Questions & Answers

The man in the gray suit appeared to me again. I was at another motel, sitting on the edge of the pool, my jeans rolled up, my feet in the water. The water was distorting them, making them look bigger than they were and then I saw his reflection in the water.

It did not distort, not like mine. The ripples in the water did not touch his image.

I turned around, looked at him and said, "Hello."

At first I thought he wasn't really there; I thought that perhaps this was an actual dream, but then I remembered that I didn't dream anymore. I didn't dream and I didn't feel lonely and I didn't feel guilty and I didn't have any secrets or desires. I had killed them all with my special bullets.

"Hello," the man in the gray suit said.

"What am I?" I asked.

"You are the Endmaker," he said.

"And what is that?"

"A test," he said. "A system, a weapon, a reset. You will bring about their end and they know it. So far, they have tried to kill you directly and by proxy, tried to get you to commit suicide, and tried to tempt you, but you have killed each one. You are something outside their paradigm. You are something they cannot see. You are a blind spot."

I pulled my legs out of the pool and asked, "Why me?"

"There are some questions without answers," the man said, "and some questions with an infinite amount of answers. Pick one."

"What do I do now?" I asked.

"They have tried various approaches," he said. "They will be smarter. You must keep going. You must face your limits and go beyond them. You must give them mercy and make their end."

Finally, I stood up. "Who are you?" I asked.

"That is another question without answer," he said, "or with an infinite amount. You may choose any you like."

And then he was gone, as if he was never there at all.

My reflection looked back at me and told me what a good girl I was. Look at all the pain you have caused, it told me. Look at yourself.

It was me, but it wasn't. It was more beautiful than I could ever have hoped to look. It's hair was dark brown, chestnut, and it fell in waves, curling like little snakes around its shoulders. It smiled at me and its teeth straight and white and had little points on the end.

It raised one hand -- one perfectly manicured, silky smooth hand -- and gestured for me to walk forward. "Come," it said. "You have felt pain and sorrow and heartache. Let me give you love. Let me make you something better. As I am now, so you shall be."

The mirror showed me my deepest wishes, my longings to be prettier and smarter. It showed me seducing men and women, making them kneel before me, worshiping me, kissing the scales on my feet.

I almost gave in. I almost took its hand. But when I raised my own hand, there was the gun and my reflection recoiled. And I remembered. This was not real, this was not my reflection. This was just another monster.

It hissed at me and I remembered all of my wishes, all of the darkest desires I had. The bullet that formed was sleek and mirrored. The reflection tried to pushed forward with its claws, but I had already pulled the trigger.

The mirror and what was inside it shattered into a million pieces.

As I gingerly stepped over the mirror shards, I looked down at one of them and found the reflection, its skin peeling, turning to dust and nothing. It was trying to say something. Its lips moved and I remember what it had said before:

"As I am now, so shall you be," it was saying.

I stepped on the shard and it broke apart.

The dog was blacker than night and larger than life. It unhinged its jaws and I looked into its maw and I saw every single secret I did not want to know about myself. I saw every way I was deluding myself, I saw all of my insecurities, all of my issues, all of the little lies I told myself and others.

These were things I didn't even know about myself, but the dog knew everything. He knew secrets I had forgotten; hidden moments that I never wanted to remember. He brought forth every single secret I had and I fell to my knees in front of him. He had shown me all my secrets and now he would swallow me whole.

There was a secret day I called in sick to work. I was tired and didn't want to get out of bed, so I called in sick and instead watched television all day. This was one of my secrets; I was ashamed at how mundane they were, at how banal they all seemed now. I almost wanted him to eat me up, so all my secrets could be forgotten after my death.

Almost.

My secrets bunched around me like flies and when I raised the gun, they flew into the barrel and made another bullet.

The dog growled. The gun barked. The bullet howled.

There was an eye watching me from the door of my room.

I was laying on the bed of the motel room. My back was turned to the door, but I knew the eye was watching me. There were eyes everywhere. They crawled over the floors and ceilings, over dressers and tables. They watched me, they knew my every move, my every thought.

