Good Morning Magpie, Part 1: The Dove and the Magpie, 1

Part 1: The Dove and the Magpie

1.
The wind blew fierce, a torrent in the night, as the magpie was tossed about through the clouds. His chest burned, his wings ached, and he had been flying away for longer than he could remember. No rest, no slowing, only purpose.
Though he had tried to flee from the darkness that poured from the seam, he could no longer bring his wings to carry him. He fell through the storm, hearing the ghosts of his life whisper in his ear.
You should have stayed.
You were not worthy.
You are a traitor.
These sounds careened through his skull as he fell through the trees, bouncing between branches. He heard several cracks and felt a horrible pain in his wings, and he cried out into the night.
Finally the ground spiraled upwards, eager to introduce him to his death.

2.
But death didn't come to him. It was pain. He'd hit the ground with a heavy thud, and lay there mumbling to himself as he tried to recount how he got there. He drifted in and out of consciousness as the sun dawned on the world, and myriad small creatures fled to the East. He couldn't see the darkness from which they were running, but he could feel it. All creatures could, somewhere in their souls.
He felt great fear and great sadness as he saw the sky turning gray. He watched the color drain from the trees and the underbrush, heard the sounds of the few creatures unwilling or incapable of leaving die down into silence.
He tried to move, but his body racked with pain, and he stopped. He examined his outstretched wings, and looked away immediately. He shuddered.
The magpie closed his eyes to keep from crying, and let himself pass into a state of sleep, though he wasn't able to rest. Images of his life flashed before his eyes, and soon he was incapable of keeping the tears at bay.

3.
Just as delirium came to him, he felt a tug. Soon his whole body ached, and he was overwhelmed with vertigo. It's the world collapsing, he thought. Soon he'd be dead, and the pain of his broken wings would be relieved.
But soon never came, and his discomfort grew immensely as the movement became more vigorous.
“Leave me be!” he called into the sky. “Don't tempt me with relief, then pull it away!”
“Shut up, you baby,” came a voice that stopped the magpie's heart. He labored his eyes to see.
A dove of purest white had hold of his wing, pulling him Eastward.
When the shock of it passed, he kicked his leg into her side, and her grip lessened. He pulled away.
She turned on him. “Do you want to die?”
“I had grown accustomed to the idea,” he said. When he tried to ruffle his wings, he fell to the ground, crippled in pain. “Just leave me be. You can't mend my wings anymore than you can carry me away from the darkness. Go and save yourself, noble dove, and forget my eyes.”
As though his words had fallen on deaf ears, she grabbed hold of his wing once more and started back to pulling him. Finally, the magpie pecked at her neck.
“You're wasting your energy, dove! I am short for the world, and you will be too if you don't flee with the rest of animalkind!”
“Shut your blasted beak and help me carry you or we will both die, because I am not leaving you here!”
He gave a loud sigh as she continued to pull his dead weight. “What displaced sense of honor drives you to this deed? You're only making my hurt all the worse, and for what little life you may be sparing me I shall die all the more pained for my broken wings!”
She dropped him and turned viciously. “Shall I fashion a splint for your wings, so you may not burden me with your aches? Or should I simply tie you a noose?”
“Lady, I mean you no offense of this, and I appreciate your intentions, but you haven't the slightest clue how cruel you're being. I do not wish for death any more than you, but I have accepted my fate for what it is. Please, little one, you're running out of time.”
“Even if the sky itself crumbled to the ground, I would not turn my back to your need. So you can either stay an ass and kill us both, or get off your bloody rump and help me.”
The magpie eyed her for a few moments and sighed. He pushed himself to his feet and gingerly slid his wing beneath hers.

4.
The day wore on between exhausted arguments and long periods of silence. The magpie was in pain, asking every dozen feet to be left along, but the dove refused to grant his wish. But finally she grew tired herself, and they agreed to sit and rest for a short time.
The magpie cleaned his feathers as he watched the dove gather bits of twig with her beak and arrange them in a pyramid, a pile of fluffy detritus beneath it. She disappeared for a little while, and before he could think she'd left him for good, she returned with a thin slab of rock, which she set next to the makeshift tower. She began to strike it with her beak.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
Sparks flew off the stone and into the twigs, and almost immediately they burst into flames.
“It's cold,” she said. “Colder by the second.”
The dove nestled herself to the fire and set her eyes on the magpie.
He looked away awkwardly.
“You seem awfully resourceful for a bird of peace.”
She blinked, but said nothing.
“Do you know what happened?” he asked.
At this, the dove broke her gaze and looked away. She said, “No. But I saw it happen. I was flying.”
“Oh,” said the magpie. “Oh I see. What happened?”
She took a deep breath. “I'd been traveling with a flock of gulls from the South, we'd just come over land when we heard what could only have been a thunderclap. A bright flash burned our eyes and the very air we breathed seemed to alight in flames. It looked to me as though the horizon had cracked, and a great blackness was seeping out from it, sapping the life around it of its color. We fell, like all creatures of the sky did, but we were high enough to regain our lift before we hit the ground. Is that what happened to you, magpie?”
He looked away. “No such luck, I fear. A cougar had just taken me into its den, played with me as it would a mouse, and broken my wings. When it heard the crack you describe as thunder, it grabbed its cubs and ran. I only barely managed to pull myself out from that hole before it was trampled closed. Of course, I'd be better off had I stayed below. Almost assuredly I'd be dead by now. It's ironic really, that the world should be coming to an end and all I want is to die, and the only thing keeping the world from granting me my wish is a dove with a sympathy complex.”
His jabs had no effect, and she made no reply. He coughed.
“So, the gulls then? What happened to them?”
“The creatures that came from the shadows took them.”
The magpie turned his head to one side. “Creatures? I saw no such creatures.”
“Had I left you with your suicidal delusions, you'd have dined with with them not moments after we met. You're lucky to be alive.”
“Lucky? Have you ever known a bird to break its wings and fly again? I'm not a bloody ape, I can't just set them back into place and wait a week for nature to work its course! The only thing this body can do well enough to brag about is fly, and I've no chance of ever doing that again. If this magpie be lucky, I should wish my enemies were half as fortuitous.”
“The Gods have granted you life. You should be appreciative that they only took your wings.”
He stared at her for a few moments. “No. No, no, no!” he cried desperately, “A religious dove! It could have been a masochistic wolf or a lunatic koala, but no, the one creature in all of creation to feel charitable towards this dying bird is a theologian! My dove, I wish you'd revealed this to me sooner, I would have just slit my throat from the start!”
“I take it you are no lover of religion.”
“I am not, at that.”
“That's your prerogative, then. It's none of my business whether you're eternally devoured by the great Worm-Sloth in your afterlife, so long as it doesn't happen because of me.” She paused, then said, “We've rested long enough, we need to keep moving.”
The magpie sighed. “I apologize for being so rash, I simply have a long history with those who drink from the pond of Asthuria. You seem to be an understanding bigot at least, which makes you tolerable. And that reminds me, have you a name?”
“None that you have any business knowing. But you may call me Swan.”
As she patted out the fire, he looked at her with a crooked grin. “If that's the game we're playing, then my name is Crow Raven Hawk of the Eagle family, thrice descended of the Vulture clan and second cousin twice removed of-”
Swan thwapped him across the head with her wing, and he stopped.
“Come along, Crow,” she said with a wry smile. “We must be on our way if you're ever to return to your palace.”
“A sense of humor!” he said. “That's encouraging.”

5.
The second time they stopped, it had begun to rain. They were only losing ground to the darkness, and Swan only agreed to stop when Crow had pointed out she was barely breathing. She hadn't bothered with a fire, they merely sat in the rain and tried to recoup some of their strength.
“So,” Crow said, “you said the gulls were... eaten, was it? How did you escape that?”
“With great difficulty,” she said.
“And the creatures you say came from the darkness. What manner of creatures are they? And why haven't we seen them?”
There came a guttural roar from behind them, and the two instinctively jumped into the air. Though Swan flew up several feet, Crow simply fell on his face. The dove cam back down and grabbed him once more by the wing and started dragging him away from the noise.
Then there were a series of heavy footfalls approaching them, faster and faster, and Crow kept looking behind his back to see what it was, but saw nothing.
“What could make that sound?!” he yelled.
“Keep moving!” shouted the dove.
As they passed between the leaves of grass, they heard other noises too. Howls, shouts, cries, a demonic chorus that was moving at an unnatural speed. They came upon a ridged hill and hid behind it, and the thing that had been chasing them passed by. It pounded off Eastward, and other things followed in its wake. Crow could make out shadows, but nothing more.
He whispered, “Swan, you were in the air, did you see what these things are?”
She said nothing, and put her wing against his beak, giving him a stern look. He stayed quiet.
The angry ruckus continued past them, and it became readily apparent to the birds that there was a veritable army of these creatures.
When the stampede of creatures seemed to pass, they were left with an awful silence. After a few moments, they lifted themselves up and pushed forward once more.
But when they pushed past a bush of crab grass, they stopped in their tracks.
There lay on the ground a rabbit, blood trailing from its mouth, paw twitching. It had been trampled in the initial rush to escape from the darkness, and now five gulls were picking at its entrails. But the gulls were not normal. They were jet black, and no light reflected from their wings. One of them gnawed at an exposed rib, and its beak cracked and fell apart. Instead of stopping, it simply used the remaining shell to scoop up gore, tilting back its head to let it slide down its throat.
One gull moved toward the rabbits head and plucked out one of its eyes. It held the gelatinous sphere in its mouth for a few moments, staring directly at Swan and Crow.
“Does it see us?” Crow whispered.
The gull bit down, and the eye popped. Bits of it flew everywhere, and the gull hopped over the corpse towards them.
It opened its beak and made a call, and trails of black slime sprayed outwards from its mouth. It spread its wings, the same blackness spreading from its side. And then it broke into a run at the two birds, and Swan was locked where she stood. Crow looked between the two of them and pushed her out of the way, letting the gull run past them. It stopped and turned.
“What's wrong with you, dove? We have to move!”
The gull turned towards Swan and walked towards her, and she tried numbly to back away from the creature, but she was frozen with terror.
Just as the gull was about to peck her gut, the magpie took hold of a stick and struck it across the head, which flew from its shoulders and bounced once off the ground, then collapsed into a pile of black mess. Its body fell over, and did the same thing.
Swan lay wide-eyed on the ground, and Crow dropped the stick.
“How did you do that?” she asked.
“Whatever these creatures are, their bodies are astonishingly frail.”
She stood up and stared, quivering, at the black mass on the ground, and the four remaining gulls feasting absentmindedly on the rabbit.
“What's wrong?” he asked.
“They were with me,” she said, “when we fell. They were of the gulls I traveled with.”
Crow looked at the small, ravenous flock. “But these things aren't natural.”
“It's the darkness,” she said. “The stuff pouring from the seam. It covered them, and now they're...” She trailed off.
“Wrong,” he said.”
She nodded.
Without another word, he slipped his wing over hers, and they continued around the gulls. But they had little hope that they would encounter anything they wanted to see.

