Azure

There were answers I thought I’d find begging on my knees. The only thing I received were bruises that dotted my skin like angry kisses. I didn’t find salvation in inaction. I did not find it through respite. It was through movement that I saw clarity. It was through movement that I saw it.

A hundred feet above me, an orb of azure light swirled in place. I was alone in the Chanokian forest, three miles down the Trenton path when I saw it. It didn’t look real. Nothing new ever does. Not presents or people. Not letters of acceptance or the look of disappointment on a face you thought you’d never fail. And not an orb of azure signalling you’re not alone in the universe.

I don’t remember the next moments. Or several weeks after— as a park ranger explained to me as we sat in their operations cabin on the north side of the forest. Ranger Dan, a surly, white haired Santa knock off, told me I had been missing for over three weeks. Three weeks! I thought I had missed thirty seconds at most. It felt like a lazy day where the first overdue steps you take against bring the blinding sun and an otherworldly shine to everything you see. That wasn’t the case.

Friends kept calling me after they heard I had been found. Most were relieved, others were angry. None of them understood. I couldn’t tell them. They thought I was lying. That the trauma had packed away the memories like unwanted presents deep in the closet. I couldn’t tell them because nothing was there. No one had taken me away. Not that I could remember. There were no marks on my skin. No disturbance on the ground where I was found. Even my clothes and pack were in the same condition as when I had started the hike.

Eventually I was left alone. Less people wanted to talk or commiserate once they realized I wasn’t holding out on them. I can’t say things went back to normal. Because I know I had been changed— but I couldn’t say how. It was in the little things that I noticed. Lights were brighter. Sounds louder. It felt like I had upgraded from an analog television to a 4K home theater with surround sound. I began to feel an outward presence of individuals around me. A magnetic field— some small, some larger— that they would emanate.

Part of me wanted to rush back to my friends and tell them what was happening. The other part knew I needed to keep this to myself. I had already been the source of controversy. I didn’t need to be poked and prodded or worse, locked away for minor delusions. I didn’t kid myself, it could all be fake outside of my own mind. Still, the occurrences began to increase. Soon I began to have dreams that didn’t seem to belong to me. I walked through hidden paths between time and space— and upon waking a thrum sounded from my chest. I felt more beacon to the unknown than member of humanity.

I returned to the forest without my pack. I didn’t think I’d need it for the second time. The trees shifted gently in the wind and I listened to their whispers. The pine needles squished into the muddy path beneath my feet as I drifted along. I waited for more. No orbs swirled overhead. I continued through the forest in a daze. Had I really seen it? Had I ever even gone?

My questions stirred within me and the thrum returned. I looked at my chest to see an azure light. I smiled and looked above.

Eo

I thought of her as an art form. One that brought my senses alive. A light nip of her teeth and my lips tingled. 

I had a hopeless belief that she might signal fate was real. 

Olympus

The sons of Poseidon are harbingers of doom. You’d think that would belong to Zeus and his boys, but you’d be wrong. You’d also be mistaken if this story didn’t involve the children of Hades. The oft- forgot brother that dwells below the earth. 

His role would prove greater than all others. 

For what, you ask? The ascent of a new God to Mt.Olympus. 

SRT

“She drank enough sazerac to make it a personality trait, she was never late, and she was the most brilliant woman I’ve ever met. The world lost a hell of a human today. Following after Vivian Lang feels like muddling through the dark.” Cooper said as he scanned the room.

“Throughout her career she redefined what courage looked like. She was the first in her field— and the finest we’ve ever seen at SRT. Many people owe their lives to her. Myself included. 

She said it would take an entity of epic proportions to stop her. One God to another. 

My duty today is not only to pay my respects to Vivian Lang, but to debrief you on the latest threat.

A dragon has claimed the Montana sanctuary. Not a wyrm or a drake. It’s the real deal. Vivian led an initial raid— but its power is off our scale.” A ripple of shock went through the crowd of mourners. There was only one previous case on record where a full blooded dragon appeared— and that was in the early days over in Uzbekistan.  

“The official statement is that the Montana sanctuary borders are being refortified. While their is work being done, it’s to ease the public. 

This creature has left a message for the SRT. 

‘All life that steps foot within my domain is forfeit.’

