A. Lee Martinez's Blog, page 31

One of These Doomsdays, Chapter Ten

The robots came the next day. Lot of them. Dozens upon dozens. More than Felix had seen in a long time, and the survivors played it safe by staying inside. Fortunately, they’d had time to prepare. They’d foiled the walls and brought a few more supplies from the nearby grocery store. They watched the patrols of melvins and titans wander aimlessly.

“Are they looking for us?” asked Bree. “Or just looking for anything?”

“I could never figure that out,” admitted Felix. “I know they’ll come after you if you’re not foiled, but I don’t know if they know we’re here and can’t find us or just patrolling out of due diligence.”

He called over Gretel and Bree and laid out some playing cards.

“Oh god, I don’t want to play any more card games,” said Gretel, “and if you’re going to show me another of your perfect solitaire games again, I’m going to shoot somebody.”

“We’re not playing cards. I think I know what’s happening to us. Well, not the what. Or the why. But I think I can break it down into something we can understand.”

He laid out a row of four cards on the table.

“These cards are us.”

“Which one am I?” asked Bree.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Can I be the ace of spades then?”

“I told you,” said Felix. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Then if it doesn’t matter, I want to be the ace of spades.”

Felix thumbed through the deck, found the ace, and replaced one of the cards.

“Can I be the four of diamonds?” asked Gretel. “Four is my lucky number.”

“Fine. Four of diamonds.” He slammed the new card on the table. “That’s you.”

The cat rubbed against his leg. “Don’t tell me you have a preference.”

He spread the cards so they weren’t touching each other.

“This table is the city, and each is a card placed on the city. Gretel, Bree, the cat, me.”

“That’s not me,” said Bree. “You pointed at the wrong card.”

“Bree, Gretel, me, the cat,” said Felix.

“I thought the cat was the seven of hearts,” said Gretel.

“It was the last time,” agreed Bree.

Felix gritted his teeth. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make a difference. Can we just get on with the explanation?”

They shrugged.

“Okay, so these cards are each of us. We all started out on the table, but we were all spread out. Same table, but different cards, not touching. And the cards aren’t just us. They’re our particular doomsday. Robots, ants, zombies, and dragons. And as long as our cards aren’t touching, our doomsdays don’t overlap. That’s how it’s been for as long as any of us can remember, right?”

They nodded.

“Except now, for some reason none of us can explain, the cards are starting to get mixed together.” He took the cards and stacked them on top of each other. “Now we’re all together, but the doomsdays still aren’t mixing. They’re still coming one at a time, but in a consistent pattern. Like this.”

He took the top card and put it on the bottom of the slim deck and repeated the action several times, being extra careful to get the matching doomsday with each card. “Zombies, dragons, robots, ants. I bet that’s the way it goes from now on until someone else comes along and brings their doomsday with them.”

“How do you know there will be someone else?” asked Bree.

“I don’t, but can we be surprised if there is? If this table is the city, and this pile of cards is us, then we can probably assume there are more people, more cards, out there.

We just haven’t overlapped yet.”

“You don’t really think it works that way?” asked Bree. “Cards on a table?”

“Of course not. It’s just the best model I could think of.”

Gretel sat at the table. “There’s a problem you haven’t thought of. Each of us only survived the other’s doomsday because we ran into each other. We’re all experts at dealing with our problem, but the odds of us surviving outside of it are slim-to-none. If you hadn’t shown me the tinfoil trick, those robots would’ve killed me. If Bree didn’t know about the rations, we’d be dragon food.”

“I’d thought of that,” he said. “Lucky we ran into each other then.”

“No. It’s not luck,” said Bree.

She paused for no logical reason other than drama.

“Someone is controlling it.”

Gretel laughed dismissively. “Not necessarily.”

“How else would you explain it?” asked Bree. “Someone’s has to be doing it on purpose.”

“Or it’s just the only way it could work out.” Gretel picked a random card of the table. “Let’s say this guy is surviving the pirate apocalypse, right now.”

“Pirates?” asked Bree and Felix together.

“Not pirates then. Space invaders. Giant Asteroid. Ghost dinosaurs. Whatever.

“So ghost dinosaur guy has the ghost dinosaur apocalypse nailed down. Piece of cake. But then one day he wakes up, and he’s in the middle of the robot apocalypse. He’s completely screwed over because he doesn’t know shit about how to survive. So the robots kill his ass before he does.”

She tore the card in half.

“He’s dead. Game over. And Felix never knew he was around and didn’t even think to look for him in the first place. We weren’t chosen. We aren’t being manipulated. We’re just the lucky ones. And the unlucky ones get eaten by ants or zapped by robots before anyone else even notices.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” said Bree.

“I used to not believe in giant ants or zombies. The world, or wherever the hell we are, doesn’t give a shit what you believe.”

“You’re wrong.”

“You tell yourself that when we all wake up in someone else’s doomsday with no tin foil or string beans to protect you.” Gretel grabbed the cards and tossed them all in the air. They scattered through the air, falling to the floor.

“Do you really think there will be more people?” asked Bree.

“I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised.” Felix leaned down and picked up a card. “There could be dozens. Maybe hundreds. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe thousands.”

Gretel grumbled. “You don’t know any of that. You’re just guessing, and it doesn’t do us a damn bit of good to sit here making up wild theories.”

“What the hell do you want to do?” asked Felix. “We can’t just survive. We have to do something.”

“There’s nothing to do but survive.”

Felix and Gretel stared blankly at each other. The only sound was the soft hiss of Bree’s gasmask.

“I’m not going to die because you refuse to be realistic,” said Gretel.

“Fair enough,” he replied. “But I’m not going to give up just because you have.”

He waited for her to hit him. Or to get mad. Or to shout. Something. Anything. Her face remained cool. Unreadable.

She walked out of the room without saying another word.

He wanted to follow her. He wanted to give her a hug. Not out of some misguided romantic obligation. He wasn’t sure if he even liked her. But it still seemed like something he should do.

He didn’t.

All the stuff that normal people did, none of that was easy anymore. Since he couldn’t remember anything about his life before this, maybe it never had been. He hated that it was so damn hard.

He looked to Bree for rescue, painfully aware that hoping for emotional stability from a human who had never even shown her face was probably not the best choice.

“Let her go,” said Bree. “She’ll work it out for herself.”

“We’ve been doing that too long,” he replied.

He couldn’t say if she was smirking under her mask, but it sure as hell felt like it. “Anybody ever tell you you’re a weird guy?”

The problem with self-reliance is that, taken too far, it wasn’t a virtue. It was a barricade.

Felix didn’t say that to her. He didn’t want to deal with her judgment. Somehow, hidden behind the mask, it was worse than Gretel’s. If they could talk. Just talk. They might be able to connect in a way normal people were supposed to. But Gretel couldn’t do it. Bree couldn’t do it. As far as he could tell, they didn’t want to.

He wanted to, but he couldn’t do it all on his own, and he couldn’t keep trying. It was just too hard.

Bree snapped her fingers. “Felix, you still there?”

“I’ll be in my room,” he said. Or maybe he didn’t say anything at all and simply trudged wordlessly upstairs to his apartment. Even he couldn’t tell for sure anymore.
And it didn’t matter.

 

His previous apartment, the one that had been attacked by dragons only a day ago, had been fixed with the reset. He’d changed places because of that. The undamaged couch and unbroken windows reminded him of the prison he was in.

He’d taken up residence on the apartment next door. He sat on its plaid couch, staring at the ceiling, for at least an hour. He thought about watching a movie, but it seemed like too much work. But even ennui was no match for boredom, and when he worked up enough energy, he explored the apartment, room by room.

It reminded him of an old person’s home littered with doilies and porcelain figurines and a small television hooked up to a VCR. The bathroom was full of pink with little plastic fish stuck to its walls. The bedroom smelled of vanilla and mint.

There were no pictures, no photographs. There were frames for them, and he found five thick photo albums in the back of the hall closet, but they were all empty. Not even the attractive (but not too attractive) models that came with photo frames.

