Afterlife Battlefield by Johnny Ostentatious

Prologue

1

Saturday nights mean different things to different people. For young’uns, Saturday night means spending time with family and getting tucked in at a reasonable hour. For teenagers, Saturday night means hanging out with friends in malls and flirting with the opposite sex. For adults, Saturday night means socializing with neighbors and acquaintances at dinner parties or athletic events. For workaholics, Saturday night means catching up on clerical duties and answering low-priority e-mails. But for Zack Fury of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Saturday night has always been the loneliest night of the week. And this one was no different.

Zack, a loner, sat on his Sanford and Son couch in the living room of his one-bedroom apartment. On the coffee table in front of him were countless Coors Light beer bottles, some half-empty, most liquid-less. Beyond the coffee table was a thirteen-inch TV on a wood tray table. Jacked into the TV was a no-frills DVD player, currently muted. On the TV screen danced images from an episode of The X-Files. The current scene centered around an alien autopsy.

To the left of the couch and the tray table were drawn venetian blinds. Under the window was a compact imitation-wood desk. On it was a portable CD player. Blaring from the speakers was The Cure’s goth album Pornography. A while back, Zack had created a three-hour MP3 CD consisting of The Cure’s depressing trilogy: 1982’s Pornography, 1989’s Disintegration and 2000’s Bloodflowers. He only listened to the CD when feeling more down than a blues singer.

It all seemed so hopeless. Why bother? No lover, no friends, no family. What was the point?

Zack reached over to the right. In between the couch and the end table was a Maverick, twelve-gauge, pump shotgun.

Zack laid the shotgun across his lap and reached for a beer. He grabbed one of the half-empty bottles and took a long swallow. The Coors Light was piss warm, not that he minded. His taste buds were so numb, he could slurp down Tobasco sauce without cringing.

Slamming the Coors Light bottle down on the coffee table, Zack belched, irritating his already hoarse throat from drinking for nine hours straight. Plus, his stomach rumbled from containing nothing but barley and hops. Not to mention his bladder quivered with the impending bathroom break.

Abruptly, Zack started sobbing. He brought his hands to his face and felt his shoulders bob. Tears splattered on his cheeks. A tablespoon worth of nasal drip slid down his throat, causing him to cough.

No longer crying, Zack picked up the shotgun and rested the trigger guard on the edge of the couch cushion, his legs hugging the stock of the Maverick. The barrel crossed his chest. Hands clammy, he moved the muzzle up to face, the trigger guard never leaving the edge of the cushion. He pushed the muzzle under his chin. Simultaneously, he reached down to his legs, but since his thighs hugged the stock of the shotgun, he had to squeeze his hand between his legs. His hand slid past the grip and found the trigger.

Downstairs, the octogenarian fuddy-duddy banged on the floor (her ceiling). “Turn that down!” she yelled in her Slavic accent.

Zack realized “Out of This World” was blaring from his computer speakers. He blocked out Robert Smith’s warble and stared down at the shotgun. Exhale from his nostrils created condensation on the barrel of the Maverick. He jammed the muzzle into his mouth. The front eyesight touched his tonsils.

Biting down on the barrel, Zack Fury squeezed his eyes shut and pressed down on the trigger.

Fade to white.

New Arrival Field

1

Zack opened his eyes. He lay supinely on a jagged surface. It wasn’t in his apartment.

Stone sober, Zack jumped up and staggered back a few steps.

“What the. . . ?”

Zack was in what looked like the hybrid of a desert, a forest and a quarry. The layout of the land was flat—no hills in sight. Intermittently on the ground were piles of different kinds of rocks: granite, obsidian, marble, slate, limestone and sandstone. Where there were no rocks, he saw either sand or dirt, the latter so malnourished, it sported cracks, like a picture of the Great Plains during the Dust Bowl. Odder still, this field (if you could call it that) had an occasional Joshua tree. From where he stood—apparently in the middle of this field—he saw six Joshua trees.

With nothing better to do, Zack decided to check out a Joshua tree. The nearest one was about 100 yards away. He walked over to it. The tree angled at a forty-five-degree slant. He touched the unremarkable bark, then leaned against it. Suddenly, he heard snapping sounds. He jerked away from the tree and gaped. It wasn’t a Joshua tree. Instead of sword-shaped leaves and greenish-white flowers in panicles, it had Venus flytraps, six altogether, one on each branch. The flytraps stretched for him with bloodthirsty aggression, their jaws snapping like steel leghold animal traps. He stepped back and was about to retreat from the Venus flytrap tree when he heard something.

Flapping.

Zack crouched down at the base of the tree. He looked up to eye the source of the flapping. It was hard to see the sky because the flesh-craving Venus flytraps swerved all over the place, searching for him, the snapping of their jaws increasing, sounding more and more like cracking whips. (Also, their minute noses sniffed for him.)

Finally, Zack saw where the flapping was coming from.

“Holy fuck,” he said.

It was a flying tarantula the size of a horse. The arachnid had black and tan fur, and its four wings were gray—two wings in the front, two near the rear.

“What the fuck?” Zack mumbled.

The tarantula coasted thirty feet over the Venus flytrap tree. Zack gripped the bark of the tree. The tarantula disappeared into the purple horizon.

Zack stepped away from the tree. The Venus flytraps must have sensed his movements. They reduced their snapping of the jaws and stretching of the vines.

Inserting his hands into his jean pockets, Zack studied the purple sky. There wasn’t a single cloud floating by. Weird.

Zack noticed something else. If he stood a certain way, he could sense a cool breeze. Strangely, he couldn’t always feel it because heat from the ground seemed to negate it.

“What the fuck?” Zack said into his shoulder.

“I wouldn’t use such colorful language, but yes.”

Zack jerked at the voice of the person walking toward him.

“Who the hell are you?” Zack asked.

“Doctor Prescott Rosenthal.”

Rosenthal

Twenty years ago, while studying at Johns Hopkins University, Prescott Rosenthal made the decision that his specialty in medicine would be ophthalmology. He selected it for one simple reason: it involved a minimum amount of blood. And the act of eye surgery was elementary, especially for someone like him, whose skeletal fingers and calm hands seemed ideal for numerous tasks, from creating precise incisions to suturing the haptics of intraocular lenses. In fact, operating on the eye came so intuitively to him, there were days when performing laser-vision correction or cataract surgery, he would daydream or outline a research paper he planned on writing. More than once, he entered the O.R. after a late night out with his physician friends, and he zipped through a full morning of surgeries without a hitch.

Conversely, Rosenthal struggled with the business side of running a private practice. The byzantine maze of tax laws, federal regulations and insurance provisions gave him a migraine no sedative could cure. Most practices employed an administrator to deal with the full-time job of pushing paperwork, but he had a bad run of administrators after his first one, Mrs. Lorry, suffered a nervous breakdown on her tenth anniversary. In the five years since her departure to the mental ward, he had employed fifteen administrators, the longest one staying three years, the shortest one staying three hours. The ones who filled the position briefly turned out to be so inept, he fired them as soon as he discovered they had lied during the interview, embellished their résumé or falsified their references. Regarding the administrator who filled the position for three years, that one turned out to be bilking the practice of tens of thousands of dollars. Apparently, he had been stealing Rosenthal’s money to bankroll the tours of a heavy metal band he managed. By the time Rosenthal discovered the scheme, the metal head had swindled $80,000—two years of the administrator’s salary.

Currently, Rosenthal and his refractive surgery coordinator were splitting up the administrative workload. It was a temporary arrangement, only until he hired a new administrator, but he knew his refractive surgery coordinator wasn’t happy about the extra duties. Like most coordinators, she came from the sales/marketing field, which helped bring extra income into the practice, since she was more aggressive than a starving piranha. Similar to most sales types, she viewed clerical work as beneath her and reminded him of that fact at least once a day, either in conversation or via e-mail. Rosenthal placated her with promises that he was close to hiring a new administrator. Of course, he was lying. He hadn’t even placed an ad or contacted a recruiter. He procrastinated because now the coordinator behaved herself. When left only to manage refractive surgery patients, she occasionally acted unethically. For instance, a couple of months ago, Rosenthal was performing laser-vision correction—a.k.a. LASIK—on a forty-something baby boomer. During the procedure, he thought the patient’s pupils seemed too large (pupils that are too large can result in the patient being afflicted with aberrant vision), but he continued on with repositioning the corneal flap because his technician would have flagged the patient during the pre-screening process. Only later did Rosenthal discover that the patient did indeed have pupils that were too large. The tech had noticed it, but turned a blind eye after the refractive surgery coordinator bribed him with an offer he couldn’t refuse—a half-hour blowjob. Luckily, the patient only suffered mild halos given by automobile headlights when driving at night; Rosenthal easily corrected it with an enhancement. He considered terminating the tech and the coordinator’s employment, but his practice was barely operating in the black. Replacing one position, let alone two, could tip the scales so his practice would bleed into the red, free-falling him into bankruptcy. Instead, he intended to confront his tech and coordinator about the incident, which he hoped was an isolated one. Although, he hadn’t scheduled a meeting with the two of them yet. A bit difficult when you’re working sixteen-hour days.

Rosenthal grunted into his office. He collapsed into his leather chair. It was eight o’clock at night. His staff of six had gone home after the office closed at 5 p.m. He was the only one here. Outside, it flurried. Icicles hung from the top of the window, as they had since the first snowstorm in December. It was now mid-February.

Snarling, Rosenthal reached to the floor for one of the monstrous managed-care policy binders. Heavier than a James Michener tome, he dropped it on his desk. Dust rose and his desk lamp shook.

“Let’s see here,” Rosenthal said, frowning and opening the 1,000-page manual to its table of contents. He saw words and corresponding page numbers, but nothing registered, everything a blur. He sighed, then removed his spectacles, closed his eyes and rubbed his eyelids. God, was he tired. What he wouldn’t give for one night of relaxation and a deep eight-hour sleep. But if I do that, my practice will go under, and I’ll be forced to work for someone else. No, he could not allow that to happen. He was not going to wind up poor and penurious like his father, who was forced to take a job as a drugstore night manager after being disbarred for tampering with evidence.

Rosenthal put back on his eyeglasses. He refocused on the table of contents and found the page he was looking for, when a white flash filled his vision. He wheeled back in his chair until it rammed into the wall. Framed diplomas crashed to the floor, their glass panes smashing.

“Oh . . . ow . . . aughhh. . . .” Rosenthal moaned.

Pain shot up and down Rosenthal’s arms, so immense, he could lift neither limb. The pain’s epicenter seemed to be in his chest. So intense, it felt as if his sternum was going to crack open. And, for some odd reason, the half-eaten shrimp fried rice in his trashcan filled his nostrils.

