once everywhere
antiquarian extinct
goodbye pay phone

Today, I was pleasantly surprised to be published as a guest blogger in “Happiness between Tails by da-Al,” who in her own words, describes her childhood as having been “spent between U.S. coasts and parts of Spain while I corresponded with my grandmother in Argentina.” This one line sounds magical all by itself!

Aside from being a novelist, she’s worked as a broadcast reporter and a print journalist, whose work garnered her an Emmy. And while I haven’t seen a picture of her husband, she does have a cute lab-mix.

Thank you, da-Al for sharing my work with your readers.

“I had a completely different idea about what All-Souls day meant,” she smiled.

“What, did you misspell it in your head, too?” he asked.

“Yes, and when I had to kick off my shoes or be dragged skyward, I finally got it,” she returned.

“It definitely isn’t what anyone was thinking while listen to bible lessons in Sunday School,” he chuckled.

“Nope,” she responded, “Now, lets get home before it starts to rain and we catch our death.”

He shook his head in agreement as together they walked hand-in-hand down the sidewalk, with nothing but thin socks covering their feet.

The doctor said, ‘brain tumor,’ but those two words vanished as she added, ‘six months to live,’ and ‘immediate treatment.’ To make matters worse, a deadly Zombie virus was been making the global rounds.

He had a decision to make and he had to be quick about it.

It was easy, slipping into the isolation ward of the hospital. All he had to do was find a supply closet, put on the surgical scrubs, then walk-in like he knew what he was doing.

Strapped to a bed, eyes darting, teeth gnashing, was a man. He offered him his bare forearm.

There’s a fairy ring of mushrooms growing in my front yard. The only option to safely remove them is to pull them up wholesale.

It wasn’t long before I regretted doing so. Several things mysteriously went missing from the house: an entire jar of change, the television remote, my truck keys, my favorite coffee cup.

“What the hell!” I exclaimed.

They turned up a couple of days later – in my neighbor’s yard – across the street. We were less surprised by the sudden reappearance of my things than the fact that a fairy ring of mushrooms can grow in artificial turf.

We were scared about Y2K, but not the binary disaster of today’s date: 02022020.  Spread the word befor

It was a situation Tom never thought of and one which should’ve never happened. But once it was brought to his attention, as a supervisor, he knew he couldn’t let it stand.

A dumber-than-a-box-of-rocks van operator came to him complaining that the know-it-all woman in the front office kept changing the number of exemptions on his federal W-4 tax paperwork. He claimed more people than what he had in his household, which is perfectly legal.

Know-it-all’s changing it without Box of Rock’s consent though, was not legal and Tom politely pointed it out to her. She, on the other hand, kept claiming it was wrong of him to claim so many when they didn’t exist.

“What he claims on his paperwork is between him and the federal government and not you or this company,”  Tom told her.

She refused to listen to him and after the third alteration of his paperwork, Tom took it to his direct supervisor, Mr. Worthless. He had a habit of doing everything in his power to undercut the company at every turn when it came to the company’s local operation.

As usual, he did nothing, and in fact, he agreed with Know-it-all, letting her alter employee’s files willy-nilly.

“So it’ll be okay with you if she changed your filing information?” Tom asked.

“She has no reason to change mine,” Worthless stated, “It’s in perfect order.”

“So is his,” Tom responded, leaving his office.

Next, he went to the manager’s office for possible resolution. Mr. I-can’t-be-bothered couldn’t be, telling Tom to go back and tell Know-it-all not to change employee’s paperwork without their knowledge.

And though Tom did this, she continued to alter Box-of-rocks income tax filing. Since he wasn’t getting relief and technically being management, he acted outside the company by calling the local union representative, telling him what was going on.

Results! He was in the office within minutes, reading the riot-act to Know-it-all, Worthless and Can’t-be-bothered, informing them that he was filing a notice of intent to take action if the unauthorized alterations did not cease and desist immediately.

At first, Worthless and Can’t-be-bothered went after Box-of-rocks, harassing and threatening him with all sorts of disciplinary actions. When Tom learned of this, he confronted both men and told them that he involved the Union and that he did so because of Know-it-all’s illegal actions.

Within minutes, Tom was written up and suspended from work for three-days without pay. However, along with a three-day vacation, his pay was reinstated after going to the state and best of all, Box-of-rock’s paperwork was filed exactly as he wanted.

“You’re gonna do what?” I asked.

“I’m going to leave Circus-Circus and go to work for Port of Subs.”

In my mind, I was sure Mary was making a mistake. Leaving the third highest position in the housekeeping department of one of the largest hotel/casinos in Reno seemed crazy.

Yet, that’s exactly what my wife did. Not only did she take on managing this start-up sandwich shop, she built it through her strong customer service and dedication to the products offered.

That was 30 years ago. And today — well — it’s her last day and I couldn’t be more proud of her.

Brady lived by himself in a hovel carved into the side of a low hill, a few miles south of Beowawe. Once, the place had been a miner’s claim, the kind of hopeful scar left behind by men who’d chased silver and sunlight across the desert.

Now it was his, half cave, half cabin, cool in summer, warm enough in winter, and far enough from anything resembling a town to make the world feel properly quiet. He liked it that way.

