parallel section for 'arson'

Ok, so, this story is in many pieces, and I know we're not supposed to post incomplete things but bringing it all together is totally beyond me right now. All you need to know is that the narrator remains the same as before, but we are now a year or two in the future.
--------

Carlos

In a book I read once, a couple years ago, I learned that anything that can be thought of particles can be thought of as waves, and anything of waves as particles. I also learned that things were either waves or particles in the first place; I sort of knew that about particles, since everything is made of smaller things, but I’d never thought about it that much, or at least not enough to come to that conclusion. This was a nonfiction book so I learned all these things in a very direct way and they stuck with me.
I’m in the Organic Produce Market out on Terrace, closer to downtown than where I live. This is where I work, at one of the registers. OPM, as the employees affectionately know it both for quick speech and because it’s fun to say “I work at opium,” is a sort of high-end organic foods place, in that it’s laid out like a regular grocery store and is almost as large. I’m leaning against the check-out counter at my register, the one I prefer – right in front of the big automatic sliding doors, where you get the most sunlight. It’s a Saturday, midafternoon, and not a damn thing is going on. Carlos is helping some oldish woman find sprouts. Pete’s doing whatever it is Pete does in the office upstairs, and Rachel hasn’t come in yet. At my register, I lean my elbows on the cool fake wood of the counter, balling one fist and holding it in my other hand, resting my chin on both, legs apart behind me, prison-rape style. My apron, maroon-colored, is hanging loose from my neck because I’ve untied it. Pete makes us all wear pants and polo shirts; it’s too hot for the apron to be all on top of me, too. I have ten black polo shirts for this purpose. I’m staring at the wall, quite a ways away, five more registers between me and it and four behind. I scratch my chin idly. I’m thinking it’s a wave day.
Carlos comes sauntering back to the front with the old woman. He’s Hispanic but unusually dark, like maybe there’s some Indian in him; I’ve never asked. I incline my head slightly towards him and he does the same for me, a bit of worker solidarity. Otherwise I follow them both with my eyes only; I’m comfortable. Carlos is, too. He’s got a saunter to his walk always, but it’s more pronounced today, with nothing to do but think about what things are made of and occasionally hunt down vegetables. He likes the woman in the sort of affable way he has of liking people. He smiles at her as she chatters on about how nasty she’s found out most produce is from the internet and her son who’s a farmer up in Virginia and she’s just oh so disgusted with the state of things as basic as fruits and vegetables today and how she’s so glad there’s a place she can come to get safer foods &c. &c. Carlos just nodding all the way along as they finally come up to a register two up from mine, stopping the nodding only to shoot me a quick wink, an isn’t this lady hilarious sort of thing, and I smile wanly to indicate that I’m on the same page. He rings her up quickly (she’s only buying the sprouts and some curry powder) but she stays awhile after he’s returned her credit card, chatting about her son’s good work up north. Carlos’s answers are almost all monosyllables, but she’s still got the impression he appreciates her conversation so she keeps going, which is good because he does. When it’s not busy like this, when it’s just me and Carlos, sometimes I get time to wonder at how Carlos is able to put forth this sort of idea of himself as a friendly person and good listener, without needing to do anything besides mumble “yeah” or “oh.”
After the woman leaves, Carlos ushers his saunter my way, the usual half-grin flickering at his mouth like something inevitable. He comes around the front of the register facing me and hops up onto the counter, legs swinging off the ground, bumping his Converses into the paneling. Shoes are one thing we aren’t required to wear a certain way. I have not worn anything but flip-flops in three years.
Carlos is a big guy, short but still with a sense of bigness about him. Very broad shoulders, I guess, though I’ve never really understood why it is some people seem to take up more space in an abstract sort of way than others. He’s wearing a dark green polo shirt and loose jeans that are more fashionable than the plain khaki pants I have. His eyes are very dark brown and tend to blend with the pupils, contributing to the overall impression of too-darkness, I’ve always thought. His hair is black, too, but he keeps it buzzed. All this I take in as routine, and Carlos speaks.
“So you up for tonight or what, man?” He speaks just like he walks, and with no accent. He’s lived in North Carolina all his life, just like me.
Carlos is talking about a party he’s throwing with a friend out of the city a ways, out in cow-country and even getting on toward the Sandhills. The way he was laying it out to me before the farmer’s mother came in, the friend is house-sitting for his grandparents (the friend’s, not Carlos’s), and is looking to throw a decent-sized party. It’s supposed to be a very top-notch farmhouse, with a barn and all that, and a lot of fields and farm kind of things, and this guy really just wants to fill it with as many people as possible. To that end he has stocked a “plethora of kegs,” in Carlos’s words, Carlos riffing off of that movie with Chevy Chase and making fun of his own lack of accent at the same time in the clever way he can do sometimes.
Seeing that it is time for discussion I abandon my prostrate position, which is only good for very slow kinds of thinking, and jump up onto my own counter, though I elect to sit cross-legged rather than let my legs dangle. As I jump I talk.
“I dunno,” I say, staying carefully noncommittal, since I really don’t know. “It’s pretty far away, right? And I don’t even know this guy, or anything…” I’m trying to appear frank and sincerely concerned by these things.
“Nah, man. Look, you can ride with me, I finally got a stereo for the camino, it’s bad ass. It’s like a thirty minute drive, tops.”
“But I’ve never even met this guy. What the hell is his name? I don’t even know what the guy’s name is, or – ”
“Maybe I didn’t convey very well how many people will be there, homeboy. A shitload. A metric fucking shitload. It ain’t gonna matter one way or the other. And even if it did, he’s a friend of mine, he’s not gonna kick out my friend.”
This all makes sense, I know, so I don’t say anything. Really, I just don’t want to go because Carlos is 25, a solid five years older than me, and I don’t really know many of his friends. Sometimes Carlos and I hang out after work at his grungy townhouse that’s just up against downtown, drinking tequila and shooting the breeze, and I’ve met some of them that way, but still, this seems like a real affair. A real planned-thing. But Carlos is adamant, and I have to admit I’m buoyed by his determination to get me to this party. Eventually I agree, and it’s worked out that he’ll pick me up at my place after he grabs a six pack and we’ll eat on the way.