The pain shot up a notch. Rosenthal couldn’t take it much longer. If he didn’t know any better, he would swear an anvil sat on his chest.

Rosenthal jerked, his arm flopping to and fro. He fell out of the chair, onto his face. The pain reverberated throughout his entire body. He never had a heart attack before. He hoped he lived through this massive one.

He didn’t.

3

Zack stood staring at Rosenthal, who wore a white lab coat. Of average height, Rosenthal was about fifty years old and balding with black/gray tufts of hair above his ears.

“Where did you come from?” Zack asked.

“Bangor, Maine,” Rosenthal answered.

“No, I mean how did you get here?”

“I’m not sure. I was in my office. When I awoke, I was standing in the middle of a field of rocks. I soon started walking.”

“This is really fucked up,” Zack said.

“I would have selected a less vulgar choice of words, but, yes, that seems to be an accurate assessment.”

Zack cocked his head. Could this Bobo the Clown-looking motherfucker use any more twenty-five-cent words?

Rosenthal, apparently, didn’t catch Zack’s glare. He extended a hand. Zack shook it and introduced himself, noticing that under the doctor’s lab coat were a white-collar dress shirt; a red, white and blue necktie; creased brown slacks; and mahogany penny loafers.

Zack took a moment to realize he wore the same attire as in his apartment: Lawrence Arms T-shirt, Levi jeans, white athletic socks and black Chuck Taylor high-tops.

Rosenthal asked, “Do you know where we are?”

Zack shook his head.

“How long have you been here?” Rosenthal said.

Zack flapped his lips. “Um . . . about—I don’t know.” Pause. “That’s weird. Since I’ve been here, I’ve lost all sense of time, you know?”

Rosenthal shoved his hands into his lab coat pockets. “No, I don’t know. That was why I was asking you.”

“Chill out, dude. No reason to get all postpartum on me.” Zack felt his sense of humor surfacing—one way he dealt with depression.

Rosenthal closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fine!” Eyes open and hands back in his lab coat pockets, he exhaled through his nose. “I suggest we start walking to find out where we are.”

“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

“And why is that?” Rosenthal sneered.

Zack told Rosenthal about the flying tarantula. While doing so, he noticed the Venus flytraps (several feet away) had calmed down. They no longer stretched and snapped their razor-sharp, bloodstained teeth.

After Zack finished telling the tale of the flying tarantula, Rosenthal dipped his chin down, giving the punk rocker a condescending look that the affluent have been giving the working class since the dawn of civilization. Zack, arms at the side, flexed his fists.

“Flying tarantula?” Rosenthal said. “I don’t know what kind of scam you’re trying to pull, young man, but I didn’t just drop off the turnip truck. I graduated magna cum laude from Johns Hopkins. You’ll have to get up pretty darned early to pull the wool over my eyes.”

“That’s OK, I like to stay up all night,” Zack said, paraphrasing a joke from the 1980s’ British sitcom The Young Ones.

“What!?!”

“Dude, listen to me. Why would I make up something like that? I mean, I like to make shit up every once in a while to fuck with people, but come on.”

“Mm-hmm.” Rosenthal folded his arms across his chest.

“Well, if you don’t believe that, you gotta at least believe this Venus flytrap tree. Look at them! Have you ever seen anything like it?”

Rosenthal looked over Zack’s shoulder. His face slackened and his arms dropped to his sides. “Oh my word.”

“Pretty twisted, huh?”

“If it’s not an optical illusion. . . .”

“Damn, dude, you’re tough. You make Scully look like John Keel.”

“Excuse me?”

Zack spoke real slow, as if talking to a conservative Christian. “Dana Scully was the character on the TV show The X-Files; she was the skeptic. John Keel was the guy who wrote The Mothman Prophecies. He— Oh, never mind.” To change the topic, Zack clapped his hands once, loudly. “What were you doing before you got here?”

“I told you: I was in my office, prepping to perform some paperwork.”

“You weren’t doing anything you might be ashamed of?”

“What is your point, Mr. Fury?”

“Before I got here, I was in my apartment. I killed myself, or at least I thought I did. . . .”

“How?”

“I stuck a shotgun in my mouth and—click—pulled the trigger. How’d you kill yourself?”

“For your information, I did not commit suicide. I suffered a massive heart attack.”

“A-ha, so you did die! You just weren’t hanging out, chilling in your posh office. You had a coronary in there. You lied! You’re not just a liar, you’re a lying doctor. That’s the worst kind, you know.”

Rosenthal fiddled with the knot of his necktie. “Yes, I may have omitted some information, but I fail to see how that categorizes me as a liar.”

“Lying by omission, BITCH!” Zack danced next to Rosenthal and began singing his own version of The Sex Pistols’ “Liar”: “Liar, la-la-la, lie / Why didn’t you tell the truth? / You’re so suspicious / You’re a liar.”

Rosenthal snapped. “Will you knock it off! Start acting your age and not your shoe size.”

Zack, grinning, pogo-danced in circles around Rosenthal. In mid-pogo, he froze, landing on the ground and protruding his chest to belt out his best imitation of Johnny Rotten’s groan at the end of “Bodies.”

“Relax, man,” Zack said, “I’m just joking. Lightening up the mood, dimming the lights, chilling the ham. Know what I’m sayin’?”

Hands on hips, Rosenthal glared. “Your humor neither amuses nor entertains me. If we’re going to be partnering—”

“Ooooo, ‘partnering.’ Sounds kinky. Hey, if this was a Red State, there’d be the possibility of us getting lynched. Does the threat of imminent death arouse you, Ennis?” Zack raised his eyebrows flirtatiously.

“You’re an idiot.”

“I believe that’s an insult. Hey, you just insulted me. Tell you what, take it back and call me an ‘idiot savant,’ and I won’t sue you for slander.”

Rosenthal sighed and stared into the distance.

“Go ’head,” Zack said. “Say it. Say it!”

“How long have you been off your medication?”

“Pshaw, medication is what got me here in the first place. Well, self-medication, actually. . . .” Zack felt his goofy mood dissipate, replaced by pensiveness and sobriety. “We’re really dead, aren’t we?”

“It would appear so.”

“Where the hell are we?”

“I believe you answered your own question.”

“Where’s the Devil and all the demons with the pitchforks, then?” Zack asked.

“Perhaps they’re on their way.”

“Maybe we should get moving, then.”

“Why didn’t I think of that,” Rosenthal said with a snicker.

They walked away from the Venus flytrap tree. The flytraps sniffed, stretched and hissed at them.

4

Peripherally, Rosenthal saw Zack Fury looking at him. The punk rocker was on the verge of speaking. Rosenthal picked up pace. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop Zack.

“I don’t think we’re in hell.”

Rosenthal grunted to show he heard Zack. He hoped the vocalization would prevent the punk rocker from expanding on his thought. Alas, no.

“I mean,” Zack said, “I’m a motherfucking atheist. Since I don’t fuckin’ believe in God, I don’t believe in the Devil, or in heaven or hell.”

“I’m fairly confident we aren’t in heaven.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I’m sure if you scour texts from various religions, none of them would describe heaven as an empty quarry.”

“Good point.” Zack stopped. “Hold up.”

Rosenthal continued walking. “What’s wrong?”

“We can’t go this way.”

Rosenthal halted, his back to Zack. “Why not?”

“This is the way that tarantula went.”

“So.”

“So, I don’t wanna run into that mofo. You didn’t see the size of that thing. It’s bigger than a fucking horse.”

Rosenthal turned around. “I believe it’s time we laid down some ground rules.” He counted them off on his fingers. “A: we are not to use profanity of any kind, not even accepted euphemisms. B: we are not to fear hallucinations conjured up by your Kafkaesque paranoia. C: w—”

“Ding, ding, ding!” Zack made the sign of time-out. “First off, I’ll curse for however fucking much and however goddamned long I want. They’re only words, so piss off. Second, I didn’t imagine shit! I saw a flying tarantula, so quit trying to belittle me, you rich sonofabitch.”

Rosenthal brought his hands together, tenting them, middle fingers grazing his chin. “I propose a compromise.”

“You ‘propose a compromise’? What the fuck, are you fuckin’ Monty Hall on Let’s Make a Freaking Deal?”

“If you make an effort to minimize your . . . colorful interjections, I will concede and lead us in a different direction.”

“Yeah, all right, whatever.”

They switched direction to walk perpendicular from the route the flying tarantula took. For several moments, Zack did not speak. For this, Rosenthal was grateful.

Appreciating the overdue silence, Rosenthal noticed neither his nor Zack’s feet made a sound. You’d think soles of shoes striking rocks would produce at least a minuscule audio effect, but no, nothing. It was almost as if they wore socks on a plush carpet. Very peculiar.

“I wonder what our connection is,” Zack said.

Rosenthal rolled his eyes and attempted to regulate his breathing. Five minutes of peace and quiet. Is that so much to ask? Perhaps this Zack Fury was educated in the inner-city public-school system. That would explain his high level of ignorance.

“I mean,” Zack said, “I know we’re connected with both of us being dead and all, but there’s got to be something else, you know?”

Rosenthal didn’t reply.

“You said you’re from Maine, right?” Zack asked.

Rosenthal inhaled and waited several moments before exhaling. “Yes.” He stared at the purple horizon. Approximately 200 yards ahead stood a Venus flytrap tree. Like the previous one, it angled at forty-five degrees.

“OK, I’m from Philly. P.A.’s not too far from Maine. Where’d you say you’re from again, Bangor?”

“That is correct.”

“Hey, doesn’t Stephen King live down there?”

“Up there. Yes, he does.”

“Ever hang out with him?”

Rosenthal shook his head. “Occasionally, I’ll see him in the supermarket or 7-Eleven, but, no, we never ‘hang out.’”

Of course, there were stories—Bangor legends, most likely—of Stephen King’s maniacal public behavior in the early and mid-80s, when the horror writer was in the throes of his drug and alcohol addiction. But Rosenthal hadn’t arrived in Bangor until 1990, years after King sobered up with the help of his wife and family. However, Zack Fury of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, did not need to know those sordid stories. As Rosenthal had learned in his first month in the Pine Tree State, Maine residents took care of their own, celebrities and commoners alike.

“Anyway,” Zack said, “so Philly and Bangor are just a hop and a skip up the East Coast, right?”

“Actually, it’s a ten-hour drive.”

“Yeah,” Zack wisecracked, “but that’s doing the speed limit.”

“What is your point, Mr. Fury?”

“We both live in the same country. Maybe that’s our connection. I mean, it’s not like one of us lived in America, and the other in India, you know?”

“No,” Rosenthal said, “I do not know. Your comments make absolutely no sense whatsoever. You are not in the least bit logical. It’s as if you pride yourself on proceeding from point A to point P, while circumventing fourteen necessary steps.”

