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559/Q
I HEARD IT ON THE RADIO Now available at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01AKV9PTU/
559/Q
WINTER 2016
FROM THE EDITOR
Brrrrr, it’s cold in here! There must be some chillin’ in the atmosphere! Welcome to our second issue since having converted to our quarterly schedule. We hope you’re keeping warm in this deep freeze. I just saw yesterday that there was heavy snow in the United States as far south as the state of Georgia. Stay warm, everybody! You still think we’re making up this climate change stuff?
If you are an aspiring writer, why not submit to us and see your work published here? We hope you enjoy the stories, essays and poetry that is included herein.
Alan Seeger, Editor
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SUBMISSIONS
If you’d like to submit materials for publication, please send e-mail them to [email protected]. The next issue will be published on May 15, 2016.
Please include a brief (2-3 paragraph) biography.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ARTIST Sam Phillips
CALAMARI RINGS Jo Saunders
LUIS WANTED THE WEEKEND OFF Carolyn Southard
NOTES FROM A TROUBLED TURKEY DINNER Jean Gochros
OLD TIME ROCK AND ROLL Jay Crowley
BLACKBIRD Thomas Hansen
THE OPEN DOOR (PART 1) Gregg Cunningham
WHAT DOES A HOMELESS PERSON LOOK LIKE? Thomas Hansen
KNOCK, KNOCK Alan Seeger
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559/Q
ARTIST Master sculptors say
“Measure seven times, cut once,”
So it is that I spend most of my time thinking,
And a smaller fraction writing.
— Sam Phillips
Perseus with the Head of Medusa, Benvenuto Cellini, 1545
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559/Q
CALAMARI RINGS Jo Saunders
His mother was cooking calamari for dinner and Ricky had been tasked with
watching the stove to make sure the rings did not burn. The greens were done as were
the baked potatoes, staying warm in the oven.
He looked into the black pan. The white calamari rings were browning well in their
shallow sea of oil, tiny bubbles rising in rainbow colours. Not rings, really, more ovals
and near figure of eights, rings squashed at one end or smile shaped. He started
looking inside the rings, wondering where they led, a new universe in each. One in
particular drew his attention, the shimmering patterns within the white flesh
circumference offering a glimmer of a possible new world, a rainbow alternative to the
everyday grind of homework and chores … his life seemed monochrome in comparison.
His eyes were drawn in first, the calamari sides receding, getting higher around him as
he went in, his consciousness first, and then with a light ‘plop’ his body followed. He
sank gently onto a sea of bubbles, not hot as he’d expected, but pleasant to the touch,
warm and welcoming, light as air he floated down to come to rest among them.
Looking down, he perceived his limbs, transparent now, shimmering in translucence
with the same effect as the rainbow bubbles.
Ricky’s feet found purchase on the black base, and he perceived that he was on
rock. He took a faltering step, only to bounce way up, higher than his height, doing a
clumsy somersault, and once again drifting downwards through the bubbles. Hardly any
gravity in this place, then. He made his way between the bubbles, the biggest of which
were as high as his shoulders. The white calamari ring surrounded this new world as a
range of mountains, topped by jagged dragon’s back ridges, many miles distant.
He noted that he was on the crest of a hill, and that the bubbles gathered only on
the heights. Carefully lest he leap too high he made his way down the slope. Soon he
felt pressure on his chest and found it hard to breathe; his body yearned to get back up
high. He sniffed, expecting a fishy smell, but his smell sense was deadened. Then he
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noticed silence; there was no sound in this world. He tried clapping his hands, but they
melted soundlessly between each other. He cried out, “Mama!” but had no voice.
Suddenly scared, all he wanted was to be back in his own world. Swift as thought,
he popped back, into the kitchen, watching the pan.
That night he did not eat the calamari rings, beautifully browned as they were, nor
did he ever eat calamari again. And he made himself scarce when his mother fried food
in the black pan, preferring instead to go out into the night and look dreamily at the
stars.
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559/Q
LUIS WANTED THE WEEKEND OFF
Carolyn Southard
Once Luis talked me into doing his job for him because he wanted the weekend off. At that time
Luis was working as a tour guide on a bus that took holiday-makers, mostly British, up the coast to
El Balcon de Europa and the Caves of Nerja, after which they were taken to a timeshare resort where
they would be introduced to the joys of timeshare ownership. According to Luis, the job was a breeze.
“You don't need to speak Spanish, the driver knows how to do everything, and the whole tour is
British - just take your Spanish dictionary along and you'll be fine.” (My grasp of Spanish at the time
was pretty elemental.) The big incentive was the money, which was a whole lot of pesetas for
someone like me who had been making a pittance as an OPC on the street. What did I have to lose?
The night before my debut as a tour guide Luis and Das took me out to one of “their” bars, where
many handsome young men made a big fuss over me (“We've heard all about you!”) and kept my
wineglass filled. The next day I woke up late, dressed in a hurry, grabbed my dictionary and ran out
the door, heading for the hotel where the bus was supposed to pick up the passengers.
The bus driver was waiting. He was a grizzled Spaniard of forty or seventy years; hard to tell
with such a face. He regarded me, babbling apologies in Spanglish, with a nonplussed expression,
shrugged his shoulders and got in the driver's seat. Within a few minutes forty-four other people had
turned up, all holding their timeshare tour invitations and all speaking the Queen's English. I switched
from Spanglish to the most proper, perfectly-enunciated English I could muster and herded them
onto the bus, telling them as they got on that this was my first experience as a tour guide and I hoped
not to let them down. This method either works perfectly with Brits (they're rooting for you) or it fails
miserably (they're British, by God, and not accustomed to this sort of slipshod service). I was
gambling on the former.
We pulled out of Torremolinos, them chatting amongst themselves and me frantically reviewing
the notes Luis had given me, which he said I only had to read verbatim as we drove past the scenic
spots described. This sounds easier than it actually was. The grizzled Spanish driver had the usual
foot of lead, and we were flying down the carreterra at a speed which was just fast enough to be
Spanish and just slow enough to prevent the passengers from rioting. Luis's notes turned out to be
written in several languages. I realized I had better talk fast. I stood up, microphone in hand, pointed
to a Moorish tower off to the left, and started blathering about the Moors' influence on Spanish
architecture, most of which information I'd picked up in the local bars late at night rather than from
Luis's multi-lingual notes. The driver drove and the passengers looked out the windows and I
blathered away. Off to a good start, I thought.
A passenger came up to report his wife needed to stop at a bathroom immediately. I looked up
the words for “bathroom” and “immediately” in my dictionary, poked the driver, pointed to the outside
world and said both words, in a rather nicely-accented manner (I thought) and with a question mark
at both ends, Spanish style. He looked confused and shouted, “Que?” I shouted both words again
and pointed again. He shouted, “QUE??” I pointed at the passenger, held my stomach and screwed
my face into the universal I-need-to-PEE expression. The driver said, “AIEE!” and pulled off at the
next exit, right up to a roadside cafe. The passenger's wife leapt off and fled into the cafe. The driver
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looked at me suspiciously, with narrowed eyes. What's the matter with him, I thought, hasn't he ever
had to pee?
By the time we got to Nerja I was starting to relax. After all, all I had to do was point my charges
to the restaurant where lunch was being served and count heads at the bus an hour later. This, too,
sounded easier than it actually was. The headcount came up two short. After everyone had looked
around a bit someone suggested it was the Potters who were missing. I had a flash of genius and
said, “Everyone, spread out and find them!” Then I got out my dictionary, looked up the word for
“wait”, and said it to the driver. His eyebrows shot up and the cigarette in his mouth dropped down,
but he didn't move. About ten minutes later the Potters, looking sheepish, were herded back to the
bus by at least half of the passengers. I felt pretty smart. I looked up the phrase “let's go” - I felt
confident enough by now to go for the phrase section of the dictionary - and said it to the bus driver,
with a flourish. He looked at me as if I had lost my mind and said, “Que????” I felt like John Cleese
talking to Mañual. I pointed at the bus and shouted, “Let's GO!” He said, “AIEE!” and hauled himself
up the steps. The rest of the party got on the bus and we continued to the Caves of Nerja.
At the Caves of Nerja I consulted Luis's notes and found that I was supposed to lead the 44-
person party through the caves. This didn't sound like a good idea. First of all, I don't like caves.
Second, I am extremely nearsighted. I was wearing sunglasses with prescription lens, which is
perfect for the sun in Spain but pretty useless in a cave. However, there were a lot of pesetas at
stake, so I rounded up the passengers, some of whom I now knew by name, and we headed down
into the caves.
Everything went fine - a splendid time was had by all, even me, and the caves were spectacular.
We emerged unscathed at the other end, except for one problem - the Potters were missing again.
“Spread out!” Everyone scattered. The Potters were herded back in record time, and we all went
back to the bus patting each other on the back. I was feeling rather merry by now and told the driver,
with the help of the dictionary, that the Potters had disappeared again but that we had, together,
found them. He looked positively amazed to hear this. I told the passengers, “Even our driver is
amazed!” Everyone laughed except our driver, who looked at me with deep suspicion and only got
back on the bus after all of the rest of us had done.
