MicroHorror

Firmly strapped flat on his back, David couldn’t move so he tried to remember instead.

Yes, before college he had believed love was endlessly renewable. That was until the day gin had caused ice to slide below his tires. Drunk, he had jerked the steering wheel wrong. Jenny that day rode beside him in the car, her mouth an oh of surprise, red lips as if about to blow a bubble. Yes, those winter crisp days had hacked off his right foot when their car smashed too fast into a tree.

A hand-carved cane and a fake foot inside a real shoe meant women were rarer. A degree in Engineering just a breath away when the Loma Prieta quake dropped his steel filing cabinet across him, papers he’d written scattered across black tile stained red with his blood. The remainder of his right leg had bid him adieu under a surgically masked face that same afternoon.

A crutch and pinned-up pant leg for seven years at the same job. No girls, not forever. Food that had once had tasted so good now seemed boring and bland. Up and dressed before dawn for the hour-long commute, the bus blindsided by a tractor trailer running out of control downhill. His left leg that day had been pinched off like in youth he had squeezed a zit. Blood and black and pain.

Legless David was rolled in his non-motorized wheelchair by a woman discovered in court when he’d sued the trucking company. Wild red hair and buck teeth but strong with love for him. She liked to camp in the mountains. Parked by a fire, he charred fish on long sticks, millions of stars overhead. He reached for Susan but they’d argued and she became angry. He looked up from the bottom of a cliff where he’d been pushed. He said goodbye to his left arm that night, goodbye to Susan and adieu to his foolish youth.

One-armed David sipped a dry martini. Gentle surf lapped white sand as gulls called under puffy fat overfed clouds. A thin blanket covered his legless lap. A woman he’d hired read travel adventure books aloud to him with her French accent. Sometimes in the corners of his mind he could remember walking those foreign streets, tasting roasted grubs. Yes, riding horses, he could almost remember the smell of their sweat and their muscles straining as he rode across the grasslands of Australia. He hadn’t felt the snake bite him because of too many martinis that day. The woman had dropped her book and screamed at him in French. He’d lost his last arm because it had blackened, festered and hurt and had to be amputated.

David lay on his back on a hard table under a too-bright light. He wanted to move his head and look, but it was held with tape or plastic tight across his forehead and tight all across his body. A man dressed in blood-soaked painter’s coveralls wearing a white surgical mask walked into view. He held up an oblong package wrapped in plastic. “Your arm,” he said and chuckled. “Say adieu to your last arm.”

David thought back to all the things he had done, the women, the drinks, the travel. Wild red hair and buck teeth. He opened his mouth as if to say oh. He realized in a moment of clarity that those memories hadn’t been real. He’d been given drugs, strong drugs by the man in the mask.

A big saw, the kind used to cut limbs off of trees, fluttered glowing red-hot into view, held by the man over David’s neck. David closed his eyes. He remembered kissing Jenny that night long ago, her lips warm but tasting of tobacco, her hair smelled like sage. Rock music played a loud heavy rhythm he felt more than heard. He pulled her close and tight and hoped with all his might that this, his last memory, was real.

Doris and her husband Herb sat on the grassy river shore along with Herb’s mother and sister. Doris smelled potatoes grilling on the little hibachi her mother-in-law, Momma Lowery, always brought along to make breakfast. “I’m hungry,” Doris announced and leaned back on the blanket, soft grass underneath. Spring hadn’t arrived yet, but the air felt newly warm as if desiring spring’s arrival. The river was higher today than yesterday and the air still smelled like last night’s rain.

Herb frowned at her. He took off his old fedora, and then pulled his sweater off as he always did these warmer days. He replaced his hat and said, “Hope they’re not rotting like they have been all week. We need the meat.” Doris liked it when Herb showed off his muscles under his tight T-shirt and suspenders.

Momma Lowery used a kitchen fork to turn the potatoes. She was old and fat but loved to cook. Always over-dressed no matter the temperature, she pulled a small blanket over her legs and smiled weakly at Doris. Momma Lowery couldn’t see very far since losing her glasses.

Patsy, Herb’s sister, almost never spoke. But now she stood in her new cotton dress, pointed and said, “Look at all of them.” Her eyes went wide. “There must be hundreds.”

Doris turned to look upstream. “Is that a log jam?”

