Ashore - A Mallvile Story

     A few years ago, I wrote a story for Clever Fiction, I think it was actually the first challenge I took part in there, called "Adrift" (go read it if you have not, it is quite short).  "Adrift" is a story set in the Mallville reality (I am going to assume that you are familiar with "Mallville - A Journal of the Zombie Apocalypse", or else why would you be here?) even though it was not marked as such.

     I could write a bunch of clever attempts and being deep here about that story and the intervening time period, but that's not what you are here for, is it? Instead, let's return to our seafaring friend to see what he is up to in:

Ashore: A Mallville Story

(Sailboat ~ Cove ~ Goldmine)

By Void Munashii

    It had been thirty-two days, I think. I’d been making little scratchmarks on the wall of the sailboat’s cabin each morning, but it could be hard to keep tracks since every day surrounded by nothing but water is much like every other day surrounded by nothing but water.

    I kept better track of my food and water, which was easier because there wasn't much of it.

    I found an emergency kit with fishing supplies in it, and I was able to catch some fish, but the fuel on the boat’s stove ran out before I finished cooking my last one, and I have never been into sushi.

    My water supply was in even worse shape. I tried doing that thing with a tarp and evaporating sea water; that went poorly.

    I didn't give up. I couldn't give up. Every time I thought of sitting down and waiting to die, I’d look at Carla’s note. I had stuck it up on the wall of the cabin:

    “LIVE”

    And so I have been. I’m no sailor, and had just been lucky that there hadn't been anymore storms like the one I’d ran into before. I had no idea where I was going. I was sunburned, thirsty, tired, hungry, and completely and utterly out of my league.

    I was standing there with the wheel in my hand, holding it steady as if I had any idea what I was doing with it, wishing I hadn't been too much of a coward to save my wife, when I heard a voice.

    “Trying going to starboard.”

    I jumped, and almost fell over. I turned as I was fighting to stay upright and there she was, standing at the back of the boat.

    “Carla,” I said, dumbly.

    “Hi,” she waved as she spoke.

    “How...?”

    “You looked like you needed some help, so here I am,” she danced in a little circle, “think of me as your fairy godmother.”

    I know, in my rational mind, that Carla cannot possibly have been there. She can’t have been, but the things that happened….

    “It’s dehydration, right?” I asked.

    Carla shrugged, “Maybe. Look starboard.”

    “Huh?”

    Carla scowled a little, “Look to the right… no, the ship’s right: starboard.”

    I looked out and saw something off on the horizon; it looked pretty big.

    “I think you should check that out,” Carla said, she was right behind me then, speaking quietly in my ear, “don’t you?”

    “What is it?”

    “Dunno.  It could be anything. It could even be a boat,” she walked in front of me, as if she were trying to get a better look at the speck.

    “What if it’s hostile?”

    “Do you really have anything to lose at this point? I've seen your supplies, hon, you’re pretty well fucked if you don’t do something,” Carla was never one for cursing: it was always a good indicator that she was especially serious about something. “Did you even try evaporating sea water?”

    “Yes.”

    I steered the sailboat towards the dot, and after a lot over over-correcting back and forth, the object started to get larger. As I drew nearer, I could see that it was a small island. How far had I drifted anyway?

    “You should circle the island first,” Carla said. She looked concerned, and sounded more serious than before, “Make sure it’s safe.”

    “What happened to ‘do you have anything to lose’?”

    “You should take advice given by a hallucination with a big grain of salt, honey,” her expression softened, “Including this.”

    I figured that Carla was not only right about being a little cautious, but I also wanted to see if the island was inhabited; maybe there would be a dock I could use.

    I did not find any docks or buildings, but I did find one sign of life: a huge frigging boat! It was one of those big shipping freighters they use to send stuff from China, and it had run aground in this cove on the far side of the island. It looked like after the boat had hit the beach, the current had driven it around so that much of its right side was up against the beach. It was listing slightly towards the island.

   According to the back of the boat, it was called the Sinjin Eureka Hong Kong, and it had more shipping containers on it than I could count. There were dozens of stacks of containers that I could see piled anywhere from two to six high.

    “You have to go check that out,” Carla enthused, “It could be an absolute goldmine of supplies; maybe even water! Or... it could be thousands of laptop computers, and you with no wifi.”

    I maneuvered the boat around the freighter and into the cove, and hit the shore with enough of a jolt to almost knock me off my feet. I dropped anchor even though I was probably never going to be able to get the sailboat out of that sand again; no reason not to.

    “You need a weapon,” Carla said.

