The Seventh Folding of Willow Sprite

by M. K. Noble

Crumbs dusted the white enamel, clinging, until a spray of water took them. As the specks of cake began their journey, she wondered how long it had been since she left the house. McKenna never went outside. She didn’t bother. She gave the box a tap and a shake. It was three years ago. It had been Lindsey’s twenty-fourth birthday. There was pizza, cake and then, the Gamezworld friend request.

Reminiscing, she sang as she folded, “So young, you’d just begun . . .” Three years since she began her affair with

Kevin of Seven, who lived in a place near Chicago. “Or where Chicago would be if the Windy City existed in the Seventh Dimension.” He teased, “It’s windy here too, lol.”

Lindsey had joked about how lame this “Kevin guy” was. It’s too bad some people don’t like other people to be happy.

What did he look like? No picture, only an ET avatar. “He does sound cute,” Lindsey finally admitted, “but why won’t he say where he’s from? Doesn’t that bother you?”

No. McKenna wasn’t bothered. Unlike former friend Lindsey, McKenna still isn’t bothered. There were weeks of chats, discussing games and favorite characters, and colors. It was simple. McKenna and Kevin were in love.

She had promoted Linds as a Gamezworlders player for the Seven D. She wouldn’t just ditch Linds. There was no invite for Lindsey. McKenna had felt guilty but thrilled. The thought still thrilled her. Sadly, Lindsey’s negativity persisted.

“McKen, I don’t like this; he’s not telling you enough. Why won’t he at least say where he’s from?”

“He does, Linds; you don’t believe him, but I do. That’s the difference.”

“The Seventh Dimension, McKen?” Lindsey tried to turn McKenna against him. “He says he lives in the Seventh Dimension, McKen? C’mon.”

“That’s why he turned you down.” McKenna had to be blunt so that Lindsey would know the score. “Lindsey, I told Kevin you didn’t believe him. Uh, so, I’m a player in the Seventh D World Game. Sorry Linds, but you weren’t invited.”

Lindsey didn’t give up. “Why can’t I find Seven D anywhere, McKenna? Doesn’t that strike you as weird?”

“Okay so, Seventh D World Games isn’t found on search engines, Linds. That’s because SDWG is super exclusive and private.”

When it became clear she had to choose, McKenna blocked Lindsey’s emails and avoided her calls. Despite her resolve, McKenna was sad. She and Lindsey had been friends since the third grade.

Kevin had sympathized, saying it was for the best since Lindsey took time away from games and time away from folding. Folding is important.

McKenna folded the cupcake box, making it a five-fold. The ends must meet exactly. Pressing . . . pressing . . . be patient. Crease the cardboard, then fold exactly, press, crease . . . She hummed a kindergarten song, “The People on the Bus.” Creasing and pressing, “All through the town,” she sang. “You’re not a box any more; you’re décor.“

Décor was a sophisticated word. McKenna was cosmopolitan. “Cosmopolitan” was Kevin’s favorite compliment.

She added the five-fold to the pink tower on the window side in the living room. Stepping back, she smiled. The bakery pink transformed the wall. The wall was incredibly awesome. Pink was definitely better than margarine yellow. There was not enough room to view the full effect. The hall ended in egg cartons, useful in mapping dimensions.

The halls where McKenna walked in 1997 were lined with homecoming banners, dance notices and one with a black marker smeared on an Animal Farm poster, starring “McKenna the pig as Napoleon’s wifey.”

Her late mother’s bedroom walls hosted layers of TV Guides and Enquirers. Kevin had remarked on their value in making intra-space assessments. He appreciated her ingenuity.

Stairs were becoming a problem. The extra pounds she guessed, pounds added to the three hundred fifteen that had been her weight on the last doctor visit. The entry to her bedroom office had become an arch of tri-fold cellophane.

Be careful. Remember the roach attack on the Styrofoam. She had created a wall of Styrofoam behind her bed. The boxes resembled oysters, common in a mermaid’s environment.

Kevin had been pleased and she was proud of her ingenuity. He has gone on about the wall being useful in plotting a bridge map. Then the roach invasion had ruined it all. Remembering the roaches, she winced and berated herself again. You better not pout; you better watch out. Worms march in, they march out; worms play pinochle on your snout. Be careful.

Attracted by wafts of ravioli and fries, they had streamed through the boxes, gathering an army before dropping to the floor and traversing the worn carpet to her desk, where they scaled the oak frame like a mountain.

A message from Kevin had come through while she was screaming. Crunching them under her feet, she swept away handfuls of twitching insects, scooping and flinging them to the floor. Fighting the urge to run, she had answered.

“Just eat them,” he said. “Catch them as they run. Pop them in your mouth and enjoy a snack. LOL!” Kevin had laughed at her. “No,” she had sobbed, “roaches are gross.”

Minutes of silence became an eternity of loss. Waiting to be forgiven, she had stood, staring at Mac as she flicked roaches from her hair and brushed them off her sweats. At last, the seven hearts had popped up; he was back. Anything, she had promised herself then. I’ll do anything, oh please.

Discard the box shells, he had said. Her tears had softened him. She could tell he cared because he sent the seven hearts. “Oh Kevin, so many . . .” Remorse still threatened to overwhelm her.

The insects had paused before swarming her desk. They knew that they had gone too far. They should have fled then, scurried into the peeling walls, back to their twitching families hidden in dark chambers. They would have been safe.

“Go work on the pink wall and don’t come back for an hour.” The roaches were gone when she returned. Erased was a better description. All that was left were smears.

What happened? The Seven D had remapped her office, Kevin explained. She told herself it doesn’t matter because a message had appeared with a link to Seventh Neighborhood. She had clicked “About” and “FAQ,” but there were few facts available. “Residents” would collaborate on “custom” environments. Invitations were based on personality and data.

She had im’d Kevin, “What do you mean by ‘custom?’ Is there a theme?” Her heart had raced with possibilities. Willow Sprite and Quiver’s Truth might share a private little corner of My Seventh Neighborhood. See Lindsey; see what you missed!

