The Couch.

The couch is on stilts. I am not comfortable with it.
It sits in the middle of the living room,
Glares at me. A large eye. My mother sits on the couch.
She knits her afghan. The blanket on my bed smells
Like moth balls.

My mother is here. She pokes random objects. She dreams
Of nothings that blink on and off. Christmas music
Spews from a loud speaker in the bedroom. Snow falls
From the sky. We’re nothing, you and I.

My father said he got the couch from a garage sale three years
Ago.
He said he didn’t like it at first. He said it made him think of
His banged-up knee he got in high school on the varsity football
Team.
The blanket has not been washed.

It is not Sunday. My father did his washing on Sunday.
I call him every Friday afternoon, and ask if he remembers to do
The washing.

The third time I called him, he hung up on me and didn’t invite me
To his wedding.

A year passed by. We sold the couch to a couple in Chicago,
Who were giving their daughter a new puppy for her birthday.
This is the story of a couch. The couch is on stilts.
I am not comfortable with it.

River Pierre.

She is dressed in an Afghan and black clothing.
I told her I was over the whole black outfit thing,
she could wear anything she wanted. She came from South Africa.
She spoke in broken English.
I told her the wind is like a language...that it is a language.
It speaks to tree branches and rocks.
She told me I was different. I didn't know where I belonged.
I took an essay writing class when I was six.
We ate lunch on the River Pierre, in France,
and looked over her notes on Gibraltar.
They told me I do everything wrong. I'm not the way I should be.
Everyone makes me feel uncomfortable. No one understands.
The lake is filled with fish. Every day, I take bread crumbs out to
the lake, and only see three things-a toad, a lily pad, and
a tortoise. The tortoise has a brown-speckled shell. He looks
at me and wanders away. Everyone says I am selfish. I agree
with them. I haven't had a job in seven years.
The word, Gibraltar rings in my ears. It is an interesting word,
and I wonder what it means. Gibraltar.
We're not in France anymore. We're back at home, leafing through cake
magazines and talking about the football game on tv.
It's almost Thanksgiving.

Opening.

No nighttime is upon me. October is just a month.
It is cold and darkness is waking.
Not within me. In the clouds.
I am alone. My heart beats. I feel the earth move. She moves.
The earth is moving, she is sobbing, singing, doing
something I don't know what it is she is doing. I don't know
the heart within. She finds me moving within movement.
You moved to Ohio without me. Without a way to go.
You said you loved her. Your shoelaces were untied. I didn't
believe you.
I don't like anything I've ever written. I don't like anything
I've ever read, aloud, or in my head.
The moon shines down. No nighttime upon me.
My chin hurts painfully, every Sunday. The sun shines down.
The clouds are overhead. No stories are written. I am a story
within a story. I am tired. I want to rest. There isn't any rest,
so much work, so much work! My mother told me not to swear.
She told me not to do a lot of things. The flowers are opening
and it is not even spring. The flowers are opening in bloom.
Opening like the surgeon who opened my chest when I was one years old.
Opening like a door that was closed. You said you would never forgive me.
I don't want your pity. My heart is tired. I am tired. Why can't you
understand? The darkness is within my beating heart. He said he didn't
like the noise.

ii.

The dog walks down the street, its tail wagging.
He barks at nothing. It is the bark of a tree. I am angry on the inside.
Nothing can make me stop moving. I am a mover. I move every three years,
sometimes I wonder if my parents are FBI agents, insurgents of Canada
and the far north.
It is cold. The winter winds chill me to the bone. I am alone in my bed,
wondering if anyone notices I am alive. Most of the time,
they do not care, or want to understand.
I believe in things. I don't believe in everything. The dog barks down
the street again. The wind is moving.

I finished reading.

"Eyes of Elisha" by Brandilyn Collins. I enjoyed the novel. I haven't read mysteries in awhile, I have been focusing more on science fiction, but this book was written in a simplistic manner. Here's what I thought: I was sometimes annoyed by Chelsea because she seemed to have a big mouth and didn't think things through.

