The Timeshare on Douglas Lake

There’s a cabin on Douglas Lake that I go to every year on Memorial Day weekend with two old college buddies, Benny and Alex. We were all Business majors at the University of Tennessee, but that didn’t stop us from making the fiscally-dense decision to go in together on a timeshare right before graduation. It’s been almost a decade since we finished school and moved on; these days we all live in other parts of the country. I live in Chicago now, Alex is in Washington D.C., and Benny’s all the way out in San Diego. But we all still pay nearly $1,000 a year for the Douglas Lake cabin, and that’s on top of the initial costs when we signed the agreement. Like I said, it was a dumb, impulsive move. However, it’s kept us in touch over the years. We haven’t missed one of our Memorial Day cabin trips yet.

Our place sits on the edge of a row of other cabins, and I dare say the other ones are nicer than ours. That especially goes for the place directly next to ours. It’s really more of a posh lake house than a cabin, with a second-story balcony and open-air back deck. Alex calls the behemoth “Catfish Palace”, referring to the most popular catch on Douglas Lake. It was built after we signed on our place, and it sits a little too close to our lot if you ask me. But I’m sure whoever owns that place would doubly prefer to not be so close to our rustic getaway.

As for the other “owners” of our cabin, we only have info for the people that stay there the week before us and the people that come the week after us. This is in case anybody wants to request a time switch. Since we’ve got the Memorial Day holiday during our week, we’ve had offers – generous offers – to trade in exchange for an adjacent week - plus cash. But money hasn’t been tight for any of us, and we really do look forward to that weekend every year. Since the agreement is for a whole week, we’ve let the family that follows us, the Downey family, know that the place is available on the Wednesday after Memorial Day if they want it. I’m sure getting access just after a big holdiay isn’t ideal, but they seem to appreciate the gesture.

This year was one of our best trips yet. I’d been dating a girl named Susanne back in Chicago, and things were starting to get serious between us. I told Benny and Alex that I was thinking about asking her to move in with me, which quickly became the target of a lot of domestic jokes and comments about “living in sin”, as though living together before marriage was a thing that raised eyebrows anymore.

“I hope Father McTuggagin doesn’t find out,” Benny said, referencing a crass, made-up character that we often played with our collectively bad Irish accents. “What’s thess now, young Daniel? Ya be livin’ in sen if she be willin’ to touch ya doon belowww!”

We all laughed and cracked open another round of beers as the sun went down. Old friends are the best friends, especially when you only see each other long enough to tell the same old jokes and recount the same old stories. Alex would talk about the time we scored tickets to see Pearl Jam in Memphis. And every time he did, I’d remind him of the magic mushrooms he secretly took without me and Benny knowing.

“It was incredible,” he’d say. “Just the hum of the lights in the parking lot was more majestic than ‘Yellow Ledbetter’ could ever be."

 

I’d look at him side-eyed. “I would trust your judgement more, Alex, if you’d ever actually made it inside the FedEx Forum.”

“Oh, right.” And then he’d laugh as if he were remembering this fact for the first time. Looking back, maybe he was.

Maybe we all were.

I said that this weekend was one of our best trips, but I guess they were all pretty much interchangeable. Each and every one of them offered a nice, long weekend away from the grind with a couple of good friends. If you could magically align them all, like a stack of photograph negatives over one another, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the same sentences and exchanges matched beat-for-beat. I’m sure there’s a psychology word for it: the more time away from a person, the more likely you’ll do and say the same things when you see them again. The three of us fell into old patterns and habits we had back at UT, those days that we were around each other nonstop.

“Hey, do you think you could hang back an extra day or two?”

It was Tuesday morning. Benny and I were doing our final sweep of the cabin, making sure we grabbed our personal items. The lodging association that ran the timeshare sent a small cleaning crew between each group, but we had learned the hard way that you pretty much have to clean the place top to bottom if you don’t want to leave behind a cellphone charger or favorite pair of sunglasses.

“What do you mean ‘hang back’?” I asked Benny. “You think the mosquitoes need a chance to finish us off?” I was trying to play along, but it was obvious that he wasn’t joking.

“Sorry, it’s just that there’s some stuff I need to tell you before I go back. Just between you and me, Dan. Without Alex.”

“Why wouldn’t we want-“

“You’ll see. Please.”

I considered this for a moment. It wasn’t like Benny to ask something big unless it was important. He wasn’t careless with other people’s time like Alex could be. And another day or two in Tennessee wasn’t such a big deal. I owned a small data analyst company that I could run from almost anywhere. Plus, I’d brought on Susanne when she was let go from her law firm the previous year, and she could easily handle daily operations for the week.

After a quick call to Susanne and cancelling my afternoon flight, I told Benny I was there for him. He asked that I not say anything to Alex, and I kept the plan a secret. We had all used separate Uber rides to get from McGhee Tyson Airport in Knoxville to the cabin, but had planned to return in the same car. Alex had the earliest departure time, so I made up a bullshit story about losing my cellphone at the last minute. Benny said he’d lend a second set of eyes for the search. After a few rounds of protests, Alex relented and left in a solo ride.

With Alex gone, I started to unpack. Benny stopped me.

“Hold off on that, man. I’ve got a surprise for you.” Benny gathered up his luggage and walked out the front door of the cabin. I followed suit, confused. He locked up. Dropped the key in the lockbox on the side of the building, then walked across the driveway toward the big lake house next door.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ve arranged for special accommodations.” Smiling, he removed a key from his shirt pocket and waved it in the air. “Plus, we can’t go back on our deal with the Downeys.” I’d forgotten about them. They would likely be showing up the next day.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, giddy with excitement. “We’re staying at freakin’ Catfish Palace?”