Rachel

Rachel steps through the doors right at six, bringing in with her the last bits of sun and the beginnings of another perfect spring night. Rachel is always on time, and Pete loves her for this. Carlos just plain loves her.
She smiles at me as she walks past to the little “Employees Only” closet, where she stows a purse and some sort of paper bag. Rachel is by no means beautiful, but she has a sort of elegant nature about her that makes her presence distinctive. She comes over and stakes out the same place Carlos had been sitting a few hours earlier, walking slowly but covering a disconcerting amount of distance. She is very tall, especially for a woman. Preparing for an awkward social engagement, I put down the magazine I’ve been thumbing through, and am suddenly amused at the idea that this little spot is my office, and that Rachel is a client. I smile at this, hoping it will help an effortful, brief conversation go down smoothly. I grope for something to say.
“What’s in the bag?” Lame. Rachel is delighted, though.
“Oh, it’s a vase for my mom. It’s her birthday tomorrow, so I went down to Seagrove, she really likes the pottery they do down there.”
How to respond to this?
“Oh.” Excellent. Behind Rachel, I see Carlos leaving his register and walking toward us, trying to maintain saunter but failing now that he’s all worked up, running a hand uselessly through what hair he has. Rachel drives Carlos wild, and she is the only person I have ever seen who can penetrate his thick outer layer of coolness. She doesn’t ever express much interest in him, but I suspect that in some way this does not really bother Carlos. In any case, it’s a good situation for me, since it allows me to maintain a minimum of conversation with Rachel, who has always unnerved me. I don’t know what it is. Her eyes are set slightly too far apart to be considered average, and this gives her a vaguely insectile appearance, but smart insectile, like a praying mantis or something. Somehow I doubt that’s the only reason, but it is at least something I can sink my mental neuroses into.
Carlos is upon us now, already excitedly talking to Rachel about something he heard on the radio the other day, and to her credit her smile falters only for a split second before she regains balance and humors her odd, short coworker. I take the opportunity to slip over to the same employee closet, where I hang up my apron. Rachel and Pete will work the nightshift alone, as the schedule dictates for Saturday. As I’m shutting the door, I hear Carlos launching into his party description, complete with the “plethora” line, and inviting Rachel to come along, and gee, she’d love to come, Carlos, but only it’s her Mom’s birthday tomorrow, and she’s going to make her breakfast and give her this beautiful vase and there’s no way she could be out so late.
“Homeboy!” Carlos is calling to me as I turn from the closet. “Don’t you think Rachel could use a night out?” I can tell it’s a lost cause, and so can Carlos, but he’s trying to smooth it out anyway. I do my best to pitch in.
“Aw, come on, birthdays are important, too. And for her own mother! You want to keep her from her own mother?”
Carlos does an impression of sheepishness which ends up looking sort of like a sad clown face, with the lip turned down too much; I don’t guess he’s much acquainted with the emotion.
“Yeah, I suppose you’ve got a point.” He starts walking to the closet, untying the back of his apron and flicking it over his head in a single motion. Rachel busies herself at a register, unlocking the terminal and setting up for the few customers in the store. As Carlos and I are heading towards the door, Pete emerges from the office just above our heads, over the front entrance, and comes down the stairs, which arrive at the ground floor right where we’re standing, to one side of the closet. Pete has joke that he tells sometimes, that with a Peter and a Paul (me) working at OPM, Rachel really should change her name to Mary to complete the set. From a kindly old manager who has run the OPM since his family came into it decades ago, it would be sort of cute. From Pete, who’s in his early thirties and just sort of a greaseball, it’s somehow unsettling. Anyway, I don’t want to hear the joke, so I walk out of the doors quickly, Carlos shouting something to Rachel hastily over his shoulder and following me out into the bruised purple of the shopping center at night.

Mold

A fat red honeycomb sat on the grass in the backyard like something God had made and then left, for people to figure out what to do with. It was a red sand box.

"We have to keep that if we get this house," Megan Roth said.

"That sand box? I'm looking at a house. You're looking at a sand box?" Jeff asked.

Megan saw she was behaving irrational but what the hell, she was pregnant, and by all the laws of man, if anyone had a free license to act irrational it was a pregnant woman. Right? She felt the baby kick when she saw the sand box and took that as a premonition. Luke or David or Aaron if it was a boy. Mirah or Lana or Gretchen (she'd always liked that name since elementary school when she'd been jealous of a popular girl named Gretch).

Baby would like that sand box, pure and simple. One baby kick meant yes. Two meant no. One baby kick, big and energetic meant hell yes.

"I just like it," she told him.

"I like the house," Jeff said. "You like the sand box. I guess we have a winner."

Jeff had printed out a checklist and a scorecard and made her use her purse pen to put big check marks next to this one.

It was big, this house on Two Harbor road in Lake Lewiston, Iowa. It was so close, you could smell the lake. The house was a hundred years old if it was a day, with a flat porch splashed with new white paint, windows with pointed arches, trimmed with grey. The interior of the house was rustic, like a sort of magic cottage. Dick Martin, the realtor, said the owners were a retired couple living in Florida.

"What's the day's scores?" Jeff asked, driving back to Des Moines.

"I know you want that house," she said.

He didn't say anything and that was ample evidence she'd been right. As she expected, Jeff called her from work the next day and told her he'd made an offer on the house.

"Mr. Martin says they'll accept it. It's a low ball figure." That last part was his excuse for not discussing it with her first. "It's a buyer's market, Meg."

She surrendered.

Dick Martin called the next day with the news that their offer had been accepted.

***

She walked the house, planning out in her head where everything would go. Might as well make this the baby's room. Our room's next door. There'll be baby monitors and I'll be able to respond if the baby needs anything without walking down the hall. She opened the closet in the baby's room.

She recoiled. The closet was dusty, the carpet stained. Over the air conditioning register a rope of mold clung like the saliva string of some swamp monster.

The air was ripe with it. Mold-air. Hot and sweaty. Megan immediately felt the baby kick.

The mold was green-black and looked like algae rotting on the side of a fish tank.

She called Jeff's cell. "You need to come to the new house on your lunch. Thanks."

The thanks would piss him off, she knew.

He called her right back. "What do you need?" He asked in his patient (she's pregnant) voice.

"There's some kind of mold in the closet."

"So?"

"We're having a baby," she hissed.

"Meg, we've already bought the house. That's our house you're in." He was wearing his calm voice, the one she hated.

"A moldy house," she countered.

"I'll call someone," he said.

"You do that."

***

She followed the man from room to room. He looked a little like Clint Eastwood in the face but got rounder than Clint Eastwood in the wide buttocks. The Dirty Harry of Professional Mold Cleaners.

He introduced himself as Dale.

He poked around by the air conditioning register. "Musta' gotten hot in here over the summer. Mold likes it hot." He pulled the register off. "There musta' been condesation in here when they shut the air conditioner off. They didn't run it all summer?"

"I don't know. We just moved in. The people we bought the house from live in Florida."

"Well, that 'splains it. The people probably left in high summer, right?" He continued without waiting for her answer. "They probably just shut the air conditioner off and it had a leak, and it got humid up here. See where it's discolored right here on the wall."

"Yes," she agreed.

"Lady you got black mold."

"Is that bad?"

Dale shrugged. "Nah, a little bit like that won't do nothin'. You oughtta see an infestation. You gotta wear a mask to clean that because in large amounts the spores cause all kinds of breathing problems. Spores get in the skin and the food in your fridge..." he trailed off at her look.

"I can do this up with a bit of bleach," he said. "No problem. You just might wanna' have a look to see if there's a leak after you run the heat or the conditionin'."

"Thank you Dale," she said.

