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Meanwhile, my creative interests have broadened. While I love serialized genre fiction, I also love a lot of other creative endeavors that I’ve been prolific at in these past few months. I’d like to share more of that material here. I’d like to spend more time writing non-fiction articles. I’d like to publish more video content.

Basically, I’d like to do a lot of things with this space that aren’t genre fiction. So we’re pivoting. This space will be publishing more media critique, more comedy, more weirdness, and yes, eventually, more genre fiction.

Thank you for your patience as I find myself.

From the forthcoming leaflet: Monologues for Actors Throwing Their Audition by Ben Wolf

She’s a beauty, isn’t she?

Hi. Dave Myers. And you’re..? Good to meet you, Jeff. Has anyone helped you yet? Anyone from sales come over and speak to you? Cause I saw you from our break room - I’m on break right now - but I saw you eyeballing the best car on the lot so I thought I’d introduce myself.

Yeah. No, I get it. I’m “just looking” at it, too.

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You mind if I give you the tour? Are you sure? Cause it would be a big favor to me, I love talking about this car. The 2019 Corvette C7 Coupe with a six point two-liter V8 engine and a 7-speed manual transmission. Four hundred and fifty-five ponies under the hood. Someone told me they didn’t have that many horses in the Civil War - I don’t know if it’s true but it’s fun to say.

Now, I haven’t driven this one - honestly, they don’t stay on the lot very long, honestly - but I’ve driven some others and the handling is unbelievable. Like a baby carriage. Which is nice. 

Because the road ahead is long. And endless...

...

Hmm? Yeah, no. I’m okay. You just caught me thinking. That’s all...

You, uh... Do you mind if I ask you a personal question, Jeff? How old are you? Mmm. Yeah. That’s about the time you start needing a car like this.

It’s that time in your life when all of a sudden the end is closer than the beginning. When thoughts naturally turn to death. And to the looming chasm of time that stretches out from this moment unto eternity. A cold, meaningless void that, eventually, embraces us all.

But you want to know something incredible, Jeff? No one ever thinks like that when they’re driving a ‘vette.

...

Come over here. I want to show you the rear end. That’s what people will be looking at, right?

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Mm. Just breathtaking. Carbon fiber spoiler. I keep saying, one day I’m gonna come out here and eat my lunch off it. Not this one, obviously. Because honestly, they don’t stay on the lot very long. Honestly.

What’s-? Gas mileage? Uhhhhhhhhhhhh... I’m not sure about the M.P.G. specifically. The EPA might not have released the official numbers- Oh, look at that. You’re right, there it is on the spec sheet.

So... Not wonderful if gas mileage is your priority. Is that-? Sure. Right. I get it. Of course. We’ve only got one Earth. It’s a diminishing resource. A diminishing... resource... 

...

Aren’t we all?

You know, Jeff... One of these days - in a cosmic blink of an eye, really - there will be a moment when your name will be said for the last time. You’ll join the ranks of the unremembered, as we all will. Just a forgotten vestige of a lost era. Ephemeral, like blades of grass on the wind. Here... Then gone.

Kinda makes you want to live for the moment, doesn’t it? Every man dies, not every man really lives, right?

...

You wanna sit in the driver’s seat?

No, it’s cool. I’ve got the keys right here. Let me get the door. Watch your head. Nice, huh? You’ve got your short shifter, big screen on the dash. Wanna crank her up? Go ahead. Yeah. Give her some gas, Jeff. That’s it.

Feels good, doesn’t it?

...

Jeff? Jeff, are you crying? It’s okay, buddy. Yeah, go ahead and let it out. This world can be so cruel. Just the other day a woman accused me of inducing mid-life crises to sell cars. Not this car, obviously, because it’s brand new and honestly hasn’t been on the lot for very long.

I get it, man. We’ve got problems! Big problems! And it wasn’t always like this. We used to call men ‘Sir!’ We used to smell books! Where’s it all gone and what did it all mean?! We just... We... we...

What’s that? You’ll take it?

Gosh, I don’t know. Technically, I’m on break. 

No, you’re right. Let’s live for today. Follow me, I’m gonna draw up the contracts. Hurry. Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives, Jeff.

These days things can be so rough I’m starting to wonder if one Corvette’s enough anymore.

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I work from home, so I talk to my dog a lot. Lately, I’ve been talking to him about taking out the trash. Mario loves trash. He lives for it. So I’ve been convincing him to stay away from it by telling him some pretty bold lies.

Mario’s a Jack Russell and, like most terriers, he’s smart as a whip. My wife and I adopted him at 3 months old and we started out with a standard, lidded trash can. For a  time things were great. It didn’t even occur to Mario that he might get into the trash and help himself to cast-off bones and banana peels. But once he had, the seal was forever broken. Every time I left our apartment he would tear into our garbage and strew it across the kitchen and living room.

To address the problem, we ordered a “dog-proof” trashcan from the internet. We didn’t have it a week before Mario had gotten inside and pulled out our leftover Chinese food. We went back online and tried a bin with a different, _more_ “dog-proof” latch and more stars from customer reviews — but it couldn’t stop Mario. We tried everything. We taped the lid onto the can with duct tape, we weighed the lid down with books. We were desperate for a solution.

Eventually, we resolved the issue the old fashioned way. We threw _$200_ at a brushed-aluminum trashcan behemoth with a weighted foot pedal and a clam-shell opening at the top. Mario’s 13 pound frame can’t open the latch and it’s too heavy for him to pull over. In fact, it’s too heavy for _me_ to pull over. 

Ever since we switched to the behemoth, we’ve been “trash party” free. Which is great for my wife and I. But it’s not so great for Mario.

After the trash incident, I felt that the relationship between my dog and I had become strained. My long weekdays with him at home were spent in awkward silence. I would sit on the couch with my laptop, working, and he would sit on the other end, silently criticizing me. I did my best to ignore his furtive glances and impatient sighs but there’s only so much of that you can take.

The worst was when I had to empty the trash. I’d pull the bag out and tie it off while he knit his brow in confusion watching me. “Why?” His expression would ask. “Why would you keep this from me? You know I love it. And you don’t want it. Do you hate me? Am I being raised for food?”

His accusatory looks were too much for me to bear. But the communication gap between us didn’t allow me to put into words why I couldn’t just give him the trash that he so desperately wanted. How could I explain to him the decision to purchase the behemoth wasn’t personal?

It was a very troubling time for me. And it was in the depths of this anxiety that I devised a plan.

After a lot of thought, and several hours rehearsal in the mirror, the next time I took out the trash I picked up the bag in front of Mario and muttered as gravely as I could, “I only pray it is enough.” Then, with my brow furrowed and my face dark, I took the bag to the dumpster. 

When I came back, Mario’s confusion was evident. I closed the door slowly, locked both locks, and returned to my work without a word. Despite his inquiring looks I remained silent. In fact, we hadn’t spoken of the incident at all before the garbage can was full again.

The next time, before I left, I grabbed a baseball bat and swung it a few times. “Probably no use bringing this,” I mumbled. “It could just rip it from my hands. Best to just give it what it wants.” I left the bat in the corner, crossed myself, and walked the bag to the dumpster. 

For weeks we carried on like this. Every time I did the chores I’d have an opportunity to say something like, “Bag feels a little light this time. Hope it’s enough to satisfy the bastard.” The lines were always performed with a look of deep inner fear. Wide eyes. Trembling chin. I tried to appear as though I was suffering from a severe, bracing terror, because that’s the kind of thing that a dog can’t help but pick up on. 

One night, when the wind howled, I jumped up shouting, “It’s here... It’s here!” Mario was so startled that he barked.

For the past several weeks, every time I took the garbage out I added more details, painting a clearer picture of something terrible, frightening and arcane to whom I sacrifice the garbage. As a result, Mario understands that the trash is quite special - in fact, it is our salvation. Somewhere within 30 seconds of our front door is a place where I leave the trash for the neighborhood wendigo, a hideous fiend whose hunger will never wane.

The results have been marvelous. Now, the second my foot hits the behemoth’s weighted pedal, Mario runs under the couch. He’s so respectful of the trash that he even shies away from the public bins on our walks. My wife and I joke that he’s kind of traumatized.

All in all, the wendigo has been much more successful than the lies I told to get him to take a bath.

I have an idea that I believe will change the sport of basketball forever. I think it would raise revenues, improve ratings, and make the game more entertaining than it’s ever been before. And this plan is so simple that I’m frankly shocked no one has tried it.

5 years ago I got really into the NBA, falling in love with the drama and the athleticism. So this season, I decided I would finally read the rule book. But I didn’t get far, because I got stuck on one rule in particular...

Rule 2, Section 2, paragraphs B, C, D, and E.

It’s the part of the rulebook that says players can’t wear jewelry, or equipment made of anything hard or dangerous, or any equipment that’s designed to increase a player’s height or reach.

But you know what the rulebook specifically doesn’t rule out?

Toupées.

Hair pieces. Rugs. Wigs.

“Okay,” you’re thinking. “So what?”

Well... It’s kind of a fantasy so let me paint a picture for you.

It’s late in the season. There’s a team that’s not making the playoffs. They’re tanking, and they’ve got time for some shenanigans.

