Stephen Hemmer Stories

She put her phone away and stood up, a little more relaxed and energetic than before. She was halfway up the mountain and she was determined to get that prize. 

As she hiked up the mountain she saw other hikers and admired the dedication they represented. She never quite talked to any of them, but they wished her a good morning. Later up the trail, a ranger checked to see how she was doing. Just like she had with the hikers, she waved the ranger along. Eventually she found herself at a river crossing the path before her. The other hikers were taking a bridge to get across. The wooden hand rails were carved and painted red to give the place a sort of meditative feel to it all. Zoey moved towards the bridge but as she got close, a kid broke free from his family and instead skipped over the river using a series of smooth flat stones sticking up from the creek. 

She decided to take his lead and began to follow across the stones. One, two, and then a big stretch to three, a small jump to fou… 

She slipped.

She caught herself, her nose an inch away from a larger, more jagged stone. 

Zoey looked up and saw the ranger from before looking toward her with concern, wading into the water. She waved him off with a laugh, straightened up and turned towards the bridge. Just beneath the bridge she could see the river give way to a waterfall. She took out her phone again and gave the picture another five stars and a small warning to “be careful if you decide to skip across the river.”

The ranger stopped her on the far bank and asked, “Do you need me to look at that?” pointing toward a small gash on Zoey’s hand.

“Oh, uh, no, no thank you. I’m actually kind of happy with it as is. Haven’t felt a scrape like this in years. Exciting in a way.” She walked past the ranger who furrowed his brow.

As she continued she noticed another stone on the side of the path, once again towards the upward sloping side of the mountain, and angled just perfectly for her to sit and stare out across the path toward the scene for her. The wear and tear of the thing made it clear that it was natural, yet the thing looked exactly like the rock she saw only a few kilometers back. She pulled out her phone and took another picture and left a less flattering caption. “I saw this stone before. It’s a bit repetitive, is it not? I get that it’s there to let me look across for the view and rest, but just put in a bench instead. The view is pretty though. Two stars.”

After another hour of hiking, she finally got to the pavilion at the peak. A stone marker indicated that she was 599 meters above sea level and had walked 6.8 kilometers. Across the courtyard was a cable car that would lead her down the mountain. She took another picture, commenting on the details of the cables, and the colors of the car, and how it all looked like it was well maintained, but in need of another paint job. She hoped Wes would appreciate her comments.

Just past the cable car was a small restaurant with a bowl of noodles on the sign. Finally, her reward. Zoey walked inside and ordered the curry udon, just like Wes suggested. The bowl was out before she really had a good time to look around, so she took her chopsticks and dug in. The first slurp was absolutely delicious, just the perfect blend of buckwheat noodles and curry spices. 

Around the restaurant were several of the hikers she saw before. She considered inviting one of them to eat with her, but didn’t want to keep Wes waiting for her review, especially of the noodles. 

The next bite felt a little spicy… She checked the menu over the counter and it didn’t have the chili pepper for spicy, but Zoey pushed it out of her mind. It was curry udon after all. She continued to eat a little more, though she began to struggle as her hand started to shake and her palms sweat.

Zoey’s lips began to burn. She dropped her chopsticks into the bowl of noodles. The noodles sat in her stomach like a brick, but worse, the spice was growing hotter and hotter in her mouth. She stood up, fanning her mouth, and looked around for a water fountain or something, anything. Everyone around her continued to eat without reacting to her. The pain grew hotter and hotter until it was a searing fire burning through her throat.

---

Zoey unplugged from her VR set and quickly fell out of her chair toward the mini fridge in her wall. She pulled out a bottle of water and downed it before another could even be fully constructed in its place.

The sensation difference between the scorching heat and now the ice cold water cooked her brain for a second as she took the time to just let it slowly wash over her. 

She stood up and switched the chair from VR to just her simple computer and started to type up a report to Wes. She included all of her previous screenshots and comments, but focused on how the udon needs to be fixed. “You can’t have players pulled out of the experience because of some damn noodles.”

Zoey took a second to look out the window of her dragonfly and stare at the distant stars. She pulled up the status display on the window to double-check the relay was still allowing messages to flow properly. All green and hovering at 7.8 exabytes a minute. Then she plugged back in.

---

His expression sobered me a little, but I wanted to hear his life story. I asked the usual questions, starting with, “Where are you from?” 

“Chicago.” 

“What are you doing passing through?” 

“On my way north.” 

“What’s up north?” 

He didn’t answer that one, so I let it slide. I ordered both of us another drink, and once again, he finished his before I even got mine. He just let the whole bar hang in silence, didn’t even ask me anything in return.

Eventually I asked, “What exactly do you do, you know, for a living?”

He said, “I’m unemployed, but I used to investigate emergency supply shuttle crashes for Helios Shipping.” 

