someone walked into the building. 

“Hey there, Trevor!” said Steven Beecher, or at least the bright shiny smile attached to Steven Beecher’s face that he’d appointed to do all the talking for him. 
“Hello,” said Trevor, and he meant it, but mostly the first syllable. 

“Boy, it’s a cold one out there, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Trevor, who’d spent half an hour unloading a truck in it, after spending half an hour shovelling out the truck in the first place. 
“Gosh!  Geez.  Good thing you’ve got the new hire to help out, eh?  Anyways I was just getting up for a nice Saturday breakfast and hahahaha would you look at me silly clunch I am I didn’t have anything for the eggs and toast and I was wondering if-”

Trevor hefted up a nice big pack of bacon.

“Oh there you have it, got it before I even ask for it!  Thank you!  Oh, and it’s nice and streaky too.”
“Had to trim a lot of fat from it,” grumbled Trevor. 

“Ah, that’s no great problem – heck, I’d take more if you’d left it on.  Nothing wrong with a bit of fat, as long as it isn’t where you sit eh hahahahaha?”

“Haha,” said Trevor. 

“Haha!”
“Haha.”
“Hah!” concluded Steven, and he paid his money and walked out the door and left Trevor to do more of the real work, which he was grateful for because his cleaver hand was itchy. 

***

The coffee was gone too soon, as it always was, and soon Trevor was busy skinning, jointing, gutting, chopping, and – when there was nothing better to do (which wasn’t often, mercifully, given the size of this particular carcass) – measuring and weighing and labelling. 

It always made his fingers itch.  He preferred to work with his hands, and he preferred those hands be dismantling something.  It was soothing. 

What WASN’T soothing was the doorbell.  He had thought to change that for something less jarring, but then the first thing to disturb him would be a customer loudly clearing their throat at the counter like this one was, and that was an even worse shock to the system. 

“Hexcuse me,” harrumphed the customer in question, and oh no, oh dear, it was far too damned early in the day to deal with Esmeralda, both for Trevor’s sanity and for the universe.  Why was she out of her home before noon?  “There happens to be a paying customher heah.”
Trevor grunted, which must have come out servile enough because she didn’t comment.

“Two prime rib steaks, if you hwould be so kind.”
And as luck would have it, those had been the last two things he’d removed, fresh and red and beautiful, shining from their fleshy prison.  He gave them a wipe and a weigh and a wrapping of brown paper that hid all their glory from the world, and then they were handed over into the care of Mrs. Esmeralda Platterton, who held them as if they were raw roadkill. 

“Perhaps, if one might give a hword of hadvice, you might consider hasking your staff to hassist you by minding the front counter.  Good day,” she said in the least sincere voice imaginable, and then she was gone.

And those had been the only good steaks he’d gotten from that damned animal too. 

***

Lunch was cold and clammy and hauntingly immobile and halfway through it Trevor was interrupted by Matthew Gunderson and his sixteen thousand pictures of his grandson, Stewie, who was staying with them while his parents were out doing something Trevor wasn’t interested in.

“-And here’s Stewie coming off the bus, and getting on the bus – oh sorry, those two were backwards – and here he is eating dinner, and oh right I was going to get some dinner for him.  Do you have something for that?”

“What do you want?” said Trevor, and if they were the first words he’d managed in twenty minutes they probably should’ve come out more practiced and less like a bear growling. 

“Oh, I’m not really sure, you know.  Maybe some liver?  It’d be good for Stewie.  Or no, we should really get tongue; he likes it in his sandwiches.  Or a steak – no, too pricey; he’ll make a fuss.  I haven’t done kidney pie in a while but-”

“A bit of everything,” said Trevor rudely, and dumped some sausages on the scale in front of them. 

“Oh yes!  How clever!  My, you always were the smartest boy in town, weren’t you?  Yes, a bit of everything.  My word, Stewie’ll like that.  A good chuckle!  Thank you, thank you!  Have a nice day!”
Trevor bit through his tongue and managed something that sounded like ‘you’re welcome’ and then put away his knife before it went somewhere impolite again. 

***

Scarce three minutes afterwards the door rang while Trevor was packaging up the last of the soup bones.  He looked up and for the first time that day he didn’t feel his lips want to roll back over his teeth.  Trevor didn’t mind Shannon nearly as much as some of his other customers, even if she made him nervous now and then.  Her eyes moved like flies, and her brain was like a quick cold chisel. 
“Saw Gunderson walk away with a bagful and it looked like he was happy,” she explained.  “Fresh meat on the weekend?  Lucky, lucky, lucky.  Got any chops left?”

“One or two,” he said.  “A bit too much fat.”
“I can deal.  I know you’re a perfectionist, but man, trust people when they tell you that’s no great crime.  And I won’t look a gift butchering in the mouth.”
Trevor grunted agreement in a way that was sincere and pulled out his brown paper and string.  As he worked she looked around the shop with that quick, critical gaze of hers. “Where’s your help?”
“My what?”
“Your help, the guy who started last week.  Big hefty lad, but I’d reckon some of that would turn to muscle if he kept at it, eh?”

She was probably right, if Trevor was any judge of meat and bone.  “Gone for good.”
“What?  He’s quit already?  When’d he leave?”
“Just missed him.”
“Wow, quit already, huh?  And here I thought you’d have finally found someone that could make the cut.  You can’t find good help anywhere these days, can you?”
Trevor shrugged.  “If you work at it hard enough, I think just about everyone’s got something useful in them.”

***

Except for the soup bones.  Nobody bought the damned things, even as dog treats. 

Hold up, hold on, give me a second!  Wait up!  Stop, drop, and listen!  You’ve got to listen to me, you just GOTTA.  You’ve got to listen to my idea for a video game!

