Carl hated stories. He didn’t go to movies or watch television. He barely listened to the radio if and would always change the channel if “personal interest” piece came on. If someone asked him if he had read the most recent best seller, Carl would answer with the type of no that made it clear that not only had he not read the most recent best seller but should you continue this topic of conversation past the initial asking then he would, polite or not, turn away from you.

More than stories, Carl hated storytellers. The better they were at crafting tales, the more Carl disliked them. With their sense of self-importance as they tried to control the room, regaling everyone with some yarn about this or anecdote about that. Jokesters, orators and raconteurs were just on his list of people he wanted to spend his time around. It was probably why he wasn’t invited to dinner parties or get togethers or barbeques. Carl didn’t mind.

Carl’s father had been a great storyteller. He had been a big man, with big shoulders and a broad chest. His smile was one of those that people said brightened a room and his laugh infected others like a quickly spreading virus. He had many friends – from all walks of life, who would be at their house (much to the chagrin of his mother) at all hours of the day. And that would be when his father told stories or listened to stories. Because as great a storyteller as his father was, and apparently he was one of the best, Carl’s father was the type of person that people wanted to tell stories to. It was in his face, in the way he folded his fingers together when listening to serious tale, or patted people on the back as they wailed away their troubles. Everyone could tell that he was their to listen and, if your story was good, to tell your story to someone else. To share it with the world, to make you mythic.

Carl worked with numbers now. He moved numbers from one column on a spreadsheet to another until they did what the client wanted them to do. He fought numbers sometimes, although he wouldn’t see and certainly wouldn’t say that is what he did. Still if you had some finances that needed wrangling, Carl was the person to do it. Numbers fell to him; he understood the numbers. There were no metaphors or similes, not inside jokes or double entendre. They just were and they added together.

Carl’s father didn’t work, not on any steady basis. “Too many stories out there, Carl lad,” he would say. He had some odd jobs here and there. Manual labor, deliveryman, mover,

things that had flexible hours and didn’t require too much of a commitment. He always brought home money when it was necessary. Bills were always paid, well they never went too far over, but life was always scratching and surviving. Carl’s mother would set up interviews with respectable companies through friends or friends of friends and Carl’s father would bind himself up in his one good suit and head off. But he would never make it to the interview. Not once. He’d come home; his suit wrinkled with dirt or mud (one time he was covered in strawberry preserve) and say with a half-smirk, an impish grin, “Have I got story for you.”

There are heroes out there and there are villains. People who do things and make things happen. People who raise up societies and people who raze them to the ground. It isn’t always the heroes who do the raising either. Then there are the sidekicks and the lackeys, the love interests and the comic relief, he monsters and the trials. Everyone’s life is a myth – some myths are just larger than others. I am none of those things because I am not really an everyone. I simply watch, watch and record. And sometimes, just sometimes, I get to eat one of those Cuban sandwiches.

Have you ever had one? You start off with some toasted Cuban bread (it’s like a flatter and fatter baguette) and then you slather on mayo and mustard. The more’s the better in my opinion. Them you grab yourself some ham and roasted pork. I know what you’re thinking, “Pork and ham? Gastrointestinally redundant?” Not by far. Then you do a layer of cheese. Some people prefer provolone and others Swiss, doesn’t really matter. What matters is that it is white and mild. This isn’t one of them sharp cheddar Dagwoods if you get my drift. Then the kicker – pickles – nice and slim. Delicious. Pile ‘em on. It’s enough to make you do one of things where you kiss you fingers like some stereotypical Italian chef while saying, “Muncha.” Or whatever the Cuban equivalent of that is. Sorry. Where was I?

Yes. I watch and record. There are lots of people like me – watchers, recorders. Not that I am a fan of either of those names being what I am called. You can see us, not always, sometimes we throw down invisibly. But staying transparent is exhausting; you always have to be thinking about it and how the light waves are traveling through you and at what angle. I know there are people in my line of work who stay completely see through the whole time but I think it gets in the way of the job.

It is work by the way. We’re not just a bunch of creepers who like watching things happen. Nor are we angles waiting for a time to swoop in or demons waiting for a time to pounce – although we’ve been confused for both. I don’t think I’m making much sense. Let’s try this. You know that scene where Arthur is about to pull the sword from the stone and Merlin comes down to tell him all this stuff because he knows everything and as a result of it Arthur becomes the Pendragon and then unites the warring clans under Camelot until he can’t keep it in his pants and has a bastard child who hates him and at the same time his lady steps out on him with his best friend which basically destroys his sense of self-worth? You know that? How do you think Merlin knows what he knows? I mean Merlin was an interesting cat, did a lot of connecting the dots, but where were the dots in the first place? That’s where the people who do my job come in. We record.

We watch everything and write it down and file it away. Edward Cray called it the Akashic Records. All the thoughts and actions of humanity written down in the lower ether. I call it the Home Office. I, and others like me, keep track of all the important things and make sure that it stays there. We’re like Google and Wikipedia, without the friendly user interface, all rolled into one for all that has been, is and will be. We’re the Dewey Decimal System of the universe.

Facts you must know about Nathan White.

