User:The Koromo/Rotten Apples (wip)

I. A Few Bad Apples
Northeast of Boise the mountains tower triumphantly, holding the sun high above at its peak and hiding it as it descends as evening fades into night. There are great forests, some humanity has never walked amongst, that dominate the land in thousands of acres, spanning several counties. There are vast natural lakes that descend hundreds of feet deep that none have ever swam in. Upon one of these abundant Idahoan mountains is the town of Little Loop, Idaho.

Residing in Custer County, near the state’s center, the town’s history for the main part is shrouded in fairly moderate normalcy; nothing more than a drive through Idaho State Highway through Lemhi and many grassy plains and oceans of grass and the lingering horizon, and you will come across this friendly little woodland neighborhood deep in the vastness of the northern mountain state’s heartland. In 1899 the town was founded under a locomotive company and middle-aged couple named Muriel and Heighton’s and over many decades eventually sprung into one of those “everybody knows each other” neighborhoods that Idaho itself was expectedly so familiar with. With a minuscule population of 226 and the nearest college campus three miles further in the larger mountain town of Windhand, it was safe to say that the town of Little Loop was safe and alone.

The town itself is not much to behold. Upon the grass in the far reaches of Idaho State Highway, a certain slope will turn you slightly up the mountainside, not uncommon for the hilly overtones of Idaho's geographical layout, until you reach the tiny hamlet. This hick-ish, but not unfriendly mountain town area of Merrick was merely nothing more than a miniature woodland boondocks in the mountains. Houses were generally scattered, many in between peaceful wilderness and flowing streams and rivers. Farther out into the town, the woodland opened up and revealed the grassy mountain plains, complete with aplenty of homes that stood under the blue of the immortal sky. There was a small private high school in the area by the name of Highway High, of course based derivative of the name of the long, lonesome stretch of road that connected the thick Idahoan mountains to the town. The hamlet had earned its name due to its circular structure of six woodland miles in total, ‘looping’ around a good deal of the portion of the forest. So the townsfolk nice, the atmosphere free, the landscape a spectacle, the town overall – normal.

Until the post-Y2K days had hit and everything had altered drastically.

In the pre-winter of 2000, the first occurrence in a chain of incomprehensibly strange events ravaged Little Loop unexpectedly and with no warning. Over a period of slightly more than a month about half a dozen townsfolk had disappeared without a trace leaving no evidence behind of their existence whatsoever, save for irregularly shaped dirt gaps. Mabel Barrington, superstitious widowed eldest resident of the town had of course spouted monologues about the occult and the otherworldly, but other townsfolk even after these events remained skeptical of her yarn.

The Loop’s first official death-by-assault would arise in July of 2007, more than half a decade later, when presumably unstable fifty-year-old townie fella from Denver by the name of Will Milling turned his rifle on twenty-six year old Barry Balton in a presumably homophobic hate crime; half of Balton's face was blown off in the incident before he was immediately rushed to the minuscule town infirmary by his friends Ronnie Desmond and his wife Marty. Apparently Milling had tried to fire at them as well when they both had made haste with the dying victim of injustice, but his rifle jammed as he poked its scope in the direction of Marty and attempted to fire; but to no avail. Milling was sentenced to half-a-century in the ol’ calaboose, while Balton had merely died of his wounds hours later in the town’s tiny emergency room.

Hell would return to Little Loop on November the third, 2009.

On Roans Central, which was the grassier, more open portion of the town that revealed the sky overhead, a graduated university student previously attending Appleton Academy three miles down the road in Windhand was roused from his slumber by beams of morning light filtering through his window across from his bed. He moaned and stretched, propping himself upward onto the sheet and staring out into the open space of fields beyond his window. The grass rustled and weaved under the morning light, the rising sun lifting itself over the mountainous horizon casting the shadows of distant pine trees and the woodland that they belonged to. The sun beamed also onto the multitude of homes, lights off and the insides quiet. The young man in his nothing but his undies yawned fiercely and squirmed out of bed before trudging over to the blinds and grabbing each end harshly before pulling them together. Annoyed that he had been awoken so early on a Saturday by mere forget of closing the blinds the night before, he pried open one of his drawers and grabbed one of his standard articles of clothing; blue jeans and a plain white t-shirt, which hastily applied. His clothing was often scattered disorderly in his drawers merely from a lack of care. Clothes were clothes.

He flicked the light on shuffled over to his Blackberry where he and Milly’s conversation from last night lay when he snapped the phone’s screen on. Something about volley ball practice to which he had responded to passively in his mind, but sounding rather sugar-coated on his phone. He gazed down at it, read Milly’s “luv u hun ^_^” message that she had given right before he went to sleep and pocketed the cell.

No matter her ditziness and godawful communication skills when it came to social media, sometimes his love for that girl could go beyond what he thought was even remotely possible. Nathan Hoffman and Mildred Lawrence would be together for three years come March 9th; a relationship that had begun in Nathan’s junior year and Mildred’s sophomore at Appleton University. But Mildred hated her given name and would correct as “Milly, if ya please,” which she’d say in that Texan drawl, inherited from her southern parents, that had driven him wild whenever they together, especially in the sheets. Milly may not have been the sharpest tool in any of the sheds you’d find ever-abundant in Idaho's heartland, or maybe even in the north as a whole, but to him it bore no significance. Whilst some would pass him off as ignorant for it, he never understood why the idea of intelligence mattering in relationships was so important to society; “his heart is bigger than his brain” was something his parents had always told him about him when they were still around, so why couldn’t the same apply for a woman?

Nathan had graduated from Appleton a year ago at age the age of twenty-three, a year only added to his high school years because of a not-so-minor setback in tenth grade (which included urination and the principle’s quarters).

Hunger rumbled from within. He groaned, his need for breakfast unsatisfied since his lack of a decent meal last night – nothing more than a handful of lame breadsticks and salami. In and exhaling, he stepped out into the hallway and trailed down to the stairwell where he descended.

Nathan made a right turn into his kitchen to be met with the pearly white floorboards and dullard wooden cabinets. The room was a whole was both a mix of dining room and kitchen; his fridge lay off in a corner, but a table was placed near the window that overlooked the grassy fields beyond. He tread over to it and clicked it open, letting a gentle breeze flood in. Grabbing his stomach, he hungrily turned over to the kitchen and groaned in relief when he saw the fruit bowl lying idly off to one side, precariously close to the edge. He shambled over to it; a fly buzzed about frenetically in the air only to be swiftly swatted away by Nathan’s incoming hand.

Figuring the fly had not planted its eggs in any of the fruit, he reached for an apple and gripped it bringing it quickly up to his mouth; he noticed faintly that his home phone had begun to ring far off in the distance but food came first for him. He’d never felt this starving in weeks, it seemed; Darrel was no stranger to food and had put on a good ten pounds in the last few months, but he was 198, so as a whole it wasn’t an atrocious weight. Over two-hundred pounds would be far worse, but he was getting fairly close.