    I motioned around the deck of the boat; it felt weird to be standing on it and not have it rock under my feet, “What weapon?”

    “There has to be something.”

   Carla moved down into the boat’s small cabin. I waited, feeling a little foolish. I was about to go down into the cabin myself when Carla reappeared carrying a hammer and a large phillips head screwdriver, “It’s dangerous to go alone. Take these,” she said, sounding mostly serious.

    I took the weapons from her, although a wooden sword might have felt more imposing.

    “Don’t you want to keep one?”

   She looked at me like I was being stupid, which, to be fair, I was.

    We made our way down from the sailboat, and over to the side of the freighter. The ship looked big from the water, but it looked huge right up alongside it.

    I tried yelling up to the ship for awhile, trying to get the attention of anyone up there, but no one responded, and eventually Carla told me to stop. We would board the ship.

    “How do I get up there?” I asked, looking at the smooth side of the ship.

    “Well, there’s some stairs over here, but I think they are a little higher than you can jump,” Carla was standing below a set of stairs that ended probably fifteen or twenty feet off the ground.

    I walked up and down the length of the ship where it touched the cove’s beach looking for some other way up; maybe some emergency handholds or something. No luck. I thought of maybe swimming around the other side, but Carla said that it was a bad idea.

    “Rope,” Carla suggested, “there’s plenty of rope on the boat, right?

    

    She was right, there was quite a bit of rope on the boat. I went and got that rope. I then tied the hammer to one end, and threw it at the bottom of the stairs.

    It took a few tries, but eventually I got the hammer through the bottom step, and let the weight of it pull the rope up while the hammer dropped back down to me.

    Carla suggested tying a sort of noose on the end of the rope that the hammer had been tied to, and then feeding the other end of the rope through the noose, and pulling it tight to secure the rope around the bottom step of the ship’s stairs.

    By the time all of this was done, it was getting late into the afternoon. Carla told me to stop and eat; I was going to need as much strength as I could muster for what would come next.

    I protested, but Carla insisted I eat more than what I had been rationing for myself.

    Back at the bottom of the rope, I pointed out that on my best day the chances of my climbing up to the top of the rope were slim.

    “I can help you,” Carla said.

    “How, give me a boost?”

   “No, look at all the excess rope you have,” she pointed, and there was a good thirty or forty feet of rope lying in the sand beyond the bottom of what was hanging from the stairs, “you cut that off, throw it up threw the steps again, tie the other end around your waist, and I will help pull you up while you climb. Plus that way if you fall I can try and slow you down.”

    “But… you’re not really here. “

    She stepped forward and poked me hard in the chest, “Aren't I?”

    She hadn't been wrong yet.

    It hurt: the rope around my waist dug into what had a month earlier been my gut hard as she pulled it, but she gave me just enough help that I was able to pull myself up the side of the freighter and grab onto the bottom step.

    I clambered up the steps, and collapsed onto the ship’s deck, panting. My arms and palms burned, but not both for the same reason.

    It seemed like only seconds later when Carla appeared at the top of the steps, “See, now that wasn't so bad, was it?”

    “Yes it was.”

     “Up! It’s going to be dark soon, and you need to find the crew.”

    I made my way past stacks of shipping containers towards the ship’s control tower, I think that’s what it’s called. It was an easy target, being the only thing taller than the containers.

    I didn't actually make it to the tower before I found out what had become of the crew.

    “Look out,” Carla cried.

    I turned to see a shambling man in blue coveralls coming at me. He was too close for me to properly hit with the hammer, and Instead of bashing in his skull, I stuck it in his mouth. Then we both fell to the deck with him on top of me, trying to chew through the hammer to get to me.

    With my left hand, I worked the screwdriver free from where I had it in my pocket, and tried to stab the dead man in the side of the head with it. That did not work at all.

    “The ear,” Carla yelled, “or the eye!”

    I jammed the screwdriver in its ear hole, but it stuck. I couldn't shove it it farther or pull back out.

    “Move your hand!”

    I let go of the screwdriver’s handle, and Carla kicked it home. The man fell limp and I rolled him off me.

    It was as I was trying to pull my hammer out of the dead-again man’s mouth when we heard shambling footsteps. Two more coverall-clad flesheaters came around the corner of a container stack and started towards me.

    “Hey, assholes,” Carla called, somehow she had gotten behind them and was standing my the rail at the side of the boat, “over here!”

    The zombies went for her, and she stood there, beckoning to them. She wasn’t going to even try and run.

    “Carla, no!”

    The monsters stopped, and looked towards me again.

