Eve Morton

Author: Eve Morton

  • 31 for 31: Rings by Eve Morton

    I love this short story so much.

    “Rings” was inspired by two main events: my oldest son getting ringworm and the short story by John Cheever called “The Enormous Radio.” Postpartum was a difficult time period for me and one of the main ways I stayed calm was to read and write short fiction.

    It should be no surprise that most of those stories were scary stories.

    Motherhood is weird and rough. Kids do strange things and evoke strange ghosts. But also, kids are gross sometimes and get gross conditions like ringworm. It’s mostly harmless; a fungus that sort of takes over their bodies until their immune system is back up and going. It was a quick and easy doctor’s visit and an even faster healing time. No one judged me for it–the ringworm was just proof I really was taking him to the park a lot, since that was likely where he picked it up–but it bugged me. Irked me.

    And so, why wouldn’t a ringworm rash also work as a radio transmitter? And you could hear all the judgements and gossip of the local neighbours?

    That’s what happens to Beverly in “Rings.”

    When the first issue of Bleed Error liked the story enough to publish it, I felt elated. And when my kid was all better, too, I got him a toy with the money from the sale. Only fair, right?

    Rings

    Beverly heard music the first time she noticed the rash on her son.

    She lifted his tiny baby legs by the ankles to change his diaper, not even bothering to reflect more than three seconds on the round red rings that dotted his chubby torso. Babies got rashes, didn’t they? They also got pimples, too, at least Samson did for the first few weeks he’d been alive. At nearly nine months old, he was still a great baby, the kind that she thought was mythic when she was first on maternity leave with him. He never cried longer than three minutes, and only when he wanted food or rest.

    Samson smiled at her as she hummed along to the soft beat from the pop song that popped into her head. She didn’t know the artist or the lyrics, but the beat was so persistent she figured she must have heard it earlier in the day, at Starbucks or the Mommy and Me classes. As soon as she put Samson in his onesie, the red rash on his stomach now covered, the song went away.

    Beverly didn’t think about it again until that night. When Chris, her husband, came home he insisted he wanted to be the one to put Samson to bed. Beverly let go easily, knowing that her baby and her husband were both marvels. She kicked her feet up on the couch and dozed as the song’s beat returned. 

    “Samson’s got a rash,” Chris said moments later.

    “He’s a baby.”

    “It’s not diaper rash. It’s a ring. Look.” He held out the infant in only his diaper. He smiled at her with a gleeful expression, his dark eyes joyful. Beverly wanted to kiss his tummy—but she pulled back. There were rashes on his stomach. The same ones as before, now more plentiful.

    “That’s nothing,” she said. The song played louder in her head. “You hear that?”

    “What?” Chris didn’t wait for her to respond. “I’ll call the doctor. That’s gotta be ringworm.”

    “Oh.” Beverly put a hand over her face. She knew that rash. She’d seen a half-dozen photos of horribly rash-riddled children on the pediatrician’s wall of infographics. She didn’t like to stare too long at those photos—who would?—but now she felt the sting of shame. “I’m a bad mother.”

    “No.” Chris held the phone to his ear and Samson in his arms. “You’re just tired and here all day. Seeing the same thing over and over, and you don’t notice it until someone else does. Hello? Hi. This is Chris Mathers…”

    “Or hear the same thing,” Beverly added softly. Chris didn’t notice. She rose from the couch, though her back smarted, and took Samson from his arms. He had no fever, no complaints. He smiled at her delightfully. At least whatever this was wasn’t hurting him.

    “He has an appointment tomorrow at 2 p.m.,” Chris said. “Can you take him?”

    “Yes,” Beverly said, and continued to hum as she danced with her baby in her arms.

    *

    Dr. Stevens, thankfully, was not judgmental. He noted the red rings with a practiced nod and immediately wrote her a prescription. He gave it to her without another word.

    “Wait,” Beverly said. “How did he get this? Should I be worried?”

    “Not at this stage. And he could have gotten it anywhere, honestly. Have you taken him to a park or something similar, with lots of other kids around?” When she nodded, he made an affirmative sound between his teeth. “Probably there, then. It’s basically just a fungus, like we’d get on our feet, and that he can’t quite fight off anymore now that he’s weaned and the antibodies from you have diminished.”

    Beverly stared at the red rash, still visible from her son’s unzipped onesie. Those rings were fungus, like the faerie circles her grandmother pointed out to her in her youth? She shuddered. “Can I get this? From him?”

    “Not really. We only get athlete’s foot.”

    “I’m no athlete.”

    “But you are a mother, and working very hard,” Dr. Stevens said with a kind smile. Beverly saw the words as transparent and perfunctory, but still appreciated the gesture and thanked him.

    “If you want to schedule his nine-months vaccinations as you leave,” Stevens said, “please feel free to do so. We can check in with the ringworm again if it’s still a problem. Shouldn’t be, though.”

    Beverly did just that on her way out. She made small talk with the receptionist as she took the appointment card. “By the way,” she added as a passing thought when she picked up Samson’s car seat, “I like the radio station you guys have playing here. What is it?”

    The admin gave her an odd look. “There’s no radio here.”

    “Oh.” Beverly blushed. She’d been hearing the same song over and over. “Must be my cell phone or something. Have a good day.”

    Once in the car, she turned the real radio up. It blotted out some of the tune in her head, but not too much. Each time she looked at Samson from her rearview mirror, he waved his arms to the beat of the song. 

    *

    Three days later, when she took Samson to the local park, the music changed to voices.

    Beverly had been hesitant about taking him to the park again, given what the doctor had said about where the ringworm had most likely come from. But the cream she’d been rubbing into his belly and back—because they were now there too—had seemed to diminish some of the redness. She figured if something did happen, and he sprouted more faerie circles on his arms and legs, she at least had the tools to handle it.

    He still had no fever. No discomfort. In fact, he seemed utterly delighted every time she rubbed the white cream on his rings. She went in clockwise motions first, then counterclockwise, repeating the lore her grandmother had told her about widdershins and deosil. Then she’d tickle him in a flurry of hand movements, and his high-pitched laugh would cut through her defenses.

    The whole thing was sort of fun, really.

    But then the voices happened.

    She was pushing Samson on the swing in the park when she heard Morgan Sutherland, a mother from her Mommy and Me group, distinctly in her ear. She called out to her husband, also named Chris, and then the rest of the words were garbled. Beverly looked around at the park. She didn’t think Morgan lived around here. Beverly saw no one else, save for older people going round and round on the track to get their steps in for the day.

    Beverly turned back to Samson. It was early morning in June, so the park was free of school-aged kids. She smiled at him as she pushed. It was only as he swung back to her, and she heard Morgan’s voice again, that she finally realized the noises were coming from Samson.

    Or really, Samson’s ringworm rashes.

    She picked him up out of the swing. He wore overalls and a short onesie underneath. She pressed her ear against his chest. Among the breathing and giggles, she heard Morgan. Then Chris.

    “I can’t believe you think there’s something going on,” he said, his voice angry. “She’s our babysitter. She’s a child.”

    “She’s twenty-three. That’s when you married me. I can’t see the difference.”

    “You’re making this into a bigger deal than it needs to be.”

    “I can’t stand this—”

    “You can’t? What about me?”

    “Always about you,” Morgan’s voice twisted into a vicious snarl. “Ugh. I think it may be best for you to leave.”

    Beverly snapped her head back. Whatever she was listening to wasn’t meant for her to hear. But she dipped closer once again, and heard the final words of the argument. 

    “Okay, fine. I’ll stay at a hotel for a while. Maybe we just need some space apart.”

    There was static after that. Then nothing as Samson giggled, grunted, and pooped. It was the kind of poop that really needed her attention, so she packed him up and took him home. A bath, feeding, and then Chris’s arrival home followed. Then bedtime routines, and nodding off in front of the couch. It wasn’t until midnight, when Beverly woke up from her slumber in front of Netflix, and decided to check her phone, that she saw Morgan’s new status on social media.

    Chris and I are taking a break, she wrote. We need to sort out some things. Thanks for all your support so far. Xoxo

    *

    The next day, it wasn’t Morgan Sutherland or her cheating husband Beverly picked up through her son’s ringworm. It was Luanne, the cashier at the grocery store. Beverly didn’t even know her that well. She would stop to talk when getting groceries—because everyone wanted to stop and talk to you when you carried a baby as friendly as Samson around—but that was it.

    Luanne’s former smoker’s voice and wonky grammar were distinct, though. There was no doubt it was her, and that her problems were many.

    Beverly kept Samson in his diaper all day. She put his cream on in the morning—but stopped when she realized her clockwise motions had been the thing to, effectively, change the channel. Now that she had Luanne, she wanted to listen as long as she could. She heard about gambling debts, her secret cigarettes, and a gay son she didn’t want to talk to anymore.

    “Not because I don’t love him or nothing. I just can’t talk to him. You know, that… stuff… is all I can think now. I can’t get over the fact that I used to change his diapers!”

    “He’s a man, Lu,” said another, younger voice. A daughter, maybe?

    “No, he’s my boy. Always will be. And I just can’t stand the thought—”

    Beverly lost the transmission as Samson tried to crawl away. She darted after him, and flipped him over on his back, so she could keep listening in on his radio stomach. There were more rings here and, she’d decided, the best audio. Something must have been changed during the switch, however, because she was brought into another house. She didn’t recognize the people in any way, but their problems were similar. Cheating. Sex. Debts. Deaths. When Samson eventually needed to nap—crying louder and longer than she’d ever heard him before—she finally stopped her snooping.

    But was it really snooping, she wondered, if the voices came to her? What had happened to the music, anyway? She had no answers, and neither did the all-seeing oracle of Google. She didn’t even want to type in any of her symptoms, for fear of the tracking and targeted ads that would come her way.

    So she waited for Samson to get up again. She waited, and then, she listened.

    *

    “Mushrooms are good for you,” Chris said to his younger brother Dave. Chris, Beverly, and Samson had gone over to Chris’s family for dinner that night. Since his brother was a newly minted vegetarian, and his mother had planned burgers, Chris thought he’d save the day with Portobello mushroom burgers. Dave had only turned his nose up at the large fungus.

    “I can’t eat that,” he said. “No matter how good it is for me. Isn’t it, like, alive? That’s what I heard from my friends.”

    “Not anymore,” his father had said with a roll of his eyes. “Neither is the cow, either.”

    Everyone ignored his father. Chris tried to validate some of Dave’s concerns, speaking in his science teacher voice. “It’s true that mushrooms are closer to the insect kingdom than they are to plants, but you’re going to have to draw the line somewhere. At least, ethically speaking, if you want to live a productive life. It’s been said that trees can feel pain, too, you know, and that they can release certain chemicals to warn other trees of an impending attack. Some of their root systems spread for miles and miles, allowing for an entire network of communication.”

    “Really?” Beverly asked. Though she worked as a librarian, she’d never stumbled upon this information before.

    “Yes, it’s quite impressive, really. We underestimate how much networking truly goes on between plants.” Chris’s grin reminded Beverly of the flirting they’d done when they first met one another at their summer jobs as camp counselors. He used to tell her the names for species of grass and other flora, while she’d tell him her grandmother’s stories for the same pieces. She was about to open her mouth to tell him about the mushroom’s lore—but Chris spoke again to Dave. “It’s the same with mushrooms too. All of these plants and fungi are connected. They speak to one another. So they’re alive, yeah. But you’re living too. And so you need to survive.”

    “I should be able to coexist, though,” Dave said meekly.

    “And sometimes coexistence means devouring something. It means accepting our place in the food chain—which I should say, is a food web. It’s not about domination. It’s about sharing space.” When Dave still didn’t seem convinced, Chris laughed lightly. “Wait. Am I overthinking this? Are you just veggie now because of your friends, and if your friends don’t eat Portobellos, you won’t either?”

    Chris’s mother and father said yes. Dave protested. Beverly jumped in and stated, “Portobellos are really popular, you know. All the high-end restaurants serve them. I shelved a cookbook just before mat leave that said—”

    “Just make what you’ll make,” his father cut in with a dismissive wave, getting ornery and no doubt hungry. “Then we’ll see who wants to survive.”

    Chris ended up doing just that. Dave, eventually, came around as Beverly also ate a Portobello burger. No one asked her what she thought, but she wanted to try them for herself. Maybe the fungi inside of her burger would let her connect with Samson more. She spent all her time now listening in on the neighborhood gossip, making her own connections, matching voices and stories over the rings. She secretly hoped that being in a new town with Samson—though they’d all been to Chris’s parents’ place before—would yield ever more discoveries, even more webs of communication.

    When Samson fussed halfway through dinner, Beverly jumped to her feet. Her mother-in-law Jean held up a hand. “You’re in the middle of a meal. And I rarely get to see my grandchild. Let me.”

    Beverly hesitated, but sat down. She finished her burger by the time Jean returned. She still could not hear anything new.

    “That boy is covered in a rash,” Jean said sternly. “Did you know?”

    “Yes,” Chris said. He eyed Beverly. “It’s just ringworm. We’ve been giving him cream for it. Is it still not better?”

    “Not from what I saw. It’s all over his back and torso. He seems to be burning up, too.”

    Chris left the table without another word. Beverly felt a wave of nausea pass through her. She’d not been using the cream. She’d been listening, listening, and listening. When she rose to see her son in the guest room, Chris held him tightly to his chest. His eyes narrowed at her. “Did you not see this? Again?”

    “I must have missed it.”

    “He’s actually sick now.” Chris dug through the diaper bag, found the nearly full bottle of cream, and gave Beverly another strained expression. She looked down and away. Her face flamed.

    When Chris found the thermometer, he took Samson’s temperature. It was elevated, but not in danger territory. Chris took over then; he found the baby Tylenol they also had, administered it, and then slathered him in cream. Beverly watched on mute. Now that she was in the room, she could hear snippets of conversation. As soon as Chris put on the cream, it was all gone.

    “Are you all right?” Chris said, his voice barely above a whisper. Samson had fallen asleep against him, wrapped in a new onesie and the temperature lower. He rubbed Beverly’s back with his free hand. “Is this—”

    “I don’t know what this is.” Beverly sat on the spare room bed, her face in her hands. Her mind was so quiet now. “I think I’m just bored. I hate being at home.”

    “Oh.” Chris let out a breath. He almost laughed, then grew serious. “That’s easy to fix.”

    “Is it?”

    He laughed for real this time. “Go back to work. We’ll get a nanny or daycare or my mom or something else. That’s easy to fix.”

    Beverly felt better for the first time in months. Ever since he was born. Had it really been that bad? No, not with Samson. He’d been a perfect child, it seemed. But she’d been bored. She’d been antsy. She’d been… on the outside of those Mommy and Me classes, never accepted into the group. She enjoyed being a mother while she sort of hated motherhood. Or maybe she just hated maternity leave. Or maybe this was all just hormones. She hated the thought of it, but it was the only explanation that made sense.

    They hugged. Cried a bit. When Chris put Samson in his pack-and-play for the night, the argument was over. Beverly wondered if, in a different house somewhere in this neighborhood, another mother overheard.

    *

    When Beverly returned to work two weeks later, Chris made her lunch. “Portobello sandwiches,” he declared. “Figured it would be a nice, fancy welcome meal back.”

    Beverly thanked him just as Jean arrived to watch Samson. He smiled at her eagerly, waving his arms, excited to spend the day with his grandmother.

    At work, Beverly’s feet smarted until lunch. She would have thought that rocking a baby would have prepared her for library shelves and endless stacking, but she was wrong. In the break room, she made sure no one was around before she took off her shoes. She opened her sandwich. After two bites, she heard the music again. 

    Beverly smiled.

    END

  • 31 for 31: Biology’s Void by Eve Morton

    An alien story for today!

    “Biology’s Void” was written after I had an amazing conversation at an academic conference with another grad student who was really, really into aliens. Like really-really. She was doing her entire dissertation on the abduction narrative; she laid out the stages as she saw them, and as she’d built from her research. Meanwhile, I told her about Betty and Barney Hill, the interracial couple from the 1960s who were abducted, and who had just been covered on Last Podcast on the Left.

    We talked for hours.

    I always think I’m not very into alien stories–and then events like that happen, or I end up getting sucked into X-File marathons, and I remember my absolute love of the horror behind these experiences.

    The main character in “Biology’s Void” is directly inspired by Betty and Barney Hill, and the concept of ‘missing time’ as it relates to alien abductions (and also traumatic experiences; see Mysterious Skin for the other major influence here). It’s still one of my favourite stories that I wrote, probably because after that hours-long conversation, it was pretty much a breeze to write.

    I hope you enjoy it too! It would be published a few years later in an anthology that now seems to be defunct, but I found here.

    Biology’s Void

    It is November 12th 2017. 1:05 AM. My name is Barney Addison, and I am missing time. 

    Barney clutched at his throat. The words echoed in his head, but didn’t come out of his mouth. When he found no wounds on the front of his trachea, he reached behind his ears. Nothing. Next to his pulse and ankles. Nothing. His chest. Only the ruddy scars from his mastectomy six months earlier. They weren’t bleeding, but wetness clung around his dark T-shirt chest that smelled like plant matter or vacuumed space; like an office building basement after the cleaners come. His cargo shorts were singed at the edges. All of this could have been from falling asleep on the building roof with a cigarette in his mouth and a drink in his hand. Or it could be what his father always prepared him for.

    Barney stood up from lying down. The glow of the North York hospital and IKEA anchored him. He was the Sheridan building apartment roof, close to the Leslie Street subway station. He only recognized the building’s position from when he’d explored the neighbourhood earlier in the summer when he began delivering mail; he had no recollection of climbing the stairs or taking the back elevator entrance. All he could recall was coming home from work, changing his clothing, and then—three hours were gone.

    Barney’s heart rate skyrocketed. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be. Alien invasions were something his bipolar father fixated on during his youth. They were something syndicated on the Syfy channel and Space Network, closed inside paperbacks. Not real, not real, not real. 

    “It is November 12th 2017. My name is Barney Addison,” he said aloud, repeating a drill he hadn’t done in at least ten years. “And I am missing time.”

    *

    Gordy’s window was open when Barney arrived.

    “Welcome,” Gordy said as soon as he saw Barney swing in from the fire escape. “By all means, come right in. Be sure to wipe your feet on the matt I’ve put out just for you.”

    Barney’s shoes crunched against newspaper by the window. He’d been coming into Gordy’s bedroom by whatever means necessary since the two were teens and next door neighbours. His window jumping was a hard habit that he’d maintained until this day, even when Gordy lived on the first stop on the Leslie Street subway and in a third floor apartment building.

    Barney opened his mouth to tell him about the aliens, but Gordy had turned around and walked into his kitchen. Music played on a speaker in the front area, sending low vibrations through the barely lit apartment. Several people in brightly coloured shirts sat on Gordy’s couch, lost to their own drug-induced world. Gordy’s pill collection was all over his end table, guarded by Chris, Gordy’s long-term boyfriend who also moonlighted as a nurse. Chris didn’t wave or look up. The apartment was already booming with business. 

    In the kitchen, Gordy took down a bottle of cheap scotch and started to pour it into glasses. He made sure to line up the drinks in front of Barney so he could watch every step of the drink making process. He let Barney choose what glass to take before he took a sip of his own.

    “So what’s up? I sense a meeting between us.”

    Barney clasped the glass, but didn’t drink until Gordy swallowed his first sip. His hands were shaking. “I’m missing time.”

    Gordy furrowed his brows. “Like…a black out? A Rohypnol episode?”

    “No.” Barney shook his head. “I know it’s not that. I was on a roof when I woke up.”

    “Wait. Back it up. Tell me from the moment you lost time.” Gordy leaned on the counter, sipping his drink. His eyes fixated on Barney, his face marked with concern. In spite of the party going on in his kitchen, it was clear that Gordy this was his first drink of the night.  

    After a sip, Barney went through the night as he remembered from work to changing clothing to three hours gone. “It’s not a bad date or a dream. I was alone. And nothing in my apartment was tampered, and I wasn’t taking any drugs.”

