Okay so here’s the schtick. You’re going to stick your hand in there, no, not there, there, and then just hold it there. Now don’t move. I mean it.

Okay now you over there with the pigtails. Get the fuck over here. I want you to take your foot across, yeah like that, and then just hold it. No you can’t use the bathroom. I don’t care if it’s emergency. Well, Sally, you should’ve thought of that before you decided to play the goddamn game.

Alright now Will. I want you to get over here. Okay you little fuckface take your left arm, no your left arm, jesus christ what’s the point of school, and you’re going to place it right next to Sally’s leg. See that little dot? That’s where you want to go.

Now Sally see that blue spot right there? According to this, you want to take your other hand and reach for it. Just, yeah okay you got it and NO WILL ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME SHE DIDN’T EVEN TOUCH YOU AND YOU FELL. Great fucking job kid now we have to start all the way over. Clear the mat. And get that fucking dirt off it what do I look like a cleaning lady? Alright let’s do this again.

Gena’s problem was that she couldn’t understand. The tapping of the group therapist’s pen chimed hollow; it pulsed dullness and dim cognition. No one was going to get better.

“How are we today?” Eric asked the group. His eyes had that particular color of maybe grey, maybe a speck of color, but no one was going to look at his eyes, just the chart he tapped.

Ermine and Vic, the red group’s brothers spoke at the same time, “We need a ping-pong table.”

“Is this how both of you feel? I’d like to hear from each of you individually,” Eric said.

Ermine and Vic crossed their arms and slumped in their chairs simultaneously. Gena saw their blue heart lines pumping to the exact same beat. They thought they were the same person, but had been whipped into speaking as “we” since they were toddlers.

“Nothing else?” Eric made some notes on the chart. The scritch and scratch of his pen called out weight and arrogance. The pen seemed to glow a bit to Gena’s eyes, like it was feeding. “I’m sure individual letters submitted by the both of you would work wonders on the funding of extracurriculars.” The brothers weren’t biting. They’d set out their hopes and had them properly dashed. “Too bad. Well, let’s have Vic stand up and find a separate seat, please. You know we’re working on not sitting next to each other.”

The brothers pretended to not hear.

“I could tap on the glass and get Mat in here if that’s something you boys are interested in doing today.”

They looked at each other and nodded at the same time. They both stood up and walked to the center of the group, turned back to back then perfectly split, both walking over to another chair opposite. They stared at each other across the void. There was no space between them.

“Well, Samantha, how are you feeling on this fine morning?” Eric asked a little perkier. The whites of his teeth were brighter. Samantha hated that name, she was Stolt to herself and everyone else and wouldn’t respond to anything otherwise. Stolt crossed her legs, the white hospital pants and shirt she wore wrinkled from her motion and made hollow, scrunched sounds.

Eric waited patiently, he was paid to be there. Everyone sighed because everyone had tried the waiting game with Eric and it never worked. He’d make marks on his chart. The silence would crescendo over the course of the hour and consume all the group’s thoughts. The silence had to be filled. But no one wanted to fill it. The hungry silence ate and ate and ate all their hearts.

“Hey Stolt,” Gena leaned over and nudged her knee, “how was your terrible morning?”

Stolt, jostled from her defiance looked up at Gena. Stolt saw something there, a shimmer of color, a note of humanity.

“My morning began with the rising sun. It was orange from a purple night. It burned my eyes and I knew I was still alive. I closed them to keep out the burning though I longed for it to consume my soul. To die in the fire of the sun would be a great honor.” A grim smile completed her litany.

“A witch, before they killed her,” Gena said with her eyes askew from Eric, “told me that sunshine and fire are one and the same in all places across the universe.”

“Do you think about death often, Samantha?” Eric jumped in.

“Dude, she likes being called Stolt. Even my third grade teacher asked what names we preferred being called and he molested me, alright?” Viv’s lips glowed with rivalry. She had a voice which could be heard from across the greatest din, a triangle chiming from the back of an orchestra.

“Speak when it’s your turn, Vivian.” Eric turned his attention back to Stolt, “Samantha is your real name. That’s the person who is going to walk out from this hospital, a woman who knows who she is and understands how to live in this world. Samantha’s persona is the cause which resulted her being here. And I’ll not feed such malediction.”