   “Shut up, honey,” Carla ordered,then, waving at the zombies,” Over here! Come and get it!”

    They went for her. I stood, again frozen in fear as the undead surround her, unable to help. I didn't see what exactly happened last time, whether she managed to escape or not, but I did this time.

    This time, when the zombies reached her, she simply wasn't there. The monsters hit the railing she had been standing in front of, and toppled over it, landing on the sand below with a pair of crunchy thuds.

    I broke my paralysis, and ran to the railing. One of the zombies had landed on his head, and wasn’t moving. The other one only seemed to have broke its back, and was clawing at the sand trying to drag its broken body. Later, I would finish him off by tossing heavy crap at him until I managed to hit his head.

    “That was easy,” Carla said from behind me.

    I turned to face her, “How…?”

    “Shhhh,” she said, placing a finger on my lips.

    Exploring more of the ship revealed another dozen corpses, but the dead kind, and only one more zombie. This one had been badly eaten; most of his face and upper body was gone. He went down easily with the crowbar I found near a couple of the bodies; judging by the dried blood on it, I was not the first person to use it as a weapon.

    I don’t know if anyone got off the ship alive. It looks like there are a couple of lifeboats missing though, so maybe someone is out there; maybe even on the island. I pulled the rope I used up just to protect against any unwelcome visitors..

    It was almost dark when we began breaking into shipping containers looking for food. Thank goodness for emergency flashlights. On the sixth try, we found that goldmine Carla had talked about earlier. A container full stuff from Hawaii. A lot of it has not been too useful yet, like the red salt, but there was fifty cases of water that claimed to be 100% Hawaiian.

    Carla smiled as I took a long drink from the bottle with the hula girl on it, “I guess my work here is done,” she said in a comically deep voice and her hands on her hips.

    “What?”

    “You can’t just depend on me forever; you need to figure some of this out on your own.”

    It felt like my heart imploded in my chest, “You can’t leave again.”

    “I will always be here when you need me. Right here,” she touched my forehead, “ and right here,” she touched my chest.

    She put her arms around me, hugged me tight, and kissed me softly on the lips. When I opened my eyes at the end of the kiss, I was alone under the stars.

    That was a month ago. I feel more at home on this ship. I found a rope ladder to let down the side of the boat to get on and off. I have plenty of food and drink; some of it is kind of weird stuff, like dried squid, but it beats starving. I have a bed, there are books to read, and even a small workshop where I can build… stuff. I am set for awhile at least.

   Tomorrow I climb down and start to explore the island. I cannot live on the Sinjin Eureka Hong Kong forever, and if there is one thing I need to do, the one thing Carla insisted I do, it’s live.

Short Fiction: The Tall Policeman

The Tall Policeman

By Void Munashii

*contains adult language*

1.

    Randeep Singh knew his doorbell was going to ring before it did; he had seen the man walking up through his security cameras. There was one thing that bothered him though: He had not seen exactly where the man came from.

    Actually, to be honest, there were a number of things that bothered him about the man about to ring the bell: He was a police officer, he was freakishly tall, and his uniform was blue instead of the black the local cops wore. All of these things set off Randeep’s internal alarms, but the fact that there was not a police car, or indeed any car parked in front of his house, was what had him mentally going over all of the places he had guns stashed.

    By the time the doorbell rang, Randeep was already standing on the other side of it, easily in reach of the shotgun hidden under the coats on the coatrack. He was afraid to answer the door. He had been waiting for this moment for years, for the moment when the government would come for him.

    The tall policeman knocked on the door authoritatively. “This is the police, I need you to open the door! We have been receiving some complaints from your neighbors!,” the tall policeman said in a voice just as authoritative as the knock.

2.

    The X-Files theme flowed from Martin’s mobile phone, letting him know that it was Randeep on the other end. They had met a decade ago at a comic convention, and, though they had been there for different reasons (Martin had been there looking for comics and toys, Randeep had been there looking to back up his theory that real space aliens would attend conventions because they could blend in with the cosplayers), they had hit it off. Martin tolerated Randeep’s eccentricities, and assumed that Randeep felt that he was giving the same courtesy to Martin.

    Martin snatched the phone off of the table and accepted the call, “Hey Ran, what’s up?”

    “I need you to come over. There is something I need to show you,” Randeep replied.

    “What?”

    “I cannot talk about it over an unsecured line,” Randeep answered, but Martin mouthed the words along with him, having heard this many, many times.

    Martin glanced at the clock, quarter past three, and then contemplated the forty-five minute drive out to Randeep’s place out past where civilization ended, “It’s kind of late, man. I have work tomorrow.”