The place was spooky. A hotel room was intentionally generic to avoid feeling like you were sleeping in someone else’s home. A home could be comforting. This place was neither.

He’d had the same feeling when first settling into his basement apartment, but over time, he’d made it his own, gotten used to it. First thing tomorrow, he’d take all the plastic off the furniture.

The cat had watched him in his search, more curious to Felix’s actions than anything he might find. It found a space on the kitchen counter, and he didn’t have the will to push it off.

It purred contentedly from its perch, ignorant of the trap they were in.

“There’s a way out,” he said.

The cat’s tail flicked.

Someone knocked on his door. He checked the peephole before answering. He didn’t know why. It was Bree. He opened the door.

“Yes?”

“Are you okay in there?” she asked.

He tried to see her eyes through the lenses of her mask. They were brown. Or green. Maybe blue. That could’ve been a glint of the light.

“I’m okay,” he lied.

She spoke so quickly, it was obvious she hadn’t been listening for his reply. “Do you want to come down to the basement?”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

Bree laughed. He hadn’t gotten used to the weird way it sounded through the mask. “Nothing’s wrong. I just was inviting you down there. We could hang out. Or something.”

“Something.”

The possibilities in that filled him with unease.

“No. Thank you.”

He hoped she would retreat to her basement. She pushed the door open and walked past him. He noted the gun tucked in her belt. His own weapon was in the bedroom. Way too far away.

“We can hang out here, I guess,” she said. “Nice place.”

“You’ll have to excuse the décor,” he replied. “I didn’t pick it out.”

She grabbed an empty picture frame and studied it. She straightened a cheap oil painting of an ocean landscape. “It’s cute. This way to the bedroom?” She was already halfway into it when she asked.

He hesitated. If she was here to kill him, she was taking her sweet time. If she was here to do something else—

Felix hoped she was here to kill him.

He considered walking out of the apartment, closing the door, and avoiding this mess. Instead, he followed her into the bedroom, daring only to put one foot in the room. She’d laid her gun beside his on the nightstand. It felt presumptuous on her part. Too intimate for a couple of strangers.

Bree lay on his bed. He wasn’t sure if the pose was supposed to be seductive or not, but she was on her back, her arms behind her head, one leg bent over the other. If she’d been naked, it might have been appealing, but fully clothed, it came across as mixed signals.

“Want to have sex?” she asked, clearing things up considerably.

Felix had imagined a world where women were more forthright, where the games of dating were less fuzzy. Not that he could remember dating, but he still had a vague sense that it wasn’t usually this easy to get women into bed. Being the last man on Earth no doubt helped a lot.

“Yeah, okay.”

He hated that it seemed kind of empty. It wasn’t because it was casual. It just seemed like they were going through the motions here. Last man on Earth. What other options did Bree have?

He sat on the bed, took off his shirt.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Getting undressed.”

“Ewww. Don’t do that.”

“But I thought you wanted to . . . . ” He was unsure how to finish the sentence. Have sex seemed too mechanical. Fuck seemed too passionate. Do it seemed just plain stupid.

“I’d prefer it if we just unzipped,” she said. “Why bother with all the other stuff? It’s all just neural stimulation, right?”

“I happen to like neural stimulation,” he said softly.

Bree joined him at the edge of the bed. She put her arm around his shoulder. Her gasmask hissed steadily.

“Want me to whisper sweet nothings in your ear?”

“Forget it. I’m not in the mood anymore.”

He stood, but she grabbed his sleeve. “Wait. I’m sorry. It’s been a while since I’ve been around people. And I wasn’t very good at it before. I think. I don’t really remember. But assuming the person I was wasn’t very different than the person I am, it’s a safe bet.”

“Me neither,” he said, “I think.”

He still hadn’t gotten used to his lack of a past. He’d spent years oblivious to its absence, but now that he’d noticed it, he didn’t know how to ignore it.

“It’s funny,” she said. “You adjust to living without no future, but no past either and you just don’t feel like a person.”

“No, you are a person.” Felix sat back on the bed. “We are people.”

She flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. “You don’t know that.”

He was getting tired of people telling him what he didn’t know when he already knew he didn’t know. Trying to wrap his head around that sentence only annoyed him more.

“We are people.”

He was thankful she didn’t challenge him again on it. She might have broken him if she had.

“It’s okay if you don’t find me attractive,” she said.

“It’s not that . . . .”

He looked into her mask.

“All right, maybe it is that. I’m sure you’re an attractive woman, but it’s difficult to tell under all that stuff.”

“Didn’t think you were that superficial,” she said.

He felt like a jerk.

“I’m busting your balls, Felix.” She nudged him with her boot. “I get it. The mask and the three layers of clothes. It’s kind of weird.”

“Don’t you ever take it off?” he asked.

“Oh no. No no no no. Not around people. That’s a good way to get sick.”

“Because of the dragons?” he said. “You’re sure they make people sick? But Gretel and I haven’t gotten sick.”

“You won’t,” she said, “but I have a compromised immune system.”

“Have you ever gotten sick?” he asked.

“No. Not as long as I take precautions.”

“But if you’ve never tested it, how do you know?”

“How did you know tin foil keeps robots away? It’s just something I know.”

It sounded like paranoia to him, but it didn’t mean she was wrong.

“Is this because of Gretel?” she asked. “Are you two a thing?”

“No.”

“Didn’t think so.”

He didn’t mention his awkward sexual encounter with Gretel. It wasn’t relevant. Though the idea of another uncomfortable, fumbling experience filled him with unnamable dread.

He said, “I’m not going to lie and say sex has to be special to be good. But it would be nice to get to know you before.”

She pushed up on her elbows. “My name is Bree. My dad’s name was Edmund. Now you know everything I know.”

“You remember your father’s name?”

She nodded. “Feel better?”

“Not really.”

The door to the apartment closed. He heard the click, but might have thought he imagined it if Bree didn’t confirm it. They went to the living room. Nobody was there. Felix went to the door, opened it, saw the door on the other side of the hall close.

He knocked on the door. “Gretel, is that you?”

Nobody answered.

“Gretel, I know you’re in there.”

The door opened, and Gretel stood slumped on the other side. She couldn’t look him in the eye. “Sorry. I thought you were alone.”

“We were just talking.” It sounded like an apology. He couldn’t say why.

Bree, her arms folded, staring at her nails, stood in his apartment doorway.

“It’s cool,” said Gretel. “None of my business.”

“It’s not like that.”

Gretel held up her hands. “I should have knocked first.”

She sounded hurt. She couldn’t hide it. He would’ve found that obnoxious if he didn’t feel like he’d betrayed her. They’d known each other only a few days. They’d slept together exactly once. And it was, for both of them, the longest relationship they’d had with another human being.

He imagined himself in her position. Sitting across the hall. Working up the courage to come over. Not knocking because knocking would give the other person the chance to say no. Pushing past all the trepidation and awkwardness, hoping she wouldn’t look stupid.

Finding Felix sitting on the bed with the only other woman on earth. She was reading too much into it, but he couldn’t blame her for that.

“You don’t have to explain, champ,” said Gretel. “It’s the end of the world. Not like any of it matters.”

It mattered more than he could fathom. In a world with a million souls, what difference did three people make? In a world of only three people, everything they did was important. It was as if they held all the emotions of humanity among them, and one moment of awkwardness, of fear, of quiet loneliness was multiplied a thousand times by the experience.

He’d hurt her. He hadn’t thought he could, but somehow, he had. The hell of it was that he hadn’t done anything wrong. He had every right to sleep with Bree.

It was only when the door clicked shut quietly that he realized Gretel had closed it on him. He didn’t knock again.

“This is all too complicated for me,” said Bree. “You know where to find me if you figure it out.”

She went downstairs to her basement.

Felix stared at Gretel’s door for a while. He wondered if she was on the other side, watching him from the peephole. The door stood between them, and all she had to do was open it.

