8 of 100 Days of Stories

         

100 Days of Stories                    

                   Day 1

The days out at sea
were maddening to Lucy. For every net of fish her well-meaning
husband pulled in, she dreamt of pushing him overboard and starting
her life over in a strange land on a distant coast. She was certain
that if she had any sort of nautical know-how she would have offed
the ignorant ham-faced jackass a long time ago.

His crew called him
"Gull," as in Seagull but she had said "I do" to his given
name of Gus. When she shivered in the sea mist she wondered why she
hadn't seen the glint of stupidity in his eyes, how the fates had
conspired to hide the bird-brained "Gull" behind the mask of Gus.
Gus who said if she stayed home he would miss her too greatly, Gus
who had included her sea-travels in their pre-nuptials, Gus who was
"Gull," in every action, every awkward romantic gesture and
ill-advised sexual advancement he made towards his soggy wife.

Lucy winced at how
much she had argued with her father to marry Gus. She had seen his
boat and dreamed of ocean voyages to Europe or South America,
anywhere that wasn't New England. She found Gus's proposal after
a month of courtship terribly romantic, and in the end her parents
relented when Lucy resorted to a hunger strike which in reality had
been nothing more than Lucy eating when they weren't looking.

The waves licked at
the side of The Palindrome, which Gus insisted was the god of the
seas. In the beginning Lucy thought his mistake was endearing but the
grace period for correction was long gone and now every time Lucy saw
the name scrawled on the side of the boat every nerve in her body
screeched "Poseidon, you illiterate moron, it's Poseidon! How can
anyone claim they love the sea and not know POSEIDON?"

Such was Lucy's
life, and she had resigned herself to her perpetually damp misery
crying over the edge of the boat and pretending it was sea-sickness.
The crew laughed at her apparent malaise and teased Gull that this
was proof that women didn't belong at sea. Lucy wished that they
were all dead.

She ate in silence
alone with her husband; the only time that they were ever alone
together was in his quarters which smelled of fish and regret, when
Gull broke the silence with a sheepish announcement, "The boys and
I are heading down south this summer, there's supposed to be a
pretty large skipjack migration near Florida," he cleared his
throat, "I figure you could stay home with your mother since you
get so sick on these small trips."

Lucy glared at Gull
and tested her hope that she had suddenly gained to power to kill him
with her mind, when he continued to stare at her stupidly she began
to scream. "You stupid no-brained ass! You keep me trapped on this
boat near the icy shores I have seen my entire life, and the time you
finally head out somewhere beautiful you- you- stupid no brained
ASS!" she punctuated her tirade by hurling her drink at his head
and running to the deck.

There was chaos as
the crew tried to keep control of the Palindrome during an unexpected
storm, Lucy went to her usual place and began to wail. She regretted
her life tremendously, every choice she had made was the wrong one
and this was her sentence. She lost herself so completely in her
misery that when the crew shouted out to secure themselves to the
boat she heard nothing and was tossed overboard by a wave.

Day 2

Long ago the days
had gotten colder and Yancy hadn't noticed. It wasn't until
Margarite, the sole frumpy caretaker of the drafty church pointed it
out to him that he had even bothered to observe the climate at all.
This annoyed Yancy in a way that would have caused him to grind his
teeth, had any remained in his withered old head.

Yancy and Margarite
had an understanding of mutual company. He, a decades old zombie,
acted as her celibate uncommunicative spousal stand-in, and she in
return had knocked out all of his teeth with a shovel the first time
they met.  It was not the star-crossed, eyes caught across a room
intro that most girls fantasize about, and yet Margarite was certain
that it was at least as charming as some of the romantic comedies she
had watched as a young girl. This was the kind of views on romance
that made Margarite a perfect nun, and a terrible blight on Yancy's
daily existence.

Yancy had been a
practical zombie, remaining content to linger at the train station he
had spent his entire life working for. At night he kept the place
free of raccoons, and only occasionally ventured out from his
abandoned engine to snack on some young hooligan trying to tag a
railcar. He stuck to light snacking; a bite or two was all he really
needed. If he had stuck to that routine he would have never met the
hen shaped woman who fussed over him daily.

