Owl Creek Bridge Takes Another

He listens to the crowd

Smiling like a boy who’s caught a lizard

Then hangs his head low

 Trembling like a groom the night before

And lets his breathing cease

Dreaming like a man condemned to hang.

Gillian Walks

Todd slams the door of his truck and steps out in his driveway. He sees his girlfriend Angela standing on the front porch and wonders briefly if he forgot to meet her after work again. Sometimes he forgets things like that and it makes her sad. He walks up to her and they hug, her small frame encompassed by his, but she turns away when he leans to kiss her. Todd cocks his head and frowns, gazing down at the top of her head.

Angela leaves ten minutes later, striding quickly to her car. Todd stares at the dying grass of his small lawn until he can no longer hear her driving away. He digs out his keys and it takes him a few tries to fit the right one in the lock on the front door.

That evening, he packs a few worn duffel bags into his ancient pickup and drives off. Angela’s words run through his mind as he consults the long list of directions he printed out from the Internet.

“You should go after her. It’s obvious she’s the one you really care about.”

Angela had been right about a lot of things, but he’s not sure she’s right about this. 

Todd stares at the sky and frowns. Seattle is not the sort of place he imagines Gillian living. It’s too cold, for one. Todd had to rush to the first store he saw and buy an umbrella and thicker jacket – in April.

He stares and thinks about her…about Gillian. Growing up it was always him running after her, and in the process he learned a lot about her. Most of it he doesn’t remember clearly. As a young man he often paid more attention to her looks than to what she said. It had been so hard to focus on her words when he could watch her shiny blonde hair, usually cut short, and straight white teeth that never needed braces.

It starts to drizzle again and Todd quickly climbs back in his truck. He had pulled into a coffee shop just before reaching his destination, drumming his fingers on the stained table as he gazed at the final stop on the directions. He hadn’t seen Gillian in about three years. They exchanged letters for the first two, but the last letter he had from her was short. She had written only an address, nothing else, and never responded to the letters he sent after.

One year to the day since he had received the address, Todd started driving. Three days was a long time in a car; Austin was a long way from Seattle. He had stopped once in every state he passed through – New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Oregon. Finally, Washington.

Finally, after so long, Gillian.

He speeds the last few miles and ends up not at a house or apartment building but a strip mall. Todd pulls into the parking lot and reads the spray-painted numbers of the stores. The address is the same as the one in the letter. Gillian lied to him.

He isn’t sure if she meant this as a trick, a way to stay hidden from him, or to make him look harder. He parks in an empty space directly in front of a taco shop that bears the same four digits her letter described. Todd doesn’t think Washington is known for its Mexican food, but he goes in anyway.

“Hola, welcome to Pancho’s Tacos.”

Todd stares at the fair-skinned teenager behind the register. “Carne asada burrito, no guacamole or salsa, and heavy on the sour cream. And a medium Coke.”

The teen’s glazed look is shaken and he stops mid-transaction. “Are you Todd?”

“What?”

“Just gotta ask, dude. Are you him?”

“Why?”

“I dunno, man, you got that burrito so I’m supposed to ask.”

“Yeah, my name’s Todd,” he scowls.

“Hold onna sec.” The kid opens a door behind the counter marked “Employees Only” and sticks his head inside. Todd hears a scraping sound, a few mumbled words, and then a short Hispanic man walks out.

“Todd Robinson?” the man asks pleasantly.

“Yeah, what of it?”

“Please come back at closing time tonight,” he smiles.

“Uh, why? Does this have to do with Gillian?” Todd glances at a white lined square of paper the man pulls out of his pocket.

“Please, just take the note and come back later.”

Unnerved, Todd accepts the slip of paper from the man. He unfolds it and reads “Taco shop, 10 PM. Come or leave.”

He doesn’t move. It’s definitely from Gillian.

“So, you still want that burrito?” the teenager asks.

Todd’s eyes never leave the paper. “Yeah. To go.”




The sky turns dark quite early with the constant cloud cover. Todd drives around a bit and checks into a motel. He gets lost on the way back to the shop but at 9:47 he’s found the right parking lot. Four deep breaths later, Todd pushes the Plexiglas door open and looks around. The cashier raises her head and smiles. Gillian.

She darts around the counter, ignoring the couple in line, and stands before Todd, hands tugging at her black uniform.

“Hey,” he says as casually as he can manage.

“Took you long enough,” she smiles in return.

He looks away guiltily. “I would have come if I knew you wanted me to.” Her smile turns down at the corners and he knows this is the wrong thing to say. He looks everywhere but at her.

“We have to leave.” She turns around and grabs a large purple bag from behind the counter.

“Aren’t you working?”

“Nope,” she says as she walks briskly out of the shop.

Todd hurries after her, worrying that he upset her. “Where are we going? We should talk, I haven’t seen you in forever-”

“And whose fault is that?” She whips her head around, glares, and keeps walking.

Todd pauses, perplexed. “Well, you left.”

“You let me.”

“What does that mean?”

She sniffs in response. He keeps following her, wanting to ask her what’s wrong but knowing she won’t tell him. After a few minutes she turns and walks into a bar, doors propped wide open. She stomps straight to a two-seater booth. Todd takes the seat opposite her.

“Remember that time you kissed me and I laughed?” She says the moment he sits down.

Todd groans. “How could I not, Gillian?”

She grins. “You were such a little nerd. I can’t believe I ever had a crush on you.”

His head jerks up. Reflexively he brings a hand up to casually scratch his ear.

“It’s been so long,” she continues softly. “And still you came. You’re here, with me, just like it used to be. And…you’ve hardly changed. Same floppy hair. Same ugly jeans.” She leans closer, looks into his eyes. Her dark eyes have somehow become more beautiful since the last time he looked into them. “What would you do, Todd, if I…kissed you now?”

She leans so close he feels her breath on his lips. “Gillian…”

She breathes out, slowly. “Too bad it will never happen.”

“What?” Todd blinks, wide-eyed.

