cogito

Scene from Early Eternity

In the afterlife we wandered unbounded by time or space and took in all the wonder in the universe and beyond. It was unspeakably amazing, enough to burst your heart with joy had you still had a heart. But, what can I say? The adaptability of our souls is boundless too and soon we fell into familiar habits of listlessness and searching for what else, something else, something more.

Most evenings – though evening was a very different notion there that I’ll not bother trying to explain to you – a lot of us gathered at Adam’s, a favorite bar. We’d drink a little or a lot and shoot the breeze about this or that, the wonder of it all, what comes next now. We’d sit in small groups, some alone on the periphery, and while away the lack of time, pushing futilely forward toward the other end of all this endlessness.

One guy sat mostly alone all the time, incredibly drunk and blue. Everyone knew him as Willie, and everyone knew that he was the guy who created the universe. You could forget about asking him all the questions you might have, though. He was never in any condition to answer, poor haunted bastard. He was the only one of us who never left Adam’s. I guess he had no interest in the wonder of it all.

The topic came up more often as the evenings came, one after the other. You’d get a little bit of a buzz on and then someone would say, “So, what do you think they mean when they say, ‘forever’?” Everyone was worried about it. Forever is a damn long time in all this timelessness. “We’re off the clock,” people joked, though fewer people laughed at it each time.

As for me, I tried not to worry about it. I tried to just enjoy the next sight, the next idea, the next evening, the next drink. “It could be worse, you know. It could be a hell of a lot worse than endless wonder,” I said.

One evening as I was leaving he stumbled out of the shadows by the door and grabbed my lapels, tottering unstably against me and peering shakily into my eyes. “So, whaddya think?” he slurred up pungently.

“A-about what, Willie?” I stammered.

He just looked with wavering intensity into my eyes and said nothing. I could feel his resolve disintegrating as his hands slipped from my lapels. Soon he dropped his gaze and started to turn away. “About what. Yeah,” he mumbled with a wheezy chuckle.

“It’s quite nice,” I blurted, but he just kept staggering toward his stool. “Very… wondrous.”

Transplant Rambling Blues

Stepping off the bus, a wild-eyed farm animal in this cosmopolitan jungle, I was immediately stabbed in the gut of my heart by the thug mugger of this city's beauty, a metaphor in case that isn't clear. Later on, under the influence of a nightclub's violent musical assault, she asked me above her cleavage if I felt at home here yet, if I felt like this city was my home. After a long pause, I told the place where she had been standing that I was terrified of becoming so numb to humanity that I did not feel overwhelmed by this place. She didn't understand, having walked away, and I was left dancing badly by myself. Sometimes, in the park, I tell the trees that I've met their distant cousins, far away in a place where trees plant people and tend to them but people often cannot survive in great numbers because the climate is more suitable for plants and wildlife. I like to imagine seeing coyotes on the horizon in this place. I like to imagine horizons. When, defeated and relieved, I get back on that bus to the real world, my greatest fear is that the people back home won't recognize me, won't let me back in. "You've changed," they'll say. "That city has ruined you." Maybe someone can take me up by Eagle Pond and fell me into a dirt grave, like we did with horses back on the farm. Meanwhile I'm on a subway and a man who smells like vomit it asking me if I trust the church. I'm pretending not to hear him, pretending not to smell him, pretending not to taste him in the roof of my mouth. I don't want him to feel despair, but I want him to disappear from my world. We want these cruelties sometimes, in a city like this. Far above this clackety train car buildings thrive in the city soil, pushing their penthouses up to drink in the sun of this new morning, people crawling all over them like bugs. "We pollinate the buildings like bees," I say, laughing, but the man is gone.

Jumper

She lives near the top floor of the tall high-rise, in an apartment her friend once described derisively as "post-pubescent and pre-informed", words she now has tattooed in Victorian script above her left shoulder blade. The homeless man who watches her come and go from the post of his eternal vigil beside the mail drop box thinks of her as Asian, though she is half Puerto Rican and half American mixto. Her window high above the street is always open, symbolizing the endless opportunity funded for her by her wealthy parents, with whom she never speaks. "I am an artist," she lies, when people ask her what she does. Sometimes she throws pieces of bread out through the open window at the unsuspecting world below, but this wouldn't impress anyone as much as a fantasy of art might. Her only art is standing naked with her eyes closed and her arms upraised in front of the blast of harsh, angry guitar raging from her expensive music system, art her neighbors all hate because they only get to hear it, not see it. The music rouses something less dead in her soul, something almost alive, almost vital. It gives her the scraps of resolve she needs to throw on something revealing and head out past the homeless man to abuse herself around town, to let others have a go at her, to crawl home to the elevator that loves her. For her life is an apartment in an empty world, where she's not an artist, not even Asian. Death is like bread falling naked to the ravenous masses below, guitar music fading away far above.