6.
Night had fallen once more, and though the rain had stopped, everything was covered in mud. They had encountered no more creatures, and labored greatly to keep it that way.
“You wait here,” Swan said as she wandered away. She returned again with dry sticks and another piece of flint.
“You have quite the nose,” he remarked.
As she made to start the fire, he held out his wing. “I don't feel right letting you do all the work.”
He struck the flint with his beak, but caused no spark. Instead, he shattered the piece of rock in two and got his face stuck in the ground. Swan pulled him out, laughing. Indignantly, he left her to her work, and laid back and stared at the sky. Black clouds, no stars. He sighed and sat back up.
“None of this water tastes well. I'll be a very happy magpie when we've reached the East and can drink from the clean pools there.”
Swan said nothing, continuing to stare at the fire.
He coughed. “So, what shall we do about the creatures then? We can't go Westward lest we become like them, and I fear to so much as touch one of them for all the gross coming off them.”
Silence.
“Haven't you a plan?” he asked.
She looked at him, and he saw that she was crying. “Any plans I may have had were destroyed the moment we saw those gulls.”
“So they were dead! Or undead. Either way they weren't the companions you had before. Isn't it Asthurian doctrine to live in the moment?”
“If you had gone through what I have,” she said, “you would not say such a thing.”
He watched her as she gazed into the fire.
“What have you gone through?” he ventured.
She looked at him, but did not answer.
They sat in silence again, and the magpie nodded off. Swan watched him with a mix of emotions, then returned her gaze to the fire.
Crow awoke with a start, giving a short scream before falling onto his side. The dove gave him a worried look.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
He looked around quickly, then settled his eyes on the ground and sighed. “I haven't had an easy night of sleep in a very long time.”
“What is it that haunts you?” she asked.
“What is it that keeps you silent?” he returned. “We all have our demons, Swan.”
She closed her eyes.
“I have traveled between both poles, and have made many friends along the way. I have seen all of them die, be it from age, predators, or carelessness. I had promised to make no more friends, and though I shared no names with gulls I had certainly grown enamored with them. And they too were killed.” She paused, then said in a whisper, “The Gods are cruel.”
Crow asked, “Then why do you abide by them?”
“Because despite all the horrors I've seen,” she said, “I am still alive.”
“And admirable stance,” he said. He made no effort to comfort her. He knew there was no comfort he could provide.
“I come from a storied family,” Crow said, “and I left them behind. My guilt is what haunts me.”
The fire was dying down, and Crow picked up some sticks with his beak.
“Would it comfort you to sleep by my side?” she asked.
He narrowed his eyes. “Are you making an advance on me?”
“If you're going to act like a child, fine. Consider my offer rescinded.”
He looked away. “I apologize. My father was too smart for his own good, and I fear that same wit was bestowed on me. I haven't the nose for serious situations.”
“If it's wit you wish to call what you have, I should hate to meet someone half so funny as you.”
They remained silent for a time before Crow spoke quietly, “May I lay next to you?”
After a few moments of consideration, she nodded. He walked to her side of the fire and settled next to her.
“The world is coming to an end,” he said.
“So it would seem,” Swan replied.
He closed his eyes. The dove watched him as he fell into sleep. His form slumped a bit, and then he began to shudder. Swan settled closer to him and put a wing around his shoulder to pull him close.
He rested his head on her neck and whimpered, “Emma. Emma.”
Swan replied in a soft voice, “Sleep, magpie. Cast your fears to the wind and dream peaceful. Leave your hurt with me.”
His shuddering soon ceased, and he fell silent.
The dove closed her eyes, and began to dream.

7.
The next morning, Crow awoke alone in the clearing. He gazed bleary-eyed from the scorch marks on the ground to the trails between blades of grass.
“Swan?” he called out. “Are you here?”
There came no reply.
“Swan?” he said in a meek tone.
He sighed. “I've been abandoned once more.”
“Oy!” Swan shouted. Crow started.
“What's your damned problem!” he shouted. “Aren't I in enough pain?”
She came ambling out of the thicket dragging behind her a contraption of sticks and grasses spun into ropes.
“Not yet you aren't,” she said with a grin.
“What on earth is that?”
She set it on the ground and walked towards him. “I had a revelation. As we are, we're losing more ground than we're making. You can't fly with your wings akimbo, and I can't carry you.”
“So?”
“So, we need to fly but we can't one do what the other can't. But if we worked together?”
He looked at the contraption, then back at the dove. “And what does that have to do with this?”
She smiled. “It's a harness. With my wings doing most of the work, yours won't have to work so hard to keep us aloft. I think if you but keep them stretched-”
“I am awestruck,” Crow interrupted.
“I'm sorry?” she said. “Does that mean you're impressed?”
“It certainly does,” he said. “You've done such a good job of seeming intelligent, I am simply shocked that your lunacy hasn't shown its colors sooner. Have you not seen my wings? I cringe but to move them, let alone keep them outstretched. And that's when we aren't in the sky! I would be just as well off trying to fly by myself!”
She took a harsh tone. “Is that your threshold, then? You're only willing to live if you don't have to hurt doing it?”
“I've already hurt enough, Swan.”
She eyed him for a moment, then walked up on him and pushed him. “What do you have against the world that you're so afraid to live in it? You haven't even tried to fly since I found you!”
“I jumped when the creatures moved past us!”
“But have you tried since? You're so convinced of your doom that you would not even argue against it for fear of being wrong! What harm is there in hope?!”
Crow glared at her and stepped forward. He said, “Hope?”
He opened his wings, cringing, and spread them to their fullest length. The dove stepped back.
Feathers jutted out from them at every angle, blood matted them together, and in several places bone jutted out from the skin.
“Have I any hope to fly again? Or should I simply close my eyes and pretend that nature is more a mother than she is a bitch, that she will grant me flight instead of gangrene?”
He closed his wings with a relieved exhale and said, “I am hopeless, Swan, because there is no force in this world or any other that could fix me.”
Rain started to fall once more, and the dove shouted, “What good does that serve?!”
“To be realistic?”
“To be fatalistic! You've broken your wings, so you are as good as dead? The Gods have-”
“Don't you dare speak to me of the Gods!” he yelled back.
“And don't you dismiss them so quickly! What have they ever done to deserve your scorn?”
He scowled. “What have they ever done, what action have they committed, what great good have they set upon the Earth that makes the Gods so deserving of adoration? Has there been any moment in your life when you were not in pain? Yet you cry out to them, as though they would ever step from their gilded thrones in the deep halls of Asthuria to mend the broken heart of a lowly dove, or the wings of a poor suicidal magpie! And in case you haven't noticed, the very personification of evil is eking out of a seam in the world! If the Gods had any bloody sense at all, they would be fleeing Eastward with the rest of their congregation. We've been abandoned, Swan! The only difference is, I'm willing to admit it.”
He turned his back to her and started to amble in the direction of the seam.
“What are you doing?” she called out.
“I refuse to wait for death a moment longer!” he shouted. “I'm marching into it with every ounce of what little strength I have left.” He looked over his shoulder. “Does that satisfy your silly little convictions? If nothing else, at least I am taking an active role in my demise.”
Swan grabbed her harness and caught up with Crow, keeping apace with him.
“I'm sorry you feel the way you do,” she said, “but if nothing else, can you think of me?”
He turned to her. “Of you? I would cast you into the seam itself if it meant I could follow!”
“Then... what about Emma?”
Crow stopped in his tracks and looked at her. She saw great fear in his eyes.
“How do you know of her?”
“Whoever she is, is this how she would want you to spend your last days? Would you rather her see you as a coward?”
“If you have any sense of self-preservation,” he stated, “you'll stop with this immediately.”
“And what if I don't, magpie? What will you do to me with your broken wings? Peck me until I bleed out?” She opened her wings and lifted herself several feet into the air. “Come and get me, Crow!”
He stared for a moment, then turned and continued West. Swan landed and caught up with him.
“I'm just trying to make a point.”
“You've made it,” he said. “You have made that point into a sword of absolute clarity. I am exactly as worthless and as helpless as I have led myself to believe. Congratulations, you've transformed my miniscule fears into unfettered certainty. Now, please, leave me my last shred of dignity and pretend we never met.”
“Crow...”
“It has been an interesting diversion, little dove, but I've grown tired of it, as I have of you.”
“I understand you hating me, Crow, but-”
“Hate you?” Crow turned and looked at her with tears in his eyes. “That's the work of insurmountable wit, Swan. If you think I am capable of hating any creature other than myself, you haven't the slightest understanding of my character.”
“Crow, I'm just trying to help you stay alive!”
He screamed, “How many different ways must I express it, little dove? I don't want to stay alive!”
He marched away from her as the rain grew heavier, but she continued to chase after him.
“But I want you to!” she called.
“You don't even know me!”
She grabbed him and forced him to stop.
“I know you're in a lot of pain, and the lion's share of it isn't from your wings. I know that for all your tripe about not caring, you saved me from that gull and have kept me in good company for the short time we've been together. You're the only friend I have in the entire world, and you've set yourself on the edge of oblivion just to spite me!”
He stuttered. “It... it isn't spite for you-”
“It may as well be! Every step you take Westward is one I will take as well, and even if you drown yourself in that darkness, I won't hesitate to follow you down! No words, no wit, no amount of anger can shake me of my conviction. Our fates are tied, whether you like it or not.”
He watched her, doing his best to shield his eyes from the rain and wind.
“And to be honest, I don't want to die,” she said.
Crow looked towards the East and sighed. He looked at Swan.
“Fine. We'll try your damned harness.”