''Whatever. An apple a day keeps the doctor away'', he thought passively.

He wrapped his lips around the apple and when his teeth punctured the fruit’s red membrane and his taste buds were hit with the flavor, he reeled back in hard hitting revile and dread, yakking up the chunk of fruit with a nauseating thud on the kitchen floor, covered in a thick sheen of his saliva. He coughed violently, looming over the sink and firing spittle into the drain nearly to the point of vomit. The apple had slipped from his hand, thumping once, twice on the island table until it bounced onto the floor and rolled out of sight. With no regard of the ice machine he almost instantaneously nabbed a plastic cup off of the counter and ran tap water into it, shoveling it fiercely down his throat. Soon the taste had ceased but faint glimmerings of it remained in the back of his throat, gnawing.

He went back to the drain to excrete the last remaining bits of his spittle. Christ, he thought, what the fuck was that?!

The apple emitted no odor, but as soon as his teeth sunk into its flesh it had hit him; a foul concoction of what, it seemed to his taste buds, was the flavor of the most repulsive of rotten eggs and human vomit, overall making it seem like he had just dipped his head in the sewer and took a hearty swig. His eyes red and wet from the sudden shock, he swept the remaining sprinkles of spittle from his lips with his sleeve and leaned back against the kitchen counter, panting. Through his surprise he failed to notice the phone had stopped its series of rings and now sat silent on one of the tables in his living room.

His panting ceased. With a relieved “whoo” and a thump of his fist on his chest he leaned forward and onto the island, arms crossed. He had never tasted something so awful before but the water had relieved the dreadful feeling on his tongue quite quickly, which came as his surprise; usually water had done nothing but intensify his thirst when something tasted crappy. Now it flushed the taste away. Still, shock remained – his tongue had never laid upon something so foul in his life, and from an apple, no less. He remembered that the batch was fairly old and now realized it was probably his fault for not remembering it, and not dumping them earlier, no less.

After he had finished gathering himself up he grabbed the bowl and dumped it into his pullout trash bin, the fruits thumping over one another until the last had plopped out into the bag. Before he closed it he trudged over to the apple that he had taken a bite out of that had bumped onto the floor. He picked it up from its underside and, with mild disgust, tossed it in the bin before kicking it closed.

Putting aside the rotting surprise, he opened up his freezer and decided to go for something that wouldn’t repel his taste buds. He grabbed a pack of Eggo waffles and threw two in the toaster, also grabbing a couple strips of bacon and leaving them on the pan to sizzle. Almost immediately after this his phone began to go off again.

Hastily he made his way from the island table to the living room. The flat screen lay mounted on the wall off to one side; the fireplace was unlit, and he could have probably afforded a fake one, but a central heating system did a good job of fighting off the crisp November weather. In the center of the living room was furniture that, when looked at resembled a square, with a coffee table in the middle. In the back was his office, a doorless entryway that lead into a large room with a high roof and a bookshelf, complete with several tennis posters and photos of both he and Milly or memorabilia of when his parents still walked the earth. His computer lay on the desk and, for the moment, his manuscript of And the Kite String Pops sat next to it, piling up in all its 352 page glory.

The final copy of And the Kite String Pops had been sitting there for days, untouched, and Nathan knew it was better that way as of now. He’d completed the climax of the novel (which of comprised of its final eighty-four pages) in one painstaking, strenuous weekend half a month ago and it had been sleeping cozily next to his computer ever since. The rest of the book was revised fully except for those last eighty-four pages; he’d get to it sometime later this month, but there was that overwhelming feeling of accomplishment you got when you finished a story, especially if it was a novel, a feeling that he didn’t want to throw away too quickly by getting back to it immediately.

Almost immediately after he turned twenty Skydance had been published, a psychologically dramatic debut that had taken about two-hundred entries to publishers before it had finally been accepted, only to be met with overwhelmingly unremitting backlash. Skydance was a two-hundred page, chapterless drama honing in on the traumas of war – something Nathan had never experienced for himself – and the effects it can have on a man. Most critics had amended its message but tore it apart for various other issues, such as its notably stale characterization that, according to critic Marcy Sanders, couldn’t decide whether its characters wanted to be “flamboyant or melodramatic – or both”. Also attacked was its flat plotline, or lack thereof, that followed a disjointed structure, only made more difficult to read by its lack of a chapter formula.

Looking back on it Nathan knew it was a shitty book ("Michael Bay's "Pearl Harbor" level debacle", as Nathan had humorously put it when speaking about his writing to others), not because of the critics’ reactions, but because of his own mistakes regarding it; writing what you didn’t know could certainly work for many authors, but not for him and he unfortunately did not realize this until after the novel was published. That’s why he’d stuck all of his short stories set in places either in New York or Idaho or places he had visited, on vacations or otherwise. In Skydance, the protagonist was a drafted university student from New York – but that was as far as Nathan had gotten to his own reality, as the rest of the novel was set primarily in Vietnam’s desert. Even through months of research it proved not to work very well in the final draft.

He’d found more success with Blood Brothers, published two or three years later, that departed from the antiwar propaganda melodrama that had festered upon an ignorant Nathan Hoffman’s computer documents for three years prior to Skydance’s publication. Blood Brothers, at nearly five-hundred pages, had been his longest work of fiction to date, a novel that he had begun writing drafts for when he was less than sixteen. The novel in question was a crime thriller set in the industrial backdrop of 1960s Manhattan, focusing on two brothers in poverty who, not knowing the identity of their parents, fought to survive in the slums of New York City’s deepest locations. The brothers, Marty and Ernest, struggle to put the pieces together of their lost lives and discover just who their family really was. Overall the novel had received a much higher critical praise than his previous, though its use of violence as a plot point irritated some – sure, it wasn’t Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian level but looking back on it Nathan realized it came damn close, the most notably violent instance involving a medieval device and a scalpel.

And the Kite String Pops had been something of a sequel to Blood Brothers, though not directly. It took place in the same universe (or “’verse”, as Nathan had liked to call it) as the aforementioned novel, but rather than continuing the saga of the two brothers’ relationships as established in the previous book, Nathan had set it in Brooklyn’s seventies backdrop, about a decade later, this time focusing on a street gang looking to strike it rich. It also incorporated violent elements, as Nathan had realized, but overall its drug-addled content had triumphed over any other dark theme Nathan may have put in the book.

Nathan looked over to the picture on his wall of him and his family. He had been enthralled by the idea of writing since he was as wee as he could remember; in diapers, even. According to his mother, the first thing that had appealed to him about books was the feel of the page on the skin of his fingers; she’d told him stories when he was a preteen and he was at his peak of interest in books about how he’d run the flat surface of his fingers over stuff like the undoubted masterpiece of epic literature The Very Hungry Caterpillar and do nothing more, seemingly not even listening to his mother’s words when she read off the blunt little sentences to him as he sat in her lap, less than three feet tall at the time.