Kindling

Suddenly, in my mind, you are a fire. Lying back and looking up at you I see it in the way you move almost silently, only the occasional soft breath sound, something between a moan and a sigh, as I watch you through careful, distant eyes. It's a thing I do, forcing myself to think deliberate thoughts while you kindle from a smolder to something more. "You are a flame and I am a wick," I joke to myself, being careful not to dispel the delicate balance with a laugh or smile. Interruption, the sudden evaporation of so much good in the world, would be a tragedy for me. Breathing in deeply I trace with my eyes up the faint line in the center of your stomach, loitering casually around your breasts and up your neck to your lips, barely parted, and then to your eyes. They are gypsy dark in the dim light, and I cannot tell if they are closed or if they are opened slightly, watching me. I imagine taking you in my arms, risking your capricious but gentle fire, and holding you close to my chest. You are wilder than I am and more beautiful. You frighten me and excite me and I feel, briefly, as though my pleasure and joy is just the grace of your playful, powerful whim. You bring me to the end of the strength of my will and I begin to lose control. Then your rhythms, the pulse of your legs and the quickening of your breath, whisper sweet things I am waiting to hear. Closing my eyes I feel my silly, empty thoughts burn away as I am overcome and consumed by you.

Here There Is No Sky

At first it was considered by most to be a sort of honor, the notion of being the center of everything. At first it seemed to mean that we were important. Over the centuries, however, the perception changed. Most people began to think of it as a sort of cruel joke.

I'm talking, of course, about the revelations of space travel.

At first space travel was a fiction for humanity.

Then technology progressed and space travel became a feeble reality, and it stayed this way for almost a hundred years, puttering around in Earth's orbit or to the moon or to the nearest planets.

Then, after a few depressing failures to send humans to neighboring planets, space travel was abandoned. People decided it was too expensive and yielded no material benefit.

Almost a hundred years after that, however, revolutionary advances in energy production technology made far-reaching space travel truly feasible. Then it became a mighty movement. Ships were built and people were trained and hopes were high and humanity exploded out in every direction.

Then, as the ships pushed farther and farther away, it didn't take long for the shock of all ages to set in. People argued about it for a bit, but it was too obvious to refute.

After that space travel became a cynical distraction, a trifling reminder of the empty mystery of our position in the universe.

Earth, the most important place. But why?

"Like ancient Hollywood movie sets," was how people described what they found. "Real from one perspective, but fake from any other." Everything faced Earth. Everything happened toward Earth. Once you left the perspective of Earth far enough, it was undeniable. All of these things that seemed interesting and alive and three dimensional from far away just became, when you got closer to them, a farce, an act played out for the benefit of one spectator.

Earth.

At first the religions seized on it as some sort of vindication. It did smack of higher intelligence, of an obvious order to things, of architecture. But where was the architect? Over the ensuing centuries of silence, the arbitrary senselessness of it all became the unspoken bother and anxiety of all of humanity. People began to feel a sort of cosmic paranoia, as though we were being watched by persons who refused to show their faces. "Maybe something happened to them," some conjectured. Cults grew up to mourn the accidental death of the gods. "Their plans were so carefully laid, and now nothing will ever come of them." They said. "We thank you for your intentions," they prayed.

Slowly, cynicism turned to the determined optimism of a new kind of human rebellion. People began migrating to "Out of Focus" stations scattered around the universe. Most of these were situated behind large objects, where Earth wasn't even visible. First generation humans in these settlements always had the same complaint: they all missed the sky. "From here the sky is so empty," they would say, staring up into someone else's sky, having no sky of their own. Later generations, of course, were not bothered by this. Instead an odd, irrational creed arose among them. "Here," they would say, "there is no architect but us. Here there is no Earth. Here there is no sky."