    “But you do go creepy crawling sometimes.” Gordy gestured to his own window and to Barney’s lifetime of climbing buildings or houses. When Barney worked as a maintenance man, he’d explored during his down time and basically had an entire layout of the Toronto apartment building complexes memorized. Once you figure out how to get into one building, you can get into any other. And with Barney’s array of grey uniforms from all his jobs, he could easily pass a worker to gain access on the ground floor before exploring bigger heights. He’d never break into strangers houses–only friends like Gordy who had given baseline consent to creepy crawl inside–but Barney liked roofs and did what he could to find as many as possible. He liked the lights of the city. It was all an escape from the mundane existence of being a teenager in small town Tweed, and then being an adult in a city so big everyone was anonymous. 

    “Maybe you hit your head,” Gordy suggested. “And this is a concussion.”

    Barney bowed his head in front of Gordy so he could examine his crown. “Nothing. Absolutely no marks like that. I know what a concussion feels like–and that is not it. There are no other marks on me except for the singe of my shorts and the smell, Gordy.” Barney bit his lip, utterly terrified. “That means one thing.”

    “And it has to be aliens, right?” Gordy took a drink, but didn’t shut Barney down. He let him explain how the smell signalled a particular alien theory popular in the 1990s, and how the singe meant they must be the Grays, not any other species, because of the technology in the spaceship. 

    In that moment, as Gordy listened and never said a word, Barney knew he could love Gordy–like a boyfriend, more than a friend. He was the only person through Barney’s entire gender transition who heard every last theory about his gender identity as if it was valid, and the only person who had gone through the same nonsense in their teenage years when both of their families realized they had queer kids on their hands and sent them away. Gordy and no one else understood the allure of believing in aliens in order to make sense of a world that seemed cruel, or to stave off the reality that his father was completely losing his mind.

    “So, okay. Say you have been abducted,” Gordy said, his voice clear and logical when Barney had talked himself hoarse. “Then what do you do next? Obviously they dropped you back here, so are you done with?”

    “Sometimes. I think. I’m not sure. It’s been a long time since I’ve even been into this stuff.”

    “Right. And who exactly do you tell about it? Cops and FBI—or the Canadian FBI CSIS—are out. We’re not exactly close to Roswell, either so we can’t go backpacking for answers. I don’t even think Canada has its equivalent.”

    It did. Barney could recall the name and the circumstances like an old song he’d listened to on repeat. But he kept his mouth shut–instead he thought of his father, his dark skin and even darker eyes, and how scared he used to look whenever he’d be missing time, too. He couldn’t tell how much of his father’s descent into madness was now actually real or if it was a perfectly valid response to an insane experience like being abducted. Or maybe even a side-effect of being abducted. Did his disorder allow him contact with the aliens, did the aliens cause the disorder, or was there nothing wrong with Jason Addison at all? All outcomes blurred together into the same ending. 

    “I… I don’t want to end up like my dad.”

    Gordy nodded. He remembered Jason being taken away just as clearly as Barney did. “I know. You won’t. You’re long passed the age where hereditary illnesses like that form. Don’t most schizophrenics or bipolar people start in their early teens? We’re nearly thirty, Barney. You’ve long since passed the safety point. You’re fine.”

    Barney nodded, but he wasn’t so sure it was that easy. He’d only been Barney for ten years, on testosterone for five or six. It had made his hair thicker and given him a beard, along with giving him thick muscles and a deeper voice–but what if the internal clock on family illnesses started again, and he was a teenager in his body? Or what if it was testosterone in the first place, and being a guy made him more susceptible to his father’s lineage? He wondered what would fill in biology’s void in madness—his synthetic hormones coursing through him or father’s blood that did the same? And all of this was assuming that the mental illness was real, and not an excuse cooked up to cover up the alien’s invasion.

    Barney took another drink. His head swam. He didn’t even know where his father was now, so there was no way to ask him. He would probably be just as impossible to find as Barney was now with a new name and new likeness. 

    “You won’t end up like him,” Gordy said again, rubbing a hand over Barney’s elbow. “You’re not crazy. There is nothing wrong with you. We’re both absolutely, one hundred percent normal.” 

    “It’s the other people who are strange,” Barney said, echoing what the two of them had told one another in their youth. Barney was amazed at how many chants he had stored away in his head; his dad’s alien drills and Gordy’s pep statements against homophobia only being a handful. His mind felt like a locked cage of Japanese Koans, or at worst, bumper stickers. 

    When the music in the other room grew louder, Gordy invited Barney to stay the night. “The party is only beginning, you know.”

    “I know. But I should go back home.” 

    Gordy nodded. He topped up Barney’s glass before leaving to go to his living room. He didn’t bother to tell Barney to use the door to leave; the window was always open.

    *

    The next day at work, Barney fought a wave of nausea as he held up a package. He thought it was the alcohol coming back to have its revenge, but he was steady on his feet. Every time he looked away from the package, the world righted itself. His body achieved equilibrium. But the name and address on the package made him shudder deep inside. 

    He knew that building. He swore he did. He closed his eyes to see if he could conjure the place from a deeply held memory. Tables, needles, and doctors with face masks. Black out days and long, long stretches of nothing but beeping. He opened his eyes. The package in front of him was like a bruised aura leading him down a road he wasn’t sure if he wanted to go. Each time he looked away from the package–nothing. Just the sunny day and the streets of Leslie and Shepard, and his post office truck. The other mail for that street was for the North York hospital, yet another place that Barney knew all too well. Those memories weren’t pleasant either. The therapy program he and Gordy had gone to for being troubled kids (the code word for being queer) had been in one of the hospital’s basement rooms, too close for comfort to the other address that made his head spin. But maybe he was mixing and matching his memories, still in a hungover state, and merely poking an old wound when he was too sensitive. 

    Yes. That had to be it. He was just in a bad place, so everything became The Singular Bad Place in his mind. He loaded the hospital letters into his mail bag before he touched the package. The back of his eyes felt heavy.  

    “Fuck.” 

    Barney heaved at the side of the truck. No one was walking by, but he was sure he was going to arouse suspicion. And he couldn’t just forget his mail route. He had to deliver the package. Since it was so close to the hospital anyway, if he couldn’t take it and passed out, someone could deliver him to the ER. 

    On shaky legs, Barney made it to the front wing of the hospital. Though he looked nothing like the fourteen-year-old girl who had once been admitted to the psych ward, the front area made him weary. He was not going to be put away; not again–and not even for the same reason. There was no more conversion therapy in the Toronto wing of this hospital. People still had a hard time configuring trans identity, but at least people didn’t think they were possessed or troubled anymore. A lot had changed in those fifteen years since he was put into a room and told to confess all his secret sexual deviant thoughts, and then given proper sexual object choices and roles he was told to perfect like a marionette. 

    By the time he finished the mail route for the hospital, Barney felt as if he had walked through the fire and come out on the other side. People called him sir. Barney. Even Mr. Addison if they knew him. 

    He was a guy. Not a sad, afraid girl. But by the time he wandered around to the wooded area close to the hospital, in search of the package address, the sinking feeling came back. He meandered through the path, a parking lot, and more wooded area. He expected to find nothing but a dead end, but right there, on a street that seemed to come out of nowhere, was another steel building. Down the alleyway was a door and a dumpster. A red doorbell taunted him; he could ring it and know exactly what this place was beyond his nightmares–but his feet were lead. 

    He flung the package to the ground and ran away, through the woods and the parking lot and right by North York Hospital. He got into his post office truck and floored it, nearly crashing into a dark sedan. The horn blared and anchored him to this world. 

    “Mr. Addison,” he said to himself. “You are one hundred and ten percent normal.”

    He merged onto the road and went home, humming a tune he didn’t know. 

    *

    “Do you remember North York?”

    “Of course I do,” Gordy said, bitterness in his tone. “I was there for three weeks before you. And even when you got to leave, I was still stuck there.”

    “Right. Of course. I just… Do you remember where our therapy was located?”

    Gordy scoffed on the other end of the phone. Barney had his headphones in with the mic pressed close to his face. He’d gone to the gym after work, but the strange alleyway in the middle of the hospital’s grounds had frustrated him. Familiar, yet strange. And the song in his head now had lyrics—there is no self in cell division / all we know is human prisons / join biology’s void / and say hello to millions—ones that he couldn’t feed into Google to find an answer. The mystery package that had once made his knees weak seemed to be a blurry recollection as the song took dominance in his mind. It wasn’t quite like losing time, but it had been reshaped and remodelled in a way he didn’t like. So he’d called Gordy, the only other person he knew who had shared his therapy experience at North York when they were teens. 

    “I don’t understand why we’re walking down memory lane,” Gordy said. “It was not exactly a pleasant experience.”

    “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just…I had to deliver the mail there today.”

    “Right. You’ve done that before. And they don’t do conversion therapy anymore, thank fucking God. They still have a psych ward, obviously, but sometimes those are needed.”

    “Sure,” Barney said, not wanting to argue the point. “But do you remember another building?”

    “Like the cafeteria?”

    “No. Another building, like close to North York but maybe on the other side of it. Near the woods. Do you, did we… ever get therapy there, too?”

    “I don’t know if what they did could be called therapy but…” Gordy seemed to think a long time. Barney wondered if his memories were coming back to him in the same way as his did earlier in the day. If so, he didn’t sound nearly as pained as Barney felt. “I don’t think so. I mean… No. I don’t exactly like to dwell on the many and varied treatments, but I remember most of it occurring in the main hospital.”

    “So no blinking lights or sleeping for days?” 

    “Barney,” Gordy said, carefully. “What happened today? Did you lose time again?”

    Barney pushed up a barbell, attempting to work out instead of answering. Gordy was always a stoic, though, and waited patiently until the silence became too much for Barney. “Not exactly. I didn’t lose time… more like retrieved a memory I thought I had forgotten and then promptly lost all form and shape of it.”

    “About our conversion therapy?”

    “I think so, but I don’t know. It seemed more medical than psychological.” Barney put the barbell up and sat on the bench. His story sounded so ludicrous, but he was sure that these two random events were tied. That the pieces of this puzzle were adding up. When he tried to explain the doctor masks and needles to Gordy, though, his voice was thin and angry.

    “No.”

    “No?”

    “No,” Gordy repeated. “This isn’t some MK-Ultra bullshit. Or some alien conspiracy to steal memories. The people who told us we were sick when we were kids were not some masterminds. They were just working with faulty psychology. This isn’t anything bigger than gigantic stupidity and shame about sexuality and gender identity. And no one in conversion therapy prodded us with needles. They didn’t need to in order to make our lives fucking shitty.”

    “Right,” Barney said. He nodded. Sweat fell from his brow onto his gym shorts. He’d been working out far too hard before he’d even called Gordy. He was just low on electrolytes after drinking. That was the only explanation for his random fuzzy memory because Gordy was always right. The people who fucked them up as kids were never the monsters they wanted to believe. They were just stupid and following orders. Most people who commit horrible mistakes usually are. 

    And the other stuff with aliens? Well, maybe it was time to see a therapist about grief over his father. Even if he didn’t exactly trust the profession. Things had changed a lot in the last fifteen years. Maybe therapy was a good thing again. “You are totally, one hundred percent right, Gordy. I’m just… having a rough week.”

    “I know. It’s okay. I think we all deserve a little break from reality every so often. It’s why Chris and I do what I do. You can come over tonight, you know. If you want. No charge.”

    Barney genuinely considered the offer. He’d gotten high at their place before, but the weightless feeling of being on opioids didn’t resonate with him. It was too much like slinking off the first veil of reality; like falling so deeply into a sunken place he couldn’t emerge from. It was, to put it bluntly, like the Rohypnol incident in his first early college years, when he’d been raped and woken up the next morning with the definitive idea that he wasn’t LeeAnne anymore, but Barney. 

    “You there?” Gordy asked. “You got really quiet.”

    “Yeah. I’m fine. Just at the gym and thinking of heading home.”

    “And then to our place?”

    “Maybe. I’ll see where I end up.” 

    “Okay, Barney. Take care of yourself.” 

    Barney followed up with some pleasantries before ending the phone conversation. He headed into the male locker room and waited for a stall to change in. As he waited, he removed his tank top to ring it out, allowing his scars to become visible. A man across the area seemed to gasp. Barney’s body went rigid, worrying for a moment if he had been outed as trans. 

    “Sorry, bro,” the guy at the other end said. “I didn’t mean to gawk. Looks like a nasty accident.”

    “Sort of,” Barney said.

    “You mind if I ask what happened, man?”

    Barney paused for only a minute. He’d long ago cooked up a dozen stories to explain away his mastectomy scars, years before he could even afford the surgery. I’ve been shot. Super bad piercing experience. And he’d even considered covering the scars with tattoos. But now, a more delightful excuse came through his head. “I’m an alien with two hearts. You know, a timelord.”

    “Oh, shit man. You can just say you don’t wanna say.”

    Barney nodded. A stall opened up and he went inside to change out of the rest of his gym clothing. He ran his hands over his scars, remembering the same feeling of weightlessness as the surgeon gave him anesthesia. You won’t remember a thing, she’d said. And she was right. For a long time afterwards in his drug haze, everything was gone. LeeAnne. His mother who disowned him. His sister who was fine to think he was a lesbian, but thought this ‘trans business’ was too strange and who had moved to California anyway. He forgot his father being taken away when he was twelve and the criminal record that soon followed his father. Breaking and entering, carrying a weapon, trespassing. His father had gone from a youthful Jamaican immigrant to a paranoid gun-toting alien contact survivor. And Barney had just forgotten it all. 

    Now though, he ran his fingers along his scars. He remembered the steel building next to North York, and the doctors who stood over him with needles and machines. They were just like the ones telling him he was a criminal for liking women, except that they were silent with darker eyes and longer fingers on their hands. Except that they were aliens. And they had a message for him. There is no self in cell division / all we know is human prisons / join biology’s void / and say hello to millions.

    Now, Barney remembered everything.

    *

    The next time a package from the steel building came in on his post office run, he wrote down the address. When his hand shook too much, he snapped a photo with his phone instead. He typed out a text to Gordy about the place—but soon decided to save it as a draft for later. Gordy had already gone through enough. He’d been in the psych ward much longer since the therapists never really believed him when he tried to convince them he was cured. In retrospect, Barney’s queerness had been easier to hide because he hadn’t even known what it was like to be a trans man fully. He was just a tomboy, and saying that he liked men got them off his case, and easier for him to do since it was half true. So Barney’s conversion therapy had only been a fraction by comparison to Gordy. 

    And maybe, because Gordy was cis and Barney turned out to be trans, there was another line dividing their experiences. Barney didn’t like to think that way, but he knew it was true. Cis people engaged with the world in a different way; their bodies were never quite marvels in the same way that trans bodies were. Trans bodies morphed and changed; obtained a second puberty and new facets of physicality. Maybe because of this morphing and changing, Barney was somehow more susceptible to whatever was going on in the steel building.

    Maybe. He didn’t know for sure. But he was determined to find out more than before. 

    As soon as Barney reached the door down the alleyway, he rang the red bell. He’d conned his way inside of enough apartment buildings as a maintenance man, he was sure he could get inside here if he had a package that he said needed signing. To his surprise, though, he didn’t need to con. As soon as he rang the doorbell, it opened. 

    “Hello?” Barney pushed his way inside. “Anyone here?”

    Silent. Pure silence, the kind where Barney heard his own blood in his ear. He put down the package between the door so it didn’t close. The package was heavy–like several phone books all bound together–so it worked as the perfect door stop.

    “Hello?” Barney asked again. He’d gone down a long corridor with numbers, rather than names, on each one. He tried each door knob, but nothing worked until the very end. Door 725 opened easily. A light flickered above a filing cabinet and next to a chalkboard that had the same number written on it.

    A chill passed through Barney. He opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. He touched his throat, behind his ears. His arms, his ankles, and his chest. Nothing. He wasn’t being abducted or missing time, but an electrical charge in the air made his coarse hair stand on end.

    He opened the first drawer in the filing cabinet. It was easy enough to find the name Addison, and it was no shock that his old name LeeAnne was there next. With trembling fingers, he pulled out the file that was at least three CMs thick. The first page was the hospital intake form from the exact date he entered conversion therapy at North York’s psych ward. Nothing was amiss in the subsequent pages; everything was familiar and had checked out. 

    Perhaps this place was just an old filing centre, a storage area to keep things that they had to legally keep for a certain amount of time. He wasn’t that keen to keep on reading how “LeeAnne displays a preference for the same sex, but has spoken about dating boys if she can also become one” and wanted to put the file away. His creepy crawly mission seemed like a wasted afternoon until he came upon the last page of the file. A body chart had been laid out and marked off with round hollow dots, like crop circles on the elbows and viridians of a human body. Underneath were times and dates, along with injections. 

    “What kind of MK-Ultra bullshit is this?” he asked aloud. Seeing nothing else other than the cryptic writing that seemed to trigger long buried memoires, Barney put down his file and searched for Gordy in the large stack. Gordon Zednichek was the last file in the drawer and less thick than Barney’s. The last page bore the same chart with a body, crop circles on elbows, and the injections. The final words made Barney bit on his lip so hard he drew blood: Subject incompatible with desires. He will be sent back to the conversion centre. 

    Barney swallowed the blood in his mouth. He checked the last words of his file again. It was a date and a time and an injection rate, followed by the words “Pending…” It seemed like a lack lustre ending, nothing as definitive as Gordy. Barney tore through random files now, comparing the charts and the results. When he found another file that also bore the “Pending…” final words, he memorized the name: Casey Thompson. Age twenty-six now. The address was out of date–a parents’ place that Barney knew was now a vacant lot since he had delivered mail to that address years ago–but the name itself was familiar. He knew he had seen it before. 

    He took another photo with his phone and closed the filing area. A creak down the hall made his heart catch in his throat, but no one was there. The steel building really did seem like a storage area–but for what, Barney still wasn’t sure. 

    When he got back to his post office truck, his heart was pounding. His hands were shaking. But the elation that came over him once he found Casey Thompson’s name was worth it. He delivered mail to that address in the past–the Sheridan Apartment Building over by Leslie and Shepard.

    The same one he’d woken up on two weeks ago, when he’d lost time. Barney let out a deep, low breath, knowing that for once, he was onto something. 

    *

    He didn’t call Gordy, or even wander up to Casey Thompson’s apartment and ask them what had gone on years ago, and what was going on now. Hearing the answers from someone else didn’t seem to ease the itch that Barney had inside of him–and had had inside of him for a long time. Instead, as soon as it got dark, he put on one of his old maintenance uniforms and left his cell phone behind in his apartment. There was no note, but the phone itself and the last images he’d taken should be good enough.

    He conned his way into the Sheridan apartment building and went right up to the roof. The familiar scent of plant matter and vacuumed air greeting him, but it had faded significantly since his last lost time episode. There was a shed filled with tools for the building, along with a folding chair in the back. He took it out and put it in the centre of the roof. The North York Hospital insignia glowed blue like a beacon, along with IKEA and a McDonalds in the distance. 

    He waited. And he waited. 

    He thought of the first time his father had woken him up from sleeping in the back of his van. He’d told the then LeeAnne the ways to make sure you knew who and what you were when you lost time. He’d told the then LeeAnne that he’d had to pull the car off into the corn fields because a bright light had come over the car and tried to lift it up. 

    “But we’re here again. Everything is fine. It’s just like Betty and Barney Hill,” he said. “They were abducted in 1961–but they came back. They always come back. And once you do come back, you have to keep talking about it and keep telling people about it in order for the experience to become real. When you lose time, you lose a piece of yourself. So you have to keep talking. You have to keep remembering.”

    Barney knew he had been scared as a kid. His father had nearly totalled the car and then ranted in a near-yelling voice about identity and invasion. But now Barney thought of the coalescence around his own naming; how he’d woken up from a date-rape stupor and realized that his body had been taken from him the night before. How the experience bore so much similarity to conversion therapy, where he’d been brought into different buildings and made to feel and say and think things that weren’t true. Barney had been born out of LeeAnne in those moments, when his body and biology had been taken from him, and he’d fused his identity with his father’s alien conspiracies. It was why the name Barney, in a baby name book, seemed like the perfect fit when he’d skimmed over it.