Gillian slides halfway out of the booth, pauses, and looks him straight in the eyes with a hard grimace. He tries to break the gaze but she does it first and strides out the front door. Todd bangs his knee against the edge of the table as he hurries after her. He shoves through a group of people walking through the double doors and catches sight of Gillian, sprinting across the street and around a corner.

Todd sighs. He pulls out her last letter, his favorite because she told him that things were different. That she had stopped running.

He crumples it, takes a deep breath, two, three, and then opens it again and smoothes it out.




The next night, Todd arrives at Pancho’s at 9:59. He peers through the clear door, but Gillian isn’t there. The freckled teenager sees him looking and gestures for Todd to come inside.

“I dunno what the hell you did, dude, but Gillian quit this morning,” the boy shakes his head and hands Todd another folded note.




The car parked outside the empty bus station wasn’t Gillian’s. Todd remembers her ranting about all the sporty little mid-life crisis cars on the road and doesn’t think she’d ever buy one. He approaches it anyway, as it’s the only other car around and this is where her note said to meet.

He’s about to knock on the tinted window when he hears a sniff. He looks around for the sound and hears it again, this time accompanied by a stifled sob. Peering around the side of the car, he sees Gillian sitting against the curb, trying to staunch flowing tears with a thin napkin. She glances at him and shoves the napkin into her pocket.

“Take a picture,” she snaps. She stands up and doesn’t meet his eyes.

He shifts his weight back and forth. “Is this really your car?”

Silence. Her eyes dart to his face and then retreat to her dark layers of clothing. She nods.

“Was there a reason for making me come here?” he asks, patience already thin.

She squints at her patterned scarf for a moment. She dips her head slightly so her loose hair covers her face. When he doesn’t apologize, she shakes her head. “I guess I don’t have much to say.”

Todd tries not to meet her eyes, remembering the way she teased him the night before. He takes a deep breath, sighs it out, and realizes he’s going to give in. “We should talk. Really talk, somewhere you’re comfortable. I want to hear about how things have changed,” he touches her arm and meets her gaze as she glances up.

She hesitates, then pulls out a set of keys. “Get in the car.”

He wants to ask where she’s driving, but decides to show her that he can still be patient. She pulls up to a motel much like the one Todd is staying in. As he looks at the flickering lights and ragged lobby chairs a shiver runs through him.

“You don’t seriously want to go to a…I mean, now…?” He raises his eyebrows.

“What? I’ve been staying in a room here the past few months,” she says blankly.

“Oh, I thought you wanted…nevermind.”

He follows her through the lobby and up two flights of stairs. A maid stares at him steadily as she mops the floor and he quickly averts his gaze. Twice he stumbles when the tip of his boot doesn’t clear the next step and he tries not to take this as a sign that he should stop following her.

Gillian doesn’t look once to see if he’s still there. She opens a dark door at the end of a long hallway and he stops before it, glancing back and forth at anyone who might see him enter. He sees no one and steps inside, shutting the door behind him.




A thump from the hall wakes Todd with a start. He sits up quickly and looks around, momentarily disoriented.

He yawns and lies back down, grabbing for the cool pillow next to him. His eyes snap back open as he reaches over, feeling for warmth. Instead his fingers reach a cool, fluffed pillow. Little feathers stick out and jab him as he runs his hand across it.

“Dammit!”

Todd grabs his cell phone and scrolls through the contact list. He presses send more forcefully than he means to.

Four rings, and then…

“Hey. It’s Gillian. Leave a message.”

Todd sighs and sits on the edge of the bed. After a while he knocks the pillow to the floor and doesn’t pick it up. Eight minutes later he steps out of the shower and picks up the phone again.

“…Leave a message.”

Todd waits for the beep. “This is getting old. Really old.”




For the first time since he’d known her, Todd considers not following Gillian’s latest instructions.

He takes a cab back to his truck and sees an envelope wedged under the front tire. Todd opens it and finds a photograph of a wooden sign.

“Sparring Park,” Todd reads. “Where the hell is that?”

He sighs and presses his head into the brown leather of the steering wheel. When he sits up, his rearview mirror shows him the pattern driven into his forehead. Rain starts to fall and he sits, watching, before finally starting the engine.

Todd drives around for a while, stops at a Denny’s and orders coffee. He sits alone in the large, empty booth and examines the photo again. As he flips it over he notices small black numbers on the bottom corner and is reminded of the days of disposable cameras. He always took too many pictures and never got around to putting them in albums.

He pauses, then looks closer and realizes they’re not just numbers, but a date. The photo was taken over a year ago.

He asks the overweight waitress for directions and drinks his coffee until the rain finally becomes a light mist. He drives four miles to the park. It’s small, only a few parking spots, and the rusty playground is empty except for one figure, dressed in a white snow jacket, rocking slowly on the wet swings. Todd sighs, digs his new umbrella out of the back seat and walks over.

She looks up as he approaches and mumbles, “Not a day goes by that it doesn’t rain.”

He shifts forward so the umbrella covers her as well. “You can have this if you want.”

Gillian doesn’t move. He waits a few seconds before speaking again. “Why did you go?”

She shrugs. “I couldn’t tell you.”

“I think you could.”

“Maybe I won’t, then.”

“Now, that I believe.”

She doesn’t respond. Todd runs his hand through his hair and tries to speak several times before rubbing his face with his free hand and groaning.

“Gillian, what the hell is going on? Do you want this to be…something, or not? I need to know.”

She kicks the tufts of grass under the swing and nods her head noncommittally. “Why? Can’t we just do what we want? I really missed you, Todd.”

He walks a few steps away. When he returns, his fists are clenched. “I have no idea what you want. I don’t have a damn clue what I want because of it.”

“I’m not trying to do anything.”

“Then why are you here? You never told me you wanted to see me in all those letters. You never tried to come back. You didn’t even sound like you cared when you said goodbye.” Todd sets the umbrella aside, scratches his head and leaves his hand there for a minute. He turns back toward her. “Will you just talk to me, for once?”



Todd leaves the umbrella lying on the ground when he finally goes. Gillian had run off nearly an hour before, bolting for the other side of the park, but he sat on her vacated swing thinking about how cold it is.

