The wind shook the trees with a violence that dropped anything dead. Shane listened as the pieces of jagged wood jostled their way down, carrying a shuffling that seemed to pierce the loud howling of the wind itself.

He had stormed out of his house, looking to get away from his parents who knew nothing; nothing of the dynamic nature of the wind, nothing of the plight of a thirteen year old, and certainly nothing about their son. He had wanted to go to his friend’s house on this gusty Friday night. Sure, he got it; all the movies, tv shows, general society, and perhaps even his parents own childhoods, had them believing that “Friday night at Matthew’s” was teenage code for “I’m going out drinking and doing drugs with my friends and this is my obvious alibi”. But then again, the fact that they truly might think this only reaffirmed his feeling of isolation. Friday night at Matthew’s would happily have been friend night with Matthew and other friends, if either of them in fact had “other friends” to hang out with.

Of course, in this instance, “Friday Night at Matthews” was teenage code for “losers” in a way. Shane didn’t like this term, but as a member of one of only two tables in the Rockwood Middle School to seat a lonely two students, he couldn’t think of a better descriptor. He certainly wasn’t a loser, or so he believed. His friend Matthew on the other hand, with his pony-tail, a love of anime, and a greater love of 90’s female pop artists like Michelle Branch and Christina Aguilera, slid easily into that group.

Shane meant this in the nicest way possible. He envied Matthew in a way actually. The kid that he had grown up exploring these same back woods behind his house with had allowed nerdiness to become a symbol of honor. A symbol he wore proudly, no matter how often it got him called homo or snickered at. Even the cruelty of his Bowser shell backpack being thrown in the toilet on three separate occasions would not convince him that a black LL Bean might be more suitable for middle school.

“You can’t keep a Koopa down,” he had said to Shane, his bag suctioned against his back, leaving a trail of water droplets on the school tiles with each step.

It had frustrated Shane in the past, spending the majority of fourth grade trying to “change” his best friend; show him the way that he could enjoy playing World of WarCraft at home but choose not to mention it in school.

“You know what man, maybe I’m just not cool enough,” he had said, his hands balled into fists like he always did when he was fighting back emotion, “I mean, I would get it if you decided to start hanging out with Zack and the rest of the Gryffindor’s.”

Shane could still remember Matthews glistening eyes. They were self-proclaimed Ravenclaw’s together (the fact that Shane had been sorted into Gryffindor once did nothing to change his devotion to the house) and it would have killed Matthew to have lost his friend. Shane had given up that day on his attempt at fixing Matthew, and as of this seventh grade year, he had given up altogether.

He was trying to be better about accepting his social status that came with aligning himself with Matthew for so long. Matthew constantly reminded him that being a “closet-nerd” would get him nowhere in life but unhappy. Shane trusted his friend’s assessment. For a kid with no social sense, he often shared enlightening commentary. Shane would often laugh off his comments but he would find himself thinking of them later with his mind no longer preoccupied by videogames and movies.

There was only one thing that stood in his way of full acceptance into nerdom. One hurdle that didn’t just continue to trip him up, but held him down and beat him repeatedly. This hurdle stalked him in the halls, pleading with him to show a sense of normalcy.

This hurdle was a girl.

This girl was Eliza.

A crackle from above pummeled into his wandering thoughts. He looked up just in time to see a large branch plummeting towards him from the tree above. A quick sidestep accompanied by a yelp was enough to save him from the impending danger, and the branch flopped upon the road, bouncing three times, splintering until it no longer remained a threat. With the third wriggle it finally fell to a rest. Shane remained still for a moment, watching the branch as a cat might a wounded sparrow it has found in the garden. A level of cautious vigilance in his gaze, as if the wind might turn the small shards of wood into adders at any moment.

After several seconds passed, Shane finally allowed himself a breath. The wind that now was ripping at his thin jacket less frequently had left the branch motionless. Taking in its size without the altering effects of fear revealed it would not have killed him, though certainly could have done some harm.

Shane couldn’t imagine the irreparable damage he would have done to his parents psyche had he been killed after storming off into the stormy night. He was thankful for the near miss that left him heaving deeply and slightly elated.

And then he saw it.

It was inconsequential even as it drew his attention slightly, letting his eyes linger. Had he not been in such a heightened state, he probably would have missed it completely, his mind dismissing it as unnecessary for focus amidst the bellowing wind and flashing sky.

The bobbing light trounced around in the woods, distant enough that if you blinked you might have thought you’d imagined it. Shane watched it long enough to notice that it would disappear for long moments at a time, so long so that he was always about to move his attention to something else when it would reappear, livelier than before.

He wasn’t sure what it was, this gypsy of an ember gallivanting around the woods behind his house, but he knew he wanted to see it. Without realizing, he broke into a sprint, down the road which eventually morphed into a dirt road rather abruptly. It was moving across his line of sight, not away or towards, but straight across. Well, not straight at all. It was incredibly winding and unpredictable, but at the same time it drifted from left to right with a purpose. The dichotomy made no sense and all sense to Shane, whose quest to meet up with this blip kept him from analyzing further.

