She waited by the door.

Always she waited by the door, fingers gripped to the mail slot so hard it left divots in her skin. She'd pull them away and rub at them until they turned red, until the knuckles were sore from popping but the skin was smooth again.

Sometimes the mailman was late. On those days she cut herself on the metal slot sometimes. She cut herself, darted to the kitchen and ripped open Band-Aids with her teeth. Her heart beat her ribs as she washed off the blood with alcohol. She did not feel the sting.

A car would stop outside. There'd be the sound of a killed engine; of the little plastic flag with the flower painted on it 'snick-ing' up. She'd crawl along the floor on hands and knees, plant herself flat on a faded carpet and peek through again.

Agoraphobia he called it. He clicked his little pen and signed off on her label. He signed away her terror of the pavement with a flick of his wrist; the memories of him pressing her face to asphalt and holding her hair to paint it with blood and skin. His hands on her throat, strangling, pressing in, leaving bruises. He was her dybbuk. What the world took from him he took from her, from her flesh and her pride. He was dead inside and he fed off of her soul to live again.

Agoraphobia. A flourish and a signature. Swallow these pills please, ma'am.

She opened the door. Her hands jittered on the knob. Her eyes darted left and right. She was the doe and the yard was the open field. The dead grass was overgrown. The maple tree had been downed by lighting and was slowly rotting away. She ran her tongue over her lips and slunk forth.

Shoulders hunched. Heart in throat. Its beating was the pounding of his feet moving up behind her.

To the mailbox. She tore the door open and grabbed the bills. She sobbed. The neighbor watering his garden watched in confusion that was immediately threatening. The woman walking her bichon rolled her eyes. A boy on his tricycle would ask his mommy what was wrong with the crazy lady over dinner that night.

Dart inside. Darkness, home, sanctuary. She wrote out checks and tore advertisements precisely four times, each in perfect squares, bending the paper back and forth and back and forth until it was pliable. Back and forth and back and forth until it could be broken with just a single tug.

She did this every day.

On the morning of October 6th 2009, at precisely 10:43, the mail came to her. She was crouched upon the rug, counting to ten again and again, preparing herself with her muscles taut and her fingers curling. They reached up for the knob and then, like God reaching down to touch her, it slipped through the slot and onto the floor.

She lifted the flap and peered through, but God was already gone.

On October 7th at 10:45, the mail came through again. And on October 8th at 10:36, it came through again. Each time she hugged it to her chest and ran to her room. Each time she threw herself onto the bed and sobbed with relief and confusion and joy.

The months went by. She stopped trying to see him after the first attempt because she was afraid to look. Doubts plagued her mind. Was it him? Was it him, teasing her, mocking her, blocked only by the six bolts nailed into her door? Was he waiting for the day she would open it to thank him and would he take her on that faded rug? Would he dye it fresh and red?

October to November. November to December. He began talking to her on December 25th at 10:53, the day she forgot Christmas. It was not his voice. He gave her a card with a tree on the front. The glitter got on her hands and she didn't mind.

"Happy Holidays, ma'am."

She said nothing. He left.

There were stories after that. He gave her the letters and painted stories with his words. His voice was low and soothing and kind. She could see the tips of his calloused fingers, a little dirt beneath the nails.

"Should see the sunset tonight, miss. Really a looker. Red and orange and yellow. Like a fire that doesn't burn, you know? With clouds to break the heat. I could take pictures for you, if you like."

"Yes," she would whisper. "Please."

And he did. He gave her pictures of the sky. Pictures of people. Pictures of the grass and the houses and the street. Children playing kickball and mothers kissing scraped knees. Bronzed men on rooftops fixing shingles after it hailed. He passed her the world through the mail slot and she pinned it to her wall.

Then one day he stopped coming. She crouched by the door and waited. 11:00. 11:23. 11:57. She bit her cheeks to bleeding. She scratched at the wallpaper and tore it off to curl between her fingers. Still he didn't come, and she ran to her room where she kept the world and she desperately searched for the last piece of it he'd given her.