We estimate that the current range is just beyond the historical Western edge of the former state and to the capital area. 

Butte must still have precious metals, because that’s where it’s made it’s den.

Glacier park has become its hunting grounds and the other creatures are scared enough to not contest.  I called you here to mourn the loss of a great leader— and to call forth new ones. Who will stand with me to avenge Vivian Lang?”

The auditorium stayed silent for a beat. 

Then a small hand rose near the back. A wave of encouraged arms swelled from there. Soon, Captain Cooper Hass was staring at a sea of them. 

“That’s a good start. I’ll see you all tomorrow. Good luck and Gods bless.”

Cooper read over the report for the millionth time. There was no portal. The dragon didn’t manifest into the land. That was a bad sign. It meant it woke up. And anytime something that old woke up— the world burned. 

Montana had already been a difficult area for the SRT to patrol. Ever since it’s creation in the 1970’s the Supernatural Response Team operated as a national protective service against supernatural threats. 

Originally, the United States tried to keep its land. Ironic how well that went. It became clear after a series of supernatural based massacres that certain areas were too dangerous for humans. 

The areas became known as “Sanctuaries” and any errant supernatural creature would be sheparded there by the nearest or most experienced SRT unit. 

Montana became a sanctuary, northern Maine past Bangor, entirety of Utah was lost, and the southern part of Florida. 

Gradually, as incidents went down, people forgot there were ghouls, werewolves, ghasts, goblins, etc living on the same continent as them. Humans stuck to the cities, the creatures stayed in the sanctuaries. 

Most of the time. 

You can’t stop the curious or stupid. But you can do your best to deter them. The fees for trespassing in a sanctuary made monopoly barons gasp. You did not fuck with the SRT or it’s efforts to protect you. 

Rule number one: Don’t go into the sanctuaries. 

Rule number two: Don’t even think about it. 

Rule number three: Even if it looks cute, stay the hell away from it. 

Bugaboo’s and will-o-wisps were responsible for the third one. Nasty little things. But he sure as hell would have tangled with either of us before dealing with a dragon. He had his affairs to get in order. Cooper was a confident man by nature, but you didn’t go against a force of nature without knowing the risk.

High Desert

There’s a demon that stalks the desert at night. Legend says you can’t hear it until it’s too late. Some say it’s a desert wolf— other say it’s the lost son of Satan. Everyone agrees that it leaves it leaves the innocent alone. Only the wicked pay a price under the glowing moon and silent cacti.

The grit of the sand catches between your teeth as you try to spit out the trail dust. The spurs of hidden quills love up against your legs and burrow deeper with every shifting step. The windless night brings every crick and creak right to your ears. Sweat stains your shirt— dark circles of concern live under your arms.

This is when you know God has left you. No, not yet. The howl in the distance— that’s when. The cry of an unchecked demon. Gabriel blows no horn of protection for the wicked. Silence falls again. The howl carries every ounce of terror straight to your heart. Without your crew, you remember that wolves don’t roam the desert.

Then you understand. You understand that the Devil has come to a moonbright plain to claim you as you walk alone— desperately seeking a new life. One swipe— and you’ll find one.

Neighbor

They called him Caldwell. It was easier than explaining why his nickname was “Grim.”

The accidents started when he moved to Davenport. The McGilly neighborhood hadn’t experienced a tragedy greater than a grandparent passing in their sleep in over thirty years.
One night into Caldwell’s arrival, a local man ran a red light and killed a family of five. Caldwell had nothing to do with it. He couldn’t have. He was at home putting away chipped ceramic plates.
Outside of a hound dog appearance with his droopy cheeks and molasses thick drawl, Caldwell was a pleasant man. He worked at the community bank. Never too late or too loud. He became an assumed staple to the bank’s function.
He hid between tasks— not intentionally, but his paperbacks provided ample cover as he picked through his daily chicken salad sandwich. Occasionally bemoaning the amount of tarragon.
Too much or too little, no one ever heard.
The deaths weren’t a common a common occurrence after he showed up— but a slew of maladies struck the town.
Yellow fever, TB, dyslexia. The last felt uncovered rather than precipitated.
None the less, milk curdled quicker, babies attacked the teat, fathers awoke late for Sunday chores.
The rhythm of Davenport was awry.
Being the faithful populace they were, they sent summons upward in search of a salve for their woes.
Surely a single man couldn’t chase away the favor of God?
No prayers were answered.
Then the rumors began.
“Grim Caldwell isn’t a man.”