Aphter: Five

ONE TWO THREE FOUR

FIVE

I'd never seen this side of town before. It was like suburbia, someone's idea of a nice place. There were houses of various styles and sizes complete with lawns and sidewalks. There were lampposts everywhere, lots of them, though most of them were off right now, probably to simulate a "nighttime" experience for the people who lived here. The street was paved and meandered a curvy path through the neighborhood. There was no one out and about.

According to Sheriff Mercury, this road would eventually lead us to The Twilight Zone, a more urban-like area closer to the light at the center of town. It was named as a joke, partially because of the dim, shadowy light that its location provided, and partially because it had an atmosphere that tended to attract weirdos. No surprise, then, that it had always been my father's favorite place whenever we had visited Aphter back when he was alive. It was also no surprise when I found out he had moved into a nice little place over our regular coffee shop after the cancer took him. He had reserved the place in advance on one of his last visits.

My dad had more connections in Aphter than anyone else, living or dead, even when he was still breathing. He'd been visiting here most of his life, since learning the way from his grandfather. All the big names in Aphter knew David Sayer, and some of them even liked him. I was hoping he could help me figure out what was going on. I was hoping he knew something I didn't.

After a few blocks, Amy began to loosen her grip on my neck and slowly lifted her head to look around. "You feel like walking?" I asked her.

She looked me in the face for an instant, and then lowered her eyes. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm acting like a baby." She let go of my neck and I lowered her to the ground.

"Hey, don't worry about it. You've had a pretty busy day, you know?" She smiled a little. "You're doing fine," I said, patting her on the back as she stood on her own feet.

She didn't feel like saying anything, so I was able to think while we walked. I went over the facts again in my mind, looking for any connections I had missed before: Early yesterday morning I woke up to see the pale figure of a Whim circling the fan in my living room above the couch where I slept. Listening carefully, like my father had shown me, I heard the Whim softly singing these words:

    Amy's not the butcher's son
    But the butcher's Amy's mum
    Amy's all alone today
    'Cause the butcher's gone away
    And tonight the one's who caught her
    Come to get the butcher's daughter
    When they see that they were wrong
    'Tis the daughter sings the song
    Then the dead man, he will bring 'er
    To the one who seeks the singer
    Hang the butcher, kill the baker
    Sing the song to meet the maker

I laid there and listened, keeping still so as not to frighten the Whim, until I had memorized the song. Then, without planning or thought, I said my plans out loud. "I'm going to the butcher shop down the street." It's important, my father had shown me, to act on your first impulse when following a Whim. Too much forethought and the Whim will lead you astray. So, I got up, got dressed and drove to the butcher shop in the little storefront strip down the road. I knew it was there, but I'd never visited it before. I bought my meat at the supermarket, as did everyone else I knew. Nevertheless, it must have done a decent business, because it was a nice looking place in a good part of town. "Montagne's Chop Shop" it was called. The lettering on the door said the place opened at 5:00 A.M., but it was 5:37 and the place was still locked up tight.

This was not the sort of town where people lived above their shops, so I knew I had to figure out who owned the place. It crossed my mind that I might have the wrong shop, but I ignored the thought. Whims didn't work like that. Peering through the door I saw the name "Darla Montagne" on a catering business card at the end of the counter. I jumped back into my car and drove down to the little coffee shop back near my apartment. I took in my laptop, ordered a triple, fired up Google and, within a few minutes, had a listed phone number with an address. I didn't bother second guessing, I just memorized the MapQuest directions and jumped back into the car.

When I got to the place it was immediately apparent that something was up. It was a nice neighborhood, all BMWs and Porches. It was not the kind of place where people left their doors hanging open. I walked to the door and called out. "Hello?" I yelled. Nothing. I didn't really want to go in, because I've always hated getting shot. "Hello, this is the police," I lied. "Is anyone here?" Still no reply. Nervously, I stepped into the large entryway. "Amy?" I called out. "Is there an Amy here?" After a minute, I heard a noise up above, and then I saw Amy peak from the top of the stairs. "Amy," I said, "I think I'm supposed to help you find your mother or something."

She was easy to convince. Kids always are. I just told her the truth, as strange as it sounded. I even told her the Whim's little song and asked her if she knew what it meant. She said she had no idea, and I believed her.

My next compulsion was to come to Aphter. Why? Well, because of the words "the dead man." Like I said, you don't over-think a Whim.