There was writing on the back.

"Michael Evans

7843 Parkside Avenue, Seattle Washington

I think you should come see me today, Miss Adams.

The world is a wonderful place to be."

And she opened the door and crossed the street.

Somewhere between here

and nowhere

Cut from the moor by chance

and circumstance

On roiling waves I am adrift

as the sea shifts

I’m tugged from the shore

and I implore

The moon for a direction

at its discretion

I swim amidst endless stars

and where they are

Burns pale and perfect light

so milky white

A beacon to guide my way

won’t drift astray

Take up both oaken oars

and row on for

A promising but distant land

and by my hand

I’ll part this murky water

I will not falter

I must traverse this ocean

with my devotion

Find where inside my chest

my heart can rest

And dock my weathered bones

in that new home

Death dealt the cards Jack had shuffled. His hands weren’t bony or pale; they were large hands with hardened callouses. His fingers flew gracefully, everything about the motion casual and relaxed.

“I need more time.”

Death smiled. It was a genuinely kind expression. It made his eyes crinkle warmly. They were blue like the sky, and there was nothing hollow about them. His face was fully fleshed, albeit chiseled. He wore a simple plaid button-up shirt and blue jeans. He smelled of a subtle cologne.

“That is why we are here, is it not?” He replied. “So you may buy yourself more time?”

Jack trembled. He picked up his hand, eyes flying over the cards. He looked better equipped to the name of Death than the entity before him. He was shriveled in his white hospital gown, his bald head gleaming under the single light hanging from the ceiling. A diaper was wrapped around his waist because he could no longer control his bowels.

He was thirty four.

“If I win,” he whispered. His tongue flicked over his lips like a worm checking for birds. “If I win, I get more time?”

Death fanned out his cards. They were spaced perfectly, and his kind eyes moved over them without giving anything away. “That is correct,” he replied. “Five more years added onto your life.”

Jack began to tremble harder. He felt the fear down to his bones. He felt wetness seep into the godawful diaper, smelled the sharpness of urine. Death did not flinch. Their hands moved in unison, and he felt as though he had no control over the motion of his own arm.

He had three tens. A three of a kind.

Death had a flush.

The tears immediately began to run hot down his cheeks. “One more,” he rasped. “Please, please one more.”

Death’s blue eyes watched his face. He said nothing. The silence made him angry, and he stood, slamming his fists against the table so the cards shook and tumbled over the edge.

“It’s not fair! I…I’m not ready to die!”

Death continued to watch him. He reached out for a card and begin to spin it slowly, end over end, just fast enough that Jack couldn’t make out what it was. Still he said nothing.

But an ashtray appeared in the middle of the table.

Jack stared at it. The tears dammed up, and he felt a knot form in his throat. The ashes were full to the brim, nearly overflowing.

“How long would it take to fill that?” Death murmured.

Jack swiped his hands over his face. “A day,” he replied. “Maybe.”

The ashtray disappeared. In its place bloomed a bottle of rum, the amber liquid inside sloshing gently. It was half empty.

Death didn’t need to ask. Jack whispered, “One night.”

Sheets of paper unrolled across the table’s surface. He couldn’t bear to look at the doctor’s signatures, the warning signs, the omens from check-ups that he always ignored.

Silence reigned again until the bottle cracked. The glass fractured, and its contents spilled out, seeping into the paper like blood. Jack sat down again and raised his gaze back to the man across from him.

The spinning card came to a stop. The Jack of Diamonds stared out from it, boasting his own face.

“You shuffled this deck, Jack. You controlled the cards you were given. You were the master of your own fate.” For just a moment, a fleeting second, he thought he saw pain flash across the man’s kindly face. “Not everyone is so privileged.”

Death leaned forward. The card grew bigger, and the light faded as it encompassed his vision.

“The hand you were dealt was the one you made.”