I clutched the gun in my hand. I had emptied it of bullets - no metal would harm these eyes. They were not human eyes. They were the eyes made of sin. They saw my every fault, my every misdeed, my every wrongdoing. Killed a boy, they whispered. She killed a boy killed him dead killed him killed him murdered him killed him in cold blood murdered him to save herself she should die just die kill herself she should kill herself killer killer killer killerkillerkillerkilllerkillherkillherkillherkillher

The weight of my sins pressed down on me, but instead of letting them in, I bunched them up into a ball. I took my sins into my hand and made a bullet.

Then I turned to the door and I shot that motherfucker in the eye.

Three down. More to go.

Blackberry Winter

That's what my mother used to call it. When winter lingered into spring, when the blackberries have bloomed, but there was still snow on the ground. I remember going out into that snow, when the sun was high, and collecting blackberries for my mom. I remember coming back with my hands stained black from their juices. I remember my mom and I washing the blackberries and eating them one by one, laughing as we did. I remember the stomachache afterwards, having eaten too many blackberries, yet I still felt happy. It was a blackberry winter and I remember being happy.

After I killed someone -- a living person, an actual person with parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins -- after I had killed a living, breathing person (it was self defense, he was going to shoot you, it was self defense), I ran. I ran until my legs gave out and I collapsed onto the ground. I wanted to cry, but I was too tired, too sore, too scared to cry.

I shivered and pulled my jacket around me and dragged myself to my feet and began to walk. Walking clears my mind, walking helps me. What was I going to do? I had killed someone. But they had tried to kill me. It was clearly self defense. No one would blame me. I wouldn't go to jail. In fact, I stopped him from killing more people.

And then a question arose in my mind, a question I was sure would come up with the authorities: where had I gotten the gun?

The revolver was in my pocket. I had put it there after I had stopped running. I couldn't carry it around out in the open.

What would I say when they asked me why I had the gun? What could I tell them? I couldn't tell them that I brought it to a school. I didn't have a permit for that, I didn't even have a permit for the gun itself.

And then another thought: they would take the gun away. For some reason, this thought stuck into my brain like a thorn. They couldn't take the gun away from me. I need the gun, I thought. I need it to fight the monsters.

The monsters, they would come after me, like the man in the gray suit said. They had tried to kill me. They would do it again. The gun was my only protection. I couldn't lose it.

So what could I tell the authorities? What could I possibly say?

Nothing. I could say nothing. I could just go, leave, run away. So I did.

I made one stop before leaving -- I bought a holster, so I could carry the gun better. It had been digging into my thigh. And I've checked the news dozens of times, hundreds of times, but there's been no report about a shooting at my school. No report about dead or missing faculty members. For some reason, that made me feel worse than if there had been news reports.

There's snow on the ground, but I found a patch of blackberries by the side of the road. I plucked them all and cupped them in my hand and ate them as I walked down the road. I wanted to feel that happiness again, but I couldn't. I don't think I can be happy ever again.

It happened the last day before Spring Break.

I was working in the front office when one of the teachers brought in a sixth-grade student. He wore shabby clothing and carried a backpack that barely hung onto one shoulder. Usually, the kids who are dragged into the office look angry or annoyed, but this kid just had a blank expression on his face.

"I caught him lighting matches in the hallway," the teacher said. He put an open matchbook on the desk, half of the matches already ripped out. "I've already written him up, I just need him to see Mr. Henderson." Mr. Henderson was our vice-principal and was generally in charge of suspensions and expulsions.

My coworker Nancy, the one who owns a Glock, got up. "Mr. Henderson's busy right now," she said, "but I'll keep on eye on him until he can see him."

The teacher sat the student down on the hard yellow plastic chair beside Nancy's desk and said, "Thanks. I need to get back to my class."

"Sure thing," Nancy said. She sat back down and looked at the student. "So what were you trying to do? Burn the school down?"

"Yes," he said. His voice was flat, unaffected.

Nancy shook her head. "Why?" she asked.

I knew that was the wrong question. No good ever comes from asking why. I was right.

"She told me it would be good," he said.

