Kathleen McCluskey is the novelist of THE LONG FALL trilogy. She has been featured in numerous magazines and compilation books both nationally (USA) and internationally.

Samuel leafed through the user manual while Carol set up the laptop for him. A retirement gift, after forty years in the civil service. Not an end but the beginning of a new chapter, or so he’d been told at his retirement party. He was to use the laptop to explore the endless possibilities awaiting him in this new chapter. “I’ve finished loading the photos,” Carol said. The files seemed to go on forever as she scrolled down the screen. “I’ll let you organize them into different folders. Ask if you need any help.”

When she’d gone, Samuel opened the first set of files. Pictures from his niece’s graduation, mostly people he didn’t know. One of Carol linking arms with him. He hated seeing himself in photographs. Moving the cursor along a row of folders, he came to one that didn’t have a title. It contained more files.

He placed the cursor over the first file. A small box popped up: Date created, 12/09/1956. His date of birth. That can’t be right, he thought. He clicked on the file, and his birth certificate appeared on the screen. Place of birth: Dublin. Father’s profession: plumber. Pristine, virgin white—not the yellowed and creased document he kept in a trunk in the attic. Carol never said anything about putting this on the laptop.

He went to the second file, dated 22/05/1958. A grainy black and white image. His mother in horn-rimmed glasses, hair short and curled, wearing a pencil skirt, blouse and cardigan. It was how he liked to remember her, as a young woman. He had seen similar photographs but not this one. She leaned forward with her arms outstretched, eyes gleaming, her face expressing such joy. “Samuel!” Carol called from downstairs.

He closed everything down and went to see what she wanted. He didn’t ask her about the folder, unsure what to ask and self-conscious about his ignorance of computers. She had already done enough, setting up the laptop. Not even a week into his retirement, he didn’t want to appear totally helpless.

Later that evening, he climbed into the attic and searched for his birth certificate but couldn’t find it. While he was there, he went through a box containing his old stamp album, Billy Bunter books and Meccano set. As he fiddled with the Meccano pieces, he recalled past Christmases and birthdays. He thought of the photograph of his mother, her kindness and gentleness.

The next time he turned on the laptop, the nameless folder was still there. Had the number of files increased? Possibly, but hard to tell. He clicked on one with the date 13/04/1959: a photograph of the house where he grew up. Number 34 Saint Lawrence Road, three storeys and a basement, cracked harlequin tiles leading to the front door. A woman stood at the gate, her head turned but Samuel recognized Mrs. Breen, the widow who had rented rooms on the top floor. He pictured her puffy face and the hairs that sprouted from moles on her chin.

Samuel closed the file and went to the next image. The garden of Number 32, a clothesline loaded with bed sheets. In the background, his black and white cat, Tom, sat outside the coal shed. Samuel recalled the disastrous day when he and Tom prospected for gold among the piles of coal. Tom jumped onto the sheets hanging from the line, leaving a track of black paw marks. There was no way to hide the evidence, and Samuel had endured hours of agony anticipating his punishment.

Another image, 26/06/1960: his two brothers in the lane behind the house. Robert, aged seven, sitting in a homemade cart built from a wooden crate with pram wheels and rudimentary steering using ropes. Standing behind the cart, Jack, the eldest, gave the thumbs up sign to the camera. Samuel felt a queer mixture of wonder and regret on seeing Jack. His easy-going brother, never offhand, always interested in what Samuel was doing. Jack had softened the worst of Robert’s bullying. Images from that summer coincided with Samuel’s earliest memories. Pictures of Jack and Robert exploring the abandoned manse at the end of the lane. Their mother with a neighbour, sitting in the living room, laughing at a shared joke. Tom stretched out on a sunlit patch of grass.

He opened a document, dated 09/06/1965: a school report. Geography, A; excellent. English, B; very good. Mathematics, B; very good. Religion, C; good. The headmaster’s summation read: A well-mannered boy but difficult to get to know. Progress is satisfactory.

Next, an icon that looked like a film reel. It took him to a white screen, then blurred monochrome as the picture came into focus. A page lined in squares on a sloping desk and a round hole containing a ceramic pot of ink. A hand holding a nibbed pen. The sleeve of a jumper and a satchel lying against a chair leg. The view switched to a figure in a dark suit, scrawny turkey neck and widow’s peak. Haddington, his primary school teacher. Samuel turned up the volume. “You sneaky, slimy snakes. I’ve had enough of you villainous snakes, you nest of vipers.” Haddington came closer. “Particularly you, Dunne, you sneaky adder.” He bent down, his face filling the screen, long nose and crazed eyes. It had been a misunderstanding, a mix-up over a broken metre stick. Samuel had done nothing wrong but Haddington wouldn’t listen and blamed him.

Samuel got up from his chair and paced the study, still seeing Haddington’s face and feeling the humiliation of that day. He went downstairs to make a cup of coffee. Carol was out, at lunch with friends. Haddington and his metre stick. When was the last time he’d thought about that monster? All that was buried in the past.

He returned to the laptop, and clicked on another film reel. Though the lighting was poor, he could make out the old range cooker in the kitchen of Number 34. A man walked on-screen, the camera trained on his legs. A voice, undeniably his father’s. “All I ask, boy, is some respect. A little bit of respect.” He approached the camera. A leather strap swayed in his fist. “You’ll learn to show respect.” The strap raised, a confusion of movement and noise, the whack of leather on bare skin. The film ended. The silence in the study magnified. Samuel held his breath. He was back in that kitchen, the fear as raw and crippling as fifty years ago. He shut down the laptop. Where had these films come from? Who had put them there?

A distraction, that’s what he needed, something practical and mechanical. There were plenty of jobs to do around the house, chores he had put off until retirement. He went from room to room, making a list of repairs. In the downstairs bathroom, he inspected the grouting but couldn’t concentrate, his brain flipping through images from the laptop. The films, Haddington just like he was at school, and the beating, exactly how Samuel remembered it.

The following day, he busied himself with paperwork relating to his pension, forms to fill, trips to the post office and bank. The laptop remained closed on his desk, its silver sheen unsettling. “How are you doing with the photos?” Carol asked. “Let me know if you need any help. ”He said nothing about the folder. The files felt private, for him alone. Seeing the old house and Jack induced a yearning, and with it a swell of tenderness for his childhood. Days spent playing with Tom or exploring mysterious cupboards, nooks under the stairs and the dark basement. Immersed in the past, questioning and wondering, he fought the temptation and gave in.