And she taught me how

she used her tears as daggers

as diamond-studded stilettos

trickling down her cheeks

through my ribs

to the heart

She showed me how

to weaponized those crying

eyes and magnify her pain so

mine would be trivialized

whenever I was bold enough

to open my mouth and

speak of it

She found the target that was

my guilt and gleefully pulled

the trigger so the bleeding

hole grew bigger if her words

so much as disagreed with

mine

She ran forward to thrust her

nails into the wounds and

made them wider so they would

accept grit and grime

And every time she wished my

silence she could smash her fists

against infected lesions and I’d

tense my aching jaw

But ah, my prodded heart grew

callouses and the tears lost their

power to make my gut twist

and writhe in loathing of

myself

And the ‘I’m sorry’s’ are pre

recorded to be played back when

necessary and while they leave

her satisfied I am hollow as I let

them fly past lips and unclenched

teeth

From all the things she has shown

me I have grown to learn instead

to keep my own eyes dry.

It irked him when they said she didn’t deserve it. That seemed like it was the thing to do. They’d read headlines, wag their heads and mutter, “She didn’t deserve that, poor soul.” What did that even mean? She didn’t deserve to be beaten by her stepfather? She didn’t deserve to get introduced to Maybelline as a method to cover bruises? She didn’t deserve to get shoved down a flight of stairs and crack her head open on a cement floor?

Gee. How gracious of them.

There was still a stain on the sidewalk in front of her apartment building. He walked by it every time he went to school.

The first time Timothy met Tracy, she was pounding out a beat with drumsticks on a railing. She looked up as he passed, winked, and then spun effortlessly towards him. The pounding continued, on building sides, along the bus shelter with a sharp DING DING DING. She stopped on a hasty staccato, took a seat next to him, and said:

“Hey there mopey.”

He frowned. “Mopey?”

She reached up and poked the corner of his mouth with the tip of her drumstick. “What’s with the long face?”

He felt his lips twitch, whether he wanted them to or not. Pushing the stick away with a finger he replied, “Nobody’s in a good mood on Monday mornings.”

“Aaahhh,” she replied, and crossed her heart. “Amen.”

A silence passed between them. Companionable. Usually it would have been awkward, but with her it wasn’t.

“What’s your name?” he asked, surprised to find himself trying to strike up a conversation. He never did really.

“Tracy. You?”

“Timothy. Tim.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Oh. We can’t be friends I’m afraid.”

Stunned, he felt his heart drop briefly into his stomach. That too was odd for him; giving a damn after so short a time. He just shrugged and hunched his shoulders a little.

She threw back her head in light, airy laughter. “I’m kidding, man! But you got to admit. Tracy and Tim? TT? T squared maybe? Oh man. Totally GAG worthy.”

She thrummed the drumsticks again, BAH DUM TUSH! The bus pulled into the stop, and she sat next to him when they got on.

It went on like that. Cusp of high school, freshman year. Nobody shoved them into lockers or down trash cans, but the whole atmosphere was weird. The bizarre push and shove of way too many people in one space, and way too many raging hormones.

It was pretty much clockwork. Tracy and Tim at the bus stop, every morning, usually before the crack of dawn. Ungodly hour that. She always had a smile, he a frown. Every time it was “good morning, mopey!” There was a warmth in the nickname. Her smile was an infection he was all too happy to contract.

Things changed with Tracy halfway through the year. She’d show up with tears in her eyes and blame the cold. She started caking makeup on her face and claimed it was to fit in. She didn’t smile much anymore. She didn’t rap out beats with her drumsticks.

One morning she got there before him, which broke their norm. He watched her through the glass. Her shoulders were shaking and her face was in her hands. She was sobbing. He could hear it as he got closer.

Tim didn’t say anything. He just reached out and hugged her, and she turned into him. She told him everything. And immediately after that, she made him promise to tell no one.

“He’ll go after my mom,” she rasped. Her tears had washed away the cover-up. He could see the bruise on her cheek, purple and angry. “I swear to God he’ll kill her.”

So he didn’t tell. He shut his mouth. He kept her secret and did his best to cheer her up every morning at the bus stop. He lent her his hat when her stepdad ripped out some of her hair. He was her shoulder to cry on, her confidant.