“The theme is in my universe,” he had answered. Universe? Her stomach hurt like it did when she was ten, and Mom kept her home from school. Fight or flight the doctor had said.

Silly to be worried ’cause look at what happened. She checked her email, scrolling through Willow fan mail, looking for notes from Kevin, or from Seven D gamers, the human ones. Nothing yet, but it was early. She considered logging on to Seventh Neighborhood but decided to wait. If Kevin wasn’t there, someone or something else could be.

McKenna had begun to question her sanity. “Lindsey might be right” crept into her thoughts, ready to slide under a door and into her dreams. Again, she searched for Seventh Neighborhood and Seven D World Games, but found no links, nothing to use against Lindsey’s words.

After the roaches, the world had surely changed. Something happened to make it spin. “No, revolved” was a better word, because everything had turned, Mac, her desk, her chair, everything. Her bedroom wall with the six-folds of colored plastic had rotated like Mom’s lazy Susan.

She had found herself within a game, and she was Willow Sprite, who was the reality, not a figure on a monitor, but real. Graphics from Wraith World, the Fifth World of the Seven Plains had surrounded her with paint-by-number images, rendering some elements in color, while others had the thinnest wash of tint, or no color, like an outline waiting for crayons.

“Willow,” someone whispered. Quiver’s Truth, had appeared as a cartoon at first. Then, he too, had become real and as solid as she. Taking her hand in his, he had stroked her hair, the silken tresses falling on her shoulders. “Close your eyes,” he sang.

A thousand fingers had stroked her, their touch a soft breeze of sensation, then pressing gently and then there was . . .

She folded the bakery five-folds. Groaning, she closed her eyes. The first tryst had been too brief. She had found herself back at her desk, her hand resting on her chin. Mac’s corner clock said she had been in Wraith World an hour. Staring at the monitor, she had wondered when she could return. Although it wasn’t long before she did, Lindsey’s words kept nibbling on an edge of her mind. Oh please. It would be disloyal. McKenna had refused to doubt his love.

How long since the roaches disappeared? Bank notices connected to her old life. Fees, debits and new services told her that it had been months. For months, Willow Sprite and Quiver’s Truth had lived together on Willow Island in Seventh Neighborhood.

She folded and pondered Mom’s favorite phrase, “Every cloud has a silver lining.”

She wanted more than her father with his dealership, more than her mother, who had sighed and smiled when she deposited the insurance checks, the silver lining from Daddy’s murder during a customer test drive of a Lexus minivan. Daddy’s hands and feet had been tied, trussed like he was a Thanksgiving turkey, and he’d been tucked in a drawer under the last row of seats. The van had been top of the line and Daddy’s number one seller.

Daddy was a shadow on the screened porch, a pair of black socks resting on the foot of a recliner, but mostly her father was the dealership. McKenna might have had more of his attention if she had been born with a luxury interior and chrome wheels. When Daddy died, Mom had quit her office job, married her new plasma screen, and devoted herself to American Idol.

The stroke took Mom, but banished the bathroom scale, the weight loss programs, The Price is Right mornings and the Fox News nights. Now, the two-story brick house was an island ruled by McKenna. Lindsey had wanted McKenna to take classes with her, but Lindsey wanted to be her roommate.

“You’re by yourself too much McKen,” Lindsey had argued. “You need to get out.” Lindsey never called now. It didn’t matter. McKenna will stay with Kevin and be his Lady of the Seventh Dimension. Her secret heart had searched in chat rooms and games of fantasy. She found Kevin and her true self on an island surrounded by warm oceans, an island covered in rolling mists. Willow Sprite was a water nymph. McKenna had role-played in other worlds, but when she became a mermaid, Willow Sprite, the princess warrior, she discovered her power.

Pitting one suitor against the other, she had played in the oceans and lagoons of Poseidon’s Undersea Kingdom, in The Secrets of King Arthur’s Lake and Sea Treasures of Atlantis. Soft blue hair lazily drifted and caressed her face.

Later, her lover would think of her perfect breasts, the nipples pointed and sweet cherry red. Hearts and friendships were broken. Until Quiver’s Truth, huntsman of the Seventh World, claimed her, she had played the coquette.

Shadow Siren and Journey’s Wench had called for a vote to shut Willow “Spite” out of Wraith’s World, Fifth of the Seven. Then, Quiver’s Truth put Willow under his protection, declaring her his lady. Quiver’s Truth was a hunter with straight yellow hair. He, like she, was part elf. She was now unavailable, but they still beg for her.

McKenna remembered her father’s words on making a sale. Pay attention; focus on the buyer. She was observant and considerate, careful to “like” Kevin’s Neighborhood posts.

Comments were often confusing. Kevin explained that many of the Seven Worlders were new. Many were from other areas of Seven D, farther from the Great Barrier.

If it hadn’t been disloyal, she would have messaged one of her human friend players, Riley (Mephisto Warrior) to ask him what he thought of Block Chairman Martin. Were the new smiley faces clues or part of a different game? It wasn’t important as long as the magic enveloped her.

On Willow Island, the bows of willow trees shaded a waterfall. Limestone shot with emeralds, turquoise and dark reds framed the edge of the lagoon. Not pretending anymore, she was Willow Sprite, a water nymph with silver skin that glistened in the cool sun. Peering into the water, she saw the tilted eyes of her beautiful face.

But, itching doubt still threatened to crawl from her mind’s edge. Was Willow Island created from a cloud of stardust? If it was not on Earth, was it at least part of our universe? She was afraid to know. She feared the drabness of being sane. She suspected that doubters like Mephisto Warrior, Green Prince Sorcerer and Moon Deer were invited to join Seventh Neighborhood for tests. Kevin explained, “We need to evaluate and understand how to make them come through.”

Moon Deer flirts with Kevin. McKenna knows her password and reads her secret posts.” He responded with LOL’s to Deer’s lame jokes. It’s not like the way he jokes with McKenna, not at all like what they have.

She passed under the cellophane arch and then sat at her desk. Until Kevin fulfills his promise, she will humor Moon Deer. She waited until “Welcome to the Seventh Neighborhood!” pulsated, the words shrinking and ballooning until they changed color.

