My office is on the corner of North Hampton and 56th, what some people might call Hampton Heights, and others consider a slice of urban decay. I call it cheap rent, and I share the building with shadows and silence. The neighborhood thrives on secrets, its inhabitants and the patrolling cops alike keeping their business to themselves. Not a place a young girl should loiter in the small hours of morning. Which is why I was more than a little surprised to find a 14-year-old Asian girl sitting outside my office one chilly Friday morning.

“A little early for a visit,” I said.

“It’s 10,” she said. She was a slight girl, a hair over five feet with long black hair and the ramrod straight back of a teen trying to make a good impression on an adult.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” I slid the key into the lock and opened my office door.

“Winter break.”

“Huh.” I walked inside. “Come on, it’s freezing.” I waved her to follow me. She did.

I’m pretty sure my office was zoned as a studio apartment, but the owners had been too excited about having a tenant to put up much of a fuss about how I used the place. It smelled as musty and old as it looked. I put my coffee on the walk-through kitchen counter, hung my coat on the rack, and crossed uneven hardwood to sit at my desk. She was still standing near the doorway.

I wondered what I must look like to her. I was stocky, shorter than average, but still a head over her, with the wide-shouldered build of a linebacker. My hair and beard were long, tangled messes because I had skipped the morning shower. I would have smiled at her, but I’ve been told by more than one woman that my smile is more off-putting than my stern face. I had no clue how to put her at ease. For someone whose job it is to find kids, I’m pretty damn bad at talking to them when they find me.

“Do you want a coffee or something?” I asked. “I don’t have any of that Monster or whatever you kids are drinking these days.”

She smirked. “It’s Celsius now. But no, thanks.”

I nodded. “Take a seat. Might as well tell me why you’re here.”

She took a seat in the padded accent chair in the corner. It was an awkward several feet from my desk, but it was the only chair in the room. I’d meant to purchase actual office chairs but hadn’t gotten around to it in the last few years.

The girl sat primly in the chair, like something might jump out of it and eat her. She was trying her hardest to give an impression of someone professional and unbothered, as if any teenager ever could. There was desperation in those eyes. If she had a hat, it would be in her hand. The poor girl was terrified.

“Let’s start with your name,” I said.

“Chee.”

“Hmong?” I asked.

She nodded, surprised.

“I have a doctor colleague who helps me out on occasion. He’s Hmong.” Truth was, Fong was a good friend. He was also my cultural bridge to the neighborhood Hmong community. Being white had its advantages in many areas; communicating with minority community in-groups was not one of them. He helped me pick up a few words and understand the culture where I wouldn’t otherwise. That being said, after doing this for a few years, I had picked up a few things myself. Like common names.

I rummaged through my desk drawers for a fresh notepad, settled for a half-used one, and wrote Chee at the top.

“Okay, Chee,” I said. “Tell me why you’re here.”

“My sister’s missing and no one is looking for her.”

Chee laid it all out for me, and I scribbled the pertinent bits on my notepad: 16-year-old older sister named Bao, went out after dark two nights ago, hasn’t come home.

“What about the cops?”

“We tried. They say she is probably a runaway. But she’s not.” There was more desperate fear in her eyes than before. Maybe Chee was better at staying proper than I gave her credit for.

“I believe you.” I did, for the most part. At least, I didn’t take what the cops had to say as proof of anything. It was a rare day the boys in blue made an appearance here. Even rarer was the day they would help find a near-grown Hmong girl. “What about your parents?”

She shook her head. “My mom is too old to do anything to help. And my dad… Well, he’s gone.” She said it with the uncertainty of someone still trying to figure out how to tell people. “I don’t know where else to go.”

“Nobody else in your family will help?”

“My dad was the clan leader. Without him, no one has any obligation to me or to Bao.” She paused.

A teenage girl whose dad recently died loses her sister and has nowhere else to turn. Call me a sucker, but how could I say no?

“Any idea where to start?”

She beamed. It might have been the first genuine smile I’d seen on her. “My uncle. My mom and I live with him. I overheard him saying he saw something to the police, but I couldn’t hear what. They didn’t let me out of my room.”

“Your mom’s then.” I stood up. “You coming?”

She blanched, started to say something, stopped, and finally said, “Yeah.”

I grabbed my coffee and coat.

“I can’t pay…” she said, then added, “much, yet.”

Of course not.

Chee’s mother’s house was a few blocks away, but we still drove. The sky was a clear blue and the sun hung up there like a big lie. Not a single ray of heat reached the earth today. It was early enough in the morning that the temperatures hadn’t climbed above single digits. They likely wouldn’t all day. Even with the heater blasting, my fingers were numb on the steering wheel.

I stepped out of the car and the air bit at my cheeks. Why did I live where the air hurt my face?

There were no cars in the driveway, and the garage door was open to an empty workshop. Did she walk to school every day?

Chee’s mother was a stout woman who appeared to have had Chee later in life. She wore her age with the bearing of someone who had earned every wrinkle and spot. She greeted us at the door and, with a fuse equal in length to her height, began yelling at Chee in Hmong.

The conversation flew past me like I had front row seats at the racetrack: loud and fast. I tried to keep up, but the few words I recognized were “Bao” and “meeka”, which had something to do with being white. Hang around enough Hmong folks and you’re bound to be talked about.

After a while, I started to shiver, the cold creeping into my bones. The mother-daughter yelling match was oblivious to the cold, however, and blocked me from entering the door. I considered returning to my car and wiping my hands off the whole business. But I’d already promised Chee I’d help. Damn principles. I really needed to work on those.

A stooped, elderly man appeared in the doorway, appeared to scold Chee and her mother, then turned to me.

“Come in before you freeze your asses off,” he said. That I understood.

The inside of the house was bare, save for a large and comfortable couch. There was a large empty space on the other side of it, as though the room was meant for hosting many guests who hadn’t been seen for some time. Once we settled in, and my teeth had stopped chattering, the old man, who Chee explained was her uncle, spoke again.

“You’re supposed to be in school.” He was a tall man, bent under the weight of his age. Still, he commanded a presence of authority in the room that the women deferred to.

“It’s winter break,” she said under her breath.

The old man scoffed. “It’s January. I’m not that old.” Boy, did I feel dumb. He turned to me. “We’re very sorry for the trouble our niece has caused you. Thank you for returning her to us. However, I have to ask you to leave so we can address this family matter as a family.”

“Wait…”

The old man stood up. “To your room Chee. Sir, I can escort you out.”

Chee stood. “He’s here to find Bao.”

Her sister’s name blanketed the room. Everyone fell to silence. Chee’s uncle flushed. That interested me. It was one thing to be shocked by the mention of your missing niece, another to get angry.

“The police are looking for her,” Chee’s uncle said.

“The police are doing nothing,” Chee pleaded. “No one is doing anything.”

Her uncle snapped at her in Hmong.

“He will help,” Chee said. “He finds people. That’s his job.”

“It’s also the police’s job,” her uncle said. “Go get ready for school.”

Chee opened her mouth to protest some more and looked at me. I nodded my head towards the hallway that I assumed her room was down. Finding no allies, Chee stormed away. I felt a little bad for the kid, but I needed her uncle alone.

“If you’d please leave now, sir,” her uncle said. “I have to call the school to see if someone can pick her up.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that quite yet.”

“Excuse me?”

“Chee’s a child, you’re right about that. But she’s right about something else.”

His eyes narrowed.

“I told her I’d help. As far as I’m concerned, she’s a client and I don’t abandon clients until I’ve done my part. Right now, that means trying to find Bao. Chee doesn’t know much, but something tells me you know more. So you’re going to spill and then I’ll save you a call to the school and drop her off myself. Fair trade?”

The man studied me for a long moment, features hard. Maybe bursting into someone’s house with their teenage niece and yelling at them wasn’t the best for building rapport.

“Thov, kuj xav pab koj.” My Hmong was not perfect, but even the attempt softened his features. He continued his study of me. Whatever he found, he appeared satisfied with.

“What did you say your name was?”

“Owen. Owen Ashton.”

“You’re Fong’s friend. He talks about you. Says you found his cat.”

I sighed. “A long time ago, yes.”

He nodded. “Do you have a business card?”

I paused.

“I’d rather not send my niece off with a stranger. I’m sure you understand, given everything.”

“Sure.” I reached into my pocket and produced a business card. It was plain beige with my name and contact info under the words Private Investigator in bold lettering.

He took it and sat down.

“What do you know?” he asked.

“Bao was out late two nights ago. She never came back. That’s about all Chee told me.”

He scoffed. “Of course it is. Did Chee tell you Bao was a little whore?”

“No, she didn’t.” I held my poker face.

“She was all around town with these boys. Not Hmong. Not even Asian. Whites, Blacks, Mexicans. Everything but Hmong. She was trying to shame our family. Mao and I,” he gestured to Chee’s mother, “we tried to stop it. Scolded her. Grounded her. Forbid her from seeing them. But she was so determined to ruin us.” He spat the words like rotten milk. I got his meaning.

“I get your meaning,” I said. “What happened to her?”

“What do you think?” he said. “A damn boy. I went to check on her one night and she was gone, her window open. It was two days ago now. First night of this cold. I couldn’t let her be alone out there, so I went looking for her and found her. Then, I saw her.”

“Bao?”

“No,” he whispered and leaned in. “Poj Ntxoog.”

I didn’t recognize the name.

“A little ghost girl,” he added.

“How did you know?”

“Her clothes. She was wearing rags, almost nothing, but she didn’t look cold. It was below zero, but she wasn’t shivering at all. And she wasn’t wearing shoes. Her feet were bare and they were…” He choked up. There was honest terror in his eyes. “They were backwards,” he said when he had gathered himself. “There wasn’t anything else it could be.”

“What did you do?”

“I ran. I didn’t know which way I was going but I just ran.”

“And what about Bao?”

He shook her head. “Bao isn’t the first girl to go missing around here. There’s been five children in the last three years who haven’t come home. All girls. All around Bao’s age.” He looked up at me, his eyes red and watery. “All of them turn up dead sooner or later. And the Poj Ntxoog is there every single time.”

I drove Chee to school. When I parked out front, she paused and looked thoughtful.

“Not embarrassed by your old private detective, are you?”

She looked at me, uncomprehending. No one gets good humor these days.

“What’s on your mind?” I asked.

“Uncle was wrong,” she said.

“About what?”

“The first girl, Mai Neng. I didn’t know her that well, but I know people who did.” She looked at me. “No one saw a Poj Ntxoog around her.”

After I’d dropped Chee off at school, I made a phone call. Fong was a doctor, which meant there was as much a chance of him being on rotation as not when you called. Thankfully, he picked up.

“What can you tell me about Poj Ntxoog?” I said.

“Hello to you too, Owen. I’m well, thanks for asking.”

“Hi, sorry. I’m on the job and need some quick info.”

He sighed from the other side of the line. “We have to work on your people skills.”

“After I find the missing girl.”

“There’s always a missing girl.”

“Fong…”

“I know.” I pictured him raising his hands in defeat. Fong and I had been friends since middle school when we bonded over our love of detective stories. We were cool, okay. Though only one of us ended up following the path. “What was it you needed?”

I let out a strained breath. “Poj Ntxoog?”

He laughed. “I just like making you pronounce it.”

“Fong!”

“Yeah, yeah. Poj Ntxoog. It’s like a little girl ghost. Long hair, bad clothes, whole Asian ghost girl nine yards.”

I scribbled some notes.

“Supposed to have backwards feet,” he continued. “Can I ask why you’re asking?”

“Missing girl,” I said. “Hmong. Uncle who saw her last says he saw Poj Ntxoog there too. Says a bunch of girls have gone missing and this thing is there every time.”

“Weird.”

“Why weird?”

“I mean, Poj Ntxoog is sort of a trickster. Like in the stories, men will be walking alone in the forest, run into one, and fall victim to her. She’s not usually associated with missing kids.”

“That is odd.”

There was a long pause as I wrote some notes. Then Fong spoke up.

“Owen, you don’t think there’s a serial killer or something going around, do you?”

“I can’t say the thought hadn’t crossed my mind. But it’s too early to say. Could just be coincidence.”

“You don’t believe in coincidence”

“I don’t believe in ghosts either, but I know better than to rule them out.”

Milwaukee Public Library’s Capitol Branch is a small, one-story brick building across from a McDonald’s that gets a lot more traffic. I was never much of a library guy myself; I sourced most of my cheap romances online, but this particular branch was home to one of the best resources in this part of town I had — Doug Shirley.