Okay, so the thing about this game is, it’s a role-playing-game.  It’s fully immersive, and it’s really comprehensive, and it’s happening at this moment, this very moment.  You roll your start randomly, and everything you do determines what happens next.  There is so much RNG and so many huge overarching factors but the moment to moment decision-making is always down to you, and the stats are so complex they’re impossible to figure out, and and and

Oh.  Are you sure?
Oh.  Okay.  I guess yeah, we’re already doing that. 

I’m sorry for wasting your time, I’m going to think this over. 

***

Hello again, my friend my pal my buddy my chum my friend!  You’ll be pleased to know and happy to hear and delighted to find out that I’ve come up with an idea for another video game!
It’s a real-time-strategy thing.  Rare these days I know, but nonetheless – and there’s even some basic automation built in, so you can set up a schedule that happen almost every day to perfect your build order.   There’s limitless depth for micromanagement down to the twitch of a finger or you can zone out to see the big picture and let the whole day drop away without oversight and suffer only non-permanent setbacks.  And the best part is: it’s free-to-play, so you can spend all your time playing it and getting addicted and spending way too much money.  I even set it up so you can combine random experiences from the day’s play overnight and reroll them into new strategies-

Really?  Really really? 
Oh right.  Yes.  I understand.  I guess that’s true. 

Piss in a cup, I was so sure I hadn’t invented real life this time.  Thanks.  Gonna have to work on this. 

***

Alrighty you got a second sure you do now just give me a moment of your time and I promise that if you’ve heard of THIS idea for a video game before I’ll eat my hat to shut myself up and never darken your dork again, this I swear. 

It’s PvP, total free-for-all, all teammates permitted and all backstabs possible.  Everyone can hurt everyone and everyone can’t work alone so you need to learn to trust to get anything done but the possibility is there.  It’s sort of balanced because you’re all playing almost the same character type, but sort of imbalanced because of the uncontrollable start seed.  Every weapon you can think of is usable, but consequences for just opening up on everyone are huge, and-

Wait THAT’S real too, AND it’s only the way total psychopaths think of the world? 

I’m sorry, so sorry, so damned sorry.  I won’t bother you again, I swear. 

***

Hey listen I know I said I wouldn’t bother you again but WOW you wouldn’t believe this idea I had, listen, you’ve got to listen, it’s revolutionary, it’s impossible, it’s the best thing you’ve ever imagined or heard or dreamt. 

It’s an idea for a video game, and it’s a platformer.  An old genre, but a goody: and the best part is, it’s totally customizable in difficulty because it’s all about BALANCE.  Very little jumping, not much parkour, but an infinite number of burdens you can take on that make just moving an exercise in groin-clenching teeth-gritting brow-sweating risk and frustration.  The more you pile up the greater the rewards, but the rewards need you to keep up that weight, and the longer you sweat it the heavier and more tippy and burdensome the responsibilities get, and which will break first your will or your back or will you finally break free and reach the next level?  It’s a bit rpg-elementy in that you get more powerful if you’re higher level so it’s easier but-

Oh come on, surely THAT can’t be real life too!  Well, if you say so, you say so, and you’re right.  Shoot. 

See you later.

***

I know you’re busy these days, but this is too good to not share.  You deserve to be in at the ground floor. 

It’s a puzzle-solver, an absolutely diabolical puzzle-solver.  Anything is a problem, anything is a solution, there’s a gradient to how well you perform – and this is the good bit: you’ll never know precisely how well you did!  You’ll be left to piece together feedback gradually over time to find out if you’ve been getting the right answers or not, and even then you’ll never quite know if you found an optimal route or just stumbled along into a dead-end means-nothing conclusion.  The big secret that we can’t let anyone in on is that everyone gets the same ending, so it’s more about the journey than the destination and it teaches you a valuable lesson about treating arbitrary goals as more important than the satisfaction of the moment which is pretty cool if-

…no dice, huh?

No dice. 

Well.  Easy come easy go.  Thanks for the help, you’ve been a real huge assist here.  As usual. 

***

Okay, okay, okay, I’ve finally got it: this idea is so simple, so brilliant, so straightforward that it almost isn’t a game at all: an idle game.

You sit around, and you can try to do things, but those produce the same results by and by as hoarding your slowly accumulating points and using them to buy things that should make it easier to do things, and you do it all to make an arbitrary score value go up – which is diabolically determined by the same points you must spend to make it go up in the first place.  When it goes up there’s always a new goal.  It chews up your day and makes it slip out of your hands and you go to bed unsatisfied and craving more, always more, sure that there’s something you missed, some trick or complex strategy that could’ve sped up your progression and finally brought you to the top of the pinnacle of-

ARGH!

COME ON!
FOR THE LOVE OF PEAT AND BOGS!

Is there NO video game idea that some MORON hasn’t already made into REAL LIFE already!?

At eight thirty, Alexandria Nichols West woke up with a bad hangover and a worse case of bedhead. 

At ten thirty, it ate her neighbour. 

And this was what happened afterwards.  Later.

***

By midnight the last of the fires had gone out, but the smell remained: burnt and stale and acridly thick around the nostrils.  It was a smell with teeth, that could chew at you as it went down your esophagus. 

Which was very merciful because the smell took your mind off the sights.  If you put enough mind into gagging you could pretend the thick, tangled locks spilling from every window, doorway, and ventilation duct were mould or something normal you’d condemn an apartment building for. 

One of the thicker snarls writhed insolently at Marjorie as she sat outside the front stoop.  She flicked a pebble at it, and it ate it. 

“Another six inches in the last half-hour,” she said.  And scooted backwards a few more feet.  “Still not slowing down.”

The snarl, its meal complete, sidled closer.  She threw the nearest clump of burning hair at it and watched in satisfaction as it receded to sulk. 

