NaNoBlog

Another round robin story surfaced, just to prove me wrong. I give you...

Cacodemon

Her hand wouldn't stop twitching. Not even when she put it under the C-Ch
volume of the World Book Encyclopedia, and whacked it with the largest bowl
she could easily lay hands (well, hand, at this point) on did it cease its
faint grotesque quiver.

"Oh, that's disgusting - that's disgusting," she murmured weakly, screwing
up her mouth and her courage and the tourniquet around her arm. The sudden
pressure sent her into a dizzy spell, and she collapsed onto a chair,
gasping for breath. The humor of the whole situation struck her and then
the gasps changed to faint breathy chuckles.

"If your right hand causes you to sin-"

It was starting again. Not even a tremor yet -- just an infinitesimal
ripple under the skin, but she could feel it gathering strength again. It
wouldn't lay still forever. Whacking it silly wasn't enough. It wasn't a
part of her anymore. And she knew it would only spread. She would have to
do it. It was... she struggled to find a word for what it had become. She
looked at it, lying there. Clammy. Stunned. Unclean. That was the word:
Unclean. The laughter burbled up again.

"One hand washes --"

She reached for her knife. Her hand, still lying limp on the table for now,
seemed to growl at her. She wondered if there was some way to restrain it
for now. If there was, at least, some way to keep it from spreading.

"Look now, you've been a good hand to me most of my life, and I'm quite
content to forget this whole sordid little affair if you'll just settle down
and behave yourself."

It gave a little jump.

"But I can see you're not going to do that." She swallowed. "Fine. Have it
your way." She brought the knife down, slowly, watched the fingers spread
and arch, forming a claw. She felt the cold metal of the blade on her wrist.
She clenched her teeth, pushed the blade a little harder, a moment away from
breaking the skin.

The hand did not call her bluff. It lost the aggressive stance, waved
around, signaling for her to stop. She sighed in relief. "Now are you going
to behave yourself?" she asked. The hand gave her an emphatic thumbs up.
"Good." She set the knife down and the hand relaxed.

She picked up the phone, held the receiver to her ear with her shoulder and
dialed, keeping a close eye on her other hand. Just in case.

It rang once, twice. On the third ring someone picked up and said hello.

"Hey, Tony? It's me. Yeah. It's happening again. How soon can you get here?"

She paced across the living room, clasping her errant hand by the wrist,
clutching it tightly. Tony would know what to do. He'd be here in ten
minutes. All she had to do was hang on til then. If only she had some way
to distract herself. Once she had loved to knit, but that had been out of
the question, lately, of course. She didn't trust her hand with a sharp
knitting needle anymore. It was a sneaky thing, and it would take any chance
she offered it, she knew. The television sat dark in the corner, but she
knew she wouldn't be able to focus on anything enough to watch it. So she
continued to pace. spine stiffening each time her hand gave a rebellious
jerk, each time her pinky twitched ominously. At long last, she heard the
crunch of tires in the driveway. Tony. Finally, he was here. She ran to the
door, unlocked it. Tony stepped in, a look of concern on his face and a live
chicken under his arm. He had come prepared. But before he could say a word,
her wicked hand leapt to Tony's neck, striking like an adder. Her fingers
wrapped around his throat and began to squeeze and squeeze.

"Oh!" she squealed. She tried to walk away but the grip of the hand was too
strong, they were stuck together. "You have to get it off!" Tony calmed a
bit at her words, grabbed the thumb and the fingers in each of his hands and
slowly pried it off. He was relieved by the air he was provided, and
immediately loosened his grip, and once more, relentlessly, The Right Hand
of Liza was once again on his neck, and the chicken was trying to run out
the door. "Tony!!" Liza shrieked. The shock was enough. He broke away from
the diabolical grip, realized the chicken was gone, and plunged after it out
the door.

He returned a moment later, once more with the bird. Liza was now sitting at
the kitchen table, talking in a low voice to her hand, scolding it,
threatening it with the knife.

Tony spoke. "I think I know exactly what's going on," he said.

"You do?" she said. "Oh good."

"Yes," he said, "I'm afraid I do."

Her brief sense of relief gave over to nervousness then. He wasn't making eye contact with her and his voice seemed
flat. Tony is a friend, she told herself, he doesn't want to hurt me. SHe wished she could belive it.

He sat down at the table, still avoiding eye contact. "I can't help you if you don't want to be helped, Liza. And you brought this upon yourself."

She looked at him, wide eyed. He looked so harmless in his black turtleneck and thick-rimmed glasses. He seemed to
sense this analysis and dismiss it without judgement. Silently, he held out the chicken.

"I... I only..." she bowed her head. She knew he was right. It was all her fault. She gritted her teeth, and took the chicken in her left hand
by its feathery neck. It fluffed itself up and made a whirring, brooding sort of noise. The encyclopedia was still next to her on the table. Tucking
the chicken into the crook of her elbow, she turned the pages, her pulse fluttering at her neck.

"Chicken -- Gallus domesticus. Any of several varieties of fowl originating in... plumage... flightless" ... her eyes scanned the page. Ah! There it was, near the end.

"...blood reputed to have purifying qualities, especially among practitioners of the voudoun religion of Haiti..." She looked up at Tony, and he nodded gravely.
Her right hand gave a sudden jump, and she almost screamed. The chicken startled and raced across the tabletop, leaving dirty feathers all over her woven placemats.

Tony caught it and grabbed the cleaver. "You know you have to do it, don't you? There's no other choice, unless you want to give up, and..." he looked into her eyes, and
she saw something almost like frenzy in his face. The hand leaped for him again. He brandished the cleaver, but it parried him and caught at his turtleneck.

"No, no!" she sobbed, but its grip was unshakable, no matter how she struggled to loosen it. There was a horrible ripping noise, and... then they both froze. The chicken
dropped from Tony's grip and fluttered noisily away upstairs. There was a horrible green-and-black tattoo over Tony's chest, starting at the root of his Adam's Apple, and
leading downwards toward his navel. The hand released its grip and fled to her pocket. She stared at him, unable to move or speak or tear her eyes away. She couldn't
take in what the image was, but she knew, she sensed, it was... evil. It was foul and smudgy, like a bruise. There were things like eyes, and other things like claws,
and some ornate pattern on his solar plexus that seemed to weave itself into knots and then untangle itself with each of his breaths.

The hand was creeping out of her pocket now, but she didn't think she had the strength to stop it. It crawled over the pages of the encyclopedia, began to flip them backwards.
Tony was still motionless, the cleaver poised, his eyes lit up and somehow rapturous. All at once she felt her finger tapping, tapping hysterically over and over again, at
a spot on the page. With all her willpower, she forced her eyes from the horrible sight to look down at the book.

CACODEMON, it said. Her fingers retreated quiveringly into her sleeve.

Well, I think that "Fast Food" was the last of the round robins we're going to get from the e-mail experiment. My goal for the week is to get something into submission shape and submit it by Monday. Hey, Ray Bradbury used to submit a story a week, so there's proof it can be done, at least.

Fast Food

It's amazing what they can do with frozen, pre-prepared meals these days. Without them, my elegant upscale restaurant, Chimera, would never be able to keep up with the incredible customer demand. We did have real chefs once, back when we first opened, but they're such temperamental things, always wanting paid and so forth. Cuts into the profit margin. So we contracted out the cooking work to Insta-Meal, one of the larger providers of pre-prepared meals in the nation. Changes had to be made, of course. We couldn't very well serve our patrons airline-style food and expect them to keep coming back. Our sommeliers worked with their nutritionists, and after several months we had crafted a variety of meals, all of which could be popped into a microwave and served in mere minutes.

Business positively boomed! Not only did we cut out kitchen staff to a fifth of what it had been, but these peons need only be paid minimum wage to be kept happy, whereas our chefs once required thirty or forty dollars every hour, and sometimes even a real salary. Also, a party which once took an hour and a half to eat dinner could now be pushed through in as little as twenty-five minutes, though of course we're not so lucky that they all move through this quickly. But with shorter wait times, we can pack hundreds more
customers in an average night than ever before. The trouble began the following year, when certain individuals had noticed what we were doing.

I told Mr. Z. not to piss of Eddie LaVane. I mean, everyone knows he's the premiere food critic in the city. The power this man has is unbelievable. More than one restaurant has gone under because Eddie LaVane snapped his fingers. The problem with Mr. Z. though, is that he's proud. I said, "Look, we really don't want to piss of Eddie LaVane or he'll screw us over, all right?" and Mr. Z. just had to prove that he was invincible.

Everyone gets that way in the industry, I guess.  In your snooty Culinary Institute chefs, with their Radish Seared Ahi Tuna Au Poivre Vert and their Avocat en Flambe, it's only to be expected, and in your headwaiters named Andre with their white tails and their wine lists, it's practically de rigeur. Pretending to be Continental for nine, ten hours a day
will do that to you.  And even Mr. Z, short-short order, kitchen bitch, Chief Microwaver, wasn't immune.

It might have been the immaculate white apron and hat (of course they were immaculate, after all, there's not much you can do to soil your clothes while microwaving the Green Tea Crusted Sesame Tiger Prawns Instameal), or it might have just been the atmosphere
of the place.  In any case, he picked up an accent that could best be described as French twice removed (learned from a guy who had learned it from a guy who had learned it from a guy who was actually French) and lorded it over his miniscule staff of kitchen peons. And that might have been why he got so angry when I came to instruct him about Eddie's meal.

"Just one sprig," I pleaded.  "One tiny little sprig of fresh parsley -- look, I'll even buy it myself.  Forty-nine cents a bunch at the store across the street.  All you have to do is heat it up like normal, stick the sprig on top, and serve it up with that adorable obsequious grin of yours.  Is that too much to ask?"

"Eez zat too much to ask?!" Z's weasely moustache wiggled unpleasantly. "You weesh to disembowel mon arteesteec antegreetay?  You wish to smash mon reputation upon ze flagstones?  You weesh to drive me to le suiceed?"