8.
After sorting out the tangled mess, she slipped part of it over her head and stepped into two loops, one for either leg, and pulled them taut. The slack went into the underbelly of the harness, which Crow slipped inside of as tenderly as possible. They immediately admitted that it was an awkward setup.
Swan flapped her wings, and they lifted off a few inches from the ground. Then they fell, and Swan exhaled heavily.
“By the Gods, you're heavy,” she said.
He rolled his eyes. “Perhaps if we got a running start?”
She nodded and prepared herself for take two. She took off into a run, Crow keeping his legs in time with hers as best he could, and when she spread her wings the two lifted off.
She called out to Crow, “Spread your wings!”
With a sigh he did so, and immediately they picked up lift. Swan flapped her wings and the two glided upwards, and Crow laughed.
“I can't believe it!” he shouted.
“I didn't think it was going to work either!” she yelled.
He didn't understand what she'd said through the rain. “What?”
“Nothing!”
As they flew higher, Crow surveyed the extent of the damage to the world. For miles the world seemed bleached of its color. Only at the edge of the Eastern horizon was there even a hint of color and sun. Before they turned their course in that direction, Crow looked back to the West.
There appeared to be a wall of black expanding out from the seam on the horizon. It bled off onto everything it touched, and grew slowly across the land.
“My Gods,” he said without thinking.
And then they turned East, and he shook his head. Though his wings ached and there were pins and needles at the slightest bump in the air, he was not in as much pain as he had expected. Perhaps this won't be so bad after all, he thought.

Murder, Part 3

Chapter 3
He takes a long drag and exhales, watching the wisps of smoke curl and dissipate. There aren't enough cigarettes in the world to block out the memories he's plastered to the wall. Not that that's going to stop him.
It doesn't make sense that he still feels this way. By all rights, he should be looking at those pictures with pride. It may just be in an advisory role, but he's helping in an investigation, one that could revitalize his career. Or at least the general media's interest in it.
But he can't shake that sense of shame that looms over everything he's done in the last twenty years. It doesn't make sense, but it's there.
He's been on the case for nearly a week, now. If the pattern continues, there are only a few days left before the new Couples Killer takes another set of victims. And Walter is clueless.
He has gone over every file, every newspaper clipping, ever piece of memorabilia available to him, and not a single lead has come to mind. It seems a river of alcohol twenty years deep has dulled the edge of his criminal instincts.
It doesn't matter too very much, though. Even if his involvement with the case only goes this far, the media will still have a field day. “HERO COP HELPS IN SECOND COUPLES KILLER CASE.” It doesn't matter what the actual truth is, the headlines can only say so much. Money and fame are mutually exclusive, and neither one gives much thought to reality.
Still, he'd like to be able to say he's helped to some capacity. A general opinion is coming about that Kennedy wasn't really much of a president, and it took fifty years for the American public to let that become more important than his legend. What kind of shelf-life will Walter's legend have? Hopefully just enough to last through to his death.
There's a knock at the door, and Walt waits for it to go away. But it doesn't.
With a sigh, he gets up and answers.
It's James.
“Hey, Walt. Mind if I come in?”
“Uh, sure, come on in.” As he closes and locks the door behind the kid, he says, “What brings you out here?”
“Have you found anything?”
Walt takes a deep breath, looking around the entryway. “I've been trying a while, but nothing's come to me.”
The kid seems distracted by the memorabilia on the walls. “You've kept all this stuff for all these years,” he says. “I can't imagine what it must be like to be that successful. You know, I did my dissertation on the original CK case.”
Walt leads him into the living room. “Is that right?”
“Yes sir,” he says with a prideful smile. “I was at the speech you gave at UCLA a few years ago, I tried to meet you afterwords but you vanished pretty quick.”
The kid's attention is drawn to a short, rusty knife in a glass case on the wall.
“That's the knife he used to kill the husbands.”
The kid seems surprised. “They let you keep it?”
Walt shrugs. “After being closed for so long, evidence stops being a thing of necessity. The department was going to throw most of it out, but I took it with me when I retired.”
“Throw it out?”
“Yeah, they were modernizing the precinct and didn't want to deal with all the clutter. A lot of important information got nixed, all that's left is a, a read-out on a computer says what happened to who and why. A paragraph maybe.”
“That's a shame. It's not like that anymore, I can tell you.”
“Well, it was a more innocent time. Can I get you something to drink?”
The kid shakes his head. Walt pours himself a glass of whiskey. When he sits down, the kid follows suit.
“So, I take it you didn't come out here in the middle of the night to bemoan the mistakes of the past?”
He smiles. “No sir, there's just something I want to run by you. It hit me like a tidal wave, you know? And I had to share it with someone, just to make sure I wasn't crazy.”
“Well, share away, son.”
The kid nods. “So, we know the new couples killer is someone with an intimate knowledge of the case. And we know there are some details about the original killings that were never released to the press. So the new killer would have to be someone who knew the original killer. Maybe an unknown accomplice or a friend-”
“Son, I know the case like the back of my hand, and I can promise you that Milovich didn't have any friends. His family was gone before he was out of adolescence, and he didn't like people. He would never have had an accomplice.”
The kid's smile fades. “Oh.”
“It's not a bad idea, son. You're thinking out of the box. But it doesn't hold water.”
“Oh, I see.”
The kid looks down and stutters for a few moments.
“Well, I'm sorry I wasted your time, Walt. I'll try to think harder next time.” He gets up and starts to leave, but Walt stops him.
“Hey, kid, don't worry about it. There's nothing to feel bad about, okay? I was in your shoes once, I know what it's like. But I'm telling you, going down that road is a waste of time. I can only say that because I have the experience to back it up. We're going to find this sumbitch, you understand?”
The kid nods.
“Walt, do you mind if I... Do you mind if I ask you something?”
“Sure son, go ahead.”
“How do you balance family with...” he gestures towards the murder hall of fame, “all this?”
“What do you mean?”
“Ever since I got this case, I've been spending all my time trying to find something. But things between my wife and I have gotten... Well, not any better. How did you deal with it?”
Walt looks at him and considers the answers he could give. But for once he feels like being honest.
“I didn't.”

The room is hot, at least twenty guys are sitting there trying not to be angry. Walt is twiddling his thumbs and sipping on a mug of spiked coffee.
He had a long night.
After what seems like forever, the door opens and the police chief comes in.
“Sorry I'm late, fellas. There was a wreck, blah blah, tell me we've got something.”
Dead silence across the board. He runs a hand through his hair as he reaches the front of the room.
“So that's it, then? Quadruple homicide and we've got nothing?”
“Actually, sir,” Walt says, “I think I may have something.”
He gets looks from everyone in the room, but the only one he notices is the one he gets from the kid. Walt looks away and steps up next to the chief.
“Alright, what have we got?” he says. “Nothing. Same deal as with the first killer, and that's why you brought me on board. No evidence left at the scene, no suspects, nothing. So, I figure we look back on the case this one is imitating. What if the original CK had an accomplice we never knew about, or a friend he may have blabbed his feats to? That's the only way these things could be happening the way they are. So I looked back through my records and found a whole slew of people who are potential suspects. Old college buddies, neighbors, ex girlfriends.”
The chief is handed a folder with a list of names, which he hands off to someone else. “It's a stretch, but it's worth a shot. I want a background check on every name, find out where they are and what they're doing before the day is out.” He looks at the kid. “Good thinking, bringing this guy on.”
James's mouth is just slightly open, and as the chief leaves the room, others get up to leave. But James stays seated and stares at Walter with a look of disbelieving confusion on his face.
Walt walks right by him, giving him little more than a cursory glance through the crowd.