Lights began to flash. Her hands were green, then deep purple. The desk became a waterfall. The bed changed to a swirl of colored stone. The bedroom walls were miles of distant forest cloaked in mist. Willow Sprite and Quiver’s Truth sighed as they tossed pebbles into the lagoon. They counted the ripples. There were always seven.

Wolves were howling in a haze of distant trees. He pressed his long body to hers and kissed her on her nose. Grinning back at her, he jumped up to chase a deer as it hurried into the foliage.

The mist faded and became a wall. The swirl of rocks melted into a bedspread. She was back.

McKenna stared at the monitor until an email from linz @ gamwhorll.net popped up. Lindsey must have a new address. “It’s Riley, McKen. They can’t find Mephisto, McKen. Oh McKenna, PLEASE BE CAREFUL!!”

There was a link to a news report. A gamer had gone missing. There were stacks of boxes, blood traces and something viscous, a slime substance they can’t identify. Why Lindsey would send this? Lindsey was losing it, obviously jealous and paranoid.

She wished she could send Kevin a rose. In one of their “private’ messages, he had confided that his world had no roses, no flowers, only the waves of “thists” that gathered at the Great Barrier. “When predators crawl near toward the Barrier, thists scream a warning,” he had explained.

She loved his stories about his nurse. During his first growth, Kevin’s nurse had warned him to be still or he would not grow enough to complete his first molt. The nurse warned that a giant krant could eat him come slaughter season. Krants hurl themselves against outer force fields, trying to crack and attach to the Barrier Wall. They were seldom a threat, Kevin assured her, because krants wither quickly, and thists kill them. The most dangerous were scrathes, tiny creatures slithering undetected by thists. McKenna perceived just a hint of fear when he confided this. His fear made her love him more.

Scrathe tentacles secrete an acid which created pockets where they cocoon themselves. Later, when the scrathes emerge, they prey upon Seven D young, who lay helpless after the Sacred Spawn. Worse, the young are often vulnerable and unprotected because adults are indifferent during the Sleep of Three. Thists too can be dangerous. During the second growth, ravenous and aching for the joy of slaughter, one must be careful.

“I travel only in the smoothest of eggs,” he had said. “Egg” was their private joke. McKenna had suggested “egg” when he searched for a word to describe the thing he used for travel, something wider and rounder on one end than the other, “It has a silver smooth surface,” he told her. “Any small imperfection, the tiniest groove or rough patch obscured by the gleam, any break in the surface, can result in destruction. Then, undetected, thists attach. They can suck you through the shell, and your hunt is over. I’ve witnessed it,” he said with a shudder. “They become flush with scarlet as they feed, and they’re beautiful as roses.”

There was someone was at the door. Careful not to disturb the décor, she looked through a window. Only a crack, she whispered as she placed her foot against the door.

“McKenna . . .“ Lindsey stumbled on her words. Former best friend’s hair was cut, something new. Soft curls framed her round face. She wore a long blue sundress with daisies on the hem.

“What is it Linds? I’m kinda busy now.” It had been a while since McKenna bathed. She tried to remember the last time she wore something new.

“Just worried about you Ken . . . maybe we could . . .“ Lindsey looked like she might cry.

“I’m just fine Linds—you are a worry wart.”

“C-c-call m-m-me.” Lindsey stuttered when she was nervous, “Okay Ken? Please?”

“Absolutely will when I get a minute. Bye Linds.” She shut the door. “Oh God,” she whimpered. Then, she took a shower and washed her hair. It will be tonight.

At ten o’clock McKenna sat and waited. The pink wall was behind her, a last minute Kevin request, and if another, one of the others in Seventh Neighborhood had asked, she would have refused.

A chirp signaled a message from a fan. Would she let him “see” or would she give him a task, and then perhaps let him see? She deleted. Green Prince Sorcerer im’d, “Seen Moon Deer? We were hookin’ up, and she doesn’t answer. I even texted, but it’s like she’s fallen off the planet.”

He jumps up to chase a deer. McKenna’s hands shook. Why am I worried? “No worries,“ she answered, “Moon Deer’s a flake.”

At ten-thirty, she despaired. No Kevin; no Seventh Neighborhood. She rose, her lips quivering. A whine blasted, loud and sharp until it became a siren. She pressed her hands to her ears. Gray light filled the room until waves of color poured in. Now? Oh Kevin my darling is it now?

Yes! She was Willow Sprite, and Quiver’s Truth was at her side. He traced her jaw. Something’s wrong. She moved to touch her lover’s hand and discovered that unless she turned it, she couldn’t see her own hand. This Willow Sprite was flat, a creature of only two dimensions. Her flat silver arm leaned against him. She was thin as paper.

He sang in her paper ear, “Fold.”

She bent as he pressed and creased. Her head bounced on her shins.

The wolves were howling. They’re not howls, they’re screams! She slid open the lids of her eyes. Am I breathing? I must be, but I don’t feel it.

Pink boxes floated above her in a gray room. Her thin heart swelled as she saw Quiver’s Truth sitting on a silver egg. Oh Kevin. He moved toward her. He wants to kiss me, she thought. There was screaming in the distance, but it was really more of a screeching sound. Fear clouded his blue eyes, changing them to dark gray. Oh Kevin, you’re afraid of the thists.

She wondered what he saw. Could he restore her third dimension? Kevin grinned and nodded. Tiny strings shot from his mouth, dancing and growing long as they attached to her. There was a gentle tug. She felt her face again! She was becoming round! She stretched her silver arms and the supple body her fans will miss. Then, Willow’s silver arms became the trembling arms of McKenna. Will he love her still?

He kissed her hand, “We’ll be as one, my lady.”

Waves of bliss flowed until her lover’s mouth widened, and his chin expanded, the chin rolls folding and draping, enclosing her arm. McKenna wanted to scream along with the thists as Kevin devoured her. “As one,” she dreamed. The gray of his massive flesh shimmered. From slits near Kevin’s snout (gills?) a thick clear fluid oozed and dripped. That’s the slime they found in the basement. Sorry Lindsey. His folds enveloped her, and they flushed with scarlet, as beautiful as any rose.