She waited for him to finish on the front porch. There were kids playing in the street, tossing a ball back and forth. As it got closer to late afternoon, the reason people wanted to move to a prime location like Two Harbors became absolutely clear. The setting sun, the sparkling breeze from the lake, the way the trees dropped their red leaves and the branches seemed to stretch all the way to heaven, their knotted limbs dancing in the sun. It was a pastoral scene. This was the kind of place you could let your kids roam free without worrying about some molester snatching them up and taking them back to some secret molestor's body dump.

Dale tapped her on the shoulder interrupting her train of thought.

"All done, Ma'm. Good as new up there." He was wearing heavy gloves, and he followed her glance. "Just bein' careful with the bleach."

"Thank you Dale," she said.

"'s my job. M'am let me just say this is a beautiful house. Nice property, too. Big yard." He looked at her stomach. "I see you and your husband have the right idea." He smiled.

He waved as he left.

She had to look. She went up the stairs into baby's room. She swung open the closet door. Dale hadn't missed a spot. The register was clean.

At dinner, Jeff looked harried but he still found the time to tell her his thoughts.

"Meg I know you are preoccupied with making sure everything's perfect. That man cost me one-hundred and eighty-nine dollars. He called me and told me it was just a little mold from a leaky vent. I understand that you're pregnant, and I know that sometimes pregancy causes some extreme feelings...you let me handle the muckups, from now on. I know you know how much this house cost...closing costs alone."

Everything's gonna' be perfect, she thought. Him sitting there with his smug look. Just one of those episodes you've told me about in the baby books Meg dear. I know what's wrong.

"Jeff Roth I am so glad I married you," she told him.

The next morning she watched the news and then went outside to the backyard to look at the wide green triangular swatch of grass they now owned. "You're going to love this," she told her stomach. Her belly felt warm. The baby kicked.

She walked to the sand box. It wasn't filled with sand like she'd expected. It was filled with wet gravel, grey and black stones, piled like it was a child's cairn. She toed the loose gravel. There was dark mud underneath. The sand box probably hadn't been used for years and years. The old couple who had lived here had moved to Florida. Maybe they had kids, and maybe those kids had played in the sand box, she thought. Maybe kids had once sung songs to each other like she had done when she had been a little girl, and dug with red plastic buckets in the sand, sometimes moistening it a little so the shapes little hands designed would keep longer.

She put her hand on her belly. The baby was active. Her whole body felt flush and she patted her stomach. "There, there," she said. Mirah or Lana or Gretchen. Luke or David or Aaron.

Probably with the force of those kicks I'm having a boy, she thought.

She ran herself a bath. The water pressure in the house was good. It was clear. There were no strange particles flitting through the water that filled the bath.

She sighed and leaned back in the tub with her foot by the drain under the water. The hot water was baking steam on the bathroom window. She hadn't turned the fan on because she wanted to luxuriate in the heat and the feeling of loosening the tightness over her belly. She could write her name in that mirror if she wanted, she thought. Megan. Married To Jeff One-Time Dream Man.

She snickered.

The water was suddenly too hot. She pushed out her toes to turn the faucet down a bit, but unlike her last tub in the apartment, this one was a little tougher to turn and she finally decided to sit up and just do it manually with her fingers.

Her hands slipped off. The water was growing hotter. She stood up, arcs of water falling back into the tub. She got out of the tub, her ankles burning. Her feet hurt. They felt flayed. She felt like one of those people who run over burning coals.

Naked, she opened the bathroom door, to let the steam out - which was now ninety-nine percent of the atmosphere. She looked back at the tub.

It was black and green and shiny.

It was not clear water. It was not water at all. Whatever it was lapped the sides of the tub like a gentle tide from a lake. It bubbled. The water started churning and leaping over the sides of the tub spraying to bathroom tiles and running through the channels that interconnected the tiles.

She retreated, slammed the door, and put her back to it. She looked at her midriff, the round perfect rise of her belly. There was nothing black on her, no extra shiny to report.

She reopened the door. The tile, laid fresh by the last owners before they put the house up for sale, gleamed, it's criss-cross grid cleanly caulked. There was no sign of sludge-water, of black green mold water dribbling and sparkling. The tub was slightly overspilling though. Clear water. She hurried and turned the faucet and pushed the drain lever. The water drained in a bubbling echo.

She didn't mention the bathtub incident to Jeff. (Having a hallucination he'd say. Perhaps you're not good with pregnancy if you're susceptible to such illusions) Perhaps she should just deem it a hazard of the trade - the baby-making trade. She told herself that while she brushed her teeth before bed, dressed in sweats. Pretty soon the generous looks she got from others, who looked like they wanted to reach out and touch her belly would disappear, replaced by annoyed grimaces as she dragged a screaming child through the grocery store. She smiled in contemplation.

Jeff lay in bed under the sheets reading a magazine, a car glossy with a NASCAR driver holding up a trophy. He smelled like cinnamon.

She sat down on the bed next to him and swung her feet under the sheets, manuevering her bulk quietly, so as not to disturb his reading. She reached under the sheets.

She found his penis. It felt wet at the top. Wet and sticky. One thing about pregnancy Jeff claimed he liked was that her sexual desires had grown near insurmountable as the pregnancy wore on. She was like an animal.

She flashed Jeff a mischievous smile. She felt him growing even larger under her fingers, moist, the route easier, the friction less. She knew what he liked. Her eyes slowly moved up the sheets from the bulge of blanket pumping up and down to his face, her own flushed.

Jeff turned the pages of his magazine.

His expression was distant.

She released his penis.

She withdrew her hand from the sheets. She looked at it. She felt sick. Her eyes rolled up and she nearly fainted, at what she saw.

Her hand was covered in sticky black. She had to pry her fingers apart, they were so encrusted with black matter. It gave off a sickly sweet odor, swamp flies and cats in heat, bug spatter, hot smoky microwaved hot dogs twisting and twitching, bologna and cheap processed meat.

She gagged.

"Meg," she heard him say, as she crouched on the bed holding her mouth, trying to keep the puke in. She inadvertently got some in her mouth from her fingers. It tasted vile. It tasted exactly like it smelled. Fly shit. Hot dogs. Fornicating cat.

Her lips covered in shiny black and green mold like a fashion model from the underworld, she ripped the sheets back.

There was nothing there.

There was no black mold penis, the shaft leading to a thatch of rotten weeds. No rictus mold man, bulbishly waiting. (Have a glass of wine. It's an 1877 black rot. For proper taste sniff the glass first, before taking a small sip. Hold it. Roll it in your mouth. Let it sink in. Experience the hot ripe sensation as it excavates your taste buds to the max. Here's a Hand of Glory to nibble on while you wait for your main course of elk rectum).

- Nothing but white sheet.

"I think I'm having an anxiety attack," she told him. The room was whirling, the walls spinning.

"Let me call the doctor," he finally said. She saw he had waited, watching her. He was seeing what I was up to. He thinks I'm up to something.