"Listen up, Gilbert," I said, pronouncing it like his mother back in Poughkeepsie did, and not "Jeel-bair", as he allowed the highborn few to call him on occasion, "You stick that greenery in the goddamn slop before LaVane ever sets his beady little eyes on it, or so help me I'll... I'll --"

"Non! Thees ees the vinal humiliatiohn! I weel no longer stand for eet! Eithair I must be allood to preepair mon food accordeeng to zee traditional mannair, or I must reseenay!"

"Pardon?"

"Reseenay! Reseenay! Leave off! Queet!"

"Ah yes, resign." I sighed. "Look, Mr. Z, you're a fine cook, really you are, with the unwrapping and the microwaving and everything, but you're no artist. Now howsabout I just run and get us a nice little sprig of parsley, and you go ahead and serve the food like your supposed to so I don't have to do anything drastic. I'll even put it on the plate myself, hey? How's that for fair?"

Z eyed me warily as he considered his next move.  Just then, my cell phone rang: Eddie LaVane had been spotted leaving his hotel.  He should be here in five minutes. I relayed this to Mr. Z, then held my breath as he stared at me, his eyes narrowed. After a moment his expression relaxed and he actually smiled at me.
 
"Yees," he said.
 
"Yes?"
 
"Yees. I weel do eet. Goh. Goh and get your parsully and I weel preepare Monsieur LaVane's meal as you request."
 
"Good. Okay, good," I said, my suspicions overshadowed by my relief at his agreement. "Alright, well, I'll just go to the Stop N Shop across the street and I'll be back, three minutes at most." I turned and rushed out the back door into the dark alley behind the restaurant.
 
"Shit," I muttered as I tread through a puddle. Cold, foul-smelling water splashed around the bottom of my pant leg and soaked the top of my socks. "Shit," I said again. I didn't have time to deal with this now. I walked quickly through out of the alley, looked both ways to make sure no cars were coming and –
 
"Shit!"
 
A black stretch limo was turning the corner, no doubt occupied by Eddie LaVane. I sprinted across the street and down the block to the Stop N Shop. The automatic doors parted and I ran inside. In the tiny fruit and vegetable section I found what I was looking for, a small bag of parsley, sixty-nine cents plus tax. I grabbed it and rushed to the register.

"Excuse me?" I said to the teenage girl behind the counter. She looked up at me from behind her copy of Cosmopolitan. She was chewing a large wad of gum with her mouth open. I looked down at my parsley expectantly and she slightly rolled her eyes and put the magazine down. She rang me up, all too slowly for my taste.
 
"Seventy-seven cents," she said, sounding bored.
 
I already had my wallet out and was handing her my Visa card.
 
"We don't accept plastic for any transactions under five dollars," she said.
 
Dammit. I rarely carried cash and at the moment I didn't have so much as a penny on my person. I didn't even have my checkbook on me.
 
"Dammit," I said out loud. "Okay, um… add these in." I scanned the racks of impulse buy items around the counter, grabbed six Milky Way bars and handed them to her. She scanned them, one at a time.
 
The total came to $5.23, and she swiped my credit card. I waited impatiently for it to go through. I looked at my watch. This was taking way too long.
 
"You know your pants are wet?" the girl said. She smacked her gum loudly.
 
"Yes, I'm aware, thank you," I said.
 
"Smells like pee."
 
I glared at her, snatched the credit card slip from the machine, signed it with a squiggle that barely resembled any name at all, much less mine, and dropped it on the counter.
 
"Do you need a bag for –"
 
"No," I said, grabbing my parsley, and ignoring the pile of candy bars.
 
"Hey, what about your – "
 
"Keep 'em!" I called back at her.
 
I ran at full speed across the street and down back to the restaurant. Surely, Mr. Z could have stalled this long, I told myself. Everything would be fine. I ran through the alley, barely missing the puddle this time. I fumbled with my keys, unlocked the back door and rushed in.
 
"Z! Mr. Z! I got it, I got the – " I looked around. Mr. Z didn't appear to be in the kitchen. There was only Philip, one of the bus boys.
"Philip! Philip, where's Mr. Z?" Philip looked confused.
 
"He's out there serving that food critic guy. He showed up just after you left."
 
"Serving him? But… he was supposed to… oh, no." I pushed through the kitchen's double doors and scanned the restaurant for Mr. Z and Eddie LaVane. I spotted them and nearly fell over.
 
Mr. Z had already served LaVane what looked like a Risotto Primavera Insta-Meal, still in its original black plastic container, with a huge piece of broccoli sticking up out of the whole thing.
 
And it was on fire.
 
My voice caught in my throat and without thinking I ran across to the table, where Mr. Z was setting the flaming meal in front of a wide-eyed Eddie LaVane.
 
"What are you doing?!" I screamed.
 
Mr. Z looked at me with triumph on his face. "You wanted garneesh!" he said. "I gave you garneesh! Bon appetit, Meester LaVane. Haha!" The entire restaurant had gone quiet and everyone was staring at our little group: Me, hyperventilating, with my pee-soaked pant leg. Mr. Z, laughing heartily. And Eddie LaVane, the city's top food critic, whose face had gone as crimson as our tablecloths.

Buttons

"Are you the magic deliveryman, who only takes
buttons?"

For a second I stared at her in amazement. She was
slight and ragged, in  that Gaiman-fan-punk-chick
sort of way.  Those usually tip pretty well,  since
most of them have been waitresses themselves, if they
aren't still.  I  didn't know what she wanted with
seven extra-large pineapple and anchovy  pizzas, but I
wasn't here to ask questions.  I was here to drop off
the  pizza, take the money, take the tip, and drive
away. Besides, it wasn't as  if I hadn't had strange
orders before.

"Are you the magic deliveryman, who only takes
buttons?" she asked me again, in a wide-eyed way with
her hands in her pockets.What the hell, I  thought,
it's been a long night and she's sort of hot.

"Yes. Yes I am," I replied.

She seemed pleased, though her brow furrowed
slightly."The thing is," she  said, "I'm not sure if I
have enough."

This again.   Third time tonight.  First it was those
blubber-fed frat boys  (aren't frat boys supposed to
be lean and well-groomed, or have I been  reading the
wrong clothing catalogues?) taking ten stinking
minutes to dig  the last two bucks out of the couch
cushions.  When that was finished, it  was cool for an
hour or so -- nice neighborhoods, drunk guys showing
their  girlfriends how thick their wallets are -- and
then this old grandma type  who looks like she could
barely spell pizza, much less chew it, invites me  in
while she spends eternity mumbling and looking tearful
and rummaging in  her handbag before finally fessing
up that she didn't have the money for a  pizza, had
meant to make an appointment at the hairdresser's
instead, but  had dialed the wrong number, and she
didn't want to disappoint that nice  young man at the
pther end, and couldn't I just leave it here now that
I'd  gone through all  this trouble... a real scam
artist, I tell you.  It took  til I was back in my car
and halfway across town before I realized that I'd
been suckered and would have to give up my own
hard-earned cabbage to make  up the difference.  So
the night was turning into pretty much of a loss.  I
was gonna stand my ground on this one, though.  The
anchovy smell was pretty  staggering even out here in
the open air -- there's no way I'm putting these
things back in my car tonight, I thought to myself,
while I waited for her  to come back with the cash.

A few minutes later, she worked her way back to the
front door with a large  cloth bag.  She appeared to
be digging around in it, and while I couldn't  quite
tell what goodies she'd found so far, it sure didn't
look like there  was any money in her hands.  Oh
Jesus, I thought, she is actually going to  try and
pay me in  buttons.  I'm going to cry.

This was not my lucky evening.

She set the bag on a small, round table next to the
door and continued to root through it. "Oh, there is
it," she said, pulling out what looked  like a small
compass. She put it in her pocket, then went back to
the bag. "One, and two,  and three. four, five, six,"
she counted to herself. A moment later she  pulled her
hand out of the bag and extended her arm.

"Is this enough?" she asked, chewing her lip.

I looked at the contents of her open palm: twelve
buttons in various sizes  and colors, one as large as
a quarter.

"Uh. I don't think so," I said. What the hell was I
supposed to say? Hot or  not, this girl was an total
nut.

"Oh," she said, visibly disappointed. She put her
arm down and furrowed her  brow, as if thinking.
"Well. what if I threw in this one?" She looked down
and my eyes followed hers. I was surprised to see  her
fingering the top  button of her black shirt. She was
still chewing her bottom lip, watching  me, waiting
for me to respond. Was she getting at what I thought
she was  getting at?

"Are you serious?" I asked. Maybe tonight would be
my lucky night.

She rolled the buttons around in her clenched fist,
still toying with her  shirt's collar. I took a step
forward. What was I supposed to do? I'd seen  this
situation unfold in a thousand bad pornos, but in the
eight months I'd  had this job, this had never
happened to me. I set the reeking stack of  pizzas
down, and walked all the way inside. She eyed me
rather warily, and I  wondered if I had completely
misread the situation.

Then she yanked off the button with one sharp tug,
carefully unthreaded it  with her teeth, and added it
to the collection in her hand.

Apparently, I had indeed misread the situation

"So is it enough?" she asked anxiously,  extending
her upturned palm. "One  of these is real
mother-of-pearl, and these two are brass."

I cursed under my breath, my face turning red. A
look of panic flashed over  her face, and she ripped
off a second button, hastily adding it to the  others.
The soft curve of her breasts was revealed, now, but
she didn't seem  to notice. Her hand leapt to the
third button, fingers pulling at it  nervously,
questioningly. "How many do you need?" she wailed.

A strange noise, the scraping of metal on metal, came
from somewhere inside  her dimly-lit home. Her eyes
widened in alarm. "Just tell me how many you  need.
Please. Now."

I didn't know how many buttons I needed. I was not
ready for her to start  yelling at me. What was I
supposed to do? I snapped at her, "What's the
matter?!"

"I just have to get the pizzas," she said, still
panicked. The scraping  noise was growing louder, so
was she. "How many buttons do you need?"

"I don't know!" I shouted.

"Well just tell me and get out!" She was ripping off
the third button,  helping me not at all to focus. I
was so off-balanced I nearly fell over  when she
opened her mouth again. "If Simpson comes in and
you're still here  it's going to eat you instead of
the pizza! You Have To Get Out!"

