The Death of All Things

  We should strengthen the core.

  The neck muscles aren’t strong enough.

  We need to do more walking to build strength in the legs.

  The pain is to be expected.

  The feather-touch of your brushes never stops. You push back against their hope, painting with the hallucinations of every fever-induced seizure. Every cry of pain rousing you from your sleep. Every infection, another layer painted over the glow of their dreams for you.

  Two years after those first steps, your mother walks you like a dog up and down the length of the driveway. Sweat prickles down your curved back. Your heart pumps acid through your muscles. When the fireflies emerge, the sweat burning your vision turns them to dandelion-shaped blobs of light.

  You grasp your brushes in your cramped fingers and deliberately ease your grip from the walker. Pain and power bloom like a rose, scattering petals of blood across the cement.

  Another visit to the hospital.

  Broken nose.

  Fractured cheekbone.

  Abrasions to the chin and forehead.

  You pretend not to notice your mother’s tears, just as you pretend not to hear her arguing with your father later that night.

  Why weren’t you watching more closely?

  I was!

  Not closely enough.

  It was an accident.

  It wasn’t.

  The rain washes your blood from the driveway the following morning. No more will they torture you with their impossible hopes. Those dreams died when you left the hospital, painted over with blood and your mother’s tears.

  * * *

  Marriage is a dream rooted in love and happily ever after. For years, you’ve watched death spread through the heartwood of that dream. Kisses wither and fall. Arguments sprout from the tiniest of seeds: a dirty dish left out, a receipt misplaced, a grocery forgotten.

  All I asked was for you to pick up diapers on your way home.

  I forgot, okay? I’ll go right now.

  Don’t bother.

  You’re drunk, aren’t you? Jesus Christ. You’ve been drinking while you were watching our kid?

  Their words uproot memories of another night, one that began with a bout of choking and aspiration and ended with pneumonia and a feeding port carved into your stomach. You could have died, but you claimed another death in your stead. You painted over your mother’s dream of career with helplessness and love and obligation and fear.

  Their resentment grew and spread from the grave of that dream. Resentment of each another. Resentment of you.

  I’m trying to keep this family from going broke!

  This is no family. It’s a goddamned hospital and I can’t run it alone. You hardly even show up for visiting hours.

  You flee to thoughts of your new school, of half-days surrounded by new friends and their dreams. Donovan wants to be a pro football star. Jaylen an astronaut. Skyla a veterinarian. Cassie a doctor. Hunter wants to be a pilot for the Air Force.

  When the teacher turned uncertainly to you, you tapped out your answer on the bulky voice synthesizer mounted to your wheelchair. A lepidopterist.

  The teacher beamed, showering you with praise for knowing such a big word, never suspecting the lie. You love butterflies, but you know your future leads elsewhere.

  I used to think you were cheating on me, but you’re not. You’re just working late so you can avoid coming home. So you can avoid us!

  Why the hell would I want to come home to this?

  It goes on for hours. Screams alternate with sobs. Accusations with apologies.

  The glowing stars on your ceiling remind you of fireflies frozen in flight. Your anger builds like a fever as you listen to their barbed words tearing at each other. At last, your brushes lash out without thought or control.

  Soon, the front door slams and the car pulls away, tires spinning in the gravel. For a time, silence fills the house. When your eyes are heavy and your mind straddles the border of life and sleep, your mother enters your room.

  You feel the angry heat of her presence, smell the drunk of her breath, and try not to move.

  We were happy before, she says, her words salty with grief and pain.

  You keep your eyes shut. She reeks of rotted dreams.

  You did this. He isn’t running from me. He’s running from you.

  She’s your mother, so you believe her. You swallow her words like chunks of ice that lodge in your chest.

  She keeps talking. Maybe she believes you’re asleep. Maybe, like so many others, she simply forgets you’re capable of hearing and understanding what’s said around you. Maybe she simply doesn’t care.

  She talks of dreams and plans, of futures she’ll never see. Love and hope and career and happiness, all stolen. And then, before stumbling away and leaving you to cry silently to yourself, she gives you a gift.

  All those dreams, and you killed them.

  She’s your mother, and you believe her. You accept your role. You are the Death of Dreams.

  * * *

  You develop a fascination with obituaries and funerals. You begin lying to your mother, claiming complete strangers were the parents of friends at school or volunteers you’d met at the hospital, all for an excuse to sit amidst those solemn crowds, embraced by silence. In that stillness you learn to touch the dreams of those gathered to say goodbye. Dreams of conversations they’d never have, of misunderstandings never clarified. One way or another, everyone dreams of more time.

  Instinctively you pluck those dreams, tossing them one by one like dried rose petals onto a sinking coffin. With each one you take, you feel…not relief, exactly, but movement. A letting go, like a stream thawed and unblocked after a long winter.

  You’re fifteen when you first feel Chris’ stare through the funeral gathering. At first you ignore it, as you have so many others, but as you complete your work, you see in him the rough strokes of a new dream taking shape, fanciful and fragile. Your slightest touch could collapse it to dust, but as you look deeper, you see yourself reflected in his dream. You wheel closer, offer a cautious hello.