Dinner was becoming
a bit too infrequent for Yancy's taste and the station had changed
from a bustling hub of daily activity to a quiet hub of nothing. He
never would have called it a ghost town though, a stickler for the
practical, Yancy didn't believe in ghosts or calling empty
buildings towns. Such poetic folderol had no place in the mind of a
train conductor, living or undead, and it was that practicality that
sent him across the street to Saint Beauregard's Chapel of Constant
Sorrow in the hopes of catching some slow devout on their way out of
daily service. Instead he found Margarite, or rather she found him
with a Black Diamond Deploy 3 across the face.

The rest was
repetitive history. Yancy spent his un-life tied up in Margarite's
living quarters as she spent the day dusting and managing the chapel
for any would-be parishioners. Daily nobody came, and nightly
Margarite would chatter on endlessly about strangers who had long ago
stopped kneeling in her pews. Yancy groaned in miserable response,
having stopped lunging at her long ago when the last , "You old
silly," had rung painfully in his ears shattering what was left of
his ego.

"Do you think it's
global warming Yancy?" a rare pause in her ceaseless chattering
snapped him out of his memories.

"Rooaagchachl?"
he responded in confusion.

"No, I guess that
wouldn't make much sense now would it? Warming making things
colder, plus there aren't any people on the roads these days, so
I'm sure the ozone layer has..." She returned to her monologue
and Yancy returned to his thoughts, drifting back in his memories
further than he had before.

He slowly began to
remember his youth, warm days and hot-blooded adolescence pushing him
to find his fortune. He remembered that there was a girl who he
fancied at the time, though the rot in his brain left her memory
cloudy. They spent days together, holding hands, talking, kissing
behind her all girls' school, she'd laugh as he'd nibble behind
her ear. He had been chased away by numerous nuns who called him a
lothario or heart-breaker, but he was only interested in one girl.

She was the sun to
him. No matter the weather, when Yancy saw her it was a summer day
warm enough to scramble a young boy's brain.  He would have given
her the world if she had asked for it, but she asked for nothing but
his company. So he gave her balloons.

He didn't know why
it was balloons, but flowers had seemed too clich and stuffed toys
were the gifts of children so he had settled somewhere in between,
giving her a bouquet of brightly colored balloons every weekend
before they hit the town. She would laugh and tease him gently before
releasing them into the air with a delighted laugh as he pretended to
grasp for them in their ascent.

He tried to remember
what exactly she would say to him when again he was snapped back to
the present.

         "I've been
feeling a bit run down lately, maybe I can find a hot water bottle to
warm my bones. Would you like me to look for anything for you Yancy?"
She stared at him with embarrassing sincerity.

"Naahguuuuugh,"
he lifted his hand in a stiffly dismissive gesture.

Margarite smiled
softly and planted a kiss awkwardly on the top of his flaking scalp,
before wrapping herself in her tattered coat and heading out into the
chilly evening.

Yancy groaned softly
to himself as he searched for more of his lost youth in the recesses
of his mind. He remembered little more of her but the day she
graduated. He watched her from behind the gate of her school and
cheered embarrassingly loud as she crossed the stage, there was a
party for her at which her parents ignored him, and that night as
they sat alone together under the stars he had asked her to be his.

Tears welled up in
her eyes as he had held out the ring to her, he was expecting tears,
but he wasn't expecting her to shake her head.

"My parents are
sending me off to Europe," blood rushed to his ears drowning out
everything else she said to him. He stared at her weeping and when
she stood to leave he begged her to run away with him instead--

Margarite's heavy
footfall signaled her return, she sighed heavily as she walked over
to the knots that kept Yancy bound and untied them.

"I found something
for you Yancy, I thought I would give them to you as a going away
present," from the pockets of her coats she pulled out a dirty pair
of dentures and a half inflated balloon she placed them on the table
as Yancy stared at them silently, lost in his thoughts...

"You can't go
Margarite!" he had cried through tears of his own, "I love you, I
will always only love you." The entire night seemed to be crushing
him, "Run away with me instead, I know we're young, but you can't
seriously be thinking of spending years in some convent in Europe can
you?"

