Run

     Run. It was the last word Petra heard from her crew boss "Big" Dan Chief when the weather shifted. That's what she was doing now as the fire cracked and popped at her heels. Super-heated embers fell like burning snow as she fled the wind-driven flames. She was singed, blinded by the smoke, and coughing but she wasn't going to stop. Could not stop.
  They were a crew of ten cutting a fire break near the top of the ridge. The break wouldn't stop the fire but it might slow it, or contain it for a few precious moments, maybe help the evacuations and give the water bombers time to get up here and drop their fire retardant loads.
   This was a war, another dry year in a string of dry years, and the whole forest was a short fuse. One spark and everything exploded like a bomb. No rain now, none for weeks, and none expected to come.
    Petra stumbled, fell, and rolled shedding her gear. Her axe, shovel, the forty pound pack she carried, even the fire-resistant tarp-she could have dug in and hid beneath it if there was time-all gone. Run. Down. Keep going down. It was summer and warm dry winds from the south had held the flames to the northern forests. Why did it change today? Vicious gusts from the north starting pushing, pushing, pushing destruction south where the creek beds, the swamps, everything was sun-baked as dry as paper.
     Heat and smoke rolled and roared. Flames overtopped the pine forest now dangerously flammable like gasoline.
   Run. How long? Don't stop. Everything burning. Run.
   Petra broke through to a hydro line, a wide clear-cut swath of grass running northwest to southeast. Overhead power lines hummed as they carried electricity from the dams on northern rivers to towns and cities in the south.
    The ground evened out here. It had been cleared and graded by the power company. Choices. Which way? Away. Away from the flames, away from her friends and workmates, away from the roiling boiling death that burnt at her heels.
   Burning ash fell and ignited the tall grasses at her feet. The far trees seemed to shiver in the wind as the fire roared closer.
   Petra turned left, to the southeast. She'd seen from the helicopter that dropped them off just a few hours earlier there was a cut, or canyon, or something there she could hide in, stay low. Even if she did escape the heat the smoke could still suffocate her.
   Run. Don't stand still, don't stop. Just run.

Devil in the details.

     The devil is in the details, in the corners, the joins where two different things come together, where something broken has been repaired, the moment between moments. Details are transitions. The devil is in change, and change is necessary. It's the only way to move forward; or backward, sideways, up, down. Unless we jump from time to time, place to place, leap over the details, skip the devil. Then we think we're safe but the details sneak up and there is a reckoning of things we've missed. Miss the details and you get lost. 

     Feelings are smooth like ice on a still pond. They are deep. The place she keeps them is empty. Imagine a chasm too wide to cross and too deep to fill. Imagine nothing. Imagine this is the safest place. An empty palace and even the echoes have fled.

This place is broken but it's as fixed as she could make it on her own. A place for unneeded, unwanted and painful things.

Abigail

"Gran, what's this?" A young man's newly deepened voice rumbled through the plush green-carpeted living room.

"What is what my dear?" A small bird-like voice trilled back. 

An old woman perched on the edge of a pink velour upholstered easy chair. It swivelled from side to side as she shifted her weight in an unconscious effort to influence the flight of the golf ball soaring across her television. Beside her on an ancient, plastic, folding TV tray and next to the simple remote control sat a pile of personal correspondence, all scrawled in a fine looping style.

She still tried to write letters and cards when time and the arthritis allowed. Just now she had some to send so she'd sent her grandson David to fetch envelopes from her bedroom.  

When he visited as a boy she allowed him to go through her dressing table and keep whatever dusty baubles or treasures he might find. There were a number of very interesting marbles and some very fine lighters she'd forgotten she ever had, some pins, and cards, and even a few old trinkets and charms she received as a girl from her father. David was 16 now and looking more like his great-grandfather every day. If only the boy would cut his hair and wear slacks without any holes, she thought. His visits cheered her though and he often came by himself, walking past the factory and down the hill after school when he didn't feel like taking the hour long bus ride to her former daughter-in-law's house. A strange boy thought the old lady, he never calls anywhere home. He must be snooping out of habit. 