James catches up with him outside the building.
“What was that?”
“It was what it was.”
“You stole my lea!”
“I did what I had to! You have no idea what it's been like for me, kid. Whatever it looks like, I have not been successful. I have been riding on the heels of the CK case since it wrapped, and I've practically gone bankrupt. I'm sorry I lied to you, kid, but you'd never have agreed to give me the shot if I'd asked. You have to understand, this is my last chance to ever amount to something. You still have your whole career in front of you.”
The kid's expression has softened, but Walt can't tell his emotions.
He doesn't say anything. He just walks away.

Murder, Part 2

Chapter 2.
He kicks a pebble as he leans back against the brick, lights up a cigarette and takes a deep drag. He's tired, cold, and he hates giving interviews. They stopped being worthwhile a decade ago.
The check in his hands is for a pretty decent figure, but it's not as much as he was expecting -not as much as he needs, that's the main thing, but really that figure was never going to come anyway. He sighs and keeps riding his cigarette, hoping for a speck of relief to be nestled somewhere in the tobacco, like a golden ticket.
'Ramble on.' That's the kind of thing you expect your delirious grandpa to do when you're sitting on his knee sipping cocoa and talking about the good old days. Every person working in that fucking building acted like I was just another guy.
A door opens up next to him, and the kid asking him the questions comes out. He walks up to Walt and shakes his hand.
“I want to thank you for giving us your time, Mister Valero.”
“Come on, it's Walt,” he says amiably.
“Walt. Well, I want to thank you for coming in, it was a great pleasure talking with you, and an honor. Really. A lot of people sit in that chair and talk about their lives, most of 'em these faded has-been celebrities who weren't even relevant when they were relevant. But you're a real hero, Walt. I respect all the work you've done, and I just want to say, I hope my own kid turns out half as good as you.”
Walt smiles and pats the kid on the shoulder. “You're killin' me with your kindness, son. I wasn't a hero, just a guy doin' his job. You would have done the same if you'd been in my place.”
He blushes. “I don't know about that, sir.”
“Ah, you don't give yourself enough credit. You know, you remind me of an old friend of mine. If you're half as smart as he was, I'll bet you won't have to worry about a thing as long as you live. You tell your kid to keep up the good work, and you do the same yourself, alright?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Alright.”
The two part ways and Walt trots down the street. He still runs into an honest-to-goodness fan every once in a while, and it always cheers him up. It always feels good to be recognized.
He gets into his car and drives the long way home, savoring the afternoon air. It reminds him of his days working on the CK case, driving all across town to talk to character witnesses and compile leads. Truth is, no one could have done what he did. That's the bitch of it all, really. He was the only one who put it together, and if he hadn't, the guy would have gone on to kill again. Maybe so far as dozens more. It was pure chance that he and his team stopped Milovich before he killed his tenth. It was such an amazing story, in fact, that they made a movie about it in the 90's. Starring Clint Eastwood, of course. That one ended up feeding Walt's family for a good six years.
He's long since retired from the police force, long since divorced his wife and disowned his children. None of them gave what he needed. None of them lived up to his expectations. Sometimes it keeps him up at night, but that's why there's whiskey.
By the time he has pulled up, he's already in his chair hugging a cold glass. It's been a long day, productive as it was, and he's ready to get drunk.
His house is lined with memorabilia. News clippings about the CK case, pictures he'd taken with various celebrities, everywhere is a reminder of the glory days. Everywhere is a portrait of what his life was, and what he will be remembered for.
Walter Valero cannot help but feel small in this huge chair, but to feel old in this rapidly evolving world. He knows that the praise hefted onto him by his peers is ill-won. His career as a police officer was, in truth, nothing spectacular; sub-par really, if you want to get down to brass tacks. There was no skill involved in catching the Couples Killer -he just got lucky. And ever since then, he's been living off that one bright spot in an otherwise shitty life. Had the case not been as gruesome as it was, or had it not caught on to the public's imagination so thoroughly, Walter would be homeless right now. Without his press, without his house, without his whiskey.
If he doesn't do something soon, that's just how it's going to be.
He's going to die alone.
As he falls asleep, he thinks of the glory days, and imagines they're still here.

The phone rings, and Walt is startled awake. He looks to his left and sees that it's nearly five hours later, but he feels as though he'd only dozed off momentarily. He picks up the phone.
“Hello?” he says groggily.
“Walter Valero?”
“Yes?”
“Hello, sir. My name is James Sanford, I'm calling on behalf of the Everett County Police Department.”
“Not to be rude, Mister Sanford, but it's nearly four in the morning.”
“I apologize for calling so late, but it's, uh... it's urgent. We've got a case going out here, we'd like to get your input.”
“You should know I retired three years ago. I'm no longer qualified to-”
“This is concerning the CK case.”
The world seems to grind to a halt, and for a moment Walt can't even speak.
“I'm sorry?”
“I can't say any more over the phone. Do you have transportation?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Come to 5900 Walnut Avenue and I'll tell you everything. Good night, Mister Valero.”
“Wait,” he said. Walt rubbed his temple. “CK is dead, I watched him get the injection. Are we talking an impersonator?”
“Come to the address and we'll explain everything.”
At that, the line clicks dead. Walter hangs up the phone and stares at the picture of Adam Milovich, sitting in a jail cell, smiling in that awful way he used to do. Looking at the man who caught him. Laughing.

He pulls up to an old house and it's like '89 all over again. Dozens of cruisers, several network vans waiting just outside the perimeter, floodlights.
Everyone's wearing a face like they don't know where they are or why. Walt's seen that before, too.
He gets out and walks up to the perimeter, where a portly cop stops him.
“Step back please, sir.”
“I'm Walter Valero, son. One of your guys called me in.”
“You got a badge, mister Valero?”
“Not recently.”
“Then I'm afraid-”
A voice shouts, “Jim! Let him through!”
The cop turns, surprised, then shrugs and lifts the tape for Walt.
For the first time in more than twenty years, Walter steps onto a crime scene. A chill runs down his spine, like he just stepped over his grave.
The source of the voice, an eager cop in his mid twenties, walks up to Walter and holds out his hand.
“Mister Valero, thank you so much for coming out at this ungodly hour.”
“Are you James?”
“Yes sir.”
He shakes the kid's hand. “Good to meet you, son. Now, you mind explaining what this is all about?”
The kid nods, but his face remains grim. “I think you need to see it for yourself.”
Walt shrugs. “Lead the way.”

Excitement and horror. That's what he's feeling.
The house is torn up on the inside. Pictures ripped off the walls, wall paper peeled back. The contents of any cabinets have been tossed onto the floor. Broken glass litters the carpet.
In some places, there's blood.
He's walked all through the house, seen the damage, examined the little tells. The same tells CK left twenty years ago.
Walter does nothing but breathe for a moment, taking it all in. What was he expecting, exactly? Whatever it was, it wasn't this. An impersonator, sure. Not this.
This is CK down to the letter.
The kid makes to explain the scene, but Walt stops him. There are other cops on the scene, and they're watching him closely.
He takes a deep breath and says, “The killer came in through the front door, probably knocked and either let himself in or was let in. You'll find traces of tranquilizer in both the male and female victims, which the killer got into them by way of a dart gun. He bound the female in a wooden chair, which he set right here, then stripped and hogtied the husband and laid him out in front of her. He went all through the house and broke every mirror he could find, and judging from the amount of glass here probably took a few windows too, and gathered it all up in a pile here. He used an ammonium carbonate to wake them, and from that point until about four hours and forty five minutes later, he tortured the husband until finally putting two bullets into either side of his chest. Approximately five minutes later, he shot the wife in the head. He then dragged their bodies into the backyard, where I assume they've been arranged very artistically.”
The kid turns to the other cops in the room. “Guys, this is Walter Valero, key investigator on the original CK case. I opted to bring him in due to his unparalleled knowledge of the particulars of the Couples Killer.”
“He ain't told us nothing we don't already know,” said a bald cop.
Walt chimed in. “And you're not going to know anything he doesn't want you to.”
“Maybe if this were the actual CK, but that guy was put to death what, eleven years ago?”
“Twelve.”
“Either way, he's gone. That means this here's the work of an imitator, and that means the guy's probably delusional, and-”
“And that means he probably made a mistake, yeah,” said Walter. “That's what I would be inclined to believe, if I didn't have twenty years of nightmares on my side. Gentlemen, there have been a few CK impersonators, but they all either made mistakes or failed outright. This is beyond the point of imitation. I visited all five crime scenes in the original case, they all looked exactly like this.”
“So what? Guy probably saw a documentary on the History Channel-”
“I've seen every one of them, trust me,” Walter said. “We never released pictures of the bodies to the press.”
“Then he read one of your books.”
“I never detailed the full process of CK's cycle.”
“Then he read someone else's book.”
“Alright, cue-ball,” Walter said, “you want to question me, that's fine. But you don't give a starving man a brick and tell him it's a cheesburger, alright? I know what I'm lookin' at here. There are things about this that an impersonator simply wouldn't know. Now, Mister Sanford, you brought me in on this to get my professional opinion, presumably because you and your friends are out of leads. Well, I'd bet money that this isn't the work of just an imitator.”
There's silence in the room for a moment, then cue-ball says, “Alright Mister Valero, thanks for the hints, now would you mind leaving us to our crime scene?”
“How many have there been?” Walter asks Sanford.
“Excuse me,” cue ball says.
“These are the third and fourth, respectively.”
“Alright, have your lab guys run the gamut of tests, on the bodies, on the floor and walls, on the samples, on the evidence.”
“Hey!” the bald cop screams. “What the fuck do you think you're doing?”
Walter turns on the guy. “Alright Gonzo, you want to direct traffic? I hope you know what to look for, 'cause if you yell at me one more fuckin' time, I'm leaving and I'll never help your department again.”
He stares Walt down, balling his fists, but he says nothing.
“Alright then, it's established,” Walt says. “You folks need my input on this.”
“The problem here isn't what we need from you,” another of the cops says. “You're not a cop anymore. Legally, we could get in trouble for letting you tell us what to do. All due respect sir, when it comes down to the paperwork, we're the ones who are going to be held accountable for what you end up doing here. Isn't that right, Fenton?”
The bald cop nods his head, “That's the polite way of saying it.”
Walter looks around at the group of people and nods. “I apologize, fellas. I haven't been on a crime scene in years, and old habits die hard. Please, do your jobs. Sanford, can I speak to you a minute?”
He and James walked into a side room of the house and stood across from each other.
“You didn't clear me coming out here with your colleagues?”
“No, sir.”
“Or with your department?”
“Not exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
“When the first set of killings happened, I immediately made the connection to the CK case, and when I proposed we bring you in on counsel, my superiors said it takes two to make a trend. Now, we got out here two hours ago, and nobody here has any idea what to make of it. The guy who did this, he wasn't under any pressure at all. No prints, no tracks, no left-behind property, not even hair or skin in the glass. We've already had a background check done on the victims, there's no overlap in friends or family, so ostensibly there is no connection between the two couples so far. My assumption was, the only way we could find a lead was to look back on the case this one is imitating, and that means sooner or later we'd have to bring you in.”
Walter shakes his head. “That's admirable, but you should have cleared it with the proper folks first.”
“I just didn't want anyone turning over the crime scene too much before you got to see it.”
“Well, kid, I'm here now, and seeing what I have, I'm just as lost as you guys.”
“You haven't seen the bodies yet.”