”The banker deals in sin.”

They waited for a final proclamation. The damning crescendo of their worries.
“Grim Caldwell is a Devil.”

They believed he brought Evil to their land. And for the good people of Davenport, that just wouldn’t do.
By the next week, the bank still held an errant waft of tarragon. But no rustle of thin pages could be heard in the back room or at a desk titled “Caldwell.”

Cryptid

There’s a keening meow that echoes in the alleyways of Placid Lake. The winter snow deadens the noise, but can’t kill it. The tracks found in the morning are enormous. Reports of a roaming mountain lion sweep through the town. The tracks seem off to a young detective. He notices they’re too far apart for it to have been walking on all fours. This cat seems to be upright.

The young detective stays young. He’s found soon after his revelation. The department closes the case as a freak accident. No details are released to the public. No one needs to know about the Cat Man.

Funfetti

"You're treating me like I use day-old McDonald's hash browns as a deodorant."

"What? That's an insane statement."

"Exactly! You're treating me like a crazy person when in reality, I'm just poor!"

"Life is wild, man. One second you're eating cherry Twizzlers with a couple of dimes in a Denny's. The next, you're twirling a sign outside of a cell phone shop. Lady karma has no chill for those that cut the line. It's the curse of the conga."

"Are you on drugs right now?"

*******

"For the love of God, Ryan. Stop licking dollar bills. I don't care that you think you'll gain stripper powers. It's not true. They practice all their moves- so get your ass out of that hammock and go practice!"

Sharp Shadows

In the dark corners of the woods, amidst the brambles and unruly thickets, the sharp teeth of goblins work on cooled flesh. 

Sitting in an old meadow slowly consumed creeping trees is the cemetery. That’s where they buried the Witch. That’s where you can find her. 

But there are three rules the town has for those foolish enough to venture into the forest. 

Don’t travel through the woods alone. 

Don’t travel through the woods without a light

And never travel near the Witch.

Up

It took three weeks for anyone to notice the decapitated head in the attic window of the Kowalski house. Even then, people thought it was a decoration. Halloween come early or some other eccentric reasoning.
It wasn’t until the postman noticed the smell that they realized something was wrong.

People don’t have a tendency to look up. If they did, they would have noticed the strange happenings in the Kowalski house long before the sour stench of decomposition started flowing past the porch.

Originally the Kowalski family had five members when they moved into the house in 1972. Husband and wife, Harry and Lisa, and their three kids, Stephen, Simon, and Tiffany. Slap a sitcom title across their family portrait and you wouldn’t be mistaken for believing their normalcy. But behind their carefully manicured hair and bright eyes— something was missing.

With Simon, the kids at school could have sworn he was speaking in whispers while projecting normally. For Tiffany, it was the hollowed stares of any boy after she broke up with them. But Stephen? Nothing anything anyone could remember. Even the idea of him seemed to slip their mind. As for Harry and Lisa, they were somehow always together. No one had ever seen one of them alone.

The head appeared one year after Stephen graduated from college and returned home. Not yet anyone remembered him even going off to college or that he had returned at all. The police were summoned to the house to question the Kowalski’s, but by the time they arrived there was nothing to discover. No head. No smell. In fact, there was nothing inside the house at all.

Now, the Kowalski’s, while odd, had certainly lived in the neighborhood since 1972. But the strangest thing was that no one could find a picture of them. Not within the school yearbooks or local papers. Not in old Polaroids or projector slides. Even journal entries seemed oddly smudged where a name might have been.

Even the day before the police arrived, neighbors had seen the Kowalski’s departing the house and returning later. No moving vans or packed cars. No urgency in the air. Nothing at all.

The family had been there. And then they were not there.
Not once did anyone think to look up.

Hands On

Every couple hours I can hear the slap of a hand against the inside of the closet wall. No one else in the house has ever heard it. It doesn't matter what time of day— rain or shine— the slap will happen.

