Heart Eater's Garden

A paramedic once stole the heart riding on ambulance 03, locals often mention. The people living around the near-devastated pockets of city have many common folklore, and some are ridicules and others are straight out asinine and some are worth telling. The paramedic folklore starts differently depending on how told the story. Most start by saying the ambulance 03 crashed. One reason is that a tank carrying acid lost control down down a hill and the ambulance either ran off the road or was swated from the road. One old woman started by saying that he never was a paramedic- but a mafia professional impersonating a paramedic. Whatever the case, the locals each sharpened their gazes, and made clear to us in a very different tone that they knew “what really happened that night”, and they pointed to the dark pocket in the recesses of slumping buildings. “The paramedic stole no heart that night...”

                  The paramedic walked down the sidewalk unaware of how near misfortune waited her. The cooler strained the joints in her hand. The weight within swelled. Pressure drove nails between her elbows. Wet wind hurled black leaves from dripping rooftops. Cat eyes watched from a dark strip between the street light pavement and yardside glow. A mugger blew on his finger tips. He wrapped a pipe in fabric and took a deep breath. The footsteps of his target melted into the slime coated sidewalk.

           The mugger wiped hair from his face and hurried to keep him. The target walked thirty feet away and paid no mind to the rapid footsteps. The mugger licked his lips and held tight to his weapon. He passed by three houses, one with no windows, one with no doors, and one with a stone porch guarded by empty flower pots. Two hounds barked from behind a short chain link fence. Merrymakers within the home partied the night away, their windows concealed by flowered curtains and doors locked tight. Ten feet away, the mugger felt his blood tingle, his stomach harden, the same feeling as when the judge ordered a restraining order against him. His teeth grinded until they cracked. The target turned around at the block’s end, crossed his arms. “Well?” he said with narrow defiance.

The mugger rose his weapon. “Empty your pockets.”

“I have nothing for you. Go home.”

“No- give me what you got.”

“I remember you. You’re that motorcycle dealer. You tried to rip me off on an Off-Roader.”

A car’s headlights flooded the street with illuminated exhaust. Deep scars ridged the mugger’s face. “I sold good machines...”

“I’m in a hurry.”

     The Mugger dug his heels into the sidewalk, rose his pipe, but his target moved faster than his malnourished bones and muscles ever could, and before the mugger understood that he’d been outperformed, the target had him bent backwards, spinning his hips, sending him to the ground with his arm still in tact- until he bit the pavement. The Paramedic held onto his arm as he fell, and before he landed his joints twisted- once his ribs smacked the ground all the air broke from his lungs, and the joints in his wrist, elbow and shoulder each snapped free.

“Instead, you’re going to give me what you have.” The paramedic rifled through the mugger’s pockets, who groveled in a circus of shame and agony. He found nothing, but for the pipe. “Your pants. I’m taking them.”

“Not my pants!”

“Yep. They’re mine now.”

He peeled them free and slung them over his shoulder.

“One hour left! One hour-one hour...”

“Doesn’t matter anymore. Come with me, and you’ll get your pants back.” 

A shadow arrowed through the street light fog. A human gargoyle crossed under a halo of light and pushed through a fence coated in dead pine bush.

“….Your time is up... now.”

         The paramedic reached for a flashlight on his hip. The intruder stepped into a ray of light. His beady, shark sharp eyes- and round divet scars in his patchy cheeks. Ancient wanted posters came to mind. “Don’t move with that hear. Once I’m through-”

The mugger pulled a wound up stack of cash from a cavity in his cloaks.

“It’s all here...”

      The intruder swiped it away- counted it. “Just as I suspected. Stolen. I’ll be back for the rest. Soon. Maybe sunup. And about the heart, if you don’t mind…”

The intruder pried away his metal buttons and opened his coats. A worms and blacked vessels wound from a cavity in his chest.

       The paramedic shook until the cooler dropped from her grasp. The intruder tore the cooler away and looted he contents. He spun around, crouching in the dark. His flesh fizzled and steamed, staggering into dark portals between lifeless homes.

       The paramedic lifted the mugger up, smacked him hard across the face, than held him up again. “I have a secret to show you.”

       The mugger’s thighs shivered as wet cold slid wires of sensation up his body, into his empty stomach, though his blackened lungs and rotten liver.

“Please, understand, someone is after me and if I don't-”

“I have a solution for that problem. Just come with me, and all of your problems will end.”

      They walked together. The target gripped the mugger’s good arm as the disjointed limb swung back and forth like a chicken’s broken neck. The night sky developed into a haze of orange and lunar colored street lights. A single contorted tree trunk extend from an iron tile in the sidewalk, half of its limbs cut off to avoid the hanging power line, and the other half shrunken by illumination gas. A branch snapped and a squirrel came down with it.

        The mugger looked to the cooler. The Paramedic still still carried it.

“Want to see what’s inside?” The paramedic shook it and let the mugger peek. Cold air escaped, and for a brief second he saw the vessels and tubes of a heart but as his pupils scoped in the dark, the heart and its carnage sunk into canvas shade. The paramedic snapped the lid shut, and patted his new companion on the back. The mugger pulled as his scum strained facial hairs. Many of the friends he made in the streets stopped showing up to his place, only to turn up somewhere else with their bodies intact, but ribs broken apart, their hearts torn from their bodies.

“but I have offspring!”

“I’m probably doing them favors.”

The endless shower of highway drones emerged as the houses thinned to brick buildings and alleyway playgrounds. They turned down a curved sidewalk that dipped below a dripping overpass where burping shadows cackled behind tents. Four bums leaned against a fence reaching from the overpass roof to the dirt below. A shelter warning them to keep straight heads steamed with watery soup only a few blocks down. The mugger cried for their assistance, and they alerted to the cries- until the paramedic called them with elated whistles.

“Ted, Bill, henry-” she knew them all by name. “How’s the new kidney? Is your back feeling better?”

They shared a good laugh, and she shared with them each ten dollars.

They left the humming shade of the overpass and came to a razor wired fence separating grain elevator tracks from the rest of the city. They followed the border of the fence until they found a spot of eroded earth through which the target pushed the mugger through, then went in after.

        They walked over the rails until the grain silos looked like pen caps and the urban glow looked like halos over glowing statues of ancient heroes. The sky darkened and tiny sparkles emerged from the smoggy skyline.

        As they went further, more and more sparkles poked from the sky like invading aircraft. The mugger forgot his numb legs and the swelling of his arm like a sock stuffed with lint. The enforcer looking for his payment retreated to the back of his mind, the restraining order meant nothing.