1) He is the seventh son of the seventh son of Satan, destined to rule beside his grandfather and bring about Hell on Earth.

2) He has spent his entire life fighting his destiny and it has cost him the lives of his mother and two of his surrogate fathers.

3) He is currently twenty-four.

It was raining in Seattle. This of course was like saying it was sunny in LA or that five is less than fifteen. It was, for the most part, always raining in Seattle. That night’s rain was more of a mist, more of a nuisance that got in your eyes and hair but no real danger of an actual soaking unless you stood outside very, very long. Nathan White’s clothes were just shy of soaking and he was not happy about it. He had not been in a good mood when he had started the evening out, searching for one Archibald F. Cogsgood and the fact that he had been out long enough for his clothes, mostly the bottom of his pant legs and collar of his shirt, were clinging to his legs with moisture had only made him angrier.

His first stop had been the illegal gambling parlors in Chinatown, Cogsgood liked his Mahjong but the proprietor, after a fair amount of cajoling and bribing, had insisted that to Nathan that he hadn’t seen Cogsgood in days. Two more similar establishments had turned up the same results. At the fourth betting parlor, the owner had said the same thing, but there was something in the man’s inflection that had suggested he was lying.

“Honorable Lei Feng,’ Nathan had said. “I am not here to call you a liar, because I know some great liars, so what you are telling me is coming across more like a child’s fib. You know one of those moments where the guilty kid is standing in front of a broken lamp, his baseball rolling by his feet, and he swears to his parents with big, youthful doe eyes that he had nothing to do with. ‘I promise Ma, I promise Pa, that lamp just hopped off the table.’”

Nathan usually had more tact than to call a man on his untruths to his face, especially when said man had two hulking brutes for muscle standing just outside the office door, but Nathan was not in a good mood. To his credit, the honorable Lei Feng’s face only changed one shade of red before he managed to compose himself.

“Mr. White was it? I am afraid it is you who are mistaken. Now please remove yourself from my establishment before I take a more forceful measure.”

Nathan glanced around Le Feng’s office. The décor was stereotypical reds and yellows, with banners of calligraphy hanging in even spacing on three of the walls. There was a small incense burner on the corner of the table, with three smoking sticks. Their pungent smoke twisting and dancing between the two men. Behind Lei Feng was a picture of the man shaking hands with a few local government officials at fancy looking galas. Nathan took a slow breath in through his nose and then letting it through his mouth. He purposely blinked, letting his eyes remain close a second or two longer than a real one.

“I am sorry you feel, but you’ve got beans and I need them spilled.”

The two men who ate at the table were not particularly noticeable. In fact, there was an overpowering sense of normalcy to them. They wore slacks and blue Oxfords, brown loafers and tan belts. They were not tall or short, too skinny or too fat. There hair was neither particularly long nor cropped close. Their skin was a light tan and their features, while fine, were not sharp or round. Next to their brown loafers each man had an identical black briefcase. In fact, you could describe them more by what they were not than what they were. Something about them lent itself to forgetfulness.

Their waitress, a twenty-five year veteran of the service industry who hadn’t written down an order in over half of those years, had to go back with a pad and pencil just to jot down that they both wanted tuna salad sandwiches on whole wheat, fries with black coffee. They were so indistinguishable that witnesses would later refer to them as the man on the right and the man on the left.

“Today’s the day,” said the man on the right. His voice was neither deep nor high-pitched. His tone wasn’t flat but there wasn’t any real inflection in it either.

“Today is the day,” said the man on the left in exactly the same tone. “Are you ready for it?” said the man on the right.“I suppose I have to be,” said the man on the left. “You suppose?” “No, I don’t suppose, I am ready.”“Yet, you said suppose. Do you doubt the validity of our chosen course of

action?”It was that point that Doris, the aforementioned expert waitress, arrived with

their food. The two men took bites of their sandwiches and sips of their coffee – not quite in unison, but close enough.

“Well, do you?” said the man on the right after they each had eaten half their sandwich.

“Do I what?” said the man on the left, popping a fry in his mouth.“Do you doubt the validity of our chose course of action?”“Of course not.” “Excellent,” said the man on the right, lifting his cup of coffee to his mouth.“Yet,” said the man on left in mid-chew.The man on the right lowered his cup of coffee. “Yet?” he asked. “We do not know that this is the action that will lead to the result we are

hoping for.”“The Wheel has told us it is. Are you saying that you doubt the Wheel?”The man on the left looked around, glancing at various parts of the ceiling. It

was the type of looking that one does when one expect a portion of said ceiling to come crashing down or a bolt of lightning to shoot from the sky and strike one down. He leaned in, closer to the man on the right.

“Of course, I am not doubting the Wheel. The Wheel is all.”“The Wheel is all.” The man on the right repeated. “It is just” the man on the left continued. “That we have always seen the

results of our actions before. We know that the Wheel is turning in the right direction and that we – mere spokes of the Wheel – are the agents of this turning.”

He dipped a few more fries in the ketchup on his plate.

“I guess,” he said dabbing the fries up and down. “I am more disappointed than anything else.”