Margarite smiled
softly at him through her tears, "You old silly," she choked and
closed the door behind her.

Yancy snapped out of
his reverie and stared at the old woman sleeping on the bed, he
gingerly took the dentures and placed them in his mouth, snapping a
few times to test them before he moved.

"Oh Yancy, it's
been so long since you've nibbled behind my ear."

Day
3

         Deep within the trenches of a battle long resigned
to the studies of school children, lay Private Charles Lackey.  Each
breath taken was miserable but he forced the foul air in and out of
his broken body with the dedication of a military man should. He was
the last soldier alive in the trench, the other men, his brothers in
arms, did not know this morning that they were crawling into their
own grave.

         He clutched his rifle to him with broken hands as
the figure stepped down into the hole and peered around. She was a
strange apparition, in tight denim pants, horn rimmed glasses and a
shirt that read in bright letters "Death before dishonor, nothing
before coffee." Charles thought he saw a sparrow tattooed on her
neck, but he was sure he was mistaken. He was convinced his eyes were
playing tricks on him as the girl began lifting up the ghostly
specters of this fallen comrades from their remains.

         "Okay, okay, form an orderly line to the left and
no shoving. You will all get where you need to go if you just--Oh
cool messenger bag! Does this belong to anyone? No? Cool, Amber is
gonna scream when she sees me with this!"

         Charles watched in confusion as the girl rummaged
through the contents of the bag, gagging at the sight of the rations
inside which she smelled briefly and tossed outside the trench. She
then produced a small flat device from her pocket and aimed it at
Charles. He screamed.

         "Whoa! You're still alive! Crap!" She returned
the device to her pocket and began to shove the confused spirits
along into a glowing door which had appeared.

         "Wait!" Charles choked, as the relieved deceased
resumed their slow march towards the afterlife, "Who are you?"

         "Hold on," the young girl held up a finger to
silence him as she retrieved her strange device and yelled at it,
"Circe, call Boss guy. This will just be a second--Hey, you said
that they would all be dead Jordan. Well one of them isn't, he's
staring at me now. Lemme double check, yeah he's still staring at
me. Yeah I think he sees me." She waved her arm in front of Charles
who followed her gesture with a painful wince. "Yes he sees me.
Well what am I supposed to do? Hello? Damn it, I was cut off."

         "What are you doing here?" Charles struggled to
sit up but only managed to discover several broken ribs, "Are you a
grave robber?"

         The girl looked offended, "Gross, no way. I'm
just here doing my job so I can buy a car when I go to college this
fall. Mom was being a total bitch and wouldn't just buy me one."

         Charles took a quick stock of his remaining limbs,
three quarters of one leg, and the other was completely gone, his
arms were both present but several fingers were gone as well. He
noticed tourniquets around his knee and thigh. He had been out of the
fight before the others fell to the enemy.

         "Are you an angel then?" he asked skeptically
looking her up and down.

         She shook her head, "No, this is just temp gig.
I'm technically a reaper, I get the souls of the dead where they
are supposed to go and keep records so no one is forgotten about. You
can't have someone living a million years just because a reaper
forgot about them."

         "So what is in store for me?"

         "I'm not sure, my inventory says that everyone
in this trench should be dead, and you're kind of holding things
up." She gave him a look of irritation that showed how little she
admired his determination to stay alive.

         "Well maybe you can come back some other time, I
am sure I am not dead presently and if it is all the same to you I
would much prefer to continue living," he said, adjusting a nearby
helmet to prop up his head. 

         "Look guy, I don't really want to have to come
back here, I have stuff to do, and this job doesn't pay overtime. I
have a party to go to tonight and well, you know, YOLO."

         "Yohlow? What is that, some sort of native rite of
passage?"

         The girl stared at Charles for a moment, "No, it
means You Only Live Once."

         "That is precisely why I am in no hurry to shuffle
loose this mortal coil young lady. So if you do not mind, I would
like to--"

         "No, you're supposed to be dead, and I am not
going to stick around late just so I can fill in some sort of
shrinkage report on a missing dead guy, to me you are dead, and have
been for a very long time."

         "What sort of talk is this? You are looking at me
right now, you know that I live."

