One Step for Man

Halfway to Mars, disaster befell the ship. A hasty decision later, I doubled down. Nothing was going to stop me from getting to the Red Planet.

One Step for Man

Let me start by stating for the record that I never intended it to end like this, and I never wanted to hurt anyone. It’s just that, I guess as my ninth-grade English teacher once put it, my best trait is persistence.

We were halfway to Mars, more than four months from home. I had volunteered to stay awake throughout the voyage. I enjoy the emptiness of space. It’s sort of like being surrounded by the nothingness of transcendental meditation without the need to utter some ridiculous mantra, like repeating the word “cucumber” until the syllables lose their meaning.

I wrote and exercised, but mostly I just stared out into it. I like how big the universe is. It’s comforting to know that the universe is so unimaginably large, wrapping me up in its black safety blanket.

And that desire to look at the stars indeed gave me the opportunity that part of me now regrets. Most of me, however, sees my actions in a time of crisis to have been the right choice. Ethics, after all, are not black and white like the void and the stars. Maybe that’s why I love to stare at the sky. It’s simple.

But when that asteroid crashed into the side of the spacecraft, I knew I had to do something. I just didn’t know what at the time.

The crash startled me, I saw sparks outside the window, but there were no warning lights. Whatever we had hit, it crashed into us hard enough to dislodge the sensors near the impact area. Imagine that the sharpest meat cleaver in the history of the world slices off your hand, cleanly and instantly severing the nerve endings. You wouldn’t even notice it was gone unless you looked at it.

In cases of emergency, Lt. Ellen Exley was the first to be woken up. She was the mission’s first mate and initial handler of any situation. And before you say anything, Ellen always had my utmost respect. More than that, even. She was the best of all of us. Of that, I’m certain.

So like the mission book said, I woke her, gave her time to come out of her post-stasis funk and drink a cup of coffee, and then told her what happened. We looked over the ship’s diagnostics and checked them against where we should have been at this point in the mission. Whatever it was, she said, it was big.

We suited up and went outside long enough to see flaps of metal slapping against the side of the ship where the crater was gouged. Air was leaking, so we stopped the flow of it to the area. We sealed it off, but we had already lost a lot of our supply to the void.

The two of us returned to the navigation room and looked at the mission chart for a long time. In silence, I watched her debate in her head. I knew what she was going to say before she told me. She had always been a conservative officer—no NASA mission leader gets a commission without being a very conservative decision-maker—and I was not surprised when she suggested that we had to turn back. I was surprised, however, to find that I had a crescent wrench in my hand and, when she turned to tape her message, split open her head with it—at the base of the skull, the soft spot that covers the medulla. No premeditation. I just did it.

There’s nothing quite like seeing blood float in zero gravity. Globs of red molasses, colliding, coalescing. It doesn’t move like a fluid, much less something that came from a living being.

I was not surprised when she suggested that we had to turn back. I was surprised, however, to find that I had a crescent wrench in my hand.

Again, let me stress that I had not planned on killing her. Something, an idea not yet fleshed out, had pulled the trigger.

With Ellen, at least.

The rest of the crew … well, that’s a different story.

After I stared for a while at the limp mass of Lt. Exley that was my handiwork, I had to make a tough decision. Was I going to tell NASA and turn back? Or was I to continue to Mars? I debated for a long time, nearly an hour, fighting with myself, but really my involuntary actions with the wrench had made up my mind. Now I began the hard work of assuring myself that it was the right thing to do. If I turned back, I would not see Mars and never would. Another mission to the red planet would probably never take off in my lifetime—not after what happened with Ellen. And me? I would be in jail, wouldn’t I? Even a plea of insanity wouldn’t save me. The public bloodlust would be too loud for even the most dense of politicians and judges to withstand.

So, it was off to Mars.

First, there were preparations. A transmitter aboard ship sends the status of all systems back to Earth twice a day. A package of all of the ship’s data was automatically collected and collated and beamed backwards. I’m awake on the ship to catch things in real time, that’s what I volunteered for; if something happened to me, this was the mission’s backup SOS.