I believe everything is made up of matter, and, to explain the vision Chelsea had and why she was right about the murder, in one scenario, Chelsea randomly picked out a logical event and placed it in the proper order. Usually, when people claim to be psychic and are accurate, simple science can explain their accuracy-scientists have said the human brain is like a computer, and can compute information pretty fast. We have so many people in the world, it's hard not to be accurate about something we're not supposed to know. I like the paranormal, though, and I read fiction all the time.

Some parts of the story don't tie in together very well, and it seems as if Chelsea's visions are mere coincedence, or that she could have committed the crimes herself and blamed someone else for them. Bad things happen every day. It's not illogical for someone to guess right about some of them.

The theme of the story worked for the series. I would buy more books if I had the money.

What They Talk About.

I am not talking about tomorrow. I am not talking about the eggs being boiled
on the stove. I am not talking about the way the banana bread is being baked in
the oven, or the white-haired lion on the evening news, spouting songs about God, Israel, Iran. The country is in turmoil. When has it stopped being in turmoil? My president seeks resolution, holds up his hand in silence, holds up his hand and places it on a book, The Art of War, of resolution. I keep myself to myself. The news blares on. You told me you wouldn't leave for Jefferson City, that you wouldn't leave me behind, that my sister didn't lose her leg in the bar fight and couldn't find the leg and had to get it replaced. I am not talking about tomorrow. I am not talking about your mother, who owes me money she said she'll never have. The house has been put up for sale. Anger is written all over my face, it's really not, it's really not, I just don't like drinking, don't like dancing, don't like much anything about anything. My classmates usually provoked it. They're not here. You are. You talk to me. I hear you.

I Told You Once.

I told you once I told you before,
I'm not something I don't know about.
I am nothing I know nothing about,
words creep slowly up the wall like a cat.
I couldn't take the worried crease of your mother's brow,
the insistent drilling of your father's favorite sports into my head,
the french onion soup that never came out right during
our winter holiday up north to your mother's.
She told me she used to work as a car salesman,
that she used to dream of the day when she could get fired,
and actually work where she wanted to work-as a hostess
at a four star gourmet restaurant, a window cleaner,
a volunteer at the fire department.
She wanted all those things, she said, and more, writing them
all down in her notebook, making promises with herself to
try to fulfill her dreams. She didn't know which way she was going.
Or why she wanted to go there. She didn't know what she wanted,
what she could be, and summer came swiftly.

Quiet Mind.

I am the quiet mind.

I am the heart that can't breathe.
I am the broken. The dark destiny.
The friend without a friend.

In the last light of the full moon,
my mind bears the burden of you.
Bears the burden of what I am.

A human. A ghost. A liar.
Excuses drift across the ocean like flowers.
I surround myself with petty pennies.
A shadow that settles on a rock.

I keep myself steady, my hand on my belly,
mother calls to me from the other room and asks

if I need something to eat. I haven't eaten
well in weeks.
The quiet mind within a well. I don't have-anything-
trees, twigs, tears.

My eyes smart. I see visions of ghosts.
My loneliness breaks me. I am bent over rocks.
My hunger is not a problem. I am not a problem.

Darkness will not break me.
Never the quiet mind within the quiet heart.
Never the quiet.

Chronicles.

We are not miners. We are 49ers. My friend mentions the 49ers every time conversation
is awkward, every time a truck goes by on the freeway. I am tired. My mind is quiet, is steady. The beat of my heart is stilled, willed. The flower is wilted. My love for you blooms eternally in gardens; my love for you is in a book, the symbol written in words. I haven't slept in weeks. The night falls. The waves break on the ocean. You tell me nothing. You tell me, "I see things bigger than myself!" I tell you know this. I try to get another job, but I can't speak past your eyes. Your eyes like stars. The woman with the red shirt works at the gas station. She sleeps at night without a pillow, thinking of her mother, her father, her sister, her brother. If they will be able to eat the next day. The television tells me no one is hungry, not in words, but in images. I can't afford cable. A pigeon poops in the garden. In the winter, my landlord drains the pool. It looks half-naked.

Fanfiction Story.