Benny laughed and ushered us inside. It was even more impressive than I could have imagined. The living room and kitchen were combined in an open floor plan with high ceilings. Fruit and other food items were on the counter. There was a hallway that I assumed led to a bedroom. The staircase dramatically curved up the side of the large room. The upstairs held two more bedrooms, but the coolest feature was the large open space in the middle that held a bar and led out to the second story balcony.

“Check the fridge,” Benny said.

I walked behind the bar and opened the small metallic fridge at my knees. It was fully stocked with Seaton tall boys, our beer of choice. None of us had been able to find the brand in town all weekend, assuming the brewery must have folded for good over the previous year.

“Did you do this?” I asked. Benny shrugged and I punched him on the shoulder. “We could have been drinking these all weekend?”

“No, I was saving them,” he said, opening two for us. “They weren’t easy to find.” He then plucked two cigars from behind the bar and opened the balcony door. Walking out, it occurred to me how orchestrated Benny’s seemingly spur-of-the-moment request had been.

“Wait, wait. You have to understand that I have a lot of questions.”

Benny shushed me, then gestured out.

The view from the balcony was astonishing. My mind fell to ease over the cool water of Douglas Lake. It was strange how different it all looked from just twenty feet up. The air smelled sweeter, felt softer somehow.

Benny handed me a cigar. “Dan, I own this place. Bought it last year.”

“You what? I mean, wow. Why didn’t you…I mean, wow!”

“Business has been good. Hell, it’s been so good that I up and sold the company.” The words looked comically natural coming out of a mouth that was also clenching a cigar.

“Yeah, but why tell me all this now, and not Alex?”

Benny paused for a moment and said, “You’ll see.” Off my look he lost the swagger some. “Look, I just wanted one more weekend in the cabin, a normal trip like the old days. Is that so strange?”

I couldn’t argue with that. If Catfish Palace was our future vacation spot, which I assumed would be the case, I was sure going to miss the old cabin.

“Well, congratulations,“ I said. “It looks like San Diego paid off big time. Oh, and you owe me the cost of my cancelled flight, you know.”

Benny laughed till he choked on the smoke from his cigar. Channeling Father McTuggagin, he said, “Danny, mah boy. Tha only thing ya need to ra’member is tha…ah, fook it. Le’s have us a drenk!”

This got me laughing. I was still confused as hell, but my incredulity was dulled after a few more Seaton tall boys. I was able to lighten up and eventually meet Benny’s enthusiasm, if not his wild exhilaration. After the sun had set, he revealed a small cache of fireworks on the back deck. He scurried to the edge of the lake with something that looked like a hand grenade on a stick. Lighting it, Benny cried out to the stars overhead. The whole scene seemed very dreamlike to me, but we had moved on to whiskey a bit before then. The display of lights shooting over Douglas Lake was fantastic.

Benny shook me awake the next day. It was after twelve o’clock in the afternoon. I probably hadn’t slept that late since college. Even our “wild” cabin trips had gotten pretty tame as we aged out of our early and mid-twenties. Sleeping so late was surprising, but the hangover was painful. I was barely able to focus my eyes or walk. Benny giggled as he helped me from my bed and back out onto the balcony. I wretched at the sight of the piled cigar butts and empty beer cans we’d strewn across the floor the night before. Benny navigated around the debris, leading me to a side of the balcony I hadn’t noticed the previous day. It was overlooking our old cabin. There were two chairs waiting for us. Benny sat me down in one of them, taking the other for himself.

“What’s this?” I asked. Benny shushed me and nodded to a car that was emptying in the cabin’s driveway. It was the Downey family. I had never seen them before, but they looked pretty much as I had imagined them, except there were two boys instead of a boy and a girl. Also, and I don’t know why I had assumed otherwise, but they were all a bit older than I thought they’d be. Mr. and Mrs. Downey – I think his name was Glen, I didn’t know her name – appeared to be in their fifties. The kids were either late teens or college-age.

Benny whispered to me. “Stay kinda still. I’ll narrate as best as I can, but the next few minutes are pretty crucial.”

This seemed like very odd behavior, but I chalked it up to my hangover. I began to speak up, but Benny leaned over and shook his head with dead serious eyes. I suddenly felt very uncomfortable. I hadn’t been outside for two minutes and I was already sweating profusely.

Benny looked out to the Downeys. “Okay, Dan. Let’s see what you notice.” Mr. Downey went to grab the key from the lockbox from the side of the cabin as the rest of the family unloaded luggage and groceries from the trunk of their sedan. Only, the lockbox wasn’t a lockbox anymore. It was a small panel that slid up with a hidey hole under it.

“What happened to the lockbox?” I said, trying my best to match Benny’s lowered volume even though my head was pounding.

“Oh, good. You got one right off the bat.” He was still whispering, but Benny’s excitement was causing his voice to crack.

“When did they do that?” I asked. Benny stared at me as I watched the Downey family carry their things inside the cabin. I looked back to Benny, but he shot a couple of glances toward the cabin to tell me to keep watching. I didn’t think there would be much to see, except I quickly saw that I was wrong.