He trudges back to his car and decides to go back to his room. It’s too late to start the long drive again and he dreads getting on the empty road.




Morning comes quickly and Todd packs even quicker. He’s throwing together the last of his clothing when his cell phone buzzes. He looks at the unfamiliar number for a few seconds before answering.

“Hello, is this Todd Robinson?”

“It is, who’s calling?”

“Officer Stoller of the Seattle Police Department. Do you know a woman named Gillian Taylor?”

Todd feels the phone slip from his grasp. He grabs it again and presses it to his ear. “What happened with Gillian?”

Pause. “There’s been an accident, I’m afraid.”




Todd speeds to the hospital, following Stoller’s directions. He parks quickly and doesn’t bother getting any sort of permit. He rushes to the front desk and asks to see Gillian. The nurse asks if he’s family. He tells her what the police said to say.

She leads him to a room in the ICU. Gillian’s bed is curtained off.

“Would you like to hear about her condition, sir?” The nurse asks. Todd waves his hand and nods.

“Well, we believe she’ll recover. We don’t know when, but she should be able to walk again. She has not woken yet, so we can’t ask what really happened, but reports from witnesses say she was speeding…down the wrong side of the road,” the nurse says delicately.

“Thanks.” Todd doesn’t look up.

The nurse nods and leaves. Todd takes a seat next to Gillian’s bed. She’s unconscious, and after staring at her for a while he grabs her phone off the bedside table.

Contacts. One entry. Todd Robinson.




Todd sleeps by her bed, but not very long. She awakens later in the day and the nurses eventually declare her stable. They leave and she stares at Todd until he leans close to her face.

“Will you stay?” she whispers, barely audible.

Todd doesn’t answer. His eyes are hard.

“It’s driving me crazy, seeing you again,” she continues with a stale smile.

Todd smiles slightly and reaches around the IV drip to pat her hand. “Everything will be all right. I promise. Just…think about yourself for a while, okay?”

He gives her one last pat and rises from the chair. He grabs his keys and jacket and strides out the door.

Gillian watches him go, then notices her phone lying near her pillow. She reaches for it, unable to curl her fingers around it and drags it closer so her other hand can pick it up. Weakly, she presses the ‘Contacts’ button on the keypad. She starts to cry.

No entries.

The Streetlight

There's a time, every morning around dawn, when the streetlights flicker off and the morning sun illuminates the empty streets. I hate this time more than anything else.

That's what I dreaded most about the day. At night I wander from streetlight to streetlight, without a possession to my name - though the name itself hardly belongs to me anymore. I gave it up many years ago, along with anything else that made me unique, that made me stand out from the other streetrats that cowered behind every city dumpster and abandoned, defiled building. All of it has ceased to matter. All that remains now is me, my meager squandering of food, and my beloved streetlights.

Time matters not anymore. Faces blur together in my memory. Events are no longer certain, they might have occurred, they might not have. They might have happened yesterday, today, ten years ago, tomorrow. I would not know the difference. Or perhaps they only happened in my dreams.

I never dreamed of streetlights. They were real.



The wind blew softly through my hair. I could hear it, whispering, coaxing me along with its gentle words. The streetlight I stood under illuminated a small radius of cracked sidewalk and deserted black road. I was a wanderer, and the wind was my guide. I had nowhere to go, nowhere to be, and no one to remember my name.

Oh, but what a name it was, in those days of sorrow and excitement. In the days of adventure and intrigue. In the days before the streetlights.

I gazed at the edge of the circle of light encompassing my abandoned shadow. I was hesitant to move past it, to break the safety of the light, to move out into the darkness again. I spent all my nights wandering from streetlight to streetlight, as they were my havens. My oases from the desolate lives that everyone around me led.

I could not decide if I should yet move on or remain in this last haven. I stood on the edge of a vast stretch of land, not quite desert, not quite alive. That was wrong. There were many living things in the desert. But none of them provided comfort to a weary traveler. None held any answers for the lost, for the meek, for the lonely. It’s good, then, that I was none of those.

But the space in front of me would soon surround me nonetheless, if I chose to cross the soft border of light I still gazed at so intently. I was not looking for answers from the light. I was not looking to the land to tell me what to do. I was not even looking at the streetlight for assurance or guidance, for I knew it would provide none. The answers had to come from the wind. For this was the same wind that had touched so many others, that had grazed so many cheeks, and tousled the locks of so many wanderers like myself. Perhaps it was the same wind that had taught me so much before, that had shown me the path when I was just as unsure of my road as I was tonight.

I liked to think that it was the same wind that reached the others I used to know. Part of me hoped they still took time to stop and ponder the wind as I had taught them to, so long ago. They had at first looked at me strangely, perhaps questioned my connection with sanity, as I could not tear myself away from the night sky, the light gray clouds, the enigmatic wind. But the longer I stood there in silence, the more relaxed they became, and soon we were all still, listening to the sound of the wind, searching for the answers in the sky.

And it spoke to them. It told them things that it never told me. For the wind never whispered the same thing twice, and it sounded different to everyone who listened.

I stood, and waited for the wind. It had quieted for a moment, and I knew then that I was the only one who listened anymore. I knew that I was all alone, that there was no one left from that time. No one who thought of the wind and the sky and the clouds and the streetlights anymore. It was only me. It was only me again, for it was only me to begin with.

I hushed my thoughts and focused on the wind. Dawn would break in mere hours, and I must be away from here by then. But where was here? And where was there? I decided to move out, into the open desert plain, far away from human interaction. That is what I decided. But it wasn’t what the wind wanted.

It became apparent that the wind was telling me to turn around. To go back. To follow the trail of streetlights once again, but this time to follow a different path. I would not retrace my steps. I did not know where I would go, but it wouldn’t be back to the same place.

What I didn’t know was the wind was leading me somewhere. It was showing me the path to what I truly desired, or thought I did. Perhaps I really only wished for peace of mind. But I didn’t know that at the time the wind showed me the way.