The man on the left put the fries in his mouth and chewed noiselessly. “Disappointed?” said the man on the right. He was still holding his coffee mug

in his hands, watching the man on the left over its rim. Today was an important day after all. One that would finally set off years of planning, but it required steadfast commitment. “How can you be disappointed when we are beginning The Wheel’s final turn. The Wheel is all.”

“The Wheel is all,” said the man on the left. The man on the right sipped his coffee. “That’s just it,” said the man on the left. “We’ve won’t get to witness the final

turn. After today our roles as mere spokes of the Wheel are done. The Wheel is all.”“The Wheel is all,” said the man on the right. He sipped his coffee again. “I

suppose—“ he stopped.“You suppose?” said the man on the left.“That is disappointing,” said the man on the right.“Exactly,” said the man on the left.The man on the right drank more coffee. The man on the left ate more fries.

Doris came and refilled both their coffee cups and their water glasses. “However,” said the man on the right after Doris had left.“However?” said the man on the left. “However,” said the man on the right. “That is no reason that we should cease

our actions for the day.” “Of course not,” said the man on the left. “The Wheel is all.” “The Wheel is all,” said the man on the right.” The man on the left raised his hand, signaling to Doris that they would

require the check. The man on the right picked up his briefcase, turning the three numbers on each lock until they read 010. The clasps popped open with a click.

Doris arrived at the table as the man on the left was opening his own briefcase. “How was everything?” she asked.

“Quite exemplary,” said the man on the right, his hand still in his briefcase. “The coffee was exceptionally good.”

“Doris, be a dear,” said the man on the left, pulling a pistol – silver and threatening – from the briefcase, “and cower under this table.” “The Wheel is all,” said the man on the right revealing his own weapon.

“The Wheel is all,” said the man on the left.The man on the left and the man on the right then opened fire into the

crowded diner. They made quick work of the patrons, finding heads or vital organs. When the man on the right and the man on the left each had one bullet left, they turned their weapons on themselves.

That is how it all started. The Wheel is all.

When Collin Christopher Capps, PhD popped out of existence – sending hundreds of tiny lights scattering around his large study like he was a dandelion and some small child had just blown very hard – he left three things behind: 1) a set of size 10½ wide footprints burnt into the carpet, 2) a dozen books containing all the secret knowledge of the human race and 3) twelve very startled current and former students. He had invited the twelve people – eight men and four women – spanning the ages of 24 – 39, his favorite students from his thirty-odd year career teaching at a small, Midwestern liberal arts college, for a delightful dinner, a catching up and to share some exciting news. Look back at item two from the previous list for exactly what that news was.

“My life’s work is complete,” he had said as the company had adjourned to the study for coffee, tea and an assortment of after dinner drinks. “Most of you know that while I taught most of you freshmen year English, I have chiefly been concerned with uncovering the secrets of language and prophets. I have been to the proverbial seven corners of the world. I have found and translated texts and manuscripts that have not been read in thousands of years, some that will not be written for a thousand more. I have done all this for knowledge, not for action or personal wealth. I am a scholar not a leader.”

He had paused there. Not for dramatic effect or as a way to incite his guests to speak up with a chorus of, “Oh but you are a great leader, Professor Capps.” No the good professor stopped to bring the back of his hand up to his mouth as he let out a low rumbling belch. His current and former students looked at one another, shocked not only at the awkward lack of social graces that Professor Capps was showing but also the trickle of smoke that escaped the corners of his mouth as he did so.

“I have visited the Akashic Records. I have seen the real Egyptian Book of the Dead – not the hackneyed volumes you can find with a quick Google search.” When he said “Google” it sounded like he was swearing or discussing a particularly foul bowel movement. “However, I have made a mistake.”

He belched again, this time the sound reverberated around the room. More smoke escaped the professor’s mouth and his skin was taking on the reddening look it does when placed over a flashlight.

“There is a sentence,” he continued, still getting brighter. “A sentence that must never be compiled and should it be compiled it should never be translated and should it be translated it should never be read. I have done all three.”

He was now glowing with brightness of a 60-watt light bulb and the inside of his mouth flickered as if it had hot coals in it. His guests, unsure of what to do but not wanting to be rude to their favorite professor, all took unintentional steps away from him. Those that were sitting scooted farther down the couches or slid their chairs back.

“So I leave it to you, my favorite students. I leave you knowledge that humanity has and might have.”

He waved his hand at the coffee table in the middle of the room and twelve books appeared. They were each as large as a medium-sized dictionary, bound in leather that had been stained a rich mahogany color. At their materialization, some

of his guests gasped, others gave small yelps and one man, the youngest of them all with sandy colored hair, actually jumped.

At this point the professor’s light had risen to that of a bright halogen. He had started to shimmer as if he was a heat mirage. If you were to ask any of his guests later, although no one actually did, why they were still sitting there and not running for the door or calling 911, they would tell you that despite everything there were waves of calm rolling off Professor Capps. A feeling of, “Everything will be alright. This is how it is supposed to be,” that only the appearance of the books had broken and even then only for the briefest of moments.

Professor Capps continued, “Each of the books has a piece of the sentence that must never be read. Above all, do not put this sentence together. After all,” he waved his hand at his blurring, blinding form. “You don’t want to end up like this.”