Herb coughed. “No. Just lots more dead people than usual.” He stood and picked up a long pole with a hook on its end. “Way more than usual.”

Momma Lowery looked back at her son. “Now wear your gloves,” she said. “You know the radio said they might still be contagious.”

Herb coughed again. “The radio lies,” he said and started downhill to the shore. He used the long pole as a walking stick. “That’s no disease that does that. There ain’t no disease I’ve ever seen that bites folks’ heads off.”

The first of dozens of headless bodies began to float past. All were too far offshore for Herb to reach. The next few floated closer so Herb reached with his hook and snagged one, a pudgy, headless man without pants.

Patsy stood and pointed again. “What’s that over there?”

Doris looked but didn’t see anything at first.

“Hey,” Herb called. “Come help me. This guy’s heavy.”

Doris shaded her eyes. “Is that man running?”

On the opposite shore a man was running downstream. And behind him something big was chasing.

Patsy shouted, “Is that a gorilla?”

Herb stood and looked. “Too big for a gorilla. And gorillas have fur and ain’t green.”

The huge, green creature caught up to the man and grabbed him effortlessly. It lifted the man overhead and held him upside down. The creature was so large that by comparison the man appeared more like a struggling child. The creature appeared to be sucking at the man’s head.

Doris asked, “What’s it doing?”

Patsy screamed.

The creature tossed the man’s limp body into the river. The man’s head was gone.

Momma Lowery poked a potato and Doris heard it hiss.

The huge green creature turned and looked across the river at them.

Doris said, “I hope it can’t swim.” She heard Patsy whimper.

The creature smiled and showed off long pointed teeth. Then it ran full tilt toward the river and dove in. It surfaced and began to swim rapidly toward them.

Momma Lowery said, “The potatoes are done.”

More than botanic because of gene manipulation gone wrong, it beat ten thousand tiny hearts and invaded walls to eat. Cockroach meals and wood and mold between studs of one home, and then ten homes, and then a thousand homes. It sanitized inside walls for better human inhabitant health and grew undetected for years.

Young Billy, home from school with a fever, saw the first thorn poke through the sky-blue paint of his wall. Almost too small to see, he thought he imagined it because of his fever. His warm hand reached to test and felt a slight pluck at his skin. Billy looked at his fingertip and saw a spot of blood. Strangely the blood felt really good. He wanted more. He pressed his finger back on the thorn. His eyes rolled back and he grinned a really happy smile.

“Billy?” His mother leaned through the open door to look for her son. “Where’d you go?” Just inside the doorway she noticed a thorn poking through the wall just above the light switch. She touched it and felt it pluck her finger. She liked how that felt. She put her finger back against the thorn. She smiled and leaned against the wall, happy.

Joe the UPS delivery man rang the doorbell a third time. The package required a signature. Inside he could see a TV playing. The car was in the driveway, but nobody came to the door. Joe decided to be generous so he left the package on the front step. On his way back to his truck he didn’t see a thorn poke through the stucco just above the doorbell.

After his last delivery for the day, Joe drove out of the neighborhood. At the last stop sign before County Road he noticed a man watering his lawn. Something appeared to be wrong. Joe let the engine idle and watched. The man leaned against the wall of his garage, his hose in one hand spraying the lawn. But the hose wasn’t moving and the man held his other hand to the wall, one finger raised as if he were killing an ant. Joe noticed the man had an almost idiotic grin on his face.

The man suddenly collapsed like a punctured balloon, the hose fell to the grass, the flat deflated man hung by one finger from the garage all. Then, quick as a wink, the deflated man was sucked into the wall at the point where his finger touched. Joe felt himself shudder and muttered, “Jesus Christ!”

Joe felt the sudden need to depart the neighborhood. He pulled through the stop sign and heard all four tires blow out. His truck lurched and stopped. Joe undid his seatbelt and jumped out. He was afraid and wanted to run but something punctured his shoe. Joe remembered the man deflating, but strangely didn’t feel afraid. In fact he felt good, really good. So good he began to smile.

On the Twitter search page, Wendy-56 entered “ghosts,” and hit the RETURN key. A column of tiny square images, like little soldiers, dutifully lined up the on the left side of her Firefox window. Topping the list was one unusual square. No-longer-living’s image was a solid black square. His one tweet said “Don’t follow me. Beware.” So naturally, Wendy-56 clicked on “follow.”