Stolt raised her shoulders in defense. Somewhere another chord from another name zapped into her mind. Two songs played across her soul. “Sa-man-tha,” she said like there was a bad taste in her mouth.

Eric looked at her quizzically. “Yes, she’s the girl we’re looking for. Likes butterflies, paints rolling landscapes, studies everything about Australia. Would you like to fulfill your dream of going to Australia, Samantha?”

She shook her head, “Butterflies are weak.” Stolt then closed her eyes to meditate somewhere far away, where waves crashed like swords crossing and the sun poured molten, down from heaven.

“I guess we should move on. Gena, you seem particularly interested today, would you like to share how you are this morning?” Eric clicked his pen several times over.

“Do I get good marks if I say I feel okay?” Gena asked.

Snickers and empty guffaws made their way around. Tim and Ermine motioned at each other like they’d had the balls to ask about the chart.

“Now Gena, we don’t ask about what I mark down. What I put here doesn’t matter. It’s about how you’re actually feeling.”

Gena rolled her eyes against the bullshit, “That’s like saying it doesn’t matter if I swallow razorblades or coffee.”

The fluorescent lights hummed and burned Gena’s vision. This whole institution was meant to deaden and destroy the human spirit. Why would anyone think they could get better in such a dreary place?

Eric made a note on his chart, “Anyone else projecting that it is because of me they are being kept here?”

Time slowed and tension thrummed low and hostile. Stolt, Viv, Vic, and Ermine all raised their hands. Gena saw their arms moving in perfect unison, as if the same song of gallows stabbed into their spines simultaneously.

Gena saw the group circle and the four hands floating up to their apex. If she lifted her hand too, they’d create the five points of the pentagram. Stay in shadows, but misery. Risk it all and reveal yourself to freedom.

Gena raised her hand with the group. They were all outsiders. They were all one foot in this world and one foot out. They couldn’t see the vibrations like Gena could. But it didn’t matter. Gena’s hand reached into the void and her hand completed the five points of the star.

A strum of shock and beauty coursed through the five, like a splitting tree or a flower petal being ripped in the name of love. Eric dropped his pen to the floor and as Gena stood so did the rest.

The air became fresh. Their voices called high and low like the wind over empty bottles. The glass and walls and fluorescent lights and concrete floor melted away.

“Don’t break the circle!” Gena cried as they shimmered away from the world.

Grass and sunshine suddenly came to be. Clouds and trees and the hawk crying. Heart beats and smiles. The group looked around at one another.

Eric knelt and touched the ground, “How, where... What did you do?”

Gena looked down on him with glee, “You were right, Eric. It wasn’t because of you we were stuck there. Thank you for pointing out that was merely our projection.”

Every single person in the world has magic.

Some have the magic to change a bunch of different things into one amazing thing,

Others have the ability to physically do things with ease, no work needed.

Others are able to imagine and create and see things in the world and put them on a page in various shades and hues, making it emotional and amazing, and unique.

More still have the ability to know what others are thinking and feeling and are able to say exactly what we need them to.

And yet some in the world never realize their magic, so make others feel better, to make beautiful sounds out of wood and metal, they shut it inside, bury it deep.

Many wonder why, if they have magic, why not use it and develop it?

Because people choose, and sometimes those who have developed their magic more than others makes other feel like they should give up before they mess up.

Everyone has escepcially one gift. The power to bring a person down, and the power to ignite the magic in even the most buried of souls.

It is always a choice.

Choose what your magic will do, because your magic forms you. It forms others.

Every single person in the world has magic, make your magic bring out the magic in others.

The creases in the corners of his smile, the gold flecks in his eyes. His hand in mine, all the weight of the world off my shoulders and I am Atlas at a loss. A loss for words, a loss for rationale or explanation. Alas, Atlas allows the world to slip off her shoulders but we carry on in the moonlight, more magic than memory. And as the world spins off into oblivion I am left with no spells or aces, no cauldrons or cults, no more of Zeus's fire, but magic nonetheless.