He reached for the knob. She might have left it unlocked for him. He put his hand on the old, cold brass fixture, but he didn’t turn. Unlocked. Locked. He wasn’t ready for it.

He felt more alone than he ever had when surrounded by killer robots.

One of These Doomsdays, Chapter Nine

Gretel thought they should keep going. Felix wanted to stay. They argued in hushed whispers upstairs while Bree stayed in her basement sanctuary.

“She’s nuts,” said Gretel.

“Didn’t you say we’re all nuts?” he replied.

“Yes, but she’s a special kind of nuts. She’s going to kill us if we stick around. I was worried about you killing me, and you’re stable. But she’s strange. And I don’t trust her.”

“You’re saying you trust me then?”

She didn’t answer that question. “This lady is out of her head, and if you think I’m going to stick around, waiting for her to stab me in my sleep, then you’re more nuts than she is.”

“We need her to survive the worms.”

“We already know how to cope with that. We eat the string beans and corn.”

“There might be more to it than that.”

“So we ask her to give us the lowdown before we move on.”

“What if she wants to come with us?” he asked.

“We tell her no. Shouldn’t be a problem.” Gretel smiled. “Unless you think she’s dangerous.”

The conversation would loop around to the beginning, and they would argue the same points again. The words might change, but it kept coming back to whether or not they could trust Bree. Gretel didn’t. Felix didn’t either. It was why he had trouble winning the debate. He more or less agreed with every reason she had.

At the end of the fourth round of their circular argument, he stopped trying to be logical.

“We found her for a reason. I’m not leaving her behind.”

Gretel sighed. “Felix, I like you, man. I really do. I’m pretty sure you’re not going to shoot me in the back, and even if you tried, I’m absolutely positive you’d screw it up and I could kill you easily enough. But you’ve got to get this Everything Happens for a Reason bullshit out of your head.”

“I never said Everything. I don’t think much of this has a reason behind it. But some of it does. And I think finding each other is one of those things.”

He put a hand on her shoulder. Actually, he only considered it because he wasn’t at all certain she wouldn’t punch him at any attempt at contact. That was the problem. As much as he wanted to argue with her, he still had the gnawing instinct that they were more of a danger to each other than any of the doomsdays they faced. Doomsdays had rules.

People were unpredictable.

She said, “All right. We’ll stick around for a day. Two at most. Then I’m leaving. I’m going to find that wall. With or without you. I still think you’re out of your mind though.”

He smiled. “Thanks.”

“But if she shoots us tomorrow . . . . ”

“I’ll apologize.”

Gretel didn’t smile, but he liked to imagine that maybe she thought about smiling. “I’ll hold you to that, Champ.”

 

The rest of the day with Bree wasn’t very interesting. They watched the zombies milling around on the street. There wasn’t much in the way of conversation because conversation was extraordinarily difficult with no past to talk about..

In movies, Felix’s only frame of reference, people could usually trade stories about where they grew up, their family, or something weird that happened to them in college. Anything, really. But with no life before these doomsdays, they had no amusing or interesting tales to share.

He tried talking to Gretel and Bree anyway, but neither of them was interested in exchanging more than a few words. He decided he was the well-adjusted one among this group, and that frightened the hell out of him.

This was why Felix preferred fiction. The boring parts were edited out, and if his life were a film, the writer would jump to the next interesting part.

There was no such convenience for him. He had to wait out the hours. He found an empty apartment on the second floor and spent most of the night sitting with the cat, waiting for the reset. He didn’t know where Gretel or Bree spent their night. Truthfully, he was happy for the time alone.

It was just so much pressure to keep holding things together, and frustrating because he wasn’t sure what he was holding together or why he kept trying, other than he thought he should. Other than knowing the alternative was to be alone again.

“Doomsday sucks,” he told the cat.

It mewed.

Felix didn’t make it to bed. He fell asleep on the couch, and awoke to the sounds of terrible shrieking.

The cat hissed, darting behind the couch. He went to the window and took a peek.

Great flying reptiles filled the skies. They came in a thousand shapes and sizes. Bulky beasts with glittering red scales and great leather wings, like something out of a fairy tale. Long and serpentine and swimming through the air as if it were water like the Asian varieties. Some were no bigger than dogs. One landed atop a thirty story building and howled. It looked more like a science fiction alien version of a dragon than a traditional mythic variety. Its body was covered in black quills, and instead of jaws, its mouths was a whirling Cuisinart from a nightmare.

Felix ran downstairs. He tried Bree’s basement door, but it was locked. He pounded on it until she answered. She opened it only a fraction of an inch.

“What?”

“There are dragons!” he said.

“Yes. What’s the problem? You ate your ration, didn’t you?”

He leaned against the door, forcing it open a little wider. “You said your thing was worms.”

“Wyrms from the Old English as in a great serpent.” The tone in Bree’s voice made clear she thought he was the stupid one.

“Why would you call them wyrms when they’re dragons?” he asked.

Bree kept her tone. “I like the sound of it better. Why do you care?”

Gretel came downstairs. “There’s a swarm of dragons out there. She didn’t say anything about dragons.”

“It’s Old English–” Felix stopped himself. “ . . . . never mind.”

Bree opened the door wide. “If you ate your green beans and corn, everything will be fine. So wait a second. You thought I was talking about worms. Little squiggly things that come out after it rains?”

Again, she used that voice that made him feel like an idiot.

He said, “I assumed they were giant or poisonous or something.”

“Nope. Big flying lizards. Some of them do breathe poison though. Or acid. Or lightning. Probably other stuff as well, though I haven’t catalogued it all. They stay up there and I stay down here.”

Felix watched from the window. There were hundreds of the creatures, and he had no doubt that if they descended to the streets, they’d tear through the city with ease.

“They never come down here?” he asked.

“Usually one or two will stray lower, do some sniffing around, but the beans and corn mask my scent. Or something.”

“How’d you figure that out?”

“I don’t remember, but it works.”

He hadn’t expected an answer.

Bree opened the basement door. “Well, you better get down here.”

“I thought you said they’d leave us alone,” said Gretel.

“They do. Usually. Doesn’t hurt to play it safe.”

Gretel hesitated. “If those things attack, we could all end up trapped in there.”

“It’s your decision,” said Bree. “How about you, Felix?”

He was torn, but this was her doomsday. She should know how to survive it.

A shriek rattled the windows. Felix and Gretel moved over to take a look as two dragons descended from the sky. They were a mismatched pair. One was long, lean, and green with feathery wings. The other was round, red, and had large black wings. They soared downward, bumping into each other, snapping and snarling, like the Laurel and Hardy of mythological monsters.

They hit the street a few blocks away from the building. The round one bounced a few times.

“I thought you said they wouldn’t detect us,” said Gretel.

Bree took one step out the basement door. ““They don’t. Usually. You both ate your corn and beans?”

“Yes.”

The thin dragon warbled.

“Are you lying to me?”

“For the last time, we ate it all,” said Gretel. “Every drop of creamed corn. Every disgusting bean. I fucking hate string beans, but I ate the stuff.”

The dragons moved closer. The round one sniffed the concrete, and his partner followed after him as they drew closer.

“The cat,” said Felix. “We didn’t make it eat.”

He couldn’t believe he’d overlooked it. It just seemed like such a silly thing to do, but he hadn’t even thought about it.

Felix started upstairs to the second story apartment he’d picked out. Gretel grabbed his arm. “Don’t be stupid, Felix.”

“It’ll be fine,” said Bree. “Now get in the basement. Last chance.”

“I can’t. Not without the cat.”

He bolted upstairs. Even as he did it, he knew how stupid it was. But the cat needed him in a way that nothing else in this city did. He couldn’t abandon it to be devoured by dragons.

He shouted for the cat, wishing he’d given it a name now. He checked behind the couch, under the bed, and any other nook and cranny. It was nowhere to be found.
A shadow passed over the windows. The dragons shrieked.

“You’re going to die for a stupid cat?” asked Gretel from the doorway. “Are you a goddamn moron?”