Zack smirked. “So what are you trying to say, I’m retarded?”

Rosenthal clenched his teeth together. Maybe if he didn’t retort to Fury’s remarks, the Philadelphian would get the hint.

“So,” Zack asked, “how did you waste your days?”

Because Zack posed a question, Rosenthal had no choice but to reply.

“Excuse me?”

“What did you do for a living?”

“I am an ophthalmologist,” Rosenthal said.

“Caller, you say what?”

“Excuse me?”

“I was quoting Oprah Winfrey, or as I call her, Orca, the jabbering pile of Jell-O. She’s pretty hot, don’t you think? Man, what I wouldn’t give to roll around in the hay with her for five minutes. Know what I heard? I heard when she cums, thousand-dollar bills pop out of every orifice of her body. And she doesn’t scream either. Instead, her vocal cords make a sound like a cash register. You know, ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching.”

“Are you attempting to be facetious?”

“Shit, yeah, motherfucker! And I must be succeeding ’cause you’re frowning more than Sarah, Plain and Tall.”

“Hardly.”

“So what’s an ophthalgist?”

“An ophthalmologist performs surgical procedures on the eye.”

“Oh, so you’re like that cat I go see every couple years to get my eyes checked.”

Rosenthal placed his hands behind his back and curled them into fists. This was his number one pet peeve in interacting with laymen: explaining the hierarchy of the eye-care field.

“What you’re referring to is an optometrist,” Rosenthal said. “As an ophthalmologist, I subspecialize in cataract surgeries and refractive procedures.”

“Cataracts . . . that’s the crap old people get, right?”

Rosenthal nodded. “Extracting cataracts is actually an elementary surgery. Most cases are outpatients.”

“Speak English, Doc.”

But before Rosenthal could expound about cataract surgery, Zack asked, “So what’s the other thing you do? Refraction surgery, is it?”

“Refractive procedures, more specifically laser-vision correction, in which I enhance a patient’s vision to give him or her as close to twenty-twenty vision as possible.”

“Oh, like LASIK.”

“Yes, Laser-Assisted In Situ Keratomileusis is one form of laser-vision correction, but there are other refractive procedures, such as Photo Refractive Keratectomy, Laser Epithelial Keratomileusis and Conductive Keratoplasty. Also, remember that there are ophthalmologists whose subspecialties may include glaucoma, vitreo-retinal, pediatric, neuro-ophthalmology, etcetera.”

“So you aren’t that dude that checks my eyes?”

Rosenthal shook his head. “That would be an optometrist, or acronymically known as an O.D. An O.D. is licensed to prescribe corrective lenses and diagnose visual impairments. He is not—I repeat, NOT—trained nor licensed to perform surgical procedures. That is my job. It is what I do.”

“Why even have them, then?”

“Optometrists are similar to executive assistants, in that they are a necessary expense. An assistant may spend half the day filing her nails and gossiping on the phone, but the rest of the time she is useful by greeting patients, filing paperwork and corresponding with other practices. An optometrist, on the other hand, may spend most of the time goofing off with his sophomoric sense of humor, but he does service the ophthalmologist by carrying out the monotonous procedure of an eye examination.”

“Christ, sounds more complex than a NOFX bass line.”

“And, of course, the eye field employs opticians, as well.”

“What do they do?”

“Opticians cut and edge eyeglasses to fit a prescription. Like optometrists, opticians are merely glorified lab rats.”

“Wow,” Zack said, “that’s pretty stuck up of ya, don’t you think?”

“Hardly. After college, I underwent seven more years of schooling—eight if you count my fellowship. Optometrists are only required to attend four years of optometry school after college, and opticians are provided on-the-job training by their employer.”

“That’s pretty messed up. It’s almost like classicism. You know, ophthalmologists are the upper class, optometrists are the middle class, and opticians are the working class. Hey, is it a coincidence that all three of youse start with the letter O?”

Rosenthal shrugged. “I never gave it much thought. However, the three professions are frequently referred to as the three O’s.”

“So are you and your ophthaligist fellow cronies always trying to keep the other two O’s down, like how the rich do in real life?”

“There is no need to. As long as the other two O’s do not overstep their boundaries, the three professions will remain harmonious.”

“So how come you wear glasses?” Zack asked. “Shouldn’t you have gotten that LASIK done on yourself?”

“While LASIK is a relatively safe procedure, complications do result in one to ten percent of cases (depending on which literature you consult). I am not prepared to risk my vision on an elective procedure.”

“But you do it on other people?”

“Correct,” Rosenthal said, his right fingers fidgeting.

“Isn’t that a bit hypocritical? If LASIK is so great, you should get it done on yourself.”

“I disagree.”

“Then why do it?”

“I’m answering a demand. Consumers desire refractive procedures. My practice is satisfying that desire.”

Zack laughed. “So, were you born a cock-knocker, or did it take years of practice?”

“What did I say about profanity? We had a verbal agreement.”

“Agreement, schmagreement. I can’t keep biting my tongue when it’s clear you work hard at being a dick. Pun intended.”

“Why you!”

Rosenthal scuffled toward Zack, grabbing him by his scruffy T-shirt. A RIPPP filled the air.

“Get the fuck off me,” Zack said, “you greedy . . . eye-operating . . . Yankee motherfucker!”

“Not until you respect your elders!”

The two broke free from one another. Rosenthal wasn’t sure how it happened. He was too busy trying to catch his breath.

“Yeah,” Zack said, “you got the elder part right. You are old. You’re so old, you probably go to the retirement home and all the one-hundred-year-olds are coming up to you, asking what it’s like to be a senior citizen.”

Rosenthal breathed so heavily that retorting to Zack’s juvenile quip was out of the question. As the ophthalmologist’s shoulders bobbed, he discovered the origin of the rip he had heard. The rip came from him. His lab coat was torn where the sleeve met the coat. Fortunately, the rip only measured approximately two inches. Not that it mattered. This place they occupied—this field—wasn’t frigid, nor was it hot. The temperature could not be classified in any shape as comfortable, however, he was neither sweating nor shivering. He felt. . . . What was the word? Disengaged? No, that wasn’t it.

Rosenthal felt tugging on his arm. He scolded Zack: “Will you knock it off! You already tore my sleeve. You’re not going to be happy until it’s completely detached from my lab coat.”

“Hey, you did that all on your own. You grabbed me first, remember?” Zack waved his hands. “Never mind. Check that out.”

Rosenthal looked to where the punk rocker pointed.

Ten feet away, a mound of rocks trembled. Suddenly, an arm broke through the top of the pile. Visible was the elbow to the hand, fingers separated and stretched apart.

Melody

Fifty kilometers south of Darwin, Australia, Melody Holiday strolled down a path at the campground she and her traveling mates had pulled into last night. It was now the next day, late morning, hot with the humidity skyrocketing and energetic insects bouncing off her sweaty skin.

Melody was half-Aboriginal, half-Australian. At one-and-a-half meters tall, she had high cheekbones, big breasts, a flat stomach and long legs. Despite these traits of stereotypical Western beauty, her dark skin almost daily elicited racist remarks and attacks. Interestingly, such blatant bigotry never discouraged her from being a performer.

Melody was the lead singer of Polemonium, an indie-rock band that a critic once described as “what Millencolin would sound like if fronted by Olivia Newton-John.” Polemonium was halfway through their monthlong tour. They were to play in Darwin tonight.

Humming to herself, Melody hopped over a tree root. She passed a nest of chirping baby black bitterns being fed by their mother. The scene reminded Melody that her twentieth birthday was next week. In two-and-a-half weeks, when she returned home to Sydney, she would celebrate it with her father, but not with her mother. She hadn’t seen her mother since she was sixteen, when her mother rejoined her tribe in the outback. Her mother was an Aborigine.

Melody’s parents met back in the 1980s, when her father was drumming with his band, Whammo. The New Wave outfit toured frequently with Midnight Oil. The two bands went against the grain of the mainstream by not always playing in metropolitan clubs. They often set up their gear in remote locales, like the outback. While playing in northern Queensland on an Aboriginal reserve, Melody’s father sweet-talked her future mother into accompanying him for the remainder of the tour. Three months later, with no more places to play, the two bands returned to Sydney to rest and recharge. It was during this sabbatical that Melody’s parents married and made love.

Growing up, Melody’s main memories of her mother were her moping around the house and crying herself to sleep. Despite fitting into Australian society, her mother missed the outback. Things probably wouldn’t have been so bad if Melody’s father had a nine-to-five job where he was home most of the time, but Whammo was somewhat successful, so he was constantly writing, recording, performing and touring. The band did break up in 1989, however, he continued working in the music business as a session drummer. Unfortunately, most of his gigs were in Melbourne, so he would be gone for weeks at a time. This, of course, only intensified her mother’s depression. Luckily, in 1995, Whammo reunited to be the house band for a Sydney-based, late-night talk show. The show wasn’t in production when Melody was on school holiday, so during these breaks, the Holiday family drove up north to visit the tribe Melody’s mother grew up with. To this day, Melody couldn’t believe how blissed out her mother was on these trips—she wouldn’t stop smiling. Those trips went on for a couple of years, until at the end of one holiday, her mother didn’t come back with them; her mother loved her tribe more than her husband and daughter. It surprised neither Melody nor her father. Nonetheless, on the three-day drive home to Sydney, she and her father spoke only when necessary.

“Mel!”

Melody snapped out of her reverie. “Yeah?”

“We roll in fifteen minutes,” said Sean, Polemonium’s guitarist. He tapped his watch, as if for emphasis.

Melody realized she stood on the bank of a river. The water flowed south. A turtle or two swam by. The smell of mold and musk permeated the air.

Wow, my mind must have been really wandering if I made it all the way out here. Melody glanced over her shoulder. Sean was gone. She wondered if he had found her because of a psychic link they shared. Just because they weren’t an item anymore didn’t mean their connection had to sever. After all, they were the songwriting team for Polemonium. In fact, last night they started a new song. Even though the tune was in the nascent stages, she had a good feeling about it. Who knew, it might wind up being catchy enough to be the lead track on their next CD.

Melody sat Indian-style on the edge of the bank. Since Sean and her were ex-lovers, she knew the Polemonium van wasn’t going to leave for at least twenty-five minutes. Sean had the annoying habit of dividing or multiplying timetables by two. When they went into the studio, he’d declare they were going to cut a sixty- to seventy-minute album, but it always winded up being thirty minutes—thirty-five minutes tops. In this instance, he said the van was “rolling” in fifteen minutes. Translation: half-hour.

Forgetting about her ex for a moment, Melody wanted to know why her thigh felt weird. She shifted and saw her dress was riding up, allowing the grass she sat on to tickle her thigh. She solved that minor annoyance by smoothing out her skirt. Now, she sat on the edge of the bank, her legs dangling about a quarter of a meter above the river.