The folder waited at the end of the row. He opened pages from the school magazine, an account he had written of a teachers versus pupils football match. A puerile piece, toadying to the teachers and masquerading as irony. Pretentious juvenilia that summed him up as he was then. Images from 1973: schoolmates standing and sitting, not posing but looking away from the camera. Some he identified immediately. One who now ran a gift shop hadn’t changed, apart from the grey thatch of hair that once was black. Another he had met recently, the jowls and comb-over unimaginable in the smiling sixteen year old on the screen. At least three had died. Others he remembered imprecisely, different attributes coming to mind: generosity, spite, humour, vulgarity.

He lingered over an image of Jack on his motorbike, helmet dangling from his hand. Samuel relived the breath-whipping sensation on the back of the Kawasaki as it sped along country roads, dipping crazily to take corners, his awe at his brother’s control of the growling machine. He clicked on the film icon without checking the date. The video started with a view of a ceiling and a fluorescent light tube before cutting to a door with a window. His mother’s voice, “It’s time to go in.” She walked into frame with Robert, her hand on his shoulder. Samuel knew his father was also there. His mother pushed the door open. Inside, a chair with a folded newspaper on the seat. A window, Venetian blinds partially closed. The end of a bed. A slow pan along the covers, the shape of a body beneath. It was Jack’s room in the hospital. After his accident. The room where he died.

One afternoon, Carol called him in from the garden. “I’ve found more photos,” she said. She laid them out in rows on the kitchen table. All the photographs were of him. As a toddler, sitting on a blanket under billowing sheets. Standing between his mother and Mrs. Breen. Holding Tom in his arms. The images seemed dull and lifeless after what he’d seen on the laptop.

“Can you have an unnamed folder on a computer?” he asked. “The default setting is New Folder.” Carol gave him a quizzical look. “Why do you ask?” “No reason, just wondering.” He waited for her to say something about the folder. Instead, she gathered up the photographs. “I can put these on the laptop, if you like.”“No,” he said, “there’s no need for that.”

Samuel whiled away afternoons in cafés, observing the people around him.
The mother hissing at her two children—what was in her past that made her so angry?

And the businessman grimacing as he checked his phone—was he haunted by a shameful incident as a child, some cruelty or misunderstanding?

How much did anyone remember of their past?

Samuel had stopped questioning where the folder came from. It belonged to him, a record of his life. The past was not a dead thing for Samuel. His past was alive on the laptop.

The films lasted ten or twenty seconds, no more than a glimpse, the duration of a memory. One began with a view of a hand reaching for magazines arranged on a shelf. Then, hurried movement and the grim face of a security man. Samuel could feel the iron grip on his arm forty years after the act. Accused of shoplifting, he had brazened it out at the time but felt his shame all the more deeply now.

He had opened more than half the files. Better to take it slowly, and savour each recaptured moment.

Each visit to the laptop offered an element of the unexpected, not knowing exactly what was coming next.

His university years: half-empty lecture halls, and the maths professor who covered the blackboard with an illegible scrawl. Samuel was captivated by snapshots in the college bar of his coterie of friends. The excitement of Rag Week, dunkings in the canal, painted faces and laughter.

His brain tingled with anticipation, going through photos from a student party, scrutinising each face. In one, a group gathered around a plastic bin that must have held home-brewed beer or wine. His eyes led him along a line to Carol, standing with a cup in one hand, the other raised in the air.

Samuel had not forgotten that night. Tom Scanlon, who threw the party, told him that John Cazale had died. They toasted the genius actor.

Then, Samuel met Carol for the first time. Her animated face on the screen brought back those first tentative weeks and months. Captivated and intimidated, he had marvelled at her easy confidence. A time of flux. Constant movement. Forward, always going forward.

He paused whenever he came to a film, steadying himself before clicking on the icon.

A close-up of a clock, lettering on the face: William & Smith London. A familiar ticking, the sound that had announced the passage of time in Number 34.

His mother, leaning against a cupboard stacked with plates, a ball of shredded tissue held to her nose. She looked at him with raw accusing eyes.

“You won’t do this one thing, for me, if not for him.”

Her request that he attend his father’s funeral. A request he could not grant. She had begged him but he refused.

Samuel allowed himself one session on the laptop per day, and no more than five files per session. He studied every square inch of the computer screen. Afterwards, he went for long walks with no particular destination, walking to regulate his thoughts as he digested what he had seen. Going over every detail, re-experiencing his life.

He replayed the film from his wedding to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. The registry office seemed so austere. He was struck by the lack of occasion. The registrar had a birthmark covering much of her neck and cheek. He had forgotten that, as he had forgotten so many other things.

The folder contained images from their honeymoon in Lisbon. Not pictures as such, but impressions; arbitrary views of shops, monuments, sky, a distant horizon obscured in haze. The gaping mouths of fish in the Tagus. A table with a plate of chicken and a glass of wine. Graffiti emblazoned junction boxes. A dried fountain littered with cigarette butts.

He examined a photograph of Carol. She posed beside the statue of Pessao, hand raised to keep her straw hat in place. Samuel recalled the abrupt winds that passed through Lisbon. Her hesitant smile transported him to that time and place and to other places and times, half-formed plans and unacted intentions.

Samuel had kept a diary for six months in 1989. Pages from the diary appeared in the folder, filled with the minutiae of his life—meals he had eaten, films he had seen and books he had read.

An entry from week 5, February 2nd: Meeting with N. tomorrow, very nervous. He had no notion who N. was or what the meeting was about. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t remember.

Two months into retirement, Samuel still hadn’t made a start on the home repairs. There was no rush, nothing urgent required fixing. Nothing that couldn’t wait until the days got shorter.

Robert came to visit with his daughter, Lucy.

“So, how are you handling the void of retirement?” Robert asked.
“It’s not that bad.” Samuel laughed off the jibe, and turned his attention to Lucy. “I hear you’ll soon be starting a PhD. You must be excited.”
Lucy shrugged and looked away.

“She’s worked hard for it.” Robert gave Samuel one of his stern looks. “She’s not going for an easy option, like the civil service.”
Samuel let the remark pass. Carol took Lucy into the sitting room, leaving the two of them at the kitchen table.
“Do you ever think of Jack?” Samuel asked.
“Why? Has something come up?”
“It just crossed my mind, Jack and his motorbike.”
Robert drummed his fingers on the table. “Jack was the wild boy on his Kawasaki, stupid and reckless. A senseless way to go. It hit the old man hard.”
“Our old man was an abusive brute.”
Robert waved that away. “You got off lightly, you were too young. He had worn himself out by the time he got to you. Jack had the worst of it. That’s what the old man couldn’t live with, afterwards.”
They sat in silence. Samuel could feel his brother’s eyes on him.
“What’s prompted all this, asking about Jack?”
Samuel hesitated, then he said it. “It’s a strange folder on the laptop with pictures and films.”
“Really?” Robert pursed his lips. “Forget about that. You don’t know half of what goes on around you. All you see is what you want to see. Get off your arse and stop sniffing your old farts. Go out and live a little, make the most of retirement.”
Carol returned to the kitchen.
“Sam here has been digging around on his laptop,” Robert said.
She shook her head in exasperation. “Ever since retiring, he’s never off the thing.”
Robert turned to Samuel. “You need to pay more attention to your wife.”
“Chance would be a fine thing.” Carol raised her eyes to the ceiling.
“Come on, Sam. Take her on a holiday. Start spending some of that money you’re hoarding.”
Robert laughed, and Carol joined in.
“I’m going for a walk.”