“Either help me find it or go hide with Bree.”

The dragons thudded against the wall, knocking pictures down and cracking the drywall.

“Here, kitty, kitty,” whispered Felix through clenched teeth. He lay flat on the floor, glancing around. “Here, you ungrateful fleabag.”

Gretel crawled alongside him. “This is ridiculous. I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

Sticking low to the floor, they scoured the apartment as the terrible lizards lurked just outside, more curious than aggressive at the moment.

“This is what happens when you feed a cat too much,” said Gretel. “They start taking you for granted.”

“Not the right time for a lecture,” he replied.

She wasn’t wrong. Why the hell should the cat worry about robots, dragons, or zombies? Not while good ol’ Felix was around to keep those problems at bay.

The duffel bag sat beside the couch. Felix crawled across the floor to pick it up. He’d need it when he finally found the presumptuous feline.

The dragons roared as the thin, green one smashed a window and stuck its long arm into the apartment. Gretel jumped out of the way as it felt around blindly. Its claws pierced the couch, and it dragged it across the room. Felix scrambled away with the duffel as the dragon shredded the furniture and bashed it over and over again in an attempt to squeeze it through the window.

The cat stuck its head out of the duffel bag.

“How long have you been in there?”

It offered forth a condescending meow before ducking back in the bag.

“Yeah, I’m the asshole.”

He zipped up the bag, and they slunk toward the exit. Each step, he debated whether it would be wiser to creep or run, but as long as the dragons were playing with the couch, he saw no reason to draw their attention.

With a furious howl, the couch flew across the room. The green dragon pushed its head halfway through the window. Its long, narrow snout snorted. Its jaws smacked, and it ran its pink tongue across the floor.

Felix and Gretel hurried downstairs. Not walking. Not running. The round red dragon fluttered past a window in the hallway. He was proud of how calm he was, but there was no reason he shouldn’t be. This was his life. He’d gotten used to it.

Bree had barred her basement door.

He knocked. “Hey, let us in.”

“It’s too late for that,” she said from the other side. “You made your choice.”

“Shit.” He tried avoiding eye contact with Gretel, but he could still feel her staring him down.

“Your goddamn cat is about to get us killed,” she said.

The building’s front door smashed to splinters and the skinny serpent tried to squeeze through. Its wings got in the way. It couldn’t reach with its snapping jaws, but it was only a matter of time before the wall gave way.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Gretel shoved him aside and pounded on the door. “I am not going to die for a goddamn cat! Open this door, you crazy bitch!”

“That might not win her over.”

She kicked the door three times then drew her gun and fired the entire clip at the dragon’s face. Howling, it withdrew. Splotches of bright emerald blood stained the carpeting. Felix dared hope the monster took the hint, but it renewed the assault. Every blow threatened to knock the wall in.

He nudged Gretel aside and spoke to the door in his calmest voice. With all the noise, Bree wouldn’t hear him unless she was right on the other side, but if she wasn’t, she’d already decided she wasn’t going to open the door.

“Open the door,” he said. “Please, Bree.”

He thought of everything he could add, but it came down to whether she had it in her to allow two people to die out here. He didn’t know her well enough to guess.

Bree door opened. “Quick. Before I change my mind.”

Once inside, she barred the door again. Felix didn’t have much faith in their basement shelter. The dragons could dig them out in maybe an hour. Maybe less.

“So now we’re going to die down here,” grumbled Gretel. “You should’ve left the cat outside.”

“It’s not the cat,” said Bree. “The wyrms don’t give a damn about cats. Did you eat your rations?”

“We’re not idiots,” said Felix. “We followed your rules.”

A loud crash rattled the building. The wall must’ve finally fallen in. They were all deathly quiet, listening for the sound of monsters at the basement door. A low growl and snort told them the dragons had found them.

Bree grabbed Felix by the collar. “Did you eat your rations? Don’t lie to me.”

“Yes, two cans of string beans, one can of creamed corn!” he shouted back.

The dragon scraped the heavy metal door with their claws.

She turned on Gretel. Both drew their pistols and pointed them at each other.

“Whoa whoa!” said Felix. “Everybody needs to stay calm.”

“You need to stay calm.” Bree’s gasmask made her words a growl. “I’m calm, and I know that one of you bastards didn’t eat your ration. And if it’s not you, it’s got to be her then.”

“I’m telling you, it’s the cat,” said Gretel. “Give them the cat, and we’ll be safe.”

“And I’m telling you, they don’t give a damn about cats. They smell one of you.”

Gretel nodded toward Felix. “How do you know it’s not him?”

“Because you’re the one with the gun pointed at me,” replied Bree.

“You pointed your gun at me first.”

A blow from outside dented the door, but it held for now.

Felix stepped between Gretel and Bree.

“We aren’t doing this. We aren’t turning on each other. It’s a stupid cliché, and I’m not going to die because you two aren’t willing to trust each other.”

Bree and Gretel lowered their guns with far more reluctance than was reasonable.

“I ate the corn and the string beans,” said Gretel.

“All of them?” asked Bree.

Gretel hesitated.

“All of them?” asked Felix.

“Most of them. There might have been a few beans left in the can. Not many.” She shrugged. “Maybe a sixth.”

The door’s top hinge broke. The dragons’ snorted loudly.

“You can’t blame me.” Gretel’s face twisted into a scowl. “String beans are disgusting.”

With the precision of a military operative, Bree grabbed a can off the shelf, opened it, and handed it to Gretel, along with a fork.

“Eat the beans,” said Bree.

Gretel eyed the door like she was considering making a run for it.

“Screw it.”

She stabbed her fork into the beans and shoveled them down, swallowing without chewing, suppressing her gag reflex. By the sixth bite, the dragons quieted. By the fifteenth, their rapid, hungry breaths calmed. Halfway through the can, they lost interest. Felix, Gretel, and Bree waited an hour before checking, but when they did dare open the door, the dragons were gone.

“I can’t believe you almost died because you don’t like string beans,” said Felix.

“Says the guy who was willing to die to save a cat,” said Gretel.

The cat wandered past her and rubbed against Felix’s legs. It was only hungry, but he liked to believe it cared for him as much as he for it.

“Anyway, I don’t dislike string beans, champ.” She smacked her lips and stuck out her tongue. “I fucking hate the things.”

Set Dressing (exerpt)

“Do you ever notice in those stories that some hero will come across the monster’s lair or a castle of death or whatever, and there’s usually a pile of corpses to indicate he’s in a dangerous place?

“Where do you think those corpses come from? They’re the bones of everyone who quested before but failed. Every sad sack who thought he was the hero of the journey, but actually was merely a nameless dumbass who got himself killed. Everybody wants to be a legend. Most people end up as set dressing.”

-Helen and Troy’s Epic Road Quest

One of These Doomsdays, Chapter Eight

She was short and plump with long blonde hair held back in an off-center scrunchy. Her ponytail jutted to the right. The gasmask completely covered her face and made her voice sound electric.

“Who the hell are you?”

She adjusted the bag of groceries in her left hand while keeping her gun pointed at them. Felix held up his hands. Gretel kept hers on her hips.

“I’m Felix. This is Gretel.”

“Are you zombies?”

“Do we look like fucking zombies?” asked Gretel.

“Don’t know. Not really sure what zombies look like. Hadn’t seen any until today.”

“Then why did you ask?”

The blonde shrugged. “Don’t know.”

“We’re not zombies,” Felix said. “We’re just a couple of people trying to find a way out of this city.”

The blonde chuckled. Or maybe she rasped. The mask made it hard to tell. “There is no way out of this city.”

“See?” Gretel asked Felix.

“She doesn’t know that,” he said. “You don’t, do you?”

“I know it,” said the blonde.

“You’ve seen the wall? Or the pit? Or the whatever the hell it is that keeps us trapped in here?”

“No, I haven’t, but I know there’s no way out of here.” The blonde sighed, and her synthetic voice crackled. “Because I wouldn’t be here if there was.”