He questioned it always. Questioned what he was doing, covering this up. Questioned what kind of world it was where some kid felt she had to protect her grown ass mother.

He snuck out one night, and stood outside her apartment door. He stared up at where her window was, a bat in his hand. He thought to himself, if nobody else is going to tell this fucker what for, I will. He fantasized about beating his head in. He fantasized about painting his body in bruises like he’d done to his friend. He would do it, he thought, hovering his finger over the doorbell. He would do it like the Punisher, full of righteous wrath.

His hand fell. He turned and walked silently home again.

When Tim got the news, guilt hit him like a sledgehammer. When they investigated Tracy’s case, he ran to that witness stand. He didn’t make it through his testimony without crying. He swore at the stepfather, swore at her mother for not protecting her, and inside he pleaded God’s forgiveness for not doing it himself.

They convicted the monster.

Tim felt nothing in the conviction. It felt hollow.

Standing over Tracy’s grave after the funeral, unawares of others trickling away, he let himself go. He fell to his knees and curled his fingers into the still-loose earth they’d stuck her in. He thought of her vibrancy, her smile, of the life of her. He knew she could have been something great. Something bigger.

If only someone had done something more.

The ship floated through the void. It steered with rocket-fuel rudders, silent fire spitting to lazily tilt the metal helm left or right. It was a prick amidst infinite space. To stars, laughably insignificant. To passing asteroids, just neighboring debris. It puttered along at a snail’s pace, and light traveling back to earth looked on with the morbid fascination of someone watching a turtle crossing the street, barely dodging traffic.

There were three turtles nestled inside that shell. Fragile things that hustled dutifully about their tasks each day. The clock told them when it was day. It told them when to sleep. When to eat. When Ronald was busy checking on life support so Cathy and Johnathan could have an unmolested quickie. Most of all it told them how much longer they must continue limping along through space to reach their destination. A new home.

Cathy stirred her fork through rehydrated peas. She brought them to her lips and chewed. It was like eating sawdust. She did it mechanically, tongue rolling over the mush and thinking Johnathan’s blowjob had been more pleasantly flavored.

Her husband drummed his fingertips atop the metal table. Then his knuckles, tapping out a beat. ‘Shave and a haircut, two bits.’ He needed a shave. He could have done it, but he was tired of wiping off the cream with nothing but moist towelettes. It made his face feel sticky and unwashed. That all of him felt just as sticky and unwashed was an unfortunate fact he cared not to think about.

Ronald turned his wedding band back and forth with his thumb, feeling the warm gold press against his skin. “Why do you think they stopped reporting?”

Cathy jumped. The silence interrupted was eerie, and every time he opened his mouth she assumed he was going to tell her he knew. He did, of course, but found himself apathetic. Hurtling towards Mars inside a hunk of metal made things like adultery seem small. Besides, there was nowhere to stick a body, and it seemed disrespectful to just let Johnathan’s corpse drift through space.

“No idea. Technical difficulty, maybe?” She picked up another forkful, shrugging.

“We don’t have the supplies to fix that transmitter if something’s gone wrong with it.”

She snorted. It sounded overly derisive to him. His fingers drummed faster. “Why bother thinking about it? It’s not like we can turn back. We’re eight months in. We’re almost there. Mars is on the horizon. You knew what you were signing up for.”

“It’s concerning, Cathy.”

“It’s concerning,” she returned, mocking. “If you were worried about concerning things maybe you shouldn’t have signed us up for this.”

“I didn’t sign us up.” He spoke calmly, levelly. He imagined hitting her in the mouth with his drumming knuckles. “You wanted this just as much as I did.”

She smiled. It was contemptuous. “Only because you sold it to me like we’d be pioneers. Explorers. Not floating endlessly drinking our recycled piss.”

“Forgive me,” Ronald replied quietly. “I mistook you for an adult who could make her own decisions. My mistake.”