The sky darkened even more when they slid through the back fence bordering a brick bridge over a pond shimmering with silver ripples across an obsidian surface. The world sounded quiet- a stillness never before discovered by the mugger. No cars, no dogs, no people- their sights and smells, and noises dead to the arch they hiked across. A panic overcame him. The absence of population struck him like alcoholic withdrawal- All around- a ring of urban towers barricaded them like glowing ghosts. Only sinking voids smoked in the shadows besetting him.

The ground rolled like gravel. The mugger looked down to see pieces of rubble and debris filled the path they walked down. All around them, broken bricks and fractured beams. They walked over piles of fallen structure, past skeletons smashed into the ground, Between rows of abandoned cars left to rust in empty lots., then stepped into an alley with walls suffocated by ivy vines that spread across the building like veins of green blood. Leaves and tangles caught their feet. Water dripped on their heads from above. They stood tighter together as the growth filled the alley. When thorns and branches obstructed the forward way, the strange target merely cut his palm with a box opener, and bled over the plants. The foliage uncoiled and the target pulled the mugger through. He dragged his feet, let his body limp until the target dropped him to the nestles on the ground. The mugger looked up at the flowers blossoming from holes and fractures in the walls. The building seemed to bend and wave as the stars and clouds swirled to grieve or laugh depending which eye he closed. He saw them crawl up branches stretching from broken windows. They breathed not with lungs but through pockets in their cuticles. Without eyes, they leaned forward, their nostrils thrust from slits in the middle of their head, and a dozen tiny hooks unfurled from their mouths. Water didn’t drip, but chlorophyll nectar from between each rung of their curling dentures.

The alley opened. The mugger beheld a stone lot broken apart by leafy stems and overlapping roots. The heads of foliage, bushes died and rose and sunk, crawled through cracks in distant walls. the moon shone. Particles of moisture shined silver. Yellow and green plumes of spore dust suspended in the air like cotton tails. The mugger sneezed until his nose swelled shut.

The paramedic left the mugger alone as he stepped into the jungle breaking from the urban decay. A small creature stood from the moss coating. The mugger felt blood in his dislocated joints again, but he heard the same soil and wood clipping as the creature before him at his back, and overhead dangling from ropes of growth connecting the fallen buildings. The flesh between his toes itched and burned. He looked down and saw the fibers of his shoes curling under faint heat waves. The paramedic sunk into the green gusts of abiotic vapor.

The mugger grabbed a vein with his good arm. It broke and = hit the ground. More and more bricks slid behind the walls. Venomous hisses and rolling eyes seeped into the alley alcoves. He sneezed again, his clothing more covered in the pungent pollen. He kicked and slapped with his free arm, but the more he fought the faster the vines constricted and dragged him further inward.

The enforcer looked all over, but didn’t recover the rest of the debt. His boss didn’t care about the lowlife, but he needed an answer as to what happened to the man that dealt with them in the past. He weighed almost three hundred pounds and never spoke unless utterly necessary or to his wife or son. His knuckles red and callused, his neck like an owl's. He crossed an alleyway, when he heard guttural calling from within.

A destitute staggered from the alley mouth, his hand over his heart, blood seeping from between his fingers. The man collapsed onto the enforcer, and begged him for help. The enforcer parted his lips, and recognized the man he wanted, stepping back and letting him fall to the pavement where blood blossomed around him and sunk into the jagged cracks of the sidewalk. Drops of blood lead into the alley. The enforcer took out a utility light and followed the drops over the trash bags and torn boxes. He listened to slushing rips, and over sweetened gnashing, wettening clasps dripping blood in the tarnished niche of the  alley way. A creature with the hands of a saw, and a mouth of a dozen hooks gnawed on the loose fibers of the pulmonary valve. The heart kept beating. When the enforce saw its pulsating chords he stared deeper into the exposed vessels. The creature, coated in moss and leaves glistening with crimson, held out its dinner for the enforcer to share. He took the warm, throbbing heart in his hands. The howl of a forbidden relic stalked the alley.

Something grinded against the alley floor slime. They plowed over the refuse and waste, bleeding and near blinded, breathless, but without fatigue, without the closest sensation of exhaustion. The paramedic crawled into the alley, bleeding, her clothes soaked in crimson, one leg tendons and vessels.

The enforcer watched for a short time in the narrow strand of light from the end of the alley way. But circuits sparked, and the city’s power dimmed until at last breaking to full darkness.

The heat beat against the enforcer’s palms, and its blood leaked between his fingers. He took his first bite into the tender flesh.

By Blood

      A vagabond bit the jail floor. The cell gate closed behind him. The police turned to leave, but the vagabond spoke through his torn lips. “You must listen- I no liar!” The lady cop turned around and pointed a hook shaped finger at him. “Not another word out of you.”

The vagabond slapped the floor, then crawled to the bars and pulled himself up. The cellmates looked him up and down. Never did they see an inmate so beaten and broken. His eyes wild and swollen, blood and spit in his hair, his mouth missing most teeth but for a few yellow husks. He fell to his knees, breathing hard, and crawled to the nearest cellmate- a boy with long hair and a shaggy beard that looked too young for jail, reeking of refer. The vagabond pleased with him. “I'm not crazy either. Will you listen?”

       The pothead scratched his beard and looked to the man next to him. A large handed skinhead with eight fingers stared down at the vagabond like a hawk. Bullet scars lined his exposed arms. He crossed his arms. The vagabond turned to him, blood and spit in his hair. “It’s true- let me tell you.”

       “Shut your mouth.” The Skinhead commanded.

       “Please, someone… someone-” the vagabond turned to a withdrawing drug fiend. “You have to listen me.”

       The drug fiend shivered. “I do believe you-”

       “At last!”

      “-But I don’t care.”

      The vagabond slumped on the bench. He looked to a tattooed man besides him. “How about you?”

       “No habla Ingles.”

        The vagabond slumped and wiped blood from his lips. “I'm going to tell you all anyway-”

The cellmates all groaned. The pothead pleadedto be placed in another cell.

       The jail door opened. The sheriff came in. Some sandwich crumbs still on his tie and chin. He examined the cell patrons, and called on the vagabond. “Come with me, son.” He unlocked the gate and slid it open. The others looked with hope that he meant them, but upon seeing their faces light up the officer scowled. The pothead got up. “Not you!” the sheriff barked. The pothead slumped back down among the seasoned criminals. The sheriff pulled the vagabond by up his collar and locked the jail behind him. The inmates sighed in relief.