“There’s a way out,” said Felix. “We saw it.”

The blonde lowered her gun. “You’ve seen it?”

“Not in person,” he said. “We saw it on TV.”

She laughed or rasped again. “Terrific. First people I’ve seen in ages, and you’re nuts.”

“He’s nuts,” said Gretel. “I’m just looking for the wall.”

The blonde tucked her gun in her belt. Felix moved toward her, but she whipped out the weapon and aimed it at his head.

“Not so fast there, Sport. Keep your distance.”

“But we’re not zombies,” he said.

“I still don’t know if that’s true.”

“Zombies don’t talk,” said Gretel.

“I only have your word for that. I haven’t met many zombies, and if you were one, you’d probably lie about it rather than take a bullet.”

“How can we convince you?”

The blonde didn’t reply.

“Is that your thing then?” Felix asked. “Some kind of plague thing?”

She wiped her plastic lenses. “What the hell kind of question is that? Where the hell have you been?”

“Robots.” Gretel slipped off her backpack, rifled around for a granola bar. “He’s been running from robots. Me, I’m giant ants.” She leaned against an old Studebaker, unwrapped her snack and took a bite. “The cat is zombies. That’s what we think anyway.”

“It’s kind of hard to explain,” said Felix. “But if you give us a chance—”

“Okay. Explain then.”

She listened to their theory. Her face was impossible to read, and she only stood there with her arms crossed. She’d nod every now and then.

“We really don’t know why it’s happening,” finished Felix. “Or how we got here. Hell, we only remember our first names, and we can’t even be sure of that in the end.”

The blonde said, “Okay. Come with me then.”

“That’s it? You believe us?” he asked.

“Sure. Why not? All I know is that I’ve wandered through this city for years without seeing a soul, then a bunch of zombies show up out of nowhere, followed by you two. That’s not something that makes a whole hell of a lot of sense, and your story is as good as anything I can come up with.”

She put her hand on her head, gazed into the red sky.

“And now that you’ve mentioned it, I can’t remember my last name either. Funny how I never noticed that before.”

Some zombies several blocks down moaned and shambled blindly. They turned their heads back-and-forth in that peculiar way they did sometimes, scanning the area for prey via their odd senses.

“I have a place set up about a mile down the road. We should be safe there. Follow me. But don’t get too close, or I’ll shoot you in the face and get on with my day.” She waved. “My name’s Bree by the way.”

They walked without talking. The number of zombies increased after finding Bree.

“How dangerous are these things?” she asked.

“They’re stupid,” replied Felix. “And less dangerous than robots.”

“Easier than ants,” said Gretel.

But she put her hand on her holstered pistol as the number of walking dead increased.

He tightened his grip on his baseball bat. “Though this is more than I’ve ever seen before.”

There were fifty or sixty zombies now, and every new street they passed, every alley, a few more appeared. They seemed different. Not smarter, but fresher, more alert. They were still slow, but as their numbers grew, they wouldn’t need speed.

“It’s not supposed to work like this,” said Felix.

“Someone upstairs didn’t get the memo then.” Gretel drew her gun.

The cat meowed. Felix tucked its head into the duffel bag and zipped it up.

“It’s okay. Nothing to panic about.”

The change in the pattern worried him.

Bree led them to an old brick tenement. “This is it. Home sweet home. It isn’t much, but it keeps the worms out. Should be able to handle a few dead people.”

“Worms?” asked Gretel. “I thought you said you were dealing with a plague.”

The many keys on Bree’s ring jangled as she sorted through them. “Worms bring the plague. Or the plague brought the worms. Not sure which, but doesn’t make a difference in the end.”

Several of the closer mobs of zombies shuffled vaguely in their direction. The nearest mob was having some trouble navigating around several parked cars, but they were figuring it out.

“We should probably get inside,” said Felix.

Bree mumbled to herself as she unlocked the door. She turned on them with her gun in her hand.

“Now don’t get any ideas. Just give me your weapons and get inside.”

Felix was happy to get rid of his gun. He never liked the damned thing. He was more reluctant to give up his bat, but he put himself in Bree’s position. He wouldn’t have been terribly comfortable inviting two armed strangers into his home. She tucked his weapon into her belt and nodded to the bat clutched in his hand.

“You can just put that down.”

He dropped his bat. It clattered down the stairs, and the zombies moaned. Both women gave him an annoyed glance.

“I’m not giving up my gun,” said Gretel. “Go ahead and shoot me if you want to.”

Bree said, “You sure seem determined to die.”

“After a while, I just stopped giving a shit.” Gretel walked past Bree and entered the tenement. Felix was left standing there, feeling stupid.

“We’ll never get anywhere if we don’t trust each other,” he said.

Bree put her gun away. “How the hell are you still alive?”

They went inside. She shut and locked the door. They then went downstairs into a basement, which she locked shut and barred.

He took stock of the room, lit by a few dim hanging bulbs. Canned goods lined the shelves. A folding card table and one folding chair sat in the middle of the room. And nothing else. Not a TV. Not a magazine. Just concrete walls.

Bree turned on an air purifier. It hummed to life. There wasn’t anything special about it. It wasn’t even a top-of-the-line model.

She sat in her chair and put her gun on the table. “You can’t eat my Spaghetti-Os. Don’t ask.”

Upon closer inspection, Felix noticed the cans were evenly divided between string beans and creamed corn. There were three cans of Spaghetti-Os on the bottom shelf.

“You must really like string beans,” said Felix.

“No, I don’t like them. I used to not mind them, but eating two cans a day didn’t help anything. String beans and creamed corn keep the worms at bay.”

“And the Spaghetti-Os?” asked Gretel.

“I’m saving them for a special occasion.”

“This can’t be all you eat.”

“I have some cookies upstairs, but I don’t bring them down here. No place for cookies.”

Gretel said nothing. Her look said more than enough. He knew he was crazy, and he was placing better than even odds that Gretel was too. But their crazy was more of the kind brought on by years of solitude and cat-and-mouse games with evil robots and giant ants.

Bree was different. She was a straight up kook. It puzzled him, given the circumstances, that he could decide that, but the other choice was too weird.

“You’ll need to eat two cans of beans, a can of corn,” she said. “Otherwise, the worms will smell you.”

“There aren’t any worms today,” he replied. “Today, it’s zombies.”

Bree listened as he explained what little they knew. Her face hidden behind the mask, he couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but she did nod every now and then.

“You’re saying tomorrow, the worms will come back?” asked Bree.

“Or robots,” he said. “I think that’s the pattern right now. Ants, zombies, robots. It seems to stick to a schedule. We aren’t sure where your worms will fit in that yet.”

Bree said nothing. He wished she would take off the mask. It made talking to her hard. Her body language, slumped shoulders, folded arms, remained equally inscrutable.

“Believe it or don’t,” said Gretel, “but it’s true.”

“Yeah, okay. But I’m still going to need you to eat these beans and corn. Just in case.”

Felix grabbed a couple of cans off the shelf.

“We don’t have to do that,” said Gretel.

“Can’t hurt to be safe, can it?” he said.

Bree handed him a can opener and a spoon. He didn’t ask if he could heat them up. He didn’t see a hotplate anywhere in the basement. There was only one chair in the basement, occupied by Bree, so he leaned over the table, shoveling mouthfuls of room temperature creamed corn.

“It’s not so bad. You really don’t even have to chew.” He swallowed and wiped his mouth on his forearm.

“I am not eating those damn beans,” said Gretel. “I fucking hate green beans.”

“Did you remember that?” he asked.

“It’s not a memory. It’s just a fact.”

She stormed upstairs, unbarred the door, and exited, slamming the door behind her. Bree quickly put the bar back in place.

“Your friend has an attitude problem.”

“Tell me about it.” He almost added that she wasn’t his friend, but, aside from the cat, she was the closest thing. “She’ll come around. If there’s one thing she does, it’s survive.”