They sign me on a one-quarter contract - not a quarter of the season, not one game. One quarter. This costs them next to nothing. I’m a rounding error, salary-wise, and that’s fine. I’m here to break a sport, not enrich myself.

Anyway, I show up for the game looking frosty in my new ‘do, ready to make history. I take the court as the oldest rookie in NBA history and the only one who can’t dribble with his left hand. The game starts, the ball is tipped to the man I’m defending and I set my plan into action.

Now, I’m a little less than six foot, so my guy’s gonna take the shot. He just is. But I don’t do what defenders usually do, which is just wag a hand in his face. What is that? That’s useless. Completely ineffective.

No, I whip my hairpiece off and shove it right in front of the shooter’s eyes, completely blocking his vision. He misses the shot and... boom. The league is shook. Because this is the perfect defensive strategy. The hairpiece is fully opaque, it’s off-putting, wet with middle-aged sweat, it probably smells. Plus there’s the shock of it all. They thought I had hair but then I ripped it off my head right in front of them. Now I look like an angry thumb who has just scalped himself. They’re stunned. They’re questioning everything with the shot clock winding down and a wriggling toupée brushing against their nose.

The whole quarter I’ve got my wig in one hand, chasing down Giannis and Dame and all them... and they can’t score a bucket! The fans are losing their minds. Coaches are screaming. The mascot puts a mop head on top of his mask like a wig and the crowd erupts in applause.

The refs don’t know what to do because there is no mention of toupées in the rules. I’ve committed an Air Bud and there’s nothing they can do but watch. Tony Brothers starts crying. Scott Foster’s screaming at me, calling me Chris out of habit. The officials have a little meeting, then they come over and ask me to take off the hairpiece - and here’s the loophole, this is what’s so devious about all this - I just say what everyone who wears a toupée says...

“What are you talking about? What toupée? I’m sorry but I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

The result is pure pandemonium.

In one game the whole meta has changed. The entire league switches to hair-based defensive strategies overnight and before long we see all the other players covering up their domes. It’s the hot new fashion accessory around the league. Rappers and Kardashians start copying the players. Other sports stars join in. The whole Inside The NBA crew gets them. Bron even shaves his plugs to make the experience more authentic.

Ratings go through the roof because this is the drama that fans crave. My toupée ends up in the hall of fame. A few years later Netflix makes a comedy about it called Hair Bud and a documentary called The Last ‘Do. I make NBA history in one quarter without ever touching the ball.

I know it sounds kind of crazy, but this could work.

This could work.

It might not work.

But...

...it’d be pretty cool if it did.

October 23rd - Sunrise

Dear Miss Megan,

I will not drink today.

I spent most of the night talking to Steve. I feel bad for him. He don’t deserve none of this.

The other two didn’t really click with me. Kurt’s just pissed off at the world. Like, no shit motherfucker we all are. I always have been.

Brit’s so fragile I’m afraid to talk to her. You can tell she’s still crying a lot. She touched up her makeup this morning which made Penny and Allison laugh and say something about finding boyfriends.

But Steve and I laid down some cardboard off to one side of the garage so as not to disturb nobody and talked late into the night. Not sure we would have kept anyone up, though. Penny and Allison slept like the dead and I don’t think Brit or Kurt even closed their eyes.

Steve’s 23 and went to school in Chicago. He just graduated from Northwestern and works in marketing. Says he's got a job at a movie studio. I asked him if he did the posters but he said no. Still, it sounds like he’s got a good thing going.

Steve was in a big high rise building when all the shit went down. Inside, watching the news all morning. He heard that there were those dead eyed people all over the world. East coast. Europe. Everywhere. Doctors didn’t have no answers. Politicians pretty much disappeared. Nobody knows what the fuck’s going on.

He said the traffic on the freeways was at a standstill and people were getting pulled out their cars so he didn’t want to risk driving home. Steve lives up in the valley and didn’t know how long it would take him to get back or if there was anything to get back to. Said he’s just got a two bedroom with a roommate. Looked kinda sheepish about that, like it was something to be ashamed of. I told him that sounds alright to me.

Steve got quiet after I said that. Then he smiled and said I was lucky. Said I must know all sorts of helpful stuff. Like how to sleep outside. Find food. Make shelter. He said I was set up for success in this exciting new market and then he laughed.

I don’t know how to feel about that.

October 23rd - A little after noon

Dear Miss Megan,

I will not drink today.

Sometime this morning, not long after the sun come up, there was an LAPD cruiser circling near the garage with its speaker going. The cop repeated the same thing over and over. “Survivors report to Blessed Sacrament immediately. All survivors report to Blessed Sacrament.”

There was no traffic so you could hear the cop’s voice bounce off the buildings. I guess they was making too much noise for the folks that turned sour (or whatever you want to call it). I heard them banging on the cruiser door through the cop’s microphone. Then the cop says to their partner, “Go go go,” and the speaker cut off.

After they left, Kurt grabbed his stuff. Picked up his little messenger bag. Unrolled his suit jacket. Then he stood there looking at us like we were holding him up. “Are we going or what?”

Penny and Allison gave him a skeptical look and it seemed like that pissed Kurt off. “Come on! Let’s go! What are we waiting here for?”

Penny glared at him, saying, “You think the cops can help? They can’t even drive the neighborhood.”

Well, that pissed Kurt off pretty bad. He pursed his lips and paced like he was counting to ten in his head. He looked like shit. Bags under his eyes. Sweat on his forehead. Just one night outside and he was cooked. But I guess the counting to ten didn’t work cause Kurt basically exploded.

He, Penny and Allison fought like cats for a bit - yellin and cussin and all that. Steve gave me a look, and I could tell that he was waiting for me to step in and say something. So I did.

I said, “Guys, we’re just gonna make this situation worse if those things hear us. Now, I lean towards the girls on this one. But if there’s enough people who want to go I’m willing to check out the church just to know what my options are. We’re about 10 or 12 blocks away. We can walk together if you’re interested.”

Penny and Allison just shrugged that off, which I understood. I didn’t like the idea of a shelter, either. But Brit grabbed her phone and her purse. Then Steve stood up and grabbed his shit, too. I told Penny that if I wasn’t back by night they should join us. She just shook her head, gave me a hug, and told me to watch myself.

Allison whispered in my ear before I walked out. “Don't let 'em get you killed.”

October 23rd - Afternoon.

Dear Miss Megan,

I will not drink today.

We climbed down the pallets into hell. The sky was red, like during the wildfires. Smoke hung everywhere and there was carnage in the streets. Everywhere we went smelled like burning plastic and rotting meat. Looking down Sunset, I saw cars on fire in the distance and groups of black-eyed people stumbling down the street.

I could tell Kurt was scared by the way he moved. He was all hunched at the shoulders. Tense, like he was ready to flinch. He was impatient for us to follow him, but he didn’t know which way to go. Meanwhile, Brit and Steve were waiting for someone to lead the way, so I told everybody it was safer if we got off the street.

We snuck into the hotel lobby next to us, then crept from building to building. We were lucky it was mid-morning when the shit hit the fan. Front doors were either left open or smashed. There was a coffee shop where we took some day-old bagels.

Block by block, we rucked through an infested ghost town. We saw some black-eyed people on the streets, usually in threes or fours. Most were injured. Broken legs and ankles. Gunshot wounds. Some had dark, black blood dried on their hands and mouths. There was a long-haired man with no arms walking real fast down the middle of the road. He had broken bones poking out of big black holes in his shoulders, but no expression on his face.

October 23rd - Night.

Dear Miss Megan,

I will not drink today.

Blessed Sacrament sits at Sunset and Cherokee. They do a soup kitchen so I guess I know the area pretty well. There’s a construction site catty-corner across the street from the church where they was building apartments. So I hustled over and waved the others through the gate, figuring the fencing around the site would keep the freaks out so long as they weren’t motivated to come in and get us.

I led the others inside a dark, half-built building. It looked like the crew had been hanging drywall when it all went down. The walls were mostly in place with a few gaps where you could still see the bare lumber.

Kurt wanted to start talking once we were inside but I shushed him up quick. There was a stairway in the corner that led to the second floor. Upstairs, we found an apartment unit about ninety percent complete, so we stacked sawhorses and sheets of drywall across the doorway to seal ourselves inside.

We were across the intersection from the church, up a floor, and looking out an eight foot hole in the bare lumber where they was gonna put a window. Steve walked right up and stuck his head out to look but I pulled him back inside.

There was a folding table nearby and I got Steve to help me move it real quietly to the center of the room to stand on, back in the darkness of the room where there was no chance of being seen.

I stood up on that table and my knees about buckled from the sight of it all. The strip was overrun. Black-eyes were everywhere, clumped in groups of a dozen or more. Filling the street like it was a festival or a parade.

Past them, I could see the church surrounded by metal fencing. It was new and looked like they put it up in a hurry. On the other side of the fence were the cops. I could see them moving up and down, holding the line. The black-eyes would cluster at the chain-link, pushing it in, and the cops would beat them back through the fence.

In the military we called this “fubar,” Miss Megan.

I stepped off the table and the others took their turns. After they was all done, we huddled up for a big argument.

Kurt was ready to go to the church. Pronto. Said he wanted to cause a distraction. He wanted to “make an explosion” to get the creepers away from the front gate. Then we’d run over and the cops would let us in.