I tried to talk. "Wait, what, but, um..." and the
door behind her started to  open. The scraping was
slow, and steady, and so loud it filled the room.

"It's too late!" She said, "Just come on!" Over her
shoulder I saw something  like the end of a very long
spike, black and shiny. She shoved the buttons  into
the purse and thrust it at me, and stuck her hand into
her pocket and  mumbled something and opened the front
door and shoved me through and it all  happened so
fast I didn't notice that I wasn't standing on the
sidewalk of  Maple St. next to my idling car until she
came flying out the door behind me  and shut it behind
her, and it disappeared.

It took a minute for the reality of the situation to
sink in. At first I  thought it must be a trick of the
light, that the air looked lavender  because it was
just past sunset, but then I came to my senses. It was
10:14  according to my black plastic "sports fashions
playmatch" watch from the  Korean swapmeet. The sun
had been down for a good three hours.

I began to look more closely at my surroundings. It
wasn't just the air that  seemed lavender, it was
ewverything. The ground beneath my feet, the Gaiman
fangirl, even my own arm. Stranger still, was the
fact that upon closer  examination, there didn't
appear to actually be any ground beneath my feet.  I
was standing on something solid, to be sure, and yet,
there wasn't  anything there but lavender space. Then
I realized the spaces was finite. I  could see a a
curved wall eaxtending all around us, and though  I
couldn't  see what was on the other side of it, light
was filtering in through it. We  were apparently
enclosed in some sort of fleshy globe. I had the
unpleasant  notion that some little kids had blown a
bubble with his chewing gum and  somehow I'd managed
to get trapped inside. All of these thoughts raced
through me in no more than ten seconds before I
shouted, "Where the hell are  we?"

"There's no need to yell," said the fangirl. She
seemed calmer now and was  more interested in finding
a way to keep her shirt closed than in paying
attention to me.

I was tired and confused and more than a little out
of sorts about the way  this evening was going, but
there didn't seem to be anything I could do  about it,
so I just huffed and sat down. The girl turned away,
absorbed in her clothing predicament and acting as
though being stuck in a purple vacuum  was perfectly
normal. I tapped my right foot against the side of the
wall.  It didn't exactly bounce, but there was
definite elasticity there. It didn't  seem likely to
break either. I crossed my arms and frowned. A moment
later I  stood up and began to pace three steps in
either direction. I was on my  fifth pass when the
girl spoke.

"Kindly stop fidgeting," she said.

"Why should I?" I asked, allowing belligerence to
take over in favor of  fear.

"You'll upset the grimple," she said. "Now stop
asking questions."

"What?  Questions?  Why?"

The girl gave me a long disapproving look, the sort
that would have "Now, now" attached to it if she were
a grandmother instead of a punk.

"It was asking questions that got me into this.  And
you too. Grimples are funny that way.  They feed on
innocence, human flesh, and interrogative sentences,
although I've found that pineapple-anchovy pizza makes
a good substitute."

"Did you-"

There was a hungry rumble all around me.  The girl
winced, and I clapped a hand over my mouth. Of course,
this was the hand that all the buttons were in, and
they spilled, all over the pink squashy substance.
Automatically I bent to pick them up, and then I
noticed something.

Where the buttons touched the grimple - its stomach?
Its colon? its projected thought-goo? I didn't know
and I wasn't going to ask - buttonholes were appearing
around them.  Hardly believing my luck, I pulled at
the button, slipped it through the buttonhole. The
pink substance parted just like a shirtfront, and
underneath I felt grass, I felt night, I felt
ten-o-clock.  Quickly I unbuttoned the other buttons,
and had soon made a gap wide enough for a person - two
people, if one of them was a skinny fangirl - to
squeeze through.  And we did.

The girl's eyes were wide with wonder.  Well, okay
they were already pretty wide, but give me a little
sympathy here. "That's amazing!" she breathed.

I grinned proudly.  Finally, something had gone right
tonight.  "Just call me the magic deliveryman who only
takes buttons.

Lily and Dan

"The left side's still a bit too high," said Dan.
"I've got half a mind to just give up now."

"Half a mind's all you've got, love," Lily said and
pecked him on the cheek.
"Besides, you promised me a spice rack. Deliver, or
it's your ass." She pointed an X-acto knife at him and
grinned.

Dan smiled and picked up the leveler. He had never
seen Lily use so much as a pinch of paprika in the
entire time he'd known her, but the promise of exotic
and tasty dishes with names he couldn't pronounce
filled her brand new cookbooks.

Lily crossed the kitchen and Dan watched her out of
the corner of his eye as she set to the task of lining
the kitchen drawers with lilac-patterned paper. It
delighted him to see her in this new, domestic light.
She bustled away, smoothing out tiny bubbles in the
adhesive paper. As she worked, she hummed softly to
herself, contentedly. She had a wonderful new husband,
a beautiful new home, and the whole of her life ahead
of her. It was just the way she had dreamed it would
be. And soon... soon she would murder Dan.

She had to. There was no way around it. All her life
she had known that she would find a rich man to marry,
and all her life she knew that he would have to die a
few months later. It was a simple plan, too: She and
Dan enjoyed sky diving, hang gliding, rock climbing,
all sorts of dangerous hobbies.

They certainly did live lives full of adventure and
amusement. He had been happy to show her just how to
survive when you're skiing on a nearly vertical
incline, when you're plunging off a forty foot drop
into mid-air and a field of rocky snow. He trusted her
so completely, and it was a simple matter to
accidentally drop one the rope as he was about to
achieve the peak of some glorious climb. She planned
never to settle down, never to live a quiet life, and
all he wanted was a quiet life and a good family. He
would have been a perfect husband for millions of
women, but for Lily he was only to be a perfect
husband for another month, at the most.

Lily looked up from sorting heirloom silver into one
of the drawers. "Dan, I love you," she said, and they
retreated into the bedroom.

Lily looked at sex with Dan as a routine duty. She had
pretended to be really into it at first, moaning and
moving under him, but as time went on, she stopped
trying. She just spent the time thinking about what
she would do when she'd gotten rid of him. Dan never
seemed to notice one way or another. He spent twenty
minutes kissing her and and alternating grunts with I
love yous until he finished, which he always did with
his eyes closed and the most ridiculous expression on
his face. Sometimes Lily fatasized about taking a
series of pictures of him with that expression. She
wasn't exactly sure how she could do it without him
noticing she'd brought a camera into bed, though. On
this particular day she glanced around the homey
bedroom in gisugst and thought she might just suggest
it.

Dan had insisted on the Amish quilts and the handmade
wooden furniture. The room looked like it belonged in
someone's country cabin, not in a sleek mansion. The
man was hopeles. Lily knew that she would die of
boredom if she actually had to spend her whole life
with this man, even if he did know everything there
was to know about extreme sports. The thing was he
approached them just like he approached everything
else, as a boring academic subject. Lily prided
herself on offering him the gift of spontanaiety in
these last months of his life. It was about time she
tried it again.

"Danny," she said. She only called him that when she
was trying to be overly sweet and wanted something. It
*always* worked.

"What is it, Lily?" he asked. He was all care and
concern.

"Go get the digital camera," she ordered.

"Mmm?" he said.  "That's in the cabinet with the
film?"

"It's in the drawer with the receipts," she answered
impatiently, but he was already out the door, and
before she even had time to assume a sultry
expression, he was back with the camera, happy as only
a newlywed husband with a cool gadget can be.   He
turned it on, contemplated it lovingly, pressed some
buttons, looked through the viewfinder at his wife on
his bed.

"You know what we should do, Lily?" he said
thoughtfully.  "We should try taking pictures, the
next time we do it."

Caught off balance, Lily only said "Ummm-"

"It might," he announced as one who has been pondering
the subject, "inject some spice into our sex life."

"Well, well," Lily thought to herself.  "Perhaps I'm rubbing off on him."

"Oh, honey!" she said, her eyes wide.  "Do you really think so?  I mean...
isn't it kind of... dirty?"

"Well," he blushed.  "Maybe a little.  But don't you think it might be fun?"

"Oh, you know I'd do anything for you, sweetness."

She smiled and slipped the X-Acto knife into her pocket as he bounded into
the bedroom with the camera.  He had already stripped down to his socks by
the time she got there.  And the socks would stay on, as always, through
the whole repugnant act.  It would have to be soon.  She couldn't take
much more of this.

As she approached, Dan sensed the knife in her pocket, and let out
a grumble which grew into a mighty roar.  Though the earth's yellow
sun seemed to concentrate his powers, his abilities had severely
taxed ever since he had first taken up with this confounded woman.
He had been prepared for the constant effort of concealing from her
his true form; of course no human could be expected to marry a seven
foot tall tripedal lizard-thing.  But the ingenuity and persistence
of her efforts to take his life!  She had kept trying to kill him
far longer than any woman of his native T'groff'k'zl would have done,
and while at first he had been charmed by her youthful exuberance,
he was starting to resent the trouble of having to constantly
rearrange her mind to make every little plan slip up.  He'd half a
mind to abandon the whole project.  But no, if he went home now,
without having prepared this world for the Feeding, the rest of his
tribe would never forgive him.  He sighed, teleported Lily's knife
back into the kitchen, checked that his footguards were secure, and
prepared for another night of bizarre, uninspiring humanoid sex.

State Forest at Night

In the heat of the night, the moon's light pressed against his shoulders as he walked, deserted.....his girl of the evening had left him, citing a drunken friend in need as she scurried up the gravelly trail. Their concourse had been awkward and punfunctory, mostly trying to find a good angle in the lumpy dirt, away from damp leaves and earthworms. At the crucial moment, she had called him Susan and bit him on the shoulder, hard. The tender spot above his collarbone throbbed unpleasantly as he walked, illuminated by the slow-motion strobelights of moonlight between trees. It was uncomfortably warm, and the girl's spit seemed to cling to him and chafe uncomfortably. He longed for a shower and a change of clothes. But such a thing was not to be had for miles. All he had was his grandparent's RV, borrowed for the summer and parked in a balding state forest.