You know Helios; they run a lot of those supply chain ships for the colonies. Well, apparently various governments have contracts with them so they will send out emergency supplies to the colonies.

Anyway, I ask him to tell me his weirdest story, the weirdest thing he found while investigating. There is nothing more I enjoy than hearing the mysterious and weird from someone who has seen some shit.

He tells me, “You don’t want to hear any of them.”

“Don’t worry, I love things like that.”

He sighed and asked for another drink. I bought another round for us both. And once again the guy downs it in a single gulp, but he begins explaining. “Well, the shuttles that we…they send out have extremely precise amounts of fuel based on their weight and the path they need to go on, their trajectory. Very little margin for error. I used to check to see if the calculations were wrong or if there was something wrong with a batch of shuttles, or user error.”

“What kind of user error?” I ask.

“Well, sometimes a pilot on these things will misread a gauge or override autopilot in a non-emergency situation, and muck the whole thing up, but the most common ‘user errors’ are stowaways. Tourists and thrill seekers who are trying to see the more remote corners of the colonies. Well, the rules are simple when you find a stowaway. If you kept them on the shuttle, the extra weight would completely derail the trajectory, leading to certain death for both of you, plus loss of the supplies. Since these things are sent out only in absolute emergencies, they cannot risk that. So, stowaways get air-locked. It’s called the TG Law, after the first pilot who died from a stowaway who wanted to visit her brother.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah, it's not easy to do. Even though pilots are trained to know without a doubt that it's the right thing to do, most pilots who do it even once, well, they retire. Quickly.”

He kind of lost himself for a second, staring out the window of the bar. I just let him sit in the silence.

Eventually, he turned back around and started his story again, “Well, one day I got a job to inspect a crash on Titan. Since it was so far away they sent a shell for me. Have you ever used a shell?”

“No.”

“Well, they absolutely suck. You plug in,” He pulled up his hair to reveal a spinal jack just below his hairline. “And then all your senses are replaced with the shell’s data, but it’s so damn slow and everything just feels off, cold, weird. 

“Well, I plugged into the shell and trekked toward the shuttle crash. Took me a week to get there from the nearest outpost, but much better than flying the whole way. 

“The shuttle is half buried into the rock and dirt and grass, so I start to identify the shards. This is the cockpit, this a stabilizer half a mile away, this pulverized pile of flesh is the pilot.

“It’s never pretty.

“My shell, it could upload a sample of the pile. It confirmed the DNA was the pilot’s, as expected. No other DNA, so no stowaway, our first concern. I moved on. Checked the data on the manifest, picked through the shards of the boxes and confirmed it was all here. Double checked the air-lock’s data to see if it opened when it shouldn’t have. Everything was in order. So finally I unplugged from the shell and started to go over the info downloaded from the black box.”

He looked toward his empty glass. I wanted to get him another drink, but I thought it had to be a bad idea by this point. As I was reaching for my wallet to consider it a bit further, he started talking again.

“I went through the black box data and it confirmed everything. Nothing was wrong with the shuttle, nothing malfunctioned. The atmospheric pressure at the time was stable, no storms. It should have landed.

“Well, that’s when I decided to check the camera feed.

“Right before entering atmosphere, the pilot, sitting in his chair, passed out. This was surely a fireable offense, but nothing else went wrong. The autopilot should have guided him.

“But then, the lights flickered, and behind the pilot, from a shadow in the corner of the screen, there was a woman. Civilian clothes, short cropped hair, gray eyes. Well, she dragged a box from the supplies, sat on it, and rested her head on the pilot’s shoulder and fell asleep.

“Sure enough, right after passing the umbra of that moon, 56kg was added to the ship’s weight from nowhere.

“But, her remains weren’t there. No one reported seeing her after the crash.”

Ricky turned away from Sean fully and pulled out a box from the shelf. He reached in and pulled out a joint.

Sean stood up straight. “No…I mean…”

Ricky sat down on his bed, lit up his joint and inhaled. “I know what you mean.”

Sean watched as Ricky took another hit and exhaled, the smoke gently wafting throughout the messy room, over the trash across the floor, the three drops of blood on the corner of the uncovered mattress, and the broken dresser drawer.

Ricky turned back around and stared Sean down. “The damn pamphlet was on your table when I visited yesterday, okay? I’m not a fucking idiot.” He turned back away from Sean. “I just didn’t think you were. So, goodbye.”

“Is that all?”

Ricky stood up and walked further into his room before turning around to look at Sean’s face, twisted in pain. “What else do you want me to say?” He tapped the joint so ash fell into a bare trash can.