He quickly diverted his attention from the picture hanging above the fireplace. God, it was almost too much to bear. He’d grown up with his mom and dad pretty much a thousand miles away, born a little further downstate in New York’s semi-urban area before they moved out of their filthy apartment to a nice little home further upstate in the town of Dovel, Dutchess County, only a few miles off from New York’s heartland. Dovel was a pretty little semirural area, with a nice amount of rolling greens and a forest beside it that, if you trekked through, would lead to the highway, which you knew you’d be approaching once you heard the distant sound of vehicles ricocheting on the wind. But even in the day, one would be a fool to travel further than fifty-yards into those woods; apparently there was an unincorporated, tiny settlement named Pepperton somewhere deep into the thick brush, where sunlight would fade under the looming canopies in eternal night. Pepperton, odd little name for a town. Nobody had been there, at least no one in Dovel had. In Dovel, Nathan's father had owned a small restaurant in the town, pretty low class and beaten down, but it had gained its reputation from the bar and its relationship with the town men.

One summer in the early eighties, in the bridge between the late afternoon and the evening when the sun began to descend, an out-of-towner misfit from Connecticut Peter Clainey, town resident of three months now, had stormed into Weber's Bar (presumably) looking for a drink; and when he got hammered, he really did, and Nathan's father would find this out rather soon. After about four drinks he was drunk as a fish and his loudmouthed attitude didn't let up; only, it had increased.

"Baloney. Baloney," he'd said. "There ain't nothin' in those woods. I'll go in and prove it. Just a woods. Nothin' more."

"I'd advise you not to do that," Nathan's father had said as passively as possible without sounding rude - and it was hard under the noise of the bar, though many's eyes were turned toward their customer - "there are some...superstitions we have about those woods-"

"I know that," the man demanded. “I heard all yer rumors. I heard ‘em all. I know ya New Yorkers got nothin’ but an eye for trouble. ‘Specially down in the city. But just what is the rumor, I ask ya? Ghosts? Demons? Zombies? Ha-ha!” The fella took one final swig at his beer before belching considerably.

It took Nathan’s father a long moment to respond. “Inbreeders.”

The man’s arrogance was gone, overshadowed by wonder. But soon his mood reverted. “You’re loons. You New York fellers are loons.” His eyes narrowed to glares. “I tell ya what – I’ll go in those woods tonight. Alone. I’ll bring a gun and a knife and a flashlight for good measure, but ya know what’s gonna happen? Nothin’! That’s what!”

Many protests were made but shortly after dusk had settled, Clainey took to the forest, his feet crunching upon the downed twigs and rocks upon the ground. After a few minutes of his walking, if you were looking in his direction, the glare of the flashlight had simmered down into invisibility – he was now venturing deeper into the unknown, into the natural void where no light had ever shown. It was hard for some Dovel residents to sleep that night.

Like they anticipated, Peter Clainey never came out.

There was much talk about it for the following weeks, even months, but soon the news had simmered down until talk was only a minimum. When Nathan was a child his father had told the story to him, and to this day he had seemed to make bizarre connections to both Dovel and Little Loop. Both rural towns, both in the middle of nowhere, and both had something strange surrounding them; for Little Loop it was Barry Balton’s “legend”, for Dovel it was the legend of those woods that shrouded it.

They gave him shudders when he recalled both the events; there were legends that lived in both of the towns that he had resided in. And despite the superstitions surrounding Pepperton – implying if there really were inbreeds in those woods, or if Peter Clainey simply got lost in the thick brush and never found his way out – he could not help but feel a degree of nostalgia for the town. He was born in the town’s small hospital a few miles from his first home, where he would be taken to. His earliest memory went back to when he was five when he had snuck into his parents’ bedroom and nabbed their photobook (which had a long history ahead of it) and scribbled crudely the word “FAMILY” on to it with a permanent marker to greet them when they woke up. After his parents died, he brought it with him to Idaho, a place he had flown to in order to attend Windhand Academy, and those four years might have been the greatest of his life. Earning an English major, meeting a fantastic group of friends, losing his virginity, and finally meeting Milly.

College started a few months after his mother and father had gone away. That first day, after unpacking in his dorm, he thought about them; growing up with them, playing ball with his dad when he was only a lad, getting his first crush at age twelve, his mom discovering the magazines he hid under his bed when he was a teen, and finally heading up to Sunset Lake, New York for a small summer vacation in his grandparents’ car, looking out and seeing a car speeding violently from the opposite direction, seeing his mother and father’s minivan swerve off the road when the car skimmed them, seeing it barrel off the highway through the road’s guardrail and into the trees, seeing it burst to pieces as it hit a tree-

He swiped up the phone to distract him from the thought. Thinking about it hard and long made him dizzy. He held it to his ear. “Hello?”

It was Milly, and her voice brought him instant comfort. The thought from before was relieved. “’Lo? Nate?”

Nathan instantly smiled. “Yeah, Milly. Hey. It’s me.”

“Ohey,” she said casually, a finger intertwining with the blond of her hair, which Nathan obviously did not see. “My girls and I won the game last night. Jus’ thought ya should know.” Ah, yes. That game. Guilt overcame Nathan for not being able to make it to Milly’s volleyball game the night before, but he had an excuse, and that excuse was that he had a technician over to fix his upstairs television which had somehow busted. That was excuse enough, he thought. Anything for not going to a volleyball game, he thought with a bit of hostility, but forced it out of his mind. Milly was a part of the local volleyball team, a game that had little standing in a state as barren as Idaho, but the whole volleyball syndicate was tiny. Milly had been on the volleyball team in the university, so when she graduated she knew about the opportunity and snatched it up as fast as possible.

He continued. “Hey, that’s great. You against the Cherry team, right?”

“Yeah,” she confirmed, “nine-nothin’. Nine-nothin’, Nate! That’s the first time anyone on our team’s gotten sumthin’-to-nuthin’ since the sixties…” She went off in that little monologue world for a while, one that Nathan was familiar with and used to. It annoyed him to no end at first, but it didn’t bother him anymore. In fact, nowadays he kind of liked it. Finally when she seemed to stop for a second or two, he took his opportunity.

“So anything else you wanted to call me about, hun?”

“Oh. Yeah.” She coughed a little, though it sounded more like a grunt over the buzz of the phone. “Maybe we could, y’know, go out tonight. Dinner fer two. Wine fer two, too. Or beer in yer case. For celebration. Sound good?”

“Yeah, that’d be great!” Nathan said with a bit too much enthusiasm, attempting to withdraw the excitement at the last second to make it sound more natural, but the final word slipped out. Truth was he hadn’t been out to eat in weeks, was feeling deprived of it. There was a nice steakhouse up the road and it would have fit perfectly for a fancy dining experience between a man and woman. “I mean, uh, sure, that sounds great. Any suggestions? We should try the Amora up the road, but it’s up to you, babe.”