Cathy stood and slammed her fist against the table. She gripped her fork tightly and thought of stabbing it through his hand. Thought of the family she’d left behind to come with him. Thought of the regret that had begun to fester just a month after they’d left orbit. She needed someone to blame. She needed a reason to have gotten onto that shuttle that didn’t involve her own stupidity.

Johnathan floated through the door. His flesh gleamed with new sweat from working his muscles so they wouldn’t suffer from the lack of gravity. He latched onto a rung and pulled himself down, strapping himself into a seat and reaching for a bag of food. Ronald saw his chiseled young face, ran a finger over the lines around his own aging mouth, and hated him.

The silence feel again. No eye contact was made. The clock knocked off another number. Three more days and they would pass through Mars’ atmosphere. Three more days and they would come alive again.

“I’m going,” Ronald mumbled around his last bite. He drifted upwards and out, pretending he didn’t hear their murmurs as he moved down the short tunnel. He reached his bed, with its straps to hold him in place, and latched himself in. A madman safely in his straightjacket. They were all going mad. Cabin fever amplified by knowing that walking out the door would make your head explode.

He thought of what it would be like when they got there. Thought of what it would be like after they’d touched down. There were already three hundred people on the Mars colony. Three hundred people living and working and stretching their legs in giant climate controlled caverns underground. There would be plants, there would be running water and air that didn’t smell stale.

Most of all there would be younger, prettier women. Johnathan would leave his wife. He would find someone without bags under her eyes or red hair turning to grey. He would find someone with tighter curves to bed, and Ronald would watch Cathy’s face fall as she felt her years settle on her shoulders.

He could think of no better revenge.

Perhaps that was why those days went by so swiftly.

Landing was easier than rising had been. He remembered the pull of earth’s jealous atmosphere, remembered feeling flattered somehow that it was so determined to hold them. It roared around the ship. It was furious, perhaps, that they would leave its verdant bosom for a lesser sibling. That they would leave the place their ancestors rested for a hunk of reddish rock further from the sun.

Ronald had been sick of the world. No, that wasn’t right. He had been sick of the people in it. He’d felt claustrophobic, knowing that nothing he ever did would be new. He wouldn’t make new discoveries because he wasn’t smart enough. He wouldn’t explore new lands because they had already been discovered. The Vikings had raped and pillaged their way to the New World long before his mother and father had consummated his creation.

He’d wanted to be something more. To do something more. Mother Earth could not offer him that.

Mars embraced them with comparative quiet. Its atmosphere was thinner. Stretched by time and more natural hostilities. As the fuel was burned and combusted to slow their descent, Ronald thought of it. Of time. Thought that before man had stepped foot onto the planet, it hadn’t existed there. Nothing could grow and show its passage, certainly no higher mind could record it. They made time exist here. They had spun it into being from nothing.

They donned their suits and the door opened. Johnathan was the first to step out. He did it with swagger. He stopped a few paces away, and through the radio in his headset Ronald could hear him shout “DADDY’S HOME, BABY!”

Cathy’s laughter tittered through. He twisted off his microphone and put his feet on the ground, looking down as he walked.

The gravity was different. Lesser. Lighter. Not as insistent on holding him down. He watched the red dust churn around his boots and take just a little longer to drift back down again. It fascinated him. He looked up, hearing only his own breathing, turning his head in the absolute silence. He could see in the distance the pods of the original Martians, the first of man to settle himself here. They were tiny things. He was glad he’d come after the drill had made their permanent home.

He flicked his radio back on.

“…Still not getting anything.” John’s voice. There was a tinge of worry in it. “Using short-frequency now. We’re not even far from base. They should be answering.”

“Maybe they’re going to jump out and surprise us,” Cathy replied sarcastically. Ronald could hear the fear beneath it. “SURPRISE, suckers! You’re stuck with us now.”

The pods gleamed up ahead. They were beacons. As he got closer, Ronald could see the Martian soil had dusted their sides red. From the right angle, it looked like blood spatter.

“Can you imagine having lived in those things?” Cathy again, muttering. “At least you had the decency to wait until now to drag me here, Ron.”