Melody wore sandals with dark-green nylon straps and black cork/latex soles. She also sported a one-piece, burgundy, chamois dress. It was crosscut, covering the essentials, and had a two-inch strap that ran over her left shoulder; the dress’ skirt had ragged edging. She called this outfit her cavewoman dress. It reminded her of the garment an actress would wear in one of those anachronistic 1950s B movies that were allegedly set in prehistoric times.

Melody wore her cavewoman dress whenever onstage. After the show last night, she hadn’t felt like slinking out of it. Right now, she considered washing it here, but the river was infested with too much plankton.

Without warning, one of Melody’s sandals slipped off her foot and splashed into the river. “Son of a. . . .” she mumbled, scooting off the bank. Her move was so sudden, a dragonfly changed trajectory in order to not kamikaze into her temple.

Standing in the river, water coming up to her chest, Melody moved her sandal-less foot in circles, feeling for her footwear. “Where are you?” She couldn’t leave without the sandal. It was the only footwear she brought along for the tour, and the band only had enough money for food and gas.

Melody carried on with using her foot as a scout, sensing mostly sand, dirt and fallen eucalyptus leaves. Something brushed her ankle. The fin of a passing fish?

Melody stopped moving her foot around. Time to face facts. “Nuts.”

Melody took a deep breath, then went underwater. Almost immediately, she found her sandal. It had landed on a mossy log. She wiggled her foot into the sandal and pushed against the log.

Half a second later, Melody popped above water. Rubbing her eyelids, she flapped her lips to purge the river aftertaste. Her mouth felt as if it were jam-packed with scallops. God, how she hated seafood.

Vision clear, Melody froze. In front of her was a six-meter-long crocodile. Unlike the turtles from before, the croc wasn’t floating by. It stared at Melody, snout no more than a meter away.

Melody didn’t move for what seemed an eternity. River life around her and the crocodile carried on: a squirrel monkey swung from one mangrove tree to another, a pair of Radjah Shelducks waddled out of the water onto the shore, and a cane toad floated by on a yellow, oversized lily pad.

Why isn’t it doing anything? Melody thought about the crocodile. Is it playing a game with me?

Suddenly, Melody realized a mistake in judgment. All this time she had been looking into the crocodile’s vertical pupils. Did the croc take that as an invitation for a stare down? Possibly. After all, ever since she noticed the reptile, it hadn’t blinked once.

Another thought struck Melody. Maybe the crocodile couldn’t tell she was there. Wasn’t the theory in the book Jurassic Park that dinosaurs had poor eyesight and only spotted prey when it dashed for safety?

To test the Michael Crichton theory, Melody stepped back.

The crocodile swam forward and stopped after closing the gap between them to half a meter. It hissed.

Melody started to cry. She didn’t know why. No, that was a lie.

Being within arm’s length of a carnivore brought Melody’s inner turmoil to the surface after months of denial and avoidance. She shouldn’t be in the band. She was still in love with Sean. She couldn’t take one more night of seeing him slip away after the show with a pocketful of condoms and a groupie on each arm. Why was life so unfair?

“Mel!”

Melody didn’t budge. She knew whose voice whisper-yelled from the riverbank. It belonged to the man she dreamt of growing old with, the man she fantasized about whenever she masturbated, the man who broke up with her six months ago because he “wasn’t ready to settle down.”

“Mel,” Sean said again. “Ma—Muh—Melody, d—don’t move.”

Tears gushed down Melody’s cheeks. She jerked. The crocodile took its cue.

The reptile leapt toward its prey. Melody flinched, wondering if she made the right decision, but she never finished that thought. The sight of the soaring crocodile caused her bladder and rectum to empty in unison. She started to shiver. The croc’s salivating tongue wagged her way. Its mouth zoomed closer and closer. . . . She was mesmerized by a purple pebble wedged between two molars. What was that doing there? The croc’s tongue covered her face, feeling clammy. She cringed. The reptile’s teeth skidded down both sides of her head. Was that her left ear that just lopped off? The croc clamped its jaws around her neck. She kicked and flailed, blood running into her mouth, gagging her.

The crocodile dragged Melody down below.

6

Zack, along with Rosenthal, watched the arm flop back and forth. This went on for a few moments, until the punk rocker snapped out of the shock. He stepped toward the mound of rocks the arm protruded from.

Rosenthal grabbed Zack’s arm. “Wh—What are you doing?”

“Obviously somebody’s buried in that pile. I’m gonna help dig ’em out.”

Rosenthal let go of Zack. “What if it’s a trick?”

“What!” Zack strode for the pile.

“It could be a trick.” Rosenthal inched backward, hand on cheek and chin. “That arm may not be attached to a body. It could be a trap. It may be a predator.”

Zack glared at the ophthalmologist. Had he been one of those kids who swore monsters lived under his bed?

Zack kneeled over the mound of rocks. “Can you hear me?”

A voice murmured from the rocks. Zack couldn’t make out any words. Sounded like somebody speaking through a tin can.

“Hang on,” Zack said. He began picking up rocks and pushing them down the mound. The trapped person’s arm and hand twitched. In excitement?

“Hold on, hold on,” Zack said more to himself than whomever he was rescuing. “I’m going as fast as I can.”

Zack paused. Rosenthal peered over his shoulder.

“Feel free to jump in anytime,” Zack said.

Rosenthal stepped back and stared at his manicured hands. Zack pushed aside a few more rocks, wondering what the good doctor was doing. Then he realized that Rosenthal was hesitant to participate in manual labor because it might damage his hands. Next to neurology, eye surgery probably demanded the most delicate of hands to operate. It made Zack wonder what arthritic surgeons do. Retire?

Zack continued to toss rocks aside. In doing so, he noticed the rocks were warm. The deeper he dug, the hotter the rocks got. He hoped they didn’t get so hot that he wouldn’t be able to pick any up.

At this point, the entire arm of the buried person was exposed. The shape and svelte of the limb told Zack it was female. Patches of grime dirtied the arm in a few spots.

Soon, the girl’s head was visible. She had light dark skin (Hispanic, perhaps?), and her black hair was dripping wet. The only other physical characteristic Zack noticed was that her eyes were translucent gray.

“How ya doin’?” Zack said. “Shouldn’t be much longer.”

The girl didn’t respond.

“That’s great, Fury,” Rosenthal said. “Make small talk with her.”

“Hey, Doc, why don’t you— Oh, wait, you only operate on eyes, so that doesn’t make you a real doctor. Right?”

Rosenthal stormed away. He took refuge near a Venus flytrap tree.

Zack ignored the sulking eye doc. He threw aside a few more rocks. The girl was helping, too, since both of her arms were now free. Once they dug down to her waist, Zack stopped and said, “Whaddya think, wanna see if I can pull you out?”

The girl nodded, touching her left ear, as if to make sure it was present and accounted for.

Zack squatted at the edge of the hole, securing each foot between a couple of rocks. He gripped the girl’s biceps; she clutched above his elbows.

“On three, OK?” Zack said.

Once again, the girl nodded.

Zack smirked. “And none of that Lethal Weapon shit, either. It’s on three, not after or before. Oh, and promise me something, will ya? After I pull you out, please don’t say anything like ‘I’m getting too old for this shit.’ ’Cause you can’t be any more than twenty-two. And nothing pisses me off more than young’uns, like yourself, saying they’re so old, when you’re not.”

The girl looked at Zack as if he were crazy. It was an expression he’d been receiving since junior high.

“On three,” Zack said. “One, two . . . three!”

He pulled the girl out of the hole in the ground. Even though she was slender, she was heavier than he had anticipated. Then again, maybe it was because her lower half was still surrounded by rocks.

The girl got stuck from the knees down. Zack and her put more effort into it, grunting in unison. That did the trick. Before you could say, The excavation was an outstanding success, Zack and the girl lay on the ground, panting.

After Zack quit panting, he sat up and asked, “How ya feeling?”

“Fine. Little winded, but I’ll live.”

The girl had an accent. British?

“Where the bloody hell are we?” she asked.

“That, my dear,” Zack said like Sherlock Holmes, “is the million-dollar question.”

7

Rosenthal stood near a Venus flytrap tree, out of reach of the famished flytraps. However, being bit by a flytrap was the last thing on his mind.

Rosenthal watched Zack lead the young lady away from the pile of rocks she had been buried under. She certainly was exotic looking, the ophthalmologist observed, with her dark skin, jet-black hair, slender frame and copious breasts. She reminded him of his housekeeper, Celena. Obviously, this young lady was more fetching than Celena, mainly due to her youth and firm body.

Rosenthal had been having an affair with Celena for almost five years. He did not know why she aroused him so much. She wasn’t gorgeous, with her pimply skin, plump girth and petite bosom, but he couldn’t keep his hands off of her. Maybe it was her maid outfit, or the fact that she spoke no English. Whatever the case, she was a suitable object for his sexual fantasies.

Ever since his wife had slipped into a coma six years ago, he found his libido almost impossible to satiate. At first, with the assistance of Vaseline, he made love to his unconscious wife, but he quickly grew bored of that weekly exercise. Soon, he made passes at Celena and was elated that she did not put up much of a fight, each pass of his more aggressive than the previous one. Quicker than you could say Clinical Eye Atlas, they subjected each other to their twisted sexual scenarios. Perhaps the sickest act they concocted was doing it doggie-style in front of his comatose wife. Even now, standing several feet from the Venus flytrap tree, Rosenthal felt himself getting aroused by that salacious memory. Why was that?

“Hey, Doc,” Zack said, “this here’s Melody. What’s your last name again?”

“Holiday.”

“Melody Holiday. Is that your real name? Ah, don’t matter. Melody, this is Doc Rosenthal. Doc’s an optometrist. You know, one of those cats who sells glasses on street corners.”

“I AM AN OPHTHALMOLOGIST,” Rosenthal said, “I AM NOT A GLORIFIED REFRACTIONIST!”

“Easy there, Doc, don’t get your panties all in a bind—could lead to hemorrhaging.” Zack turned to Melody. “The Doc’s a little uptight. He’s having trouble accepting the fact that we’re all dead.”

“Dead?” Melody said.

“Yeah,” Zack said. “How’d you die?”

“I . . . I was on this campground outside of Darwin. . . .”

“Darwin? Where the hell’s that?”

“It’s in the Northern Territory. In Australia. I—”

“Oh, so you’re Australian. I thought you were British.”

“For goodness’ sake, Fury,” Rosenthal said, “quit interrupting her!”

“Was I?” Zack addressed Melody. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s OK.”

Rosenthal said, “Go on, dear.”