Doug was a middle-aged black schizophrenic. Which meant he was also homeless, on and off medications, and in and out of jail. He never kept a phone number for more than a month. When he’s not in cuffs or a locked unit of one of Milwaukee’s hospitals, Doug can most consistently be found at the library.

When I walked into Capitol Branch, Doug was in his normal corner chair by a window with a large stack of books beside him.

On his meds, Doug was one of the most articulate, well-read, and well-informed people I knew and trusted. He read everything, talked to everyone, and heard every bit of gossip the Hampton Heights homeless community had to offer. And he liked me, which was a plus.

Days he was off his meds, though, Doug was as unpredictable and scatterbrained as his criminal record would suggest.

He was bald up top except for the sides. When he’s in bad places, he keeps his hair about as well as a bird’s nest. Today, the sides of his head were cropped short, the white-gray hair almost a layer of dust. A thick five-o’clock shadow was apparent even though it was noon.

I sat in the chair beside Doug and plucked a book from the pile: Disappearance at Devil’s Rock.

“What’s the theme this week, Doug?” Doug’s reading spells always had a theme, though they could range from as simple as dinosaurs to as esoteric as written by a Sagittarius.

He grunted a greeting but didn’t look up from The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon to answer. I hazarded my own guess.

“Missing girls?”

He raised an eyebrow at me. I was close. I took a peak at a third title. The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly.

“Missing kids.”

Doug smiled. “How you doing, Mr. Ashton?”

“I’m great, Doug. How are you?”

“Perfect. Weather couldn’t be better for some mysteries.” The wind was howling. Goosebumps rose on my skin. Sometimes cold was a mindset.

“Speaking of,” I leaned in. “I’ve got one I could use some help on. In fact,” I tapped the top book on his pile, “I think it fits your theme.”

“For real?”

I nodded. “What have you heard about a little Hmong girl? Went missing maybe 3 days ago, lives on 54th.”

“Hmong?”

“Asian.”

“Oh.” He thought about it for a moment. I let him. “I don’t know nothing about Asian, but I know a girl was supposed to have been out too late by the creek a few nights ago. Damn cold.”

“Lincoln Creek?”

He nodded. “Richie saw her. Said it was damn cold out. Too damn cold for a little girl. Said he wanted to help her, get her home, or warm or something. Tried to go up to her, but…”

“But what?”

“But Richie got spooked.”

“Spooked?”

Doug shook his head. “Says he saw a ghost.” Then he shrugged. “I figured he was off his meds.”

“What happened to the girl?”

“Don’t know. Richie says he got so scared he ran off and forgot all about her ‘till he was at the tent.”

“Thanks, Doug. I’ll let you read some.” I slipped a ten into the book I was holding and put it back on top of the pile. “That’s a good one.”

I got up to leave. “Oh, Doug.”

“Yeah?”

“How’d Richie know it was a ghost?”

Doug shook his head. “Said something about long black hair and dirty clothes. Sounds like he’s watched too much J-horror to me.”

Sometimes being a detective is about following people, sometimes it’s about talking to people, and other times it’s walking through the freezing cold along 21 square miles of urban watershed looking for clues.

From where Chee’s uncle and Richie had seen the girl, I managed to narrow my search to the few miles near Hampton Heights. In the hours it took me to search, the sun descended below the horizon. As soon as it did, the cold crept deep into my bones. I was wearing a heavy wool overcoat and a sweater underneath. Even still, I could not stop my teeth from chattering. My nose stung as if the cold was its own scent.

Without the sun, a few streetlights lit the neighborhood in a dull fluorescent glow. It was not the best to search for clues under, so I pulled out my phone’s flashlight. My fingers, numb even through my gloves, struggled to keep the light stable.

The ground was a frozen block of snow. Nothing fresh had fallen in the last few days and, even with the wind, the snow was too frozen to have shifted much. Which meant, after a few hours of looking, I noticed what I would not have been able to if there had been fresh snowfall or even low enough temperatures to melt: two sets of footprints headed into a dense cluster of trees at the water’s edge.

That’s where I found the body.

I was far from the streetlights, so I only had my phone light to see by, but I could tell he was not Bao.

He was a young man, maybe mid-twenties, white, slight of frame, with large eyes. He had been dead for a few days. How many was hard to say. The temperature had preserved him and his wide-eyed, mouth-agape expression. His pants were down to his knees. A set of frozen imprints in the ground suggested he had been kneeling when he pulled them down.

A girl goes missing three days ago. She’s last seen near a park. A boy, dead for about that many days, is found in the same park. There was a chance this dead boy had nothing to do with Bao; that he was a coincidence. But Fong was right. I didn’t believe in coincidences.

I wasn’t a woodsman by any means. I wasn’t about to track a deer through the forest by tracks and tufts of fur. But what even I could do was see there were three sets of footprints here: two sets of boots walking into the trees, one set of boots walking out the other way and ending by the road. Beside it, another set of bare feet walking towards the trees. Three people here? The wind rattled the branches above me.

I looked back at the boy and grimaced. A dead body is a little above my paygrade. With a surge of good decision-making that often eludes me, I took out my phone and dialed the number of Sergeant Laity, my usual source of insight into Milwaukee PD. He picked up on the 5th ring.

“What do you want, Ashton?”

“Nice to hear from you too, Laity. I’m doing swell by the way.”

“It’s fucking 11 at night. I left my pleasantries in my dreams.”

“Old man much?”

“I work odd hours. Look. Why are you calling?”

“Dead body in the woods by Lincoln Creek. Looks like it might have been here a while.”

“Jesus Christ, Ashton. Call 911 with that stuff, not me.” He was awake now.

I shrugged, even if he couldn’t see me. “He’s dead, Ashton, and not going anywhere. Didn’t seem like much of an emergency.”

“For fuck’s sake, stay put. I’m calling it in.”

“No can do.”

“What do you mean no can do? You found a dead body, Ashton. Stay by it.”

“Can’t. Missing kid might not have the time.”

“God Damn it, Ashton…”

I hung up the phone. I’d already started to follow the boot prints out of the trees and towards the road. The bare footprints stayed beside them the entire way.

The footprints faded away much before they neared the road, but I followed the direction they pointed me towards: to an old, single-story apartment building with boarded windows. It looked how I imagined my own office building would once I left.

One window was shattered inwards into a pile of glass and snow. I glanced around. No one was out—too cold and late—and slipped through the open window.

Inside was not much warmer than out as the wind howled in behind me. My breath still puffed out in front of me. The tips of my ears burned, and I wondered if I was dumb enough to have given myself frostbite. I pulled my jacket tighter and walked deeper into the building.

Whatever the layout had been before, the building was now stripped to its skeleton. Gapped hardwood floors groaned under my weight. Beams and the remaining dry wall shrieked in protest as the wind outside threatened to rip the building apart. The boarded windows offered little light. I pulled out my phone’s flashlight again. It cast dark shadows that moved as I walked like the figures at the edges of my vision. The moist scent of mildew itched at my nose. The air was heavy with dust and who knew what else. My skin crawled with the imagined grime.

Maybe I should have waited for Laity. Hell, I’d settle for Doug right now.

I turned one corner, holding my breath, praying not to see a dead little girl, and found empty space. It happened again and again as I moved through the labyrinth of indiscernible rooms until I was sure I had been mistaken and the girl was not here.

I came to a wide, high-ceilinged room that I figured was the lobby. Where there should have been a staircase down was a gaping, black hole in the floor. I stepped away from it.

I passed my light over the room one more time and froze. A dozen feet away, in a shadowed corner of the room that still managed to elude the light, a figure was curled into a ball. A young girl. It was hard to tell from where I stood, but I thought there was a faint rise and fall of her chest. I let out a sigh I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

I took a step forward, but stopped.

At the edge of my phone’s light, a length of black hair shuddered as if blown by the wind, and vanished back into the darkness. My mouth went dry. Blood thundered through my ears. My breath came short and shallow. My legs tensed like springs ready to burst at the slightest movement.

Whatever it was remained cloaked in blackness an inch out of sight. I crept the phone light over, unable to keep it from shaking, to reveal another figure. Another girl. Short. She stood still and silent. Her features were indistinct under a blind of long, black hair. Her arms hung limp at her sides. She wore clothes so filthy, they may as well have been wrapped in rags. Pale skin betrayed scars and bruises over most of her body.

I told myself this was a normal girl, a scared girl, maybe even an abused girl. She was probably just as scared at that moment as I was.

I almost believed it.

“Are you alright?” I took a step forward. The girl did too, her backward feet landing toe first before flopping onto her heels. Nope, not normal.

Bao was still in the corner, shivering and taking shallow breaths.

“I’m not going to hurt her.” I said. “I’m here to help.” I took another step towards Bao. The Poj Ntxoog took another step to stay between us. It was silent the whole time, save for the sick slap of sole against floor.

Whatever it was, it did not look strong. I thought I could take it in a fair fight. But I also remembered the boy, dead in the park. Frozen in place mid-movement. I had never put too much stock in ghost stories, but I wasn’t an idiot either. Still, Bao was in the corner, shivering and presumably starving. For all I knew, she had moments left.

I began to take another step forward.

“Wait!” a girl’s voice said from behind me. Chee’s voice.

I didn’t take my eyes off the Poj Ntxoog. “Aren’t you supposed to be at school?”

“It’s almost midnight,” she said. “I saw you outside and…” She trailed off, her eyes wandering towards the Poj Ntxoog.

“Looking for your sister? Didn’t you hire me for that?”

“Is now the time?” she said and walked forward toward Bao.

“Wait.”

She didn’t. “Mai Neng?” She whispered. The ghost girl said nothing. Chee advanced. “It is you.” Chee spoke to the Poj Ntxoog in Hmong. Though the ghost didn’t speak, it relaxed. Chee walked past it to her sister and shook her awake. Bao stumbled to her feet and put her full weight on Chee’s shoulder. They staggered towards me. I didn’t dare move until they were past the Poj Ntxoog and had reached me. I put my coat over Bao.

“Can you make it outside?” I asked.

“I think so,” Chee said.

“Good. Go. The police should be here soon. There’s something I have to check.”

Chee gave me a questioning look. Her sister moaned and shifted on her shoulder. “Be careful,” Chee said, and she half-carried Bao out of the room.

I looked at the hole in the floor where the stairs should have been. It held wide like a gaping maw eager to consume. I felt eyes staring back at me from within. The Poj Ntxoog still stood where Chee had spoken to her. I couldn’t see any eyes under the mop of hair, but I felt her regarding me.

I didn’t believe in coincidences.

The Poj Ntxoog did not move to stop me when I approached the hole. Within the hole, I made out the tops of washers and dryers against the wall. This must have been the laundry room. I could fall on top of them without too much trouble. Probably. I gripped the edge, slid over, and toppled onto machine tops.

What I found there was a matter for the next day’s paper.

I stood outside, coatless, and shivering after I had given my statement. A lanky cop strode over to me from the abandoned apartment complex. He was about a foot taller than me and, even with being rail-thin, cut an imposing figure.

“Laity,” I said. It was all I could do to keep the shivering out of my voice.

The sergeant nodded. “Ashton.”

“And didn’t make a single dime on it.”

“Another pro bono?”

“What can I say? I’m a bleeding heart.”

Laity looked over to the ambulance where Chee and Bao huddled together under a paramedic’s blanket and my coat. Chee was crying. He sighed.

“I don’t think I can give you shit for it this time,” he said. “But keep it up and we’ll see.”

“I’m not in any danger of getting evicted,” I said.

He nodded. We stood in the cold for a long time.

“They called the cops, Laity.”

He grimaced. “I know.”

“They talked to the same Uncle I did. The footprints were right there for everyone to see for days. All they had to do was look. And now five dead girls, going back who knows how long.”

Laity’s wide, mustached face was set in deep thought. He was silent for a long time. “The guys did what they thought was best with the information they had.”

“When the hell did you get so political with me? It’s Owen. Don’t bullshit me.”

Laity went stern. Anger flashed through his eyes. For a moment, I wondered if my friend was going to hit me, or worse, arrest me for condemning cops. My chest tightened.

I was saved by another cop I didn’t recognize approaching us. “Sarge,” she said to Laity. “Kid’s mom is here. She won’t let us take her to the hospital.”

“God damn it.” Laity made to storm away.

“Wait,” I said. “I might have a way to help with this.”

When Fong had finished examining Bao, we stopped by my place for a nightcap. Or a morning cap. It was nearly six by then. My place was small and a mess, but Fong didn’t say anything. He was short, bald, and had gained a lot of weight since graduating from medical school, but Fong was good people.

