Seven Story Publishing

        For Rod Serling

YOU would not believe what happened.

         You have probably seen a lot of strange things in the past that you would not have believed to be real. You can analyze them all you want for as long as you want as many times as you please and label it as nothing more than a dream. They will always begin and end the same way because those moments will linger long after you are dead and gone.

         Life goes on as is, but not everything around you. Technology, likes, dislikes, appetites, sleep schedules, attitudes, allergies, friendships, relationships, tastes and opinions will change.

         It does not matter where your story begins because ours starts somewhere else. In a place you have never seen, been to, or heard of.

         A place that would not have existed unless you drive past it by accident or found it on your GPS on any of your devices. It sits on the east coast, tucked into a small corner of your home state where Mother Nature cannot make up its mind whether it wants to be warm or cold and a college football rivalry game between two teams sitting on both sides of the lake becomes more important than a wedding.

       The name of the town is not important. It is another small town in another state that no one knows about but yet can be found on any state map. It could be your current location, a place you have lived in for six months and yet it could be your childhood home.

       You are either relegated here for some personal reasons of your own or you are one of those who left and never wanted to come back, but you also had a personal reason to do so. The former seems to outweigh the latter but they still make do with what they have and with what they are given. You have always intended to leave her because you deserve to have the life that you have wanted and refuse to give others the life they think they are entitled to.

       You have heard all of the stories. Well, you have only heard the version they want you to hear because your ears are fragile and they think you would not understand. Every town has a grapevine that stretches further than the eye can see without straying from its intended path, a ripple of gossip that occupies the time between sunrise and sunset.

       Some people are long gone but their imprint in the town’s history will never fade away. You remember what they have done over the years and you will either laugh until it hurts or shake your head in embarrassment. It does not hurt to remember the memories you had before you had left for a better and deserving future.

         The cycle will be repeated because it has to be. It’s not a bad thing.

         Small towns have magnets and we’re the paper clips. We’re drawn back not only by curiosity but to once again bask in the memory of once was and what will never be.

We’re meant to see the world for what it is. Some do and some don’t. Instead, you’re rooted right where you are because it makes sense and makes you feel safe. Over the years, everything you once knew changes.

       You bought your first game station at the shopping mall that sits on the northwest side of town. You and your family attend your favorite restaurant and watch your brother get a giant sombrero and a white moon-shaped cake with bright blue icing for his birthday celebration. You and your friends riding your bike across the narrow dirt trail winding through a small forest that sits across from the same supermarket your mother once shopped at.

       You have other memories here, too.

       You had your first kiss with your high school crush at The Silver Screen Drive In, outside of town after graduation. You had your first and only cigarette with a couple of juniors and seniors in the cafeteria bathroom with the window open to draw out all of the smoke.

Over the years, it has all changed. Your bike path is paved over for a drive-thru for a local bank. Your shopping mall is still there but it has lost all of its appeal and the stores inside have been replaced by something of lesser value. No more sombreros for anyone else’s brother because the restaurant is now a jewelry store that will not last for the rest of the year.

Sadly, you and your high school crush did not stay in contact. Instead, you went your separate way and they went theirs. They have submitted to middle-aged obesity, their face is riddled with acne, they are married to someone they did not want to marry but had to because of their children and they live someplace they do not like but cannot get away from.

You have dodged a bullet and consider yourself lucky that you do not have to wake up next to them every morning. You are married anyway, and this is just a quick stop off into the past that you have been meaning to make for months. You are not home sick; you are home curious.

The town invalid, a middle-aged man in a short-sleeved blue shirt and tattered jeans, rides his bike through town to root through your trash cans for your empty pop cans so that he could take them to the recycling center outside of town. No one minds it because he needs the money to buy himself a six pack of beer since his wife and her lover are in charge of his disability check.

On the south side of town, where a trailer park reigns supreme, crickets and frogs commune in the dark suffocating night. Ash Graham sits on his front porch, his short pudgy belly spilling out from the waistband of his work pants and drags on a cigarette he knows he should not be smoking. He had promised his wife Darlene that he would quit smoking and had gone so far as to chew that disgusting nicotine gum and slap on all of those patches, but the cravings were too much for him to ignore.

Inside of the brown painted brick house that serves as the coaches’ lounge, the high school principal is lying on a tacky burnt orange couch with the pretty biology teacher straddling his naked waist. They are married but his sexy hazel eyes and her natural tan curves are the factors of their sexual attraction to each other; her husband works the night shift and his wife is sitting up with their daughter because she is sick. They are throwing caution to the wind because the love they once had for their spouses is nothing more than a deflated balloon lying in a dirty gutter; they know that what they’re doing is wrong but they have held off on one another for far too long.

On the northwest end of town is your local middle school. It has not seen light nor life in the past two years because it had been deprived of both of those things long before tonight. Its red brick wall is marred by grease, oil and neglect; the bowl-shaped ceiling lamp on a gold chain dangling down between the network of rafters, cobwebs and old pipes does not provide enough light.

A dark anorexic crack forms inside the center of the wall and severs the thick white putty spread between the bricks. The jagged edges of the bricks rub together and spills a river of red dust onto the basement’s dirt-covered floor. The crack yawns into a wide cavernous mouth brimming with a beam of soft monochrome light that pushes the darkness toward the corners of the room.

The tall dark figure emerges from the gap, and grasps a large white object in its right fist. It stands in the middle of the room, tips its head toward the ceiling and inhales a cloud of stale musty air into its lungs. The scent of peppermint wafts from its mysterious form to replace the distasteful air around it and fills its nostrils.

It scans its surroundings and peers through the rectangular window. A circular patch of blacktop backlit by an overhead street lamp casting a weak brass-colored glow. Its black stovepipe hat spreads a dark veil across its wide pale forehead, deep-set black eyes with their nickel-colored pupils and hawkish nose.

No one will know it has been here except for a select few. None of them will be around long enough to tell anyone about it. They will be nothing more than a missing persons case that goes too cold due to lack of evidence; one of many sad disappearances that still occur throughout the world today.

After tonight, nothing will be what it seems.

 ONE

WHEN the redhead’s right palm collides with his left cheek, sixty-two year old Duncan Glass realizes he should have stayed home.

       The alcohol distorting his brain fails to warn him of the consequences of his actions. Her vanilla-scented perfume and the friction he’d felt when her left buttock had brushed against his right thigh would make one think that she was getting his attention. He had been in his fair share of taverns in the past to know when a woman is getting “friendly” but this is not one of those times.

       Pain explodes across his face, and whips his head toward his right shoulder. The split-second flash of light in his vision stuns him one second before the world turns into a dizzying halo of bright pulsating colors.

       When his head stops spinning and the world rights itself, he meets her gaze again. He cannot tell if it is blood or sweat or both trickling down his chin but that is not important and something he should not be angry about. Johnny Cash is on the jukebox in the far-right corner of the bar singing about Folsom Prison.

       Neon signs and recessed lights glint off of the tavern’s knotty pine interior, cast faint shadows across the windows facing the parking lot, and winks off of the array of bottles and picture frames on the tall wooden shelf standing along the mirror backed bar. An arch of rainbow-colored neon frames the jukebox’s glass display window, and radiates across the tavern’s gritty white and green tiled floor in faint psychotropic colors. The two broad-shouldered men occupying the booth in the far-left corner drinking cheap beer in frosty glass mugs and the skinny brunette waitress in the tight strapless black dress lugging an empty tray pause in unison.

       Shame pours over Duncan and blooms across his cheeks. The air inside of the place, if there had been any at all before or after he had come in, feels hot and suffocating.

       “What the fuck are you doing?” She asks.

       The smell of whiskey sails from her lopsided lips and stings his nostrils. Deep dark lines etch across her forehead like a tablet of Egyptian hieroglyphics and bracket the corners of her mouth. There was not enough eye liner and pancake makeup to cover the years that were not too kind to her.

       “I’m sorry, miss,” Duncan states. “I thought that you were—”

       Her brows furrowing, she says, “You thought I was flirting with you, right?”

       He sighs with relief as the tension in the room begins to dissipate. He raises his right hand, and flashes an affable smile.

       “I sincerely apologize if I offended you,” he proposed. “I’d like to buy you a drink to make up for my rudeness.”

       She shivers, her face creasing with revulsion, and sweeps a strand of hair behind her left ear. She blots her hands against the front of her skirt, cocks an obnoxious grin and steps aside as if he has become contagious. The waitress appears out from the corner of his right eye, her heels clacking against the floor with the sound of someone snapping their fingers.

       “Back away, asshole,” she hisses, then says to the redhead. “I’ll take care of you, honey.”

       When she leads the distraught woman away, Duncan raises his hands in forfeit and spins his stool back toward the bar. The redhead slides onto the stool at the other end of the bar under the flat screen television hanging on the wall playing a rerun of Hawaii Five-O that no one is watching.

He swallows the remainder of his pride and reaches across the bar for his mug when a large pale hand seizes his left wrist. A tall dark-haired man in a red shirt and jeans stands on the other side of the bar, his basset hound brown eyes flickering with disgust.

The tavern’s name is drawn across his shirt in black cursive. His name—Vic—is scrawled across his nametag in bright orange marker. His arms are a Sistine Chapel of colorful tattoos that start from shoulder to wrist and accentuate his thick muscular build.

“Don’t make me throw you out,” he cautions him. “Keep your hands to yourself.”

Duncan nods. “Gotcha. I apologize.”

Vic removes his Vulcan grip on Duncan’s wrist and saunters toward the other end of the bar. He plants his hands on the edge of the bar, leans in and whispers something in her right ear and makes her a third Cosmopolitan. He places it on a small white napkin in front of her, adds a courteous nod and leans back against the bar to hear the rest of her story.

Duncan does not reach into his pocket for the money for her drink because he knows it will not do him any good to be nice anymore. He lifts his mug from the bar, takes a sip so cold that it almost turns his teeth into ice cubes and catches something in the corner of his left eye. He glances at the five-by-seven picture frame sitting on the edge of the shelf on the left side of the mirrored back that he had been trying to avoid all night long.

His beer does not taste like beer anymore. Instead, it tastes like sadness, nostalgia and guilt.

He fixates on the black and white photo inside of the frame. He has done his best to avoid it by watching people come and go due to their reflections in the mirror or tracing the rim of his glass with the tip of his right finger. He has even watched two episodes of Hawaii Five-O that he cannot hear because he thinks it is a worthy distraction.