He usually didn't mind being alone -- sought it out by preference, in fact -- but tonight it irritated him.  It wasn't just that he had been walked away from first, was it?  He certainly hadn't been planning to take her with him down to the town and sit in the local bar....he scratched again at the bite, annoyed.  He was pretty certain she had raked her nails -- which had looked grimy even before their grappling in the dirt -- down his back too, and felt a slight stinging there as well.  His shirt seemed to be sticking to that place, and he plucked it away impatiently, halting with a gasp as i ripped away with a sharp pain.  "....the *hell?*" he said, popping a button off his shirt in his haste to find some relief from his own flushed blood and to see if that bitch -- and he usually never used that word, either -- had actually broken the skin.  What had she done?  He held his neck awkwardly to the side, trying several different angles, impatient to see.

There was just the slightest hint of mottled skin -- but it was bad light. He scowled, disappointed.  These things always feel worse than they look.  "Kneel down, Susan!" the memory of the voice rang in his ear. He brushed the dirt from his knees and resisted the urge to play with his collarbone anymore.  "You've got something for me, don't you?" she had demanded, not quite playfully.  "Maybe," he had sneered.  "Shut up, Susan.  Your slip is showing."  She had tugged at his briefs until they had caught in his groin and made him wince.  He'd wished he could say something witty, something revealing.  But he couldn't quite get the thread of her game.  At first he thought he was supposed to play the blushing schoolgirl, but she got more and more annoyed with him, the more he forced his giggles and flipped his hands at his balding forehead.  Finally she had strongarmed him backwards, holding him down by his chest in the prickly scrubgrass.  "You can't pull this bullshit on me," she'd spat. "I know more than you think"

"You don't know anything!" he had replied, a bit shocked but willing to see just how far she would go with this. He seemed to have gotten it right that time, because that was when she started threatening torture to make him tell her what he knew, and her version of torture started with pulling his pants down and exploring with an open mouth. And now he couldn't remember whether she'd bitten him as part of the torture or just for fun, or maybe he'd never known, and he had no idea what the scratch was for, but they were both stinging something awful, and he wondered if he was going to get some sort of weird backwoodsfolk disease for backwoodsland, and he decided to go back up to the RV to check himself out, and maybe change his clothes, before he hiked down to the bar.

The shower was lukewarm, intersperced with occasional blasts of icy cold water that smelled sour. The soap wouldn't lather, so he settled from for rubbing himself briskly with a rough cloth until his skin was pink and raw. He stepped out of the small show cubicle and looked in the mirror, craning his neck to examine his injuries. For thr most part, they were long purple welts, but blood had congealed in a few spots like a crust of rubies. He reached a hand around and traced a finger along the raised welt. The resulting sensation was both painful and intensely arousing. He touched it again, poked until he was lightheaded from the combination of pleasure and agony.  He donned clothes haphazardly and stepped out of the trailer.

"You little cunt." The words came softly in the darkness, and in an instant she was on him. She raked her nails down his back again, ripping off the scabs so the blood flowed freely and soaked his shirt. He hissed through his teeth at this, and she bit his lower lip. "I brought some panties for you, Susan," she drawled. "They're real pretty. All lacy. And you're going to wear them tonight, just for me."

Stunned into silence by the feel of her fingers, he could only groan and nod as the blood began to seep from a dozen new wounds.  

The Car
I lifted up the edge of the plastic and held my breath. I could feel the cold, damp air seeping out from under it. I lifted the black plastic  covering a little higher, till I could start to see the corner of the car. Just then, the largest, nastiest centipede I'd ever seen wriggled its  way across my hand, and I dropped everything again.

I stepped back and  reconsidered. It had been a good thirty years since Jim had thrown the tarp  over his old broken down Cadillac and left it for dead, out by the barn  where we hardly went anymore. I didn't expect it to be in great condition.  Hell, I was surprised it hadn't collapsed from the rust by now. But the air  that had seeped out from under that tarp smelled like something rotting. I shuddered, pulled on my gloves, and prepared to get back to work.

Like a band-aid, I thought. Quick and painless. I gripped the edge of the  tarp and gave it a good yank. I winced  as cold, foul-smelling water  splashed onto me from the tiny little puddles that had gathered in the  wrinkles and valleys of the plastic. I pulled again, destroying a dozen more of the foul little ecosystems. I dropped the tarp and stared at the hulk of a car.

It was once a proud red beauty, but the paint had begun to chip and fade even before Jim had put it out to pasture. All four tires were flat and bits  of upholstery stuck out between the cracks in the black leather seats. I  tried to imagine the car as it had looked brand new and wondered whether it  would even be possible to restore it. I pictured myself driving the classic,  cherry-red Caddy, chrome sparkling, the exterior washed and waxed, the hood  so shiny you could check your hair in the reflection. And a pair of fuzzy,  black dice swinging from the rearview mirror. Of course.

I sighed and walked around to the back of the car. Dreams of  restoring the  beast would have to wait, as I had more important things to do. I slipped the key into the lock, took a deep breath and opened the trunk.

The lid of the trunk opened smoothly, which surprised me. Peering into the  dark depths of the trunk, however, I was surprised further.It was gone. I gripped the lip of the trunk, my knuckles turning white. Who could have been  here? Who knew? Moreover, how had anyone managed to open the trunk? I was holding the only key in my hand. I swung down the lid, inspecting the lock for signs of forced entry. There were none. I shook my  head in disbelief. Jim had been dead of a heart attack these past thirty years. It had hit him right after we'd pulled the job. I hadn't known that at the time, of course. I hadn't known that until this past week,  when I'd finally come back from Tangier. I'd been drifting out there all  this time, waiting for things to  cool off, waiting for the statute of  limitations to expire. Who knew what had happened after all this time?

Someone must have found out, must have gotten here before me. I'd gotten the  key from Jim's ex-wife, but someone could have stolen it from her, replaced  it to prevent suspicion. Hell, knowing Jim's taste in women, she could have gotten  into the trunk herself. I opened the trunk again, peering inside. Suddenly,  a slip of yellowed paper caught my eye.It was a note.

I glanced around me; the sun was beginning to set, and the clouds were  coming back. I picked up the note. The envelope was cream-coloured, and  thin, and had my name on the front. Inside was a pink piece of paper,  perfumed. I removed it from the envelope, and unfolded it.


   Dear Kenton,

  I have been waiting for you for a very long time. I
was unable to follow  when you left the country, but I
have not forgotten, and I know that not  even you
could forget. And you have paid with your gold, and
you will pay  with your life.

  love,
  Carlene.

I blinked after reading it, remembering very clearly what she was talking  about. In my mind it was only a simple mistake, the same as any man might  make. The note had a postscript: Turn around.

"Oh, Carly," I sighed. "It doesn't have to be like this." I heard the click  of a gun being cocked behind me.

"Turn around, you bastard." Her voice sounded deeper after so many years,  but it was unmistakeable. I couldn't get a handle on all the emotions  spinning inside me at that moment. This was the only woman I'd ever loved,  who'd made my life resemble Heaven and Hell in turn. I knew if I turned to  face her, it would be my undoing.

"Why don't you just shoot me now, and get it over with?" I asked. My throat was dry and tight, and I knew the words didn't sound as cool as I meant them to.

"I have a reason," she said, "and I'm not going to tell it to you.  You always were a clever man, Kenton- narrow, but so clever.  See if you can figure it out as we go along. Turn around."

My mind obediently began racing, though I held my ground.  She needs to find something.  She needs something I know. That doesn't make sense; she could have got it all from Jim.  She needs- wait, this is Carlene I'm talking about here.  God, I never could figure this woman out, and long absence had only made her worse.  She's angry.  There's something else. That nasty little sadistic streak she had shown near the end, to poor Mark?

"You didn't get my letter?" I asked, playing for time.

"I got it.  All three lines.  And a half.  Counting the date."  Her voice was sounding cooler than mine. Deeper, too.  "Turn around."

"If you want the combination to the locks, I've got them, if that's what you're wondering." Another stab, looking at the empty trunk.

"You're still cold, stone cold, Kenton, and if you don't want to add 'dead' to that description, you'll turn around."

There was nothing else for it.  I had come to my wits' end, as I always did around her, so quickly.  There was nothing for it.  I turned around.

It wasn't her.  I gaped.  Unbelievably, it wasn't her. I couldn't understand it.  The voice was the same. And she knew.  She knew everything.  She had been waiting for me all this time, or she had caught onto my trail somehow and tracked me down.  Thirty years is a long time -- God, if I don't know the truth of that, no one does -- and I'd watched as my hair condensed around my ears, my face sagged, my muscles shriveled up, but none of that could account for the change in the woman standing before me. It simply wasn't the same one.  The shape of her shoulders, the width of her eyes, the sharpness of her knees -- these are things surgery can't change.  And yet... she had something of Carlene in her. The voice, like I said, was exactly the same.  And the mouth was like hers, and the neck, and the chin.  She was... well, it's insulting to use words like "well-preserved" with women, but she must have been a real looker when she was young, because she wasn't half bad even now. Or maybe it was just the gun.

She took a step towards me, her body weaving smoothly but the gun staying perfectly level. I stayed perfectly still as she reached out a hand. Carlene had always had ragged shards of fingernails, the result of vicious nibbling. These fingernails were smooth, even, and they all tapered to a fine point. Hands pressed around my throat and pricked delicately against my arteries. I began to get lightheaded, and from the woman's pleased expression, she knew perfectly well that I found this arousing. She began to rub against me, moving her hips in a slow abstract dance. The pressure lightened slightly. "Carlene..." I breathed.
    
Her face hardened and the fingernails dug aruptly into my skin.

"You think you can play me like you did, her?" she asked. I felt the sting of her palm slapping across my face. "It doesn't work like that. Not anymore. You are going to give me what I want, and then I am going to kill you. Understood?"

"I never meant to hurt you," I said. I could tell she wasn't buying it. It was the truth though, I really hadn't meant to hurt her.

"I suppose you expect me to believe that you left the country in an attempt not to hurt me?" Her eyes glinted with something fierce, dangerous. I swallowed, or at least tried to. My mouth was as dry as if I had just awakened from a night of hard drinking. I knew I had to tread carefully. Very carefully.