David brought her an old silver picture frame, about four inches by six and needing polish. It had a simple card stock backing covered in luxurious black velvet. The glass was greasy the way old glass can get when it's rarely handled. She took it gently in faltering hands.

"Oh dear," Gran murmured,"did I leave that out?"

"It was under the envelopes." David replied.

The picture was old, and black and white. David recognized his grandmother. She always looked elegant in photos, especially when she was younger. In this picture she was seated on a large armchair and wearing the typical 1940's housewife's uniform; calf length skirt, knit sweater, curled blonde hair, pearls. She was smiling widely and holding a large young girl on her lap. The girl was smiling too, but not at the camera. His tiny gran looked like she was supporting the girl under her arms as if to keep her from falling on the floor. The girl's head tilted up and back. Her eyes were almond-shaped, her mouth split wide in a goofy, toothy grin, and her tongue lolled to one side. Long blond hair was cut in a fringe, brushed away from her face and hung straight to her shoulders which were covered by an embroidered calf length white smock. It looked fancy and special, like a dress for first communion, but she wasn't wearing shoes just socks, knee length probably, ribbed, and also white. Her arms and hands bent awkwardly in toward her body and the soles of her feet seemed rounded with no arch.

"Who is it Gran?" David was quiet and curious.

"Why I haven't looked at this for...Well that's me of course, and the little girl...well...that's my Abigail." She paused to wipe something from her behind her bifocal glasses then turned off the television. It was awhile before she spoke again.

"You know I married your grandfather when I was older. I'd had so many beaus. When I was not much older than you I had a particular boyfriend. One Christmas we were at a parade and it was so cold the mickey of vodka I was holding for him froze and broke in my good fur jacket. He was so mad, and I was mad at him of course for ruining my coat. We didn't end up together. But your grandfather. Oh my. I met him later that next year, we courted for a long time, and we eventually married. Then we had Abigail and this was right before the war you see." Gran seemed to drift away while she reminisced. A smile crossed behind her eyes and ever so slightly lifted the corners of her mouth. It stayed there a moment, then tightened and fell. With a sigh she continued slowly.

"I'm so tiny you see and she was just such a large baby...the doctors back then...didn't know what they should have known...Abigail stuck inside me during the delivery so they used forceps to pull her out and they damaged her. She wasn't breathing at first, and then she was and then she couldn't swallow without a tube so that was how they fed her. That hospital. We were there for so long. Your grandfather was away, the war and all that. He never had to fight though. Colour-blind. He served as part of a military police force as I remember."

"Anyway when I could finally bring her home it was suggested I put her in a place for, you know, people like that. In an institution. Back then it was expected if your child was different like she was but I just couldn't bear the thought of her in a place like that. So I kept her with me and took care of her, cleaned her up, took her out... Oh the ruddy messes she'd make. I fed her and helped her swallow her food. When your grandfather came home he just loved her so. She never learned to walk or speak you know, not real words, just sounds, and people would whisper like they do why are they keeping her at home."

"We lived in a house in Kingston Ontario at the time and your grandfather stayed in the army for a little while after the war. I don't know why. Enjoyed it I guess. This picture was taken when he was away for a little while again. Training, I think. It took forever to clean her up for the photographer. She's six there. Look how big she is already! Little me and I carried her everywhere-in and out, up and down. She just really loved getting ready and going out."

Gran carefully removed the velvet covered cardboard backing to reveal a folded pressed piece of tissue paper. She slowly peeled the paper open and gently held it in her palm as if it was a butterfly that might startle and fly at any moment. Neatly curled inside and tied with a thin red ribbon was a lock of the blondest hair David ever saw.

"She liked ribbons, red ones, and her hair was so fine I could never get a braid to stay. It was always just hanging down and in her face and so much lighter than blond. Almost white. It used to shine in the summer."

"Where is she now? Dad never said he had a sister. Do I have an aunt?" David sounded confused.