I was ready for my four-hour break at the timeshare resort while the passengers were being
inducted into the joys of timesharing. As Luis had instructed, I had everyone wait on the bus while I
went up and informed the sales office that we had arrived. I walked in to the middle of a typical mid-
1980's American timeshare salesperson pep-rally, which I had never seen before and which
frightened me to death. There were about 30 salespeople, male and female, in the room, all of them
pumping their arms in the air and yelling things like, “Sell! Sell!” and “Don't take no for an answer!”,
while a character in red suspenders and big cufflinks led on their cries from a-top an orange crate. I
had gotten very fond of my British passengers by now and was tempted to dash outside and scream,
“Run! Run for your lives!” However, I was a long way from Fuengirola and my pesetas were still
unpaid; furthermore, those salespeople looked more dangerous than the passengers. I tactfully hid
inside while the sharks swarmed out and plucked the hapless passengers off the bus.
Once the passengers were all paired off with salespeople, I was free to loaf and snack until time
for the trip back. I figured the passengers would probably hate me by then and might even become
violent, so I'd better eat while I could. One of the salesmen told me, “Whatever you do, don't sit with
Nick - he had some bad news today and got drunk.” Fine with me - a depressed drunk should be
559/Q
easy to spot. I went out to the pool area, loaded up a plate, poured a hefty glass of plonko blanco
(which is what the Brits call cheap white Spanish wine, “blanco” being “white” and any cheap wine
being “plonk”), and looked around for a place to sit. There was an empty table, so I plopped down
and tucked in.
One of the tragedies of my life is, I cannot sit down anywhere in public without attracting every
loony in the area. My whole life is spent carrying books and art supplies and all sort of props so I can
sit down and look too busy to be interrupted. Spain was no different, and neither was the timeshare
resort. Within moments a loony had landed at my table and was babbling away. I looked around for
possible support. Everyone within eyeshot looked away, fast, except one guy about my age who was
wearing shades and watching the whole thing in a disinterested way. I made some excuse to the
loony, picked up my gear and went over to this guy, acting like I knew him in case the loony was
watching. The guy very nicely went along with it, and the loony ambled off to torment someone else.
I thanked my new best friend and introduced myself, and he did too, taking off his shades to display
unfocused blue eyes swimming in a sea of broken blood vessels - “I'm Nick.” Just my luck, thought
I. However, it would have been unspeakably rude to flee, under the circumstances, so I gave a deep
inward sigh and went back to eating.
After a while he asked what I was doing in Spain, being an American himself, and we got to
talking. The more he talked, the more evident it became that he was really thoroughly drunk; probably
would have fallen down if he had stood up. He went back and forth between holding a normal
conversation and trying to pick a fight. Picking a fight with me when I'm drinking wine in the sun is a
very difficult thing to do, and after awhile he realized it and sunk back into morose silence. After
some more time had elapsed he announced the bad news which had set him off on this drinking
spree. It turned out he had a 15-year-old son back in California who had been killed the day before
in a car accident. His ex-wife had called with the news that morning. I gasped and dropped my fork,
and he started to cry. The crying didn't bother me — I figured he had a damn good reason — what I
couldn't understand was why none of the other salespeople were there trying to help him, and why
one of them had told me to avoid him. Cold-hearted bastards, I thought to myself. What could I, a
total stranger, do to help?
I read all the time, so I know a lot of good stories. I also like to tell stories. Not everyone in the
world wants to hear my stories, but that doesn't stop me from telling them. I figured if he didn't like
them, he would mumble “how interesting”, excuse himself and drift off, but at least it would be him
drifting off and not me. What’s to lose?
I started off with a story that almost seemed to have a moral, if you didn't examine it too closely.
One story led to another, as they will do if no one tells me to shut up. We sat there for three hours
and I told him every story I ever heard or read in my entire life. I told him short stories from Theodore
Sturgeon books. I told him tiny tales from Reader's Digest. I told him the story about the celluloid reel
discovered on the dead planet, and how the discoverers couldn't figure out what the images on it
meant because they didn't understand the meaning of the words at the end of the film - “A Looney
Tunes Production.” I waxed eloquent over the hallucinatory dream from “The Magic Mountain.” I
gave him excerpts from “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare” alongside “Juliet of the Spirits.” I told him
the legend of the Appointment in Samarra, in which a servant in Baghdad encounters Death in the
marketplace and Death makes a threatening gesture to him, so he flees to Samarra, where Death
won't be able to find him. But it turns out that Death wasn't making a threatening gesture — He was
559/Q
just surprised to see the servant in Baghdad when their appointment wasn't until later that night, in
Samarra. It seemed that for the first time in my life I had an audience who truly appreciated my tale-
telling. The sun began to drop in the sky, the wine glasses remained empty, the bread on my plate
began to harden in the heat. He listened, hypnotized, and I, like Scheherazade, told tales.
Finally, the bus driver came looking for me. He whistled at me the way he would whistle at a
dog, and pointed to the bus and then to his watch. Nick stood up with me and watched as I collected
my gear. As I turned to leave he took my hand, looked me soberly in the eye, and said, “You've been
an island of sanity in the middle of a nightmare.” I thought at the time that this was probably the nicest
thing anyone had ever said to me in my entire life. I still think so.
Back at the bus the victims of the timeshare sales pitches were recovering from their ordeal, but
luckily none of them blamed me. The Potters were already on the bus, trembling. The others told me
their tales of terror as they were boarding the bus, and I realized I would have to find another job
because never again could I send innocent holiday-makers to a timeshare resort. The driver pulled
the bus out onto the carreterra and we sped back to Torremolinos.
Just as Luis predicted, as the passengers were getting off the bus they dropped bits of money
in the form of a tip on the driver's table - some even dropped small bills. Finally everyone was gone
except me and the driver. I pointed to the haul, which looked pretty good to me, and said, “Bueno,
no?” He shrugged and made a so-so gesture with his hand, and began dividing the loot. I put my
share in my pocket and picked up my gear for the umpteenth time that day, and as I did the cover of
the dictionary bouncing around in my bag caught my eye. There was something distinctly wrong with
it. I looked at it for a solid minute and then started laughing, rather hysterically. The driver turned
around with a tired “what now?!” look on his face. I held up the dictionary and the driver studied the
cover for a minute. Then he looked at me, having fits, and then he started to laugh too, pointing at
the cover – the cover of what I had thought was my English/Spanish dictionary but was actually one
of the many dictionaries given to me by Luis, this one being English/Portuguese. I laughed so hard I
had to sit down on the bus steps. The driver sat back down in his driver's seat and held his stomach,
laughing. We sat there laughing our heads off, in Spanish and American, at the thought of me
speaking Spanish-accented Portuguese to him all day long and wondering why he didn't understand.
As I walked back up the hill to my apartment later, I thought a lot about the power of language.
I thought about Luis, speaking seven languages fluently and saying, “It's easy after the first four.” I
thought about the British bus passengers, who I knew liked me better for attempting to speak
“proper English” instead of sloppy American slang. I thought about Das, who fell on the kitchen
floor in fits when I told him that the best way to wash dishes was to “soak the living daylights out of
them first.” I thought about the Spanish driver who couldn't speak pseudo-Portuguese to an
American who was in such a hurry that morning she'd grabbed the wrong dictionary. I thought
about the man who'd lost his only child but had found temporary solace in stories. And I thought
about my favorite fable, the appointment in Samarra, and how many things had to be just so for
me, the storyteller, to be in the right place at the right time to tell that story to a man who needed to
hear it.
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559/Q
NOTES FROM A TROUBLED TURKEY DINNER
Jean Gochros
5:00 PM. It’s Thanksgiving. Our cocktail sipping guests include daughter Susan, her
husband Presley, and their friend, Connie. Connie is with the State Department. She’s just flown
in from a secret mission in Southeast Asia. She has a slight cold.
5:15 PM: My own husband Harvey proclaims the turkey “Beautiful!” as he takes it from the
oven. But as he is setting the pan on the counter, some drippings spill onto the floor, just as I
step forward to help him.
SPLASH, WHOOSH, THUD!
5:30 PM: I slowly become aware that I am lying face down in a pool of blood. People are
calling my name. Someone is feeling my pulse.
6:00 PM: Susan is still wiping away blood. Someone is administering ice. Harvey is yelling
at the others, “Stay out! Slippery floor! Stay out!”
7:00 PM: Still dazed, I sit pressing ice to a swollen lip — the only source of all that blood.
Reassured that I’m okay, the guests have seated themselves. Miraculously, dinner is on the
table.
8:00 PM: Guests are all eating, drinking, chatting. I am still too dazed and my lip is still
bleeding too much for any of the above activities.
9:30 PM: Guests are making going-home noises. They are also sitting around comfortably,
sipping after dinner liqueurs. My lip is still bleeding and my head hurts. Presley calls his brother-
the-doctor, who says yes, I need the ER. Yes, it can wait till guests leave. Lip might need
stitches, probable concussion — nothing serious. But I should definitely be checked for internal
bleeding. If they give us a hard time about that, we can use his name.
9:45 PM: Guests are still making going-home noises and standing around, chatting.
9:50PM: An ashen Connie suddenly sways, steadies herself with a chair and whispers, “I’m
really sick!” Susan rushes to get the thermometer. It registers 103. This is no mere cold! Flu?
Probably. But, Connie whispers, her secret diplomatic mission had been a hurried trip to handle
a crisis in a malaria-ridden city. There had been no time for shots. Oboy!