I also didn’t know that I was completely and utterly wrong. There was still someone out there, someone I used to know, who remembered the wind. Who remembered how to listen to it, how to discover what it was saying, and how to follow its instructions.

Someone who still remembered me.



And he was standing there, in the middle of the dark night, eyes closed, listening intently. And the wind would lead me back to him.

The Battle

Snare drum beat its transient tone
Spindly trees shook hard and groaned
Drop of water cleared the way
For the lives to end that day

Slashes fell and thunder called
Open field of ravens cawed
Fire ravaged through the place
Arms gripped tight in last embrace

Spinning round with outstretched limbs
Shooting lights burst high and dim
Little boy turned into man
Armor clasped and shield in hand

Squinting fiercely through the din
Waiting til the night rolls in
Whispers through the ancient cracks
Said you're never coming back.

The Red Door To Nowhere

Elsie didn’t like her older brother.

In all fairness, he didn’t like her either, which was why she wasn’t offended when he “accidentally” tripped her as they crossed the street to school. It was their first day of high school in a new town and she felt relieved that, no matter where they lived, some things would never change.

The day passed uneventfully, with only minor inconveniences as she avoided her brother in the hallways and feigned interest in the kids around her. She focused instead on her decision to cut her black hair short and buy some smaller clothes, ones that fit her. She didn’t mind the people around her, but her desire to get home and bury under the bed covers was strong; coming from two months in Nevada and six in rural California, the New Jersey cold was worse than she expected.

Elsie ducked out of the school building and into the snow outside as quickly as possible. Her house was only a few blocks away, and she hoped to make it there before Robert was out of class. She had to ditch the second half of sixth period in order to do so, but she didn’t care. They’d probably be out of this city before long anyway. Their mother had a horrible time holding down a job.

She rounded a corner and nearly slipped on the icy ground. There Robert stood with his new buddies, showing them how to jimmy a parked car. Jerking back around the corner, she sucked in her breath and started to tiptoe in the opposite direction. She wasn’t quite sure where to go, but she’d find another route.

Crack.

The sound of ice breaking free from the edge of the sidewalk as she placed her weight on it silenced the dull speech of the boys around the corner. Not caring any longer about her safety (or perhaps caring about it more), Elsie took off at a sprint, trusting the thick rubber treads of her snow boots to save her from skidding down the icy path.

Thud.

The rock grazed her right shoulder. It didn’t hurt, not at this distance, but it threw her off balance. She heard laughter behind her, but no pursuing steps. Robert must not have thought it a battle worth fighting. Still, rocks and snowballs rained down behind her until she reached the next corner and flung herself around it.

Fairly certain she was safe for the moment, she set off searching for a way home. She wound through indistinct streets, avoiding people, not trying too hard to reach her destination. Robert had already seen her, and was probably waiting at their house. It was better if she arrived later, as he might get bored and leave. One could only hope for small miracles.

The scenery around her soon faded from solid, gray apartments and square, blocky houses to shabby office buildings with broken windows and decaying wooden shacks. Elsie was aware that she was far from any familiar part of town and that she should double back toward what she knew, but with each step she breathed in freezing air and blissful freedom. In nearly every city they lived in, she had been driven home by the police at least once, and not because she had done anything wrong. Rather, she would simply wander off, and her mother would worry and eventually call the cops. Today was certainly no different. Elsie knew her mother would call again and they’d find her and take her home, so she wasn’t afraid. Not in the slightest.

She liked this part of town, where the buildings felt like individual entities. The structures near school made her think of little green army men lined up in a row. But here, every shack had personality, each building its own graffiti, and all were worn with age and experience. She often paused to stare, to read, to wonder. But she grew tired. Her feet began to ache, her arms drooped with the weight of her books, shoulders pained from the backpack she carried. And there were no police. No one had yet come looking for her. Strange.

Elsie stopped at the next house and sat down on the chipped concrete wall that lined the property. She squinted through the snow, vaguely examining the shadowed buildings. A flash of color caught her eye, and she immediately hoped a bird had flown by. She’d hardly seen any animals since moving here, which made the city that much more unnerving. Focusing, she realized with a frown that it wasn’t a bird, but a door.

A bright red door.

On the second story.

A bright red door on the second story of a ramshackle building in a lonely part of town. A door that led straight to…air.

Really, a door that led nowhere.

She loved mysteries of this sort. Little things, out of place, stranded in the wrong time, the wrong era, the wrong…world. She dropped her books on the concrete, heedless of where they lay, and set her backpack against the wall. She stepped into the street and walked swiftly toward the house, entranced by the door. It must have been built for a reason. Someone wanted a door that led nowhere, but who? And why?

The front door was just as dull as that of every other building, the lock broken and knob tarnished. She kicked her way inside, pausing every few steps to listen. She heard nothing, not even a rat scurrying about its business. She felt along the wall until her hand reached a switch. She didn’t expect that anyone was paying an electric bill, and yet – the light switched on. The room was empty and swept clean.

She found it all so very intriguing.

The first room led to another, this one a sort of hall with stairs leading up into the darkness of the second floor. The bottom step was spotless, the second just as clean. Gradually, slowly, trying not to ruin the mysterious stillness, she climbed the stairs, noticing that each one grew dirtier. By the time she reached the top, there were piles of dust coating the dark, grainy wood. Spider webs clung to the corners where the walls met the ceiling, and the flowery wallpaper was torn and stained. It reminded her of a house they had lived in until Robert traced over the wallpaper in her room with a penknife.

The door. Elsie desperately wanted to find that door. She paused for a minute, listening, looking for a way to get her bearings. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. She wasn't deterred. She would find that door, and she would find out what happened when she opened it. It was too dark to really tell where she was going, despite the light outside. She could still see no windows, merely outlines of walls and furniture. She moved slowly, trying not to trip, but her shuffling steps kicked up dust. She fanned the thick air, stifling coughs that seemed extraordinarily loud.