He paused and turned his head slightly to the side, as if he was trying to hear something far off in the distance.

“Oh dear,” he continued. “I might have made a greater mista—“ and then he popped, scattering the aforementioned lights, no bigger than fireflies, around the room.

The beginning of this story was at a line of sinks in the men’s room of the Tin Whistle Pub during the annual Professional Writer’s Conference, PWC for those in on the nomenclature, in the winter of 2014. I am, like almost the entire crowd filling the Tin Whistle that evening, a writer. You’ve probably not heard of me. I had, at the time, published a handful of short works in some credible literary magazines, but had “pulled a Dylan” as one reviewer had written when I released a work of speculative fiction. It was about a group of a dozen men and women who are entrusted with books containing all the secrets of the world and how they set up and ultimately fall apart in creating an Illuminati-like organization. “Imagine a scathing look at the bureaucracy of today’s modern corporations crossed with the works of Shea and Wilson. I both hated and loved it,” is what another reviewer wrote. I hadn’t intended any of it. I have always felt that the whole concept of conspiracies is a bunch of nonsense because if you get five people in a room and try to order a pizza it is a disaster. Imagine trying to get those same five people to secretly rule the world. What would the person who loves pineapple and ham do to the person who just likes cheese and no sauce when society is on the line?

But I am getting distracted. I was trying to tell you about how I was in fact in a men’s room washing my hands. It was a fine bathroom, UK-themed posters and flyers on the wall, automatic urinals and dark wood paneling. There were three sinks, each with their own sanitizing foam dispensers (I do miss soap sometimes) and I was at the one all the way on the left. At the far end of the counter was a leather bound journal. Now finding a journal in a bar full of writer’s is nothing extraordinary. Writer’s love to carry journals – some spiral bound pads that fit in shirt pockets, others find the Moleskine, with all its historical hype, to be of their liking. I’ve seen others pull out full 8½ by 11, 500 sheet thick mini-tomes from their satchels (writers also love satchels) to jot down their ideas on paper the color of coffee rings. My own preference is firmly in the 21st century and I tap my ideas into a smart phone. Not that I had had many ideas since my one book.

This journal was neither garishly big nor pocket-sized. It had a leather strap wound around it and a few rubber bands added to help hold it closed. It was overflowing.

Overflowing that was the best way to describe the banks of the river - simply overflowing. There had been rains for the last few weeks. Not rain but rains. Long downpours that didn’t so much stop as became showers or, at the lucky times, sprinkles. Right now was one of the lucky times and the people standing by the swollen banks were surrounded by a misting that left their rain jackets and faces slick and glistening. The one or two that had glasses had to stop what they were doing periodically to wipe their lenses.

It was a team of volunteers who had driven down in big pick-ups full of sandbags that had found the body. They had pulled up around nine in the morning, the rain a bit stronger at that point, and were just hefting the heavy, fifty-pound bags when one of their number had spotted the woman. She was wearing a white dress that had become soaked through to transparency. It was only when the men, thinking that she had slipped and fallen or maybe been a seizure victim, rushed over

to her that they noticed the red staining on the back of the dress and the incredible paleness, almost blue quality, to her skin. Of course they had quickly alerted the authorities.

That was how Detective Oliver Cummings of the Itmus County Sherriff’s department had wound up at the scene making the observation that the river was moving past swollen and would soon break the banks and flood everything in sight. The forensics team was moving quickly, a scurry of men and women in disposable white plastic suits. The rain had probably already destroyed some evidence and so now it was a race to beat the elements. Cummings was looking at the muddy footprints leading from the volunteers’ pick-ups to the body and shaking his head.

“What a fucking mess,” he whispered. “Olly, you paying attention?” his partner, Detective Sharon Hokanson asked.

He had been partners with Hokanson for going on three years and it had been a good one. The petite woman had angular features and pointed nose that she absent-mindedly would rub at when she thought she was on to something. Currently she was squatting by the body – Jane Doe because no identification had been on her, with the local ME, Gabriel Farrister. Farrister was stout man in his late 50’s, with a full head of greying hair and a trimmed mustache. He was exceptionally good at his job and had taken more than a few of Cummings dollars at their weekly poker nights.

“Sorry, Sharon,” Oliver said. “What’s up, Doc?” “I’d say,” Farrister started. “That judging by rigor and body temperature that

we’re looking at a time of death sometime early this morning – probably 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. Obviously the weather has had an effect so there could be an hour or two on either side.”

“Great,” Sharon said. “So any time between midnight and 5:00. That’s a lot of time to look at.”

“I’ll know more once we get the body back to the morgue.”He pointed to the body, which had been placed on a plastic sheet and rolled

onto her stomach. “I’m counting at least dozen stab wounds – all clustered around the liver, kidneys and spleen. Whoever did this knew what they were doing and went for the major organs. My guess is she simply bled out.”

“And the rain came and washed it all away,” Oliver noted. “Or she wasn’t killed here, merely dumped,” Hokanson added.“But why dumped here? Why not thrown into the river with the hopes that

she would be washed away?”“Maybe this is where she washed up?”“All speculation,” Farrister added. “I will tell you all more information once I

have had to study my results. “

There was no him. Or was it her? There was no her. There was no singular only plural – the ultimate plural. The plural of all – the ultimate we. He or her or it was everything.