“How was she, if I may ask?” My curiosity was burning.

Normally, I would expect my friend to stonewall me with some spiel about doctor-patient confidentiality. Today, however, he sighed. “She’ll be fine. Malnourished and dehydrated, obviously. Some bruises on her wrists. But other than that, she’ll live.”

“Nothing else?”

“No sign of other injury. She wasn’t raped, Owen.”

I let out a tense breath.

“Cops figure out who the dead boy was?” he asked.

I nodded. “Boyfriend. Ran off one night for a romantic evening, only he wanted it a little more romantic than her. Things got rough. Report will say Bao defended herself, knocked him out, and he froze to death by the creek.”

“And what do you say?”

I thought about it. “Boy didn’t have any bruising to suggest how he was knocked out. He was bigger and stronger than her. She was too disoriented to even make it home. Something else knocked him out.”

“Poj Ntxoog.”

“I don’t think it was that either.”

“Come on, Owen. You’re telling me you don’t believe? After all this?” He gestured around the room with his whiskey glass.

“It’s not that. I don’t think it was a Poj Ntxoog. I think it looked like one. You said Poj Ntxoog isn’t associated with missing kids, right? They’re tricksters. Which goes to reason they wouldn’t be protectors either.”

He nodded.

“Chee didn’t call it Poj Ntxoog when she saw it,” I continued. “She called it by name. Mai Neng.”

“The first girl.”

“Exactly. And there was something about the bodies. What this guy did to them. He turned their feet around, Fong. Turned them backwards.”

“Jesus christ,” Fong said. “This is fucked.” He downed his whiskey, and I poured him another one. He stared at it thoughtfully. “They’re going to catch him.” It sounded like a statement, but it felt more like a question.

“I don’t know.” We sat in silence, waiting for the sun to rise on Milwaukee.

“John, just shut up and give me the fucking gun!”

He was screaming his taunts, unable to translate physical reactions into verbal communication.

“All right, I’ll give it to you,” I said to my close friend Carl, as I pulled my weapon from my side and pointed it at him, just before hearing the blast. Then the infinite swirl of stars and colors and life burst into our existence, and once more all of us were merely subservient victims of these things called physics and reality.

Always Back to Monday

“You’ll give what to me?” he asks over Monday morning breakfast.

“The maple syrup,” I grasp for words as I grab the bottle. “That’s what I’ll give you… because it’s only a Monday morning.”

“What day did you think it was?” Carl asks.

“It could’ve been Thursday,” I say. “Long weekends rarely end early.” My ears focus on the fading buzz of electrons and spatial plasma as my mind begins to assert control over the present situation and its numerous undecided aspects.

“You joke around breakfast time all you want,” he tells me. “Come Wednesday, if you aren’t prepared, if your memory slips a half second, if your reactions are worse than theirs, that means that you, and probably the rest of us, will be their victims; instead of them being ours.”

I’m reciting this conversation in my head, out of practice, while avoiding the important task at hand — to understand the bank heist we are about to perform. But it’s not like that really matters on Monday. You see, I’m the only one who goes back to Monday.

For Some, It is Always Back to Tuesday

“Oh, my god,” Joseph screams. “The lights! The fury! You all experienced that, right?”

“For god’s sake, Joseph,” Carl responds. “We’ve all experienced it together multiple times. Problem is we need to figure out, again, why everything went wrong. Why do we keep getting phased back in time with memories from the future intact?”

“You see that?” Rutger says in his vaguely unbroken German accent, “My hand, look at it.” His fingers go through acrobatics in the air. “That bullet surely ripped my palm in half. And yet it’s back to normal, like nothing happened.”

“We’re not going to make any progress here if you keep behaving like children,” Carl tells us. “You think we’re going to get back to a normal, linear flow of time by playing these ridiculous tricks?” He wipes a layer of sweat from his forehead and then turns to me. “What about you, John? Any new insights? You seem to be the only one coming up with clever ideas.”

“No, actually,” I reply. “Nothing new on my end.” I’ve decided not to tell them what I know. For now anyway.

Or, Is it Always Back to Wednesday?

Wednesday. Polished rubber clicks against a marble floor with its own particular resonance when you are wearing steel-toed boots. When we, as a team, initially entered the bank that afternoon, there was just one thing we kept in mind: we had come here to conquer.

That was our attitude the first time we broke into the bank. After we were sent through several cycles of the bank robbery, it became an event that was almost formulaic. “All right, you fucking assholes!” Joseph enjoyed repeating this particular line for some reason, every single iteration. “Put your fucking hands up!”

The rest of us could tell you what was going to happen by rote memory. I might angle my weapon differently in one cycle, watch the security guards react to the sheen of light in a slightly different position just to see if I could get an advantage. But Joseph would be just as taunting, Carl would be just as commanding, and Rutger would be just as professional. That was our team.

When someone places the barrel of a gun behind your ear and asks whether you are willing to cooperate, you tend to evaluate your choices. As a rite of initiation to professional bank robbers, there is little else that can make you question them. Even if that little thing taunting your confidence is a sudden, random time travel loop.

So, Why the Time Travel, Then?

The first time we looped, Carl actually wanted to check to see if the time travel was added as an insurance option to guarantee our success. We all figured out that we go back to Tuesday while the rest of the world was oblivious; I kept my Monday secret to myself.

But we were raiding a bank, not a quantum physics laboratory. We were hired red-bloods, mere mercenaries with mostly up-to-date intelligence. Astrophysics and the Taoist Master standing behind the all-encompassing Universe — all of that was something we stumbled upon in our duties, and definitely not something we expected upon signing up.

So, what caused us to travel back in time repeatedly? None of us really knew. Having an extra day to research while the others were blissfully ignorant did nothing to help me.

A bank is the least busy on a Wednesday afternoon at lunch. We realized this as an opportunity. Insurance companies make the same bet. We just figured that a team of angry, skilled soldiers would be a bit more intimidating than a department of pencil-pushing administrators and their facon bacon cops. But every Wednesday, the same thing happens: we lose and go back in time.

To Fire The Gun Randomly

“Pack the bags with as much cash as you can.” Carl was always thorough on this point, every time the bank robbery occurred. It seemed to be the line with which he had most success and one he was most willing to rely on.

“Please don’t hurt us,” one of the tellers screamed as she struggled with the equipment. “We’re going as fast as we can.”

“Did you see him yet?” I asked. “Are you fucking looking?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Carl responded. I rescinded any doubts about him. “No, I didn’t fucking see him, but I’m fucking looking.” Sweat traced his hairline.

“You’re still looking for The Ghost?” Joseph asked, “I’ll tell you if I see an exorcist.” He turned around and moved out of vision forever. The next thing I heard sounded like the cracking of wood. By the time I looked, he was on the ground and there were an infinite number of assault rifle bursts. The Ghost had struck again. I was eliminated with the others.

To Fear Others Randomly

I loop back in time to Monday. “Give me the fucking maple syrup,” Carl handles his line quite well. He doesn’t know yet, and if I try to explain, he’ll just forget what I tell him, and I’ll go back to Monday again without gaining anything. I keep it to myself. No use having the same conversation for infinity.

So, it’s a quiet Monday. Tuesday comes. “You get a look at The Ghost, this time?” I ask.

“Holy fuck, I’m alive again!” Joseph screams out.

“Shut up, Joseph,” Rutger rubs the more circular parts of his shaved cranium. “You say that every time.”

“That fucking Ghost is always there,” Carl yells, finally showing his irritation. “Every time we prepare for every move he is going to make, and every time he kills every last one of us. I mean, after I saw red, I assumed the same happened to you all again, right? You were all blown away?”

“To the hilt,” I chime in like I might’ve been expected to. But that’s the thing, I did die again, just like them. You see, we don’t know who the Ghost is, but at the last moment of our robbery, this person suddenly appears, draped in black and cloaked in silence. What follows is a blood bath with our veins as the main pipes into the tub.

“To the hilt?” Carl counters. “You mean, like your lover?”

To Question Randomly

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I ask. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“This is a heist, not a fucking charity dinner,” Carl says to me. “We’ve been in that bank at least twenty times by now, and so far I haven’t had a reason to question your abilities.”

“And you’ve given me plenty of reasons to question yours,” I respond.

“I’m with John on this one,” Rutger adds. “Killing civilians is sloppy. It makes the police want to hunt you all the more. It’s pure logistics. Do you want the money in the vaults, or do you want to commit some terrible act to prove you have a right to it?”

“Why can’t we have both?” Joseph asks.

“Because you are either weak and victimized by the situation, or you are strong and you overpower it,” Rutger says. “It is an anomaly to be both.”

“That’s not exactly what I meant,” Carl adds. “No, John. I wasn’t criticizing you for being a bleeding heart. I think you knew the girl at the bank — from before we planned this heist.”

To Die Randomly

“What makes you think I knew her?” I ask.

“I saw you talking to her,” Carl replies. “You were speaking almost as though you knew some very intimate things.”

“Go fuck yourself, Carl,” I respond. “For all I know, you’re the one who was talking intimately to her.” And that’s just the thing — I did see him talking to her, and very closely. But it was several cycles ago. I’ve been trying to piece it together, fragment by fragment, moment by moment, but have gotten nowhere. The unexpected counter punch was enough to get him to shut up. I don’t need him quiet for the rest of my life — just until the next day will be sufficient.

Wednesday. Another blazing through of rent-a-cop uniforms and the bank suddenly fell within the sovereignty of our domain.

“You, Joseph and Rutger, you break the vault seals,” Carl handed out his orders. “For this time anyway.” The bank tellers gave each other quick perplexed looks.

“I’m on lookout with you, John,” he added, pointing to the front. “I’m on point, you stay back. I want to at least get a look at this thing when it kills me.” No more than a smile before his head exploded. His blood got in my eyes and I could not see. Struggling to get to Rutger and Joseph, I saw one of the teller girls, the one from before, with a faint whisper on her lips, “Carl…”

To Misunderstand Randomly

“Give me the fucking maple —”, I interrupt him, grab the bottle, and place it directly in front of him. Being resurrected in a rooftop restaurant with an infinitely warm sun may seem ideal, but it might not be enough if you can still see your nightmares right in front of you.

“You’re getting a little jumpy too soon, aren’t you, John?” Carl knows how to bother someone right at the moment they least need it. He’s good at being a boss.

Tuesday. “What the fuck, John!” his tone suddenly changes. “I told you to hang back. And not one fucking bullet of suppressing fire?”

“It was another bloodletting,” Rutger says. “We were all doomed, once again, without more than a half impulse of willingness to defend ourselves. I wonder, what are we after now? To get the money, or to end the time cycles?”

“Both,” Carl and Joseph chant together, before their seriousness subsides into non-threatening chuckles.

“Then maybe you should tell us,” Rutger replies.”About the girl. You went down first, then John, then Joseph, but, knowing my fate, I hid and waited. I listened to The Ghost walk straight up to the teller. He asked where you were, Carl, by name. So, why don’t you tell us what you really know?”

To Lead Randomly

“She’s just a fuckin’ girl,” Carl tells us. “Just one of the bank workers. I may have pushed her around, or I may have used force on her, or I may have demanded information from her. You all saw how I behaved with her, there should be nothing to question.”

“It’s the exact opposite,” Rutger replies. “Everything is up to question. Here we are, twenty or thirty time cycles later, and we’re still going through the same actions. I want to find a loose end, and so far, you’re the closest thing to it.”

“He makes a point,” Joseph mindlessness seems to dissipate when he can be made to finally recognize his own self-interests. I agree.

“So, what do you all have in mind?” Carl starts to panic. “Are you going to torture me? Beat the answer out of me?”

“No, that won’t solve anything,” Rutger says. “I want answers, not tears. Begin by telling me her name.”

“Angela,” Carl blurts it out. “It’s Angela. But I know nothing else about her. Not a fucking clue.”

“Next time around, then,” Rutger says. “You, John, are going to sit out, until the last minute, to enter the bank. Then you can tell us what you learned when you go back.”

To Follow Randomly

“It’s fucking impossible to take on a bank with only three heistmen,” Carl complains on Wednesday morning.

“Oh, yeah?” I look to Rutger’s lead.”And so far, it’s also been impossible to take it on with four heistmen, so things can’t be all that much worse for us.”

“Which one is Angela?” Joseph asks. “There were six bank tellers, four women, two men.”

“The one with the green earrings,” Rutger replies.