His neighbors, those few who bothered to ride this far out, thought him a bit touched for preferring the company of wind and sand to that of people, but Brady didn’t mind. There was a peace in the desolation, in knowing that the nearest soul was a good half-day’s walk away. Even the wild horses kept their distance, though he could often see them at dusk, tracing thin silhouettes along the ridgelines.

That evening, he sat on his newly built porch, a rough thing of pine planks and sweat, nursing a cup of coffee and a cigarette he’d rolled himself. The desert, restless with the murmur of insects and the shifting of wind through sagebrush, seemed to hold its breath. The quiet struck him first as pleasant, then as peculiar.

No horses.
No pronghorn.
Not even the usual whisper of air through the gullies.

The stillness was not empty, as it pressed on him, as if sound itself had been buried alive beneath the sand.

Brady leaned forward, frowning. A flicker of movement caught his eye beyond the sage line, something tall gliding between two low hillocks.

The shape was wrong for a man, incorrect for anything he’d ever seen. It was too fluid, too deliberate, as if it moved through a slightly thicker world than his own.

It stepped into the dying light.

The figure was dressed in black, though the cloth seemed to absorb the sunset. Its skin was the color of ash, its eyes two caverns sunk deep beneath a brow too heavy for any human skull.

In each hand, it carried a curved blade that glinted as though catching light from somewhere beyond the sun. The thing advanced, gait jerky and marionette-like, as if pulled forward by invisible strings.

Brady rose, his instincts older than reason. He’d hunted enough to know what came next.

Where there was one predator, there were always more. He stepped inside his hovel, unhurried but efficient.

The Winchester leaned against the far wall, oiled and ready. He grabbed it, along with every box of ammunition he owned, and took position in the doorway.

By the time the first shot rang out, the figure was close enough for Brady to see that its mouth never closed, gaped open in a soundless scream, a pit lined with teeth like shards of glass. The rifle cracked, the creature folded in half, and yet its body hit the ground with a delay, like it had to remember how to fall.

Then came the others. They poured from the horizon in silence, dozens of them, each identical, each moving as if bound to the same unseen rhythm.

The sound that should have come with such a mass never arrived; even his own gunfire seemed muffled, absorbed by the night as if the desert refused to echo it back. For eighteen hours, Brady fought.

He lost track of time except for the rhythm of reloading, firing, counting, and breathing. His arms ached, his shoulder bruised deep purple, but he never stopped.

The air stank of gunpowder and blood, if that’s what it was. The fluid that seeped from the bodies shimmered like oil and evaporated in the sandy loam.

When dawn finally broke, the sun rose into a sky too pale, as though it too had grown weary of color. Brady stepped out and surveyed the battlefield.

Two hundred corpses lay sprawled across the slope, their faces already crumbling into gray dust. Brady burned them anyway.

For three days, he kept the pyres lit, watching as the smoke curled upward in thin, unnatural spirals that refused to disperse. The wind did not return. The horses did not return. The world seemed to hold itself back, waiting for something.

On the third night, as he sat beside the last smoldering heap, he heard the faintest whisper, a voice so low it felt like it was forming inside his skull rather than around him.

“We were the first breath,” it said. “And you have exhaled us.”

Brady stood, rifle in hand, though there was nothing to aim at. The horizon quivered.

The stars above Beowawe seemed to shift, not twinkling, but turning, like they were eyes adjusting their focus toward him. He did not run.

He watched as the night sky pulsed once, twice, then settled. The desert released, the wind returned, carrying with it the familiar rasp of sage and sand.

By morning, the world looked unchanged, with empty hills, bright sky, and the faint glimmer of heat rising from the rocks. But sometimes, when Brady steps outside with his coffee and his smoke, the stillness creeps back, thick and patient.

And though he never speaks of that long night south of Beowawe, he keeps his rifle close. Because every so often, the silence comes again, hungry, remembering.

Her cellphone rings for the sixth time that day. Another private number, another scammer.

She accepts the call.

“Hello,” a man with a Jamaican accent says, “This is the Social Security Office, how are you Mrs. Hansen?”

“Raheem? Raheem, is that you? Thank goodness! It took you long enough to get back to me. So what did they say about me claiming my husband’s disability, especially since I was the one that killed him?”

“You killed your husband?”

“Come on Raheem, I told you that the last time we spoke and don’t worry, they’ll never find his body. I chopped him up and fed him to the pigs. So what did they say?”

The caller clears his throat, “Ma’am, this is the Social Security Office and I am calling to inform you that a warrant has been issued for your arrest and…”

“A warrant!?! You turned me in? How could you do that, Raheem? I trusted you. We were supposed to run away together! It’s your fault he’s dead and I’ll tell them that you put me up to it! I swear I’ll tell them everything!”

“Mrs. Hansen, you have the wrong number. I just…”

“How can I have the wrong number, Raheem, you called me. You set me up, didn’t you? You thought you’d get me sent away and claim all that money for yourself, but you remember this, Raheem – I know where you live and I didn’t have any trouble killing my husband of 20 years and I certainly won’t have any trouble killing a man I’ve only known for six months. What do you think about that?”

‘Click,’ the caller hangs up. She hasn’t had another scam phone call since.