Never step off the path or all is lost.He or her or it was all. Was he or she or it lost? Lost? Lost? All lost? Around

him or her or it were colors. All colors. Not as in a rainbow – where there were strips of red and orange and yellow, all the way to indigo. The whole spectrum of light. Rather every inch, every iota was every possible color at the same time. It wasn’t white – which was every color combined – or black – which was the absence of color – instead he saw everything as every what it could be. Nothing was solid or rather nothing stayed solid for long. The colors kaleidoscoped and pinwheeled and moved in and out as in they were waves or air currents.

We all have to make a choice sometimes.Sometimes the all color coalesced, hardening into shapes or objects– a

triangle, a circle, a dot, the number 1, the letter Pi, a cross, a diagonal line- but only for a heartbeat of a moment and then they would scatter away again. He or she or it saw each shape, each symbol from 8 billion perspectives and no perspectives.

He or she or it might have had a body once but if he or she or it had had a body it was no longer his or her or its concern.

Was that warmth? Was that wet?

Earlier

“Man lives in two worlds. The process of individualization is a voyage of discovery to the other pole, the other world. The world beyond the ends of the Earth.”

Franklin Donald Dover, PhD listened to Dr. Lawrence Owens’ voice through the earbuds of his iPhone. Owens who spoke with a staccato cadence that lent itself to bit of overemphasis was talking about Carl Jung’s Red Book or Libre Novus. It wasn’t the first time Dover had listened to the lecture; it wasn’t even the dozenth time, but Dover found Owens to be slightly soporific so he played the lecture whenever he needed to relax. And relaxing was something very badly at the moment.

He was currently sitting in the back of a black town car driving through a desert. Which desert he had no idea, having entered the car right after taking his first (and probably only) private jet flight. The airport had been small, only two maybe three landing strips, a flight tower and a handful of hangars. Dover hadn’t even had a chance to really look around before the driver of the town car had hustled him in. He looked through tinted windows at the desolate landscape and tried to pick out any flora and fauna he recognized. This was only hindered by the fact that he had not idea what the native flora or fauna of any desert might look like.

His watch let him know that he had been on the plane for just over fifteen hours, but the thing could have been doing circles after it had taken off from Chicago where Dover lived in a small studio apartment near the university. He closed his eyes and concentrated on Owens voice again.

“He calls him an old retired magician – on a pension, shaking, trembling, with age...”

Later

They all sat on a hill overlooking a sunset. Nothing like the sunsets of the real world – this one had changed colors from blue to red to green to pinks in languid secession but still at a rate faster than normal. It went and went in it cyclic pattern. Dover and Howell leaned on a tree, a great grey and green beast that reached higher than its based should have allowed, eyes shut. They were physically exhausted but rest was not coming to either of them. Both had the image of Howard Dexter’s face as the great dogs had leapt upon him. Dexter, who had been bold to the point of being irksome, crying for help, wailing as the rest of them had moved through the door, tumbling into a boat on the otherside that had carried them to this hill.

Sir Bors had tried to save him. The knight swinging his great sword at the steel furred beasts, every hit sending sparks on contact. In the end, it had been too much even for him and he had jumped into the boat, slamming the door behind him.

“Another failing to atone for,” the big man had said sadly.As Dover and Howell rested, they could hear the knight now talking to Prof.

Cochetti. “Are we still on the path?” the old man’s voice seemed more exhausted now.

The toll of the journey weighed on him. Yes, every person how had undertaken the expedition knew it was going to be dangerous, but to lose one let alone three people was almost too much for him to bear.

“Of course,” said Bors. “If we were not, we would not be. We would be all and that is not something you want. This is one of the last stops on the path, the single hill. Soon the library on the rim, the writings on ether, will be on the horizon.”

“So the island moves?”“Yes, those sails catch the wind and move it along just as if it were a boat. ““Fascinating. So the island does not touch the sea floor.”“Of course it does scholar Cochetti. The wind pushes us all hill, shore and sea

towards our destination. ““I feel no wind, Sir Bors.”“Even the gentlest breezes can stir minds,” Bors said.

Later still

“Is it everything you had hoped for, you bastard?” Howell said as she whipped the papers off the table in front of Cochetti.

“Victoria,” the professor said, holding up a hand. “Please calm down.”Howell ran over to a filing cabinet and kicked it. Despite its appearance of

weight and stability, it sailed across the room and crashed into a wall. “You knew! You fucking knew that we wouldn’t be able to get back.”“Of course I didn’t know. There was a possibility but I didn’t know.” Cochetti

said. “How could I have known any of what would happen? “

“You underplayed the danger,” she yelled, kicking another filing cabinet. It slammed into the exact spot as the previous one had. “If you had been honest with us, we would have told you to take you schemes and shove it up your ass.”

Dover arrived at that moment, skidding into the room just as Howell lunged for the professor.

"Good night, my child," the old woman said softly as she headed to the bedroom door. The young girl, with blond hair and green eyes the color of sea foam, was not actually her child,  rather the old woman's very important charge. The young girl who's head dreamily lolled to the side on the soft down pillow numbered, "Good night, Granny," before finally falling asleep.