“Goddamnit.”
Marjorie looked over her shoulder to see Bruce throwing his new cell phone at the crumbled remains of the sidewalk, where it became his old phone.  Perspiration streaked his face and combed the soot from his white moustache. 

“No luck?”
“No.  The landlord says it’s a matter for the health inspectors, the health inspectors say it’s a matter for the cops, the cops say the fire department needs to come in and check the building before they’ll do anything about it, and the fire department said we should consult with pest control.”
“And pest control?”
“I can’t phone them; my son-in-law works there.”
“Oh.  I could do it.”
“Not anymore you can’t.  Unless you want to go back in there for your phone.”
Marjorie looked back in there, but not very far: the knotted coils and curls obstructed all light and dark leaving only hair.  “No, I don’t think so.  Probably eaten by now anyways.”
“Good.  He wouldn’t be any help, trust me.  Little snot-nosed creep.  Don’t know what Donovan saw in him anyways.  ‘Oh dad, we’re in love and we don’t care what you say’ yeah well your husband doesn’t know a glue trap from a humane trap from a trapdoor damnit.  He couldn’t catch this thing if we paid him.”
“If he’s in the city’s pest control we are doing that.”
“And he never listens, either.  We’d tell him it’s a giant hairball and he’d just ask us to make sure it isn’t rats either or a rat king or some other nonsense.”
“How horrible that would be.  Imagine.”
“And I’ll tell you what: he always gets me a sweater at Christmas.  A sweater!  Do I look like I’m going to freeze to death without a sweater?  Do I look that old to you?”
“Mind your foot.”
“Because I don’t care when I turned sixty or not; I’m still wearing t-shirts when I go on my runs.  And I like that!  I like it that way!  None of this fuddy-duddyizing hint-hint bullshit!”
“There’s hair on your leg.”
“He tried to buy me a spa kit for that too,” said Bruce offhandedly.  “Hah!  That’s insulation, that is.  Trying to freeze me out so I’ll wear his damned sweaters and sweatpants and headbands.  The gall.”
“Bruce.” 
“I don’t need him making judgments about my lifestyle like that.  Sure, Donovan gets more done now that they’re married, but that’s no call to meddle in the personal affairs and personal attire of your eld-”
“BRUCE.  The hair’s got you.”
Bruce looked down at the creeping strands slowly engulfing him.  “Eh?  Whatever.  Now in MY opinion, Jordan’s problem was that his parents were-”

The hair took Bruce and led him away.  Marjorie checked his phone, but it was indeed broken. 

No phone.  No neighbours.  No house.  Nothing much. 

The building shook and shuddered and disgorged a collection of bones and one bedraggled straggler. 

“Hey Angie.”
“Hey Margie.  So, how’s everything doing out here?”
“Nobody cares, really.  How’s everything in there?”
“Awful.  The hair ate everyone except me.”
“Why not you?”
“It doesn’t like my shampoo.”
Marjorie sniffed Angie’s hair.  “Yeah, can’t blame it.  What is this?”
“Expensive.”
“Well, that’s your problem.”
“Not a problem today, is it?”
“Right.”  Marjorie prodded the bones.  “So…is this everyone?”
“Just about.  See?  There’s Clive’s titanium hip.  And Janice’s braces.  And I think this must be Holly’s scapula – see the deep muscle scarring?”
“Yeah.  Wow, all those weights really did a number.”
“No fooling.  Did anyone else come out?”
“Just me and Bruce.  It just got Bruce because he was too busy complaining.”
“It’s what he wanted.”
“It really, really was.”  Marjorie squinted into the squirming depths of the apartment building.  “Hang on – didn’t you say everyone else got eaten?”
“Yeah.”
“Then who’s that?  Did they hide in there somehow?”

“No, that’s Alex.  Hey, Alex!”
The twitching, contorting figure jerked one arm outwards and slapped it twice at the air, serpent-quick. 

“Doing alright in there?”
A violent spasm shook her shoulders, her skull immobilized by the crawling nightmare that filled the building. 

“Think that’s no.  That a no, Alex?”
What could have been a chin wobbled.

“Okay I think that’s yes.  Yes, it was no.  Sorry, it’s a little hard right now.

Chinwobble.

“Want anything?  Food?”
Chinwobble.

“Alright.  Should we bring it in, or-“
HeadspasmheadspasmHEADSPASM

“Okay we’ll just leave it out here.  You should be up to it within an hour or two, right?  The rats shouldn’t get it; I think it ate ‘em all.”
Chinwobble.

Angie turned back to Marjorie to find that she was deluged in mail.  “What’s happened?”
“Bills,” said Marjorie.  “Cell phone, internet, electricity, insurance, rent, so on and so forth.  I think we’re probably getting penalized for this too somehow.”
“Hmm.  Think they’ll accept the building being eaten by hair as a reason to not charge us?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, if we’re paying we might as well get something out of it.  Hey, Alex!”
In the distance, the skeletonized form jerked. 

“Can we crash in your place for now until we get on our feet again?”
A pause for thought, then chinwobble. 

“Cool.  Should we come in, or-“

Headspasmheadspasmheadspa-

“Okay okay point made.  Well, can you just dump some of the bigger debris outside then?  We’ll make a little hut or something.”

“See if you can find a working laptop,” urged Marjorie, “I’ve got sixteen hours of data entry due by tomorrow night or I won’t be able to make rent on this little hut.”
“Sure thing.  Hey Alex!”

***

At seven-thirty-five PM the hair consumed the rest of the city.

Marjorie did not receive her paycheque, and as such, missed rent.  This reflected poorly on her finances. 