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10:00 PM: Guests are beginning to leave. The thermometer now reads 104. Presley again
calls his brother-the-doctor, ironically a tropical disease specialist also just returned from
Southeast Asia. He is about to assume his new post as Maui’s Director of Public Health. He
says to get her to the ER immediately — it might well be malaria! If they give us a hard time,
about that, we should feel free to use his name.
10:15 PM: The last guest heads for home. Susan, Presley and Connie head for Queen’s
Hospital. Harvey and I head for Kaiser Hospital.
10:30 PM: At Kaiser, many, many people are having bad Turkey Days.
1:00 AM: My lip is about to get 12 stitches. The ER physician confirms concussion, but
scoffs at the possibility of internal bleeding. Why would we worry about that? “Dr. who? Who?
Don’t know him!”
2:00 AM: While leaving, Harvey notices bruises around my eyes. “Don’t worry,” the ER
physician says, “Probably just from her glasses when she fell.” Harvey tells him I wasn’t wearing
glasses. The ER physician says, “Oh.” Then he pales. “OH! You can’t go yet! We need an MRI
— she may have internal bleeding!” He adds an afterthought: “It may take a while — the
technician lives on the other side of the island.”
4:00 AM: MRI shows no internal bleeding.
4:30 AM: Home again. The phone is ringing. Susan reports that they, too, have just gotten
home; at Queen’s Hospital, many, many people were also having bad turkey days. Connie says
to thank Presley’s brother.
Susan says the ER physician had agreed the ER was needed, but he’d scoffed at the
possibility of malaria. She mimics his words: “It’s flu season. Why would you think of malaria?
Dr. who? Don’t know him! Just get this prescription filled and — wait a minute, what city did you
say she was in? OH! Wait! Don’t go yet! That city’s having an epidemic — we need to check for
malaria!”
Well, they’re finally home and Connie has been put to bed. She is filled with antibiotics and
sleeping pills — but, thank goodness, not malaria!
5:00 AM: A new day is dawning. Thanksgiving is over. We are all thankful.
The turkey, I’m told, was delicious.
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OLD TIME ROCK AND ROLL
Jay Crowley
In 2001 my son and daughter-in-law moved back to Nevada from Oregon. They
moved in with us and planned on staying until they found work and a place of their own.
My grandson was almost three and the granddaughter was three months. It was
awesome times. I love my grandkids… They lived with us for about eight months. We
hated to see them leave. During those eight months, I got to spoil my babies.
However, as a new grandmother, I didn’t know any lullabies to sing to a baby. I just
couldn’t sing “Rockabye baby in a tree top” — that is not me, but I love rock and roll. As
I sat rocking my granddaughter, I started singing “Move it on Over,” a George
Thorogood song. She loved it and fell asleep. Wow, that worked, and best yet, I knew
all the words to the song. Even better, she liked my singing. Whenever she got fussy, I
would sing the song and she loved the part about the “big dog moving in” ...of course, it
could have been that I tickled her toes.
As the years went by, I still sing the song to her when she gets stressed. However,
Grandpa and I have added a few AC/DC numbers. “Highway to Hell” “Spellbound” (for
those about to rock, we salute you), “Thunderstruck” and “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
.” As you can see we are old rockers. Both kids over the years, spent a lot of time with
us on trips, sporting events or going to lunch. Several years ago, my son and daughter-
in-law, bought the house next door, so we are blessed that they live next door to us.
When the children were growing up, we got then involved with all kinds of sports;
soccer, football for the grandson and soccer and softball for the granddaughter. As the
grandson got older, he became hooked on computer games and dropped out of athletic
sports. Because he was in his room all the time, we spend limited time with him. I was
sorry for this as I feel it is important to bond with your grandchildren. We have one
granddaughter many states away and on get to see her on Skype.
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We took the granddaughter to dancing lessons, gymnastics, and 4-H shooting. After
several years of trying out different activities, she finally settled on softball and the 4-H
shooting team. Before we go to her softball games we play “Queen-We are the
Champions”, she gets all fired up and plays decent ball. We really can’t play much
music when she is shooting, but she listens to the AC/DC CD on the way going to the
event and her and Grandpa singing along. She knows all the words, better than us.
Today’s children have missed out on some great music and entertainers. The heavy
metal bands of Iron Maiden, Metallica and Motley Crue. The soft music of the
Letterman, The Righteous Brothers and Air Supply and so forth. There are so many
great bands during the 60’s, 70’s and even into the 80’s. Bob Seger, Bob Dylan, The
Dobbie Brothers, Journey, Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, The Beatles, Elvis, I could go
on and on. I love all Rock and Roll.
Our grandkids never stood a chance, they had to listen to all the old rock and roll
music, all the time when around us. Now the granddaughter is a teenager, she still
listens to oldies and Taylor Swift on her IPod. Just recently, she found out about
Imagine Dragons, and went to their concert. However, her music roots are still loving
good old rock and roll. The grandson, who is eighteen now, found western music, but he
still loves the rock and roll oldies too.
So what is the point of my story, teach them young to enjoy good music… Just give
me that good old rock and roll.
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559/Q
BLACKBIRD Thomas Hansen
Brother singing in the dark
at the end of this car on the train
after midnight in the deep of the night
“Shoot ‘em in the streets,” he howls
Anger boiling out of his lungs,
his people’s lives matter, he knows
“Get a bigger gun and chase them for fun,
shoot the little blackbird when he run”
Broken heart cracking some more as
brother urges his children to take his hand:
“Blackbird singing in the dead of night,
Steal away quick, don’t take a stand”
Gray musty din as the train wheels bang on
while tired brother-man sobs and pleads,
“Run away, fly away, soar away,
Steal away quick, my baby blackbird.”
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THE OPEN DOOR (PART 1) Gregg Cunningham
Morgan didn’t realise he was what the movies referred to as “one of the bad guys”
until he looked around the Armoured Personnel Carrier at the masked, faceless
characters, rocking with the motion of the vehicle, as they sat silently awaiting their
orders behind their blacked-out visors. Thinking about it, Morgan knew none of the other
guys sitting in the row of benches as they drove to yet another unknown destination,
with more undisclosed orders. In fact, the men dressed in black fatigues were under
orders not to engage with each other outside combat.
They followed the platoon leader’s instructions, took out the intended target, and
then returned to the barracks to await the next objective sent from the Company.
Morgan had no camaraderie with the others — no backslapping, no teasing, no abusive
nicknames. They didn’t fight or gamble together. They didn’t have a musical wingman
routine, or team up to fight in barroom brawls back-to-back with the redneck locals, nor
did they exchange photographs of their girlfriends or wives while knocking back tins of
Bud. Neither was there a battle for the role of Alpha male of the platoon — that was the
role of the mysterious Master Chief. He was the Clint Eastwood, the masked Gunny,
always one step ahead, and no one messed with him.
Hence Morgan finally deduced, as he sat on the bench, that he and the others were,
in fact, the bad guys. Faceless cannon fodder ready to take a bullet fired by the hero,
who would probably evade every automatic round they fired in return to one of the
heroes’ twelve single revolver bullets, which would result in twelve of them being killed
by a direct head shot.
Morgan sighed, steaming up his visor, as the APC pulled up and idled. It had been
a long ten years in the company. A decade of obscurity and obscure missions, killing
spies, patrolling secret laboratories, protecting ridiculously over-the-top megalomaniacs.
He couldn’t actually remember a time when he wasn’t fighting for the company. In fact,
he was conditioned to the point that he couldn’t actually remember what he had done
before the Company had picked him up, and no matter how he tried to conjure up a
memory from his previous employment, he found it a blank canvas.
Morgan had been recruited by the Master Chief himself, but never properly
introduced; right place, right time, supposedly, which was strange, as Morgan had
absolutely no ability to make decisions or handle a weapon with any real proficiency. He
was clumsy at best, but seemed to somehow have the ability to walk away from any
skirmish almost unscathed. But the Master Chief had insisted, and the company agreed
to hire him.
“Okay — subject. Professor Vikar is male, 59 and unarmed. We are clearing this
target.” The voice spoke calmly from within the darkness of the slowing military vehicle.
559/Q
“A section takes the front, B section the rear. C section, you are with me. We take
out the subject, set the charges and clear the area. Check watches… set on my mark...
mark!” Master Chief grumbled from under his helmet, as he reset his watch to a fifteen-
minute countdown. Morgan complied, his watch set, and waited to shuffle off the APC
behind the others, forming the C section group. C section was about right, Morgan
thought; go in, cut the place up, and hope for some good news to come out of all the
blood.
His last mission had been to guard an anonymous patch of land surrounded by
barbed wire and turrets. His team rotated patrolling the perimeter, only they had come
under attack by a lone gunman who had wiped out almost the entire platoon with stun
grenades, but left him nursing nothing but a broken nose. Once again, it seemed, he
had had his own personal bodyguard, the Master Chief, who had pulled him from the
rubble. Another reason for him to realize that they were indeed the woefully
undertrained bad guys, and it was only the Master Chief who continuously kept the
Company from disaster.
“Okay on me!” the no-nonsense leader whispered to his section as the other
sections made their separate ways toward the secluded laboratory hidden in the
grounds of Professor Vikar’s estate.