    “This is important, Martin, I really need your help.”

    “You said that last time, man.”

    “I mean it this time. This is some really serious shit.”

    Randeep was not normally one for foul language. Martin did some mental math, figuring that if there was no traffic, and he did not stay for more than an hour or two, he would still be able to get to bed at a reasonable time, “Fine, but if this is about that kid down the road playing with his ‘spy drone’ again, I am going to make you eat your Art Bell picture.”

    

3.

    Martin had mixed feeling about going out to Randeep’s place. On one hand, Randeep had a nice chunk of land with no neighbors for a quarter mile in any direction, it had been part of a larger farm at one point in history, and Martin’s entire apartment could probably fit quite comfortably into the living room of Randeep’s house. On the other hand, the directions for getting there involved the phrase “turn off the paved road”, which was never a sign of a convenience.

    Randeep had explained that part of the reason he liked living out there was that no one could sneak up on him because their car would kick up dust that would be visible a soon as they started down the road towards him. Martin had never pointed out that someone approaching on foot through the fields behind the house would not kick up dust, nor would there be any in the rain; he knew better.

    By the time Martin’s dust-covered Ford Focus pulled into Randeep’s driveway, the short, skinny man was already there, pacing a short, tight course.

    “Okay, so what’s the big national secret this time? Did the Reptilons replace your mailman again?”

     “You tell jokes, Martin, I will make you eat those jokes this time!”

    Martin’s eyebrows raised. Randeep was really worked up this time; whatever he thought he had discovered had brought him to a plateau of mania that Martin had never seen before.

    “Alright, what is it?”

    “It is inside, come on!”

    The short, skinny, dark-haired man led the taller, pudgy, light-haired man up the walkway and onto the front porch.

    Before even getting to the door, an odor assaulted Martin’s nose. He was used to unusual smells in Randeep’s house from the unfamiliar spices the smaller man used in cooking, and while they often smelled odd, but ultimately tasted good, this smell was just bad, “Good God, Ran, what are you cooking in there?”

    “I am not cooking anything; it is what I wanted to show you.”

    “You’ve discovered an incredible smell?”

    Randeep lead Martin into the house. Martin glanced at the pictures in the front hall as he entered; they were some of Randeep’s most treasured possessions: framed pictures of him with Art Bell, Whitley Strieber, Linda Moulton Howe, and Stanton Friedman. Randeep had told him multiple times how he had met them at various conventions over the years, and Martin sort of figured that they were Randeep’s equivalent to meeting George Lucas and Stan Lee.

    The smell grew stronger as they entered the living room. Randeep stepped aside, giving Martin a clear view of a body on the carpet. It was lying facedown in a puddle of black liquid, and there was a ragged, black hole in the back of its dark blue shirt. Martin noticed that the body was wearing a black leather belt with compartments on it, and a holster.

     “Holy shit, Ran, did you shoot someone?” Martin starts to back towards the door, “You wanted to show me that you murdered someone?”

    “It is not a person, Martin.”

    “Is that a cop? Did you shoot a fucking cop?”

    “It is not a cop,” Randeep’s mania starts to even out, as if seeing Martin losing his cool calmed the smaller man down, “The police here wear black. It was a fake cop!”

    “So, what, it’s the NSA? CIA? Did you murder a government agent? Is that better somehow?”

    “It is an alien! Look at his blood.”

    “An alien?”

    “Yes!”

    “Randeep, and I say this as your friend, aliens aren’t real! All that Art-Bell-alien-abductions-conspiracy-theory stuff is just bullshit. I knew you bought into that stuff too much, but… you murdered someone, man!”

    “Not someone, something.”

    “Yeah, keep saying that; maybe they’ll just put you in a psych hospital for the rest of your life instead of lethal injection,” Martin said, having now backed his way into the entry hall.

    “If this was a policeman, then where is his car?”

    This caused Martin to stop; there hadn’t been any cars outside when he drove up, “Okay, yeah, maybe he wasn’t a real cop-”

    “He was not.”

    “-and he walked here for whatever reason, but you can’t just kill him.”

    “He teleported or something. I did not see him walking up. He came around the side of the house; out of the fields; I checked the cameras. It is as if he appeared out in the field.”

    “Did he attack you or something?”

    “He was going to… here, help me roll him over and I will show you.”

    Martin, much to his mind’s surprise, found himself walking over to the corpse. Without having any conscious control of his body, Martin was able to dedicate his higher brain functions to trying to figure out how much prison time he would be liable for in this, and figure out exactly why he was not driving away in his car while calling the police.