“Oh, the beauty, eh?” Joseph says. “I guess infinitely reliving the last, most painful days of your life would be at least worth her.”

“You’re all making a mistake, you’ll find that out when we go back to Tuesday again,” Carl protests.

“That’s all I ever wanted,” Rutger responds. “To find out. Let’s hope that’s what we get.”

To Kill Randomly

Watching the bank from a block away was like watching it through a time rift. The distance was alarming, even if I was armed with one suitcase containing sniper rifle components and another containing a submachine gun.

Just another Wednesday, where I was ready to kill, except this time there were toxic jet streams just overhead and an urban deli just beneath my feet. It was a nice contrast to marbled granite in every direction.

Our van showed up, just as scheduled. The three soldiers stormed the bank, there were shots for about one minute, and then all went silent. Everything must’ve gone without a hitch.

Three minutes passed, and I saw a black, armored vehicle come to a halt just out back of the bank. The time frame fitted The Ghost’s past behavior, so I slid down the nearest fire escape ladder. Running across the street, I heard a series of shots, from automatic to semi-automatic fire until I finally put my foot down on that first step up to the bank — then there was only one weapon that I could hear.

I dodged to a side entrance for employees, fired at the door’s locks, and kicked in the door. The Ghost was caught surprised, but not too surprised. Next to him was a woman, a bank teller. She was holding a brown briefcase. I heard a gentle whisper from her lips, “No.” I made out the numbers on the briefcase, ‘AX-4007’, and then, once more, I was basking in sunlight at a rooftop restaurant on Monday. She didn’t have green earrings, though — they were blue.

To Think Randomly

“Give me the fucking maple syrup,” Carl says.

“What do you think she meant by that?” I ask the air and beg the sky.

“What, that she turned you down?” Joseph breaks my concentration. A mild glance of irritation, as I think to myself, “Just wait till tomorrow.”

Tuesday. “Holy fuck!” Joseph screams, “We were brutalized by The Ghost. Not a fucking chance. Never a chance in goddamn hell!”

“John, did you find out anything this time?” Rutger says, “Did you get any information?”

“AX-4007,” I tell them, “I could only see that The Ghost entered through the back of the bank alone, maybe with a driver, but the opportunity of a clear shot never presented itself. When I broke in after The Ghost finished you all off, I saw him in the back, with a bank teller and a briefcase marked AX-4007.”

“The girl with the green earrings, right?” Rutger asks, “It was Angela.”

“No, it was actually the girl with the blue earrings,” I reply. “Angela wasn’t with The Ghost at all.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Joseph asks.

To Be Ignorant Randomly

“So you, Carl, know the girl with the green earrings,” Rutger says out loud. “And The Ghost knows the girl with the blue earrings.”

“Angela and our second mistress,” Joseph adds.

“The second girl is Patty,” Carl tells us, to the surprise of the rest of us, and then with a few grains of reassurance, “They all have name tags, you know.”

“And the briefcase? AX-4007? That could mean anything,” Rutger says.

“I know, but it’s an ocean of information compared to the few drops we’ve been able to squeeze out of the situation,” I reply. “At least we know that The Ghost is in the loop before the bank robbery actually starts.”

“We need more information,” Rutger says. “It’s information that is the key. Next time, I want you, John and Carl, to stay back and watch the bank. The Ghost can’t escape two snipers. Joseph and I will get what information we can from Patty and Angela while we’re inside.”

“What? Two heistmen against a bank full of security guards?”

“I’ve memorized the patterns of their footsteps and the time frames each one puts in between shots,” Rutger says. “I think we’ll be a bit more successful. Do you have any better ideas?”

To Be Consumed Randomly

Wednesday. I gave a very slow wave across 400 meters of urban sprawl to my comrade in arms, before gesturing a thumbs up. Carl repeated the wave, but finished it up with a middle finger.

We were both armed with Dragunov sniper rifles, effective and efficient, with a magazine clip big enough to make it an almost foolproof weapon. We were positioned such that one of us would have a decent shot when The Ghost emerged from his vehicle. And since that vehicle originally approached from the Northwest, that is where both of our sights were aimed.

I looked up from my scope and checked my watch. The Ghost was two minutes late. I saw Carl waving at me across the bank plaza. He pointed to his eyes, and then to the scope, closing the end of the rifle into his shoulder. Following suit, I stared at the road leading to the bank, until I heard the explosion.

A loud roaring blast of a car horn distracted me, as a bicyclist stopped short to scream at a driver and then pedaled away. I checked my watch. This hadn’t happened the last time; my time on the rooftop hadn’t lasted that long. I looked across the plaza to where Carl was positioned. He was gone. I pulled up the scope and zoomed in on his position. I didn’t see him, and I didn’t see his weapon.

I dropped the sniper rifle and fell back behind the parapet, pulling a pistol out from inside my jacket. A hand lifted itself up from the other balcony, dropping a grenade in front of me.

To Be Heroic Randomly

Tick, tick, tick — as the grenade bounced against the concrete, I pulled myself over the edge, holding on with just a few fingers, until the blast knocked my grip loose and sent me falling through to the unforgiving steel of a fire escape. I was completely unarmed.

I hoisted myself up and made my way to the ground level as fast as I could. I lunged through traffic to the bank. The grenade had made whatever weapons I had on the building useless, and the apparent absence of The Ghost from the bank had made it, for the time being, the safest place I could go to.

“Hey!” I screamed, coming through the bank entrance. “Rutger! Joseph! Carl’s dead!” I fell to my knees while catching my breath in an empty marble bank, with bodies of security guards scattered throughout. Silence. I was still alone.

“Please don’t let them come back. Please don’t let them come back,” I heard quiet whispering coming from one of the office rooms. I took a pistol from one of the dead guards and followed that soft scratching. Then I found her — another one of the bank tellers, but she didn’t have green or blue earrings. It was not Angela or Patty. It was… Lucia, I discovered from her name tag.

“Who don’t you want to come back?” I walked up to her, “What are you afraid of?”

Slowly, quietly, she took her hands from her eyes. “Well, nothing anymore.”

I looked down. It was Joseph. He was shot through the skull. Then, I heard the front door to the bank open.

To Be Sacrificial Randomly

Being a mouse to a cat is a lot easier if it’s the mouse that discovers the cat and not the other way around. I rose softly and sneaked through an office hallway to another office. I heard the clicking of a firearm, but there were no shots. That made me more nervous than bold.

In the next room, I stumbled on a body. I hardly had to look down to realize that it was Rutger. Security guards don’t die rushing through doorways; they die crying to themselves in a pool of blood while hostages are sacrificed. I looked past the body to the wall, and there she was: Patty, the girl with the blue earrings, Angela following close behind. Except, unlike Lucia, she was not terrified. She was standing, rather unintimidated.

“He’s in here!” she screamed.

I turned towards the rapid footsteps long enough to calculate their distance. Then I turned to her and raised my pistol for one final shot.

“No, don’t kill my best friend,” Angela stood in front of Patty. “You’ll have to kill me too.”

If confusion had distracted me, then it could also work on The Ghost. I fired one shot at the table in front of us into a vase, sending glass shards flying. It was enough for both of them to dive to the ground.

The Ghost entered the room with a lowered weapon. My arm was around Patty’s neck, the pistol firmly to her skull.

To Be Angry Randomly

“I want answers!” I screamed.

“You dumb, ignorant shit,” I heard The Ghost finally speak. It was a woman, “You were never supposed to take a hostage like this. You were never supposed to be on your own.”

“When you have no choices, then you have no choices,” I could hear Patty wince as my nervousness translated into a tighter grip.

“Now we’re going to have to do this thing all over again. You know that, don’t you?” The Ghost told me.

“Yeah, I do, but what I want to know is how you know,” I said.

“You mean you really understand the time cycles that have been going on?” My heart skipped a beat.

“More than you could possibly imagine,” I lied.

“Then you’re dumber than I thought. The government files on AX-4007 are explicitly clear. When a time loop is set up, the results repeat until the cycle has reached its nexus point, where it contradicts the setup.”

“What do you mean by that?”.

“Isn’t it obvious? What I mean is that the gun you’re holding doesn’t have any bullets left.”

To Be Dead Randomly

“Give me the fucking maple syrup…”

I can’t turn away from the glint of sunshine in our safe rooftop haven. “The time loop has not yet reached its nexus point.” There’s a moment of silence.

“What?” Joseph asks.

“I’m just thinking about why she said no,” I walk the line between reality and fiction.

“Typical idiot,” Joseph replies. “You mention time travel and nexus points to a girl, and she’ll walk away from you like the weirdo you are.”

“You’re quite sure of your abilities,” Rutger speaks. “I hope you don’t fail us when it finally matters.”

“Don’t worry about me. My talk comes with a delivery,” Joseph says. “Whether it’s with the girls at the club or plying my trade.”

Carl looks at each of us, and then without hesitation, reaches across the length of the table to pull the maple syrup closer. He doesn’t say a single word.

I don’t trust Carl.

To Be Suspicious Randomly

I make up some excuse for breaking my engagement that afternoon at the restaurant. A few calls are made, some equipment is acquired at a hefty credit rate, and by evening, I have tracked down Carl to a low-profile but classy restaurant downtown.

Since all I want is information, binoculars and an audio surveillance device are all that I need. But just in case, I bring my peace of mind.

“You want me to put the diamonds into your bag?” she says.

“Hush hush,” Carl mutters, using a cigarette to cover his mouth. Finally, after a few moments have passed, “Use words we have agreed upon.”

“The glass goes into your bag, the one with the blue sticker on the bottom,” she says. “And then the green goes equally into both bags.”

“That’s right,” Carl says. “The bangs we have set up, they’re going to take out the bolting mechanisms for all of the containers in the building, so it will be easy pickings”

I look closer. I see green earrings. It’s Angela. Carl is trying to sell us out.

To Be Curious Randomly

All he is trying to do is get a bigger cut. The antagonism and frustration he’s been showing as a leader isn’t because of an actual block he’s running up against; he’s just venting his inabilities.

I listen to their conversation some more, but I get no good information out of it. I see the stud in town taking out his lady so that he can tell her how he’s going to rip his friends off. But I don’t see or hear anything about time cycles or loops.

Angela — she jumped in front of her friend, Patty, to save her. I saw her at one point talking with Carl in the bank, but I wasn’t able to follow up my questions on that.

My suspicion that Carl was lying has been proved. But the fruits of this proof are worthless. If I walk away from that bank with hundred million dollars instead of a hundred and fifty, I’d be almost just as satisfied.

Carl’s secret is self-interest and greed. I can contain him. But The Ghost’s secret — that one still eludes me — and she still escapes containment.

AX-4007? Maybe my credit’s still good enough to get some more information about it.

To Be Desperate Randomly

There are all types of midnight phone calls. “I need some information, government related, high confidential levels,” I say.

“Yeah, hold on,” I hear as the line goes blank. Thirty seconds pass. “You know where to meet me?”

“I do,” I reply.

“Be there in an hour,” the phone clicks.

Never doubt what you might find down an alleyway near an underground computer cafe. Maybe some acne-riddled teenage losers; Maybe acne-riddled teenage geniuses. I miss the days when I could commit crime in such a carefree manner, with the attitude of ‘I’m a juvenile; they can’t do anything permanent to me.’ But now I need help from someone like that.

I have enough time to order a coffee and sit down at a computer that is just sufficiently visible to anyone looking for me.

Someone is going around the room placing sticky notes on broken computers. They place one on the desk in front of me. I lift it up, seeing the warning about a broken machine, and then flip it over. “Traveling through time? Look around. I’m watching.”

To Be In Need Randomly

I look around the room and catch the gaze of one person watching me intently. Casually I walk up to him, “You know what time it is?”

He smiles, “Any time that you want it to be. Let’s talk outside.”

I follow him to the back alley, in between dumpsters with rotting food and trashcans overflowing with garbage and dirt.

“What you’re looking for doesn’t exist,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“The AX-4007 Project,” he says. “It was started five years ago, but just last year it was officially canceled. Budget cuts.”

“What was the project about?”

“To control the flow of time. Not to travel forward and backward, but for setting up loops. To control all time through all the universe is too god-like, they probably thought. May as well start small, the way mankind always has.”

“Can you tell me anything about the current time loop that we are in?” I ask.

To Be In Abundance Randomly

“The project was scrapped,” he says. “So, I doubt anything about it is still working.”

“But it could still be in operation, if someone got their hands on it,” I reason with myself as much as I question his story. “What kind of person would that be?”