“Today!” The no-nonsense Master Chief sighed, hesitating for a moment. He stared
into the back of the APC, studying Morgan. “Don’t screw this one up, Morgan — not this
time!”
Professor Vikar’s theories were ridiculed, but he kept the research going as far as
he could. He thought the logic sound, simple and self-explanatory, and having poured
all of his money into the theory of building his invention, he was sure he now had the
prototype for the world’s first laser light bending doorway.
What Vikar believed was that time travel was possible, and that he could bend light
between two objects in time into loops using lasers and prisms, becoming a doorway to
the past. The only thing that was stopping him proving it was that in order to travel back,
you needed a doorway to walk through. It was no good trying to get to the time of the
dinosaurs, as no door had been made back then. So the only way to go back to a
certain time was to have a door.
Build your door today, and time travel was possible only back to that day, through
that specific door from another assembled door in the future. Build this other door in the
future then link the doors with your perfected laser theory, and according to Vikar, you
have a light corridor between them. Like opening a tin can in 2002 and a tin can opened
in 2013 – instead of string to connect them to make talkie cans, they’re joined by lasers
and future as-yet undetermined sciences.
559/Q
So in theory, Vikar thought if he built his door in 2002 and switched it on, without
fully understanding the hows and whys, someone would immediately walk through from
a second door built in the not too distant future- hopefully that person would be himself,
having finally perfected the laser science in the coming years. A time travelling doorway
from the future back to this theoretical laser doorway in 2002 as yet not powered up.
Vikar’s idea was simple, but when his wife died tragically in a laboratory incident,
inadvertently switching on his invention by accident, the first of the objects had
appeared. It was then he realized that he was not going to be welcoming himself to
2002 after all, and this had led him to his decision to switch the faulty machine off and
mothball that prototype until he could understand what the smoldering objects actually
meant, and when they actually came from.
And, of course, take the time to mourn his wife’s passing.
But the concept had worked, and this pushed an excited Vikar to build Mark II, Mark
III and Mark IV. In fact, during the decade after the six random charred objects
appeared through the first doorway, he continued to build the laser bending prism
doorways. During the first decade, none were as successful as the Mark I doorway, but
Mark IV produced several more scorched items.
His large, secluded, self-sufficiently powered workshop looked more like a grand,
circular auditorium rotunda with the futuristic laser doors circling the granite wall around
his workbench set in the middle of the floor. The high marble supports gave an elegant
feel to the area, as if one was passing through a museum exhibit. Each of the mounted
doorways on the granite wall were inscribed with the years that they were constructed,
with large roman numerals above them. Beside each doorway was its power supply,
complete with eccentric wiring dangling from corrugated tubing and the laser wattage
that would enable the device to be activated.
Vikar admired the assembly each morning, but was still no closer to finding out
when the items came from. He scribbled notes in his journal and emptied his fridge of
low-carb beer as he pondered the charred objects, but came no closer to identifying the
peculiar, time-travelling pieces. His theories and achievements were being closely
monitored, however, Homeland Security being one of the concerned parties who
scrutinized his flagging career with extreme interest.
By 2012, Ten years into his experiment, and an uneventful decade after the death
of his beloved wife, the Mark XI doorway had burst into life, in a stunning explosive light
show. And that was the day the soldier had arrived through the electrical doorway.
It seemed far further along his production line’s future; Mark XI had finally had a
breakthrough, and he had finally seen his machine in action. Unfortunately, it also
happened to be the last time professor Vikar saw his invention at work, in that timeline,
anyway.
559/Q
For that was when the men clad in black came to kill him.
2013. Mark XI doorway.
The three sections made their separate ways down to the professor’s laboratory
and readied themselves for the assault on the building. Morgan checked his watch and
made another check on his magazine clip, he didn’t want it falling off again in the frenzy
of battle like the last time. This new platoon he’d been transferred into meant business;
they took no shit and had no time for his newbie cock-ups. The platoon leader planted
the charges on the hinged doors and withdrew to the safety of the wall, then checked
the radio for the situation report from the others.
“Charlie section ready,” he said through his blacked-out visor.
“Alpha section ready” crackled in his earpiece, followed by “Bravo section ready.”
Each section reported back, and the platoon leader nodded to one of the soldiers to
detonate.
The explosion was short and sharp, blowing a hole exactly where he had intended
it, and Charlie section entered the smoking building. Morgan took lead and was
immediately hauled back by the Master Chief. “Take up the rear and watch our backs,
Morgan. We bad guys always forget to cover our backs. Stay well back until called
forward.”
And that was that; his destiny signed, sealed and delivered. Morgan let the others
through and waited until the Master Chief platoon leader had cleared the smoldering
door frame, then slowly followed him into the grand hall.
The mayhem began as soon as Morgan stepped through the broken lab door. They
had only been inside the room for seconds when he heard the static in his earpiece and
a muffled “target acquired” over the static on his radio. Around him began the confused
shouting, “Don’t take him out... cease fire... cease fire!” mingled in with the whining
shrills of the alarm. Inside the shot-up lab, he saw the rifles pointing to the center of the
room, the bleeding, bullet-riddled professor lying by his desk, and the most bizarre sight
was the man on his knees in the center of the lab.
The unknown figure was dressed in the same black fatigues as the soldiers who
were pointing their weapons at him. The kneeling figure had his hands in the air and
was turning around to each of the armed men looking very confused. Master Chief was
hunkered down amongst a pile of scattered textbooks next to the Professor’s bloody
body, checking his shallow breathing, while the kneeling intruder was now shouting his
objections and waving his arms. Master Chief bent down and listened to the Professor’s
dying words, then turned to the intruder. After shouting his objections, the intruder was
subdued by a rifle butt to the head and quickly dropped to the floor; his own rifle he’d
used on the professor clattered to the ground.
559/Q
“You fuckin’ fool!”
The sirens began to wail and the ten portal doors around the room crackled
warnings of their impending overheating, which echoed inside the chamber. Morgan
glanced around the confusion in the room, the bullet-riddled marble pillars and granite
walls, the smashed laser coils hanging from several of the strange doorways marked in
Roman numerals.
On the door inscribed MARK XI slid the ragged bloody fingerprints of the professor,
the doorway glowing and pulsing red, reflecting off the visors of those astute soldiers
inside.
Morgan walked cautiously towards the others, rifle raised, ready to fire on any other
figures hiding behind the marble pillars, but he tripped and stumbled over the hoses and
power cables snaking between the vibrating equipment on the floor. He tried keeping
his weapon raised as he watched two of the soldiers grab the groggy unknown intruder
to his feet. He was still mumbling his objections as he hung limply in their grasp.
“Shit, guys, what the hell… I got him, he’s down… what’s the problem? Those were
our orders?” The confused intruder looked around the room and fixed on the twitching
body beneath the Master Chief.
“I got him sir… he’s down… those were your orders, take him down… I…”
The Master Chief calmly walked over to the dazed soldier, removing the stranger’s
visor. “What the hell?” the Master Chief stumbled back. “Morgan?… how did you…?”
The Master Chief spun around to the doorway they had just walked through, as Morgan
stumbled, staring back at the familiar, unmasked intruder in the middle of the room, and
proceeded to trip once more on the snaking cables on the floor and stumble backwards.
The captured intruder, standing between the two soldiers next to the Master Chief,
looked on bemused at the slapstick soldier who was now stumbling backwards against
the glowing doorway marked MARK XI and watched as the Master chief lifted and
turned his weapon, firing at Morgan now engulfed in the dancing red glow.
“Morgan NO…!” Stumbling Morgan grabbed out for balance as he fell into the
doorway marked MARK XI and then disappeared in a hail of the Master Chiefs bullets
that swept low around Morgan’s legs. Then the door crackled and he disappeared.
“Fuck... not again!” master Chief cursed.
Morgan steadied himself in the door frame and tried to focus, but his eyes blinked
with red burrowing blotches and his side burned in pain. He raised his weapon as the
fillings in his teeth seemed to vibrate loose, his eyes bulging for a second. Stumbling
forward blindly and lurching against the table in the middle of the room, Morgan
knocked over the neatly stacked pile of books to the floor. He was dizzy, like he’d been
using his cell phone for way too long, and his eyes were unable to focus for a moment.
559/Q
Professor Vikar froze, dropping his morning coffee, as the door he had moments
earlier activated, vibrated like a snare drum humming and crackling. The staggering
figure emerging from MARK XI was armed and obviously in a distressed state. Vikar
stared disbelieving at the sight, lost in his thoughts as the man shook his head and
stumbled from the fizzing door as the overheating alarms began to sound.
The room rocked as an explosion echoed down the corridor, and Vikar was woken
from his momentary paralysis as was Morgan whose vision was slowly returning. Then
his radio began relaying orders from the Master Chief down the hall. Automatically,
Morgan raised his rifle scope to his face and swept the smoky room as the stunned
Vikar made for the doorway Morgan had emerged from and reached out for the
overheating standby switch.
“Target acquired!” Morgan shouted confused and then proceeded to open fired on
the Professor automatically.
The shots rang out from the end of Morgan’s gun barrel as professor Vikar reached
the overload button, and struck it with a bloodied fist incredulously. He staggered
around and fell to the floor clutching his bloody chest as Morgan’s dizziness returned,
and the room filled with smoke and the rest of his team.