"'She'?" Nancy said. "Who told you?"

"She told me she would purify this place," the student said. "She told me that this place would burn and everyone who ever hurt me would burn with it. All I had to do was one thing."

"Right," Nancy said. "I think we're going to have to call child services, too. It's obvious-"

And that's when he pulled the gun from his backpack. He shot Nancy before she had time to speak. A hole blossomed in her head and blood and brains splattered her computer screen. Then he turned the gun to me and said, "She's going to purify this place. She's going to burn all those who burned me. All I have to do is kill you. All you have to do is die."

Mr. Henderson opened his door at that moment and he saw the student with the gun and Nancy, dead at her desk, and he backed away, but not fast enough. The gun went off two more times and I saw blood on his jacket, blood on his tie.

I was paralyzed. I couldn't handle this. This wasn't a dream. I couldn't will the gun into my hand. I couldn't do anything. I just stood there and waited for death.

The student looked at me and then raised his gun and pulled the trigger. At the sound of the click, the world around me froze like a still image. Nothing moved, not even the air. Everything was silent and still.

The man in the gray suit was behind me, but I couldn't turn to see him. He said, "This is one of the ways they will try to avoid their own fate. The child of ice imbued a lonely pain, but the bride burns into them a pain that wants to be shared, a pain that needs to be given away on the point of a knife or the tip of a bullet. But you have will. You have momentum." I felt the weight of the gun in my hand. Had he handed it to me or was it always with me? "Use it," he said and then he was gone.

The world unfroze. The student pulled the trigger and I moved out of the way. I felt something go by my ear. I fell sideways onto the floor and when I looked up, he was there, holding his gun with two hands, pointing it at me. "I just want it to stop," he said.

"Me too," I said and raised my gun and shot him.

I don't know how there was a bullet in the gun. I hadn't made one, but then again, a special bullet wasn't needed. Just a regular one, a small piece of metal, then pushed its way through his soft tissue and into his heart. He looked surprised as he died.

I didn't know what I was supposed to do next. This wasn't like before, with the boy in my kitchen. That boy had been a monster and he had vanished afterward. But this...this boy was real. His body lay on the floor, his blood pooling beneath him. I had killed him. I had ended his life.

I looked at the gun in my hand and at the boy on the floor and I stood up. I stood up and walked out of the room. I walked and then I ran.

I ran until I couldn't run anymore.

A Walk in the Park

I met the man in the gray suit again, but it wasn't a dream. It was in real life.

Since I hadn't been sleeping that much, I've taken to going for walks at night. I'm sure that it's dangerous, I know I could get mugged, but I don't have anything else to do. So I walk.

Last night, I walked to the nearby park. There was a fountain that sprayed water during the day, but was now off. From the glare of the streetlamp, I could see pennies and nickels at the bottom of the fountain. As I was looking at them, I could feel someone standing behind me. I turned and there he was.

He looked the same as in my dream. I still can't properly describe him, except that he was wearing a gray suit and a gray hat. I can't remember what his face looked like and I did not dare not look into his eyes.

"What's happening to me?" I asked.

"You are the Endmaker," he said. "You are making their end."

"Whose end?" I said. "Who did I kill?"

"You cannot kill what does not live," he said. "They are not alive, not as you know it. You are merely ending their existence. And the gun is the means to the end."

"The end of what?"

"The end of fear," he said. "They fear you now. They cannot escape you. One by one, they will be drawn to you and you will end them. You are their extinction."

"Why?" I asked. "Why me?"

The man in the gray suit raised one hand and placed it on my shoulder again. I became sure that the thing under his glove wasn't a hand, but something else, something that merely looked like a hand; that this man wasn't a man at all but something that looked like a man and talked like a man, but was something so vastly foreign, so immensely alien that I could never hope to comprehend anything it told me.

I couldn't stand it anymore. I backed away from him and ran back to my house. I took a single glance back and he was still standing there, his hands to his side, looking at me as I ran.

I can't sleep. Ever since that dream where I killed the man (I'm pretty sure I killed him), I don't sleep that much and when I do, I wake up after a few hours.