"He doesn't really know that much about her dear. He was born a few years after...well..." Gran stopped and rubbed her eyes again, properly with a tissue. With a deep breath she continued.

"She always had trouble swallowing, you see, and one night, in her sleep, she must have choked, I suppose, and it made her sick. She vomited but somehow she had turned onto her back. I tried to do what I could but I was on my own and it just wasn't enough. She couldn't breathe and that was that. She went so very quick. She was gone before the ambulance came. There was nothing the men could do. They let me hold on to her...I held her for such a long time. Oh my." Silence fell like a blanket. The kitchen clock ticked and tocked in the space left behind. Sunlight streamed in through the large front window sparkling on the few dust motes dancing in the air. 

"It's such a silly thing being sad. Abigail would never have had the things we take for granted, or been an adult on her own. Still, she was so very dear and sweet. This picture is the last one I have of her. We took it just before that ruddy awful night. I think losing her hit your grandfather very hard...I don't think he ever wanted to leave the army, even after the war. When our Gail passed he took leave, then an honourable discharge,and we travelled. The Caribbean mostly. Some of the places he'd been and some he hadn't. Across Canada, the east coast where I'd lived as a girl. My second youngest brother and his wife came along too, to California and some really nice places in Florida. My it was a fine time.

Then four years later we were back in our little house in Kingston where your father was born and then we moved here after your grandfather took a job as a teacher at the high school. My my. So many memories. But it's almost teatime dear! I tell you what! I think today we'll break out the rye. It's in the bottom cupboard beside the sink. I take mine over two ice cubes, you can mix yours how you like. My brothers always took theirs straight."

The Fake Girl

      Lester and Lydia Liitning's six year old daughter Lacey Ann was nicknamed Thunder. Whenever she felt thwarted, slighted, or even slightly peeved her bright face would scowl and darken like a storm cloud.  She would rumble and roar, rattle and pound, and hurl and smash while onlookers and her unfortunate parents ran for cover from the tornadic girl's tempestuous outbursts. Mild conditions were unpredictably brief and would change without warning to moderate or severe.  Every year her birthday produced an especially turbulent season.  The upcoming seventh annual celebration of "Thunder" Ann Liitning promised a continuing trend of ill temper with the near certainty of worsening as the day approached.
     This unsettled domestic climate was further excacerbated by the yearly birthday dress shopping tradition Lydia had insisted on starting while Lacey was still a manageable babe-in-arms. Lydia now regretted these excursions and approached them with a phobic anxiety.  Her husband Lester was no different from his wife and like any survivor of multiple natural disasters often exhibited signs of post traumatic stress disorder.  His preferred coping mechanism was a dreamy-eyed dissociative mental state in which he repeatedly mumbled, "Of course dear, you're right dear, yes dear."
     Young "Thunder" Ann Liitning took her parents in stride.  They were weak impermanent structures to be buffeted and broken at will.  They meant as much to her as a grain silo or trailer park might mean to a summer twister.  Perhaps because they stood up to her unpredictable moods in a similarly rickety manner.  As a result, this year's birthday dress shopping had started early and lasted an unseasonably long time.