After three tries, his curiosity gets the better of him. The picture had been taken back in the fall of Nineteen Ninety-Two at a bar called Katy’s two miles outside of Columbus, Ohio.

On the right side of the picture is a beefy man with a six-foot-three frame and military-cut blonde hair above a wide pale forehead; his hawkish nose is hard to miss in the flash of light whipping at them from the side of the camera. On the left is a tall man with a narrow build and a clean-shaven head above his boyish handsome face that women could not keep their eyes from. They bookend a short rangy fellow with short dark hair and a pencil thin mustache the color of a Nebraska cornfield.

The man on the left is Lieutenant Timothy McLaughlin and the man on the right is Private First-Class Simon Carter. Duncan is the man sitting in between them, a chihuahua sitting between two Doberman Pinchers. It reminds him of a simpler time when if a man had done something wrong to a woman and had apologized for it then he would be forgiven for all wrong doing.

They had met during basic training on a bright April morning in the spring of Nineteen Ninety. They had become more than just friends and fellow soldiers. They were the brothers he had never had and he would have given his life for them and vice versa.

A month after they had been deployed to Iraq, seventeen soldiers were ambushed and killed by an RPG, rocket propelled grenade. Timmy and Simon were a part of that convoy and were killed. When he had received news about their demise, Duncan had gone into the first room he saw, locked the door and cried for hours without telling anyone.

A part of him had wished that it had been him instead of them or that he should have died along with them. He knows that they would not want that for him and would have preferred that he lived out the remainder of his life and regale his grandchildren with tales of military past.

He had been proud to serve his country but the more he thinks about it the more he regrets it. He does not know if that is a catalyst for the fact that he is old and tired or the fact that his best friends were not sitting here with him anymore. If he had gone to college, he would have been called a draft dodger and lost the respect of his family.

His father Randy had been a drill sergeant who had served with the Marines for over fourteen years and had wanted nothing more than for his little boy Duncan to follow in his footsteps. His mother Tracy had been a middle school math teacher for over ten years and had never accepted excuses from any of her students to admit defeat so she was not about to let her son do the same. Duncan did not want to disappoint them so he had done what his father had wanted for him but all it had done was make him despise his place in the world and lose two of his best friends.

A loud chuckle stirs Duncan back into the present. He takes a sip and peers over his right shoulder without looking away from his reflection on the pool of beer inside of his mug. Johnny Cash fades from the jukebox and steps aside for Bob Seger to croon out his classic “Like A Rock”.

The redhead and Vic huddle together and whisper. After twenty seconds, they separate, glance back at him and chuckle. It was not the first time someone talked about him behind his back; he’d been called a lot of things when he had gotten back from Iraq.

He sighs and drains the rest of his mug in one giant swig. Some people would rather see other people wallow in guilt rather than let things go whether it is because of childhood trauma or a simple case of a miniscule ego.

He glances at the picture sitting on the shelf, leaps backward from his stool, steps around the side of the bar, snatches the picture from the shelf and storms away from the bar. The youngest of the two men sitting in the booth in the far-left corner casts an intimidating gaze at the back of Duncan’s head and takes a sip from his bottle. Vic and the redhead look on with big arrogant smiles on their faces.

“I guess it’s you and your hand tonight huh, old man?” she chuckles.

“At least my hand doesn’t have herpes,” Duncan replies.

He ignores the chorus of gasps rising and falling around the bar, and pushes the big tinted glass door open. Vic says something to the back of his head that he does not acknowledge because it is not important to him right now. The picture had been placed there by the previous owner who died six years ago but Vic had been nice enough to let it sit there.

They did not deserve to have that photo any longer than they already had. He could put it somewhere in his house even if he had to move a few things around as long as it was not here anymore. This place, as far as he is concerned, will never see his reflection in their mirror ever again.

He steps out into the cool spring air and saunters across the parking lot. Loose gravel stirs beneath his boots. The wind fondles the treetops, and caresses his sweaty pale forehead.

His cheeks flushing with shame, he pauses beside his lime green Ford Ranger and stares at the big black rubber toolbox sitting in the back. He peers at the tavern’s right front window standing adjacent to the pulsating neon jukebox and considers chucking one of his pipe wrenches through it. It will only make matters worse so he decides not to because he does not need that kind of trouble to follow him around for the rest of his life.

Instead, he climbs into his pickup, starts the engine and pulls away from the bar. “Outlaw Shit” by Waylon Jennings blares from his truck radio in a low but clear volume. A thick tail of dust spews out from his back tires and drifts across the left shoulder of the road; gravel rattles against his undercarriage and rebounds off the rear quarter panel of an old red Chevy Chevette.

He slides his left hand out of the window, flashes a middle finger that no one inside will see and slides his arm back inside. He taps his fingers against the crown of his steering wheel, bobs his head to the music for two miles and pulls into an all-night convenience store. Inside, he buys a bottle of Jim Beam with a fifty dollar bill he had forgotten that he had and drives away.

He pins the bottle between his thighs, keeps his left hand on the steering wheel and breaks the seal on the bottle with his right. He uncaps the bottle and takes a giant swig when his truck lurches onto the abrasive strip along the right shoulder of the road. A loud rasping sound vibrates against the night sky; his steering wheel shudders against his left fist.

He jerks the bottle from his lips, plants it back between his thighs and eases his truck back onto the road. He swallows, seizes his next breath and checks all three mirrors to make sure a patrolman is not coming out of hiding. The last thing he wants is a ticket; everyone in that bar would laugh until sundown if they had known that he had gotten pulled over.

He rolls his window down, rakes his right hand through his thinning white hair and basks in the wave of cool air sweeping across the front cab. He cruises past the town’s welcome sign standing along the right shoulder of the road and licks a bead of sweat from his upper lip. He cuts his pickup across a stretch of two-lane blacktop lit up by the irregular archway of street lamps spilling cones of soft brass light across the pavement and turns left.

A fat, pale yellow moon beams in the funeral black sky, pulling odd shadows from places people do not notice. As Waylon Jennings fades to Electric Light Orchestra singing “Strange Magic”, Duncan halts beside a STOP sign, kills the radio and takes a giant swig from the bottle. When he lifts the bottle toward his lips, a soft tinkling sound echoes across the street.

It sounds, at least to him, like a kazoo or maybe a—

“Nah,” he mumbles.

He jams the bottle back between his thighs, shakes it off and passes the STOP sign. He shudders, tugs his brown leather bomber jacket tighter across his body and rolls his window up halfway to take the edge off of the cold. He does not want to get sick and yet the air will keep him from passing out at the wheel, which is something else he does not need.

Two blocks later, he takes a right and catches something in the corner of his left eye. He tightens his grip on the steering wheel, turns left and parks his pickup along a faded yellow curb. He retrieves the bottle and takes another swig when the contents in his stomach begin to shift like a fishing boat in rough torrential waters.

He jerks the bottle from his lips, and lunges across the front seat. The bottle slips from his grasp and plops onto the passenger floorboard, spilling a pool of whiskey. His body locks down, squeezing his chest and stomach while sucking the air from his lungs.

The color drains from his face as a river of acid rises toward the back of his throat. His hands curl into large white-knuckled fists; a vein stretches across the far-right corner of his forehead above his right eye. He knows what is coming but he cannot stop it.

A river of yellow puke bursts from his lips, dribbles down his chin and soaks the whiskey bottle. Hot lucid tears trickle from the corners of his eyes, slide down his cheeks and obscure his vision. A sharp bitter aftertaste scrapes the back of his throat and tingles across his tongue; flecks of sweat cling to his brows and seep from his pits.

He heaves until his throat is a tunnel of dry hot pain. The smell of pine sap rides on the breeze sweeping across the front cab and fills his lungs. He peers through the passenger window and scans the row of stucco bungalows and clapboard houses sitting across the street as if waiting for them to judge him.

Maybe it is a good thing the redhead did not go with him. If she had, this would have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

He leans back in his seat, and wipes a film of drool from his right lip with the sleeve of his red Georgia Bulldogs tee-shirt. He rests his head against the left side of the window frame, cranes his head back and inhales large pockets of cold air into his mouth to soothe his burning throat. He sees his reflection cast in the side mirror, his five o’clock shadow and the faint dark creases around his wide-set green eyes telling a story laden with sadness and loss.

He had never looked or felt so pathetic all of the time. There had been a time when he had always seen a positive outlook on everything. He worries about people who sweat the small stuff and concentrate on the negative side of things instead of hanging onto hope.

       However, his optimistic bubble had burst. No wife, no children. He had submitted to the pros and cons of loneliness although he would have preferred things to be much different.

       “Over here, Bulldog,” a familiar voice mumbles.

       He flinches, and goes stiff for a second.

       “Come on, Bulldog,” it mutters.

       The alcohol in his brain muddles his senses. He tastes the film of vomit on his tongue and the hot ragged texture in his throat but he cannot recognize the voice. He has not heard that name in a long time because there is only one person who had ever referred to him by it.

       He inhales another cloud of air, and waits for his intestines to unfurl from the highway of knots sitting in the pit of his stomach. He swipes his right hand down his face, blots his palms across his thighs, jerks his key from the ignition and flings them across the seat. He clenches the door handle with his left hand, gives a deep deflating sigh and prods the door open with the meaty part of his left shoulder.

       The door creaks open on rusted hinges and flings tiny flakes of rust onto the curb. He steps out, shuts the door with his elbow, plants his left foot forward, wobbles backward on the heels of his boots and slumps against the middle of his truck next to the rear driver-side quarter panel. He lets off a huge burp that would have blown Mrs. Langston’s wig clean off of her skull, chuckles at the image of that incident playing on a continuous loop in the back of his head and peers upward.

       A mask of disgust falls across his face, and tugs at his brows. Anger squirms through him like an army of worms rooting through the graveyard dirt of his flesh. An icy chill trickles down his spine and pins his feet to the curb.

       The more he stares at it, the more he wants to retrieve the bottle from the passenger floorboard and drink until it goes away. His teeth mash themselves together as a small muscle twitches inside of his right jaw.

       A three-story red brick building looms under the blind dark sky, its rough texture split by a yin-yang of moonlight and darkness. Moonlight ices its shingled green roof; the row of evergreen bushes lining the main pathway leading toward the front door projects stout shadows across the yard. The town’s name and the words MIDDLE SCHOOL were stamped across a large wooden church sign standing on the right side of the property.

       It had started out as an orphanage back in the mid-forties to the late sixties. Due to budget concerns, the kids had been transferred to other orphanages or adopted out to the loving parents they had always dreamed of. Three weeks after the place had been emptied, it had been renovated into the local middle school.