That was Kurt’s smart idea.

I didn’t like this plan. At all. I said we needed to get back to the garage before sundown. There weren’t no way we were making “an explosion,” and we definitely weren’t making it into the church, and even if we did, that didn't make us safe.

So we kind of shouted under our breaths at each other for a while but Brit and Steve were still undecided. That’s when Kurt lost all his patience and put his hands up, and stopped whispering.

“What are we doing? Why are we listening to this guy? You want to live like him?” He was pointing his finger at me but glaring at Steve. Kurt wasn’t afraid to get mean, I’ll give him that. He moved his face just in front of Brit’s. “You want to piss on the fucking stairs? Go ahead. Eat garbage with drug addicts. I don’t give a shit. I’m sleeping in a bed tonight.”

He turned and left.

Brit didn’t even look at me. She just followed.

Steve didn’t say nothing at first. Just stuck his hands in his khakis and stared at the doorway. We heard Brit and Kurt walk down the stairs and rattle through the gate at the back of the construction site.

Once they were gone, Steve looked at me and said, “Can I stay with you?” I didn’t know what to say so he kept going. “We can’t go to the church. And I don’t know how to get home right now. I think it’s safer if I stay with you. Is that okay?”

I couldn’t say nothing. I couldn’t swallow. I guess I got a little caught up by his question. But I held it together good enough to nod and say, "Sure."

Before leaving, we stood on the table to watch out for Kurt and Brit.

Kurt had took his undershirt off and tied it to a piece of wire he must have found on the construction site. We watched him sneak over to a broke down F150. The truck had swerved into oncoming traffic and the windshield was all smashed in with the driver side door hanging open. Kurt moved real quiet and kept the truck between him and the black-eyes in the intersection.

When he got to the truck he reached in and flipped the gas cap release. Then he stuffed his shirt down the gas tank and that’s when I knew they weren’t going to make it.

Kurt pulled the shirt, wet with gas, halfway out the tank and lit it up with a cigarette lighter, then crammed it all in there before he run off to hide with Brit behind a Jersey barrier. Well, the flames took hold first thing and the smoke billowed out quick. Thick, black smoke that hung in the air. Awful smelling. And the wind was pushing it towards Brit and Kurt.

We watched from above as the smoke engulfed them. They were fighting for air for over a minute before the flames finally ruptured the gas tank.

The resulting fireball knocked a couple black-eyes to the street, but it wasn't the Hollywood special effect that Kurt had in mind. It didn’t make a dent in the overall crowd. Sure as hell got their attention though.

Blinded by the smoke, Kurt and Brit made a break for it when they heard the truck explode. I don’t think they knew what they were running into until they were already in the intersection. By the time the smoke cleared they were surrounded.

I made Steve look away as the black-eyes descended on Brit and Kurt. The bastards looked like fish, the way they circled, each taking a piece. And the cops just watched through the fence.

I wish it hadn’t taken so long.

October 24th - morning

Dear Miss Megan.

I will not drink today.

Last night, Steve and I got back to Penny and Allison’s parking garage just after sunset.

We had a time getting back. The black-eyed people was roving the streets like shadows, crawling all over everything. The fire seemed to excite them.

I took Steve on a detour and we snuck through the back of a CVS. We found some cans of baked beans, some trail mix, a few tins of Spam and some of those Progresso soups. We put them all in two backpacks they had in the back-to-school aisle and snuck towards the door with a gallon of water in each hand.

We passed the wine aisle and I stopped. I was looking down it at all the bottles hiding in the dark and thinking how these were wild circumstances. How I'd probably focus better with a drink. How the world was fucking ending and who gives a shit.

And then I thought about you, Miss Megan.

Steve was up ahead of me, walking toward the door. I took one last look at the bottles. No one could have stopped me from taking them. But I didn't.

When we showed Penny and Allison what we brought, they hugged us. Then we all ate and talked. We got a feeling these black-eyed people won’t last for long. They’ll starve. Wander off. Die of exposure. But they won’t last. Not most of them, anyway. They weren’t built for these streets. Not like us.

So we gotta outlast them. We all decided to stay here in the garage as long as we can. Just the four of us. Or maybe let in a few more. Not many, but some.

I told them I’d get more supplies when we needed. And that I’d find a better way in and out than the pallets. I think we’re going to be alright for a little while.

I wish you were here, Miss Megan. I wish I could keep you safe. But I know you probably ain’t out there no more.

You saw me when I was invisible. You saved me. So I’ll save some for you.

I promise.

And I will not drink today.

October 22nd - Afternoon

I ain’t had a drink today, Miss Megan, but I’ll be honest, I tried.

I’m sitting in a garage bathroom cause it’s the only place I could find with a deadbolt and four walls. I still hear screaming outside. Don’t know where you are or what’s happening to you right now but I hope you're alright, Miss Megan.

After what I saw on the overpass I wrote in my journal for a while and watched the fire department clear the 101. But I couldn’t sit still. Couldn't keep my hands from shaking. So I went down to Sunset looking for a drink.

And I’m sorry for that. Real sorry.

I intended to stick my hand out until I had enough change for a couple of tall boys. Actually, I thought maybe I’d get a bottle of wine instead of beer because maybe that wouldn’t be as bad. “Addict logic,” right? “Bargaining with the disease.” I still hear you. I’m still with you.

I will not drink today.

Anyway, I’m walking down Sunset with my hand out, but I don’t get a dime cause everyone’s distracted. People were tense, staring at their phones with dark expressions.

Then, all of a sudden, across the street, I heard this guy shouting, “Get off her! Get off her!” So I turn and see three people all tangled up, fists flying.

There’s this business guy - no jacket, but he’s got a nice business shirt - latched onto this big tall guy’s wife or girlfriend. Like, business guy’s mouth is on her face. It’s covering her mouth while she’s struggling in his arms.

And business guy’s eyes are dead. Shark eyes, like the girl on the 101.

So this girl... pretty little sundress and heels on, and she’s trying to push him off, but he won’t let go. She’s trying to scream but it’s muffled by business guy’s mouth on her face. And at first, I thought he was making her kiss him but then I saw the blood and realized he was biting.

Her boyfriend, the tall guy, he's got one hand grabbing business guy’s collar and he’s pounding him in the temple with his other fist. Over and over. Haymakers, all of them.

But business guy won’t let go. He just holds on to her like she’s a life raft. And this young girl he’s on, she's scratching his face, jabbing his eyes, clawing... But he don’t even react.

Finally, tall guy digs his arm around business guy’s neck and yanks his head back, ripping the guy off his girlfriend’s face, and all I see is blood spraying in the air. He’s got her blood all over his mouth and the girl’s screaming. She breaks free from his grip and stumbles backward until I can see her smiling.

But she's not smiling. Her lips are gone.

The guys fall into the street. The first car weaves around them, the second one plows right through. Tall guy bounces off the front bumper and goes up over the windshield. Business guy goes under, tumbling and turning, until the car spits him out the back, all blood and wrong angles.

And that's what broke the spell. Suddenly, everybody was screaming and shouting, so I turned and started sprinting. I ran as fast as I could down Sunset and it felt like the rest of the city was with me. Left side and right side, the addicts and the hipsters and the soccer moms, cause when you're screaming and running it's all the fucking same.

But we only get a block before we run into another fight. Two valets got this heavy woman on the ground, blocking the sidewalk. They’re holding her arms back, shouting in Spanish as her shark eyes roll around in her head.

LAPD shows up in a patrol car with the sirens going. People are crowding the street with their phones out and these two young cops get out all wide-eyed. They just start shouting. No clue what’s going on. They got their damn guns out and they're pointing them at whatever.

Sirens are going off five feet away from me. There's car horns. Glass breaking. And screaming, screaming, screaming. So much noise I couldn’t even think. So I ran til I couldn’t run no more, Miss Megan. I just didn’t know what else to do.

When I stopped to catch my breath I saw smoke and heard gunshots about a block away. Still wasn't safe. I’d heard about a junky spot, somewhere you could shoot up in peace, a bathroom in a parking garage by the Guitar Center. I couldn’t believe it when I got there and the door wasn’t already locked, figured there’d be people hiding out already. Got lucky, I guess. So I slammed the door shut and turned the deadbolt.

I just been writing since then. That was a few hours back and I still hear screams sometimes. I hear sirens. Sometimes gunshots.

Didn't eat today. Nothing but some handfuls of sink-water. But that’s alright. I can hold out. I know how to go without food when I have to. I’m lucky that way.

Hope you’re doing alright, Miss Megan.

October 22nd or maybe 23rd, it’s real late right now.

Dear Miss Megan,

I will not drink today. Not even thinking about it.

Sat in the bathroom for hours and hours. Not sure how long exactly but it was a long damn time.

At some point the lights went out. I figured they were timed for when the garage closed but when I stuck my head out the door and looked around, I realized that all the electricity was out. Whole damn block. Couldn’t see nothing.

I didn’t see nobody and my stomach was gnawing at me, so I walked back down to Sunset and I don’t even know what to say about it. The street was full of deserted cars, overturned trash cans, small fires, and dead bodies.

It took me back to bad times, Miss Megan.