THE END

Check out M. K. Noble's blog marjoriekayesbabylondreams.com. 'Its purpose is to promote my as yet unpublished virtual reality novel, now called Past Imperfect.'

Number Nine

by Michael Gray Baughan

     You are awakened by an incessant beeping sound that cuts through the flypaper walls that separate your apartment from the one next door. It begins at seven-thirty in the morning and lasts exactly ninety minutes. You try to ignore it, but you can’t. You have sensitive ears and more than a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder. You groan and roll over, pull a pillow over your head. You were up far too late and you are exhausted. The beeping persists. Try as you might you cannot get back to sleep. Every morning of the last eight days you have lost a little more of yourself to this beep-beep-beep-beep. By the ninth morning you are nothing but a fetal ball of frayed nerve endings, primed for detonation.

You say to yourself what is the matter with me? Why don’t I just go next door and tell my neighbor to shut the damn thing off. I will tell you why. Because you have never met your neighbor. Because you are new here and afraid to do anything that might upset your tenancy. Because you keep telling yourself today must be the last day of this. Somebody else in the building must be bothered. Someone else will speak up. Because today might be the day number nine finally gets you. 

Today is your twenty-seventh birthday. This scares the hell out of you. You aren’t a fearful person. No more so than most. But you believe in numbers, and patterns of numbers, and meta-patterns of those patterns. In your life the number nine has formed just such a meta-pattern. The facts are incontestable. You were born on September 9^th, 1972. Ninth month. Ninth day. In a year with integers that sum at nine. Your mother always maintained it was 9:09 when the doctor announced the crowning of your head and 9:27 when you actually popped out, but you are objective enough to consider those details apocryphal.

It hardly matters. That is just the beginning. The day you turned nine—9/9/81—you came within nine seconds of getting killed. Ridiculous! But true.

At the time, you were a very promising young swimmer. You lived in the small Florida town of Largo, where kiddie swim meets drew the kind of rabid fan support that Hoosiers give their basketball teams and Dominicans their baseballers. You even had a personal coach, one of those fanatics who had you training on your birthday for a championship meet against Pinellas Park. Thanks to the climate, the swim season lasted well into Fall, when only the first days of school were reason enough to get out of the water. It was late afternoon, a time when thunderstorms often rolled in off the gulf, but your coach wanted one last run. Pinellas Park had a superstar in the 1500 meter freestyle and to have any chance of winning you would have to come in under your all-time best of 15 minutes, 21 seconds. (I know it is impossible for you to read those integers and not add them in your head.)

A few drops of rain began to fall as you stepped up to the starter’s platform. You had enough time to think what are the odds? before your coach fired the gun. It was a good start, despite your distraction. You hit the water smoothly and fell into a natural rhythm. You felt strong and fast and you swam magnificently. You were in the middle of your last lap, about halfway to the wall, when it happened. With one ear out of the water and the other beneath, the air above your head was struck by a thunderclap so loud it penetrated the pool and set off a series of vibrations that sounded like something monstrous was in the water with you. That feeling sent you into a frenzy. Why did you make the turn instead of getting out of the pool at the far end? Was the racing habit so ingrained that you forgot it was possible to stop midway? In any case, you swam like a warhead shot from a nuclear submarine. You did not take a single breath on the backstretch. When you yanked yourself out of the pool your coach was beaming and yelling something into your ear but pool water had seeped in and it was still alive with those subaqueous echoes. Your brain was alive with cosmic vibrations. Then everything went white as lightning struck the water, throwing you both to the ground with such force that it broke your coach’s stopwatch and froze your time on its cheap liquid crystal face: 15 minutes, 12 seconds. Nine seconds better than your previous best and nine enough to save your life.

No doubt you are wondering how I know all this. Assuming I’m not some omniscient literary device. Your coach told the story to the local paper after you destroyed your competition the following week. He proudly claimed you had lightning in your blood. It was this article, discovered during one of my automated media scrubs, which first brought you to my attention.

Flash forward to your eighteenth birthday. The date is 9/9/90. You are a freshman at the University of Florida, planning to major in mathematics. Classes have just begun so you should be out having fun, but you are too scared to leave your room. With good reason. Not two weeks had passed since the discovery of eight mutilated students and though the police had a suspect in custody, you had a feeling they had the wrong man. You were correct. While most of your friends were out celebrating the lifted curfew, you sat frozen on your bed, waiting for death to make a house call.

Down the hall someone was blasting the White Album. By the time it reached your theme song, you had scared yourself into a kind of trance, and in this trance you had a powerful vision of the Gainsville Killer making his way down the dormitory hall, room-by-room, looking for his ninth victim.

You could not know that Danny Rolling was too busy getting captured during a spoiled robbery attempt to fulfill your prophecy. Among Rolling’s possessions, though, the police found stolen keys to several dormitories. One of those dormitories was yours.

     In Pythagorean Theory, the Law of Nine represents the culmination of life’s journey, the last step before ascendance to the Decad, or Divine Reality. Armenian mystic Georgei Gurdjieff developed an expression of this he called the Enneagram. Originally a sophisticated tool to holistically integrate multiple facets of the human mind, today it has been co-opted by New Age shysters to play metaphysical matchmaker.

You discovered the Enneagram during your second year of graduate school. It was a pet hobby at first, a way to calm your numerological anxieties. Before long it began to infect your work, showing up in footnotes and off-hand comments during your Number Theory seminar. The Enneagram inevitably led you to a closer study of Pythagoras, whose theories slowly but surely began to dominate your every waking thought. Last winter your application for doctoral candidacy was turned down. No one at the University wanted anything to do with what your advisor called “prehistoric mumbo-jumbo.” A few weeks later you received a mysterious letter, a letter from me, the president, founder, and sole active member of the Number Nine Society. In the letter I offered you a fellowship to continue your unorthodox research. With nowhere else to turn, you accepted and earned yourself free room and board at a run-down studio apartment in the Mission District. It’s all I can afford. You have been living here for a little over a week. You have yet to meet your benefactor, but that will change soon enough. As far as my man Friday has been able to determine, you stay up all night tweaking a prophecy engine of quadratic equations. Into which you feed the birth dates of historical personages and it spits out a death prediction that you check against the facts. Last week your algorithm achieved an unprecedented twenty-seven percent accuracy rating. With a little more time you might actually get somewhere. If only you weren’t plagued by my morning bell. If only today’s date wasn’t 9/9/99.