The entire cabin was turned a bit. It was as though the building had been lifted and set back down so that, from our chairs on the balcony, Benny and I could now see the entire back half of the cabin. And I could see more than that. The back wall was almost entirely glass, a window where I could see the Downeys unloading their groceries into the refrigerator. The cabin only had one story, that hadn’t changed. But it looked different inside. There were paintings on the wall, and what seemed like hundreds of trinkets, small items like plastic toys or wooden carvings, were splayed around the room on small shelves that were affixed to the walls.

“That’s not our cabin,” I said.

“It is and it isn’t,” Benny said. “Let’s just enjoy the show for a while, huh?”

And he was right. It was a show, just not much of one at first. It started out like the world’s most boring reality show. One son, the Blonde one, would talk to Dad for a minute, then shout something at his brother, the Quiet-looking one. Mom opened up a box of crackers and made everybody snacks. It was very mundane stuff, yet I couldn’t look away. Then something strange happened. One by one, but not at the same time, each member of the Downey family dazedly stumbled over to a specific trinket on the wall, as though the item was pulling their destined soul toward it. The rest of them didn’t notice as this happened, they just went about their business, though the business seemed to grow increasing odd. I’m certain that I saw Mrs. Downey put her shoes in the freezer. And then, once they all stood before their trinkets of choice, they lifted the item into the air and stood there for several minutes.

“What’s happened to them?” I asked. “What the hell is going on, Benny?” I was still whispering.

“You don’t need to whisper anymore,” Benny said, full volume. “Do you want another beer?”

“No.”

“Suit yourself,” he said as he opened one for himself. I hadn’t seen him bring it with him.

“Did you do something last night? Did you…change things over in the cabin after I fell asleep?”

“The answer to your question is ‘no’. Last night, I got drunk with you and shot off some fireworks. The cabin is as it always has been.”

That wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. I squinted and saw that the paintings in the cabin were violent scenes: torture, animal sacrifice, things that I would have noticed and taken down.

The Downeys all walked outside, trinkets still in hand. They were looking right at us. I instinctively ducked down and Benny laughed.

“They can’t see you. They’re in the cabin.” He said that as though they hadn’t just walked outside.

Benny took a sip of his beer and threw the half-empty can at the family below. It hit Mrs. Downey in the face. The impact left a red welt on her face and spilled beer on her clothes, but she didn’t seem to notice any of it.

Benny did the Father McTuggagin voice again. “Shite. T’was aimin’ for dear old Da, I was.”

“What the fuck?” I shouted. This wasn’t the Benny that I knew. “What the fuck are you doing? Are you somehow behind this?”

“Behind this? I’m not behind this, Dan.” Benny laughed. “You might say that I was in the middle of it for a while, then I crawled my way to the front of it, but I didn’t build the cabin. The cabin just ‘is', okay? I pulled you out so that you could see it.”

Just then, a car slowly pulled into the cabin’s driveway. It was Alex’s Uber ride from the previous day. I squinted and saw that my friend was now driving the car.

“What’s Alex doing here, Benny?” Silence. “What’s he doing here?!”

Alex stopped the car and got out. His face was covered in dried blood. I didn’t see the car’s original driver, and I was afraid of what carnage might be hidden away in there. Alex walked over to join the Downey family, revealing his own trinket, a small wooden spiral thing, from his pocket. They were now all facing us. Their lips began moving, just slightly, but in harsh rhythm. It looked like they were chanting, or perhaps praying. Benny stood up and jumped off the edge of the balcony. He landed sturdily on his feet down below. I arose from my chair as he walked to his congregation standing on the border between the cabin and a place poor Alex had once called Catfish Palace.

As I peered over the edge of the balcony, I saw that Benny had changed. He was twenty or thirty years older. His clothes were the same, but his hair was now wispy and the top of his head was dotted with sunspots. Age hadn’t weakened Benny though. He calmly walked down the line of his dazed parishioners, touching each of them gingerly on their foreheads, one by one. Once Benny arrived at the end of the line, I saw that Alex was also an old man. The blood had dried into the deep wrinkles around his eyes.

I suddenly felt much older myself. I wanted to call Susanne, but I could only remember her name now. If she was ever an actual person who once loved me, I couldn’t imagine her face anymore. Once he finished blessing Alex, Benny turned and smiled up at me, his teeth gray and rotting. He gestured for me to join them. I didn’t want to. I looked away, down to my own trinket, a painted rock. It grew hot in my pale, fragile hands.

The world quickly dulled as I tumbled off the balcony. I never felt the ground below.

The Island Birds

"Hello friend or Savior!”

Wallace was in no shape to be anyone's savior; he could barely stand upright on the mysterious beach which he had only arrived at an hour earlier. The words of the message appeared blurry from underneath a cracked pane of glass, presumably to guard the yellowed sheet of paper from rain. All of this was affixed to the side of a beached motorized yacht, now coastal wreckage-as-monument to the frail man standing before it. “The Golden Corona” was painted on the jutted remnants hunkering over the dark sand. Still, the badly-damaged vessel was in better condition than the battered raft that had barely carried Wallace to the island. He had struggled against an unforgiving current for hours before arriving at the Corona, and he was weaker and hungrier than he'd ever been in his life.

“Please help yourself to one of the bottles of freshwater I’ve left for you.”

Wallace was already on his third bottle, having thrown up a good bit of the water from the first. All of them, around thirty in number, had been placed in a neat row at the base of the yacht. Had Wallace been the sort of person that paid attention to world events, he would have recognized the boat and known its owner. In some circles, The Golden Corona was as famous as the Argo.