I didn’t have much of a plan as I walked around. Thought it might be a good idea to check the trash bins for something half-eaten so I looked behind a couple restaurants. Didn’t want to go inside if I didn’t have to.

It was a sight, though. The whole strip was empty. I saw shadows running in the distance but none of the usual traffic. Plenty of cars but nobody driving. Nobody walking the streets. Nobody.

So I’m creeping down the sidewalk when I see this flickering orange glow in a parking garage up the way with a rolled-down cage covering the entrance. It’s all locked up. So I walk up, quiet as I can, and start whistling like a teenager at his girlfriend’s window. I throw some pebbles. Just trying to make enough noise to get someone’s attention.

After a bit, this head peeks over the side. Can’t see the face. Just a shadow against the red and gray sky. It says “What you want?” A woman’s voice. Real rough, like a smoker. I don’t like asking for help, you know, but I didn’t see much choice in the matter. So I ask if she’s got room up there for one more. I tell her I don’t need nothing but a roof. And I tell her I’m a gentleman. She just laughs at me for saying that. Tells me to go around the side and climb up the pallets.

So I went into the alley, climbed up some pallets that was stacked there and crawled over a cement ledge into the garage. Stood up, looked around, and saw the whole place was deserted. I walked up until I got to the third floor and found two ladies sitting on some cardboard in front of a little fire. They got cans of tuna and asked me if I wanted some.

So how do you like that?

The girls were Penny and Allison. Homeless. Or unhoused. Whatever. They seemed like they was a couple but I didn’t ask. Said they been living together for about three years now.

I asked them if they got any idea what’s going on and they showed me their phone. I saw headlines about a virus or a disease or something. Some videos of more street fights and a stampede at The Grove. I saw a video of people tearing each other up in Times Square. Fires burning through Chicago. It was bad. But there weren’t no real answers. No one knew why.

Penny says they saw a guy who got tore up by a crowd of those people. A whole bunch of them walking around together. Penny’s got a smoker’s voice. Big girl. All bundled up in a hoodie and Cookie Monster pajama pants.

Allison’s smaller, with tan, stretched skin. Long brunette hair on top of this wiry frame. They had their pipe with them but luckily they didn’t drink.

They’re telling me all about how they hid out in their car all morning. Put sunshades and blankets over the windows like they were stealth-camping and just hunkered down right in the middle of all the panic and the screaming and the gunfire. I thought that was pretty lucky. I told them about the bathroom I was in and they thought that was real lucky.

They said in the late afternoon, their car started to fill with smoke. They thought it was on fire, so they jumped out, grabbing handfuls of their stuff. Then they looked up and said the building beside them was all up in flames. Top to bottom. Four stories. And the whole front, the facade, was crumbling down onto the street around them.

The streets were too jammed with empty vehicles to drive away, so they ran. Allison knew about the garage.

So we were talking and eating tuna when all a sudden we hear voices. People down in the street getting loud. “Help! Help us!“ I get up to look and Penny tells me to sit my silly ass down, but I do it anyway.

Stick my head out, and there are three people down below looking up at the garage. They saw the fire light so they’re yelling up at us. I tell them to shut the hell up before someone hears them but they’re all panicking real bad. So I tell them to go around to the pallets, just to keep them quiet.

Penny cussed at me for this but I didn’t care, she didn’t own the garage. Allison chilled her out a little but I could tell they weren’t real happy.

So these three shadows come walking up the sloped garage drive. Two guys and a girl. Pretty soon we found out their names were Kurt, Steve and Brit. And right away, the girls and I can tell they’re not like us, you know what I mean?

Kurt’s in a fucking suit. No tie. Sweaty as shit. Carrying a messenger bag full of papers and stuff he don’t need. He’s maybe 45 or 50? Hard to tell, cause I think he had some work done. Still, he’s all outta shape and outta sorts.

Brit was about 20 or so, wearing a skirt and sweater with some sneakers. Eye makeup was all cried off. Had one of those fancy metal water bottles in one hand and a phone with a dead battery in the other. She was in a real bad way. Couldn’t hardly talk. Just barely keeping it together.

Steve was in khakis and a button up. Twenty four or five maybe. Looked like he worked in an office or something like that. Kept his hands in his pockets. Little bit quiet but he seemed alright, I guess.

We get to talking and it’s a bad scene from the get-go. Right off the bat, Kurt’s trying to be in charge of whatever this is, but Penny and Allison are like “fuck that.” Penny tells this dude: “You are a guest in our garage.” Then Kurt says: “You don’t own the place,” and they’re like: “You don’t like it, get the fuck out.”

So not off to a great start.

Finally, I jump in, making my voice all deep like my drill sergeant was. “Hey! We gotta keep it down. And let’s get this fire out. We don’t need nobody else finding us up here. Why don’t we backtrack to the alley, find some cardboard to sleep on, and we’ll rest for the evening? We can figure out the rest in the morning.”

At first, Kurt was gonna be a dick to me, but I think he was just too tired to argue. It’s hard being out in the sun all day if you ain’t used to it. So my little speech worked and they all agreed to do what I said, which was wild. Felt good keeping the peace like that.

So we were walking back down to the ground floor when Brit asked if there was a bathroom cause she hadn’t pissed since she left the coffee shop (I think she’s a barista). Allison pointed her to a stairwell and told her to pick a corner but Brit couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t go. Penny and Allison snickered but I figured she’d get over it sooner or later.

We got down to the street level and raided the dumpsters, grabbing the cleanest boxes we could find. Steve and Brit pitched in and helped as best they could, but Kurt could hardly bring himself to inhale down by the garbage. Then Allison said she’s got some extra cans of tuna if somebody wants one and Kurt said he’s a vegetarian.

So I think the new guys are gonna have a rough time.

Continue to PART THREE.

Dear Miss Megan,

I will not drink today.

I never had to write about myself before. Don’t know if this is how most people do these journals but I’m just gonna write to you like it’s a letter. Or like we talk to each other in our sessions.

I like our sessions, even if I don't like the V.A. The things we talk about stick in my mind. I’m working on my “all-or-nothing thinking” and my “overgeneralization” and trying not to “disqualify the positive.”

Drinking helped me with those problems. I worry about them coming back.

I worry that I’ll find out I can’t get sober. That I'll never be strong enough. But that’s “all-or-nothing thinking" - a thought drawn in black and white - isn’t that what you said? The real world has shades of grey and millions of colors too.

I’m trying to think more colorful.

Because I know this ain’t a life. I’m invisible. If I disappeared tomorrow nobody would notice.

Except maybe you, Miss Megan. And I’m grateful.

So I’m gonna do what you say I should.

October 18th

Dear Miss Megan,

I will not drink today.

It’s morning and I’m in my tent. Don’t smell too good but I didn’t drink last night. It’s been more than 24 hours now. My first full day without alcohol in a long time. A real long time.

Lately, I’ve been keeping my tent on a low hill north of Sunset Blvd. Last night I was looking down on the freeway below me when I started counting the billboards with beer on them. I saw six bottles. Big, wet, green bottles full of bubbles. A genuine six-pack made up of three separate billboards, all of them as big as a building. Like you could swim in all that beer.

Never bothered me before, but right now, I don’t want to see it.

October 19th

Dear Miss Megan,

I will not drink today.

Been two days without beer or anything else and I feel strange. Kinda empty but full of nervous energy. There’s too much going on in my head. Too many thoughts. My hands don’t know what to do. Writing to you helps a little.

I couldn’t sleep last night so I sat up and watched the boys down on the overpass. They got a couple RVs down there for about four or five guys. I used to drink with them. Felt like going down to say hi but I didn’t. “Sober people, sober places.” Just like you said.

It was hard not to go. Didn’t even know if they had beer but I felt the pull. On nights like last night, when that urge is pushing on me, it’s hard to think of reasons not to drink. So what if I’m hungover tomorrow? What have I got to lose? I got nothing.

But that’s “black and white thinking” again, isn’t it?

“Nothing.”

October 21st

Dear Miss Megan,

I will not drink today.

I didn’t drink yesterday. I really wanted to, but I didn’t. I know you would tell me that I should be proud of what I’ve accomplished so far. You would say that all progress is incremental. It doesn't feel like progress but I know you'd say it is.

Anyway, I gotta tell you about last night...

I was up late again, in my tent. Couldn’t sleep. Then I heard shouting and screaming over the traffic. So I stuck my head out and looked down on the overpass at the boys in their RVs.

They was circled up and beating on a guy in a Hawaiian shirt. Fists flying. Fighting like dogs. I was too far away to hear just what they were saying but it was a clear night, all lit up by the street lamp, so I could see everything.

The Hawaiian shirt guy was acting wild. Like an animal. He didn’t look like he was sleeping rough, looked more like someone’s dad or something. Cargo shorts and a ball cap with a goatee.

But he was outta his mind, Miss Megan. Even with all them beating him, he’d grab one of the boys and dig at them, tearing with his fingernails and biting.

I seen people lose their cool with street folk. They’ve said stuff to me they wouldn’t say to a dog. Sometimes people on the streets get attacked, beat up while they was sleeping. Stuff like that happens, but I never saw one like this. Kamikaze-style.

Eventually, the boys knocked him to his knees, circled up, and wailed on him. Five on one. Blood poured from his forehead, out his ears. One of the boys had a skateboard. They lifted it over their head, then brought it down, axle first. SMACK. And he went down. Like a wet sack hitting concrete.