Granny who, up until the door was closed, had walked in a slow, stooped shuffle, straightened as soon as the latch click. She pressed her fingers into her wrinkles and, as a baker smoothes bread dough, Aunt P kneaded the crow’s feet and creases – smoothing them out. Out as she headed down the staircase she freed her grey hair from its handkerchief prison, shaking it out. The dull, split ends started to mend and by the time her feet touched the first floor she had lustrous raven locks, shining blue-black in the candlelight downstairs.

Aunt P took a big breath and held it, puffing out her cheeks giving them a youthful rose color. She grabbed the threadbare cotton shirt and grey linen skirt with two no-longer gnarled hands and pulled them while exhaling.

“Whoomph!” she said dramatically with a spin as now a form-fitting little black dress.

Aunt P snapped her fingers and from a dresser flew a makeup bag. The lipstick, brush, concealer, mascara and other powders and lotions orbited around her, applying themselves to what needed to be. By the time the woman twirled her way into the house’s simply kitchen with it’s potbelly stove, shelves lined with wooden bowels and rough iron pots, Aunt P was no longer. Instead there was simply the Good Witch Persophina – a young, gorgeous woman with heavy eyes and figure that had swayed many a noble knight and earnest explorer off their path. She was a good witch but certainly not a sainted witch.

At the table sat two women in the style of the old crone that Persophina had just looked like – Aunt O and Aunt Q.

“Ta-da!!” Persophina said, leaning against the doorway and striking a pose. “I’m ready for my close-up Mr. DeMille.”

Aunt O and Aunt Q, both of whom were inspecting a pile of potatoes, looked up silently.

“What?” said Persophina.Aunt O tossed her potato into the still acceptable basket while Aunt Q tossed

her potato over her shoulder into the rubbish bin. It missed the bin, stopped before it hit the floor and then floated back towards its target.

“Oh come, what?” said Persophina again.“You couldn’t wait until she was definitely asleep?” said Aunt Q sternly.“What if she had woken up?” said Aunt O.

“Oh shut the fuck up, you two,” Persophina responded. “When it was your turn last time, Quinzella,” she pointed at Aunt Q. “You skipped out before bed time even began. This is my one night off in three months, don’t give me shit.”

“I’m just saying,” said Aunt O but now she was smiling.The three magic casters had taken in their young ward, adopting the disguise

of the kindly, mundane Aunts O, P, and Q. They had been doing it for seven years at that point and while they loved Hope, they each looked forward to when their Wednesday came up in rotation and they were allowed to take the night off and have fun. They couldn’t all take a night off or even two at a time, despite what Brutus, their watch turtle insisted.

“You all could use a girls’ night.” Brutus often said. “Just leave Hope with me and go do some cake batter shots or watch something by Len Dunham or whatever young women like you do.”

“Women like us took a solemn oath to watch the girl so it’s only one at a time, Brutus,” one of them would say.

The dining room of the Sorenson household was warm, decorated in large

paintings and lavish tapestries. Heavy red velvet curtains hung on either side of large windows that ran from the oak floors all the way to high twelve-foot ceilings. Light fixtures, done in the style of old candle sconces, bathed the room soft yellow glow. In the middle of the room was a long wooden table, kept in pristine condition through almost daily polishing with soft rags. The table’s legs were carved with arboreal images – leaves and flowers - that twined around the thick supports. Opulent chairs done in the same style with thick silk cushions the color of pale roses were arranged neatly around the table. Each place setting was a stack of china denoting several courses – soup, salad, main course – with the accompanying flatware, moving outward in. However, none of the Sorensons were sitting at the table. No, the five children: Hans, the oldest at 43, down to Greta, the youngest at 29, stared at their father, Jens.

Jens Sorenson was a man in his late 70s, having married and started a family only after he had amassed the first half of his now sizable fortune. In many ways he had never felt that having a family was something he had wanted, rather it was an item that he felt needed to be checked. First money, then a family, then an empire and so on. He wanted a bloodline that would spread across all facets of society and had forced his children on their paths – medicine, music, politics, etc. His children had known him as a cold man if they had really known him at all but none of them had seen him as the monster he was truly was until that moment.

“Where is our mother?” Gregor, the middle of the fifth and an accomplished architect, asked incredulous about the answer his father had just given so matter-of-factly.

Jens sat himself at the head of the table and placing the pristine white napkin on his lap.

“Gregor, you know how I hate to repeat myself. Now you must all sit and eat or you will never see her again. I believe Hilda has prepared Glace au four for dessert and you know how much I enjoy it.

“Dammit, Father,” Ana, the second oldest and a world-renowned flutist, yelled. She had the high cheekbones and pale blue eyes of her mother, but had always been like her father in temperament. If Jens could entice any of his children into murdering him that night, he was fairly certain it was going to be her. The night, however, was still young. “We will not play your little gam—“

Ana froze as a rumble, deep and resonate, ran through the room in a palpable wave. Then silence complete in its utter absence of sound – no creak of the floors under the Sorenson children’s feet or the slight rasp of Jens’ breath. And then three people - dirty, wearing long leather coats and burdened with bags, knapsacks and satchels - came bursting through one of the walls. No, that isn’t quite right. They burst through the space right in front of the wall and what rubble scattered across the floor were not bits of brick and plaster but rather words and letters reading “brick” and “plaster.” The hole they created did not show the snowy woods of the estate outside rather a black emptiness.