  Chris doesn’t flinch or look away. He whispers an inappropriate joke about a dinosaur and a lonely chicken. When your fragmented laughter bursts free, Chris lights up like the sun.

  From then on, it becomes a challenge to make each other laugh. Jokes and puns and clever wordplay. You read together—Erma Bombeck and Terry Pratchett, Mark Twain and MAD Magazine, every collection you own of Calvin and Hobbes …

  The first time you use your updated voice synthesizer to share a dirty joke, Chris laughs hard enough to spill tears.

  Chris is a year older, able to drive you on short trips. Your mother’s nervousness is nothing to the glow of her joy at seeing you happy. You know she uses these short reprieves to drink, but you avert your eyes from the empty bottles and the hangovers, just as you’ve learned to blind yourself to her dreams, afraid of what you’ll see. Afraid of what you’ll do.

  You and Chris explore and hold hands and read and laugh at bad horror movies. You go to a park, where Chris arranges blankets and sleeping bags and hand-cut foam blocks to support you as you lay together and watch an August meteor shower. Between streaks of light, you point out constellations and the red dot of Mars.

  You kiss Chris for the first time that night.

  I love you. You hate the cold of your synthesized voice, but the answering whisper raises bumps on your skin, sending tingles from your chest to your groin.

  You dream of warm nights, of lips and hands and skin, of companionship and love and security and adventure.

  But you are the Death of Dreams.

  Four months after that first kiss, Chris carries you through the butterfly exhibit at the county fair—a cramped trailer full of plastic plants and monarch butterflies. One lands on your knee.

  I love the way your eyes light up when you see something new. There are so many places I want to show you.

  Death grows in your chest as you force yourself to lo
ok closer at Chris’ dreams. Dreams of a future, of the two of you together. Dreams of love, yes, but also of purpose and duty and self-worth and obligation.

  Chris dreams not of being with you, but of saving you.

  You paint burning tears over Chris’ dreams, and in killing them, save you both.

  Your mother holds you that night, the taste of beer on her breath. It’s the most connected you’ve felt to her in years. You bury your dreams of Chris, wondering how long it will take them to blossom into something new.

  * * *

  You’re nineteen years old. Your mother stands numb, holding an umbrella over you both against the drizzle as you watch the gleaming coffin sink into the earth.

  This was an acquaintance of your mother. Her grief is distant. Weary and cold. You turn away from her, afraid of the damage you might do.

  Afterward, you gather with strangers in a church basement that smells of macaroni and Jell-O. You make sure to talk to Father Perez for a few minutes. Of all the funerals you attend, Father Perez’s are your favorite. He talks to you as he does anyone else. His deep voice is both soft and powerful, and his black moustache is bushy as a squirrel’s tail.

  Soon, he moves on to greet and comfort others, leaving you to sit and watch and listen for any dreams you might have missed.

  You were careful. Thorough. Collecting dreams like your younger self collected leaves. Your mother stands alone by the wall, hiding behind a Styrofoam cup of red punch.

  Pained, self-deprecating laughter tugs your attention toward a quiet corner. I was jogging in the woods. Tripped over a root.

  Mhm. Is this like the time you fell in the bathtub two months back?

  Neither of them pay attention to you. You wear your wheelchair like a cloak of invisibility.

  It’s not like that.

  Why do you stay with that asshole?

  He’s not…

  One dreams of violence against the man who hurt her friend.

  The other…fear. Escape. But beneath it all, dreams of hope. Of the man she thought she knew, a man who was once charming and kind and attentive. Protective and passionate. She dreams of changing him, of finding that man again. Saving him from what he’s become.

  She took a vow: for better or worse. The worse things become, the more tightly she clings to dreams of better. The more tightly those dreams bind her.

  By now, painting death over a dream is easier than breathing. Her tears capture the gleam of the fluorescent lights. You listen to the sudden hitch in her words. You watch her dream wither.

  As she and her friend hurry away, you see something more—a new dream taking root in the ashes of the old. And for the first time, you understand. You embrace who and what and why you are.

  * * *

  Without Birth, there is no need for Death. Without Death, what need is there for Birth?

  For years, you’ve avoided the husks of your mother’s dreams, walled them away with bricks of guilt and fear. Guilt over the dreams you’d killed. Fear of destroying what remained.

  You told yourself—believed, even—that it was to protect her.

  Later that night, as she pores over bills and prescriptions and insurance letters, you return to that long-hidden landscape beyond the wall. Her dreams are fragile. A single inadvertent touch could send cracks spiderwebbing through them.

  One dream calls to you. Buried beneath grief and denial, you find your own death. It’s both dream and nightmare. She stands over your grave, her soul gutted from her body. She imagines the emptiness to follow. Deeper yet, shrouded in guilt, she imagines relief. Freedom.

  She imagines you flying free of your broken body. Free of the pain and struggle. An angel finally released from this cruel, earthly prison.

  She thinks your fascination with funerals is your way of preparing for death.

  How long has she been buried with that dream? How long has its poison leached into her vision, distorting her world?

  Swirling anger and pity on your brushes, you sweep the dream aside, leaving an empty canvas in its wake. And you ask—whisper—beg—for her to see you. To see that you don’t need death to fly.