If something drastic occurs, like a collision with an asteroid, a message is sent immediately. Since the sensor array monitoring the hull in that area had been knocked out, no message was sent, so the main computer had the data about what happened, but hadn’t dispatched anything back to base. In a few hours, however, the central computer would do a ship-wide diagnostic and report that that section of the hull had “disappeared.” Also, so would have all of Ellen’s vital signs. So, I had to work quickly.

I found the sensor logs in the ship’s main database and programmed a section from the week before, a few days worth, to loop. It was quite easy, actually. Being the only person awake onboard ship for a thousand-plus hours alone allowed me to get extremely comfortable with my metallic surroundings, and I knew almost every inch of it. Copy the records and upload them to the routing CPU where the main sensor conduit collects its data for that section of the hull. Program it to loop, set the date and time, and let it go. The only way someone would find out is if they were extremely lucky and noticed that the values for that fairly insignificant section of the ship were exactly the same every day, or if they were the most anal person in the cosmos. NASA had a lot of those people, and machine learning ran in the background of most of the organization’s systems to help the human operators out, so I was nervous. But my patch should buy me time, if nothing else. And by the time anyone found out, it would almost certainly be too late.

Cleaning up Lt. Exley was more difficult. You can’t really mop up blood in free fall. You have to catch it. Weeks later, I was still finding little spots where it had wandered down the corridors and to different levels. Her body, I bagged and sent on her final mission out the airlock.

Then, it was time to deal with the others. The crew was 12 large: Exley, Captain George Huntley, five planetary scientists (Carter, Milford, Drummond, Coleman, and Shannon), three geologists (Haverford, Biswas, and Linklater), Hans Morgan (the ship’s doctor), and me. I was the crew’s atmospheric sciences expert.

I repeated the same procedure with the cryogenic life-support systems as I had with the sensors, albeit I first studied the data and the system more extensively than I had the more basic hull sensors. I had time; the other crew members were all in stasis and there was no reason for the equipment to wake them for months.

After I collected the data I wanted to use, I ran a few experiments using Exley’s empty cryo tank, and watched the main computer’s reaction to it. First, I bypassed the sensors that read the cryo unit’s life signs. I uploaded the stored data I had prepared to loop, set the date and time, and waited until I was sure that the computer took it for the real deal. After I had Exley back to life and on a four-day life cycle, I started on the others.

I did Morgan first. While we were in training in Texas, I stumbled across a stash of kiddie porn on his laptop while looking for a copy of a disclaimer that we had to sign. That fucker deserved it. I locked the door of the unit and altered the readout of its life-support settings. With it continuing to pump out normal numbers, I turned the unit’s oxygen to zero and its carbon dioxide all the way up. Then I stood and forced myself to watch him suffocate. I did this for all of them. That was the penance for my actions.

As I said, Morgan wasn’t that difficult. Not easy, but not that tough either. But everyone else was rough. Especially Karen Haverford. We went to grad school together, and she married a friend of mine. I’m sorry, Bill. I hope someday you can forgive me.

A few hours later, I was the entire crew. Off to Mars, no turning back.

Maybe ethics is based on being surrounded by people everyday and being forced to live with them. In a universe of one, maybe there is no such thing. Just like the stars, black and white.

There were another few months left to the Red Planet, and for a while I wondered if I was going to make it. Physically, the ship’s tanks had plenty of fuel, and, even with a lot of air lost to the void from when the asteroid hit, I had enough oxygen and food for 10 of me. For the first time in my life, I even watched every game the Yankees played, every inning. And you can actually throw a rising fastball in zero g. (Or at least that’s what it looked like to me.) There’s not much else to do when the nearest human being is millions of miles behind you.

Mentally and emotionally, it was much harder. I just wasn’t sure if what I had done would catch up to me and stop me. But it didn’t.

Sure, I’m a little angry it had to happen this way. But I never stopped; I never turned around. What was done was done. It still hurt, but after months the pain had dulled considerably.