He picked up the land line phone, a small cheap unadorned phone from somewhere like Korea, and pushed in the digits for her Doctor. She reached over and clicked the hang-up button. He sighed. He hadn't really wanted to call, she knew. Just Meg the pregnant gal acting out again. I just have to get through this, she thought. If he did call the doctor, I'd babble and spill my guts to her about these fantasies. They'd put me in a hospital. She felt her heart beating in her chest like a semi truck honking across a superhighway.

"I think I'm fine," she told him. She put on a fake smile, not caring how weak it looked. "Let's just go to bed."

***

She woke up with a start. Jeff was gone to work. Her lips were dry. She looked at the alarm clock. It was ten in the morning. She got out of bed slowly, holding the bottom of her stomach and levered herself to the bathroom. She looked in the mirror. She looked haggard in the mirror slash medicine cabinet.

She went in the kitchen. Baby was hungry. Her stomach felt hot, another heat flash.

She opened the fridge.

Black and green spores covered the food. A can of grape soda half-exploded, the moss had somehow pierced the top of the can like it was thirsty. Spores writhed on a plate of saran-wrapped meat loaf like living caviar. They crawled on the non-fat milk. A black mass loomed inside a translucent vegetable drawer.

She closed the fridge door.

She went to the laundry room and got the bleach and a sponge. She put them in a bucket.

She returned upstairs.

She opened the fridge. The mold was still there. If anything, it had gotten even worse. It rubbed shiny green streamers across the fridge's automatic light, giving the refrigerator a pale green marshy look.

She poured the bleach in the bucket.

She ran the sponge over the mold.

Baby kicked against her oven-hot belly.


***

She called her mom to discuss pregnancy. Alice Long was retired but before Megan Roth was Megan Roth she was Megan Long and her mom had worked as an appointment coordinator for a doctor.

After a little small talk she broached the subject.

"Mom when you were pregnant with me..."

"Yes?" Her mother asked.

"Did you ever have - you know, did you ever see things that weren't really there?"

Her mother hrmed as she thought.

Finally, "I don't remember honey. Why, is everything okay? Is Jeff treating you okay?"

"Everything's fine, with Jeff I mean. I've been having these hallucinations."

"Hull nations," her mother tripped over the word.

"Yes," Megan said.
"Honey I have a good doctor. As good as you can get. He's Doctor Elijah (sound of her rooting through her purse)...Stephen Elijah. He's Protestant."

"Mom I already have a doctor."

Her mom harrumphed. "I know you do. But she's a woman doctor and if you ask me, a doctor should be a man. Women are too worried about their day to day worries. Men have better concentration. Women ---."

"Okay ma, I've got to go. Someone's knocking."

"Okay honey - if you want to talk I'll be gone in an hour to visit Mrs. Beck. Do you remember Mrs. Beck? Oh, I meant to tell you: the neighbor girl Darcy is pregnant. Fifteen and pregnant. She's getting rid of it I hear. Getting it abort-.."

"Bye mom, say hello to Mrs. Beck for me," Megan said hanging up the telephone with a rewarding click.

She went out back with the sack of trash. It was filled with the contents of the refrigerator. The white sack was bulging with drippy mold. She decided to throw it in the sand box. She'd sneak it into the trash Thursday so Jeff wouldn't see.

She was halfway to it, when she heard a noise. The noise was coming from the sand box. It was the sound of sand being dumped, the fine granules sifting.

The sky was cold, overcast; grey clouds slid against the cold pale sun. She approached the sand box, slowly. She thought perhaps it was a neighbor boy come to play in the sand box, perhaps it was one of those neighborhood artifacts like she'd had as a little girl. Like the swings Mr. Baker kept in his backyard long after his kids had grown and had families of their own, so that neighborhood children had a safe place to swing - safer than the park; and you just didn't know these days. There was a boy in the sand box. She saw his head, a rich black mat of curly hair moving in time while he dug in the sand. She couldn't see anymore of him. He must be reclining in the sand, his only focus the thing he was creating. Perhaps he had a cup of water in there and was using it to shape the sand into the things that were in his fantasies.

She got closer. She could see the head was fine, the curls glamously blue-black, the hair ruffling a little in the wind. The head went deeper. He was digging a hole to China, she thought. She should tell him he'd come up somewhere in the ocean if he was digging right here.

He looked up.

It was not a boy's face that looked up, that caught all the shadows of the fall day in his sharp-as-razors cheekbones. The fleshy lips, black. The eyes too wide apart that sat on the outside of his forehead, like a fish. The lack of a nose. The boy had teeth though. Rows and rows of shiny metal teeth. His skin was black and green. He stood up. He was completely in the nude.

Oh this is too much, she thought, her hand covering her eyes helplessly.

He put one foot outside of the sand box. It was an aquatic foot, the toes webbed. Another. Now he was out of the sand box entirely, his eyes on her. She dropped the trash bag and turned and walked back to the house as fast as she could without breaking into a run. He wasn't real, she thought. This was another one of her pregnancy deliriums, these visitations. She reached the back door to the kitchen, opened it quickly, quicker perhaps than if she'd really thought he was a phantasm of her mind and went inside. She locked the back door and looked through the blinds.

Mold boy was sniffing the trash. He was grinning a smile of little metallic-steel teeth, lips like the skin of a rotting melon. He had his arms at his sides but the fingers were grabbing. Those grabbesr wanted to hold her down, she thought, and rip the baby right out and hold it up like a NASCAR trophy. Hold it up like one of those kids gone bad in Lord Of The Flies. What had they done to Piggy? Put his head on a

She closed the blinds and picked up the phone to call the police but then decided to take one more look to see if mold boy was real. He was no longer there. Wait, was he real - or wasn't he? She stood silently debating. Megan decided it was in her best interest to hang up the phone and walk to the front door and lock it and draw the latch.

She peered out the front window. There was a kid out there. But it wasn't mold boy. This kid was normal. Dressed in cheap clothes and cheap sneakers, he bounced a tennis ball on the street. He wasn't being careful of the gutters, either, as if he were out there to lose that tennis ball on purpose. Sometime I'll have a kid, she thought. He'll walk these streets, perhaps with a green scuffed tennis ball, bouncing it aimlessly and dreaming kid-dreams. Perhaps waiting for Jeff to return from the office to play ball, or have a little brother or sister of his own, a nagging presence trailing him as he bounced the ball.

She sat down on the couch and turned on the TV.

She had an uneventful afternoon, considered taking a walk, but decided against it. She was getting closer to term and her doctor had told her in direct contrast to her advice of a month ago that she should take it easy and not do any strenuous exercise unless she wanted to spend the rest of her pregnancy on her back in bed rest.

Megan shuddered. Not her- with everything that had happened lately, these stupid delirious tantrums, the last thing she needed was to be ordered to immobility. She rubbed her stomach. It was so warm it felt like baby had a little bic lighter and was thumbing the flint against her womb. She was behaving like a lunatic but the last thing she wanted was to lay in bed all day long. (He wouldn't have a hard time getting me. I'd wake up with Dark Wet And Moldy caressing my stomach).