How could I be certain you would come on the ninth day? Overcome your lifelong inertia and actually raise a hand against your Fate? I couldn’t. But I had a hunch that terrible night of waiting in your dorm room had convinced you to never be quite so passive again. I can imagine your state of mind when you find yourself in the hallway at 8:50, confronted by a simple wooden door, behind which the infernal beeping persists. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Summoning you. Driving you mad. By your reckoning you have ten minutes to change the laws of nature.

You try the knob. It is unlocked, and swings open with a simple twist.

Inside you find a bare room. The white walls are covered with what at first appear to be black tadpoles or spooning sperm cells. Upon closer inspection you see that these squiggles are actually thousands upon thousands of overlapping nines. For a time you are unable to tear your eyes away. It is as if the skin of the universe has been peeled away to reveal the ennead skeleton hiding beneath. You bask in the beautiful mystery of that perfect number. But soon the beeping intrudes, beckoning you down the hall.

By the look on your face you are shocked to find a decrepit old man sitting at a desk. On the desk is the guilty alarm clock, which now reads 8:58. Next to it is a birth certificate, which proves that I was also was born September 9^th, but in the year 1900. Do the math and you will understand why I spent my last penny hiring a shady electrician to build a perfect mousetrap. Out of the bottom of the clock, through drilled holes in the desk, run two tiny wires. One goes to a bundle of plastique hidden in a lacked drawer. The other terminates at a massive toroidal power supply. If you summon the willpower to turn off the alarm before the magic hour you will defuse the bomb and trigger a nine hundred volt death sentence coiled into the seat of my chair. If you do not, we will both die together in a fiery blast.

I have waited one year shy of a century for this day. Everything has been arranged to within a hair’s breadth of perfection. What more can a man ask but to live as long as I have and know the exact moment of my passing? If Pythagoras was right, if the secrets of the universe hide in numbers and harmony is achieved by their proper alignment, then I will die the most harmonious death in the history of mankind.

8:59 now and you are studying my birth certificate. You keep stealing glances at my face, trying to determine if I am alive. For months on end I have practiced the art of remaining completely motionless and all my hard work is paying off. I have blinked once in the last nine minutes and I don’t intend to do so again.

* * *

     Michael Gray Baughan hails from Philly, lives in Richmond, and writes from an unmapped region located somewhere in between. Visit him online at michaelgraybaughan.com, or peruse his collection of oddities and curiosities at wondercabinet.net.

The Deborah Number*

by Deborah Walker

What is the dimensionless number of fermented honey?
The viscosity of unctuous syrup,
slipping into the minds of
the bee maidens?
The entheogenic nectar of the gods,
the hallucinogen sliding
along their hive comb minds,
over-flowing into divination?
Bee maidens flying from past to future, gliding on the sticky sweet.
Flow like mountains between time.
Into the present, alight with their Delphic smiles,
knowing that to read the future is never to change it.


*Note: The Deborah Number is the dimensionless number denoting the fluidity of materials under specific flow conditions

Man Obsessed

By Ben Revermann

By all accounts the moon shouldn't be there. The circumference doesn't make any sense. In order for the moon to maintain its orbit (obviously, to anyone of a scientific mind) it would have to be hollow. For billions of years it's slowed the Earth's rotation to a point near perfection. Without it, life on Earth would be plagued by five-hundred mile an hour hurricanes; catastrophic earthquakes and minute long days.

Dr. Davis knows all of this. When he was fifteen, he suspected it.

Now fifty-five, he lives alone. His house is littered with scientific journals. The boxes in his hallways are stacked to the ceiling. With no time to clean, any woman who set foot in his house would run away screaming.

Dr. Davis is standing in his living room/office. Although he calls every room in his house his office he does most of his work here. The dry erase board is sitting on a tri-pod. He's looking at it.

A week before he'd been fired for teaching his theories about the moon. With a little money saved he can now focus all of his time on it. The night of his firing he had made a discovery.

Crunching the numbers for the millionth time tonight he is able to prove how long the Earth lived without the moon. This discovery would make every scientist in the world stand up and take notice. He doesn't care about that however.

Dr. Davis wants to know how and why the moon is there.

Casting this new discovery aside he thinks a thought, the first thought of many that will eventually lead him to the answer. This is why he's contacted.



The Alien appeared in his living room and stood there for five minutes, unnoticed until it finally cleared its throat. Dr. Davis turns around startled, and asks, "Can I help you?"

The Alien smiles, "Yes you can. We're not here to hurt you. We need you to stop what you're working on."

Dr. Davis asks him, "I'm close aren't I?"

The Alien smiles again, "Yes sir"

Dr. Davis shrugs and turns back to his dry-erase board, "Well, you can tell whomever that I won't stop."

The Alien is surprised, it has been a party to over a hundred of these meetings and until now it has never been blown off. It tries again, "I must insist sir, that you stop what you're doing."

Dr. Davis continues with his work, "I've devoted forty years of my life to this. I knew I was close before you said anything. I've sacrificed having a wife, children and a social life so I'm not going to stop now. What can you offer me?"

The Alien is again surprised, "How could you know I have something to offer?"

"Because you first said you're not here to hurt me." he says while continuing his calculations.

The Alien accepts this as obvious, "We can give you a new obsession."

Dr. Davis is amused, "Such as"

"We can turn your mind in a direction other than the moon. You could be a world class composer, or an evolutionary expert. Would you like to write screenplays?"

Dr. Davis is unimpressed, "Why don't you just erase my mind?"

The creature tells him, "We can't do that. We can however give you other things to think about. As a bonus, any alterations to your brain would include a free tour of our spaceship. All you have to do is agree to let us change your mind for you."