The boys caught their breath and checked themselves. They was tore the hell up, Miss Megan. Blood running down their faces and forearms. Saw there was a fist-sized chunk of skin missing from one of them.

Then they helped their tore-up friends inside the RVs, cursing and spitting at the bloody man on the ground before locking themselves inside.

It's a lawless country for the invisible.

Anyway, I ain’t drinking.

October 22nd

Dear Miss Megan,

You won’t believe this shit.

I woke up and they were gone. The boys. Hawaiian shirt. All of them. And they just left their RVs and their generator and their grill behind. The side door to one of the campers was wide open, too. Not the door to the cab, the one that went into the living area. It was bent and dented. Hanging from one hinge and turning back and forth in the Santa Ana breeze, making all this racket, like WHACK! WHACK!

I walked down to the overpass calling, “Hello?” But I couldn’t hear a thing over that damn door slamming and the morning traffic below. WHACK! WHACK! So I caught the door mid-swing and called inside again. "Anybody home?" No answer. So I stepped inside and closed the door to keep the racket down. Turned round, and I don’t even know how to tell you what I saw.

The sleeping bags were torn. Filling pulled out. Little white fluffs of cotton covered everything. Curtains and blinds were ripped off the windows. Fixtures tore up. Cabinets open. Blood on everything mentioned. Little puddles on the countertop, big dark stains on the carpet. And a couple tore off fingers lying on the thin, brown carpet.

It caught me up, Miss Megan. I couldn’t move. Not until I heard the sirens.

I ran outside, expecting to see LAPD on the overpass waiting for me, but the sirens were coming from the freeway below. Then I noticed there were horns honking, too. People shouting. So I looked down, and it was like watching a movie.

Traffic was snarled, stretching back who knows how far. Lanes all stopped up. Cop cars were working their way down the shoulder into the mess but they couldn’t get through. And all this commotion and noise was centered around a girl stumbling across the 101 on foot.

She looked like a college student in her hoodie and shorts. Real young but she was hobbling. One leg forward, one leg back, dragging a broke shin like it was nothing. White bone sticking out a tan leg. Blood trailing behind her.

The blood and the bone... I seen that before. I seen all kinds of gnarly shit. But I never seen a face like hers before. Her eyes were black and dead. Like a shark. Unfocused. She didn’t even notice the honking and sirens around her. She just jerked forward on her broken leg. Mouth open. Drooling.

Before the police got to her a Camry pulled out of line, trying to swerve around. The girl walked right in front of it. Went under the wheels and came up the other side. Road rash covered her face and shoulders. Nose bloody. One of her arms was pulled from the shoulder socket, dangling like a fishing lure.

She didn't say a word. Just picked herself up and kept stumbling.

Continue to PART TWO.

When it was my turn, I said “I’ll take the club supreme too.” And the guy behind the counter asked... “Do you want it Mike’s way?”

This ruined my day.

Because, god help me, I just didn’t understand. Why would I want the same sandwich options as a stranger? Some guy who just happened to be standing in front of me? So I said, “I don’t know Mike.”

The attendant looked confused. “Okay, but do you want it Mike’s way?” So I said, “I’m not with Mike.” I could have stopped there, but I kept explaining. “Look, we’re not together.”

And that’s when I finally noticed. I wasn’t in Jimmy John’s. I was at Jersey Mike’s. And “Mike’s Way” is how they ask if you want it with everything.

“I don’t know Mike.”

“I’m not with Mike.”

“Look, we’re not together.”

I sounded like I was denying allegations of a personal relationship with Jersey Mike. Whoever he is. Like there were rumors about me dating Jersey Mike so I was going store to store to quash them.

I sounded insane. So I turned on my heel and walked out the door.

I’ll never eat a sandwich again.

A few years ago, I discovered this amazing Japanese TV program: Urasawa Naoki no Manben. It’s basically Inside The Actor’s Studio for mangaka (Japanese comic book author/artists). And the host is none other than Naoki Urasawa, creator of 20th Century Boys, Pluto, and, one of my all-time favorite manga, Billy Bat.

Like most Japanese artisans, the enthusiasm and obsession of these mangaka is absolutely infectious. After inhaling the entire series, I went out and bought ink pens and nibs and pots of ink. I taught myself how to use them and I practiced, practiced, practiced…

And this is the best I could manage.

It’s not bad, but it’s not what I wanted. Also, the TV show kind of glosses over how UNBELIEVABLY TIME CONSUMING drawing manga is. It’s an art that rewards obsession, and only obsession. I just didn’t have it.

Still, I’m glad I took a swing. I’m proud of the comics (the writing, mostly). But I’ll have to settle for watching the greats on TV.

Oh well…

Read part 2 here.

Eating a burger in the back booth of a diner, I was on my phone flicking through crime scene photos when I got a text from my sergeant. “I don’t like radio silence.” The precinct had called a few times looking for updates but I was content to ignore them.

The truth was I had nothing to say. I’d done my due diligence. I checked both victims’ phone records but didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. Friends went to a bar with the victims on Saturday night and they all left in good spirits and at reasonable hours with corroborating witnesses and air-tight alibis. I hadn’t yet looked over the surveillance video from nearby businesses but if those didn’t turn up something monumental, I was fucked. As far as I could tell, there was nothing tying these bodies to anyone but me - and I couldn't even prove that.

My thoughts were interrupted when the waitress walked over to refresh my coffee. She was big and matronly, with kind eyes. “That gonna do it for you, sweetie?”

I nodded and at that moment my mind was hijacked by another vision.

I was in Beverly Hills, walking along Wilshire. Traffic whizzed by as I skipped down the sidewalk, my arms swinging in the air. I was free. My hair clung to my face as I spun with my arms outstretched, beaming brightly up at the starless sky. I laughed, high and hard and unembarrassed at absolutely nothing until my lungs were empty and I stopped, with hands on my knees, to catch my breath.

“Sweetie? You okay?" Suddenly, I became aware that I was gripping the table. The waitress hovered over me. Her eyebrows furrowed as I turned to look up at her, sweat beading on my brow, saying nothing as -

- a car horn blared. I was dancing in the street, laughing. Lights and horns and engines went from a rumble to a roar as the vehicles sped around me and swerved to miss. A Mercedes slammed on their brakes and screeched to a halt just a few feet away from obliterating me. The people in it screamed. They swore at me. More car horns drowned them out. I lifted my arms to the sky and spun in a joyful circle. I couldn’t stop laughing.

The waitress looked me over with evident concern as I struggled to control my breathing. “Sorry. What was the question?”

“Check?”

Sweating and short of breath, I smiled as normally as I was capable. “Yeah, that’d be great."

---

Forty-five minutes later I was looking for street parking on Wilshire. After circling a few times, I finally gave in and paid $15 for the pleasure of a cement garage. I drove up to the roof, found a space, and then walked to the edge and looked down at the street below.

It was rush hour and I wondered what I was even doing there. Below me was a six-lane road with a bumper-to-bumper stream of headlights. The sidewalks on either side were bustling with foot traffic. Everywhere you could put a person or a car, there was one. How was I supposed to find anyone here?

I took the stairs to the street level and waded out into the wasteland. Roaming Beverly Hills with my hands in my pockets, I eventually found the part of the street that matched the vision I had in the diner - the place where I’d danced into traffic. I don’t know what I expected to find but there was nothing there. The investigation had the distinct feeling of retracing my steps.

But then I had another vision.

I heard voices, snippets of conversation all around me. I was poolside at a rooftop party, scribbling on a cocktail napkin. In the corner of the napkin was a blocky logo made from the letters “P.H.,” and in loopy, girlish handwriting, I wrote, “Hide and Seek.”

When my senses returned, I looked across the street and realized I was standing about a hundred feet from the Peninsula Hotel.

---

The elevator let me off on the roof, and I stepped out into a crowded movie premiere party. The dancefloor was crammed with people. There was a steady pulse of club music coming from a DJ in the corner. He never once made eye contact with his audience, who all acted like he wasn’t there anyway.

I walked over to the bar and ordered something to help me adjust to the sudden stimulation. The bartender had a mohawk and a handlebar mustache, and the drink convinced me he was there to look the part. I choked it back but then -

I was wearing a black dress, standing within a crush of people, easing my way through a dancefloor. My fingers delicately pulled at arms and pressed into shoulders, clearing a path through the beautiful people until I emerged, the lights of the city looming high above me. I was by the bar, approaching a thin man in a limp, black suit. I walked over, reached out, and put a hand on his -

The vision was interrupted by a hand on my shoulder. I turned around and found myself looking at a dark-haired woman in a black cocktail dress, beaming up at me with big, brown eyes.

“Angie!" I sputtered.

“Ellis.”

“Hide and seek?” I asked.

"Ready or not, here I am.” Angela laughed, and everything failed me. My wits, my mouth, my mind. I grasped for words that were just not there.

“You knew it was me,” she said. When I didn’t respond, she said forcefully, “You remembered.”

Despite standing two feet from one another, she had to shout over the music. Grasping my lapel, she led me somewhere quieter—somewhere private—a walkway between the bar’s backstop and the handrail surrounding the roof. She whirled around to face me with her eyes wide and electric.