        The sheriff took the vagabond to the interrogation room and handed him an ice pack and a handkerchief to clean up with. An empty pastry box sat by a cold pot of burned coffee. A camera recorded the vagabond sitting down on a plastic chair. The sheriff unplugged the wire connecting the camera to its monitor and sat down.

      “My guys tell me you aren’t charged with any crime.”

      “They didn’t listen to me- you’re all in danger! The doctors is-”

       “Dr. Oliver Ekbaum in a vampyre.”

       “You believe me!” The vagabond jumped from his seat. “We have to-”

       “You’re kicking a sleeping dog.”

       “I knew him when he was running a clinic in Uganda.”

       “You’re a doctor too?”

       “Not after that. Not after what I saw him do.”

        The sheriff leaned back. “I can take you past county lines. Once you’re gone you stay gone.”

The vagabond writhed and wrung the the blood from the handkerchief before tossing it to the floor. The sheriff frowned at the towel. His daughter stitched her initials in the corner.

        “I'll tell him you sneaked in to steal some pharmaceuticals. He’ll forget all about it. Everyone’s life goes on as normal.”

        “I have no normal life.” He unfastened the top button of his shirt and pulled it down to reveal canine scars. “He almost killed me.”

         The sheriff looked him up and down, rose his chin to show he listened, his eyes and cheeks firmed like stonework.

     “Took me years to overcome this. I killed nothing. I’ve been looking for him ever since.”

      “I can’t make this more clear. You’re giving us both trouble. I don’t want anyone getting hurt, son.”

      The vagabond took to the corner of the room and screamed into his palms before turning back to the table and planting both hands down. His mouth opened, but the words didn’t come out. He buried his face in his palms and wept.

     The sheriff escorted him to the car and drove him out of town. Along the way he saw the white teeth smiling on the billboard of the only clinic within fifty miles. “Dr. Ekbaum Medical Practice.” They drove until the town became glistening silver on the horizon. The fields and crops turned to tall weeds emerging from sand and dry patches of rocky, untoiled earth. The sheriff stopped in the shade of an autumn leafed tree. The sun burned through the clouds.

     “Please, stay away. It’s for everyone’s good.” The sheriff said taking him out of the vehicle.

      The vagabond stood and watched the car disappear behind the emerging heat waves. Buzzards picked at road kill.

     The vagabond walked down the highway. The clouds dissolved and nothing kept the heat from burning the back of his neck. His flesh boiled even years after eradicating the curse from his blood. He turned down a gravel road and walked towards a treeline. The gravel thinned to dirt, and the dirt to prickly grass that poked through the soles of his shoes and pierced his feet. He looked at his shoes. His toes stuck through holes. He took them off, and walked towards a wooden bridge extending over a dry creek bed. Beasts scoured below the bridge. The vagabond paid no mind until he heard the snarls and slippery tearing. He stopped to listen. Hooves stamped, throats growled, tricky meat tore away from bone like Velcro ripping. The vagabond’s epidermis chilled. Dust rose from the cracks of the bridge. He knelt down and peeked below. Three deer with ribbons of meat hanging from their flat teeth like looted flags wrestled over the rib cage of human hamburger. They ate like the deprived. One leg remained attached, the head looked like a flattened basketball. Dust adhered to the reddened bones. One of the creatures batted against the other. It wailed like a revving fan, and all of them ran in circles around their prey, stampeding the matted sleeping bag and garbage sack filled with belongings.

        The vagabond wiped his brow, and rose certain that he no longer had a choice. He went in the direction from whence he came.

        His camp hidden behind bushes between two meager farms reeking of pesticide. He took his trowel and pierced the ground under the crumpled tent cover and disinterred a belt rigged with dynamite. He covered himself with a coat, and smeared mud over his face to appear as a different person. He carried out his secondary plan.

        The small town enjoyed a peaceful afternoon until a blast shook the ground under everyone's feet and ash rained into their backyard ponds. The birds took flight, and the cats and dogs broke free from their restrains. Sirens erupted. Smoke reached the sky from the middle of town.

The sheriff walked among the emergency vehicles. The hospital lobby still suffocated with smoke. The hoses beat flames with steady streams. The sheriff took his hat off and examined each body before the paramedics put them into the coroner van. They recovered four bodies: A middle aged receptionist. A security guard. A nun. And two nurses- then some pieces of a fifth unidentified person.

       “Someone had enough powder to clear a tunnel.” The deputy said. “They must’ve planned this for sometime.”

        But the sheriff didn’t answer. The patients evacuated the building. The sheriff went inside, and walked along the quiet rooms stinking of bitter smoke. He stood at the stairwell above the morgue, but no matter how hard he concentrated on his memories of gunfire and car chases, his nerves tensed, and he turned away.

       At home that night he watched his son toss a ball against the barn wall. His sickly condition medicated with Ekbaum’s prescriptions. His daughter played her xylophone, with another five hundred dollar rescue inhaler waiting for her in a white bag with the doctor’s signature. The kitchen smelled of oregano and tomato paste. The mother of his children cooked dinner, her headaches getting worse by day.

        The son came in and tossed the ball at his father. It struck his face and rolled back to the boy’s feet. He recoiled in anticipation of reprisal, but the sheriff only looked deeper into the boys eyes.

       “What’s wrong?” the adolescent asked.

       “Nothing, son. Go help your mother. If she doesn't need it, than help your sister with something.”

        “Yes, sir.”

        When he left the room, the sheriff took his phone and dialed the deputy. His daughter came down the stairs. “Can I go with my friends, father?”

       “Not tonight.”

       “But dad,”

      “Not tonight..” He spoke like a eulogy. “Wash up for dinner.”

       He hugged and kissed her. She went to the dining room.

       The sheriff slid outside and called the deputy. The phone rang for one minute unanswered. He sat in the shadows, and checked the corners of his property to be be safe that no one listened. After three minutes the deputy answered.

      “Yes, I know you’re sitting with your wife." The sheriff told him.

      “We were in the middle of a bit more than sitting.”

      “You need to meet me at the propane field at dawn break.”

      “What for?”

       “Do it. Don't be followed. Bring two assault rifles and enough ammunition to clear out the trailer park.”

       He hung up, and went in to have dinner. The meat tasted over-cooked and the spaghetti all clumped together like playdough and the tomato sauce tasted like pure garlic. But it was the best dinner he ever ate.

