Category: Short Story

“You know, I dream of dying,” the bleary-eyed stranger said, leaning over into the aisle between the seats. He had woken suddenly as if the plane had hit a pocket of turbulence, but so far the red-eye flight from Chicago had been a smooth flight.

Beverly held her folded magazine to her chest, smiling patiently at the strange little man. She had been a social worker and nurse for most of her career, so she intuitively knew how to talk to people. Especially people that carried a hint of instability about them, like a reek of body odor. “Oh do you now?”

The bald stranger ducked his quickly in a nod. “All the time. Just now in fact.”

“It was just a dream,” Beverly said in her best comforting tone.

The stranger shook his head slowly. “No, it is always the same. I have the dream about dying, wake up and tell someone. Then I fall back asleep again… somehow I avoid the death. I wake up somewhere else, in some other place, in some other time.”

“Time?” Beverly responded flatly, as she was only half listening, already focusing on the People article about Johnny Depp’s recent divorce.

“Yes. I think it is another timeline actually. I am not sure.”

Beverly was fully ignoring him now. “Oh, that’s nice dear.”

The stranger cocked his head listening for something. He touched Beverly’s armrest, but did not reach far enough to make contact with her directly. “Did you ever watch that movie Sliding Doors?”

“I’m sorry?” She replied.

“I think that was the name of it. Sliding Doors? Something like that. It was about how a single choice is made and completely changes a person’s life. They live this one life, and then see how this other life is better, and that is the moral of the movie. Bunch of movies have a similar premise. Exploring how a single choice affects everything.”

“I suppose I have seen something like that,” Beverly conceded. No one around them noticed the conversation, as almost all of them were sleeping.

“I will be honest with you, I think that is how my life is.”

Beverly folded her magazine into her lap. If this strange man wanted to have a conversation, there was no stopping him. “Why do you think that?”

The man leaned closer, whispering. “Did you hear about that railroad derailment in Jersey last year? That train took a curve and double the speed and everyone aboard died?”

“Yes, I remember something about that.”

“I was on that train. I fell asleep, had the dream, woke up to find everyone around me safe and sound. I fell back asleep, and then woke up in my bed. That version of me had not set the alarm, so I had accidentally slept in. But that is not what I remember. I remember getting a cab to the rail station, buying a ticket into the city, boarding the commuter, and the people around me. I remember my seat number, even.”

“That is a strange dream, I suppose. Have you seen a doctor?” Beverly tried.

“Like a therapist?” The man made a face.

“Maybe. It sounds like it was upsetting, perhaps talking to someone about it would help?”

“I have talked to people about it.”

“But not a therapist.”

The man shook his head. “No.”

Beverly looked at her lap, to the window with a black sky beyond, only the blinking glow of the wing light was visible. A thought popped into her head. “Why do you remember the seat number?”

“Because I remember looking at my ticket. The crazy thing is that when I did a bunch of digging with the transit authority, they had no record of selling that seat. It was empty.”

Beverly smiled. “That makes perfect sense though, since you never bought it. You weren’t there, and it only was a strange coincidence.”

“If the one time, maybe,” the man crossed his arms and tucked his hands against his sides. “But that is not the only time.”

Beverly felt a chill run up her arms. “How many times?”

“At least thirty that I can remember. I have started keeping a diary, but I cannot remember all of them. Some of the events happened inside of other events, so the choices I made to get to other choices were all negated. I remember a ferry sinking in the Sound, but that never happened, because the turnpike had a massive pile-up, but since I died in the pile-up too, I woke up at my kitchen table, a puddle of drool under my cheek. The pile-up happened, but the Ferry didn’t. I never found out why.”

“And in the ones that did happen in your real life?”

“I was supposed to be there, but I wasn’t. I was always in the time when I was late, or spilled something, or ran into an old friend. Sometimes being early saved me. I would wake up on the other side of the event, thinking I had died, but in reality, it happened afterwards.”

“You have the quite the imagination, Mister?”

“Jerry Katchowski.”

“Beverly Waterson. Nice to meet you Jerry.”

“Nice to meet you too.”