“You knew, right? Our link, our tether, our little... twin thing. I’m not delusional.” She looked at me seriously, her eyes burning with intensity. “You knew about it.”

I sputtered, unable to find coherency. I think I tried to say something but the words stopped at the back of my throat.

She grabbed my shoulders, stopping me, and took a deep breath. “I can see through your eyes, Ellis. Not your thoughts, but what you see. I’ve always been able to. I didn’t even realize that other people couldn’t do it for a while. I didn't realize how special we are." She waited for a response but I didn’t have one. “I was so lucky. I was never truly locked away at that hospital because I could always be with my brother.”

There was sweat on my back despite the cool night breeze. “What do you mean?”

“Ellis, I sat in a wheelchair at the corner of a psych ward and watched what you did for almost twenty years. Your eyes were like my favorite TV channel. You were my salvation. I saw every milestone, every crime scene, every trip to the urinal. I saw it all.” She smiled coquettishly, “Wanna see?”

I saw a blood-covered woman, dead on the floor of a kitchen. Her neck was twisted unnaturally, broken by a jealous husband I'd put in Pelican Bay. It was a case from almost three years ago. The kind of thing you hope you can unsee. I squeezed my eyes shut. Then -

I saw three gang members, lined up in an alley, each one shot in the back of the head. Executed. The flies were thick in the air, buzzing incessantly. One landed on my lip, and I swatted it away.

Back on the roof, I grabbed the handrail for support. “Angela...”

Her mouth was a straight line. “Not very pretty, I guess. But you know what’s worse than watching body after body? Watching your brother abandon you. When they took me away, I watched it through your eyes. I saw it the way you saw it. Through the window. And it scarred me, But you...” She was practically vibrating with anger. “You tried to forget me, and I saw that, too.”

Tears welled at the corners of her eyes. We stared into each others eyes in silence for a long time. It was the accusation I’d been dreading, and it ripped through me because I knew she was right. “You really couldn’t feel me in there? Not even a tickle at the back of your mind?” It was more of an accusation than a question, asked between rivulets of tears coursing down her face.

Suddenly, she laughed, a hand to her lips in pure delight. “My god. If you could only see yourself right now. Wait, what am I saying? Of course you can.”

Suddenly, I was standing in a little walkway between the bar and the railing, looking up at a man who was rail-thin and pale with bags under his eyes. His mouth was open in horror, eyebrows knitted together. He looked like a ghost who had seen a ghost. And he was me.

She laughed again, and the spell was broken. “After the hospital—well, after the meds wore off—I figured out I could actually reverse the flow. I could send the images back to you, I could feel it. And that’s just so handy. Because now that I know it works and we’re catching up on lost time, I don’t have to tell you how things have been... I can show you."

I was wearing soiled pajama pants, screaming on the tile floor of a hospital ward. Hot piss ran freely between my legs as two orderlies held me down. They stabbed me with a hypodermic needle, shouting, “Relax! Relax!”

I saw a hospital ceiling as electricity coursed through my brain. I was lying on a table. Straps across my chest and legs held me in place. My back arched in agony, and I bit down on a rubber mouth guard. I heard nothing but the throb of electricity, as though it were the only sound the world ever made.

I lay in bed, near catatonic, unable to move from the overdose of haloperidol tablets I’d just swallowed; a week’s worth of tablets that I’d saved, hiding them beneath my tongue. My eyes felt heavy, and I couldn’t focus, not visually or mentally. The room became dim. Further away. I was prepared for death. Welcoming it. Done. An orderly rushed in to save me just before I lost consciousness.

My knees buckled, and I had to grab the railing with both hands to stay on my feet. There was blood on my lip where I'd bitten it. Angie leaned in conspiratorially, her eyes twinkling with mischief. “I went through all of that because you wouldn’t tell them it was real. You know that, right? That’s why you’re here. Doesn’t seem very fair, does it?"

I noticed I was breathing heavily, struggling to find enough oxygen on this wide open rooftop.

“I think it’s your turn to watch, Ellis.”

“Watch what?” My voice was dry, nearly lost beneath the dance music.

"Whatever I want."

And then I saw 238. I was looking at the address, memorizing it as The Redhead leaned against the door and The Suit drunkenly fumbled his key into the lock.

Angela leaned in and whispered, “Those two wanted to have sex with me.” She gasped in mock horror.

I leaned back on the couch as The Redhead kissed me, groping my breasts, her hands working their way under my blouse. The Suit sat in the corner, watching and drinking wine out of a coffee mug.

“They found me outside a bar. Took me home. But I wasn’t interested in sex.”

The Suit walked backward, through a beaded curtain, beckoning The Redhead and me into the bedroom. They didn't notice me steal a blue-handled knife from the table.

“No. I needed them to help me find my brother."

My hand clamped tightly around a fistful of The Redhead’s dress. Beneath us, on his hands and knees, The Suit was bleeding from his chest.

“Or, I guess, so you could find me,” Angela giggled.

The Redhead screamed.

"It's your turn to watch, Ellis. I'm going to show you so many wonderful things. So many-"

I lunged at her, my forearm impacting her throat, shoving her back against the railing. I grabbed her leg behind the knee and pulled up with all my strength. She spun backwards, feet over her head, and tumbled off the edge of the roof.

I saw my own haunted face as I fell backward, engulfed by a sudden rush of air. Lights spun around me as I plummeted past hotel windows, looking up at the sky, accelerating to the street below.

And then I saw nothing.

---

Beneath the cover of screaming pedestrians on the sidewalk below, I left the party unnoticed. Back at home, I called my sarge and told her I had no leads.

Angie died a Jane Doe. She had no ID, no identity at all, really. If someone ever figured out her name, the story wrote itself. She was a missing psych patient who died tragically in a strange city.

But the truth is, I abandoned her. And that's what killed her.

Everyone carries shame, and if you don’t, you will. Something that’s never talked about, never toyed with, and if you could cut it out of yourself, you wouldn't hesitate. But it's there, and there it will stay. I used to tell myself that the worst parts of me are bedrock. That I’ve constructed what good I am capable of atop a sturdy foundation of necessary evils. But it's a lie. When the other side of the mirror came for me, it told me the truth about myself. And I didn't like that.

So I broke the mirror.

The committee arranged for a horse and carriage to meet the seniors in the parking lot. They would pick students up at our cars and take us to the front door of the venue. 

I thought it was a stupid idea and I said so. It just reinforced all that Cinderella nonsense prom was so steeped in. I wanted a modern prom. With Korn and Limp Bizkit.

Then my girlfriend told me the horse and carriage was her idea. I probably should have taken what I said back but I was 17. So I doubled down and called it ridiculous.

The night of the prom, we got there early and my girlfriend spotted the guy with the horses setting up. She sternly informed me that we were going to ride in the carriage. So I pulled into a spot and we walked over in our rented tux and gown.

I have to admit, it was actually pretty cool. It was a nice night. Perfect temperature. We looked good. The horses looked fantastic. Everything was straight out of a fairy tale, and maybe that wasn't so bad.

Then the carriage rolled up to the front of the venue. The line of students waiting to get inside saw us for the first time and they went crazy. Almost at once, they jumped to their feet and applauded. There was screaming, hand waving, dancing... I even remember people taking pictures of us with cameras. Film cameras, because that's how old I am. People paid real money to preserve this memory.

We made an enormous impression.

Then someone shouted, “You da man!” because that's also how old I am. And then some other people shouted my name. Not my girlfriend’s, mine.

And that’s when it dawned on me: no one knew about the horse and carriage but the prom committee. It was a surprise. My girlfriend and I were the very first riders.

So everyone in line, most of the senior class, assumed that I rented Cinderella's carriage instead of a limo and took it across town to prom as a grand romantic gesture. Perhaps the most romantic gesture that many of these impressionable minds had ever witnessed.

I was a legend. 

Because of something my girlfriend did.

Which I called ridiculous.

Someday my daughter will ask me what prom was like and I'm going to lie.

Twenty-five years ago, we were nine. Angela was “it."

I could hear her shouting from around the corner of our apartment building, “… NINE … EIGHT … SEVEN …” I sprinted across the burnt grass. It was one of those brutal summer days in suburban Kentucky where the heat quivered in the air.

At the far corner of the property was a rusted metal shed that held the maintenance equipment. Out of breath and slick with sweat, I wedged myself in beside it, hiding in the dark crevice between the shed and a chain-link fence. I’d dirtied my tank top, but the mass of overgrown kudzu that covered my hiding spot made me nearly invisible.

Angie’s voice echoed off a neighboring building, “… TWO … ONE! READY OR NOT, HERE I COME!"

Controlling my breath, I tried to make myself as small as possible. Hide-and-seek was our favorite game, but for different reasons. I was always the one who hid. I enjoyed the sensation of disappearing and the idea of someone looking for me. My twin sister, Angela, always did the seeking. She enjoyed the hunt.

From behind the leaves, I watched her emerge from the side of the apartment building and slink through the midday sun. Angela had long black hair and dark features. At nine years old she was gangly and thin but already filled with a peculiar audacity - a spark of impulsivity that seemed to dance behind her big, brown eyes. Mom called her “a pistol” or “a firecracker." I interpreted that to mean “dangerous.”