"I was trying to protect you," I said. I heard the words leave my lips. I realized that, though it may have been part of the truth, it wasn't what I was meant to say. It was the same thing that everyone says, and it is not a strong argument.

"Bullshit," she said. She did nothing. I thought she was going to shoot me. But there was something she wanted, first. "Try again."

This time I did a bit better, I thought. "I wanted you to come with me. I had to make the arrangements in such a rush, on the run really, and if I'd caught up with you I would have swept you in my arms and taken you along but as it was I just couldn't get a message." I stopped at a look in her eyes. "But you figured out what happened," I added hopefully.

She took a step back and lifted the gun to eye level. "And?"

"And I wish it could have happened differently."

"And?"

"And..." I glanced down at my feet, then back up to her, and the cold steel, and I must have been starting to cry. "Carly, I'm sorry."

And she was satisfied.

New Crop of Round Robins
We tried todo this through e-mail, an experiment which failed miserably. Well, you learn from mistakes right? Theoretically at least.

The Circus

The circus was coming back to town, and that could
only mean trouble. Marianne didn't even have time to dwell on what had happened last time, between the strange mix of acrobats, lion tamers, vagabonds and ragtags, and what they had done to her beloved home. She simply walked as fast as she could to the house
of the friend Heddy, a few minutes away, to warn her, and come up with a plan. She had no idea how effective a couple old women could be, but she knew that this was her home, and the circus was nothing like she remembered it being when she was growing up.

The walk to Heddy's wasn't far, but by the time Marianne got there she had worked herself up into such a state that she pounded on the door with both fists and stormed in before Heddy came to open it. "Heddy, we have to arm ourselves," she said. "We need
axes!" Heddy coughed and hemmed for a second, but no real words came out. "Well, Heddy," Marianne set, stamping her foot on the entrance hall floor, "what are you waiting for? We have to act now! Can't let those circus freaks take advantage of hapless old
women, now can we?"

Heddy looked really ill by this point. Marianne naturally assumed that she was remembering some circus horros of her own. "There there," Marianne said, waving her wooden cane in the best, most reassuring manner she could muster. "We'll put a stop to it this time, Heddy. I won't let 'em cause you harm. But you have to help me. We need to get some protection, and I'm counting on you to drive since my eyesight's not what it used to be." Marianne took another tottering step into the house and put her hand on Heddy's shoulder. "It'll be all right. We've just got to take action."

Heddy cleared her throat and spoke at last. "Marianne, I don't think this is the time..."

"Well whyever not?" Marianne asked. Before the sentence was out, a younger man appeared behind Heddy. He wasn't bad looking either, Marianne thought. Even blurry, she could see that he was a prime specimen. So this was how things were. She'd have Heddy's hide later for not telling her about her new interest (hadn't they ALWAYS shared all the details of their love lives with each other?), but now wasn't the time. "I see that you are entertaining a male friend," said Marianne primly. "I wouldn't dream of interrupting of course. Just call me when your guest has gone home, Heddy dear."

Marianne turned to leave, but heddy stopped her. "Marianne, darling," she said in a strained tone, "I'd like you to meet my son, Richard." She paused for a second before adding, "He is the Director of the circus."

"Oh," said Marianne, and "Oh," again. "Richard.Marianne Sturgid. I'm pleased to meet you."

"The pleasure is mine, I assure you," replied the circus director softly. Weren't circus directors supposed to have big barking voices, like that man in her yard the last time? She could hardly hear this young person. She leaned closer. "Ah. Yes. Um. How - how *long* have you worked for the circus, Richard?"

"Not long at all," he replied, smiling. "In fact- well, I suppose you ought to be the one to tell her, Mother..."

Heddy summoned up an uncertain smile. "Oh, it's so exciting, I hardly know where to begin! You see, Marianne. The circus..."

Marianne's lips tightened. She didn't like the sound of what was coming.

"Part of the circus has decided to settle in town. As a sort of... home base, I guess you should say. And we've all been offered jobs. You too! The envelopes went out yesterday. And because my Richard got himself the director's job -- it's really something very new, you know. Never been tried before. A whole town turned into a circus! And you've always been my dearest friend, you know, so I was able to convince him to get you one of the best jobs left, after... you get your own cage, with running water and electricity, and cable television, of course, and you're far away from the elephants and those noisy teenagers on their dirtbikes, and you'll only have to be on duty six hours out of every --"

Richard cut her off with a gentle smile. "Well, it's a lifetime contract, and the pay is up to ninety thousand dollars a year, plus a bit more on commission if you do real nice work for us. What do you think?" Marianne may have been thrown off guard, but she was not such a one as to let such a matter settle in such an intolerable manner. She opened up her mouth, wits held tight in one hand with her wooden cane, and said, "My dear Richard, I can call you Richard right, since you're practically my nephew...?" She paused, but not to wait for an answer. She was actually starting to get confused. Just when did Heddy have another son, and would not she, Marianne, her best friend for life, remember such a thing? "Richard, when, exactly, did you get this job for the circus?" she asked.

"Two weeks ago today!" He said proudly. "Before that, I'd been just a pencil pusher, a drudge, wasting my life away in some stupid office in Haverford. But now -- the circus! Can't you just smell the sawdust?" He chucked her playfully under the chin. She jumped back, and almost fellinto Heddy's antique porcelain tea service.

"Young man!" she squeaked, outraged. "I don't know what's gotten into you people today. With your suits and your slick talk and your ninety thousand dollars a year... what did you say it was all about? My... my own cage? My own CAGE?" She stumbled back in terror.

Heddy put her hand out, but couldn't reach her. "Marianne, calm down. You shouldn't get so excited."

"It's an incredible opportunity," Richard said. "You'll be able to entertain thousands of peopl and bring joy into their hearts."

"By watching tv in a cage? I don't think so, sonny."

Richard laid a hand on her arm, "Come now, don't be so negative. Mother wants you to be happy and do this with her."

"I won't," said Marianne. "I won't do it, and I will do my best to make sure everyone else doesn't either."

Richards hand tightened on her arm. "I'm afraid you don't have a choice," he said.

"Oh no you don't," Marianne said. She swung her cane out in a low sweep that knocked Richard to the floor. "C'mon, Heddy," she said, tugging at her friend's arm. "I knew I didn't take those martial arts classes for nothing."

What happened next seemed to defy the rules of gravity. Marianne used her cane to vault herself and Heddy through the door, while managing to score a nice hard kick to Richard's head in the middle of her acrobatics. Neither of the women looked back, so they didn't see the way that his head caved in and leaked a greenish blue substance all over the entrance hall tiles.

Once they were out of the house, Heddy seemed confused. "Where are we going? Marianne, when did you get here?" she asked.

"Do you have a son named Richard?" Marianne asked.

Heddy rubbed at her eyes and blinked in the sunlight. "Marianne, you know I don't have any other son than Sam."

"Uh huh, I knew it." Marianne used her cane again to vault the two of them into Heddy's convertible.

"Where did you learn to do that?" Heddy asked. She seemed more bewildered by the second.

"Martial arts class, I already told you. Now fasten your seatbelt and drive."

"You took martial arts? When? Why?" Marianne waved her hand at the ignition and waited until Heddy started the car to answer.

"Three years ago. I thought it was a marital arts class, and that I might find a new husband. Then I figured I might as well stay instead of admitting my mistake. Good thing I did, too."

Heddy backed out of the driveway, peering left and right and tapping the breaks every couple of inches. "Marianne, where are we going?"

"City hall, I should think." Marianne sat back and let the wind blow through her hair. "We've got a tough job ahead of us, Heddy, but never let 'em say we aren't equal to the task."

"Okay, Marianne, if you say so. Martial arts, huh? Pretty fancy."

"Comes in handy," said Marianne.

"Yeah, I guess," said Heddy. "Say, have you ever thought about trying out for the circus with that?"

Round Robin E-mail Experiment
This week we're experimenting with Round Robin Social Storytelling through e-mail instead of through live chat. The idea is that authors have more time and less restrictions on length. We may end up with some longer stories than usual. There have been a few glitches so far (and we only started yesterday, good heavens) with two of our members dropping out, a new one coming in and another one's e-mail suddenly refusing to accept new messages, but I am confident that we'll come up with some sort of end product. In the meantime I am working on a short story that I started in a speedwrite last week. When it is finished I may post it here or not. We'll just have to see.

Round Robin Story Begun By Eve
When Daniel was finally certain that the minister had left, he opened his eyes and surveyed his surroundings. Though it took him a minute for his eyes to adjust to that brand of darkness peculiar to crypts, catacombs, and choir-robe closets, soon he was able to discern shapes and forms in the haze surrounding him. "Jules?" he called in a hoarse whisper, but there was no response.

Daniel sat up, his eyes slowly focusing on the fluted columns of the Windsor family mausoleum. Jules should be here by now, of that he was certain. But if Jules was not here, well, Daniel would take advantage of his absence to explore a little. He carefully climbed off the top ledge where he had stashed himself on hearing the funerary party. The Windsors certainly kept their crypt clean, he thought, as he examined his dust-free hands at the bottom.

Indeed, the whole place seemed just a little too clean. There were none of the dust and cobwebs he would have expected, and the firelight glinted a little too clearly off the polished wood and silver of the coffins around him. Wait... the firelight? Why did he see such a thing here at all, here where he thought he was all alone? He froze, looking down in terror at the room below him.

"Jules?" he whispered again, his mouth dry. The moment the name had escaped his lips, he regretted speaking. He knew, in the pit of his stomach, that Jules had not been the one to light the fire, and he was not at all sure that he wanted to meet the person that had. In response to his call, a scuffling began in a dark corner of the crypt, and it seemed to be moving toward him. Daniel swallowed hard. Why had he agreed to this? It had seemed a fine idea as he and Jules sat in the warm comfort of the pub. But now... now there was no comforting, well-worn mahogany bar before him, no half-drunk pint resting in his hand. There was only the darkness, and worse, the firelight. No sign of Jules. Daniel inhaled sharply as the shambling footsteps grew closer.