         "You live now, sure, but what does that matter?
Who cares? I never heard of you, all you are is a check mark on my
work app."

         "I do not know what you are talking about, but if
I am as inconsequential as you say I am then please move along, you
are exhausting me."

         "You're being a douche, you know that? I don't
need to take this kind of crap from some old dead guy. I'm going to
be a photographer," the contempt in the girl's voice was
practically tangible, "I should rip your mustache off your stupid
face and make a keychain out of it."

         "Obviously your dungarees have cut off blood to
your head, young lady, now if you do not mind Charles Lackey does not
intend to die today."

         "Lackey? My last name is Lackey!" The girl
stared at him for a while with suspicion before turning her attention
once again to her device, "Circe, look up my family tree. Look for
Charles Lackey."

         The girl stared at her device and then at Charles,
then back to the device with a flourish of swipes and pokes. She
frowned.

         "This thing says you're my great great
grandfather, which is weird because if you die here then I--Circe
call Boss guy, Hello? Jordan? You're such a dick! You think it'd
be funny if I were never born you douchebag? Yeah, well it wasn't
funny!" The girl seemed annoyed but satisfied by her strange
conversation and turned her attention back to Charles. "Good news
old guy, you're right you aren't supposed to die today, you get
to live a long happy life and eventually that leads to me, cool huh?
Well I gotta go, peace yo!" and with that she left the trench, and
Charles was alone again.

         "So, that is the result of my genealogy,"
Charles muttered to himself thoughtfully, and with a look of
disappointment in his eyes, he raised the rifle to his chin...

Day
4

         You see sir, I had every intention of arriving on
time to work today, but unfortunately I had a long stream of bad
luck.  Now, I know you aren't one to listen to excuses and to be
honest sir, I haven't been the sort of guy to make excuses for
things before today, but to be perfectly honest you're going to
just have to believe me--Oh?

         Well it started like any other Wednesday, I cleaned
up, shaved, got dressed for work, drank some coffee and read the
news. The strangeness didn't really begin until I hit Baxter
Street.

         Baxter street is where the "artsy type" gather
to sell whatever it is this crafts obsessed generation has copied off
of Pinterest--Pinterest? Of it's a website where people gather
websites about stuff, a lot of people fill it with craft projects or
recipes for food they'll never cook, I mean brioche? Come on, who
are we kidding? I highly doubt that anyone is whipping up a batch of
brioche, oh right my morning.

         So I usually catch the bus on Baxter Street on
Wednesdays because the bus stop closer to my house has been scene to
some rather unsavory youths. There is this one girl in particular who
insists on sitting really close to me while I wait for the bus, I
wouldn't mind it so much if she didn't reek of gasoline and raw
chicken. Well on Wednesday she takes the Everest street eight o'clock
bus downtown so I catch the Baxter Street eight fifteen and then make
a connection once she's gotten off.

         Well there I was waiting for the bus when this young
guy who looks like a hippie runs up to me and places a shriveled
disembodied monkey's paw in my hands and stares at me. Why do they
call them paws? Shouldn't they be monkey hands? They have fingers
you know, they certainly look more like hands than paws to me. Oh
right, so I look at this guy and I say, "Hey man I don't want
this thing, it looks like it's seen the deep end of several
dumpsters, why don't you just stick to hot-glueing shells to old
lamps like the rest of these guys? I mean, this thing is even missing
a thumb!"

         He then goes into this rant about how it grants
wishes and I need to make a wish right away because he needs to pass
on the monkey's paw, and the entire time his body spray is just
making me gag so I say "I wish you would go away."

         Then his eyes get real big like I've just said
something he'd never heard before and begins backing away from me.
He steps off the side walk and before I could say anything else the
Baxter street bus hit him, KAPOW!  Then I guess the driver freaked
out, because instead of stopping for us to get on the bus he just
drove off!

         So then I realized I had two problems, one was the
disgusting monkey hand and the other was the fact that someone had
just lay waste to this dude and drove away.