Finally he reached the bridge, the light growing bigger with each step. It was no longer a blip in the night but was now a flame of sorts, only this flame was bounding about in the forest, trees masking it intermittently before it would spring up again.

He shot across the bridge, his steps heavy upon its elderly structure. It had been there for centuries he was sure (history had never been his strong suit). The flame was so close now, and Shane had calculated that it would be making it to the road on the other side of the bridge any minute now. It disappeared on his left for several moments before breaking out of a bush further up than he had calculated, scuttling across the road and into a thicket.

He hadn’t seen anything distinguishing aside from the light, and he picked up his pace, stitch in his side be damned, trying to make it to the thicket.

A minute later he was there, too late. He knew it. His sweaty palms fell on his knees in abject acceptance. He had failed, the flame was gone and he couldn’t be sure what he had seen. Shane had always been one to trust himself more than anyone around him. It was a bit prideful, and perhaps his most unrecognized flaw, but he was far more skeptical of things he couldn’t prove himself. It didn’t matter what level of trust he had for someone, his own mother could tell him she had seen a stray dog and his immediate response would be to find it himself.

He couldn’t imagine explaining this most recent aberration to his parents, or even Matthew. Could he even be sure of himself for that matter? Maybe he had been hit in the head by that branch and he was just in shock? The whole world seemed out of sorts.

A shuffle of branches startled Shane, and he whipped to the right, staring into the woods. Immediately he saw the glimmer on the hill to his right.

It was the light.

And the light was attached to a body. The body of a man was Shane’s first thought, but within seconds of analyzing he knew this to be untrue.

The light was a flame (He had been right about this part at least).

The flame was incased in an ancient lantern. Shane would have guessed that it was fueled by gas in any other circumstance but the unusualness of the rest of the scene had him unsure. It swayed in a way counter to anything he had ever seen, swirling as if touched by the wind but simultaneously as if it were a part of the wind. It was playing as one, not in danger of being extinguished by the wind’s brutality. It was a lantern of exquisite design; something Shane knew rather than saw due to the lighting.

It wasn’t the lantern that held Shane’s gaze though, but rather what held it. A short, stocky man held the lantern in his long, stick fingers. His torso was so small compared to the size of his arms and legs that it was a wonder he had a body for them to connect to. His legs were bent like frogs, the knobby knees pointed away from his body, and he seemed prepped to spring at any moment.

The face is the only thing that kept Shane from running, screaming in the other direction. And not for the reason that he wasn’t scared, in fact, quite the contrary. It was about as human looking as the rest of its body, with a pointed nose, wrinkled skin, and a disapproving scowl. Two rounded teeth protruded from his lower jaw, and out of his mouth like slugs looking to escape his mouth. These two small tusks (that was probably the best word for them) didn’t seem large enough to do damage but Shane certainly did not intend to find out if this were true or not.

The last distinguishing attribute of this bizarre man-creature was his mane. His face was surrounded by long, matted hair. Twigs and sap clung to the whiskery exterior, hinting at a long life-time in the woods. This gave his face the appearance of a cat, and the hair rippled in the wind as he continued to survey the boy from above.

“Hello?” yelled Shane before he could stop himself. He coveted a reaction from the strange creature that stood still as a gargoyle before him.

“The light protects the forest, but the night keeps it alive”

The creature’s voice was a grumble, and it seemed to vibrate from somewhere deep within. Shane shuddered at the strange words.

And with these words the creature seemed to jolt back to life. Springing from its still position, it launched into the forest with unrecognizable speed and deftness. The lantern trailed behind it, held tightly in its abnormally long arms. In seconds there was nothing to be seen but the bouncing light, and a second more, and this too had vanished. Shane took a few steps as if to pursue it but it was clear almost immediately that the task would be futile.

Shane began to walk home, lost in his thoughts. The worries of the fight with his parents seemed so far away, a distant wound long since healed into a scar. His mind grappled with what he had seen and how he would approach discussing such a thing with anyone.

It wasn’t the existence of the creature that had him worked up. It was strange, and startlingly unpleasant, but it hadn’t seemed dangerous. No, it was the unexplained that had left such a chilling aftermath within him. It didn’t jive with anything that had happened in his life. It had left him with no meaning. He was left to fit this squiggly memory into the rest of his life memories that remained wholly square and circular.

“SHANE!!” he heard his mother calling in the distance.

He wouldn’t tell her he decided in that moment. He wouldn’t tell anyone. Maybe it didn’t need to be explained. Perhaps it didn’t, but he also knew that nightly walks in the forest was now a part of his routine, in hopes that a lantern might cross his path once again.

She didn’t have a name, and that didn’t bother her considering she wouldn’t have even known what such a thing was were you to ask. Well, she had a sound. Most things in the zoo that she knew answered to sounds, but only few had a sound that was uniquely their own. Her sound was high-pitched and whooping. Chu, Chu, Chu, Chu, Chu, her family would often chant when she arrived in the enclosure, using the Stander entrance she had learned to navigate. Only her family called her by it, and they seldom did during the light of day. Light time meant the Two-Legged Standers would be around, and within the chimp tribe their remained an unspoken rule, one which did not need to be spoken to be followed; that their sister’s sound remain from their hollering mouths within such noisy, uninteresting company.