He stood over Professor Vikar as they surrounded him pointing their weapons at
him. He lowered his, and waited for the Master Chief as he entered and walked over to
the dying body.
“He’s down sir, tried to activate the device over there, but I stopped him!”
Immediately following this, two of his platoon comrades approached him, and rifle
butted him to his knees.
“What the hell guys, he’s down…” Morgan spat, dropping his rifle and reaching for
his head. He watched the Master Chief kneel down and lean towards the dying
professor as another soldier stumbled into the room. The professor muttered his dying
breaths into the Master Chief’s ear and the chief stood up, turning to Morgan and pulling
off his visor.
Morgan blinked in the bright room light and took in his surroundings properly. The
ten doorways fizzed and sparked around the wall, and the red filtered light twinkled like
fireworks, lighting up the numerals above each door. As he watched, the slapstick
soldier, stumbling into the room, gasped at Morgan’s unmasked face and tripped
backwards into the bloody doorway marked MARK XI, the same doorway that the
professor had tried to deactivate moments earlier. His head ached in confusion and deja
vu.
As he watched, he realized he was watching himself stumble, and as the Chief
turned with his rifle raised, he heard the roar of the gunfire, and saw himself stumble
inside the red light… and disappear in an explosion of light.
559/Q
“What the fuck?…”
Morgan realized that something was way wrong with the situation, and that he had
stumbled into the Twilight Zone… and that from here on in, it was only going to get way
worse.
The Master Chief cursed and threw down his rifle, then turned back to the
unmasked Morgan. “You stupid, clumsy fucker! What part of ’stay and watch our backs’
didn’t you understand?” Morgan was still staring at the doorway that he had just
watched himself disappear into and slowly read the numerals marked above each of the
others.
The Chief turned and pulled Morgan’s hair violently, turning his head to meet his
masked stare. “I’ve had enough of this shit, Morgan — I’d like to put a bullet in your
head and finish it right now… and believe me, I would if I could. Shit!” he spat.
“What the hell is going on…? What the fuck just happened?” Morgan replied as the
Chief yanked him away from the others.
“Listen here, Morgan, ‘cos I am only going to tell you once. We are gonna try again,
but this time I ain’t telling you jack shit. It gets us into too much trouble, hell... it gets me
into too much hassle… shit, come here!” The Master Chief grabbed Morgan by the nose
took him to a secluded room away from the others, and closed the door behind the
disgruntled soldier.
“Take Vikar’s body to the APC carrier. I’ll catch up back at the RV point,” the Chief
said, keying into the radio and trying to talk above the din of the alarms.
The storeroom was filled with spare parts, electronic cables and coils for the
humming doors outside. Large metal parts inscribed with ’Prototype 1992’ were propped
along the walls with cut, hanging cables, and smoke-damaged shells. Boxes of melted
cables and burnt-out coils stacked high along the far wall, with notebooks balanced
precariously on teetering columns. Master Chief sat Morgan down firmly on a chair, and
undid his own tunic. It was quieter inside the room, and they could talk without the drone
of the alarms and the crackling doorways.
“Bravo Section, clear the area and set the devices for five minutes. We are clear of
the room,” the Master Chief lied.
“Roger that, sir. Setting timers for five minutes!” Bravo leader replied.
Master Chief turned to a protesting Morgan and reset the timer on his watch. “Shut
the hell up, Morgan, and listen. I ain’t fighting with you this time. It all comes back round,
and I sure as hell ain’t keeping it from you anymore. Naw, the hell with it... Mother of
Christ. You’re on your own this time.” he unbuckled his helmet and threw it to the floor,
as Morgan watched on and gasped.
559/Q
“Okay, shithead, take a good look at my face, ‘cos you’re gonna be shaving it soon
enough. It’s too damn hard to explain, besides, you fuck it up every time you try and sort
it out, so I’m…”
Morgan cut him off, “Jesus holy fucking Christ, what the hell is going on here? Quit
screwing me around,” Morgan gasped in utter disbelief. “I just saw myself disappear
through some… some… time tunnel shit from the Twilight Zone… and now you think
you can screw me up by… by trying something outta Mission Impossible, with that
dopey mask!” Master chief sighed, rubbing the scar on the arch of his broken nose, and
checked his wristwatch. He could hear the dull sirens of the lab still shrilling outside.
Four minutes to go.
“Morgan, listen to me. I am you, dipshit, and yes, these doors are exactly that, time
doors. You got yourself around four minutes to get your head around this, and take a
walk back to the door you just saw yourself disappear through, and sort this shit out,
again. No heroics, no pissin’ about, and no shooting anyone, ya hear me? Cos it ends
up with me here and you all the way back at the beginning again. So I ain’t pushing you
through this time – you are gonna walk through, without your rifle this time. Then…”
“What the hell are you talkin’ about, sir, there is no way in hell I am going through
that door again just because you’re trying to tell me that you.... are me! And I need to
save you…” Morgan began to laugh hysterically as the Master Chief grabbed his nose
again and put a knife to his face.
“Listen to me, you little scrote, I don’t have time to explain. No one is saving
anyone… I need you to tell that Professor Vikar to switch the damn things off. Simple.
Nothing else works.”
Three minutes to go.
“Now I’m gonna show you something, and no, it ain’t no magic trick… I want you to
look at my face.” Master Chief took his knife and pressed it to Morgan’s cheek. Morgan
flinched as the metal dug into his flesh, then saw the old, worn scar appear on the
chief’s wrinkled, battle-worn face as he drew the blade down his own fresh cheek. The
chief pushed his face closer as he drew the knife across Morgan’s face.
“You’re fucking crazy, dude, what the hell are you pl…” Morgan watched in pain as
the Chief’s well-healed scar appeared to increase its length along the contour of the
Master Chief’s already-scarred cheekbone. He flinched as Master Chief grabbed his
collar and lifted him back to his feet.
“Listen, I sat in that seat, disbelieving myself years ago... just like you. Only I have
done this routine many times already. Morgan... it’s gotta stop, so man up and get your
ass back through that door and tell Vikar to quit these tests, or we are gonna just do this
all over again and again. We got two minutes, so let’s move to the door and this time
559/Q
you are gonna go through, and don’t try anything smart. I’ve seen it all many times
before!”
Two minutes to go.
Morgan was pulled back to his feet and pushed back through the wooden storeroom
into the Professor’s laboratory. Together they made their way to the doors, the Master
Chief frog-marching Morgan to the MARK XI doorway as the sound of the alarms
warbled hysterically around the room again. Morgan resisted at first, but a swift knee to
his leg sent pain rushing into his brain and thoughts of resisting the chief faded. Morgan
stumbled to the floor, his leg throbbing, but the Chief held his collar tight and bounced
him like a puppet in a romper suit over to the crackling doorway.
“Listen, shithead, we’ve only got one minute, so quit fighting and just make the
crossing, then talk to the professor and make him switch this Groundhog Day headfuck
off.”
The Chief and Morgan looked to where Vikar lay in his own pooling blood, then
turned to each other, as the laser generator hummed and crackled frantically.
“Okay, if you’re me, how the hell are you so much older looking? Answer me that,”
Morgan said defiantly. The Chief laughed, shaking his head, again checking his watch.
One minute to go.
“I fought myself last time ‘round and ended up through there,” he said, nodding to
the door labeled MARK I which was now flickering to life. The door that had sat idle
since the tragic incident that had killed Vikar’s wife was now a vibrant doorway to the
past. “It’s a long journey back to here, believe me!”
As he was talking the Chief turned, and Morgan saw his window of opportunity,
bringing his head down on the bridge of the Chief’s nose with a bone-cracking crunch.
Morgan spun around, seizing the moment, and tried for the exit, but as he spun, he slid
on Vikar’s pooling blood and fell to the floor like Bambi on ice.
“Morgan, you stupid fucker!” The chief spat out the blood in his mouth. “This place is
gonna blow — get through the door, or we both die right here and now!” But Morgan
was still stumbling for his freedom.
“MORGAN!” the Chief shouted, blocking Morgan, cutting him off at the exit, lifting
his bloody military knife.
“Get to the door, now!” he ordered, his face bulging in maddening fury as the
overload sirens wailed and the frazzle of electrics buzzed around them.
“Yeah, like that’s gonna fuckin’ happen!” Morgan replied, and ran from the blocked
exit that the Chief stood in.
559/Q
Morgan was trapped like a skunk in a cage, and the chief was closing the distance.
He tried to duck, but he was grabbed around the neck by the Chief’s gnarly hand, the
Chief’s knife swooshing in his other hand as Morgan fought him off, trying to snatch the
blade. The Chief brought his knife down, slashing at Morgan’s waving arms, slicing the
tendons of the fingers on his left hand, and immediately realized his mistake.
The chief lost grip of his knife as his withering left fingers now turned to a useless
hook. Morgan lashed out blindly, his wrist spurting redness over them both, stumbling
backwards as the final seconds of the set explosives ticked away.
The Chief looked at his own deforming hand, realizing what he had just done to
himself, and began to curse at Morgan. Then he saw in horror that there were only
seconds of the countdown left. Morgan recovered and grabbed at the doorway behind
him to steady his stance just in time to see the Master Chief make a final grimacing
charge towards where he stood.