Outside, the sun's just starting to crest the horizon, and Walter is a little confused.
“This is wrong.”
“You see it too, then?” Sanford says.
The husband is on the left, the wife on the right, and they are set head-to-head in a straight line horizontally with the house. They are completely naked, covered in blood -the husband far more than the wife- and their eyes have been glued open.
And their extremities have been severed and replaced where they were once connected.
“Was it post mortem?” Walter asks.
“Yes.”
Walt shakes his head. “No. Milovich said there was a sanctity to his victims after death. He would never have dismembered them like this.”
“So, what do you think it means?”
Walt rubs his head. “I don't know.
He turns away and rubs his head, looking at the sky. After a yawn, he turns back around. “I think I'm going to go home and give this a long think.”
“But don't you think you should look at the scene some more. or-”
“Son, I've seen all I need to. Milovich never left anything he didn't want found at a scene. If this guy's worth half his salt, your techs will find something and that'll lead you to him. Me, I'm going to go home, have a glass of whiskey, and try to think out of the box.”
“Alright then.”
As Walter starts to walk away, James says, “Uh, Mister Valero?”
He turns around and says, “Please, it's Walt.”
“Right. I just want to say, there was another reason for me calling you out here. I actually did my dissertation on the CK case, and you were my motivation for joining the force. I think if we caught this guy, and I had my name next to yours in the books, well, I think I'd be set for life.”
Walt looks at him for a few moments.
“Yeah, you'd think that. Well, thank you much, son. I'm honored.”
At that, Walt walks away, leaving James to consider the corpses by himself.

Murder, Part 1

Chapter 1.
1989:

It ends tonight.
Through the cold evening air I can feel shortness of breath, the trembling heart, the tensing of muscles, her eyes getting wider and wider until it seems like they could pop right out of her skull. At least one of her fingernails is missing from compulsively digging them into the oak chair I've bound her in. There's blood on her chest, her legs, her upper arms, and splotches on her face, and none of it is hers.
The horror she embodies in this moment is a mirror, and I stare into it as willingly as any man to face the truth of his own dementia. I feel sorry for her, and I wish I could cut her bonds and give her the gun I used to shoot her husband, tell her to put it to my knees and fire because that's where it would hurt the most, then put a round in my stomach and let me die as its acids ate through the rest of my organs. But that would be too easy.
To give her a way out would be too simple. I want to be defeated, more than she or anyone could ever know, but I refuse to make it easy. I want her to find a chink in my armor of her own volition, and I want her to exploit it to every gruesome end. But I already know she won't. She's stopped begging, stopped crying, now she's just staring at me. I think it's possible she's altogether forgotten how to speak.
She looks like a domestic cat, caught in the arms of an angry child, knowing it's going to die but incapable of striking back by virtue of its own origins.
I hate her for being so pathetic. I hate her for being so helpless, for giving in so quickly.
And I hate myself for needing to do this thing in the first place. And deep down I've come to understand a horrible truth, one that I've only barely touched on as yet, but will surely revisit as these killings continue; though this act will set the demons at bay, in less than a week I will be hungry for more.
Killing sets me at ease, but like sex and drugs, its effect is only lessened by time and experience.
She will be my tenth victim, and my last. I've made sure of that.
I wave the gun in her face and watch as she becomes a pencil sketch of herself from the fear, and I put my finger on the trigger and she practically shits herself. It's a crude thought, I feel guilty for it, but what the hell, it's murder.
I take a deep breath, and I consider just walking away. I won't, obviously, because she's seen my face, heard me talk. Not that it matters at this point, but I can't stop the killer in me from going down that road. But, really, how big of a mind-fuck would it be if I pressed the gun into her temple, leaned close, got right in her face, and just screamed at the top of my lungs? And before she has time to let that sink in, I just turn around and walk away. I'd be out of the apartment before she could even process the fact that she was still alive. It'd be worth doing just for the weirdness of it.
But I'm too far for that now. Caught up in my own silly little web. I have to kill her, and not just because of the ostensibly obvious reasons. The carnal necessity that brought this whole thing out in the first place, that's why I'm here. That's why I have this gun, that's why I shot her husband, and that's why I have to shoot her.
I have to because I need to because I want to.
So I put the gun against her head, and I lean close, close enough to kiss her on the lips, and I look her right in the eyes.
“I'm sorry,” I say, and I pull the trigger.

I'm blinded by the gunfire and deafened by its scream, but it sticks around too long. Something terrible has happened, and before I can take it in, I'm pulled backwards onto the floor. A foot stomps on my hand and the gun I had is ripped away. I've been flipped over and put in cuffs, and I hear some vague mumblings about rights. And then my vision returns.
There's sobbing, and it's a woman's voice, and I look up to see that she isn't just alive, she's unharmed.
There's a smoking hole in the wall behind her, and I can't help but smile for all the rage and relief I feel.
“You couldn't have cut it any closer if you tried!” I shouted.
A pair of spit-shined shoes under a perfectly trim brown set of suit pants steps on the shattered glass in front of me, and suddenly I'm yanked up off the ground, made to be eye level with whoever's in front of me.
And as soon as I see his face, I smile.
And I wink.


2009:

“Alright Walt -uh, may I call you Walt?”
He rubs behind his ear. “Absolutely.”
The kid smiles. “Cool. Alright Walt, here's the deal, I'm going to ask you some questions, and they're going to be vague. The way we do these sorts of things is, we ask these short form questions to give you room to work with, so you feel free to ramble on about whatever comes to mind. What we're going to end up doing is, we're going to cut up the footage of the interview -use the bits and pieces that are most compelling, or best represent a certain period in your life.”
“Period?”
“Uh, yessir. We're doing a retrospective on your whole life.”
“I was under the impression you were going to stick mainly with the Couples Killer.”
“Well Walt, that will certainly make up the bulk of the thing, but we have to fill forty five minutes of air time. The CK case, as compelling as that is, everyone knows it, we spend the whole night talking about it people won't watch through to the end. What we're going after here is the story behind the story. What motivated you to become a cop, you know, stuff like that.”
“I see.”
“Are you comfortable with that, Walt? I assume our legal team went through the particulars-”
“I'm afraid I was misled a bit, but that was the fault of my people, not yours. Don't worry about it, son. What do you want to know?”
“Hold on just a moment.”
The kid turns and signals to the crew around the set -a yellow wall and plastic tree that could only look natural from a handful of perspectives. Red lights flash on top of three separate cameras, two of which are fixed, the other resting on the shoulders of a bald man with orange facial hair. Everything in place, they give the kid a thumbs up.
“Alright Walt, tell me about your childhood.”
“Ah, well. It was pretty run-of-the-mill. I was born in Dallas, 1961, youngest of six. My dad was a WWII vet, flew with the 8th Pursuit Group in '43. I was not exactly a planned child, my brothers ended up taking care of me more than anyone. My father died of lung disease when I was in high school, mother following soon after for... various reasons. I was brought up a pretty strict, upstanding kind of guy. Now, my brothers, they tended towards the hippie movement, but by the time I was old enough to really see what it was, it had already started to fall apart. Then there was Vietnam, now I never went over there obviously, I was only fourteen when the war ended, so I can't say much about it first hand, but I watched my siblings burn their draft cards and run from their responsibility, and I swore I'd never go down that road. Retrospectively, sure, it was a bad war, and probably not worth fighting, but I was raised to follow the orders of my country. I went into the army in '79, went to Grenada in '83, came home and joined the Academy. By '89 I wasn't too much better than your average beat cop. Big difference was my morals. Most of these guys, they were raised on Dirty Harry, you know what I mean? That was a big problem back then, a lot of guys were getting into law enforcement for the wrong reasons. They wanted to be Clint Eastwood with his .44, taking the law into their own hands and lookin' badass the whole way. That ain't the way of things in the real world, though, you understand, police work is mostly just boring paperwork. Me, I'm one in a million. I got lucky with my career, and you ask any other famous cop out there who made a name catching some serial killer, he'll tell you the same thing. Right place, right time. And if he says different, he's a liar. Now, that's not to say that there isn't any skill involved, there's a lot to being a cop that most people don't realize. There's plenty of people who couldn't have figured out the pattern, who would have been stumped by all the bits and pieces, and there were, too. But I can name at least five guys offa top of my head who were a stone's throw away from my job, who coulda took that case as far as I did. It's just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. And being the right guy for the job.”