  Other dreams and memories begin to surface. In one, she reaches to stroke your bangs from your eyes. Your head lolls to the left. In another, you wear your favorite T-shirt, with the butterfly dressed as Wonder Woman, and laugh at two young squirrels chasing one another outside the window.

  She looks at you, and a smile eases the tension of her mouth.

  As her vision grows clearer, so too does yours. You can see Death’s dreams for you, now. Dreams of growth and love and life and purpose. You are partners. Collectors. Family. As eternal as life and dream.

  You are the Death of Dreams, and the Birth of Possibility.

  WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS

  Stephen Blackmoore

  “The fuck did you get into, Jimmy?”

  “Something bad,” Jimmy says, his voice tinny through the cheap phone.

  “You need bail?” I don’t tack “again” onto the end of that sentence. Considering that the phone woke me up into a hangover headache like two steel spikes shoved through my eyeballs I think that’s pretty good.

  “I got backroomed at the Gold Rush.”

  The Gold Rush is one of those shabby little places way way way off the strip. The Bellagio it’s not. Though, like all casinos, I’m sure it’s loud, smoky, and stinking of desperation.

  “For fuck sake, Jimmy.” Getting backroomed is when casino security thinks you’re cheating and insists—politely—that you follow them into the back room for a “friendly chat”—or maybe a broken nose, so rumor has it. In Jimmy’s case they’ll either give him a stern talking to and dump him on the street, or call the cops and have him tossed into the North Las Vegas jail for his bi-monthly visit. There are worse things, so I’m not real clear on what the big deal is.

  Jimmy Freeburg is a fuck-up. One of those guys who’s always got an angle that doesn’t pan out. Horse tips, blackjack strategies, poorly thought out scams and cons— nothing big. I’ve bailed him out a good, five, six times…? After a while it all blurs together.

  As roommates go I’ve had better. He’s really kind of a pain in the ass. So why do I go to all that trouble?

  Magic. Some people have it, some people don’t. Jimmy does, but he doesn’t know it, and he couldn’t do anything with it if he tried. His magic’s like a badly tuned radio. All static, no signal and it’s twisted around just enough that it shrouds him in a sort of psychic fuzz. Makes him hard to get a read on, hard to track. Extends to the places he spends most of his time, even when he’s not there.

  So our apartment’s something of a black hole, magically speaking. As are three strip clubs, four bars, and unsurprisingly, the North Las Vegas jail.

  Magic camouflage is useful. But it doesn’t always work.

  A noise on the line. Somebody else comes on. “Eric Carter.” A man’s voice I don’t recognize. It’s smooth and oily and even if he didn’t know my name I wouldn’t like him. “Necromancer. Left L.A. under a bit of a cloud. I understand you murdered Jean Boudreau.”

  Like I said, it doesn’t always work.

  “Technically,” I say, “the ghosts I fed him to murdered him.”

  There’s silence on the other end. I’m not sure what this guy was expecting, but I don’t think it was this. Another mage? That or he’s looped into our world enough to know what I am just by knowing my name. I’m a nobody, but I’m a rare nobody.

  Everybody’s got their own weird ideas of what necromancers do. Sacrifice rams, drink blood, eat babies. We don’t eat babies. Well, I don’t eat babies.

  The reality is that we’re keyed into the dead and dying. We see ghosts, talk to them, pull out their secrets like we’re yanking teeth.

  This does not make us popular party guests.

  “I see,” he says. “I’d like to see you here at the Gold Rush. I have need of your particular talents.”

  “Pass, thanks.”

  “If you
don’t, I’ll be forced to shoot your friend Jimmy, here.”

  “Knock yourself out,” I say and hang up the phone. I consider going back to sleep, but I know I can’t. I pissed off a lot of people back in L.A. when I killed Boudreau. Now somebody’s found me and I can’t afford to stick around and find out who.

  I knew Vegas wouldn’t last forever. Now it’s time to head for somewhere else. I roll out of bed, throw on some clothes. Everything important I own fits in a leather messenger bag. I’ve got a clunker downstairs with a glowing check engine light that’ll get me to Utah before it catches fire. I’ll steal another from there.

  The phone rings again. I grab my messenger bag. Phone keeps ringing. Sorry, you’re in the shit, Jimmy. I get it. But honestly, you and I, we’ve never really been friends. You were useful. Now you’re not. And I’m not going to answer that phone.

  I answer the phone.

  “I take it you didn’t shoot him.”

  “Consider that a poor opening gambit,” he says. “My name’s Sebastian McCord. I own the Gold Rush Casino. I would still very much like to meet you.”

  I rummage through my messenger bag, make sure I’ve got everything. “No,” I say, checking that the Browning Hi-Power I keep in there is loaded. “I really don’t think you would.”

  “We’ve gotten off on the wrong foot.”

  “Seemed pretty clear to me. I don’t come by, you shoot Jimmy. I’m not coming by, so shoot Jimmy.” I hang up.

  A few seconds later the phone rings again. I let it go a couple times before picking up. Before I can speak McCord says, “I’d like to hire you to kill a man so that he’ll live forever.”