“Yeah. That’s what I was thinkin’ too. Any time good for ya?” “Any time you want, Mill.”

“Alright. Eight-thirty. Nah, too late. Eight?”

“Sure.”

“See you there, big guy. Love ya.”

“Bye, Milly. I love you.”

She hung up, leaving only the dull buzz of the phone that rang in Nathan’s ears. He placed the phone upon its receptor and collapsed immediately on the yellow armchair, recalling a day that was, even before going out, pretty eventful. The gut-punching shocker when he chomped into that apple had been a major contributing factor. Maybe the only one at all. Milly calling about the volleyball game? Not that important. Her team had won before. Still, that apple.

A sharp shudder thrilled down his back when he thought of it, not because of its concept, but because the faint, lingering remnants of his taste brought it back up like steaming bile when it passed through his mind. He’d tasted sour milk before, eaten a chunk off of a rotten egg with tabasco sauce at a particularly wild college party, and maybe the latter had tasted worse but he still felt as though that apple had been something he had never tasted before – an amalgamation of not only vomit and sewage but of something that he could not quite put his finger on, an alien flavor entirely. It seemed to him that evil had a taste. If evil had a taste, it would be that apple.

He scoffed. Stupid thought. Belching once, he snuggled over onto the armchair on his side, tucking his arm behind the pillow and pressing his head gently down onto its fluffy surface. A bird chirped away in the chilly Idahoan air. The buzz of the heater droned faintly. Every few minutes, the house creaked as if it had a mind of its own. Within these minutes Nathan had found himself asleep, and surprisingly, no dreams came.

He awoke with a start, despite his mind being a black void of nothingness in his rest. He thought that perhaps it was realization that had woken him up, as he had jolted with a gasp and almost fell in a heap onto the floor before gathering himself and lying down. Christ! Did he miss his dinner with Milly? He hoped to God he hadn’t. Frantically he glanced over to the clock, almost forgetting where it was for a minute.

5:32. Phew.

More than two hours were allotted until the get together. That gave him plenty of time to get some downtime done. Clean the dishes, throw in some laundry, use the bathroom.

He picked himself clumsily up off of the chair and headed for his workshop.

Milly applied the last bit of her makeup – she shut the pad, discarded the mirror, and fingered the lipstick lightly before throwing it sloppily in her drawer. Her parents fussed about downstairs, something about car repairs (which her pops’ buggy definitely needed) giving the house a bit of a livelier feel. Chubby, her cat, curled up in a ball on the windowsill of her blue-painted bedroom. He stirred, purring quietly in his relaxation time. The November breeze spilled in like a natural steam in a hot spring from the small crack of opened window. With a final, gentle yank of her locks with her hairbrush, she stood up and stretched, the early evening setting in outside, soon to become deep dusk.

Milly Lawrence was graceful, of that everyone else was sure. And of course her body, but that was not what Nathan desired about her. Well, he did, but that was only a fragment of why. When she walked the blondeness of her hair swept across her face and whenever her hair did that, his eyes dutifully followed its movement. Her ditzy tendencies to Nathan made her, for lack of a better word, sweet. As in kind sweet. Nice ass? Good figure? Hell yes, and Milly had those, but Nathan didn’t care much about that. At least, he tried not to. Milly despite her inherent niceness was pretty prone to anger management issues. It was mostly her parents’ doing, whom she had still lived with even in her late twenties. Damn, she wished she could just be out. She had taken interest in a university up north in Vermont, but she’d decided to stick around for a bit with her parents. She’d wished she hadn’t made that mistake. All the two did was bicker, and if they never stopped then she would get involved. Never much luck in a household like that. Sure, Milly had raised some decent pay, but not enough to get her own home. Nate worked hard on his first book, and despite it being a critical flop, it still raised him enough money to buy him a decently sized house.

Milly took a gander at the clock on her wall. Almost six. Twilight would set in soon, that comforting glow as night descended, an amalgamation of the cool blue of the early dawn and the blood red of the sunset. In just two hours she’d be out of her house away from her darned parents and in the arms of her boyfriend.

Her parents had fortunately treated her like an adult now, however – they’d let her go on dates and go to the movies alone (as long as she brought pepper spray, her mom had said) and take walks and shop (also, once more with emphasis, pepper spray) by herself. Her dates with Nate were in the triple digits by now, given how long she’d known him. Another number would be added soon.

She quietly tiptoed out of her bedroom to spare herself the annoyance of bothering Chubby, who had a tendency to be rather grumpy. She closed the door firmly shut attempting to make as little sound as possible and trekked downstairs, where she was met with her parents bickering about the same old crap. They both gave her a passing glance and, with a shout of “I’ll be back!”, she hastily marched out the door.

Day had descended into twilight, which had descended into dusk, which soon gave way to night. It was especially in the Idahoan nights that the cold really gripped and tightened with a vice-like squeeze; even in late spring, it could get blisteringly cold once the sun disappeared over the horizon. In the early foreshadowing of winter like on the night of November 3rd, 2009, this was especially apparent. It’d be literally one-degree Fahrenheit tonight. Not even December – by January it’d be below fifteen every single time the sun had dipped beneath the mountains, and by February, who knew and who cared. Milly had been used to it; she’d lived in Little Loop all her life, rarely ever venturing into the outside world. Nate had gotten shorter winters living up in New York, though they were still fairly harsh. Compared to Idaho, though? Almost scoff worthy.

Nathan was the first to arrive at the restaurant. It was a five-star dining place down the road from Roans Central, a bit nearer to Windhand. He’d ask the gal at the reception desk for a booth for two and she gladly seated him.

When he sat down he felt the atmosphere oppress him for a few seconds. He’d been here before, enjoyed the food immensely, but now it seemed distant; alien; strange. The restaurant was busy, it was inhabited, people were talking all around him – but he seemed like he was the only one here right now, trapped in an obsolescent bubble of worthlessness and meaninglessness for apparently no reason whatsoever. The restaurant was dimly lit; and the lighting dimmed his mood itself. The 55” televisions mounted up on the restaurant’s walls did nothing but contribute to his suddenly depressive state; on the screen was a news channel, people talking with no faces, no identities, just men and women on a screen. He heard the faint sound of a heater bzzzz off somewhere, probably close to him.

If evil had a feeling, it would be depression, something he seldom experienced for himself – even in his teenage years – and had only come up once in a while after his parents were taken from him, which was basically as soon as his teen years had ended. So Milly had anger issues and Nathan had grief-related depressive issues. But there was no reason to be depressed now, so why? His mood did almost a total three-sixty when Milly walked in the door. Immediately her clothing nabbed his attention; tight jeans, a tank top, and a small cap placed firmly on the golden of her hair. Man, she looked good. She gave Nate a small wave and he exchanged the gesture. His depressive attitude was completely gone, and Nathan internally thanked Milly for the service. She tread over to Nathan’s table and collapsed down on the opposite booth. They leaned over the table and both gave each other a quick peck on the lips. Milly said “So how’s yer day been, Nate?”