The blast was deafening, as the air was sucked from the room as the first of the
detonations exploded. The Master Chief was thrown aside by the explosion as Morgan
shielded his eyes from the flames erupting around them.
Morgan was lifted off his feet and thrown backwards by the blast towards the
doorway marked MARK I. His burning uniform melted from his arm as he cartwheeled in
a fiery ball into the sparking laser doorway marked MARK I. He looked on in horror as
the Master Chief’s left arm was torn from its socket, as he too was flung towards the
wall of doorways, and the burning laboratory disappeared behind him in a flash of laser
light, rubble and smoking chaos.
When the smoke finally settled, there was no sign of the ten doorways, the Master
Chief or Morgan.
November 2002. Mark I
Professor Vikar removed the spectacles from his face and wiped his brow. Today
was the day. He had checked and rechecked the measurements, adjusted the wattage
of the laser coils and calculated the dilation of the doorway to within a millionth of an
ampere hour. As the power conduit throbbed and the meters flickered, Vikar walked the
equipment, inspecting each and every dial once more. They all read steady, with zero
fluctuation as anticipated.
The lab was set out in a simple, clutter-free arrangement, the electrical wiring laid
neatly around the walls, the silver air conditioning coils suspended high over the lab
floor by high tension steel cabling. In the center of the lab, surrounded by four large
marble pillars, was the Professor’s desk, neat stacks of time travel theory books on
559/Q
either end of his idling PC, which showed a screensaver of multicolored, snaking pipes
winding over the screen.
Vikar donned his gloves and walked over to the coolant plant. He turned on the
nozzle, releasing a small blast of vapor into the chamber which cooled the high
temperatures of the superconductors that powered the device.
Again he checked the dials and recorded all the relevant information. The lasers
pulsed and vibrated as the power buzz hummed with each increasing voltage stepup.
Vikar took a step back and wiped the lenses on his glasses again.
He was finally ready. Well, almost.
All he had to do now was flick the switch; it was as simple as that. Almost twenty
years of theory and ridicule had now come to a pinnacle in a circuit breaker wired to a
big red button that was mounted on a flashing, charred box on the wall.
The box on the wall was just his mockup of the unit Doc Brown had invented to
enable his DeLorean to time travel; his very own Flux Capacitor. His, however, was no
more than an old power meter with LED lights blinking inside. The granite wall that it
was mounted on still had the charred markings from his prototype experiments ten
years prior to 2002.
Professor Vikar admired his setup, straightened his necktie, then walked to the
fridge in the corner and pulled out the bottle of Krug 1990 and inspected the gift label.
Vikar, for that special day. Your loving wife, Mary. xxx
He smiled, and closed the fridge. He took the bottle over to his desk and opened the
drawer. The crystal whisky glasses clinked as he lifted them out and placed them next
to the bottle. He wasn’t keen on keeping the flutes she had bought him in the lab.
He keyed the intercom, and she answered eagerly, “Are we ready?”
He smiled. “Yes, dear, all set!”
“I’ll be down in a minute. Don’t touch anything until I get there!” his wife chuckled
back with excitement. Now he was ready; ready to welcome the traveler who, in theory,
would walk through the doorway into 2002 from another time somewhere in his own
future timeline.
Professor Vikar walked over to the discolored box on the smooth granite wall and hit
the red button, and the generators began to whine. The static buzzed in the air as he
donned his protective goggles and faced the doorway he’d spent twenty odd years
designing. His wife entered the lab wearing an identical uniform: lab coat, goggles, ear
protectors, and walked to his side.
The Mark I pulsed and hummed as the lasers flashed faster and faster, the
superconductor producing more power into the coils. The vapor hissed from the tanks
559/Q
as the audible alarm kicked in. The lights flickered and blinked out as the door seemed
to burn brighter and brighter, sucking up more and more of the superconductor’s
energy. Another alarm rang out as it reached its critical mass, and Vikar ran to the dials,
concerned. The doorway was eating twice the amount of power Vikar had anticipated,
causing him some concern. He ran to his desk and punched in the override command to
halt the procedure, but the door continued to glow and vibrate as the computer screen
flickered and went black. Vikar cursed and stood back confused. Where was the power
coming from?
Only the red pulsing glow of the doorway remained in the room, and Vikar watched
on helplessly as it expanded, feeding on some external power source now. His wife saw
that the coupling conduit was still connected and walked over to it to break the
connection.
“No, Mary! Leave it, it’s too far gone now, let it run its course!”
She bent down nonetheless and took hold of the coupled cable, instantly connecting
the circuits. The first flash gave off a boom, and Vikar ducked in horror as the bright
immense explosion of power sent debris flying around a startled Mary.
Then the door glimmered, and Professor Vikar realized his Mark I doorway had
indeed defied science, and opened up to the future.
He watched, slackjawed, as Morgan flew through it, screaming, his burning torso
smoldering as he hit the polished, laboratory-tiled flooring, and rolled to a stop by
Professor Vikar’s feet.
This event had changed everything.
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559/Q
WHAT DOES A HOMELESS PERSON LOOK LIKE?
Thomas Hansen, Ph.D.
I have found it very interesting lately to ask people how they can tell whether someone is homeless or not. For example, do the homeless wear certain colors or name brands, or use a special handshake? We should as a nation be forewarned the homeless are out there, among us, trying to use the advantage of their homelessness to get money or food or drugs or cigarettes from us.
Joking aside, I think it is important to be able to pick these people out. They may try their aggressive panhandling on us, if we are not careful. They may “guilt” us into buying them a cheeseburger or some onion rings. (I guess I should avoid writing on an empty stomach.) Ice cream parfait? Chocolate chip cookies?
To get back to this important topic, let us consider their appearance. Several bloggers with comments from people who seem to be experts on everything, said to watch for: missing teeth, dirty and scraggly hair, stained clothing, and mis-matched colors in the wardrobe in general. Also, watch for “things that don’t go together” like army boots and beachwear.
Next, watch for the paraphernalia they carry. They will have signs (homeless, please help) and various items showing they need assistance: canes, walking sticks, thick glasses. They will often have several different types of backpacks (not matching colors) and duffle bags. In addition, they will have shopping bags from different stores, one perhaps from Target and one from Whole Foods. Again, the colors and styles cannot match. If they are color and theme-coordinated, the bags send the message this is not a homeless person.
Be sure to note whether the person is talking to themselves… or better yet, screaming. If there is screaming, it should have no connection whatsoever with the temperature or weather or general doings of the day at hand. A bright sunny day for begging? Then the homeless person will be talking about how hard it is to live in Siberia, or about the slaughter of goats in Patagonia, or how global warming is caused by Muslims. You can even design a Facebook game. You know, if your first name starts with a-d your nickname as a wrestler is “ax-murderer” and e-h is “scary guy” and etc. Untreated mental illness and various ignored illnesses in general are problems among the homeless. However, any signs of them do help us ID the homeless. That way, we don’t have to give these people our spare change or treat them like human beings.
In addition, watch for items that show the person “has issues” or maybe is “hiding from the law.” They could be wearing a jacket with bullet holes in the back. They could be wearing a lightweight jacket even though the temperature is below zero degrees Fahrenheit. They should, again, have a jacket that does not “go” with the rest of their outfit. If their clothing is too normal and color-coordinated, they should have a jacket or sweater that breaks them out of that convention. Black slacks, grey shirt and black cap?
559/Q
Then the jacket should be pink and green stripes. Or orange and red polka dots. Go with the unexpected, the homeless tend to say. Especially if it is a guy. The colors of shoes and boots must work this way too.
The only exception right now is that “cool and privileged” well-dressed yuppie dudes are wearing brown wingtip shoes right now. This makes them look like the thin and sullen man in the ads. Note: brown oxford or casual shoes will work too, if the dude is broke and cannot afford brown wingtips. Brown wingtips used to be available everywhere, because nobody wore that much brown when dressing formally. Back in the day, all the weddings, job interviews, graduations, and court sentencings demanded black wingtips. Whenever you would go to buy shoes for these kinds of events, the sales person would say, “umm, well, I have it in that size, but only in brown.” By the way, I checked in 34 different thrift shops. You cannot even buy used brown wingtips.
Okay, so maybe I digress a little. I just think shoes are important. I guess shoes are something I know about. Every once in a while, I write about something I know about.
So that leads me to a related topic: walking in the shoes of a homeless person. Now we have to ask ourselves these questions to find out if individuals are considering essential issues when deciding to appear to be homeless people. First, is it cool to stand out in freezing weather just to get a few bucks? Second, is the stack of dimes and nickels amounting to almost a dollar you can get standing near the bus stop worth the terrible cold or the stubborn pneumonia you will have for two or three weeks or even over a month? Third, do you like being insulted and sworn at? Fourth, will you be okay accepting a half-eaten sandwich from a total stranger? Fifth, do you enjoy people screaming at you to get a job? Sixth, do you get a kick out of being shunned and avoided? It can be like a game—dunking the direct stare of strangers. Seventh, do you think it is okay for people to lecture you? They can say things to you like, “If you got serious, you could help yourself instead of driving everybody else crazy too!” Or another good line is, “You don’t really look homeless—my cousin Alex is homeless and you don’t look or smell like him!” Oh—another good one is “Why don’t you go home and take a shower?”