Samuel stayed out until he was sure Robert had left. It was a mistake to have mentioned the laptop. Nothing had changed with his brother—still dismissive, still talking down to him. Maybe he should say something to Carol. But no, not after the way she’d laughed with Robert at his expense.

Samuel decided to take a break from the folder. He went back to planning the home repairs.

“You’re very quiet,” Carol remarked at breakfast. “Is something wrong?”
“No, why should there be anything wrong?”
“I’ve noticed you haven’t gone near the laptop in days.”

Carol had to know something about the folder. She had installed everything on the laptop.

He spent more time out of the house, sitting in cafés, rehashing events from his past. After a week, he was ready to dip back into the folder. But not at home, not with Carol around. He packed the laptop in the bag he had used for work.

“I’m taking this out with me.”
“It’s your laptop,” Carol said. “If the battery is fully charged, it should last you four hours.”

There was a Costa Coffee nearby, a characterless place but it had plenty of tables with space for the laptop. He sipped his coffee and looked around the room, not taking much notice of anything.

The difficult truth was that the folder no longer excited him. He found the entries from the 1990s and 2000s disappointing. Not as many files and longer stretches of time between them.

The images still seemed unplanned but were incidental and mundane. Soulless buildings, street corners and tram stops that defined his trips to and from work. Views of the supermarket car park where he shopped every Thursday.

Faces obscured because they were too close or smudged by movement. Neighbours, his doctor, the barman in his local, ancillary members of the cast of his life.

Pictures from his retirement party: people he never liked, standing awkwardly with slices of cake on paper plates. He shut the screen as the head of department began a trite speech about his years of service.

Everything had been so fresh and fascinating at the start, when Samuel first looked inside the folder—his school days, university, meeting Carol. There must have been a point in his life when the urgency waned and the future became a sterile present.

He kept up a routine of going to Costa and viewing two new files each time. Arriving late one afternoon, all the tables inside were occupied. No matter, the day was warm, an Indian summer forecasted. He took his iced tea to the furthest outside table and watched the cars sweeping by before starting the laptop.

The files to do with his brother’s visit bothered him. Not so much the images: Robert grinning as he delivered some put-down and Lucy looking bored. It was the film of the conversation between Carol and Robert in the kitchen.

“Have you said anything to Sam?”
Carol shook her head. “He’s so moody and preoccupied.”
“I tried to talk sense to him, but you know what he’s like.” Robert shrugged. “Passive but wanting more. Never satisfied but not doing anything about it. Sam has always been a victim.”

They had appeared exactly as Samuel pictured them in his mind’s eye. The derision on Robert’s face and Carol’s half-smile. He still hadn’t spoken to her about the laptop. Not yet. First, he would get to the last file and, then, begin again in reverse. Start at the end and trace his way to the beginning—see if that told him anything. When he’d completed the second cycle, he would talk to Carol.

The laptop came to life. He moved the cursor across the screen and clicked the mouse. The folder was almost empty, only one row of files. He opened a different folder, then went back to the unnamed folder. It made no difference. His body flooded with dread. What had he done? Could he have deleted the files by mistake and wiped out his precious past?

He clicked on the first file in the row. An image, today’s date. The café in the background, the laptop on the table, iced tea to one side. What about the other files? What was left? He clicked on the last file, the final entry, a film reel icon.

A white screen, cloudiness, then a car moving at speed, accelerating. He looked up and saw with his own eyes what was playing on the screen.
The car veered off course, coming towards him, seconds away.
The driver, hands on his chest and off the wheel, face contorted.
Samuel heard shrieking, sensed movement around him, tables scraping against the ground.

The screen went blank.

I was suddenly conscious of a faintly grey presence only a few feet away from me that was sliding through the hallway as I sat at my desk. I stared in disbelief. I was about to speak as if the apparition could hear let alone respond, but then it disappeared. I say “it” as I sensed the figure was female. Why, I don’t know. Nothing like this had ever happened to be before. I thought paranormal occurrences were possible, but I didn’t believe they were common-or that I would ever be affected. Indeed, after a few moments of surprise, I resumed work on my computer.

The following day, around the same time in the morning, an even more astonishing thing happened. I saw the shape of a slightly familiar looking dog marching throughout the hallway. We’ve had several dogs as pets whose memories we treasured. He looked so real that I wanted to reach out and pet him or her. Unlike the other presence I didn’t have any sense of gender. But the immediate reality of the sight was even more striking than the human apparition.

I didn’t recognize the “woman” or the “dog.” But why did they appear? Did their presence reveal some momentous development? Was I being forewarned? Or had I become a way-station on some paranormal trail? But it was easy, I realized, to invent all sorts of theories and possibilities, one more absurd than another. Assuming I had been visited by paranormal beings, human and canine, how did I know that I wasn’t just a random instance of their appearance? Why was I special?

Against my better judgment I decided to relate these two visual experiences to my wife, Jane, and our 15 year old son, Ned.

Big mistake!

I thought they’d share the mystery of these dual appearances with me. Not so.
“Did she have any expression on her face?” Jane asked, not unreasonably.
“Did she have a face?” Ned immediately cracked, bringing a smile to Jane’s face.
“Why are you making fun? I saw what I saw.”

Jane nodded. “Of course. But you’ve been working very hard. It could be just a …
I don’t know ...a ….”

“Figment of my imagination?” I reacted with indignation. My account, no matter how unusual or fantastic, should be treated with more respect. I taught history at a community college. I was busy marking papers and other activities, and I was a bit tired, especially my eyes. But I was hardly overworked. I was lucid, observant, and totally rational.

“Come on, Dad,” Ned argued, “a woman and a dog! She wasn’t walking the dog, was she?”

Ned laughed and Jane resisted a spreading smile.

“Well, I didn’t expect to be made fun of. I won’t bother you with any more spectral sightings.”
“Steve,” Jane said, “don’t be insulted. We believe you.”
“Sure, Dad. We were just joshing you.”