I have never written fanfiction before, it makes me feel weird, but I've been having trouble writing anything as of late and decided to write something, anything. The fanfiction is based on Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series, which he got the idea from a famous poem. I started reading his books when I was twelve and I remember when I first read "The Gunslinger." I am picking on Stephen King because he'd probably like my writing. I don't plan on sending it anywhere, unless I send it to Stephen King's agent and ask him to finish it, for free, of course. I'm trying to finish my UFO story.

I have trouble writing shorter fiction, too. My patience is horrible.

As always, the characters belong to Stephen King.

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

Two thoughts came to him: The whispers were loudest in the dark. And then: The magician is dead. A man stood where none had stood before, looking down in the crevice of the black tomb of the magician who twice tried to kill him and had once brought him back to life. The man’s name was Roland Deschain and he listened to the whispers while he mourned, hearing the ghosts of the past, hissing their accusations in his ear. “Vinny!” one ghost screamed. “Vinny!” “Shake my hand? Shake my hand?” repeated another in a singsong voice. “Porter…porter,” sighed another, as if he, too, was in mourning of someone Roland didn’t know the name of, maybe someone named Porter, or maybe porter was his job or it was a word in a different language and Roland wouldn’t be able to translate it. Roland was the last gunslinger. He used to be one of the last. Eddie, Susannah Dean, and even Oy had become gunslingers along their journey. Now, his friends were dead. He was mourning their life. Last year, he put his gun away for a new one, a .44 black caliber the size of his hand. Not only was he mourning Susannah, Eddie, and Oy, he was mourning the death of all those who lost their lives on other worlds, unknown soldiers whose tombstones bore no distinct name, gunslingers from far away lands like Ottawa, Topeka, Jefferson City, Missouri, population: 33,000. Roland gave all the soldiers the name of Jane Doe. Roland was uncomfortable in a black suit. He was older. He had gray hair and his eyes were like icicles, cold and hard as steel, his mind quick like playing cards in the dark. He remembered the old inn where he played poker with a dead man, the man who lost one eye in a bar fight and had been turned into a half-mutant. Last he had heard, the man was still looking for his eye. Roland was fighting for his life. He had cancer. He started smoking at twenty-three years old and hadn’t stopped a day since and the old woman at the hospital in New Manhattan said the cancer had wormed its way into his lungs. She was right. His lungs were blacker than the space above them, blacker than tar and a summer thunderstorm.
He mourned the loss of his love. Her name was Natasha Spiendel. He met her at a bar back in Nicker, and had made love to her on that first night he met her. He knew he was going to leave her. It was written in the stars. That was a terrible thing to think. She thought he was going to stay forever. She said so while they were making love. A gypsy read his palm when he was nineteen and said his real lover was a demon, locked away in the chasms of his heart that can’t be broken open. His mind was dull, dim, dead. He didn’t remember how he had gotten here.
The only thing that kept him awake was the pills he ate and licked dry and the pinpoints of sun that bore through the spider webs that made up his mind. Birds whispered and sang to him in his head. He was in a different place. His heart reeled. He was alone.
Alone in a haunted tomb of a dead magician he had never wanted to meet in the first place, whose death constantly haunted him in ways that were both unbearable and unimaginable. Roland felt a hysteria that was bordering on dementia. He grinned in the darkness at nothing, his mouth slacked open. He thought about the visions he had in the North, about the dragon who had green jewels for eyes and sent him a vision of the end of the world. Of all worlds.
Darkness rose up over the tomb like a giant monster and swallowed him. He stood in front of the magician’s tomb and whispered a prayer in Old Speech, a prayer he hadn’t used in a long time. He panicked. Bile rose up in his throat. He kept himself firm. His body remained. He did not move. He moved. The ghosts moved with him, calling around him frantically, asking for forgiveness, for alcohol, anything they could claim. He had none to give them. He was on his last life. The last gunslinger. He couldn’t fix himself. He was broken. He was in mourning.
He went outside the haunted tomb and built himself a fire in the hallway. He ate the last of the beef jerky in his fanny pack he stole from a dead horse whose spirit surely haunted this tomb along with the dead magician. He missed his horse. He couldn’t remember how many horses he had. But he missed them. He even missed the Crimson King. His eyes bore itself in his skull.