"And I wouldn't be interested in the moon anymore?"

"You'll always be interested in the moon, and the reasons for it. You'll just be more interested in other things."

Dr. Davis thinks for a minute, "How about you just tell me what I want to know? How is the moon able to be there?"

"Because then we would have to kill you."

Unfazed Dr. Davis asks, "Couldn't you just tell me and then give me another obsession?"

The Alien nods no, "If we told you it would be catastrophic. Humanity can't handle that. If you know, nothing, not even us could stop you if you were able to continue with your work."

Dr. Davis faces the Alien, "So my options are get a free tour of your spaceship and have a new obsession; or find out why the moon is there, then die."

The creature nods yes.

The funeral for Dr. Henry Davis will be held on Tues. May 18th at St. Mary's Catholic Church. Followed by his burial. Afterwards, dinner will be provided by the University of Minnesota. No known relatives exist. Co-workers say he was a man driven by his work, a man obsessed.

* * *

Ben Revermann lives in southern Minnesota with his wife, four children and three dogs. 
He hopes to one day make his living using the written word.

The Big Fizz

by Dave Morehouse

"So, to summarize the equations on your handouts and the case I have been making for the last two hours - The multiverse is basically an immense bottle."

The audience of Theoretical Physicists did their best to stifle outright laughter. Even so, their exchanged smiles didn't go unnoticed by the aged presenter.

"I’ll try to keep this simple. Think of it as all universes and dimensions wrapped together in an elongated sphere with a hole at the tapered end."

A majority of the scientific community attended this session out of ancient respect for the professor. He had mentored most of them at one time or another in their academic careers. Dr. Millhouse, no one dared be familiar enough to use his first name, was among the brightest theorists ever; but that was a long time ago. A ghost of his former brilliance, the Doctor was slated to speak for 15 minutes but, instead, carried on enthusiastically for over two hours. The audience pretended to listen early on out of admiration but his equations and explanations kept getting crazier with each minute. The youngest among them, those who hadn't experienced his brilliance first-hand, became impatient.

"So professor, what would you say is the astounding result of your lecture this morning?" The young physicist made no effort to hide his sarcasm.

"For your sake, young man, I'll continue the simplified metaphor - the universes, as we know them will fizz out the top of the bottle and begin anew."

"Another Big Bang?" His incredulous shrugged shoulders and upraised arms twirled for the audience's benefit.

"No, more like a reordering and rendering of the layers of time and space. Anything can happen actually. The various universes will mix and match time periods and matter as the whole affair struggles to regain equilibrium. I can’t tell you what the end result will be like, but I suspect it will be very different."

"So, in what millennium will this all happen, Doctor?" The young scientist abandoned sarcasm and turned to full ridicule.

"Finally! A worthy question, young man. It will occur at 3:17 . . . exactly eleven minutes from now."

The emcee grabbed the opportunity to take back the stage and try to salvage what was left of the conference. Thank you, Doctor Millhouse, for your whimsical insights into the mysteries of the universe. That will close the morning session. Coffee, tea, and light snacks are in the lobby. We’ll start the next presentation after the break. Shall we say thirty minutes from now?

The lobby filled to capacity almost immediately. Colleagues busy shaking their heads; discussing the age-onset idiocy of Dr. Millhouse. Doddering old fool. Really it’s a shame. His theories were groundbreaking back in the day. What time is it? The pink three-legged hippo glanced at her watch and told the herd of nursing chickens it was 3:18…almost time for our hip exchanges.

* * *

Dave Morehouse writes music, poetry, and short fiction. His most recent work has been published in Black Heart Magazine, Everyday Poets, Revolt Daily, Crack the Spine, Postcard Shorts and an inspirational book - Psalter for the 21st Century.  His short story, “Press Restart”, has been featured in the Writers’ Anarchy Anthology – “The End of the World as We Wrote It.” He is the editor for the online zine Postcard Poems and Prose. In spare moments he plays fiddle and concertina by Lake Superior in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

The Numbers Game

by Tanya Isch Caylor

For the game to work, Jan must know precisely how many calories she's consumed that day.

In terms of weight loss, which is ostensibly the goal of the exercise, she should aim for something in the 1200s. That is, technically, her goal. But secretly she lets herself slide past 1700 and even into the 1800s because that's her comfort zone, both in terms of not feeling deprived but also because -- especially because -- that's the time period in which she most likes to lose herself.

She'll be washing dishes after dinner, with the boys careening about and Sara's music blasting upstairs and Phil oblivious to all but ESPN, and without doing anything that anyone would notice -- an elaborate mental ritual that requires no physical movement other than an eye blink -- she slips into the past.

Her favorite place to start a session is the London apartment of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. They're never home when she arrives. It's easier that way, because she doesn't want to interact with them so much as to hang out in their world -- to take long, slow yoga breaths in an era where the phone isn't always ringing and music isn't always blaring and computers aren't always crashing all around her.

Jan is not what you would call a diehard fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. She does not, for instance, know the exact street address of this infamous Baker Street apartment she's been using as a mental crash pad. Frankly, she can think of nothing more unnerving than conversation with a detail specialist like Holmes. The last thing she needs is to have someone point out that her left index fingernail needs filing and her dark roots are coming in and what these observations, along with her excess weight and all the other unflattering things she imagines people routinely notice about her, imply about her life.

She does, however, envy the great detective's focusing abilities and problem-solving skills. Not to mention the fact that he's got a housekeeper. How sweet is that? She's hoping to soak up some mental clarity, along with the ambiance.

Jan finds the most comfortable chair in the room, draws up to the fire, and inhales the lingering aroma of Holmes' pipe. Which is actually, of course, the remembered scent of her grandfather's pipe. Who smokes a pipe anymore? No one she knows.

Here, she thinks, there is time to read a newspaper. To dip a pen in ink and write a letter. To hear your thoughts unfurl as you gaze into the fire. Time, plenty of time.


The gadget that helps whisk Jan away -- she can't really call it a time machine, since she never physically leaves the kitchen or that stack of dishes in the sink -- is a Christmas gift from her husband.