“There’s a building on the northwest corner of this island. It’s a real building made of concrete and steel. The biologists that used to live here have vacated this tropical prison, but I’m here now. My name is Rylan McCay. I have one warning for you: don’t eat any of the birds. They carry a very rare disease. I have plenty of information and research here that will explain everything. Get here as soon as you can.”

That was the end of the note. The words were as much of a premature admonishment as they were a promise. The caws and cackles from inside the forest of the island, which otherwise appeared bereft of fruit and other such nourishment, had given Wallace hope for a meal after days without. After the initial scout which led him to the Corona, he was going to set out for a hunt, hopefully build a fire close to a source of clean water - if there was any to be found.

The letter quelled his imagined feast, but this information was like rising up for oxygen. If Rylan had survived on the island more than a week or two, then perhaps there was a life to be had here. At the very least, there was someone with whom to await rescue.

Wallace judged the sun and headed northwest.

He couldn’t have known it, but Wallace’s trek mimicked, almost step-for-step, the exact course Rylan had taken the previous summer. The surrounding currents had put Rylan on the same basic path. Only in his case, the Corona was heavier than the life raft, and had found purchase on the beach quicker.

An explosion at sea had killed everyone but Rylan, transforming the Corona into a powerless scrap adrift on the Pacific Ocean. After two days, he had to ditch the remains of the crew to suppress temptation to feast upon their spoiled meat. But fate brought Rylan to the very island he’d been seeking, though its secrets were still a mystery to him then.

It took Wallace about an hour to reach the northwest corner. Wallace’s legs were still cramped from dehydration, and the sun grew brighter and more intense as it began to set. Once he was within range, he cut into the island through a thicket of trees. The bird noise was much louder once he was under the forest canopy. The discord was jarring after so many days of silence, but Wallace had a mission and a destination.

For his part, Rylan had reached his grim destination months earlier. Before he had even spotted the island, a seagull landed on the edge of the Corona, signaling that land would be nearby. Rylan devoured the diseased bird immediately, all but its beak and toes, and thus became an unwitting host to an angry mob of viral parasites.

A quarter mile into the island forest, Wallace met up with a trail which led him to a small, one-story building. It was grey and cylindrical, perhaps decades old. Moss and vines covered the lower part of one side, but it appeared that Rylan had cleared the growth away for visitors, revealing a large metallic door which he’d propped open a few inches. Wallace grabbed the edge and began to pull it toward him.

Wallace never got a good look at the thing that Rylan had become since he’d started down the path to decay. He'd barely had time to set the trap: water to keep his prey alive, a siren song disguised as a welcome letter. Rylan's face and body had been remarkably changed by the poison inside him, poison which both killed him and kept him alive.

Wallace had obeyed the letter’s instructions, he'd ignored the island birds. Rylan-as-creature would have sensed it if he had, and then it would have had nothing to eat. It grabbed Wallace’s hand from inside the building, ripped his whole arm off with a torturous snap. The malformed and insane birds cried out from above, alarmed by the screams that followed.

Orange Soda

After six long years sweating it out with Lisa in the country, Bob was glad to finally be living in a bustling city neighborhood, even if it meant he now had a divorce under his belt. He enjoyed running errands on foot during the weekend, saying hello to all the shopkeepers and random folks making their way up and down Green Leaf Avenue, though not all of them appreciated Bob's attention. There were restaurants and bars and banks and so many little stores that Bob often forgot that he had, say, a music store or a shoe repair place right around the corner. It was the perfect change of scenery, revitalizing a still reasonably young man after an unhappy span of time.

The only problem, if you could call it that, was that Bob loved orange soda. He loved it so much that he didn't dare keep a drop of it in his apartment. Lisa had taught him to fear his love of orange soda through health articles and straight up science to the point where Bob quit drinking it for their last four years together, but that changed when he moved to Green Leaf Avenue. There was a store a block away that had a vending machine out front, offering sugary orange goodness day or night. Bob still didn't buy more than one at a time, but he often found himself making the walk to the machine two or three times a day, sometimes as late as midnight.

It was during one such late night trek that Bob saw a homeless man with wild silver hair sitting near Bob's destination, perched on the back of a bus stop bench. Bob had seen the man around before; dirty face, missing teeth, a penchant for muttering under his breath and intimidating passersby. This was usually during the daytime, a time when pedestrians flooded the sidewalk and Bob could angle himself behind other people to avoid the silver-headed man's intense gaze. However there wasn't anyone to hide behind out at this time of night.

Bob thought about doubling back, but quickly felt ashamed by the impulse. It was ridiculous to be afraid of someone that had never shown him any harm. Plus, Bob knew that he wouldn't be able to sleep if he couldn't press that ice cold can to his lips for at least one citricy sip.

Before getting much farther, Mr. Silver Hair jumped down from the bench to the sidewalk, blocking Bob's path. In that moment Bob deeply regretted not keeping orange sodas in his fridge. He could hear the man say something, but it was faint. It was then that Bob realized that, at some point between his apartment and this point he had already taken a few dollar bills out of his pocket, and that the homeless man was staring at the wad of money in Bob's hand as he muttered.

"I'm sorry," Bob said, trying to keep his pace and direction firm. "Sorry, man."

The homeless man overcompensated his volume and shouted at Bob. "Wanna tell you some shit we got going on here, Mikey!"

Bob didn't know why the man had decided that his name was Mikey, but it freaked him out.