#magic #myth #love

Magic and spells

Used by my will

Singing of bells

For an empty heart, it fills

Vivacious colors

To ones delight

So intrigued

You lose your sight

People will bend

Right under my thumb

But soon the magic

Begins to feel numb

Hollow bodies

And stolen minds

Replaced by spells

To make better times

Good intentions

Of pink and gold

Turned to rust

They sink and mold

Emotions too real

Cannot be put under

So keep your fairytale

Deep in a slumber

My memory has been good to you since you left.

It's taken you and buffed your sharp edges,

polished up your one-liners,

and edited your conversations for wit and sensitivity.

It's rationalized your selfishness and rather quick temper,

forgotten how you hated sharing a single bed,

inconvenience in general.

It even injects feeling into your empty phrases.

You'd love my memory of you.

So I wouldn't advise you to come back.

You could never compete with this memory of mine.

Even your eyes aren't that blue.

Some would say that a feeling doesn’t have a smell. But the fortune tellers would have to disagree. At least those of us who are of true descent. The spirits and magicks that pulse through the wind--the fates and futures that rise and fall like the tides of the very air we breath--can be so chokingly distinct to a Romani, a keeper of destinies.

Still, one must be trained in the ways. To recognize how certain strains of serendipity have a familiar, welcoming spice that tickles the nostrils, while others bring with it a cloud of musky-scented mourning that clings to the lungs and lingers in the clothes.

People bring with them their own kismet, meandering off them like incense. Their moods, hopes, and fears become their own fortune teller that need merely be read by those with a nose to sense it.

I've never liked my nose really--too pointy and small. It's a wonder the insignificant thing can sense anything at all. But it does. More than I want to, that's for sure.

I hold my long hair back with a scarf, tieing it around my head with a knot against the back of my neck. A woman lifts the flap of my tent and enters bringing with her a sweet scent.

As I shuffle the cards the bangles on my wrist clang together like wind chimes singing of the impending storm. Their cold metal against my skin helps ground me. It helps focus my attention on the task at hand instead of the strong sweet odor of deceit that fills my tent and makes my stomach cramp. Deceit tricks me every time. It has an overpowering, sugary aroma that mimics the scent of love and is similar to innocence, yet without the hint of mint.

The woman before me has tight curls that barely meet her bony shoulders. Her gaunt face pulses on the sides like she’s clenching her teeth in time with her wringing hands.

I swallow.

One last attempt to cleanse my aching throat as I finally take my eyes off my client and give all my attention to the cards.

The tips of my fingers confirm the stack is ready and with eyes closed I retrieve the top card.

A metallic zing runs up my hand and I know the reading before I see it. “Reverse nine of wands,” I say.

My voice is huskier from the fire burning in my open mouth. It blazes more raw with each breath.

This card doesn’t tell me anything my sense of smell hasn’t already. “You have a secret you don’t wish to be found out.” We are merely setting boundaries for what is to come. “You are wanting to know if it's too late.”

Even I cannot sense if her husband knows of her actions. The cards must do the rest. They speak to me like the wind whispers to the trees. Like my Mother and Grandmother raised me to smell those around me, they also taught me to listen to the wands-the magic in the cards.

My fingers dance on top of the deck and the top card is harder to read through my touch but I’m certain it’s the right reading. On the table I exhale as I read it. “Upright. Six of wands.”

The air twists from sweet to sour, like milk that has spoiled. I speak swiftly to ease this woman’s dooming fear. “You’re successful in your quest and have overcome the burden of publicity you fear. See how the six of wands has a man with a wreath riding a white horse. The white horse of course represents strength," and purity, but I leave that bit out. "You have shown much strength in this situation and will surely be publicly rewarded for your efforts."

The woman smiles and her hands are finally still. I inhale deeply at the welcoming refreshing scent of ease. Like rain after a fire it soothes my lungs and throat.

A painful shock is sent through my fingers as I brush the top of the deck. The top card is not right. Closing my eyes, I hum without thinking, and my fingers are lead to the card somewhere in the deck that finishes this woman's destiny.

Down toward the end of the pile I retrieve the one card that vibrates through my fingers. I only stop humming when the Queen of wands is upside down on the table, facing me instead of the woman.

"You must beware of selfishness and jealousy."