         I tossed the hand as far away from me as I could and
reached for my cellphone to call the police, but when I reached into
my jacket pocket, THERE WAS THE MONKEY HAND! One of the fingers had
bent down but I knew it was the same one because I certainly hadn't
put a monkey hand in that pocket before! So I screamed and wished
that the creepy hippie dude was alive so I could give him back his
stupid hand when all of a sudden he gets up off the street!

         He looked really bad too, his arms were really
broken and his eyes were all cloudy and one of them had some gravel
stuck in it, real gross. Well I guess you had to be there.  I wasn't
going to stick around to find out what was going on so I dropped the
monkey paw in front of him and started hightailing it to work on foot
figuring I'd be about 5 minutes late at the most if I really booked
it because my wife has been making me go to the gym with her and I
think I'm in pretty good shape now but there was some construction
being done nearby and that was really holding me up. I guess I said
"I wish I had more time to get to work," out loud because I felt
something move in my pocket and, YES IT WAS THE MONKEY HAND! I'm
not ashamed to admit I screamed when I felt that thing move in my
pocket and when I took it out to look at it there were three fingers
bent and when I looked up I was looking at dinosaurs!

         Did you know that dinosaurs used to live in this
area? I sure as heck didn't and if I thought I had screamed loudly
before it was nothing compared to how I screamed when I almost got
stepped on by one of those big ones with the long neck.

         I started running for my life when I found myself
face to face with one of the smaller types, but even those are taller
than me, and it screamed at me! Its breath worse than the hippie
guy's body spray and I panicked and punched it. I punched it right
in its stupid face!

         It was pretty stunned, and I understand that, I mean
it isn't like he had ever seen a human before let alone been
punched in the face by one. By the way, punching faces really hurts
your hand, I bet more than the face being punched! So I started
running again, hoping I'd find a tree to climb, but that took me a
while because the trees that were in the area were mostly really tall
ones without many low branches, but I found one! I climbed up the
tree and that stupid lizard followed me and stayed at the bottom,
waiting for me to get tired I guess. I tried to get him to go away by
throwing my brief case at him but he just ignored it, probably
because I missed.

         I reached into my pocket and grabbed the monkey hand
and only one finger was left standing, it wasn't even one at the
end, it looked like that stupid hand was flipping me the bird, which
honestly it was doing that with the wishes, it didn't need to add
insult to injury. So I grabbed it and said "I wish I was at work
where I am supposed to be," and poof! There I was in the lobby! I
still had three minutes to go! I tossed the monkey paw into the
garbage and ran to the elevator, but there was an "Out of Order"
sign on it.

         I started up the stairs, and as you know we're on
the 20^th floor of
this building so it took me a while, and I was still tired from those
dinosaurs you know?

         The merger papers for the meeting today? Crap! They
were in my briefcase!

Day
5

         Dahlia checked her watch again, he was late. She had
been awaiting his arrival for what felt like days, but in this Place
it could have been centuries. She was focused on the entry, she
needed him to see her in this Place, she needed him to know it was
her, and that she was fine without him. She needed him to know so she
could make him suffer.

         The Place had nearly driven her mad, the perfection
of it all. No one understood her here, "This is paradise," they
would tell her as they shook their heads.

         Paradise, the never aging, glorious perfection made
her scream just so something imperfect would ring through the skies.
When Dahlia screamed they came for her, and with gentle hands and
soft words they led her away and sewed her lips shut.

         Subconsciously she lifted her fingers to her lips
and shuddered. They had sewn her mouth shut with perfectly white silk
thread, so pretty and cruel, and only until she "learned to calm
down." All it had done was remind her of how she didn't need to
eat, she felt satiated but in those details more madness lurked.  She
had clawed at the thread, in tears and in desperation, and then was
silent. Dahlia had been silent, and calm and without any ceremony
they removed the thread.

         She still didn't speak, and instead thought of
him. That infuriating man who had insisted that she would never make
it here, a man who had insisted to her that she would suffer if she
avoided it as she had hoped to do. A man she intended to drag out of
there with all the pent up loathing she felt from the moment she
arrived.

         At long last the gates opened and the newest
arrivals filtered in, each of them being greeted by friends and
family who had arrived before. At first she was afraid she had been
mistaken when she saw his name and face on the arrivals roster, but
finally he arrived.