    But Barney also thought of the feeling of having no body, of having no self as he was put under for his surgery. The weightlessness that came from drugs he controlled. His surgery was the last shed of LeeAnne being removed from himself, but Barney had also been removed in that black-out waiting period. You won’t remember a thing—and he hadn’t. He was a void then. A perfect and nothing void; no self to worry about, no memories to hold him down. Good or bad. Boy or girl. Right or wrong, under the knife he was cosmic. He was everywhere. He was alien. 

    There is no self in cell division. He went through the song until it abruptly ended. Across the street, the lights started to shift and change form. Barney braced himself. Pending… Pending. The blue turned to a gauzy green and violet as it was removed from the hospital. It swirled around in the air and then fixated over the apartment complex. It hovered there, seeming to check out Barney in the same glance that Barney checked it out. His heart beat very fast. He put a hand over his chest and his scars and felt the beats course through him like an electrical jolt. 

    He was afraid. He was relieved. 

    The lights lowered over him, embracing him like a hug. 

    “It is November 24 2017 4:25 AM,” Barney said. “My name is Barney Addison, and I have found my lost time.”

    END

  • 31 for 31: The Plague by Eve Morton

    This is the story that started it all, so to speak.

    “The Plague” was the first story that I published professionally. My friend Derek (of speculatingcanada.ca) had posted the call for submissions for his friend’s publication Postscript to Darkness. The call sounded doable: a short story that was speculative in some way, and was under 3000 words. The pay was decent, too. Enough to motivate me–but not enough to make me think I had to be too professional or serious.

    And so I wrote this little story I had in my head about a queer kid surviving the apocalypse and what that would feel like. In some ways, it’s a new beginning–and for a queer kid, that is sometimes the best thing we can get.

    So I wrote the story. I enjoyed writing it.

    And then it was accepted.

    And then I got to do a reading of this story in downtown Ottawa with other authors, some who have gone onto serious good things. That night was really magical for me. It was the first time a life of writing–and writing really weird things–seemed completely viable.

    Even fun!

    What a nice new beginning.

    The Plague

    No one ever really remembers a plague. It’s not like a war, where the planning, battles, and deaths are all categorized at once. Each step is made with the conscious fact that this will be history one day. In the present everyday life of war and destruction, an archivist is happy. There is always something to do. 

    But a plague is pieced together like a puzzle, always after the fact. It cannot be foreseen and even while it is happening, many people move about their daily life unnoticed and not affected. It is always understood after the deaths. Not the first or the second—these are merely incidental and could have very well been accidents of fate. But by the two hundredth or two thousandth, then something is happening. Only when one death tips into many deaths does it become history. When it is worth remembering and learning from, it is given a name. 

    Back during the cholera epidemics, John Snow tried to solve the mystery of the sickness. There was no such thing as bacteria and germs were thought to be spread through the air. The plague doctors wore bird masks stuffed with herbs and home remedies in the beak, hoping to keep away the death and not breathe it in. People avoided certain areas where the dead were piling up, but they did not look at the water. Snow followed an inventible ghost map of sickness, and later realized it was emerging from one pipe where everyone drank. Even without seeing the bacteria with a microscope, he knew the existence of the monster that was taking people one by one. As soon as the mystery of cholera was solved, then it could move onto history. Plagues are always created backwards, after the ending is known. 

    ***

    When my mother got sick, I was twelve years old. She called to me from her bed one morning, her voice hoarse and grainy. It was the sound of two bones rubbing together in sand, trying to sound out the syllables of my name. 

    “Abigail. AB-A-GALE.”

    I didn’t even fight her when she used my birth name. I just got up and gave her water to try and make the sound behind her voice stop. I gave her soup and other fluids, but nothing worked. I changed the sheets and tried not to touch anything. I washed my hands and I showered regularly. I wanted to stay home, but she told me to go to school. When I arrived and sat in my class, I counted the heads of each person who was there. Three students were away. It is just a flu, I told myself. 

    But I stopped going to school when three students became five and I could hear the same dried-out hollow voice in others. I went to the library before I left, wearing winter gloves though it was spring, and took out books on John Snow. I stopped showering, in case whatever was happening was in the water and it could get into my mouth or eyes. I boiled all the water in the house before anything touched our lips. I drank and did not get sick, but my mother, already sick, refused everything I gave her and spun in her bed at night. 

    It is only the water once, I thought to myself, and John Snow has already claimed that for his history lesson. I looked away from the pipes and the books collected dust on my shelves. I did not go to school for days, then months, then years. I learned more in my house than anywhere in the world. 

    To me, the plague started with my mother. But that is only because I know the doors and the roof and the walls of our house. I know our private history, the photos on the walls and where the dead cats are buried in the backyard. The plague always starts inward like this and spirals out. I only became aware of what I could see and feel with my own hands. But I did not know the history that was happening outside my window, not for a long time. 

    Really, the plague stated halfway around the country. Some sheep farmer was the first one to display symptoms. He had gotten too close to the dirt and to the bodies that were buried underneath, stepping on the ground in bare feet. Later, he would be rendered mute in bed, just like my mother, spinning like a millstone at night. The bodies underground were old corpses from one of the wars that Napoleon had started. I can’t remember what one exactly—Waterloo or the French Revolution—but the battle name is not really important. What I do remember is that Napoleon wasn’t really a short man. He was normal height, maybe a few inches less than average, but he was probably taller than I was when I was reading about him. He was only portrayed short to humiliate him by his enemies. Maybe that was why the bodies from underground wanted to lower us, to reach up and grab us by our toes and bare feet. They wanted to pull us down to their level. 

    Zombie is not quite the right word. Zombies come up to the surface and demand attention; they bite and infect you. These creatures were not solid and bold like zombies. They had broken themselves down into tiny pieces, the past history of a group of people, and they demanded to be remembered by pulling us all down with them. It got lonely underneath and we were doing a terrible job of keeping track of history, of keeping track of death. 

    When I checked my mother, she had no marks, no bite wounds. But the flesh on her feet glowed pink and I knew it was something in the garden. I scanned the ground, always wearing shoes and hopping on cement, to see where the disease had started. But there was no distinct portal, no distinct entryway. The sheep field was incidental; the farmer may have been the first infected, but there was nothing special about his land. The invasion of the illness was really something that had been brewing ever since Napoleon got the first short joke. There never is a distinct beginning to plagues, only our own interpretations. 

    I cut my hair first. I thought it may have had something to do with the illness, the same way arsenic and other poisons linger in follicles. But I scanned its roots and saw nothing, so I began to learn to start again. I wanted to be like John Snow so badly; I thought I had to be him in order to find the answers. After I read his books, I’d then stand in the mirror, my chest flattened across my skin from binding, and will myself to figure it out. I needed to know where it came from and its origins, how it could start so small and then explode out. I needed to understand that it could somehow get my mother, but not touch me. I needed to understand why we were so different, and yet we shared the same last name and facial features. Even when I stopped eating as much and my cheekbones stuck out and my hips disappeared, it did not seem to matter.  Not enough, at least. I was still her daughter to her, and she was still calling me Abigail from her bed while I pretended to be John Snow. Even if she couldn’t see my face, my bound chest, or my new cropped hair, she knew my voice and who was in the house with her.  Even at our most desperate, when she was dying and I still could not figure out the plague, I told her my name was only John Snow once. She never answered me and I don’t think she ever heard. I didn’t like the way the name sounded anyway; it was hollow and too blunt. It was only the water once, I thought. And there would only be one John Snow. I was not him. But I was still left wanting more than what I was given, what had been passed down from generations, and what I saw disappearing right in front of me.  

    I watched as my mother grew drier and drier. Her skin flaked off and into the wind. Her voice became distant and then it was nothing but bones rubbing together. The last time I went to see her, she was a pile of dirt on the bed. What was left was formed perfectly to her body, like a mummy, but in a thousand tiny pieces. The window was inexplicably open, and in one gust of wind she was gone. 

    This is how they all went. This was how they all left us and died. They touched the ground and the past infected them. They let the past hold onto their bones and take everything else away. And then by chance, they floated into the atmosphere, into the air. So long as you did not touch the ground and let the past get to you, you did not appear like ashes and dust. 

    I was alone in my house for weeks, piecing the mystery together. Others were also figuring it out. Men walked by my window regularly on stilts, their wooden limbs creaking as they learned to take new steps again. Other people realized it came through the dirt, and not the air. People began to talk to one another through a mutual exchange of their feet. To look at the sole, and not the soul, was oddly moving.

    Everything else in the world was the same except for this elaborate stepping stone game, like pretending the floor was lava when you were younger. Only once touched, the lava would burn you from the inside out, boiling away your blood and organs, turning you into ash and dirt without the least bit of pain. There was only lethargy, until you were dried out worse than the mummies in the museum, and then the wind took you. Peaceful, almost. Most people want their ashes spread across the world, as if it was the key to immortality, to be many places at once.

    One day, I moved to my still-open window and watched as pack of stilt walkers traipsed by. I went outside, being careful to stay on the pavement my house was surrounded by. The stilt walkers reached so close to the sky that I could barely see their faces. 

    Someone threw me a pair of stilts and they rattled to the ground. From up high, he yelled, “We could use someone like you.”

    I did not know what to say in return. I showed him my feet. 

    “Good. Good.” He smiled. “Let’s go.”

    I took his gift with shaking hands and tried to learn my new motions. From atop my wooden legs, I took in a sudden breath of the shallow air. Like looking down the water pipe, I began to understand what John Snow had felt. I was seeing the world and its history the way I had never witnessed before. This was a plague now, to me and all the others around. I could see the empty houses and the fallen bodies, the dust that spread up into the atmosphere and was almost thick enough to block the sun. I learned, as I walked with these new men, that they were calling the illness The Dust Disease. It now had a name and time would remember us, either as victims or survivors. It was a chance to start again. 

    “What is your name?” the man asked me. 

    I was still bald from my hair cutting and I looked very different than the soles of my feet. I was wearing what my father had left behind, not wanting to wear my own clothing or tarnish my mother’s memory by wearing hers. The pants and shirt were old, and now covered in dust, but it looked okay. The man regarded my new jacket, too big in the shoulders, before he looked at me and asked my name again.

    “I’m Max.”

    “Nice to meet you, Max,” he said with a smile. He introduced himself, and then we kept walking. It was hard to work my new legs at first. But he was patient, and waited for me as I caught up to him. I left my house behind me, the ash and dirt of others lingering in my path.

    ***

    This is what I have learned so far, now that I am fifteen. We are still piecing together what has happened to us, but we now know that we are not alone. More days past by and we find others on slits, and others who blow right by us in the wind. This is not a war, something deliberately made with the intent of remembering, recreating, or with a distinct end. This has all just happened, almost by accident, and it will keep going until someone like John Snow has a need to track it down. 

    But I am not John Snow anymore. I am Max. As the man beside me calls me by my name again, more people on stilts join us. We walk into the night.

    END

  • 31 for 31: Skeleton Key by Eve Morton

    I hope spooky season has been treating you well!

    I’ve really been enjoying going through my old stories to compile this list. It has reminded me how much my stories have changed–but also remained the same.

    One key theme that’s come out is my resistance to, or fear of, institutions, doctors, and the psychological industry. It can be so easy to declare someone unfit or unrecognizable in some way, and then have them turn into monsters on paper. So often that leads to a self-fufiling prophecy, and people who are declared monsters may as well become them.

    Or become haunted by them.

    The next story is one of many stories I wrote on those themes, but exploring them through the lens of gender transgression, transition, and trans identity. My PhD dealt with these themes, too–but I never got to truly express how horrible some of these scenarios were, or the lingering haunted feeling that stayed with me long after penning my research papers.

    “Skeleton Key” is a story that explores what is left behind when you are not recognized in a medical system–and then in a death industry–where your birth name and birth identity is the only thing that is ‘real.’ Be warned that this story–and many more invovling trans protagonists–confront the realities of being a minority. Sexism, racism, and many other -isms are the ‘monsters’ in these stories–but there are also literal monsters lurking around the corner. Because why not have both?

    Skeleton Key

    The last time I heard from Sally was in the ER the night I broke my wrist. We spent two hours waiting before a doctor saw me. Then, when my sex marker (F) didn’t match how I currently looked (M) or my name (Ryan), it was another two hours before the doctor came back with x-rays. 

    Sally made a jerk off motion behind the doctor’s back when he left for the second time and refused to meet our eyes. When we were alone, she made the jerk-off motion to me, too.

    “I bet that’s how you broke it. Too aggressive with your sex toys. I know you’re all about sex positivity, but you positively snapped that wrist.” 

    I laughed. Sally and I were quite the pair. I looked like a twelve year old boy before the testosterone shots made my chin sprout fuzz and my body bulk out. Her hormones made her face heart-shaped and gave her breasts. She was thirty-seven, but still dressing like she was in tenth grade and wanted to get the footballer’s attention. 

    I couldn’t blame her. I had broken my wrist trying to impress the local jock at my gym, only to slam backwards and snap against a wall. 

    “You know, you’re right,” I told her. “I was jerking off when I broke this.”

    “Told ya.” 

    I already knew the procedure for broken bones in the Ontario ER system.  After my x-rays, I was supposed to get a cast, but at this rate, I’d be there all night. 

    “You don’t have to stay, you know,” I told Sally. “Thanks for driving me, but I know you have a date.”

    “I do. A pretty date.”

    “The guy with the red car again?”

    “And the scar on his chin. The scar and the car,” she said and laughed. She was dressed in two inch heels and a pink top that matched the highlight of her eyes. When I’d met her in group, she said pink was her favourite colour. No one let her say that before she was thirty five, so she was catching up for lost time. Her nails glittered as she went through the file the doctor left in my stall. She held up my x-ray towards the light, her nails still shimmering.

    “Goddamn. It looks like you fractured this.”

    “Nope. Just a lot of little breaks,” I repeated the doctor’s words. “One of the most common injuries in adults. Not a big deal.” 

    “Yeah, but if you’re not careful, your bones will be all you have. So you gotta take care of ’em. That’s why you always gotta be on hormones. If you ever get your uterus out, you know to take them forever and ever, yeah? Don’t be like me. Don’t cut your balls and run.”

    I didn’t laugh at her joke this time. Her harsh lesson in biology had been her follow up to her favourite colour story in group. She’d gotten an orchiectomy, thinking it was the smart way to rid her body of testosterone. As it turned out, hormones are good for bone growth. And not just menopausal women break their hips. Sally had shattered her hip pelvis when she was thirty-four, three years after removing her nuts without actually transitioning. So when everything was all repaired, metal holding her skeleton together, she figured it was better late than never to start liking the colour pink. 

    “And if, you know, God Forbid we ever die,” she added, her tone just the same as when she asked if I had jerked myself off into this broken wrist, “our bones are gonna be the only things that identify us. So always make sure to check with your dentist. Change your name there first. And everything else, well, die in the proper clothing. And hope to God gender doesn’t’ exist in the goddamn afterlife.”

    “Stop,” I said. 

    “Too dark?”

    “Yeah, kind of. And my head hurts.”

    “You’re probably hungry. I’ll get you a snack.” She dropped the file back down on the counter and came back with a package of chips. We both ate them until the doctor came back and I was casted up. 

    “I have to go, love,” she said. “I have that big date.”

    I waved with my other hand, not in a cast. Sally raised a brow and grabbed a Sharpie from the counter. “Let me leave you with a last laugh,” she said. She wrote something on the back of my cast, something I could barely see without twisting my body all around. 

    “There you are,” she said. “I’ll see you around.”

    “Have a good night.”

    The next day, she was gone. 

    *

    I had theories about what happened to Sally. Most of the happier ones ended up with her living it up with the scar in a brand new car, him paying for her surgeries, and purchasing a mansion in Tahiti. 

    But I knew it was far more likely that the guy had shattered her skull instead. 

    When my cast came off six weeks later, I read about a body found in a local park. The doctor called me in from the waiting room before I could finish the article, so I tucked it under my hoodie and took it with me. 

    “Do you want to keep it?” the technician asked me, holding up my cast. “Sometimes people want to keep it.”

    I was about to say no, when I saw Sally’s writing. She’d signed the cast before leaving.

    I held open my backpack and the technician gave me the remnants of my cast. On the bus home, I read the newspaper about the dead body in the park. No head. No hands. No clothing.

    “It’s her,” I told my roommate. I put the newspaper down on our table, but he barely looked up from his video game. “It’s Sally. The body they found in the park.”

    “How do you know for sure?”

    Because bones were all we had. I didn’t say it aloud. I continued reading the article. The entire body hadn’t been found, and at the rapid rate of decomposition, it wasn’t likely they’d find any other pieces due to scavengers. Her pelvis, the one that she’d shattered and that doctors had to piece back together with metal and screws, must not have been found because there was no mention of tracing the serial numbers. 

    “DNA testing,” a reporter said, “noted that the skeleton belong to a man.”

    My heart sunk. This was Sally, I was sure of it now. I still had a toothbrush from when she’d stayed over and we talked all night. But if I came forward with her DNA, her body would be released back into her family. They would give her back her old name, bury her in a family plot, and call her their Darling Son.

    So I stayed quiet. I wrapped my cast with her last words on it with the newspaper that announced her death and hid it under my bed.

    Six weeks after that, I walked by the local commentary and saw them burying a bunch of bodies in pine boxes. Unnamed, unclaimed by family, and given a pauper’s funeral

    My wrist ached for her again. 

    *

    “You know, you have more masculinity in your pinky finger than most guys I know,” Sally told me in group. This had been after I reiterated the story of my broken home in front of everyone without shedding a tear. Absent father, daddy issues. The standard stuff that therapists wanted to hear about transgender men. 

    And I nailed it. 

    “Thank you,” I said.

    “You know, that’s not a compliment. Masculinity will be the death of this planet. So fragile. It snaps off like it’s nothing and then we’re left picking up the pieces.”

    I paused. My binder cut deep into my chest and I could barely move an inch without pain ricocheting through my body. My D-breasts were sandwiched across me, never moving. And that pain remained me of why I was here. “Masculinity is what I want, though. It’s what I need to pass.”

    “What you want is a body,” Sally said. “New skin. More hair in places you didn’t have it before. A voice. A little less fat off your chest. You don’t want masculinity. Most cis men don’t want masculinity. It’s something thrust upon you.”

    I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t really talk with my binder so tight, anyway. I hoped my silence counted as a response. In most conversations with men, I had learned that it did. 

    “You want to get breakfast?” she asked. “I’m feeling like eggs. I think eggs would be good right now.”

    It was four in the afternoon, but I said yes. We talked all night and into the morning. I laughed harder than I had in weeks. The next day, when I woke up and saw bruises across my chest, I went to the emergency room. 

    “What have you been doing, Rachel?”

    “It’s… Ryan. My name is Ryan.”

    “What have you been doing?” The doctor asked without looking up from the x-rays. “You have four fractured ribs. Has someone been hurting you?”

    “No,” I said. “I’ve just been having fun.”

    *

    “When the hyoid bone, located in the throat,” the medical examiner from TV said, “breaks, it means the cause of death is usually strangulation.”

    I shut off the TV. Another crime drama had paraded out transgender women as set design when talking about a prostitute’s death. Every single episode was the same, all the medical and legal information a rehashed version of the previous episode. When I was twelve, I used to find these shows comforting. Someone was killed. Medical science and detective work found the killer. And they were put away. 

    Now, at twenty-seven, everything seemed to ring hollow. Sally had been dead for months. There was no way anyone would ever find the scar with the car. Even if I came forward, I could barely make a dent in Sally’s case file given what I knew. So I went to bed instead of watching TV. 

    I slept with a hand around my throat. Sick fever dreams that pinned me to the bed. Pressure on my chest, like someone was weighing my breasts down with sandbags. When the bone in my throat–hyoid, hyoid I repeated, named after the Greek word for U–snapped, my body shot awake.