No, he thought quickly, shaking his head. He didn’t miss the Crimson King. He didn’t miss any of them. Only Susannah. She was the only one who didn’t betray him. Even Eddie betrayed him for a chance at the Elixir of life. He had no more doors left. The key was gone. He had found the key in the Crimson King’s mouth, protruding from it after he was shot and killed in the turf war between the gunslingers and the vampires. Eddie lost his life. Eddie and the vampires. The vampires hated him. They would find him. They would want him dead. Most of the time he wanted to be dead. He didn’t know how to swim with the fish. But he wanted to.
His mouth filled with vomit.
He leaned over and retched into a bucket that wasn’t there and then it was. In this part of the Old Kingdom, all bets were off. The magician’s magic resided in the key. He needed to steal back the key.
The Crimson King was dead. He hoped his ghost was not haunting this tomb. He hoped for a lot of things.
Roland licked his lips. “What do I do now?” he whispered. His lips were cracked and dry. It had been days since he had had a drink. Days since he had eaten, until just a few minutes ago when he ate the beef jerky. The jerky was salty and went down hard and his mind was hard from thinking only one thought at a time. His brain was slow, like molasses. He felt fine. He was so happy he could literally lift himself off the ground.
You, his thoughts whispered playfully, gropingly. Are. The. Last. Right. Like that was anything new. He was alone like he was before the magician followed him in the second world. His first world was Earth. He remembered. He saw. The vision was crystal clear.
Someone shuffled behind him in the dark. He bolted, and, realizing he didn’t have anywhere to turn, slumped against a wall. Ghosts groped for him in the dark.
“Eat,” an old woman cackled. “Live, breathe, be.” She hovered behind him like a mother caring for her child, except Roland was not a child and definitely not hers. Roland screamed and put his hands over his face and she did nothing but stood there and watched him with a stupid expression on her face, one of amusement and contempt. “Be,” she repeated. Her eyes rolled in their sockets.
“Are you another gypsy?” he asked. He smiled warily. “Or a soothsayer?” He chuckled. She didn’t get the joke. No one ever understood his jokes.
She shook her head. “Matilda,” she said, smiling, showing cragged teeth.
He laughed. “Hello, dear,” he said, grasping her hand. It was cold as ice. It felt like dead seaweed brushing against his fingers. He swallowed hard. So many nightmares filled his soul that he didn’t know the difference between nightmares and waking life anymore. “What are you doing here?” he asked her, wiping his hand on his jeans. He didn’t want to feel that hand in his ever again. Never. Again. He snorted. He’d write that down if he had a post-it note and a pen.
She laughed. “Live here,” she said, cackling gleefully. “Can’t find food anywhere. The magic man brings me food and he’s dead.” She threw her head back and jittered another one of those crazy laughs. Roland didn’t think it was at all funny. Neither would the magician if he was here. Roland smiled dimly. Great. He was trying to be a comedian now. As if the universe didn’t have enough problems to deal with. He glanced at the old woman.
“Alive?” he prodded. Persistence. That was key. Especially to crazy coots like the woman standing before him. Especially in a tomb like this.
“No. Deceased.” A chill ran down his spine. Of course, his mind whispered. He would be dead. That was the only way to get away from Roland. “How do I get out of this place?” he asked her timidly. She rolled her eyes heavenward, then glanced back down. She slammed her first into his jaw. He was sent reeling. His mind whirled. He sank in blackness. Darkness. The ghosts whirled away from him in a blur of noise, voices, images.
In the darkness, in the deepest pit of despair, on the edge of another world that flickered between unconsciousness and consciousness, Roland woke.
He opened one eye.
The Crimson King was not there.
He was dead.
Roland was not.
That was good, that was fine, that was great, that was wonderful. Roland rolled over on his side and looked up at the sky that glared down at him like an eye. He was in the desert again, he was sure it was the same desert the magician had followed him to at the beginning of his journey. He was happy he was here. The magician could not find him. The magician was dead. He repeated the words over and over in his mind. He repeated them. He was in the desert. It wasn't anywhere near Cairo.
Roland fell into a dead sleep. He didn't even get up from where he lay. He slept looking up at the stars.
The next morning, a cart and buggy started making its way across the desert toward him. Roland watched dumbly. What were they doing here? Was it a ghost carriage? Was he seeing things? The desert was full of mirages. He waited. The buggy pulled up to him. "Hello, mate," he said. "Good of you to kill my cousin for me."
Roland looked startled. "Who?" he said, blinking at him in the sunlight.
"My cousin. The magician."
Roland glanced at the horse again. The horse was nothing but a skeleton. Its eyes were pools of blackness. The universe swirled above him. Roland looked back at the old man. He looked exactly like the magician, except his nose was shaped differently. It was much more crooked. "You are?" he said.
"Shawn," the magician's cousin answered. "Shawn Johnson. Pleased to meet you." He chuckled, as if what he had just said was funny. It wasn't.
Roland smiled anyway.
Of course.