“Anyone who was involved in the project. But even then, you’re talking about a lot of teenagers who worked shitty internships and couldn’t do anything competently, and a small handful of scientists in their sixties and seventies who couldn’t explain anything competently. The project washed out just like its workers. I’d tell you more if I knew, but that’s where the story seems to end.”

“Unless the story keeps repeating?”

“There is no story. There’s nobody still involved with it or anyone who could give a fuck about it. What’s there to repeat?”

“Only what was left incomplete.”

“And as far as I can tell, as far as the records say, that’s nothing,” he says. “Nothing is going to keep repeating.”

To Be Neglected Randomly

“You’ve been a great help,” I say. “Bill me what you think is appropriate.”

“That’s already done,” he says.

Tuesday. “Holy fuck, what the fuck!” Carl screams, lashing at his throat. “Someone cut my throat and left me to bleed out to the last fucking moment.”

“I didn’t get too far, either,” Joseph says.

“That’s because you can’t keep your fucking mind on the job and off of the girls,” Rutger says. “You lose focus, you fuck up and you die. Don’t fucking forget that next time.”

“What about you, John?” Carl looks at me. “Did you find anything? You’re usually better at taking apart the information from these cycles.”

“I remember looking across the bank and seeing Carl disappear,” I reply. “After that, I heard a loud explosion, and only remember choking to death on the heat and dust.”

“So, does anyone have a plan?” Carl asks. “Because next time, I think I should be the one who watches the bank. Last two fuck-ups were manned by John. Go with Team Carl and you’re all right.”

To Be Attentive Randomly

“Part one of research is information gathering,” Rutger puts it like it is. “Part two of research is information application. Why don’t we try this whole thing again from the start?”

Wednesday. We went with our original plans, all a bit wiser, all a bit more cautious. “Hey, everyone, this is a fucking robbery.” Carl announced loudly. “Shut the fuck up and do what I say.” He deliberately placed his back to the front of one guard who always hid out till the last moment, and with the quietest slip of rubber against marble, turned around and neutralized his target.

“You, Patty,” I said to the girl with blue earrings, “I need to speak with you, right now. Come with me. Rutger, you’re on lookout.”

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Ending this,” I said. A few muffled screams of help, and she was finally in the quiet solitude of a 3-foot thick, steel cage.

“What is going on?” I asked her. “The others, they don’t know. But you know. You know The Ghost. You’re going to give me information.”

To Be Soft Randomly

“I don’t know The Ghost,” she said. “I don’t know that person at all. How could I?”

“How could you not?” I asked. “I have checked out the story of every other person employed at this bank, but you’re the odd one out,” I half-lied and caught her believing me. “Tell me, or it’s going to be painful for you and The Ghost.”

“The Ghost is immune,” she said. “I know and believe that much. I’ve been in the cycle too. I went from the first cycle warning my manager and the police, to the last cycle where I know that I can’t get out, whether I come into work or not.”

“The Ghost is immune. Yeah, sure, but you aren’t,” I said.

“That is the problem for you,” she said. “I am the Ghost.”

To Be Hard Randomly

“You aren’t the Ghost, I’ve seen you both separately,” I said.

“I am,” she said. “The Ghost is me twenty years from now.”

“And Project AX-4007?”

“In five years, the project is resurrected again, with much of the help of the living members of the original team, but they’re all college graduates at that time.You can’t just bury research and expect nobody to find it.”

“Then what is the point of this? You’re going back in time to stop an old boss from being fucked over by some bank robbers? Really? That is your motivation?”

“I don’t know my other’s motivation. I only know that she is the one who really has power here.”

“I doubt that will be proven,” I said. Then I heard a quick, friendly knock at the vault door, and remembered that the vault acted as a sound muffler.

To Be Insensitive Randomly

“Come in!” I replied to the knocking with a glint of humor, before I walked over and began undoing the lock. It was too late at this point for me.

“John, it’s been so long, I hope you’re not about to blow my brains out,” I heard as soon as a crack of air was able to carry sound.

I disarmed myself and placed my pistol in the back of my pants. “Yeah, let’s keep that even then,” I replied.

Enough of the vault was open so that a human being could walk through it, but I did not see or hear anyone. I kept turning that one-ton door with the force of my body using the principle of levers. How stupid of me. Then I felt it — the metal barrel firmly placed against the side of my skull.

“The nice part about keeping things even is that it makes it so that things are always divisible by two,” I heard The Ghost’s voice.

To Be Strong Randomly

“Against the wall, now,” she said, her words breaking through the blackness of her mask like swords aimed at my heart. “I need to talk to you. This is not going to be simple, but you need to hear this.”

“Okay,” I accepted the situation and her demands.

“You cannot kill anyone in this bank. Not one. You take hostages. You hold them down to the ground with all your fury and might. The fury and might you’d expect of criminals with a plan, but not a slaughterhouse envisioned by a bunch of sloppy criminals who come for one thing and try to take everything. You do that, and we might escape the time cycles.”

“You’re trapped, too?”

“Yes, but not in the same way as you. You’re trapped on the bottom. I’m trapped on the top.”

“And what if the others don’t agree?”

“That’s the other thing, Carl and Joseph may not enter the bank alive, you kill them before that happens. Here, let me show you how.” She raised her weapon.

To Be Weak Randomly

“Give me the fucking maple syrup,” Carl asks.

I look at him. A moment of solitude and quiet goes by as I say nothing.

“Do you need a fucking hand, or am I going to have to walk over there, smack you up, and take it from you?”

I see the bottle, pick it up, and gently place it in front of him.

“Good, that’s what I expected of you,” he says. I turn to my thoughts as I stare at my empty plate.

“Carl, what the fuck is that?” I look up to see Joseph murmuring. There’s a red dot floating around the maple syrup bottle, just before it explodes with the loud burst of a sniper rifle’s gunshot.

We all jump underneath the table at our rooftop restaurant, and at that exact moment, look over to the corpse and realize that Carl’s dead.

To Be Uncertain Randomly

Tuesday. “Holy fuck!” Joseph screams. “I didn’t see that coming, not a bit.”

“Another cycle, another try,” Rutger says. “What are we even trying to do?”

Not a single sound can be heard from Carl. The others are on repeat between Tuesday morning and the evening of the heist on Wednesday. And now I see the repercussions of the previous day.

“This shit wouldn’t be happening if Carl was here,” Joseph argues with himself. They don’t remember about the innumerable cycles where Carl had been with us, and everything went to hell just the same.

“Goddamn, even if we wanted to walk away, we can’t,” Rutger says. “Half of the police department has been bought off, so that they’re going to be busy somewhere when the robbery finally goes under way. You can’t just ask for a refund on a million dollar city-wide bribe.”

If Carl is gone, that means he never met with Angela last night. She may or may not know that he’s dead yet. But I can imagine that The Ghost knows.

To Be Unknown Randomly

Wednesday morning. “What makes you think this will work this time?” Rutger asked.

“Easy,” I replied. “I met The Ghost.”

“You met him?”

“Her. This is the only way. We have no other choice.”

“Kill Joseph? Right after we use him to break in?” he asked, and then began chuckling. “You’ve seen too many mobster movies. This is a team effort. We do this together.”

“We have been doing this together. Over and over and over. In the beginning, the very first time, I had perfect confidence — Carl was ruthless enough, Joseph was crude enough, and you were methodical enough — but now I know Carl was just selfish and Joseph impulsive.”

“What do you mean? Carl’s been dead since Monday morning, and that was another huge bribe to get the authorities to look the other way.”

“You don’t remember that first time? “The very first cycle?” He gave me a blank look. “Just shut up…”

“… and give me the gun,” he completed Carl’s sentence from our first cycle. It had been his response when I had found him talking to the girl with the green earrings.

To Be Unaware Randomly

“But how?” he asked. “How do I remember that, and also remember that Carl was never there?”

“I don’t know that,” I said. “Not yet.”

“Are you sure that killing Joseph will end the time cycle?”

“That, and nobody can die in the bank. That’s something I was overlooking, in terms of the professionalism of this team and possible changes to history we were responsible for.”

“You think someone in that bank ends up curing cancer or establishing world peace or ending poverty? It might just end up being the son of some influential politician, ready to bend and pervert the law for their own personal purposes.”

“You know, there’s only three of us. If you’re so worried about contingencies, we can make sure that Joseph isn’t in a position to know about the fact that it was one of us who pulled the trigger. Any shot we fire at him that he doesn’t see, we blame on The Ghost.”

“I’m sick to death of these endless time cycles,” Rutger replied. “We may have entered a particular territory where the experimental method will prove more fruitful than the technical one. I’m in.”

To Be Open-Ended Randomly

Wednesday afternoon. Normally, we just charged the bank and killed anyone who stood in our path. “3, 2, 1…” I counted down a synchronous time established with the others. A small, tin cylinder bounced off the walls with its clicks and tinks, catching the attention of all of the main lobby guards.

And then a sudden blast of noise and light made them all deaf and blind. A flashbang, standard police stormtrooper tactics. In a matter of 10 seconds, we stormed the lobby, forcing guards down to the ground and disarming them. But, no matter how slow those seconds passed for us doing the raid, and no matter how fast it was for our hostages, it wasn’t enough.

“I count 8, er, 9, guards taken,” Joseph said.

“There’s supposed to be 12.” Rutger said.

I saw an arm outstretched from a normally vacant hallway door, pistol hoisted and all, just to the left of my shoulder. Latching on, I grabbed his wrist and, forcing my shoulder into his ribcage, I flipped him over. A single shot was fired.

I grabbed the gun. Nehind him were two other guards, who readily gave themselves up and surrendered, sinking to the marble floors.

I turned around. Rutger was bleeding.

To Be Cautious Randomly

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s fine, just my shoulder,” Rutger said.

“The shoulder you use for firing your gun,” Joseph said. “You’re worthless now. Come on John, just you and me now.”

“You, give me your shirt, right now, or I’ll kill you,” I said to a guard. I wrapped a makeshift tourniquet above Rutger’s wound with the shirt.

“Open the vault, right now.” Joseph screamed at the bank teller. It was Patty. She followed his orders precisely, unlocking the vault with the bank manager’s key.

“You’re okay, right?” I asked Rutger.

“Yes, I am fine,” he replied. “I’m left and right handed, I can fire with either shoulder. In Germany, as a child, I had once lost the use of my right shoulder from farming equipment wounds. Trust me, I am fine.” He stood up, looking like he was about to faint.

“You!” Joseph got distracted, and pointed to Angela. “I want to see you in closer quarters.”

To Be Angry Randomly

My vision drifted from Rutger trying to keep standing to Joseph closing in on his prey. I lifted my gun and fired. One single shot, and he fell to his knees and then to the ground. A pool of blood slowly expanded from his where his head rested.

“Anyone fucking moves without my say so, and I will kill you just the same,” I screamed like a man trembling with his only friend nearly dead, and after having executed my only bought-off ally. Nobody questioned my willingness to end a life after that.

“Your money is in the bags,” muttered Patty from across the room.

I helped Rutger lean against a wall as he readjusted his tourniquet and his pistol grip.

“Perfect,” I said, taking the duffel bags and throwing them over my shoulder. An entire security team, disarmed and harmless, lay just below me, each guard feeling the tremors of my footsteps, each of them smelling the friction of the sweat drawing down my forehead.

I took Rutger on my shoulder, and we made our way to the back where our ride was waiting for us. I kicked open the backdoor and saw The Ghost, standing calmly and without worry, as I struggled balancing a human being, a rifle, and two sacks of cash worth up to two hundred million dollars.

To Be Resolved Randomly

“Need a ride?” she asked. “Your getaway contact wasn’t worth the price you paid. Get in now.”

I put Rutger in the backseat and climbed into the shotgun seat, noticing the internal armoring of the vehicle. As we drove beyond the bank plaza, I realized that there were going to be no more time cycles.

By late evening, we had been traveling through the offroads without a soul for miles. Rutger’s wound had stopped bleeding and the near endless supply of water bottles had brought him up to standard consciousness. But for all the water, there still wasn’t a drop of conversation.

“I should’ve explained, but I couldn’t,” The Ghost spoke. “You see, I love Angela. I’ve always loved her. I didn’t know it then, but I have learned it since. And there are decades where she only speaks about the horrible things that Carl and Joseph did to her. No matter how light it appears to criminals, it is oceans deep for someone who can feel. This was the only way I could end her suffering.”

“And, what about AX-4007?” I asked.

“When the project was brought back online, I was first in line for a position. Once it reached its final level of sophistication, I, a former intern, knew what I could really do with it without anyone discovering. It was a risk I took to end the pain of someone I cared about.”