He took another swallow. He didn’t know if he hated creamed corn. He wasn’t crazy about it. It didn’t make any difference. He put the can to his lips and chugged it down before he could think about it. Except halfway through he did start thinking about it, and he was pretty sure he was going to throw up. Somehow, he didn’t.
He slammed the empty can down on the table with a grimace. “But that’s all any of us really know how to do, right?”

Bree, her thoughts impenetrable, made them abundantly clear.

“You’re a weird guy, Felix.”

Coming from her, it wasn’t a damning appraisal. She wasn’t the person to rely on what was normal. He wasn’t so sure he was either.

Belching, he opened a can of string beans.

Legends (short fiction)

Korak the Bold woke with an arrow sticking through his head. He suspected something was wrong immediately. The goddess of death walked among the corpses, collecting souls and stuffing them in her bag. From one angle, she appeared as a seductive young woman. From another, a withered old crone. And from just the right viewpoint, she looked like both at once.

“Oh, hello. I was wondering when you’d wake.” She gathered a small gray soul into her hand and studied it with her hollow eyes. “This one’s hardly worth my time.”
Korak surveyed the dead piled around him in the pass. Two dozen soldiers. All killed by his hand as he bought precious time for his retreating unit.

“Such a waste,” he said.

“It is the way of mortals to waste their lives,” said the goddess.

Korak picked up his blood-soaked sword. “I thought I was finally out. I was hoping for the peace of the grave.”

She laughed. “What makes you think there’s any peace there?”

“There isn’t?”

“It’s not for me to say.” She tied her bag around her belt. “You’re probably wondering why you’re not dead yourself.”

He nodded.

“So many souls today,” she said. “One more won’t be missed.”

“But why me?” he asked.

“Because you’re a hero,” she said. “I don’t collect heroes anymore. This world has too few of them. The gods love their drama, their glorious rises, their tragic falls. It will most certainly hurt your legend to carry on, but there is always another heroic end to be found around the corner. The gods won’t like it, but that’s their problem. This is my domain, and I’ve decided to let you live.”

She waved her hand, and the arrow dropped out of his head.

“I might not be so generous next time,” she said with a smile.

“Is this redemption?” he asked.

The goddess put a cold hand on his face. “This is life.”

She vanished.

Korak stood among the corpses. He’d fought so long, so hard. He’d killed in the name of kings and peasants, for tyrants and against them. He’d sought to become a legend, but his sword seemed so heavy in his hand. This would’ve been the perfect end to his story, but it wasn’t the ending he wanted.

He threw the sword away and his legend along with it. He would be forgotten in a thousand years.

The thought made him smile and as he walked from that bloody pass, the goddess of death wished him well.

One of These Doomsdays, Chapter Seven

The cat was surprisingly relaxed about being shoved into Felix’s duffle bag.

“Do you really have to take that with us?” asked Gretel.

He scratched the cat’s ears. “We can’t just leave it. It might be the only other living thing on Earth.”

“Ants are alive.”

“The last living thing that doesn’t want to eat us,” countered Felix.

“If you died, that cat would eat you,” said Gretel.

“I’m pretty sure if it came down to it, you’d eat me,” he said.

He didn’t expect her to deny it.

And she didn’t.

“We can leave it here,” she said. “We’ll leave it plenty of food. We’ll barricade the door to keep the zombies out. The tin foil should keep the robots away. And we’ll leave some radios—”

“I’m taking the cat.” He pushed its head down and zipped up the duffel. “No point in arguing.”

“Fine. Take the cat. But don’t bitch to me when it gets out of the bag and gets lost.” She hefted on her backpack with a change of clothes and some snacks. They didn’t see a point in weighing themselves down with supplies until they made it farther out of town.

Originally, they’d struck upon the plan of going to a car dealership and taking the keys to a vehicle. That idea ended as soon as they’d discovered that while the dealerships had cars, the key racks where they were empty.

It was becoming obvious that someone didn’t want them leaving the city.

That was why they had to do it.

Neither of them believed they’d make it far. Whatever cosmic force was manipulating this city, playing with them like toys, was bigger than anything they could understand.
They had to try anyway. They had nothing to lose.

They walked east. Or so Gretel claimed. Without a sun or stars in the sky, direction was difficult to determine. Every compass they’d found at the sporting goods store hadn’t been working properly either.

Along the way, they talked about what they might find.

“My money is on nothing,” said Felix. “A great big wall of it at the city limits.”

“What’s a wall of nothing look like?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Guess we’ll find out.”

“Computer code,” she said. “That’s what we’ll see. I’m telling you this is all some sort of weird computer simulation gone wrong. We’re plugged into some virtual reality machine right now. Hell, maybe we’re just brains in jars. Or maybe just me. You could just as easily be a simulation too.”

“I’m not a simulation,” he said.

“That’s exactly what a simulation would say.”

“Maybe you’re the simulation.”

“I know I’m not a non-player character, Champ.”

“What if we’re both simulated, and we just don’t know it.”

“That’d be stupid,” she said. “Next you’ll tell me that the cat is the only real thing.”

“No, I’m not. Though we can’t disprove that either. We can’t disprove anything, really. Holograms. Virtual reality. Living batteries for evil supercomputers. Prisoners of evil aliens. A bad dream I’m having that I haven’t woken up from yet.”

“Can’t be that battery thing,” she said. “It violates the laws of thermodynamics.”

“How the hell do we even know the laws of thermodynamics are a thing? How do we know that every single thing we’ve ever learned is one great big lie?”

“Guess you got a point there, Champ.”

They paused at an intersection. The world seemed so incomplete now. He wished for a street sign. Something to orient themselves. Something to indicate they were making progress. He was positive they could just turn around and see his old apartment building right behind them. It was why he didn’t turn around.
Across the street, an empty coffee shop sat. It just had the word Coffee Shop on its marque. No brand name. Nothing to give it any distinction.

Gretel nodded toward some shuffling zombies in the distance. “Company.”

He wasn’t too worried. He had his bat. He had Gretel.

“This has to mean something,” he mumbled to himself. “It can’t be some stupid simulation. I think it’s a test.”

“For what?”

Felix said, “To see if we have what it takes to escape.”

“I thought you just said you thought there was a big wall of nothing around the city.”

“Remember that woman we saw on the TVs?”

“Not likely to forget something like that.”

“She made it out. Somewhere, there’s an exit out of this place. I know it.”

Gretel chuckled mirthlessly. “You don’t know it. You believe it.”

“You saw it too,” he said.

“I saw a woman walk through a door. I didn’t see where it went. Anyway, the whole show could’ve been a trick.”

“Who would want to trick us?”

“Who the hell would want to drop us in the middle of a ghost city filled with deadly ants? Give me an answer to that, and I’ll answer your question.”

Felix was about to respond, but she interrupted.

“And don’t give me any more goddamn guesses. Guesses aren’t worth a damn. We could guess all day and never get it right. And even if we did, we’d never know.”

“But the exit—”

She whirled and grabbed him by his shirt. “I don’t want to hear another word about that fucking exit.”

The nearby zombies groaned, shuffling with more speed toward them.

Gretel released him. “We need to keep moving. Stay ahead of these damned things.”

He nodded. There was an unusual number of walking dead trudging after them. They also seemed more alert, more focused, as if drawn by the tension between Felix and Gretel. The undead threat was minimal, but there was no need to get sloppy.

They kept walking. Neither said a word. Felix had thoughts. Plenty of them. So many, he couldn’t organize them into any reasonable framework. He wanted to talk to Gretel about it, if only to help him do just that.

She obviously wasn’t interested. He wondered if she had the same questions and simply wasn’t ready to ask them. Or if she didn’t have them at all. He thought about the years he’d spent alone in this city, living day-to-day in a haze he wasn’t aware enough to recognize. It wasn’t a great way to exist, but it was simple. Now everything was messy. He couldn’t blame her if she preferred it to drowning in a sea of unanswerable questions.