Daniel wanted to turn and run, but he knew that doing so would only lead him into a wall. He'd managed to get himself in a corner. Great. The only thing to do was stand there and wait and try to play it out. Maybe Jules was having a bit of fun. The seconds crept by as the figure moved closer and Daniel's heart thudded in his chest. Don't panic, he told himself. He wanted to be able to laugh at the whole Douglas Adams thing, but his throat was too tight and dry. Maybe he'd laugh later, if he got out of here alive. He could see the robes now, and a pale foot shuffling into view. It was bare and callused and covered in sores. They looked like they should have been red, but instead were a washed out purple color that put him in mind of the time he'd spilled Merlot on his sheets and tried to wash it out. Except the sores were much nastier than the sheets had been. They looked like they were oozing. Daniel could see both feet now and he was horrified, He wondered if he ought to look up but every impulse in his body begged him not to. You do NOT want to see the face of this thing, Daniel. Every cell seemed to be screaming that.

He slowly raised his eyes from the figure’s feet. The bubbling skin of the feet led to swollen, distended ankles. What terrified him most, however, was what encircled the creature’s ankle. There, against it’s mottled skin, lay a trinket Daniel had not seen for nearly a decade. The anklet, finely crafted platinum-chain with charms in the shape of ravens, was one Daniel had bought long ago. His fiancee had never able to wear rings; she would take them off to wash her hands, then forget them. When he proposed, Daniel had given her an anklet instead. He remembered the day as clearly as though it were yesterday, bending down on one knee before Raven on the mansion’s expansive lawn. She had thought the nod to her unusual name to be touching, an example of his devotion, and joyously accepted his proposal. Far too trusting, it never occurred to her that Daniel picked the design because he had no idea what else she might like. Nor did it occur to Raven that Daniel was marrying her for her money, that he loved her estates and riches far more than he could ever love any woman. There in the crypt, however, it seemed karma had finally caught up with him. Daniel trembled violently; he had no idea how Raven had risen from the dead, but he knew in his heart that she was going to avenge her murder. By carefully suffocating his young bride, Daniel had avoided leaving any evidence for the police. Up till that moment, he had thought it the perfect crime. But there, alone in the silent crypt, Daniel Livingston knew that he had made a grievous mistake, one that would lead to his demise. Somehow Raven had been resurrected, and no amount of money could save Daniel from his fate.

Round Robin Story Begun By Neil
Fish was not happy, not happy at all.
He liked to think that his anger wasn't just based on
Samuelson's success, but even if it was, well, didn't
he have a right? Hadn't he worked just as hard?
And hadn't that bastard stolen his prize right out from under him?
He sat and fumed as he thought about what he'd say the
next time they met.

As he seethed, he wondered if
perhaps his favorite friend couldn't express his
feelings better. He fondled his knife, running his
hand over the well-polished handle. He had gotten it
for his birthday ten years ago, and it had never left
his side since. Friends came and went, often turning
into mortal enemies first, but his knife had never
deserted him so. Fish drew it from its sheath and
watched the light glint and flash, playing on the
well-honed blade. Yes, he thought to himself,
Samuelson would get his. And it would be richly
deserved.

The knife was made of genuine Damascan Steel
Replicant. Fish had saved all of his money from the
first two years in her Majesty's service to afford it.
He'd had it custom built and engraved with a message
he felt would always mean something to him: True Love
Above All. The blade had a name, too. He felt
something more than pride for her. He felt love, and
so he named her accordingly. Amora. Amora was always
there for him. She was always by his side and in his
heart. She helped him with his work, and spent leisure
time with him too. And now she would help him cut his
ties to Samuelson. One way or another he was going to
be the lead Major. Amora knew that. Amora told him
everything would be all right.

For the moment, however, all Fish could do was wait.
His division was still eight hours away from the
capital, even at the ship's fastest speed. He exhaled
heavily and leaned back against the curved metal wall.
The knife in his hands was heavy, but the weight of
the blade was comfortingly familiar. He spun it
between his hands without looking down. He had
twirled the knife between his fingers so many times on
his long voyages, that the movements had become nearly
automatic. Aside from the blade, Fish carried few
possessions with him. When he had newly joined the
Service, his commanding officer had said that in the
distance possessions were anchors that tied you down.
A younger, more materialistic Fish had doubted the
man, but he had since come to recognize the veracity
of the statement. Money meant virtually nothing to
Fish. What he wanted; what he lived for and, if
necessary, would die for was power

Whistling between his teeth, he dropped the blade back
into the sheath, and that was satisfying too, feeling
it shoot into place like a bolt on a door. He dropped
his reverie with the knife, and sprang for the ladder
like a man with purpose. It was, however, nearly half
a minute later that the screams and commotion began on
deck, the call sounded for all hands, and a report
sounded.

The mutiny was short and swift, and before twenty
minutes had past, Fish controlled the ship. The
bodies of the former captain and first mate, plus the
communication second who was too slow for his taste
had been removed to the morgue, and Fish was sitting
comfortably in the captain’s chair. He looked at the
assembled crew, his crew, and smiled slowly. “Ladies
and gentlemen” he began “we have a slight change of
plans. We will continue to the capital along our
present course. I wish to be informed immediately if
we catch sight of the Dreadnought or the Incandescent.
Other than that, you should continue as you were.
Any questions?” There were mute shakes of the heads,
and his crew turned back to their work. Fish had a
ship now, and Samualson would be getting his. Oh,
how’d be getting his.

Fish was happy, very happy indeed.

Round Robin Story Begun By Moss
"You kids never even try to understand these things," he said bitterly. He shook his head, half in anger, half in sadness, and threw the copy of the Advanced Trigonometric Astro-Telemetry manual across the room. It crashed into the wall and fell, landing in a heap, like a bird that had broken its neck. "I've tried being strict. I've tried being fair. I've always tried to understand, but what do you do? Ignore me. I think I've earned your respect. Haven't I? What else do you want me to do? The fate of the planet hangs in the balance, and all you ever want to do is stay out late, hopping freight trains and tripping on cough syrup, or whatever it is you kids call it these days. Haven't I always been there for you, given everything you needed? Food, shelter, love? I even bought you the Lambourghini steamroller you begged and begged me to get you for Christmas, Alec. And this is how you repay me? For all these years?" He fought back tears as he spoke, his hands trembling. He clutched at the mantlepiece to steady them, and fell silent.


Alec sighed and put a hand on his father's shoulder. "Look, Dad," he said, "It isn't that we don't appreciate everything you do for us. Really." He stopped for a moment when he saw the vein throbbing in his father's forehead. The appearance of the vein was never a good sign. He hesitated to go on, lest it make his father worse, but then went on in a rush. "Please don't get overwrought," he said. All of the children knew this word, overwrought. They had grown up hearing it nearly every day. Their mother was always afraid that one or all of them might become overwrought and turn out like their father. "All this talk of the world hanging in the balance is not healthy." Alec put his arm around his father's shoulders and walked him to a chair. "Please sit down and try to be reasonable. Jenna didn't mean to upset you. She just wants to go to the prom like everyone else at her school."

Of all his siblings, his eldest sister was by far the most trying. While the Guinness children were all brilliant, even by their father's standards, only Alec seemed remotely interested in applying his intelligence to any sort of scholastic pursuit. The other children, even fourteen-year-old Josh, cared only for self-indulgence. The Guinness' ample wealth had enabled the children to live lavishly, spending exorbitant sums of money on the kind of whimsical excesses that their peers could scarcely dream of. Despite attempting to placate his father, Alec knew full-well that Jenna's behavior was certainly not normal.

Going to the prom might be a normal desire, but taking the Concorde overseas and hiding out in London was not how most children dealt with disappointment. Nor, Alec grimly reflected, would most children then email their father, claiming to be traveling with a pack of teenage drifters and hopping train cars for transportation. His mother's fears had been more than realized.

"When I was your age," growled his father, although by this point he was past addressing anyone in particular, so the age in question remained nebulous, "When I was your age, we listened to our parents! Respect! Respect is dead nowadays. When my father said to me, "Now, son, you can't go out tonight, you have to stay home and help me devise a source of high-powered coherent radiation, did I decide to go joyriding around Europe with a bunch of druggie hippie hobos?" At this point his wife came padding into the room, a pained expression on her face. It had been there ever since Alec could remember, and the passage of time had only intensified the effect.

While his mother comforted his father, Alec went to retrieve the stricken book. Lifting it carefully, he smoothed the pages, and carefully closed the cover. It was not badly hurt, and would survive virtually unscathed, although he knew that in some years, it would be that much more worn, and the cover would slowly come loose from its bindings quicker than it might have otherwise. He turned his attention back to his parents, huddled closely together, in whispered conversation. So many conversations between his parents were seen, but not heard, that most of the children had learned lip reading in order to eavesdrop. It was, Alec considered, like any other war. The enemy would create encryptions, and you would seek to break them. He frowned, momentarily nonplussed, but then realized the militant description was appropriate in many ways.

Not for the first time, he cursed his family's wealth. He knew that it was essential, that there was no other way they could have a chance of completing the Mission, but sometimes he was afraid it was more of a distraction than a help. It was a heavy burden his family bore, knowing that they would be the only ones with the skills and the technology to face the invasion. With so much money at their disposal, it was easy to try to run off and hide. But there was not much time left. His grandchildren would be only a little older than he was now when the first ships arrived. He and Jenna might well live to see that time, and he didn't know whether to be excited or terrified. He sighed heavily; there was nothing else to be done. His parents' marriage might be falling apart before his eyes, his sister might be trying her best to die at thirty from an overdose of paint fumes, but he was goddamned well going to finish his equations. Now, if he could just find a way to reconcile the phases of the warp material and the third level disruptor beam. Alec knew it would be another long night.

Round Robin Story Begun By Katherine
"God bugger it!" I exclaimed. I swung my leg around;
there was a disconcerting clicking noise. I let out a
small scream as I toppled to the floor, and lay there
moaning for a bit. Then, I slowly stretched my leg
out, getting about an inch before the pain returned.
Cursing silently to myself, I rolled onto the stomach,
and stared at the wall ahead of me. This was not the
time to have a sprained ankle

The water was boiling on the stove, Harris (the dog)
was whimpering to be let out of the closet, and the
Jenkinsons were due to arrive in less than ten
minutes. Cursing the slippery tile of the floor, I
pulled myself towards the counters at the other end of
the room, where I hoped I could climb into some
semblance of a standing position. I was going to have
to work and think quickly.