    The tall policeman was heavy, heavier than he should be by Martin’s estimation, and it really did take both of them to roll the man onto his back. This gave Martin a clear view of the dead man’s front.

    “Holy shit,” Martin screamed in a girlish pitch, and staggered back, tripping over the coffee table, and landing between it and the sofa, his head on the cushions. He scrambled up onto the sofa, nearly overturning the coffee table in his effort.

    It is not the shotgun-blast hole in the center of the tall policeman’s chest that had so disturbed Martin so, although he would normally be disturbed by that, but the small pair of multi-jointed arms to either side of the wound; arms that would have been obscured by the shirt. The skin on those arms was not the colour of any human flesh that Martin was familiar with either: it was a dark grey.

    Moving up to the tall policeman’s face, also skinned in grey flesh, revealed to Martin four glossy, orange eyes, and a mouth that was too large. The mouth was open, frozen in something that vaguely looked like an expression of surprise, and it exposed way too many teeth for Martin to be comfortable with.

    “What the fuck is that?”

    “I told you, it is an alien,” Randeep looks more than a little proud as he said this.

    “Why did you even let that into your house?”

    “It did not look like this when I let it in. It was wearing this,” Randeep plucked a pinkish, flesh-coloured scrap from the floor near the body, just beyond the edges of the black blood pool, and holds it up. It was a human face that looks like it has been sliced off of someone’s skull, but the back of it does not look bloody at all, “It is some sort of mask. It is how they blend in with us,” he tossed the mask down onto the coffee table.

    “Okay, so why call me? Why not call your MUFON people, or something?”

    “You are the only one I can trust with this. I am sure that any group I could go to for help has been infiltrated. No one can know about this.”

    “What do you mean no one can know? You finally have honest-to-God proof of aliens, and you don’t want to tell anyone? You’ve been looking for this your whole life.”

    “I never needed proof, and I do not want to disappear, thank you very much. I need you to help me take it out back and bury it.”

    “I am the first guy you think it when it comes to disposing of bodies?”

    “I have heard that a true friend will help you bury the body, and I consider you a true friend. I will owe you greatly for this.”

    “How did this even happen?”

    “The policeman came to my door, but I knew he was not a policeman because his uniform is the wrong colour, and also I had not seen him approach on my cameras. He just sort of appeared at the side of the house.

    “He asked to come in because of complaints from my neighbours, and I did not know what to do, so I let him in. He said something about this party not being loud enough, and music started playing from somewhere, and he ripped open his shirt and pulled off his face.”

    “Music? It wasn’t attacking you? It was a stripper! You shot and alien stripper!”

    “A stripper? Like it thought this was some sort of alien bachelorette party,” Randeep motioned to the large, decidedly un-party-like room around him.

    “Maybe this is what alien parties look like, I don’t know,” Martin suggested, “Okay, what do we do? Uh, first thing we need to do is move the body, we need to wrap it up.”

    “I can get a tarp.”

    “No, just get a boxcutter; we’ll wrap it in the carpet.”

    Martin cut a large rectangle of carpet around the body of the tall policeman, careful to make sure that all of the blood pool was included, and together the two of them managed to roll the body up in it like a space alien taquito.

    That is when they both noticed that the body’s black blood was still oozing through the carpet, so Randeep got a tarp from the basement anyway, and that re-wrapped the whole mess in that.

    By the time they dragged the body out of the house and into the field just past the edge of Randeep’s property line, the sun was going down and Martin’s hopes of getting to bed early were going down with it.

    It was late by the time they shoveled the last spade of dirt onto the body. The hole was not as deep as Martin would have liked, but neither he nor Randeep were particularly burly men, and the ground was hard and dry from a lack of recent rain.

    Filthy and exhausted, the two men collapsed onto the couch, looking at the patch of bare floorboard that was stained with the tall policeman’s blood.

    “What do I do about that?” Randeep asked, pointing to the stain.

    “That’s up to you man, disposing of alien corpses is one thing, but getting bloodstains out of wood is completely out of my league. I think you might just need to replace the floor.”

    “Yeah, that is a good idea.”

    “Damn it,” Martin cursed, “we forgot to bury the face,” he points to it lying on the coffee table.

    “I think I will keep that. Maybe I can figure out what it is made of.”

    “Oh, so that you want to ke-” Martin never finished that thought, as that was when the doorbell rang.

    The two men looked at each other, “ What do we do?” Randeep asked.

    “We answer it. I mean, it’s not like it’s going to be more alien policemen strippers, is it?”