Book Update.

I'm on Chapter 12 of Eyes of Elisha.

The Ghost Whisperer.

*********

A speck on the horizon.
It wasn’t the UFO he was expecting. It wasn’t the UFO he was hoping for. It was just the moon, taking its first breath on a cool autumn night full of broken thunderclouds.
Lieutenant Barney Trent gazed up at it from his Porsche, wondering when he was going to see the UFO. He had been out here for hours, waiting for the right moment for it to arrive, waiting for something fantastic to occur. He didn’t have much longer to wait. He glanced at his commander. His name was Matthew Plunkett, and he was forty-seven years old, had a baby girl and a wife. They were struggling, he heard. It was sad. He was glad the man was here. It was a good idea to have someone else with you to witness a UFO sighting. One person wasn’t enough.
“Do you think they’ll come?” he grunted, glancing at the man and raising an eyebrow at him.
Matthew shrugged. “They’re aliens. Aliens are supposed to be unpredictable.” He snorted. “I’d say yes or no.” He chuckled. He was having a ball. He didn’t believe in aliens one way or the other. He thought they were imaginary. His mother told him so. He still thought they were imaginary. Nothing was going to change his mind. “Let’s wait.”
They waited. Waited. Their commanding officer, Wolf Morrison, said he didn’t know when the UFO would come. Or even if it would. Matthew didn’t want to pass up the chance of seeing something he would never get to see again. The sun went up. It went down again, down, down over the horizon, until it was just a speck. That wasn’t a UFO. He told it to himself, silently, quietly. The sun and moon were not UFOs. He wished they were. Finally, silently, near the dawn that was coming up out of the darkness, he saw it. A green speck of light on the horizon. A green speck. It came closer and closer until it was nearly standing on top of them. Barney’s breath caught in his throat. He didn’t know what to say. It was the most wonderful sight he had ever seen in his entire life. He didn’t need a video camera. He was going to remember it forever. “Is it real?” he whispered to Matthew.
He shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care,” he answered, shaking his head. “Let’s just watch.”
They watched for what seemed like forever. The UFO turned on its side and dipped out of sight. They never saw it disappear. One minute it was there. The next minute it was gone. Just like that.
Barney shook his head and chuckled. It was better than Christmas.