       After he had come back from his time in The Gulf War, Duncan had enjoyed his twenty-year stint as the school’s head custodian. He could still hear the laughter of the children and see the smiles on their faces when they passed him in the halls between or before classes.

Some of the teachers and the custodians from the elementary and high schools had been laid off due to inflation. Sadly, he had been the first person who had been let go but at least they had thrown in a gold watch and a nice severance check. He thought the fact that they had fired him made as much sense as putting a tube top and dreadlocks on a bullfrog and calling it a supermodel.

       He would have given anything to have his job back. Since they had taken his job away, he would burn this place down to the ground and watch them squirm in misery. On the other hand, he would have been a hero to the kids who had felt like this place had been as torturous as the cubicle their parents had succumbed to on a nine-to-five basis.

       The singsong voice he had heard a few minutes ago stirs him from a fever dream. He sighs and perks his ear to the wind again.

       “Hey there, Bulldog,” it whispers.

       He peels back the blanket of alcohol-induced fog obscuring his brain and sighs. It cannot be, he thinks, I need to stop drinking.

       “Is that you, Sarge?” he asks.

       He squints at the four redwood picnic tables sitting on the right side of the property inside of a tall chain link fence where cigarettes and tales of adolescence had once been shared. He peers over his right shoulder toward the big black plastic toolbox stretching across the back below the back windshield and sighs. He peels the lid back, slips his right hand inside and fumbles around until he finds what he needs.

       He removes a small red gas can with two bright yellow lightning bolts cutting across the sides and shuts the lid. He had learned over the years that it is common sense to have an extra can lying around in case he would ever run out. Randy had always reminded him to come prepared for anything; he may have been born at night but not last night.

       The thick metal chain and the large padlock holding the heavy metal doors in place tells him that this is not the way to get in. There are plenty of ways to get inside because he did not sit on his ass during his seventeen-year employment. He had come up with a mental escape plan that he had not forgotten about in case something had happened.

       He squats down, grasps the thin metallic handle of the gas can in his right hand and scampers across the sidewalk. His heart thuds against his chest; goosebumps trail down his limbs and raise the hairs along the back of his neck.

         He brushes a strand of hair from his forehead with his left hand to keep it from twitching so much. He kneels down beside the tall chain-link fence bordering the right side of the property, and places the gas can down beside him. The school has never placed a surveillance camera on the property because they could not afford it but break ins were few and far between.

       He counts to ten, and clutches the bottom of the fence in both hands. He ignores the touch of cold steel wriggling into his palms and burrowing into his joints. He peels it away from the thin metal post, braces it open with his right shoulder and slides underneath.

His clothes rub against the cold black tarmac and fill the night with a chorus of soft incoherent whispers. A drop of sweat dribbles from the corner of his chin and plops onto the front of his shirt. He rises up one knee as a wave of dizziness washes over him.

The world becomes a carousel, sans the loud calliope music. A second drop of sweat slips past his dry cracked lips and slides across the center of his tongue. His hands slip from the scab of the fence, slamming it back into place with a loud metallic clang that echoes across the neighborhood and snaps his head back into focus.

He winces, his face cringing with disgust. He counts to ten, and waits for the sound of police sirens to come screaming towards him but nothing happens. He breathes a sigh of relief, stretches his right arm out and claws at the air with his fingers.

Where the hell did it go? he thinks.

He peers over his right shoulder and curses under his breath. He turns, glances through the notches in the fence and sees the red gas can sitting on the other side of the fence along the curb. He clenches his fists together, presses his cuticles into the middle of his palms and utters an audible grunt that vibrates from the back of his throat.

Of all of the things he could forget about, how could he have forgotten about that? Had he been too drunk to do this? Had the anticipation been too much for him to handle?

No, he thinks, I’m just drunk and angry.

The more he thinks about it, it is supposed to be more of an impromptu fuck you to the school board. He would never condone something like this but someone has to pay for what they did to him and everyone else. A voice in his right ear reminds him that this had been a bad idea even on paper and the one in his left ear says to ignore it.

Treetops sway in the breeze, casting odd shadows across the front lawn. A thin white cord sways in the breeze and taps a thin metallic hoop against the old tetherball pole standing in the far-right corner of the patio.

Duncan blots his hands against his thighs and reaches for the loose scab of the fence when an odd smear of light flickers in the corner of his right eye. He peers over his right shoulder, wipes a tear from his cheek and skulks further across the patio. The same soft musical sound he had heard earlier tonight floats across the patio, seeps into his eardrums and leads him toward the rear of the building.

He pauses and stares across the length of a concrete staircase descending between two brick walls. The lone bulb above the far-left corner of the doorway flickers, casting odd shadows across the doorway. A strange sensation washes over him and sends another sleeve of goosebumps trailing down his arms.

It is not his job to care about what goes on in this place anymore but curiosity is hard to ignore. He grasps the banister with his left hand and steps tentatively down the stairs. The blanket of light spreading across the bottom of the landing pushes the darkness, and draws him ever so closer like a moth to a street lamp.

A sheen of sweat coats his forehead. His heart beat accelerates.

He approaches a heavy wooden door with a scarred brass doorknob and scans the array of scuff marks and crude drawings that had been etched into its knotty pine façade. He extends his right arm, wraps his fist around the doorknob and ignores its cool touch pressing against his palm. He opens the door on rusted unoiled hinges and slides his hand away as a current of cool air envelops him.

A blanket of pale monochrome light spreads across the doorway and projects his anorexic shadow across the staircase behind him. He clings to the nagging suspicion that someone had somehow gotten inside of the basement to seek shelter from the night. He remembers how warm it would get down here in the winter and how cool it would get here in the summer on the far-right side of the room.

When he hears the music once more, it is the sound of a flute and not a kazoo. He had not heard the sound of either one of them in a long time and therefore could not pinpoint the difference between the two. He feels as if his body is moving in ways that he knows nothing about as if he had been stuck in some kind of a psychotropic dream.

The smell of pine sap rides on the breeze sweeping across the doorway and fills his lungs. His skin bristles with anticipation. His eye color shifts to a milky blue, and his body goes stiff, craning his head toward the light beaming from the middle of the wall.

A large dark hand with tapering black fingers emerges from the other side of the door, and holds it open. A part of him wishes that he would wake up and find himself asleep inside the front seat of his pickup but he cannot stir himself away from the light.

     As he enters the basement. the door closes with a loud thud.

TWO

IT is not Disney World but the place still brings him a sense of joy.

       Jared Campbell grasps the abrasive black rubber handlebars of his yellow striped black ten-speed bike and cuts across a narrow dirt trail. His body buzzing with adrenaline, his feet pump the jagged metallic pedals fast enough to raise his knees toward his elbows. A stray branch gropes at his left knee, bounces off of his thigh and wobbles in the air like an old door stopper.

       He races through a wide gap topped by an archway of gnarled branches and droopy green vines and draws a large gulp of air deep into his lungs. He lowers his head, his neck length russet-blonde hair stirring in the cool spring breeze, and speeds across a dark dense forest. Moonlight slips through the thin canopy of tree branches overhead, casting odd shadows across the forest.

       He raises his head, flies past a large tree stump jutting up from the right shoulder of the trail and out of the forest. He emerges out onto a large dirt clearing with three dirt hills sitting twenty yards away from each other, jutting toward the sky. The first hill stands four feet high, the second stands five feet high and the third stands at an astonishing nine feet high with a smooth flat top.

   Jared scans the four rows of ribbed metal bleachers teeming with spectators standing along the right shoulder of the trail and grins. The sound of applause radiates across the forest, intersects with the chorus to “Seven Nation Army” and is followed by his name.

       “Jared! Jared!” The crowd pops. “Let’s go, Jared. Let’s go.”

       An enigmatic voice booms from a massive loud speaker on a large anchor’s box standing on his far left. His skin bristles with enthusiasm.

       “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages,” The announcer exclaims, “Let’s give a round of applause to the star of the show, Jared Campbell.”

       The crowd noise increases. A bouquet of black and or white shirts with neon green decals of his name and number—12 because he had been born on that day in April—bloom from the risers. He grins and waves to the crowd as AC/DC’s Thunderstruck booms from the second loud speaker on the far-right corner of the anchor’s box in a loud deafening roar.

         He leans back on his banana seat, rubs his palms together and grasps the handlebars again. He pedals across the trail, and races towards the first hill. His breath tickling his upper lip, a thick comma of hair clings to his forehead.

       He draws a quick breath, rolls up the hill and soars three feet into the air. Camera phones crackle and flash in unison, and capture his hovering form in mid-flight. He clears the top of the hill, its metal spokes and matching rims glinting like sun-kissed chrome.

       He lands safely and sighs at the roar of cheers exploding from the audience. His front wheel jostles, kicking a small peal of dirt across the right shoulder of the trail. He winces, ignores the toxic negative voice whispering in his right ear.

       The last thing he wants is to lose focus while he is doing so good. You’ve got this, he reminds himself, You’ve. Got. This.

       He races toward the second hill, his tires leaving soft incoherent whispers behind. An excited voice echoes across the forest and overrides the music.

       “Nice landing,” the announcer exclaims.

       The crowd pops again. He draws his shoulders together and lowers his chin toward the conjoined pipe between the handlebars.

       When his front tire reaches the edge of the hill, he lifts his head and accelerates. His lungs seize with adrenaline as he jerks back on the handlebars. The cool breeze envelops him like an ugly Christmas sweater and caresses his forehead.

       A second barrage of camera phones click and flash across the forest. His rear tire spins in the air. The wind ruffles the sleeves of his short-sleeved neon yellow tee-shirt.

       He lands on both wheels again, and draws another crowd pop. He exhales, plops back onto his seat. His body bubbling with elation, he raises his right fist into the air above his head.

       A pleasing grin tugs at the center of his right cheek. Heat spreads across his face and chest.

       Two down, he thinks, one more to go.

       His veins pumping with adrenaline, he focuses on the third hill looming at the end of the trail and silently mocking him.

        Come on you little shit, it says, you couldn’t clear an anthill in your bare feet so what makes you think you can clear me. 

       The hill has always gotten the better of him but not today. He feels it in his chest, a sharp pang of triumph that has long been overdue.

       A hot wet odor permeates from the front of the hill and stings his nostrils. When his front tire edges the face of the hill, the dirt softens. A sudden shock seizes his lungs and heart in unison, squeezing a low audible gasp from his lopsided lips.