    They approached the front door, Martin looking back to make sure the bloodstain would not be visible from the entry hall, which he knew it would not be since he had not seen it when he first entered either. There was nothing to be done for the smell though.

    On the front door stood a pair of men, tall men, freakishly tall men. They must have been twins, because they had identical faces; the face looked a little familiar to Martin, but Randeep recognized them at once. The smaller man’s face paled dramatically.

    “Hello?” one of the tall men called through the door, “We apologize for disturbing you so late, but we are looking for our employee. He was supposed to… entertain at a different location, and we think he may have come here mistakenly.”

    Martin suddenly realized why he did not recognize the face immediately: he had not seen it on a head before.

    “Well shit,” Martin cursed tiredly.

End

The challenge prompt for this story was "A very close, long time friend asks you to help them bury a body," but it is only one of the three scenarios that were available.

If you liked this story, head on over to Clever Fiction, and see what other people made of this challenge's prompts! Heck, even if you didn't like it, head over there anyway, and maybe you'll find something you like better.

Thanks for reading, and until we meet again: don't trust the darkness.

Resurrection...?

    *Lights flicker on, revealing a dusty, long abandoned room*

     Is anyone here? Well, in case anyone is reading this due to some long forgotten addition to their news aggregator: Hello, it has been quite awhile; thanks for waiting around.

     I'm going to be honest with you, it has been about a year and a half since I have written a story to completion, but that is about to change thanks to the folks at Clever Fiction. You see, those lovely folks have come out of their own cocoon with a new writing challenge, and that is just the sort of thing that gets me writing.

     There is one substantial change though: in the past they would host the stories on their site (You can read my old stories here if you have not read them), and now they require we host them ourselves. Imagine my pleasure to discover that this old place is still standing?

     So keep an eye on here, and in the next few days I will post my first new story in a long time. See you back here then!

Snow Globe

     What? A post? Yeah, well sort of. While I have not been going to movie screenings anymore (a combination of more people going to them making it more difficult to get passes, other responsibilities, and just needing more sleep have caused that), so I have not been writing reviews anymore, I have been writing.

     Most of what I work on now is for a site called Clever Fiction, I may have mentioned it before, but I am feeling too lazy to go back and look. In any case, you can check out the stories I've written there here.

     Recently they had a visual prompt of a bench in the snow. I would link to that post, but their site is having problems. The story I wrote for that prompt is called "Snow Globe", and I quite like it. However the story did not make it up on that site in its entirety. To rectify that I am going to post the whole story here.

     Enjoy.

 

Snow Globe

by Void Munashii (Visual Prompt)

The cold wind wakes me like a slap in the face. My eyes jerk open, and all I see is white. I think I've gone blind at first until I realize that I am in the middle of a snowy field. I look down at myself to confirm that I can see, but my eyes are greeted with a white winter coat, but I have black gloves on, and they stand out in contrast against the whiteness of everything else.

I take in my surroundings, trying to remember where I am and how I got here; trying to remember who I am. I'm sitting on a bench at the edge of a field like someone waiting at a bus stop. Dense trees surround the clearing. In the very center of the open space is a cabin with a trail of smoke rising from a metal pipe in its roof.

Something about that cabin makes me uneasy, but I don't know why.

I look around me for any signs of how I got here. There are no tracks in the snow, but it's also snowing, so if I've been here for any length of time they may have been covered up. It can't have been by car; there doesn't appear to be any gap in the trees wide enough to drive through.

Maybe I was hurt, and I made I this far and passed out? That would explain why I don't know how I got here, or who I am. I must had suffered a head injury. I feel around my head for a bump or a sore spot, but I don't find any. Drugs maybe, maybe I did drugs.

There's a dark blue backpack on the bench next to me, and I wonder if it will tell me who or where I am. I brush away the layer of snow that has landed on top of the bag, and unzip the top. Inside the bag there are three hardback books: “Pandemic” by Scott Sigler, “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt” by Edmund Morris, and “Bruce Aidell's Complete Book of Pork”. What the hell am I doing with a cookbook?

Digging past the books I find a package of white socks, a box of salt, a jar of garlic powder, and a manila envelope. I pull the envelope out, and open it. Inside there is a single thick piece of paper and a disc, although I don't know if it's a CD or a DVD. The piece of paper has a man's picture on it. Something about the man is familiar, but it doesn't connect to anything specific for me.

I put the items back in the envelope, and the envelope back in the bag. I dig around some more and find what looks like a sharpening stone, a container of antacids, and a box of matches. This doesn't make any sense. If I were going someplace snowy, why would I pack this assortment of crap?