Maybe ethics is based on being surrounded by people everyday and being forced to live with them. In a universe of one, maybe there is no such thing. Just like the stars, black and white.

It took a couple of months before Earth figured out something was wrong. During a routine examination of the ship’s readings of oxygen usage against what they had had planned, they found that we weren’t using enough. They told me they wanted to do a diagnostic of the ship’s sensors, and I hung up and never talked to them again. Eventually, they stopped trying to talk to me too. In a way, I was relieved. I may be a murderer, but I hated lying about it.

A few weeks later, I made it. And what a beautiful reddish-orange globe it is. Pictures do it no justice. Until you have been here, and gaze upon it in all its intense glory—from the migrating polar ice cap to the carved canals—you haven’t been alive. It’s majestic.

The Earth is so soft. Its oceans give her a welcoming, cool, and comforting look.

But Mars …

Mars stares back at you.

It’s hard, forbidding, dead. Its mountains make Earth’s look like children stomping around in their father’s boots. Empty canyons that make Earth’s look youthful. How did ancient people look to this piece of rock and connect it so eloquently to a god of war? It looks war-torn, as though it fought a battle with God and lost, miserably. Prometheus beaten down by Zeus and burned with his own fire.

I loaded a landing ship with a month’s worth of provisions and air, a rover to drive, and sensor equipment to conduct all the tests I could. After all, I was still on a mission.

I never really was much of a pilot. I usually left the flying to others, and for good reason. I had crashed a tiny Cessna back on Earth, and I was about to crash my second airship, albeit something much bigger than a two-seater personal plane. During my final approach to the planet’s surface, I hit some turbulence, not to mention the gravity being a little lighter than I was expecting, and I lost it. I spiraled, dropped, and pulled out just in time to save myself—but not the ship. Most of my instruments still worked, and none of me was broken, so I considered myself lucky.

I still do.

But the moment I hit the Martian ground, the red planet became my home. The lander would clearly never take off again. I don’t know how to fix it and almost certainly don’t have the tools and materials if I did, and there was no one to come get me. The crash had breached some of the air tanks, so I was left with only enough oxygen for about a month, but food and water for a nonexistent return trip of many months. I was stranded on a very dead chunk of rock with a rapidly diminishing amount of time.

Mars stares back at you. It’s hard, forbidding, dead.

I was distraught and sulked around the lander for a few hours, taking inventory of what I had left. I cried. I would never see my family again. Or my friends. I could never apologize to the crew’s family members or to my superiors for what I had done. I had sincerely wanted to go back to Earth, turn myself in, give them a full report, and probably spend the rest of my life in jail. At least then I could die surrounded by the rest of my people. But my story wouldn’t end like that.

As the sun headed toward the horizon, I was wondering what had gotten into me. I thought it a fitting metaphor, my life setting on a desolate alien land. Then the red of the sunset amplified the fury of the landscape, and the planet seemed to alight in a fiery hue.

A Mars sunset makes one on Earth look tame. I was roasting in the depths of hell, surrounded by a fire I had lit myself, and I had never seen anything more beautiful in my life.

After that, I slept soundly. The next morning, I loaded up the rover and explored. What a magnificent land—huge, empty, and all mine. Over the past few weeks, I have explored as much as I could. I mapped a lot of the surface and conducted most of the experiments I had planned to perform before we left the blue planet. I’m sure you’ve received that data by now. I have been more productive in my time here than at any other time in my life.

But that time is running out. I am almost out of air, and in a week I will be but another inanimate ornament on the surface of this dead planet. I might just sit here, by my rover in my makeshift camp, and slowly let the air go out. I may throw myself into one of the massive canyons that litter this scarred world. Or, most likely, I will climb as high as I can on Olympus Mons and, after watching the sunset from the crow’s-nest of this world, pull the oxygen tube from my suit and let the life leave me with the daylight.

Whatever I choose to do, whenever mankind decides to make it back here, be it in one year or a hundred, I’ll be here. Waiting.