Beverly inwardly rolled a pair of imaginary eyes and went back to her magazine. Another hour passed before she looked over to see Mr. Katchowski sleeping soundly again, his head lolling downwards, chin pressed firmly against her chest.

“Hello everyone, this is the Captain,” the overhead PA stated calmly. “I just wanted to let you know that we have some turbulence coming up, so I am going to turn on the overhead signs to fasten your belt when you are sitting in your seats.”

The panels above made their ding noise, and Beverly looked back at Mr. Katchowski to make sure his seatbelt was fastened. He was no longer in his seat. Beverly bit her bottom lip, wondering how the gentleman could get up and go to the lavatory without her noticing. She felt her years, realizing that a man sneaking from his seat could go unnoticed.

The flight attendant pushed the drink cart past slowly, and Beverly made eye contact.

“Yes, Ma’am?” The attendant smiled graciously, albeit tiredly.

“The gentleman that was sitting here, did you happen to see him get up?”

The flight attendant tilted her head questioningly. “No, Ma’am. That seat has been empty. This was not a full flight.”

Beverly felt her stomach drop for a moment. Perhaps she was going senile after all. “I must have made a mistake.”

There was a pop from behind, and then the sound of a roar from a dinosaur, immediately all the pressure in the cabin was gone, and the floor buckled and tipped violently. Beverly put a hand to her bleeding head from the sharp impact against the now missing drink cart. As her head cleared of the flashing, Beverly realized the scream she had heard wasn’t her own voice but that of the young attendant being sucked out of the plane. The cockpit skewed wildly to left, as the roof tore above her like a giant was pulling it a part like a sandwich The air rushing around her was a malevolent, living thing, tearing at her face and her clothes and her hair, as her seat spun freely through the air, the burning chunks of her plane going brightly in all directions of the bottomless night sky.

Her last thought was of a strange little man waking up in his bed, safe and sound.

“Are you married?” Doctor Walden inquired. “Now that you are employed, I can actually ask that. As you know, we are colleagues and all.”

“She, uh… passed a while ago,” Gerald replied, using his carefully constructed response to such a question. He had designed it years ago to stay away from the pain.

“Ah. Well that is good, then. This place can suck up time, so to speak,” the Doctor explained, his face changing as he realized his mistake and attempted to backpedal. “Of course, I don’t mean it that…”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. So what are the current cases?” Gerald asked matter-of-factly, trying his hardest to shift the conversation.

“Good question… and a little difficult to answer here in my office,” Doctor Walden explained, a hand slowly unwinding the cellophane from his new package of cigarettes. “We should probably perform rounds and meet some of the, uh, guests we serve here. Shall we?”

“Yes sir… I am glad to have the opportunity and all, I just…” Gerald explained in a rush, hoping he did not offend the head doctor of the facility. It was hard for an ex-con to get a job, even if he did have his medical residency finished. Stupid mistakes made as a kid would take his entire adult life to fix.

“No, of course, Gerald. Curiosity is a good thing to have. It does not kill cats here at least,” the Doctor laughed heartily before it lead to a hacking cough. “My wife told me that I have to quit, but alas, I don’t have the time.”

Gerald smiled, understanding. “I was an addict myself when I was in high school, took my mom dying for me to ditch them.”

“At the time, you thought it wouldn’t catch up with you, right?”

Gerald nodded, remembering the day his mom had told him about the cancer.

“Irony, right? Death and cancer waving at you from another person’s eyes. I get it myself, although that has not reduced the amount I smoke at all. You should see my wife. Such looks of disapproval! Makes the milk curdle if it is on the counter behind me,” Dr. Walden laughed again, and again it carried over to a phlegmy cough. “Now. DR! Gerald. I should use the title in front of the staff and guests, shouldn’t I?”

Gerald smiled again, finding the old doctor’s manner pleasant even with the lung dropping coughing fits. Dr. Walden stood, grabbing a stack of clipboards from the nearby mail basket, its edges of folded plastic forming darker shadows within. Above it, a small double handled electronic device covered in ornate carvings hung from the wall, nestled within a gilded frame.

“These are the notes from the staff, updated twice a day. Part of your job is to interpret where necessary, and add your own notes for me to review. Since you and I will be working opposite shifts, your notes and my notes in these patient files is one of the primary ways we will communicate.”