The first door she came to was locked. It might be worth breaking open, but only if there wasn't another option. The second door looked as if someone had already forced their way in. She tentatively pushed it open. Emptiness. A broken picture frame and, yet again, no windows. Backing out, she saw only one more door down the hallway. As she approached she noticed a difference; this one looked freshly painted, as if someone had tried to cover up a dark shade of green with a light blue.

This had to be the right one.

Her fingers hovered over the rounded brass knob, excitement at finding the mysterious door barely contained. It twisted easily, the door pushed open and…

There it was. The bright red door she had seen from the street. She hurried to it. The door was as clean as the blue one, but with one flaw: someone had carved a word into it, right at her eye level.

Nowhere.

The red door to Nowhere. Intrigued, she traced the words with her finger, drawing it away quickly as a splinter from the ‘h’ dug into her skin. Shivering with anticipation, Elsie reached her unhurt hand toward the doorknob. It twisted, slowly, resisting the movement. The more she twisted, the harder it was to open. She put her other hand on the knob and yanked the door open. A great gust of wind whirled through the archway, violently blinding her as dust and hair flew. She pushed against the door with her body, struggling to keep it open, just wanting one good look into the open hole in the wall before her efforts failed. The wind continued to blow, churning back and forth, upsetting all order in the room. Her shrieks were drowned out by its howling, and she fought desperately to keep her eyes open, to hold her hair back, and slowly she inched closer to the doorframe, and peering inside she saw darkness.

A chasm, deeper than any hole or cliff gorge she had ever seen, much deeper than the mere two stories the building seemed to have been from the outside. And from the depths came the great swirling winds, the wretched noise, the darkness seeping from below, its tendrils spreading through the entire room with no windows from which to escape. The darkness scared her, made her wish she hadn’t ever opened the door, and she moved back away from the chasm with every intention of shutting the door and never thinking of it again, when suddenly everything stopped.

The wind and shrieking sound ceased, the darkness retracted into the hole, and Elsie stood staring at the scene before her. The room was destroyed. Dust floated gently on the rank air and settled on her disarrayed clothing and matted hair. But as the room regained its silent stillness she became aware that something had changed. The carving of ‘Nowhere’ was now on the inside of the door as well. Her eyes focused and she glanced at the closest wall. Where there had been smooth wallpaper, there were now words.

Words, carved into the walls, jagged and splintered. At first there seemed to be no rhyme or pattern, just random words jumping out, all different sizes and shapes. But as she stared, she began to piece together sentences…horrible sentences, lines that she didn’t want to read, things she didn’t want to see…

There’s only one door and it leads Nowhere.

I went somewhere but I got Nowhere.

Step inside, don’t look down, Nowhere hides things underground.

Elsie took a deep breath, but her heart raced and she began to hyperventilate, screaming without intending to. She spun around, saw more words, and noticed with growing terror that the word ‘Nowhere’ was in every line, and it was bigger than the other words, growing larger, deeper, burning itself in her mind.

There’s a hole and a door and a drop and a light and Nowhere.

Sleep is good but Nowhere’s better.

One way ticket, next stop Nowhere.

Nowhere Nowhere Nowhere Nowhere Nowhere…

It flashed through her mind, and she began to chant it, unwillingly, her eyes glazed with tears that escaped down her cheeks. She stumbled back and hit the doorframe, knees buckling as she reached wildly for something to grip, but the room was still empty. The wind picked up again, suddenly, loudly, and ‘Nowhere’ was repeated over and over in her mind. She shut her eyes, but it was imprinted on her eyelids and her mind chanted it. Her mouth picked it up, quietly at first but it grew in strength until suddenly she stopped. Elsie stood, erect, head forward, shoulders back, eyes unmoving, mouth shut. She whipped around, faced the chasm and stepped into it.



Robert ambled slowly up the streets. Rounding a corner, he recognized Elsie’s backpack on the ground and thought about how she had ran from him earlier. He felt a small pang. It was almost guilt. Almost.

He looked around, wondering if she was nearby. Sometimes he pretended he cared. Sullenly he grabbed her backpack, kicked her books into the street, and took off for home.

In the Eye

Side One

I’ll admit, perhaps, that I’ve gone a little stir-crazy these past few days. I truly thought I could handle this, that I’d enjoy being so thoroughly and utterly alone. For that’s always been the hardest thing about life to me; the amount of social interaction required to live with other people.

Some of it is simply inevitable. You have to talk to your parents, growing up. You have to talk to your teachers, your classmates, your friends, if you have any. You have to talk to the cashier in the store and the doctor when you go for appointments and even the dentist requires you to mumble out answers to questions he has no right to ask with his hands in your mouth.

But beyond all that, beyond the absolute necessary interactions, I’ve always preferred to be alone. I can do small talk when I must and I can even hang out, go out, enjoy my time when I’m invited somewhere that I actually want to go. But when given the chance, usually I stay home, or go out on my own. I’ve heard that some people are afraid to go to movies by themselves. They’re worried about how they’ll look to others if they eat at a restaurant alone, or if they go to a museum and ponder paintings for hours without uttering a single word. I don’t have that problem. I don’t care what I look like to others. I care about my thoughts, and what I see, feel, hear. I am my own company.

So when this opportunity presented itself – the aforementioned one, that drove me sort of stir-crazy – I didn’t even think about it. Surely, if anyone could handle months alone on the coast, with only the old lighthouse and the seagulls and the waves for company, surely I could. Surely I would love it. The only interruptions to my dreaming would be the fortnightly supply dump and mail run by a lovely silent man named Dennis. How marvelous, to have no one at all to speak to, except every-so-often Dennis. To have no one try to speak to me, including Dennis.

It has been two months, now. Two months alone. Four visits from Silent Dennis. Twelve words spoken aloud in the presence of another human being. Many more spoken to myself, to the gulls, to the ocean and the winds. An absolute tumultuous multitude of words spat at the lighthouse in which I reside, begging it to shout back. It does not, and I have no reason to assume it would.