He hesitated telling her about the apple, and hoped the uncertainty did not show. Instead he said; “Just fine. I took a nap after you called me, so I don’t remember much. H’bout you?” “Doin’ just the same,” Milly said. She then smiled. “Maybe a little better. Because of the game, n’all. Sorry ya couldn’t come.”

“No no no,” Nate insisted with a wave of his hands, “I should be sorry. It wasn’t…” What was the word? “Right”? It wasn’t right? No, that didn’t seem right in itself. Nothing really was “right”, he guessed. Subjective perceptions, "right" and "wrong" opinionated concept in and of itself. Was it? Whatever. It wasn’t important now.

Milly cut in anyway. “It ain’t yer fault. I wasn’t sad about it. Ya had it deadlined anyway. Who cares?”

Nathan hadn’t wanted to go to a volleyball game, but he would have went to Milly’s because of his love for her. But if she wasn’t guilty, then he shouldn’t have been.

''I didn’t do anything. I’m overthinking it.''

The waiter came by, a tall man of apparent elegance, but maybe that was only because of his butler-like attire. The place really was dreamy, both in atmosphere and style. So why was it giving him a chokehold on this particular night? What gave? There was no reason. He thought there wasn’t. He shook the feeling off and asked for a glass of water, followed in succession by his girlfriend who asked for a glass of champagne. The waiter nodded with a smile and head off.

The uncertainty in the back of Nathan’s mind still lurked like a creeping shadow, but he did his best to ignore it. Soon they had ordered a shrimp appetizer (which only Milly ate, as Nathan had no taste for seafood in her contrast) and not long after they had ordered their meals – Atlantic salmon for Milly and a bone-in rib eye for Nathan.

Milly went up to use the woman’s room a couple minutes before their entrees arrived. God, he was so damn hungry, he didn’t want to wait for Milly. Would she consider it rude? Maybe. He didn’t care. He needed a bite to get that damn rotten taste out of his mouth once and for all. It had kind of lingered there the whole day, but he mostly assumed it was his mind. Power of suggestion. He dug the fork crudely into the steak’s sizzling flesh, digging the knife’s faintly serrated edges into its skin. The red and dark chunk plopped out onto the dish, and he dabbed it with steak sauce. He held it up to his lips.

He sniffed, admiring the charcoal aroma of tender steak right off the grill. He wrapped his lips around it and pulled it onto the flat of his tongue.

Not until hours later did he think of it, but his mouth hadn’t reacted to the taste until about a second after it had connected with his tongue. The taste had burned like a mouthful of hot oil, like a mouthful of sewage, and the chunk of moist meat rocketed out of his jaws, which were agape in a silent scream. He wretched several times, and in an attempt to be discreet as possible he dug himself into the thick leather of the seat and hiding his head under the darkness of the space below the table. He attempted to vomit, he really didn’t want to but he had to and still, nothing had come out. Nothing but pools of saliva that splattered onto the squeaky leather of the booth. The saliva cascaded gently off of the booth, dripping down into the trench below the table. He scrambled onto his buttocks, face red, flushed, disoriented.

The same taste. It was the apple, and it was back for round deux.

Gasping for air, he grabbed his glass of water with quivering hands and chugged as hard and fast as he could. It didn’t take long for the taste to be gone – the water worked all sorts of wonders. The steak sauce had given the predominating pungency of sewer water a tangier feel, but in the worst way possible; the flavor’s “tang” was in the taste of bark on a tree. Exploding into a coughing fit as the last of the taste died down, he noticed a few seemingly concerned (or, more realistically, just irritated) folk from a few tables over staring at him blankly. He turned away from them. The coughing stopped.

His mind was a jumble of questions, an entanglement of twisted wires. His head lolled listlessly from side to side, the flavor’s remnants still itching, grabbing at the back of his throat for more. After all the questions he went through – What is the exact taste? What’s in the food? Is it some sort of poison? – they all harked back to what seemed to be the simplest pair of questions; What is this? Why is this happening?

When Milly arrived ‘round the bend from the lady’s room, relief had returned though only partially. He saw her in those clothes and immediately he cooled down a bit, though the questions remained in a maddening pattern. Why? What? Why? What? Before she got close enough to see him, he quickly swiped at his tearing eyes with the handkerchief and threw it back down on the table in a crude heap. His eyes remained red, but hopefully she wouldn’t see in the dull five-star restaurant dimness.

“Don’t ya just love it when ya come back from the bathroom and ya find yer food waitin’ for ya?” Milly asked rather casually as she sat back down upon the booth. She picked up her utensils, twirled the fork, cut into the salmon. He hated seafood and even then he stifled a gasp with envy as he watched her dine delightfully in front of him. His stomach groaned and faint jealousy welled in his heart.

Milly seemed to take notice. “Ya alright, Nate?”

He immediately tensed up. What was he supposed to say? I woke up this morning and everything I’ve eaten since tastes like a fast food restaurant's bathroom? She’d think he was out of it. Or a nut, in Upland Speak.

He lied. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said ruefully. “Just not very hungry.”

She took this with stride. He made a mental note to himself that “just not very hungry” was a lie that Mildred Lawrence wouldn’t perceive. “Want me to pay, then?”

“No no no,” he insisted immediately, as an attempts to make up for the lie. “I’ll pay. You won the game after all.”

She shrugged and got back to eating. He tried his best to divert his attention from both his own plate and hers.

Just what the hell is going on here? he thought.

The two sat in silence for a bit. Milly finished her salmon. Shortly after she finished her champagne; Nate no longer touched his water. They ordered the check.

“So am I comin’ back to yer place?” Milly abruptly ask when the two were at their peak of silence.

Nathan blinked. “Yeah. That was the plan from the start, wasn’t it?”

“Mhhhm, I didn’t know. Sounds good, though.” The tone of her voice made him realize exactly what she was talking about and he stirred.

That was a good idea on her part. He could use it after a day like this.

The sex was good, but to Nate it somehow felt empty and loveless and he assumed this was because the acknowledgment of his hunger had clawed at his insides the whole time. He attempted to suppress shutters when thinking about it, but he failed. He was sure there was some rational conclusion to the sudden malformation in his taste buds, but he dared not think about it. And he’d never submit himself to a doctor; they’d almost killed his father once during eye surgery. Killed.

Right now he sat on his back porch, flesh on his chest bare and his back pressed against the cold metal of the cushionless patio chair. Tiredly he rolled a thin cigarette between his fingers up and down over the web of his index and held it up to his lips, taking a puff. He held it there. The twilight was in its final minutes, the sun’s bloody orange glow now only faint slivers through the dead autumn brush behind his house.