“Of course,” Gerald nodded. He grabbed one of the offered clipboards from Walden’s hand and they both walked from the brightly lit office. “Is there anyone that dictates these into a computer somewhere?”

“No computers here. They don’t behave well,” Walden shrugged, leading Gerald down the hallway. “I am not sure if you have noticed, but everything here is analog. Clocks, locks, and pencils.”

Gerald thought about his time so far spent in the Bluejay Lane Memorial Hospital since his arrival. Mentally he had noted the lack of modern medical equipment and the unusual absence of the ubiquitous flat screened TVs found in so many places these days. But until it was pointed out explicitly, it didn’t register.

“Crazy huh?” Doctor Walden continued. “When I started the TVs were these massive tube monstrosities… huge! Like a TV would weigh a hundred pounds easy. Not like the little flatscreens these days. You pick them up with one hand! But even back then, with all the shielding, and all the insulation, even those big behemoths blew out. These little screens don’t stand a chance!”

“Bad wiring around here?” Gerald inquired.

“Uh, no, I don’t think so. Just the nature of the place.” Doctor Walden waved at the guard behind the multiple layers of bonded acrylic glass, and the barred prison gate buzzed open. “This right here is probably the highest tech thing we have in our little facility, and half the time, the buzzers fail. The doors get stuck in the locked position. Thankfully no fire marshal has stuck their heads in to question why our prisoners would burn to death in an emergency.”

“That sounds horrible,” Gerald grimaced.

“Yes it would be,” Doctor Walden smirked wryly.

They passed through the gates and entered the long white hallway of Section A. Gerald knew it was called that because of the full story height red letters painted on the far wall where the hallway opened into some sort of common room.

Doctor Walden continued, “This where the majority of our guests reside. We do have a Section B and C, but those wards are shut down for now. Not enough guests to fill the beds.”

“That is a bad thing?”

“It can be. So are you familiar with asymptomatic linear and nonlinear chronopathic disease?”

“I was with you up to asymptomatic…” Gerald admitted as they walked up to the first heavy metal door, inset with a glazed wire reinforced chunk of heavy acrylic glass. Behind it a young woman sat an easel painting a landscape. She appeared to be quite gifted from where Gerald was standing.

“Yes, yes… I understand that our course of study and treatment here is not well known, but as a lead physician, you will have to come up to speed quickly. First lets start with Chronopathy. Do you know what that is?”

“Time… an affliction with their sense of time?” Gerald tried.

“Yes, to an extent. Specifically, Chronopathy is a deep innate sense of time. All temporal things understand time, because we are in the flow of it. The river of time flows around us, if you will, and us with it,” Doctor Walden sounded excited to have a new listener in Gerald. “Human beings are especially prone to this sense of time. So having a disease or natural defect in that innate wiring causes a wide range of disorders on a spectrum, not unlike psychosis.”

“Interesting,” Gerald admitted as he watched the young lady make precise brushstrokes of oil on canvas. It was hypnotic almost.

“This patient is Moonstone. No last name. No documented birth record. She is one of our oldest patients… been here since the early 1970’s.”

“She doesn’t look a day over sixteen,” Gerald commented.

Doctor Walden agreed emphatically, “And she believes it is 1972. In fact, she believes it so fiercely that her body has not aged a single day since then. Her blood and marrow tests, spinal fluid and nervous system sampling all comes back with the same markers day after day for decades. She paints the same picture every day as well,” Doctor Walden sighed heavily. “We have to switch out the canvas and make every single thing the same in her room. She resets every night when she falls asleep.”

“Resets?”

“Just what it sounds like. I think Moonstone’s short term memory fails to be committed and her neural pathways reset to the morning of April 4th, 1972 every day. My predecessor believed a series of government-led drug testing resulted in her current condition, but we have no proof.”

“Every day?”

“Every day. Come, come. Next room,” Doctor Walden lead Gerald to the next door, again, inlaid with the heavy glass. “This is Bruno Viskolov, he is our chimera.”