The woman and I make eye contact and I both see and smell the worry in her face. "The queen of wands, in either position, represents fertility and the feelings emotions and hardships it brings."

The womans dirty brown eyes have lost all the shine of youth. Without looking away from my face they fill with tears.

"This could mean an obstacle will stand in the way of your success. In order to have what you desire you will have to push through this thing, or person, that stands in your way," I cringe at my own words wondering what this woman is planning and what I am leading her to do. With a shake of my head I continue. I don't need to know the detials of her life. It's none of my business. "Just as one pushes through the hardship of labor and delivery."

My smile turns to grimace as the air in the room spoils like rotten fruit. Another tricky emotion, though I’ve had more experience with lust in my tent than deceit.

I don’t process the woman’s thanks, I only hold my breath as best I can to keep from retching. She pays a grateful tip and runs off to make a mess of whatever fate I interpretted for her. I grab at my stomach as soon as she’s left, falling forward onto the table with one fluid sigh of relief.

My head clears with each fresh breath and I remove the scarf from around my head to dab at my sweating brow. The waves in my stomach calm. The flask under my table is half full and I sit up, then tilt my head back to wash it down quickly.

I blame the attacks of scents that woman put me through for why I don’t notice my next client approaching. My senses are burned numb from use and without warning a large man throws open the door flap and enters.

Sounds of laughter from the carnival and screams from the rides make a chill run up my arms. Or perhaps it’s this gentleman’s appearance that puts me on nerve. Or the fact that I can’t smell him at all.

His shape is like an upside down triangle, with wide thick shoulders and a lean waist. His black hair is unkempt, his eyebrows too shaggy to reveal any eyes, and his beard so mangy it screams laziness more than style preference.

I grab a hanky from my belt and blow my nose trying to clear my senses before we begin. “Your fortune awaits, Sir. Please have a seat in my office.”

I wrap my head dress around my head again bringing the length of the scarf down to drape over my shoulder.

Deceit and lust were tricky, but this next scent has me completely baffled. It floats out to me with an edge of warning but of what? I detect the scent of leaves and grass clippings. Anxiety? It's missing the putrid roadkill scent of fear, though it's definitely earthy. It’s nothing like the pleasant sort of dirt smells that accompany carefree moods such as mellow and relaxed. If smells could have images attached to them this one would definitely be that of a worm wriggling in the darkest of soils.

I can't put my finger on it yet there is something familiar about this man's smell. I've encountered it before. The man smiles a toothy grin and many of his remaining teeth are lopsided with brown decay.

I list again the smells I detect. Leaves, grass, earth, and the last is a nutty sort of aroma that could possibly just be something he ate while enjoying the fair.

The man says nothing, only smiles his disgusting smile and breathes a ragged breath that makes him sound like a smoker. Could that be the nuttyness I smell?

“Can I read your fortune for you, Sir? Or perhaps a palm reading?" My voice shakes at the blindness of this conversation. I still have no clue what his intentions or desires are.

“You look too young to be a fortune teller." His voice is more earthy than his scent. "And definitely too pretty to be one."

"You doubt my abilities then? How I'd love to prove them to you. Please, take a seat." My voice rises higher with each word.

A new scent of roses blends with the earthy smell. Confidence. He does not doubt my abilities at all. Rather he is counting on them. What does he want?

The tent flap is opened again and a crow comes swooping in deftly. With the sight of that bird and the smell of this man I, in an instant, realize two things. One, I know exactly where I've smelt this before and two, I am in big trouble. It all clicks. This man is one of Jarku's men, come to kill off the race of fate-readers, and this bird is with them. I was only six years old the last time I saw this bird help Jarku murder my mother. That nutty aroma I remember now is the intent to kill.

Another man steps in as the bird continues to fly at me.

Standing, I knock my chair over and grab a tarot card from the table in one fluid motion. Instead of allowing the ache to creep up my fingers I push it back into the card and it glows a dim wavering blue.

With a flick of the wrist the card goes flying through the air toward the bird and slices into its neck just as it opens its beak to squawk. The bird call is cut short as it falls with a thud to the ground. From the cards lodged position in the dead bird I can make out the five of wands and the blue light goes out.