        Morning seeped through the dark cracks of the east. Shadows of maturing crops reached over the gravel. The propane tanks hummed. Dew drops turned red with rust. The sheriff zipped up his coat and kept his finger tips in his mouth. He checked his time again. Pesticide fog rose over the crops and the wind carried it across the propane field like coastal fog. The sheriff coughed and his lungs constricted. He pulled his handkerchief over his nose. The clouds brightened. A shrouded overcast welcomed him good morning. Red and purple splendor twirled along the horizon. The sun peeked over black hills. He looked at the time once more, and kept his watch to the distant roads as the pesticides settled to his knees in the gravel lot where as it rose higher and condensed over the roads, crops and trees like walls of gloom. A shape developed within the pesticide mist. The sheriff crossed his arms. The closer the mass came, the more defined the distinctions. Three people, two standing- and one in a wheel chair creaking along. The two on the sides remained still, concealed behind the pesticide. The wheelchair in the middle came closer. The sheriff crossed his arms. The doctor emerged. In one hand he held bloody strands of blonde hair. In the other a deputy badge.

        “Did you forget our agreement, Sheriff Lawrence?”

        “Your days are numbered.”

        “I overcame death already. Who was the fool that blew up my hospital?”

        “Some nobody.”

        “No. That person knew me.” The doctor’s bald head dripped with perspiration. Tangles of orange facial hair barely covered his thin lips and his chin shaped like the handle of a baseball bat. His thin body looked like a spine with eyes disguised as a human in a pale blue suit.

        “He said that he knew you in Uganda.”

        “Ah- yes. I remember.” He pointed to same anatomy as the vagabond did when he displayed his scars. “I did good work in those clinics.”

        “He made it sound like you preyed on them.”

        “I did. We all do.”

        “You’re a monster.”

        “I’m receiving the fruit of my labor- I ask because he caused me a deal of problems. Some of my… patients… escaped. I need them back. I know you’ll do good work, sheriff. You’re smarter than most. Aren’t you…?”

       The sheriff reached for his weapon.

       Ribbons of handkerchief blew away.

       The sun rose over the RV park. Imogen awoke. She recorded her tests. The viles of green and yellow created sediment that she applied to wounded plants. She scribbled down the results, and prepared a new test, but found she lacked the necessary components.

      She parked her mobile home at the end of the RV park so she didn’t bother anyone, and they didn’t bother her. Some police sirens waned in the distance. Her stomach still ached with sickness from the news of the bombing and the deaths, but she drank some tea and ate breakfast, then she put on a shawl and exited for the woods in front of her door.

         She collected various agents like tree bark algae, pedals and stems, and dropped them in a basket. She raised her hood. The branches dripped with fog. Blue aluminum cans dangled from the tree where she found the fattest blue mushrooms. She picked the beetles off and collected them. She sighed sifting through her cluster of forest debris. She didn’t have enough.

          A path cut through the grass, she noticed, that exist the last time she came to the forest. She followed the matted foliage, finding blood droplets on the leaves. She heard a whisper that sounded like wind until she saw the leaves on the ground rustle and a pale mud soaked hand reach up.

         “Help me,” the voice begged. The flesh of the pale hand boiled in the daylight. The hand retreated, but the steam remained floating in the air. Imogen came nearer and saw sparkles under the forest floor. “Bring me to the dark, please.”

          Imogen looked around and noticed the ground scraped of growth and mounds of dirt. She started to unbury the person despite the hisses and cries as she eclipsed the glaring white sky.

“Why are you here?” Imogen asked, but she saw the young girl in the hole lost much strength and only moaned dull sounds. She recognized her. The sheriff’s daughter. She pulled her out and wrapped her shawl around the girls head. Her flesh continued to steam and split. Her eyes glossed and she fell asleep. Imogen lifted her up. She weighed no more than eighty pounds. He thin arms curled around Imogen's shoulders, and they went back out from the woods. The sheriff's daughter, though snoring, kept biting her lips and sucking up the blood droplets.

         Imogen placed the girl in her bed. She poured more hot tea and burned special incense. She build a ring of crystals and sang Ojibwe healing songs she learned from a Swede named Snowflake on the California coast. She checked the pulse. The heartbeat felt weaker than water. She tried one more treatment, one of her own design. She went through her viles and mixed a salve in a bowl. The girl’s breathing exploded into marathon pace then settled again only to increase once more, bringing her to rib splintering extents, then dropping her back down. Her body convulsed and fluids started to leak from her nose, ears, and twin wounds over her exposed body.

         Imogen knocked over glass bottles, spilling foaming fluid on the floor, trying to reach the ivory tusk she used to grind the contents to flakes and dust. She added honey and some sour smelling fluid. She poured it into a small pot and boiled it on the stove. The girl rested like the dead then spasmed from the bed, crushing cardboard boxes of empty picture frames and broken jewels. Imogen lifted her back on the bed, enduring scratches and slaps. She tied a belt around her wrists to keep her from falling again. The girls pupils constricted to pen points.

         Imogen drained the fluid, cut an incision into the girl, then inserted a hose and siphoned the fluid into her body. The girl rolled her head and made a loud curse before falling down. Sweat soaked through the blankets and sheets to the bottom of the mattress. Body odor filled the trailer and not even open windows cleared the stentch.

        Imogen checked the girls pulse- and found no heartbeat.

        Imogen paced her trailer, pondering what to do next. She inspected the body, finding the girls knees and fingers covered in dirt. She owned no phone, so she locked the door she painted in rainbow quilt work and walked from the RV park, down the highway into town. She entered the police station. She saw nobody inside. She called and knocked on the desk. Not even the heating vents droned. She saw the cell block door open. Just a hair, she leaned over, to see inside. Empty jail cells. She went around the counter. Someone left the keys in the cell door and freed the inmates.

          Imogen walked by. Not a single car drove on the roads. The clouds grew darker. Rain started to splatter the pavement. Imogen looked into store windows, seeing nothing but dark displays. She saw the sheriff's car in the middle of the road, looted and rendered undrivable by damage to the wheels. Bloody prints painted the windshield and hood streamed down the glass in flowing rainfall.

An old woman called out from a narrow alley way. Imogen looked to see her head rise from a trashcan. No teeth and eyes like fleshy slots. She beckoned Imogen to come near. Imogen approached, then noticed the beckoning hand did not belong to the old woman- someone held a severed head out and beckoned her with a youthful but bloody palm. Imogen turned and ran. Her feet pattered in the curb wash. Rain soaked her gown. She wiped water from her eyes, and each time she did the shadows in the corners of the street took new shapes.