Hi reader! This has been a finished short story, intended to be a completely fleshed out tale, unlike my shorter One-Pagers. Read more of my longer, more complete short stories here.

Puddles

Maggie loved to splash around in puddles. And not just little puddles of water, mind you, but also the small pond that floated in the middle of the sidewalk.

Each weekend morning that it rained, she would wake up excited, run downstairs for breakfast, where while her mom would get her yellow raincoat and galoshes from the closet and her dad would ready a big hug for her at the front door—after she finished her eggs, toast, and orange juice, of course. Maggie would then go out and splash around in the pools of sometimes-chilly, sometimes-tepid rainwater for as long as the weather and her stamina would allow, and then slosh her way home, where dad would have a big smile and another big hug for her and her mom would have a steaming cup of hot chocolate ready in the kitchen.

This particular morning, Maggie was really excited. The rain was heavy. Not in a hurricane-heavy sort of way, but in a lazy, sloppy rainstorm sort of way. There was barely any wind, and the water droplets were huge, heavy, thick, and made crashing sounds when they hit the sidewalk. They cannonballed into the ever-growing lakes of water everywhere, splashing all of the little droplets of water that were hanging out on the edge of each pool. This was her favorite kind of rainstorm—heavy, warm, and comfortable, and they made for the biggest and best puddles to splash around in.

She jumped in a few, and was starting to get properly wet. Smiling from ear to ear, and starting to feel hungry and ready for some lunch, Maggie spotted the grand prize of puddles. It was too big for the sidewalk and spilled into her family’s front lawn. The heavy droplets fell from the sky and smashed into the lake of water like meteors hitting the surface of a distant planet, throwing flotsam in the air. It called to Maggie, and she answered.

The heavy droplets fell from the sky and smashed into the lake of water like meteors hitting the surface of a distant planet, throwing flotsam in the air. It called to Maggie, and she answered.

Grinning, and lightly quaking in anticipation, she jumped in the air and drove down with both feet. But her feet found no ground. They went through the water, then her knees, then waist. Her eyes were still open when her head went under the water, and she saw what looked like an endless cavern. She couldn’t see any end to the water, and above her where the puddle should have been it was all black. No way out.

Then in front of her and above, Maggie saw that it was lighter. She swam to the light area, and up through it. She reached and felt the sidewalk, and pulled herself up onto the ground in front of her house. The sky seemed more gray, the rain more menacing, and she was crying and frustrated.

Maggie ran to her front door, trying to stop from crying but the involuntary blubbering squeaked and tumbled out. She needed a hug from her dad, the hot chocolate from her mom. But when she went inside, there was none. Her mother yelled at her, calling her Margaret, for having gotten soaked and ordered her upstairs to change. Her father spanked her when she questioned why her mother was being so mean to her. After taking a hot bath and changing, and going without dinner for having disobeyed earlier, she cried in bed, confused and frustrated, until she finally fell asleep.

Her mother and father told her that they didn’t want her splashing in puddles. In fact, they told her that they never had said she was allowed to. Repeatedly. They didn’t hug her anymore, or give her hot chocolate anymore, or wait at the door for a goodbye kiss before she went to school. They yelled, and they spanked when she didn’t answer their yells quickly enough.

At school, things were now just as bad. She discovered she was failing every class, when she knew she had been getting straight As. Her answers to all of the questions, which used to be correct, were now wrong. Other kids laughed at her, the teachers shook their heads and kept her late after class, punishing her whenever she dared to suggest that the answers she knew to be correct should be acceptable.

Occasionally, on the way home from school, or after walking out of her house, she would see a puddle, and jump in it. Looking at her wet feet, she would fight back the tears.

As the years went on, she managed to get some of the answers right, and to do enough acceptable things at home so that she didn’t get spanked as much. She was able to graduate from school, but didn’t have the grades to go to a good college, and her parents refused to pay for it anyway. She found a boy who seemed to love her, but after two children he left one day and never came back. Decades of miserable jobs provided enough for her kids to have clothes and food, although they never had as much as the other families in town. Her son resented her for not giving them more. He left at 18 and never came back. Her daughter stuck around, but only out of a sense of responsibility. Maggie was never sure if her daughter really loved her.