* * *
Benjamin Hades didn’t realize what he was signing up for when he joined
the United States military. He was twenty-three, going on twenty-four, and had just graduated from Princeton University with a degree in sociology. He had a whole wide world to explore. That was when he got the call. They needed him at Area 51. It was such a simple request, they said. A simple request that could potentially persuade his entire career. He thought about it for two weeks before agreeing to leave his crummy, part-time job at McDonald’s, and delve into the career of a soldier. He hated war. Hated the possibilities. He needed the money. They said they’d pay for his schooling. He signed up immediately. He flew a plane to Roswell International Airport, got off, and three security guards lead him to another bus with blacked out seat windows. He got on and was driven three miles to the Area 51 site, near Groom Lake, a dry riverbed that was going to be turned into a dam by the end of the year. His boss’s name was Matthew Plunkett. He knew he wasn’t going to like him. He was tall, hard, and cold, his eyes like brown saucers in his head, his mind sharp and quick, like lightning. He ushered the man into his tight little office, an office that was a span of about twenty feet wide and long. A diploma adorned the wall opposite his desk, from MIT. He rubbed his hands together gleefully. “You’re working at Area 51,” he said. He paused, studying him. Benjamin didn’t like being profiled like that. It made him nervous.
Benjamin nodded, confused as to why the man was being so secretive. It wasn’t a big deal. He’d had plenty of jobs before this, five, as matter of fact. This was the most interesting job he’s ever had. More interesting than working at a grocery store. “What do you want me to do?” he asked quickly. He hoped he hadn’t offended the man in some way. That was the last thing he wanted to do. Offend the government. Yeah, that was rich. He scowled.
“Your job is to monitor Bunkers one through seven,” he replied. “We have everything already set up for you in the security room. All you have to do is watch.” He rose to his feet like a giant monster rising from the ground. Watching Bunker One through Six was like watching golf. Nothing happened. Several men came in and out of the building. He had a toll booth. They signed when they came in, and when they came out, usually around dawn. Barney was up with the sun, and went to sleep when it went down. The days became tedious, dull, real. There was nothing special about Area 51.
The next morning, he went to downtown Roswell, and bought a cup of coffee from McDonald’s. McDonald’s was the fast-food chain of choice for these parts, either that, or Denny’s, and Denny’s wasn’t open yet. They didn’t open until 11am.
“What am I doing here?” he demanded of his steering wheel.
He drove all morning and went back to his apartment and fell into a deep sleep. Night came, and his shift, second shift, just began. He hurried into his clothes and drove down I-55, and stopped in front of a large building marked with the words “Employee” on the sign. The garage door opened, and he inched the car into the garage. He stepped out.
A man wearing a black suit and tie wandered over to him, carrying a clipboard. “Hades, Benjamin?” he asked in a cheerful voice. It was hard, being happy in a place like this. Harder than a person could imagine.
Benjamin thought the building was haunted.
Benjamin nodded, wondering what he had gotten himself into.
It wasn’t like he couldn’t find work. It wasn’t like he didn’t have enough money to eat and rent an apartment and put gas in his car. He could find work. He could do all those things. It was the feeling of excitement, of doing something he wasn’t supposed to, that he liked. It was like, I don’t know, finding God again, as corny as that sounded. It was like being friends with your inner demons. Officer Cooper Smithson kept Benjamin company, spouting stories of World War II and Vietnam. Tall, lanky, with brown hair and eyes, he had been stationed in Vietnam, he said. Had shot and killed a man, a German soldier who was working with the Chinese. “Have you ever heard of such a thing?” he said laughingly, slapping Benjamin on the back. Benjamin thought shooting a man must have made him go mad. His behavior was sporadic, chaotic. Benjamin smiled encouragingly. He wished the man would just shut up. He wanted to eat his soup. It grew cold. He took a sip. That was better. Soup was good on a night like this.
“You ever seen a UFO here?” he asked Cooper curiously.
Cooper’s face suddenly turned serious. His eyes lost focus. “Once,” he said stiffly. His shoulders drooped. His face went white.
Benjamin looked at him. “And?” he prodded. He looked at his hands. They were large hands, large ones that had seen much labor. He remembered the little ones that fit into his father’s hand. He remembered other things, too. He kept it to himself.
“Once is enough.”
“Was it on the ground?” he asked quietly.
“Yes.” He nodded. “It was on the ground.” He paused. “I was just a solider back then, had just started working at Area 51, thinking of all the possibilities it had to offer.” He shook his head. “That was so stupid of me! Really stupid. Anyway,” he continued, “I found out what Area 51 was really working on. A futuristic version of the Stealth-fighter pilot, it was a small, sleek-looking model, gray, about seventeen feet wide and across.” He stopped. A single tear squeezed down his eyelids. He didn’t bother to wipe it away. Benjamin studied him curiously, wondering what the fuss was about. It was just a UFO.