Latching onto the handles of the cabinets, I clawed
my way to my feet. Pain shot up my leg, and I caught
my breath. I could stand, though. Barely. Could I
walk? Gingerly, I took an experimental step. I gritted
my teeth and inched my way to the closet, where Harris
was howling. Hobbling as fast as I could manage, I
prised open the door. The wolfhound, now freed, showed
his gratitude by leaping upon his hindlegs and
thrusting his paws onto my chest. Unbalanced by his
weight, I crashed to the floor, shrieking in pain.

That was where Mrs. Jenkinson found me. Harris had
knocked my glasses off and I could only make out a
blur of Mauve above me, but the voice was
unmistakable. "Prudence, dear, are you all right?" she
crooned. "We came a few minutes early and I just let
myself in, because I know you never mind about that,
and then imagine my alarm when I heard you shrieking
in here! Well I never did think you should have such a
large dog in the first place." She shook her head,
something I could tell because the mauve blob was
moving and making me seasick. I still had a dog on my
chest -a 150 pound dog, mind you- and the pain in my
ankle was making me nauseous already. This threatened
to put me over the edge. I closed my eyes and willed
myself not to vomit.

As my last surviving relatives, the Jenkinsons had legal
power of attorney over me. I never did think they
should have the right to decide what I could and
couldn't do, but the state of Nevada disagreed.
After Harold passed on and I took a fall one morning
getting the newspaper, some busybody neighbour
suggested that maybe I was too old to be
living by myself. Just thinking about it made my
blood boil. I've done alright for the past 112 years,
and I have no intention of quitting this joint anytime
soon. If I let on to how badly I was injured, though,
I knew the Jenkinsons would move to have me placed in
a nursing home. With that thought, I steeled my
resolve and stood up quickly. The pain was blinding.
It would've felled any young person (the younger
generation have no pain threshold whatsoever) but, for
a woman who bore 11 children at home, the pain was
quite manageable.

"It's quite all right," said I, in the general
direction I had last seen the Jenkinson female (for
nothing but stars, spots, and wheeling pain-colored
sunbursts were presenting themselves to my vision at
the moment) "I was shrieking in delight over some
news I recieved from a very old friend - Orlando Bloom
signed her forehead at an unexpected appearance in her
hometown." I grinned sickeningly at her (not
difficult in my condition) and batted my eyelashes. I
knew she had a teenage daughter, and so would
recognize my reference well enough to be traumatized
by it. It had the desired effect; she started
muttering excuses and heading for the door. "Pass me
the telephone, will you Maude? There's a dear. I've
got to phone my bridge club and pass around the happy
news. Squee," I added. She handed me the phone and
scuttled out, and I, with a sigh as much of relief as
blinding agony, sat down to dial my osteopath.

Round Robin Story Begun By Anne
We sat on the steps of the library at four a.m. talking in the dark. We'd gotten off from work at the factory a half hour earlier, but we both needed wind down time before we went home to sleep. I lived with my mother and my little sister, so I couldn't make noise when I came in, and Jerry was married and had three kids. We'd started taking walks together after work six months ago. Jerry said it helped clear his head from all the paint fumes. Normally we just talked about whatever. Shootin' the shit, Jerry would say, but I could tell that this night was different.

Everything about his demeanor was altered. Normally, Jerry seemed to walk aimlessly, his steps slow as though he had no reason to hurry. He probably didn't, really. From what I had gathered from our late-night conversations, Jerry wasn't a man with a lot to live for. The night I met him, he said off-hand that his father and his grandfather and every ancestor before them had been born and buried in Tullahoma. With three kids and a nowhere job, Jerry was headed for the same destiny. I'd met men like him before. To people who didn't know me, I suppose I seemed bound for a similar fate.

Tonight Jerry was animated, filled with energy almost to the point of mania. He cracked a grin at every small sound, at the wind around the rooftops, at the cats in the alleys as if they were communicating some fabulous secret. Whoooosh. You have been selected. Yowwwwrrr. You may already be a winner. "T's up?" I asked eventually. "Nothing," he answered promptly, vigorously, and automatically. Then "Mike, I've got something to tell you."

It shouldn't have surprised me, in retrospect, that I - we - had come to a certain closeness. Was I his confessor? No, but it was inching that way, and maybe today, here, before a temple of knowledge we would take a great step forward. And maybe we would arrive safely, or maybe we would discover that we had been standing on the edge of an abyss, and we would not land at all. My mind stretched that second out, an eternity of hyper awareness, and then "Yeah, Jerry?"

"I'm leaving, Mike" came the reply "I'm going. There's a train out of here in two hours, and I'm gonna be on it. I'd like you to be with me"

I didn't know what to think. Jerry was my best friend, and he meant a lot to me, but could I really abandon all I'd been working towards for these eight years? Would I really abandon my masterwork for him? I was all so uncertain. I wished I knew more--where he was going, what he was planning. I could feel the fear coming over me. The night seemed to eat into my bones. But I knew what I had to do."I'd like to, Jerry," I said, heavily.

Jerry smiled. "It'll be great, man. No more factory. We'll head out for the coast. Nothing but easy living from now on. Sun and ocean breezes, and no more damn paint fumes. Think I'll open up a little shop, sell fishing tackle, bait. I got a little money saved up, but I'm not takin' anything else with me. Starting over. I might even change my name. A new life, you know?" I wrung my hands nervously. Could I abandon the experiments? I was close, so close. A few more months, and I knew I'd have my functional prototype. But was it all a pointless quest? Hadn't I just been using my work as an excuse to keep going, something to cling to? Some reason to justify to myself my prolonged existence in this nowhere town?

I opened my mouth to speak, unsure what I'd say. Probably something along the lines of "Sure, Jerry. It'll be great." But just as I began to form the words, an animal cry rent the night. Seconds later, great gouts of flames licked up from a house four blocks away, and without even looking, I knew. It was my house. The prototype had gotten loose. Dread clenched my stomach in knots. I'd taken every precaution. This couldn't be. This meant... I didn't want to think about what it meant, but in my heart I knew. I had only time enough to shout "Take cover!" and to push Jerry to the ground as the shockwave hit. It was all over, I knew. I felt the heat of the flames on my face, felt the flesh of my face char and slough away in great strips. All over. The brick facade of the library crumbled down on us, and then everything was black.

Round Robin Story Begun By Julia
Her purse was full of butterflies. As a little girl, Theodora had spent long afternoons in the fields near her grandmother's house trying to catch the delicate insects. Beautiful though they were, the butterflies never lived long in captivity. Once snared and placed in jars, they quickly sickened and died. Those days had been all but forgotten, however, after Theodora grew up, for in the city she never saw butterflies. In her dream, though, the butterflies strong enough to withstand being confined and they glistened like dragonflies.

Some one of her co-workers, back in the days when she had still carried guest checks in her apron pocket, and had laughed with the other servers passing in and out of the kitchen, had taught her a few origami shapes - crane, fish, frog, butterfly. The last was the only one she remembered now, and if there was ever a small scrap of paper to hand, she would often find herself a few minutes later slipping a miniature folded butterfly into her purse. She never noticed when she was actually folding it, and there was always a moment of pleased surprised when she found one in her hand.

A fleeting moment, but a moment none-the-less, and then into the purse it would go, among its many brethren. She occasionally would go through the handbag, sorting out the butterflies, remembering, when she could, where the paper came from. Receipts were quite popular, although generally a uniform color, white, with purple-black ink embossed on them. An embarrassingly colorful run, left over from an abortive interview where her hands had occupied themselves for an hour using the potential employer's multi-hued post-it notes. She hadn't gotten the job, of course, but she had the butterflies to remind her.

She thought back to that day, to sleeping on the subway as she rode home from her interview. She'd told herself she never really wanted the job in the first place--that she was only interviewing there to get some practice--but she knew she would have taken it if she could have. The stress of working at the plant was getting to be too much for her. No time to make butterflies there. All she could hope for was to dream of them for a few minutes during her commute. How suddenly it had all changed!

It had all changed, of course, that day she'd been riding on the bus, going nowhere in particular. She'd been so tired, yet at the same time restless. She hadn't anywhere to go, and nothing to do, and it was her day off. She had tried, fitfully, to nap, and when that failed she'd watched television for awhile. It was no use. She craved movement. She needed something to catch her attention. So it was she found herself at the bus stop, having walked thirty blocks, thinking of nothing in particular. Her feet aching, and the sky threatening rain, she had paused at the nearest bus stop and boarded the first bus to come by, not even bothering to check where it was headed. She would ride it to the end of its route, she thought, and back again, and she would watch the tall grey city through the windows. Her hands fidgeted in her lap, and she cast about for some small scrap of paper to occupy her in her restlessness. By chance, she picked up a discarded slip lying at her feet. It was a lottery ticket.

She'd barely looked at it at first, her fingers ready to fold it into butterfly shape as she was so accustomed to doing with every other scrap she found, but then a voice in her head said, "Look! Theodora Rose Palmer, look!" She heard the voice clear as day, and she could have sworn it sounded like her grandmother, who had died when she was fourteen, but of course that was impossible. Still, she listened to the voice, and she looked at the paper and saw what it was and she decided then and there to get off at the next likely place and find a newspaper. The ticket was a day old, so the numbers had already been announced. Since someone had thrown it away, it obviously wasn't a winner, but Theodora thought it would be fun to make a game of it anyway. Of course she'd been shocked when it was a winner, and not just any winner, the winner. She scarcely knew what to do with 67 million dollars (and that was after taxes), but she wouldn't ever return to the plant, that was for sure. She thought she'd share her house with butterflies. Have a butterfly garden all her own, and all the scraps of paper in all the prettiest colors she'd ever wanted. And so she did just that. And if her friends, or the people at the shops thought she was crazy when they caught a glimpse of all the blue and the yellow and silver and crimson every time she opened her purse, well they didn't say a thing about it now. Millionaires were allowed to be eccentric.