"It's a little stereo you mount underneath the kitchen cabinet," Phil explained. "I thought you could use it to listen to those audio books. You know how you're always saying you never have time to read anymore."

"How can I listen to a book with the kids around?" she'd wondered aloud.

Phil's not a big reader himself. More of a numbers guy, he likes to say. Still, she couldn't help thinking he'd secretly bought it for himself. She could picture him at the kitchen table, slurping his late-night bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios (which he would later deposit in the sink without rinsing, leaving tiny sodden O's to form barnacles on the sides), all the while listening to that inane radio program where insomniacs were always calling in to report UFOs and Bigfoot sightings and whatever else was keeping them up at night.

But it was, she now realized, a thoughtful gift for a guy who has come up with some real clunkers over the years. It was amazing how easily she could be transported, even while scrubbing a pan or grubby face. This must be how it was during the days of old-time radio, she thought.

Of course, some novels were off-base for an environment that included kids. When in doubt, she applied their family movie night safety net: No matter what the genre, anything created before 1970 was probably safe.

It was, she thought, not unlike the substitutions you make when you're dieting. If, while scanning the library shelves of recorded books she found herself tempted by a Stephen King novel, she would force herself to bring home Bram Stoker's Dracula instead. If chick lit sounded appetizing, she would bypass Jennifer Weiner for Jane Austin.

These antiques worked their magic just as well, maybe even better, than what was currently on display at Barnes and Noble. The passages were remote and exotic, but the narrator proved an able tour guide, keeping her from stumbling over the vintage language.

Sometimes, between the end of one CD and the start of another, Jan would find herself replaying scenes in her mind, lingering inside especially inviting locales, or straying off the plot path altogether and exploring the world that lies just beyond the story.

And then one day, in a secret bit of synchronicity that seemed all the more vivid because she could imagine a narrator reading it like a line from a novel, she realized that the year she was exploring in her imagination was the same as the number of calories she'd recorded in her food log that day.


According to the rules she's crafted, Jan has to land somewhere between 1869 and 1889 if she wants to visit the Baker Street apartment. She's never checked to see if that is the exact time period that Holmes inhabited the apartment. It works for her. That's all that matters.

Getting there is easier than she would have imagined. She starts her day with a 300-calorie "diet donut" -- half a whole-wheat bagel topped with a tablespoon of peanut butter and 12 chocolate chips -- then follows up with three 500-calorie mini meals over the course of the day.

That puts her at 1800. After that, it's just a matter of coming in for the landing: Nibbling a carrot stick or an olive or a couple of grapes as dinner is winding down, carefully moving out five or ten calories at a time until she closes in on the right decade.

She rechecks her calculations while doing the dishes, and plans her bedtime snack accordingly.

The cellophane rolls of Smarties candies always make her smile. Her grandparents kept a jar on their counter, next to the old-fashioned coffee pot. She didn't know it then, but they're only 25 calories a roll -- around two calories per tablet.

As a kid she'd strip candies from the wrapper with her thumb like she was dislodging peas from a pod, then pop the whole handful of tangy sweetness in her mouth and crunch happily. Now she takes only what she needs to reach her desired destination, twists the wrapper back into place, and sets the roll aside for another time.

She's experimented with M&Ms and Hershey's Kisses, but Jan always blows way past her target if she even thinks about chocolate. And besides the negative ramifications to her waistline, she can think of absolutely nothing relaxing about contemplating the future. The Oh-Ohs, as she once heard someone call this decade she's mired in in real life, feel like a roller coaster ride along the edge of a cliff. She's not obsessed with all the stuff that could go wrong on a perspiring planet teeming with humans as it whizzes through space -- unlike the listeners who call into Phil's radio program -- but she's not crazy enough about the future to want to go there any sooner than she has to.

Y2K may not have panned out in real life, but in her game, the world always ends at 2000.


Jan knows what Phil would say if she tried to tell him about her time-travel diet. At this point in their marriage, she not only knows how to complete his sentences, but how to begin them as well.

If, for instance, she makes a passing reference to one of her male cousins -- no matter how small a role this cousin plays in relation to the point she's trying to make -- he'll invariably say, "You know, after all these years, I still can't tell those guys apart."

And then he'll begin to work the problem: He knows there are three men in the set, and he'll dredge up a list of three names, three jobs and three wives. (He has retained almost no data about the cousins' collective set of children, so he doesn't bother jotting this material on his mental chalkboard.

It's frustrating to navigate their way out of these conversational cul-de-sacs, no matter whose wrong turn got them off track. So she strives to avoid them whenever possible. But she can't always shut down the sound bites in her head.

"For all the work you put into that, you could've lost that weight a long time ago," he'd say.

Or: "It doesn't matter what kind of a diet you're on -- it's really just a simple mathematical equation. You've still got to subtract 3,500 calories to lose one pound."

Which means she needs to atone for 105,000 calories. Well. Thirty pounds -- who is she kidding? According to those "healthy weight" charts on the counter at Phil's insurance company, she's packing 52 pounds of excess baggage.

To his credit, Phil doesn't go around citing those figures all the time. For one thing, he could stand to lose a few pounds himself. At least she doesn't have a problem with nighttime eating. Once she's decided to take a mental vacation, she locks in on those Smarties and locks out temptation. Everything else -- the kids, the dog, the leftover pizza in the fridge -- shifts into another dimension that's already starting to pull away from her own.

It's only on days when she's not traveling, when she loses count after breakfast or is simply too busy for this interior video game, that she struggles with mindless eating.

So they don't argue about her being fat. What they would argue about, if she ever let it slip, is her problem-solving technique.

"Yet another example," Phil would say, "of how women strive to complicate the straightforward."

And somewhere inside her head, Sherlock Holmes would stir, just long enough to nod in agreement.


And then one night they're lying in bed, touching but not really talking, and Jan, who's booked a trip to 1826, lingers inside the beach house she's been renovating on the coast of Massachusetts.

According to the biography of John Adams shes been listening to, that's the year the second president and his best frenemy, Thomas Jefferson, both died on the Fourth of July, exactly 50 years after both signed the Declaration of Independence.

