My plan was to resign just as soon as I had something else. No new job had panned out yet, so here I was, walking down the carpeted hall with a styrofoam cup of dishwater-flavored coffee in my hand. I was the first one in the conference room so I took one of the executive chairs and kicked back, drawing a series of puking skulls on my notepad to kill time. The usual guys filed in, making sarcastic remarks to each other. “Why you gotta break my eggs,” asked Mellon but it was not really a question at all- breaking each other’s balls was the protocol. I stayed out of the fray and elaborated on the skull/puke pattern that had spread across the meeting agenda.

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“Gimme seventy-five bucks!” Asmarelle shouted through the tenement door. She gave the cheap wood a pounding from where she sat on the carpet. “I could bust through this door,” she went on. “You do it,” her mother shouted from inside. “Just you try.”

“C’mon MOOOOOMMMMM!!!” Asmarelle wailed. She turned to Merit, who was standing next to her. He was about as tall as an action figure. “Y’know Az, don’t worry about it,” he said in his little tinny voice.

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It was pitch-black but Marjorie continued moving forward, stepping carefully on the wet rock floor of the tunnel. She could feel Bennie’s fur against her bare leg, and heard the little dog sniffing away. A figure loomed ahead that she could barely make out. As she got closer she identified a head and shoulders. When she was a couple of yards away she could make out some definition- it looked like a statue of some kind, the bearded face grinning and glinting like plastic. But then she heard its rough, labored breathing. She couldn’t feel the dog at her heels anymore. “Bennie?” she whispered, barely breathing the name. Continue reading →