Gerald peered into the glass to see a man sitting on a chair, watching his hands. Gerald leaned closer to get a better look, and the man grew hazy for a moment and then popped back into focus. He was no longer a man, but a small boy. In another moment, he grew hazy again and an elderly man sat stooped, ravaged by the affects of time. “What the hell?!”

“Bruno is physically manifesting within his own time stream. His corporeal and temporal forms are not aligned. We can control some of it with medication, but Bruno is clever. He is able to control his phasing to some extent, so he is able to flush anything we give him in moments. Thank god he is gentle. His adult form is very muscular and he could do some real damage during treatment.”

“My god, his right arm is that of a baby but it is attached to the body of a grown man,” Gerald exclaimed.

“That is the proof I have that he is in more control than he leads on… and why I call him our chimera. He is able to shift specific parts of his body to other points in his time stream. It is bizarre to see a grown man waddle around on baby legs, or a small child’s head attached to a muscle bound Russian. Ironically, the mental capacity is always there, and it does not affect his reasoning or emotional state. You can carry on a very lengthy complicated discussion with Bruno in the form of a baby and he will sound like the thirty eight year old he is. He is quite intelligent; loves to read.”

Doctor Walden strolled languidly on to the next door, as if surveying a sparse bookcase at the local library.

“… And this guest is our most recent addition and happens to be the star of the ward. Our very own Thomas Mayweather, a real bonafide Chronopath.”

“Chronopath?” Gerald raised his eyebrow.

“Colloquially known as a Time Traveler. The irony is he believes he is a scientist.”

“Why is that ironic?”

“Because, Mr. Mayweather here believes that he created a time machine to travel through time. When in reality, he didn’t use a machine at all. He is a Chronopath… he can travel through time, and space for that matter, at will. He just doesn’t believe it. He is so wrapped up in his delusion of being a mad scientist, that he is effectively stuck. He could literally pop out of here anytime he wanted, if would only accept the truth.”

Gerald nodded, trying to mentally accept the possibility of someone being able to travel through time anytime they wanted. It sounded like hogwash… but after seeing Bruno next door, his capability to accept the impossible seemed to have increased in a short amount of time. “So, where is his machine?”

“It’s in my office actually. I hung it on the wall.”

“Ah. I saw that,” Gerald recalled. “I wondered what it was.”

“Yes, it is a Time Machine,” Doctor Walden used air quotes. “Covered in dials and buttons and all sorts of other lights and batteries… all of it just a focal point for Mr. Mayweather to pour his mental energy into… and BAM!” Doctor Walden slapped his palm, “He is fifty years in the past to get caught by police for breaking and entering into a private residence, foolishly claimed he was a time traveler, and consequently, becoming our guest here.”

“Wait… he actually is from the future?”

“Yes, as far as I can tell medically. Higher amount of radio isotopes in his body. Some form of a nuclear event must occur between now and then… I rather not think about it. Quite well mentally, except for the delusion, of course.”

“You think he came back to avert a disaster or something?” Gerald tried.

“He won’t tell us. Claims he would corrupt the past or something silly like that. Very emphatic about it.”

Gerald looked in to see a mousy brown-haired man strapped to a bed, drooling.

“Drugged and restrained,” Doctor Walden observed. “Thorazine, if you were curious.”

“I wasn’t,” Gerald said, watching the mad scientist roll his head over sleepily.

“He is very agitated when he is not drugged. We keep him sedated for his own protection,” Doctor Walden concluded.

“Of course.”

“I have thought about it often, actually… what I would do if I could travel anywhere and anytime. The possibilities are endless right?” Doctor Walden mused.

Gerald thought of Mara and the night that led him to prison. “Yeah… I could think of a few things.”

“Well don’t. Not healthy to feed their delusions,” Doctor Walden replied as if he was closing a book. He turned on his heel and headed back the way they had come. “Let’s head to the Nurse’s station and I will introduce you.”

Gerald mentally filed it away anyway. Something to think about. The life he had built was a life, but it wasn’t the same life he could have had with Mara. He took one last lingering look into the Chronopath’s cell, and followed Doctor Walden with his mind swirling with all the potential futures and pasts.

All he had to do was be patient. And with a grin, he realized that here, he had all the time he would ever need to think it through.