Joshing, indeed! But I smiled nonetheless, wondering if the figures, especially the woman, would reappear. And hoping they would.

***

But there was no return. I felt foolish staring at the hallway at the same times each morning the next few days and being disappointed on a daily basis. I was actually pining for a second paranormal experience. Naturally, I kept this bizarre lookout to myself to avoid any further embarrassment. I could easily envision such other questions as:

Do you think the figure is of a former girlfriend?
What do you think her name was?
What’s the position of her hands? Is she pleading?
Was the dog wagging his tail? Did he have a collar?

I’d be a target, a marked man even to my family, if I opened my mouth again. But there was no diminution of my belief in what I saw. I didn’t imagine anything. Even if these fleeting figures never reappeared visions of them were fixed in my mind.

***

We had some friends over for dinner on a Saturday night, two couples we knew well. Just a small gathering. I don’t know how the conversation turned from politics to exploration of space with all the ultra-powerful telescopes and then to what creatures might be found on planets yet to be seen.

“They could be composed of anything, not flesh and blood like us,” Jeff mused. He was an executive at an insurance company.

“Even invisible, like paranormal beings,” Eve, his wife, a part time interior decorator, conjectured.

I couldn’t help myself. My face, I knew, had turned one shade redder. Jane winced. Obviously, she had shared a confidence with Eve, one of her best friends. But it seemed Jeff, her husband, didn’t have a clue how her comment involved me. Nor did the other couple, Doug and Doris, who both worked in the entertainment field. But I still felt betrayed and embarrassed.

Suddenly, a feeling of strange calm came over me. My normal pallor returned. I glanced confidently at the others. There, before us all, was a slim, barely visible shape of a woman.

“Don’t go!” I shouted at the diaphanous body. I leaped forward as if I could actually put my hand on her. But hands on what? There was was nothing but air. Everyone was staring at me as if I were insane but I didn’t care. Whoever it was, and whatever it was, had returned. Perhaps willed to do so by my firm belief? Vouchsafing my perceptions, my very integrity. Could I summon a paranormal in this method? Was I so gifted? A discovery none too late at the age of 42.

But the gathering ended. Not my fault. After the others left, embarrassed at what they had seen and not knowing its significance, Jane came over and comforted me.

“The doctor will know what to do,” she said, touching my forehead as if mere fever could explain my stunning paranormal epiphany.

“So will I,” I said with supreme confidence.

Jack Adler is a Los Angeles-based author and editor.

The scorching heat from the sun was unbearable, the blue sky cloudless, the few green leaved acacia trees distantly dotted around far away from the over trodden narrow path, making it difficult to even entertain the thought of going to seek shade from under them. The twenty kilometer journey was proving to be near impossible for the three ladies walking one behind the other on this path.

They were all in their forties, the youngest and less talkative being anything between forty and forty two. Madhuve, the oldest, was doing much of the talking. She was tall, dark, a bit heavy around the waist, with chilling eyes that twinkled when she stared at you; you could tell that during her young age days, she had been a very strong woman. Masivanda, the second oldest, spoke here and there, mostly just nodding her head in agreement with Madhuve. She walked with a slight limp, and, according to her, she had tripped and fallen while running away from an angry charging bull from their village. She was slender, good looking and avoided looking people in the eye for reasons best known to herself. Stembile was the youngest. She was light in complexion and very beautiful. Her body and curves left many men drooling, some even walked into walls, trees and sometimes ditches while staring at her. She barely spoke, just listened to the others talk, occasionally laughing at something funny said by Madhuve. They were all married.

They had started this journey just before sunrise and hoped to arrive at their destination before sunset, but as they looked at the horizon ahead of them, with the sun just a few moments from touching it, they knew they would not make it today. They were going to attend a passover; a church event that happened once every year. The church leaders this time had decided to hold it very far from their village, but since they were devoted christians, they could not miss it.

The heat of the day had caused them to use up all their water and they knew that sooner or later they would have to find some. Since this was in the rural area, homesteads were within a few kilometers from each other and villagers did not mind sharing their water, or even food. It was also going to be a moonless night and walking in the dark, without seeing where one's foot was going, would not be a good idea. Snakes hunt at night and you don't want to step on one, especially puff adders that tend to just freeze when they sense danger. Hyenas, even though presumed timid, were talked about a lot in these villages. They were nocturnal because of the enmity between them and humans, and staring back at one, on a pitch black night like this one would be a terrifying experience. The ladies would have to find a home to seek shelter for the night and proceed the next morning. They could also use a hot meal, and, knocking on someone's door, way before dinner, was the wise thing to do, otherwise they would only be given somewhere to sleep for the night, a thought that was not pleasant at all.

As they walked on, hoping to set foot in a village soon, they listened to songs from the evening birds, that seemed to  celebrate yet another day lived amid near misses from slingshot yielding village boys; yes, having stiff porridge (sadza) accompanied by a roasted bird was an achievement, a complete meal in every boy's dream. With one small roasted bird, two to three boys could finish two kgs of parlenta (sadza).

"Wait a minute," Madhuve said, excitedly, stopping, and, signalling the others to do the same. "I think I heard something, like people singing. Doesn't sound too far away."

"I hear them too." Masivanda spoke, her head craned to one side as if to catch the sound waves. "Sounds like some funeral songs. Oh yes, it's coming from over there, by that hill." She was pointing at what seemed like a glowing fire about two or so kilometers to their left.

The darkness was getting thicker and they could hear their own footsteps quite clearly. All birds had stopped singing and all that could be heard were frogs making their loud croaking noises; the males' deep loud distinctive croaks could be heard coming from different spots as they tried harder and harder to lure the females over for some romantic moments. A few fireflies could be seen floating all around them.

Now, when Masivanda mentioned the funeral, she and Madhuve exchanged glances that filled Stembile with fear. She had never seen anything like it. Their eyes had glowed for a moment and their long tongues had simultaneously slid out of their mouths and given their lips a chilling swab. Braving herself, Stembile started walking. "Maybe we can go over there and ask for shelter and food, am sure there must be a path brunching off this one not far ahead of us, oh yes, there it is." She increased her pace, her heart pounding. She hoped the other two could not hear it. All she wanted was not to be  with these two alone in this darkness. She had no idea what was wrong with them but a cold stream of sweat running down the small of her back told her there was something sinister about them. All the stories she had heard in the village of ghosts and witches, and had brushed aside as mare myths, started flooding her head. Her mind was racing as she remembered Madhuve's response to her food statement.

"Yes, food! Funerals have lots of food, particularly meat. Yes, meat, am craving meat tonight, bloody raw..." Masivanda had given her a nasty nudge, stopping her in mid sentence. She had noticed Stembile 's terrified look. "Shut up." She had loudly whispered to her.