"Just out for a stroll, dude," Bob said as he sidestepped past the silver-headed man. He thought for a moment that the man had tried to grab his arm, but he continued unabated. However, now the homeless man was following him. Bob would still have to cross a street and a parking lot until he reached the soda machine, and he didn't feel like being harassed the entire time. He made a decision and turned to face Mr. Silver Hair.

"You know what? Here," Bob said as he peeled a dollar from the wad in his hand a thrust it in the homeless man's direction. Silver Hair took the money quickly. The reaching/grabbing motion was pure muscle memory though; his face was still intent on Bob.

"Some real shit, Mikey!" the man told Bob. The money had apparently failed to elicit gratitude. "We got some work to do. Gotta clear 'em out, you hear me?"

"Jesus, dude." Bob shook his head and couldn't believe the next thing he heard himself say. "Just give me the dollar back, okay?"

"Not about the cash," the homeless guy said as he leaned in closer. Bob backed away and almost fell off the curb into the street. "I'm talking about the mirrors, Mikey."

Bob stared at the silver-headed man. In return, the man tilted his face downward and raised his eyebrows, his eyes wide on Bob as though he had just revealed an unmistakable truth that Bob should have realized all along.

Bob did not share the man's conspiratorial vibe. "Now you're talking about mirrors?" Bob said, dismissively. He shook his head and started walking toward the soda machine. As he crossed the side street, the homeless man followed.

"All up and down this street, Mikey." The man clapped his hands and continued. "My man, how many mirrors you think they got versus how many they got on you. On me. I've counted them out. It's over a hundred. More mirrors than we got people. Just look around, Mikey!"

The store was closed, but the soda machine was always open for business. Bob was thankful that the parking lot was still well-lit. He'd hoped his silence would send Mr. Silver Hair a message to leave him alone, but the vagrant waited patiently as Bill fed two dollars into the machine and pressed the picture of the orange logo. A can noisily flipped through the machine and landed in the tray below. Bob fished it out, immediately opening it and taking a long swig. He didn't care about the homeless man in that moment. He had never been thirstier.

Two quarters fell into the change receiver. "Keep those if you want 'em," Bob said as he zipped away from the machine and toward his apartment. He knew he'd have to lose the homeless guy before he got back, and hoped that fiddling with the quarters would buy himself a head start. He got all the way back to the side street and glanced back to see Mr. Silver Hair just sitting by the store's front entrance. He didn't seem to be interested in Bob anymore in the least. Bob continued on around the corner and stopped long enough for another deep sip of orange soda, then slowed his pace for the walk back.

As he neared the next side street, the one that led back to his apartment, Bob noticed a store that he hadn't really paid attention to before. It was a mirror store, with a dozen or so mirrors displayed in the front window. Bob stopped walking and thought about it. He recalled seeing his reflection in these before, but the store had somehow never registered as one of the many on his block.

It's funny how the mind works, he thought. What's more, the store certainly explained Mr. Silver Hair's concern. He paused again.

Well, it explains it in a theoretical way, but not a practical one. Bob had assumed the man was using code when he was raving about the mirrors, that perhaps he was actually talking about secret video cameras planted by the government or some other such invasive conspiracy. A fear of literal mirrors seemed a bit silly in this day and age, something out of medieval times. But the man was obviously crazy and Bob did his best to not dwell on the poor man's odd obsession.

Bob took two steps and then stopped again. A tall display mirror stood beside the store's entrance. The shopkeeper had obviously put it out as a means of advertising the location, but surely they hadn't meant it to be left out overnight, where it could so easily be stolen. It was a floor length dressing mirror, the kind with a rotating stand used to tilt the mirror toward the floor. It was angled a bit toward Bob's feet now. He saw in the reflection that his soda had fallen out of his hand, the can's remaining liquid pooling in an orange froth around his shoes.

But that wasn't right. He could feel the cool aluminum can still in his hand. He reached forward and pushed the top of the mirror back a bit, angling it so as to see his face. The face that stared back at Bob belonged to a stranger, and maybe not a person at all.

"Are you Bobby?" it asked him. Bob had never gone by Bobby before, though sometimes a friend would call him that and he'd let it go.

Then it occurred to him. "Are you Mikey?" Bob asked the thing back.

Without thinking, Bob took a step closer to the mirror, not realizing that he was already standing right in front of it. There was no room to move closer, only through. That's how he walked through the mirror passage before he could stop himself.

On the other side, the first thing Bob noticed was that he still felt like himself, despite what the mirror had shown him. The second thing he noticed were all the shadows that surrounded him, hanging limp in the place where the world had once stood. The third thing was that he no longer had his orange soda.

Summer Blue

The weather has finally warmed up enough for Cal to go outside and really give some attention to his home's backyard patio. He dusts off the slightly-wilted wicker furniture, remembering so recently when it was adorned with icicles. He checks inside the grill to make sure he hasn't left old and rotting charcoal from last season in it. He smiles as he works. If the temperature can keep above 65, Cal hopes to invite some close friends over for a cookout on Sunday. He hasn't seen many of them in several weeks, the cold being their main excuse for not visiting.

Cal grabs his broom from its spot next to the outdoor kiln and begins to sweep the patio. As he pushes the first gathering toward the edge of the granite flooring, he notices a small pile of bright blue powder on the grass, just beyond the patio's brick steps leading down to the lawn. The mysterious mound is only a few inches tall, not much bigger than a pyramid-shaped softball. To Cal, it looks like discarded, sugary contents of perhaps a couple dozen blue-flavored Pixie Stix. He quietly curses whatever neighborhood child decided to pull this strange prank on him.