Ah yes, the smell. The homeless who do realize they need a shower may be desperate to take one. And having money to go to a club or pool to get at a shower may be one reason for their begging and cajoling today. Yes, a plan for the day. Getting enough money to be able to take a shower. Sounds like a good plan.
Being homeless is going to demand a lot from you. Take a good shower first, and then get ready for an adventure. Be obvious and “out” as a homeless person – or fly under the radar. These choices are up to you. I wish you well and hope your choice can be realized. I hope you get to go through with your “choice.” Homelessness is usually not about that.
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559/Q
KNOCK, KNOCK
Alan Seeger
Originally published in 13 BITES Vol. I
It was nearly seven o’clock on a Friday evening in the late summer, and Julia Rhodes McMahon
was sitting in the living room of her rural home in the mountains of Colorado. She was alone in the
house; her husband Adam had been in Chicago on a business trip for three days. He was supposed to
arrive home soon. Julia felt a pang of loneliness; it was the first time they had been apart overnight
since prior to their wedding sixteen months before.
The house was small; more a cabin, really, than a house. The exterior was sheathed in worn
redwood planks weathered a silvery grey by the cold Colorado winters, and it was roofed with cedar
shakes. It included a single bedroom with an adjoining bathroom, plus a living room and kitchen that
were separated only by an island containing the sink. It was all that Julia and Adam needed at the
present time, and she adored the amazing view from the small back porch, which looked out over a
vista that led upwards to the snow-capped Rockies in the distance.
Tonight Julia had cheated a bit on her normally health-conscious diet and made herself a frozen
pizza. She’d started to pop open a can of Diet Coke, then decided to indulge herself just a little bit
more and poured a glass of red wine. If it was good enough for the Italians, it was good enough for
her.
She scrolled through the satellite television menu until she ran across an intriguing entry: Bride
of the Vampire, a low-budget British flick with an unknown cast and a deliciously creepy ambience
filled with foggy moors, spider-webbed passageways and dimly lit corridors. It was an homage to the
classic Universal and Hammer vamp films, but so ineptly directed that it was almost-but-not-quite a
parody. It was, to put it simply, a bad movie — and that was just the kind of film that Julia loved. She
made a bowl of microwave popcorn and settled in on the sofa.
The movie was a nice mix of wonderfully creepy and enjoyably campy at first, but after a while it
became tediously repetitive and more than a little predictable. The leading character, a blonde who
was a real Lucy Westenra type, seemed to fall for every devious trick that the vampire in the movie
laid out for her. At first Julia felt like calling out to her, telling her, “Hey, girl, don’t go there,” or “He’s
gonna nail you if you go out on the terrace,” but after about thirty minutes the movie had settled into
such predictability that she was rolling her eyes and felt like cheering for Count What’s-His-Name
instead. After all, she was sure that he needed his blood, and if Lucy-lady was too stupid to protect
her pretty little neck — not to mention the other obvious charms that the movie put on display
through her filmy negligee — from the vampire’s fangs, Julia figured she deserved whatever she got.
559/Q
There was a good reason that she’d never heard of this movie before; it wasn’t fun bad, it just
plain sucked, and not like the Count.
Another hour went by with no sign of Adam. Julia tried calling his cell phone, but it went directly
to voice mail; she figured he’d forgotten to turn it back on after he got off the airplane.
Julia finally turned off the television at about 10:30 PM and got ready for bed. She stripped and
walked into the bathroom, turned on a hot, stinging shower, and lathered her blonde hair. The
thought occurred to her that she was glad that she hadn’t decided to watch Psycho; Julia realized that
she might have been just a little bit creeped out by being alone in a house so late at night, taking a
shower.
Then she realized that, despite the movie having been laughably bad, she actually was feeling a
little bit spooky. Julia finished her shower, wrapped herself in an oversized, heavy duty bath towel,
and walked into the bedroom.
She looked at the wedding photo that hung on the wall of their bedroom and felt that lonely
feeling stir again. “Where are you?” she said to photograph-Adam.
Julia had grown up as the oldest of three kids in a middle-class family in Wapakoneta, Ohio, and
cruised through high school on her good looks. Her blue eyes and blonde hair had pretty much
qualified her to wrap any guy she wanted around her little finger, and she had once thought she’d
wanted nothing more than to win Homecoming Queen her senior year and marry the quarterback of
the football team, but that had all gone south when she discovered that her quarterback was doing
the slutty little bitch that she had thought was her best friend.
After graduation, she decided that college wasn’t such a bad option; her little sister Sarah, who
had inherited their mother’s genes for auburn-red hair, green eyes and a razor-sharp mind, planned to
go to Oberlin College. Julia figured that if she buckled down, she could at least go to one of the state
colleges; maybe become a teacher. She wound up at Kent State and graduated with an education
degree six grueling years later, accepting a teaching position in her home town of Wapakoneta. Her
brainy little sister had graduated from Oberlin the year before and was working on her master’s at
Ohio State, but Julia had no plans to follow in little sister’s footsteps just yet; she had met a brainy
beanstalk named Adam McMahon and knew he was the man for her.
They dated for nearly five years before Adam finally got around to popping the question. Their
families both insisted on an elaborate wedding, so they picked a date in the late spring two years later
and Julia continued to teach. She didn’t mind; she found it very rewarding. Soon Adam had a firm
offer for a better job in Colorado; they continued their relationship on a long distance basis, and after
the wedding, Julia finished the semester, resigned her teaching position and moved into the cabin in
the mountains.
Now Julia wished there was someone here with her, because she felt very alone and very
vulnerable. She went into the kitchen, retrieved her cell phone from its charger and dialed Adam’s
number again, but once again the call went straight to voice mail.
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She decided to try her sister. Sarah had landed a job with a research laboratory in St. Louis that
was studying the nature of time, and despite the fact that she was a cute redhead that attracted lots
of looks from the guys, Julia knew that she didn’t go out much. She dialed her number. We’re sorry,
your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number and dial again. Hmmm. She
redialed but got the same recording. She had the impulse to call her mother, but her parents were in
their 60s and she didn’t want to worry them. She put the phone back on the charger and walked into
the bedroom.
What she saw made her stop and stare.
The little 13-inch bedroom TV was on, and was showing the first scene of Bride of the Vampire
where the Count was trying to seduce the girl.
The problem was that a) that part of the movie had been over more than an hour ago, and wasn’t
on the schedule to be repeated, and b) she hadn’t turned on the bedroom television.
Julia reached out to turn off the little TV just as the vampire looked into the camera and
whispered, “I’m coming for you, my dear…”
She clicked the television off and jumped back as if she’d received an electrical shock. It’s all
right, Julia; it’s only a movie, she thought. But how had the little TV turned itself on, and why was it
showing a scene that was early in a film that had been shown two hours ago and was not scheduled to
be repeated anytime soon?
She shrugged and walked over to her dresser. She dropped the towel, standing and enjoying the
feeling of the cool air on her bare skin. She pulled one of her husband’s tee shirts and a lacy pair of
panties out of the drawers and slipped them on. She reassured herself that Adam would be home
soon. It couldn’t be too much longer.
Julia’s stomach rumbled a bit, and she decided to get another slice of pizza before she lay down
to read for a while. She walked into the kitchen, plopped a slice on a paper plate and put the rest into
the fridge. When she turned from the refrigerator and started to walk back out of the tiny kitchen into
the living room, the TV was on again. What’s more, there was a familiar image on the screen, yet it
was not one she’d seen before.
She walked into the living room and stood, transfixed, watching the television.
It was the Count, the vampire from the movie, but he wasn’t acting out any of the scenes that
she had seen when she was watching it earlier. All that was visible on the screen was his face, and he
seemed to be watching Julia very closely.
As she gazed at the image, the vampire on the screen suddenly winked at her, said, “Knock,
knock!” tossed back his head and let out a hearty laugh.
That broke the seeming spell that had been cast on Julia. She snatched up the remote from the
coffee table and thumbed the power button. The screen went dark.
559/Q
Julia was breathing heavily, as if she’d just finished running a 100-yard dash. Her heart was
pounding. She realized, much to her annoyance, that she was genuinely frightened — scared out of
her wits was more like it.
Behind her, she heard a voice from the bedroom. It was saying her name. It sounded so familiar,
so loving… Adam? Had he sneaked in while she was in the shower?
She walked into the little bedroom, only to see that the little TV was on again, and the vampire’s
face was there, mocking her. He seemed to look at her and said, in Adam’s voice: “Hey, sweetheart.”
Julia froze for a moment, then whirled around and grabbed the nearest heavy object she saw, a
large stoneware pot that she and Adam had purchased at a gift shop at Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico
while they were on their honeymoon. Before she had time to think otherwise, she had hurled the pot
toward the grinning image of the vampire; there was a crash and a sizzle of dying electrical parts and
the television and shards of pottery went crashing to the floor.
She immediately ran to the living room and saw that the television there was flickering to life;
she yanked the power cord out of the wall, then stood there, savoring the silence for a moment.
A moment was all it lasted.
The little radio she kept on the kitchen counter, the stereo in the living room and her cell phone
all lit up simultaneously, blasting the same spooky music that had been the background for the film.
Adam’s voice blared out as well, overriding the music: “Juuuuu-lia,” it called in a teasing tone.
Julia screamed.