The door used to pop open when it happened too. So, I started leaving it ajar. Just a crack, so that I’d see something push it further. But I never have.

During stormy nights the windows in my sister’s room rattle like death maracas. My own room is greeted by the scratches of tree branches on the siding. I try to read during the storms— I don’t like the dreams they bring. The ones where the slap isn’t coming from the closet, but from the far corner or beneath my bed.

I’ve burned sage, prayed to various gods. But I haven’t seen anything. And it hasn’t gotten better. I want to tell my sister, but she only believes in science. I ask her about the footsteps we’d hear on the basement stairs when we were kids. The clear thud of heavy boots on old wood— at odds with the soft patter of our bare feet. She rolls her eyes and tells me it didn’t happen. I don’t bring up the closet.

The summer brought the usual frenzy of house projects and glamorized ideals. This year meant new carpet— which meant us kids had to rip up the old, turgid, pea soup green monstrosity that had dwelled on the floor since the 1970’s. I’d say it went gracefully, but it did not. It fought back at every turn with ancient moth balls, surprise staples, and the awkward weight of wool.

Success would have been sweet. But in my room we found a missing floorboard. There was a one by one hidey hole in the floor that had been clumsily boarded over. I didn’t want to look inside of it when my sister first noticed. A murder hole? In my room? Next to my bed?! The irony of all the creepy things happening to me was not lost. We looked after I finished my combined swearing/ panic attack. I wish we hadn’t.

Inside were old Polaroids. They were blurred, out of focus. But there always seemed to be a shadow at the edge of the photos. I recognized our house. But it looked different. It looked eerie. No people were shown, but an occasional hand popped into frame. A gnarled, club of a hand. The type you’d see on an aged prize fighter or rancher. I told my sister to put the photos back. They had stayed there all this time and we didn’t need to be the ones to let them into the light.

She didn’t listen.

The next day she heard the slap against the closet wall. She tried to put the photos back into the hidey hole, but it was too late. She had heard the hand.

The slaps started to happen faster. Less time in between them. It didn’t matter if we were together or apart— the noise continued. If anything, it sounded louder. It sounded angry.

We had forgotten the outside world. Our friends hadn’t seen us. Our grades were abysmal. But then I had to leave for summer camp. School ended before we knew what happened. Laney told me she’d be fine at home. That it was only noise. I didn’t know if I believed in God, but my worry gnawed on me until I began to pray for her at night. Tucked inside my sleeping bag in a drafty cabin, I begged the cosmic forces to just let this be a cruel joke. A ruse.

They didn’t listen.

Before the first week ended my mom came to pick me up. Laney went missing the day before and no one could find her. I asked my mom if she’d searched the house. She looked at me like I was crazy. I told her I didn’t want to go home.

We pulled into the driveway— our off white, two story New England bungalow loomed over me. I knew Laney was inside.

I didn’t know if I could join her.

Drop

“Dylan, the rope broke.”

”What do you mean it broke? What are you saying?”

”I am so sorry. She’s gone. We’re too high up.”

“No. No, no, no.” Dylan dropped to his knees. The wind whipped up over the peaks. A light frost dusted the route they had just finished. “We have to go find her. You don’t know.” His voice broke as he looked at Matt.
Matt hugged Dylan and let the tears fall from eyes.
“We should get moving before that storm rolls in.” Dark clouds swirled in the distance. The sun teased its descent as the sky began to dim.
Dylan wiped his eyes and nose with a beaten up green Patagonia jacket.
“I’ll be ready to go as soon as you are.” Matt nodded at him and checked the ropes.
The brothers had climbed together for years. Only in the last sixteen months had Matt seen Dylan begin to light up— and that all started with Eliza. She managed to drag him out from his camper van and back into the world of humans on his non-climbing days. He even began to shower semi-regularly, which was a coup for the rest of their friend group.
But more than that, Dylan began to push for higher peaks and bolder strategies with Eliza’s gentle support and easy laughs. If Dylan were the crags of a mountain, Eliza was the waterfalls.
“Everything is ready— are you okay to do this?” Matt said.
“I have to find her, Matt. She’d never leave this mountain if I was lost. I know you’d do the same.” Matt nodded and began the descent.
Night fell as they made it down the mountainside. The ice began to thicken and the winds whipped up as the stars burned like wildfire overhead. The two brothers were focused on the area their headlamps lit up and nothing else.