Round Robin Time Again! This time with Neil, Katherine, Moss, Anne, and Eve. Enjoy!

Round Robin Begun By Aarika

I remember when I preferred books to movies. I was an unstoppable reader from the moment I learned till some time in my early twenties, often finishing three or four books a day. But somehow the combination of college and work left me too fatigued to keep it up. These days, I like nothing better than to lie back on the couch with some popcorn and spend an evening watching videos.

I buy videos, too - that's another thing that's changed. I read far too many books to keep pace with my spending money, and so I kept the libraries both of my friends and my city my constant creditors. Movies, on the other hand, you have to own. Well, at least I have to. Nowadays.

I think I might still read if they made more Choose your Own Adventure books. For adults, though, not kids. I used to love them. I have often thought about this since my college days, but it wasn't until last month when I was watching 28 Days Later with Hal that I had the big one, the mother lode idea. Instead of dvds with alternate endings, why not make choose your own adventure ones? Think of the possibilities! In the mood for a comedy? Rather see it end tragically? If you think he should have kissed her skip to chapter 24 if you think he should have slipped on a banana peel, go to chapter 8.

It was a brilliant idea, and it had the potential to transform movies forever! It would change the dynamic of storytelling, make it better. Plus, it would appeal to the ever growing "do it yourself" sense that more and more people exhibited these days. I immediately bought a digital video camera, and together with a few friends set out to create a prototype. All I needed to do was capture the essence of the idea on some sort of film, and Hollywood would be falling all over itself to throw money my way.

God I was a genius! I began, perhaps simply, vaguely, with too many ideas to put any to good use. Before a month was out I'd filmed three weddings (between four characters), two bedroom scenes (they weren't willing to experiment all that much), sixteen arguments, a dozen or so heart to hearts, and perhaps half a dozen tragic demises. I needed some sort of story to put things in order.

I needed a story with truly universal overtones, a story that would speak to the heart of every viewer. I needed an epic. I needed, at least, an excuse to use both of the bedroom scenes. After many drafts, many late nights spent staring into the soulless blank eyes of Microsoft Word, inspiration struck at last. I fired out an initial treatment, working and reworking it, honing it til it was perfect. Only then, as I gazed with pride over my Meisterwork, did I realise that I had neglected to film the pastry-chef's-convention-attacked-by-giant-helium-breathing-squid-demons scene that would prove the emotional lynchpin of the film.

My mother's kitchen was the scene of the key plot twist. My younger brother wore a white apron and a tall chef's hat. Also, a mustache and sunglasses. When these last two costume choices were questioned, my brother calmly answered, "I'm also a spy in this scene. All chefs are spies." Several of his friends were game for playing the giant squid and I made them all stand on stools, after taking off their shoes so as not to scuff Mom's newly-sewn seat cushions. Their costumes consisted of several cans of silly string and each was equipped with some frozen octopi that was tied on top of their head with ribbon found in my mother's sewing basket. The whole thing looked, well...amateur, frankly. I mean, it was a valiant effort but in the end, it turns out that movies weren't meant to be chosen. They're formed and provided for our amusement and should be viewed in the order given to us. I apologize to my friends from the sex scenes who thought they were going to be onto the big screen. And even bigger apologies to the sexy folks who didn't realize they might have ended up on the big screen.

Round Robin Begun By Noah

"I said give me your wallet, motherfucker!" and he hit me a second time. I felt something liquid and warm oozing from between my split lips, and I knew I was bleeding. I could taste it now. He landed a third punch squarely in my stomach and I fell, half-unconscious, slumping against a stack of flattened cardboard boxes. He loomed over me, and i could see my blood on his knuckles. 'The wallet,' he said, kicking me in the ribs.

"I don't have a wallet. I have nothing," I moaned, flat on my stomach against the boxes. I could hear him standing over me, breathing heavily.

"Nothing? A rich-lookin' guy like you? I don't believe you," he yelled, angrily, inches away from my face.

"Nothing, I swear! I left my wallet and keys in the office this evening. I didn't even have money for the bus--I've been walking since 39th Street. Please, you've got to believe me!"The hoodlum blinked once or twice. I could see doubt in his face. I only hoped it was enough. It was a dangerous game I was playing, but I was desperate. He couldn't be allowed to find what I was carrying. If it got into the wrong hands... I shuddered to even think of what might happen.

"Your jacket," he said, and from the satisfaction in his voice I could tell he though himself very clever. "Hurry!" I struggled to disentangle myself from its sleeves, shaking as much with relief as with fear, and as much with cold as both. I handed the jacket over, and he snatched it, feeling for the pockets through the fabric. "And - uh - your watch!" This I removed without even thinking about it - it had been stopped for three days anyway. Don't let him remember my pants pockets, I silently pleaded. Or my shoes. Those would be just as bad, and maybe even worse.

I was only three blocks away from the drop off point. Losing the stuff now would be horrible. I didn't want to have to face old Lou empty-handed. He wouldn't give a shit that I was bleeding and bruised. He was very business-minded and didn't much care about operative well fare o long as the transports went smoothly. I handed my watch over to the kid and started forward. "Not so fast," he said, blocking me with an arm. "Can't have you going off and getting the coppers out on me the second I turn my head."

"I won't, I swear it," I said. My voice was trembling.

"I'd love to take your word for it," the kid said, "But I'd love kicking you in the face, more." The last thing I saw before I blacked out was his leer and the steel toed Doc Marten.

It was dark when I regained conciousness, which meant I had probably missed the appointed time, but with luck I would still get there before Lou left. I picked myself up, and tried to clean the dried blood off my face as best I could. Then I staggered out of the alley, and toward the drop off point. It would not be good for my credibility to show up late, but it was better late than never.

I could only wish that they had picked someone more suited to the job, but I'd been doing this for years and I'd never run into trouble before. It was not by accident I left my wallet in the office: if I were to be found I would at least want them to have to work to know who I was. Certianly Lou appreciated precautions like that, though if it were to fail... I shuddered, from the cold, from the pain in my leg, from the thoughts in my head, and I found myself already leaning against the right door, and knocked. The door opened smoothly, I nearly fell inside.

"You're late," Lou said.

I mumbled something. I took the notebook from my pocket.

"What did you say?"

"I said I've got it, Lou. Passwords, backdoors, whatever you need. I got mugged, but I didn't let the stupid shit take it." I normally watched my language around the likes of Lou. It was a small thing to make me feel superior. But tonight I was showing just what a tough guy I could be.

Round Robin Begun By Moss

Robert was a thin, fierce man, but he feared that this job with the refrigerator would tame him. It was a squat, chunky, General Electric affair, and it sat there at the bottom of the stairs, seeming to mock him in its mute white obtuseness. There was something rather perverse about a refrigerator unplugged, he thought vaguely, as he moved into position. As if it were no different from any other container.

As he approached he notice that its door was slightly open, and the black fluid that had begun to form inside it the week before was trickling onto the parquet floor. Lydia would have his hide if he didn't get that cleaned up before she got back from the grocery store. He didn't want to clean it up. He didn't like the thought of getting a hand too near the stuff, even with a greasy rag and rubber glove for protection. Maybe he'd watched The Amityville Horror one too many times as a teenager, but he couldn't help feeling the stuff would try to devour him. He stood on the landing for a minute scowling at it before picking up his resolve and moving in for the attack.

Halfway down the stairs, he thought better of it and went immediately back up to the garage, where he kept his things. After several minutes of shifting through the accumulated detritus, he found what he sought: it was an old-fashioned blow torch, and the propane tank was nearly full. Thus fortified, he returned to the basement steps. Even armed with fire Robert still hesitated before descending once more to face his enemy.

Also armed with a good putty knife, he was ready to work on the floor. Just as he thought, the black goo would budge only a little with his scraping efforts. Two minutes into the job, he lit his blowtorch. At first he tried simply heating up the knife, to see if it would do a better job scraping, but that didn't seem to make any difference. If he didn't know better, he'd say the goo was already burning a hole into the floor, and he didn't know how much more damage he could really cause than that sullen refrigerator. He turned his torch on the floor itself.

The torch sprang to life with a satisfying pop, and the bright blue flame licked and hissed eagerly, anticipating the taste of flammable material. Bending low to the floor, Robert ran the torch's flame over the black river of ooze that disfigured the floor. His plan was to heat the goo back into a tractable state, and then to scrape away the softened black mess away with the putty knife, hopefully without destroying the floor in the process. He was mildly surprised to discover that the flame's heat had no effect whatsoever. If anything, the torching had tempered the unknown ichor of the refrigerator, forging it into a seam of pure black basalt. Cursing under his breath, he faced the inevitable -- yet he could not deny taking a grim sort of pleasure in the contemplation of his task. He would have to just hack the stuff out, floorboards and all.

Heading back from the tool shed, Robert had a sudden thought: maybe the saw and the hatchet weren't both needed. But that was quickly quelled by the heft and feel of walking through his house with a huge, sharp thing in each hand. It made him feel manly, alive and ready to kill anything that got in his way. That included little black stains that seeped out of the refrigerator and sought to make his life a living hell and ruin his marriage. No stain was going to get away with such a thing, not if Robert had anything to say about it. The first cut into the floor was a bit rough, it's hard to start a nice hatchet throw without something towards which to aim. But a thick black marker provided the much-needed black X and everything went smoothly for a few minutes. That is, until Robert discovered the first rule of sharp things -- they have no discerning power. They cut through wood and electrical wires with the same ease. Also, water pipes.

By the time he got down to the basement to turn everything off, the kitchen was under four feet of water, and filled with an eerie blue smoke. The old refrigerator was bobbing up and down, floating slowly but inexorably towards the cascade of water running down the front steps. Something in Robert's face changed. He had the smile of a man no longer completely in control of himself. He flung himself at the refrigerator and pushed it further down its path. He crashed through the door with it just in time to see Lydia walking up the driveway with two bags of groceries in her arms. As he came to a rest at the bottom of the steps, the refrigerator in front of him, torrents of water around him, he grinned sheepishly up at his wife. "Sorry hon, there weren't nothin' else to do. My pappy always said there's only one way to deal with a problem 'fridge--you gots to float the damned thing out!"