Tonight, Chu bounded from rooftop to rooftop with ease just as the chimps had taught her. The metal canopies layered in decorative vines and decayed leaves barely squealed underneath the weight of her petite, calloused feet. At first such leaps had been difficult for Chu, her body being not as full of hair, her arms not quite as lanky and flowing as her chimpanzee friends that had invited her into their family so long ago. Chu saw herself in their eyes, if not in their bodies so much. As she grew older, these differences became more glaring, and Chu often worried that one day these differences would be too much; one day she would belong in her own metal home.

It had taken Chu a while to realize that it was their eyes, the same eyes that she shared with her family, which allowed her family to make most of the jumps that they did. It was eyes with a belief that their body would follow, eyes with trust in a soft landing that hadn’t happened yet, eyes with confidence, which let them make the daring, graceful jumps work.

She landed soft upon her glass roof destination. The landing sent a few bats fluttering from their clasped holds below her. Their terrified screeches were muted by the thick see-through slab beneath her feet. Chu smiled at the small result of her pounce. Bats were not very strong conversationalists, and as far as the animals whose company she enjoyed within the many homes varying in size, shape, and vegetation, they were some of her least favorite. Due to this, she enjoyed that she had startled them, and walked a bit more heavy footed the rest of the way before dismounting by grabbing unto the horn of the frozen, rock rhino.

The rhino did not move when she swung from it before falling to the ground. Chu had been sad the first time she had seen the rock rhino, since she counted the Rhinos as one of her closest friends, even though they rarely sounded to talk with her. They were a quiet sort, and preferred to talk to her with their bodies. But this particular rhino had been different. Chu had learned long ago that the rhino was more than just dead. In fact, she had begun recently to suspect it had never been alive at all, although she did not know the proper sounds that would allow her to broach such a topic with her family.

The rock rhino contained Two-Legged Stander symbols in front of it, large and looping. During the day Standers could be seen all over these oddly shaped rocks, hanging and playing in it as her brothers and sisters did a tire swing. The elder standers would watch and poke a flashing box, mostly reveling in their offspring’s amusement. Chu wasn’t sure what the rock symbols meant, but she sometimes liked to look at them when she was by herself. She stared a moment at them now. They shone too shiny in the moonlight, making Chu think that perhaps they were more metal than rock after all. When a cloud passed over the moon, throwing its shadow over the still rhino and the symbols it stood watch over, Chu decided it was time to move. Chu was on a particular mission, as she was nearly every night.

Chu placed the rectangular grain cracker she had stolen from the wooden food shed earlier in the evening right next to the purple plastic bag of water. The bag was on the metal slab where Two-Legged Standers often sat and ate during the day, just as the purple bag always was. Chu knew the container held water because she had investigated once, and accidently spilled its contents on the dirt floor. She had panicked and ran for cover without leaving a cracker that night. She had felt incredibly guilty, fearing she had done irreparable damage to the small watering hole, but the next night it had been back, and filled with water once again.

She rested the grain cracker against the purple pouch, and scampered into the adjacent tree, as was her nightly ritual. Chu positioned herself behind the metal sun that sprayed light on the scene below. It was a trick she had learned from the leopard, who used the tactic to hunt its prey. All anyone would see if they looked into the tree would be the light trickling down, not Chu hanging, hidden within the leaves and branches.

As he did every night, the Two-Legged Stander came around the bend, his mouth contorted in a funny manner in order to make a soothing sound. Its rhythm reminded Chu of the birds, and she wondered if he did it in order to attract a mate or if it was just for himself. Whatever the meaning of his song, it seemed to make him happy, as he stepped with a bounciness that Chu rarely saw in Two-Legged Standers.

He was a Stander of medium age, with hairless skin just like Chu. His hair was brown like the cougar, but it had a certain shine to it, which was evident tonight as he came under the barrage of light from the metal sun in the tree. He had a metal stick that hung at his hip, looped into his removable skin that only two-legged-standers cared about as far as Chu knew. The metal stick could shoot light from it. She had seen him use it before, but under the current circumstance where extra light was unnecessary, he did not need help for his poor-sighted night eyes.

This was Chu’s Two-Legged Stander. The one who seemed contently lost within the zoo, unwilling or unable to leave for his own home at night like the rest of his kind.

The Two-Legged Stander came upon his purple bottle and saw the cracker rested up against it. He bared his teeth, which Chu had come to see as happiness and appreciation, not the aggression that it meant in her family. Of all his shortcomings, Chu was able to forgive him for this one. Communication could be difficult sometimes.