I met Death when I was sixteen. I knew who he was the moment I laid eyes on him. It was like seeing God. You just knew who it was.

He stood over the body of my mother, her face blank, her eyes unfocused, staring at the saucepan that had fallen from her hand and splashed its contents across the floor. I was a teenager, taking in a scene that my mind could not understand, refused to understand, rejecting it outright in every way. The scene was only a picture, a thing to view and dismiss, and set aside into the empty void of forgotten memory. Yet it stayed. It was burned indelibly into my memory. My mother, splayed across the floor, spaghetti sauce flung across the vinyl, a wooden stirring spoon undulating slowly like a teeter totter in a storm. And then the man, standing next to her body, his face saddened, but slowly shifting to jubilant as he watched my face change slowly from shock to horror.

“You see me?” He asked softly, his hand pointing at my chest.

“I… my mom?”

Death looked down to survey the scene again. “Aneurysm.”

“Did she…”

“She is already gone. She did not suffer, if that is what you are asking.” Death shrugged and stepped over my mother’s body. He was barefoot. “She is not here, so you can’t talk to her.”

“Am I about to die too?” I asked.

“Of course not. Not your time.”

I swallowed heavily and watched his face carefully. He was a cosmic force embodied into that of a middle-age, yet ageless, white man. Bald, a soft face with a square jaw, and small freckles across his cheekbones and crossing the arch of his nose in between.

“Did she go to heaven?”

“She moved on.”

“That is not an answer.”

“Look at you, Ms. Intelligent,” Death chuckled. “Debate team?”

“Maybe,” I retorted.

“Fair enough. Are you angry with me?”

His brow furrowed slightly, and he appeared to actually care. I wasn’t, strangely enough. “No. I guess not. Worried.”

“Oh?”

“Just me now,” I sniffed, a forgotten magazine clutched in my hand. “Dad is long gone.”

“He is in Singapore. Sleeping right now,” Death grinned. “You want to see him?”

“Not really.”

Death’s eyebrow went up. “Why?”

“Not much of a father, just a sperm donor,” I admitted frankly.

“And funny too,” Death said to himself more than to me. “Strange day.”

I still felt the heavy pressure of tears camping out the back of eye sockets. Out of the corner of my vision, I could see my mom’s hand stretched out across the fake tile floor as if still stretching for the fallen spoon.

“It is ok if you cry,” Death said consolingly. “I don’t mind.”

“Don’t you have other people to take?”

“Who says I am not?”

“But you are here,” I pointed out matter-of-factly.

“And I am there…” Death pointed at himself standing in the living room. “And there…” Death pointed at himself looking in through the kitchen window. “And there.” Death waved at me from the kitchen table, reading the newspaper as if the suburban domestic dream was very much alive.

“Ah. Neat,” I murmured.

“You seem smart. But not that smart.” Death winked at me.

“Why do you say that?”

“You haven’t figured out…”

“Why I can see you?”

Death’s eyes went wide fractionally. “I retract my previous statement. Smart as a whip.”

“So…” I said.

“So?”

“Why can I see you?”

“The powers that be have finally granted me an apprentice,” Death declared proudly.

“Shit.” My stomach felt like it was made of knots that wanted to be regurgitated violently.

“No, truly.”

I dropped the magazine, and it fell to floor with raspy crinkle noise that only laminated glossy fashion magazines can make. I put both of my hands to my temples and rubbed in exasperation. “So you are telling me that I just literally just came in on my mother dying at the hands of my new boss? Do you have any idea how insane that sounds?”

“Says the young lady carrying a conversation with Greche.”

“Greshag?” I frowned. “What kind of name is Greshag? Grease hag?”

“Greche. Gray-cheegk. Very old tongue. No longer spoken on this Earth,” Greche paused thoughtfully. “For about five thousand years or so. Maybe longer. I assure you, it was spoken in fear at one time.”

“Death too hard? Grim Reaper not applicable?”

Greche scratched his chin absently. “Oh, I suppose they work, but Greche works so much better. It is one of those words that had a bunch of meanings. Death means no longer alive, and Grim Reaper makes it sound like a boring harvester of wheat, frowning at the scything work. I have never used a scythe, but it looks fun. At least the Youtube videos make it look oddly satisfying.”