Sean unfolded his arms and gestured swiftly towards the front door. “I’m going to ship off, okay? I’ll be working on a goddamn relay, you know? So, I’ll be far, far from the nearest planet, let alone a star.” Sean tried in vain to motion the whole concept, to express the implications of the isolation, but all he could do was struggle.

“I told you. I’m not a fucking idiot. I know what the hell a dragonfly is, and you’re stupid for going to work on one.” Ricky then mimicked no one in particular. “I’m going to send messages to assholes across the stars and never see another human face again. Uhhhnnn.”

Sean scoffed. “You’ll never see me again. Does that not matter to you?”

The joint hung limply in Ricky’s mouth as he looked Sean up and down, starting at his beat up and busted boots, his cuffed up jeans, his tight white shirt over muscles, and landing on his freckled face. The face that said he didn’t have to be alone, no matter what he heard, no matter what anyone else said, and Ricky used to believe those words. His eyes flickered to his hand. The hand that reached for Ricky’s at night. The hand that firmly gripped his own as they ran from his house laughing. The hand that pushed him up against the wall. And then his eyes flicked back to Sean’s lips. Those goddamn lips. Those lips that stole his breath before Ricky pushed him away, and those same lips he pulled back to his own.

And Ricky turned away.

Sean stared at him for a second, went to speak, and stopped himself. He clenched his fists, seeing that boy who…who goddammit, used to be such a shit to him, but one day, one day he saw something more in him. He saw something worth preserving in him. And now, Sean struggled to find it again, so he let his hands fall loose and simply said, “Fine.” Nothing more.

“You…you want me to say something…like…like ‘don’t go, stay, don’t leave.’ Like some kind of faggot?”

The two let the word hang in the air, Ricky refusing to look back.

Ricky turned back around and began to yell, “You want me to stop you, don’t you? You want me to say! To say! To say ‘I love you’ is that it? Well I’m fucking sorry to disappoint you but in case you haven’t noticed I’m not some fucking fag!”

Sean stood there, mouth agape, trying to form anything to say, but all he could muster was a weak, “Jesus Christ Ricky. Jesus Christ.” Sean took a step back and slammed the door shut.

For a few seconds there was the sound of determined footsteps and then another door slammed, but then there was just silence sitting in the apartment. 

Ricky yelled. Ricky screamed. And then fell onto his bed holding his head in his hands. 

Elise sighed, looking at the same wave for the fifth time in so many minutes. “Bleh.”

A voice whispered in Elise’s head, right behind her ear, giving it a little tickle. “Hey, Elbow, are you in there?”

Elise sank a little, slinking back towards the stone and sat on it. “Yeah,” she said out loud to the voice coming from her head.

“Can I come in?” said the voice like gentle rain.

Elise rested her arms on her raised knees and shoved her head in the little nest she made for herself. “No...”

Elise sat there for a second waiting for a response that didn’t come. She continued instead. “How did you know I was in here?”

“I used to come here all the time, last cycle. Was my own little hideaway, especially after that class.”

Elise asked the voice, “How old am I?” 

“You’re 13 cycles, right?”

“No, I mean, like, back there. How old would I be back there?”

“That’s...hard to say. Hey, I’m coming in, can you unlock the gate?”

Elise closed her eyes real hard, much harder than she needed to, but it was a habit she picked up during her 6th cycle. When she opened her eyes again she saw that Clem was sitting next to her. She wasn’t simulating any costume, so she was simply wearing a student’s blue-grey jumpsuit, starkly contrasting her bright orange hair.

Clem looked around the park that seemed to stretch and stretch and stretch further than the eye could see. She turned to look Elise in her dark brown eyes. “Do you want to talk about what you’re feeling?”

“It’s just...I don’t know. But like, do you think it's different, like it feels different, when you’re really there?”

Clem sighed, “I don’t really know...I’m only a cycle older than you. My family left before I was born, before I was even a twinkle in my mom’s eye.” Clem could see Elise retreating back into her nest. “But I have to imagine it would have to feel different, right?”

That was wrong, and it only pushed Elise to further burrow her head into her nest.

Clem sat there awkwardly for a moment, trying to figure out how to talk to the girl in jean shorts and a white tank top, simulated for sure.

She sat, and thought, and then placed a hand on Elise’s shoulder. “That’s why we are doing this. It wasn’t like this,” she said, motioning to the park around her, “by the time we left. It’s amazing we were able to get any memories like this even recorded, let alone clear enough for us to shape it.”

“I know, and that’s not it...I mean, it is, but it's not all of it. I just...”

“Then what is it?”

Elise pulled her head out of her arms. “It’s just, I’ll be long dead before we get there! I’ll never get to experience our new home. I’ll never feel real grass between my toes, my mom will never yell at me for tracking mud into the...the...the house! Or whatever it’s called. I’ll never experience this.” She motioned to the nature around her, “Not properly at least.”