Out of fear of the sugary substance attracting ants, Cal decides he shouldn't spray the pile with water or knock it asunder with the broom. He retrieves a dust pan from the spot by the kiln and begins to gather the blue powder onto it. However, Cal notices that the blue dust has a delicious smell, much more appetizing than merely sugar. He stops gathering the dust onto the pan.

Squatting before the mound, Cal touches a finger to his tongue and then drags it through the blue substance. He brings it to his nose and sniffs. The powder smells almost like a mix of roasted garlic and a robust cheese, like from a fine pasta dish. He inspects it, marveling at its perfect deep ocean color. It doesn't even have a hint of a dirt speck in it. Cal knows that he shouldn't, but he cannot help himself as he touches his blue-powdered finger to his tongue. The taste is unbelievably good, filling a void Cal didn't know existed in the world before.

After several more finger-to-powder-to-tongue transfers, Cal has to force himself to stop. He feels like he has eaten a giant helping of some savory, pan-seared Italian dish - Cal's favorite kind of food, but he is still not full. Shaking off a submerged feeling, he springs to his kitchen and fetches a small Tupperware. At first he is careful to not get dirt mixed in with the Blue as he scoops it into the plastic container, but then Cal notices that the Blue somehow repels the dirt. It remains pure as he gets every last speck into the container. He places a lid over it and carries the plastic tub to his kitchen's counter top. As he sets it down and walks away, he resists the urge to grab a spoon. The smell seems to seep through its plastic enclosure.

Cal sleeps deep that night and dreams of the things that he will serve his friends at the cookout on Sunday. The Blue will make every bite delicious, but he knows that he'll have to wait until after sundown to serve them, outside and by candlelight, so as to hide the strange color that might discourage their appetites. But once they have sampled the Blue, they will all be swimming in the same waters as one. Cal knows that his friends will stay with him after that because the Blue inside of him tells him that they will.

Cal dreams of this eternal togetherness as another pile of Blue crawls into place on his backyard lawn, beginning its not-very-long wait. This mound is slightly larger than the first one, and a darker shade of blue. It will soon be joined by many more Blues, each of them necessary for all the new friends that Cal will serve over the long summer to come.

Home Inspection

It had been a long time since Greg had gotten any real satisfaction from robbing houses. Lately, it just felt like he was evening the score, like pulling out an old, dusty eraser and wiping the slate clean. Well, as clean as it could get with a dusty eraser.

He knew what to look for, which neighborhoods to hit. When he had first started out, those dark and desperate days back in Houston, he hadn't liked anyplace with more than one floor. But now he sought out the two-story houses, sometimes three. He needed the challenge as much as he needed the money that Zachary would give him for whatever he brought back with him.

Greg had his target: a two-story corner brick home on Levy and Bowerwood. He had watched it for a few days, more than enough time to figure out the old woman who lived there didn't move fast. A trip to the mailbox took her over a minute, which meant a trip to the supermarket or beauty shop would give him at least an hour.

That would have been the easy route, safe. But it was too easy for Greg's taste. That's why he decided to play dress up and steal from her while she was home.

"Morning, ma'am," he said to the old woman standing at her front door. He had found the coveralls he wore and the clipboard at a thrift store he'd visited the previous day. The baseball cap with the Buchanan Gas and Electric Company logo was his, custom-made. Mrs. Buchanan was a teacher from high school that Greg had especially hated.

"What d'ya want?" the old woman squawked. She was fully dressed in an old-fashioned and ill-fitted pants suit, looking as though she expected to preside over the world's most depressing boardroom meeting later that day. The wrinkles on her face tripled under the weight of the scowl she presented Greg.

That's perfectly alright, he thought as the difficulty meter in his head shot from a 4 to a 6, maybe a 6.5. Make this uncomfortable for both of us, you old sack.

"Ma'am, we're doing inspections on your block this morning, checking pipelines for a natural gas purge that we'll be running next week."

Carol Louten's glare judged the tool bag laying at his feet, more props in the grand bid for authenticity. She looked like she literally wanted to kick both the bag and Greg off of her porch. "Gas purge? Nobody told me about that."

Greg's mouth dropped open as his eyes searched for answers. This expression was second nature to him, higher than a genuine smile on his face's list of greatest hits.

"Ma'am, you haven't seen the notices that we've been posting?" He flipped through the papers on his clipboard and held up an inspection notice with the Buchanan logo clearly displayed. "This is just one of three. Did you get a letter from my company in your mailbox?"

"No. I don't think so. No." Carol Louten held her footing firm as Greg's confusion became real. He had dropped the BGE notice in her mailbox himself just two days prior. He had even made sure to misspell her last name so that he could have a conversation about a new girl at the home office who was lousy at her job, one of many deflections he relied on in his line of work.

"Well, I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but I'm required to check this home's excess flow valves, circuit breaker switch panel, the arc-fault ground connection point, and-" Greg flipped to the last page on his board. "And your second floor polarized receptacles."

"My what?"

"Electrical outlets." And off her look. "They're what the plugs plug in, ma'am."

Carol stared at Greg for a moment, lips pursed and eyes squeezed into fury. With a grunt, she pulled the door fully open. He nodded and smiled, exhaling as he crossed the threshold. The hardest part was over.