And there's something else. Ever since I killed the child or the thing that looked like a child, I've felt something...missing. I used to feel alone, but now I don't.

When I think about being alone, I just feel...nothing.

Dream a Little Dream

I thought all my dreams would feature the man in the gray suit, but then I had one that didn't. It was perhaps even weirder than the other dreams, though.

I was folding clothes straight from the dyer. They felt warm and soft. Then I heard the singing. It wasn't the song that the child song, no, this was a different song.

"He wear no shoeshine,
He got toe jam football,
He got monkey finger,
He shoot Coca Cola,
He say I know you,
You know me,
One thing I can tell you is you got to me free."

I walked into the kitchen. I felt slow, lethargic. The floor was a crisscrossed pattern of black and white.

In the kitchen, I saw the child again. He was smiling at me and I raised the gun again and I shot him, then I shot him again. I didn't even realize I was holding the gun. The bullets hit him in the chest and the shoulder and made splashes of blood. His smile didn't leave his face.

He started to shake and then dance.

"He rollercoaster,
He got early warning,
He one mojo filter,
He say one and one and one is three,
Got to be good lookin'
'Cause he's so hard to see."

I backed away just as he exploded. Blood splattered me in the faces and I closed my eyes. When I opened them, I wasn't in my kitchen anymore. I was in a circus tent. Lights flashed around me, illuminating the black and white stripes of the tent.

I was in the center and there were rows and rows of people watching me. I could see their blank faces shaking in laughter. I heard a voice behind me.

There was a man with a megaphone. He held a tophat in one hand and had a handlebar mustache. He wore a coat of red and yellow with golden epaulettes. He looked kind of like Cesar Romero, the actor who played the Joker in the old '60s Batman series. "Ladies and germs!" he spoke into the megaphone. "Witness! The cure for the common cold! The killer of children! Gaze upon her sad face, watch as she lays in bed and cries all day long, mock her all you want! Go on!"

He turned to me and lowered his megaphone. "How did it feel? Good? Did you enjoy shooting the boy?"

"Who are you?" I asked.

"She speaks!" the man shouted into the megaphone. "She cuts straight to the point! She wants to know who I am!" The crowd tittered. The man turned back to me. "I am just a dream, my dear. Your subconscious mind at work. A fanciful reverie, you might say."

"Then I'd like to wake up," I said.

"Too bad," he said. "You are just too dangerous, my dear. Better you stay asleep."

I still had the gun in my head, so I lifted it up and pointed it at him.

"Oh, my dear," he said, "that's not the real gun, it's all part of the dream." He snapped his finger and then I wasn't holding the gun at all, I was just pointing my finger at him. "You see?"

I looked at my hand. I opened it so I could see my palm and then closed it. I didn't know what I was doing. My body - my dream body, it wasn't even my real body - was acting on its own. My fist closed and suddenly I remembered all the dreams I had ever had, each and every one of them. Dreams about school, showing up naked to work, dreams about my mother and my father, every anxiety dream I ever had, ever dream I had ever remembered or forgotten.

Then I opened my hand and there was a bullet. It gleamed like nothing I had seen. It wasn't real.

It was a dream bullet.

The man with the megaphone looked at me with anger. "You shouldn't be able to do that," he said. "This is my world."

"But this is my dream," I said. The gun appeared in my other hand and I carefully loaded in the dream bullet.

The audience of the tent stood up all at the same time and attacked. I saw men with cutlasses and women with beards and men who breathed fire and they were all rushing forward towards me. They seemed to melt together into an amalgam of every nightmare, their faces twisting into different forms, their limbs becoming amorphous.

I didn't stop, however. I aimed and pulled the trigger and time slowed, like last time. The bullet twisted in the air and it seemed to pull the crowd behind it. Not just the crowd, not just the nightmare people, but the entire circus tent, too. The backdrop peeled away as the bullet flew forward and the man with the megaphone screamed and his mouth grew bigger until it was larger than his entire body and he consumed himself.

Everything fell away then, leaving a nothingness all around me. I closed my eyes and when I opened them I was awake.