And so, here we were, walking through the suburbs of Deadsville, heading for The Twilight Zone. Might sound strange to you, but for me, it's just another day on the job.

SIX

Aphter: Four

ONE TWO THREE

FOUR

"It was a pleasure to meet you, Sheriff Mercury," I said. "I'm a big fan."

"What's that?" he asked, distracted. "Oh, right. That. Yes, well, thanks. Just continue on this way and you should get into familiar territory in a while," and he spun and was gone, walking very quickly down the road that meandered off to the left.

"He was nice," Amy said, yawning.

"Nice? The last sheriff was nicer," I answered. I caught her yawn at that point and, stretching and flexing, I was reminded that we needed to hurry.

"Why did you say you were a big fan?"

"Hmmm? Oh, he's a pretty well-known singer, a rock star," I answered, starting to walk.

"He doesn't look like a rock star," she said. "Can we find a hotel or something here? I'm sleepy."

I cursed under my breath, wishing we'd have gotten here sooner. I was pretty zapped myself. "No, we can't. That's why we'll need to hurry. We can't rest here."

"Not right here," she said. "Don't they have hotels or something like that?"

"No, they don't. We can't rest here at all, here in Aphter. There's no rest for the living in Aphter." I tried to set a pace that wouldn't exhaust us too quickly but would still move us along.

"What do you mean?"

I sighed, wondering how to make her understand. "Look, Aphter is where the dead rest. There's no rest for the dead outside of Aphter. Well, we're just the opposite. We're alive. There's no rest for us here. We have to get in and get out without rest. So, let's not talk too much. Let's move."

"Or what?" She sounded nervous.

"What do you mean?"

"What happens if we get tired and fall asleep?"

"You can't fall asleep here unless you're dead."

"So what happens if you get really, really tired? You don't fall asleep?" She stopped.

"No. You can't rest at all. Just like out in the living world, though, if you get exhausted enough, you'll die."

She stared at me, tears welling up in her wide eyes. "Are you serious?" She looked so tired it almost broke my heart.

"Look," I said, kneeling down to look her in the eyes, "it's going to be alright. People can go a long time without sleep if they have to. I've been here for a few days before. Don't worry. Trust me."

"But I'm already tired now," she started to sniff and a tear ran down her cheek. "Can't we just leave?"

"No, we can't. We're running out of time, Amy. We have to keep going." I had to stay aloof. In my line of work you can't let your emotions take over. Let the emotions loose and, pretty soon, you can't pay attention to anything. I had to be sharp. I couldn't afford to miss anything. "Come on. Be strong." I gave her an awkward pat on the shoulder.

She started to sob. She stood there facing me, eyes squeezed shut, arms straight at her side, and her entire body shook and shuddered as tears poured down the crinkles in her cheeks, along her lips, over her chin and onto her shirt. A more skilled companion would have comforted her immediately. I knew this. 'She's a little girl, damn you!' I cursed myself. 'Do something!' I reached out with one hand and, placing it on the back of her head, pulled her gently toward my shoulder. She didn't need much encouragement. She plunged her sloppy face into the crook of my neck and shoulder and threw her arms around me so tightly I thought she'd choke me. For more than a minute she sobbed uncontrollably and dripped tears down my back. Once, between her moans and sniffles, I heard her choke out the words, "I want to go home." This renewed my sense of urgency. I'm not a commiserator, I'm a repairman. There was only one chance to fix things, and it was slipping away fast.

"Come on," I said, and I wrapped my arm around her back and stood, lifting her. She wasn't so heavy. I could move like this for a little while. I adjusted her weight a little for balance and started off in the direction the sheriff had indicated toward The Twilight Zone. I tried to focus on the task at hand and avoid becoming distracted or carried away by compassion for this troubled little girl in my arms. It wasn't the easiest thing I'd ever done, believe me.

FIVE

Aphter: Three

ONE

TWO

THREE

The cop was on the smallish side of average with short, dark hair and a thick, black mustache. He was wearing a skintight, short-sleeve, light-blue, button-front shirt with a silver badge on the chest and navy blue, skintight, polyester uniform pants. There was a raven perched on his shoulder peering up at me.

"Who the hell told you how to get here?" he demanded.

"N-no one told me," I stammered nervously. I'd never been greeted like this before. Who the hell was this guy?