An hour into their trek, the zombie hordes thinned. Felix unzipped the duffel and petted the cat. The city blocks passed by. Coffee shops, hotels, apartment building, supermarkets. All shaped out of the same all-purpose towering gray buildings. A bus every six blocks. No more. No less. It was like they were trapped in one of those endlessly repeating backgrounds in old cartoons, walking past the same pattern.

He started scratching lampposts, fully expecting to see the same mark repeat itself after a while. It never did. The pattern varied enough that you might not notice it if you weren’t looking for it. Except for the bus. Every six blocks. Every time.

“It never ends,” he said to the cat.

Gretel grumbled. “We haven’t walked that far.”

His attempts to calculate the distance were hampered by a number of factors. He wasn’t sure how long they’d been walking. He didn’t know how fast they were traveling. He didn’t know how big the average city block might be or how long it might take to traverse by foot.

It still seemed too damned far. He tried remembering seeing anything other than the city, but aside from movies, he drew a blank.

“There’s no end to it,” he said, again to the cat, who never seemed irritated with him.

“We just have to keep walking,” replied Gretel. “We’ll reach something eventually.”

“I thought you didn’t believe there was a way out.”

“I didn’t say we’d escape. I said we’d reach the end. That giant wall of brick or computer code or whatever that’s waiting for us.”

He didn’t ask why she kept going if she thought the edge of an inescapable cage waited them. She had to keep going. Just like he did. They were both looking for answers. Gretel wanted confirmation of what she already knew. She’d given up on looking for a way out but not on proving there was no exit. She was an explorer convinced the edge of the world was just around the corner but determined to sail over it to prove some kind of point.

Gretel stopped suddenly, and he bumped into her.

“What now?” he asked.

A woman stood a few feet away. She’d snuck up on them because, distracted by their own conversation, they’d mistaken her for another shambling dead thing. But up close, it became obvious she was another survivor.

It wasn’t her face. That was covered by an odd gasmask. Something out of a science fiction story. It hissed and clicked with her every breath.
It wasn’t the bag of groceries she carried. Some zombies carried such things with them, artifacts of their living days. Felix had once seen a zombie hauling a box full of office supplies, trudging along as if he’d just gotten fired and had to clean out his desk.

What separated her from every zombie Felix had ever seen was her pistol. He’d seen zombies carrying guns, but none of them had ever pointed them at him.

Puzzle Pieces (writing)

Not everything in a story is a mystery meant to be solved.  There’s a difference between a plot hole and a deliberately ambiguous point.  This has become lost lately as writers and audiences have taken to analyzing every little moment for signs of greater significance.  One of the great things about the internet is that it allows us to easily find people who share our interests.  One of the bad things is that it allows us to overanalyze the smallest details in hopes of discovering some terrific secret.  Some writers even enjoy playing that game now.  Some creators have become masters of the art form, where EVERYTHING means something else.  More creators have become masters of emulating the art form, where EVERYTHING looks like it should mean something else, but when it ultimately doesn’t, everybody is talking about something else so it no longer matters.

I am not one of those writers.  I care about my stories, and I enjoy foreshadowing and hints of things to come when they’re appropriate.  But I don’t go out of my way to imbue every paragraph, every line of dialogue with plot significance.  I am not usually interested in presenting a puzzle to be solved.  I want to share an entertaining story, but for the most part, if you’re trying to figure out my plots before they finish unfolding, you’re probably not going to.  It’s not that my plots are complex.  It’s because I’d much rather you be invested in the characters and their struggles than in trying to outsmart the story.

The danger of hypervigilance is that of missing the point.  When we analyze a scene for some secret clue that might be relevant twenty scenes later, we stop paying attention to the bigger picture.  We’re so busy scanning the background and dissecting the narration that we might miss what’s going on in front of us.  That’s actually one of the signs of autism, to focus on the wrong thing and miss out on some important detail.  Show an autistic person a scene from a movie with a light bulb swinging back and forth in the background, they’ll just as often focus on the bulb and miss the conversation between the characters up front.  But the conversation is the point.

At my writer’s group, the DFW Writers Workshop, we present our work aloud for critique.  Some people would rather give out copies to be read.  I used to think that made sense.  We aren’t going to read our book aloud to all the people who buy it, so why not present the story in a format it will be enjoyed?  But then I noticed the difference in critique a person reading gave versus a person hearing.  Reading people almost always focused on punctuation, grammar, formatting, all those details that are certainly important but are part of copyediting, not story editing.  The listeners talked about plot and characters and dialogue.  Their advice always ended up being far more valuable and insightful, versus the mechanical, technical advice of the readers.

Copyediting is an important job.  Having recently self-published a short story anthology myself, I can tell you that it is an underrated part of the process.  My own book has its share of formatting and typo issues, and I worked my ass off to try and prevent that.  Still, if I have to pick between a few typos here and there versus an interesting story, I’ll take the story any day.  (Though with a good editing team behind you, that isn’t a choice you have to make.)

The details matter but when we focus too much on those details, we run the risk of creating hollow work that has the illusion of depth but is nothing more than a house of cards.  The reboots of Man of Steel and Amazing Spider-Man sought to add depth to these characters by giving them complicated backstories that interweave elements of their origin throughout the narrative, and both end up being silly, confusing, and even contradictory because of it.  The Ninja Turtle reboot literally ties everything around April O’neal because that’s the thing stories love to do at this point.  Although the movie actually simplifies the Ninja part of the turtles to the point that it strains believability.  That’s something, considering the turtles have never been about realism.  Still, the writers couldn’t figure out a way to tie the Ninjitsu elements to April, so they settled on the laziest solution.

Comic book superheroes are guilty of this sort of “everything is connected and means something” continuity.  Mostly because a writer at some point will decide that Mystique is blue and Nightcrawler is blue, therefore, they must be related.  Steve Ditko thought it was stupid that the Green Goblin ended up being someone Peter Parker knew in real life, and indeed, it is.  But it looks dramatic and it creates a relationship and a mystery to be solved.  If the Goblin had just been some guy, he probably wouldn’t be the classic villain he ended up becoming.  Still doesn’t make it any less silly.

The end result is that we now live in a time when everything in a story is a significant plot point.  EVERYTHING.  It’s exhausting and ridiculous, and it’s taken away the quiet moments where we can simply enjoy a story without being expected to analyze everything or be impressed by the clue the creator inserted on the first page that will tie everything together.  We’ve lost sight of characters, replacing them with machine-like working parts that turn to keep the story going.

There are exceptions.  Quentin Tarantino has made a career of digressions and story dead ends, but the characters are interesting and there is a sense of momentum even as things unfold in their own way.  Kevin Smith’s early films had a similar aesthetic.  And then there are accidental plotless movies like Godzilla, which imitates a story without actually telling one, but no one seems to notice that.

It’s not that I mind puzzle piece stories.  There are great puzzle piece stories that are true masterworks of fiction.  But just because a story requires a flowchart to understand or one can find significance in every line of dialogue that doesn’t mean it’s sophisticated.  It just means it’s complicated, which isn’t the same thing.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

LEE

Bash of the Titans (short fiction)

The bouncer didn’t even pretend to glance at the guest list. “Your name’s not on here.”

“Oh, come on,” said Prometheus. “I’m sure my invite got lost in the mail.”

The bouncer tapped his clipboard. “If your name isn’t on the list, there’s not a lot I can do for you, pal.”

A handsome man in an impeccably tailored suit, wearing a golden crown that shone with blinding light, stepped past Prometheus. The glowing man was accompanied by a beautiful woman on each arm.

“Helios, party of three,” he said.

“Helios, bro, it’s me,” said Prometheus.

Helios didn’t quite look at Prometheus. “Oh, hello. Didn’t see you there.”

“Can you do me a favor and tell this guy I belong in there?”

Helios frowned, and his crown of light dimmed. “Is your name on the list?”

“Don’t do me like that.”

“I’d like to help, brother,” said Helios, “but you did bring this on yourself.”