It was a house designed for soothing worn senses.  The chairs were overstuffed and worn; the lights were soft and homely; the floors creaked in only the quietest and most reassuring ways.  Even the timbers that made up the walls seemed to have been softened by time and care, turned into something battered and buttery that couldn’t so much as hurt a fly.  After half an hour of exposure the cruelest scoundrel would feel their heart soften and melt like chocolate in a microwave, and the everyday cares and woes of the universe would shrivel up and vanish without a word.  It was a place for rest and calm and love, and nobody had been so much as cross in it for decades.

Lauren was beginning to get a bit cross. 

Honestly, what was the POINT of grandchildren?  Children she could understand – you went to the effort to make the damned things, so you might as well keep working on them so it wasn’t a total waste of time – but grandchildren just sort of appeared, and half the work put into them wasn’t even something you were personally responsible for.  And then they grow up immediately and you go to all the effort of making them their favourite crab cakes and the little shitheads don’t even bother to let you know they aren’t going to show up so now you have two plates of goddamned crab cakes and you can barely finish half a plate now because you’re old and tired and your stomach hates being fed so much you’ll hear about it half the night if you actually let yourself eat as much as you like for CHRIST’S sake. 

“Piss,” she said aloud.  And it almost made the day much worse, because she said it at the same time as there was a tiny little knock on the door, and nearly missed it. 

There was nobody outside in the little salt-scoured excuse for a seaside garden, not even the usual tired snails.  But there was a letter jammed half-under the humorous ‘GO AWAY’ mat that Laurel had given her for Christmas a few years ago. 

Well, nothing better to do.  Lauren dragged it back inside, opened it with a kitchen knife, and read it over the sink while eating a crab cake. 

we have the kID.  BrING the B O T T L E to the DEAD PIEr by evENing

It wasn’t signed. 

Well.  That made things better.  As things stood she had been going to go from cross to worried in about an hour, but now she could focus on being fucking furious instead, which was much less stressful and more fun. 

***

Evening was a nice long ways away, which meant Lauren had time to pack even if she was early, which she was going to be.  Nobody wanted to be late to a hostage exchange, even if it was just family and you didn’t have to impress them.  It was just embarrassing. 

So she took her old rucksack and she put some crab cakes in it for the trip, and some more for Laurel, and some odds and ends and her big knick knack and of course two bottles from the big shelf in her cellar, wrapped carefully in . 

Then she left.  The wind was salty and fresh and the gulls were loud and crude and the sun was fighting the clouds and it all was so wonderful and bright that she found herself whistling, which was a terribly inappropriate thing to do on your way to a hostage exchange. 

She didn’t stop though.  She was in a santy anna sort of mood. 

“Do you have grandkids?” she asked one of the larger gulls, which was sitting on a rock glowering at her.  It warked at her hatefully.  “I do.  I have three and counting and this one’s the second one and she is a right pain in the asshole.”
It warked at her again. 

“Cloaca, for you.”
Wark. 
“Oh go away.”

She started up santy anna again.  Someone was getting Molino del Rey’d today. 

***

The Dead Pier was dead.  It was in the name. 

Once upon a time people had brought in nets and lobster traps and swore and cut themselves and fallen off it while drunk and yelled hellos and goodbyes and occasionally pissed off it.  But then the shoals had gotten all overfished and the boats had gone farther afield and now it was empty except for the occasional necking teenage couple.  Not many of those either, since there were many more romantic places to lose your virginity that also didn’t smell as badly of antique fish guts. 

Lauren had worked the Dead Pier, back when it was Shipley’s Pier.  And she’d never fallen off it.  This would be like going home, except home was holding your family hostage and making demands of you, so almost exactly like going home except smelling badly of antique fish guts. 

She breathed deep as she stepped onto it.  Tasted like the old days.  She could almost feel the terrible little sandwiches Charley had made her dissolving in her mouth on a cloud of stale wonderbread. 

“Hey,” someone said from right in front of her, where they were inconsiderately blocking all the light. 

“Fuck off,” Lauren said reasonably.  “I’m reminiscing.”
The interchangeable man scowled.  God she was embarrassed just looking at him.  Even if you were nothing more than a two-bit hired thug that didn’t have the grace to not look the part, at least you could get an impressive tattoo or something.  This asshole looked like he’d been printed off a production line and stocked in a Walmart under ‘goon.’  “Shut up or-”

Lauren was very very bored, so she took her hands out of her pockets and one of them was holding odds and the other was holding ends and she put them together and threw them gently underhand into the interchangeable man’s face, where they latched on and began taking out their frustration.  Crabs warrant their name, even baby ones, and being kept in pockets doesn’t improve their mood any. 

The interchangeable man screamed and clutched at his face so Lauren kicked him where he wasn’t covered and went on her way as the noises died down a bit into whimpers.  Two more interchangeable men kept a wary distance from her at the end of the pier, and between them was Laurel, looking VERY annoyed (good girl) and in front of them was Gus.

“Hey, Gus.”
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t dump both of you off this pier.”
“You only have to pay two guys now.”
Gus thought about that.  She could tell because his whole brow furrowed.  The interchangeable men thought about it too.  She could tell because they looked at each other, then at Gus, then at what their odds were.  They didn’t appear to enjoy them. 

“Take your hands where I can see them,” said Gus.

“They’re already doing that.  Quit stalling to show off and let’s get this done.  What do you want?”
“The bottle.  Take off your coat.  Hands in plain sight.  Drop the bag.  Move slowly.  Put it on the pier.  Stop DOING that!”
“But my hands are in plain sight.”
“Put your fingers back you old shithawk or your grandkid gets it.”
Lauren rolled her eyes (Laurel did too – good girl) and put her fingers back.  Gus was the sort to do something stupid if she pushed a little too hard, which wasn’t good, but he was also the sort to do something stupid if she made him a little angry, which was good. 