The three arrivals landed heavily on the floor, one toppling over in a jangle of buckles, straps, strings of beads, the rattle of pans and the thunk of canteens. The middle one was a stern looking man, his skin similar in texture and coloring to his tanned jacket. He wore a Forage cap and pair of welder’s goggles. His nose was straight until it made an abrupt ninety-degree turn and he had a close-cropped beard the color of tar.

“Hogan!” he said turning to man on the floor. “This does not look like The Black to me.”

Hogan, a skinny man who was either in his late teens or had one of those faces that always would look that way, scrambled off the floor. He reached into one of his pouches and produced a pile of crumpled maps. He laid them out on the table, sweeping aside place settings in a crash of porcelain and silver.

“Just a minute, Muldoon sir, just a minute.” Hogan looked at the shattered china and said, “Sorry, sorry,” to the still frozen Sorensons.

“Oh stop apologizing, idiot, they can’t hear you,” the third of the party said. She was thin woman, with a runner’s build and short hair covered in a red bandana. In one of her hands was sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun, which she held with the ease of familiarity. She walked over and stared into the fury-filled eyes of Ana Sorenson . “And even if they could they’re just Puppets.”

“Lay off ‘em, Mili,” Hogan said. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a thick circle of brass and glass. At first glance one might confuse it for a compass but instead of one needle, this had five: two of which never moved, one which never stopped and two that twirled slowly on opposite axes depending how pointed it. “They’re just like us.”

“No,” Mili said staring at Ana’s small nose and full lips. She ran a thumb over the scar that ran vertically from her chin past the corner of her mouth before it zigzagged across her cheek and under her ear. “They’re not.”

“Enough you two,” Muldoon said, pulling out the stub of a cigar. He did not light it, rather put it in the corner of his mouth and chewed like some people do with a toothpick. “Mili, go see if there is any easy to grab food – hopefully some cured meat and perhaps a cheese that rhymes with Camembert. Hogan, you tell me what happened. I want to be out of here before the story mends.”

He looked back over his shoulder. Already the words and letters that had scattered across the room were starting to flutter and edge back towards the hole as if pulled by a magnet. Hogan went back to his maps while Mili pushed through a heavy swinging door that led, predictably, into a kitchen. As the door swung close, the crashing of pans echoed from the other room

While he waited, Muldoon walked casually around the table, knocking over a few chairs as he went. He took in a few of the paintings, noticing the odd theme of falconry that ran through them all. He picked up a few pieces of cutlery and disappeared them into pocket or a pouch before stopping in front Anton Sorenson.

“What do you think, Hogan, something Dutch, Swedish? Maybe one of those bits where it turns out that the misogynistic dad over there made his fortune on rape and Nazi gold? Like that one hack. What’s his name?”

“Larsson, Muldoon sir, Steig Larsson” Hogan said. Under his fingers the lines and continents on his maps flowed and drifted like clouds on a sepia sky. He mumbled.

“Right, Larsson.” Muldoon bent over to look at the tumbler of amber colored in the second-to-youngest Sorenson’s hand. He was trying figure out if there was a to get the glass without breaking the young man’s fingers. There wasn’t – until the story was fixed, all its characters were as rigid and unmovable as mannequins made of cement. He settled for taking the cigar stub out of his mouth and dipping it into the glass before shoving back into his mouth. He sucked on it, letting out a contented sigh.

Mili returned, the shotgun still in one hand, a full sack in the other. “Luck?” Muldoon asked.“Cold duck, a smelly blue and some crusty bread. Also landed a few bottles of

red.”“How were the bottles?”“Dusty.”“Excellent.” He clapped his hands together and looked at the hole. It was now the size of

a single pane of glass. “Hogan!”“Yes, sir,” he said, hastily grabbing up the maps and shoving them into his

pouch. “Looks like our path home intersected by a surprise bubble heading from the UC-Plain to the C-Plain. It wasn’t on any of the charts sir or I would have steered around it. I’m sorr-“

“Nothing can be done about it now, Hogan. Just tell me where we need to go.”Hogan looked at his maps and then at his five-needle compass, scanning it

around the room like it was a Geiger counter or EKG reader. The two needles that did not move, did not move, the one needle that always moved kept moving and the two needles that rotated on opposing axes, well, rotated on opposing axes. Hogan studied the needles intently.

The hole in space closed with a soft hiss, like air escaping a balloon before being tied off.

“Hogan,” Mili murmured but Muldoon shushed her.

“There,” Hogan said pointing to a spot behind and slightly to the left of where Jens Sorenson was seated.

“Excellent,” Muldoon said walking over to the spot. On his way over he reached under his collar and produced what looked to be an ornate, silver letter opener hanging on a string. It was a bit tarnished from age but the blade looked sharp, sharper than most letter openers at least.