As a child I read about cabin fever, and how the deep sea fishermen and intrepid frontier families and daring astronauts would have to prepare themselves for it so as not to succumb. I did not prepare myself. I thought, cabin fever only matters if you’re a social creature, which I am not. I prefer my own thoughts. They would not turn on me. They never have. Why should they start now? When I’m finally getting what I’ve always dreamt of, the perverse pleasure of no company but my own? This is my desire! My wish! I love my silence and my thoughts! They are not difficult, nor evil, nor demanding. They are me. I love me.

Don’t I?

As an adult I read about intrusive thoughts. They latch onto all of us, even the mentally healthy. They tell us to do things we don’t want to do. Dangerous things, disgusting things. They sneak in when you’re having a good day and say, “What would happen if you stepped off this bridge? Do you think the fall is high enough to kill you? Or merely break your legs?” and then you must spend the rest of your time on that bridge fighting the urge to lean over the rails and examine the distance below.

I have never been suicidal. I’m not suicidal now.

But I am alone, oh so very alone, and Dennis is not set to visit for another 6 days. I will sit here, in my lighthouse, and imagine that there is no one left in the world but me. I am alone, in my fortress, forevermore. I hear not the gulls crying, nor do I see any fins of dolphins breaking the surface as I gaze out across the whitecaps. There are only rough waters now, and stormy seas, and wind whipping through the skies. I see yellow, and white, and gray, and brown. I see green.

I see nothing.

Side Two

The first reports of a hurricane off the coast came quickly, suddenly, and without much alarm. Those in charge of noticing such things passed along their reports of the imminent change in weather conditions to the higher authorities, but this storm barely merited a few mentions on the local news stations. Few people lived that far south – fishermen, mostly. There were a couple of oil rigs, some run-down summer homes that no one bothered to visit anymore, an abandoned shopping center ravaged by previous storms. Anyone who did live there knew the signs of an oncoming hurricane well enough without needing to be told.

A single lighthouse stood on the shore, far beyond the limits of any inhabited city. Most of the year it sat empty, its light darkened and the attached house bare of food and furnishings. Every winter, when the waters got rough and the winds picked up, an elderly couple would arrive and live out the cold months in the small house. Every evening the couple would together light the bright, shining bulb that kept the lone fishing boats away from the rocks. And every spring, they would leave again, together.

This year, the couple never arrived. Instead, a single young man with wild, loose hair and an intense gaze strode up to the lighthouse, weeks before the weather turned cold. He brought with him the clothes on his back and a small bag of books and a single leather-bound journal. He settled in the house and, as soon as night fell, the lighthouse shone for miles around.

Every two weeks a man showed up in an all-terrain vehicle with mail and supplies, just as he had for years. The mail comprised mostly of magazines and junk letters, nothing of personal import. The supplies were always the same: clean water, milk, bread, eggs, non-perishable cans of soup and beans and vegetables.

For two months this kept up, the silent man visiting, the lighthouse shining, the weather growing colder and colder. When the hurricane began to gather off the coast, the silent man brought word to the lighthouse. He broke his silence and offered to take its keeper far away from the danger. The hurricane could hit any day. It might not hit this far south. It was predicted to, but sometimes they’re wrong. Sometimes it’s not so bad. Sometimes it is.

The fishermen have all gone, he said. They know when to leave. The fish leave too, and so should you.

No, said the lighthouse keeper. No. I will stay.

So the man fell silent again and left the lighthouse. He might not return in two weeks, if the roads were too bad. He might not return at all.

In the eye of the hurricane there is quiet, but you must live long enough to hear it. The lighthouse remained standing, through this hurricane and the last and through many more. It saw many keepers, old and young, male and female, some who returned and some who didn’t. It saw the silent man, bringing supplies to the brave souls who stayed. It saw the fishermen and the seagulls and felt the winds as they battered and broke everything else around.

And it stood silent and still, much like the eye, as this particular keeper left the safety of the house and fought the wind and rain all the way up to the edge of the cliff. The man held his ground as he stared into the whirlpool of water, faced the torrential downpour and, with a cry, fell once more unto the breach.

21st Century Breakdown

The year was 2022, and Ari Winters was pulling another all-nighter. She did this so often that sometimes she thought she’d be better off reversing her days and nights, but instead she let her sleep schedule ebb and flow in a constant state of flux. It drove her brother Aro crazy, as their small flat was about the size of a two-star hotel room. But, they had a roof over their heads and money coming in, and both knew it could be much worse.

Even if both of their jobs were, well, less than legal.

After the Internet Censorship Acts of 2018 were passed, with 112 countries signing a UN accord to adhere to them, many things had changed for the youth of America. Most of the popular websites had been shut down for various fabricated violations. YouTube was now a state-run website, with all content screened before posting. Reddit and other forum-style sites were banned immediately, as it was too easy to pass information through them. Dating sites and social media were either shut down or strictly monitored for copyright violations and falsified identities – identity fraud, as it was now officially called – and many were prosecuted for misleading their followers. Only Netflix remained untouched. Even those who fully supported the Acts couldn’t imagine life without Netflix.

But the people prevailed. The biggest failing of the Acts was its inability to control the youth, the demographic beginning with the Millennial Generation and Generation Z. These children were the first to be raised on the Internet, the ones who remembered it in its early incarnations, and couldn’t imagine life without it. They were Ari and Aro, and all of their friends. They were not the ones who passed the Censorship Acts. They were the ones who fought them.

The Internet as it was known in the early to mid-2000s, the Surface Web, was now a desolate place, filled with censors disguised as spambots and federally sponsored sites. With freedom of speech no longer protected, independent companies began to fall, and the government swept in to fill the void. After Google declared bankruptcy in 2020, less and less of the constantly growing Internet was catalogued, and most sites became completely inaccessible to the average user.

But not to Ari and Aro, and not to their friends, and their generation. They simply deserted the main Internet for a place the elder generations had no understanding of, and no way to track: the Deep Web.

The Deep Web was not a new invention. It was as old as the Internet itself, originally created by the U.S. military for passing classified intel and state secrets. Then the fugitives, the criminals, the whistleblowers, and the oppressed learned the secrets of the Deep Web, accessing it through the surreptitiously spread software known as Tor.