“Oh you have got to be kidding me.”

“No, Grim Reaper is a horrible name.”

“Not that. Youtube?” I exclaimed.

Death pulled out a battered phone, and flicked his thumb upwards across the screen. “Sure, its a website that shows videos…”

“I know what youtube is!”

“Oh. Then what I am kidding you about?” Greche had a confused face at the interaction.

“That you watch youtube videos,” I said, incredulous. “You are a timeless being, right?”

“Yes.”

“You are everywhere?”

“Yes.”

“You know everything?”

“Oh god no. Hardly anything actually. That is why I love the Internet. I used to have to hang out in libraries in my spare time.”

“But you are timeless!” I rolled my eyes in a huff.

“So?” Greche defended. “I do not understand why you are getting so upset.”

“Because my mother is dead on the floor behind you, and I am talking to the GRIM REAPER, and he watches YOUTUBE.”

“Ah. Yes. Well. There is that,” Greche nodded. “A little unconventional I suppose. But I assure you I am a very good boss. And I am sorry about your mother.”

I felt a tear well of its own accord and drop down my cheek. “Yeah.”

“Do you need a good cry? I can wait and watch some TV.”

“Wait?” I said, my brain had already spaced the fact that I talking to Death. “Why are you waiting?”

Greche grinned again. “I am not leaving without my apprentice…”

“That again,” I paused and ran a hand through my long brown hair to get it out of my face. “How am I supposed to waltz out of here with my… Mom! Laying! Right! There!”

“I knew you were angry,” Greche commented more to himself than I. “Go ahead and have a cry. An ugly one. You can get blubbery and sniffy and all that if you need to.”

I sighed. “And just what does being your apprentice even mean?”

“It means I show you the ropes. Fight some, live some, save some. That sort of thing.”

“Fight? Fight what? People refusing to die?”

Greche shook his head as if it was obvious. “Oh, no, young lady. Actual fighting. Bad things roam the Earth. Souls rot. Greater powers interfere. Its a mess out there. And so far… we are woefully understaffed.”

“Oh please. How can you be understaffed when you just proved, most dramatically, that you can be in multiple places at once?”

“Because even when I can be in multiple places at once, I may not be able to act in all those places. It takes effort, man. Cut me a break,” Greche rolled his eyes in a perfect imitation of a valley girl. “Just imagine that if I can be in multiple places at once and I am STILL falling short, how big of mess it is! I need an apprentice, hell, I need three. And it will probably take you a couple hundred years to figure out the whole splitting your observation space thing as it is. So if we are going to argue about the semantics of what the hell I deal with every day, you are going to lose, because I am on this side…” Greche drew an invisible line between the two of them, “…And you… are on that side!”

“Because I am alive?”

“God no. I am alive too. Do I look like a corpse?” Greche grimaced through a thin frown. “I meant that I am the guy that knows the pool of shit he is standing in, and you can only see the fence surrounding it from the parking lot.”

“Gross,” I returned.

“Apt.” Greche reached out to take my hand. “See for yourself. Warm skin, heartbeat, all the signs of life.”

I tentatively reached out and ran my finger across his very solid palm. “You said you were thousands of years old.”

“I am. Older than most religions,” Greche winked.

“So if you are alive, and older than anything, and can be in multiple places at once, and are invisible… and you are a grim reaper…” My brain started to whirl and twirl about in my skull, the impossibility of the reality wrapping me up, unleashing me fiercely like a top, only to spin in place, it gave me a goddamn righteous headache. I put my hands to my temples and exhaled heavily.

“Just Greche,” he corrected. “All of the other stuff is parlor tricks.”

“So as an assistant…”

“Apprentice. You would be my right hand man, er, woman,” Greche corrected quickly.

“I am sixteen!”

“And homeless now. You are a minor, and that means that state can do with you what you wish, Rachel. With no family, your options are slim.”

“Shit.” I furrowed my brow and tried to think it through. The headache was not decreasing any. “And you are expecting me to waltz off into the sunset with you? I don’t even know you!”

“Yeah you do. My name is Greche. I introduced myself.”