She put the bottle on the pier. 

“That’s it?”
“That’s the bottle, yeah.”
Gus pointed at the left interchangeable man over his shoulder.  “Check it.”
The interchangeable man did so, at considerably slow pace and with many changes in his expression.  Lauren gave him a big smile that showed off all eight of her teeth as he picked up the bottle and held it up to the evening sunshine.

“It’s heavy!” he said in surprise. 

“Not for what’s in there,” said Lauren. 

“And it’s glowing!”

“Well, you’re holding it up to the light.”

“And it says ‘retirement’ on the cork.”

Gus relaxed.  She could see it in the way his lips moved into a large smile and his jowls relaxed into a calm set of folds to make a boarhound jealous and his shoulders slumped into their stooped state and his toes unclenched in his gumboots and his guard was down, which was why Lauren chose that moment to step on the interchangeable man’s toe. 
He yelped and flinched two feet in the air and down went the bottle onto the pier, where it presumably broke.  Lauren didn’t really check, because by then she was ten feet away and latching herself to a mooring post with her belt, and just barely in time. 

***

Some of the older sailors Lauren had met back in the day had made ships in bottles, putting tiny replicas of their whole lives in glass cases.  She’d always thought that lacked ambition. 

The ocean was VERY glad to be let out of its cage though, so the appeal to safety made sense.  And fuck knows it had been two and a half jobs to cram it in there in the first place. 

When the tide went out to sea Lauren took the time for a deep breath.  She couldn’t take an angry sea to the gut like she used to, even with forewarning. 

“BITCH.” 

Gus, on the other hand, was all gut.  Even the fist coming for her face had a spare tire or three wrapped around its knuckles.

“FUCKIN’ CHEAT.”
The other fist was a little faster.  Right, Gus was a lefty.  God she was forgetful in her old age. 

“GONNA” and Lauren pulled her knick knack knife from her sleeve and  she never found out what he was gonna. 

God that was going to need a good cleaning later.  He even smelled like stale sweat and beer on the inside.  But first things first.

Lauren hobbled up to the edge of the pier and looked over the side.  “Hello.”
“Hi granny.”
“You’re still a good swimmer.”
“Yep.”
“Counted on it.  Want me to throw you a line or…?
“Nah, there’s a ladder.”
“Good.  Get up here and let’s go home.  You can have your crab cakes on the way.”
“Extra-greasy?”
“As always.”

“Good.”

And she was right.  It WAS good. 

Do not even talk to me without my coffee.

It was earliest morning and the sun was still sleeping in behind the very last and longest of the hills.  Everything looked like ink blots, especially the eyes of the few shambling zombies that roamed the streets, grunting and moaning and gurgling at the just-lost moon. 

“Caffeine,” they whined.  “Caffeeeeeeine.”  And their feet took them down the worn grooves in the sidewalk that their bodies had walked ten thousand times before, never once with the brain in charge, never once with a soul to guide them, to Long Noodle John’s Cigar and Coffee Shack.

***

Don’t even talk to me without my coffee. 

Long Noodle John didn’t sell cigars, but it had been called that since Short Noodle Hoover had set up the place a century back and he didn’t want to push his luck.  You messed with the rituals and omens of the decaffeinated at grave peril, of both your business and of your person. 

So you kept the name of the business and changed your own to match it, and you kept the specials on the menu, and you gave everyone the same damned thing they’d asked for the first day you met them, and you never stopped smiling, and behind the counter you kept that ancient creaking sign that said:

Don’t even talk to me without my coffee.

And you followed its advice as you served them one and all. 

The long, slouching man with a welder’s fingers: red hot black coffee, with no napkin to keep his fingers from burning. 

The single father with eyes buried in many-folded-flesh-flaps in his face: tea, three bags, no sugar, no milk, a squirt of lemon juice from the bright yellow bottle. 

The ragged college person with the thrice-crushed nose: the cheapest, coldest coffee legally saleable. 

The woman in the suit: a triple-quadruple with a stale cookie from the stale cookie box that had, fifty years ago, held cigars. 

The three teenagers with their three backpacks and their three bad haircuts: two coffees and a tea, all of them with one milk and one sugar and honey in the tea.  The tea went to the second-worst haircut. 

And Long Noodle John did it all without a word, without a cleared through, or a cough, or an acknowledging ‘hmm!’ or a ‘have a good one’ or having to say ‘workin’ hard or hardly workin’??!’ or anything.  Because of the sign. 

Good money came from this, since you were dealing with people that weren’t actually awake or even really alive.  You took bills and coins and cards and cheques and small polished bird skulls and shark-tooth necklaces and car keys and land deeds and stocks and bonds and gift certificates and in one case a complete set of flawless dentures made from real ivory, only barely used and still warm from the old man’s first sip of coffee. 

It made good money at the pawn shops and the banks and the so ons and so forths, legal or not.  Ten more years of this and Long Noodle John would be free to spend the rest of his life without seeing a single bean. 

If they didn’t get him first. 

***

Don’t even talk to me without my coffee.

The first rays of gold breached the treeline, crawled down the sides of the buildings.  Long Noodle John’s customers hissed and recoiled and snarled at the sun, eyes averted into the safety of their own shadows as they scurried to him like rats boarding a ship sinking straight into hell.  They tripped, they crawled, they ran to him with trembling hands and buckling backs, limping and wheezing as the awful truth of the morning began to beat down on them in full. 

Chamomiles and chamomiles of leaves and grounds and cups, disposable and indispensable. 

Long Noodle John smiled, and poured, and gave no change. 

Orange Peckle, double-steeped. 