And that is how Ari and her brother kept themselves alive. They dealt in bitcoins and illicit transactions, buying and selling on the underground online markets. The Deep Web was a well-known secret, but so vast in its usage that even the most enthusiastic governments hadn’t managed to shut it down.

A bustling trade of goods, money, and services passed through the Deep Web. Aro ran an online black market, mostly facilitating filesharing. In the current era it was almost impossible to physically pass information via USB drives or discs, so all information was spread on underground sites like Aro’s. His was not the largest site by far, but still popular.

Ari, however, engaged in an antiquated and dangerous form of work known as catfishing.

In the early days of the Internet, lying about yourself in order to make a romantic connection with a stranger was easy, and occurred far more often than anyone cared to admit. Some people were sued and a TV show exposing catfishers gained popularity, but in 2020 the practice had lost all sense of fun or adventure. In light of the danger posed by strangers on the Internet, a significant portion of the Acts was devoted to forcing everyone to be honest about themselves in their online profiles. Any sort of personal misrepresentation, intentional or otherwise, was punishable with prison time in most countries, and life imprisonment in a few.

Since even before the Acts, Ari had mastered the art of donning a fake persona and engaging the unsuspecting masses, and it had served her well after she and her brother were forced underground. Her trick, as she explained to Aro one day, was to pick a niche market.

“It wouldn’t work nearly so well with just any old stranger,” she told him, shoving Pringles into her mouth and wiping greasy fingers on her shorts. “You’ve got to learn your audience, and stick with it.”

“So what’s your audience gonna be, then?” Aro asked, snagging a chip from the handful in her lap.

She grinned. “Bandoms.”

Aro raised one eyebrow. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” she nodded. “Every band out there has a fanbase just waiting to be exploited.”

“And just how are you going to exploit them?”

“Easy!” she said. “I just pretend to be the daughter of one of the band members, and they’ll give me anything I want!”

“Holy shit, you think that would work?” asked Aro.

“I know it works,” she said, biting her lip. “I’ve kind of been doing it already. For a while.”

Aro’s eyes narrowed. “How long is a while?”

“Two years?” Ari shrugged. “Give or take. I started with the old Blink-182 fans, pretended to be Tom DeLonge’s daughter Ava. It’s how I got my laptop. Some sucker sent me $600 when I told him my “dad” wouldn’t let me on the Internet unless I could pay for it.”

“Holy shit,” Aro repeated. “Holy. Shit. I am impressed, really, I am.”

“Thanks, bro,” Ari smiled triumphantly.

“Who else have you done?”

“I had a short run as Joel Madden’s kid Harlow,” began Ari. “But it’s been awhile since Good Charlotte was popular and I couldn’t keep it up. I was able to stick with Matt Wachter’s kid Sailor Mae for a bit longer, but 30 Seconds to Mars isn’t big either. Right now I’m Bandit Lee Way.”

“Gerard Way’s daughter?” exclaimed Aro. “Didn’t My Chemical Romance break up like a decade ago?”

“Ten years next March,” Ari nodded. “But they’re the most passionate fans I’ve ever seen. Still completely obsessed, it’s totally crazy.”

“So what’re you getting out of this one?”

“Mostly cash in exchange for some vintage merch that’s totally been signed by my dad, obviously,” she said matter-of-factly.

Aro shook his head and stood, shaking the Pringles dust from his jeans. “You’re evil, sis, and I love it.”

She blew an exaggerated kiss and returned to her laptop.



Life continued. They rarely left their apartment, instead relying on a steady flow of Bitcoins to pay for their shipments of food and other supplies. Every week one of the siblings would head down to a local pickup point run by another Deep Web enthusiast and retrieve their orders. It was one of the only reasons they had to leave their hideout.

It was during one of Aro’s runs that he was taken. Government agents snatched him off the street, his profile matching the description from an unknown informant, and his laptop provided incriminating evidence of his illicit activities.

When he didn’t return that day, Ari suspected what had happened. It was every Deep Web user’s worst nightmare, and there was nothing she could do but wait. Her contacts eventually ratted out the informant, a frequent shopper in Aro’s store who was picked up herself and, facing imprisonment, traded information on Aro for leniency from the courts.

One week after he was taken, Ari received a notice to her state-issued email address. It listed the whereabouts of her brother, the price of his bail, and the deadline for his release.

$50,000.

Fifty-thousand dollars. Where was she supposed to come up with that kind of money? It was utterly impossible. Insane. A totally ridiculous amount of money. Not only that, she only had a week to post the bail before the deal expired.

She couldn’t just leave Aro in prison until some unspecified future date. She couldn’t let him rot in a cell with God-knows-who for company. He was her brother, her best friend, her only family.

She took a few deep breaths and turned back to her laptop. She could handle this. It was getting easier every day to fool idiots on the Internet for cash, and so far she had been going for small change. She had focused on old bands, with strong fanbases. It was time for a bigger haul, a more dangerous con, something that could get her a lot of money, fast.

With a paranoid glance around her, she pulled up the files she had on one Jakob Danger Armstrong. The youngest son of Billie Joe Armstrong, she had slowly been compiling pictures and information on him. Although now considered a classic band, Green Day had only grown in popularity since the Acts were passed; ever the mainstream rebels, they had quite a rabid fanbase on the Deep Web. Ari had never tried to catfish as a man before, but Billie Joe only had sons. Born in 1998, Jakob was only four years older than her in real life, and she had studied him for the past two years as practice, and also as a backup in case she ever needed a big haul.

Well, she certainly needed one now.



Two days into her endeavor, she felt more stressed than ever. The rush of the game was more overwhelming than fun with such high stakes. She spent all her free time attempting to roleplay in her head, wondering exactly how Jakob would react in any given situation. It got to the point that she was dreaming about him, and not in a pleasant way.

But it was working. So far, she had befriended three different potential victims on various band sites, and one was even sending her selfies already. She had some recent shots of Jakob that she had screencapped from a public appearance he’d made a few weeks earlier, and she was planning to send them as proof of identity in a few hours. But the selfies were highly important to Ari, as she could feed them through a bootleg software program that would run facial recognition and give Ari proof that her targets were real people.