The cigarette hadn’t tasted bad. It tasted the same as any cigarette should have. Good sign? Maybe. He released the tiny muscles in his finger and let the paper stub fall before he smushed it. As he gazed up over the bleak zenith where the dying sun met the tips of the trees, he felt an inexplicable pang of guilt. He wasn’t sure why. It was probably because of Milly and missing her game. Remnants still remained of feelings throughout days, even over the course of months. Case in point? Dreams.

Who gives a shit? he thought savagely, knowing his girlfriend hadn’t cared because, well, she was a great woman.

A better woman than you’ve ever deserved, something in the back of his mind was telling him. He told it to piss off.

Christ. That was why he was self-deprecating? Because of some food that just out of pure circumstance happened to taste bad? Yes! That was it. Circumstance. Nothing more. If there was a concrete explanation, then it was probably that the apple was rotten and the steak was overcooked. There. Done. He felt satisfied with the conclusions he’d drawn. With that, he stepped back into his home.

He shut the sliding glass door. He decided he’d give it one more shot. It would work this time. So to give a gigantic middle finger to his taste buds he rummaged through his refrigerator and tossed the fresh cold cuts on the counter, followed by fresh sweet peppers, mayo, mustard, and a bag of barbecue chips he’d grabbed from his pantry. For good measure, he doused them in salsa. Whatever diet he may have been taking could fuck itself; this was a meal of victory.

He cut open a sub sandwich and applied the cold cuts – honey maple ham, turkey, genoa salami, Swiss cheese – and doused the rest on (including the peppers and the chips) into one scrumptious hoagie. He took a knife and cut it vertically into two halves, poured some coke, set it on the table. He collapsed onto the chair in a fit of hunger and swooped up one half with a triumphant grin. This food had been brought from a market he trusted; there would be no complications.

''To good food, to great flavor, to fresh meals that don’t taste like they’ve been moldering in the trash, to mom and dad, to the love of my life and finally, a big middle finger to anything that gets in my way. Victory!''

His lips opened and he bit in.

The sounds of the coughs and the wretches tore through the vents, through the heating system, through nearly nonexistent slits in the windows, through insect larvae squiggling in wall crevices. In her early sleep, Mildred Lawrence shuttered and stirred, as if the stars in the cosmos had aligned just for her. The shuttering stopped and soon her unconscious body returned to normal, lax cozily on her pillow.

In reality, her boyfriend’s screams began not long after.

II. Turn to the Stars
''"And he bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew, Golgotha." - John 19:17''

''"You're mindless fucking slaves." - Electric Wizard, "Supercoven"''

On that night Nathan Hoffman had a dream.

He dreamed he was in a vast apple orchard. But it was not akin to the apple picking spots of his childhood, which were fairly moderate in size and suited his adolescent love for the autumnal seasons in those times. Instead of short, stubby trees, these trees were gargantuan, bearing the same height and width of any redwood located halfway across the continent, but from what Nathan could see the trees had a standard apple tree feel to them – he saw no apples in the trees as they stretched up over the skyline, but the branches were jagged and dead, spiking out of the tree’s trunk which seemed to be a thousand years tall. A few apples were on the ground, but they appeared to be normal sized. In the dream world Nathan had seemed to take this with stride – in dreams you never seemed to take much seriously. At least that was in his experience.

He began walking and when he had walked a few yards or so he saw it. Above the fog in the cyclopean apple orchard was an almost perfectly rounded black shape, stretching for impossible size above the skyline. The fog’s sudden and unnatural dissipation at one point, where it had cut off completely in a perfect diagonal line, fully unveiled the eldritch substance. It was a full black sphere of incomprehensibility, and Nathan could discern no immediately noticeable earthly feature. It resembled the sun as though it had turned to black and was now approaching the earth in a supernova, and for a second panic had actually set in the dream – something Nathan had never experienced in the outer realms before. Or just “realm”, because as far as Nate knew dreaming was the closest thing to an outer reality. The black sun lay dormant except for smaller designs dancing erratically in its “body”. Most notably he recognized what appeared to be tendrils of sorts squirming around in its transparent “torso” area. He could not react bizarrely because as soon as he had taken in all of the anomaly’s features he had awoken with a jolt.

That dream was three weeks ago. December was now approaching fast. The chill of autumn had blossomed into the freeze of winter, and the cold would soon transcend into endless night. A night that seemed endless, anyway. When day ended at four, it could truly seem like the darkest depths of hell in the winter and on a winter like this Nate had known that.

Nathan had over the weeks experimented with each food group. His eyes had reddened with deprivation over the weeks, but he was making do. Any explanation for it yet? Of course not. He didn’t have a permanent doctor, because he knew it’d probably be the same old shit; “drink lots of water and take aspirin every day”, insert rational explanation, blah blah blah.

He hadn’t told Milly. He’d been wasting away by himself, and besides if he told her he’d get the “loon” reaction. No doubt about that. With the idea that the taste would disappear with time, or at least fade until it was only a sliver, and he held on to this hope. He’d listlessly experimented with different food groups until he found the ins and outs. Meat, vegetables, and fruits were all toxic, poison to his taste buds. Strangely, wheat was only just barely edible and dairy had a faint disgust to it, but carbohydrates, namely sweets, tasted the same as ever. Certainly not a good sign; he’d given no acknowledgment to his weight in a long time, but it would soon make him consider.

When he spoke to Milly he'd attempted at normality, but difficulty came clearly. His voice droned and trailed off, and it had become faintly hoarse; raspy, unclear. His eyes began to redden and sometimes his walking limped. Hallucinations, either visual or auditory, had not yet started, and that was because of his twisted new "diet" forced unwillingly upon him. Milly had noticed a personality change in him as well but she said nothing, presumably figuring he was just in another one of his "weeks" (thinking too much about his mother and father).

On some nights he remembered that dream. He couldn't clearly make out the entity and strangely enough only remembered the apparently irregular cluster of the stars that lay eons behind it. These stars were not spread out, rather, they seemed to gather in a jumble all across the sky. He did not see any immediately normal constellation. On some nights he thought of that dream and wondered why he couldn't make out what the unknown anomaly was. But why the stars? Maybe it was there strangeness in that particular dream, their irregularity, and the dream had told him to only comprehend what his mind could. But he should have been able to comprehend some entity...shouldn't he have?