SosweetthefearisSOSWEETittastessogooditmakesthisonestrongmakemorefearmakemorefearMAKE
MOREFEARNOW!
Suddenly, somehow, Julia felt something… it was a presence, as if someone was standing directly
in front of her, leaning in close and staring into her eyes, so close that it seemed that she could feel
the person’s breath on her mouth like a lover, yet no one was there.
She closed her eyes and realized that she felt this presence not only in front of her, but all around
her. It filled the house, like the sound of the music and the voice. It enveloped her like a whirlwind,
like she was being swept up in a tornado of malevolent hate that was… feeding on her, somehow.
After a moment she realized that as she began to seek to understand it, its effect on her seemed to
diminish, despite the music that continued to play and the disembodied voice that continued to croon
her name as if it were some sort of magic word, beginning with Adam’s lone voice and gradually
adding more voices until there was a virtual choir of voices chanting her name: “Knock, knock.
Juliaaa. JUUUUUUUUULIAAAAAA!”
Julia was determined to break free of the fear. She sat down lightly on the sofa and began to
speak to herself, first in a low voice, then gradually louder and bolder: “I am not afraid of you. I am
559/Q
not afraid of you. I am not afraid of you. I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU!” She leapt to her feet as she
screamed it the last time.
She felt a sort of hesitation, an uncertainty in the unseen force, and she pressed on, pushing,
prodding, searching for this — this thing’s weaknesses, trying to break through whatever defenses it
had.
“You can’t touch me, can you? You’re so big and bad and goddamn scary, you think you can just
freak me the fuck right out and feed off my fear, but it’s not working, because I’m not afraid of you
any more!”
Suddenly, the music and the voices fell utterly silent.
Julia stopped short. The house seemed to echo with faint repercussions of the chaotic maelstrom
of sound that had assaulted her before. She began to feel the tension that had knotted her neck and
shoulders begin to gradually loosen. It’s finally over, she thought.
Then all hell broke loose.
Every electronic device in the house — including the unplugged living room television and the
shattered remains of the bedroom TV — began to scream an electronic noise that resembled nothing
so much as the tormented wailing of a damned soul, and somehow, in that instant, Julia knew that
that was precisely what it was. The fear came roaring back with a vengeance, stabbing her through
the heart with a knife blade which had been forged from pure, unadulterated despair, tempered in the
flames of fright.
Julia screamed as well, a shrill born of fright like she had never known in her life. She had known
fear a number of times in her life; once, at the age of seven, she’d been asleep in her parents’ bed
when her mother had woken up screaming that she was being attacked by a man with a knife; in her
confusion upon waking as well as her childhood innocence, Julia had come out of her own sleep
gibbering and wailing, certain that she as well as her mother were about to be murdered in cold blood.
It had taken her father five minutes to calm her mother, but more than an hour to convince Julia that
there was no one attacking her mother.
That event had always been the high water mark of fear for her; in the years since, nothing had
ever really been able to scare her. As a teenager, she’d ridden the most frightening roller coasters and
seen movies that promised to scare her out of her skin. In college, she’d gone bungee jumping, scuba
diving, sky diving and cliff diving. She and Adam had been white water rafting, hang gliding, and
driving on the streets of Paris.
None of those experiences could compare to the mind-searing fear that arced through her now as
though she had put her hand on a high tension power line. She felt her bowels turning to water as the
maniacal laughter reverberated around her, no longer seeming to come from the speakers at all, but
from her own lips as whatever malevolent entity was producing it seized control of her mind and she
felt — almost heard — its thoughts:
559/Q
OhyesthefearsodelicateyetsoBOLDandsosweetsosweetSOVERYSWEETittastessogoodYOUTASTESO
GOODmydearsospicyandsojuicyohyesohyesohyes…
Julia shuddered, feeling violated, yet there was a strange tingling between her legs, as if her very
nervous system was betraying her. She shook with incipient arousal, fighting the feelings, fighting
against what this thing was forcing upon her.
Whatever it was, a ghost, a spirit, a demon, or something else, it was forcing itself upon her just
the same as if it was a man who had broken in to the house and raped her physically, but where a
physical rapist could not force her to feel pleasure, this thing seemed to be hijacking the parts of her
mind that dealt with sexual arousal and jumpstarting them, hotwiring them like a car thief bypassing
an automobile’s starter.
“NO!” she shouted, furious at the invasion of her mind. “No! Get the fuck out of my brain,
whatever you are!” She felt the fear seem to melt like frost in the heat of her anger.
“Julia,” her husband’s voice called softly. “Why are you angry with me? Don’t you love me
anymore, honey?” Despite the fact that she knew that this voice was not coming from her husband’s
lips, she shuddered and sighed and longed for him to wrap her in his arms. Then she realized what
was happening and pulled herself together.
Just then, there was a bang on the front door, as if someone were attempting to break it down.
The next moment, there was the sound of someone rapping on the back door, then the bedroom
window. The pattern went on for what seemed like several minutes. Julia ran to the small fireplace in
the living room to grab the most efficient weapon she could think of, the fireplace poker.
It wasn’t there.
She looked around frantically, desperately seeking the heavy iron tool, but it was nowhere to be
found. When was the last time they’d used it? March or April, perhaps? She wasn’t sure. Certainly not
any time recently, in the heat of summer.
Another silence fell. She sat crouched by the fireplace, waiting for whatever would come next.
Suddenly she heard Adam’s voice again, but this time it sounded distant, as if he were out in the
front yard. “Thanks for the lift, man,” she heard him say. Thank God! He was finally home!
She ran to the door and fumbled with the lock. She felt an odd moan welling up from inside her,
the kind of sound you heard coming from people who were completely overwhelmed and on the verge
of breaking down in tears. She managed to get the doorknob and the deadbolt unlocked and threw the
door open, eager to greet her lover and equally eager for this emotional nightmare to end.
But it was just beginning.
On the front porch, a nightmarish sight greeted her; Adam seemed to be standing there, almost
as if he were a door-to-door salesman who had rung the bell and was waiting for her to answer.
559/Q
From his mouth protruded the dull black handle of a fireplace poker. The rest of the poker exited
his skull in the back and the angled part of the business end of the tool was hooked on the edge of a
board that ran along the inside of the porch’s roofline. The shaft of the poker was coated in blood and
grey brain matter. Adam’s dead eyes seemed to stare accusingly at Julia.
Her eyes grew wide, and her mouth gaped in a silent scream.
She turned and ran to the bathroom, where she threw up the pizza and the wine, managing to
get most of it in the toilet bowl. She stood up, bawling, and went to the sink to wash the vomit off her
mouth and chin. She looked in the mirror and suddenly realized that her reflection was staring back at
her with its arms crossed accusingly.
“Wha—”
“Julia, Julia, oh, Julia,” her reflection said in Adam’s voice. “You poor, dear thing. How could you
do that to your husband?”
That was the last thing she remembered before she woke up on the floor in the grey early
morning light.
~~~
Julia walked out of the vomit-spattered bathroom to see that the bedroom television was still
shattered. She walked into the living room, quite certain that by now a passing neighbor would have
seen Adam’s body suspended from the porch roof and called 911.
The door was standing open, but Adam’s body was not there.
She glanced toward the fireplace. The poker was in its place on the tool set, where it should have
been. No blood, no brains, nothing. She looked outside; nothing seemed amiss or out of place.
She looked toward the kitchen and saw that the message light on her phone was blinking. She
picked it up and pressed the voice mail icon. “You have two new messages.” She pressed 1 to play the
first one. It was dated three days prior.
“Mrs. McMahon, this is Robert Lockwood at Adam’s office. I’ve been trying to get a hold of him for
hours; he didn’t show up this morning for the flight to Chicago. He’s not answering his cell, and I just
ran across your number in his contact information. Please ask him to contact me ASAP. Hope
everything’s all right. Thanks.”
A wave of confusion swept over her. Not knowing what else to do, she proceeded to the next
message.
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“Honey, why won’t you pick up the phone? I have to talk to you. You have to believe me… I love
you. She doesn’t mean a damned thing to me. It was a one-time thing, I swear. Please. I’ll be home in
half an hour.” Adam sounded frantic.
Suddenly, a whole set of memories came flooding back, as if she was remembering them for the
first time.
Julia had only a vague recollection of hauling Adam’s body out to the car and loading it into the
passenger seat. It took quite a bit of effort, but she’d managed. Then a quick drive up into the
mountains, thirty minutes away, onto a deserted side road; moving the body to the driver’s seat,
putting the car in gear and letting it go over the side of a cliff.
If a car goes crashing off a mountain road into a deeply forested canyon, but there’s no one
around who gives a shit, does it make a sound?
It had taken her nearly ten hours to walk home, but she didn’t mind; it was well worth it, and she
couldn’t afford to be seen hitchhiking.
Then there was the experience she’d had last night; Adam’s voice, coming from the television
sets, from the stereo, the phone. Real? Or just the product of her evidently deranged mind? After all,
if she was able to do away with her husband and then conveniently sweep the memory under her
mental rug…
Now to finish up.
She went to the fireplace and picked up the poker, walked out the front door and down the street
to one of the neighboring houses. The one that belonged to that bitch named Cheryl, the divorcee that
had run around in cutoffs and a bikini top all summer long, getting looks from all the men, including
Adam.
Knock, knock.
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