Maybe I'm stupid. Maybe I am a drug user.

I zip the backpack closed, sling it onto my shoulder, and get up from the bench. My feet crunch in the snow, leaving deep footprints behind me as I head for the tree line. The trees are tight together, but there should be plenty enough space between them for a person to fit through.

I make my way to the tree line and stop. I've hit something. I put my hands out towards the trees, but something is stopping me from touching them. It feels like I am touching a glass wall.

I take the gloves off, stuffing them in my coat pocket, and touch the wall. I feel... nothing. It's not cold like glass would be, but it's not warm either. It doesn't feel like anything, but I cannot put my hands through it. I try pounding my fist against the barrier; it doesn't hurt, and it doesn't make any sort of noise.

I don't understand this. The snow seems to be passing through it, and when I blow on it, the vapour from my breath passes through easily enough, but I can't. I swing the backpack against it, and it bounces back like it hit something.

I don't know how to put it in words. It's like I am pushing against a solid wall while pushing against nothing. I can feel the presence of a hard, solid barrier, but I can't feel the surface of it.

There must be a gap or a break in it. I got in here somehow, right? If I can get in, then I can get out.

I start moving to my left, sliding my hand over the smooth yet non-existent surface that is keeping me from getting into the woods. I slog through the snow around the edge of the open space, my hand always inches from the trees, but never quite able to touch them.

There aren't any breaks. How can there not be a way through? I've gone far enough around the clearing now to be in front of the cabin, and still haven't found any way through.

“You may as well give up, son!” a voice comes to be on the wind.

I turn away from my invisible wall to see an old man sitting on the cabin's porch. He's wearing a red and black coat, a furry cap, and is smoking a pipe. He looks harmless, but something in me cringes all the same.

“You can't get out,” he calls to me, “Not like that anyhows.”

I swallow down my fear and call to the old man.

“Where am I?”

“What?” The old man yells back.

“Where am I? How did I get here?”

“You're gonna hafta come closer, son. My hearing's not what it was!”

He seems harmless enough; old certainly. I dismiss my unease as just a reaction to my situation. It seems like he might have some answers anyway.

I trudge across the snow, and step up onto the cabin's covered porch; the boards creak under my weight. I can see the old man better now, and he looks even older than I first thought; eighty at least. He's sitting in an old rocking chair. There's a table next to him with a metal ashtray and a hardback book; the dustcover has been removed so I can't see the title.

“You been checking that wall for a while now?” the old man asks, “I was tempted to let ya go all the way around if you didn't look over at me yourself, but I was thinking on goin' inside, and I didn't want to leave you out here.”

“Umm... thanks,” I say, running my hands through my hair to brush out the snow before it all melts.

“I once saw this one girl go all the way around twice before she finally decided to come talk to me. I find that as I grow older I lack the patience to let you kids do that though,” the old man shakily rises from the chair, “Lets head inside. It's nice and warm in there.”

The old man walks past me, and opens the cabin's door, a plain brown thing with four small windows set into it that creaks loudly as he forces the hinges to move. He enters the cabin and leaves the door open behind him, “Hurry up 'fore you let all the cold in,” he says as he strips off his coat.

The door takes a bit of pushing to get it to close, but it seals the cold out nicely. The inside of the cabin is quite warm thanks to the big stove near the center of it, and the heat makes my cheeks and ear burn from being in the cold outside. There is a large steaming pot on top of the stove.

“Get outta that wet coat before you drip all over my floor!” The old man orders, “You can hang it on the hooks there.

There are four hooks on the wall next to the door. The old man's coat is on one, and a blue coat of a similar style to my own is next to it. I hang my coat on one of the empty hooks, drop my backpack on the floor under it, and look around.

Three of the walls of the large room are hidden behind bookshelves, broken only by the windows and door. There is an easy chair and a shabby sofa with a coffee table facing the stove on one side and a small round kitchen table with three chairs on the other.

At the back of the room are a pair of doors. A bathroom probably, and maybe a bedroom or closet; I don't see a bed in here. Next to the doors is a sink, some cabinets, and a fridge that looks like it was old when the old man was young.

“Where am I?” I ask.

“Get right to the point, don't ya?” the man asks, stirring the steaming pot with a long handled spoon, “You haven't even introduced yourself yet, boy.”

“I'm sorry, but I don't know who I am.”

The old man laughs like it's the funniest thing he's ever heard, “No, of course you don't. No one who comes here does,” he puts the spoon down on a plate on the kitchen table and walks over to me. He leans in close to my ear, “Tell ya the truth, I don't know who I am either,” and he cackles again.