I shook my head and grinned at the comment against my best judgment. “Yeah, you did. But its just a name.”

“A name can mean a lot.”

I didn’t respond right. I looked over to my mother, laying so still, as if she had become a rug or accessory to the kitchen decor.

“There are perks. Being an apprentice means you can live a life that you can barely imagine. It means seeing things that 99% of humanity never knows about… it means being a part of something so much larger that it actually makes our little planet and all of its people seem insignificant. It is a big opportunity.”

“Yeah?” I sniffed.

“Yeah… plus its not really optional. You have been recruited. Whether or not you come right now, you will come eventually.”

“I will?”

“Guaranteed,” Greche stated, as if no other option existed.

“Why do you say that? Maybe I wanted to grow up, finish school…”

Greche interrupted, “…find a boy, go to college, get married, have two and half kids, a dog, a cat, a quiet life, and then have me show up on a Monday night when you are 89 years old, and you say ‘Hey, I know you.’ And I say, ‘Yep. I introduced myself to already, it’s Greche, remember?’ But you will be an old bat with a bit of alzheimers and dementia, and you will say ‘Nice to meet you, Greche.’ And then I will laugh and tell you to stop being an old bitty, you have to be an apprentice. But you will be dead already. So opportunity lost.”

“You can see all that? Oddly specific,” I said in a whisper.

“Or you can save us both the trouble and you ditch your lame excuse of a quiet life and come see what you can see, with me. Greche.”

At the time, I remember thinking to myself: fuck it. “Fine. Let’s go.”

“Any goodbyes to this place?”

“Do I need anything?” I asked.

“No.”

“Then what do I need to say goodbye to?”

“See, Rachel. You were meant to be an Apprentice. Great minds think alike!” Greche winked.

“We will see,” I shot back.

“Right now in fact. Let’s go take care of the demon down the street. The bastard owes me money.”

What can I say? Hell of a first day on the job.

“Hey, you want to see something cool?”

This is a phrase that many teenagers hear before an avoidable tragedy and the alarm bells started ringing in the back of my head as soon as I heard it. But of course, being a teenager myself and eager to have a close friend since I was new to the neighborhood, I knew my response was going to be in the complete opposite of what it should have have been.

“Yes,” I replied. I tossed the basketball back to Greg and he took a graceful jumpshot that would have been a three pointer on an actual basketball court and not Greg’s driveway. The ball swished through the hoop barely touching the net itself.

Greg was nice and one of those kids that was effortlessly cool, not really making an effort or anything, but had the quiet confidence and engaging sense of humor that drew everyone in to like him. I would not expect that he was secretly a serial killer and wanted to show me the dark end of a tunnel or his knife collection or have me lick the end of a rifle barrel to see what it tasted like. I was fairly sure that Greg actually wanted to show me something cool.

“Come inside. It is in the bathroom. Nothing weird, I promise.” Greg quickly added with a laugh.

“Bathroom?” I asked.

“Yeah, I would like to say it is a pet, but my Dad says that you can’t keep these as pets. We have to leave it be.”

“Ew, is it like a big cockroach or something?” I laughed.

“No! This is a nice neighborhood dude. We don’t get roaches here. My dad is a doctor after all,” Greg laughed.

I knew that the neighborhood was nice. It was an upper-scale set of cul-de-sacs spread across a wide set of rolling green hills, intermittently speckled with old oaks and tall silver ash trees. Greg’s house was the only house in this corner of the development, and the lot backed into the national forest. I was slightly envious of Greg and his family. I lived in an apartment near the school, and it was cramped with only my mom and I.

“Raccoon then?” I said.

“You just have to see it before I explain, man. Trust me, it is pretty cool.” Greg opened the door leading from the garage into the expansive mud room, and waved me down a hallway to the laundry room.

“I thought you said bathroom?”

“I did. It is right here, past the dryer.” Greg pushed the door open, and flicked a light on. “It is nesting under the sink.”

“If it is a poisonous snake and I get bit, I will kick your ass,” I said with faked menace in my voice. Deep down, I knew Greg could wipe the floor with me as he had at least twenty pounds of muscle that I lacked.