Yes, like blood spatter. Leftovers from a murder unsolved.

They reached the entrance. It too was metal, in all its hard relentlessness against the elements. It looked battered. Solar panels stretched over the rock, some of them smashed, most intact and drawing in energy from that distant sun. Ronald held his breath and punched the numbers into the pad nestled in the protection of a jutting rock.

The door slid open smoothly. He breathed a sigh of relief and stepped inside.

Lights flickered on. The corridor was surprisingly long, especially considering it was just an entryway. Cathy and Johnathan were silent as the door closed again and the sound of oxygen hissing into the air echoed. When it was finished, the place rang with a soft beep, and Ronald ripped of his helmet to breathe.

Really breathe. He felt it inflate his lungs, and drew it in again. He smiled and ran forward, letting out a whoop that had been building in his chest. He bounded. He leapt. Above him the lights buzzed electrically and he thought he’d never heard so glorious a sound.

“I’m still not so sure that…”

Johnathan stopped speaking as his radio barked static. He raised it and shook it like a small child trying to fix some toy. Ronald moved towards him and grabbed it away, twisting the knobs with care and raising it so they could listen.

“He-lp.” The voice was strained. “…wounded. Greenhouse Section. Room two two five, need medica-”

There was a loud thump. A scraping sound like claws on rock. The radio went dead again.

Cathy stared down the tunnel. It was still dark further ahead. Her green eyes were saucers, and her lips were slightly parted. She did not speak.

John made up for it.

“Oh, no, no no,” he spat. “Fuck, no. I didn’t sign up for no Alien bullshit. You’ve got to be kidding me. This isn’t happening.”

“That isn’t what’s happening,” Ronald snapped. “Get your head together. You have any idea how many rovers we sent out here? Besides that, they’ve been researching this place for years. We’re still alone in the universe, John, try not to piss yourself. Something’s just gone wrong.”

“Something,” he shot back. His hands tightened into fists. “You call stopping all communications ‘something?’ They haven’t been sending shit back home either, genius. Maybe it’s because they’re all dead.”

“We’re not going to get anywhere with this arguing about it.”

“And we’re going to get dead if we keep going in.”

“Need I remind you two that we can’t go back either,” Cathy interjected. Her voice sounded thin now. All scathing inflection was gone. “This is a one way trip. Strict no return policy.”

Johnathan ran shaking fingers through his hair. Ronald felt a twinge of satisfaction. He was afraid too, but more practiced at hiding it. He was going to have to take the lead, and Cathy would have to watch as her cuckolded husband showed up her cradle-robbed lover.

It made his heart beat faster.

“Come on,” he said. He turned and began walking, not caring if they followed or not. “We’re getting nowhere jawing off here.”

Only half a second’s hesitation. Then he heard their footsteps fall in line behind him. It felt good. It felt right.

The lights continued to flicker on as they moved forward. There would be no stealth. Ronald still didn’t believe they’d need it. It was ridiculous to think some creature had gotten in and started slaughtering people. They weren’t in some B-rated horror flick. This was reality, and in reality things like that didn’t happen.

Step.

Light.

Step.

Light.

Step.

Corpse.

Cathy screamed and smothered it with her hands. Johnathan cried out and stumbled back a few steps, grabbing onto her as much to comfort her as to comfort himself.

Ronald stared up with morbid fascination. The woman’s head hung at a jaunty angle, mostly because she had been partially decapitated. Her hands had been bound and the rope nailed into the rock to hold her place. Her glazed eyes stared unseeingly. Her jaw hung ajar. On her forehead a strange symbol had been painted, a half-sun that alternated between short and long rays. Her blood had been the ink to paint it.

He stepped closer and pulled off his glove to touch that blood. It was still warm.

“Oh God oh God oh God oh God,” Cathy breathed. Her fingers were still hovering in front of her mouth, trembling. “What are we gonna do what are we gonna do.”

“We don’t have weapons.” Johnathan whispered the words, as if the walls might hear him.