Clem waited a second after Elise finished, and then turned forward. “We won’t always see the good we do, but it's still important to do it.”

Elise stayed silent, but kept looking towards Clementine.

Clem broke the silence. “Can I change the view?”

“Yeah...”

Both of the girls closed their eyes, Elise much tighter than Clementine. When they both opened them, they could see that they were sitting on the hull of a spaceship soaring through the empty void of nothing, stars barely moving with them. 

Clem looked out to a brightly colored cloud of gas off in the distance. She felt the cold plasteel of the ship’s hull, and smelled the burn of empty lungs with none of the fear that comes with it. “No one else is going to see this sky. Not even tomorrow. It’s just me and you. And, and it may not be exactly the memory you want. But, it’s uniquely yours.”

Elise placed her hand on Clem’s. “Thank you. You know, I feel a bit better. We can go back...or stay here a moment longer. Just us.”

As she took a moment to breathe, she looked around the graveyard and rested her hand on her thighs. “This is dumb,” she said to no one. 

Bending over to pick up the box, she stopped for a second and let her eyes rest on the box, on the lines and curves and shapes, and what they meant was inside. She sat back down and started digging again.

“Fuck it, what’s the worst that could happen?” And then in a funny voice mimicking Brit she said, “‘Wanting to die and not being able to.’ Okay, well, shut up Brit.”

She shoved the box into the hole and covered it back up in dirt. She pulled out seven candles and placed them around the mound of dirt, hoping that a combination of Yankee Candles and those weird tall Mary devotional candles were gonna work here. She took the spade and began to carve a circle in the dirt around the candles, and then ornate symbols and shapes across the mound, careful to double check a piece of crumpled up paper from her pocket.

Behind her was the sound of wet flesh slapping on marble. She spun around and saw a large black hound crawling over a low gravestone, gripping it with four pitch black human hands where its paws should be. Shadows flickered off it like licking flames, its whole body seeming to be more a hole in her vision than an actual entity. 

She crawled backwards on her hands and knees and knocked over Vanilla Cupcake (tm) into the circle carved around the mound. The whole circle went up in flames, surrounding Alexi with heat and lighting up the tilted face of the grim beast staring her down. 

“Wait, Regi?”

She stood up, wiped a tear off the dried mud beneath her eye and leaped over the flame to the dark and menacing creature, a representation of the death and decay beneath the dirt.

The black creature of unfathomable rot bounded towards her and she opened up her arms. It leaped towards her and almost knocked her back toward the flames, but she pivoted to land in a patch of soft grass away from stone and fire. The creature landed on her and began to lick her face, his breath full of decay and rot and somehow smelling better than when he was alive. Alexi rubbed the fur behind his neck, wet, sticky, and knotted, and the grim protector of the graveyard began to violently shake its leg, and the human hand at the end of it, as if to scratch the ghost of an itch.

---

Alexi checked her phone and realized that sunrise was coming fast; it was time for her to go. She blew out the candles, packed them up along with the spade, and flattened the ground with her shoes.

Walking through the front gate of the cemetery she noticed that Reginald was following her but stopped at the entrance, scratching at the empty air as if a plate of glass was between them.

“I’m sorry Reg, but you gotta stay here.”

Reginald tilted his head, its burning embers for eyes matching Alexi’s. Alexi began to cry again.

The first woman in the picture was wearing a black suit and holding the remnants of a piece of cake. The other woman in the picture was a thin, brown-haired woman laughing so much that her eyes were closed. Smeared across her nose was the other half of the piece of cake in the first’s hand. This second woman seemed so familiar. The curve of her neck, how it met her shoulders. Even the white dress she was wearing felt like it should bring to mind something. The screen was a tickle, but this, this was an itch. 

Bea reached out to grab the picture. As she moved forward, her hand began to shake, and her fingers felt numb. She lost her balance, realizing that the end table was much further away than she guessed. 

She fell back into her bed, and furrowed her brow. The itch grew to a full blown headache, and then shallow and sudden breaths. She took another look around, hoping for another clue, but found the room wanting. 

Then the door knob turned, and the door opened. Bea closed her eyes and collected herself.

A woman in a long white coat and holding a tablet walked up to the side of her bed. On the woman’s coat was a small golden rectangle. Bea squinted and tried to understand the symbols, but it was fruitless. Despite this, the name Dr. Quitslund came crawling back from that growing itch in her thoughts.

Dr. Quitslund brought a walker from the closet over towards Bea’s bed and then sat down in a thick, cushioned chair. 

She flicked and swiped at her tablet, not looking at Bea, until she turned and spoke up. “Bea, we have to talk about tomorrow’s treatments. It should greatly reduce your shakes, and you likely won't even need the walker most days.”