“Shhh. If you spook it, it won’t come out.” Greg grabbed the handle of the door of the sink vanity and pulled it gently open.

I whispered, “Won’t the light bug it?”

“Doesn’t seem to bother it. I have been feeding it bits of lunch meat here and there, and think I have it trained to come out.”

The space was consuming, and I could not see much with the light that managed to penetrate the dark under the sink. It was counter to the bright light of the bathroom overheads, reflected again and again by the multiple mirrors. The space under the sink was oddly opposite the more I thought about it.

“Why is it so dark under there? The light in here should at least go a little further back?” I said.

“Yeah, my Dad said it is how they nest,” Greg nodded. “Here she is.”

A long slender filament of glass reached out from the dark, and bent gently to fold towards on the face of the vanity. It immediately dawned on me that it was like the leg of a bug, but made out of crystal instead of chitin.

Greg made a light clicking noise with his tongue, as if he was calling a horse. The same clicking noise came back from under the sink, and another couple legs slowly pulled the body out from it’s dark hiding spot. The body was larger than my clenched fists pressed together, and it was lethargic in its movement, slowly pulling each limb from underneath.

“Oh my god, it’s a spider,” I said dumbly.

“Yeah, not just any spider, this here is a real life baby Shatterspider. My dad says the fully grown ones can eat whole horses and cows.”

“Bullshit!”

“I swear, its true.”

The Shatterspider moved as if it was swimming, its gossamer limbs gently reaching out in different directions and moving back as if probing invisible surfaces around it. The body was like a mirror, both see through and reflective depending on the facet, its eyes, small flecks of brilliant diamond glowing like infinitesimal suns.

“Where did it come from?”

“Dad said that it was a stowaway from his last trip. It probably crawled off his bags and set up shop here in the bathroom to sleep until winter. He said it will move on after the summer is over.”

“Don’t things hibernate in the winter?”

“I don’t know. Just what my dad said. But that is not the cool part… its the web. Here, take my phone.” Greg pointed at the dark space under the sink. “Light it up.”

I flicked the flashlight app on and pointed it under the sink, wary to keep my face and hand away from the lethargic beast still lazily feeling the air around it. The light went under the sink and flickered back at my eyes for a moment. I could see the hallway behind us, the laundry room, then the hallway again, and another laundry room. In one part of the web, I caught sight of a dark forest, and glistening frosted over fibers of a web hanging above a frozen lake. The light from the flashlight alternated between them all likes panes of glass set at odd angles, reflecting the light in strange ways.

“What the hell?” My voice sounded far away from my own ears.

“Isn’t that wild?” Greg huffed quietly, trying to contain his excitement.

“My dad said that is why it is called a Shatterspider. It shatters the reality around it, like a black hole. It builds a web out of the fractures between realities. Those are all other places. Like this one, but different.”

“Those aren’t your hallway or your mudroom?”

“And not my lake or forest either.” Greg slapped me lightly on the back. “That is how the big ones catch prey. Dad said that if you ever walk down a hallway and turn to find another couple hallways all connected, there is a good chance you are in a Shatterspider web. Wild, huh?”

“He said it would be good for it to nest here, out of the way. Won’t accidentally catch Molly.” Greg winked. Molly was their family’s pet Boston Terrier.

“What if it won’t leave?”

“Oh it will. Dad was insistent that it would… and nothing to worry about. Shatterspiders don’t like this world.”

“Huh. If I wasn’t seeing it, I wouldn’t believe it,” I admitted.

“I knew you would be cool with it,” Greg said affirmingly.

“How come I have never heard of this sort of thing before?” I asked. “Shouldn’t this sort of thing be common knowledge?”

“Oh, uh…” Greg scratched his ear. “Yeah, so my dad has a special job. He is an explorer… of sorts?”

“Where does he go exploring to collect something like this accidentally!?” I asked incredulously. The Shatterspider, apparently bored and not being fed, started to amble its way back to its dark web under the sink.

Greg shrugged and took his phone back from my shaking hand. “Well… I guess I would have to show you the Den, then.”

“What’s in the Den?” My eyes were probably the size of silver dollars.

Greg grinned like a fool. “Stay for dinner?”