“How many eons before the family gets over that?” asked Prometheus.

“You’re the foresight guy. You tell me.”

The bouncer undid the velvet rope and allowed Helios into the party.

Prometheus scowled at the bouncer. “Your wife is going to cheat on you with your brother.”

“Piss off, pal.”

Prometheus crossed the street, sat on a bus bench, and watched the party fill up. When he was feeling down on himself, that damn buzzard would appear. It cawed and spread its wings.

“Scram.”

The terrible black bird flew away.

The gods were throwing a gala across town, and if he hurried, he could arrive fashionably late. His invitation had probably been lost in the mail. He knew better, but he convinced himself it was worth a shot. He had to be wrong one of these times.

With fresh optimism in his heart and a hungry vulture flying overhead, he hailed a taxi.

Human (short fiction)

The Specialist

“Tell me about your wife.”

“She ate the dog.” There was a quiver in his voice. “She almost ate me.”

“Not what she is now,” I said. “Who she was.”

Barry sat in the backseat of the squad car. “How does something like this happen? She’s human.”

I could see Barry was going to be hard to get to. Considering he’d just witnessed his wife devouring their beloved family pet, it wasn’t unexpected.

“Are they going to kill it?” he asked.

It.

Barely an hour after watching her transform into something monstrous, she was already an it. This would be a tough one.

The SWAT team was ready to storm the house, but even armed to the teeth, they were reluctant to make the charge. The thing inside wasn’t bulletproof, but it sure as hell wasn’t going down without a fight.

“What was her name?” I asked.

“Penelope,” he said.

“Do you love her?”

He glanced to the house. A shadow passed by a window, and the thing that had been, that maybe still was, Penelope, howled.

“How?”

“It’s complicated,” I replied. “Not really sure how or why it happens. Not consistent. But sometimes, when a person isn’t thought of as a person, when they get ignored and dismissed, when nobody in their life sees them as human . . . sometimes, they stop being human. Sometimes, they cease to exist. Sometimes, they become something else.”

The horrific thing that had been Penelope lobbed a chair out a window and roared painfully.

“Do you love her?” I asked again.

“I did. I don’t know now.”

Penelope squealed as if he’d punched her in the gut. If she had a gut now. I hadn’t seen her up close yet.

“Before the transformation,” I said, “What about then?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. We were having trouble. Fighting a lot. But people fight. They don’t become monsters because of it.”

“Sure they do. Maybe not writhing masses of tentacles and anger, but we’re all ready to become monsters, in one way or another.”

“Can you save her?”

“Me? No. She doesn’t know me. I don’t know her. Any compassion I can offer would be too little, too late. She needs someone who cares about her to go in there. Someone to remind her she’s human.”

“Her parents are dead. She doesn’t have any family other than me.”

“Then it’s up to you,” I said. “I can’t make you go back in there or guarantee your safety if you do. But either you go in and talk her down or these guys will be forced to put her down.”

The SWAT team held their weapons at the ready.

“You can’t ask me to do that,” he said.

“I’m not asking you to do anything. I’m giving you your options. Only you know if you care about Penelope enough to see what’s underneath the thing she’s become. And it’s no pressure, but if she isn’t fixed soon, it’ll be too late.”

He sat there, thinking, for a while.

“We met in college.”

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “Tell her.”

Barry screwed up his courage and went into the house. Penelope howled and screeched and tossed several pieces of furniture into the walls. She punched a hole in the roof with a lashing tentacle.

Then quiet.

I went inside. The house was a mess. Barry sat on the floor with Penelope, naked and frail and human again. They held onto each other like nothing else in the universe mattered.

It was a fragile thing, humanity, but sometimes, it was the only thing keeping us from falling apart in this lousy world.

The Bogeyman War (short fiction)

In the Hollow Lands, the children dwelt forever, spirited away by the Bogeyman. Why he did this, no one knew. Once taken, he tossed them into the cursed woods to fend for themselves against its many dangers. Most didn’t survive long. Some were swallowed by hungry trees. Others were dragged into the dark by things even the Bogeyman seemed to fear. And others just faded away one day, lurking like ghosts until they disappeared completely.

The Bogeyman seemed to take no joy in it. He sat in his ramshackle cottage atop a hill ringed with brambles, silently surveying his kingdom and its unwilling subjects. Sometimes, he would go inside and use the door that led to other times and places, returning with a new child in tow.

Penny had somehow made it past the terrible things in the woods. She’d avoided the hag that liked to drown whoever she could catch. She’d run faster than the three-legged hound. When the withered-faced viper nearly killed her, she managed to smash its skull in with a thick branch she brandished as a club. She faced the dangers of the woods, along with a handful of children who had followed her. Not all of them had made it. Their screams were fresh in her mind, but their silences were worse. Debbie and Tommy had vanished without a trace, taken without even a chance to utter a warning.

But she’d made it, and with the few children remaining (she didn’t bother counting for fear of being discouraged), they pushed their way through the thorns at the bottom of the hill. By then, they were exhausted, and the pain was easier to ignore once the strength had left them. It didn’t matter. They would reach the cottage.

Not every child made it through the brambles. Penny wondered if they’d ever escape or if it was their fate to stay there forever. If so, it was her fault. She’d led them here with promises of freedom, but she’d known they were nothing but bait. Penny had been eight when she’d been taken, but time was impossible to measure in the Hollow Lands. She was bigger than the other kids. Stronger. She’d been here longer than almost anyone, and she’d done things no one should have to do to survive. But she’d made it here.

The Bogeyman smiled as Penny approached the porch. A hot wind blew across his kingdom.

“Send us home, or we’ll kill you,” she said.

The Bogeyman laughed, and clouds rumbled overhead. “You and what army?”

She glanced behind her. There was no one else there. The few kids who had made it through the brambles lay defeated by the steep climb.

The Bogeyman stood. He was long and lean, a creature in a tattered black suit with a bowtie and eyes of black glass. “Do you think you’re the first child who thought to bring the fight to me? Oh, Penny, such foolishness.”

Penny tightened her grip on his club. “We just want home.”

“You are home.”

She drew on what little strength he had and charged the Bogeyman, who slapped aside the charge, long fingernails drawing shallow gashes across Penny’s cheek. The girl fell to the ground. She didn’t cry. She wouldn’t cry.

The Bogeyman sighed. “You belong to me. You always will.”

She stood, balling her hands into fists.

“You’d be a lot more threatening if you weren’t wearing those Scooby Doo pajamas,” said the Bogeyman.

Screaming, Penny ran at the Bogeyman, taking him by surprise. No child had ever challenged him twice. They tumbled down the hill, past the exhausted children, into the brambles at the bottom. They tore at her flesh. More pain. So much at this point that she didn’t even notice it anymore.

The Bogeyman noticed. He howled as he struggled to free himself. Gray blood oozed from his wounds and his spindly right arm snapped off in a thorny tangle. He pulled himself free and cackling, fell to his knees.

Penny yanked free. Blood dripped into her right eye and her arm felt broken. The things, the hag, the monsters in the darkened woods, bayed and hooted from the other side of the brambles. She ignored them.

She grabbed the Bogeyman by the collar and dragged him back toward the forest. The monster seemed so light as to be insubstantial. Like darkness with nothing to fill it.

“Think about what you’re doing,” said the Bogeyman. “When I’m gone, who will protect you from the other horrors that lurk in the shadows?”

“I will.”

She threw the Bogeyman over the brambles. The things in the woods fell upon him and tore him apart. He screamed. A lot. She listened to every scream and vowed to remember them all.

Penny lifted Jessica from the ground and shook her away. Jessica would have to make the climb herself, but at the top, the Bogeyman’s door to other worlds was waiting.

“I’m scared,” Jessica said. She couldn’t have been more than six.

“I know. But you’re almost there.”

“Can’t you go with me?”

Penny glanced at the darkened woods where monsters lived. Monsters and lost children.

“Not yet.”

She plunged into the thorns, and the things silently fled into the eternal night rather than face her.