          She saw a vehicle parked near a hardware store. She tried to door but found it chained shut from the inside. An old man scratched his head as she begged him to open the door. He saw what pursued her and he disappear in the backrooms. Imogen turned around. Shadows crept nearer as the rain turned to fog. She took a piece of lumber and threw it at them. With a one handed catch, the lumber broke in half with a lighting quick grasp. They hovered over the water in the street.

         “Take us to the girl.” They asked of her. “And you will not be harmed.”

          Imogen spun around and sprinted into the alley away. She stepped through broken glass, jumped over a trashed Buick, into the steam of a manhole. She ran without pause until she reached the highway, there she cut into the woods, dodging low hanging branches and slicing her flesh on thorns. She went in circles to check for pursuing footprints in the mud, but she found none. She walked the rest of the way, unaware of her bleeding scratches dripping on the foliage.

           All the RVs left. Her trailer sat alone in the park. She entered, closed the blinds, locked the windows and doors. She didn’t believe in killing, but she owned an unlicensed .44 she stole from a boyfriend some years back. She sat near the body of the sheriff's daughter. She left the lights off. As the sky darkened, so did her trailer. Something like raccoons rummaged through her garbage, crawled up the outer walls and tapped on the roof. She sat up from the bed, the .44 with her. She peeled back one blind. Outside she saw a host of shadowed figures within the night cast fog.

           The springs of her bed whined. She spun around, and fired. The girl fell back, her flesh white wisps in the dark fluttering to the floor. But she crawled back up, holding the wound, prying out the bullet and dropping it to the floor. Imogen held onto her weapon, cocked back the hammer one more time, but the girl grabbed her hand and jammed a finger behind the trigger. Imogen bent her legs and placed one foot ahead of the other. The eighty pound corpse bit into her forearm like a bear trap. Imogen reached for the ivory horn and stabbed the girl in the mouth. She forced it in so far that her jaw cracked and her sharp canines lost their power. Imogen threw vile after vile at the girl, each one shattering but to no effect. At last she took the pot containing the compound she invented and poured it over the head of the girl. It ignited into sparks and smoke. A fire ignited within the girl and burned in her mouth, eyes, and throat. The girl collapsed as the fire spread from her corpse to the loose piles of dirty laundry. The shadows outside waited. Imogen doused the walls with fire extinguisher from under the window seat.

               A charred skeleton remained smoldering on top of old garden magazines.

              She mended her wound with towels and vodka. The shadowed lurkers scraped against the windows with claws. They even rocked it back and forth until Imogen felt her self tipped back against the wall and her belongings tumbled on top of her. The glass shattered. Cold wet streams of air blew inside.

               Twisted faces seeped in within the fog. Imogen tried to raise her body but the contents her cupboards pinned her against the capsized wall. She took a deep breath, as the shadows became clearer- withered flesh and sharpened teeth, and raised her weapon once more. She shots caused the trespassers to retreat into the fog in a crumbling whirlwind- but only until the wind started to blow once more, then they came back in standing as straight as before. Imogen hurled the gun at them, closed her eyes and covered her throat.

              They took the skeleton, and dragged it out, leaving Imogen to pant and sweat, listening to the bones grind against the walls, and disappear into the fog.

              In the morning the fog cleared. Imogen crawled from her trailer. She undid the towel to see the wound on her arm raw with infection. She took to the highway, and walked out of town.

She never told anyone about what happened because no one believed her. Years went by, she found herself living in a van with two other women and a dog. One day she saw a billboard for a new terminally ill ward, a doctor with a strange name, but matching the likeness of the billboard that stood outside the town she once called home.

             In that terminally ill ward, a child wasted away in bed one night. She pretended to sleep, listening to her monitor's cadence. Her bones felt rotten. Her skin felt like sandpaper. She gave up trying to dream, so she tried to read a book in the lamplight, but her eyes shook and watered when they concentrated. She gave, turned the lamp off

             A ray of light cut from the wall and spread. The door opened, and wheelchair wheels squeaked.

            “You don’t deserve to be so sick and weak. You don’t deserve to be human,” He offered his hand. “The price will be high, but there’s nothing better…”

            His razor teeth shined in the moonlight. She dropped her book to the floor.

City of the Immolated

The phone stopped ringing. It’s just another phone call, she dismissed the third time that day.

Harley stared down at the phone laying on its receiver. Her spirits failed her and her fingers curled back into a fist. A rock tore the lining of her guts. A cold laughter mocked her. She saw it in the window reflection. A sinister grin, soil clumps filling his mouth and eye sockets.

She neared the window, and took hold of the nylon bindings holding the curtain against the wall. Wind blew snow against the window. She buttoned up her coat, and placed a palm on the glass. The frost melted beneath her hand. The first snow of the year shedded over the urban glow. She wiped away condensation and looked into the street. The Pink Panda Twenty-Four Hour Daycare only four blocks from her apartment. Upright shambles occupied the space between her and the Daycare. She noted them all for not a single thing changed about them in the time she lived in this neighborhood. The garage full of trucks from the 40's, the lot of rusted parts exposed by the wind lifting tarps until the elastic cords snapped off and projectiled over the razor crowned chainlinks. Stealing from you does us all a favor, she thought, looking to the place to rent backhoes and take out loans, the fenced off soccer field, the bus stop,  the phone booth, then the cleared lots of once standing structures since burned down. In the distance, gleaming towers polluted the clouds with the noxious haze of regurgitated butter.

Her phone rang again. She decided not to idle. She closed the curtain, took her purse, said goodbye to the cat, and locked the door behind her.

Her boots scraped against the sea green carpet as she stepped around the blood stains and patches of bald floor. A stranger slept against one door with his head buried in his lap. Foreign tongues argued behind another door- she felt ashamed, but curiosity provoked her ears. In the next door, she heard the whispers of two male lovers. The next, the explosions and gunshots of an analog TV set, then it all slipped away as she sunk down four flights of stairs to the ground level.

An old woman collected mail, an older man grumbled behind her. Harley greeted them good evening, but they ignored her. Outside a police officer ticketed a car parked in front of a hydrant. His cheeks and nose red like blood. He plastered the ticket on the windshield and went along into the steaming streets. Harley knew the owner and covered her smile. Already a nest of tickets fluttered under the windshield wipers. The early snowfall tumbled from the glass into the tickets to destroy them. Not my problem, Harley assured.