As I watched, I realized that she was making a show of looking for me. She tip-toed across the dry grass like a silent movie villain, cartoonishly searching, with one hand shading her eyes. Then she ran over to a plastic bin, the building’s communal outdoor toy chest, and rooted through it, shouting, “Ellis! Oh, Ellis! Are you in here? Where are you?”

Picking a baseball from the bin, she tossed it in the air a few times, scratching her chin as though lost in thought. “Where could he be?” She wondered aloud. “Oh! I know!” Then she swiveled on her toes and threw the ball at me as hard as she could.

It whistled through the air before smacking the side of the metal shed just inches from my face. The deafening clang of the rusted metal siding shocked me, and I jumped out screaming, “Hey, watch it!” But Angie just laughed, doubling over at her own cleverness.

“How’d you know where I was?” I asked.

“I saw the tool shed.”

I turned and looked at the structure behind me. “But how did you see me?"

“I just did. When I closed my eyes and counted.”

“How?”

“In my head, dummy!” And then she fell over laughing.

---

The last number I had for the hospital just rang. I checked online but the Kentucky Division of Behavioral Health's website was a mess of broken links. Eventually, I got through to someone at Health and Human Services and that’s how I learned that Hartman-Neal Psychiatric Hospital closed a week prior.

“You can’t just close a hospital, can you?”

“There were issues with the pipes, sir. Legionella, I believe." She sounded like a bored, government functionary who didn’t need this conversation.

“So what happened to the patients?”

"Most were transferred to different facilities in the system. Are you looking for information on anyone in particular?”

“Yes."

"Well, if you’re listed as the primary caregiver, I could get that for you."

Angie’s primary caregiver? That would have been Mom. “What if I'm a cop?”

“Then there’s a form you can fill out.” I could hear her smirking.

So I leveled with her. “What if… What if I’m looking for my sister and I think she might be in a lot of trouble?”

She paused. “Then… there’s a form.”

I sighed so she could hear it. “Well, what would you do if you needed to know where your sick sister is right now?”

She paused, weighing her options. “Where are you calling from?”

“Los Angeles.”

“Mm,” she mumbled. “She’s probably not far then.”

After hanging up, I searched the Louisville Journal for stories mentioning the hospital and got a handful of hits, mostly about Legionella. One of them stuck out, however. “Kentucky Buses Hundreds of Mentally Ill Patients To Cities Around The Country.”

It was an exposé about the beleaguered Hartman-Neal putting their patients on Greyhounds headed to far-flung locations across America. The writer drew a connection between slashed funding and “mistakes” made. Many of them arrived at their destinations with no plan, no relatives, and no funds. The hospitals in the receiving cities called it "patient dumping."

One line of the article stood out to me. “Nearly a third of patients released were sent to California, including several hundred to Los Angeles County.”

---

What’s so unnerving about the person on the other side of the mirror is that they are both exactly you and exactly the opposite of you, which is an apt description of my twin sister, Angela. Angie was strong where I was weak. Confident where I was self-conscious. Sick where I was sane.

I understood from a young age that the world was dangerous, and I withdrew from it. I remember watching as people flitted through social gatherings, dipping and diving through small talk like figure skaters. I felt very much apart from that experience. I was always more comfortable observing or dissecting than participating. People called me “quiet” when they knew I could hear them and “haunted” when they didn’t.

Angie was the opposite. She was maniacally social and attracted people like a magnet. Beautiful and effervescent, there was something devious and fun about her. As a kid, when you were with Angie, it was like watching a rated ‘R’ movie or sneaking a drink from the liquor cabinet. There was something about her that felt wrong.

I remember she used to tell kids on the school bus that we were Siamese twins. She could hold a dozen sixth-graders under her spell with the story. “We were born with our hands fused together. Doctors had to cut us apart.”

Her audience of schoolgirls would squint at one another, neither believing her nor refuting her, so Angie would shrug and say, “Ask him.” They’d turn to look at me at the back of the bus, so I’d look up from my book and nod my head, confirming the lie. Pretty soon the whole school knew our fake origin story, ridiculous as it was.

But in our freshman year of high school, something happened. Where once Angie had been bright and witty, she became moody. Where she was effervescent, she’d become dark. She had always been impulsive, but now she was erratic.

On an October afternoon, I was sitting in the back of my social studies class when Officer Sullivan, the school’s police officer, came to the door and asked for me. “Ellis? Can you come over here, please?” There was a low chorus of “ooohs” from the class as I stood up. “Grab your things, son,” Officer Sullivan said, and the “ooohs” grew louder.

I picked up my backpack and followed him into the hall. Tall and thick, Sullivan led me to the front office, saying, “You’re not in any trouble." When I didn’t respond, he explained, “We just want to make sure you’re safe.” He took me to the school secretary, who asked me to sit in the lobby until my mother came to pick me up. I asked her why, but she just shook her head.

I slumped into the glass-fronted lobby, dropped my backpack, then looked outside to see Angie, with handcuffs on her wrists and ankles, being dragged by several cops, kicking and screaming, into the back of a waiting police cruiser. With her hair smeared across her face, she struggled and jerked to free herself. Once locked in the back of the squad car, she lay on the seat and kicked at the windows with the heels of her sneakers until she was driven away.

I wouldn’t find out until I returned to school a few weeks later that the vice-principal found mom’s chef knife in Angie’s locker. When administrators asked for an explanation, what she said frightened them. For the next two weeks, Angie slept in mom’s room and we weren’t allowed to see each other. There were a lot of concerned phone calls from the school and a series of doctor visits for my sister.

One day, a van parked in front of our building and I watched from my bedroom as Angie was escorted into it by a heavyset man in nurse’s scrubs. Before she got in, she looked up at our building - right at me - and then she stepped into the van and was gone.

That night, in a terse conversation at the dinner table, mom stared at her plate as she told me, “Angela has something called a recurring delusion, honey. And she thinks that if she hurts you, it might make it stop. When she knows that’s not true, she can come back to live with us again.” She looked up at me, crying openly. “I love you both... So much. But your sister’s very sick right now. And we don’t know if she’s going to get better."

That was how my sister became my secret. We didn’t talk about her anymore. I understood that her illness never changed, but only because I was never informed of any changes. In fact, I was told nothing. As a child, I was never taken to visit her, and as an adult, I maintained the tradition.

I never wrote her. I never called her.

I don’t know why.

The doctors called it “reflux,” a phase that a lot of infants go through. To ensure she got the nutrition she needed, we would have to feed her more frequently.

As in, every single hour.

To meet demand, my wife and I slept in shifts. I would turn in at 8:00PM and take over from my wife at midnight. That meant I was spending a lot of unstructured time alone with the baby in the wee hours of the morning.

I'm not sure why, but I started creating videos during those quiet hours.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

Overall, I think they hold up surprisingly well. I rarely laugh at my own jokes, but I actually found myself enjoying these. In retrospect, I was working through a lot of fear and the videos were how I made sense of those feelings.

Fear is a big part of parenting (at least, it is for me). At the time, I feared SIDS more than anything, but I was also afraid of how quickly and irrevocably my life was changing. I was giving up control. I was giving up my time, my peace, my health. I’d had a predictable life, and now I didn’t.

Watching them now, these videos feel like dispatches from a forgotten war. I see the sweat and the exhaustion and the thousand yard stare, and wish that I could reach through the screen and tell myself that it would all be okay.

Eventually, my daughter’s reflux subsided, our sleep schedule returned to normal, and the late night video shoots came to an end. It was a period of a few weeks, at most. But we’ll always have the videos we made together, a reminder of a strange and special time.

Hopefully, the first of many.

Finally, a bit of housekeeping:

I haven’t really established my Substack routine yet, so I wanted to take a moment to state my intentions.

As I said in my introduction, I intend to publish a portion of my fiction (approximately 2,000 words) every week. But I will also be publishing a weekly newsletter with no organizing principle. No theme. No objective. No word count. There may be art. There may be videos. There may be interactivity.

But there will be no rules.

This was the first such post.

Sometimes I catch myself staring into the mirror.

I read somewhere, maybe in a magazine, that every time you look at yourself, you rewrite the definition in your brain that’s filed under "me.” It reminded me of witness testimony. Defense lawyers sometimes argue that memories are imperfect in a similar way. They quote studies that say every time you remember something, you change it. You remember it without a particular detail, and suddenly that detail was never there to begin with. You rewrite the whole scene, without that detail, and that's how you remember it until the next time you rewrite it in your head, each time moving further and further away from the truth, and always remembering yourself as having been just a slightly better person.

Maybe that's what I'm trying to do.

Lately, I’ve thought about the mirror looking back - as if my reflection is the real me. Because there’s something that happens in the fraction of a millisecond that it takes for the brain to process what it's seeing and, in that space, I can feel completely disconnected. Wholly divorced from the movement of the arms, the head, the eyes. I feel apart from myself, so maybe it actually is someone else. Maybe there's some magic to it and the room I'm looking into is the real one. The one that matters. And that guy, the one standing in a bathroom just like mine except everything is reversed? That guy’s the real me.

Then I wonder things. Like, what if we walk out of our bathrooms, in our separate dimensions, and our lives diverge? I go left, he goes right. I drive a Ford, he drives a Chevy. I tango, he merengues. Maybe, on his side, he’s the mayor. Or maybe he's even happy.