He spun as he always did, waving the cracker as a baby chimp might wave a stick. The wave meant gratitude, and although it happened each time, Chu basked in its meaning again tonight. He didn’t know where his secret helper was located but he hoped they would know his thanks. The Two-Legged Conductor would then finish his twirl, pull his cracker baton to his face and take a small bite. Chu would watch him chew it for several minutes, slow and methodic, as the cracker turned to a pasty clump of brown in his mouth. The saltiness could be a lot, and it showed on his face intermittently, but Chu knew he would learn to love it as she had.

It was always a small bite, too small for a meal. Her Two-Legged Stander, in his immense survival ineptitude, didn’t seem to grasp this. But Chu didn’t care; thanks to her, this bite would sustain him for another night and day.

Chu unconsciously bared her teeth in a show of happiness. Her work was done but she watched him longer, until he left the lighted area and turned the corner toward the home of the reptiles. Chu was silent as she made the leaping journey back to her family.

The Two-Legged Stander went about his business as always, not thinking twice as a chorus of CHU, CHU, CHU leapt from the chimpanzee enclosure and into the New York City night that surrounded the Bronx Zoo.

Abram Lindell wasn’t a cranky old man, he just had little patience for those who didn’t adhere to the rules. At a youthful sixty three years old, Abram had lived a long life and it worried him to see crankiness and rule-following slowly melding into one definition. Anyone would be “cranky” he thought, if they too were up at 4:30 scrubbing graffiti off the concrete slabs of the sewage treatment plant. His father would have agreed.

His father had passed away seven years ago, a heart attack plucking him as he planted tomatoes in the back yard. It had been a quick death, more than most were lucky enough to get, the doctors had been quick to assure Abram when he got to the sleek linoleum casket known as Saint Francis. Francis was the closest hospital to his parent’s house in rural upstate New York, a quick twenty minute drive if the roads were clear. The roads had been clear that evening, but that wasn’t why the ambulance hadn’t turned its sirens on. Mr. Lindell had been pronounced dead by the twenty-year-old, rap-blaring, EMS personal as soon as they came upon Abram holding the old-man in the torn earth.

Abram had been devastated to lose his father for many reasons. It had left him with no immediate family since his Mother’s passing ten years prior to that (if there was anything Abram hated worse than heart attacks it was cancer; and maybe teenagers). But most significant was the loss of Abram’s moral compass. The world could try its best to tell him what to believe, berating him with abrasive TV personalities, overheard conversations at the mechanic, and half-drunken discussions with friends, but until his father and he had solved a world issue over a pint of Guinness, Abram couldn’t be sure of his own thoughts. His father had been a rule-follower too, growing up in an age where the American government was viewed as a second-religion. Thomas Lindell was American, Catholic, and then a Lindell, in that order. John F Kennedy and Franklin Delano Roosevelt held almost as revered a status as Superman or Captain America might to an eleven year old child for Abram’s father. They hadn’t been superheroes to Thomas Lindell, they had been one better; they had been real. To Thomas Lindell, a democratic government could be flawed but it was flawed in the same ways that humanity was. To not embrace the flaws was to be naïve, and as an ex-fighter pilot, Thomas Lindell was anything but naïve.

Abram had grown up in a small, one story house in a one child family. Abram had been born with small, struggling lungs which made survival in his first couple hours of life unsure. But, with the never-quit attitude he would carry with him his whole life, Abram had pulled through for his elated 19 year old parents. Thomas and Mallory had tried to have children after Abram but after two miscarriages, had given up trying. Mallory, a zealous believer in God and prominent community leader at the local church, had taken the second miscarriage as a sign that Abram was meant to be her only blessing; a miracle granted to her from god. Abram battled with the theory that he had been given to his mother as a gift throughout childhood. Miracle baby seemed to have come at the price of two innocent, unborn souls and their deaths seemed to weigh heavier on his mind than his mothers. As he grew into adulthood, Abram realized that the miscarriages had been incredibly rough on his mother and that coping came in many different ways, religion being one, but this revelation didn’t necessarily make up for the weight of guilt he had forced himself to carry; for himself, for his mother, and for the surprisingly heavy deceased babies.

Though he had never told anyone, he had named them, the miscarriage babies, as if that would ease the guilt that perched so heavily on him, two fat condors gripping tightly to both his shoulders. Evelyn and Damian. He had stolen these names from two tombstones that lay adjacent to each other at the small, rundown cemetery behind his house. It was a local cemetery, but not the local cemetery. That was Baron’s Cemetery, or Baron’s Boneyard, as the immortal-feeling high-schoolers often called it. No, the Old Vale cemetery was hardly used anymore, and thus, seldom visited; forgotten as the dead that plotted its uneven, weed-infested landscape.

This was quite alright with Abram; almost preferable. It had been a place of peaceful escape for Abram growing-up, and going to visit Evelyn and Damian to talk with them, apologizing and keeping them afloat of the day-to-day happenings on earth was therapeutic in a way. With every birthday that passed, “Happy Birthday my Miracle Boy” scribbled in Mallory’s elegant cursive with green icing, his favorite color, he would find time that evening to sneak to Evelyn and Damian’s tombstones and apologize once again for their death’s. He hadn’t meant for God to murder them, and he hoped that they knew that. He was trying his best to enjoy his own life for the three of them. It didn’t matter to Abram that there was moss sprouting upon their last name, “Edwards”, they were Lindell’s he had never met. He was as sure of this as the unchanging dates of death chiseled into the weathered stones before him; 1893 and 1895.