It was almost time for the rush to be over.  Almost time for the relaxing part of his day, where he could start counting his gains and thinking about what island he’d spend his retirement on and whether he should live on martinis or margaritas.  He would smile for real, and laugh, and talk with his voice, using words.  And until the next morning he wouldn’t have to think about caffeine. 

English Breakfest with two sugars. 

Unlike most of his customer base, Long Noodle John believed in early to bed, early to rise, and so he woke up with working eyes, an uncreased face, and a healthy, regular appetite.  He had never revealed this to anyone, for fear of death. 

Early Grey with milk. 

And that.

Dark roast

Was.

Mocha

That.

And a latte.

Done. 

“Oh man, one more thing!”

But not actually.

***

Don’t even talk to me without my coffee.

It was a new customer, and this one was wearing clothing, real clothing, that a person might wear, not whatever cloth could be placed on a barely-animate scarecrow.  It was wide-eyed.  It was bright-eyed.  It was bushy of tail and mint of breath and it was striding up to the counter and putting down exact change and asking for a herbal blend WITH ITS MOUTH and Long Noodle John couldn’t close his mouth or believe his eyes or stop the horrible droning sound of rushing blood from filling his ears.

“Well gosh I didn’t know that this place was here hahahaha joke’s on me well now there I was jogging and good thing I’ve got this wallet on me and hey no rush now man yeah can’t go too fast in the morning  you know or else well you know it’s no fun at all, gotta ease into it, y’know?”
Long Noodle John nodded mutely.  He felt the weight of a great and powerful embarrassment on his neck, trying to snap it.  His fingers moved without guidance and put bags and water and heat together, hoping this would save him. 

“Here y’go!”

He took the change. 

“So, working hard or hardly workin’?” inquired the stranger, voice loud and happy and echoing from one side of the street to another.

Long Noodle John shrugged and almost lost a shoulderblade. 

“I bet you get LOTS of traffic this time of day!”
His smile was cracking.
“Well, see you tomorrow!  I’ll bring photos of my cat, you can have them as a tip!”

Nod.  Smile.  Cry inside. 

“G’bye!” said the stranger.  “And really you should stop selling cigars, y’know?  Bad for you!”
“It’s historical,” said Long Noodle John. 

Every eye turned to him, sunken and cold and dead over their warm beverages. 

“Oh shit.”

***

Don’t even talk to me without my coffee.

That’s what it says on the sign of Medium Noodle Davy’s Cigar and Coffee Shack.  He got it embossed for good measure. 

And just to be safe, he works with his jaw wired shut. 

The doorbell was a dreary little dead thing – cracked and chipped and worn from too many fingers too long ago – but it might as well have been a venomous snake the way it looked to Janet. 

She pushed it anyways.  There were some dares you didn’t back down from, even if it was your best friend who’d made them.  Especially if it was your best friend that made them. 

There was no footsteps, no oncoming shuffle, no creak of the floorboards.  First the door was shut and the house was empty and then they weren’t and there he was in front of her, shortish and squatish and with a crease to his brows that made him look like you’d interrupted him at all times from some very important thought.  His skin was all over rough and chapped and ridged and his eyes were a murky puddle. 

The Lizard Man. 

He didn’t say a single thing to her, just waited patiently.  Probably had this sort of thing happen to him all the time.  If she was lucky he’d just slam the door in her face. 

He waited.  And just like it had when Yasmine made her dare, Janet’s nerve cracked. 

“Can I see your basement?” she asked. 

The Lizard Man’s brow furrowed a little more deeply. 

“It’s for a dare,” she caved, and then because oh what the hell might as well spill everything: “my friends all think you keep bodies down there.”

A snort came through the Lizard Man’s nose, a distant cousin to a giggle.  But he opened the door wider and turned on his heel and damnit there was a dare to live up to. 

Hopefully. 

***

The Lizard Man’s house was dry and dusty.  Everything was in its place, had been put in its place decades ago, and had never been moved again.  It made Janet think of her grandmother’s house, especially her grandfather’s room.  His shaving razor was still set on the counter where he’d left it, and when she put it back in the wrong place – just to take a look, that was all – the next time they’d visited it’d been right back where it came from. 

The Lizard Man wasn’t as old as her grandmother.  But his eyes were.  Funny, that. 

Unsurprisingly, there were lizards – none of them caged, all of them free to do as they pleased, which was mostly sit there and not move, like most lizards and most people.  Thin little elegant ones stuck on the walls blinking with reproachful eyes at the noisy new intruder (somehow Janet’s feet weren’t capable of the same noiselessness as the Lizard Man’s).  A couple big fat ones on the kitchen table eating carefully from a bowl of chopped plants and plant byproducts.  A small bug-eyed one atop the refrigerator, which the Lizard Man gently took down and placed on his head.  It seemed satisfied with this, although it kept a wary gaze on Janet with one rotating eyeball.  She’d have returned the favour if she could have. 

The door to the basement was bigger than she’d have assumed.  Most old houses hid them in narrow little doors that looked like they’d open up cupboards or closets; this was nearly a front door itself.  But it opened with a special little key in the Lizard Man’s hand and the stairs led down, so she followed. 

The door shut itself after her, and it was only when they reached the bottom of the stairs that Janet asked herself why anyone would need a key to their own basement. 

***

The basement was less dusty, in defiance of natural law.  Soft red light seeped from the lamps overhead, and around them were many more lizards.  Some of them hung from the rafters; some of them squatted on the floor.  A big pile of them were piled up in a big pile.

A VERY big pile.  Some of the lizards were bigger than Janet.  As a matter of fact, they looked like something she’d seen at the zoo.  Dragons?  Komodo Dragons.  She wanted to ask, but was worried about the answer, so she didn’t.