A Nameless Land, Chapter 1

Wake up, son of mine.
Momma got something to tell you.
Changes come.
Life will have its way with your pride, son.
Take it like a man.

Hang on, son of mine.
A storm is blowing on the horizon.

Changes come.
Keep your dignity.
Take the high road,
Take it like a man.

Listen up, son of mine.
Momma got something to tell you.
All about growing pains.
Life will pound away where the light don't shine, son.

Take it like a man.
Suck it up, son of mine.
Thunder blowing up the horizon.

Changes come.
Keep your dignity.
Take the high road.
Take it like a man.

Momma said like the rain,
this too shall pass like a kidney stone.
It's just a broken heart, son.
This pain will pass away.
-Momma Sed, by Puscifer.

The storm was of a sort few had seen in many years. It had begun the day before, and only grown stronger through the night. Now it was darkening once more, and the storm showed no signs of slowing.
He watched it from his bedroom, fascinated by the rivers rolling down the glass. It cast a black shadow into the room, ran an image of the rain across his face. He felt his heart speed up as he saw a bright white flash. He closed his eyes and counted.
“One... Two... Thr-”
An explosive roll of thunder shook the walls and the glass, setting off car alarms and shattering some of the larger windows in the area. The crackling, tumbling explosion seemed to go on for minutes, spreading across the skies like a shout from god. Soon it lost its steam, and the boy exhaled.
Three miles.
He wiped sweat from his brow and looked at his bed. He needed to get to sleep, as he had to go to school in the morning. But the storm was keeping him up. Not out of fear, so much -the thunder scared him quit a bit, but he found the rest of it to be very interesting. It seemed an extremely otherworldly state to occur in nature so frequently. It almost felt like a disrespect to not pay attention to the storm while it was about. But if he stayed up, he wouldn't be able to focus at all for school.
Before he could really mull over the decision, another flash of light blinded him, and he closed his eyes. He didn't even finish the first count before the thunder hit, and he quaked at the loudness of it. The heart of the storm was directly over him now. He ran back into bed and laid himself out flat -an attempt to make his body as little a target for a lightning strike as possible. He'd already made sure any electronics in his room were unplugged, and any sticks or pointy things were horizontal with the ground.
A candle burned in the corner, giving the wall a ghostly orange flicker.
Lightning was not something he feared, he was just superstitious. It made him feel like a fool, but for every strike that didn't obliterate him, he considered his paranoia validated.
Soon there were cracks coming over couple of seconds, and he gave up counting entirely. He pulled his head up under the covers and tried to think of a happy place, but didn't have the focus.
“Alright!” he said. “I'm afraid of lightning! I'll admit it!”
He said this as though it were an offering of his pride to whatever force managed the storm raging above. In his mind it seemed like the smart thing to do.
It didn't happen immediately, but the dirge of lightning strikes passed. The rain was coming just as hard as ever.
He felt his body still quivering from the fear and tried to force himself to sleep.
A pair of cats started fighting in an alley between two apartment buildings, and the screeching howl sent shivers down his spine. A horrid fear crept over him, like there was a presence in his room, watching and making silent threats.
Finally he jumped out of bed and left his room, hoping to find solace and hot chocolate in the kitchen.
But when he opened the door, he found his mother sitting at the computer desk, sipping from a steaming mug and looking out through open blinds at the porch and the torrent beyond. He tried to close the door before she turned, but didn't make it. She looked at him and raised an eyebrow.
“What are you doing up, young man?”
Her tone of voice was amiable, but not without authority.
“I couldn't sleep.”
“The storm?” she asked.
He nodded.
She looked back outside. “It runs in the family, I suppose.” She held out an arm, and the boy hugged her. She rubbed his shoulders, and he already felt the fear leaving him.
“You know, I haven't seen a storm like this since I was a girl. I was your age back then, you know.” He nodded, and his mother continued. “It's been a long time since I could really... feel a storm.”
She took a breath, words hovering at her lips, but she looked at her oblivious son and held back.
“How about,” she said, “I make you some cocoa, and we have a chat.”
He looked up at her eagerly. “Can I put on some Beatles?”
She smiled. As she went to the kitchen she said, “Alright, but not too loud. Your father's still sleeping.”
He nodded and went into the living room. As he heard water being poured and the oven being clicked on, he pulled out a metal case from beneath a turntable and opened it, revealing a small cache of ancient vinyl records. He sifted through them until he found the blue album, with the four mop-tops looking down from the inside corner of a hotel building. He removed the second vinyl from its sleeve -marveling at its translucent blue color- and looked at its label. He found his track and set it on the table, pressed the on button that started the table turning, then pulled the needle over and found the second large space between grooves and set it there. The last haunting seconds of the previous song played, then silence.
And then While My Guitar Gently Weeps began.
He smiled and jumped up onto the couch, pulling the blanket folded on its back over himself, huddling into a cocoon. He made a place for his mother, waiting eagerly for her return.
He felt a twinge of sadness at the song, but enjoyed it all the more. The wailing guitar line pulled something out of him that he didn't normally feel, and it was nice to be in that place, if even for just a few minutes.
If life could be like music, everything would be okay.
His mother came back into the room holding two mugs, and handed one over to her son. He cradled it and sipped cautiously, scalding his lip even still.
“Careful, it's hot!” she said, laughing as he gave a small shout. She put an arm around him and pulled the blanket up around their knees, and he cradled up next to her as close as he could without spilling his cocoa.
For a short time they could hear only the soft music and the pattering of rain, and the distant sound of thunder, and it was very peaceful. The white noise of the world dissolved his need to understand, and he closed his eyes.
“Kenny,” she said.”
He opened his eyes and looked up at her. She never used his name like that.
“There's something I've been meaning to talk to you about.”
Ken looked back down and felt his throat start to choke up.
“Is it about dad?”
She nodded. “He's been...”
After a few moments of silence, Ken hazarded, “In pain?”
She nodded again. “The mines have been getting to him. With the war going on now, they've made your father work twice as many hours for half the pay. He tried to get a transfer but they said someone with his condition can't work anywhere else. So it's... it's a bad situation, Kenny. He hasn't been doing so well.”
Ken stared intently at the spinning album -now playing Don't Let Me Down- and trying hard not to think about what she was saying.
“Kenny?” she said cautiously.
“You said this wouldn't happen.”
“What?”
“When we moved here,” he said. “You said this wouldn't happen.”
She nodded slowly and cradled her son's head.
“I said what I did because I didn't think things would be so bad when we got here. I'm sorry I lied to you, Kenny.”
“Can't we move away again?”
A tremble went through her voice. “I wish it were that easy, baby. We left the last time because we had no choice. Now, we have obligations. I'm responsible for a lot of people at work. And your father... as strapped as they are for workers at the mine, he'd never be able to get another job if he just up and quit. You need to get through school and get out of this place on your own steam, not on the heels of cowardice.”
There was silence between them. A siren droned on in the distance.
“If dad dies,” Ken said, “I can quit school and get a job in the mines. We'll need the money, and-”
A tear ran down his mother's cheek, and she held onto him tight. “No. The only thing you need to worry about is your learning. If worse comes to worse, I can get a job at the docks, we can move into a smaller place. You're too young to have to be responsible for our mistakes.”
He felt himself wanting to cry but not wanting to seem weak in front of his mother, so he buried his face in the blankets to try to hide it.
Several loud bangs came against the door in quick succession. They both jumped at the sound and stared at the door in disbelief and confusion. After a few seconds, they came again.
His mother said, “Wait here,” and got up, adjusting her clothes as she went to the door. She looked out the peephole and then opened the door. Outside, a young boy was about to knock on the door across from theirs, then turned at the sound of the other one opening.
He looked up at her, drenched to the bone and scared out of his mind, and stuttered to find words.
“Are you alright?” she asked. “Where are your parents?
Ken leaned over the back of the couch at the kid in the doorway. They made eye contact.
“Th-th-they're...” he looked nervously to his right, then back up at her. “I'm lost,” he said. “P-please help.”
He stood shivering outside their door for a few seconds as she looked him up and down. Finally she stepped outside and checked to make sure no one was watching.
“Alright, come inside.”
She led him in and stopped him at the edge of the tile entry square, the only place in the apartment besides the kitchen that wasn't carpet.
“Take off your clothes, please. Ken?”
He looked away from the boy and at his mother.
“Get a bunch of towels from the bathroom, okay?”
He nodded and ran into the other room, sifting through the drawers for a couple clean towels. He found them and went back to the living room, panic surging through him.
The boy was down to just his underwear, and held himself, shivering. Ken couldn't help but to laugh.
His mother gave him a stern look and snatched the towels away, handing them over to the boy. He dried himself off, then draped one around his shoulders and used it as a blanket. His mother led the boy to the couch and covered him with the blanket they had been using. She then offered him the cup of cocoa she'd been drinking, which he took hesitantly.
He spoke a barely audible, “Thank you,” before sipping at the drink.
A door to the side opened, and Ken's father stumbled out. He leaned on the door frame, his eyes heavy with sleep.
“What's all the ruckus?” he said, his voice a deep grumble.
“It's a boy,” she said. “He showed up drenched to the bone and asked for help.”
He looked between the shivering figure in the blanket and his wife. “And you just let him in? What about his parents?”
She glanced back at the boy, then stepped over to her husband and whispered.
“I think he's an itinerant. Probably made it over the city wall in the storm.”
“Then we should turn him in to the police before he gets us in any trouble.”
“Harold, hush,” she said. “Now isn't the time to be male. I just want to give him a warm bath, something to eat, a place to sleep, and then we can leave him out in the morning.”
Harold looked at her and then to the boy. “Are you sure you can live with that?”
She squinted. “I'll be fine. Get back to sleep before your hands start acting up.”
He went back into the bedroom and closed the door. She sighed.
“Ken,” she said, turning to her son,” Could you please go run some warm bathwater for our guest?”
Grumbling, he left the room and did so. As the water ran, he hovered in the doorway, listening to whatever conversation might occur between the two.
She set a hand on his shoulder, and he looked up.
“Do you speak much English?”
He nodded.
“Where did you come from?” she asked.
He looked at the turntable.
“A place too far away to have a name.”
She nodded. “I understand. How old are you?”
“Ten,” he said.
She smiled. “You're a year ahead of my boy.”
“Why are you doing this?” he asked.
She contemplated. “Because-”
There came another knock at the door, and she stood up.
Quickly, she said, “Go into the bathroom, tell Ken to turn off the water.”
He did so, stumbling as he ran.
She stood up and walked towards the door, but didn't open it immediately. The sound of running water went off, and there came another series of knocks. She opened it.
“Yes?” she said, bleary-eyed.
An older man wearing body armor stood there.
“I'm sorry to bother you ma'am, did a young boy come through here a few minutes ago?”
She couldn't help but notice the gun at his hip, its belt unclipped.
“I'm sorry officer,” she said. “Not a soul.”
He raised an eyebrow, then pointed at the ground.
“Explain that, please.”
A trail of water led from the doorway down the stairs and into the rain.
She stuttered for a few seconds.
Kenny ran out into the room, drenched in water. “I can't get my socks off, mom!” he said as he rolled on the floor, pulling at a pair of wet shoes.
She turned and looked at her son, then back at the officer. “I'm sorry sir, I wasn't thinking. My son thought it would be a good idea to play in the rain. I stopped him before the storm really hit, but I'm sure we'll be scraping mold from the carpet for weeks.”
He regarded her and the relatively dry carpet between her and the boy, but couldn't see the pile of wet clothes against the wall adjacent to the door.
“Moooom!” Ken shouted.
“Alright, alright! I'm sorry officer, is that all?”
He squinted. “Keep a look out for another kid, and next time keep better track of your son.”
“Will, sir.”
She closed the door, stood, then sighed and slid down it. Kenny walked up to her, dripping on the floor, and she hugged him.
“I love you so much, Kenny.”
He hugged her back.