     Hurricane Lacey struck retail locations uptown, downtown, crosstown, and out of town. She blustered and raged through outlet malls, boutiques, specialty shops, and thrift stores. Confused clerks, disorganized merchandise, and maltreated retail managers littered her path of petulant destruction. For two full weeks she pounded her parents' chequebooks and rattled their nerves.  Dresses and outfits were tried on, thrown aside, picked up again, bought, returned and exchanged for fancier, trendier and more expensive junior miss fashions. Her whirling stormy track eventually led through little India, to a small storefront attached to a larger garment warehouse.  She barged through the door letting it bang shut on her bedraggled parents.  The effusive shopkeeper greeted them with the enthusiasm of a lifelong people-person and heavily accented English.
     "What a lovely young girl!" his compliments temporarily stalled Lacey's temper, "You obviously know your own mind.  What lucky parents you must have!  Come, come you must try this on, and this! Why, I'll show you ten colours!!"  
     Lester and Lydia huddled near the door like rain-soaked strays while the salesman worked a miracle.  He danced Lacey from from one end of the small store to the other, past shelves stacked to the ceiling with expensive, intricately decorated fabrics and foreign looking dresses.  Maybe it was the incense laden air, the vibrant coloured garments seeming to bring the mannequins to life, or simply the reprieve from Lacey's oppressively violent personality but Lester's eyes began to clear.  He took in the store as a swirl of colour and light and joy.  Lydia stopped trembling. Her anxiety eased when she heard with amazement her daughter's voice.  It wasn't raised in anger or screaming frustration.  Her little girl was laughing.
     The Liitning's reprieve did not last long.  Like shell-shocked survivors peeking from under shelter at the clear blue sky, they realized this bright ray of hopeful sunshine was just the eye of the storm.  The forward wall of Typhoon Lacey had passed, laid waste, and now the trailing front swept forward to pummel survivors, fling wreckage and devastate whatever dared continue standing.
     "I like them..." said Lacey waving her hands at all the dresses stacked to the ceiling in white-painted cubbies, "but I really want that one!"  She pointed directly at a small child-sized mannequin half-hidden behind a sari rack and a revolving bangle display.
     "I am so sorry but that outfit is just not available."  The shopkeeper pressed his hands together and almost seemed to bow as he smiled and apologized.  "Perhaps, this one over here is more to the young lady's taste?" 
     Just one street away a car skidded through an intersection and collided with another.  The screech and pop of the crash coincided with Lacey's steely reply.  "I.  Want.  That.  One."
    "Of course dear, yes dear."  Lester desperately grabbed for his wallet. Lydia began shaking like an abused schnauzer and shook her head at the shopkeeper; tried to form words, to warn him.  
     "I apologize, good sir, good lady, but this dress is just not for sale."
     Lacey inhaled. She turned red. She turned purple. She clenched her fists and ground her teeth. Her body went rigid and sweat formed on her brow. Her mother squeaked like a mouse and threw her jacket over her face. Lester surrendered. He might have even given a final guffaw as he relaxed his whole body, looked to the ceiling, and waited for the inevitable.
     "I can, however, trade you for it.  You see those clothes belong to her and I cannot in good conscience leave her naked in my store." The shopkeeper pulled the little mannequin into full view.  The dress was gorgeous.  Lacey could not have appreciated the stitching, or the sequins, or the quality, cut, and sweep of the fabric.  She only knew it was pretty and she wanted it.  

     "Daddy!"  Lacey didn't understand trading, giving one thing and getting another.  She understood her parents opening their wallets and paying money for whatever she wanted.  She needed 

her father to fix this situation by capitulating to her inevitable will and getting her the object of her desire.

     "Trade, of course, yes dear, of course.  Um sir, what would you need for a trade?"  Lester was on unfamiliar ground as well.

     "As I said, I cannot leave this young girl naked in my store, it would not be decent."

    "Mannequin." Lacey interrupted.  "She's a mannequin, and it's not like she'd even care if she had clothes.  It's not like she's real.  She's just a...a...fake! She's a fake girl!  I want that dress!"
     "Um, we don't have anything really to trade you for.  My watch?  Here take my watch! Or my wife has a ring...a wedding ring, my grandmother's, but we can get another!"  Lester began thrusting items at the strange shopkeeper hoping against hope some trinket or shiny bauble could, like a talisman, forestall the doom rising in his daughter's eyes.  
     "No, no sir." The shopkeeper bobbed his head.  How can he still smile, wondered Lydia. Didn't he know the end was coming, disaster was nigh and its name was Lacey?  "This barter can be a straight exchange.  Your beautiful daughter has a perfectly lovely ensemble, I'm sure it will fit very nicely on my "fake" girl."
     Lacey's dress was a day old.  It came from an outlet mall thirty kilometres outside the city.  Lydia had a tailor alter it to fit the little girl's exacting tastes and fashion sense.  It was sunshine yellow with ribbons and darts and complicated pleats.  It flounced and twirled and featured a full collection of gaudy accessories.  