She cleaned a little before Jeff got home. She avoided obnoxious solvents, regretting the bleach earlier. You couldn't be too careful, she knew from pregnancy books. Her copy of What To Expect When You're Expecting was well-thumbed, well-thumbed indeed. Jeff called it her bible, when he caught her reading it, scrutinizing a section for tips or information she might not know.

"Meg reading her bible again," he'd say.

She heard his knock. He must have forgotten his keys. It had to be him. This was his normal time. She hadn't heard the garage, though. But it was quiet, the door had been replaced by the last owners. It ascended smoothly, the gears newly minted, the door oiled. She looked out the window at the garage hoping for a glimpse of the tell-tale light. No. There wasn't a light out there. There was nothing but darkness. The garage sat a little away from the house. The house had been built before they attached garages like they did these days and a previous owner had just built a standalone and built an attic on top, though it was mostly just insulation and a big coil of electrical wires, according to Jeff.

The knock continued, a hearty knock, a let-me-in-I'm Hungry mom - knock. She looked at the thudding door. She resolved to peep through the peephole. Maybe it was the boy she'd seen playing with his ball in the street, it was just a minute past six o' clock, and Jeff would be home any minute, and everything, would be the same as it normally was.

Boom.

Boom.

The I'm hungry knock kept coming.

Boom.

It stopped before she got to the peephole. She looked out into the cold fall night. Twin Harbor street looked back at her, the faces of the neighboring houses, the people she had yet to meet, yet planned on it - perhaps a house warming party - normalize things and get used to having these people around and them used to having her around - the houses were merrily lit with golden dinner lights.

Maybe a prank, she thought. She'd go back and watch TV.

Boom. Boomboomboomboom.

The rapid knock, with no one there.

She darted back as the peephole glass broke and tinkled to the foyer floor. Behind it came a thin runnel of black liquid. The liquid splashed on the red flagstones in front of the door, filling the cracks. It filled her Keds, her husband's spare pair of Dexters.

Boom.

The knocker relented. The black liquid slowed to a trickle.

She jerked when she heard feet on the stairs. They were coming from baby's room. Tap. tap. Tap. Taptaptaptap.

Someone running in place with a jump rope, an athlete doing a bit of training upstairs.

Mold boy shoved his head over the railing halfway down the stairs. Black pupils rotated in his fish eyes. He grinned. He must have crawled through the window in baby's room. Or seeped up through the air conditioning vent, she thought. She got up and tried to go out the front door but it would not open. The knob was coated with the vile black mold, and she thought the inner workings of the door must be, too. That must have been what he was doing; spitting as he knocked, the green and black shiny slime breaking the door's mechanism. I'm like a bug trapped in a jar, she thought.

Mold boy was crawling down the stairs like a sperm, slick black and green spreading, enveloping the stairs. He carried his own Slip N' Slide with him, she thought hysterically.

She ran for the back door, one hand holding her belly. She opened the door and took one look behind her. He was crawling, but he was slow, and without running she should be able to outdistance him. She went out into the backyard, barefoot, holding her belly with her hand.

She ran into the backyard of their new house, spying out of the corner of her eye, the yellow of her husband's headlights. She saw his taillights redden and the garage door swinging up. She ran toward him and averted her course, when mold boy crawled out of the door. If she went that way she'd run right into him. Instead she decided to take off behind the house and circle around the neighbor's and head back in this direction. She'd get in Jeff's car and tell him to take her anywhere but here. She couldn't live in this house. She didn't want to live here. She could never sleep in its walls, with the memory of all these horrors, put her new baby to bed, the musical chug-chug of its spinning toy levitating above it.

She took a big breath, felt the baby kick. She looked at the sand box as she ran. It wasn't a sand box. It was a hole. The sides were pulsating with shiny black and green. Fine hairs split the black and green mold. She smelled pickels and peanut butter. She fainted.

She woke up to a flashlight. Jeff. He knelt with the flashlight stabbing her eyes. "Mmmmm," she said. He withdrew the flashlight.

"What are you doing out here?" He asked her. He looked toward the trash bag, its plastic sides rippling in cold wind.

"Someone was chasing me," she said.

"Who?"

She couldn't find an answer. He helped her up.

"I thought," she said.

"Meg, what is it?"

"Nothing," she said.

Her stomach hurt. The baby kicked. It was hot to the touch.

***

Her doctor (still a she - and how do you like that fucking shit, momma?) told her the baby was crowning. Jeff held her hand. He had been steady gaining weight. He's been talking about layoffs, she thought crazily. He clutched her hand with his own wet warm one. A tremor passed through her. It had nothing to do with labor pains; this tremor was of a different sort entirely, and she wondered if that boy hadn't gotten to her while she'd laid unconscious. Had opened her legs and crawled inside her like a tampon. Maybe she had a mold boy in her belly, laughing and spitting inside her. The liquid spilling out in rivulets on the bed - the doctor's transparent gloves covered in the stuff.

Push. Pushpushpushpushpushpush.

(One spurt of motor oil later).

"Oh God," her husband said.

She couldn't tell if this word was a word of joy or a word of horror.

The War Will Be Televised

For my fifteenth birthday my mom did something she had never done before, and told me what one of my presents was going to be. It wasn't like I believed in Santa Claus at fifteen so she wasn't exactly ruining Christmas. If you believe in Santa Clause when you're fifteen, I've got some land on the moon I want to sell you.

She took me shopping with a spend limit of $200. If you've been TV shopping lately, $200 doesn't get you too far.

I told her with a sinking heart that I didn't see one I wanted. I secretly wanted her to allow me the extra hundred for that 20 inch Sony flat screen beaut, but apparently it did not occur to her to kick in an extra hundred.

And I wasn't foolish enough to ask. She was pushing her mid-forties and had grown up poor, enough to believe that we (my father, and me) should not only respect the power of money, we should also respect that she controlled the flow of it, which uniformly meant that we weren't to press her for too much, too often.

"David Gregory Jones," she said, maybe sensing I was hoping for a sympathetic hundred being added to the stash she was allowing me to use to buy a TV..

The salesman, a portly guy with a nametag that read Jim, looked at us uninterestedly.

"Can you help us for a moment," she demanded of the man.

Portly Jim trudged over. She asked him all the questions Consumer Guide probably tells you to ask before you buy something. What's the most reliable brand? Is there a difference between Daewoo and Emerson? Why are these two televisions the same size but one costs more than the other?

Jim, round and sweaty, gave way under her merciless assault of flying questions. M'am, these days they're all pretty reliable. Just different brand names, M'am, but it looks like the same picture to me. The more expensive model has a game jack in the front where your cables can go if you're a gamer.

"Thank you," she said. He looked around for a bolt-hole, sensing things wouldn't get any easier. He found his escape, chasing after a young couple, away from this imperious un-shy woman. His fat legs pushed him through the TV section and I thought to myself, you're lucky you don't live with her.