Ken took off his clothes and set them with the itinerants, changed, and then went back into the bathroom, where his mother was making sure the other boy was getting what he needed. She walked out as he went in, going to put their drenched clothes through the washer.
He stood awkwardly in the doorway, and the other boy stared at him.
“You can come in,” he said. “I'm not modest.”
Even if he was, there was a layer of bubbles on top of the water, and everything below the neck was submerged.
Ken sat down on the toilet next to him.
“What was with that guy?” he asked. “Are you wanted or something?”
The boy had no reaction.
“I don't think I've ever seen a cop that close up before. Not a real one anyway.”
He waited for the boy to say something, but he remained silent, staring at the ceiling. Kenny's mother came back into the room. She brought a chair in behind her and sat down.
“I want to give you your privacy-”
“It's fine,” the boy said. “You have questions.”
She nodded and closed the door.
“What's your name?”
He sighed. “Calcifaryo Ayalin-Jiyundibnarafabi a Thrastefel.” He looked up at Ken's bewildered mother. “Everyone calls me Cal.”
She blinked. “Okay then...Cal. Why was that man after you?”
“I want to confirm what you said to your husband, that I'm an itinerant that jumped the wall and got caught. But I take it you saw something incriminating on that officer, and that's what this whole talk is about.”
She said, “You're very bright for someone your age.”
He shrugged. “I get that a lot.”
“His gun was holstered but it wasn't clipped, and his drawing hand was close at all times. He was expecting to have to fight back.”
Cal nodded. “And he was the only one?”
“That I could see.”
Cal sunk his head below the water then came back up. “You folks have been kind to me, where a lot of people wouldn't have been. I want to ask you a favor.”
“What's that?”
“For your own sake, you don't want to know why those men are after me. But if you ask, I'll tell you.”
Ken's mother mulled it over, then said, “Alright, we'll leave you alone about it. But if anything else happens, you tell us. Okay?”
He nodded. She returned the gesture, then stood and grabbed the chair.
“Come on, Ken. Let's leave Cal to his bath, alright?”
He looked hesitantly between the two of them, then went with her out of the bathroom.
Cal's eyes followed him out the whole way.