       Gravity shifts, pushing him forward. Sweat breaks out across his brow and pools inside of his underarms. The dirt swallows his front tire like an entrance to a cave collapsing shut, and lifts him from his seat.

       He jerks his hands away from his handlebars, spreads his legs apart, leaps backward off of the bike and pivots on his right foot to prevent falling. His bike’s rear end lifts three inches off of the ground, and topples onto its right side with a loud metallic crash.

       He curses under his breath, his brows furrowing with anger. The announcer’s box and energetic crowd cheering his name disappears in unison, receding into the shadows like a frightened canine. He feels the mixture of joy and praise blooming through him now dissolve, leaving sleeves of goosebumps sheathing his entire body.

       They were not real.

       They never were.

       They were all in his head, and had been here since he had found the place three months ago. It is nice to see them every once in a while. He grasps onto the hope that one day they will not be imaginary anymore, and refuses to let go no matter what anyone says.

       His dreams of becoming the next BMX phenom like Mat Hoffman and Steve Van Doren will not fade over time. It would give his life some semblance of joy if he were able to entertain a packed stadium with all of the tips and tricks he had to offer. To be admired by boys and adored by the girls who had hung his posters in their bedrooms would make life worth living.

       He makes the long walk across the clearing, wipes a sheen of sweat from his brow and sighs. He lifts his bike from the dirt, and brushes it away from the tire and the right handlebar with the edge of his tee-shirt. He guides his bike around the right side of the third hill and follows the remainder of the trail away from the clearing.

       They were going to build something on top of this by the time he clears this hill. It’ll be sad to see a piece of his childhood buried under tons of brick and stucco but there is nothing he can do about it. Times change; all we can do is roll with the punches.

       A Waffle House would not be bad (it has been years since he has gone to one). They would probably stick another Supercenter here when there is a perfectly good one two towns over. Maybe he could do some small chores for some of the locals and make some money so he could take his father Dwayne out for breakfast.

       Would it change how they had felt about each other?

    Would they finally reconnect as father and son?

       It is possible but Jared is always the type of person who never always sees the glass as empty. If anyone could do it, then he could, too. All it takes is a small thing to show someone that you care about them and remind them that their happiness is as important to them as it should be.

       Maybe then he could get off meth. If not for himself, then for Jared. He would love to see Dwayne standing in the crowd, cheering him on along with everyone else and bragging about how proud he is of him.

       Was he wishfully thinking about something that would never happen? He had known what would have really happened when Dwayne realized that his son had become a famous athlete. The thought alone had sickened him.

       If you love your father, he’d say, you could give him a few bucks until I can pay you back later. It would have been more than a few bucks. In fact, it would have been one plea after another, each one facilitating his addiction.

       Jared brushes the thought aside and guides his bike through another semi-lit forest. Once he clears it, he straddles his bike and pedals along the right shoulder of Connett Road toward home.

       Home?

       The word violates his tongue with a sharp bitter aftertaste that churns inside the pit of his stomach. There are other distasteful words he would like to call it but that is not one of them.

       He climbs off his bike, and guides it across a gravel driveway towards a green striped white aluminum-sided trailer that has not seen better days. Dwayne had forced him to move away from his friends in town and out here during the heyday of his addiction. Tall jade green pines obscure the gently sloping hill beyond the back yard, and loom above the trailer like distorted gothic cathedrals.

       He veers across the front lawn, leans his bike against a pair of naked oaks and cuts across the yard towards the front porch. He peers over his left shoulder, glances at The Smith’s immaculate white stucco bungalow sitting next door and sighs. It sits beyond a brown picket fence on a lush green lawn next to a concrete driveway; a large rectangular flower bed borders the front porch and teems with bright colorful flowers.

       Soft brass lamplight frames the front windows and pools onto the front porch. The sounds of laughter coming from inside drives a spike of sadness through his chest and sends a single hot tear trickling down his cheeks.

       It speaks of family. The kind of family he had always wanted but never got.

       A perturbed frown slumps across his face. He knows he will never live the life he deserves to have because he is too busy giving someone else the life they think they are entitled to. He has always imagined that Dwayne and his mother, Nora, would one day shower him with love, that they would go into town to have dinner together, pick up some movies from the video store, curl up on the couch and watch them until the sugar rush dies.

       He peers away from The Smith’s house, wipes the tear from his eyes and hikes up the front porch stairs. He grasps the cold brass doorknob in his right hand, slowly turns it and eases the front door open on soft creaking hinges. He steps inside, darkness engulfing the trailer save for the moonlight framing the living room drapes.

       He draws a large breath, turns and eases the door shut. He breathes a sigh of relief when a cone of brass light beams in from the kitchen doorway and envelops him like a prison spotlight.

       He gasps, spins around and pins himself against the front door. A hot dry lump clogs the back of his throat as his lungs and heart constrict in unison. The sound of heavy footsteps parade toward him in a slow and methodical pattern that rings every drop of sweat and misery from his body.

       A tall middle-aged man wearing a dingy white shirt and ratty jeans stands inside the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. He peers at Jared with heavy lidded brown eyes that glint with anger and fatigue as a thick brown mustache coats his upper lip. His face glistens under a sheen of sweat; the stench of body odor assaults Jared’s nostrils.

       “Where the fuck have you been?” Dwayne Campbell asks, his voice slow and raspy.

       Jared knows to choose his words wisely because the slightest syllable or incoherent answer may be his last. The intensity of Dwayne’s dominating stare hugs his throat like an invisible noose and sends a chill down Jared’s spine.

       “I was out riding my bike,” Jared responds.

       Dwayne says in a mocking voice. “I was out riding my bike.”

       Jared’s cheeks flush as his heart thuds. He swallows the lump in his throat and braces his thighs with both hands because he knows what is about to happen.

       “I don’t remember giving you permission to leave,” Dwayne asks, “Did I?”

       A loud snap stirs Jared from his trance. Dwayne leans his face closer as his lips curl into an angry sneer.

       “I guess you don’t have to answer me when I ask you a fucking question,” Dwayne says, “When did we become Man Of The House?”

       “I didn’t say I was,” Jared replies.

       “You’ve always got time to ride that goddamn bike but you don’t have time to do your fucking chores, huh?”

       “I did my fucking chores,” Jared states.

       The fire in his cheeks shifts into his chest. His hands slide away from his thighs and twitch with a mixture of anger and vigor.

       One second Dwayne lowers his head and sighs. The next, he clears the room in one step and cuts his right hand across the air in a loud whistling arc. Pain explodes across Jared’s face, burrows into his chin and slams the left side of his face against the front door; stars burst in Jared’s eyes.

       The mixture of anger and vigor he had once wielded sinks toward the pit of his stomach. A tear trickles down his cheeks.

       “Don’t get fucking smart with me,” Dwayne winces. “I’ll knock your stupid ass back to Dixie, you fucking little shit.”

       Jared slides his head away from the door, wipes his right hand across his face. He stares down at the thin trail of blood streaking across his palm and sighs. His face hot and sagging with shame, he skulks across the living room and down the hallway.

He steps into his bedroom, and shuts the door behind him. He leans against it in case Dwayne has not gotten enough and glances toward the ceiling, his eyes brimming with tears.

How could someone treat their son like this? Fathers are supposed to be a role model for their sons, but Dwayne Campbell is anything but.

There had been a time when he had been a good father before Jared’s mother Nora had done what she had done. Six years ago, Nora Campbell had set out for her eight to five shift at a local café in town only to have skipped town with her boss in tow. As much as he had loved his mother, she is the catalyst for this.

Had she known that Dwayne would turn out like this?

Had she even planned to take him with her?

Was she convinced that she is better off without them?

Anything is possible.

If things had gotten better between her and Dwayne, this would not be happening. In her case, she had thought that cheating was the gateway to problem solving. If she is willing to cheat on Dwayne, then she will do it to her boss.

The sound of footsteps parading down the hallway snap Jared back into the present. A small black shadow spills across the bottom of his bedroom doorway, eclipsing the pool of light beaming across the hall. Jared backs away from the door, his heart thudding inside of his chest, and plops down onto the foot of his bed.

“I hope you enjoyed that while you had it,” Dwayne bellows. “I’m selling that fucking bike and you’re going to get a job starting tomorrow.”

Jared peers out of his bedroom window and mumbles. “I’ll do you one better, asshole.”

He scuttles across his bed, opens his bedroom window and climbs out. He slides down the front of the trailer, brushes the tiny flakes of white paint from his shirt and cocks a sideways glance toward the front porch. He kneels down on one knee, and reaches under the trailer’s twisted metal frame with both hands.

It has to be here, he thinks, please do not tell me the son of a bitch found it.

When his hand closes around it, a wave of elation bubbles up inside of him. He hears a loud shuffling sound from under the trailer and peers underneath, his brows furrowing. He snatches the braided gray handle of a maroon backpack with a southern collegiate logo along both sides from the ground, slides the straps up and over his head and tugs it twice.

The front porch light is off for the first time in days. Jared glances at his father’s dark blue Dodge Durango sitting on the same four cinderblocks since last summer and skulks sideways across the front lawn. He keeps his attention on the front door and waits for the exact moment when the porch light will flicker back on and reveal that Dwayne had been standing there all along.

He counts to ten, and sighs with relief.

If his own parents will not care about him, then why should he care about them? They are not his problem anymore and vice versa. He did not want it to come to this but if this is his only escape then there is no other option available.

He guides his bike across the other side of the lawn, crunching a few frail twigs and soft grass under his tires. The cool spring air sweeps across the front lawn, whispers in the treetops and caresses his forehead. He clears the front lawn in five seconds, straddles his bike and heads east along the left shoulder of Connett Road.

Behind him, the dilapidated white trailer shrinks into a small gray dot floating on the dark horizon. Goodbye you sadistic motherfucker, Jared thinks, you can live there since you like the place so much.

A big part of him knows that there were plenty of parents out there who would take better care of him than his real parents would have. He had never gotten so much as a note of encouragement from Dwayne or Nora because of reasons he had never known. Not a “don’t worry, buddy” or an “I’m proud of you no matter what happens.”

With Dwayne it was: “Not only are you a coward but a fucking idiot, too.”

Jared follows Connett Road for seven miles straight into town. He rides past a trailer park that had seen better days sitting on the east side of town and veers left around a sharp turn past a trio of stucco bungalows on postage stamp lawns.