“Do you know where here is?” I ask.

“I call it the snow globe; snows here all the time,” the man says, “Been here a long time, I think. I bet you're hungry; there's a little stew left there if you want some. There're bowls by the sink.”

I realize that I am hungry. I see a dish strainer next to the sink with a pair of brown bowls and some utensils sitting in it. I take a bowl and a spoon, and go over to the stew pot, “Thank you,” I say to the old man as I spoon some of the meat and broth into the bowl.

“I'm happy to share,” the old man says, “Take a seat and enjoy.”

I sit at the table and begin to eat. The meat is kind of grayish, but it smells like beef. I wonder if I'll get food poisoning from eating meat that has gone off or something. I take a bite, and it tastes a little sweet; pork maybe.

“Finally!” the old man exclaims, “I've been waiting to read this! The first two were great.”

I turn and see that the old man is going through my backpack. He's looking at one of the books; It looks like the “Pandemic” one.

“Excuse me?” I say once I've swallowed.

“Ah! Salt! Thank God!” he says like I hadn't spoken, “And some new socks!”

“Excuse me, sir,” I say, rising from the table, “That's my bag; that's everything I have... I think.”

The old man looks at me, “I'm sorry, it's just been awhile, and I've been running out of some stuff. Like I said, that's the last of the stew there. Some vegetables woulda been nice this time though. It's not like I can grow my own here or anythin'”

“So there are other people here?” I ask, looking at the blue coat hung next to mine.

“Nope, jus' me an' you right now. I'm sure you'll be passin' on soon though,” the old man pulls out the manila envelope, “Here we go, lets find out who you are.”

The man crosses the room, and stoops down to open a cabinet at the bottom of one of the bookshelves. He pulls out a laptop computer, and comes over to place it on the kitchen table.

“I wouldn't keep this in there, you know, but that's where the plug socket is. What sorta idiot puts a plug socket in a cabinet?” he asks as he opens the computer's lid.

While the computer boots up, the old man slips the photo and the disc out of the envelope, “Handsome, aren't ya?” he asks, holding up the picture, “I bet you pulled the ladies, didn't ya? Or did you prefer guys?”

“I don't know.”

“Don't worry about it. I ain't here to judge ya; they done that already. Now lets see who you were.”

I don't like the way he phrased that.

The old man puts the disc into the computer, and uses the computer's touch pad to access it.

“Okay, so you were Anders Anderson,” he laughs at my name, “No wonder you ended up here with a name like that. I bet you got mocked somethin' fierce in school. Probably warped you bad.”

“That disc says who I am?”

“Yup. I wish they had these things when they put me here, at least then I'd know who I am and why I'm here.”

“Why am I here?”

“Lets see,” he reads the screen, “It seems you are a,” he pauses for effect, “murderer; shot up a shopping mall.”

“No,” I say. The idea repulses me.

“Yup, but that's pretty normal. Here, look for yourself, “he turns the laptop towards me, and the leaves the table, “Murder's what gets most people sent here. Rape occasionally. Makes we wonder what kind of a bastard I was.”

“How many people have been put here?” I ask.

“God, it must be a few hundred by now. I've got albums fulla your pictures. I expect they'll be sending on a new album soon. I hope they send some vegetables too.”

I can't look away from the computer. There's a mugshot of the man in the photo, of me, and a mass of text describing how I killed twenty-eight civilians and two police officers before I was captured.

“So if there have been hundreds of people like me here, where are they now?”

“They passed on, don't ya listen?” The old man replies, I can see him out of the corner of my eye; he's standing by the sink, “You'll be passing on shortly, and in a week or two they'll send me someone else.”

“You said that before,” I say, “'Passing on'. Where will I pass on to?”

“You see, I figure that I must have done something really awful,” he continues without replying to me, “because they want me to suffer; they want me to survive; it's why they keep sending folks like you to me. You kids pass on, while I remain.”

“Pass on to where?” I say, still looking at the computer. There are links in the document, and clicking on them opens pictures of dead, bloody bodies. One of the pictures is of a child clutching a bloodstained stuffed rabbit; half of the kid's head is missing.

“If I were a stronger man, a better man, I would just let myself go,” The old man starts moving towards me, “I tried, but it's so hard. One of these days I'll go though, and then one of you kids will take over for me. Until then... well, I just get so hungry.”

Hungry?

I turn in time to see the old man coming at me, the cleaver in his right hand raised above his head, ready to split mine.

He moves fast for an old man; very, very fast.