         He was dressed in the same white as everyone else,
the smile on his face showing how pleased he was to at last be what
he hoped was his eternal home.

         She watched him. She hadn't expected her anger to
resurface as much as it did. His betrayal, his cruelty all for the
sake of this Place? It didn't seem right, and here...well
everything had to be right.

         Dahlia swallowed the scream she felt rising up her
throat and fell in step behind him, she wanted to catch him before
the tour, before he felt the satisfaction of knowing anything at all
about the Place.

         "About time you got here," she said, grabbing
him by the shoulder.

         "You? How did you get here? I thought that--"

         "Yeah, well I guess the cruel joke was on me, I
never wanted to be here, and yet...never let it be said that no one
watches you while you're doing the right thing," she held up a
silver card, on one side was her name and face, and on the reverse in
embossed letters was 'MARTYR.'

         He smiled and hugged her tightly, "I want to let
you know that I forgive you."

         "Forgive me?
You forgive me? You were the one who abandoned me, you were the one
who insulted me, and you
forgive me?" Dahlia
pushed her way out of his embrace and slapped him as hard as she
could, she wanted her hand to sting, but there was nothing. "I want
you to know that I will never forgive you for how you hurt me, and
all for this?"

         "This is Heaven," he said to her looking
confused by her wrath, "this is what everybody wants."

         "It's not what I want. What I want is for you to
come with me. If you are really sorry you will leave with me right
now and go back--"

"There is no going back! It's here or the other
place Dahlia, you know that!" He looked around nervously as people
began to pay attention to them. "We're here, can't you just be
happy with that? Why would you want to go back to that pain, that
uncertainty, that--that filth?"

She shook her head, "Call me nostalgic," she
glanced over at the gate, still open to allow the stragglers in. She
began to leave.

He grabbed her wrist, "You'll never make it back,
what will you do if they send you to the other place?"

         She pulled her wrist away and began to run, laughing
as she called to him, "You know what they say, 'Go to hell for
the company.'"

Day
6

         The crisp winter air chilled the tears as they ran
down Echo's flushed cheeks. Her sentence was severe and cruel, a
story that would be lost to the legends of time. A time for creating
myths about the men who carried out the strange punishments of the
pantheon of gods. They punished without prejudice, the haughty, the
skilled, the beautiful, and the chaste.

         Echo had not meant to fall in love with the strange
shepherd; she had only meant to listen to his song. When she heard
the first few notes of his flute on the other side of the hill, she
could not help herself. She found herself running to him, called by
the music to his side. She was swept up by it like a gale force wind,
she danced and twirled under the late spring sun, she felt the music
wrap itself around her like a lover and together they moved. When she
stopped she was out of breath, sweating and satiated. Only then did
she see the face of the shepherd.

         He was wild looking, dressed in leather with an
unkempt beard like wild brambles, skin that had been made rough by
the wind and green eyes that reminded Echo of forests that frightened
children avoided. Atop his head were rams horns, black as obsidian,
she knew then that she stood before the god of fields and groves,
Pan.

         She stepped back from the shock and stumbled to the
ground, terrified by his appearance. He offered her his hand and for
a long while she stared at it before wrapping her delicate fingers
around his. He helped her to her feet and smiled, she turned and ran.

         Echo realized she could resist him no more than she
had been able to resist his music and that night she found herself
dreaming of him. She dreamt of him in a field by the river in the
moonlight, laughing as strange creatures danced around a fire,
beckoning her to return to his side, taunting her lack of willpower.
With a start she awoke, and ran to the place she had seen in her
dreams.

         Echo was a beautiful girl who many men in the
village had taken an interest in, but she had rejected them all with
the same force that drove her into Pan's arms.  As they embraced
she knew that she had rejected those men for this moment of passion.

         In the morning she awoke, adorned in flowers beside
the Neda river, Pan sat watching her, stroking her dark black hair in
his rough fingers. They did not speak, for words could do their
feelings no justice.

         In the days that followed the moonstruck Echo heard
nothing but the music of her lover's flute. People in her village
began to think she had gone mad, and urged her father, Achelous to
find her a husband.