She stuffed her scarf down her coat collar. Still her bones recoiled and her chest shivered from the sharp cold burying its teeth into her bones. She wore only a shirt beneath, no sweater, no undershirt. Her phone vibrated in her purse. She ungloved one hand and pulled the device free. The curb became quicksand when she saw the digits- a caller from some obscure room in the city. She took out the battery. The phone stopped, the haunting digits frozen, the pixels one by one succumbed to a dark bleach.

She passed the meth lab. A flash and a bang lit up the curtained RV windows. A unibrowed man stepped out and smoked a cigarette. He warned her with watchful eyes as Harley strode past benign to the illicit operation. The unibrow man lost interest in her. He sniffed the night air, smelled her blood, but detected no potential for victimhood. A shiver went down his spine, and he stomped out his half burned cigarette. He decided he was safer in the exploding meth lab.

Her teeth chattered. She knew a one eyebrowed man once before, way back, back then… she drew her phone and tossed it over a fence. She used a track phone anyhow. She dropped the battery in a trash can. A bum dug through the trash and devoured a half eaten bag of movie popcorn. He choked on a kernel and slid back into the brush of dark between two buildings. She wondered if she knew him before, if perhaps he might let a little secret out to the wrong people- then take them right to her. She felt around her purse. No mace, no gun- nothing to fall into the hands of the little panda bears. The pink sign shined a block away, just over from the barred windows of the liquor store. She smiled, a warmth brewed beneath her chest, the unibrow and the gagging vocalist ceased to complicate her evening. Her shift started at 9PM, but she showed up an hour early every night to see the children to bed.

“Only thirteen tonight?” Harley asked the dayshift sitter.

“Holidays roll around, we don’t see them as much.”

“I love seeing them go to sleep… it’s my favorite part about children. When they’re awake I cannot stand them.”

“It’s going to be a quiet night. Our troublemakers aren’t here, we have plenty of formula for the babies, and snacks for the older boys and girls. Whatever you need. Plus with this snow, it's so toasty and warm- good luck waking them up in the morning.”

The dayshift sitter closed the coffee room door, and beckoned Harley.

“The dumpster wasn’t unlocked last night.”

“No, no- you’ve made a mistake.”

“I know it’s not pretty business but- If you aren’t… doing your job, then we’ll find someone else who will.” Her words soaked with regret, each syllable-even the pauses of her breath, drove nails into her heart.

“There’s no problems.”

“No, but there will be if you don’t start leaving one out.”

Harley made coffee and hung up her coat. She looked young once, trails of youth remained on her face, wads and clumps of broken down flesh caused her body shape to swell and bloat in asymmetrical patterns. Gray hairs spiraled from her black locks, and her lips remained an early morning pale, sharp and narrow.

She sipped her coffee, but felt the pins of insomnia outwork the caffeine. They pierced her eyelids, the curve of her spine, her joints, even her toes and finger tips. She knew how a fractured mirror felt better than most.

One of the kids yawned, and she lost concern for her depreciating health. She left the coffee room to see the little pandas. Eight sleeping bears, each one fat and comfortable on floor mats covered in cotton cocoons, pillowed with stuffed animals, the glow of the Christmas cartoon washing over their restful faces. The four infants slept like piglets in straw. The Sleepless One, a little girl that slept during the day and animated after nightfall, hung out in a lit corner pulling blocks out one by one and using them to construct a model of the Golden Gate Bridge with arches and columns and lanes- even the anti-suicide fences.

Harley asked the girl, “why not sleep?” The nocturnal wonder stared without smile and produced a piece of art from her overalls. Harley took it, and asked for it to be explained. “That’s my house. That’s my family in the mad room. That’s our dog with me. That’s you,” She pointed to the basement. “Making hot drinks for us.” Harley took the art. Tickled giggles escaped as she examined and re-examined. The girl went back to her blocks. A scar ran down along the bridge of her nose down to her upper lip where a piece of her mouth discolored into a pink square- a burn scar. Harley wore many along her thighs and foot bottoms. The inflictions never fully healed.

Harley looked over the drawing again while listening to the holiday cartoon in the nursery. A movie she saw every holiday, when the snow first fell. In that first year she heard it over the sound of sharpening blades, foaming pots, and cracking whips. How nice, she thought, to be able to enjoy it for once.

Then little Johnny stirred and awoke with cry. Harley sprang, possessed by the possibility that he needed a hospital- but she also worried about him awakening the other children. He buried his face into her lap, but the phantasms that provoked his fit struck fierce bolts too terrible for him to disclose to her. He whimpered to Harley and asked for a new cartoon because the Christmas one reminded him of the night terror. So she switched it off and put in a different tape. The VCR whined and hummed as it reeled back the cassette while she comforted the boy on his mat, giving him a new juice box and a cookie that she baked herself. He settled down, but his eyes did not shut for the rest of the night.

The shadow of a broken man emerged from the veils of steam. Harley looked from the children to the front window stretching across the wall. Outside misted with fresh snowfall steaming on warm streets. The drifter sifted through the mist, and placed his hands on the glass to peer inside. His gangling limbs bowed out. Glasses pressed into his soft, fat, balding features. Harley rose from the dark of the nursery and erected against the counter. She didn’t reach for the button that dropped the iron shutters over the window. Two bolt locks kept the door secure. A camera recorded the front of the building, and the rear. The glasses glared with electric snaps, and he pulled his hands across the fogged window, leaving a long hand print across the pane before vanishing into the street where the snow melted to gravy colored slush.

She leaned back, satisfied that the visitor went on his miserable way. She didn’t hate the creepers- she shared blood with far too many to hate them. However she stayed at the counter, watching the snow sprinkle under the current of childish snores.

She saw the same three things whenever she wished that the kids would have a life better than hers. A royal-purple Mercedes with golden rims rode past towards the shining towers. Anarchists rioted down the streets with bats and flaming garbage cans. A tribe of hunter gatherers migrated towards the city limits. Her heart raced, her forehead moistened- and the pitch fork veins pumped oil into the furnace of her inner war machine. Not because they lived the way they did, but because what they practiced failed to alleviate the lesions of the Pink Panda children.

Little Johnny walked up from the nursery pulling his blanket with him. He saw nothing outside but noticed his babysitter seething like one of the diseased rats he often ate breakfast with. She took a pen from the counter and wrote line after line until the black ink leaked through to the surface, leaving vessels of blue and black to sink into the cheap counter top. His attention went from her to a short stool that he pushed to the counter. He climbed up to read what she wrote, but she crumpled it up and tossed it into the recycling when she detected his snooping eyes.