As they drew nearer to the home, they were relieved to see a lot of people, some singing and dancing to a rhythmic traditional drum bit that somebody, whoever that was, surely knew how to put together. This was happening around one big fire while some others just sat around another small one, chatting in low tones.
African funerals can be so much fun; people just do not sit or stand around looking sad and all, they break into song and dance; they share jokes, with some even imitating the deceased's behavior while they were still alive. The only time everyone is really sad and concerned is when they have just heard the news, or a few moments after someone's death; a few minutes after that, it is time to comfort and get the close members of the family to divert their attention from mourning all the time.

Even none relatives attend funerals and am sure most of them just for the entertainment, plus, of course, meat. On almost every funeral, a cow is slain and this does not happen often in any African village. Meat is eaten at very important functions only, such as weddings, funerals, anniversaries, memorials, and, on Christmas day. It is very common for a group of African women going to a funeral to be chatting excitedly, laughing, doing hi fives until they are close to the home, when suddenly they give off a cacophony of wails, screams and sobs, with some even going an extra mile by staggering and finally collapsing, falling short of passing out.

A dog barked at them from somewhere behind the main house, but a small teenage boy silenced it with some kind of a whistle tune.

"May we be welcome in your home, Papa?" Masivanda politely spoke, clapping her hands together, a thing villagers do as a sign of respect when entering someone's yard. An old man of around seventy years had appeared from the direction of what seemed like a chicken run and noticed them.

"Sure." The white haired old man responded, approaching them. "You are welcome. It's not a very pleasant day of course with the funeral and all but, as you can see, there is lots of people here from all over, please feel free to join."

He showed them where to sit. A young lady  offered them some food and water and they accepted without hesitation. They told them their story and that they where happy to finally sit comfortably for the first time since before sunrise. Soft moans could be heard coming from one of the round huts surrounding the fire, and, Stembile could not hold back her own tears as she felt the pain the mourners felt.

An elderly lady sitting close to them started sobbing too, uncontrollably. She spoke with a shaking voice that was filled with emotion. "He was only twenty, oh Lord, why why why?"

Two young ladies wearing sarongs came up to her and put their arms around her shoulders, murmuring soft words of comfort. Her sobs subsided but the pain could still be seen in her eyes, and this was too much to take for Stembile who was using the color of her dress to wipe her own tears. She looked at her friends. They did not seem a bit moved by what was going on and she had to fight hard to clear her memory of what she had, or thought she had seen early on. She got into some small talk with the other ladies who were sitting by the fire.  At least the home owners were happy to offer them accommodation for the night. What did not stop bothering Stembile was how her two friends kept looking at each other in a  weird way, glancing at their wrist watches as if they were worried about time. Their minds seemed so far away from here, and, at this point, she knew she should not have come on this journey. Regrettably, it was too late.

As the night wore on, the singing and dancing intensified- beautiful round-assed middle aged women displayed their worldly possessions without fear or remorse, in the most entertaining erotic of ways. They took turns entering center stage to outperform each other, their hips and waistlines vibrating in a way no one had ever seen before. This was their one of very few chances to show off their moves without fear of being judged, demonized or condemned by the so-called holier than holy. At funerals anything went and if you had a problem with it, you were free to up and leave, no one cared a brass farthing. At some point, Stembile was tempted to join in but shyness got the best of her. While contemplating this, she had not noticed Madhuve and Masivanda getting up and disappearing into the dark behind one of the huts. Suddenly anxious, she looked around, her eyes searching all around the fire but to no avail. She wanted to ask one of the ladies there to help her look for her friends but realized she may have just been overreacting. What if they had just gone to answer the call of nature? What if they had gone to retire in one of the houses? Not wanting to embarrass herself, she settled back down and diverted her attention back to the entertainment. A few moments later, when she instinctively turned her head towards where her friends had been, her heart skipped a bit. They were back, sitting there, staring at her with glaring eyes that seemed to speak a horrifying language. They had that, 'what the hell' look in them that sent shivers down her spine. It was as if they had never left. She couldn't hold their stare, instead, she decided it was time to go to bed.

She rose and went into one of the huts closest to the fire. A lot of other women lay  on their sides on the floor; a few were snoring and someone mumbled something in their sleep. She found herself a small gape enough to wiggle her slim body in and was fast asleep in no time at all; last thing she remembered was her praying silently to God that those two would not follow her here.

As if Stembile's departure from the fire had been their queue, Madhuve and Masivanda exchanged knowing looks, then Madhuve surreptitiously opened her small hand bag, reached in and took out something that looked like a small woolen sachet, stuffed with a substance only known to themselves. She looked around to make sure none were watching before casually tossing it into the fire. A tiny spiral of smoke rose from the burning sachet into the air and disappeared without anyone noticing.

A few moments later, one by one, people around the fire started yawning and  falling asleep. The singing and dancing around the other fire started to slowly subside until every single one of the singers and dancers could not keep their eyes open. Within a few minutes, silence replaced all the noise and only a few hee, hees from an awl somewhere in the trees nearby could be heard amid the snoring all over the yard. A happy black smith lapwing flew overhead, letting you a loud clack clack sound, before disappearing into the dark. For Madhuve and Masivanda, it was time to act. They had four hours before sunrise and that was more than enough time. They both seemed to transform into super humans that could float just above the ground. They went into the hut in which Stembile was sleeping, found her and stood above her.

Madhuve leaned over, slapped Stembile lightly on the face and when she snapped her eyes open, recognizing them, Madhuve waved her open hand three times from side to side above her face and suddenly, Stembile found herself getting up and, following them outside with a blank look about her face. She had been hypnotized by Madhuve's hand and started to enjoy their company as they floated in the direction of the termite mound, behind which a fresh grave awaited them.

Stembile would later remember feeling light headed and amazed by the fact that she could just float through the air, her feet barely touching the ground; how it felt so cool to be able to see all the way across the fields as if a big light had been switched on and placed over the whole area; how, like a helicopter, she had the lift, drop, forward thrust and reverse without using her feet, just her invisible wings.

At the grave site were several graves, some of them very old with only an old granite tombstone sticking up, probably belonging to some ancestors, and a couple of others could have been anything between one and many years old. They were not interested in those ones, their sights were on the freshly built one, one without a tombstone yet. While Stembile watched in ewe, Madhuve pulled out from under her dress, some kind of a leather whip, went to stand at the head of the grave and gave it a hard smack, while mumbling some words Stembile memorized. Masivanda stood by the foot of the grave, whistling softly, her eyes sparkling. The top of the grave opened up like sliding doors and revealed nothing but chilling darkness inside. Performing some kind of a ritual dance, with their arms flailing, Madhuve and Masivanda circled the grave twice before Madhuve walked up to Stembile and handed her the whip.