Wendy-56 had so much on her mind like the health of her mother and the threat of a transit strike, that she gradually forgot about No-longer-living. She arrived at work a week later, before the others of the same secretarial pool had arrived. After logging into Twitter, she noticed that No-longer-living’s black square had appeared. The message to the right of his square was odd, “@Wendy-56 is following me. I told her not to. Beware.”

Curious, Wendy-65 clicked on the black square. The No-longer-living page came up all black as expected. He was following only one person, her, and she was his only follower. “Um,” she said to the screen. “Like, one sick dude.” Wendy-56 decided to send him a direct message.

“What the F,” she wrote. She made it a point to never type the F-word out in full because she could never know who might be snooping over her shoulder. “Why the weird posting. Should I report you as abuse?” She hit the RETURN key and jumped. Her fingertip hurt like an insect bite. She tried to jerk her hand free, but the keyboard came with it, her finger stuck to the keyboard.

She stood up and looked at her finger stuck to the RETURN key, the keyboard dangled from the end of her finger. The cable connecting the keyboard to her computer transformed as she watched it, from its normal dull black to a transparent tube filled with green bubbling fluid. She looked more closely. The bubbling green was traveling from the computer into the keyboard. Her eyes went wide. The green was injecting through her finger into her blood.

He head swam. She felt woozy. On her computer screen the black square that was No-longer-living’s logo dissolved and vanished. Wendy-56 collapsed back into the seat of her chair. “Oh,” she said, her last word. She sagged like a bag of Jell-O and was swiftly sucked in through the keyboard, in through the cable connecting the keyboard to the computer, sucked through the Internet, sucked into Twitter.

Those who followed Wendy-56 were puzzled later that day when her next tweet arrived. “I followed @No-longer-living. Beware.” A few of those who followed Wendy-56 clicked on @No-longer-living. A few of those who viewed No-longer-living’s page ignored the warning, ignored the same warning Wendy-56 had ignored. They too clicked “follow.”

Afternoon light dappled by outside leaves scattered shadows across her hospital sheets. The hospital reeked strongly of disinfectant. His mother opened her eyes and said, “Is that you, Harry?” Harry was his dad.

“No,” he told her. “It’s Blake, your oldest son.”

Her feeble hand fluttered, seeking his, so he took it in his and held it gently. If felt to him like brittle paper. He tried to will her his love though his hand.

“You look good, Harry,” she said. “You must be eating well.”

“I’m Blake.”

Her grip relaxed, and her eyes closed. The room filled with beeped warnings. “Goodbye, Mom,” he said at last, too late.

Blake let go of her hand and felt a tiny piece of her skin tug at his. He looked and a tiny bit of her old brittle skin had stuck to his finger. He looked at it and realized this was the last touch he might ever feel from her. He asked the nurse for a bandage and covered that bit of his mother’s skin to protect it.

Blake forgot about the bandage. The next morning, bleary-eyed, as hot water bathed him, the bandage washed off and lay unnoticed on the shower floor. Blake dressed and went to work.

Exhausted that night and a little tipsy Blake slipped his key in the lock and found the door already ajar. Carefully he eased the door open. Harsh light from the hallway swept across the interior as the door squeaked open. A young naked woman sat in a chair facing the door. The door stopped, left silence hanging, waiting.

“Is that you, Harry?” the woman asked.

Alf Dagger was a reporter who specialized in hot technologies. Ever discreet, he visited the cell phone store early before it opened for the regular public. Today’s story would be about the hottest selling cell phones, the ones implanted directly into one’s brain.

Alf sat on a smooth bench near the back of the cell phone store. He waited for the pain of a pin prick to dissipate. He sniffed and could still smell the lingering odor of rubbing alcohol.

The salesman said, “Just one quick test and you’ll be out of here.” The salesman fingered an old-time ear bud.

Alf’s ear itched. As he had been instructed, he thought about answering and a voice floated inside his head, “Testing one, two, three.”

“All clear!” Alf thought back. He smiled and stood up. “This sounds way better than the old phone. What do I owe you?”

“Already debited,” a click then Alf heard the rest of the words directly from the salesman’s mouth, “You’re set to go.”

The first call Alf made was to his editor. He thought about calling and, inside his head, heard his editor’s phone ring. Alf smiled. Totally hands free. He could stand in the middle of the street and juggle and still make calls.