"According to the floor plan, your kitchen is back this way, correct?" he said, pointing to the left entryway from the small foyer they stood in. The woman quickly sighed and nodded. Greg opened his bag and pulled out an old radar detector that he had found at a flea market and later modified. He switched it on.

"What's that for," Carol asked. "Some kind of gas detector?"

"That's exactly what it is, ma'am." He gave her a grateful look as though she could teach him a thing or two. She closed her eyes and shrugged. He continued. "It measures carbon monoxide, which is a very deadly gas. One of your neighbors...do you know the Stensons?"

"Oh, yeah. 'Cross the street."

"That's them. Well, the Stensons had a small CO leak, hardly even worth the trouble of repairing. However, the gas purge next week very well might cause a rupture in the active pipe, which would be catastrophic for the Stensons. Well, it would have had we not caught it when we did." His tone straightened its tie and got serious. "And I don't think that I need to tell you what I mean by 'catastrophic'."

She grimly nodded as Greg sat his bag by the front door. He could see that Carol was picturing the Stensons' young girl going to sleep one night and never waking up. It was the exact image Greg needed Carol to have in her head for the next hour.

Greg began to walk through the house, Carol following closely behind. He made his way into a dark living room and darker hallway. Greg, ever the detective, wasn't surprised to not see a single family picture displayed on tables or hanging on any walls. "No family" was very attractive to Greg, but he was beginning to think that was where the romance ended. Outside, the house was neat and modern; even its lawn was cared for by a professional crew. But the inside was drab: bookshelves lined with dusty books, side tables covered with doilies, analog clocks sitting next to digital ones.

Old people stuff. Great. 

He walked into the kitchen and saw that Carol didn't even have a microwave. He couldn't help but roll his eyes. Even though his back was to the old woman, she must have sensed it.

"Is there a problem?"

Not yet, Carol. Don't jump the gun. That's later.

"No ma'am. I was just looking for the circuit breaker. The kitchen is usually the-" He walked to it. "Oh, here we go." He opened the panel and pretended to inspect it. He was about to tell Carol that the unit may need to be replaced when he heard a loud thump above him, coming from the second floor. He had no idea what it was, but it didn't sound like a dog hopping off a bed - not that he thought Carol had one.

"I'm sorry," he said, turning to the old woman. "Am I taking you away from company?"

Carol looked insulted. "What's that supposed to mean?" she asked.

"It's just...I thought I heard something. Upstairs."

"Nothing up there except three bedrooms, two closets full of old sheets, and an empty bathroom." She smiled a bit. "Oh, and all those polarizing resuscitators for plugs."

Greg returned the smile, in his way. "Okay. I just need to check the stove hookup and then I'll ask that you show me the backyard."

He glanced behind the stove and scribbled a few random letters on a random page. Carol craned her neck to see what he wrote, but she was slow and Greg jerked the clipboard nonchalantly to his side.

"Okay, now to the backyard, please. After you."

She guided him through a sun room, the darkest he'd ever seen. There appeared to be a futon set up in the corner, but Carol hurried him through to get into the backyard and sweet daylight. To Greg, it was like stepping out of the Addams Family house into the real world. The day was bright and birds were chirping. He didn't realize it before, but his sinuses had been stuffed up the entire time he'd been inside.

Probably all that dust. This is hardly worth my-

Greg saw something move from inside the house, somewhere in one of the second story windows. His peripheral vision had picked it up, maybe a curtain pulled to the side or a figure somewhere watching him. Whatever it was, it was gone. Everything was still.

"What in the heck are you looking at?" Carol asked. She had her hands on her hips in a way that reminded Greg of that old cow Mrs. Buchanan. He wished that he could pick Carol up and throw her over the fence.

"I was...," he looked over the perfectly-manicured lawn. "I was just noticing that this style of house doesn't have an arc-fault ground connection point. My mistake. We can go back inside. Do you have a basement?"

The basement held no more valuables than Greg had seen elsewhere in the house, but it would serve other purposes. He lifted the phony CO detector around the dirty room. He pushed a button that he had installed and the device emitted a series of quick beeps.

"What was that?" Carol shrieked, just the right reaction to Greg's ears. "Was that that carbon diocide?"

"Dioxide. Yes, but I wouldn't be alarmed. A pocket of CO gas here and there is perfectly normal. But I'm going to need scan every room, just to be on the safe side."

She nodded. "Yes, okay." Greg hoped that he hadn't calmed her down too much. There were so many fine lines in his work.

"Now, are there any rooms on the first floor that we didn't pass through?"

"Yeah, one."

Carol slowly climbed the basement stairs and led Greg to an office study on the first floor. As she swung open the door, Greg had to keep himself from laughing. A large floor safe, likely a TL-30 or -40, sat squarely behind an oak Riverside Executive desk. His back twinged with old hurt from memory of such previous hauls.

Even if the safe's contents don't pay off, I can get a solid grand for the desk. I'll just have to back the van right up to the front door.

"I don't go in here much," Carol said. "This was Henry's room. He didn't like me going in here, and after a while I stopped wanting to."

"Is that right?"

Thump, thump from overhead. Greg looked up at the ceiling, then to the old woman. Her face was calm, bored even.

"Yes, that's right," she said.

"I think it's time I checked out the second floor," Greg told her. "See about those outlets."

"Don't you want to check this room for gas?"

Greg quickly waved the radar detector around from where he stood.

"It's fine. Let's go."