In an echoing, hoarse voice, she said. "You wait out here and stand guard, just before light, do what I just did to open the restaurant up, so we can come out. Understood?"

Stembile just nodded, a distant tingling sensation crawling up the back of her neck into the back of her head. The two disappeared into the grave and it closed up again. Later, Stembile would vaguely recall going to sit on the grave, burying her head between her drawn up knees, before everything went blank.

Early morning birds singing woke her up with a start, wondering where she was. The rising sun's rays blinded her and she had to hold her open hand just above the eyes to see a big crowd of astonished people staring at her from a good thirty yards away, their eyes wide with horror. She looked around herself and shot to her feet, stepping away from the grave. The people staring at her were angry but also confused. They were saying something she could not make out. She opened her mouth to say something but nothing came out. Her knees buckled and she collapsed on to the ground, suddenly aware of what was going on. She had been sitting on a grave, for how long, she had no idea; why, she could not comprehend. The crowd slowly and cautiously approached her. Terror gripped her as she watched them edge closer and closer through her long braids that hung loosely over her eyes. Some were carrying long whips, some knobkerries and some, long curly ropes. This told her they had seen her a while back, gone back to gang up and come back to deliver mob justice. It is customary in many African tribes to visit a fresh grave early the next day just to make sure it has not been tempered with. How could she get out of this, how had she gotten here in the first place? All these unanswered questions flooded her head as she tried to recall.

The crowd stopped about ten yards away and one elder came closer and stood above her. He was not carrying any weapon but his eyes were red with anger. His chest was rising and falling as he struggled to rein in his rage. Stembile recognized him. She had seen him before. Wait a minute, from last night. He was the elder that had welcomed them.. them. What, them? She and who? Then, suddenly her memory came back, and so did her voice and sanity. The funeral, the food, drinks, the song and dance, the fire. Where were her friends, Madhuve and Masivanda? Had these people hurt them in some way? Was this a man-eating tribe? She could not bear the thought of being devoured alive by these hungry looking people. She had to run away from here. She felt cornered like a wounded animal. Her only weapon maybe anger.

Then on top of her voice, she screamed, "Where are my friends! Where are they?" She was now up on her feet, looking around frantically.

The old man 's anger immediately turned into concern. With a soft voice that was barely audible, he spoke.
"Young lady, are you okay? Do you understand where you are and how you got here?"

"I am okay," she screamed, stomping her feet against the hard ground. "Where are my friends, what did you do to them? " She broke down and started sobbing loudly through short deep breaths.

Someone in the crowd screamed, "Witch! Let's deal with her!" Everyone else joined in and instantly, it was a chorus of, "Whip the witch! Human eater! Whip the witch! Human eater!" They were now surrounding her and raising and waving their weapons, waiting for the old man to give them the thumbs up. The old man did not. Instead, he reached out his hand and carefully led Stembile through the crowd towards a big loquat tree about twenty yards from the grave. He sat her down and gave her enough time to calm down. Someone from the crowd ran up to them, holding some kind of leather whip. "Uncle, uncle," he shouted, "ask her if this is hers."

Stembile gave one look at the whip and before the old man could say anything, she got up and took it out of the man's hand. Suddenly it all started coming back. Her friends' weird looks, the waving hand in her face, the floating to the termite mound, the...she started walking slowly towards the grave, the whip held firmly in both her hands. Everybody's gaze followed her until she stopped at the head of the grave. She raised the whip above her head and paused.. something occurred to her just before she brought it down onto the grave.

Her face twisted into a raging grin as she processed what the two ladies had subjected her to..this humiliation, the embarrassment, the fear. How would the world view her now? A witch from Nengoma Village? How would her family, friends, relatives react to this news? How would her husband regard her upon hearing this?

An avenging spirit was fast engulfing her. She thought deep, tears rolling down her chicks, and, with all her might, she brought the whip down onto the grave and a shattering noise echoed through the hills close by. Nothing happened.

Stembile realized she had forgotten the words Madhuve had spoken while slamming the whip hard against the grave, and, without saying them, the grave would remain closed. She told the chief and his people what had happened until she got to the opening of the grave part, then stopped and, crying softly, she said she could not remember the rest; only that the other two women were definitely down there feeding on the dead young man's body, and since this was taboo in this village, and, digging up a grave for whatever reason was not something allowed, everyone chose to believe her story and agreed to let her go. Back at her village, when she narrated her story, no one believed her, they brushed her aside and advised her to see the village traditional doctor, because, surely, she was losing it.

In Chamba village, where the unthinkable happened, there is talk of people hearing knocking sounds coming from deep in the grave, heard whenever they pass by at night. Nobody has ever had the nerve to stop and listen carefully. Some even claim to have heard pleading voices begging to be let out; it's been twenty years now.

But, hey, that's not what happened. Repeating Madhuve's exact words, Stembile smacked the grave again, circled it twice and all of a sudden, a strong whirlwind came out of nowhere, kicking up debris, sand and dust. Everyone closed their eyes until it passed, and when they opened them, they were horrified by what they saw. Two scary looking women were standing in front of the grave, their lips, hands and dresses covered in blood- some of it trickling down their arms. They just stood there, their eyes almost popping out of their skulls. They seemed powerless, confused, frightened and unable to move. The villagers on the other hand were equally mesmerized. Some collapsed to the ground, some had run off into the hills. Everyone was trembling except for the old man who stared back at the two ladies. He seemed to wait for a particular moment to say something or make a move. The two ladies looked at each other, at their bloody hands and understood. Their faces changed immediately from being horrifying to being afraid, ashamed and vulnerable. Simultaneously, they dropped to their knees and buried their heads in their hands, waiting for what they knew was coming.
Without anyone saying anything, the crowd moved in on them and started whipping them.

Realizing what was happening, and what would happen if he did not stop the crowd, the old men muscled through to the center where the witches lay groaning and screaming in pain and pushed away the crowd, shouting on top of his voice. "Stop stop stop! You gonna kill them and then what? Let's take them to the chief and he will deal with them according to our laws!"

Someone shouted, "kill them, the chief will just pardon them! Kill the witches, kill the human eaters!"

"No no no!" The old man insisted and after a few moments of silence, the crowd dispersed. The three ladies were taken to the chief 's house where they were locked up in a cattle kraal, waiting for elders from their village, whom the chief had sent his aids to summon, to arrive.