They had been his favorite, but he had visited all twenty seven tombstones often during childhood and his teenage years, especially after working landscape for Mr. Townsend, caretaker of the Old Vale Cemetery during his years of high school and turbulent, unsure few years that followed graduation.

In a way, Abram had grown up to become a mixture of Mr. Townsend and his father. This thought had never really occurred to him until today, as he dropped the prickly scrubbing brush to his side, breathing in the cold, misty air of a 4:30 morning.

He was a reclusive, elderly single man who’d never really left town, a la Mr. Townsend, but with the never-to-be-stunted ambition inherent in him due to half the genes he had stolen from his father. Abram had dated but never seemed to find the “right one”, much to his mother’s chagrin. His father had been far less inclined to judge this part of Abram’s life. A wife had been something Abram had wanted as a young man. However, he wanted one in the way a five-year-old yearns for a puppy: the dream of a puppy is well and good until your parents are making you walk it at 7 o’clock on a Saturday. Yes, he wanted a wife in theory, but the flawed girls he met in dive bars and on the streets of Old Vale had never quite stacked up to the girls he met in his daydreams. This in no way stopped him from sleeping around and pouring his heart out to any twirling girl with a loving smile who would give him a sideways glance. For the better part of a decade this had been all that he did.

Abram, without a shadow of a doubt had wanted a family though, but something about fatherhood scared him. Having such a wonderful father had stunted him in a way, or so he had led himself to believe. How could he possibly live up to the shining epitome of guiding fatherly light that Thomas Lindell had been? So he had traded in family for an adventure. A brief stint as a police officer in his skeleton of a town had ended nearly 30 years ago. A routine traffic stop had gone poorly and he had been hit in the knees with a sizzling bullet. Abram hadn’t even seen the mustached man grab his weapon. And such should have been the end of his illustrious career of do-goodery, but Abram had realized he couldn’t give it up. So now he worked as a security guard for a local security firm that he himself had created. He was his sole employee. Abram liked to think of himself as a mercenary; a guard for hire. It was a much more heroic way of saying he bounced from strip malls, to sewage treatment plants, to helping the large, older mayor get in and out of the local pool safely.

The hours were shit, and the pay was shit. Fitting, considering his primary employment was at the local sewage treatment plant. Corning’s Water Treatment is where he found himself this morning, whistling into the air in forced amusement. It was the third time in a month that he had gotten on the job to find a vandalized water tanker, swooping letters in new acrylic spray paint decorating its sides. GONZA MOVEMENT it read in its shouting letters. Abram didn’t have the slightest idea what it meant other than a cry for recognition and belonging. He could think of so many other ways to find these two human needs, but he tried hard to remember what it was like to be young and fleetingly destructive. A past Abram who would have considered this act tolerable (or at the very least having a considerable motive) had long since exited his body, but the remnants of empathy could be found if he searched long enough. This morning, however, he didn’t search long before falling back on cursing the teenagers. He was sixty three and had earned the right to be angry he finally decided, and to hell to those who would decree that as Crankiness 101.

A noise behind Abram startled him, and he jerked to his feet a bit quicker than his body could handle. A twinge of pain shot through his long-ago wounded knee, but he stifled the cry of pain. His cop instincts would not allow for an utterance of pain. Pain showed weakness, and criminals were like wolves. Abrams had settled this analogy long ago with his father on a particularly drunken Sunday night. The game was over and he had told his father this theory. His father had concurred.

“You bare your teeth and they run, but if they smell the limping calf of self-gain, it’s over.”

Thomas Lindell had taken a long chug of beer.

“I like it, son” he had said with a belch.

Abram stifled the imagery of him being the actual limping calf in this scenario. He was not some wounded wildebeest struggling across pounding Serengeti waters. He worked out at the local gym twice a week, although his work outs mostly consisted of watching middling dramas on the treadmill, backed with a seventies soundtrack in his earbuds whose upbeat funk seldom matched the dour complexity of the law proceedings unfolding on screen. He was in decent shape, despite the battered knee, and could take even the healthiest of crocodiles he might encounter in the rough rapids.

Abram clutched at his side, un-velcroing the utility flashlight that hung at his side, quickly pressing the rubber button that brought it to life. Its steady stream of light was much dispersed by the morning dew that hung in the air. Abram was glad he had gotten the most expensively stocked one he had found at the hardware store.

The light fell on the chain link fence that surrounded the water-tankard. It was as askew as most things in Old Vale, having been built on uneven ground. Those charged with installing the fence had either been extremely oblivious of the minor barriers discrepant footing, or had been wholly uninterested in putting forth the effort necessary to fix it. As it was, the fence was silent as the morning, unshaken as it shimmered amid Abram’s light. His watchful ear trained for the source of the noise, Abram was still for several moments. What had seemed a stumbling, flesh on earth, no longer rang in the air. Abram’s heart-rate slowly subsided. His free hand drifted slowly from its hovering position over the Taser on his opposite hip.