Carol led him to the staircase, just right of the foyer. Greg waited for her to begin the slow, arduous journey up the steps, but she just gestured for him to go up.

"Are you not coming upstairs?" he asked.

"No. I never go up there." The words hung for a moment, ominous. Then she smiled at Greg. "My knees, you know. I almost had to ask you to carry me up from the basement. It's too much trouble, so I just stay down here. Sleep in the backroom. Got everything I need down here."

"Oh. Well, that's fine," Greg said as he turned away and climbed the stairs, a rare smirk forming.

As dark as it was downstairs, it was even darker upstairs. He carefully went from room to room, checking for the source of the thumping. The last thing Greg needed was a hero barging in on the job. Especially if the hero was an underage relative that he had somehow missed during a stakeout over the past two weeks. He didn't find anybody, and it looked like there was nothing to take either. The rooms were mostly empty, the decorations more suitable for a life-sized dollhouse than a home. To Greg, this felt like a waste of space and a good reason why the rich needed less riches.

He peered out a window, wishing he could open it. His sinuses had flared up again. As he thought about it, the lack of upstairs loot was almost a relief to Greg. Carrying anything as large or heavy as the study desk down the staircase would risk personal injury. Still, he went about his quiet search for jewelry and any artwork that might pull in a few extra bucks.

Movement outside caught his eye, maybe a lawn maintenance worker. Greg quickly backed away from the window.

Home stretch now, kid. Not a good time to be seen.

A bit shaken, Greg decided to end the search. He removed the radar detector from his jacket pocket, ready to send beeps down the stairs for Carol to hear. It was time for the second hardest part: getting the mark out of the house.

He pushed the button, but nothing happened. Silence. This was not good. Carol was sold on the gimmick and the gimmick needed to be convincing. He hit the side of the device. Nothing. He knew that the batteries were new, but he took them out and put them back in anyway. Nothing. Greg had been using the detector for years and had never had an issue. He stood in the dark of the second story hallway, could only stare at the dim light coming from first floor, by the staircase where Carol stood below.

Greg thought of the backup plan, of the ropes and the gag laying in the bag he had placed by the front door. It was a shitty thing to do, but he was already in a hole with Zachary financially, and there wasn't another tactic that he could see to get Carol out of the house. He took a deep breath and began to walk toward the staircase.

His footsteps suddenly sounded sickeningly familiar. Thump.

Greg had been caught during a job once before, had served time for it. He had bought some access codes to an office building and was using them to search for petty cash and whatever equipment he could carry out with him. A security guard had wandered in and busted him, trapped Greg like a rat with no more than a can of pepper spray, which was more than Greg carried. The moment when the guard yelled "freeze," he actually felt the word take form. It was as though his neck was blasted by a cold breeze and the chill spread down his spine and across his shoulders.

If his shoulders were frosty then, they were twin blocks of ice now.

Thump. This one behind him, impossibly.

He slowly turned toward the bedroom at the end of the hall. He had closed the door when he had walked out of it earlier, but it was open again now. In the doorway, a pale woman stood in front of a boy around seven or eight years old. Her hand, bruised and bloody, was on his shoulder. They looked like a mother and son portrait, only one occupying the physical world and all of its gruesome dimensions. They looked as though they had been dead for some time. Their skin was grey, their eye sockets hollow. But they could still see Greg; he knew that they could.

The floor melted under his feet, causing him to slip until the ground's firm, hot grip took hold of his ankles. Greg steadied himself by pushing against the walls of the hallways, but he was still sliding down into the floor. As if in burning quicksand, he turned away from mother and child. As he did, he found himself face to face with an old man, half naked, his skin torn with lacerations. The old man was hunched over and sneering at Greg. He grabbed one of Greg's arms. With his free hand, Greg pounded on the floor, suddenly solid.

Thump.

Muffled from below, Greg heard his own voice. "Am I taking you away from company?"

Greg pounded on the floor again, trying to warn himself.

Thump, thump.

The old man pushed Greg's head down and he sank lower into the floor, his energy draining faster than his mind could try to save himself. Greg was powerless and he knew that it was almost over. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes for what might be the final time before he went under.

The old man was gone, mother and child too. Greg looked down and saw that he was kneeling on the hallway floor, his arms still stretched to the walls on either side of him. Slowly, he tried to push himself up, only to fall to his knees again.

Thump.

"Is everything alright up there?" It was Carol, calling up from the first floor. Greg realized that he had been whimpering. He looked at the doorway to the bedroom. It was empty, but his mind could still place mother and child there, too easily. "Hello?" Carol again.

Without answering, he stood up and walked back down the staircase. He made no effort to disguise any expression that he might have been wearing now, but that didn't stop Carol from smiling at him.

"Everything check out okay?" she asked. Greg reached the bottom of the stairs and stood face to face with Carol.

Greg tried to answer her. Stopped. Couldn't. From a far off place, he realized that he had dropped the fake detector upstairs. He instantly knew that it didn't matter, that nobody would find it up there. It wasn't a place where people went.

And knowing that - especially in the way that he now knew it - made Greg want to dent the old woman's face in with a crowbar.

Just like Mrs. Buchanan. Always with a lesson to teach.

"Yeah, I got what I needed," Greg said, picking up his bag, a saccharine smile plastered on his face. "Big time, ma'am. Everything is perfectly fine here."

"Oh, good!" she said, beaming. Carol Louten opened the front door, allowing Greg to stumble back into the warm Thursday morning again.