Occasionally, on the way home from school, or after walking out of her house, she would see a puddle, and jump in it. Looking at her wet feet, she would fight back the tears.

Maggie saw her daughter’s children sometimes, but she could never get the kids to go out in the rain with her. Her daughter would chastise them, saying that they would catch a cold, although she never reprimanded Maggie. Maybe her daughter secretly hoped that she would catch a cold.

So that’s where Maggie found herself, over that Easter holiday. Her daughter’s family was inside, cleaning up after dinner, and she was outside, walking around in the rain. After all these years, she still jumped in puddles when she saw them. After all these years, she often forgot why she did so. But she still did.

Hi reader! This has been a finished short story, intended to be a completely fleshed out tale, unlike my One-Pagers, which explore a single idea, scene, or thought. Read more of my longer, more complete short stories here.

Evil Then Became My Good

By Greig O’Brien

It always seemed to be a dark and stormy night. This night, the tall, thin figure in a forgettable gray trench coat trudged through the ever-wetter mud on his way to the stoop of a large, warmly lit mansion.

The house easily had 30 rooms, and, at one time, each was filled with life. It was an old house, tended to by those who had once, like the structure itself, seen more lively days. The rosebush in front, for instance. You could clearly see that someone had loved it dearly, and while the wild had been fighting to get it back, it still showed signs of its previously sculpted form. The artificial lantern boy standing next to it had seen his light go out years before.

Evil Then Became My Good

But the lanky visitor in the trench coat didn’t care. Those little clay people had always left a bad taste in his mouth.

He stepped out of the mud, onto the marble step, and rang the doorbell. He then waited. If nothing else, he did possess the virtue of patience.

A woman answered the door and let him in. She was in her early twenties, light dusty hair and a serious look on her face. She shivered slightly at the sight of the lanky visitor, but if asked, she wouldn’t have been able to tell you why. He took off his hat, shrugged some of the water from his coat as he removed it, and smiled blankly at her. “Huh,” he said. “It’s always the same.”

She stood and stared for a moment before he held out his coat for her to take. “You’ve matured well,” he told her. He said so knowingly; there was no intent, no emotion in the statement. He wasn’t even looking at her.

“My grandfather is in his study,” she said, not even certain she was awake. She didn’t ask the visitor if he was there to see her grandfather, even though it was the old man’s house. But she knew. “It’s … ”

“Through the dining room,” he said. “I know.”

Out of the rain, the lanky visitor grew more energetic. He strolled through the dining room towards his destination. Two large, warmly lit crystal chandeliers hung over an exquisite 20-person oak table. Stained glass adorned two windows facing west, so that they would glow a rainbow during the setting of dinner. He stopped, checked his hair and the dryness of his shirt collar in a large, gold-rimmed mirror, and then departed for the next room. “Ah, the Barrow residence,” he said. “Not bad, Bobby. Not bad at all.”

The older man, a cigarette nearly burnt down between two wrinkled but relaxed fingers, didn’t turn, didn’t take his eyes from the fire, didn’t move, only said, “Where’ve you been?”

Putting on that wry grin that he always wears when conducting business, the lanky visitor slid to the end of the room and opened the door to the old man’s study. Inside, the room was dark but softly filled to its edges with the warm glow of the fireplace. A Degas hung over the mantle, an impeccable crystal shaker set rested atop an oak bar along one wall, and the rain poured down a pair of gold-rimmed bay windows. There were two chairs set up in front of the hearth—high-backed study chairs straight from a Silver Age horror movie. One was occupied by an old set of legs in pajamas and a red crushed velvet robe. The other chair was empty and expectant.

The lanky visitor slid to the empty chair. The older man, a cigarette nearly burnt down between two wrinkled but relaxed fingers, didn’t turn, didn’t take his eyes from the fire, didn’t move, only said, “Where’ve you been?”