The Lizard Man ignored the dragons.  The dragons ignored the Lizard Man.  They did eye up Janet some, but in a very disinterested way, which suited her fine.  Their tour group had come by the dragons enclosure during feeding time, and she knew those shut-tight mouths had awfully big teeth.  Was this legal?  She was sure this couldn’t be legal.  Even if the Lizard Man had a permit somewhere for breeding – Ten?  Twenty?  More? – Komodo dragons in his house, surely they’d get him for his basement.  This had to be bigger than the house. 

There was another staircase, which was confusing because Janet’s house only had one basement and it still flooded every spring because the water table was high, or so her mom cursed.  The Lizard Man’s staircase was cool and a little damp but not flooded.

The second basement, however, was. 

***

Actually, maybe it wasn’t a basement.  Janet was pretty sure that even if basements could have cut-stone walls, they didn’t have stalactites.  A little line of lights marched away down the center of the ceiling into the far-away night, out of sight. 

There was a boat, which the Lizard Man got into.  Then he waited. 

Yasmine really, really couldn’t claim Janet had chickened out by now.  She really couldn’t. 

But Janet’s grandmother had told her many times about the importance of not doing things by halves, so she got into the boat too. 

There were no oars, which was odd.  Then the Lizard Man tugged gently on the anchor, and it tugged back, and a lizard head the size of the boat breached the water and blew gently over them through its nose, washing them both in cold spray and mosasaur snot. 

It tasted like salt, and while Janet was spitting and coughing the boat was taken up by the anchor and gently but speedily towed away until the dock at the entrance of the second not-basement was out of sight and mind. 

Other mosasaurs followed them alongside, just as big, smaller, bigger than the one hauling their boat.  They were green and black and blue and white-bellied and striped and spotted and stippled, all very faint and very soft in the faint brightness from the cavern’s ceiling.  Then they grew brilliant and beautiful and gorgeous, and Janet turned her eyes up from the water and saw the city. 

***

There was a special dock for the Lizard Man’s boat in the harbour, and an emissary was waiting for him.  It consisted of lizard-men. 

These ones were a lot more lizard and a lot less men, but they seemed friendly enough – moreso than the Lizard Man, if Janet were being honest and just a little cruel.  They bowed to him and shook his hand, and they waited politely to greet her with nods and hisses as the Lizard Man introduced them with his silent manners.  Some of them were bigger than her and some of them weren’t, and that and the beautiful shining coats they wore were all that Janet had time to notice before they were off through the city, the beautiful stony city. 

It was high and bright and there were lights on every corner, little cages filled with lively-glowing bugs tended to by the careful hands of lizard-men.  They shone down upon houses and causeways and aqueducts and halls and wells and even stables where the lizard-men tended and fed giant rainbow-scaled snakes and made bright clothing from their shed skins.  Little gliding lizards swooped from tower to tower, filling the giant empty space above their heads where the cavern climbed out of sight, and the torchlight shone off their white bellies.  Beautiful and complicated carvings of lizards decorated every surface, doing much the same thing as the living ones around them.

There was a grand hall, but there was no throne, only a wide amphitheatre.  Lizard-men of all kinds and sizes and demeanors filled it and Janet and the Lizard Man stood in the center of it and they called and chirruped and croaked their cases one after another, voting and deliberating and making the odd inquiry. 

It reminded Janet of the videos they’d seen on parliamentary procedure in civics class, except she was actually interested. 

Then the Lizard Man spoke. 

***

It was impossible for her to describe the sounds that came out of him.  They were big, and he didn’t open his mouth to make them, and they made the floor shiver and her hair stand on end.  They filled the air and the stone and the flesh and they coddled and rocked and warmed them safely until everything was right and proper and done and sensible, and by the time they were done Janet was asleep, and who wouldn’t be?

She woke up in her bed.  Yasmine insisted she’d made the whole thing up. 

Ten years later, the Lizard Man died. 

***

His will was a little unusual, but anyone who’d have wanted to make a fuss didn’t dare, cowed by the surprisingly wealthy and intense gazes of his lawyers and their very large and beautifully rainbow-patterned briefcases.  And Janet certainly wasn’t about to.  Housing was hard to come by these days, and the old building was in good condition. 

She did dust, though.  Her grandmother had always been very insistent on dusting. 

The foot-sound was the first thing that caught their attention: the big sucking slorp of a giant foot yanking itself out of ankle-deep mud.  Their heads jerked up and their mouths opened to yell warnings – spilling lovely fresh foliage everywhere, barely cropped – but it was all too late to even start, let alone make it in time, and so the last sound was the inevitable big meaty THUNK of her mouth driving directly through scale, skin, meat, muscles, and finally a good chunk of bone. 

It was a good sound and it tasted like sweet salty red. 

The rest of the meaties ran away from the lakeside waving their long tails and worbling their fat floppy alarms and it was good, so very good, that with the adrenaline in her veins and the red in her mouth and the tingle in her teeth she reared upright and sang the murder-song, which sounded like this:

I.  AM.  HERE!
I.  AM.  HAPPY!
I DID A MURDER!

ME!  I DID!
THIS MADE ME HAPPY!
MURDER!  MURDER!  MURDER MURDER YAAAAAAAAY MURDER!
DON’T MESS WITH ME!

A lot of it was subsonic and rumbly and was done with her mouth closed, hiding her six-inch banana-teeth behind her gums while her saliva wiped off the spicy red from them.  It built up her appetite to excruciating levels and she made short, sharp work of the meaty’s body when she was done. 

Nothing like the murder-song to make your appetite surge.

After that she went for a nap, and she dreamed, and her dreams, like her, were big.   Forty foot long (not her feet: her feet were bigger), fifteen foot high, with a head like a refrigerator filled with teeth and a pair of eagle eyes backed to a turkey vulture’s nose for trouble.  A lovely set of equipment for any tyrant lizard king, awake or asleep. 