Jan had mentioned this historical factoid to Phil earlier in the week. It was easily the most interesting thing to report about her day. Funny to think she once thought working in a newsroom would be exciting. With all the budget cuts, shoveling words into the day's paper feels more like a factory job these days.

"Hey," she'd said, "I heard something shiny today."

It was a reference to another game, one they used to play together, called "I Spy a Star Fragment." Jan came up with the name. But Phil provided the impetus: His opening line, that day they met back in college.

"You ever notice," he'd said, watching her labor over her trigonometry book, "that when you multiply by nine, the answer always adds up to nine?"

She had not. As he showed her on a page of his notebook -- "See, nine times two equals 18, and if you add those digits, one plus eight equals nine" -- she felt simultaneously ripped off that she'd never learned this in school and embarrassed that she'd never noticed it herself. She was, after all, an A student. Phil was not. Or at least that was her impression.

"Yeah, I was just playing around with my multiplication tables one day, and there it was," he said. "It was like the most amazing thing."

It was, they both agreed, one of those tiny tingly discoveries that make the universe seem to glow. Like looking up at the stars, and then noticing shards of the same exquisite material stitched into the fabric of everyday life.

They don't play the game much anymore. Not together, anyway. The star fragments that Phil gleans from baseball and insurance data and Jan harvests from the day's headlines don't resonate like they once did, competing for air space with the pressing issues of the day, like who's picking the boys up from soccer. The Adams nugget worked better than most -- in part because, like the Rule of Nines, neither one of them could believe they hadn't learned it in school -- though its mesmerizing power faded quickly.

But now Jan's head's been all fogged in for a couple of days, and she's been itching to go time traveling. So today she set her calorie dial to 1826. Braintree, Massachusetts. Not because she wants to see a frail old Puritan on his deathbed, but because she thought it would be cool, somehow, to reconstruct the basic framework of the Baker Street flat onto the beach a couple of miles away. She thought she'd add on a porch, where she could gaze out at the ocean.

Jan's not much of an interior decorator -- she selects paint chips based on the pleasingness of their names rather than their hue -- but she thinks this shape-shifting shack of hers is going to positively glow in the celestial light given off when these two historical supernovas wink out of existence.

And that's when Phil, who's been idly stroking her back, says, "What are you thinking about?"

She yearns to show him. Invite him to snuggle up beside her here on the porch. But she knows this little house would dissolve in the physical universe they share. At best, she could only hope to describe some stick-figure representation. And that would lead them smack into another conversational cul-de-sac.

"Nothing much," she says, wondering if he realizes she's calling long distance, from the vacation home in her head.

* * *

Tanya Isch Caylor is the author of Declutter Your Diet: Buffet Goggles, Infinite Pie and Other Imaginary Devices that Helped Me Cut 90 pounds in 9 Months. She lives in Northeast Indiana but spends a lot of time fooling around at the intersection of math and metaphor, much to the amusement/irritation of her husband, Bob, and four kids.

New Material to Post Soon

If you have received word of acceptance and haven't yet done it, please send me a short bio and a link to your web site(s). I will be posting the first new material this week. Hurry if you want that information included.

-Josh

Imaginaire....Reimagined

As you may know, Imaginaire has lately been on hiatus for two reasons: 1) I was unemployed, 2) there were not enough submissions of an entire issue. While item 1 is now successfully resolved, item 2 remains. Thank you to some help from readers, I want to keep Imaginaire going, and given that my time is now more at a premium, as I am working full-time, freelance editing, and building guitars, I no longer have time to compose entire issues in PDF format. Therefore, I am continuing this as an online journal, but it will be one with regular updates of stories and poetry. I will simply post material as I receive and approve it. I will probably be dropping my use of Submittable as a result. Details to follow (once I have worked them out). I plan to go through current submissions, respond, and then post one every other day or so until I run out of material. After that, I will post things as received. The exception (for now) will be Andy Breslin's Practical Applications of Game Theory, which I will post a chapter a week or so until I have reprinted the entire thing, so tune in for that.

In light of this, I'll be amending my submission policy. Submittable always delivers material to me in PDF, which is very difficult and time-consuming to me, especially if this will be a series of blog posts. Therefore, the easiest method, as I see it, may be to make use of Google Docs. Simply upload your story, poem, graphic novel, etc, and set me as a reader. My email address is joshuallen.writer@gmail.com. I will update the submissions page with this info. Upload as a text-based doc, not a PDF, and set it to private. If I think it is relevant, and worth posting, I will notify you. Every author will have the option of removing their work at any time. Simply message me and I will have it down asap. Think of Imaginaire as a showcase for your work. There will still be an editorial process, but not a traditional publishing timeline. I appreciate all your work and support. If you like Imaginaire, you can help by sending donations to the above email address via Paypal or Dwolla ($USD only, please).

If you have any questions, post a comment here, or email me. I will be updating the various pages to reflect these changes and will notify everyone via this blog when the first posting will be out. Now might be a good time to subscribe!

-Josh

Imaginaire's Future?

Since the last issue, I have only received a couple of submissions to Imaginaire. This, combined with the impending renewal cost of the url, given that I have been out of work for the last six months, means that I need to take time to gauge if people are interested in the project continuing. If you would like to see more, then the most helpful way to do that would be to donate a small amount of money to the magazine, which I can use to both renew the domain name and to pay potential authors to encourage submissions.

If you are interested in helping, my PayPal email address is joshuallen.writer@gmail.com. Seems me a line or chop in a few dollars if you can. 

If you aren't interested or just can't (believe me, I understand) then I will probably have to bid adieu to Imaginaire with a final issue that would include the rest of Practical Applications of Game Theory and the one or two other pieces that I have accepted (author permitting, of course). So drop me a line if you want Imaginaire to continue. Thanks!

-Joshua Allen

Issue #5 Call for Submissions

There is still time to get your submissions in for Issue #5. We are trying to get the issue out by the end of February, and we need your help to get it done. So, get your submissions in!

-Imaginaire