    And Sally stood in front of me.

    Her bare feet didn’t touch the floor. She was made up of light and gossamer, so thin I could see through her body and to the next wall. She wasn’t wearing loud colours or sequins or pink eyeliner. Her hair was short, too brown, and cropped close to her head. She wore a jean collared shirt over jeans. One of the worst cardinal sins of fashion.  

    “Sally?”

    “Ryan. You’ve gotta help me.” Her voice was soft, but dry. She sounded far away; like she was trapped under glass or underwater. “I’m dead.” 

    “I know. I’m sorry.”

    “Shut up. Sympathy is for the weak. I need you to do something.”

    “What?”

    “You have to make me the Skeleton Key.”

    “What?”

    “Skeleton Key,” she repeated, voice softer. Her silhouetted outline disappeared against my bedroom wall. 

    She was gone. Again. 

    I touched my throat and looked at it in the mirror, expecting to find bruises. There was nothing. I stared up at the ceiling, repeating the words in my mind over and over again. Her blue demined madness splashed in front of me. 

    We have genders in the afterlife, I realized. What a cruel, stupid fate.

    I made the jerk off motion with my hand. My wrist smarted from where I’d broken it. My ribs hurt from my binder earlier that day. And my hyoid bone still ached as if it had been snapped in two. 

    Had Sally been choked? I didn’t know. I shouldn’t care how she ended, only how she lived. That had been the motto at group when she disappeared. No one had had a funeral, excerpt for private eulogies we all had in our minds. To everyone else, Sally wasn’t dead. Just gone.

    A ghost.

    I saw her–except not her–in front of me again. How do you get rid of ghosts? I Googled all the options on my phone and only came up with burning the bones, burying the body. None of which seemed to work for her. It wasn’t that Sally was a ghost; it was that she wasn’t the right ghost. 

    Make me the Skeleton Key. That was what she wanted. So I searched up that next. A skeleton key was a master key that could open any door, usually part of a hotel. It was also a novel by Stephen King, who Sally read voraciously.

    “I’m always in waiting rooms for treatments,” she’d say. “So you need a couple hundred thousand words of nonsense from King to keep you going.”

    Her voice was so clear in my mind I started to laugh again. Then I nearly cried when I remembered her rant about Carrie, the girl with telekinetic powers who went to prom. It was evidence that Stephen King was a little bit trans. 

    “What other apparent middle aged man writes a revenge fantasy using period blood and prom as the main M.O.? Come, on,” Sally said. “That’s total Venus envy.” 

    Everything we touched, everything we read, became a little bit trans because we wanted it to be. Before Sally was a ghost, she was always haunting things. 

    So of course our bones were haunted. Of course they were already cursed. If a skeleton key opened all doors, could it also put her soul back together? If I found all of her bones, could I put Sally back together?

    The thought kept me up until morning. Then I went for a drive. 

    *

    I found a metal detector, the kind that beach combers use, from a pawn shop. I brought it to the local park where her body had been found. There were indentations in the grass from the spokes the crime scene unit must have used to put up barriers from the public. When nothing but bottle caps came up in this area, I expanded my search.

    And found tire tracks. From the scar with the car? I wasn’t sure and certainly didn’t know enough about cars to be able to trace the treads. I followed them from a picnic area into the back woods. Months had passed, I told myself. I was unlikely to find anything more but bottle caps again. But the beach comber went off. 

    A screw. Metal, industrial strength. From her pelvis. I followed the beeping and came up with another pile of bones. Her pelvis was shaped like the hyoid bone, only bigger. U-shaped and caked with dirt and metal that kept it intact. Next to the pelvis, I saw scattered bones from a hand. I picked up her pinky and slipped it into my pocket. Warmth flooded me. 

    “Hi, Sally,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

    I put what remained of her hands and other small bones that looked no more than stones into my backpack. Her pelvis slipped from my hands, shattering like it must have done years before. The bone shards fell down into a pattern, then rearranged themselves. They spelled out an address.  

    135 Stevenson Drive. 

    I looked it up on Google Maps. It was a hotel at the edge of town. 

    *

    My car was the only one in the lot. A black man sat at the front desk, a thick red-covered book in front of him. He raised his eyes from the words as soon as I stepped inside. “Hello.”

    “Hi,” I said. “I don’t know if I’m in the right place.”

    “What do you need?”

    “A skeleton key.”

    “Well, I need a skeleton.”

    “A whole one?”

    “A piece of one will do. But your favourite piece.” 

    “I’m… I’m very confused.” The pinky finger in my pocket warmed again. The shards of her pelvis now were too dangerous to handle; I’d barely been able to put them in my backpack without cutting my thumbs to ruins. 

    The man behind the counter, teeth wide like china bowls, smiled.  “You need to open a door and deliver a wandering soul, I’m guessing?”

    I nodded.

    “Good. Find that person’s body. Bring me a little bit o’ bone and I will give you the key to get to the other side. Deliver the rest of the bones to the portal–the door to the next world. Then your person will make it through.” 

    “And she’ll be better there?”

    “What is she like right now?”

    “Angry,” I said. I touched my neck and he didn’t seem fazed by it, like it happened all the time. “She’s also not who she died as.” 

    “Hmmm.” He pondered this a moment. When he set the book he’d been reading down in front of him, I realized it was all blank pages. Nothing there but tiny pin pricks like Braille, expect that the man could see. He looked passed me, through me, down to my very bones themselves. 

    “How did the ghost appear to you?” he asked.

    “As a man. But she’s a woman.”

    “Her bones–“

    “Her bones lied. She is a woman. I know her as one. She knows me as a man.”

    “Are you the only person who knows she’s dead?”

    “I think. Now. But someone found her body and they labeled her wrong.”

    “There you go. Our ghosts are only memories reread too many times until they manifest. So you need to counter the rumours with your facts. You need to bring her back to life.”

    “Can’t I do that by pushing her through the portal? Bringing all of her bones here?” I asked, exhaustion seeping into my tone. I ached and wanted to sleep. I hadn’t gone to my job in two days, and I had no sick days to draw from. “I just want her to rest.”

    “You need to counter with a memory. One that will last. That’s why there are headstones. People read the name. Name stays alive. Right now she’s anonymous. So you need to bring her back.”  

    “Do I do this before or after I send her bones through the portal?” 

    “Either will do. But within twenty-four hours.”

    I glanced at the clock in his office. It said three PM, but it seemed so much later than that. “Okay. I can do that.”

    “Good. Now give me a bone.”

    I took the pinky out of my pocket and handed it over to him. He sniffed it and smashed it into dust. It fell into the book and dissolved into the pages. His eyes turned to black orbs. 

    “Thank you. You can go.” 

    “But the key–you haven’t given me anything.” 

    “You need her skeleton. She is the key.” He drew his pen and wrote down several words. “Here is the address. Bring her bones there and give her a headstone. Then she will be free.”

    *

    When I was nine, my father threw me down the stairs. I broke my first two toes and fractured my shin. As I waited with my mother in the ER, I started to see spots. We learned that he’d also cracked my skull, like he’d cracked my mother’s years before. 

    The doctor who saw me was kind and spoke in an even voice. He told me random facts about this hospital, about the X-Men when he noticed my T-shirt, and then random facts about bones. Anything he could think of to keep me awake, so I didn’t fall asleep and never wake up. 

    “You know,” he said. “When you’re born, you have almost three hundred bones. As you grow up, you get fewer, right down to two hundred and six. “

    As I waited out my concussion, I also waited for my body to get bigger so I could break less. Instead, Social Services were finally called and my father was locked up. 

    I became the man of the house, then. 

    “Your father was awful,” Sally said when I told her my version of the story. “You don’t deserve to think of awful people. They’ll shrink and shrink and shrink out of your life if you don’t think about them. The good times will grow and grow and grow.” 

    My shins ached again, like they had when I was nine, as I dug up Sally’s body. Her grave was in the corner of the cemetery with little lightning and virtually no presence. It was dark enough, and warm enough at night now, so I could do this and not be caught. 

    At around midnight, I cracked open her casket and took out all the bones. I still had her hands from the park and her pelvis in a thousand pieces. The pinky had been used to pay her way. I had everything I needed… except for her head. 

    I ached as if it’d been split open. Could I get away without having her skull? Surely I had enough. As I stacked her bones up in my backpack, I worried that she’d be forced to live her life as a headless horseman, haunting the playground and warning little children about the dangers of gender.  

    The address the man at the hotel had given me was an hour away in the middle of a lake. When no boat rental place was open, I hacked the locks, grabbed a boat, and sped out into the middle of the lake. 

    I dropped each one down and counted them up. The din of the mosquitoes sounded inside my head, but none of them bit me, as if I was protected by something.  By the time I’d reached the end of the backpack, I tilted it open and scattered her bone dust on the surface. It dissolved. The water was blacker than the night around me. Nothing happened for a long time as I waited for the crushing feeling of my chest to disappear.

    The lake started to bubble. White mixed with the black surface. And Sally’s bones rose to the top. Her femur, her ribcage, and sections of her hands. They all floated. 

    “Oh no,” I cried out. 

    Sally’s jokes about her osteoporosis and how she was like a flightless bird thanks to her hollow bones rolled around in my mind. “Call me ostrich. Call me emu. If I keep eroding, maybe one day I’ll fly away.”

    I started to sob.

    “Sink, sink. Please go away. Please sink down.” 

    I paddled back to the shoreline and found rocks, flat black ones used to skip across the surface. I dug through the sand, ravenous and desperate for something heavy to weight her body down and get her to the portal. The more I dug, the more I felt something take over my body. Dirt clung to my nails. My skin split on the rocks. I uncovered a stone so white, so pristine I thought it wasn’t real.

    I pulled out a skull from the sand on the shore. A skull with a small bullet hole in its centre, like the plug of a basin that let life slip through. I held Sally’s skull in my hand and sighed. 

    “I have all of you now.” 

    I filled her skull with rocks to weigh it down and got back into the boat. In the centre of the lake, I dropped her into the water. The skull cracked. More bones, tiny and numerous like a baby’s, flew everywhere.

    But she started to go down. Down and down and down into the water, Sally disappeared. 

    The lake was black again and still. The humming of mosquitoes turned to the humming of music. 

    I still had one last piece to solve. 

    *

    “You know,” Sally said. “I don’t think I want surgery anymore.”

    We lay back on the car from the scar she was dating. Cherry red, hood long and flat. The two had had sex on it, but she still thought it was better for lounging than fucking. 

    “So why go to group?” I asked. “Therapy is only there so you can talk out your demons before the knife cuts you open and repurposes the flesh.”

    “Oh, creative. Since when did you become the Adam from clay?”

    “Since the doctors promised to make me but forgot to breathe life into me.”

    “You see, that’s why I don’t want surgery. I already have a life. I’m full of it.” Sally grinned and nudged my shoulder. “And I really think I have found someone who likes my body the way it is.”

    “A fuck on the hood of the car is hardly a vow.” 

    “Yeah, but I don’t want to be a wife.” 

    “What do you want to be?” I asked. “I mean who. Who do you want to be?”

    “Sally. That’s it. I don’t ask for much.” 

    All I thought of was how hard it was for me to be Ryan. Sally could forgo surgery, but she had an option. I could only have a penis crafted out of the skin of my thigh, called a franken-dick by most other trans men in group. I could only ever dream of having something I could reject. I always had to take whatever was handed to me. 

    “But you know,” Sally went on, “I also go to group for you. Where else would I get such cutting commentary about the state of men?”

    “The scar doesn’t talk?”

    “Oh, God no. Why would he? Masculinity makes them silent. Please learn from those mistakes.”

    I told her I would try. I knew those mistakes were the ones that had knocked me down stairs and broke my toes. Crushed my ribs and left me with purple bruises everywhere. Two weeks after the conversation on the scar’s car, I’d be in the hospital with a broken arm. 

    I’d always break myself to make myself feel whole. 

    And Sally would be dead.

    Both of us never fucking learned. 

    *

    When Sally’s body was under the water, I rowed to the shore. I picked up the piece of paper the man at the hotel had given me and a pen from the bottom of my backpack. I wrote down Sally’s name. Her date of birth (give or take) and added that her favourite colour was pink. Hot pink. 

    I floated the paper into the water. Watched it dissolve. I checked the black water. 

    Nothing moved. 

    When it wasn’t enough, I picked up my phone and called Sally’s answering machine. There was still enough space. I listed off all the bones that I had broken and what I had learned from each one. Shin, toes, skull, ribcage, wrist, hyoid (if only in a dream). I was still talking when an orb of white light appeared in the middle of the pond. The light constituted itself, piece by piece, until Sally was formed.

    She wore the same sequined top in bright pink she had on when she disappeared. Her hair was the same shade of bottled-blonde and down to her shoulders. She had no shoes, but her toes were painted in pink. 

    She waved at me. I waved at her. The wave turned into the jerking off motion, and I finally hung up the phone.

    “Thank you,” she said. “What a fucking relief.” 

    “I hate that the after world has genders. This is the worse lottery I’ve ever seen.”

    She laughed, loud and throaty. It made the water ripple towards me. 

    “It sucks, but you do what you can. Remember what I said, right?”

    I nodded. 

    “Good. ‘Cause I gotta go,” she said. “Never fall in love with men and their cars. And always speak up. Something else, too. Make my last words good, bro.” 

    I waited until she disappeared under the water again. When I couldn’t breathe, I thought I’d been choked again. Tears stung my face instead. I reached into my bag and pulled out the cast from my arm. 

    I left it in the hollow from where I’d dug up her skull. Her signature faced the dawn as it crept up over the trees along the lake. Water lapped at its surface, dissolving into nothing but dust.

    END

  • 31 for 31: The Witch of 1000 Mirrors

    The first witch story has arrived!

    Although there is always a little bit of witchcraft in my stories, this is the first witch to make an appearance–and the witch is bad! I don’t usually have bad witches, only bad craft, but this title came to me in a half-dreamy state & I knew instantly she was ‘bad.’ Not misunderstood, but straight up bad.

    The Witch of 1000 Mirrors is an imposing, shadowy figure and I hope I’ve managed to convey this eerie-ness in my story itself. I wrote it early on in my pregnancy with my second son, fighting off morning sickness, and still adjusting to writing, parenting, and teaching all at the same time. No wonder I came up with this distorted figure of motherly love & craftiness that I was afraid of leaving behind and also becoming in my worst moments.

    And honestly–after I wrote this story, I loved it immensely–but I also almost gave up on it several times. It has one of the highest number of rejections of any of my stories, in the mi-double-digits. I think I pitched and queried this work for at least two solid years before–FINALLY–in 2024, it was accepted and published by Penumbric Magazine.

    And thank goodness for that!

    I still really, really like this story. Even if the witch is bad.

    Alas! A good witch is coming soon.

    The Witch of 1000 Mirrors

    By Eve Morton

    Maurice didn’t know where to look in the courtroom. He didn’t know where to start the story, so he simply spoke to the hushed air. 

    ‘She was ugly, lived in the woods, and hated people. 

    ‘When I say she was ugly, I do not mean her looks. Looks are trivial when you start thinking beyond time and space, the body a mere vessel to keep the soul. She was ugly in her manner, in the things she valued, in the thoughts she kept in her head but let leak out through the mirrors. 

    ‘Maybe I should explain the mirrors first? Ah, but they’re the piece that ties all of this together. 

    ‘Her name was Agatha. Even as a little girl, it suited her. She was a small and sickly child, always coughing and sneezing whenever people asked how she was feeling. She could barely talk without sending something out into the atmosphere that did not belong. Her brother, Mort, was born soon after her. Parents’ and villagers’ attention turned towards him. No one asked about her anymore, and truly, it was for the best. She could barely speak until she was five anyway, and by then, she was only speaking to the dolls. 

    ‘The dolls were the first form of mirrors: the things she looked into in order to see the world, to see her invisible thoughts, and then to cast them out. Even though her family was not rich, she repeatedly threw out her toys. That was how she caught my attention. I was and still am a scavenger—please, no judgment, I know you never like to meet my eyes on the roads, but you do not have to look at me to hear a story all the way through to the end—and her family’s abode gave me piles and piles of riches. Counterfeit riches, as I would soon realize. No one wants broken toys. No one wants pieces of a puzzle that don’t go together. Yet, I returned over and over again because what was thrown out was almost as interesting as the whole picture from which it came. 

    ‘Then one morning, there was a girl with dark hair, dark eyes, and an absent smile on her face staring at me. She stood on her family’s porch, broom in hand. 

    ‘”Hello,” I said. I smiled because one always smiles at children, especially those who have not yet learned the rules about not meeting stranger’s gazes. “How are you today?”

    ‘”You took the dolly’s leg.”

    ‘”I did.” I held out the prize she coveted. “Do you want it back?”

    ‘”No. But you’ll get your leg back eventually, too.”

    ‘A tingle entered my spine. I knew from all the folk magic I had overheard in bits and pieces that this was going to be a spell. It had to be one. But from this small child? From a family that seemed merely one step removed from my own fortune? Back then, witches were coveted. They were chosen amongst family lines to learn the arts to be of service to others. Their power was dangerous in the wrong hands, without careful practice, and it needed assistance. 

    ‘This family had no such assistance for this girl. I used that as a way to ignore her claim on me then. But I shouldn’t have. I should have realized that like some people do not meet my eyes because of what I do, the skin I have, the legacy from which I came, some people also do not like little girls. Especially ugly ones like Agatha. Even if they were the blood that made them. 

    ‘I broke my leg three days later. I could not scavenge. My wife at the time almost left me—or at least, she was gone for three days and I had no idea where she’d gone. When she came back, I was ravenous and filthy. She took care of me but without meeting my eyes.

    ‘”What happened?” My voice spooked her.

    ‘”I have to go after this,” she said quietly. “When you are better, I need to go.”

    ‘I knew before she told me that she’d found the little girl with the broken dolls in the woods. The witch in training, except without any training. I told my wife it was okay. Just get me better, and we could part. She seemed relieved. I did not ask for any more information because I already knew what I’d hear. A heart broken. A smashed face. Whatever Agatha could do to the dolls, she could do to people, and then claim it was fate. 

    ‘I arrived at the house as soon as I could walk. With my wife now gone, I had space in my own small house. Though I knew if I was caught there would be literal hell to pay, I offered the right answer regardless: “Agatha,” I called to her when we met gazes. “I want you to come home and play with me.”

    ‘She made demands. “Do you have cookies? Do you have more dolls?”

    ‘”I can make you cookies, we can make them together, but I do not have dolls.” I pulled out one of the first mirrors she would ever get. “But I do have this.”

    ‘My charm worked. She saw her reflection and moved towards it. She touched the edges and then tried to put her hand through the mirror as if it were water. “It’s solid. It’s an object,” I told her. “I think it would be nice for you to see how—”

    ‘”It’s me.”

    ‘”Yes. But if you turn it,” I said and did as I said, “you can also see me. My name is Maurice and—”

    ‘”I like it. We can go.”

    ‘She grabbed my hand, mirror under her arm, and left the home where she was born. She did not look back. Though I knew she had very little to miss, the ease with which she walked away was still startling to me. It’s still startling to me now. 

    ‘The next ten years were much of the same. We rose at dawn and went through trash. We found items to sell, items to keep. She gathered her mirrored objects like a small crow, my little magpie, and she seemed happy. Her powers diminished—or at least, her intentions wielding them were softened—because if she saw herself and saw someone else in the same item, they must both be the same. She didn’t like pain, so they didn’t like pain. I could not, for some time, get her to think beyond the notions of pain and no pain, but it was better than what we’d had before.’

    Maurice sighed. He didn’t know how to continue for some time. When he did, he met the eyes of the jury straight on. 

    ‘You know the stories some people tell of demon children? The ones who know no better, who have been corrupted since birth? Sometimes people claim a changeling did it. Others claim a curse. Black magic. I never wanted to think the same with Agatha. That at some point, there was no way she could have been helped. That she was a lost cause and the only thing I could do was to keep her powers from reflecting out and damaging those in her wake. I wanted her to change her values, change her mind. I believed she could for years. 