     "This thing is garbage!  You can have it!"  Lacey's words stung her mother like grit in a windstorm.

   With gentle hands the shopkeeper removed the mannequin's sequinned dress and gracefully surrendered it to Lacey's grasping fingers.  The terrible blonde girl spun to the changing room at the rear of the store.  She squealed in delight as the dress sparkled in the mirror.  Flinging the changing room door wide she flounced and twirled around the little shop.

     "Isn't it lovely!  Oh yes I'm glad it's mine, it's mine, it's mine, it's mine!"  Lacey sang like a bird welcoming spring.  Any onlooker might say that little girl was a ray of sunshine!  Her family knew this sunny moment was an all too rare respite between turbulent fronts but for now they were grateful for the break.

     "We're just happy you're happy, dear." Lester smiled.

     No one noticed the shopkeeper collecting Lacey's discarded clothes from the changing room, or using them to re-dress the mannequin.  He hummed and whistled to himself as Lacey danced and chirped. 

   She was a twirling, glittering whirlwind lifting here and touching down there, spreading song and joyous light throughout the store.  Lacey had gotten her way and she was ecstatic and beautiful for a precious few seconds. Her parents lived for this. Their little girl was still a storm, she would always be a storm, but in this fragile moment Lacey was an electric storm of joy.   

    "Look!" She hollered, "Look! Look! I look just like the statue!"

    And she was right. Lacey was holding the re-attired little mannequin girl's face in her hands and pretended to stare deeply into its eyes.  Then giggling and calling for her parents to keep watching she struck a mimicking pose.

      "The Fake Girl looks just like me!" Lacey marvelled.

       Lydia pressed into her husband's chest while he buried his face in her hair. Overcome with relief and dreading the next outburst they didn't notice Lacey grow quiet. The moment stretched like a cat. However much she loved her daughter, Lydia could not help wishing her little girl were different, more grateful, and respectful and that the precious little girl child she had hoped for would appear and this tempestuous little monster would be gone forever.
   Lester gently lifted Lydia's face. His shirt was soggy with her silent, burning, frustrated, humiliated tears. He knew he should say something encouraging, or comforting but found nothing inside. Coping with Lacey had dried up his emotions. He looked vacant and felt like his soul had been bleached. He was just very tired and knew if nothing changed and improved very soon every hope he had for his family would be gone.
   "Sir, Ma'am? Are you all right?" The bowing salesman approached them showing concern. "Come, come. I think the little miss has changed her mind."
    He beckoned the couple to follow him to the change rooms at the rear of the store. Lacey was wearing the dress she had on earlier and swishing back and forth in the mirror.
    "You know, I actually like this one better. Mom, Dad, can we go now?"
On their way out they passed the little girl mannequin once again dressed in the glamourous flowing sequinned salwar kameez. She was once again partially concealed behind saris and a display of bangles and jewelry. Maybe if Lester and Lydia weren't in such a hurry to take advantage of Lacey's sudden change they might have given it a second look and been amazed at the close resemblance between the doll and their daughter. They might have seen the panicked look in the mannequin's eyes as they seemed to follow them then freeze in place; or wondered at the lifelike warmth, colour, and texture of the skin as it seemed to quiver and pulse with life and then be still.
    The Liitnings left the store as quickly as they could and raced home to finish the preparations for Lacey's birthday. At the party everyone remarked on the drastic change age seven had brought to little "Thunder" Ann Liitning. She smiled, was polite to all the guests, and even said thank-you to her parents. Soon people stopped calling her "Thunder" and she became just plain old Lacey. Some said it was a miracle, others said Lacey had grown out of tantrums. Whatever it was her parents took it as a miracle, or a blessing and never went back to that little dress shop again.

    
   

     
   

     

Weary

Piers surveyed the bloody field. Crows and camp followers stripped the dying of the final shreds of life, wealth, and dignity.  The dead were already stripped of all they had and would ever have and took no notice. As an old soldier, Piers took a moment to mourn and wish them well on whatever journey lay before them, then gathered his wits before any tears cracked his stoic facade.