Deep into the Briar Woods

“There is no gentle unmaking of the soul,” the crone said. Night had fallen in the Briar Woods and she had spells yet to cast. The cabin filled with a spiced aroma as she stirred her blackened cauldron. The surface bubbled and hissed as she threw herbs into it. Evalina had waited forty years for the stars to realign. She would not be caught unprepared for her chance to rewrite destiny. Her left hand ached in agreement— two fingers missing.

A knock on door woke Evalina. No light showed from the windows. Someone had braved the Briar Woods at night to seek her. Only the foolish or powerful could. Often, both.
She opened the door to find a small, velvet cloaked stranger.
“Are you the witch?” A girl asked, her bright face peeking out of her hood.

”Who are you to ask?”

“My name is Oona. My mother sent me to find you. She said you’d want to know about the fallen star.” The girl tried to hide her nervous tick, but It was for naught. An old crone can see, even if she were blind. And with sharp, dark eyes, Evalina was certainly not.
“Your mother sent you to tell me about a fallen star? What does she want in return?”

”She did not say— only that you must hurry before the men from Darnuc found it. Their rangers have been patrolling the edges of the woods for weeks now.”

“And what do you want? Why send you through these woods at night? You’re a fool to do it for nothing.”

The girl shifted the cloak to reveal a half arm on her right side.
“I want to learn.”

Raven

She slipped into the shadow of sorrow. Singing a song of alien melody. 

Arms of darkness wrapped her tight. Tucking away her light from the world. 

Donations

When the blood shortage started, people laughed it off. The frenzied calls from the Red Cross soon changed that. Each subsequent call they offered more to get citizens to donate. It started small— gift cards to Chipotle & Sephora. Then it graduated to Apple products. Finally, they started promising investment strategies and tuition waivers for children. The higher the offers became, the less people refused, but the more suspicious they grew. 

“Why do they need all this blood?”

“Where is it going?”

“Why don’t they offer no pulp orange juice with donations?” 

The questions wouldn’t stop. But higher management employed smoke & mirror tactics to evade the public. As far as they were concerned, no one needed to know about the source of the shortage. 

The problem is that secrets like that don’t stay hidden for long. 

 Soon, the demand began to slow down. The offers dropped and the calls returned to normal. Still, no word from leadership about the nature of the problem or how it was fixed. 

An entire year passed— and on the eve of Halloween, a new moon rose in the sky. A blood red moon. It sat next to the original moon. The world erupted in chaos— two moons? Americans were irate— only two parties were allowed. But two moons? That’s treason. The rest of the world looked on with similar confusion and worry. What did it mean? 

The blood moon glistened in the night sky— it rotated in slow motion. The frustrations slipped away as eyes became transfixed on the hypnotic movement. 

The new moon began to spin faster— small points erupted on its surface— with each rotation they began to lengthen. Tendrils of red soon filled the sky and descended to the corralled masses below. 

The red strips were pliant, semi-autonomous as they surged to attach themselves to the first human they could find. 

Within a single day, the surface of earth played host to an unending mass of tethered bodies. 

Within another day— they were lifted into the sky. The tendrils retreated to the blood moon with their humans attached. 

Each body swallowed the flowing crimson surface made the moon imperceptibly bigger. 

The moon soon dominated the sky— easily dwarfing the earth & its own frail lookalike. 

An ominous silence fell over the earth— now vacated of human life. The machines had stopped— no calls, errands, chores, living being done. 

Just an orb of Jupiter proportions slowly edging away from the planet it harvested. 

No more donations needed.

Cotton Eyed Destiny

The halls of Swarthmore High School buzzed with anticipation. Winter formal had long proved to be a tradition everyone enjoyed. 

Well, almost everyone. 

Annie Turner hated dances. She hated the outfits, the fake cheer, the need to pretend that small social matters would lead to anything important in life. She couldn’t stand it. 

She decided that this year, Swarthmore High deserved a new tradition. One that showed all the fakes that the only thing that matter was power. Power that transcended mortal existence. 