Bea nodded before the doctor continued. “It will probably affect your memory again. Memory loss only shows up in about a third of patients, but with your history,” Dr. Quitslund swiped the screen a few more times, “it's almost a certainty.”

“H...how...how many treatments have I had?”

Dr. Quitslund sighed and squeezed the bridge of her nose. “You already signed up for it, but I have to stress that you can back out if you’d like. I wouldn’t recommend it, but you are allowed.”

Bea looked past Dr. Quitslund toward the door. In the window she could see the second woman from her picture talking with another doctor.

Bea started to move her way off her bed and towards her walker. “Thanks doc, it's fine, everything is fine.”

Bea could hear the doctor try to continue the conversation behind her, but she stayed focused on the woman from her picture.

When she opened the door, the other woman turned and gasped, “Bea.”

“How do you know my name?” Bea took a step back and looked around.

The other woman turned to the doctor she was talking with before and said “We can talk more later.” He walked away and towards a third patient’s room.

The woman turned to Bea and pulled a locket from her medical gown and opened it. Resting in the two halves of the heart were the two women from Bea’s picture, but younger. Under their faces were the names Sarah and Bea. The pictures turned the ache to a throb.

Bea looked up from the locket and into Sarah’s eyes and said, “Why do you have that?”

“I don’t know. I woke up with it on my end table.”

Sarah grabbed Bea’s hand and Bea’s heart began to race. Bea turned to look at her hand while Sarah continued talking, looking in Bea’s eyes. “When I look at you, I feel happy, peaceful, like, like, like sitting on the beach when the sunsets. But I don’t know why.”

Bea turned away from the woman and began to walk away before stopping and leaning on one of the walls of the long hallway.

Sarah continued, “I think... I think we were together.”

Bea turned back around. “Huh?”

“This locket, right? Like, I think...”

“Stop.” Bea looked down to the floor and noticed her shaking feet, grateful she still had the wall.

Sarah said faintly, “Sorry.”

“I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Oh.”

Bea walked back towards her walker, between her and Sarah and grabbed Sarah’s hand. “I don’t know how to feel. Okay. And I might not remember today, or even tomorrow.” Looking into Sarah’s eyes, directly, the throb started to dissolve, to lessen, a dull roar.

“Right...”

“And...and I don’t want to hurt a stranger.”

Sarah pulled her hand back, and Bea’s hand followed before she pulled it back. “But maybe, maybe when this is over.”

“Yeah.”

Peter’s laugh got caught in his throat, then he choked it down before rasping out, “I guess you could say that.”

The figure stepped closer to Peter, never seeming to step out of the shadows. “No. You misunderstand. Not could, am. I am saying that. There is no question. There is no doubt. You. Make. A. Lot. Of. Messes.”

Peter tensed up, furrowed his brow. He began to sweat in the cool crisp air. “What are you trying to say?”

The figure stepped even closer, the shadow extending past it, where it began to land across Peter’s steel toed boots. “Once again. I am not trying to do anything. I am saying I know what you do. I know why you are here. I know what happened tonight.” Its voice sounded distant, like a radio in an adjacent room.

“You don’t know shit.” Peter tried to snarl, but it came out meek and raspy as he struggled to get his voice to cooperate.

The figure began to speak, like static, even closer, as if directly in his ear. “Did he remind you of your brother too? Or was this one more reminiscent of your father?”

“How? No, just shut up.” Peter took a step back and pulled out an expandable baton, red and slick, not yet properly cleaned. “Shut the fuck up. You don’t know anything. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Your dad’s not going to love you more. You know that right? Especially not after tonight. How do you think that conversation would go?”

Peter took a step forward, and then another. Looking at the figure in the shadows hurt his head, but he tried to focus, stand tall, and raise his baton.

“What are you even trying to do? Is this your solution to everything?”

“SHUT UP!” White-knuckling the baton, Peter could feel the coarse handle dig into his skin.

“Do you know who I am?”

“Don’t care, it doesn't matter. Going to beat you bloody and red anyway.”

The figure laughed mirthlessly, as if the echo of a hollow rock. “No. Literally, do you know anything about me? Anything at all?”

Peter took another laborious step forward, as if stepping through thick mud. “Don’t...don’t need to.”

“What color are my eyes? Am I smiling, come on, can you hear the joy in my voice? What does my face look like? What am I even wearing? Here, an easy one, am I tall? Am I short? Can you say one single, solitary thing about me?”

Peter looked towards the figure again, trying to focus this time on its shape, the details of its being. He tried to focus on the hair, the height, the clothes, the eyes, anything he could notice, but every time he tried to look at the figure, his eyes just slipped off, like water gliding around a sizzling pan. It hurt to try to focus, like an itch in the back of his head telling him to run, to hide, to get away, to not be near this thing, but refusing to let him grasp anything about the figure’s nature, as if the very idea of it would break him down, worse than whatever the figure was actually planning.