Melody told her story, appending, “I can’t believe I killed myself. It was so impulsive. It’s not like it was premeditated or anything. I mean I’m not one of those people who thinks about it for years before finally doing it. I was—am—a fairly balanced individual. I was just going through a bad patch. You would too if you had to work with your recent ex.” She glanced at her sandals. “If that crocodile never swam by, I’d probably still be alive. I definitely would have died a natural death, whether in my twenties or in a geriatric state.”

“Damn,” Zack said, “that’s one fucked-up story, Mel.”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“What? Mel?”

Melody nodded.

“How come?” Zack asked.

“If you wouldn’t, I’d really appreciate it,” she said without a trace of annoyance.

“Sure.”

Rosenthal started to analyze Zack and Melody’s interaction, but the faint fragrance emanating from the Venus flytraps distracted him. Smelled like incense.

Resting his hands on his hips, Rosenthal surveyed the land by spinning around 360 degrees on his heel. The six Venus flytrap trees visible from here appeared to be equidistant from one another. Fascinating.

“That’s unusual,” Melody said.

“What’s that?” Zack asked.

“I’m not the least bit tired.”

“I don’t get it. Why’s that unusual.”

“I was just trapped underneath those rocks. You’d think I’d be a little fatigued, right?”

“Hmm.”

“What?” Melody asked.

“Well, something I realized before you got here is that I’m not hungry at all. How ’bout you, Doc?”

Rosenthal removed his hands from his hips and inserted them into his lab coat pockets. He paused, attempting to assess his appetite.

“No,” Rosenthal said. “I’m not hungry.”

“What the hell was that?” Zack asked.

“Excuse me?”

“You have to grind your teeth to tell if you’re hungry or not?”

“Was I grinding my teeth? I hadn’t noticed.”

“You are a f—”

Melody interjected, “Don’t either of you find that odd? I’m not tired and none of us are hungry nor thirsty.”

“Odd?” Zack said. “Shit, it’s downright fucking spooky.”

“What did I tell you about that mouth?” Rosenthal said.

“You said, ‘Zack, my good man, could you do me a favor and curse a little more? ’Cause I’m more uptight than a pocketful of Puritans, and I need to loosen up—stat—if I’m ever going to have a half-decent bowel movement.’”

Melody addressed Rosenthal. “You said you’re a doctor, right?”

“Yes, I am an ophthalmologist. My subspecialties are cataracts-slash-IOLs, as well as refractive procedures.”

“What do you make of us not being hungry, thirsty or tired?”

Rosenthal removed his hands from his hip pockets and pressed his palms together. Fingers stiff, he tapped his chin with his middle fingers. After a moment of deliberation, he said, “Regrettably, I am unable to postulate a hypothesis. I require tangible data; unfortunately, none is available.”

“What,” Zack exclaimed. “She only asked you to fucking guess. This ain’t no freakin’ SAT, motherfucker!”

Rosenthal, frowning, spoke to Melody. “I do apologize, dear. However, I cannot offer even an assumption without performing some tests. My reputation must not be tarnished in any form whatsoever.”

“Your reputation?” Zack said. “Dude, we’re in middle of who-the-hell-knows-where. Trust me, your rep is safe and intact.”

Rosenthal cleared his throat. “I have made my decision, and I stand by it.”

Melody did a 180.

“What’s wrong?” Zack asked.

“Do you hear that?” she said.

“Hear what?” Rosenthal and Zack chorused.

“It sounds . . . like wind. But. . . .”

“But what?” Zack asked.

“It sounds metallic-like.”

Rosenthal looked into the distance. He saw nothing nor felt any wind.

It

was

so

quiet

you

could

hear

a

lens

drop.

Rosenthal looked into the distance. He did not see anything, therefore, he scanned the horizon. Nothing. Then he saw it. “Oh my word.”

“What,” Zack said, “what is it?”

By the look on Zack’s face, Rosenthal knew he saw it too.

Approaching was a skeleton on horseback.

8

Melody stepped back. The skeleton galloped toward them on its horse. The skeleton wore a cloak. When six meters away, the skeleton removed its hood to reveal the scariest skull Melody had ever seen. The skull was red and glistened, as if it had been buffed and waxed. The sockets didn’t appear to house any eyes or optical nerves, but they did glow green.

“Fuckin’ A,” Zack said.

“Oh my Lord,” Rosenthal said.

The skeleton yanked on the reins. The horse halted half a meter from Melody, Zack and Rosenthal. Melody gawked at the horse. It was a black stallion, but it was the unhealthiest one she had ever seen. It had droopy eyelids and numerous patches of skin were either missing or peeling off. Also, it seemed to stare at Melody without seeing her. And it drooled, its saliva landing on an obsidian rock, staining the black glass red. Melody shook her head. At one time this may have been a robust black stallion, but not anymore. It was now nothing but a zombie horse.

The skeleton slid off the zombie horse with the nimbleness of a professional ballerina. It unbuttoned its cloak. Melody gasped. Parts of the skeleton were translucent. It seemed its skull, hands and feet were solid, but a few of its ribs, half of its right hip and some of its spine were see-through. This wasn’t a skeleton. It was a skeletal ghost.

The skeletal ghost whipped out a saber. The sword had an ornate hilt—bedecked with diamonds, emeralds, sapphires and rubies—but the blade was rusty. The ghoul volleyed the saber from one bony hand to the other. Melody gaped. The blade wasn’t rusty. That was dried-up blood. Lots of dried-up blood.

“New Arrivals,” the skeletal ghost said, as if speaking through a 1980s synthesizer. Melody wondered if the voice sounded retro because of the ghoul’s tongue. It consisted of shiny alloy coils that appeared to be welded together.

The skeletal ghost quit tossing the blood-caked saber between its hands. It wrapped both hands around the hilt, one hand over the other. The movement made a sound similar to walnuts cracking.

Melody stepped back, careful to steer clear of the stretching Venus flytraps. Zack and Rosenthal followed suit.

The skeletal ghost brandished the saber in one hand. It pointed the tip at each of them.

“Eenee,” the skeletal ghost said, pointing at Rosenthal. “Meenee.” It pointed at Zack. “Minee.” It pointed at Melody. “Mo.” It returned to Rosenthal.

The ophthalmologist shook his head. “No!”

“Yesssss,” said the skeletal ghost, bounding forward.

Rosenthal scurried backward, not looking where he was going.

“Look out!” Zack said.

A Venus flytrap swooshed over and knocked Rosenthal down. His shoulders hit the ground first, knocking his glasses off his face and throwing his legs up in the air. Another flytrap maneuvered over the first one and clamped onto the ophthalmologist’s left calf. Rosenthal screamed. Melody cringed.

Faster than a streak of lightning, the skeletal ghost slipped out of its cloak and leapt onto the Venus flytrap tree. Zack flinched at the feat, but Melody did not because the ghoul passed on Zack’s side, not hers.

Apparently, the skeletal ghost latched onto the tree thanks to its talon-like fingers and toes, its digits digging into the bark with the ease of a termite squirming into wood.

It amazed Melody how respectful the Venus flytraps were of the skeletal ghost. They seemed to shrink back in fear. All except one. The one biting Rosenthal.

“Please, somebody help me,” he cried. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”

Melody was surprised she could hear the ophthalmologist’s pleas. After all, he was hanging upside down, the bottom of his lab coat shrouding his face.

A slurping sound. Where is it coming from? Melody soon found out. The Venus flytrap holding Rosenthal licked his leg with its salivating crimson-colored tongue.

The skeletal ghost, still clinging to the side of the tree, leaned toward the defiant Venus flytrap. The ghoul chomped its teeth in the flytrap’s direction, sounding as if heavy iron doors slamming shut. The flytrap wasn’t intimidated. It bit down harder on Rosenthal’s leg.

“Ooooohhhaaaauuuuuugggghhhhhhh!” Rosenthal said.

The skeletal ghost sprung off the tree. In midair, the ghoul swung and twirled its saber elaborately, like a conceited samurai. The respectful flytraps darted out of the way. The ghost brought its sword down. The rebellious flytrap realized a moment too late what was in store. It released Rosenthal (he dropped on the rocks with an “umph”) and attempted to dodge the saber’s lethal edge, but the ghost was quicker than a possessed cheetah. Its sword sliced through the vine that connected the flytrap to the tree. Bright purple blood gushed from the vine.

The flytrap fell to the ground and flailed next to Rosenthal. He had been curled into a ball, hands over his wounded leg, but as soon as he saw his attacker at his side, he scrambled away. Melody was about to call after him, but the flytrap distracted her.

The flytrap flipped over and stood on its half-a-meter vine, assuming an S shape—making it look like an aggressive snake. It hissed at the skeletal ghost.

The skeletal ghost stood in front of the tree, the respectful flytraps peeking over its shoulders. The ghoul chucked its saber upward, performed a manic double somersault, then reached up and interrupted the sword’s acrobatics by catching it by the hilt. Arm extended vertically, the ghost held the saber like a spear.

To Melody’s surprise, the flytrap did a 180 and slithered off into the distance. The skeletal ghost seemed to consider chasing after the flytrap but didn’t, most likely due to what happened next.

The zombie horse whinnied and keeled over.

The skeletal ghost turned on its heel and marched toward the fallen zombie horse. Melody cringed when the ghoul passed. And she felt Zack take her hand, his other hand gripping her forearm.

The skeletal ghost walked up to the zombie horse. Upon reaching the equine’s underside, the ghoul crouched down and slipped the saber in its sheath. The ghost placed a hand on the rotting skin of the horse’s neck. In a flash, the ghoul jumped to its feet and kicked the equine’s underside.

Melody winced at the stench emanating from the zombie horse: a mixture of skunk, sour milk and rotten eggs. She covered her mouth, realizing that the skeletal ghost hadn’t just kicked the collapsed horse. The ghoul had inserted its foot inside the equine. She wasn’t sure if the ghost’s foot had pierced the horse’s hide, or if it had thrust into a part of the equine where skin was missing. Regardless, the squishy sound the ghoul’s foot made inside the horse was audible enough to make her vomit, even though no food or drink filled her stomach.

The skeletal ghost began kicking the zombie horse, its foot deep inside the equine. The body of the horse moved whichever way the ghoul’s foot went, like a ball trailing a chain.

Melody wondered why the ghost was torturing its (dead?) mode of transportation. To frighten Melody and Zack? If so, mission accomplished. She had no motivation to move from their current spot. And even if she did, how could Zack and her flee? It would be unconscionable to leave Rosenthal behind.

Abruptly, the skeletal ghost removed its foot from inside the zombie horse and withdrew its saber from the sheath. Sshhhhhhhhttt.

The skeletal ghost swaggered around the unmoving zombie horse and stopped when reaching Melody and Zack. She gasped. The ghoul seemed to be smiling at them, although it was hard to tell, since its teeth were always showing. Those teeth unnerved her. Bleach white, they contrasted the red skull.