“Mr. Nounen is away from his desk, please leave a message.”

Alf smiled and hung up. If his boss wasn’t in yet, he felt no rush himself. He looked around for a coffee shop. He felt his ear itch.

“Hello,” he thought.

“This is the AT&T Security office. Disable your phone at once and seek an upgrade immediately. A phone virus has been… click.”

Alf looked around. He was standing in that small park near city center. How had he gotten there? “I was on my way to work,” he said aloud trying to allay his confusion. “On the sidewalk, but now I’m in this park.” Two kids were playing Frisbee. Pigeons flew overhead. The grass smelled newly mowed.

Alf’s ear itched.

Alf found himself in an alley. A dumpster next to him stank of garbage. He was breathing hard and his legs ached as if he’d been running. In his hand he held a woman’s handbag. He stood up straight and felt his side hurt. He looked and found his coat and shirt cut and the skin underneath bleeding. He appeared to have been cut by a knife.

“What the hell,” Alf began, but then his ear itched again.

A horrible screeching and rumbling shook his entire body. Alf covered his ear. Dust swirled and the stink of oil and blood filled the air. He closed his eyes. The noises subsided. Alf opened his eyes. A locomotive car was inches from his face. He looked to his right and found another man standing there, his face also mere inches from the train car. “What happened?” Alf asked.

The man looked at him. “Didn’t you see? They all threw themselves in front of the train. Hundreds of them.”

Alf shook his head. “Didn’t see it.”

The man nodded at Alf. “There’s blood running out of your ears.”

Alf felt his ears. They were sticky. He looked at the man again. “There’s blood in your ears too.”

Alf felt a buzz on his chest. It was his old cell phone, a fancy pin he wore on his lapel. He tapped it with a trembling hand and said, “Hello.”

“Where the hell have you been?” It was his editor. “All hell’s been breaking loose. Something big is happening and it’s happening all over the world. I need you in here now.”

“I’m not sure where I am,” Alf said. “But I’m pretty sure it’s over.”

Alf heard screaming. He looked behind and saw dozens of people jumping off an overpass. Most just jumped silently. A few jumped and then screamed.

“Never mind,” he said. But the connection had already been dropped.

Acrid mold wetted by mud and persistent rain leaked in at the seams of the white canvas tent. Dr. Flender wrinkled his whiskered face at the stink and listened to static on loose headphones. Homeless ants crawled over the folding table in a line across a worn star pattern. “I only hear static,” he mumbled to the Sheriff. “I can’t tell what the growling is. It’s too soft against the noise.”

Dr. Flender was Chief Veterinarian from the Denver Zoo. He’d been flown in special to identify some wild animal. He hadn’t been told five children had been trapped behind a cave-in. The Sheriff surprised him with that news. Trapped for two days. Drillers had only that morning bored a hole for air and a microphone drop.

The Sheriff squelched a walkie-talkie. “Any luck with that connection yet?”

A reply returned immediately, “Almost. There, got it.”

The Sheriff pointed at Dr. Flender with his walkie-talkie’s antenna. The Sheriff appeared worn with worry and fatigue. He clearly hadn’t shaved in days. “Crap,” he said. “One delay after another. Try listening again.”

A great bullfrog roll of thunder outside rattled the tent. Dr. Flender shifted on the slick nylon folding chair. Again he eased the damp earphone over his head. This time the growl was clear despite the rain. “You say there’s children down there?”

The Sheriff nodded.

“The growling’s not a dog. A dog doesn’t sound like that.”

The Sheriff frowned. “We need to know what’s down there before we let the parents in.”

Dr. Flender concentrated on the sound. He felt a drop of cold water hit the back of his head. “Not a wolf either,” he said. “Not canine at all.” He wiped the back of his head with his coat sleeve.

“A bear maybe? There’s bears around here. Or were in the summer. Grizzlies.”

“No. Wait.” Another wrenching bellow of thunder caused Dr. Flender to press the earphones harder to his head. “No, not a bear. Not a cat, not like a cougar either.”

The Sheriff slipped on the other pair of earphones. He listened for a minute then asked, “What’s that crunching?”

Dr. Flender pressed the earphones tight again with his hands and listened hard. “Bones cracking. Whatever animal is down there, it has powerful jaws.”