A wave of regret washes over him. An image of Dwayne hunched over in his chair sobbing while two uniformed police officers scribbled everything he said in tiny notebooks plays in his mind.

You want me to come back, he thinks, because you’ve got no one to bully around.

The sound of tumbling plastic rouses him from a daydream. Jared blinks and peers down in time to see his front tire collide with a bright red gas can sitting along the curb. He screeches to a halt and shakes the contents inside of his backpack, his brows furrowing with confusion.

“What the hell?” he asks.

He drops his kickstand, climbs off of his bike, slides the strap of his backpack from his chest and hooks it around his left handlebar. He collects the gas can from the middle of the sidewalk and sees a lime green pickup truck sitting alongside the curb. He remembers seeing that truck around town a few times but could not remember who had owned it.

Who leaves a half-filled gas can lying on the sidewalk beside their vehicle? Why would they leave it here? If they were going to the gas station two blocks over, they would have taken it with them.

He strides toward the driver side of the truck, peers into the front cab and places the gas can onto the front seat. He glances at the bottle of Jim Beam lying on the passenger floorboard on a puddle of sour yellow vomit and licks a bead of sweat from his upper lip. He wipes a sheen of sweat from his forehead with his left hand and blots his palm across the front of his tee-shirt when a soft tinkling sound echoes across the neighborhood.

He turns, peers toward the middle school and hears it again. He steps away from the truck, pockets of heat spreading across his forehead and cheeks, and follows the concrete walkway toward the front door. The thick metal padlock unfastens itself from the large metal chain hugging the door handles with a loud metallic click and falls onto the front stoop.

The doors slide open on slick oiled hinges and lean against the stout brass door stopper jutting up from the floor. Moonlight pours through the shattered windows, glints off the jagged array of broken glass jutting from the windowpanes and projects odd shadows. Round-faced school bells protrude from the ceiling above the row of white striped purple metal lockers lining the school’s white antiseptic walls.

Jared turns left down the hallway, his body buzzing with ripples of electric curiosity. His ratty green striped white sneakers shuffle across the dusty hardwood floor as his soft labored breaths tickle his upper lip. He approaches a heavy wooden door standing at the end of the corridor and grasps its white marble doorknob in his right hand.

An icy chill crawls up the length of his arm and congeals in his shoulder. He opens the door, and steps through a narrow doorway. He descends down a wide concrete staircase with a sleek wooden banister running along the center of a stone-gray wall.

The spring air sweeps across the length of the staircase, stirs his loose-fitting shirt and cools his burning red cheeks. He clears the last step and appears inside of a spacious basement with a dirt-covered floor and red brick walls. Thick cobwebs and scrims of dust clog the corners of the ceilings and coat the network of pipes above his head.

A bright white light glows in the periphery of his left eye. He glances toward the left side of the room, sweat breaking out across his forehead, and blinks. The music grows louder now, and pulls him toward the light.

“There’s my little boy,” a familiar voice murmurs.

His heart flinches. His lips tremble.

“Is that you, Mom?” he asks.

A tear protrudes from his eyes.

“You’re so handsome, my beautiful boy,” she brags

Now it makes sense. Nora had not left with her boss like Dwayne told him. She was here, somewhere beyond the light, waiting for him.

A mixture of joy and happiness radiates inside of him. The tall broad-shouldered man in a red shirt and jeans stands off to his right bearing a morose heavy expression, his milky blue eyes fixating on the light. His head stooping toward his shoulders, a strand of white hair falls across the center of his forehead.

The tall dark figure leans against the wall to Jared’s left, grasping a long white flute made from a clean-shaven femur in his hands. It plants the tip of its right boot into the floor, as its red striped white stockings hug its thin narrow legs. The rich scent of peppermint drifts across the room, and tickles Jared’s nose.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she replies.

“Where are you, Mommy?” he sighs.

His body flooding with curiosity, Jared saunters across the room, his eyes shifting to a milky blue pallor. When he approaches the old man, his body goes stiff. His head slumps forward, resting the tip of his chin against the center of his chest.

A thin wicked smile curls across the figure’s left cheek as the middle school’s front doors clap shut with a loud heavy thud.

THREE

THIS is all she wants.

       Christy Ketchum stretches across a checkered brown cotton blanket between her husband Ethan’s legs and rests her head upon his chest. She hears the soft rhythmic beating of her heart in her left ear and the soft whisper of the ocean waves crashing upon the rocks along the shore in her right.

       Two strands of long red hair fall across her forehead and billow in the same salty ocean breeze caressing her cheeks. Ripples of warm heat radiate throughout their bodies; their chests and cheeks flushing. She would die a happy woman if she never left this place or this spot.

       A limp rough palm caresses her forehead, and tucks the loose strands back behind her left ear. Her hot pink strapless sun dress flutters across her silky bare thighs and spreads a sleeve of goosebumps down her legs.

       “Can you imagine?” Ethan asks. “What would it be like to live here?”

       His smooth manly voice sends a tingle down her inner thighs. She nestles up against him and wraps her arms around his waist. He could ask her anything he wants with that voice as long as she never has to move.

       “It sure beats living in the city,” she adds. “No noisy neighbors, no smog, no traffic jams.”

         “To just hear the waves crash upon the shore and see the sunset in the west and swim naked in the ocean at night.”

       This is her safe space.

       “It’s like another part of the world that no one knows about but us,” he says.

       She lifts her head from his chest and glances up at him, her body vibrating with affection. She basks in the warmth of his kindness, affection, trust, and love and swallows every drop of it. Curly black hair, deep-set green eyes, wide nose, full lips and a wide chin on a square rugged face.

       Love makes cannibals out all of us. After the first bite, we can never get enough.

       She resists the urge to caress his face and feel his smooth pale skin against hers. His eyes hold her in place. She cups his left hand in hers and kisses the second knuckle of each finger, her stomach fluttering with bee’s wings.

       “If this is where we—”

       There is something different about him that she did not see before. A light blue dog collar studded with tiny plastic diamonds and a metallic bone-shaped tag with the name LUCY cinches around his neck.

       She flinches, and draws a gulp of air deep into her lungs. A cold realization washes over her; goosebumps bristle across her body.

       A sad expression falls across Ethan’s face, and accentuates his age. He utters a soft canine cry through his dry cracked lips.

       Christy’s eyes snap open. The bright blue sky is a blank white ceiling haunted by faint black shadows and the beautiful sandy beach is now the living room inside of her and Ethan’s toffee stucco bungalow sitting alongside Henderson Street on the east end of town.

       Most people would correct themselves but not her.

       She could not bring herself to say things like “hers”. She will never erase his presence from the things they’ve owned. What was “theirs” will always be. If the love between two people becomes as strong as theirs had been, nothing will ever change.

       On the other hand, it makes the grief and loneliness more digestible. Whereas most people who have gone about the rest of their lives in a desperate search for love, she would not. Ethan wasn’t only her first and only true love but he was her final love; no man would ever take his place.

       This is not the only time she has had that dream. In fact, the dreams had varied over the year since—

       She brushes a strand of hair away from her face and tucks it behind her left ear. The dreams were not but reminders of the time that she and Ethan had spent together but the vacations they had shared. They had taken so many vacations, she did not know which one she would be dreaming about from one day to the next.

       Today is the vacation they had taken to California in the summer of two-thousand nineteen. He had surprised her with it one morning when she had been making coffee and breakfast before she had to leave for work. After she had cried for five minutes, he had also informed her that he had called the school and told her that they would be leaving that very day.

       They had taken in all of the sights, breathed in the grandeur of Hollywood. They had been greeted by a number of celebrities while riding a tour bus, ate at the same restaurant where Hemingway and Faulkner ate at and planned a picnic at the beach.

       It had not been just any beach but a beach where you did things that no one had known about. Luckily, Christy had worn a bright peach-colored sundress that day but had still insisted on bringing a pair of panties once they were done. When they had gotten back to the hotel, they made their vacation into a staycation.

       It is her favorite dream. Now that is wide awake, the dream is gone. She does not know when she will see him there again.

       A wave of depression washes over her. Sweat coats the back of her neck.

       “Of course,” she mumbles.

       She licks her upper lip when a low humming vibrates across the room. She sighs, swings her legs over the side of their (yes, their) dark-blue sofa and sits up. She stands, snatches her cell phone from the glass topped coffee table standing beside the left arm of the couch and kills the alarm.

       She glances at the time on her phone and sighs. Foolishness washes over her in a thick choking wave.

       “Shit, shit, shit,” she hisses.

       It explains why Ethan had worn a dog collar and whimpered and why she had been roused from the perfect dream. She heads across the living room, around the right side of the polished walnut oak coffee table, plops down the white straight back chair leaning against the wall and tugs on a pair of brown hiking boots.

       She races out of the living room and across the kitchen. She sneaks a glance at the digital clock on the stove and shakes her head in disgust. Ten-fifteen, she thinks, I laid down for a nap at three-fifteen in the afternoon and ended up sleeping for—

       Her stomach churns.

       Eight fucking hours, she thinks. I must’ve been tired.

       It was not easy being a widow. Ethan would have woken her up hours ago but he did not. As a widow, he had only existed in her dreams long enough to remind her he had been real.

       She grabs her key ring and a light pink leash from the bottom of a wooden white-painted corner shelf and steps outside. She shuts the door behind her, engages the deadbolts and descends the front porch stairs two at a time. She stops in the middle of the sidewalk, scans the rows of bungalows and clapboards along Henderson Street and yawns.

       There is only one thing on her mind. She hurries away from the curb and cuts across the street when she hears an odd sound behind her.

       She stops alongside the curb and perks her ear to the wind, her face sagging with confusion. It does not sound like crickets. It had sounded like someone tried to whistle and managed to conjure up a half-assed one.

       She looks around again and finds no one. If someone were wolf-whistling at her, they had done a half-assed job of it.

       She brushes it off and steps across the curb. She jogs past The Mitchell place, a bright yellow clapboard bungalow with a large sandbox in the back yard for their grandson Rory. She does not mind The Calhouns especially when Andy mows the grass every Sunday in the summer because he had always offered to do so.

       When she nears the lime-green stucco bungalow beside The Mitchell place, unease churns inside the pit of her stomach. She tries to avoid Gary Lee’s house whether she’s coming back from her morning jog or from walking Lucy but she cannot. You can try to look away from something all you want to, but you will always remember it after you walk away.

       It is not the owner who mortifies her because he does not ever leave the place unless he is watching the rain falling from his front porch. It is the house itself. It is a reminder of a life she once had, one filled with love and kindness that made her life what it had been but will never be again.