    ‘Then puberty happened. And her true power took hold.

    ‘I am an old man now, and truly, I was an old man then too. I did not know how to deal with a young girl coming of age. I thought too much of what was happening was normal, was part of the times of challenge before her moon and then the slump after her moon passed. I should have watched closer, but I did not. When she wanted to go off into the woods by herself, I let her. I did not question why she wanted to take her shiny objects with her, like a magpie. I just let her go.

    ‘That was my mistake. I accept responsibility for that. Please keep this in mind as you hear the rest of the story.

    ‘She found her first customers in the woods. People alone, wandering away from home, their lives in transition. Cheating spouses who had moments of conscience. The cheated on who needed guidance on what to do next. Those in love and wanting to share it, but within a family that did not accept. Those who had lost fortunes and were afraid of what the next day would bring. What to do, what to do? They saw this little girl, almost a woman, and came over to her. She had the mirrored objects, and the power, so strong now because of her growth, radiated off of her. They asked her questions. 

    ‘They never had a chance. 

    ‘”I don’t know why people come to me,” she told me months later, after the first funeral for the wounded spouse. “I tell them what they want to hear. What they already know, deep inside them. I see it in the mirrors.”

    ‘”What did you tell this woman?” I asked Agatha, though I already knew the answer. She dispensed advice like the clairvoyants and tarot readers of the city. Like the midwives and cunning folk of the country. She was a seer, that was true, but no one understood that the only thing inside her was darkness. 

    ‘”I told her that her husband would miss her more if she was truly gone,” Agatha said as if this was the weather. “And now it’s true.”

    ‘Another funeral, another death. Another soul moment where she connected with someone’s pain and thought that was all there was to their world. “If life is so bad,” she said, “you could kill yourself. If you don’t like your boss but you need the job, what if you got rid of him? There’s no problem with you. But the rest of the world needs to go.”

    ‘People knew better, of course. The people who came to her were not permanently broken, just in need of help. But her words came with them a spine-chilling sense of truth. You did have these thoughts. We all have these thoughts. Murderous and ugly through and through. But we should not act on them. “We should never act on them,” I warned Agatha. “People do not want to act on them. They want to see the good.”

    ‘”Then why do they come to me?” Her dark eyes and youthful face seemed too old in that moment. “I see what’s already there. I tell them. Nothing else is my fault.”

    ‘I didn’t know what to say for some time. “People do not come to you for advice. They do not want it. They–“

    ‘”Right. Not advice. They go to Meriwether for fortunes,” she said, listing one of the more famous clairvoyants. “I’m going to get better than her and take all her customers.”

    ‘”People do not come to you for fortunes. Or to Meriwether. They come to you for recognition. They want to be seen in their pain.”

    ‘”Right. I tell them–“

    ‘”To act on it. You can’t act on it. You must simply sit with them and understand.”

    ‘She huffed. She left the room for her bedroom. I heard the clanging of metal, of shiny objects, and she shuffled them around. Then it was eerily quiet. I hoped and prayed she had gone to sleep, though deep down I knew better. When I came to get her in the morning, she was gone. So were her mirrors. 

    ‘I looked all around our small village. I could not find her. When I went on my typical route for scavenging, I realized all the shiny bits, the reflected objects normally present on the curbs, were gone. She’d cleaned out where we’d once bonded and set out on her own.

    ‘It wasn’t until I was summoned here, to this court to defend my surrogate daughter, that I understood what she had become. I plead with you: she is ugly. I tell you over and over, I gave her all the chances I could. I gave her all that I could and I know that it was not enough. But please do not be fooled by her mirrors, by her powers, by the things about her that seem so powerful. She is not a witch in the traditional sense, those who are wise and use their cunning for the service of others. She is an ugly person, one who claims to see the truth, but can only understand pain and treachery in her mirrors. She has a thousand different names for the same pain, the same morose condition she calls humanity, and when you have a thousand names for the same thing, it all leads to the same conclusion: death, destruction, violence. There is no hope in her. Please do not see anything else because you know there is hope in you. Do not let her find the blackness that we all have, and let her convince you it is truth.’ 

    As Maurice turned away from the jury, he let out a single, ancient-sounding breath and looked into the palm of his hands. ‘Please.’

    The story now over, his role in the defense complete, Maurice settled into a rickety chair and observed the courtroom. It was a small, squat country building three villages over. He’d truly been surprised that Agatha had only gotten so far. A few hundred miles, that was it. He’d expected her to reach the city center, find the king and queen, and do something on a grander scale. But that had been false thinking, too, he knew that now. She did not need to go far and wide for her powers to reshape the world. She only had to find one village in peril, one schoolteacher desperate for a solution for educating children who did not have a hope of surviving in the rough world, and to hold up a mirror on all the grimness and despair that floated inside of her.

    The schoolteacher was not in the room. She’d hung herself once the spell had been broken. In her small farmhouse, her body hung in the barn, and all the mirrors in her house had been smashed to pieces. Maurice wondered now if those pieces had been thrown out, and if someone like himself had discovered the shards. He hoped in his heart of hearts that someone else like Agatha had not found them. 

    The only person on trial was Agatha. Maurice learned of her last name for the first time during the trial: Blackmore. It seemed fitting, but it also seemed like part of the show.

    Maurice focused on the jury for the rest of the trial. He remembered one woman, red hair and sympathetic eyes, who would surely be the problem. Or maybe the older man, a fatherly figure like himself, might be the problem. But there would be a problem. No one could look at Agatha and think that she was responsible. The schoolteacher had committed the heinous act, and she was dead now. All was right with the world, fairness restored. So why punish this witch?

    ‘Look into your hearts,’ Maurice whispered under his breath. Agatha flinched, as if recognizing his voice even from afar. He became scared of his own magic and drew silent for the rest of the trial. 

    There were more arguments, more evidence, and a few formal elements that he’d never been privy to in his life. Agatha sat on the sidelines, her dark hair curled behind her ears. She wore a standard brown uniform, loose and hanging off her thin frame. She’d been in the county jail awaiting her time. She’d had all of her collection removed from her. All she had was her own representative. 

    The evidence was stacked against her. But Maurice had been worn down. He was old, very old now. He did not know if he’d be able to make it back to his home after this. He considered a hotel, considered many things, before he understood that Agatha was going to take the stand. 

    The room was quiet. She rose from her spot with her representative and then sat next to the judge. She smiled at the jury.

    Maurice’s heart sunk. Her teeth. Her teeth had been capped since he’d last seen her. The bottom incisors and the top were now shiny and silver. They were mirrors. Mirrors that she could not see for herself.  

    ‘Wait!’ Maurice stood from his seat. His can slapped against the ground. ‘You can’t let her speak. You can’t–‘

    ‘I have a right to my own story,’ she said, the shiny parts flashing as she spoke. She turned to the jury. ‘We all have a right to our own story. No matter how painful, no matter how horrible, we can all benefit from a story. As someone wise in my life once told me, people don’t come to me for fortunes. They come for recognition.’ She smiled again, and caught the first juror with red hair, the first broken doll in her new collection, ‘And I know you will recognize me.’

    END

  • 31 for 31: The Institute by Eve Morton

    Happy Monday!

    What’s a better way to celebrate the start of the week than a horror story about institutions and the way we can sometimes eat each other alive to get out of the four walls we spend the bulk of our time inside?

    That’s what “The Institute” is more or less about; instead of dreading a 9-5, our narrator dreads the eating disorder program she’s forced to spend her life inside as she purportedly gets better. Whereas most places that claim to heal are inspiring–or at the very least, boring–this narrator is forced to reckon with a callous system, neglectful counsellors, and a horrible ritual that will allow her to be free–but only if she can swallow it.

    I wrote this story back in 2015 and had it published in 2016. It was a tough time for me personally. The television show Hannibal, oddly enough, was my main comfort show around then. A lot of my academic writing was about it–and I suppose, this short story is yet another Hannibal-inspired tale. It’s also inspired by my own experiences in a similar program, though of course, I got out without the horrifying ritual.

    (Or did I?)

    If you hate hospitals, or are easily upset by discussions around eating disorders, I would recommend skipping this one. Tomorrow, I assure you, there will be a different kind of story with a new and spooky monster. I can’t wait!

    The Institute

    By Eve Morton

    They called us shadow women. Trinket girls. When we checked into the hospital, the nurses whispered about us and our small bodies. Only a thin layer of skin separated us from our bones. As we stepped on the scales, we were weighed in double-digits. The staff wanted to know our secret formula, our magical cure for fat. But then the doctors diagnosed us all with anorexia nervosa and the nurses stopped asking questions. They stopped speaking to us all together. 

    From the hospital, we were sent to the institute – a large treatment facility just outside of a busy highway. We were to spend our days here, eating all our meals on campus, so we could return to normal life – and normal weight – all over again. We would have therapy. We would get better. Our parents dropped us off on the institute’s doorsteps after our electrolytes were balanced and our family GPs had written our condition down on prescription paper. 

    “Your daughter is sick. I can’t help. These people can.” 

    “Anorexia Nervosa is a tricky illness. It affects the body, but also the mind. It has the highest mortality rate out of any mental illness.”

    “Anorexia nervosa is a permanent condition. You only cope. You cannot hope for a cure. These people will help your daughter to cope.”

    The doctors talked about us like we were not inside the room, like we really were the shadow women the nurses saw. Everyone had had about enough of us, anyway. We were too visible to forget about, but not present enough to treat inside our homes anymore. So the institute welcomed us inside.

    I was the last to arrive. 

    “Good afternoon,” a tall, blonde woman greeted me. She shook the hands of my parents first, before she looked down at me. Her eyes x-rayed my body, sensing all the bones under my clothing. She sighed, sadly, and then turned back to my parents. “We will take good care of her.”

    My parents drove away without worry, as the woman, named Rhonda, and I walked around. 

    “I’m one of your counsellors. You will be given the best treatment here. Lots of therapy, lots of group discussions. You’re one of many, here. You won’t be alone.”

    She said the last part more like a threat than a comfort. 

    “What will you do?”

    “Me?” Rhonda smiled. “I help you eat.”

    “How do you do that?”

    “Don’t get too far ahead. You need to rest here.”

    We walked through the sterile doorway of the institute. Black writing on all the doors marked rooms for therapy, rooms for examination, and rooms for eating. I felt as if I was walking into a fairy tale. The oak doors looked vaguely like gingerbread.

    “The first case of anorexia nervosa was a girl who wanted to be a saint,” Rhonda began. “She starved herself because she thought it would take her closer to God.”

    Rhonda opened the door at the end of the hall. We walked into a small kitchen with a long, rectangular table in the centre. The girls sat on the sides of the table, all of their eyes down. A different counsellor, one with red hair, sat at the head. Her name was Kellie.  

    “You’ve got to eat,” Kellie stated. She looked directly at me as she spoke. “The doctor told the first anorexic girl that she could honour God by eating. God is all around, even in our food.” 

    “We do not need divine light,” Rhonda stated. She moved towards the curtains over the windows, and closed them tightly. “Any more than anyone else. Please. Sit now.”

    I sat next to a small girl with sharp bones protruding from her wrists. There were eleven of us at the table. We were missing our last apostle, our Judas. With the counsellors watching us, there were almost thirteen people in the room. 

    “You need your humanity back,” Kellie said. “Humans are hungry. They will always need to eat. Show us you are human. Thinking about the Divine is okay, but human – that is what you all are.”

    “And what exactly are we to eat?” another girl, a patient with sallow hips, snapped. 

    The two counsellors looked at one another. They smiled.

    “You will see,” Rhonda said. 

    “Just give it time,” Kellie echoed.

    The next day, the first man went missing. 

    ***

    In psychiatry, many doctors believe that patients are forced to repeat their traumas, until they find what they are and face them. This is why confession is important. You must confess your indiscretions so you stop repeating them. Binging and purging was one of the many symptoms of an eating disorder. But, if you purged your anxieties, your family history, and your nightmares, then you weren’t sick anymore. You were ahead of the curve, ready to get better and face your fears. 

    As the days went on in the institute, the meals we all shared became our new traumas. They were our new rituals that we were all forced to repeat. 

    Meal times were half an hour. All food must be consumed during those times. Then, for half an hour after the meal, no one was allowed to leave the table. Even when we were lucky enough to go to the bathroom, someone would remain on the other side of the door, listening in to make sure the only thing we purged was our psychic revelations.

    Our group therapy sessions were an hour long, with a break in between for snacks. 

    Three girls in group therapy claimed abuse when they were younger. Two were real, I thought. Another was a false memory produced from the ether, so the counsellors would stop asking questions. 

    Melanie, the first girl-victim, was abused by a man with dark hair. On Tuesday, during lunch, a man with dark hair was presented on the table. His thighs were cut, his skin peeled back to the bone, so the flank could be cooked inside the small kitchen in the institute. He was made into a victim, into a piece of meat. 

    Kellie set up the timer for the meal. “Three minutes, everyone. Then we can begin.”

    As soon as the buzzer went, Melanie picked up her knife and fork. She ate the man so she was not a victim anymore.

    The rest of us had our standard meals, issued by the institute’s dietician. Applesauce and egg sandwiches. Normal, bland food. Only Melanie, with her sandwich full of human meat, got to indulge in order to heal.

    “How did you choose him?” I asked. “If we’re not God, then how are you playing his game?”

    “He got too close to school children,” Rhonda stated. “He was bad news from the start.”

    I nodded, considering this. Melanie grabbed another piece of bread, adding mustard to it, before she ate more of him. Her dark eyes turned blue. The colour came back to her skin. She was getting better – and we all despised her for it. 

    “In some parts of the world, some people believe that when you eat your enemy, you gain their strength,” Kellie said. “You are getting his strength, Melanie. You are becoming something different than before. No longer a shadow or a trinket. But real.” 

    She nodded and smiled. The clock ticked on, another three minutes to go before the meal was over. Melanie ate in a sudden fury, cleaning her entire plate as the buzzer rang. 

    We were no longer Gods, I thought between the sounds. But monsters. 

    ***

    There was a rose garden around the institute. I was always dropped off too early for therapy, so I followed foot trails made by other people, who often dragged their IVs behind them and left marks in the dirt. This morning, I followed a trail to the back of the garden, near the woods. 

    In between two pine trees, I saw a man with dark skin. His eyes were black and his legs were large, like the back haunches of a wolf. I stepped closer. We were too close to a highway for it to be a real wolf. The skin was too dark and the bones were too prominent. He looked like a dishevelled man with oil over his body, as if he had been tarred and feathered. As if he had been shamed. 

    “Hello?” I asked.

    He extended one of his long fingers, pointing towards a hill. Fresh dirt lined the area. I walked closer to him, only to watch as he disappeared in sunlight. The creature was a shadow too. 

    I began digging where he had pointed me to. I got down on my knees, feeling the dirt against my skin. I found a finger bone first. Then, I found a jawline with teeth, rearranged and out of order. I kept digging, knowing that I would be late for therapy. 

    Was this skeleton of the man? I asked myself. Was he an old patient, one who had refused treatment, until his body had folded in on itself and starved to death? I didn’t know, but I grabbed the clavicle from the dirt. 

    “I will be back,” I told the bones. “I promise.” 

    Inside the institute’s examining room, I kept the bone under my arm, as if he were a part of me. When Kellie came into the room to weigh me, I asked, “Have you ever had men at the institute?”

    “Anorexia nervosa primarily affects women. Young women.”

    “But there are outliers, right?”

    She narrowed her eyes at me. “You need to be weighed today. Don’t worry about the past patients.”

    “Has anyone ever failed? What happens then?”

    “Anorexia has the highest mortality rate for any mental illness. I suggest you not test its limits.”

    “But—” 

    “Take off your clothing,” Kellie demanded. “Put on the gown. Get on the scale. You should know the drill by now. We need to see how much you’ve improved. No weighing yourself down.”

    “Okay, okay.” 

    Kellie came closer to me, her green eyes inflamed. “You are to wear nothing. You know what happens if you lie, right?”

    I nodded. Even as she left me alone, I still held the bone close, under the stiff gown they gave me. When she came back in, I tipped the scales.

    “What are you doing? What are you hiding?”

    Kellie found the bone right away. She held it up to the light and then began to search through my stuff. I was pulled into a new room like a child, cornered like a dog, and treated like a criminal.

    “I told you not to lie to me,” Kellie said. “Why didn’t you listen to us?”

    “Is this where you want your life to go?” Rhonda asked. “Why are you preventing your own therapy? Do you want to die?”

    “Or maybe you just like being thin. You like your bones, don’t you? You think you look good? You’re signing your own death certificate with this type of behaviour.”

    “This condition is permanent. But it does not have to be deadly. We are only trying to help.”

    “What else was I supposed to do in the mornings?” I asked, snapping out of the interrogation. “I’m bored. I wanted to be alone, so I went for a walk. And then I found him – I found his bone. I was walking because I wanted to leave, but I knew I would never get very far.” 

    Rhonda and Kellie exchanged looks. They questioned me more, but I refused to tell them where the rest of his body was. They called my parents instead. 

    “Her behaviour must stop. This excessive exercise, the secrecy… She will never get better at this rate.”

    I stood in the corner of the room as they talked. They acted as if I was the one who killed him. As if I was the one who put the bones in the ground, instead of discovering them. I had uncovered atrocities, and they could only focus on the steps I had taken, the exercise I was trying to sneak in.

    “It’s part of her condition. She must walk and walk and walk, as if she’ll run away from problems.”

    “But I carried the bones back,” I argued. “I told you what I found. I kept them safe, under my arms.”

    No one heard.

    “What is wrong?” Kellie asked me after she hung up the phone. “What are you keeping hidden? What are you running away from?”

    I held my breath. I had no memories to bring forth, no confession hidden under my skin. Not like Melanie or the other girl-victims. Not like anyone else here. 

    “I have nothing to confess,” I said. “I have done nothing wrong.” 

    Kellie only shook her head. She wrote something down in my file and then slid it away. 

    “We can talk about this later,” she said. “For now, there is more work to do.”

    As Kellie led me out of the room, I saw Rhonda devour the bone from the corner of my eye. When I looked back, she only smiled. 

    ***

    Every Thursday, we had something called “food desense.” Short for food desensitization. We would gather around and pick a forbidden food to eat. Not apples, not usually. According to the counsellors, we were all afraid of cake and soda and unhealthy things. So, to counter to most doctors’ orders, we were set out on a mission to gather junk food. 

    On an April afternoon, we were sent out beyond the institute’s walls. We held hands like wandering children, with Kellie at the front and Rhonda at the back. There was traffic all around us and a concrete bridge to the left – no escape possible. We couldn’t run even if we wanted to. 

    There were only eight of us now. After Melanie, two more girls had eaten their final meal to pass the test. Gained the weight to hide their bones. They were called cured and sent on their way home.  

    “Here we are,” Kellie stated. We stopped in front of a McDonald’s in a mall. Some girls groaned, but most had learned to be quiet about their food preferences this far along. We were only allowed two “dislikes” for the institute’s menu. Most people had used their “dislikes” for chocolate or milk; butter and gravy; sometimes brussel sprouts and green beans. Valentina, a small girl with dark hair, had used her two dislikes for chicken and beef. She was the only person in the McDonald’s without a burger. She ate ice cream and fries, as the rest of us were given Big Macs and told to stay together.

    We sat at another long table, stretched out, facing the jungle gym. We all ate sad beef and greasy fries and called it therapy for the eating disordered. 

    “Be normal,” Rhonda said. “This is how normal people eat. Not all the time, but every so often.”

    “Shouldn’t we be worried about death?” one girl, Ashley, asked.

    “The cows are fine. Don’t worry about them,” Kellie said. “All life must come from death. If you want, you can thank the cows for their sacrifice. You deserve to live too.”

    “No, I mean the workers. The corporations,” Ashley said. She was a hippy. She had gone too vegan, eating nothing but salads before she came into the hospital walls. It was a simple mistake, really. Most of the girls that sat at the table were nothing but simple mistakes, spelled out with poor food choices and too few calories. 