The old man, who at this moment could not hold back his tears, approached the kraal and spoke to the ladies with a raspy, trembling voice filled with agony, "You have no shame. I let you into my home, feed you and give you shelter and you pay me back by feeding on my grandson? Really? May the Lord punish you with the most extreme curse imaginable."

He swung around and weakly staggered back to his house.

A few hours later, when their elders arrived, after a long agitated debate, they were released after the two who had actually gone into the grave agreed to pay a fine of ten cows each. Stembile was pardoned since she had just been a victim of circumstances. 

Now, I could end this story here. Yes, don't you think it would be a good ending? Something like, Stembile realized she had forgotten the words spoken by Madhuve to open the grave and without saying them, it would not open.

Lesley Mukwacha is an African storyteller who has been leading and guiding international tourists around Africa for over a decade, sharing with them his real life experiences in the safari industry, together with fictitious stories of his around campfires, and, would like to share these stories with the rest of the world. He  currently lives in Zimbabwe but moves around a lot throughout Africa.

Floating Baby - https://bit.ly/3W5Wh5j

When Mrs. Donna Wills went to her baby’s room to check on her one-year-old son, he was floating above the crib, in a standing position looking down at her. She rushed to him, grabbed him and held him close. “I must be hallucinating. He couldn’t have been floating in the air…but he was,” she said and put her son back in his crib. Immediately, he rose up, she grabbed him, and, as she did, her husband came home, and she hurried down to meet him.

“Hi, Donna,” he said and kissed her. “How’s my family?” He took Bobby and held him. “How’s my boy?”
“Arnie, I want to show you something.”
“What’s that, honey?”
“Put Bobby down.”
“Okay. There y’ go Bobby,” he said and put him on the floor. “Watch Bobby.” As he watched, Bobby rose up, went into a standing position, smiled, gurgled, and went to his father, who held him. “Donna, what…? Uh, let ‘s go sit down before I fall down,” he said and they went into the living room. “This is unbelievable.”

“I think we should take him to the…the…God, who would know about this?”
“Let’s start with Dr. Jones. He might know what to do?”

Donna was sitting with Bobby on her lap when Dr. Jones entered the examination room. “Hi, Arnie, Donna. What’s up with Bobby?”

“I’ll show you,” Donna said and put Bobby on the floor. Bobby gurgled, rose up and went to Dr. Jones, who held him.

“I…I don’t believe it. How does he do that?”
“We don’t know, Dr. Jones, but we hoped you might know?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t. The university has a para psychology department. I would go there.”

At the university, they demonstrated Bobby to a psychiatrist/parapsychologist, Dr. Mason. “Well, Mr. and Mrs. Wills, this is an amazing phenomenon. Unfortunately, I’m afraid I can’t imagine how or why your baby can fly. We deal with paranormal activity. If you thought your house was haunted we would investigate, but…uh, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to tell you about Bobby.”

“Well, thank you for your time, Dr. Mason,” Arnie said, and they left.

The Wills' sat in their car in silence for several minutes. “I guess we’ll have to hope he grows out of it as he gets older. What else can we do?” Donna said, and they went home.

As Bobby grew older, he didn’t grow out of it; he was still flying, and the Wills could never let him out of their site. They imagined that he would fly out of their reach. When he was five, he was able to control his flying, but Donna home-schooled him to be sure he had controlled his flying. Bobby learned so fast that she had difficulty keeping up with him. By the time he was eight, he was speaking Spanish and Russian fluently, and, by the time he was twelve, he was immersed in physics. The Wills thought he was probably a genius, so when Bobby was fifteen, they sent him to an acclaimed private school. His teachers all agreed that they could not teach him anything because intellectually he was far above them, so he was sent to a university. By the time he was twenty, he had earned two doctorates and became known as a brilliant physicist. His peers admitted that they had difficulty understanding his theories.

When he was with his mother and father, he felt like a stranger. He felt that he wasn’t in the right place, but he couldn’t define what the right place was. When he was thirty, he was given his own laboratory at a major university and a place to live on campus. No one bothered him. He sat alone for hours and produced hundreds of scholarly papers, and, as time went by, his body changed. Each hand grew a sixth finger, his arms and legs became shorter, and he shrunk to four feet. A four-inch antenna grew over each eye, his brain grew, and his skull grew to accommodate his growing brain. No one had seen Bobby in a year, so no one knew how he had changed.

The scientific community contacted the president of the university to request that he ask Bobby to give a lecture. The president contacted Bobby, who agreed, providing the lecture be held just outside the door of his apartment. His conditions were met and the day arrived. The greatest minds had gathered to listen to Bobby, and the time came. His apartment door opened, and he stepped out not looking at his audience, and went to his podium. There was a gasp from his listeners as they witnessed what they couldn’t imagine, someone who didn’t look human.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the scientific community, for several years, I have been changing and I have become what you see. For several years, I have felt like a stranger here on your planet. In fact, I am a stranger on your planet. I know now that I am from a distant planet where my brilliance is common. You have tried to understand my theories, but you could not because I and my kind are superior, and you are inferior. From the time I was a baby, I flew. No one knew how or why. Now, I know why. Look up. You can see an object. That is the vehicle that will take me home. It will not land; I will fly to it, and after I fly to it, your inferior planet and all life on it will disappear. We have decided that there is no justification for you to exist. Goodbye,” he said and flew like a bullet to the ship. The second he disappeared from sight, the earth exploded and the particles that were once earth, flew into a million directions.
                                                                                The End

While teaching communication skills and writing at a community college, Mr. Greenleaf wrote short stories and plays. Since retiring in 2000, he has written short stories, novellas, and plays. Latest publisher: Once Upon A Crocodile.

Debra lost count of the hours, days … weeks? Two things she knew: her restraints were looser and the stories more depraved.

Oh, and that she is probably going to die when this is all over. If you ask her, it’s a shitty way to treat a savior. Or, as they refer to her, The Savior.

Debra sits in a cold barren room on a sturdy wooden chair, one that had sucked the feeling from her butt within the first hour. She listens to them one by one, each story worse than the first. Not just stories, though. Confessions. She is a sin sponge, absorbing their transgressions and granting them absolution, an act that will – as she’s been told time and time again – to save the world.

She shifts to restore blood flow to at least one butt cheek, but it only aggravates the pain in her back. Debra focuses on her current confessor, as if she can concentrate the discomfort away.

“So, I continue to have sex with Toby even though I know it’s an abomination,” he says while wringing his hands.

Though Debra’s she is to say nothing until the forgiveness phase, she can’t let this one pass. What are they going to do, kill her? Yes.

She shifts again, levels her gaze at eyes that reveal a hollowness behind them. “Homosexuality,” she says, pausing a half beat, “is not an abomination.”