Peter shouted, “No, no, no!”

He swung his baton wildly, trying to move closer and closer while looking away. His baton swung through seemingly empty air, finding nothing to hit. He kept swinging and swinging in the hopes that something, anything would stop this figure.

“No! No! No!”

The clay hand had thick lines carved into it, forming strange and arcane shapes and forms filled with yellow herbs and dyes that took her years to formulate.

And the hand just sat there.

Giovanni frowned, wiped the sweat from her brow, and waited.

She grabbed a large set of metal tongs and pulled the hand out. Careful not to touch the thing, she set it on a ceramic plate on her work table.

She took her notebook and checked her recipe again. And the lines were definitely the right shade of yellow. She tried to scratch her head with her gloved hand, paused, removed the mitten, and then continued.

After staring at the solid lump for a solid five minutes with no new thoughts, she took the now cooled down hand and placed it in her pile of still limbs.

---

Giovanna was locking up her workshop, ready to take her evening journey back to her home half way down the cliff when she heard the sound of mismatched foot-steps and gentle cursing.

At a whisper in the distance, “You’re such a fucking idiot.”

Giovanna turned around and saw two young women walking towards her. The one who just talked was carrying half the weight of the other. Giovanna took a second to notice that the injured woman’s right leg simply ended at her knee, sharp and jagged. Giovanna gasped and the two women looked up and matched her gaze with bright yellow eyes.

Sofia gently set down the injured Angela on a bench outside of Giovanna’s workshop before addressing her. “Mother, Angela did not follow your warnings.” She pointed to the other woman’s ceramic shards jutting from her pants. “She was playing by the river again and slipped on a wet rock.”

Angela looked up to Giovanna and smiled sheepishly. Giovanna squatted down to look at the wound and then sighed.

Sofia continued, “Can you help her?”

Giovanna stood up. “Wait here.” She walked back into her workshop and stood over the pile of rejected limbs. She rubbed her chin with one hand while resting the other on her hip, then shifted her weight to her other hip. “I-I’m not so su—“ She turned around and saw Angela smiling as she leaned over to get a better look at Mother’s workshop. Her smile started small but grew as her eyes darted across the room until they landed on a small wooden pole. 

Giovanna followed her gaze and saw the simple prosthetic sent to her by the craftsman from the woods just 3 days north. Ghost-wood. Maybe it could work, for the time being.

She grabbed the harness that wraps around the thigh, the wood dangling underneath and walked towards Angela. She crouched again and looked up to Angela’s curious eyes. “Sorry dear, but this will have to do for the moment. Now look away, I have to smooth the wound.” Giovanna took the sharp shards at the edge of Angela’s clay skin, and applied just the right pressure to snap the longer pieces off. 

Angela whimpered.

Mother took the harness and wrapped it around the leg now that the shards wouldn’t cut through the leather. “Stand up, see how it feels.

Angela did, clearly excited to try out her new leg. She began to run before tripping over. Sofia caught her and set her back on the bench. “Mother, I think it's a little long.”

Giovanna took the prosthetic back, shaved off a few centimeters and came back with it now topped with a cork end. She reattached the prosthetic and before she could even talk, Angela stood up and was running haphazardly down the path back to town, laughing and shouting. 

Giovanna turned back to Sofia. “Catch up to your sister, I have more work to do here.”

When I first met you, you were still your father’s little girl, his greatest joy in the whole world, the only reminder of his former wife. I tried to ask him about his life before he met me. He was always willing and forthcoming to talk about his early years, when he was a bachelor, but then wouldn’t say a word about your mother. He’d grow distant, lose focus, and ask to change the subject. If I would push, he would refuse stronger, so I decided to leave him his last bit of privacy. He planned to share the rest of his life with me; I could let him have this last bit of isolation.

I wish I pushed a bit more.

You were always distant, which I always understood. Any daughter would be under the circumstances. I hope you know I never wanted to replace your mother, but instead be another source of comfort for you. 

After that first year, when you first actually talked to me, that was one of the happiest days of my life. I cherished that moment for years, still hearing those words in the back of my head, even if it was just you saying you were hungry. 

I wanted to cook for you, but your father refused to let me feed you. He would always feed you privately, coming back out from your room tired and seemingly barely there. He kept this up for years until he started to fall ill.

If I were more honest, I would mention that I tried to peek. I wanted to understand his secrets, but never had the courage to open that door.

But after your father fell ill, he told me. He said... he said things I couldn’t believe and still struggle to believe to this day… about my daughter. So I chalked it up to his fever muddling his thoughts. I tried to feed you myself but you refused to eat anything besides the apples from the market. I’d head out and you were so tired, and when I returned your excitement for those delicious red apples would bring you out from your room. But that’s not how you feed a growing young lady.