Her plan had been in motion since last October after Gary Vanderfront and his cronies decided to line the inside of her locker with sheep guts and wrote “You’re a baaah-ed time.” Gary hadn’t taken her rejection at the Halloween party well. But you can’t expect success when you dress as a skeleton and ask people if they want to “bone.” 

Annie had to research how to remove sheep guts on the internet. That’s how she found her book of incantations on Etsy. The page with the cleaning guide had an old recipe section where a Midwestern Wiccan detailed their successes in between explanations of how to properly boil lentils and how to spice up vegan chili. 

Annie combed the halls as the first songs began to echo out from the gymnasium. The melodies of Timbaland and Shakira faded as she dove deeper into the school. She finally found an abandoned music room— budget cuts left the place dusty and littered with turned over chairs. It was perfect. 

Annie lit a single red candle and began. 

“Where did you come from?

Where did you go? 

Reveal the secrets of the universe to me- Cotton Eye Joe!”

A thrumming weight moved through the air. Time stuck like molasses as the final note rang clear. The motion inside the gymnasium froze. A half submerged ladle of punch stopped mid-bubble. 

A Deity had deigned to visit Swarthmore Formal. And Annie Turner had called it there. 

An explosion of lace and corduroy shocked the crowd back to life. The amp buzzed the stilted air— something changed— but the students didn’t know what. 

No one noticed the disappearance of Annie Turner. No one even thought to look. 

Over the next couple years— students would swear they heard chanting echo the halls on Winter Formal. Harsh whispers in the edge of rooms. Invisible eyes peeked through the stark, fluorescent lights and teenage music. 

Memories slipped like salmon on a ladder and worries fled to dark dreams and acid flashbacks. 

The name Annie Turner burnt like a twisted wick— flickering, but never full. 

Blue Falcon

The urinal company's name burned into my mind as my body held me captive in the stall. A blue falcon pressed into the plastic drain guard mocked me as I alternated between pressure and relaxing. The ever-changing carousel of shoes in the neighboring stall reminded me I wasted every dry second.

I pushed on my bladder in vain, closer to blowing a hole through my couch than getting out of this bathroom in the next five minutes. I refused to lift my head as the shoes next to me changed again. Staring into the white porcelain, I wondered if this is the shame that older men feel. And if it is, I promise not to laugh in the future. Here I am at thirty-one, the proud owner of the newest dam in the country. I could block off Niagara falls with this thing.

Internally there's a security squad of mini-me's who are screaming in terror at the rising pressure. My body has become the Chernobyl reactor, and there's no exit for the release. They are crying. One call's their wife to tell them they love them. Another stares at their friendship bracelet and wonders why the fuck their friend thought teal was a good color.

A pessimistic sweat starts to bloom under my arms, showing that my body isn't the jealous mistress it claims to be. The excess moisture decided it had to escape through any available orifice.

Finally, an uneasy neon silence filled the ash-tiled room. I was alone with punch bowl belly and conscious illusions as time lost meaning. The first drops fall like the tears of Mary seeing Christ on the cross. I lift my arms, unleashing an unholy torrent that even Moses couldn't have parted. In other words, I pissed so hard I knocked the plaster off the wall.

Stars

“The stars like talking to me when I’m alone, mama.” A small girl said. She kicked her legs back and forth as the porch swing swung under her. “Do they talk to you too?”

“Baby, I told you not to keep going on about this. You’ll scare your brother— you know how sensitive he gets.”

”But mama!—“

”No buts, Darlene. I don’t want to hear anymore ‘star talk’ out of you. Now get on— Elwood is stopping by soon and I have to get ready.” The rain thin woman said. She ashed her cigarette and shuffled inside. Darlene followed her back into the trailer. She stared at the brown, mottled carpet as she thought about the bright voices from the night before.

Crickets brayed against the bullfrogs as their contending Melodie’s played the soundtrack to Darlene’s walk along the creek. Silver lane park sat above Sullivan’s Gulch— where a small creek ran through it. Darlene spent more time looking for salamanders than she did in her school work. It upset her mama the few days she was home— but Darlene didn’t care for papers or writing forms the way she did about splashing through water and finding shiny rocks.