His sole job description was to patrol the perimeter he reminded himself, he just so rarely had anything to worry about that he often used self-imposed custodial duties as a means of escaping the monotony.

Abram bounded down from his concrete slab resting place, scanning the speckled chain fervently for signs of movement. It was most likely a raccoon or deer wandering through the nearby undergrowth, but Abram wanted to be prepared.

Abram felt the exhilaration of possibility and that so often hitched along with the slight dread of danger. These moments that bred fear in most were what heroic deeds were made of. Even after sixty-three years, his mind still craved the chance to do something important, something sent to shatter his ordinary life. It was no longer the enthralling pull he had possessed in his youth, but he reveled in the fact that it hadn’t subsided completely yet. It was one of the few things about him that neither of his parents had ever truly understood.

The beaten path of hardened earth that twisted its way through the grass alongside the inside fence was sleeker than normal, and Abram had to remind himself to watch his step to avoid falling. This was a new concern that had grown with age, his body no longer recovered from falls, sprains, bumps, and awkward twists as easily as they used to. After about a minute, Abram had resigned to the fact that the noise that had startled him was nothing more than an early morning manifestation of the waking wildlife that the Corning Water Treatment Plant so uncaringly impeded upon. Downgrading from mission-bound security to leisurely patrol, Abram decided he might as well finish a preemptive loop of the whole facility.

It was the stillness that first drew Abram’s attention that something was amiss.

The mornings he worked were tranquil, but not stilled to absolute zero. Whistling birds, fluttering birds, the brisk slamming of brakes in the distance. This was the chorus of an average morning, not this hollow moment between minutes that seemed to have settled over Abram and the Sewage Plant under his watchful vestige.

And as he turned the corner, the source of the stillness became clear. A mass, ghostly white and twisted was laying silent amid the tall grass on the other side of the fence, resting upon its crookedy frame. In the slim light of morning, the flashlight battling through a million specks of water that floated between Abram and the scene, it was hard to determine what exactly it was. It was something that had not been there when Abram had shown up at three, and it certainly was content in its odd position precariously perched along the fence. It wasn’t moving and the utter lack of curious critters surrounding the scene made Abram think it must have been recent. Was it the source of the noise, this quiet heap of white and blue?

As he drew closer, the grotesque scene came more and more into view, the details sparce on what had happened. But with each step, one thing became abundantly clear, causing Abram’s blood to run cold. He wanted to run away but his legs continued to be pulled along slick, mud track. It was his creation and it now rolled him along, the momentum of destiny too far along to be stopped. He would reach this figure, whether he wanted to or not.

It was a body.

A dead body Abram’s panicked brain yelped but he quelled the thought quickly. It didn’t have to be dead. Where was the blood? He thought to himself, his logical mind temporarily disabling the prior knowledge that lived somewhere in his brain; the knowledge that would have reminded him that death could occur in ways that did not spit blood from flesh. Death could be unknown and quiet.

The first attribute that really laid into Abram was the bodies’ hair. Or woman’s hair he amended, since it was long and stringy, clinging like pasta to the chain link fence. Her face was smashed up against the metal webbing, her left arm crumpled at her side.

Abram fumbled the flashlight momentarily, the sweat on his hands making its metal form difficult to hold onto. He regained control of it but not before letting a curse hiss into the air from behind gritted teeth. The radio at his side was heavy, and he considered in the moment whether he should alert Harris, the senior guard also on duty this morning. Harris was internal control, hired to work exclusively at the sewage plant with a salary paid only by the sewage plant. He was certainly sitting in the cluttered maintenance room stocked with a flickering black and white TV someone must have commandeered for free on the side of the road. It had been rigged to get a few select stations from a neighboring feed (illegally Abram guessed) and at this time Harris was probably watching the early morning soaps Abram knew he loved so much. His first few stints on the job, Harris would try to click over to ESPN any time Abram had walked into the room but by now the heavy-set man who smelled of cheese puffs and stale booze unflinchingly left his programs on for Abram to see. Harris had not been a member of the force, and in his physical state, despite being twenty years younger than Abram, it was clear that Harris would not be much help in a situation other than his ability to work a cell phone and alert authorities.

The scene was startling in its setup, and a curiosity to explore further stayed Abram from reaching for his radio and sending a crackling distress through the air to Harris. He crouched down at the fence, his flashlight now inches from the woman’s face, illuminating every aspect of her. She was in her early forties, a slender face to match her slender body type, and an agape mouth to match her dead brown eyes. With her eyes unreactive to the flashlight shining into her eyes, Abram now could be certain this was a dead body that he had stumbled upon. Morbid curiosity had Abram reaching for the right hand that had its fingers intertwined in the chain links before he even recognized what was happening. He flicked the delicate fingers free of their hold and watched the arm flop, lifeless towards the ground. The momentum caused the woman’s face to slide down the fence momentarily before coming to a rest about a foot from the mud and grass floor.