The Sheriff looked unhappy. Then they both heard a tack tack like a stone hitting stone. Then the cracking of bone again. And then the same tack tack, stone against stone.

Then they both distinctly heard, “Ow!”

The growling was replaced by, “Ouch. My finger. My finger.”

Dr. Flender looked at the Sheriff and saw a man with slumped shoulders. Dr. Flender said, “I think I’m done here.” He tried not to sound sarcastic. He took his earphones off. He didn’t like what he’d heard. Not at all. The growling, now that he thought about it, reminded him of an ape’s growl.

The Sheriff took off his headphones. “One kid’s alive, anyway.”

“What are you going to tell the parents? That one kid might have eaten the others?”

“I don’t know.” The Sheriff looked at him. The Sheriff shook his head sadly. “I just don’t know.”

Mona Shotzki took her husband Dan’s hand. It felt cold to her despite his gloves. They stood with other neighbors behind yellow police tape. They were both bundled against the night’s slushy cold. Mona spoke first: “I’m glad you’re safe.”

Mona felt his hand shiver. She knew he was trying to forget.

“Another body,” he said softly.

She heard the pain in his voice. She turned her head to look where he looked. Fifteen bodies in body bags laid out on the grass front lawn of the dark rundown house. Two policemen gently laid another alongside the others. A small lump in a large bag. A child.

Hard to believe, Mona thought, pure chance between her husband and them. Pure luck that he was alive and those in the bags were dead.

“That’s her,” Dan said. Mona felt him squeeze her hand hard.

A tall, muscular woman was led out by police. Her hands were handcuffed behind her back. She wore a jumpsuit and red apron.

With a start, Mona realized the apron wasn’t red. It was white. It only appeared red because it was almost completely stained with blood.

The other people around her began to shout. Hateful shouts. Fearful shouts.

Mona wanted to shout too, but she felt Dan let go of her hand. She looked at her husband. He was bent over. She saw him pick up a stone, a big stone.

As Dan stood Mona saw a look of hatred on his face. A look that she’d never seen before. He snarled and showed his teeth. He didn’t say a word. With all his might he threw the stone at the woman.

The throw was off. It broke a front window in the house. The result looked to Mona like sharp teeth she’d once seen in a museum, a shark’s teeth.

The police hustled the woman quickly into a police car. Other stones were thrown by others in the crowd. A rock flew past Mona’s head. It cracked the rear window of the police car as it drove off. The car slipped sideways briefly in the slush then sped away, red lights flashing.

Neighbors pushed past the police then, as if a dike had been opened. Pushed past and broke the yellow tape. They rushed to the body bags to find their loved ones.

“Don’t open the bag,” Dan said softly.

Mona looked at him. He looked afraid.

“Please don’t open the bag,” he said again.

Mona looked back at the house.

A couple she recognized from church knelt by one of the bags. The last one brought out. The one with a child.

Mona watched as they zipped open the bag.

Mona felt her husband take her hand.

Mona watched as the couple screamed. When she saw what was in the bag she felt herself involuntarily sob. She grabbed her husband and hugged him. She buried her face in the rough wool of his coat and wept with love for him.

On her sixteenth birthday Debbie Hanks climbed the hill behind her house in the dark just before sunrise. The morning was chilly but not cold. She walked easily up the modest hill despite the high grass gone to seed that clawed at her pants. At the top she spread a blanket, its dark pattern a gift from her departed grandmother, under a large black oak tree. Then she sat, cross-legged, a fifth of Wild Turkey whiskey in her hand, and waited for the sun to rise.

“How dare you,” she said. She could barely make out the shape of her house far below in the dark. “How dare you touch your daughter that way.”

He’d taken her the day before. He’d gotten drunk and raped his own daughter in the same bed he slept with her mother. He’d raped her then threatened to kill her if she ever told. She’d showered three times but still felt dirty, then stayed in bed and pretended to be sick, her vision haunted by visions of his hair, his grey hair. She hid her face when her mother came into the room. She couldn’t face her mother after that. Not then, not all night.

The sky began to lighten. Debbie unscrewed the bottle and smelled the whiskey inside. It smelled like her dad’s breath but different, sweeter. But under it she could still smell gasoline. She smelled her hands. Yes. Gasoline. She recapped the bottle and tried to clean the smell from her hands using dirt and the blanket.