“Something must have caused this,” Ronald murmured, thinking through it. The blood was slick on his fingertips. The woman had red hair. She was old enough she could have been his wife. “I don’t know, a gas leak or something. Maybe they’re breathing it in. Hallucinating.”

“You think PEOPLE did this?”

He turned on Johnathan, eyes flashing. “And what exactly do you suggest did it? The Predator? Tiny green aliens with beady eyes? Get your shit together John. Think rationally.”

John’s eyes went cold. “It’s eerie how rational you can be standing beside a dead girl. No wonder Cathy needs me to heat her up. You’ve got a heart of ice.”

Fury. It raged through him like a firestorm. Ronald felt his teeth click together. The tedious formality of pretend had been shattered. It had been sacred. Before John had kept his mouth shut out of respect. By voicing it, he had gelded him.

“Listen here you little shit,” he hissed. He felt spittle on his lip. “I’m not about to take anything from your smart m-”

A scream. It sounded inhuman. It was the sound animals make right before they die. Throaty, ripped out with insistent violence.

Then a gurgle.

Then nothing.

Cathy began to cry. Neither of them comforted her.

“We can’t just walk in there, man,” Johnathan whispered. He had a fighter’s stance now. His legs were spread, his eyes darting to and fro. “No way they don’t already know we’re here. We need a plan.”

Ronald mind scrambled. “Weapons,” he replied lowly. “We need weapons. There might still be something we can use inside those pods.” He pulled his helmet back on. “Come on. We still have plenty of oxygen left to look. Let’s go.”

They ran. Despite the circumstances, it felt good to run. Ronald felt his blood pumping through his veins harder than he had in months. Since the last time he and Cathy had made love. He didn’t want her anymore. He never wanted her again.

They reached the door. John smacked the keys. It slid open.

A spear exploded through his back.

It was bizarre to watch it. Nothing like a movie. It wasn’t slow. It simply erupted through without warning, a crude bit of sheet metal torn off a piece of equipment and strapped to a rod. His blood dripped smoothly off the tip and smattered onto the dusty ground, red on red, like he was watering it.

Ronald grabbed the spear. He jerked it through Johnathan without thinking. The man was dead anyway. With is foot, he shoved him the rest of the way through the door, using his still-dying-body as a shield so he could hit the controls to make it shut again.

Only then did he become aware of Cathy. She was against the wall, mute with terror. He could hear her pissing herself. He could hear Johnathan gurgling through the radio.

“No, no, no, no, no,” he was moaning. Cathy parroted him, rocking back and forth, her hands on either side of her helmet.

“NO!” Johnathan shrieked. There was a sudden cracking sound, followed by the wet sliding of something meeting flesh.

Ronald held onto the spear tightly and turned back towards the corridor.

“Where are you going?” Cathy breathed.

He ignored her, stepping forward, gripping the spear even more tightly.

“Where are you going?” She insisted, scrambling to her feet, following after him like some startled deer. He thought at any moment she’d start shitting pellets.

“To figure out what’s going on.”

“They’re killing people,” she said. “They’re killing people, Ron.”

“Yes,” he replied. More than afraid, he felt disgusted with her. He thought briefly of the woman by the wall, with her red hair and nearly severed head. “I gathered that.”

“So. So what are you going to do?”

“Kill them first.”

He walked. He held the spear as though he’d been doing it all his life. It felt right somehow. Ronald had never strongly considered killing a man, no more than anyone else. Maybe during rush hour traffic, fantasizing about putting a bullet through the guy driving the idling Prius. Or maybe slipping an arm around the old lady at the supermarket for cutting in front of him with a cartful of canned goods. They were idle musings, nothing more. After all, such things were illegal on Earth.

The tunnel ended. The cavern that greeted them stretched high. The drill had left deep scars in the rock. Humans had been rather rough with Mars her first time. Ronald felt bad about it somehow.

The cavern was also full of people.

They turned slowly to look at them. They were all healthy looking, well-muscled, well-fed. All bore that same odd mark on their brows, though theirs had been painted in Martian clay. Stone pews lined either side of the room, some occupied, most vacated as they stood.