A pair of floodlights enhanced the depth of the fog. The engine roar echoed up the street. Frost flaked away from the trembling window. Little Johnny pulled on Harley’s pocket. “It’s from my nightmare,” he informed her. The engine looked like a cast iron oven propelling machinery capable of hauling debris through a mountain valley swamp with tires thick as table tops and a cab that looked like a mine shaft elevator. Harley looked down to the boy, and told him that no such thing is possible, but he insisted. “It’s from my dream, he’s going to come inside- keep him out!”

The truck sped past, cutting a wagon trail in the slush. “See? Nothing-” she tried to assure him before the twisting outburst of melting steel. She looked back out the window. Between the layers of fog she saw the blossoms of flame. Black smoke rose like a flock of cranes fleeing gunfire.

The flames expanded, following trails of dark fuel into the street. The outline of the truck sharpened as it burned. What caused it to crash remained hidden beneath the fog. Harley took the boy back to bed. When she returned the fire blazed on. No help came, so she took the counter phone and dialed the emergency line. Little Johnny got back up, and took two kids, little Rosalita and little Mark, with him to watch the excitement.  The old woman at the other end told her “police are on the way,” so Harley hung up and told the kids to return to the nursery. “I want to see a fireman!” “I want to see the car blow up like in the movies!”

Harley ushered them back to the nursery, but it occurred to her that they might awake and tell the other children about the car accident, so she put them in the play area instead and told them to remain there. She watched the clock for ten minutes. No paramedics nor fire brigade came. She dialed 911 again, but they reiterated what they said before . Harley let the phone rest from its receiver on the counter. The operator’s tone echoed against the dry veins of ink. As she waited for rescue to arrive, the flames grew higher. A charred piece of jerky reached out and pulled himself out from a melted window, crawled through the spilled fuel, and through the street slush, moving like a cripple mantis, dragging his hips against the ground, fighting for every inch, every steamy breath seeping from his mouth spiraled into the smoke lingering from the roasted embers of crackling flesh.

Harley looked down both ways of the street, and saw no ambulance. The man collapsed before the day care. Little pandas stirred awake and peeked over the counter to see the snow build up on the crisp of smoldering person. The snow melted like sugar. Harley undid the locks, and jammed a book into the doorway to prevent the auto lock from engaging, then darted into the snow and mist. The children smelled the savory scent of cooked flesh blow in.

She approached and hesitated above the husk of man looking for signs of life. Snow jumped as he thrust an arm at her- not to take hold, but to swat her away. “Go away- get inside.” But Harley grabbed his arm and pulled him up despite his agonized protests. His limbs buckled, and his organs writhed against the charred leather of his abdomen. Smoke chimneyed from his throat. The flesh peeled from his arm like a bracelet, and he dropped down. Harley dropped his flesh. It sizzled in the slush.

The truck popped and crackled under the diesel reeking pyre. Harley tried again- she tore a strip from the bottom of her shirt, and tied it around his chest right beneath his armpits. He tried to tell her “leave me in the snow, leave me in the cold” but only harsh coughs and puffs of smoke escaped his mouth. Harley promised him pain killer inside. He saw the panda painted on the glass. “I don’t think tyke’s tylenol is going to cut it,” he tried to say.  

His clothing fell apart as she dragged him, and to Little Johnny it looked like a snake peeling its skin. He removed the book from the doorway. The automatic lock bolted.

Harley slapped the glass and told him to open the door. The children, frightened, alarmed, yelled at little Johnny for leaving them out. Little Brain and Special Todd awoke. Todd’s cries sounded like a cow in line for slaughter. She pounded on the door as the children argued over what  to do. Little Johnny insisted that the burned man was an “inkubutt” who intended to harm them. The kids wailed, unsure if they wanted the stinking man in or no. Then the Sleepless One stepped from her corner, her model nearly complete, and slipped between the fussy brats, to the door. She opened it- snow and cold blew in, and the reeking of burned meat entered as Harley lay the man against the floor. She rolled up a coat and stuffed it under his head. His breath sounded like a narrow vent. His flesh bubbles popped and oozed. Once inside the kids saw no cobra-monster, but rather grievous injuries- a man without lips or eyelids.

“He’s a zombie!” Little Johnny maintained to the exhilaration of the children.

Harley ran to the sink in the snack area and returned with a dixie cup of wax paper flavored water. She tricked some onto his lips. Green eyes widened as his tongue lapped the gum rivets below his incisors like a bee on a flower stamen. She wiped his blood from the tiles and nursed the torn segments of his flesh with goz from the first aid kit. His chest rose like tectonic shift, then lowered with exhale singing like rusted windmills. She leaned nearer, for she almost heard a word. Somewhere lost in the breakdown of his growling breathes, she heard the delicate consonants clacking in his throat. “Come… Closer… so… children… will… not… hear…”

She leaned near his exposed gums, the tongue still licking the regions never before reached now sweetened with his own blood clots. “Give… them...one… and… I can… tell you… their…. Fates…and… how… to… avoid.... them…”

Harley rose again to look down at the quarter round eyes quivering with ocular fluid.

“It… is… so… you … can… save… most… if… you… give… them… just… one...other...wise… I can’t… pro….mise… I... can… keep… you ...all...safe….”

Harley looked out over the edifices, a city shrinking every year, buildings crumbling, crime rising, a deteriorating nest of concrete and pollution. Why lose an ounce of blood over this place, she thought.

“Those...locks….will keep… the thieves...and the...jealous… ex spouses… away… but they… won’t stop…what’s... com...ing…just one… just one…”

“Who are you?”

“Just one… just one…”

Little Amy pressed the button on the counter. The metal shutters dropped down part way and stopped. The chains tangled in the compartment. Harley turned on the counter light. All four infants cried. The nine kids gathered around the burned body.

“Get… me… more… water…” he commanded them as they poked at him.

Harley comforted the infants, putting them back to sleep one by one, only to have them wake up again. She rushed around, nursing them with formula and comforting them with back pats. She shooed the children away, looking out for the ambulance.