"Hmmm...," he said, taking a step back and bending to look directly into Amy's face. She still had her eyes closed. "You can open your eyes, little girl," he said. She opened her eyes and was startled to see this strange policeman staring at her. She started to step backwards.

"No!" I yelled loudly, pulling her arm a bit too roughly to keep her from moving back at all. She stumbled forward a bit and almost collided with the cop, but he snapped up and thrust his hands onto her shoulders to catch her. In the commotion the raven cawed loudly and leapt into the air, flying to light on the roof ridge of a nearby house and calm its ruffled nerves.

"Careful there, breather. You'll have her arm out," said the cop, bending to look her in the face again, his hands still on her shoulders. "Are you okay, miss?" he asked, smiling a huge, toothy grin under his mustache. "Let's move a little further in to talk," he said, slipping his arm around her shoulder and leading her a few steps away from the edge of town. She held tightly to my hand, so I followed them.

"Hey, I'm sorry," I said to her, squeezing her hand. "If you had stepped back any farther I would have lost you." She just looked over at me with a blank, bewildered look.

The cop led us into the light of the nearest lamppost and then slipped his hand off of Amy's shoulder and snapped around to peer at us again. "All right now, you two, why the hell are you here?" His accent was hard to place, but there was something very familiar about him. His movements were a little exaggerated, almost flamboyant. His nose and toothy overbite stuck out in a way that I was sure I had seen before.

"Do I know you? Have we met?" I asked.

He leaned in and peered at my face. "No, I don't believe we've met," he said.

"Well where's the sheriff?" I asked?

"I am the sheriff," he replied, with a strong emphasis on the word "I".

"What happened to Sheriff Wayne?" I asked.

The question surprised the odd sheriff, and he put a hand to his chin like The Thinker and considered me for a long pause. "Who are you?" he asked, finally.

"My name is Simon," I replied, "Simon Sayer." I held out a hand to shake, but he just glanced down at it and back up again.

"Well, I've never heard of you, Simon Sayer, but you've obviously been here before. What brings you here now?"

"Just business," I replied drawing my hand back and putting it into the pocket of my jacket. "Where's Sheriff Wayne?"

"What sort of business?"

"You didn't answer my question," I observed.

"We have that in common, it seems." He smiled.

"Am I required to tell you my business, Sheriff?" I asked, trying to sound as friendly as possible. "I've never observed that requirement here before. Have things changed so much here?"

His smile faded a little, and I could see a little tension pass from him as he arrived a decision. "No, of course," he sighed. "Your business is your business, as long as you don't cause any trouble." He took a pen and small notepad from his front pocket. "Simon Sayer, you said?" he asked, making a note of some sort.

"That's right."

"And your name, my dear," he smiled at Amy.

"Amy," she replied.

"Amy what?"

"Amy Montagne."

He made a quick note and, with a flourish, snapped the notepad closed and thrust it and the pen into his shirt pocket. "Well, Amy Montagne," he said, sweeping his arms wide in the dramatic gesture of a sales model, "welcome to Aphter. I am called Sheriff Mercury, but you can call me Freddie."

FOUR

Aphter: Two

ONE

TWO

The sign just said, "Aphter," not "Welcome to Aphter" or "The Aphter Chamber of Commerce Welcomes You!", just "Aphter."

I turned to the kid, but I couldn't make out her face in the midnight dark. "Okay, now you'll need to listen to me carefully and do exactly as you're told, do you understand?"

"Why? What's going on?" She sounded tired. We both were. We'd been walking for at least six hours and my legs were throbbing.

"We're here."

"We're where? We're standing in a field!"

I sighed. "You'll have to trust me," I said. I put my hand on her shoulder, but it felt awkwardly like something someone else would do, so I took it off. "We're here, you just can't see it yet."

"Why not?" She looked around.

"I already told you why not. You need to pay better attention to things." I sighed again, trying to compose myself. "Listen, I'm exhausted, and I'm sure you must be too, so let's just agree to be agreeable, okay?"

"Whatever."

"Okay. You're going to have to take my hand, and you're going to have to close your eyes. Do you understand? This is really, really important. We only get one shot at this. I don't want to leave you behind."

"One shot at what?"

"We're going into town, into Aphter. I can go in because I can see it. You can only come in if you hold my hand and close your eyes."