       They had met in the summer of Two-Thousand and Twenty-Two, a time when most people were still collecting themselves from the wounds that Covid had left behind. He had been getting over a bad breakup and wanted nothing more than to eat enough spicy food to make him forget about it and she had aced her finals and wanted to celebrate her victory with some authentic Mexican food.

       They had met at a restaurant on the northeast side of the county. She had ordered the taquitos and rice and he had ordered the chicken quesadilla with rice but the waiter had gotten their orders mixed up. Instead of sitting at separate tables, they had sat together and talked long into the night.

Two weeks of text messages and four phone calls later, they had become an item. They had moved in and graduated together with honors. When she and Ethan had first moved here from Cleveland, she had wanted to live here but someone else had lived here so they had taken what they could get.

       That was the thing she loved about him. He had always looked on the bright side of things and saw the potential in anyone dealing with self-doubt or simple human motivation. It was a benefit of being the wife of a New York Times best-selling self-help guru and author of such books as The First Step To A New Life and The Seven Ways To Love Yourself.

       She likes to think that there were times when he had even doubted himself but never liked to admit it. For someone to brush off their own self-doubt and still manage to smile every day is a masterclass in itself. Whether it was a bad review from his recent bestseller or pressure from his agent for the delivery of his next novel, he had responded with a bright smile and enough positivity to go around for everyone.

       After a seven-year run as one the world’s most loved gurus, another storm cloud had been brewing in the distance. It was not a cumulus or a cirrus but it had still started with the letter C. It had stormed his brain, impaired his equilibrium and caused him to lose focus in everything.

       She had spent many sleepless nights by his bedside, holding his hand and talking to him in hopes of seeing any progress. His rugged handsome face and the same bright energetic green eyes she had fallen in love with nine years ago had looked deflated. His lively and positive soul had been reduced to a gaunt and shriveled husk of the only man she had ever truly loved since they met during their freshman year in high school.

       It was Ethan, but not her Ethan. She knows she will see him again in her next dream. A part of her wishes that the next dream she has will be of their romantic getaway to Venice they had taken two weeks prior to his death.

       His death were two words she did not want to become part of her vocabulary. It is what it is but she does not fret. The dreams keep her occupied and remind her that their love had been strong, promising and real.

       She is still shaking off the grief and misery from his absence. Do we ever really shake it off or do we holster it for the time being until something comes along to remind us that it is still there? She continues to keep going because that is what Ethan would have wanted her to do until it was time for them to meet again.

       In the time it takes her to dredge up the past to keep her company, she sees the bright yellow Pittsburgh Steelers flag appear in her periphery. Abby and Theodore Wolfe’s two-story Cape Cod sits along the corner of the block like it had just been built. Moonlight and shadow spill between the notches in the wooden privacy fence obscuring the back yard, and seeps across the sidewalks and curbs.

       Christy jogs across the front lawn, blades of soft grass crunching beneath her boots, and ascends the front porch steps. A high canine whimper wails from behind the front door. Or was it the same distant whine she’d heard earlier tonight?

       She hears it again, this time coming from inside of the house. An urgent scratching follows along with a third whimper.

       “Hold on honey,” she declares.

       She kneels onto the front porch and pulls the far-left corner of the black rubber WELCOME mat aside. She finds the spare key lying in its original place, snatches it from the cold concrete porch, slides it into the knob and disengages the lock. She returns the key back to its hiding spot, presses her left ear against the door for a second and opens it.

       A black dachshund with large patches of brown fur along its chest and paws scuttles toward her, its large black ears flapping around its face. The name LUCY is stamped across a small metallic tag that hangs down from a large ring in the center of its light blue collar.

       “I’m sorry, honey,” she pleads. “I didn’t mean to leave you hanging.”

       She cradles Lucy in her arms, places a soft gentle kiss on her head and rubs her belly. Lucy licks her face, wriggles from her grasp, rolls onto her right side and squirms with canine glee. She hooks the leash onto Lucy’s collar, backs away from the open doorway and slaps her right thigh.

       “Come on,” she encourages. “Let’s go for walkies.”

       Christy steps aside and sees Lucy barrel out of the house and across the front porch. Her dog tags clinking together and glinting in the moonlight. She shuts the front door behind her and follows Lucy down the front porch steps. An icy chill traces her back as a second sends the leaves littering the front porch skittering toward the curb to make way for the others.

       Lucy clears the last step, whips her tail across the air in glee, cocks her head back and utters a sharp loud bark. Her eyes wide with false shock, Christy pretends to be startled and presses her left hand against her chest. A strand of her now neck length red hair caresses the back of her head and clings to the crown of her right shoulder.

       “I apologize for being late, Miss Lucy,” she moans. “You know it’s not easy being a widow.”

       They step onto the sidewalk and parade down the block. Lucy’s ears twitch as she gallops out ahead, extending Christy’s arm and the leash.

       She had known The Wolfe’s for the past four years. When they had read about Ethan’s obituary in the local newspaper, they had wasted no time checking in on her. She had brought a bottle of wine and a tuna noodle casserole and coerced her to eat something because she had looked as if “she hadn’t eaten in days”.

       They had been right though. She had not felt like eating because the love of her life was gone, taken away at the age of thirty-eight when there had been so many more things for him to do. They had never gone to Italy like they said they had wanted to for their tenth wedding anniversary; they had tried to have children but after two miscarriages and the wear and tear it had done on her body they had abandoned all hope of becoming parents.

       When Abby and Theodore had showed up again, they had brought Lucy with them. Lucy had taken to her like an aunt she’d never had or a big sister. The time that she had spent with Lucy that day had eased the tension in her nerves and gave her a brand-new lease in life.

       No one else had bothered to come over and check on her but they did and it was like she had been welcomed into a family she had never had. She would do anything for The Wolfe’s so when they had asked her to dog sit while they went down to Raleigh, North Carolina to visit her ailing mother, she had said yes without a moment’s thought. It was the least she could have done for the only two people who had cared about her since Ethan’s death and did what they could to make the grieving process less strenuous.

       They clear Henderson Street five minutes later, climb onto Barnes Avenue and stroll past two more houses, and a local VFW inside of a squat green brick building with a shingled gray roof sitting on a graveled lot. Lucy sniffs the air, scans her surroundings with canine interest and wags her tail again, her dog tag clinking below her chin. Christy clamps her free hand across her mouth to stifle a yawn.

         The leash gives a slight tug, and cuts her off in mid-thought. She sighs, and stumbles forward. Lucy veers off the sidewalk, and onto the side yard in front of a light blue clapboard bungalow sitting on the corner of Barnes and Stewart.

       She tiptoes around the yard, sniffs the grass and the dirt beneath and squats.

       “Be careful, honey,” Christy warns.

       Lucy responds with a low wheeze and squats. A curtain of brass colored light pours through the right-side window and spreads across the front stoop. Christy holds her breath, and waits for some cranky old man or middle-aged recluse to come out to warn her to pick it up.

       She pats her pockets and curses under her breath. Great, she thinks, that is just fucking great. How could she have forgotten about the doggy bag from the dispenser beside The Wolfe’s front door?

       “Damn it, Lucy,” she says in a scornful voice. “I wished you’d take a shit in—”

       Another whimper. She steps back to give Lucy some room and works up an apology for stepping on her toe when she hears it again. It is not a whimper though but more like the sweet melody of a flute playing somewhere in the distance.

       She had heard it two previous times before this but could never quite put her finger on it. She was not being wolf-whistled back at the house and it had not been Lucy’s impatient scratching at the front door.

       She waits for a third encore and peers around the side of the yard. She stares across the street and peers at the side of a three-story stone-gray building looming over a vast stretch of dark grass glinting under a yellow cuticle moon. A lime-green pickup truck with a bright red gas can sitting in the passenger seat and a black and yellow ten-speed bike lies against the far end of the curb with a dark red duffle bag lying next to its rear tire.

       The music returns, its elegant chorus riding on the breeze. Lucy finishes, steps back from her deposit, kicks her hind legs and gives a sigh of approval. She follows Christy’s gaze, steps back toward the sidewalk and cocks her head toward her right shoulder.

       Christy steps forward, her cheeks blushing under the cold breeze. The leash slides out from her grasp, and plops down onto the grass like a detachable tail. Lucy cocks her head to the left, tiptoes on her front paws, utters a low whine and follows it with a quick bark.

       Now it is her turn to worry. She’s never seen Christy like this before; there’s something about her that doesn’t fit right. The hairs along the back of Lucy’s neck grow stiff in the cold sharp air.

       Her canine senses are tingling. She barks again, hoping to stir her out of her daze.

       Christy clears the yard as a loose strand of red hair billows in the wind and clings onto her right shoulder. Her skin bristles again but not from the coldness. There is something about the sound that leads her across the street like the MC of a cartoon drawn toward a forbidden pie by its enticing smell.

       “Hey baby,” a familiar voice sighs.

       Her skin bristles at the sound of a smooth, manly voice. Her eyes swell with joy. Her mouth slumps open as a current of cool air sweeps across her dry tongue.

       It is not just any voice.

       “I love you, baby,” it utters “I miss you so much.”

       “Ethan?” she asks. “Oh my god. Ethan?”

       Her curiosity piques. Her cheeks flush with a mixture of joy and relief. The music returns and floats on the cool spring breeze grazing the back of her neck. A sense of euphoria seeps into her bones, sends her heart thudding against her chest.

She has to find him. The anticipation is too strong for her to ignore. She draws a cloud of pine sap deep into her lungs, lets it out, steps off the curb and across Stewart Avenue. 

       A lone tear protrudes from the corner of Lucy’s right eye and glints under the sick waxy moonlight. She whines, her eyes flickering with sadness, and barks softer this time. She turns and heads back down the street where they had come from, dragging her leash along the sidewalk.

       Christy crosses the street and into the semi-lit alleyway separating the building from a row of other houses stretching across the curb on her left. The smells of wet garbage, urine and mildew overpowers the breeze but rouses her awake. Bits of asphalt crunch under her boots; a cone of white light beams out from a ground floor window and spreads across the alley.

       “I love you,” it says. “I’m over here.”

       She approaches the lit window and raises it at shoulder level. The music grows louder and rides on the current of cold air sweeping across the windowsill. She squeezes her narrow frame through the open window, slides into the building and throws herself over.