Both men just stare at the bird while I grab all the cards from the table.

"I actually liked that bird," the new intruder says. He is taller, but just as full around the shoulders. He wears a simple once-white tunic and a leather strap across his body. The men's mouths are alike in every way, except this one is clean shaven and has white thinning hair.

Stuffing the deck into the folds of silk around my belt I grab two cards for each hand. With a step backward I crouch low and fan the cards-one pair of weapons in front of my face and another high behind my head.

“Now, now." Says the second man. "No need to make this difficult, Gypsy.”

I curl my lip at the term. People associate “Gypsy” with thief, someone they can’t trust. The moods in the air swirl around me and I focus on them trying to decipher which ones come from whom. Anticipation from the first man. Impatience, determination, and doubt from the second one before me.

“What does Jarku want?” I say, not moving from my ready stance.

“He merely needs you to do a reading for him”

I sniff. “Liar!” I spin a card toward him, missing his face by only inches.

The first, stockier man whistles then chuckles.

The fruity smell of agitation hits me in the gut and I pull another card from my sash.

“Just come quietly and we promise not to hurt you.”

The air shifts to the scent of brisk spring rivers- they’re ready to pounce and grab. Barely moving my arms I flick all four cards out in front of me. The ache leaves my fingers as the cards soar and I reload. Two of the cards hit their target, the first man’s throat, one right after another they slice his airway and he falls grasping and spluttering.

The bigger taller barrel of a man dodges and I spin all four new tarot cards out at him again. His sword is drawn and he deflects them but the last glowing tarot card knicks him on the cheek and he grunts.

Dabbing at his cheek he looks at the blood on his hands. Vanilla and warm spices fill the air. He’s enjoying this. It’s the challenge he was hoping it would be.

My hands are reloaded and I crouch again speaking back to the cards. The ache is pushed out of my fingers onto them and they glow a brighter blue than before.

He smiles and takes his stance as well. “Jarku won’t mind a small delay. Never said to deliver you alive.”

I try to give a confident smirk of my own but I know the smell of road kill in the air is from my own fear. “I don’t hand out free fortunes,” I say. “I will expect my regular payment for this reading.”

With that I spin my hands in front of me, letting go of the cards faster than I’ve ever released them. He dodges them and flips a small knife from his shoe. I lean just in time to hear it whiz through the scarf on my shoulder.

Reloaded I send two toward his feet and one at his face. His dodging steps are like a dance the way he hops and skips and moves his head away from them. He is drawing closer to me from the movements. His sword cuts through the air so swiftly that he slices the last card in half mid air.

As I’m grappling for more cards his sword comes at me. Now I’m dancing my part, a sideways frantic shuffle, but my arm isn’t quick enough and his blade makes contact. Pain in my arm makes the ache of the cards feel dull. I barely notice though when he comes at me again. I jump backward missing his second blow and have cards in my hand again.

He steps back as he sees my hand full of cards raise. One, two, three cards fly and the second one zips across his ear making blood rain on his neck.

The memory of the card is still on my fingers “King of wands,” I shout. Quickly I reload and crouch. “You're too cocky and impulsive to be a good fighter.” The shake is out of my voice but I reign in my own pride. Lower myself further to the ground like Grandmother taught me.

He growls as he rushes me with sword in both hands overhead. At the last minute I duck and weave out of his way. Just as he rushes by me I take a card and slice it across his back ripping his shirt and slicing skin with the end of the stroke.

The card falls to the ground. “Knight of Wands,” I say. I’m breathing heavy but smile at the appropriateness. “You must watch your temper. The knight of wands relays the loss of power. Turning to anger is the straightest path to weakness.”

He's hunched over after my blow but with a grunt he leads up with his shoulder, swinging his arm which hits me in the chest. I fall backwards from his blow and my cards spill across the dirt floor. I'm scrambling, crawling backwards like a crab as he rises and towers over me.

"Me Mother was a rotten gypsy like you." He wipes at the blood on his face as it drips into his mouth. "Always telling me about my temper."

One more crawl backward and my fingers ache against a card.

"Always telling me what I was feelin' ’fore I said anything."