    Rhonda and Kellie shrugged. “One life leads into another. Don’t worry. Just eat.” 

    “Even sacrificial cows should be worshipped,” Valentina said, sipping her milkshake. “When you sacrifice an animal, it must be well. You cannot use one that’s sick, or else it’s a bad omen. It becomes the conscience of the tribe or the group it represents. This is one of the reasons I can’t eat meat. I just can’t.”

    “Why?” I asked. 

    She looked at me, almost begging. “Because my conscience won’t let me.”

    “Girls,” Kellie said. She narrowed her eyes at us. Rhonda tapped her fingers, beating a tattoo like the time from the institute. “You only have an intrinsic responsibility for your own life. No one else’s. And we are almost out of time.”

    We ate the rest of our meal in silence. We walked back into the mall and towards the elevator that would take us outside again. A woman with blonde hair approached us, staring intently, as she shook her head.

    “The stairs are right there, you know.”

    “We know,” Kellie said. “Thanks.”

    “Why don’t you use them?” she asked.

    Kellie stared daggers at the woman. I knew that stare. It was the same one I had been given in the examination room, the same one that felt like x-rays. I looked away. 

    “I told you: we don’t need the stairs. We need the elevator.”

    “But you all look fine,” the woman argued.  

    “You don’t know these girls,” Rhonda said. “You don’t know their stories.”

    The woman sneered at us like we were leapers, as if we had grown a skin with disease over our shadows. 

    “It’s good to be healthy so easily,” Kellie said, staring at the woman. “Appreciate it while you can.”

    I felt the hair on my neck stand up. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see what I knew was coming from inside Kellie’s threat. The woman muttered under her breath. Her flip-flops smacked against the tile floor as she walked down the stairs, just as our elevator came. 

    “Let that be a lesson to you, girls,” Kellie said when we were inside. “Never let anyone tell you you’re not sick. You all are. And you must follow us in order to be well.”

    On our way outside, we formed a line. The woman who had called us out before moved ahead of us on the sidewalk, her eyes on us. Disgust evident. As she stepped out onto the road, she was struck by a car. 

    We kept walking. No one said a word.

    That night, Valentina ate the woman’s brains, finally breaking her vow of not touching meat. 

    And the next day, she was allowed to go.

    ***

    I had dreams of food often. Real food – not what they gave us wheeled in on carts day in and day out. Not the fast food places or overly sweet cakes they gave to us. Not even the men that they put on the table as therapy. I wanted food, like the kind I ate before I got here. The kind my parents gave me for lunch every day. But the institute kept us starving near the end, knowing that it would cause desperation. No matter how much I said I wanted to eat, they would put it off. 

    “A calorie is a calorie is a calorie,” Kellie said with a wide grin. “If you can’t eat what we tell you to eat, then how can we expect you to survive in the real world?”

    Because I want to eat that food, I thought. I remained silent. She sat down next to me, placing a heavy hand on my shoulder. 

    “Eat the meal. Then you can go. We will know you’re loyal, then.”

    “Loyal to what?”

    “Your recovery. Yourself.”

    I sighed. I thought I was loyal. I thought that was what turning up every day meant and ignoring the bodies and bones on the front stops. I wanted to get out so badly. I tried to be a model patient. But the rules they gave me made no logical sense. When I followed them, they changed. The only way I could leave was eat, but there were too many forbidden foods, too many meals repeated until they were traumas. Everything became divided. The food always had two sides, two stories. In order to get past all the trauma, all the things that had turned me into their patient with anorexia nervosa, I had to break the final taboo.

    Alive and dead. Flesh and bone. Life and death. Monster and God. Even if I was still human.

    “Anorexia nervosa is a permanent condition,” Kellie reminded me. “But not if you eat where you came from. Not if you eat someone healthy.”

    “You are what you eat,” Rhonda said. She strummed her fingertips again. 

    The rest of the girls – there were only four now – stared at me from the table, their faces sunken in. They waited for my response, to see if they could get free too. We all needed one another, but not for comfort – for sustenance. We all needed to eat. We all needed to survive.

    “Let me survive,” I said, turning to Kellie. “I want to eat. Please.”

    “We need to confer with others. We need to see what the doctors would say.” 

    “Why don’t you trust me? I’ll eat.”

    “You got yourself this way,” Kellie said. “You’ll get yourself right back if we are not careful. We have already worked so hard, we don’t want it all falling apart.”

    “I am not a bridge or a building,” I said. “I don’t require an architect.”

    “You are damaged.”

    “I am not a car, either,” I demanded. “I am a person. And I want to eat.” 

    Rhonda and Kellie looked at one another. They looked back at the fridge. 

    “Okay,” Rhonda said. “You’re next.” 

    ***

    On Tuesday, the table was set. They brought out the body from the back cellar. The man was older, one of the oldest bodies yet. His skin was pale and his hair was grey. I heard the scratching of the counsellors’ pens as they wrote their field notes, judging my response like all the others. 

    “She has come so far.”

    “She has gained twenty pounds since treatment began.”

    “She can go home soon. Almost. She is so close.”

    I looked away from the man’s eyes and his navy tattoos. I tried not to think about his backstory as I cracked open his ribcage. The noise was so sickening and yet so full of pleasure, like cracking knuckles. The counsellors smiled at me, proud of my accomplishment. The four girls looked at me with wide eyes, horrified and hungry, as I slipped my hands under the man’s skin. 

    I took out his heart. This was my designated piece to eat. The heart was one of the largest muscles, yet still a delicate organ meat. It looked too small, too light – and like it was still beating. I placed down on my plate as Kellie passed me a napkin.

    “Go on,” she encouraged. “Eat up.”

    I stared. I took another breath, fear gripping me. 

    “Are you okay? Do you need the tube?”

    I blinked. The tube – no, I thought, shaking my head. Too many other girls had had the gastro-intestinal tube shoved down their throat like an amoral organ, where their liquid meals were fed into them before they were forced to swallow. I closed my eyes. 

    In my mind, I saw a creature from the woods. I saw the skinny body leftover from the program, a patient who had refused to become a monster and had died instead and was now buried like a bad omen. I saw the boy that had been tarred and feathered and forgotten about. He hovered over me like my conscience, reminding me not to become a monster. 

    “Are you going to eat?” Rhonda asked. “Or are you wasting our time?”

    I looked up. The buzzer clicked on, the seconds passing by. 

    The black creature from the woods shook his head. He said no. But he was the thing to fear, wasn’t he? He was a totem of my death and permanent destruction if I didn’t do what I was told, right? I saw the boy covered as a shadow, a former self lost inside bones and under dirt. I turned away from the creature and looked down at my plate.

    I raised my knife and fork in my hand – and then ate the heart of the stranger. I thanked the man I didn’t know for giving me life again, closing my eyes in a silent prayer. I tasted iron and rot, my nose filled with the smell of blood.

    When I was done, I looked up at Kellie and Rhonda with blood around my mouth. I wanted to move onto them next, to tear them apart limb from limb. They were the ones who had made me into a monster, who had taken the very thing I thought made me who I was. But my stomach heaved. 

    Now, for the first time in a long time, I was full.

    “Wonderful,” Kellie said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “You’ve done a great job.”

    “Yes,” Rhonda agreed. She rose from her chair. The girls’ eyes followed her as she moved around the table and placed another hand on me. “I think you’re ready to go.”

    I was silent. I worried my voice would never come back again, and if it did, I would speak in a language that was not my own. 

    When the bell rang on the buzzer, Rhonda and Kellie allowed me to rise. I gathered my coat and clothing that I had worn when I came into the institute. They gave me my discharge papers and called my parents. Finally, they took me out through the institute’s door, crossing over a small pond and bridge by the front parking lot where my parents would soon come. 

    “It’s okay,” Kellie said. “You don’t need to say goodbye.”

    When they left me there, I turned around, back towards the glass. No one was there watching me. They had truly let me go. 

    I walked towards the rose garden and found the bones of the body I had left behind. He was incomplete now, because they had taken the bone I carried with me. All of my bones were gone, too, now hidden by layers and layers of flesh. 

    It was okay, I figured. I didn’t need to see them anymore to know that they were there. 

    When I looked up, I saw the black creature. He moved towards me slowly, his eyes dark and judgemental. I had eaten the thing I promised I would not.

    But I had done it to survive.

    “I’m sorry,” I whispered. 

    The creature merely stared at me, like my own former shadow. I raised my hand, hoping he would touch it. He lifted his dark fingers, twisted like tree branches, just as a car pulled up. I blinked as a horn honked. Then he was gone.

    “Hey, Emma,” my parents greeted. Their car engine idled. “How are you feeling?”

    “Okay, I guess.” 

    “Would you like to go home?”

    “Yes,” I said. I raised my eyes. “I would.”

    “Who were you talking to before?” my mom asked once I was inside. I looked out at the woods, from the backseat of the car, and saw the creature wave me a goodbye.

    “No one,” I said. “Just a friend.”

  • 31 for 31: The Ghost of Sunday Dinner

    Another ghost story!

    “The Ghost of Sunday Dinner” is yet another ghost story in my 31 for 31 challenge, and another story about mental illness & how we hide things from ourselves, even if it means becoming haunted. I wrote this while pregnant with my second son, as a warm-up exercise for the morning before I headed into work to teach writing. I ended up loving the process of writing, and so sent it to the feminist horror publication The Last Girls’ Club & it was accepted right away. That happens rarely in this industry, so I was thrilled.

    Please note: This story deals with subtle abuse/neglect and eating disorders, but also the comfort that can come from being seen, especially if we feel invisible.

    I don’t want to say too much else–I just hope you read and enjoy! Or if you need to skip because of the content, I hope you return again for another story tomorrow.

    The Ghost of Sunday Dinner

    By Eve Morton

    Cassandra was staring at the mashed potatoes when she saw the ghost for the first time. She was wondering whether or not to eat, like always. She thought back to Hamlet, studied in her makeshift classroom in the hospital, and rephrased that famous line as ‘to eat or not to eat?’ She laughed. She thought she was being clever. 

    That was when the ghost showed up. Straw-white hair, as if bleached. Bony, but then again, most of the girls she saw from Monday to Friday in the eating disorder clinic in downtown Toronto were bony. Barely 100 pounds, if that. Could ghosts have weights? What about ideal weights, current weights, and statistics that she and the other girls on the ward traded when the docs and counselors weren’t looking? Cassandra’s head was a mess of thoughts and her hunger made it hard to focus on anything but the calories of the dinner in front of her. Four hundred ninety-five. That’s if the package is correct. This one looks heavier than the others in the grocery store. For a while, she didn’t even care that something supernatural was happening to her.

    She just cared about her weight. She cared about disobeying the doctors and counselors, proving them right and wrong at the same time as she continued to participate in her own eating disorder.

    When the ghost disappeared, she dismissed it as nothing more than a fainting spell. She’d had those before. She threw out the rest of her dinner and went to bed early. 

    *

    “You’ve lost weight,” the counselor told her on the Monday weigh-in cycle. Her dark eyebrows narrowed and she tsk-tsk’d through her gap teeth. “Have you been following the meal plan?”

    Cassandra didn’t say anything. She stepped off the scale. She was naked under the hospital gown, so she couldn’t weigh herself down artificially with rocks or water bottles. She started to slip on her jeans. She grabbed her socks.

    “You’ll have to speak to the doctor about this,” the counselor said. “We need you to hit your goal weight before you ever leave here. Do you want to leave?”

    “Yes.”

    “Then you need to gain weight. You need to, or you’ll die. You do know what the mortality rate is for someone with an eating disorder, right? It’s the highest among any mental illness.”

    Normally, Cassandra tuned out the guilt lectures on mortality and beauty image, but now she was interested. “Anyone ever die in this program?”

    “Of course.”

    “What did she look like?”

    “That’s the wrong focus.” The counselor sighed again before leaving the room. Cassandra dressed hurriedly, a chill creeping up the notches of her spine. Just before she shut the door, she remembered what the ghost had been wearing. A gown like she had, but there were stones sewed into the side. 

    *

    The ghost finally spoke to her on the following weekend. Throughout the week, Cassandra had thought she’d seen her again, but the phantom turned out to be a new girl in the program with translucent skin from a lack of vitamins, a malfunctioning air conditioner, or her own lack of body heat making her tense up. As Cassandra microwaved a TV dinner that the dietician had approved, as long as she added a glass of milk to it to fill out the nutrients, she finally heard the ghost speak.

    “You don’t have milk.”

    “Because milk is terrible,” she said, as if this was normal. The microwave beeped. Steam wafted up from her food and made the ghost seem mundane, rather than spooky. “What’s your name?”

    “Jenny.”

    Cassandra huffed. “Everyone’s named Jenny. Or Emily. We’ve had like six of them so far in the program. That’s so boring.”

    The ghost didn’t say anything. Cassandra sat at the table while Jenny floated in the kitchen. Her feet did not touch the ground. She was see-through. She was a real ghost, whatever that meant. Cassandra twirled her fork through the chicken dinner, not bringing it to her mouth. “What was your final weight?”

    “You don’t want to know that.”

    “Why do people keep telling me what I want?” She pushed the food away. “I don’t want anything.”

    “You do, but you think you can’t have it.”

    “Is that what happened to you?”

    The ghost didn’t say anything. Cassandra was worried she’d leave–she seemed to get more transparent, thinner by the second–and so she kicked out a chair at the table. “Come and sit.”

    The ghost didn’t move. “Where is your family?”

    “This is a boring conversation.” When the ghost still didn’t respond, Cassandra shrugged. “Maybe the casino? A friend’s house? I don’t know.”

    “But they take you to the hospital,” she said. “They care about you.”

    “I take the subway there. And I’m only there because I’m sixteen and can’t check myself out without their permission, and this seemed like a gold mine to them. Someone else is responsible for me now. Huzzah. Let’s party.”

    “You are responsible for you.”

    Cassandra huffed again. “Says a ghost. Were you that responsible if you’re dead now? Clearly not.”

    “I left,” the ghost said. “You assume I died there, but I left.”

    “The treatment wasn’t very effective then, was it. Knew it. Those docs don’t know how to treat us. After all, eating disorders do have the highest mortality rate. Why should I bother listening to you?”

    “I was hit by a car.”

    “Oh.”

    “Yeah. I wasn’t even sneaking exercise or anything like that. It was just an accident. Nothing malicious. So I don’t understand,” she added. “Why you’re there. Why any of them are there. You could be free but you’re not”

    Cassandra groaned. “Oh, please. Do not give me a lecture. I’m sick of them. We’re there because there’s nothing else better to do during the week. And we got caught. And we…” Cassandra thought of the other girls’ stories. Some were like her, bitter and obstinate against the rules for the sake of it, while others were simply scared. They wanted to go home again. They lost weight by mistake or had now learned that they no longer wanted to be bones upon bones, but had to wait their turn to reach their goal weight. 

    Cassandra didn’t know what she wanted. She didn’t say anything else. 

    “If you want,” Jenny said. “I can eat with you.”

    “You can’t eat.”

    “Okay.”

    Jenny disappeared. Cassandra felt the emptiness inside the room like a punch to her stomach. It rumbled. The sound was like a dog growling, like someone scratching against the backdoor. When she brought the fork to her mouth, the food was cold. 

    She threw it out.

    *

    She didn’t lose any weight come Monday. She didn’t gain any either, which should have been happening. A different counselor, one with dark skin and eyes, marked the number down without remark. Then she left Cassandra alone in the room. As she put on her clothing again, she realized the gown had been stitched with stones. It had weighted her down. She didn’t know, didn’t intend for that, but it had happened. 

    She debated going back to get the counselor. She wasn’t intentionally lying–but they would think she was. They always thought she was. It was so much easier to lie half the time than to be accused of it. When an icy chilled hand reached over her mouth, she understood that telling the truth as it stood right now was not worth that risk.

    And so, for once, she listened. 

    *

    On the Friday weigh-in, she’d gained weight. She’d not been eating as much during the week, and exercising when she was at home at night and her parents were gone, so it was another surprise. She checked out her stats at home that Friday, and realized the scales displayed two different numbers.

    In the hospital, she was gaining. But in reality, she was losing. 

    She said nothing to anyone. 

    This continued on for two more weeks. Cassandra realized she could do whatever she wanted. She needed to follow the rules during the day at the hospital, sure, but the counselors were no longer watching her as closely. Other problems emerged and took their attention. No one questioned her weekends, her evenings. She got to lose weight, still wearing her goal jeans, but also received all the praise from the doctors for gaining. It was as if everyone else had body dysmorphia, but they saw her as getting healthier, while she knew the reality. 

    “This is very promising,” Dr. Brown, the head physician in the program, told her four weeks into this sudden transition. “You should be able to go home next week. You’ll be at your goal weight.”

    “That’s great,” Cassandra said. There was a bitter taste in her mouth. Harsh, like dead air from her throat. 

    “Your parents will be happy, right? They’ve been good to follow the meal plan on the weekends?”

    Cassandra nodded. It was easier than lying. The rest of the meeting went well, right down to the weigh in, where the scale displayed the seemingly impossible number of a healthy BMI, while she could still feel her ribs and spine against the plastic chairs in the hospital classroom and group therapy. 

    “Fantastic,” the doctor said. “Just fantastic.”

    Come Friday, Cassandra was having her last dinner in the program. There was some fanfare–a goodbye speech from some of the worst counselors, the most aggressive in their proselytizing and guilt tripping–and then some shaky hugs from the other patients. Not even their bony arms seemed to be able to detect her bones anymore. 

    She left the program doors for the last time. While other girls were picked up by their parents in minivans, and driven to nice suburban homes, she was alone. She got on the subway, opened her apartment with a key that had lived around her neck since twelve, and stepped inside. 

    No one was home. 

    It felt like no one would ever be home again. 

    *

    On Sunday night, Jenny came back. Cassandra was relieved. She’d not eaten since Friday, just to see if anything would happen. Nothing ever did, not until she walked into the kitchen and flicked on the light. Jenny was at the table. 

    “Hi,” Cassandra said. She walked to the freezer and got one of those meals. She opened the fridge, before Jenny could say anything, and poured herself a glass of milk. 

    Jenny stayed quiet at the table. Cassandra ate two bites of the lasagna and felt a wave of hunger. Real hunger, true hunger, the kind that the hospital stifled with plans and with numbers. The kind that she felt now as a sudden quest for life beyond this dark apartment and the ghosts of a former hospital stay. 

    “I still don’t like milk,” Cassandra said when she’d finished the meal. “I might get almond or oat or something instead.”

    “Sure,” Jenny said. She smiled. “Sounds like a good plan.”

    END

  • 31 For 31: Crossroads by Eve Morton

    Happy Spirit Season!

    I’ll be at the Homer Watson Gallery today giving readings for the start of my spooky season markets–and since Homer Watson is a famous spiritualist (at least in Canada), I wanted to share one of my historical ghost stories.

    Please note: this story deals directly with suicide. Nothing on the page, but the entire premise–about spirits at a crossroad–is related to people who have passed on via suicide, and how the church handles (or doesn’t handle) their spirits in the afterlife.

    This story was written as a prompt for a friend who wanted something “Ambrose Bierce-y” to read. Bierce is one of America’s most heavily anthologized authors, an early supernatural writer, and his stories influenced the later works of HP Lovecraft. My friend said I delivered with my request–and so did the horror publication Scare Street. They accepted this story for one of their many anthologies, and it was so nice to give this story a second life via them. Now, hopefully, there is a third life this Spirit Season.

    Enjoy!

    ***

    Crossroads

    By Eve Morton

    Father Brown awoke to the sound of terrible scraping. The church was drafty. Surely, the strained shrieks were nothing more than the wind against the brick church. 

    Yet, as he awoke, he grew certain that the deathly scraping was something unearthly, something that required more attention than a prayer in the dead of night. 

    Father Brown rose and dressed hastily. The sound of scraping had continued, along with the sickening thud of something heavy. 

    Footsteps? Thunder? Perhaps. 