As we drove into the night I looked out at the road and thought about all that had happened over the past few endless days. How do you even count time?

How much money had we spent on bribes, equipment, and how much time? Too much. All of it was too much. If you don’t have the right people for the job, then it doesn’t matter how much money you sink into a project. Make that mistake and it will haunt you until the end of your days. In the worst cases, it may haunt you infinitely.

Kasy prayed the List of Gratitude as she and her mother left the high gate circling the compound and walked the sidewalk to the clinic. Thank you, Lord, for this beautiful day. Thank you, Lord, for my life on Earth. Thank you for my sight, my smell, my ears, my skin, to witness your Creation. It hadn’t been but a few years since He had seen fit to reset the world. The compound sat on Turkey Mountain, where the inhabitants could see the overgrown mess where Tulsa used to be, know that other American cities had had a similar fate, thank God for sparing their flock, and thank Him for punishing them.

They turned at the broken stoplight that swung and spun on its wire. On the left side of the road where the park used to be was an encampment—all snapping blue tarps, smoke. Blanket-wrapped huddled masses queued for soup at a stand near the road. The wind shifted. A moment later, the odor smothered them: unwashed armpit, crotch, ass, and burning garbage and leaking propane. Kasy and her mom stepped into the road to go round the tents rippling in the breeze. Further on, someone lay in the road with a filthy pink blanket over them. Their feet were bare. Further on, a man chopped at the air with a metal spatula and yelled at the empty sky. Each shout gouted cloud-breath into the frigid air.

Thank you, Lord, for leading us out of there. Thank you for leading us to our Shepherd, Robert. Thank you for a roof, for beans, squash, and bread, for hot water at the lift of a handle.

Kasy stopped her silent prayer to look over the line, in case her aunt was there. Her mother put her hand on her cheek and gently nudged her face forward again. Her mother’s expression was sorrow overlaid with determination. It felt like a betrayal of her mom to search for her aunt. Besides, her aunt had chosen to no longer be her aunt when they parted ways. Kasy looked away. They had to focus on those who wanted to be saved.

The clinic was in the strip mall tucked between the pizza parlor and the DMV. A message had been slashed with deep red paint over its mirrored doors: The Shepherds are Wolves that Learned How to Use a Crook. Like you would know, Kasy thought. He welcomed me and Mom into the fold after the Summer of Storms and gave us food, shelter, community, and purpose, when so many people had lost theirs, and never regained it. She prayed God would open their mind, by a transformative event or by crushing open their skull.

The clinic looked like a DMV, a place to process people, rather than a sacred place. The “take a number” ticket machine by the door was empty. So were the eyes of the receptionist. A massive picture of downtown Tulsa pre-Summer of Storms with domino-like buildings colonized a wall. There were women older than her mother, with snowy hair. There were women her mother’s age, with gray-streaked hair. The group Kasy herself belonged to—with people who      could be called women, but her Shepherd called them “on the cusp”—was the largest. One of them had brought a girl, a child, who sang softly to herself and drew stars on her arm with a blue marker. The scent of synthetic blueberry fought the stale, bad-breath smell of the clinic air.

Now, that girl is clearly not a woman, nor almost one, Kasy thought. Perhaps she’s special.

The receptionist slid a clipboard under her window, and Kasy’s mom wrote Kasy’s full name, flock number, and more. The little girl sat on the floor and doodled and sang, and the mother sat in a chair and ran her daughter’s hair through her fingers. The mother was Kasy’s age and her throat was unblemished: a small woman with a flat mouth and luscious seal-brown hair. She wore jeans and a nice pine-colored polyester blouse too thin for the weather, and a ratty parka too heavy for the weather. The little girl wore pink pajamas with purple cuffs.

No Ascension robe, Kasy thought. And she brought her daughter to the procedure. Her flock had pecked at her mother for doing the same, but that’s how it was when circumstances demanded it. Since joining the flock, Kasy had mucked stables, baked bread, scrubbed floors, beat rugs, wrung laundry, and raised chickens from egg to oven. She had calluses so thick she could grip a smoking skillet without potholders. When her mom had the procedure and then a fever from it, Kasy swabbed the surgical wound, lifted soup to her lips, wiped the shit, piss, pus, blood and did her mom’s work too. She watched the little ones and taught the older ones. Soon she and her mother were indispensable to the flock. She let herself feel a little pride in her hard work, her ambition, as a treat. That’s how it should be. Kasy joined the rest of the women in giving the new woman an approving, encouraging smile. God loves initiative.

The digital sign over the door blinked. Selena Cruz.

The girl and her mother rose. The leftover women watched her ponytail switch her shoulders with a kind of hungry softness as she went through the door. Kasy’s mother watched the door and her thumb and finger pinched the beads of her rosary. The beads passed through her fingertips and there was no noise behind the door. Kasy’s muscles clenched.

Then, the little girl screamed.

The women shifted, crossed themselves, and signed, “What a pity.” Kasy’s mother touched the scar on her throat. Kasy’s mind frothed. Her body felt galvanized with the screams. Move! Don’t move! Shut up, shut up, shut up!

Selena’s cries weakened, as if she had heard. They suddenly cut.

Kasy felt something like a pillar fracture within her. Inside her head was a tinny ringing as if her eardrums had burst and a static feeling. Her heartbeat prayed OGodOGodOGodOGodOGod. Maybe she had misheard. The doctor, surely, wouldn’t have taken her. If he Lifted them high, then what would Kasy’s Ascension mean?

It wasn’t that bad of a trade. You’d swear your faith and loyalty and do the procedure. You and Mom would be taken care of, Kasy thought. But you’re an adult, even if you won’t admit it, even if the Shepherd won’t acknowledge it.

Shut up!

Thirty minutes later, the girl, Selena, and her mother emerged wet-eyed. Selena swallowed, winced. Tears slid down her cheeks. The bandage around her throat had a dot of red where, if she were a boy, her Adam’s apple would be. She held a small blue satin box like a ring box, which her mom took from her and put in her purse.

They really did that to her, Kasy thought with an eerie serenity. Her spirit detached and bobbed to a level above her head. It took in the scene of the women and the girl who they had made one of them. The mother hoisted her daughter to her hip and slung her purse over her shoulder. She made no eye contact with anyone, not even the receptionist, as she signed out.

As she passed, making for the door, Kasy leaned over and pinched the woman’s sleeve. The woman started. Kasy whispered, “Soft serve.”

The other women rustled. Kasy didn’t have to see their hands flurrying to know what they were saying. Kasy kept her eyes locked on the mother’s startled eyes, as if willing the memory to transfer telepathically. Icy-sweet numbing swirl from the gas station. The hand signs for soft serve had not been invented yet, and Kasy could not wait for them to be, nor did she expect the woman would know them. She was just guessing, but she didn’t think the woman would know why soft serve mattered. The woman at the gas station would tell them. Kasy would not let the woman and Selena go, unless they understood everything she couldn’t say.

The woman pulled out of Kasy’s pinch and exited the clinic doors. Moments passed where Kasy wondered if she had said enough. Then, her mother slapped her. Its sound seemed to jolt Kasy awake. She had broken the six months of silence before Ascension. Her mom breathed in rapid puffs, and her eyes were ringed with white. She raised her hand again.

The receptionist hit the silver bell and rose behind the glass partition.

“Who spoke?” she signed. “Raise your hand.”

Kasy would have to start the six months of silence over—if the Shepherd would forgive her and allow her another chance. “The devil is unusually loud within you,” he had said after the previous failure. She had screamed for help when a young boy had fallen from a tree and seized on the roots, bleeding from the ears. She had suggested that maybe this time it was a guardian angel. But her Shepherd’s eyes were cold and remote, and his sermon the following day was about gratitude and duty and the sinners begging outside the walls, and he referenced Corinthians 14:34.

Yet God abhorred a liar. She slowly lifted her hand.

As she did, so did everyone else in the waiting room. Her spirit made a great shout.

The receptionist looked round, astonished. Then, with jerky angry hand motions, “I’ll end the appointments for today and send you home to your Shepherds.”

Hands stayed in the air. Eyebrows slanted and furrowed. Who needed hand signs when veins throbbing in their temples could speak more eloquently?

The receptionist threw up her hands and sat back in a huff. Hands lowered back into laps. Kasy’s heart felt too swollen with neighborly love and relief. But she still thought about Selena. She shouldn’t have Ascended at all. Why hadn’t the doctor stopped them?

She soothed herself. It’s done now. They might be able to join a flock based on the strength of their offering. It is what it is.

Immediately Kasy hated herself for that thought, because she always hated it when her mother said it to her. She had hated it after they had to leave their tornado-smashed home in Verdigris for Tulsa. She had hated it after the city cut disaster funding after they got there. She had hated it when her mom got the procedure to get them accepted into the flock. She had forgotten that she had hated it. If Kasy had been a boulder, it is what it is was the river that would wear her down to a pebble before carrying her with it.

The sign over the door blinked: Casy Hernandez.

Kasy was used to her name being misspelled. Today it felt like evidence for the devil. Her mother crossed herself as Kasy stood and went through the door.

The room was small, low-ceilinged, cave-like. There was a chair like the one at the dentist’s, and a young nurse on her knees, wiping the floor. The nurse held up one finger—the first and oldest and most recognizable hand sign—and continued wiping up the fine spray of blood. Her eyes, too, were wet.

Kasy plucked a sanitizer wipe from the tube by the door and knelt. The nurse waved, shaking her head, but Kasy shook her head back. She threw the pinked sanitizer wipe into the trash and beat the dust off her robe. I’m already here. It’s too late.

She eased onto the chair. There was a ghost of warmth on the vinyl. On the counter, the scalpels, slicked with girl-blood. Suddenly she hated that nurse.

She asked aloud, “You’re going to get some fresh scalpels for me, right?”

The nurse blanched. Kasy insisted, “You do use clean ones, right? God may have invented germs, but he also invented soap.” Her voice had gone hoarse after not being used for six months. It was a voice she wouldn’t want to hear in the dark. But how that nurse nodded! Her hand spidered towards the doorknob.

Childishly, Kasy thought, You’d tell on me? But the Shepherd would make her do more than stand with her nose in the corner. She should have been dismissed when she first spoke. Instead the nurse gathered the dirty scalpels and set a tray of fresh ones on the doctor’s cart. She was red.

Kasy lifted her arm to sign, sorry. But when she peeled her arm off the armrest, there was a scent of blueberry. Her forearm was smudged with blue ink.

“For God’s sake.” Her disgust was made dreadful by her voice. The nurse snatched another sanitizer wipe and offered it to Kasy. Her eyes pleaded. Kasy snatched the wipe and rubbed down her forearm and the chair arms. A lemon smell replaced the blueberry. The nurse slipped out of the room.

Kasy imagined the mother adjusting her daughter on her hip outside and walking towards the gas station. It didn’t sell gas anymore—no point—but sold caloric encouragement. Greasy pizza slices, hot dogs, plump, sweaty, brown, rolling alongside dry yellow taquitos. Donuts with translucent glaze. Coffee—not the real stuff, not anymore—but the soft serve was real, cool and soothing and soft. A sweetness sliding down tongue to belly. For whatever change could fit in a child-sized pocket, you could get a spoonful of strawberry or cherry preserves from the lady who ran the register. If you hung around tonguing the swirl’s point sideways, she’d tell you about how ice cream used to come in a thousand flavors, but the most common flavor came from a rare orchid far away. How ice cream now comes plain, and they had to make their own flavors. It was most unbelievable that ice cream could be better, Kasy had thought then. Her mom had last taken her when she was ten, before she had gotten her own procedure.

But that’s enough fairytales, said the gas station woman. I’ll introduce you to a good Shepherd. Just come back here when you Ascend. It’s tradition. Ice cream makes everything better.

The nurse returned with a doctor in his dirty white coat.

He said warmly, “Kasy Hernandez, sorry for taking so long. Lean back, lamb. I can’t get at your throat if you’re sitting up.”

Her mind howled the same words her aunt had howled about joining a flock, This isn’t right, nobody sane would make you to do this—

What else can I do? Kasy prayed. She imagined prayer rays beaming out of her body even as she leaned back in the chair. What can I do now? She wanted her mom to hold her hand—no, she wanted her aunt to take her hand and pull her out of the chair and run. She wanted to run back in time and pull the little girl out of the chair, and her mother, and every woman who had lurched away with their voices in satin boxes, and all the women waiting with their ears turned towards the door.