Muldoon stopped at the place where Hogan was pointing and stabbed at the air with the letter opener. His hand didn’t swing wildly before plunging into his leg, instead the tiny blade stuck in the air, moreover half of the blade had disappeared as if lodged in something invisible, which of course it was. Muldoon pulled down the handle, tanned skin tensing as biceps and forearm muscles worked. Then, ever so slowly, the letter opener started to slide down and a large slit in the air began to take shape. Muldoon pulled and pushed the blade all the way down to the floor, until the cut was roughly human height.

Mili walked over grabbing one edge of the tear and pulled it back like a piece of heavy paper. On the other side was the same blackness that had filled the hole they created upon arrival.

The plates that Hogan had broken made little tink, tink, tink as they started to come back together and the chairs that Muldoon had knocked over, righted themselves.

“I believe it is time that we made our exit,” Muldoon said, jumping through the cut. He didn’t land on anything, instead he disappeared into the nothingness as if he were a skydiver leaping from a plane. Hogan was next, his heavy bags getting caught at the top of the tear before Mili gave him a kick in the rear the sent him ass over elbows. Then, just as everything was almost back to the way it had been when they arrived, Mili stepped through and was gone.

Somewhere – in a different space and a different time – Jakob Lundin couldn’t remember where his scene was going. He had felt like he was on a roll, feeling Ana’s anger and Jens’ scheming but then his momentum was lost. He typed a few cursory words but he couldn’t find the inspiration. He finished the glass of red wine that he always had when writing and went to bed.

It took Muldoon, Mili and Hogan three days to get out of Lundin’s Unconscious. It wasn’t a particularly exciting Unconscious. It was a large ballroom, framed on two sides by staircases that led up to a balcony that circled the entire room. It was

D was not real and that was ok by him.  Instead D was a chunk of thought, a piece ether drawn up from the Collective Unconscious time and time again over the centuries. He had had many names and many roles.  When stories were first being told around the first fires illuminating the insides of caves, D had filled the role of the babe - rescued from mammoths or raised by sabertooth tigers.   In Rome, when theater was told with masks and epics were already plagiarizing the Geeks, D was the child fleeing from angry gods or watching the doom of prideful leaders.  And it went on that way through the centuries until he reached his current iteration - the

late twenty-something best friend/sidekick who was far wiser than the protagonist. Think Woodhouse's Jeeves, Cervantes' Sancho Panza, or Rowling's Hermoine Granger - although D hadn't played any of them.  They were fleshed out by other pieces of the Universal, other chunks of thought. D understood that he was not protagonist material.

D liked the whole process of creation as he was drawn up, through the Unconscious and into the Conscious before being poured, like blood and bone and oxygen, into a husk laid out by a novelist, satirist, poet or even the casual scribbler.

Aaron didn’t hate his job he just didn’t find it particularly exciting in any way. He wasn’t exactly sure how he wound up working as a social media assistant. It certainly wasn’t what he went to school for – he had spend most of his college career studying philosophy before adding a business minor the second semester of his junior year in a moment of panic. He was always doing things in moments of panic. He took the first job the he was offered out of college – working the Client Services Desk at a boutique SAT tutoring company. Moving into the first apartment that he was approved for despite the complete lack of windows in his bedroom and a roommate who was always on fad diets (currently he was eating only cabbage soup in between long bouts of push-ups and leg lifts). In some ways even his relationship with his girlfriend, Susan Dunn-Loring, was out of the briefest panic that he, at 27, might actually never get another long-term relationship again.

Today Aaron typed away, scrolling through page after page of analytics and metrics. There was dread in his eyes as he looked at 0.0% over and over for engagement on his Tweets and the sad fact that the only people liking his company’s Facebook page were a bunch of thirteen-year-olds from India. He sighed. He had only been the social media assistant for a few months and as near as he could tell the only reason that Frank, the permanently smiling self-proclaimed tutor geek that owned his company, had asked him to step into the role was that Aaron was under 30. It wasn’t that Aaron was ignorant of Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Instagram, Snapchat,, Tumblr, Yik Yak, and all the other ways that people had for sharing small pieces of personal information and large pieces of white noise and time killers, it was just that he didn’t care about it.

“What if we take a picture with a dog holding one of our prep manuals?” Frank asks. “Kids love dogs. Jesus, my daughter can’t get enough of those Corgi mems.”

“Memes,” Aaron says under his breath.“What?”“It’s memes, sir.”“Of course it is. That’s right. Memes. That’s why I promoted you,” Frank said

and walked off. Right promotion. It was barely more money, he had the same responsibilities

he had before and on top of it he had to figure out how to say something about testprep that no one else was saying. And there was a lot being said out there. He spent his days reading articles about higher education, trying to find pieces that were not too divisive but weren’t just another “10 things you need to know about applying to college.” Interestingly he had discovered that if he added a number to

his tweets and posts that more people read them. Someday he planned on seeing how high his numbers could go. Could he trick people into thinking that there were actually 500 hundred tips to the college admissions process that no one before had ever discovered. Tip #1 – do your fucking homework.

You ever feel like your life is one of those group dances that get broken out at family reunions or weddings. Things like the Chicken Dance or the Macarena; things that no one really likes except for young children