He'd been making do with his strange new "diet". Soup of any kind seemed to have no effect on him whatsoever, even with toppings or add-ons. French onion, even with its Swiss cheese topping, didn't make any alterations to his taste buds. Bread did nothing, but other wheat did, despite being only slightly edible. His writing had slowed considerably - less than half a page a day. He'd attempted to get back into the swing of it by writing a needless story he thought from the tip of his mind about a man buying a pet mouse and becoming attached to it, but it slumped. The writing had been faulty,

Meanwhile, Milly was having trouble sleeping. She'd remembered stirring on that supposed first night. Vaguely she recalled a dream she had where she had attempted to bite into something but a foulness came over her; and it ended there. When she woke up she felt as though the dream had lasted much longer than it truly had. Following this, the dreaming had progressed worse and worse to the point where she woke up in cold sweats on darkened nights, often past the midnight hours. She'd often woken up even if she did not remember the dream in a state of surreal panic; when she woke up she constantly diverted her attention to the entrance to her closet, which was always open a crack. Child superstitions coming back to haunt her, she assumed. But also she had dreamed of some incomprehensible things, like the universe in a strange shape at night. Another is that she often dreamed of Nate being considerably more irate; something he never was, as he always maintained his chill attitude. She'd seen a decline in him, but she just figured it was another one of those moments.

She had also dreamed of her and Nate's "garden", the peak at the end of Windhand overlooking the endless forests below. She dreamed of this except it was upside down. The night was bright, starry, but these stars were strange. No moon existed then. And when she walked up to the edge, she could see a shapeless form in the distance, unfathomable, nameless. And the dream died out soon after that.

Suddenly while lying in her bed she had pondered; "Who's opened it?" The closet that is. It was a sliding closet-door. The only way it could have opened was if someone had manually came in when she was asleep and fiddled with it. The thought chilled her to the core, but she knew it was improbable. But when she felt that lingering presence...

She was over-thinking some sort of obvious cosmic explanation that flew over her head, that she was sure of. What it was eluded her. What she truly could not describe was the feelings of profound despair that washed over her when she looked over there. Another cosmic possibility was that the reason for this was that there was someone in there. But who would hide in the same person's closet, night after night, with seemingly no motivation, doing nothing? And how would this person have gotten past her parents? More often than not, they both stayed up downstairs long after dark, drinking wine, probably getting into the liberal versus conservative argument the whole family was so familiar with. It was because of her parents that Milly gave no shits about politics whatsoever.

It was on the morning of one of the first days in December when her concern for Nate had truly kicked in, and with reason. She was strolling down Roans Central's sidewalk, coat wrapped around her chest. A few bikers were out, but other than that it was devoid of any human soul. Soon all bikers were gone. She gazed up at one of the mountains far off from this one and a shutter thrilled down her spine, distressed but almost impressed by the sheer emptiness of it all, despite the otherwise uplifting light of a sunny day. No movement seemed to be made in the slightest behind the drawn shades of the houses, and nothing made a noise outside, except for the solitary chirping of a lone bird somewhere. No sounds ricocheted from the highway; what else would you expect in Custer County? Three cars on the road here was rush hour.

She remembered a line from an old Bob Dylan song. “Tell you now that the whole town is empty.” She bellowed a sinister laugh, knowing she was thinking far too much. The town was small, yeah, but it wasn’t empty. It was never empty.

Nate’s house had been on the lane that bordered the woods, as opposed to the houses that were aligned further out on Roans Central, adjacent to each other. She gripped the railing and took up the stairs to Nate’s porch. A drained bottle of scotch – it had been there since forever – lay dormant on the glass surface of the white porch table, and she observed a medium-sized beetle, one of the last of the season, scuttle over it and down beneath the porch swing, where it hid in the dark. The swing was adorned with a yellow design and rocked gently from the light wind. The paint surrounding Nate’s doorknob was splintered and chipped, but she attempted to pay no regards to it; she’d been bothered by the sight of splintered wood, it was just one of those irrational dislikes. She shuttered again and went for the doorbell.

Minutes before, Nathan Hoffman had sat upon his couch, the lights in his house off, the beer in his hand lukewarm. He slumped down, his eyes red-rimmed, purple bags formed beneath them. The beer slipped out of his fingers, plopped onto the couch, rolled off the sofa and onto the floor. What little was left in the bottle spewed out like a summer hose. He hadn’t realized how pale he had gotten, at least not past instances of mere minuscule contemplation that, rather than presented itself upfront, scratched at the back of his conscious as though his mind was a window and his thoughts the nameless horror outside that scratched at it, begging to be let it. His attempted scoff at this thought showed no enthusiasm or humor in it; it was as dead and flat and empty as he felt. It came out as nothing but a seethed breath.

He stood up and shambled clumsily over to the waste bin in the kitchen, dropping the bottle inside of it lazily. He returned to his sofa.

His mind had no energy for questions anymore; now acceptance only shed its light on him. The question was why, but it was moot, empty, meaningless and insignificant now. He knew why. Something had been calling him.

He didn’t know what. He didn’t even know if that was right. Must be fuckin’ divine punishment for something he’d done, but he could think of nothing that he had done, because he knew well and truly that he had not. He prayed to no god. But he considered the possibility of karma, but what good was karma when he had done nothing? He didn’t even need good karma. He’d been nothing more than some boring kid in his early years and now he was a boring writer in his twenties. Just a man.

November ended a few days ago. There had been no significant snowfall of the work year yet, which was surprising for the Gem State, but a slick rain had fallen on November’s final day, as if it had signified that this New Year would be long and ruthless. 2010, the turn of the decade, reared its head and would be hear in less than thirty days. Nathan Hoffman, New Year’s resolution: find something that doesn't taste like shit.

He still ate, with the same dreadful diet. His stomach twirled repeatedly in malnourishment. It always hurt him when he was like this, even before this strange new situation. Now soup seemed to have grown tasteless; before it was fully edible and with the same odor and flavor, but now it had none, neither of those. It was as stale and dull as a gray sky. His eyes were red around the rims, seemingly discolored at the pupil…or just dead and flat. His ears rang and it hurt when he got up out of his chair. Visible floaters had begun to encircle the corners of his eyes, little black devils biting at his peripheral vision.

In his sleep he bumbled. After he woke up he got auditory hallucinations, at night or in broad daylight. Sometimes when he lay in bed on darkened nights he heard scratches from beyond the wall. Sometimes he wondered if they really were just hallucinations. He dreamed too, his mind stirring up visions of things he could not explain, things that he could not comprehend and that made him awake in a cold sweat each time he dreamed them. After he awoke his head thumped and drummed, like someone had taken his head in their hands and shook it as hard as they could. A couple nights, he had curled back up and cried.

Sometimes he dedicated hours of his day to make sense of the dreams, or remember them at least, but he found no success. These were things that lay on the dark side of his own frail sense of human perception, and these things sent chills thrilling up his spine. Why did he even try thinking about them? His mother told him once that the things he couldn’t remember are the things one did not want to remember. Having intrusive thoughts in his teenage years however told him that this idea was utterly bullshit, but now he considered it. Maybe for some things, and this was one of them.