         Achelous found Phorbas, a young neophyte in the
Temple of Pan. Phorbas was a proud man who claimed to be the son of
the horned god and used this to excuse lecherous behavior. He had
forced himself on many young girls in the village, and eagerly
accepted an invitation to do the same to the beautiful Echo.

         When Achelous told Echo she was to be married she
screamed, "I will never marry that pig! May he die and rot and
become nothing but the grass that feed our sheep! I would rather die
myself than to let that arrogant boar touch me!"

         Phorbas emerged from the shadows and faced Echo.
"You dare reject the son of Pan?" He snarled as he struck her
across the face, "You have rejected the son and so reject the
father! For your insolence you shall die!" He grabbed her by the
wrist and drug her to the temple where he bound her hands and feet.
"I will give you time to reconsider your foolishness, but my mercy
is not without limits."

         There she stayed for months, imprisoned and
miserable. It was not long before her belly showed evidence of her
coupling with Pan, evidence which only served to further enrage
Phorbas who refused to feed her but once a day as she shivered in the
autumn cold. She feared she would die and the child along with her.
In anguish she cried out for her lover and at night he finally came
for her.

         Pan wept as he looked at Echo, his healthy lover
with robust hips and wine red lips had fallen away to the gaunt and
ashen figure barely alive in front of him. As he reached down to
touch her she screamed out in pain and water spilled from between her
thighs.

         Through the night Echo suffered, and in the new
day's light Pan held two squirming pink daughters in his arms. Iynx
and Iambe wailed for their mother who lay nearly dead on the floor of
the temple. Pan kissed the girls on the tops of their heads and
wrapped them in his cloak as he left the temple.

         As generations passed, the story was told that a
nymph called Echo refused the god Pan and was torn to pieces by his
followers. Her love, their dance, their daughters forgotten to the
erosion of myth...but the river remembers, and so does Pan.

         

         

Day
7

"It is bitter to
lose a friend to evil, before one loses him to death."
Mary
Renault

"It is better
to lose a friend to evil before you lose him to death."
Darcy
McCoy

         The slow moving water bubbled sickeningly as it made
its way through the city, several states away a chemical spill had
rendered it toxic to humans and all we could do was sit and wait for
this sweet smelling death to move downstream to the next city. I
watched from the bridge as it arrived, its tell-tale scent of
licorice announcing its arrival followed by hundreds of fish floating
to the top of the water, gasping and dying.

         Some people didn't listen to the warnings about
avoiding the contaminated water source, and city wide the very young
and very old began to fall. I sat with my sister at my young niece's
bedside when an ill-advised lemonade stand resulted in three days of
ferocious illness followed by her death. She was only seven years
old, and I would have to help bury her.

         My close friend Jack had helped me with the
arrangements. I had to handle it, my sister was too big of a wreck to
arrange anything, and with all the complications that had arisen from
the polluted water--the process was more difficult than most could
handle at the time.

         At night I spoke to Jack about anything else I could
think of, anything that wasn't people dying in the streets. I
longed for the petty discussions of celebrity gossip or political
scandal, but instead I would try to speak, and Jack would say,
"Darcy, it's okay to be upset about this."

         Jack was always the one I could talk to when the
world seemed to be collapsing in on me. He could make me see reason,
and kept the world from spinning so fast. He was my closest friend. I
was foolish to think that could not be taken away from me.

         The cold snap hit over night and in the morning the
entire city was covered in snow and ice.  Parts of the river had
frozen along the banks and the chill slowed the movement of the
poison downstream. It was trapped with us, and bottled water supplies
were running out.

         The city began to feel the effects within a few
days, there were water riots outside of grocery stores and other
places in the country scrambled to makes sure that supporting us
wouldn't leave another city down river high and dry when the toxin
finally did move along. The hesitation was disastrous, angry men and
women threw each other into the river. Some say it was out of the
need to survive, Jack said it was nothing but people showing the
worst they were always capable of.

         For days the frozen poison lingered on the banks,
keeping the disgustingly sweet smell in the air to remind us all just
how screwed we were.  The insanity was beginning to grow. My sister
called me screaming that her neighbors were trying to break down her
door for her last gallon of water, we were cut off abruptly as they
finally succeeded in breaking down her door.