"What about that one?" She pointed to one. The TV's were all tuned to a golf match. The sound was muted so it didn't drive customers and clerks nuts. On the screens, old men in peach shirts and golf shorts hit golf balls down grassy knolls followed by close-ups of sportscasters discussing the par. My mom pointed at the only television that was off.

I looked at the price tag. $240. I thought quickly. It was bigger than the $200 models, but not quite as big as the $300 models. I could either push for that extra hundred or put all my chips on this TV. She knew I wanted one of the bigger ones and this was her way of meeting me halfway. I also knew my mother would never meet me where I was, on the other side of $300. And if I played my hand and it irritated her, it was not beyond her to skip the TV and buy pants and shirts instead.

"I think I've fallen in love," I said.

She gave me wry look.

"I bet," she said.

When my mother beckoned the frightened Jim, who was lounging on the other side of the aisle avoiding customers, he said the TV was the last one left.

"You'll have to take the floor model," he said scratching his ear.

Mom was displeased.

"Our store has a 30-day return policy in addition to the warranty offered by the company," he offered.

She acquiesced after putting him to the question for a few more minutes. I thought privately that she was just enjoying herself at this point. Michael looked like he'd rather be anywhere but here while my mother fired questions at him like a member of the inquisition putting a torch under his bare feet.

"That'll just have to do, ... Jim," saying his name like she would look him up in the phone book if she discovered he had lied.

Without the packaging the TV fit in the back seat of the car.

***

Christmas came and went, the tree went up and the tree came down. Then it was New Years Eve and I got a little drunk for the first time with a few friends on a bottle of gin. I woke feeling salty and walked home on New Years day, which dawned cloudy and severely, bitterly cold.

I chewed on a mint before I went in the house, though it looked like my parent's had been doing a bit of celebrating. They were drinking black coffee in the kitchen, and both of them looked at me, sweaty and morose.

I went to my room and got out of my street clothes and into bed, naked except for a pair of boxers. I was chilly and hot all over. New Years Eve had been my first experience with drunkenness, New Year's itself my first experience with a hangover.

My dad woke me up in late afternoon, the sun's brightest hour, to tell me I had a phone call.

He looked sleepy, too, and it was obvious even to my tired mind that the phone had woken him.

I went downstairs, sheet wrapped around me.

"Hello," I said.

On the other end static and tinny voices conversed.

"Hello," again.

The voices got louder, murmuring not quite loud enough to make out what they were saying. It reminded me of talk-radio. I made out a few words here and there. Listen...Present Arms...Color...

The phone suddenly quit and all I heard was blurry dial tone.

I hung it up, looking though the kitchen window into the backyard at the toppling sun. It sent spikes through my eyes and I went back to my room blinking out afterimages.

I got into bed and turned on my new television. I'd had it since the beginning of December and some of the marvel had worn off. I flipped through the stations.

Every station was obscured by static. I punched through them all, but it was the same white rain, the same flakes of noise. I got out of bed, shivering because my room was cold. I checked the connections. The wires were all firmly screwed in between the wall and the television.

I got back into bed and turned my face in my pillow.

I woke in darkness and my new TV was on. I saw it was now just white. It was like a face made of pale skin. I turned my head back into my pillow and tried to sleep but finally, more awake than I wanted to be, I crawled from my covers to shut it off.

I hit the power button, jumping when it shocked my finger. The TV came to life. I sat on the floor before it, trying to figure out what the hell I should do. I felt terrible. My head was filled by the sound of a hammer, and the TV was pulsating white light in time with the hammer strokes in my skull. I had a whole drum circle in there, pounding away.

The phone rang. I heard it dimly, the sound coming from the downstairs kitchen. I wondered what time it was, and who could be calling at this time of night. It was one of those wall-mounts, and I very nearly tore it right off the wall. "Hello," I said into the receiver's wrong end, before switching it.

I heard static, climbing through the phone, getting louder and louder. I sat down on a kitchen chair and held the phone away from my ear, waiting to see if the static would change into something, sleepily wondering if the lines had gotten crossed somewhere. Maybe a car had crashed into a telephone pole.

I was about to hang up, when I heard a man's voice, seeming to come from a long distance. "I need a medic!" The voice screamed. The phone burst with static. I held the phone away from my ear. I heard it from a distance.

The voice screamed. I heard a couple whizzes and pops and cracks, then the phone went dead. I hung up.

It furiously rang, making me jump. I grabbed the phone. "Stop calling here," and I slammed the receiver into its berth, hard enough to shake the wall.

I still had a few days left of holiday vacation before school was back in session, and I planned on spending the time doing nothing but getting a lot of sleep; and eating. I planned to do a lot of eating with the rest of my vacation. I was on my third bowl of cereal watching TV in my room. The program was some show like the People's Court but it wasn't the People's court. It was the extreme version of the People's Court. If you're not familiar with the People's Court, it's the show where someone sues someone else, the case is played out on TV. The show draws you in because you're waiting for the judge to go ape-shit. This show promised more ape-shit, more bang.

An old guy in a white suit was suing another guy for being a shitty renter. The defendant looked like a rat. I was pretty sure he'd lose but I was mistaken. The man in the white suit, who had dangling mustaches the same pale white as his suit, lost when he couldn't provide the judge with paperwork showing rat-man had signed a lease. The judge attacked the old-guy, asking him why he'd come into his courtroom without having the proper paperwork? The old man didn't know. I didn't know. The rat-guy didn't know.

Case adjourned.

I flipped through the channels. The TV pulsed. The picture got queer. The edges of the screen ate the center. I got up and banged the TV.

Reception returned. The show had changed. I was not watching the People's Court Goes Extreme, or whatever, anymore. It looked like a documentary. The color was grainy, reflecting the material's age. The colors mingled and flickered at times like a bad print.

It was a war onscreen.

It was death onscreen.

A boy in green fatigues ran from a ditch when gunfire exploded, carving his face with bullets. The boy flapped in the air, bird-like, before falling into the no man's land beneath the camera's eye.

I tried to look down beneath the camera lens, wondering at the man's fate. For the extremel, cheap look of the movie, the special effects were gritty and realistic.

I heard quiet footsteps outside my door. My door opened. My mother poked in and took one look at what I was watching and retreated. I heard her mumbling to herself when she walked away, about violence and television.

The camera followed an unknowable path through smoky hills. A boy strut into the picture. He turned to the camera. "Harrison get your ass in gear. Tell old man that we're taking heavy losses. up here."

I heard a boy's voice. "We're taking heavy losses, alpha zero company fifty-one to base Old man. Officer is down. Repeat. Officer down. Waiting for orders."

"I'm getting nothing Sarge," the camera said.

The boy known as the Sarge cursed. "Leave it, Harrison. Get your gear together and follow me."

Harrison followed the Sarge through the smoke, the camera jittering as flashes lit the black sky. The night tore open and what looked like a lightning bolt ripped through the sky. The Sarge toppled over. The Sarge's face was burned clean, no nose, no eyes, just the smoking surface of a scallop, wet white and yellow.