The scalpel had just penetrated her throat when she let out a monstrous scream.

Our daughter swims toward us, dipping below the surface, and for a minute all we see of her are two small horns slicing the waves. She comes from the shallows and over to the stones where we sit, our feet dangling. We eat persimmons and look out across the water to the towers of the drowned city.  I turn to her father and remember the night I arrived, when I was afraid to look at him as he stepped out of the shadows, and I looked instead up at the trees and the bowl of the sky.

The day after I turned seventeen, my father and I came out of the clouds and I saw the islands. Real islands, thousands of them, dots of bristly green fading to the horizon. I wanted to cup them in my hands. His voice came in, excited to show me each thing, give me this landscape like a gift he’d invented for me. I remember it from the old news clips, he said. These weren’t islands, this wasn’t the sea. Way back when there was nothing but snow here, Barbiedoll, waving his arm at the expanse, snow, slush, black ice. Tractor-trailers jackknifed in the ditch, pile-ups everywhere, probably on that very highway, pointing to a distant spire of asphalt jutting from the water. Pile-ups, Barbiedoll, pile-ups! A fine spray shot from his mouth and hit the helicopter window. Honestly, you would not believe it. Sideways snow, whiteouts. He looked at me to convince himself that I would not believe the whiteouts. Look at it down there, Barbiedoll, he went, feast your eyes, now waving both arms. Fantastic, he said. A tropical paradise, he said. He squeezed my shoulders. Fantastic again,just to drive the point home. This was the arctic circle, and we were in it.

It’s like an oven on these islands, he said happily, as the heat wrapped around me like a tongue. All I’d ever known were the cold breezes of the compound, icy sips of air that drifted through the rooms. Mother’s flinty fingers pulling down the blinds, sun flecking the upper canopy. Don’t touch the front gate or you’ll char your hands, and I didn’t go near the gate ever, although I was a bad daughter in every other way. Mother ticked-off and too tight in her thought-corsets, clacking across the compound in those high-heeled shoes, you, girl, you can’t even put together a decent breakfast or choose the right color wallpaper.

Take her with you, she said to Dad. We were looking at the northern archipelago on his screen. Give me a break.

My father and I passed over a town half-buried in water, over green that flowed like a river below our feet. Look, said Dad, the islands, thousands of them. This is my lab, Barbiedoll. All this. So much to study, you have no idea.

To me, the Arctic Circle didn’t look like a lab. A lab was Dad’s labyrinth of white basement rooms at the far end of the compound. White lights, white coats, people with masks, and those things like turkey basters in their hands, sucking bird flu or the red plague or pale blood from one tray of vials and squirting them into another.

And there were the other things. Better not to think about them in their cages and water-baths that he let me see only I never should have, I was only little then. It’s okay, I remember him saying, they won’t hurt you. Now here he was practically saying it again. The islanders they’re different from us, but don’t worry.

Will we be okay?

Yes, we’ll be okay, he said and laughed. The islanders were harmless, knew their place. They won’t hurt you. Nothing’s gonna happen.

Under the high bowl of stars the helicopter touched down, the bushes and grasses went sideways in its wake, and through the screen of trees I saw a long low house that went on forever. I stepped out, looked up at the sky, heard the sea tonguing the shore.

Our names were called from the doorway. It was Uncle Winch the lab surgeon, Uncle Winch who smelled of mice and electrical currents, Uncle Winch who practically jumped off the wide porch, Brothers in arms, he yelled, Barbiedoll, partners in crime, their arms around each other.

I looked past Uncle Winch and Dad. I saw the people, the not properly human people, standing in the shadows.

The islanders. The harmless islanders.

Nothing’s gonna happen.

They stood there like stone.

Here, Cornelia, said Uncle Winch, show this tired girl to her bed, nudging a woman forward. Beside her, a man held a dog by its collar. This is Galileo, said Uncle Winch, and here’s the night dog. The dog was a tight bristling shadow with yellow teeth.

Galileo came forward to take my suitcase and my gun box, and was his skin really blue, the blue of water, or was it the moonlight, or were my eyes playing tricks on me? He bent to my luggage, and it was then that I saw on his head the two horns. I reached back for Dad’s hand, but he’d taken over the dog. It was whining, belly on the floor, good boy, said Dad, good boy.

ButGalileo’s horns. The low arc of his horns in the air. Galileo’s hands like human hands lifting my cases. The blue fingers on the leather.

Good boy, again.

Cornelia, said Uncle Winch, and Cornelia moved into the light of the porch. I saw her long dress and smeared apron, knife in one hand, Cornelia standing as if interrupted in the kitchen. I didn’t want to look at her head. I looked instead at the animal that was neither snake nor fish that hung from her other hand. I remember trying to look everywhere but at her horns and bluish skin.

There was a boy, too, about my age. I didn’t look at him. I looked everywhere else, at the trees, at the stars cupping the sky.

Dad, I said, but Dad just squeezed my shoulders, everything’s good, he whispered, you’ve seen worse, and I watched him go off with Uncle Winch. Cornelia led me through rooms and gardens and at the far end, she opened a door. This is yours, she said in a voice, a human voice, low as a whisper. Galileo slid my suitcase and the gun box inside. I was alone in the darkness, afraid to lie down, afraid to sleep. The moon cast a shard of light across the white sheets of the bed.

Dad, I called when I heard him, finally, at his door across the hall.

Nothing to worry about, he said lightly, they know their place. He sounded a bit drunk. Oh, he said, I nearly forgot. I’m calling your mother. Their voices came across the hall and into my room.They were arguing about me. Mother’s voice was teary and shaking but it got choked off.

I shut my door and lay on the bed, looking out at the branches that lifted and fell in the wind. I heard Dad release the dog. It went padding through the hallways and through the gardens, and sometimes it snuffled or whined, or seemed to stop and listen, then move on.

Morning.

In the kitchen, Cornelia was skinning the snake-fish. It was as long as my arm.

What’s that?

An eel, she said. The eel-word filled my mouth, slippery, with a sickening taste. I slid past her horns and concentrated instead on her eyes, which shone when the boy came in the door. His skin was a lighter blue than hers, and his horns were young. He had a beautiful smile. I made myself look at his horns and then at hers.

My boy, said Cornelia, showing him off to me, her hand in his hair. He’s come for his traps, she said, putting a piece of bread and a yellow fruit into a worn plastic bag. I watched him go down the path to the shore, juggling the plastic bag and an armful of wire mesh boxes. He climbed into a rowboat and fixed the oars in the locks, rowed along the shoreline till he disappeared.

He came back at night. I didn’t see him but heard the oars slipping through the water and the boat knocking against the stones. Then his footsteps on the path. Mother? Are you there? Cornelia was serving dinner in the dining room and went back into the kitchen when she heard his voice. I listened to them through Uncle Winch talking to Dad. I learned, from my listening, that the boy’s name was ManRay, and that it was eels he caught in the traps that he dropped wetly in the kitchen, and he stayed out all day with nobody looking over his shoulder. Like a boy from the compound, except for the blue skin and the horns. There’s nothing wrong with the horns, I told myself.

Salt fields, Dad was saying.

Uncle Winch picked some gristle from between his teeth. Seawater’s moving in faster than expected. We’ll decide which ones to keep. Then we separate them, move them further out.

Dad put down his knife and fork. And if they resist?

No problem, we need only a few, some good ones off-island, all docile. We have time, said Uncle Winch.

Fantastic, said Dad.

On the second morning, I heard Dad fiddling around in the supply room, shutting the door, locking it, calling, Barbiedoll you up yet? He was in work clothes, his gloves and face shield hanging from his waist. We went down the hallway, through the gardens, to the dining room. Coffee? he said to Uncle Winch. Uncle Winch, too, was dressed for work. They stood at the window, watching for the helicopter, drinking their coffee. Seven gastromorphs on island three, Dad said, frowning at his cellphone, blood-clotting factors normal.

Good, said Uncle Winch.

Wait, still reading from the cellphone, three females, one immature, the shell still soft. Oh. A problem. Blood-borne pathogens, maybe? Let’s get out there and have a look-see. The helicopter landed and sent the grasses sideways. I stood there and watched them leave.

We’ll move them right away, said Uncle Winch as they climbed inside. Island three, he said to the pilot.

I went into the kitchen.

Cornelia was bent over a chopping block on the counter.

Can I sit here?

She put a dish of yellow fruit on the table, mangos, she said, holding one out to me, and went back to her slicing and cutting. I put the mango down, not knowing how to eat it. The kitchen was filled with the sound of her knife against the wood.

Here’s my boy, she said, looking up.

ManRay was in the door with his empty traps. He looked at the floor and spoke. Want to come with me tomorrow, he said, out in my boat? His voice was shy. Too shy to say those words. He put down his traps and stood across from me, leaning against the wall.

I’ve never been in a boat. I could hardly hear myself. I’ve never gone outside. Except to come here. He looked at me, polite. Worse than any mockery. I lived in a compound, I said.

Compound? said ManRay.

I did go out later, with my rifle. I got some empty tin cans from a pile behind one of the sheds and set them up on a half-collapsed roof. I couldn’t concentrate very well because of being in the open air, unprotected. It was dark when Dad and Uncle Winch got back.

Dinner was eels braided on top of onions in a kind of pie, and Dad kept smacking his lips. Fantastic, he said, what a cook, and gave Cornelia a thumbs up. After dinner, we played cards in his room late into the night, and then he called Mother on his screen. More fertile ones than we’d thought, four so far, he said cheerfully, and some of the young just coming out of their shells. Three, though, clotting factors not so good.

Too bad, said Mother about the clotting factors. Her image was blurry. She kept interrupting with her plans for braised 3D pork bellies.

In the morning after the helicopter left, Cornelia went down to the shore. I saw her from the window. She waded into the water, her blue body dipping in and out of the waves. She swam till she was only a speck in the distance, and came back later, up through the mangroves, her skin dripping in the heat. She waved when she saw me.

I met ManRay at the water, and he held the boat steady while I climbed in. He saw how scared I was. I sat down, gripping the seat. He pushed off. We were still by the shore when he said I could put my hand over the side. See how shallow it is.

I can’t, I said. He put his own hand in, grazing the small stones.

We waited. Later, good, he told me, watching my fingers touch themselves to the water. Do you feel it? he said. It’s the skin of the world. I watched the drops fall from my hand. It’s beautiful, he saidand made a splash with his oar. He started to row, slowly. Are you okay?

Yes. I turned to watch our island disappear behind the one we were circling.

Here’s the reef. Look, said ManRay, look down. Under the surface were the roofs of houses. That’s where they put the old people after they moved them here. And the house with the tv antenna, that was my great-grandparents’ house. But there was no tv. They didn’t want us to have a tv.

They? Who are they?

The ones who sent us.

What’s a tv?

Like a screen, he said, but it can’t hear you walking around.

We rowed out toward a further island. I saw, as we grew closer, that it wasn’t an island, but trees, persimmon trees, he said, that grew in the earth along a high mound of pink stones. That was the provincial legislature, he said.

When we got back home I said thank you. I don’t know what made me do it but I reached over to him and touched his arm. I didn’t want to ask what is a provincial legislature, for fear of looking stupid.

I get back early and where are you? Nowhere.

I was sitting down at the mangroves by the water, I lied, and fell asleep.

You’re off the hook this time Barbiedoll, Dad laughing but ticked off underneath, tomorrow we go island-hopping for the rest of the week, you and me, getting away. I thought of getting away with Dad, whatever that looked like. I thought of gliding out over the water with ManRay, of the oars clinking in their locks. Of the houses under the surface, and his arms holding the boat as I stepped back onto shore.

I want to stay here.

Dad laughed. After all my great plans, he said, to show you the islands?

I invented. I’m doing target practice.

Okay. Okay.

We didn’t talk much at dinner. I saw Cornelia move back and forth across the kitchen. ManRay came in the door with his traps full and squirming, and our eyes met. Later in Dad’s room, we called Mother. No, I’m not doing better today, she said between coughs. But you, daughter. She reached out to touch her screen. Mind yourself. Her eyes were swollen and her handkerchief spotted with red. She bent and spat into the bowl on the floor. There, she said. Her blood wasn’t stable, but whose was? I felt so sorry for her.

We rowed out every day past the provincial legislature to where the land ended and the real waters began, with the drowned towers off in the distance.

He taught me to swim, holding his hand under my stomach till the day he took his hand away and I floated like a leaf on the water.