“I’ll never forget the experience,” he began. “It was stupid. I don’t know why I was there in the first place. I guess I had a weird feeling in the back of my mind…maybe I picked up on it? Sometimes I do that. Like, I can tell what’s going to happen next, or I can guess what’s in a room without actually going in it. It’s stupid, I know.” He sniffed.
“What happened to the fighter pilot?”
He shrugged. “We sold it to the Japanese,” he replied. “They like fighter pilots, especially ones like that.” He paused. “I don’t think anyone actually gets these ideas from real aliens, just geniuses with nothing better to do with their time.” Cooper wrung his hands nervously. “You must think I’m really stupid.”
“No,” Benjamin told him. “I don’t. I want to see a UFO.”
“Maybe you will, sonny,” he replied, patting Benjamin on the back. “Maybe you will.”
All Benjamin could do was scowl.
The next morning was dreary and cold. It was spring. The weatherman said a big storm was coming, part of a hurricane that had come from Mexico. The hurricane was called Hurricane Fran. Benjamin wondered who named them. He slept until noon. He staggered to the shower, got dressed, washed his face, and brushed his teeth. He didn’t have anything to do until six-oh-clock, when he signed in for work. He glanced up and saw Cooper watching him, with a glazed expression in his eyes. Idiot. He’d been here for years. The man said so himself. Benjamin hoped he wouldn’t turn into Cooper. He was just a little too weird for him to handle. He shook his head and went to the security office, put his card in the door, and it swung open with a creak. The sound was deafening in such a quiet little room. He didn’t like it. It made him nervous. He checked the sign in sheet on the desk. Everyone who was here had already signed in. No one unexpected was supposed to come in today. It was second shift. They usually didn’t have any extra people come in on the second shift. He wandered into the hall. A light bulb swung from the ceiling overhead and cast a pale, orange glow on the walls. It was eerily quiet. No noise anywhere, except the wind moaning outside. Hurricane Fran was headed this way. He went to the vending machine and bought a cup of coffee and went outside to look at the stars. His break began in five minutes anyway. He had time to look. They had a small black and white TV in the break room. Light bent in the dark.
Footsteps whispered on the floor. His mind reeled. His mind thought about different things. What he was doing, where he was going. He never expected to work here, of all places. He’d heard about Area 51 before this, from colleagues at Princeton who were writing papers about the strange things that happened here. His grandfather was in the army. He’d fought in World War II. That was when he saw it. A black Sedan pulled into the driveway and three men hopped out. His eyes squinted in the dark. They weren’t supposed to be here. There weren’t any other names on the sign-in sheet. Everything was supposed to be on schedule. Those were the rules. He swallowed hard. He didn’t have time to radio the FBI or the police. He was going to have to follow them. Benjamin took his flashlight out of his pocket and followed them. He was the shadow stalking them. The first man had white hair and a white beard. The second man was younger, and had black hair and brown eyes. His mouth was drawn downward. He looked pissed. “What are you saying, it’s not running right?” he demanded into his walkie-talkie. “I checked it this morning. It should be working.” He scowled. His scowl deepened. “Jenkins, check on the sub, now.”
Benjamin frowned in puzzlement. The sub? Were they talking about lunch? Benjamin followed them into the side door marked “PRIVATE.” The door slammed shut behind them. Darkness swallowed them whole.
“Which way?” Jenkins whispered in a tinny voice. “Which way, Harry?”
Harry pointed. “That way. You know which way it is,” he said. “Don’t act like you haven’t been here before.”
“I keep thinking I’m with Wolf. Sorry.”
Harry snorted. “You know he’s a Shadow, an insurgent.”
“For who?”
“Them.”
A chill rolled down Benjamin’s spine. He didn’t like the emphasis Jenkins put on the word, “them.”
Harry scowled. “Don’t say it like that. It gives me the creeps.”
“Okay.” Jenkins snickered. “They.”
Harry glared at him. “Shut up, Patrick.”
“Hey, what about the new guy? You think they’re gonna tell him?” Jenkins asked.
“Of course not. He’s a Level One Access. They don’t tell rookies anything. It’s the law.” He snorted. “Dumbass. Should have known that already.”
“Oh.” He nodded. “Right.”
They rounded a corner and entered a large room.
The room was round and white. In the middle of it rested a large pool filled with water. In the water, was the strangest submarine Benjamin had ever seen. It was sleek and white and looked like a large whale with windows. The windows were new and looked like they had just been washed. Benjamin stared at it. That’s what they were hiding! He was so excited he almost bumped into a wall.