"Why do I have to close my eyes?" she asked. She was still looking around, as if she could make herself see what I saw by peering intently into the dark or concentrating enough.

"Well, you don't have to, technically, but your brain won't like what it sees if you don't. It will make you sick. Really sick, trust me. We don't have time for you to be sick, so just close your eyes."

She thought about it for a minute. "Do I have to keep my eyes closed the whole time?" she asked.

"No. No. Just during the change. Once we're in town, I'll tell you and you can open them. It will only be for a few seconds, and I won't let go of your hand."

"Oh," she said, sounding relieved. "Okay." Then she added, "Are you serious about this? Is this real?"

"Just wait and see," I said, taking her hand. "Are your eyes closed?"

"Yes."

"Good. Keep them closed until I say." I turned to look at the road into town. I wasn't in town yet, so I couldn't tell if anyone was about. The town looked empty, and probably would be pretty dead at this hour (no pun intended), but you could never tell. Taking a deep breath, I stepped onto the dirt road of Aphter and pulled the kid, Amy is her name, with me. I was looking at the ground, so I saw the polished black shoes in time to stop just before running into the police officer less than six inches in front of me.

"That's quite far enough, breather," said his vaguely British accent.

"Can I open my eyes?" asked Amy.

THREE

Aphter: One

ONE

"Where are we going?" she asked, out of breath from trying to keep up with my quick, long strides. I didn't answer her. "Why can't we take the car?" she added after a few minutes.

"Just watch and learn, kid," I said. She'd never pick it up, though. She didn't pay close enough attention to pick it up. She fell silent.

We had parked the car just inside the city limits at a gas station. You had to leave town on foot. That was the first step. Luckily it was a lovely fall afternoon, good weather for a walk. I'd picked this direction out of town because there wasn't a lot of sprawl to the west. Once you got outside of the city limits it was all scattered houses, trees and rolling hills.

Much to my relief, we hadn't walked far when I heard the first call. It was just behind us and high overhead, but it was unmistakable. I fought my instinct to look and kept my eyes on the road.

"Where did you say we were going?" the kid asked again.

"I didn't say," I answered. "Don't talk, kid. I need to listen." As I was saying it I heard the second call almost directly in front of me and not far overhead. I caught a flash of black in my peripheral vision, and it took everything I had not to look, but I knew better.

"Did you see that?" she asked, startled. "That thing almost hit you!"

"Shh."

"What kind of bird was that?" she continued.

"A raven. Now be quiet. I've got to listen." She stayed quiet after that, walking along beside me as my pace slowed.

After a little more than an hour my legs started to get sore and I started to get worried. Had I missed the third call? I didn't have time to start over. We needed to hurry. I looked over at the kid, wondering how she was doing. Her cheeks were a little red, but she seemed fine. She was young. She could probably walk all day.

That's when I heard it. It was high up and over my right shoulder. I stopped and turned quickly, staring into the sky. There! There it was! The road we were on had veered slightly northwest, but this thing was headed slightly southwest. We'd have to leave the road. I looked to the southwest, but the road was cut into the side of a small hill that rose in that direction. I couldn't see anything past the hill.

"Come on," I said, crossing the road.

"Where are we going now?" she asked, running across the road.

"Up this hill. This way." I looked back, but the raven was gone. I got this suspicion that I didn't correctly remember the direction it was heading, but I what could I do? I had to go with what I remembered.

There was a barbed fence a few feet from the shoulder, but it was easy enough to pass through and we were soon standing at the top of the small hill. I was winded from the short climb after the long walk. The terrain past the hill was more flat, and I could see for a good distance. There it was, looking just like I remembered it. It was still a good walk away, and I was a little discouraged. We weren't going to get there before nightfall.

"What do you see?" she asked.

"Aphter," I said.

"Where?" she asked.

"You can't see it yet."

"Why not?"

"Because you don't know how."

"Can you tell me how?"

"No. You can't tell someone. They have to watch and learn for themselves. Let's go." I started walking down the hill.

"What is Aphter?" she asked, catching up with me.

"A town."

"And we have to go there?"

"Yes."

"Who lives there?"

"Lots of people."

"People who can help us?"

"I hope so."

We walked without talking for a few minutes, listening to the cicadas start their evening song in the trees. A cool breeze blew in from the northwest.

"What sort of people live in Aphter, Simon?" she eventually asked.

"Dead people."

TWO