She focused on the most eager of her new contacts. It was a girl by the name of Sara, 18 years old, self-proclaimed Green Day mega-fan from Arizona. They’d been chatting constantly since Ari first started posting in this particular forum, and Sara was eager to please. Even better, Sara made it clear she didn’t get along with her parents, a trait Ari found to be shared among most of the young fans she encountered. Ari’s software gave her proof that Sara was a real person, and her parents were quite wealthy – they owned a chain of supermarkets throughout the entire southwest. Sara was a prime target: young, rich, and desperate for attention. As long as she could keep up the ruse, all Ari needed to do was convince Sara to hack her parents’ computer and bank account, and then Aro would be home free.

Ari figured she could do it in three more days. This was a much quicker timeline than any other con Ari had pulled, but she didn’t have any time to spare. She could only hope that Sara was as stupid as she acted.

Ari laid out her timeline: after tonight, Sara should believe she was really Jakob, and then maintaining the cover wouldn’t be too hard. It would take at least another day to convince Sara that Jakob really, really needed her to do this, then one more to teach Sara how to hack, and finally a third day to secure the money, sever ties, and disappear.

Ari still hadn’t heard any more from Aro or the authorities. They were supposed to offer him a phone call, but he wasn’t stupid enough to try her cell. It would be too easy for the authorities to monitor the call, or at least record the number. And they probably suspected that she was involved in the same business as her brother, or at least in some form of illicit activity.

They were right, of course.

That evening came and went and Ari successfully passed along the stills of Jakob as real selfies. Sara was more intrigued than ever, and Ari’s plan was on schedule. She almost felt bad for this one, really. Sara seemed to be a genuinely nice girl, and this could ruin her future. Her parents would be furious that she’d stolen money from them, and they could easily turn her in to the authorities. And, of course, “Jakob” wouldn’t be there to defend her.

But Ari couldn’t worry about that now; she had a brother to rescue.

Another day and sleepless night passed. Sara was still playing into Ari’s hand. The unsuspecting girl had agreed to help Jakob out; Ari spun a sob story about Jakob and his older brother, Joseph, accidentally breaking one of their father’s expensive vintage guitars, and needing the cash to replace it before their dad found out. He’d repay Sara, of course, the moment he could, but Jakob needed the money now, and Sara was his only hope.

The only problem with the situation was that Sara wanted to meet.

This wasn’t the first time someone wanted to meet up with Ari’s catfish persona. She had managed to put it off before, but it was a sign that she should start the process of abandoning that victim (and possibly the persona entirely). Some were understanding of Ari’s caution in this day and age, but often the young and the impulsive – the ones like Sara – were eager to throw caution to the wind. Ari could usually gently manipulate them away from that urge, but not always. Unfortunately Sara fell into the category of young, impulsive, and stubborn.

I want to help you, J. I do. I just need to know you really care about me, Sara had just typed in their private chat.

You’re so amazing, I wish I could, Ari wrote back. But you know how hard it is for me. People recognize me everywhere. I can’t risk it.

Not even for me?

Ari’s cursor blinked in the chatbox. How should she handle this? Continue laying on the flattery and hoping Sara understood? Agreeing and jeopardizing the entire mission? It all seemed so risky. Ari didn’t want to tip her hand, but she also really needed Sara to trust her. Immediately.

Sighing, Ari made a decision.

Okay, let’s meet, she wrote. But after you get the money. Then, if it’s not really me, you don’t have to give it to me.
A pause.

Okay, J. How do I do it?

Ari would worry about the meeting after she walked Sara through the hack. 

It took most of the next 24 hours to get Sara proficient enough to do learn the hack and steal the money. She lived in western Arizona, and Ari in southern California, so they agreed to meet at a Cracker Barrel on the state line.

Ari’s plan mostly consisted of snatching Sara’s laptop when she was looking around for Jakob to show up. It wasn’t a great plan, but Ari only had two more days to get the money back to Aro. She couldn’t afford any more delay.

She rented a car with a fake ID and hurried off. Once she arrived, Ari settled in a back booth and waited, sipping on mediocre coffee. Right on time, a young woman with dark hair and a backpack walked in, looked around, and sat at a table in the corner.

Go time, thought Ari, steeling herself.

She had barely approached the table when Sara’s head whipped up. Ari froze.

“Sit down,” hissed Sara.

With no other option, Ari sat down gingerly in the chair across from Sara.

“Nice to finally meet you, Jakob,” Sara said.

Ari’s façade wavered. “How did you know it was me?”

“Are you kidding?” Sara laughed. “You should have picked someone else, sweetheart. Jakob Danger Armstrong is my cousin. I knew from the start you weren’t him. But I wanted to know what you were up to, so I played along.”

“Did you tell?” bit out Ari. She felt fury, and panic, and so much fear.

“Certainly not the authorities,” Sara raised one eyebrow. “But my family, yes. And we want to know why you did this.”

“I had to,” Ari said quickly, latching on to the opportunity to explain and maybe salvage the scenario. “I’ve been catfishing for a while, and it was the only way I could get a lot of money at once. It’s to save my brother, he’s been taken.”

“Wow, that sucks,” said Sara, unimpressed.

Ari faltered. “Yeah, it does.”

“All right, here’s what we’re gonna do,” Sara said, settling back into her seat. “My parents have been in on this the whole time, and they don’t need the cash. We’ll help you save your brother. But in return…”

“What do you want?”

Sara waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, nothing much. Just your services in helping my family take down the government.”

“That’s…they’ll kill you!”

Sara shrugged. “My family is powerful. The supermarkets we own are a front, and my parents have been running Deep Web operations for nearly a decade. It’s time I pitched in, and I need people to do my dirty work. Your brother can work for me too, once we get him out of jail.”

Ari gaped. This had gone about as far south as she could possibly have imagined. And of course, Sara wasn’t going to give her any way out of this.

“So, what do you say, Ari Winters?”

Ari’s blood ran cold. Her options were limited, and there was nowhere to run.

“Deal.”