The skeletal ghost strode away from Zack and Melody. She noticed horse sinew clung to the bronze ring on the ghoul’s middle toe of its left foot.

The skeletal ghost stalked toward Rosenthal. The ophthalmologist lay on the ground, about seventy meters away from the Venus flytrap tree.

“No, no!” Rosenthal said. “You stay away from me!”

The skeletal ghost ignored the ophthalmologist’s advice.

Melody said to Zack, “We need to do something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe throw rocks at it.”

“What, are you kidding?” Zack said. “Did you see that sword? It’s razor sharp.”

“I know.”

“Please,” Melody heard Rosenthal say. He still lay on the ground, obviously injured from when the Venus flytrap bit him.

“Please,” Rosenthal said, “I beg you. Please don’t kill me.”

“You’re already dead,” said the skeletal ghost.

No matter how many times Melody heard it, that metallic voice sent chills up her cranium.

The skeletal ghost knelt on one knee. Its one hand jammed the saber between two rocks, while its other hand landed on Rosenthal’s crotch. “Join us.”

“Please!” Rosenthal started sobbing.

Melody heard flapping. She looked up.

Through the purple sky flew an oversize tarantula. Its four wings—two in the front, two in the back—moved so quickly, they were nothing but a blur. On top of the tarantula was an Asian man dressed in a sleeveless chain-mail tunic.

9

Even though it wasn’t sunny, Zack squinted up at the sky to get a gander of the flying tarantula. He wondered if it was the same one as before.

“You. . . .” said the skeletal ghost.

“That’s right,” the Asian man yelled over the flapping of the tarantula wings. “No mordavers for you today.”

The skeletal ghost stepped away from Rosenthal and swiped up its saber, then turned on its heel, holding the sword like a baseball bat.

The Asian man dug his face into the tarantula fur. Out from the spider shot viscous webbing. The skeletal ghost cursed, springing out of the way. The webbing splattered on a large basalt rock. The tarantula arched upward, taking the rock along with it.

From the position Zack stood, it looked as if the tarantula sucked the webbing back into its spinnerets, which were at the end of its abdomen. Now the tarantula clutched the rock with its fangs.

The tarantula flew erratically through the air, the Asian man still saddled on its back. On the ground, the skeletal ghost no longer held the saber like a baseball bat; it held the sword at waist level, elbows resting on its hips. The tarantula glided over the ghost and, at a height of 100 feet, dropped the rock. The ghost didn’t flinch. The rock sped down sixty miles per hour. When the rock was within ten feet, the ghoul raised its saber. The rock raced closer. The ghost swung its sword, chopping the rock in two. Half of the rock smashed on the ground, breaking into hundreds of pieces. The other half torpedoed toward Rosenthal’s right leg. The ophthalmologist screamed.

Melody covered her mouth with both hands. “Oh my God!”

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” Zack said. He felt his stomach twist and flip.

Rosenthal writhed on the ground. The rock sat in the middle of his leg, covering his lower thigh, knee and upper shin.

Even though Zack didn’t like Rosenthal, he felt sorry for him. First, his left leg got nibbled on by that Venus flytrap, and now his right leg was pulverized by the rock.

“Oh please, oh please, oh please,” Rosenthal said. “Somebody please kill me . . . the pain . . . I can’t take it. . . .”

The skeletal ghost gave Rosenthal a snide look. Zack wasn’t sure, but it looked as if the ghoul snickered, too. The punk rocker didn’t give it much thought because the tarantula made another approach.

This time, the tarantula landed on the ground on all eight legs, but quickly stood on its two hind legs. It flicked its abdomen; webbing discharged from both of its spinnerets. With one hand, the skeletal ghost raised its saber. Webbing enshrouded the blood-caked blade. The ghoul pulled on the sword, but the webbing must have been too thick to cut through. The tarantula twitched its abdomen, yanking the saber out of the ghost’s hands. The spider severed the webbing from its spinnerets. The sword flew a few furlongs. When it touched down, it clacked quietly. Zack squinted. Looked as if it landed on a slab of obsidian rock.

The skeletal ghost stared into the distance, as if pining for a family heirloom. The ghoul—hissing—whipped its head toward the tarantula. But the spider was already spewing more streams of silky webbing. These two strings aimed low. The ghost tried jumping out of the way, however, it was too slow. The webbing wrapped around its ankles, knocking them together, sounding similar to woodblocks banging against one another. The ghoul toppled over, its skull landing on Rosenthal’s chest.

“Ahhhh! Get it off me, get it off me!”

The ophthalmologist’s wish was granted. The tarantula took flight, taking the skeletal ghost with it.

Hanging upside down, the skeletal ghost thrashed about and verbalized vehemence. It grabbed its ankles and attempted to climb up the webbing to the tarantula. The spider must have been aware of this, Zack observed, because it began rocking in a way that made the ghost—still lassoed to the webbing—spin counterclockwise.

Suddenly, the string of intertwined webbing snapped halfway between the skeletal ghost and the airborne tarantula. The ghoul zoomed through the air, its arms and legs flaying. It crashed into the Venus flytrap tree, the flytraps breaking its fall.

Zack clutched Melody’s upper right arm. Even though they were fifteen feet away from the tree, Melody took several steps back. Zack did the same.

The skeletal ghost lay motionless at the base of the tree, its lower back arched over a root. Abruptly, the ghoul bent its knees and slammed its feet on the ground, its heels touching its pelvic bone. Simultaneously, it reached back and slapped a hand, palm down, on either side of its skull. Applying pressure to its hands, the ghost jumped up (bones cracking) by performing a wave that started with its arms. The ghoul landed on its feet, looking as if tumbling through the flytrap tree invigorated it.

Zack quit staring at the skeletal ghost. A shadow crept over him and Melody. They turned to see the Asian man on the tarantula.

“Hop on,” he said.

Melody took the man’s hand and climbed aboard the oversize tarantula.

“Zack!” she yelled.

Zack hadn’t hopped on yet. Dumbfounded, he nibbled on his lower lip.

The skeletal ghost charged for Zack.

Peripherally, Zack saw the Asian man tap the tarantula with his heel. The spider’s third left leg shot out, grabbed the punk rocker by the belt and placed him on its back, behind Melody. Thing must be double-jointed, Zack thought through his astonishment.

The Asian man leaned into the tarantula. The spider galloped forward. It took to the air just as the skeletal ghost reached them. The ghoul lunged toward Zack. “Yiauugggh!” Zack said, scooting forward. The ghost tried to claw Zack’s back, but missed. The punk rocker’s groin tightened at the sound of the ghoul’s hand slicing through the air. Sounded like a sickle. As the tarantula gained altitude, wind enveloped Zack. He felt two slashes at the bottom-rear of his Lawrence Arms T-shirt.

The tarantula continued to ascend. Zack had his arms around Melody’s waist, and she had her hands on the Asian man’s hips. Zack got a whiff of the tarantula. Smelled like a hybrid of manure and honey.

On the ground below, the skeletal ghost marched toward Rosenthal. Zack heard Melody shout over the wind into the Asian man’s ear. “We have to help him!”

“I know,” the man said over his shoulder.

10

Rosenthal shivered at the sight of the skeletal ghost approaching. The ghoul leered at him, its alloy tongue lolling out of its mouth.

The skeletal ghost squatted down. With incredible ease, its bony fingers picked up the rock on Rosenthal’s right leg. The ophthalmologist looked down at his leg. It appeared that his knee had been pulverized. He saw no evidence of bone.

“You have to help me!” Rosenthal said. “I think I’m about to go into shock.”

The skeletal ghost nodded. “Help . . . yes. . . .” it said in its metallic voice. Its tongue licked its bleach-white teeth. Rosenthal swore the ghoul was grinning.

A buzzing sound snapped Rosenthal’s attention away from the skeletal ghost. He looked up to see the flying tarantula swooping down.

“No. . . !” said the skeletal ghost.

In an instant, the skeletal ghost leapt behind Rosenthal and put him in a headlock. The movement intensified the pain in the ophthalmologist’s right leg. He tried to scream, but couldn’t because of the headlock. However, he could cry. Tears gushed down his cheeks at an alarming rate. He was bewildered by the emotion. He hadn’t cried in more than thirty years, not since he had received a B in high school on an algebra test.

The tarantula flew by, coming within inches of Rosenthal and the skeletal ghost.

The skeletal ghost released Rosenthal from the headlock. The ophthalmologist was grateful. He breathed deeply but could not see. Even though he had stopped crying, straggler tears blurred his vision.

Rosenthal gasped. The skeletal ghost groped for his genitalia. He blinked; his vision cleared. The ghoul knelt in front of him. He tried kicking the ghost with the better of his two legs, the left one. The ghoul used its bony right shin to slam down Rosenthal’s leg. Granite dust rose. The ophthalmologist coughed a couple of times and closed his eyes. Upon opening them, he witnessed the ghost slicing through his Versace belt with one of its talon-like fingers. Rosenthal sat up on his elbows.

“Hey, hey, hey! What do you think you’re doing? Hey, I’m talking to you!” Beat. “I demand an answer!” Almost pleading.

The skeletal ghost pulled down Rosenthal’s pants and boxers to his ankles. Rosenthal felt bile collecting in his throat. He glanced at his right leg. What used to be his knee was now nothing but fleshy skin.

The skeletal ghost, kneeling, picked up Rosenthal’s feet. The ophthalmologist turned his head to dry heave. He did this not because the ghoul propped its skull between his legs, but because he felt the bone fragments of his knee shifting around in his leg. Since his ankles now rested on the ghost’s shoulders, most of the fragments traveled toward his thigh.

Rosenthal quit dry heaving in time to see the skeletal ghost’s skull aim for his genitals. The ophthalmologist’s body quivered. He sensed something cold and slimy touch his perineum, then his entire body went numb. The paralysis hit him with such force, he no longer sat up on his elbows. His arms had weakened, and he had collapsed on his back, his head thunking on the edge of a rock. He wondered if he suffered a concussion, and if so, would it involve unconsciousness?

11

Melody removed her hands from around the Asian man’s waist and clasped them on his shoulders. She hiked up, saying into his ear, “We have to go back. What’s that thing doing to Doctor Rosenthal? Why isn’t he moving?” No reply. “I said—”

“I heard you,” said the Asian man. “It’s too late. Your companion is now under control of the Knopfs.”

“What?”

“It will all be explained when we reach camp. Now, please return to your seat so you’re not leaning on my shoulders. It’s affecting my flying of Harriet.”

Not sure what the Asian man was talking about, Melody did as requested. She placed her posterior on the tarantula’s back. As when she first hopped onto the oversize arachnid, its bristles irritated her legs, but—as before—that sensation soon passed.