         I kept myself locked in my apartment with the lights
out, in the streets below all you could hear was screams of angry
panic and desperate cries for help, sirens hadn't been heard in
weeks, even the police had given up all appearances of authority.

         I was shocked to hear the knock on my door. I had
expected, perhaps someone coming to tell me the expected fate of my
sister. I was relieved when I saw Jack. He said nothing as he entered
my apartment. He was covered in snow and looked like hell.

         "Darcy," his voice sounded tired and raw, "This
is the end Darcy, no one is going to help us, no one is coming to
help you."

         I stared at Jack, he wasn't just tired looking, he
was broken. Something ugly had reached inside of him and had taken
hold of his spirit, breaking it and reshaping it into the man of
despair I saw standing in front of me.

         "I can't let you live like this Darcy, it's
just not right," he reached into his pocket and pulled out a gun,
"Just hold still, and this will all be over quickly."

         I barely had time to move out of the way before he
fired, shattering a vase filled with dead flowers. "Jack! Stop! Why
are you doing this?" I cried from behind my couch.

         "Darcy, we're friends, and friends don't let
friends suffer like this, trust me, this is all for the best!"

         Jack shot at the couch, missing me and sending me
running into the open, "Please Jack! Stop this! I don't want to
die!"

         "Of course you want to die Darcy, why else would
you have let me in? You've heard the screaming in the streets, and
still you let me in. You let me in this apartment so I could let you
out!" He fired over and over again, getting closer each time.

         I grabbed the poker from my fireplace as he came
closer to me, "Don't worry Darcy this time I won't mi-" he
stopped as I connected the iron with his temple. He slumped to the
ground, staring at me as his mouth opened and closed like those damn
fish. I swung the iron over and over again across his skull until he
was nothing more than a red mess on my linoleum.

         I stood up taller and smiled. "Good old Jack
always was good at cheering me up," I thought to myself as I left
the apartment, I laughed to myself as I head downstairs to make some
social calls.

Day 8
"It is only
possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis."-
Margaret Bonnano

         They act like he married her because of a damn shoe,
which would have served her right, marrying some foppish prince more
interested in ladies footwear than the girl inside them. My sister
and I know the truth though, we always knew Ella was the prettiest
from the day we first stepped foot in the door we knew. She was nice
too and really helpful around the house but the girl was just, thick
as a brick made of mud.

         Momma knew that there weren't many men like our
step-father, men who would look past the plainness of a widowed
mother of two equally plain girls and see the brilliantly determined
woman underneath. A woman who sent her daughters to every teacher and
tutor who would accept little girls, a woman who made certain we
spoke several languages, dressed well and were seen doing so. Maybe
we weren't as grateful as we should have been, but we were
children.  Just little children who wanted to play in the dirt with
Ella, dirty little Cinderella.

         Our mother got frustrated, and Ella was sent off to
do chores so we wouldn't be distracted, mother had tried including
her in studies but Ella wouldn't pay any attention. After the fifth
French tutor quit because Ella was singing to rats, mother sent her
off to be productive in the house and out of the way.

         When our stepfather died we were all distraught, but
my mother took it harder than any of us, she shut herself up in her
room for a week before coming out. The loss of the \ man who had
loved her had chilled her heart and she knew that without his money
she would soon be unable to pay for dowries for her daughters.

         Everyone knows the story from there, the ball, the
prince, the slipper. Ella married a man she knew for a single night
and the kingdom loved her for it, they loved her and they ran us out
of town. I heard rumors about what had supposedly happened to us,
birds pecked out our eyes indeed. The truth was that Ella had invited
us to her wedding and the prince took one look at our crooked noses
and knobbed elbows and decided we were too hideous to be a part of
his extended family.

         So the three of us were on our own again, just like
we had been before our stepfather. Mother did her best to look brave
for the two of us, but we knew how this was breaking her heart. So my
sister and I put all our tutoring to good use. I became a school
teacher and my sister teaches young girls to be more than just a
vapid face in a pretty dress. We make little pay, but it is enough.
Happy endings are where you find them, not in a story someone else
writes for you.

         

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