The card heats, it's in my hand and I hope the glow cannot be seen from his angle.

"I'll be glad when Jarku finishes off your-"

Leading with the top of my hand my movement cuts him short as I swing from behind. The card is wedged between my fingers. With a flick it's sent off, glowing so blue it lights up the entire tent.

At first I sense his relief as he realizes I missed his throat--the death of his comrade moments ago. There isn't a hint of fear in the air as the card cuts through the fabric of his tunic and lodges deep in his chest. The heat of the glowing card makes the flesh it touches burn and the room stinks for different reasons than emotions or destiny. The only mood to be sensed is shock permeating like fresh cut lemons bold and strong.

He falls to his knees as I scramble to my feet.

The card sticking out of him has a man on top of a castle holding a globe. "The two of wands," I whisper. "Your fate looks grim. You've ignored important details in planning your future, making your downfall," he falls forward flat on top of the cards and I jump out of his way. "Inevitable."

I catch my breath as I stare at the mess made from the fight. Escaping the hand of Jarku a second time has me rooted in place shaking at every limb. To think I could do so a third time is foolish. I need to run.

The bird lies with his beak open and stiff. The metallic smell of my revenge fills the room. I bend and retrieve the card sliced in half, the nine of wands with the sick man standing alone. The last one standing, ready for battle, the card speaks to me of resilience and grit. Stepping over the men I say without looking back, "You owe me a new deck of cards."

I’ve ridden every horse I’ve seen. I can see in the dark. I can read every work of Proust in under an hour and can do so while pleasuring a woman. I leave nothing to be desired in the bedroom. I eat a raw steak once a month at Mastro’s and I never wait for a table. My therapist asks me for advice. I’ve fought in fourteen wars, shaken the hand of 42 presidents, I’ve dined with everyone from Godard to Tony Hawke. I’ve given gonorrhea to whole continents. I’ve seen rivers run red with the blood of my enemies. The Pope once compared me to Christ and I punched him in the face. I’m not like Christ, I’ll never die.

Michelangelo sculpted in my image. I am the Renaissance, a deity. My hair gets thicker with age. I don’t mourn the dead, I pity the living. I’ve cried only once in my life while watching a particularly beautiful sunset. I have one dream every night in which I am the last man on earth thus the richest and the most poor, the strongest and the most weak, both good and evil. I wake up at 7am. I make myself climax with my mind. I’m at work by 8. My company grossed more than Apple within its first year. I make all my assistants learn latin.

At the club I order an Old Fashioned, neat, and think about the human stain that is man. I wait for emotion to be bred out of humanity like body hair on women. When a woman says, “I love you” I say, “I am Lazarus, come from the dead.” When they ask what I find beautiful and I say paintings of falcons.

There is a harp player in the vestibule of my office. HR hired her after too many of my agents had heart attacks. They say that music is calming. Music is the sonic personification of emotion and that disgusts me. You know what I find calming? Order, fear, dominance, Russian Literature. The harp player is a distraction. I throw coins at her when I pass through the lobby.

Her incessant machine is turning the work place into a chapel. The noise like a battering ram beating its way into my office. I imagine bludgeoning the harp player with my awards from MIT. She holds the instrumenting gently but with pride. You know what should be held like that? Assault rifles, Rottweilers, Swiss prostitutes. Not harps. I hate her and I tell her so. Not with words. With my eyes.

The harp player is with me even when she’s not. In the silence of my penthouse I hear the insidious instrument. It’s invaded my head, the inside of my skull a cacophonous amphitheater, a tiny harpist inside. It’s spreading through me, a thawing feeling, like hints of spring. I have the strangest urge to donate to charities and call my mother. I pass a shelter and bring home a kitten. The music only gets louder. The strings laugh at me, wretched hyenas. “You don’t control me. I’m an island!” I punch the granite counter top. I free the kitten into the street.

I tell the harp player she must find a new office to torment. Her ceaseless playing is unraveling me. I haven’t eaten or slept. She quiets her strings and they obey her, the witch. “Would you like to try?” she asks. I don’t talk to women this long without the promise of sex so I leave. It starts up again.