Melody saw Zack’s hands were locked around her waist, as they had been when she hiked up to speak with the Asian man.

“How are you holding up?”

“I fuckin’ hate heights,” Zack said. Melody nodded. He had yelled his comment, but the wind rushing past them had drowned out most of the volume. Made it sound like a murmur.

The tarantula stopped flapping its wings. It glided through the air. Melody glanced down. They had to be at least thirty meters off the ground. She no longer saw Rosenthal and the skeletal ghost, only the rocky field and several Venus flytrap trees.

The Asian man spoke over his shoulder. “By the way, my name is Hayata Kikujiro.”

“Melody Holiday and Zack Fury.”

Hayata bowed his head, then dug his face back into the tarantula’s fur.

Hayata

Hayata Kikujiro sat in a lotus position (with his shoes on) in the honden of a Shinto shrine. In front of him, up on the wood wall, was a rapier encased in bulletproof Plexiglas. The rapier had a glimmering tip and a jewelry-bedecked hilt.

On the wall to Hayata’s left hung a modern bow and arrow. On the wall to his right: a Remington rifle. Neither was covered in Plexiglas. Free for the taking.

Hayata popped another Percocet and took an umpteenth swig from his jug of Tamanohikari sake, which was half-empty. He pocketed the bottle of Percocets, then changed his mind. He was fumbling with the childproof lid when a shadow blanketed him. Remaining in the lotus position, Hayata leaned to his left, twisted around and squinted at who stood over him. A priest in a black, silk robe.

The priest, who smelled of musk, had kind eyes, as well as wrinkles around his mouth and on his forehead. The wrinkles complemented the old man’s jet-black hair. The priest reminded Hayata of Ronald Reagan, circa 1984. Of course, this priest would never be mistaken for the fortieth President of the United States, thanks to his prominent facial features.

“How are you, my son?” the priest said in a mellifluous voice that could create honey.

“Been better.” Hayata returned the Percocets to his suit coat’s inside pocket. He attempted to turn around and stop leaning on his left side, but he lost balance. His left hand slammed on the rubber mat.

“Easy, easy,” the priest said.

Hayata felt the priest’s veiny hand slip under his right arm and pull him up. Before you could chant a mantra, Hayata was on his feet.

“There you go,” the priest said, straightening Hayata’s tie and buttoning his suit coat.

“Thank you,” Hayata said, nodding and grinning (he wondered) like a madman. He spread his feet apart, staggering slightly, and reached down for his jug of sake. He gulped several mouthfuls of the alcohol.

“Here.” The priest took the jug by one of its two ring-size handles, and he placed his other hand on Hayata’s lower back. “You’re not supposed to be in here.”

The priest escorted Hayata out of the honden. Hayata tried remembering from his schooling about Shinto shrines. Wasn’t the honden the inner sanctuary, which was off-limits except to priests?

The two of them strode through the haiden. If memory served, this was the shrine’s oratory. Hayata stifled a titter. Interesting how he knew what the honden and haiden were, but he couldn’t remember how he got here.

Hayata and the priest exited the haiden. They were still in the shrine but were now outside. It was nighttime. A full moon shone overhead. On either side of the shrine’s wooden fence were cypress and cedar trees.

The priest led Hayata past the temizuya, a small pavilion where worshipers washed their hands and mouths.

The priest pointed at a bench. Hayata slammed down, trying to get comfortable. Kind of hard to do when you’re sitting on a slab of concrete.

“I’m Father Yamanoto,” the priest said, perching himself on the bench, back straight, hands cupped in lap. “I’m the chief priest here.”

Slouching, Hayata slurred his own name. Upon doing so, his chin touched his collarbone. His eyelids became wooden. He heard a voice. Distant. Like a radio with the volume set on 1.

“Son.”

It was the priest. What was his name again? Yamaha?

Hayata forced opened his eyes. Father Yamanoto. That was the priest’s name. His face was in Hayata’s. Hayata’s cheeks felt cold. He soon realized why. Father Yamanoto’s palm cupped Hayata’s chin—thumb on right cheek, finger on left cheek. The frigidity of the priest’s digits filled Hayata with a surge of sobriety. He jerked, jumping a centimeter off the bench.

“What, what is it?”

Father Yamanoto didn’t say anything, just sat there, smiling. His reticence unnerved Hayata. Out of nervous habit, Hayata loosened his already slackened necktie, though he didn’t undo any more buttons on his blue pinstriped dress shirt; the top button remained unfastened.

Finally, Father Yamanoto spoke: “Tell me, son, what brings you here?”

Hayata shrugged. “I had nowhere else to go.”

“Are you homeless?”

Hayata shook his head. “We have an apartment. But . . . she’ll be there.”

“She?”

“My fiancée.”

“Now why would you be afraid to face the woman you’re going to marry one day?” Father Yamanoto placed a hand on Hayata’s wrist. “You do plan on marrying her, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Why then are you afraid to go home?”

“My . . . fiancée comes from a well-to-do family,” Hayata said. “Her parents and friends have . . . expectations.”

“Such as?” Father Yamanoto asked.

“A lavish home, expensive furniture, a luxury automobile, trust funds for our eventual children. . . . The list goes on and on.”

“Do you love her?”

Hayata paused. Lately that was the question he asked himself daily. Did he love Hatsumomo? He admired her beauty, for that he was certain. Her face was beautiful by any man’s standards. Plus, there was the matter of her breasts. Not only were they the perfect size—C—but they were firm and had exquisite nipples (small and sensitive, becoming erect at the lightest lick). Then there was the sex. Intercourse with Hatsumomo was nothing short of spine-tingling and exhausting, whether it lasted thirty seconds or three hours. But was it love?

Father Yamanoto snapped his fingers. “Tokyo to Hayata.”

Hayata dropped his head. “Sorry.”

“We lost you there for a minute.”

“My apologies, Father.”

A wasp hovered between Hayata and Father Yamanoto. The priest swatted it away. The insect flew into an apricot tree.

Father Yamanoto said, “I can’t help thinking that there is something you aren’t telling me.”

“Well, you see, Father, I’m thirty-nine years old . . .”

“Yes.”

“. . . and I’m an employee of the Nakamoto Corporation . . .”

“Mm-hmm.”

“. . . and today I was passed over for the promotion of vice president of sales, for the third time.”

“What?” Father Yamanoto said.

“I feel like such a loser, Father. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ve shamed my family, my fiancée, and the corporation that has invested so much time and resources into me.”

Father Yamanoto rose off the bench. Hayata felt the priest grab his arm and pull him up.

“Get out of my shrine,” the priest said.

“Wha—”

“I said, GET OUT OF MY SHRINE!”

Father Yamanoto’s voice echoed throughout the shrine and inside Hayata’s head.

“I—I don’t understand,” Hayata heard himself say, although he understood all too clearly.

“I will not have flotsam like you contaminating my shrine with your aura of failure.”

“But—”

“Mr. Kikujiro, you are living in an outstanding country that has produced some of the greatest warriors in the history of the world: Togo Heihachiro, Miyamoto Musashi, Tokugawa Ieyasu, even the samurai Tomoe Gozen, who was a lowly woman. These are legendary heroes who helped make Japan one of the most feared and respected countries. You, Mister Kikujiro, don’t even deserve to be mentioned with them in the same breath.”

“Wha—what are you saying?”

“You are not doing our great nation any favors by being dead weight.”

“I—”

“The spirit of the kamikaze lives to this day.”

Hayata felt his head spinning, and it wasn’t from the pills and alcohol pumping through his bloodstream.

“I . . . I . . . don’t understand. Are you saying I should kil—”

Hayata didn’t finish his question. Father Yamanoto ushered him out of the shrine. They passed between the koma-inu—two stone statues of lion-like dogs, one with its mouth open. Next, Hayata tried to keep up with Father Yamanoto as the priest descended the steps three at a time. Soon, they reached the entrance of the shrine. Father Yamanoto released Hayata, pushing him under the torii gate.

Hayata tottered outside of the shrine, on a busy Tokyo sidewalk. Inside the shrine, Father Yamanoto’s right foot stood on the bottom step, his left foot on the third step. Hayata regained balance and gawked at the priest. Father Yamanoto, sneering, coughed up phlegm and spit into a dogwood shrub that hugged the shrine steps. Then, like the last emperor, he marched up the steps to his house of worship.

Hayata hung his head. Thunder clapped, vibrating his rib cage. A cold, pounding rain commenced. Pedestrians quickened their pace. Some opened umbrellas, while most covered their heads with newspapers, purses or the shopping bags they were carrying.

Hayata still faced the shrine, his feet spread apart. He swayed. His hair, now drenched, fell into his eyes. He didn’t care. His only concerns were getting more intoxicated and not falling down. Speaking of which, where was his sake? Oh, that’s right. The priest took it when escorting him out of the honden. Two-faced priest was probably drinking it now. Hayata ground his teeth and rubbed the stubble on his chin. He contemplated reentering the shrine and retrieving his half-empty jug of sake, but decided against it. Not because he didn’t think he could do it, but because he remembered the Percocets were in his suit coat pocket. He struggled with the lid for a minute, then popped a handful of pills. He wasn’t sure how many. Didn’t care.

The rain continued to pour down. It hit the pavement so hard, Hayata wouldn’t be surprised if it created more than one sinkhole.

Growing bored with standing in one place, Hayata began to move down the street. He made it halfway down the block, until his legs decided walking required too much effort. Crashing into a wrought-iron fence, he splashed into a puddle, socks squishing.

Back against the fence, Hayata squinted. Several yards away lay a five-way intersection. On the one corner was a skyscraper. In the middle of it hung a jumbo TV screen. A commercial for a luxury car aired.

The man driving the luxury car pulls up to a street corner. There stands five beautiful women trying to hail a cab. The stud in the luxury car focuses on the prettiest of the women and purses his lips to blow a kiss. She smirks and slides into his passenger seat. The name of the automobile manufacturer flashes on the screen in big, bold white letters. The woman in the passenger seat winks at the camera. The luxury car screeches away. The commercial begins to fade. The four women left on the street corner salivate after the vehicle.

Hayata’s chin began to dip down. It touched the knot of his tie. He allowed his eyelids to flutter shut. Darkness crept in. His inner child jumped for joy, until he realized he wasn’t blacking out but overdosing. Was this what he wanted?

Mordaver Camp

1

Still riding on the tarantula, Zack kept his arms wrapped around Melody’s waist. He saw Hayata quit leaning into the spider’s fur and pat it on the side of the head. The tarantula stopped flapping its wings. Consequently, it dropped in altitude.

Despite being afraid of heights, Zack gave into the temptation of looking down. The field of rocks and Venus flytrap trees were still there, but up ahead was some sort of camp. Lots of tents.