Maybe that’s his disappointment I see every day.

He watches me loosen my tie, take off my jacket, and unclip the badge from my belt. He watches me unholster my sidearm and set it on the bathroom counter. And the whole time he’s watching, mimicking everything I do like Harpo Marx, he’s got these crinkled crow’s feet sitting over his cheeks that are downturned in that way that only deep self-hatred can create.

In this moment, I wonder if he hates me as much as I do.

---

238.

I stood in the hall and stared at the numbers beside the door because they'd been in my head the whole morning. Overnight, they emerged from the ether, and I turned the digits backward and forward in my mind like a sore spot on my tongue. By the time I was in the car, backing out of my driveway, they'd branded themselves onto my brain.

It was unlike me. Were they numbers in my high school locker combination? A fraction of some long-forgotten phone number? It was a puzzle piece with no puzzle—a pebble in my shoe.

Irritated, I drove across town to a strange address, where a crime scene tech took me upstairs and, standing in a little, open-air hallway, I discovered that 238 was the victim's apartment number. I stared at the wall-mounted black numbers in confusion. This wasn't a detail I'd half-forgotten; the call came in early this morning while I was asleep. And it sure as hell wasn't a coincidence, detectives don't believe in those.

I was vaguely aware that Sharon Li, the CSI tech, was staring at me with concern. She glanced around the little walkway, which had been cordoned off with crime scene tape, to see if anyone else had noticed my stunned expression before asking, “Ellis. You good?"

I smoothed my tie and tried to look normal. “Yeah. Good."

Li watched me out of the corner of her eye. She wore khakis and a black polo with blue surgical booties over her tennis shoes. She'd already been on the scene for hours, collecting evidence. Pulling aside the yellow tape strung across the door, she ushered me inside.

The second my feet crossed the threshold, I was hit by the most intense wave of déjà vu I've ever experienced. It washed over me like a cold chill, a crystal clear memory of walking in that same door. It was confusing. At first glance, the apartment was so unremarkable. It was just a lonely one-bedroom with dirty laminate floors and cheap Ikea furniture. There were a thousand places in the valley just like it.

Why would I remember this one?

I knew the apartment intimately. Everything about it was familiar to me. I knew the little round table with its matching chairs in the corner of the kitchen. I knew the David Bowie albums hung like pictures on the walls. I knew the crusty shag rug on the living room floor. I knew it all, but I just couldn't place it.

I kept this feeling to myself as I mutely wandered the limited floor space. There was no point in burdening Li with any of this. Déjà vu is like a dream: it’s only interesting to the person experiencing it. No one cares that your brain just shit itself.

Li watched as I let my eyes drift across the room. I consciously erased the patches of fingerprint powder here and there, trying to jog my memory. It didn't work. I began to doubt myself. Surely I was thinking of somewhere else, somewhere similar. Shit, half the people in L.A. County live like this.

"Where are they?" I asked. Deep inside, I already knew, but I still asked.

"Bedroom," Li said, hooking a thumb over her shoulder.

"We got nothing in here?" I gestured vaguely at the combination living room, dining room, and kitchen -- referencing the absence of evidence tags.

Li shook her head. "There are two sets of latents, probably our victims. We found them everywhere except where you want them. The weapon's clean. The doorknobs and coffee table look wiped. I wouldn't hold out hope for a fingerprint match."

“Well… Hope’s overrated," I mumbled.

Just as the words left my lips, it hit me. I was frozen to the spot as a vision hijacked my mind. It was just for a moment, but it seemed to happen in slow motion. Suddenly, I remembered how I knew this apartment.

I’d murdered two people in it.

I was in the dark, cramped bedroom with a red-haired woman, my hand clamped tightly around a fistful of her dress, not letting her escape. Beneath us, on his hands and knees, was a man in a suit, bleeding like a sputtering garden hose from a hole in his chest.

I stabbed the redhead, and her eyes opened wide with shock. She looked down to find a blue-handled kitchen knife stuck between her ribs, just where I’d put it. Looking up in horror, her expression begged me to understand that this wasn't how her story ended, then she fell sideways to the ground.

I shook the memory away and came back to reality, immediately checking to see if Li noticed me stop in my tracks while the color drained from my face. Luckily, she was facing away, walking through a beaded curtain into the adjoining bedroom.

“Hate these things,” she said, pulling the strands aside and inviting me in.

I clenched my molars together, trying not to look horrified, as I robotically followed her. Once inside, I felt a sinking in the pit of my stomach. The bedroom was exactly as I'd remembered. It was dark and cramped. Lying on the wood floor were two corpses: Red Hair and The Suit. Blood everywhere. It took a conscious effort not to panic.

"Okay," Li said. "Two vics: one male, one female. The male’s got three deep torso lacerations, any one of which would have been fatal. Female has one, here on her side.” She pointed to a strip of gore beneath the redhead’s left arm where the blood had dried black and crusted.

I examined the cut, trying to appear calm. "Where's the knife?”

Li pointed with her chin. “On the bed.”

I walked over and all I could do was stare at it. Blue-handled. Fuck. How was any of this possible? My mind raced, flipping through all the questions I’m supposed to ask. "You checked the kitchen?"

Li nodded. "Yeah, they must have found the weapon here. It's part of a multi-colored set. Pink, blue, orange… The rest are in the dishwasher if you want a look."

Not knowing what else to do, I stared at the corpses. “I’ll take your word for it. Any ID?"

“Personal effects are bagged on the bedside table if you want to look. DLs say they lived here."

I walked over and took a cellphone picture of the drivers’ licenses. “Time of death?"

CSIs don’t love this question. In the early stages of an investigation, determining the exact time of death is more art than science, but it’s also some of the most crucial information they can provide. Li grimaced, hands on hips, then said, "I can't be precise, but sometime this weekend. More than 12 hours ago, less than... 48? Probably Saturday night, judging by their clothes."

I stared at the bodies, wondering how I knew them. Did I know them? Where was I Saturday night?

They stared back, answerless. Then I nodded for Li’s benefit, playing the part of the calm, collected professional investigator. “That's enough for me to work with."

---

Ten minutes later, I was sitting in my car, parked at the curb. I stared into the rearview mirror and gripped the steering wheel so hard I could hear it crunch between my fingers.

In my mind's eye, I saw The Redhead and The Suit. It was like a video played on repeat—red hair, blood, disbelief, over and over again. Tormented, I thought about baseball and did my times tables until slowly the images receded into the back of my mind. Then I checked the alibi of my one and only suspect: me.

One of the great joys of living in Los Angeles is leaving. Some go to Palm Springs, some to Joshua Tree… My summertime ritual is to take advantage of the off-season rates and rent a cabin in Big Bear for a weekend of solitude. I'd only just gotten back last night.

I opened the bank app on my phone and scrolled through recent transactions. My chest unclenched in relief when I realized there was a paper trail. I checked in at the cabin rental agency with a credit card on Friday afternoon. I also bought beer at the grocery store in town and gas at a Mobil station before driving back late Sunday night. Some of those places would have security cameras to corroborate that I was 100 miles away when this happened.

It was an uncomfortable experience, looking through my phone for evidence, but it made a truth I didn’t want to believe so real that it was almost tangible. I didn’t kill these people. Of that, I was certain.

I didn’t kill these people because those weren’t my memories.

Click HERE to continue to part 2.

I was 13 when Stephen King published The Green Mile in six thin installments. The hundred-page chapbooks were everywhere. Newsstands. Wal-Mart. You could even find them near the register at the grocery store, next to The National Enquirer and Weekly World News. It was a craze, and I was happy to be along for the ride.

The whole experience felt unique. The book’s publishing schedule forced me to wait weeks between installments. I had more time to think about the story, and I was acutely aware that the author was out there doing the same. The story felt more alive because of that, brimming with possibility. When all the chapbooks were collected in a single volume, I held it in my hands and thought, “What a shame that whoever buys this will miss out on all the excitement.”

That was my introduction to serialization. I loved it immediately. Later, I’d fall headfirst into a hundred other stories that were published piecemeal. Sherlock Holmes. Dune. Dick Tracy. Berserk. And while I didn’t get a chance to experience the excitement of their publications, I still felt the thrill of the tight rope walk. I read them knowing that the writers didn’t have endings when they published their beginnings. There was something heroic about that, something almost reckless. It was like they were saying, “I don’t know exactly where this is going, I just know I’m good enough that you’ll like it.” I loved that confidence. I loved the risk.

From then on, serialization—or something like it—became the goal. I wanted to walk that tight rope. I learned to write, I went to art school, I worked in Hollywood, I sold scripts, I wrote for a TV show. I worked my way into the modern incarnation of my dream. Or so I thought. But each step forward came with tradeoffs, and I realized that I would never be able to tell all the stories I wanted to that way.

So I bought a domain name.

Welcome to Null Theory. My name is Ben Wolf and I’ll be using this space to share serialized genre fiction. Subscribers will receive the latest installment of my current story in their inbox. There will be science fiction. There will be horror. There will be pulp. It will have action, and drama, and romance, and passion, and comedy. At least, that’s the plan. I don’t know exactly where this is going, I just know I’m good enough that you’ll like it.

Let’s get started…