“It’s… not… coming… for… me…”

Pressure behind her eyes swelled like a balloon. Silvery aura filled her vision. She set the infants back in bed, though they fussed and squirmed and spat. A red camera light blinked towards them, one she never noticed before. She rubbed her temples, the stench so strong that it drifted onto her tongue. The head pain corroded into something sharp and possessive. She almost took a spoon and scooped her eye out to get to the disturbance underneath, but she realized the cameras no longer faced the exterior of the daycare- they faced her. So she went to the security monitor. All the codes and numbers melted into archaic characters, but she saw the icon of a camera- and when she clicked on the tab the camera’s red light died, but to her revulsion the auto lock came undone too. She ran to the door and bolted it with the extra locks. She peeked outside through the metal shutters but she didn’t find an ambulance- instead she saw the mocking smile, dirt between his teeth, saliva and foam slobbered from his mouth, his clothes rotten and earth stained- only a young boy, not a stalker of the night, not a retribution-hungry fiend, but the slender frame of the nine year old she kept in her crack den twenty years back. She gave him taste after taste of crack cocaine, and to her pleasure she found his addiction developed fast and he no longer needed food, water, or sleep to perform his services- so long as she kept him supplied. She made over one thousand dollars a night from the greasy hands, beady eyes- and the plundering appetites of the city’s elite. All because of a magic white rock that she and her friends made in a trailer.

The revenue stream came to an end when one client came out, zipping up his Incotex Bensons, wild and nervous. When she entered the room she found her slave convulsing on the floor like a fish, the back of his head lifting and slamming against the floor. She saw the crack pipe still burning on the hardwood, but didn’t know what to do. So, she crushed his throat with her knee and buried him in some woods. She never knew who he was or where he came from. But she never forget the cyclone of emotions that haunted his face until his neck cracked and he at last slipped away into the backwash from whence he came.

Harley closed the shutter and wiped the sweat from her hands on her pants. The children asked what disturbed her. Some went for the window, but she called for them to stop. She pulled every chair in distance jammed them against the front door. She tore the chain from the compartment and the shutters fell all the way down. As she stood by the window she felt his dirt filled eyes searching for her, breathing against the glass.

She went to the coffee room, pulled out the table, and pressed it against the back door. She dragged in the toy boxes and secured the table in place. When she thought she sealed it, she began to worry about the vents- so she closed them all, and covered them with spare cloth diapers and stacked boxes in front.  She surveyed her work, and thought that no invasive entity possessed the prowess to overcome her barricades.

The infants kicked and screamed. Harley dimmed the lights so the nursery looked like a garden of darkness and untucked blankets. She gathered the nine children. “The ambulance will come and take the poor man to the hospital. You all need your sleep.”

The kids didn’t want to sleep, they wanted to keep poking.

“Just stay here in the nursery- whatever you do, stay here. Do not move.”

She forced each of them to sit on their mats, and she put in another cartoon. This one didn’t look like anything she remembered. The box featured a shrimp and a piranha going on an Amazon adventure- but the images on screen portrayed heads rolling down pyramids to gushing cracks at the bottom where starving hands reached up to take any piece of flesh grabable- the hands fought and hurt each other for the smallest hair. She unplugged the TV. The children looked confused, and anxious. Little Rosalita cried first, then Little Mark, then Special Todd. Harley pulled her hair and went back to check on the burned man.

“No one can take them from me,” she said to him. “You hear that? No one.”

He didn’t hear. His breathes stopped. His teeth looked glossy and clean, his jaw limp. His eyes remained watery as bird baths.  She placed her hand on his neck. His flesh didn’t feel cold,  but hot as summer sidewalks. When she pulled her hands away, she didn’t doubt he died. She removed pieces of his flesh to make sure, but he didn’t twitch. She wiped the ashes from her hands with a towel. She went to check on the children.

One infant needed his diaper changed. Little Ben and Little Amy stopped crying. The others blubbered as they watched her distribute juice boxes, but no sugary fluids or snacks comforted them. The Sleepless One left her juice untouched. She never cried. Yet her attention tunneled towards someone standing above the burned man, concealed in shadows perspiring from a hairline. The spectre snapped its fingers, and the power across the entire neighborhood died.  Harley heard scuffling and shifting, grabbing and tossing. One by one, the crying stopped.

Harley held her hands out, taking short steps to the counter shelf where she left her purse. She pulled out a small utility light, but the switch did nothing. She listened. Even the clocks stopped. Then she felt a cold hand on her shoulder.

“Here”, the stranger slipped a lantern in her hand that glowed with a blue fire. A hand took hers and used it to guide the slide open. The blue light cast over the nursery.

Little Brian slept in the clutches of Cool-Aid stained cloaks. She swiped at them, but they sunk into the floor.

Little Kaylee sat in the corner, but a mammoth of a woman, an insult to the word obese, alone in a small apartment, swallowed the little girl whole and watched TV all day long.

Little Brace, one of the infants, lay in his bed- but the bed sat on seedy motel floor. A shivering crackhead in the corner asked the baby for more “of them sweet gravel” and carried him off to procure more narcotics.

Little Mark slept in a toilet. Someone flushed it, and down he went.

Little Karen slept chained to a mattress on the floor.

Little Amy slept in the warming spotlight of a burning barrel amongst shivering vagrants.

Special Todd slept on a veterinarian's euthanasia chair.

Little Ben slept as warplanes gassed his foxhole.

Little Suzy slept in a red basket made of squirming fingers.

Little Rosalita slept as USIS agents dropped from ropes, and swept her away.

Little Timmy slept behind prison bars.

Little Johnny slept as the moon lit up recently filled grave. One hand still stuck out, took hold of Johnny and pulled him under.

The Sleepless One slept. Under the Golden Gate bridge.

All thirteen of them faded under blankets of shadow. Like they weren't there. Like they never even existed. Yet something remained in the nursery. She lifted the light to see, though she knew already. The sinister dirt filled mouth opened, worms squirmed where a tongue should’ve been. Harley groveled, tears breaking down her cheeks- “Just one, please!” she begged.

The tormentor listened. Other eyes floating like tiny torches in the dark  focused in on her. “Just one, let it be me- let the rest go and I will offer myself.”

The tormentor stepped so near that she smelled the burned rocks of the broken glass pipe and the cologne of the rich old men that lathered themselves in his tender youth. He blew the lantern out. The locks each came undone, and the winter wind blew open the door to bite her bones one last time.

In the morning, the nine children awoke to the squealing of the four infants. The city looked business as usual with a fresh coating of snow. School was cancelled. Their parents picked most of them up on time. The kids were happy that day. The distant towers lustered over them, and sang to them:

“When the bough breaks,

The cradle will fall,

And down will come baby

Cradle and all.”