    The wind was still strong, and the trees were still lashing the windows, but Father Brown could feel something else deep inside—a presence. He’d only felt something like this once before, on the eve of Easter inside the rectory, and then, he’d hidden away in his room and prayed until he had fallen asleep. 

    As he glimpsed out the window with his oil lamp, he saw a shadow on the horizon. Where the main road crossed with the dirt road to St. Paul’s Church, a man stood hunched over. He seemed to sway with the wind, a stick of a willow tree or something else in his hands, which he plunged deep into the dirt. 

    “He is digging,” Father Brown said aloud. His voice echoed off his sparse room. He donned a jacket over his clothing and set out for the crossroads. 

    The man was still digging when he arrived. His silhouette was clearer, no more than a youth of eighteen, someone who should have been drafted into the army, surely. As Father Brown approached, he noticed the man’s loping gait and the slight tremor in how he held the shovel, beyond what would have been simple fatigue from the digging in the middle of the night. Perhaps he was a cripple, stricken with palsy. 

    Or, perhaps, he was just a drunk one.

    “Evening,” Father Brown said. The wind cut through and shrieked at the moment he spoke. He cleared his throat, pulled his coat around him tighter, and spoke again. “What are you doing, young man?”

    The youth jumped. He had not noticed Father Brown approaching, and he almost raised the shovel in his hand to strike a blow. 

    Father Brown stepped back, his shoes becoming caked in the mud that had formed from the boy’s shoveling efforts. 

    “What are you doing, young man?” Father Brown repeated. “There is no need for violence. This is St. Paul Church’s property. However, I, the father of this parish, would like to know what it is you seek.”

    “I’m sorry, Father,” the boy said. He truly was a boy. Father Brown could hear it in his soft voice, hardly broken by the chains of puberty. “I don’t mean you or anyone else any harm.”

    “I find it hard to be convinced of this fact. It is the middle of the night, and you bear your shovel like a weapon. Please, tell me. What is it you seek?”

    The boy leaned against the shovel, both hands over it like a thinking post, as his face became ashen with sadness. “I… my uncle, you see, he is here.”

    “Buried here? Or over there?” Father Brown gestured over his shoulder to the cemetery gates on the other side of the church, directly opposite his personal study and bedroom. “That is where our congregation meets their end on the other side. Even if you were in search of your uncle’s grave, you should not be digging it up. You should show respect to the dead.” 

    Father Brown’s voice boomed, each syllable causing his cadence to rise and fall as if he was at the pulpit. 

    The horror of the boy’s words—digging up his uncle!—struck fear into him in a way no specter or vision of the afterlife ever could. This boy was a grave robber, a ghoul, nothing but the deepest darkest sinner he’d ever faced.

    “Are you not fearful for your own soul, my lad?” Father Brown asked, some of his theatrical cadence descending into the personal. “Are you not fearful of the task you take on? Digging up a grave! And in the wrong spot. Who are you? Have we met before?”

    The youth had been staring at his hands and the overturned earth for the majority of the priest’s speech. Now, he met his gaze, his blue eyes suddenly bright orbs in the darkened night. 

    Father Brown stepped back. A demon? He wondered, yet he felt the gaze as he would an angel, bright and feverish with hope. 

    The boy began to cry, wetness like the fresh spattering rain staining his cheeks. “I saw my uncle here, Father, forgive me, three weeks ago. My sister goes to your church. I came to visit her. I attended the afternoon service. You surely do not remember me, but maybe you remember Rebeccah. She was large with child.”

    Father Brown had several women as part of his congregation who were large with child, but there was no need to hunt through those names in his mind. He knew Rebeccah Northrop. He knew of the entire Northrop family and the tragedy after tragedy that had befallen each member. 

    If Father Brown had any notion to believe in curses, the Northrop family would be the basis of such belief. Rebeccah’s father had died in the Boar War from a gangrenous wound he should have survived. He’d left a wife with five children, one with a crippled leg, to raise and no money to do it on. Her brother, Peter, this child’s uncle surely, had moved to their small New England village to help. That winter, three of the children had died of rheumatic fever. 

    During the worst of the illnesses, the mother had found out she was with child once again, her husband’s last brood. But the boy had been born still, a stone in the hand of the midwife. The mother had gone mad with grief and ended her life in the local sanitarium. Then, the uncle had lost his own life, stricken by heartbreak and madness at the terrible hand his family had been given.

    “Your uncle was Peter; am I correct?”

    “Yes,” he said and nodded. “I am also Peter. Named after him. I saw him a few days ago. Right here.” The youth tapped his shovel into the muddy dirt. “I saw him here, and he was lost.”

    Father Brown could not help but feel a chill, even as his words came out with a cool precision. “Son, there is no such thing as specters and spirits.”

    “Then, what was Mary visited by? Then, what was Job stricken with? I must believe in what I see with my eyes and touch with my hands during the day. There must be more to the physical world. There must—”

    “Yes, dear Peter. There is more than what we see. There simply must be, or I shall be a fool spending my life as I am.” Father Brown took in a deep breath, feeling far too vulnerable—and too cold, much too cold as if this boy was dead in front of him—at that moment. “But we must face the living. We must go on with our daily waking worlds. The dead have been buried. Your uncle included, and—”

    “That is the thing,” Peter interrupted. His hand was shaking, but Father Brown noted it was not with palsy but fear. “I know my uncle is dead and buried, so why did I see him here? It must be because his death is not truly his death. I am missing a piece.”

    “What sort of piece could there be?” Father Brown asked. He thought of the cursed family and wanted to truly be there for the boy. “So much tragedy can happen, and it can feel as if the Lord is testing us, like Job indeed. We must let it go and endure those trials. You have done all you can for your uncle. You have—”

    “He died in an unsanctioned way,” Peter cut him off yet again. His young face became older at that moment, his lips hard and firm. “We covered it up, Rebeccah and I. He wanted to die, not being able to face the terrible consequences of his own life, his own struggle. That baby…”

    “Your mother’s child, your lost sibling. It is sad—”

    “The child was his too.”

    Father Brown gasped. This was not the first accusation of evil within a family that he had witnessed, and he’d read many tales within the Bible of men and women within the same bloodline lying together. But those were stories, necessary parables for something greater at their core. Seeing the consequence in the flesh maddened him on the youth’s behalf. 

    “He killed himself,” Peter confessed. “He died at his own hand. And we could not bear the shame of that. So, we covered it up. We shouldn’t have because he does not deserve those lies. He made our mother crazy and then took her only solace. He is the sinner, not us. And now he has come back to prove it. He will not rest.”

    “What do you mean he has come back?”

    Peter stood a long time, hands on his shovel, and gazed into the dirt. A twig snapped in the distance, seemingly impossible given the mud and wet air all around the two of them, yet both men heard it. Their gazes followed the sound. 

    On the main dirt road, a man’s shadow was present. He walked back and forth, a terribly maddening pacing ritual, before he simply disappeared into the ether. 

    Father Brown met Peter’s blue eyes. He pleaded with the man without words. 

    “I refuse,” Father Brown said, turning away. “That was not real.”

    “Yet you saw it. I saw it. That is my uncle, trapped between worlds. I heard a legend long ago that all suicides remain at crossroads. They cannot go to heaven. They cannot go to hell. Something draws them here.” Peter began to dig again. “If I find whatever has brought him here, I can then place his spirit underground again where he will stay. I can bury what I have lost.”

    “No,” Father Brown proclaimed in fear, trembling from the night’s events. He did not want to believe anything that had occurred, yet his shivers told him that even if his mind refused to label it in language, it had happened. He shuddered beyond the cold as if an invisible hand of the otherworld was reaching for him from that pitiable hole. “No, my dear child. I will not allow you to dig here.”

    “You cannot do anything.” Peter continued to toss dirt over his shoulder. 

    The hole was deep, up to his knees. Water from the rain and spring runoff cascaded into the hole, covering his shoes and surely setting the boy up for a fever. Perhaps he didn’t care. Yes, Father Brown could clearly see now that this boy didn’t care about a thing. His blue eyes had become affixed, almost possessed, with his mission of finding his uncle at the crossroads and putting his spirit back to rest. 

    “What are you hoping to find in the dirt?” Father Brown asked. “He was not buried here.”

    “But I see him here. There must be something.”

    “No,” Father Brown said once again. “You are a simple boy, and this is far beyond your capabilities. I forbid it. You must leave now, or I will call the authorities.”

    The youth continued to dig. Even as Father Brown repeated the threat—arrest, imprisonment, insults at his mental ability—Peter continued on his mission. Father Brown understood the boy was motivated by a higher calling, as he’d once been. 

    So, Father Brown evoked the only thing he could. “Peter, this will damn you. This act is barbaric and against the Lord. I will not stand for it. I will not allow you to dig at the crossroads because it will put your soul in mortal jeopardy.”

    “It already is, Father. You don’t understand that. I’m already damned.”

    “I do understand. I have ministered to your family. And if you continue on in this way, you will only pass the curse on to the next generation. Your sister’s child, Rebeccah’s brood. Surely, you do not want that child to meet the same fate as your lost sibling? Do not damn someone already so innocent.”

    Peter halted. His shovel was in the dirt, but his face was now crestfallen. Father Brown knew that he had struck a note. He had saved the boy. He extended his hand for him to take, to help lift him out of the hole, which he grasped with a chill. 

    Under the oil lamp, Peter was filthy and covered in mud. The only thing clean on him were his blue eyes. Peter opened his mouth to say something, but every time, he seemed to fold in on himself and not utter a word.

    “It is all right,” Father Brown said. “You have done your very best. Go home now. Stay warm. I will see you and Rebeccah on Sunday.”

    Peter nodded. He regarded the shovel as if it was a foreign object and then handed it to the priest. His actions and facial expressions said, I won’t need this any longer, but no words came from his mouth. He slumped up the main road, past where his uncle’s specter had emerged, and then kept going. 

    Father Brown waited at the crossroads until the youth disappeared into the night. Then, he waited for another five minutes to be sure that the ghost did not return as well. When the night seemed empty of spirits and hauntings, he returned to his room, washed as much of the mud and dirt from himself, and then lay under the covers. 

    The terrible feeling persisted until the morning, and he knew he could no longer fool himself that it was the chill. 

    ***

    Father Brown did not see Peter or Rebeccah on Sunday. He’d prepared a sermon on the nature of the afterlife and the sins men have inherited from their fathers, but the homily fell flat on his tongue. Those he needed to administer to the most were not present. What was the point? Though he went through his sermon and the congregation was respectful and kind, he could tell they were not listening. They did not need to hear about breaking family curses and respecting the dead, God-fearing as they were already. 

    After the service, Father Brown shook hands, spoke to people about their small issues, and shared some food with others, and his faith was restored in little gestures. 

    Once he retired to his room, however, the noises returned. A subtle scraping of metal against rock, the sound of earth over his shoulder, a digging chorus of more than just Peter, but a line of gravediggers at their post, as if unearthing the entire Northrop line. 

    Father Brown had been hearing the noises since that night with Peter. And he’d been ignoring them, calling them bad dreams and lingering guilt at his harsh treatment of the youth. But until this Sunday, these spectral noises had only ever visited him at night.

    Now, it was daylight, and he heard the ghost. He’d once been surrounded by the power of his congregation, the living souls of those he could save, and yet he heard the distinct sounds of a man who had not been buried in the proper place, a man who had lain with the wrong woman, and a man who had continued to curse his own brood when he should have been protecting them.

    “Peter Shunn,” Father Brown whispered inside his bedroom. “I see you and hear you. What do you want?”

    There was no answer. Only more noises of scraping, of pacing against soft earth. Father Brown left his room and walked across the stone floors until he was on the other side, at one of the windows facing the cemetery. The grave markers were a hodgepodge of design and prominence. Some of the wealthier families had large stones, while others opted to be modest in death though they could afford angels and carvings like the biggest pieces. 

    Father Brown gathered the birth and death records he kept on the shelf in this room. He located Peter Shunn in his roster,; his death listed as a heart attack at age fifty-five, and struck it out. He didn’t add anything in, but he’d hoped that correcting the register would make the sounds disappear. 

    I am telling the truth now, his actions spoke. Please leave us alone.

    The sounds continued. He sighed and returned to the window. A man was there—spectral, not literal—and he paced the gravestones. He wore a gray outfit, the working-class gear of those who owned a shop but still did all their own repairs, and it was barely visible in the gray mist. He hunched over some of the stones, touching them like they were a child. 

    His child. 

    Father Brown found the listing for the stillborn baby. He had no name, but there was a gender listed. Baby Boy Northrop. He was buried in the cemetery right next to his father, who was not listed on the birth certificate but would join him months later. 

    Father Brown left the registry books on the desk in the room. He gathered a thick coat as he stepped outside. The shovel that the younger Peter had left behind leaned against the back door of the church. He took it now, merely to use it as a walking stick. Or as a weapon, in case these ghosts were violent like the demons in the Bible.

    He walked through the gate of the cemetery, his heart hammering. I have been here any number of times, administering a number of different but no less sacred rites. Yet now I am afraid. “God help us all,” he said as his shoes became caked in mud. 

    The specter turned. The face of the elder Peter was evident, even through the mist and distance. He locked eyes with the priest, his face caught in a rictus grin, and then disappeared. He did not run or hide; he was simply gone. 

    Father Brown regarded the earth where the specter had stood. Footprints, deep into the earth, were present in front of the flat stone where his child was buried. He’d been buried next to the stillborn and next to his mother and father after that. A nice little family plot, usually bought all at once when the head of the household passed, so the family could be together in death. 

    Father Brown stood there for some time, considering his options. His soul, the soul of Peter, and the likelihood of eternal damnation. Then, with another prayer for forgiveness on his lips, he began to dig. 

    ***

    Hours later, as the sun set on the New England horizon, Father Brown walked to Rebeccah’s house and knocked three times. A woman he did not recognize came to the door, her hair gray at the temples and her dress simple yet professional. 

    “Yes, Father?” she asked, but before either one could say anything, a scream came from inside the house. The woman blinked, though she did not falter. “Rebeccah is having her baby tonight.”

    “Oh.”

    “Yes. It is not the best time to come and bless, but I assure you we may need you in the morning.”

    “Is everything all right? I know—”

    The midwife gathered his hands with hers. She smiled warmly, so much like the smiles he gave newlyweds and those who brought their babies into St. Paul’s for the baptismal waters. She was like him; he saw that so clearly at that moment. She dealt with life and death at the beginning, while he seemed to be playing eternal catch-up at the end. “Things are going as they should go,” the midwife said as she let his hands go. “Do not worry about her.”

    “I’m here for Peter,” Father Brown said, remembering his mission with stark clarity. 

    Though he’d dressed again and done his best to wash the dirt off of his face before making the house call, he could see that his nails were ringed with half-moons of dirt. He had not been eating and was thinner in his vestments. He did not look well, not even for the midwife’s typical standards.

    “Is everything all right?” the midwife asked cautiously. “Peter has been a big help to his sister thus far, though I’m sure some of the older children could take his place.”

    “I’d like that. I need to speak with him. It is a private matter.”

    The midwife nodded. She did not invite him inside—not as another scream erupted through the small house—but she bid him wait on the doorstep as she fetched Peter. 

    He came out moments later, his dark hair askew and dark rings under his eyes. He regarded the priest with a polite smile reserved for guests, though it quickly fell away as memories of their last meeting clouded his blue eyes. “What would you like, Father Brown?”

    The midwife closed the door, leaving Peter on the porch. He had grown stronger from her presence, and the boy now crossed his arms over his chest and repeated his question. 

    “I’m afraid I am here to ask for your forgiveness on the matter of your uncle,” Father Brown began. “I believe that you were right. He has been haunting the rectory ever since you left.”

    Peter stood up straighter. “He has? You have seen him?”

    Father Brown nodded and rehashed many of the details that had kept him up at night. The scraping, the terrible howls, and his uncle’s forlorn pacing. “I’m afraid that you were right. Suicides haunt the crossroads, and the church is at a crossroads. This means that there is only one way to rid your uncle’s spirit. We must move him from consecrated ground back to the hole you were digging for him. I am… very sorry it is coming to this. I am also very sorry to your family.”

    Peter held up his hands, silencing the priest. Then, he grew ashamed, having spoken so out of turn. “I am sorry myself. I should have sought council first. I should have—”

    “Hold the apologies. We will need them for God after we get through tonight.” Father Brown drew a deep breath. He plunged his hands into his pockets, only to realize that some of the dirt and silt that he thought he’d rid himself of by changing was now back. He took out a small stone, only to find that it was a finger bone. He held it between the two of them, Peter’s gaze affixed there.

    “May God forgive us,” Peter said.

    Father Brown nodded. He could not have said it better himself. 

    ***

    They left the house of birth and walked into the night towards the house of death. Once his home, St. Paul’s Church had begun to feel unreal as Father Brown dug up the corpse of Peter Northrop and brought it inside piece by piece. 

    The man’s clothing hung off of him in tatters, having been disintegrated by the worms and other bugs after being in the ground for the past year and a half. His skin had mummified in some parts but decayed away to the bone in others. It was a horrible sight truly, one that Father Brown knew he would not rid from himself for years and years if his soul ever recovered. 

    The groundskeeper had filled in the hole by the crossroads the morning after Father Brown had discovered it. No grass grew on the patch, and Father Brown knew that no grass ever would grow there again. It was a worthy sacrifice as long as it meant that they could rid the rectory and the roads of this spirit.

    “I need you to dig again,” Father Brown said. “My back aches after retrieving your uncle.”

    Peter nodded and went to work right away. He grasped the shovel as if it was an extension of his own arm. He dug without relenting, without stopping for a break, and without his leg smarting in pain. Meanwhile, Father Brown transferred the body piece by piece from the rectory hallway to the darkened night. Each time he lay down a new part, Peter regarded it with muted horror. He nodded sometimes as if saying hello to his uncle, while other times, he turned away as if he could hide from what they were doing. 

    Or what his uncle has done, Father Brown reminded himself. They were not the bad men, the true sinners in this equation. They were doing the Lord’s work, rather dirty work, but they would be setting the scales of justice right again. 

    And there would be no more ghosts. Father Brown kept reminding him of that fact, over and over again, until the last piece of the body was brought out. He rested the skull, devoid of skin and possessing only a few wisps of hair, on top of the rest of the body. A beetle, black as the night, crawled out of the mouth and scampered away.

    Both Father Brown and Peter shuddered. 

    “Well,” Father said, “shall we lay him to rest?”

    Now, it was Peter’s job to transfer the body, piece by piece, into the grave that he had dug. He worked slowly, carefully, but soon his hands became a blur of white bone and mud, desperate to get it all underground and behind them both. 

    A driving wind shot up out of nowhere, and the clouds that had been hovering in the sky all day, turning the afternoon gray, now parted in the night sky and showered them with rain. The hole for the body was not as deep as six feet, only three or four at most. 

    But as the rain came, the dirt around them became a mudslide. Peter slipped as he transferred the legs of the corpse, and the rest of his uncle’s body cascaded into the hole, along with Peter.

    “Help!” he cried out, his voice half under the muddy water. He slipped onto the floor of the grave with his face next to his uncle’s skull, which had fallen in during the short mudslide. He screamed for help again. The bones crunched under his feet and added to the horror. Another beetle came out of the mouth of the skull and ran between Peter’s lips as he yelled for help again.

    Peter shot up, spitting, spluttering. His fingers crawled and scraped against the mouth of the grave, pulling more and more dirt over himself as he tried to escape. “Help! Father, help!” 

    Father Brown was silent as stone, watching it all in a lunatic’s trance. The wind and rain had frozen him and made his limbs stiff with fear. Peter reached out for him, desperate to grab onto life again. Father Brown wanted to grasp for him, longed to do so, but he held his position on the side. 

    “Father!” Peter called out, his gasps becoming gurgles. “Please help me! He has me!”

    “The Devil,” Father Brown said, whispering. He drew in a deep breath against the harsh wind and crossed himself awkwardly as if the action was foreign. 