Her dream was simple and powerful and it went like so:

***

There were a bunch of meaties by a lakeside and she ran up to them but her feet stuck in the mud and they slid away from her without using their legs.  She tried singing the murder-song and they all fell over dead but kept sliding and then she fell over and into the lake and the lake was upside-down and inside-out, so she was in the middle of a dry hill while everything else was swimming in the water and she was by herself until  

***

she woke up. 

Well.  What the heck did THAT mean?

It was raining now, and she wondered if she’d woken up because the water was trickling into her nose.  She snorted phlegm in a little yellow flume and shook her head free of dampness and doubt. 

Why must her head be full of odd ideas when she slept?  Something must be bringing them into her body when she wasn’t looking; maybe the meaty had been full of bad ideas.  It hadn’t been able to hear her when she was creeping up on it so clearly its head wasn’t a sensible one.  Best not to dwell on it but to simply move through it. 

After she had a little more of it for breakfast. 

A big full belly refilled, a nap taken, a rain ended, a drink at the lake (she checked to make sure it wasn’t inside-out OR upside-down first: it was neither), and she was fit as a fiddlehead fern and taking a stroll through the woods, peeing on things so nobody else got clever ideas about hunting ‘round these parts.  Little things sang in the trees and bushes; big things sang in the blue sky; the air smelled like urine and promise, and she realized that since she was happy as a clam she too should sing the happy-song, which sounded like this:
I AM HAPPY.
OH SO HAPPY.
OH SO HAPPY AND RUMBLY AND FULL.
I MURDERED YESTERDAY AND ATE TODAY AND SLEPT AND NOW I’M HAVING A NICE SLOW WALK

OH SO HAPPY THAT I CAN HARDLY BELIEVE IT’S REAL

And as she walked and sang the low deep quivering notes of the happy-song her mind left her body to do its own things and it made up its own story and it went like so:

***

She was walking through the forest and all the trees were made of meat but then they blew away and standing there was a very pretty man and they bobbed their heads and wiggled their tails at each other and sang the happy-song and made many romantic memories.  Then they built a little nest and they raised a little clutch and they all lived together a very little much until she was lying starved and expiring in a pile of smouldering rubble somewhere which really jolted her

***

out of her daydream. 

That surely wasn’t what she’d been planning to fantasize of.  At least, not the last bit.  Meeting a very pretty man sounded nice.  Expiring in a pile of smouldering rubble sounded not at all pleasant and VERY unfitting of the happy-song.

Which she had stopped singing at some point, she realized. 

Well.  That was unhappying in and of itself, and now the day was ruined.  The small things in the trees and bushes seemed whiny; the sky was empty and smirking, and even the urine in the air no longer filled her with pride.  The absence of the happy-song was merely the last straw, and so she sulked her way along the remainder of this stretch of her border, peeing with duty rather than joy.  Stay out of my way, it said.  I’m in a bad mood and I’ve got big sharp teeth.  Don’t mess with me.  Unless you’re meaties in which case please please please come in; there’s a nice lake here and I’ll only eat some of you a little lot. 

She was tired early.  Not even proper-tired in her muscles after a nice day with lots of fun that ended in lots of food; weighty-tired, inside herself, like she’d eaten a rock even though she’d never tried doing that again after the one experiment with a pebble when she was a baby.  It dragged her down and made her eyes close and the world shrink and she found the nearest little thicket that offered some protection from the nighttime rains she could smell on the horizon and as she pulled herself towards it she curled her tongue and arced her neck and uttered the first notes of her lonely-song, which sounded like this:

I AM ALL BY MYSELF
ALONE
THAT SUCKS
PLEASE IF YOU’RE NICE COME SEE ME AND WE CAN HANG OUT
FOR A WHILE
IF YOU’RE INTO THAT AND I LIKE YOU

I PROMISE I’M LONELY BUT NOT IN A SAD WAY JUST A TRAGIC ONE
THESE ARE DISTINCT THINGS
I AM VERY VERY LONELY

She sang the lonely-song a lot these days.  Those days too, come to think of it.  After she was done she laid down and set her jawbone to the ground to listen for the vibration of someone else. 

Then she fell asleep and pretended she’d meant to do that, although she surely hadn’t meant to have a nightmare.  It was a very direct and unsubtle nightmare, and it went like so:

***

She dropped dead in a burning gulch and fell asleep and a cliff fell on her and jumped up and down for ever and ever and ever and ever until the wind blew it away and let her nose stick out.  Then a passing stubby little meaty with two legs and no tail at all waddled by and pulled her out and dragged her away for other meaties to look at and even though she was terribly, terribly thin they made her stand straight up and show her thin bones to them and made silly, sloppy meaty calls that let their mouths fall open and their tongues slap around – ridiculous!  Grotesque!  Grossssss! 

They had no decency at all, they had no fear at all, they had no SONGS at all, and they wouldn’t stop, they just went on and on and on and on and on and

***

she woke up with a start and a snort and a little blurt of a song-stub that wasn’t very friendly AT ALL. 

Her dreams were awful these days.  That was the sixth time she’d had the same one, and if she were capable of counting she would be even more peeved. 

But it was a new dawn, a new day, and she could see a little herd of meaties grazing on the lovely fresh foliage down at the lakeside, unaware of her presence. 

She’d go and have breakfast.  And if she felt like sleeping after this and found herself dreaming again, maybe this time she could try and see what would happen if she got up and ate the little two-legged meaties. 

Maybe then they’d stop making all those stupid noises. 

It was a good, comforting, comfortable thought, and as she prowled down towards the lakeside she could already feel the happy tingle of the murder-song warming itself in the back of her throat.

She wished this moment could last forever.