The jostling had closed her mouth, but her eyes remained open and transfixed on Abram. Something clicked in Abram, that hadn’t hit before her mouth had stopped miming a scream and settled into a more peaceful expression; He had seen this woman before, around town. Old Vale was small enough that, even if you didn’t know everyone in town, you saw their face once or twice in passing. This woman was such a face. He parsed through his memories, hoping to come across her face and where he had seen her. Maybe the Old Vale church he thought. She seemed like a church going soul, or at least it had been a few minutes ago, before the life had been removed from her body, and although Abram hadn’t been to church since his Mother’s passing, he passed their every Sunday on the way to the Library. Somewhere in his memory he thought he saw her with an obnoxiously large floral hat bouncing along on her head. The type of hat that belonged more in an old-time southern movie; debutante-like in its vivacious flair. Yes, this was surely the same girl.

What was her name? Why had she been near the sewage plant? Why had she died? Was her killer close, lurking just outside of the visibility of his flashlight, awaiting their next kill?

All these questions flashed in Abrams brain in quick succession, so fast that he had little time to dwell on any single one long enough for any coherent answer to surmised, despite their pressing seriousness.

And then he saw the golden clasped purse.

While Abram wasn’t much for fashion, its floral design, purple and pink lilies stitched into life on a blue fabric, was appealing even to him. It was by her right hand, resting at the foot of the fence.

On the other side of the fence actually. On his side.

This struck Abram as odd immediately, although no odder than stumbling upon a dead body he imagined. Had she thrown it? Why would she throw it? Did it have special significance? A family heirloom? Maybe monetary value? What was even odder was that its golden clasp was unclipped, and it lay splayed on the ground like a butterfly batted from the air, struggling through its last breaths. The design only enhanced this image for Abram. It was majestic and it was dead, just like its former owner. Her killer may have taken what he wanted from the purse, credit cards, bent social security card, driver’s license, family photos containing smiles that might never be the same after the events of the morning, and maybe even some money (although she looked to Abram like someone who was more comfortable paying with plastic than anything else) before ditching its carcass onto the other side of the fence?

These were all possibilities, but ones Abram realized he might never truly know. He walked to the purse, hoping and praying that some form of identification was available for him. If this woman had a family they had a right to know what had happened. They didn’t deserve to grieve, to have such a tragedy thrust upon them on an innocuous looking day in April, but they did have a right to this gradation of evil.

Abram knelt to the ground and pulled the purse. It was heavier than he would’ve thought and he stupidly considered maybe the clasps truly were real gold.

All the contents seemed to be there, and aside from a lack of cash which may or may not have even been present before the events of this morning, it all seemed untouched. Yet, something was off. Every single one of the many, many credit cards were tucked neatly in their respective cloth burrows. It was almost meticulous, the colors of each congregated to match its nearest brethren in a Technicolor array. Abram could not comprehend the complexity of such orderliness (he himself owned a leather clip to hold his cash and driver’s license, nothing more) but it came together rather nice. What stood out amid this neurotic rainbow scale of cards was the woman’s ID. Her driver’s license would not have really fit well into the scheme of the colors, but it seemed out of place for it to have been placed perpendicular in the purse.

It seemed as if someone had looked at it recently and shoved it back in without a care; carelessness that seemed to run counter to the rest of the purses general upkeep.

Abram pulled the license from the pouch. He had to bring it incredibly close to his face, his eyes not being what they once were, and the flashlight shined on it, reflecting back into Abrams eyes and making the already difficult task even more so. Finally he adjusted and he was looking at what was clearly a younger version of this dead woman, smiling with a youthful exuberance that Abram thought surely had not once contemplated a future where she would possibly be slumped dead at a sewage plant.

It wasn’t the picture that held his eyes though, but the name.

Evelyn Moser.

His eyes hovered on the name.

Abram Lindell was alive and Evelyn was dead, once again.

Abram Lindell was still crying when the paramedics arrived an hour later.

******************************************************************

“Mr. Lindell,” said the droning elderly voice of the judge, “you’re currently giving this court no choice but to find you guilty.”

Abram Lindell remained silent as he had for the entirety of the court proceedings. He had not hired a lawyer. As the jury saw it, and as the whole town of Old Vale saw it for that matter, this was as good as any admission of guilt ever could be. He had been the only one at the Sewage Treatment Plant to find her, alone. He had been crying when the paramedics showed up. He hadn’t called for help at any point. His partial DNA was the only thing found at the scene. He might as well have signed his name in blood on her chest as far as most residents of the small town were concerned. The guilt had caused his crying meltdown, his inability to flee the scene, and the corresponding muteness.

The cold handcuffs snapped against Abram’s worn wrists, the Bailiff jostling him with a force that did not bode well for the bones of a man of sixty three. The Miracle Boy was heading to prison, twenty five to life, and for the first time in a very long time, he felt oddly at peace.