Across the stream a blue rift caught her eye. It belonged to an off-white jagged masterpiece of a stone. Darlene had to have it. She hop scotched across the dry rocks to cross the creek. She didn’t want to soak her tennis shoes— her only other pair were still drying out from the last salamander hunt.
She admired the strange rock— thinking of the moon overhead before stuffing it in her pocket.

“Darlene! Hey, Darleneeee!” Her brother’s voice, Carl, man chord around the creek from overhead. “Mama wants you to come home!” She heard his little feet scamper off before she could call back.
She huffed a sigh before trudging up the hill. Elwood always cut her creek adventures short— for that alone, she had a deep distaste of the man.

Long Flight

“There’s no way a Pelican swallowed that baby.”

”I’m tell you it happened. It was terrifying. Like a fucked up role reversal of those storks that carry babies to new moms.”

”You mean Mother Goose?”

”I said Stork.”

”Well originally you said Pelican.”

”I said like a stork. Listen, you’re just messing with me because you don’t believe it. I wouldn’t either. But it happened— why would I lie to you?”

”You lie to me about not having chocolate all the time. Why would a baby eating bird be any different?”

”Because one is for your health— and the other is because it happened!”

”Adrian, are you calling me fat?”

”I swear to God that Pelican ate that child.”

”Don’t dodge the question. Do you think I’m fat?”

”Please don’t do this.”

”I will never make you my nacho chili cheese fries ever again.”

“Stacy, let’s not get crazy here.”

”Crazy?!”

”…shit.”

”I’m waiting.”

”Can we get back to the birds?”

Overboard

An unlucky young man named Bartholomew Berensky apprenticed to the famous Florentine chef, Ignacio Firenze. 

Ignacio had honed his craft on the pirate vessels of the Mediterranean— the rambunctious mercenaries could only be quelled by Ignacio’s flavor packed feasts. 

His meals became the stuff of legend— as his notoriety grew, other captains began to target his first ship, The Alvair, so they could enjoy the rare treasure of a home cooked meal upon the waves. 

This is not to say Ignacio always parted willingly. There are three scars slashed across his face that would say otherwise. 

This turbulent adolescence left Ignacio with enough tales to humble Homer & as many recipes to go toe to toe with Julia Child’s. 

Salvation came on the wings of a storm— as it ripped the three masted Proveneo apart and tossed Ignacio into the sea. He washed ashore on the long contentious island of Corsica— an uneasy Italian refugee under authority of France. 

For ten years Ignacio cooked for the distant relations of Napoleon on the Bonaparte estate. During which time a young man of Polish and Sardinian heritage appeared in his kitchens, Bartholomew Berensky. The madame, Louisa Bonaparte, favored the Bartholomew’s father, after he saved her favorite stallion from hoof rot, and asked Ignacio to guide Bartholomew as a favor to her. 

It was a disaster. 

Bart, as Ignacio called him, couldn’t cook to save his life. He once managed to burn the water— of which Ignacio suspected witchcraft, wherein it was simply unintentional chemistry. 

Ignacio wanted to throttle the young man, but it felt akin to kicking a puppy or sleeping with your brother’s wife. 

Unnecessarily cruel and startlingly easy. 
Ignacio plotted to give Bart credit for his most elaborate dishes— as to shuffle him onto another unsuspecting master. But Louisa proved too fond of the young man.
“We couldn’t possibly break you two up. I have never tasted such divine combinations— it’s as if the pope has blessed your cooking. I can’t imagine letting either of your slip away from my kitchen.” Louisa said. Her lips darkened purple from wine from Versailles. Ignacio spent the night looking at his old ship knife. A battered hunk of wood with a rusted blade bent at a forty five degree angle. It had held steady on more than one attempted bucking overboard. Every galley cook knew you dig their knives in deep when a big wave rolled the ship.
The smell of salt spraying in the breeze. The odor of half rotted fish. The sweat that dripped tirelessly, like an eager dog. His heart swelled at the nostalgia— as the small gears in his mind began to spin.

The next week brought clear skies and a heavy sun. The estate stayed shuttered as the rays baked the dirt— searing away any arrogant foliage. Ignacio travelled to the far shore— an hours walk from the grounds. He withdrew a looking glass from his pocket. Eyes hungry to catch sight of white sails.
If he could not will the fates to move Bart, then he must call to the ocean to once again be the gem in its crown.