Tonight would bring feasting for the victors, drinking and plunder.  The fallen, well, there was nothing for them to do but rot in the field where Piers and his comrades had slain them. Any survivors were fleeing to the mountains and the dubious hospitality of the hill tribes. The people of these plains fought desperately, Piers didn't know what they called themselves, but they weren't disciplined and couldn't match the ferocity of his soldiers. Raised since birth to fight, Piers, his brothers and sisters, almost his entire family served the army.

  

  If he asked questions instead of following orders he might have known this battle was nothing but a tax dispute.  Tribute had not been paid and the people here, the slaughtered and scattered, became examples to quell any other whispers of defiance or rebellion.  Piers used a long knife to scrape bloody mud from his boots and swatted away the gathering flies with his free hand. Dark clouds gathered but the late fall day was warm and muggy.  A storm. He hoped it would flood the field and hide the corpses.  No one was going to bury them.  They were a warning.

Clean-up

     Ships in space.  Floating hollow containers shield the fragile occupants inside.  They drift and bump like rudderless canoes.  Metallic shrapnel ricochets like billions of microcomets then is drawn away and collected with powerful targeted electromagnets.  Ceramic and plastic debris is captured in superfine microfilament nets.

     "How's life support on those boats?" 

     The captain can monitor that from her own ship.  This is a gentle reminder for us to hurry up.

     "We have another two cycles before both sides are conscious again.  The Tellurians have secondary systems that survived our initial burst.  The ships are dead but the crews are still alive.  It's the Marsfleet ships, they have emergency oxygen but air scrubbers, recirculators, all their systems are down.  They have about four cycles and they'll be fighting each other for the breather masks."  The captain knows all this.  Is she testing me?

     "Let's get these boats chained and make a path.  Any bits we don't collect make sure they're swept into this system's sun.  Rule one."

    Rule one:  leave no evidence, we were never here.

     We tracked this battle across four solar systems.  Marsfleet pursuing the last Tellurian defenders.   An old story of colonizers against the rebels.  It doesn't really matter now.  Both sides will be slaves and their ships will be salvage.  One cycle after the captain's command dozens of Marsfleet battle carriers along with the remaining Tellurian heavy cruisers and destroyers are linked by a network of invisible energy "chains".  Any uncaptured debris is washed into the nearest sun and the captain gives the order to leave.  In a few short moments our "path", a shortcut through space is generated, and we flee with our booty.

     The perfect crime.  No witnesses.  No evidence.  Did it even happen?  An entire Marsfleet division and the last Free Tellurian Defense battle group vanish.  

     We took them.  They were being wasted anyway.

Classroom Observations

     The ceiling tiles were yellowing.  They curled at the corners and bowed out in the middles.  Too bright fluorescent lights hummed, buzzed, and flickered at a frequency just beyond human sensory capabilities.  The room was warm and dry, but smelled like it had been water damaged at one time.  A mix of formica tables, plastic chairs, and single desks with attached plastic chairs clustered in twos and threes like awkward cliquish teenagers and faced an aging white board.  Once brilliantly new, it had replaced an aging wood-framed green chalkboard.  The giant erasers and chalk nubs were gone, replaced  with dust-free multi-coloured markers and a single hand-sized "cleaning tool".  Their role, to communicate in written and diagrammatic form - to educate, was the same. 
     Elsewhere in the school other white boards were being taken down, some only half a decade old.  New projectors with attached interactive screens were taking over.  Slim and sleek laptop computers crammed with libraries of information continued their conquest, amalgamation, and subsumption of all previous media. Knowledge now came from boxes linked together with plastic ropes.  It shone through a light onto a screen and reflected back into the learners' brains.  Learning was still a safety meeting - nobody moves, nobody gets hurt - but the interface continued to evolve.  How much longer until a direct link between the box and the brain?  No interaction required just a chair and an on/off switch.