“Oh, I know,” the man nods. “Toby is my neighbor’s dog.”

He is followed by another and another and another, each in shapeless gray sweatsuits purchased at a thrift store’s going-out-of-business sale.

Debra remembers nothing between the accident and waking up shackled to a bed, her head throbbing and her ribcage feeling as if being squeezed by a giant nutcracker. The details over the next few days remain fuzzy, but all comes into brutal clarity with the first visit of Valkronus, surely not her birth name unless her parents knew she was destined to lead a cult.

Debra’s arrival, as if she’d had a choice in the matter, was no accident, but destiny (though Debra would come to believe it was more kidnapping than anything else). Valkronus went on to spell out Debra’s duties for the next hours, days … weeks? Those pursuing moral awakening and blessed enlightenment would sit across from Debra and divulge their deepest (and as it turned out, depraved) secrets. Debra, in turn, was to listen in silence, speaking only at the end to offer forgiveness’ and absolution.

“We do this not to save ourselves,” Valkronus said, voice dripping with grave concern, “but the world, as we have done for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.”

Valkronus, a frail woman whose billowy sweatsuit suggested she could be carried off in a slight breeze, placed two fingers under Debra’s chin, their gazes meeting. “This is your duty as The Savior, and The Saviors before you.”

How many, Debra wonders, sat on this same chair in the same featureless room listening to the same degenerates mistaking hostages for saviors?

Another enters. Debra recognizes her as the woman ordered to feed Debra, emptying the bed pan as needed. She reaches into the memory haze for a name. Esmandia? Delvania? Something like that, if not more ridiculous. Wrinkles crease a forehead framed by graying brown hair. A round, soft face shows none of the anxiety of Debra’s previous visitors.

“Forgive us Savior, for we have sinned,” she starts.

Us, we? Debra thinks. For the first time, a confessor has her complete attention.

“I’m sorry for the way you’ve been treated,” the woman continues. “It’s time to atone for our greatest sin.”

In a dramatic fashion, the woman pulls off her sweats to reveal jeans and a white “I (heart) SF.” She goes to work on the restraints, Debra feeling the blood rush back into her hands. She stands but the world tilts. Debra stumbles backward, preparing for impact just as hands grip her elbows, hoisting her back to vertical. Her vision clears, revealing a second person, the one still holding her upright. He’s young, no more than thirty. His expression seems to be one of sympathy, a look Debra never thought she would see again.

“We’re getting you out of here,” he says.
“Why?” The question crosses Debra’s lips before she even knows she’s asking it. She doesn’t trust anyone, especially those who want to help her.
“Because it’s time this came to an end,” he says.
He steers her toward the door. “I’m Eric, by the way, formerly known as Osvalder. You know Bess as Marvanya.” Noticing Debra’s hesitation, he adds, “I know you have a million questions. Unfortunately, we don’t have time for answers. If you want to live, you’ll follow us.”
“They’re going to kill me, then,” Debra says.
“Yes,” Bess says, holding the door open. “Burned alive, to be exact, which happens to every sixth Savior.”
“How many have there been?” Debra asks.
“Enough to save the planet,” Bess says. “Too many,” Eric says at the same time.

Sandwiched by her two (maybe) rescuers, Debra rushes down one hallway after another before bursting through a door and into the cold night air. She briefly wonders what time it is, only because time hadn’t mattered for days.

They race through a maze of alleys, Debra keeping up because it’s the only thing she can think of doing. Every step away from the chair and its restraints was a step closer to freedom. She has to believe that if she is to cling to hope.

A door opens and Debra stumbles into a room identical to the one she left, this one without a chair but with a window high on the opposite wall, which casts a moonlit square in the middle of a concrete floor.

“They’re close,” Bess says. “I can feel them.”
“How much longer?” Eric says, nodding toward Bess’s wrist. She looks at her watch. “Sixteen minutes.”
“According to the Book of The Prophecy,” Eric says, sounding to Debra as if a challenge.
“Exactly. And as long as they believe it, that’s all that matters. We just have to-“

Shouts echo outside. Debra has no idea how far away they are, but she they make those sixteen minutes an eternity.

“What the hell is going on?” Debra manages to say. “Who are you people and what does a book have to do with anything?”

Bess and Eric exchange glances. “She deserves to know, especially if …” Eric trails off, Debra hardly needing to read his mind to know where he was going.

“Fine,” Bess says, taking a seat on the cold concrete. Debra and Eric do the same. “Welcome to the Sacrificial Order of Divine Perpetuity, keeping the world alive one death spectacle at a time. Every few months, at a specific time outlined in the Book of Prophecies, we kill someone by various and rotating means. You were to be burned alive.”

“That is fucking crazy,” Debra says.

“Yet perfectly logical to everyone’s who’s witnessed a sacrifice and woken up the next day, sun shining,” Bess says. “Small price to pay to save the planet, right? Until the day they take your brother” (she looks at Eric) “or your mother. Because just maybe they don’t believe as strong as they should.”

“But if you miss a sacrifice and the sun still rises, it ends,” Bess says. She looks at her watch. “Eleven minutes from now, with another five minutes built in to adjust for any errant timing, all this come crumbling down.”

Seconds tick as shouts approach. By the time the door is broken down, the three are surrounded by the absolved, it is too late.

Bess smiles at Debra. “You’re free,” she says. “So are we.”

***

The report comes up on a computer terminal rarely checked by the handful of astronomers whose days are filled with coffee and boredom.

The intern taps a few keys, double-checks the results. It’s significant enough to bring to one of the more sympathetic researchers.

“A solar ejection,” the scientist says. “Unusual given the age of the star, so catalog it-“

“That’s not the most unusual thing about this,” the intern says. “That system has, well, several planets, can’t remember exactly. But only one that’s inhabitable. And that ejection? Wiped it out, as if aiming at it.”

“Nice catch, young lady. Exceptional work. How did you find it?”
“For some reason, I had an urge to check the Deep Exploration Base Radio Array. There it was.
“Funny, I thought we’d taken DEBRA offline. Anyway, write it up the notes so we can present them tomorrow.”

“But I’m off tomorrow.”

“Finish them when you return to the office then. It’s a fascinating discovery but hardly worth sacrificing your free time.”

Scott Craven is a former journalist with more than forty years in the newspaper business, spending his retirement to spill a few stories of his own. He recently placed a twisted tale, “Gone Fishin’,” with Dread Imaginings. On the lighter side, Scott's middle-grade trilogy “Dead Jed: Adventures of a Middle School Zombie” was originally published by Month9Books and Blackstone Audio. The first book was optioned for a TV movie by Nickelodeon.