The tarantula aimed for the camp and—Zack didn’t know how it did this—reduced speed. The wind enveloping them wasn’t so suffocating as before. It was almost . . . pleasant . . . like an ocean breeze prior to twilight.

They were now about fifty feet from the ground. Zack sensed his stomach quiver and contract. He tightened his hold on Melody’s waist (if that was possible), scooting closer toward her in the process.

The tarantula touched ground, hind legs first. In a slash of the wrist, the landing was over. Zack couldn’t believe how smooth and uneventful it had gone. The spider hadn’t landed like a plane, speeding down a runway. It simply touched down, similar to a helicopter. But with this tarantula, you didn’t have to deal with a deafening propeller.

Zack released Melody’s waist and slid down the tarantula’s rear end. Hayata dismounted by pressing on one of the spider’s leg joints. Melody was having a little trouble getting off, so two of the tarantula’s double-jointed middle legs shot up and slid under her armpits, lifting her up and placing her on the dirt ground.

“Come with me,” Hayata said to Zack and Melody. He placed a hand on the tarantula’s side. The four of them departed the tarantula landing pad and proceeded down a narrow aisle between two rows of tents. Zack kept tripping over the iron stakes and sisal/hemp ropes that upheld the tents. He began to fall behind. Becoming frustrated, he cursed Hayata and Harriet. You’d think, given the tarantula’s size, the two of them wouldn’t be able to waltz side-by-side between the tents. Maybe they took this path often, so they knew its nuances, letting them be more nimble than Jack shoplifting a candlestick.

“Ow,” Melody said. She tripped over a stake. Good, Zack thought. Now he didn’t feel like such a Doofus the Clown.

They reached the end of the aisle. Zack froze. In front of them was some kind of courtyard. It was enormous and filled with men, women and children hurrying and flurrying as if behind schedule on a strict timetable. Most of them wore some variation of Hayata’s sleeveless chain-mail tunic.

Hayata halted in the middle of the yard. The crowd swarmed around him and Harriet. Even though bodies blurred by, Zack could still make out Hayata. His one hand remained on the tarantula, while his other hand pointed. He spoke over his shoulder.

“Go to the general’s tent,” he bellowed. “It’s the one with the green flap.”

“Where are you going?” Melody asked.

“To take Harriet to her pen.”

Hayata made a beeline for a circus-size tent. Zack watched the crowd give Hayata and Harriet plenty of room.

Melody scratched her head. “Where’s this green tent? I don’t see it.”

Zack shrugged. He scanned the perimeter of the courtyard, where the tents were situated.

Suddenly, a shrieking sound emanated from the sky. Zack looked up. A blue object raced toward the courtyard. People started screaming and dashing for tents. Zack couldn’t believe how well they moved. Sure, they panicked, but not one person trampled over another. If anyone stumbled and tumbled, the person behind them picked them up.

In moments, the courtyard was empty, except for Zack and Melody, who were off to the side at the end of the aisle, where Hayata had left them.

The blue object from the sky crashed in the middle of the yard. Vibrations quaked the ground, causing Zack and Melody to knock into each other and fall down. The middle of Zack’s back hit a rope that stretched between a stake and a tent. Since the rope was tauter than a kerplunked anchor chain, he bounced off of it and landed on his chest.

During this, Zack saw somebody get thrown from the blue object. The person seemed to expect it, somersaulting through the air and landing feet first at the edge of the courtyard, thirty yards from Zack and Melody.

The somersaulter was a girl—no more than fourteen, Zack guessed. She wore her hair as a chignon on the crown of her head, and she had the type of dark skin he associated with Brazilians.

Zack blocked out the fourteen-year-old to see if Melody was all right. She lay on her back between the two rows of tents that they, Hayata and Harriet had walked up previously. It didn’t appear that Melody had hit any stakes, ropes or tents. Zack helped her up. They looked to see what crashed in the middle of the courtyard.

There sat an oversize tarantula. Unlike Harriet, who was black and tan, this one’s fur was light blue with occasional dark-blue markings. Like Harriet, its wings were transparent, but the left-front one was missing. Where that wing should have been, blood spurted out.

“Out of the way,” Zack heard a deep voice say from behind. Before the punk rocker could step out of the way, he and Melody were knocked aside, but they didn’t lose their balance.

Zack sneered. The man with the deep voice marched toward the injured tarantula. He had to be at least seven feet tall. His skin was dark bronze. And he wore sandals, a kilt, a blue shirt, as well as some weird type of headdress.

“What happened?” the man demanded as he squatted in front of the tarantula.

The fourteen-year-old fidgeted. “We were attacked by a band of Knopfs.”

“How many?”

“There were five of them, I think.”

“Were you airborne? Any Bantams?”

The fourteen-year-old shook her head. “I didn’t seen none. We were flying the whole time.”

“How did the Knopfs lacerate your tarantula? Have they developed the capability to fly?”

“No, sir. They had with them a catapult that let them shoot their sabers at us.”

Zack closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. The words the fourteen-year-old said didn’t match the movement of her lips. Why was that?

The man with the booming voice examined the tarantula’s wound. “These look like bite marks.”

The fourteen-year-old Brazilian nodded. “After we were hit with the saber, we started losing altitude. One of the Knopfs climbed up a Venus flytrap tree and, with the help of a couple flytraps, leapt through the air towards us. It bit into Henry and tore off his one wing. Luckily, I was able to kick the Knopf off of us before it hurt Henry any further.”

“Where were you attacked?”

“About ten kilometers west of the Nexus.”

“So you were on your way back from the New Arrival Field,” the man said, as if to himself. “Did you lose any mordavers?”

“No, sir. It was a fruitless trip.”

The man ran a hand down the blue bristles on the tarantula’s back. “Take him to the infirmary.”

“Yes, sir,” the fourteen-year-old said demurely. She and three others picked up the tarantula with the care of sickbay surgeons.

Back still to Zack, the tall man rested his hands on his hips like Superman and watched the tarantula carried away. He then turned around.

Zack and Melody gasped. The man had the head of a jackal.

2

Melody stared up at the man with the head of a black jackal and ears that were alert, pointed. He looked familiar. But she couldn’t remember from where she had seen him before because she concentrated on his body. It was the type that Western women salivate for. Broad shoulders, with his arms and legs toned, indicating a steady diet of weight lifting. He wore a blue, accordion-like shirt, so she couldn’t see if his chest and stomach were ripped, although his shirt had a low neckline, hinting that underneath it was indeed brawny.

The man with the jackal head stepped forward. “Greetings,” he said in what sounded like a cross between British and Arabian accents. “My name is Anubis.”

Anubis shook hands with Zack and Melody. Melody’s slender hand dwarfed Anubis’. He seemed to realize this, since he gently took her hand and cupped it between his palms. The maneuver made her feel as if she were being welcomed by royalty.

Anubis released Melody’s hand. She stared at his headdress. Like his shirt, it had horizontal accordion pleating. Unlike his shirt, the headdress was multicolored, the rows alternating between blue and tan.

“You look fucking familiar,” Zack said.

Anubis nodded. “It is conceivable you have seen me in a history textbook. After all, I was an Egyptian god.”

“No shit! I always thought that stuff was made up.”

“Most mythology is the creation of very imaginative mortals, however, even in the most fantastical or unbelievable, often there exists a kernel of truth.”

“Like a tabloid cover story,” Zack quipped.

“Precisely,” Anubis said. “Please.” He motioned toward a tent with an upturned green flap. Melody and Zack entered the tent.

In the middle of the tent was a three-meter-high pole, giving the canvas a cathedral ceiling resemblance, Melody thought. In front of the pole was a long rectangular wooden table covered with scrolls and parchment, as well as tablets that looked as if they were filled with nonsense (hieroglyphics, perhaps?). Elsewhere in the tent were swords, crossbows and shields. In the rear of the tent, next to a stack of Bible-thick texts, was a slab of stone measuring half a meter in height, a meter in width and three meters in length. On top of the slab was a firm square pillow with tassels at each corner. At the foot of this slab—bed, was it?—sat a purple, satin blanket rolled up in a ball.

“Excuse me,” said Anubis from behind Melody and Zack. The Egyptian god placed his hands on Melody’s shoulders, shifting her enough so he could squeeze by. She watched him walk on the dirt floor, around the table. For the first time, she saw a black, leather strap around his leg, above his ankle. Attached to the strap was a sheath. Inside the sheath was a dagger with a sundial on top of the handle. The dagger was on Anubis’ inside leg.

“Anubis.”

Melody diverted her attention to the tent entrance. There stood Hayata, feet apart, arms behind his back.

“Yes?” Anubis said.

“I failed in my mission to secure Mr. Prescott Wallace Rosenthal’s safe harbor to camp.” Hayata bowed his head.

“Tell me what transpired. Do not exclude any detail.”

Hayata told the tale, keeping his head bowed. Occasionally, Anubis interrupted with a question. Each time Hayata answered a question, his head rose until by Anubis’ thirteenth question, his head was fully raised. But Melody had to look away. Hayata’s words did not match the movement of his lips. It made her dizzy, like watching a dialogue-heavy foreign film with poor dubbing.

When Hayata finished his report, Zack said, “Yo, man, how come when you and that Brazilian chick talk, my fuckin’ eyes hurt?”

Anubis gave Zack an avuncular smile and said, “Due to various races of man occupying this reality, to break down the language barrier, each individual speaks in his native tongue, however, the receiver hears sentences in his own language.”

Zack scrunched his face in confusion.

Hayata addressed Anubis. “Sir, permission to be excused. My presence is required in the Tarantula Tent. I should tend to Harriet.”

Anubis nodded.

Hayata bowed, then turned on his heel and departed.

Immediately, someone else entered the tent. Melody couldn’t see whom. The person stepped to the side, to the left of the entrance, in the shadows. Apparently, Anubis recognized the visitor.

“I fail to understand why he continues to do that,” he said.

“Hayata?” said the visitor. She had a mellifluous voice.

“Yes,” Anubis said. “Time and time again, I have told him to not bow or to ask my permission to perform trivial matters.”

Melody cocked her head. Was that hissing she heard?

The woman in the shadows asked, “How did Henry look?”

“Is that the reason for your visit?” Anubis smiled. “Here I thought you decided to assist me in educating these two mordavers.”

“Mordavers?” Zack piped in.

Anubis stopped smiling. He focused on the female visitor in the shadows. “To answer your question, I do not believe Henry is going to survive. It appears the Knopfs mortally wounded him.”

“I better go pay my respects, then.” The visitor slipped out of the tent. Melody hadn’t been paying attention, so she only caught sight of the woman’s shoulder as she turned the corner of the tent entrance. The woman’s skin wasn’t green . . . was it?

Obviously, Zack had seen the woman in the light. “Yo, what the fuck, man? That wasn’t—”

“We shall discuss it later,