I would try to make you shepherd's pie when we had meat. I tried to bake you bread when we didn’t. And no matter what, you refused to eat anything but those deep red apples. I thought it was because of your father's illness, and then his passing.

Then... then that night. A friend of your father’s came to pay his respects. I returned from picking herbs and you said he left, but a week later I found his body in the woods. What your father said crept back to my mind, but I pushed those ideas out.

That week you had so much energy and joy in your voice. You even accidentally called me mother before correcting yourself. 

The ideas, the thoughts, they began to connect and grow like a mold in a hot damp pantry. I closed the door and pretended to not understand.

And then it happened again.

I tried...

I tried to lead you down the right path. I tried to raise you like my own child, despite your peculiar condition. I hoped you could subsist on the creatures of the woods, but you grew dissatisfied. You’d come home, standing in the doorway all tall and lean, and I wanted to help.

But after your most recent incident, with those children from the village...

I gave up.

And yet, I knew what I had to do. With a trip back to the market, and a visit to the apothecary, I had what I needed. 

I gave you that apple, as red as the blood in the woods, as red as your lips. You didn’t suspect a thing. You took that apple and bit into it deeply, greedily.

That night, with the sky as deep and black as your hair, you fell into a sleep. I waited the next day to see if you would wake, and then a week, and then a month, and you still did not wake. 

I hope when you wake that you can forgive me. I know I don’t deserve it, but I hope that you can. I failed you, but you have a second chance now.

Across the dirt road was Ty’s family’s pig farm. In the pen was a pig covered in mud and muck, just panting and staring at Isaac. Its tongue lolled out of its mouth as it panted short, shallow, disgusting breaths. The heat clearly bothered it as much as Isaac.

At this angle, with its mouth opened, it looked to Isaac like it was smiling. Isaac stood up from the post and looked the pig in the eyes. “What’s got you so happy?” He stood taller, puffing up his shoulders. “You’re gonna be bacon tomorrow anyway, dumbass piece of pork.” Isaac spit on the ground.

Isaac continued to stare at the pig, matching its panting gaze.

Two weeks ago, no three, Ty had the same stupid fucking grin on his face, panting as he ran up to Isaac. Isaac tackled the boy, a whole year younger, and started slamming his fists into the kid’s face. “Keep my dad’s name out of your mouth!” Isaac yelled. 

Ty was crying, trying to cover his face as best he could, but Isaac grabbed his arms with one hand and kept punching with the other. The farm boy was strong but had nothing on the son of a Royal Hunter. 

Isaac stood up, panting, and spat on the boy. Only when he was walking away from the fight did he really give a thought to what Ty said.

“Why’d your dad leave?”

He could have just told the truth. He could have just said he was hunting. It's not like there’s anything to be ashamed of, the kid of a hero. Could have said he was questing, sent by the King and everything. 

He just…

He just didn’t have an answer to why it had to be his dad to go after the Yelping Beast. 

Isaac fell back to leaning against the post, knocking it a little askew as he did. He pulled the dagger back out from the post and looked at its polished blade. Spitting image of his dad at his age, he was told.

It’s not like Isaac wanted the next town over to be hurt, or their cattle ate, but he thought about the way the damned thing could hurt him, the way its snake like fangs could dig in his flesh, be kicked by its hart like legs, or burned by the venom it spewed. No, the next town didn’t deserve that, without any doubt in his mind.

But why his dad?

Isaac plunged the dagger back into the post, an inch and half deep.  “You’re not going to go on any more hunts.” He looked down the road out of town. “Not after you get back from this one.”

He looked down, and then back up to the pig, still smiling and panting at him like the summer heat fried its brain a little too crispy.

“Go away you dumb beast!”

The pig continued to pant and stare, seemingly unaware of what his words meant.

“I swear to god above if you don’t.”

He marched towards the pin’s fence and started to climb. As soon as one foot was on the fence, the other slipped in the pin’s mud, slamming Isaac’s head into the post. Isaac fell down onto his ass and sat there and just started to cry. 

And that godforsaken pig just kept staring at him, smiling, until it turned its head down towards the road out of town.

Isaac wiped the blood from his brow and turned to see what the pig was looking at. He squinted, with the sun in his eyes, raised his hand to block the light, and saw.

Limping down the road was an injured warrior in fractured and burned armor. Plates with deep gashes, at least the plates that remained. And on the chest, emblazoned in royal purple was the heraldry of the Hunters, a lion bearing down on a serpent. 

Isaac stood up and yelled, “Dad!”

The warrior stopped and looked up. He went to open his visor, but it had been dented shut.