I hold the door open, letting the stray gossip, transient cackles, and a fusion of salmon and anxious conversation filter out into the cold April air.

You mention something about how refreshing it is to be with a gentleman, as you glide by in your fluorescent, jelly-fish dress.

She would have curtsied, over-exaggerating so we didn’t let the posh’ness slip to our heads.

You seem to drink the posh’ness in, an “I could get used to this” look playing across your face in the dim crackling-fire lights from above.

I think how we are in something like a Bond villain’s living room but filter the thought away as more of a fourth to sixth date type observation.

The hostess asks how many and you revel in telling her “two” and that we have a reservation.

Obviously. This isn’t Applebee’s. But your glee is infectious. No need to be an asshole. Besides, whether you’re more of an inner asshole or outer asshole it doesn’t really matter, eventually you smell the shit. I’m glad for the smell of steaming vegetables assaulting our noses as a skinny waiter with spiked tips bustles past.

Metaphors about assholes are crass and I remind myself they don’t belong in a restaurant that houses a mosaic rug beneath our feet.

A painting of a pristine, stick of a smoking Parisian woman is hanging on the wall adjacent to me. The street this woman is on is filled with dogs, elderly couples, and a stroller or two. They all look eerily like Eiffel Towers, all in human, dog, and stroller form, their spindly legs elongated like the whole painting had been pushed through a pasta strainer.

It looks crowded along this Parisian street, and I’m not sure if I would like living in this particular painting. I think of this a lot; a man-version of Alice sucked down the rabbit hole, only in my case it’s always a poker scene, a screaming Bruce Springsteen concert, or a dimly lit, one spotlight street. I guess any scene would be hellish to live in forever but some more than others.

I think of pointing the painting out to you, but see that you’re engrossed in a lively conversation with the hostess. I’m sure you’re asking for a booth by the window.

I decide not to mention the painting to you. You would say how beautiful it looks, how quaint. You would say how much you would want to visit but I don’t think you would.

She would say something about how their long legs matched her own.

“Perhaps that one right there is my mother,” she would say, pointing to the smoking woman front and center on the bench.

I would say something about how I know her mother well, and that her legs are much much longer than that. She would laugh and hit me, harder than present company would seem to allow for.

“And this is why you would never get brought to Paris!”

Then, in a glimpse of unjoking clarity, she would tell me she wouldn’t like Paris, which is good cause she could never afford it she’d say.

She’d be half right. She was lousy with financials and working as an assistant for a dental company rarely came with Paris level spending money.

But she would like it, I would be sure.

I hardly notice how long I’ve been watching the large middle class family at the nearest table that somehow slipped past posh security. I feel a little more at home seeing the group of invaders sliding quarters across the table for entertainment, much to the displeasure of mom and the partially concealed bemusement of dad. I wonder if they would recognize a fellow party crasher such as myself, hidden beneath the dry cleaned jacket I stole from my father just a few years ago.

If it weren’t for your frantic hand waving normally reserved for an airport runway employee (it usually required flags I always thought), I would not have realized we were being ushered to our table. You laugh off my distractedness as me “getting caught up in your beauty”, and I respond with a polite smile. Your grip is cautious but direction is stern as you pull my hand like one would an overstimulated child at Disney World.

We are finally seated at a booth. The tone in which you thank the hostess makes me understand you were the winner of the where-shall-we-seat-you debate. I thank her in turn as well.

“It really is a nice place,” I say, realizing I have added little to the ambiance of our date but having little to lead with. I’ve only known you so long.

Having made it to our personal alcove safe, you are back to gawking at the surroundings.

“It is,” you respond in a whisper, “and did you see the wine glasses?”

You hold your face of shock a bit too long. For a moment it is as if I have been frozen in time. I would rather be stuck in the Paris painting I think.

“I did,” I say, “very fancy.”

We settle into a discussion of the lighting smoothly.

Soon the waitress is upon us. She is cute enough to be a waitress but not cute enough to make my date feel threatened by her flirtatious, serving presence. I wonder if it shows in her tips. She trounces her curly black hair with a twist of her head and throws a smile on that looks like it might get stuck by the end of the night. Her tone and excitement seem authentic enough though, and she settles right into the spiel she must give nearly a hundred times a night.

“Can I interest you guys in the house wine tonight?” she says, her smile gaining momentum as she speaks.

I graciously turn it down, without consulting my date. You look a bit put off. If it was in my price range I would, but we will have to do with Moscato for the night.

“Yes, and we are actually ready to order if that’s alright,” I say.

It isn’t classy but you did tell me you were 90ish percent positive you knew what you wanted. I’ll go first and give you a few more moments to decide.

She would’ve called me an ass.

I order the chicken parmigiana. I fumble through the menu as I recite it to the waitress, as if I hadn’t had the dish memorized and she would need a friendly point to be reminded it was, in fact, on the menu.

You smile and tell me it’s a wonderful choice.

She would have mocked me and told me to try something new.

I don’t really like trying new things though, that’s the thing. I found out I was allergic to shrimp once that way. No, I think Chicken Parmigiana will do for tonight.