Harrison left the body and the camera moved quickly. I guessed Harrison must be running. He jumped over a small crater, the camera moving wildly. I briefly glimpsed burning skeletons tangled together in the crater, covered in fine red dust.

Then he rounded a hillside, and faces swam through the black smoke. I got a good look at the horizon. It was filled with blazing white lights that must have been huge artillery. The faces greeted Harrison. They were weary faces, blackened by shoe polish. Their eyes were haunted.

The TV shut off. I turned it back on. There was a commercial for something called the Astronaut Blender. Apparently it could blend not only food, but also wood and metal. The narrator said the blades would stay sharp and to prove it he churned a chunk of metal into metal fiber and then threw in an apple.

It was true. All this can be yours, plus a smaller version of the Astronaut Blender called the Martian blender. Churn iron fillings into hazardous dust and then throw in a couple lemons and make lemonade.

I didn't tell anyone because it sounded too nuts. How was I going to? I got a new television for Christmas and sometimes the phone rings and I watched a movie and I think I was really watching a war. Isn't that something?

In late January my folks left for the weekend. They drove to Omaha, Nebraska, to stay at a hotel and be romantic. Stuff you don't want to imagine your parents doing.

They went up under pretense of going to the Omaha zoo, of course.

I stayed up late, watched an old Kung Fu flick called Legend Of The Flying Guillotine.

Saturday night the phone rang loud and clear. I knew it wasn't my parents because I had just talked to them an hour earlier and it sounded like things were getting pretty hot and heavy at the 'zoo' in Omaha.

I had wanted to say, "Pretty nice zoo," or "How're the animals?" but I refrained.
I took the phone from the wall. As soon as the receiver lifted, it screamed bloody murder in static. I hung it up quick and ran upstairs and flipped on my Television.

Yes. This was really happening. The phone must be trying to communicate this was on. I sat back and watched.

A rough sign stuck in the earth read West Camp Division with a misty yellow arrow pointing, I guessed, West. Harrison went in that direction. He passed dirty soot-stained tents on all sides, descending into a sort of man-made ravine. It was dark. It started raining. Drops fell like silver darts and every so often his hand would wipe the camera lens, like he was wiping the rain from his eyes.

He passed boys in uniform. I didn't recognize the uniforms but something told me they were not in a military history book. He stopped and saluted someone, before continuing his march through the camp.

Someone yelled, "down," and the world went topsy-turvy. Harrison lay down in the wormy mud and he pulled out a cigarette, stuck it in his mouth, and lit it. It was so real I thought I could smell it.

He peeled the mud from his eyes.

A boy, about my age helped him up. "False Alarm Harrison," he said. His smile twitched.

"Carr," Harrison said, taking the hand.

Carr led Harrison to a tent. Inside the tent there was a cloud of smoke, and the canvas was discolored as if the tobacco had left its mark, like graffiti. Two kids played cards, both wearing the same unrecognizable uniforms. The kids were spattered with mud and both smoked while they dealt hands of poker.

"Hey, lookit' what the cat drug in," one of the boys said. His left eye was a gaping black hole.

"Michaels," Harrison said.

"Thought we lost you partner," the other said. His face had a serious look to it, like he commonly delivered sermons.

"No, but the Sarge, he got burned."

"That's what we heard," Carr piped in.

"He got burned bad. His face looked like a bowl of mashed potatoes, hold the gravy."

"Sore luck." Michaels said. "But I didn't like the bastard anyway. He thought he was too hard."

"Pretty soon we're going to be all that's left," the boy with the too-serious face said. "Just us. Then we're going to be gone." He wiped some of the mud from his face.

"Stop being so Goddamn depressing, Delaware," Michaels said. "You're going to make me cough up my lunch of canned salmon patty, because when I get sad I puke fish in remorse."

Carr giggled, but stopped when he caught sight of Delaware's face.

"You havin' one of them feelings," he asked.

Delaware nodded, face whitening under all the mud. "I feel like one's coming is what I feel," he said. He scratched his eye. "We gotta' get ready."

"Damn it," Michaels said. "Well boys, Delaware's always right. This a big one?"

Delaware shrugged. "They're all the big ones, if you can get killed."

"Hey Harrison you lose your rifle?" Michaels reached into a grey badly-dented locker, retrieved one, and gave it to him. The gun looked old. It didn't seem familiar, not that I was too up on guns. It had designs running down it. On the barrel someone had painted little white triangles, three really close together, a space, and then three more.

"Who's gun?" Harrison's voice sounded young. As young as these other soldiers, at least.

"It was Brunstein's gun. Found it two days ago when you were off with Alpha Zero company."

"You find Brunstein?"

"Pieces of him."

"Who's in charge of Alpha Zero?" Carr interrupted.

"Steamboat," Harrison answered.

"Oh shit," Carr groaned. "Figures that would be my fucking luck."

"Steamboat's not so bad," Michaels said. "At least he's yellow, and not like the Sarge was." 'Okay now you all know what to do, boys, kill for freedom, die for vengeance', he mimicked.

Carr laughed a sharp bark. "True fucking right." He clapped Michaels on the back.

Harrison followed them out of the tent. Delaware led. Delaware had a look on his face of deep concentration. He stared into the distance.

There was a glare of white. A roaring sound that came from all directions at once. Something stirred, malevolent in the sky. There. It landed a short distance away.

"Shit," Carr groaned. "That's it for us. Let's hear your last words, boys."

The thing walked like a man but it wasn't a man. The camp burst into motion. Boys waiting in dark beside their tents, now came alive, shouting. The figure hopped from leg to leg, an ugly unman-like thing, shambling toward to the boys.

With every group of boys there was one that was weaponless like Delaware. The boy-soldiers in those groups screamed the name of their weaponless boys, like fans at a football game cheering on their teams. The weaponless boys had names taken from cities. Topeka. Houston. Chattanooga.

The thing screamed a scream filled with sweet rot.

It danced some aimless jig.

"This is a bad one," Delaware said. "I think it's going to smoke us."

"I'll smoke it first," Michaels said. He grinned, his vacant eye winking.

He ran up to it, firing. The gun sparked when it was fired, sounded more like a drum than a regular gun. The thing continued to dance, even as flower blossoms of blood broke across its wide torso, punching holes in its skin. Michael screamed a battle-cry. The thing picked him up, still dancing, and wrenched him apart. Michael's pink as chewing gum insides popped out, throwing pieces of vertabrae.

Delaware put his hands over his temples, eyes and nose shooting blood. Then all the rest of the boys opened fire. Some who had fastened rudimentary bayonets on their rifles ran the thing through, even as it still danced, blood spraying from its many bullet holes and slices and stab wounds. It lashed at the boys, but was concentrating more on its dance which was growing more complicated by the second.

"Minnesota's down," someone screamed. The boy known as Minnesota was on his knees. His face was covered in thick red blood, his features indistinguishable. His head exploded.