The Choice: Part 10

The Choice
Part 10

I look up at Jenn and wipe the tears from my cheek. She's been crying herself, and she looks at me expectantly.
“What happened after that?” she asks.
I sigh. “What happened is a string of disappointments and unanswered questions, to be honest. I haven't thought about any of this in years, but it still...it hurts so much.”
She speaks with more caution. “What happened?”
I took a deep breath.
“I got back to the hospital a couple hours later, and the nurses there said that visiting hours were over for anyone other than direct family. I wanted to express that I was related to her more than her parents were, but I held my tongue. I waited in the lobby for hours, falling asleep and waking up from nightmares I can only describe as...utter blackness. When I awoke, I felt a terrible surge in my chest, and I bolted upright. I ran to her room, and was stopped by the nurses outside. I asked them to let me see Caroline, but they said there was a problem. They told me to wait. One of them went back inside. He came back out several minutes later with a mask over his mouth.
“He pulled it down and he looked at me. “Are you related to her?” he asked.
“I said, “No, I'm her boyfriend.”
“He nodded and shook his head. “I'm sorry,” he said. “She's gone.”
“I just looked at him, rolling the words over in my mind. “Gone?” I asked. Because, I mean, it didn't make sense. The night before, she'd been in pain but she was okay. So, how did that make any sense?
“He took me by the arm and led me away from the room, and I shook him off. “I need to see her,” I said. “You're lying to me.”
“He said, “Sir, please. Until the family comes, I can't-”
“I shouted, “You have no idea how strong she is! You're lying to me, you have to be!”
“He looked at me and he looked at his partner. He said, “Alright.”
“He led me into her room, where a line of curtains surrounded her bed.
“And a pool of blood ran away from its wheels.
“He asked me if I could handle seeing her, and I said that I had to. He nodded, and opened the curtain a bit to let me next to her. He closed it behind me and said, “If you need anything, I'll be right here.”
“So, there she was. The only love of my life, cold and pale in a hospital bed. Her lips were already going white. Her skin had lost much of its color. Her mouth was slightly open, and her eyes stared without purpose to the side.
“The arm below the hand she'd used to turn me with was slashed through dozens of times, most of them deep enough to see scratches in the bone. She held a scalpel in her hand, and a trail of blood led away from a series of drawers at the side, many of which had been busted open.
“I could practically see it in my head. She argues with herself for a while after I gone, feeling betrayed that I left. She's already in a high state of emotion, because of the moon, because of the drugs she's on, because of what I've said to her. Suddenly she just wants to end it all, because her life has been nothing but a string of pointless miseries.
“Why love, when you only ever lose it?
“So she'd gone from drawer to drawer, breaking the locks until she'd found something in them sharp enough to cut her wrists. And she'd done that, hadn't she? She was a master of whatever she put her mind to. Never one to fail for trying.
“There wasn't a note. No message scrawled in blood. Everything she wanted to say to me was written on her face.
“I don't hate you. I don't love you. I don't care. I don't care about you, about the moon, and werewolves, about nature, about school, about my parents, about life, about love. I don't care about anything anymore.
“I almost wanted to tell myself that one of the wolves had snuck in and finished the job, but as skilled as I was at self-deception, I couldn't fool myself into that. It made too much sense. I still gave audience to the suspicions of course, but I can tell you right now that I never saw any of those wolves again. Whatever message they wanted to push on me, well... it stuck, and they knew it.
“So, as you can imagine, the next couple of years were not very pleasant ones for me. I spent most of that time alternatively hating myself and hating Caroline. In an irony that only made me feel worse, these shifts in opinion changed in tune with the phases of the moon. I spent a lot of my time trying to remember what happened the day she got shot, trying to find some flaw in my remembrance and hoping that it somehow triggered a flashback. Of course, that never happened.
“I finished out high school and I left. By that point, I hated the town with every fiber of my being. I went to college in another state, and that's when I started talking to people again. I got friends, and I came out of my shell, bit by bit. But I never told anyone about Caroline, and I kept my secret from all but a very select few.
“So, she died. And even without the guilt trip and the pity party... it was my fault. If I had have stayed with her, heard her out, even just been in the room, she never would have done what she did. I still find it hard to comprehend it. She knew I would have come back, she must have! What could possibly have possessed her to do something so brash without even considering the consequences?
“But then that's the question, really, isn't it? What if she did consider the consequences? What if she knew exactly what she was doing the whole time? That would be the worst part, knowing that she had done it simply out of spite. I wish I could go back and tell her how much I loved her, help her get through her issues about Christa and Micheal, and her life in general. If only I could have truly understood the weakness that I'd seen in her eyes that day on the train tracks, I might not have been such a fool. But acts of emotion are often unfounded and foolish, and one can't help but be how they are.
“But I've gone through the epilogue without giving you an ending. She died a week or so before the full moon, and you're wondering what I did?
“Well, her parents had the funeral on the day of the full moon, and because of that, I couldn't go. Much like when I'd first heard the call, I was racked with pains, but these were truly crippling. I found my hands shaking, my body convulsing, and I could think only of Caroline, and that simply made the pains worse. I reached a fever state where I thought I could see her next to me, saying comforting things, holding me. But I kept coming into a state of wakefulness, and she would be gone, and I'd find myself screaming for her.
“Darkness fell, and I ran as far as I could. With a terrible sickness realized that I was at the clearing in the forest where we had made love. I looked down at the pains of my past and wished it had never happened at all. I wished I had listened to her and never forced her to turn me, if only because being a wolf without her was worse than any horror a hell might be able to conceive. I was scared and confused, questions ran through my mind that could not be answered.
“And I looked up at the moon and felt in her complete and forgiving stare, and it made me want to die. I didn't deserve to be connected to such a strength, after having wronged myself and the only one I loved to such an extreme.
“And then I felt it in my body. A crack here, a crack there. Then, there came a snap from solar plexus, and suddenly waves and waves of energy poured out from it and covered my entire body. I felt weightless, and I looked up at the moon and begged her not to let me go through with it. I begged Luna to make all of it a dream.
“And then the pain started. What I later found is that the first transformation is the worst because your body, while capable now of undergoing such a shift, is not prepared to fight off the pains with the correct chemical reactions. Similarly, your muscles have never stretched into these positions, and your entire skeleton has to reshape itself.
“Your thought process begins to simplify, and as this happened with me, my grief only intensified. In my wolf form, I knew only that once I had, and now I had lost. I howled to the moon as I had yet been unable to do in my normal form.
“I felt vaguely that there should be someone at my side, but there was not. This sent me into fits of rage and fear. The forest was torn to shreds by the next morning, and I awoke in a pile of leaves. I opened my eyes and regarded the sky as something I never wanted to see again.
“My entire body hurt. My brain felt like it had been run over by a tractor. I hated myself, I hated the world, and everything seemed to be entirely wrong. I wanted nothing more than to go to sleep and never wake up again.
“But, I got up. I went to school. I went through my classes day by day and did the work and got through. I graduated, said goodbye to my parents, and I went to college. Every once in a while I would drive back, not see my family or visit the old haunts as much as visit her grave. It comforted me to talk to her. I knew she wasn't really there... the stuff that made Caroline the woman I loved went with her when she died. But it was nice to feel her presence, tenuous as it was, in a world where she was dead. And talking to her, I expressed my mixed feelings about everything, but I found that I could never bring myself to really, truly hating her. The thoughts that I had about us, the doubts and the fears...all they did was make my life more miserable. The only choice I could make was to move on.
“And even now, I don't regret the choice to become a werewolf. It hurts, sometimes, but I can't imagine life any other way. It's just the world I live in, you know?
“Everyone goes through life, and as they do they're presented with a series of choices. There's a myth that says that one choice is right, and one choice is wrong, but really that's just a morality play to make people feel pressured. The truth is that a choice is a choice, and a consequence is a consequence. There are some people who are so terrified of the consequences that they don't make any choices at all, and they spend their lives living in fear, in doubt... I made a choice. I don't know if it was right, morally or spiritually, but I know that it was the only option. My choice had been made from the beginning. It was in my blood, so to speak.”
I sigh and look up at Jennifer. She's staring at the table, a troubled look on her face.
“Penny for your thoughts?” I say.
She looks up and says, “You went through all of that... and you're still willing to turn me?”
I shrugged. “It comes with the territory. And like I said, what would be the point of living in fear of the past repeating itself? I've learned from my mistakes. I've told you the story, and now you can weigh the options better even than I could. You know what could happen, just as well as I do. But before you make your decision, let me draw your attention to something.”
I stand up and walk over to the counter, picking up the packet of razorblades.
“We tend to think only of the way things end, don't we? A movie, a story. But the ending...that's hardly a thing at all, is it? Life isn't like in the movies. We grow, we learn, we live... we try to form a narrative from the scattered pieces of our lives. Sometimes it comes together, sometimes it doesn't. In the end, we all die. But what about the journey? What about the path we took to reach the end?
“Despite everything that happened between Caroline and myself, I hold my memories of her in the highest regard. She showed me a world of happiness and love, and I only wish I had been mature enough to return that feeling in kind.”
I take a breath, then look back at Jennifer. “But, the past is past. I've made my choice, and I have to live with it. Now the decision is in your hands.”
I hold out the pack of razors.
“What's your choice?”

The Choice: Part 9

The Choice
Part 9

She said, in a weak voice, “Hey,” after I walked in the room. I closed the door behind me and kneeled next to her.
I held her hand. “Are you okay?” I said. “Are you-”
“I'm alive,” she said. She smiled. A tear ran down my face when I saw it.
“Have you heard the official story?” I asked.
She nodded.
I nodded in return. “What are we going to do about the wolves, then? When they find out you're still alive, they're going to want to finish you off.”
Caroline shook her head. “I know what you're thinking,” she said. “Leave it alone. We'll deal with that when I'm not doped up.”
She tried to smile me off the subject, but I pressed it. “Caroline, I should have smelled them coming! That's twice now we've been taken off guard by them! I mean, what gives them the right to-”
She touched my hand, and I looked down at her. She was crying.
“Please,” she said, “Don't go down that road.”
“Caroline, I'm trying to protect you-”
“And I'm trying to protect you!” she yelled, though her voice was hoarse and barely had any volume. “I love you too much to watch you do this to yourself!”
“What if they come after you?”
“If it comes to that, we can leave the city-”
“You think they'll let us do that? This is a personal vendetta, Caroline!”
She stared at me as I spoke. “What?” I said.
“What do you think you heard?” She asked.
“Huh?”
“After...” she shifted in her bed, “after he shot me. What do you think he said to you?”
“He said it he did it because he just doesn't like me!” I said.
She shook her head. “No. You've got it all wrong.”
“I know what I heard, Caroline.”
“No you don't,” she said.
“I know what I heard, Caroline!”
“Please!” she shouted again. “Please, just...listen to me. Trust me. Like I trusted you.”
I felt my hands shaking. Suddenly I felt nauseous. I started to cry, and she put a hand on my arm. I shrugged it off.
“If you'd never trusted me,” I said, hating myself with every word, “you wouldn't be in this hospital bed.”
She looked at me as if she'd been struck. She said, “Listen to me. I will never blame you. I would never, for something like this. I love you. Do you have any idea how important you are to me?”
“I can't protect you,” I said. “I can't even from a member of our own race. What good am I? What's the point of even-”
“Shut up,” she said.
I looked up at her, wounded.
“You have always acted like a victim. Do you know what would happen if I died? You would mourn for the loss of my presence, for my influence on your life. It wouldn't even cross your mind to think about the fact that I was the one who actually died! You're not the one who got shot, and there's nothing that you could have done to stop it from happening, so just shut up and quit feeling so fucking sorry for yourself!”
I stuttered into silence, and looked down.
“I'm sorry,” I said. “You just...I don't know what I'd do without you. I thought -I thought I'd lost you.”
At this point, I broke down completely, but instead of leaning on her, I stood up and left the room.
“Wait!” she called after me, her voice trembling with emotion.
I stopped in the hallway, but I did not turn around. I wanted to, so much. I wanted to go back and cry in her arms and let the whole thing go, but I was vulnerable. I still felt like I'd let her down. And I had to prove that I was still worth a damn.
So I left the hospital that night and ran. Across the streets, through the alleys, cutting through backyards and playgrounds, until I reached the ROTC field. I went under the police tape and tried to ignore the drops of Caroline's blood that the CSI team had missed. I searched wildly for any piece of anything that could give me the scent of the wolves. A stray hair, a piece of cloth, something. But they were sly as ghosts, and it'd been a long shot anyway.
I wandered around the city, feeling angry and wanting to take someone's head off, until I found myself at the place where we'd first encountered the wolves. I sat down amidst the trees and bushes and felt the coolness of its strength wash over me. I looked up to Luna, who I had been ignoring the whole time, and I felt a wash of shame roll over me.
This was foolishness. These wolves knew how to hide. They knew how to cover their scent. And what's more, I had no experience in terms of tracking. And if I did find one of them, what then? I didn't stand a chance.
But they had shot her. They'd killed Matt and they'd shot her and left her for dead. Why not me? Why leave me alive, wanting to find vengeance, capable of taking it? Why not just shoot us both in the head and have done with it?
It was so angering, I just didn't understand. The logic behind the attack was tenuous at best. They were threatening enough to keep me at bay without violence. But this? This random act of cruelty? And what he'd said to me afterwords, how did that make sense at all? It would take someone with a heart as black as coal to commit such a crime simply because they didn't like someone.
And then Caroline's words registered with me. What I thought he said. She remembered him saying something different. Why had I just stormed off without hearing her out?
I had to question whether I believed my recollection was wrong. At first it seemed an impossible thing to consider, but it occurred to me how angry I was, and how my vision had gone red. Did something happen that I didn't remember? Had something happened differently that I remembered incorrectly?