He tried to give up finding an explanation, and still he had not told Milly; but why did she need to know? He was pretty certain that she could not empathize with the idea of your tongue practically rotting in your mouth, and he was also certain that she had been seeing his slow physical decline; and he knew he would see one in her if the same thing had happened, so he ruled out any possibility of that happening. He tried to laugh. As if there should have been any possibility at all? Again the laugh basically just plopped out of his mouth with no life whatsoever in it like a carcass being rolled into a shallow grave. However he did sense somehow that Milly would not be alright in these following weeks; it called, whatever it was, the thing that called to him in his dreams that he could not recall and he now realized did not wish to.

This deterioration, he had faintly begun to realize, had stemmed not from the apparent taste bud mutation in itself but from the sheer startle of it all, a feeling of life changing suddenness that, he would have thought before this, should only have come when one’s family member or close friend croaked. When the food itself seemed to downgrade itself – soup as mentioned earlier now was just tasteless, bread had a faint inedibility to it, and candy stung a bit but it still tasted the same. Would this get worse? He hoped to god it would not. His stomach already wept and sighed its disapproval; he ate so little as a whole that the faint outlines of his ribs had begun to become more apparent, however difficult to notice. He figured that soon he would need several layers to hide himself, the lowest form of humiliation for a man who ate like he had. Today his hunger had driven him to the edge; and he would eat grandly with nothing getting in the way. No matter the disgust, it was last night in the darkness as he contemplated to himself that he must nourish himself for the best. Now it didn’t matter what it tasted like; he needed to eat or he would die. The banquet waited in his fridge, but he felt no eagerness to eat it. It would be nothing more than a chore; perhaps the worst he would experience for as long as he lived. But it was something he needed to do.

It was quarter after noon when someone, Milly presumably, rang the doorbell. He didn’t attempt to look his best – nothing that petty mattered, not right now. At most he rubbed the festering crust from his eyes with a napkin in his pocket. He shambled over to his door, hunch-backed, ready for a scream from the opposite party.

But no scream came.

Milly was there in black leggings and a greenish-black winter coat that would have under any separate circumstance looked beautiful, but his sense of attraction, of beauty and ugliness, was dead right now. She only gaped at him with shock, reeling back for a second, her eyes wide with wonder. She spoke after a few dreadful moments. “Mah God, that’s…are you alright, Nate?”

He’d figured she would notice. He tried to straighten out his arched back and felt the joints click a little painlessly. He tried to smile. “Yeah…yeah, I’m fine. Come on in, girl.” She’d never heard him refer to her as “girl” before. It intimidated her slightly but she said nothing.

She seated herself, shuttering a bit, her mind not fully intact for a minute. He collapsed on the couch on the opposite end of the room; they’d played musical chairs and now she sat where he did earlier. She was about to speak but he cut in, in a hoarse and grating half-whisper; “How you doin’, hun? You need anything?”

“No, ah just came to visit you…what’s going on? There’s something wrong, I know it.” She figured he was sick but she wasn’t sure; fever had never reddened her eyes and it had never caused her a slouched back, nor did it mutate her voice to that level. “Is there anything that, y’know, I can do?”

He shook his head. It practically creaked as he rocked it to and fro and Milly pretended to not notice – it was probably a mind’s illusion, anyway. He spoke. “No, it’s nothing. Just a little sick. I’m going to try eating tonight.”

“You shouldn’t eat if yer that sick,” she argued. “Yer stomach’ll crash n’ burn.” “Well, I need to put something on my stomach. A little soup maybe.” That wouldn’t do shit, of course, and he hid his true scheme for tonight. Now that he thought about it, he’d do it as soon as she left; get it over with.

“Yar,” she said and Nate thought: what are you, a pirate? “My mum always said to me that if evil had a feelin’, it’d be bein’ sick. It’s like hell ain’t it?”

He almost immediately deviated the subject. “Nice day out there? I haven’t been outside at all today.”

“Yeah. Cool blue sky this aft’rnoon.” She shivered. “But it’s empty. Town seems outright dead right now.”

It wasn’t uncommon for Little Loop, Idaho to seem dead – every winter the lights went out, every store died except for the necessities like Moira’s Market, some restaurants, and the one bank that existed. Besides that, the lights went out after Christmas, dead for months. The vacant streets and sidewalks were caked in glistening white, soulless reflections of a town that, in spring and summer, was filled to the brim with happy folks and boys drinking at bars and pretty girls in warm weather clothing, the sun burning high in the air, birds fluttering about. Now the year died, an endless cycle of yearly reincarnation. Soon the streets would be paved with nothing but emptiness and the sky a lead-gray on the bleakest of blizzarding nights and days.

When winter came, he’d thought often, what then? Summer was hot, but it wasn’t oppressive as winter; summer time and the living’s easy, Bradley’s on the microphone with Ras MG, the same old summers from his childhood. Winter took you in its clawed, freezing grasp and squeezed the life out of you. In Idaho in late January fifteen degrees was a blessing; back in New York the weather could get bad, but you could scoff at it if you were from up here. When winter came how could he deal with the freeze and the taste at once? It would have been like two viruses fighting for the dominance of their host.

“You want a drink or anything?” Nathan croaked out. It sounded like a deranged burp against the scraping soreness of his apparent laryngitis. “I have a few beers in the fridge. Red wine on the counter.” Milly preferred white wine but she could make do with red too; anything to keep her happy.

“No, I’m okay,” she assured. She still looked concerned, her face wracked with worry and also fear. “I…I think I’ll just leave now, Nate. Don’t want to get sick and I don’t want to bother ya. Get some rest, guy.”

He jumped at the idea with far too much enthusiasm. “Yeah! I mean, sure. Thanks, Milly. I love you babe.” He dreaded if she would give him a kiss on that poison tongue, but she didn’t; she kissed her palm and threw the kiss at him. With as much forced cheer as possible he held out his hand and pretended to catch it. She left.

As she walked out of the door she felt no relief to be away from him, but rather an even profounder dread that echoed in her soul. The already chilly air seemed to get colder as if some sort of cosmic heater had been lowered.

Something was not right. Something was not right at all.

It was time.

He waited about an hour after Milly left; he lay on the couch in his writing workshop, strewn over the leather, letting his body sink into it like dirt piling onto a coffin over years of decay. He waited for his mind to come back to him fully and he found no avail – he merely weighed the options and consequences of his scheme, rolled it around in his mind like a stress ball between his fingers. Was it worth it? It was.

He shuffled over to his fridge, suddenly overtaken with a dark enthusiasm, a strange energy building inside him – an energy mixed with hope (what if it tastes good, finally?) and dread (Let’s get this over with), and then some.

Waiting gave strange anticipation for him; despite knowing subconsciously this would only be a chore, he was eager not only to end it but also to eat, to somehow savor it, to relish in the hell given to him by his tastebuds. He’d had many strange feelings before, but none were that profound; right now his anticipation scratched at him like a festering sore.

When everything was ready he set up the table at the end that overlooked the outside. His meal lay in front of him, napkin tucked inside his shirt collar, his food on a single plate except for the sandwiches which were in a basket beside him. His chore would begin.

And at last, he feasted.