She smelled her hands again. Dirt smell. A good smell. A clean smell. She uncapped the bottle again and drank a swallow. It burned. It burned and cleansed, burned and cleansed. She took another swallow, another cleansing swallow. The distant sky began to turn orange, began to glow.

Below, the first wisps of smoke rose from her house, his house.

“Die,” she said and held the bottle out like a toast. “Die badly.”

Flames began to lick out from the edge of the roof. Flames red-orange like the sunrise. Flames red-orange like the whiskey. Flames that cleansed.

Debbie stood. She drank the whiskey again. It didn’t burn her throat as much this time. A little spilled across her sleeve.

Below she saw her mother run out the front of the house. Her mother was in her night clothes. Her brother appeared next. Together they stood outside the house and pointed and screamed. Her brother screamed for his dad. Her mother screamed for the man who beat her. Screamed and wailed for the life of that evil man.

Debbie drank again. She remembered grinding her mother’s sleeping pills into her dad’s nightcap. She remembered him drinking it. She remembered wanting him dead. Debbie held the whiskey bottle up again. The sun just broke the horizon. Blinding. Bright. She used the bottle to shade her eyes.

Sirens sounded in the distance.

Debbie smiled. “Cleansed,” she said. She toasted the dawn. “To a new day.” She drank again then let the bottle hang in her left hand. She watched the house burn. Her house, their house, his house, him. She watched and after a while muttered bitterly, “Happy birthday.”

Unalaska Island and the town of Dutch Harbor lay in the middle of the string of Aleutian Islands that dribble toward Russia off the tip of Alaska. Fran Corbran walked uphill to the cemetery one last time before flying back to the mainland. Her husband, Ace, had died the year before, mysteriously, while captaining his boat, the Dugan Royal, on a fishing trip.

It was early summer so Fran spread a plaid wool blanket on the still green grass and sat down comfortably. The water off shore appeared its usual deep blue. Fran remembered these last months. The inquest had been painful for her with rumors about a large claw found punched through Ace’s chest, a claw the size of a boomerang. Her husband had been buried at sea per his last will. The coffin had been closed because that had been her final wish for him.

“Damn you, Ace,” she said. His name tasted bitter in her mouth.

She remembered trying to run the fishing company herself. But she was just not cut out for that kind of a life. Especially with several other fishermen mysteriously disappearing at sea. Fishing was not why she’d moved to Alaska. She’d moved here because Ace was her last chance for love. She ended up selling the business to a corporation formed by a few of her former employees. In fact she had just signed the last of the papers that very morning in the old office in Dutch Harbor.

“Damn you, Ace,” she mouthed again. Saying it felt less bitter.

Fran looked at her watch. 10:00 AM. Still plenty of time to catch her flight. She snapped open her purse and pulled out her only remaining photo of Ace. It showed him drunk in the Sports Bar, his hat on upside down. He liked to sing karaoke there, she didn’t.

“Damn you, Ace.”

Slowly and carefully, Fran tore up the photo. She tore it into smaller and smaller pieces. At last, a handful of confetti, she let the photo fly free into the summer breeze.

She wanted to say goodbye, but her voice still said, “Damn you, Ace.” She lacked courage.

Finally free of Ace, all cords cut, Fran stood and looked one last time at the view. The distant hills, still snow-capped in summer. The black beaches full of stones. The eagles along the wharf standing there like big rats with feathers waiting to scavenge food. What had the newspaper said just that morning? About eagles disappearing?

Inside her purse she heard her cell phone play music.

“Hello?”

“This is Betty. Duncan’s wife.”

“Oh. Hi, Betty.”

“We just wanted to let you know how much we miss Ace, and how much we’ll miss you too.”

“Thanks Betty. That’s very kind of you.”

“When you get back to the mainland, use your computer to visit Flickr.com. We uploaded a bunch of photos of you and Ace. To help you, you know, remember.”

“That’s nice. Bye.”

Fran snapped her phone shut. She looked at it for a moment, then dropped the phone to the grass by her feet.

“Damn you, Ace.” She kicked the phone with her toe.

Fran started walking down the hill. Away from Unalaska. Away from the blanket given to her one Christmas. Away from the cell phone and the wrongful kindness of others. Away from the view, always so spectacular. Away from the mysterious deaths. Away from Ace.

“Goodbye,” she finally had the courage to say. “Goodbye, Ace.”