I give the harp player a poisoned beverage and she’s out for 3 days. When she returns she is weak and her music reflects it. The notes are somber, sickly. I feel accomplished and buy a new suit.

I sit court-side at the Lakers game. The heaving athletes make me think of primordial man. Man is made for sport. He is given a grueling task, which he’ll either succeed or fail in. It is not obscured by ostentation or subterfuge. I think of the Coliseum. I think of trench warfare and sip my Old Fashioned. But the panting of men in front of me and roaring crowd go quiet. The game continues but in silence, like a television on mute. And then it begins. Harp music, soft at first but with growing tenacity. Each note lingers in the air, vibrates, it’s laughing again, the strings are being tickled. The celestial music is billowing out of the speakers. It drifts out of the mouths of screaming fans and through the coach’s whistle and from the rubber souled shoes that bounce off the court. The players aren’t playing anymore either, they’re dancing. Not even dancing like you do at the club, they’re dancing on point, ballerinas in jerseys. They’re doing Swan Lake. It’s disgusting. I open my mouth to scream, “prevail, men, we dance for no one!” but only more music comes out. There’s a string quartet in my lungs. The louder I scream, the more angelic it sounds. It’s clouding my vision. I’m no longer sure what thoughts are my own. I try to conjure images of nude women, whaling ships, animal pelts. But all I see when I close my eyes are waterfalls.

It was a normal morning. A coffee breakfast, chased with dry toast and orange juice, a shower, a shave and a bathroom break. All normal. Work out clothes on, an early morning jog and another shower after. See? All normal. Dressed for work and out the door on time. It was a five block walk to the office, and me in my pressed shirt and pants and nice shoes and a blue tie to offset the lack of color in the shirt, would be there in short time. By my watch, I had half an hour and I had never been late to work.

Everything was normal.

The boardwalk bustled with people already selling their wares in the storefronts and center kiosks. Most every day folks paid no attention to them, but the tourists … ahh those tourists ate up the sales people and their pitches, especially the ones with the Hollywood smiles, perfect hair, dazzling eyes and plastic bodies. On the beach just beyond the boardwalk, people already gathered and milled about, some on blankets, some in the water and some walking hand in hand with a lover, or holding a leash of a dog. Oh, such a normal, normal morning.

Until I met Kathy and David.

They were a cute couple, he with his disheveled hair and horn rimmed glasses and stubbled chin, and she with her pulled back red hair, green eyes that seem to sparkle and rosy cheeks. He couldn’t have been a day over twenty. She might have been sixteen. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe it did. You didn’t have to know them to see the love they had for one another in their eyes. To me, that is what mattered most.

He pushed a stroller, one almost completely pink and white, and she carried a diaper bag on one shoulder. It was the same pink and white pattern of baby rattles and hearts as the stroller. The top of the stroller was pulled up, possibly to shield the baby (a girl I presumed) from the sun and little old ladies who liked to squeeze the cheeks of babies. The wheels were big, made for going over just about anything.

An all wheel stroller, I thought and couldn’t hold back the smile that formed on my lips.

I think it was the smile that changed my day. It’s not that I don’t smile. It’s just the young couple saw it.

They exchanged a glance and then she nodded tentatively. As we passed each other I gave them a “good morning.” Yeah, that was probably another thing that attracted them to me. I smiled, I nodded, and I spoke, making eye contact with him as I did so.

Just passed them, he called back to me, “Excuse me, Sir?”

I turned. He looked hopeful with his raised brows and a nervous smile on his face.

“Yes?” I asked.

“Hi, I’m Dave,” he said and put out a hand. His fingers were long and thin. I had a brief thought that he might have played piano at some point. I took his hand. I gave it a good pump and released it.

“I’m Kathy.” She extended her hand, just as he had, and I took it, just as I had Dave’s.

“We were wondering,” Dave picked back up, “do you have a minute?”

Uh oh. Salesmen? Religious folk peddling their religion? Con artists? All of these were normal thoughts, and all of them were wrong. Thinking on it now, I don’t think I would have minded if they would have been all three.

I guess the look on my face and the hesitancy to respond said I wasn’t sure about them.

“I’m sorry,” Dave said. “We’re not trying to sell you anything or want any money. We just want you to take a picture of us and our baby.”