       She climbs down the dingy white brick wall and finds herself inside of a large basement with a soft dirt floor. A small knot in the wall catches the left side of her tee-shirt and tugs it upward to reveal a small crescent of her slim pale stomach and one half of her belly button. She saunters across the basement, her boots making small whispers amongst the loose brown dirt, and steps through the open doorway.

       A tall dark figure leans against the side of the doorway, his fingertips dancing along the length of a long white flute made from a strange substance she does not concentrate on. The strong salty odor permeates around the room, and tickles her nostrils. When she clears the doorway, it leans away from the wall and follows her toward the other side of the basement.

       Her body stiffens and a milky blue pallor floods her eyes. Her head slumps forward, tossing a thin shroud of red hair across the center of her forehead. The music sends another chill down her spine, and pins her feet to the floor.

       A cone of white light beams across the room, and outlines the frames of two other people. The tall broad-shouldered man standing on the far-right side and the teenage boy in the long-sleeved yellow neon shirt standing beside him peers into it with a catatonic glaze in their eyes. She stands three feet apart from the boy and her shadow flickering across the basement’s dusty concrete floor.

       The musician steps around her, his fingers still dancing across the flute. He steps around her, holds his flute in his right hand and swipes his left hand across the air in front of the light.

       As the window slides shut, the music ends on a sour note.

FOUR

THE flutist glances at the three people standing in front of it with bright blue eyes the size of silver dollars.

       A dark veil cast by the brim of its hat falls across its forehead and eclipses the bridge of its pale button nose. Its fingers dance along the flute, its soft cool breath pluming into the open holes, and play its soft hypnotizing tune. Sweat, peppermint and mildew wafts around the basement, tingles inside of its nostrils and tastes like warm apple pie.

       It opens the dark chasms buried deep inside of them that houses their sadness and depression and absorbs their memories. They remind it why it is standing here, why these people have come here and why the music has brought them together.

       Anyone could have heard the music and fallen under its hypnotic spell. It plays on their grief, picks them via the voices they want to hear again and draws them here.

       The flutist does not pick the people. It does, however, choose the location for which it will appear and this is not the first time. There were plenty of people who came before them but every one of them went willingly.

       It has been doing this for centuries ever since it had relieved the villagers in the small village of Hamelin of a problem. A rat problem, in fact. When they had laughed it out of town and had refused to pay it what they had promised, it had come back to take something precious from them: their children.

       Some have called it The Pied Piper. They were told that it was a man but no one knows for sure if that is true. It is a character in medieval folklore to some but not anymore.

       Not after tonight.

       It inches its way toward the beam of light and points its flute toward the left side of the gap. It presses its index and middle fingers against the first two open holes and belts out a long quavering note that echoes across the room. The gap widens, spilling a carpet of light toward the other side of the room that projects odd shadows across the walls.

       It sweeps its free hand across the air towards the gap in a welcoming gesture. The three people raise their heads and peer beyond the pulsating light. It does not know their names because there have been so many in the past that it cannot remember them even if it had tried.

       It steps through the gap, and grasps its flute in both hands again. They glance at each other, their milky blue eyes glinting with affection, and sigh. The old man steps forward, his hiking boots shuffling across the floor, and leads the others across the gap.

       The light embraces them in soft warm tendrils and sends gooseflesh down their bodies. A chorus of soft and incoherent whispers radiates from the light.

       “Hey Bulldog,” one voice states.

       “My handsome boy,” another voice mutters.

       “I miss you so much,” another voice replies.

       A tear protrudes from the corners of their eyes and trickles down their cheeks. They take three steps across the light and ignore the sound of the basement wall crumbling to a close when the room, the beam of light and the sounds of faraway voices disappears.

       They emerge at the mouth of a wide dirt road cutting a straight swatch through a lush green meadow. A bright yellow sky floats in the clear blue sky above, and warms the back of their necks. The sound of birdsong replaces the symphony of chirping crickets they had heard a few minutes ago.

       The Piper skips down the trail, its flute resonating through the meadow. The three people scan their surroundings and follow it, their clothes fluttering in the breeze. They reach the end of the trail and turn right around a large boulder when the sounds of laughter and pleasant conversation rises in the distance.

       They follow The Piper down the road for three miles past a waist-high wooden sign standing off to the right with the words VITAM QUAM MEREIS across it in Olde English script. The Piper pauses, and plants its left foot out beside it. Its fingers still dancing across the flute, it pivots on the ball of its right foot, spins one hundred and eighty degrees and stops.

When its left foot lands back where it had been, its neck twists and pops on frail inhuman bones. Its chin rests on the crown of its spine, casts a broad smile at its followers and ambles backward across the trail on uneven red-and-white stockinged legs. The once distant sound of laughter and conversation grows louder now; the aromas of hot food, wood smoke and salt tingles across the air.

The trail shifts from dirt to a wide cobblestone path dissecting a small village teeming with small stucco bungalows sitting on well-kept lawns. Footsteps crunch the soft grass between the houses as the villagers begin scurrying toward them with gleeful expressions on their faces. Old and middle-aged couples, lovestruck teenagers and curious children in eighteenth century garb ranging from ankle low dresses to neat gray blouses and white slacks.

They stretch out their hands and greet the three people with a chorus of kind words and gentle handshakes. Strands of colorful confetti fall down from the sky and wriggles in the breeze along its way to the ground. The loud roar of an accordion mingles with the sound of The Piper’s flute and fills the village with a lively but still hypnotic tune.

The Piper leads them left down a long side street, arches his brows and motions toward something with the tip of his bone flute. The smell of hot food drifts into Duncan’s nostrils and stirs him out of his trance. He blinks away his milky blue cataracts and peers over his left shoulder with his regular sea-green eyes.

Duncan turns and glances down the length of the street. His cheeks flush with a mixture of surprise and joy, and squeeze a second tear from the corner of his eyes. The Piper nods, taps its fingers against the flute once more, and leads the other two across town.

He takes slow tentative steps down the road as the same familiar voice he had heard outside of the middle school returns. His heart stutters with joy. He approaches a small redbrick building sitting at the end of the street on a wide pebbly lot, takes the front porch stairs one at a time and steps inside.

A large red neon sign standing along the edge of the roof beams the name KATY’S in readable cursive font. Country music spills out across the front porch in heavy bass-pounding waves and sends goosebumps trickling down his back. The smell of sweat, alcohol and sizzling meat trails into his nose, and causes him to salivate.

The place is packed with other customers, each one brandishing their favorite drinks in either large frosty mugs or glasses. Sunlight seeps through the fishnet windows, projecting diamond-shaped shadows across the knotty pine walls above the jukebox sitting along the left. A polished wooden bar stretches along the right, backed by a giant shelf teeming with whiskey bottles, black and white photos of a forgotten era and colorful trinkets from tropical locations.

Brooks and Dunn spew from the jukebox with “Boot Scootin’ Boogie”. The neon beer signs hanging on the walls spread psychotropic lights across the walls and glint off of the glasses in customers’ hands. A tall heavyset man with brown eyes and neck length salt and pepper hair in a white shirt and jeans sits at the bar and bites down on one end of a double cheeseburger.

“Hey Duncan,” a familiar voice replies. “Where the hell have you been?”

He turns and glances at a short curvy brunette in a red shirt and blue jean cutoffs that show off the sleeve of tattoos hugging her left thigh. Katy? he thinks, it can’t be you because you died four—

She steps out from behind the bar and wraps him up in a tight embrace. The familiar scent of cocoa butter lotion drifts across his nose as Brooks and Dunn fade from the jukebox in place of Shania Twain singing “Any Man Of Mine”. When they break the hug, she gently squeezes his left shoulder.

“We’ve been waiting for you, buddy,” she asks. “What can I get you?”

His mind buzzes with confusion. The last time he saw her, she was inside of a coffin after she had died in a tragic fire inside of the bar. She looked cold and blue back then but now she had that friendly gentleness to her that he had not seen in decades.

He cannot find the right words to say. Instead, he swallows them and licks his upper lip.

“My usual,” His brows furrow with shock.

“Okay,” she flashes a wide pleasing smile. “I’ll bring it over. Your friends have been waiting for you to get here.”

His heart twitches with joy. He swallows again, and strolls tentatively down the length of the bar. A small smudge of light appears in the corner of his left eye.

When the crowd standing along the opposite end of the bar separate, joy bubbles inside of him. His skin bristles and his cheeks flush. His right-hand twitching with shock, he stares at the round wooden table sitting in the far-left corner of the lobby.

“Hey Bulldog,” Lieutenant Timothy McLaughlin blurts “How long were you going to make us wait?”

“Look at you, Bulldog,” First Class Simon Carter notes. “What happened to your bitchstache?”

He does not want to believe what he is seeing but it all seems so real. Did he drink himself to death inside of his pickup truck? Did he choke on his own vomit?

It is the only conclusion that he could come up with to explain why he is here. He had died after he left the bar and this is his own personal heaven. That would explain everything because everyone he had known in this place had died years ago, leaving only the memories of them that he could cling to whenever he misses them.

“My…my…” he mumbles. “My bitchstache?”

“Look at him,” McLaughlin says. “The son of a bitch is so confused he doesn’t know what to say.”

He has not heard their voices in decades. He does remember the pencil thin mustache he had during his stint in the military. They had referred to it as a “bitchstache” because it had always drawn the prettiest women to their table.

“I haven’t seen him look like that since that sniper in Iraq shot the fucking snack cake out of his hand instead of his head back in the middle of July,” Carter adds with a chuckle.

Something rubs against his left shoulder. He glances away from the table and sees Katy standing next to him. She flashes a wide friendly smile and brandishes a tall frosty mug of beer in her left hand.

“Sit down, Bulldog,” Carter insists. “We’ve got some catching up to do.”

A river of tears brimming in his eyes, Duncan accepts the mug of beer, slides the chair away from the middle of the table and sits down. He wipes the tears from his eyes with the edge of his right hand, takes a sip from his mug and shudders at the wave of cold beer sliding down his dry abrasive throat. He knows he has gone somewhere but he does not care where he is as long as he is with his favorite people in his favorite place.

The Piper, Christy and Jared peer through the crowd and grin at Duncan. It plays its flute once more and leads them down the street away from the sound of country music spilling from the bar. Two blocks later, the sounds inside fade to a chorus of soft distorted whispers.

It pauses along the left shoulder, and taps its fingers against the flute. Christy turns and peers over her left shoulder at a wide grassy meadow spread out in front of a vast blue-gray ocean. The milky white waves crash upon the shore and pound against the rocks along the west side of the ocean in loud distinct whispers.