We dived off his boat to graze the tv antenna, swim down over the house, through the slippery green rooms. I found a box stuck under a windowsill. We surfaced and looked inside. ManRay lifted out a peeling photograph, a man and woman without horns. My great-grandparents, he said.

We faced each other, treading water.

Why do you have these? I touched his horns.

They’re from the experiments.

Experiments?

The ones they did on my great-grandparents. They were gestating new strains at the lab, he said, they did that every few years. His great-grandparents were no longer needed. They got shipped out here. I didn’t know what gestating meant. I was confused by his explanation. They really keep you in the dark back at that compound of yours, he said, don’t they.

I thought about the compound. Not dark. Clean white light everywhere. A bright place, too bright to think, but darkness around the edges of everything. We pulled ourselves up over the sides of the boat and slithered in, waving our legs for balance. We rowed together back to the shore, his hands on one oar, mine on the other.

That room, he said. The one with the photograph. My mother was born in that room.

After his island-hopping, which Dad said was really fantastic, he and Uncle Winch stayed home. One night at dinner, which was shrimps with grapefruits and forest honey, he said, Cornelia, you’ve outdone yourself. I raise my glass to you, and he lifted his glass in a salute.After the shrimps came mango ice cream, from mangos picked off the tree behind the shed. I’m in heaven, said Dad. My wife’s gonna be jealous. Cornelia looked at the floor. The nerve he had,following her with his eyes, saying not bad, watching her walk her slow walk into the kitchen. Almost like a real human, if you don’t look at the horns. Later in the living room, he went, I’m just kidding around, what’s the big deal? Somebody like her, it’s okay. She’s just a chimera. His cigar went out and he lit it again. They aren’t like us.

I said: you wouldn’t know.

I’d made him mad, I could tell by the way he turned his back and went quiet. They have their uses, was what he said.

Then I crossed the line. Uses? I said. I’m in heaven? I said. My wife’s gonna be jealous? I said. Like that? He got up from his chair, and out flew his hand. He slapped me. I took my rifle and slammed out of the house. I went down to the mangroves at the shore, shot out over the water. It didn’t matter where I was aiming. Any place would do. He yelled for me to get back inside. I didn’t. I stayed there listening to the waves and then I kept shooting. He came down and found me, yanked the rifle from my hands, pulled me to him and cried. He said things to me, things I forgot as I stood cold and angry inside his arms.

The next day my aim got sharper, everything inside me swimming to my trigger finger, and crack, the ricochet off my shoulder, the rush of the bullet to its target. I went out in the mornings and stayed till nightfall, and even though it was just my grandfather’s old rifle with terrible sights, at the end of the week before dark I brought down a petrel skimming out over the bay.

At dawn, the helicopter angled up away from the house, and I saw Dad’s arm, tiny now, waving at me. Before the sun climbed over the islands, ManRay and I rowed out and lowered the eel traps into shallow water. We ate mangos and swam all day, collecting the traps as the night air gathered. We loaded them into the boat and carried them through the mangroves and up the hill to Cornelia in the kitchen. I didn’t want to touch the eels. You have to get over your initial repulsion, she said, which is nothing more than fear, and she placed a small eel in my palm. The next day she taught me to make a rich broth from the bones, to roll out a crust and fill it with the wild onions, to braid the eels into a lacy shawl, and bake it all in her dish, feeding the cookstove five sticks of wood at a time. We sat around the table, Cornelia, ManRay and Galileo and me, and we devoured the whole pie. Then we played cards and drank some of Galileo’s sugarcane wine.

Cornelia was in the water. She’d taken the rowboat into the bay. I watched her throw down the anchor, a rope tied around a rock. She seemed to be over the houses, then dived. She stayed down for a long time. Later she came up, left the boat anchored there, and headed out in the direction of the provincial legislature. I heard the distant splash at each lift and kick of her feet.

Dad never went into the kitchen, but now there he was. Standing across from Cornelia, facing her, saying something about the next meal. I have a fish here, they gave it to me yesterday at island six. He put the fish on the table.

Cornelia took the fish and turned it over in her hands. I can grill this, she said. With persimmons and sorrel and wild garlic.

Good, said Dad, fantastic. Then he told her: I need to do some tests.

A current of air, a troublesome current, went out from Dad to Cornelia.

Yes? said Dad, looking up and seeing me, frowning, what is it?

The nights got darker and thicker, the bowl of stars lowering itself over the gardens that ran through the house. The sheet stuck to my body in the narrow bed and the air didn’t move. It filled the room like a jelly. Dad grew quiet.

A cage settled over the days. Nothing to eat, Cornelia, only coffee this morning please, and no, Winch, I won’t go out, I’m waiting for messages. Finally, one morning, Dad appeared at breakfast after days of frowning at the screen in his room. He told Uncle Winch the order had come through. We got the go-ahead. We’re on.

Cornelia was heading out from shore. Why didn’t I use my phone to take a picture of her as she swam? Or a movie? You never think of it at the time. Preserve it now, while it’s still here, this moment, so you can look back and back and back and see the lift and fall of her arms, the carving of the water, the picture organized into shapes and colours, into Cornelia flattened on a screen for me to remember.

I woke from the silence. No night dog padding through the gardens. It was inside Dad’s room, whining softly. I opened my door and stepped out into the hall. The moon shone through the pines. Halfway through the dining room, in a pool of shadow, I was stopped by what I saw. Dad in the kitchen, seated at the table. He looked like he was trying to leap out of his body.

Here, he said. Bring it here. The ripest one.

A hand appeared. Cornelia’s hand. I’d never noticed how slender and pointed her fingers were. They held a mango.

Closer, Dad said, give it to me, and Cornelia approached him, put the mango into his hand. Cut it, he said.Her hand lifted the knife from the table, held it over the mango, over his hand holding the mango. She cradled his hand in hers, pushing up to support the cutting, worked the knife around and under the skin, sliced the pieces off the seed bulk, the knife never touching his hand.

He ate till the mango was finished, sat back and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. I could hear him chewing, and then he swallowed, never taking his eyes from Cornelia and the knife. Her hand held it steady. Moved it closer. He spoke. I’m your monster. Aren’t I. Your monster.

He got to his feet and came toward the door. I think he might have been drunk. I couldn’t let him see me. He almost touched me as he passed. I watched him go unevenly through the rooms and the halls, through the gardens and then came the opening and closing of his bedroom door. I watched Cornelia in the kitchen. Back and forth went her hand with the cloth across the table, back and forth. She picked up the kitchen knife and stood looking down at it, running her forefinger along the blade.

In the morning she was in the water, and swam away from me till she disappeared around the curve of the shore. I don’t know when she came back, but when I went to the kitchen, she was sitting at the table. The knife lay on the cutting board. There were no persimmons, no oranges in the bowl. No wild sorrel draining in the sink. No fish laid out ready to scale and clean.

They want to operate on my mother.

What do you mean, operate?

I could hardly hear him. His voice was shaking. They said they want to remove her horns.

How do you know this?

Galileo heard.

Get her out of here, I said.

Yes. We leave in the morning.

Leave tonight.

There was a leak in the boat. Galileo was fixing the leak, but it had to dry. They’d go around dawn.

Dad, I said at his door, why are you taking Cornelia’s horns.

We have to monitor the blood supply, check for clotting factors, possible pathogens. Her horns are key to this.

Did she agree?

She’s an ideal candidate.

Did she agree?

His voice exploded. What do you think I am? he yelled. Yes, she agreed.

How do you know when a person’s lying? There’s nothing specific that they do, you just know. Words spilled out of his mouth. New stage in the research, pathogens in the blood, trauma, genetic considerations. Infinite variables. Bleeders, Barbiedoll, we’re all bleeders, do you want to end up like your mother. Verge of a breakthrough what it means you have no idea. A simple operation, an hour at the most. Horn tissue contains the answer. Then two small bandages where Cornelia’s horns had been. Blood and tissues flown to the lab for testing. Breakthrough, he said again.

I woke when the night was no longer night, waiting for the clink of the oars in the locks, the boat being pushed out into the water. There was nothing but the lapping of the waves. They must have gone. I sank back into my bed. The dog was prowling. I heard its shaggy breath at my door, its feet padding through the halls and through the gardens of the house. Don’t sleep don’t sleep.

No coffee on the dining room table, no smell of oranges or scrambled eggs in the kitchen. Voices somewhere down beyond the mangroves: men and women in their boats crowding along the shore.

What’s going on? There was a rich ugly smell like at the butcher’s and it was coming from the kitchen.

Get out, yelledUncle Winch, who held a sheet blooming with blood. He was trying to stuff it into the kitchen stove, but it wouldn’t fit and made a red trail across the linoleum. And beyond him, Dad with my rifle, yelling into his cellphone, Where is the Goddamn helicopter?

What was this laid out on the floor? On a pool red and sticky as paint? Lift the sheet, lift the sheet but too scared. Lift the sheet. Her head was turned toward me, reddish trails like dried streambeds from her nostrils, ears, eyes, mouth, from the pores of her skin. And bruises on her arms. She must have fought. Eyes wide and staring at nothing. Two black pools in her head where her horns had been.

This wasn’t real. It could never be real. It was one of those made-up horrors they tagged from your compound life and put on the screen to terrify you, get you begging for them to make it go away, make everything tidy, everything quiet and grey again. Here was the helicopter thwack thwack against the trees and the grasses, move, move, Dad shouted, waving the rifle, shoving me out the door, and the men and women from the fishing boats were coming up through the mangroves. Somebody threw a rock and Dad went sideways. As he fell he slid me the rifle. Barbiedoll! Shoot!

My father. My father who’d rocked me on his knee. Who ran the cool cloth across my forehead when I was sick, pushed me on the swing in the compound yard, put me on his shoulders and I was bigger than the sky.

Shoot, he yelled.

My father who took me to work with him and let me pour the yellow liquid into the blue liquid and watch the emerald green smoke burst out like a small volcano. Who showed me the veins of leaves under his microscope, the lace of a fly’s wing, mosquito larvae in a drop of water. Who let me feed the creatures in their cages, even the big ones who looked like people but he said they weren’t, they were more pig than human. Or the ones who were part woman part mouse part scorpion part snail and some kind of blood bacteria and I had no idea at that age what was a bacteria an animal or a plant or something else but I forgot what he told me, rushing me past the blood-harvesting room where they lay, asleep and draining, in rows. Or the little ones in the special place at the back, part child part blue-violet wavelength with virus protein, dolphin dna, notes of snail dna, them with their soft shells and swimmy bodies, and then the shells dropped off and blue legs appeared, and little horns sprouted on their heads, and even though they spoke and said please and thank you they weren’t real people, never think they are real people at all.

Shoot, he yelled again. The women were over Uncle Winch. Cornelia’s kitchen knife lay red at his side. ManRay was there, right in front of me, and Dad yelled pull the goddamn trigger. ManRay was looking at me and trying to say something, and I pulled the trigger.

Somewhere something was burning. It must have been the helicopter because I saw its smoky mangle jutting above the trees.

I’m sorry. Did I actually say that? I’m sorry? What do those words even mean?Where do you find the right words for the thing that pulls you apart from yourself? I looked at the rifle and at him lying there on the ground, and he seemed so quiet, as if nothing had happened at all. Nothing. The fingers of his left hand were moving slightly. I couldn’t stop looking at his fingers. Wake up, I said, and started to shake him, Dad, wake up. Galileo pulled me off. I’m sorry, I said to my father.

Galileo’s arms were around me. ManRay’s arms were around me.

We buried my father in the high ground, covering the grave with palm leaves. There was no ceremony. No words of remembrance. What should I remember? I tried to call Mother but she’d been shut down. Function temporarily deleted, the screen said. I sat there and cried. Not for what was, but for what could have been.

The islanders washed Cornelia’s body. They covered her with the flowers and leaves of the shore, laid her in the water, and we floated her to the deep of the bay above the drowned houses, lowering her to the roof, their old roof with the tv antenna nearly touching the surface, swimming her into the bedroom of her people.

That night ManRay and I rowed out to the pink granite stones of the provincial legislature, slept under the sky, eating eels, shrimps, and persimmons ripened in the shadow of the stones. It was there, a year later, that our girl was born. We called her Cornelia. Her horns were velvety buds, and her shell, before it sloughed off, was tightly bound like transparent ribbons of seaweed.

We come out here all the time to swim. She’s still the deepest blue, our Cornelia, the blue of the saltwater she was born in. Cornelia, swimming toward me, climbs out to the shore and we sit on the stones of the provincial legislature, dangle our feet over the side. We eat persimmons and look across at the towers of the drowned city.