The three other members of Minnesota's "unit" went down right afterwards and didn't rise.

Then the thing shuddered, stopping its dance, movements herky-jerky. It looked like it bowed, in good humor. Close-up, the thing's face was fat and pockmarked. The features were brutish, like a pig's. It had big, yellow teeth that squatted in its mouth like rotted cemetery stones. Red roots climbed out of its belly button, the color of licorice, and wrapped under its groin into its lower back. These tubes were spraying blood. The thing convulsed, the face cracking, and then it was done. The thing died.

"Minnesota's down," someone called out.

"Kansas City's gone," someone else.

"Looks like Delaware's OK."

"Mississippi's a goner."

Delaware crouched, his hands covering his face.

"Delaware come back Delaware," Carr said.

"Michaels is dead," Delaware said.

"Gone to a better place," Harrison offered.

"There is no better place," Delaware retorted. His serious face looked on the verge of tears. "I just want to go home. DO YOU UNDERSTAND. I just want to go home?"

"We all do," Carr said.

"Yeah," Harrison said.

"Don't you know, I was just a kid who wore glasses back home. I lived a pretty good life. I got pretty good grades. I was a good kid. I wanted to be a biologist."

"You're not the only one with dreams," Carr said. "I had dreams too. Stop being a stupid sonofabitch."

Delaware rushed Carr. Harrison got between them. "We need to pack up our shit. It isn't safe here," Harrison said.

"You the new Sarge?" Carr asked. He spit.

"No," Harrison said.

That simple denial tore the strength out of Carr's limbs. Carr sat. After a second, Delaware and Harrison joined him.

Delaware looked straight at me through the screen. "I know you're there," he said. He spoke to the air. He nodded. Gone was the look of despair, and desperation - the face was serious and the eyes dark. "Do you hear me?" Delaware asked.

I looked around my room. I didn't say anything. (I'm not going to say a goddamn thing. This is too weird in spades).

"I hear you," I tried.

"Good," Delaware pursed his lips. He was a year or two older than I was. "I knew you saw it all. The death dancer. It is called a Trouble Stacy. There's a lot worse," he said frowning.

His face, close-up, had started becoming the face of the man he would be, serious mouth, serious eyes.

"I can't see you, but I feel you," Delaware said.

Carr smirked. "Me and Harrison can't see you either, but we know you're there if Delaware says."

"You were following me," Harrison said. "I felt that creepy feeling at the back of my neck. I knew there'd been a contact. I don't know why it chose to follow me."

"I bet it was there to follow the Sarge," Carr said. "You know. The dead hero." Carr smirked. He had a face of smirks, skin naturally dripped into it. Maybe to Carr a smirk was a smile. "Then it followed our little Harrison for lack of anything better to do. Maybe we should call you the New Not Dead Hero, Harrison, since we need a hero, to keep morale up."

Harrison made as if to punch Carr, who ducked, grinning broadly.

"Who's gonna' make sure we keep our shoes shined?" Carr lifted one boot, the pant leg fluttered, revealing a skinny ankle. He was wearing a faded New Balance tennis shoe, white with red stripes.

"The old man?" Harrison offered.

"Lotta' help the old man is," Carr spat.

I reached out and shut the TV off.

I turned it back on. It was back to its regularly scheduled programming. I lay back watching a crime movie. I refused to think about it. The movie was about a jewel thief. I had almost actually began to follow the story - when - the phone.

It rang like the end of the world. But I didn't want to think things like the end of the world. It was probably my mom, calling to make sure everything was okay before they went to bed.

I answered. I had a mental baseball bat ready to smack the phone into a million pieces, if it was some more freakishness.

"Is this David Jones?" The caller wanted to know.

"Yes," I said.

" David Gregory Jones."

"Yes."

The phone exploded into static, hard and jagged enough to surprise me into dropping the phone.

I heard my TV from all the way in the kitchen. There was a concussive boom coming from up there. Voices screamed. I went upstairs to look. The TV was no longer playing my movie about a failed diamond heist and the genius jewel thief who almost-pulled-it-off.

Delaware and Harrison and Carr were staring at me from the screen. I should get a tire iron or wrench. I decided to break the fucking picture-tube.

Carr laughed. "Is he back?" He asked.

"He's back," Delaware said.

"You're kinda' being drafted," Carr told me.

Harrison was looking at something. "Hey," he said, and pointed.

Delaware gasped. "We gotta' get out of here," he said.

I saw something big and red walking in the background. The sky was the same black smoke smear. Was there any sunlight there? What was that big...red... walker in the distance, big eyes like jagged tears, light bleeding through?

"Kid," Delaware said. "We were like you. Consider us your local recruiting center for Uncle Sam's secret army."

"Hurry up," Carr said. Carr sounded afraid, jittery.

"Kid, we're doing this so the good people of almighty Earth can sleep restful in their beds at night. How would you like these things crawling out of TVs, all over the place?"

I stared, mouth open wide enough to catch a really big fly.

"Welcome to Never-Never-Land, kid," Carr said. He sounded hysterical. "Hey 'Ware, Big red and testy is sniffing us out."

Delaware's serious face wrinkled in concentration. "It can't see us," he said. "Just don't shoot at it or anything." He went on: "Kid, we need you, here. I can't hold this camouflage in place forever, and pretty soon he's gonna' be up the hill and on us in a flash. We need some fresh faces here. Call it bad luck you happened to buy the old man's recruitment tool."

Carr shifted his hands nervously. Harrison was looking behind him at the big red thing now coming into view. "I don't think whatever the mental camouflage thing you're doing is working Delaware," Harrison said.

I got a good look at the red thing. "No," I said immediately.

"C'mon, kid, it's an adventure."

"We gotta' go NOW," Carr said.

"Alright, kid, you're answering no. We'll just come and get you. Old man's orders."

I turned off the television as the red thing, a giant the size of the Golden Gate bridge hammered its way into view. The power button zapped me a little when I pressed it.

***

Here's what I know.

1. I hate Christmas.

2. I hate television.

3. I've been drafted.

Everything seems normal on the surface to my mom and dad. But the phone keeps ringing in the middle of the night. My parents were a little surprised by how vehemently I "accidentally" broke my television. My mom turned around and spent $300 on a new one for me. It was a bigger television with better resolution, the whole nine yards. By the time I came home from school and discovered my new Sony wrapped with a huge red bow in my bedroom I had already begun to notice radios breaking into static. I think by the time she purchased the new TV, my mom's curling iron was beginning to talk.

I can't be around anything electrical.

I keep away from the phone. I have the television unplugged. I don't go to movies. I'm getting a weird reputation. The thing is, I know they're coming.

They will come, but I'm not sure how. I know it won't be like a TV program I can shut off. It will be me fighting and dying there. I keep saying goodbye to my parents when I say goodnight. I told them the other night I won't be celebrating Christmas anymore. I don't say what goes through my mind: I've been drafted. (Any day now).

(Any day now)