A large pale light floats across the periphery of her left eye. When she peers over, her heart flutters against her chest like the wings of a thousand butterflies. Her brows furrow as her eyes settle on a tall narrow-built man in a relaxed fit tee-shirt and jeans waving his arms above his head.

She steps away from the street, her sneakers crunching against the soft grass and squints her eyes at him. Her body buzzes with a mixture of shock and happiness and spreads a fresh sleeve of goosebumps down her body. She paces further across the meadow, her boyish cut red hair stirring in the breeze, and balls her right hand into a fist to keep her fingers from twitching.

At first, she thought there had been a piece of grit in her eye but further inspection proves her wrong. When she sees the curly black hair, deep-set green eyes, wide nose, full lips and the rugged face, a flush rises from deep inside of her. Heat blooms across her cheeks and spreads throughout her chest.

It cannot be him, no matter how much she wants it to be, it cannot be. She had been sitting next to his hospital bed, holding his hand as tightly as she could, praying with every bone in her body that the cancer would just go away. Instead, it had laughed in her face and robbed her of the man she had loved and the life that she had deserved.

And yet here he is sitting on a picnic blanket identical to the one she had just dreamed about, in the same clothes he had worn in that dream and at the same place she had remembered where they had last spoken before the cancer. A cloud of doubt permeates around her head and seeps into her brain, turning all of this into one big fever dream. Had she dreamed that she had a dream about him and woke up to take Lucy out for a walk and realized that it had been a dream too?

She is confused because she does not know which way is up or down. The only thing she can determine is that she sees the man that she has ever loved sitting across from her. A tear streaks down her right cheek and dribbles off of the tip of her chin; her right hand unfurls itself and her fingertips tap against her right thigh.

“Hey baby,” he breathes.

His rough sexy voice resonates inside of her. Her heart beats faster.

“I missed you,” she sobs.

He stands, his shirt fluttering in the breeze, and extends his right hand out to her. His strong woodsy cologne drifts across her nose and stirs up old memories of naked bodies moving in erotic rhythms under white sheets that do not hide much. She swallows the sharp bitterness tingling the back of her throat and inches her way over.

When their hands meet, her body shudders. His coarse fingers caress the lines on her palm and send a sleeve of gooseflesh up the length of her arm. His touch speaks of security, warmth, love, joy, happiness and devotion as it always did.

He squeezes her hand and eases her across the blanket. Her legs tremble as she slumps against him. She rests her hands upon his chest and feels the space between them from the time he had taken his last breath to now close forever.

“I never forgot about you,” he replies.

She licks a tear from her upper lip. “I never forgot about you, either.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t want to leave you, baby.”

He lowers his head, his lips slumping across his face in a deflating frown. She cups his chin in her right hand and lifts it from his chin until their eyes meet. Hot lucid tears brimming in her eyes, she shakes her head.

She cannot believe what he is saying. She wipes the tears from her eyes and presses her left finger against his lips.

She mutters. “It’s not your fault.”

He gulps and sighs.

“I shouldn’t have done it.”

“It’s not your fault, babe,” she clarifies. “The things that we fear are the things that make us stronger.”

He cradles her right hand, and plants a soft gentle kiss on the knuckle in the middle of her third finger. She had not felt his lips on her skin in years and the effects of them had not died.

“I love you Ethan,” she whispers. “I always have and I always will.”

Their eyes flickering with affection, they smile and kneel down. He lies on his back, and opens his legs. She sidles up between them and rests her head against his stomach as she had done a few minutes ago.

The Piper plays his flute once more and leaves Christy and Ethan to their own devices. It leads Jared down the street, past a tight-knit row of bungalows that resemble gingerbread houses. A nest of townsfolk follows closely behind, their eyes flickering with delight as if this were a moment that could not be missed.

An old couple with long, sleek gray hair wearing white slacks and matching shirts appear from a nearby home and greet The Piper with a quick handshake and a gentle nod. They lean against their fence, admire the procession strolling past with warm friendly smiles on their faces and greet everyone with a series of gentle waves and kind words. A teenage boy with short dark hair and his blonde-haired friend sit on the fence outside of their house, wave at The Piper and the boy behind him with their free hand and leap down to join the crowd.

When they reach the last house on the end of the block, a pair of dark figures emerge in the corner of Jared’s left eye. The Piper pauses beside their lawn and slides away from them and drums its fingers across the flute, its long overcoat fluttering in the breeze.

Jared glances over his left shoulder toward the two people standing beside him. A middle-aged couple greet him with welcoming smiles on their faces and approach the gate inside of their fence. His heart flooding with joy, he scans them like a bike he would like to buy.

Her long dark hair falls around her heart-shaped face complete with a small forehead, thin golden brows above almond-shaped hazel eyes, a small dainty nose and thin lips. She wears a white ankle-low sundress, open-toed brown sandals and a large makeshift halo of daisies on her diamond-shaped head that hovers three centimeters above the crown of her forehead. She tilts her head toward her right shoulder, her face beaming with joy as her eyes flickered with kindness and love.

Jared stares at the tall hairless man standing on her right and feels a sense of unease wash over him. He steps back from the fence, his heart shuddering with fear. The heavy-lidded brown eyes and thick brown mustache were the things that made his nightmares a reality and fear his unwanted ally.

Instead of his dingy white shirt and ratty jeans, he is wearing a blue button-down blouse with matching blue jeans and brown hiking boots. The stale sweaty odor is now the reassuring smell of pine sap and wood smoke associated with the dense woods of the upper Midwest.

“Son,” the man responds. “It’s okay.”

 The man extends his left hand toward Jared’s forearm and grasps it in a gentle manner. Jared tries to recoil but the man’s grip is both soft but firm. His face scrunches together in a mask of fear as if he is embracing himself for the pain that is about to come.

“Jared,” the woman sighs. “You don’t need to be afraid of us.”

The sounds of their voices unfurl the pained expression on Jared’s face. His ceremonial cloud of fear is replaced by a bubble of surprise bursting through his body. The crowd of villagers and The Piper watch with anticipation like football fans waiting for the next snap.

Jared opens his eyes and leans closer toward the fence. His brows furrow.

Her smile threatens to split her face in half. “There’s my handsome boy.”

His lips stumble around the right word. He knows what to say but he has not said it for such a long time. He gulps as tears brim in his eyes.

“Mom?” he asks.

The woman nods, flashing a bright smile across her face. Jared peels his gaze away from her and glances at the man standing beside of her who resembles-

“Dad?” he asks.

The man nods, extends his arm and squeezes Jared’s right shoulder. A tremor of confusion and comfort shudders through him, trickles down the back of his legs and pins his feet to the ground. A short curvy woman standing in the crowd wipes a river of tears from her eyes with the hem of her dress and nods to a young ginger-haired teen standing next to her.

“We’ve been waiting for you for a long time,” he nods.

“We were starting to lose hope but,” she says, then glances at The Piper. “we knew we’d always see you again.”

Jared sighs.

“You left me,” he mutters. “You left the both of us and—”

The woman steps forward, presses the tip of her right finger against the center of his forehead, slides her finger down the length of his nose, and traces The Infinity symbol around his eyes before circling back to his forehead. His skin bristles as a plethora of memories wash over him to reassure him who they were.

Nora had done that to him when he was a baby to calm him down whenever he had cried. She had done it several times in the past when Dwayne was on one of his angry work-related tirades that had sent his anger into overdrive. A thick choking cloud of silence permeating through the street presses around him.

When she is done, Jared opens his eyes.

“I know I made a mistake,” she admits. “I shouldn’t have done what I did but I was so confused about everything that I didn’t make the right decisions.”

“Look, son,” Dwayne states. “We both made a lot of bad mistakes but that’s the old us. We are ready to become the parents you should have had and become a family once again. We love you and we want you to be with us.”

Dwayne nudges Jared’s left shoulder and grins. The same grin spreads across Jared’s face, etching faint dark lines around his mouth.

“I’d sure love to sit down and have breakfast with my son,” he says. “Your mom just put a nice warm apple pie fresh from the oven on the windowsill.”

Jared’s body relaxes, his shoulders slumping back into place. A hot tear protrudes from the corner of his left eye, glints in the sunlight and trickles down his left cheek. He wipes the tear away, takes their hands, steps through the gate, leaps into their arms and sobs uncontrollably.

The villagers raise their arms high above their heads and cheer. The Piper approaches the newly aligned Campbell Family and tiptoes away from them. Joy floods the village as the villagers’ grin at each other and hug the person beside them.

No one here knows where they are at, but it does not matter. This place is not on a map found on your local gas station nor can it be Googled on your smartphone. This is a special place for people like Duncan, Jared and Christy who wander The Real World with sadness and despair because they had lost the people who made a difference in their lives.

For Duncan, his best friends had given him a sense of belonging.

For Christy, her husband Ethan had given her the love and happiness that she had deserved.

For Jared, his parents were the two most important people in his life.

This is the perfect place for people like them. An exclusive club where only the broken-hearted were welcome, reunited by the version of their loved ones they should have gotten before they had come here, and given a second chance to live the life they deserve. Sadness, heartache, pessimism, despair and hopelessness do not belong here; every day is a good day and those days are not to be taken for granted.

For them it is their happy place. The place where they are the happiest. 

The Piper spins its head around with a loud bone-jarring crunch, its fingers still drumming along the length of its flute. It leans its head against the crown of its right shoulder, following the cobblestone street out of town. It steps out onto another wide dirt path cutting through a vast green meadow toward a thick stand of pine and spruce trees standing at the end.

The villagers watch The Piper saunter away, shower him with a loud chorus of appreciation and praise. Jared slips his right arm out from between his parents’, flashes a bright joyful grin and waves at its back.

Its femur flute spewing a fresh note of gentle hypnotic music into the breeze, The Piper follows the trail into the forest and disappears beneath an archway of trees in search of other aimless travelers.  

Follow and Connect with Brian J. Smith

About

Brian J. Smith has published over eighty short stories in the horror genre. His books include Dead River,Consuming Darkness, Reflections, Mommy’s Babies, Bad Allergies and his most recent was Strange Discovery And Other Strange Discoveries.  

He resides in southeastern Ohio where he doesn’t drink enough coffee, eats food so spicy it makes the devil cringe, owns a lot of books and buys more, doesn’t watch enough horror movies and is currently working on that, and believes that Valentine’s Day should be replaced by Second Halloween. He can be found either asleep by eight o’clock or on Amazon under https://www.amazon.com/author/brianjsmith.

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