At the head of the room sat one man. Rays made of twisted metal seemed to jut from him, hung behind him on the wall. His fingers were interlocked, and there was a soft, almost paternal smile on his lips.

No one spoke. Not even a hushed whisper. Ronald felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

“What’s happened here?” He asked. He forced his voice to be steady.

The man on the throne chuckled softly. “What always happens when man is left to his own devices.”

Ronald pulled the spear closer to his chest. He felt Cathy’s hand on his shoulder, trembling. “And what exactly does that mean?”

The man leaned forward. His muscled ripped. He wore no shirt, nothing but pants cut off at the knee. His feet were bare. “War happened,” he answered. “The itch needed to be scratched. We hungered for what we did not have. Some say it’s always land. Some say it’s for resources.” He chuckled. The sound was warm. “I say man just tends to grow bored without stretching his inner Neanderthal every once and a while. And you can’t imagine just how bored it got, day in and day out, measuring dirt, testing water, so on and so forth. It was scratching at the cage. It needed to get out.”

Cathy’s hand tightened on his shoulder. He jerked it away from her.

“I think you understand that, Ronald.” The man’s voice was softer now, coaxing. “We heard what Johnny boy said to you. And that? Is that your little whore?”

Ronald’s mouth went dry. He didn’t answer. Cathy whimpered.

“You came here to get away, didn’t you? I know I did. To start a new life. No rules. No restrictions. You came here to breathe, yes? But you brought a toxin with you. You brought her with you. You’ll never be free, knowing she was stuck in a tiny spaceship with you fucking another man. That savage part of you will eat at you. Rail at the bars, until you let it out.”

He could hear Cathy slowly begin to back away from him. The other people in the cavern still had not moved. They stared at him, but clearly hung on their leader’s every word. Paul Mason, Ronald knew. That was his name. Of small political status, a man who’d wanted to be the new Columbus. It would seem he’d done a better job of it than anyone had hoped, scalpings and all.

“I’ll make you a deal, Ronald,” Paul went on. “You can be one of us. You can be free. You can forget your ties to your old life. And all you have to do,” he raised his finger, and without looking Ronald knew he was pointing at his wife, “is get rid of your poison.”

His blood should have run cold. He should have felt dread, should have felt horror. Instead, as he turned around, all he thought about was how easy it had been to kick Johnathan out that door. Thought about him over his wife, having sex with her, knowing he was barely a room away. Thought about the feeling of earth clinging to him. It was less flattering now. It was like breaking out of a madman’s restraints.

And there was Cathy, his final ball and chain.

“Ronald?” She said, her voice soft with terror.

He didn’t apologize. He didn’t cry. He smiled, warm inside, justified.

“Goodbye, Cathy,” he murmured.

And he swung the spear.

Across the steppes, after four long months of winter and dwindling supplies, the starving Prussians, beleaguered by aridity and conflict, trudged their final miles. Staring glazedly into the middle distance, somewhere between their bleeding, swollen feet and the unbroken horizon, the gaunt leader of the tribe choked up a mangled cry of warning.

“Mgnhuh!”

All the shuffling stopped and in slow motion, the hooded heads lifted as one. Gasps and echoes of gasps cut through the frozen air, transfixed as if by some celestial vision. Then chaos. Despite their wounds and the wintry chill, they threw off their cloaks, frantically peeled off the layers of wool and fur, until all that clung to their broken bodies was the tiny floss of gold-lamé g-strings.

Writhing commenced. They had arrived. Cher’s 22nd final farewell tour.

Open it,

swing it open, damnit,

push against the musty

carpet, push against the

rotting two-by-four you

nailed there with that

gavel, you caved and

their criticisms made

you a judge, I mean

Christ, you tore out

parts of you because

they told you to,

whatever happened

to that story with the

cliff and the sheep,

you’ll let them herd

you over the edge,

sheer you naked before

you realize what truly

matters is what

you locked behind that

fucking door just to try

and fit in.