I relaxed. A breath escaped me, one both full of relief and embarrassment. Not everyone is crazy in this world, after all.

I glanced at my watch. I had twenty minutes or so. “Sure. I can do that. I have a couple of minutes before I have to be to work.”

Their faces lit up with smiles and he stuck his hand out for me to shake with a “thank you, we appreciate it,” on his lips.

“No problem,” I said.

Kathy set the bag on the sidewalk and rummaged around in it for a moment before bringing out her cell phone. She handed it to me.

“Just press and hold the button for it to focus. When it does, a green square will appear on us. Let the button go and then press it again and it will take the picture.”

Normal. See? Everything was normal.

She lowered the stroller’s top with her back to me. I admit I had to look away because the view from where I stood was pleasant. When I looked back, Kathy and Dave stood by the black steel rail that separated the boardwalk from the beach. He straightened his shirt with the palms of his hands and she held the swaddled baby in the crook of one elbow.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

They both nodded quickly, but their smiles looked nervous, almost forced.

I held the phone up, the camera facing them. I looked into the display and watched as the view zoomed in and then locked on the happy little family.

That was when things got weird.

The phone’s screen showed Dave and Kathy standing side by side with smiles on their faces that looked strained. Kathy had removed the blanket from near the baby’s face.

I shook my head and lowered the phone. From that distance I could barely make out the child, but when I turned the phone back to them, it was clear the child was dead and had been for a long time.

My hands shook and I tried to still them so I could take the picture.

“Is everything okay?” Kathy asked.

I lowered the phone. “Umm … yes. The camera is just having a hard time focusing. Give me one more second.”

“Okay,” she said, but her tone told me she didn’t believe me.

I held the button she had told me to and the phone’s camera zoomed in and focused on them. The square turned green, and yes, that little child was dead, and what I saw was her bare skull. I released the button, then quickly pressed it again. The camera gave a ~CLICK~ and the screen blinked several times. Then it stopped and what appeared on the screen was the stilled image of Dave, Kathy and the baby.

I looked at it for a moment, just as anyone taking a picture would, but I didn’t check it to see if I took a good shot. I checked it to make sure what I thought I saw was real. The image on the screen was of a skeletal baby being held by parents too grieved to let the child go. Dave stood next to his wife, his arm around her. Kathy leaned into him and held the baby chest high. Their smiles were clearly forced. I’m not sure, but I think there were tears in her eyes.

My mouth went dry and my legs weakened. I looked back at them and they hadn’t moved, but their smiles had faltered.

“How … how is this?” I asked, not knowing what else to say or do.

Dave took the camera and looked at the image. He frowned at first.

“Kathy, what do you think?” he asked and showed her. At this point she had already put the baby back in her stroller and pulled the top back up, not to keep the sun off of her or the old ladies from pinching her cheeks, but possibly to keep anyone from seeing the child in it.

She stood and took the phone from him. “Oh, that is beautiful. That is a great picture.”

They both shook their heads in what I took was satisfaction.

“Thank you,” Dave said and put out one of his pianists’ hands.

It was everything I could do to stretch my hand and take his. My skin was cool and the thought of touching his hand made me shiver.

Like Dave, Kathy gave her thanks and extended her hand to me, and like earlier, I shook it gently. Then they both walked off, he pushing the stroller, she with the baby bag slung over her shoulder. As I watched them go, I honestly didn’t know what to think. I stood there a while longer before taking a seat at a nearby coffee shop. My heart broke for the sad couple with the dead baby and the inability to let go, not for the child, but for themselves. And then I was crying with my face buried in my hands. After a few minutes, I composed myself, wiped my eyes and made my way to work. I was late for the first time that day.

We are on opposite sides of a wooden desk in a white house.

"Do you plan to implement any laws regarding robots?" I ask.

She doesn't speak.

"Your voters are scared that they will take over our jobs, our towns, even the world!" I prompt her.

Silence.

"And so am I, frankly. They're not even human! Why should we treat them as such?"

Her gaze is cold steel as she removes her jacket, top button, middle button—

Metal. Wires. Oscillators.

I am speechless as she leans forward.

"Because mechanical hearts still feel pain."