“Dad!” Isaac wiped the tears from his face, turned toward the dagger stuck in the post, and then ran to the hunter. Isaac swooped under the arm of his dad, wrapped it around his shoulder and started to carry him home. “Let me patch you up.”

---

Nights before this she tested the dresser doors, but opening them slowly only made them squeak longer, not quieter. So preparing the running sack had to be done ahead of time.

From the running sack she pulled out a large winter coat, a pair of snow boats, and the quietest sneakers she could find at the store. She shoved the snow boots back into the bag, careful not to disturb the tightly packed and padded collection of maybe a weeks' worth of food. She threw on her coat and tied her shoes.

Checkov looked towards her with a tilt of his head. She told him, but mostly herself, “I know, it’s cold out there, but my pajama pants are just going to have to do for now. When I’m safe I can unwrap my winter pants from the…the…damnit, the cans of peas and carrots.” She took a deep breath and then kissed Checkov on the forehead. “It’s going to be fine.”

The top of her running sack had just enough room for a very quiet and well behaved boy, but Mikaela didn’t have that, so she picked up Checkov and placed him inside. “We trained for this, okay, please be as quiet as you can possibly be.”

---

Mikaela was well into the woods before she could no longer see her house. She slipped a small treat from her winter coat to Checkov as a thank you for not waking up her dad. “He wouldn’t understand.” Checkov tilted his head.

Through the thicket of leafless trees, Mikaela was able to see the flicker of the lights of her destination, and then was met by the wrought iron fence surrounding the property. She pulled Checkov out of the bag and tied his leash to one of the vertical bars. She then threw her bag over the fence, placed Checkov through the bars, and looked for her route up. Along every yard or so, the even bars were intersected with an ornate pattern of Art Nouveau whiplash, creating a chaotic tableau of vertical lines and wild flourishes. 

She began to climb up the malformed lattice, gripping the bars firmly. She stopped halfway up the fence. “Fuck.” 

Holding on tightly to the fence with her right hand, she looked at the bandages wrapped around her left. The stubs of her ring and little fingers were warm and wet, and surely, under a good light, dark red. “That’s what I get for wearing boots in the Butcher’s house.” She took a deep breath. “But Arya can’t wait, right boy?” She continued up the fence after her brief respite, careful to cross where a flourish raised above the spikes at the tops of the bars. She dropped down next to her bag with a firm thud and turned to Checkov. “But we live and we learn, right? Hopefully.”

She took a fresh, clean roll of bandages from her bag and reapplied them in the dark at the edge of the property, careful to make sure she was still behind one of the larger trees. In the darkness, she lost track of her old rags. 

“Screw it, no time to waste!” She bent down near Checkov and put him back in her bag before picking it up and heading towards the house.

She’d never seen the house in the daytime, so she wasn’t quite sure how to describe its details. But up close she could tell it was mostly wood, at least three stories tall, and reminded her of pictures she saw of houses in San Francisco. She doubted the Butcher’s House was as colorful though, having never seen it in the light. But right now, what struck her as odd was that she couldn’t hear any scratching or skittering. So, with new determination, she began to climb a drainage pipe on the wall closest to the woods.

She pulled through the pain in her hand, climbing as quickly as possible, unsure of how long the silence would remain. On what must have been the second floor, or maybe the third, was a window with a broken latch. Mikaela rubbed the mark carved by Arya on the outer sill before forcing the window open. She climbed in through the window, careful to avoid the board closest to the wall, and took a deep breath before turning around and closing the window.

Down the hall, towards the door she came for, the door waiting just around a corner deep in the Butcher’s House, this was the hall she dreaded. But she didn’t have time for this. Arya didn’t have time for this. So she continued to sneak down the hall, despite the lack of scratching. 

There, finally, at the end, was the door, just past a turn, that should, by all rights, mean the door would open back to an empty section of wall earlier in the hall. In the lock of the door was a smooth piece of metal sticking out, a broken key. Mikaela pulled out a small thin piece of metal with a hook at the end and began to snake it into the lock. Checkov interrupted her concentration with a meow. “I know, boy, would be quicker with all my fingers.” She took a second to reach down and pet her faithful companion. 

As she refocused on her work she heard the sound of a latch downstairs, and then gentle slow scratches of metal on tile. She began to hurry, focusing more on speed than quiet at this point.

The metal began to scratch into the wood, getting closer, the stairs creaking under the weight of…that thing.

Then, the lock gave a decisive click and the key fell out. 

Mikaela tried to catch the key, but it clattered onto the wood under her. 

The scratching stopped at first, but then picked up speed.

Mikaela opened the door, tied a string around Checkov’s collar. The skittering closed in, tighter, but she refused to look behind her. She kissed Checkov on the forehead. “Alright, show me where she went.” And then she followed him into the door.

---