    He tried to get onto his knees, bracing himself against the pain that had never been there before in his joints, and offered a hand to Peter. He grabbed him. He slipped. The sequence was repeated threefold. It seemed they could not hold one another, their fingers transparent as ghosts.

    “We have done the Devil’s work,” Father Brown said. He repeated the words like a chant. He could feel his own soul leaving his body, down into the hole with Peter and the boy’s eternal soul. 

    Father Brown had been forsaken the moment he’d woken up and heard the terrible noise. The moment he’d let the Northrop family into his congregation. The moment he had become a priest. It had all led to this moment, this fearful ruin of a life ended in suicide and two lives, two souls who were desperate enough to end a family line of pain and hurt with the sacrifice of their own souls. 

    “We are dying,” Father Brown said. He held onto Peter’s hand tighter and brought him out of the grave, though he knew Peter was damned along with him, had been damned the moment he was born a cripple, a Northrop. “We are dying, dear Peter. We are already dead.”

    Peter let out a low, almost animal scream as he scrambled up the rest of the grave. He grasped onto Father Brown’s leg, tearing his pants as he finally emerged from the slippery mouth. Peter stood, gasping for air and spitting out dirt. The rest of the grave filled in suddenly, the rain and mud and wind completing the rest of their horrid task. 

    Peter held onto Father Brown’s thin body in a tight embrace. He hugged him tight, tighter than the father had ever been held by family or friend alike. When he finally drew enough strength to hold the youth in return, he felt something slide into place. Not the soul that he lost—he was sure that his eternal life was now in the grave with Peter’s uncle and would remain there until the end of time—but something more primal and freeing. He and Peter had completed a deadly task together. The Devil’s task.

    But they had done it in the right name.

    “Thank you, dear Father,” Peter said as he ended the hug and grasped the priest’s hands in his own. “Thank you. You do not know what this has meant for me.”

    “I do. I do,” Father Brown said. 

    Over the youth’s shoulder, he spotted the place where the main road crested a hill, leaving the rest of it invisible from their position in front of St. Paul’s Church. A man was there, dressed like Peter’s uncle had been dressed in the grave. He paced from side to side, and then he walked down the road. 

    Then, he was gone.

    END

  • 31 for 31: The Blind Man Who Could See

    Happy Friday, and welcome to the next story up in my 31 for 31 short horror story challenge.

    31 for 31 is often for horror cinema lovers as they use the month of October to work through their favourite or must-see horror films. But I realized I had at least 31 short horror stories that I’ve published over the course of my horror writing career, and now that most are back in the public domain, I’m going to share them with you all here.

    This story was another one from early, early on in my horror writing (and fiction writing more broadly speaking) adventures. In 2014, this story won the monthly horror contest that the Human Echos Podcast used to do. The podcast is now defunct, and there is no more file for this particular podcast episode, but I assure you, it was totally neat.

    “The Blind Man Who Could See” toys with several ideas that were scary to me and play a large role in my early fiction, like institutionalization and perception/power. It’s only now, as I tried (and failed) to find the podcast version of this story that I also realize the biblical (and herectical) angles of this story, too. Kevin, a new cataract recipient, is not as grateful as he should be for his new eyes. The holy epiphany,the sacred conversion, akin to Saul becoming Paul, does not happen for him.

    Instead, he prefers the horror of lack of sight, or lack of insight.

    And since this is a VERY short piece, that’s all I’ll say for now.

    Enjoy!

    The Blind Man Who Could See

    By Eve Morton

    Kevin waited with the bandages over his eyes as his doctor came forward. At age fifty, the operation to remove Kevin’s cataracts was an extremely rare medical accomplishment – for himself and his doctors. Small children and babies were the usually the main demographic who were healthy enough to regain their sight. Both barely remember the few months they spent in darkness with four out of their five senses. Kevin Johnson, however, had many years of darkness behind him as he slowly came into the light.

    “All right, Kevin,” his doctor said. “Take a look around the room. Say hello to the world.”

    As soon as Kevin opened his eyes, he shut them again. He pulled the blanket of the bed close to his body and tried to block out the light.

    The first hour went on much like this. Kevin had never seen what faces looked like, who people really were. He knew the voices and the contours of their skin, but that would not prepare him for the grotesque beings that greeted him on the other side. In spite of probes from his doctors, Kevin kept his eyes closed. He tried to believe that he had never been taken in for the elective surgery; never been dazzled by the promise of new life’s meaning and purpose.

    When the nurses came into the room the next day, Kevin’s eyes were still closed.

    “Are you all right Mr. Johnson?”

    “Yes, yes. I can see fine.”

    “So why don’t you open your eyes? Are you in pain?”

    Kevin opened his mouth, only to close it again. Pain, he had learned over the years, was always subjective. Pain could rebel against memory itself. As the nurse told him the benefits of the procedure he had just undergone and the wonderful world that awaited him, Kevin forgot the first horror of sight. But only for a small second. As soon as he allowed himself another quick blink at the world, he ran and hid again.

    “It’s okay, Mr. Johnson,” the nurse said. She gave him a sleeping mask made of velvet and something else very soft for his eyes. “This may take a while. Rest and try again tomorrow.”

    But the days got worse. He shut his eyes and tried to get used to the voices.

    “How are you feeling today, Kevin?”

    “Would you like to go for a walk?”

    “This was what life was about, Mr. Johnson. You cannot live it in bed anymore. You must come down and see the world.”

    When Kevin finally got the nerve to stand, he became aware of height. As he moved a step forward, he became aware of perspective. As the people at the back of the hospital’s long hallways began to shrink in size with each step Kevin took forward, his heart rate grew. The machine he kept close to his body let off a sound that scared him when paired up with the blinking lights. He took off his heart monitor. The noise grew worse as the machine flat lined.  He did not have time to understand the colours and the meaning behind “code blue” until the nurses showed up again with their too-big teeth and strapped him in again.

    “He’s a difficult one,” a nurse said to the doctor. Kevin kept his eyes shut inside his room. They talked so loud around the corner, as if Kevin was deaf as well.

    “What do you think will happen to him?”

    “You can bring a horse to water but you cannot make him drink,” the doctor said with a sigh. “We can give him sight, but he has to see. Leave him for now; he’ll be discharged soon enough.”

    When Kevin awoke the next morning, he moved down the hallway and towards the exit with his eyes closed. By the time he was in the stairwell, the announcement that a patient had escaped had already reached his ears. Kevin did not let the noise get to him. He was almost there. Gripping the railing, he got off on floor seven: the psych ward.

    Most of the people here had what Kevin thought of as perception issues. They saw things that weren’t really there. They heard things that weren’t really there. Kevin knew that his own lack of sight had landed him in the floor above the psych ward merely because he had something physically wrong with him. Now that he was a healthy man according to the doctors, he was going to have to start seeing the world as it was presented to him. But that world was strange and unfamiliar. As crazy as crazy could be.

    Kevin walked out into the psych ward lobby, eyes open and wide, and declared he what he saw.

    “Scary faces. Masks and devils. Fairies, too!”

    The doctors and the nurses grabbed his arms. They did more tests. They got him a room with a bed and some pills to take. Kevin only opened his eyes when he heard their feet inside the room. He made up more things that he could not really see.

    “What do we do?” Kevin heard the doctors and the nurses talk in the next room. “There’s nothing physically wrong with him, but he keeps having hallucinations. No medication seems to work. We can’t let him go now.”

    “Maybe it’s better for everyone if he stay here a while longer. Under observation.”

    Kevin smiled as he heard the steady thud-thud of the doctor and the squeak-squeak of the nurses’ shoes as they walked away. For the next couple weeks, Kevin hid amongst the other patients in the psych ward as the blind man who could see.

    “How are you today, Kevin?” a new nurse asked.

    “Good,” he answered. “I’ve been outside.”

    “How nice! Bring me a flower?”

    Kevin smiled. He leaned back in the chair, closed his eyes, and returned to the world he knew best. 

    END

  • 31 for 31: Baby Eyes by Eve Morton

    Welcome to Spooky Season!

    31 for 31 is often for horror cinema lovers as they use the month of October to work through their favourite or must-see horror films. But I realized I had at least 31 short horror stories that I’ve published over the course of my horror writing career, and now that most are back in the public domain, I’m going to share them with you all here.

    Next? Baby Eyes!

    This was one of the first horror stories I’ve ever published. Not written–I remember writing my own slasher films taking place at my summer camp when I was in seventh grade–but first published. As in professionally published. Not self, not zines, but accepted by someone else and exchanged for MONEY. It was $10, but I was a broke grad student. I could buy coffee with that money!

    To me, this was an utter success.

    This was way back in 2013, the year I decided to take myself “seriously” as a writer… which meant actually looking for places and people who would be interested in my dark and twisty thoughts. Enter a now defunct publisher and publication called The Grotesquerie, and their coffee change.

    The story for “Baby Eyes” is rather simple, one that plays on very familiar tropes and pain points for most horror audiences. A young girl says something cryptic to her mother about missing her baby eyes (since she has baby teeth, right?) and then the body horror and tension get kicked up. As someone who has always hated teeth, but can be ‘meh’ for eye stuff, this was a fun challenge. How can I make eyes just as scary as teeth?

    I think I did a pretty okay job! Check it out yourself and see. 😉

    Baby Eyes

    By Eve Morton

    Natasha’s tooth fell out on Tuesday night. 

    Every parent prepared for this moment, fighting or embracing a new lie to tell their children. Even in an enlightened age of co-sleeping and macrobiotic diets, I could not muster the strength to tell my daughter the truth about her teeth. I still liked the gaze of wonder that came across her face each time James and I told her stories of Santa Claus and The Easter Bunny. With the amount of time Natasha had her hand in her mouth the past week, tonguing the loose front space between her incisors, I knew it was only a matter of time before she would come running to me with a new milestone. 

    We had been getting ready for bed, after eating popcorn and watching a movie. I knew the small bits of kernels would get stuck and she’d have to brush extra hard. Sure enough, the thump-thump of tiny feet against hardwood floors sounded in the house’s hallways. 

    “Mommy, look!”

    Her palm held the tooth. The red root was still attached, bloody and gory. I tried to keep my face neutral, but the missing section in the front of her mouth made me a little weary. 

    “Wash it off, and then we can put it under your pillow.”

    She smiled, eyes wide, as the whispers from her school friends suddenly became manifest. 

    “And?” she asked. “And?”

    “And then The Tooth Fairy will come.”

    “What does she look like?”

    “A fairy.”

    “What does she do?”

    “Takes your tooth for you, silly.”

    “What do I get?”

    “Something good. Don’t spoil it. We will put it under your pillow and it will be gone in the morning.”

    “And my other teeth?”

    “They will fall out too. Eventually,” I corrected, envisioning her taking a hammer to her jaw for more quarters and praise. I leaned down to her level and pointed to my mouth. “Behind your gums, other teeth are hiding. They are waiting to come out.” 

    She nodded. She touched her face all around her jaw and then up to her eyes. I thought she was about to play peek-a-boo with me, though she had not done that in years. 

    “When do I lose my baby eyes?”

    She flapped her hands over her face as she talked. She asked the question again when I left her in silence. 

    The parenting books had not prepared me for this one. I was already aware of the strange ways kids sometimes used language. The final way Natasha said ‘goodbye’ or ‘good night’ often sounded as if this really would be the last time I would hear from her again. There was also the fevered pace at which she said ‘I love you’ for that very reason – or worse, shouted ‘I want to die.’ The true connotations and meanings had not sunk in yet. Dying to a small child was still like playing peek-a-boo, object permanence still a new concept. Natasha, and for that matter James and I, were still trying to figure this whole childhood thing out. 

    But her words still hurt when I heard her say she didn’t want to live, not with the same eyes the rest of her life. 

    “My baby eyes, baby eyes,” she cried. “I don’t want them anymore.” 

    She flung her tooth across the room. It bounced off the walls, and then landed at my feet. I had no idea what to put under her pillow now and it was getting much too late for this. 

    “Honey, honey, these eyes are all you have. These are all you need.”

    “Why do you have glasses then? Have you lost your eyes?”

    “No. My eyes are damaged, honey. It’s like a cavity.”

    Her face twisted at the memory of her first needle to the mouth last year. 

    “A sweet tooth,” she said, remembering what the dentist had told her. Little girls and little boys who like too much candy get holes in their sweet teeth. This was why we brushed every night, even if it did knock out some in the process. Natasha seemed calmed by the information. She was even moving towards the bed now. The tooth in her hand again, she placed it under the pillow.

    Aren’t you just a sight for sore eyes, I thought. I pulled the blankets up to her neck.

    “Go to sleep, sweetheart. I will talk to The Tooth Fairy soon and we will see if we can work out a deal.”  

    *

    “What does a tooth go for around here now?” James asked.

    “I think more than a few dimes.”

    “Can we write her a check? Can she save for college instead?”

    James and I were in the kitchen. He made me tea, but avoided the herbal kind I usually use to help me sleep at night. One of us had to play fairy, so we needed to remain alert. 

    I waited a while, stirring in some sugar, before I told him what Natasha had told me.

    “It’s the strangest thing. Probably nothing. The parenting books would tell me it’s nothing. She just wanted to know about her ‘baby eyes.’ As if they were training wheels for her bike or the last toes on her feet.”

    “Run, run, little piggy! All the way home,” James sang. He took a large drink from his blue mug, and then rested his hand on his chin. “Kind of a neat concept, though. Maybe baby eyes have something to do with déjà vu or nostalgia. Maybe that’s why things are familiar to us though we never remember seeing them.”

    “Because we’re about to lose our eyes or we already have?”

    “Both, maybe. Nostalgia is pretty tinged with loss. Maybe when we’re so tired our eyes hurt, it’s like our eyes are loose? Like a tooth?”

    I fidgeted with my glasses. I knew that feeling of tiredness. It had permeated Natasha’s first three years of life. 

    “I’m not so sure about this. It still makes me uncomfortable.”

    “Well, you know kids. Their imagination and all.”

    “We still have imaginations as adults, you know. It’s not something that generally goes away.” 

    James was a writer, mostly of sci-fi shorts and comics for the local paper. He also took on a lot of ‘fill in the blank’ work, as he called it. This mostly consisted of general ‘calls for submissions’ from various magazines and what his agent had wrangled up for him. James could stretch his imagination to write about a lot of things, technical or otherwise. He and I were both creative people, though. It was why we married and why we had decorated our daughter’s room with something other than pink balloons. We had written our own vows. When we first met at twenty-four, we had also promised one another then that we would never grow up to be boring or dull. We were always going to look at the world with fresh, new eyes.

    I shuddered at the kitchen counter.

    “I know that we’re creative and all that, Nicki, but you can’t deny it. Kids are different. They are just experiencing the world and that is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Obviously.”

    Sometimes James’s metaphors weren’t always so great. I had to hide my smile as I sipped more tea. 

    “But you know. There are other things. Kids see ghosts – at least, they are more receptive to the idea. They have imaginary friends, secret languages, and worlds all to themselves. They experience things differently than us. Maybe when we get older, we do lose our baby eyes.” 

    Even James shuddered now as he talked. In the silence that followed, we glanced at the clock which read ten pm. Natasha had gone to bed at eight. 

    “Yeah, I guess that’s true,” I allowed. “So. Am I The Tooth Fairy this time around or are you?”

    James reached into his wallet, pulling out paper bills before he found coins. A few dollars rolled around on the counter and he slapped each one down into place. The loud sound his wedding ring made against our granite counter echoed through the house. We paused. Listened. There was still no shuffling from Natasha’s room.

    “I’ll go,” I told him. “You just keep my tea warm.”

    When I got there, she was curled into a ball and off her pillow. She had tried to stay awake, I noticed. Her toys and one game were scattered on the floor, though I always made her put everything away before bed. I lifted the pillow off and found the tiny tooth underneath. Next to it, Natasha had left a card with a drawing of a fairy in pink wings next to a bucket of teeth. The writing inside was too messy and spelled wrong, but each sentence lined up in couplets as if it was a poem. In the dark, I used the light of my phone to read what I could, before I realized the verse ended with another request for new eyes.

    “Baby eyes, my baby eyes,” her voice repeated in my head.

    I laid a few dollars for her on the nightstand, her tooth in my pocket, and walked out the room. 

    *

    “What do we do with this now?” I asked James when I returned. I held up the tiny piece of what used to be Natasha. He stared at it too.

    “Throw it out? I don’t know where or why we’d keep it…”

    “I guess we’re not up for lockets filled with teeth, eh?” 

    I opened the counter underneath to find the kitchen garbage. James had already emptied everything around the house and taken it all outside for the morning. I tossed the tooth inside the clean bag, a hollow echo in its wake. 

    “You coming to bed?”

    “Soon,” I told James. He kissed me on the cheek and then left me alone in the kitchen. I put on another kettle for tea. 

    While I waited, I looked at the old photos of myself in my wallet. What do you even get when you lose your baby eyes? I thought. Another round of golf at a country club, another bill from the bank, more license photos. I used to keep my old licenses, student cards, and everything else with my photo on it because I thought it was funny to watch the evolution of my hair in the 1980s and the shoulder pads slump. I had thrown away all of the outfits in each photo and exchanged each hairstyle for something more demure. But the eyes always remained the same. It was the one part of the human body that did not shrink or grow.

    I went back to the garbage and retrieved Natasha’s tooth. 

    *

    The next night, I dreamt that all my teeth had fallen out. Like a white picket fence, they fell onto the front lawn of our newly purchased house and collected in a pile. No matter how hard I tried, I could not put them back into my mouth. No other teeth came to replace them. 

    *

    Two days after the visit from the tooth fairy, I walked into Natasha’s room and found all the eyes from her dolls removed. Some stared back at me hollowly with nothing inside their skulls, while the foreheads of larger dolls bore marks of pens and crayons attacking them in a desperate plea for replacement. Dolls now held third all-seeing eyes in the middle of their foreheads, while others had pairs above and below the empty holes, in an attempt to replace the missing ones. The largest doll with the deepest holes had paper replacements. Natasha drew new eyes on construction paper, folded it up like a flower, and then shoved it deep inside the doll’s plastic skull. She gave most eyes new colours than before. A fierce red and then a calming, green-blue, along with a few kaleidoscopes of rainbow colours and opal-like gem patterns. 

    Natasha turned around and covered her face when she saw me in the room. Her dark hair fell over her forehead, her cheeks red as she tried to hold back tears. 

    “I’m sorry,” she said. Voice small, almost muffled. “I thought they would grow back.”

    I cleared my throat and tried to look away. “We already had that discussion about hair, Natasha. You know.”

    She nodded. She had ruined a bunch of Barbies a year ago giving mohawks and dying them with markers. But she had tried again with eyes since the trip from The Tooth Fairy had been so successful. I marvelled at the childish logic of second chances.

    She mistook my silence for disapproval and lowered her head more.

    I knelt down to meet her so we were face to face. I brushed her hair out of her eyes and wiped away a tear. I stared longer than I needed to at her eyes, wanting to make sure she had not turned the craft on herself. They were still blue, still there. The void in her front teeth remained, but I had grown used to that in a few days.

    “I’m sorry, mommy,” she apologized again. 

    “It’s okay. Maybe The Tooth Fairy can bring you dolls next time instead of dollars, since she sort of mislead you with this one.”

    “That bitch.”

    “Excuse me?”

    “She must be rich.”

    “Yeah, the kids tooth business is quite lucrative.”

    I lingered in the doorway a few minutes more, making sure she was okay. She turned her back on me, picking up one of the dolls with six eyes, and began to play again. She hummed a song I could not recognize. 

    For a moment as I walked down the hall, I wondered if we lost our baby ears as we got older, too. 

    *

    A week later, another Tuesday, I awoke in the middle of the night. Darkness. I reached for James next to me, but I could not feel him there. Only Natasha. Her hands were clammy and wet as she gripped my shoulder and leaned into me. It had been a long time since we had tried co-sleeping. I did not know what she was doing in my room. 

    “I have found my big girl eyes,” she whispered into my ear. “They were right next to yours.”

    END