“You know, Bob, I’m very busy.”

“I’ve been waiting a long time,” the elderly man responded, not waiting until the other was finished with his sentence before beginning his own. He turned, took a long look at his visitor and his face softened. Then he smiled and took the final puff from his filtered smoke before snuffing it out in an overflowing ashtray standing a few inches from the left armrest. “Years, in fact.”

“Sorry,” said the lanky visitor, with a genuine-looking expression of guilt on his face. “Most people live every day, praying every hour, never to see me.” He watched as the old man shook his head. “I tend to be what is called ‘a rude surprise.’ ”

At this, the old man laughed so hard he doubled over slightly. He stood up and headed to the near side of the room, and called out over his shoulder, “You wanna drink?”

“Does the Pope shit in the woods? Yeah, Bobby. Scotch. And the good stuff under the bar, not that cheap shit you serve your alcoholic son-in-law.”

“Bastard,” the old man breathed under his breath, knowing full well that the other could hear every word he said, whether he uttered them out loud or kept them locked in the antechamber of his mind. He heard the other laugh softly to himself across the carpet, publicly sharing their private joke.

Making his way back to the chairs with two tumblers filled with ice and pricey booze, Bobby said, “And don’t call me Bobby. Call me by my real name.”

“But Mr. Barrow … ”

“Mr. Barrow is who I bought from you. Call me by my real name.”

The lanky visitor was delighted. He leaned back in his plush chair, now ages removed from the cold chill of the storm outside the windows, and chuckled deep in his throat. “Whatever you say, Mr. Michael Callahan.” He laughed a little longer for the darkness in the corners of the room. “Mickey.”

Mickey shook off the laughter and looked back into the fire. “I’m finished being Mr. Barrow.”

“No shit,” laughed the lanky visitor. “Quite frankly, you’re finished being Mr. Callahan, too.” His laughing sputtered to a slow stop as he turned to look at the old man. “You do realize that I’m here to collect, right?”

“Yeah,” said Mickey. “And I’ve been ready to go for some time.”

“No, Mickey. Whether you think so or not, no one is ever ready to go.”

“Well, I’ve lived a full life. My children are grown. They’re wealthy, happy, with children of their own now. You met Clarisse.”

“Oh yes, she’s matured nicely,” the lanky visitor said with the same flat tone as he used earlier. He finished his drink and said, “All of the Barrows are doing quite nicely. Are you telling me you regret any of it?”

“No,” said Mickey. “I couldn’t have hoped for a better ending to my story. Growing up parentless, penniless, and homeless in Hell’s Kitchen … Ha! … I never could have dreamed of all this.”

The lanky visitor grinned, the light from the fire glinting off his long teeth like a set of daggers all lined up, ready to be sharpened. “And all you had to do to get that was sell me your everlasting soul.”

The lanky visitor enjoyed his Scotch in silence and took his time. What was time to him anyway?

Mickey’s eyes got heavier as they filled with more firelight, while the grin on his face grew in spite of his inner troubles. “But I did it. So I made the best of it.” The lanky visitor was listening attentively now, like a stoic priest listening to the confessions of a death row convict. “I didn’t hurt anyone. Some numbers running. Bootlegging. Then investing in steel, oil, microchips. I pumped money into schools. I would like to think that if there is such a thing as to sell yourself in the right way, I did it.”

“You’re still going to burn.” The lanky visitor bored his gaze into the side of Mickey’s head, since the old man wouldn’t turn.

Mickey got up. He refilled their glasses and thought about what the other had just said. The lanky visitor, meanwhile, left Callahan to think and walked to the window to watch the rain cascade down the thin panes of glass. The drops fell like doomed souls, erratically, entertainingly, and then hit the bottleneck of the sill. There, they crashed together, violently coalescing into an amorphous mass of water that welled up. Their individuality gone. His interest in their doomed fate finished.

The two turned and returned to their chairs, both a little distant and no longer as interested as they had been before the abrupt intermission, where they sat for several minutes. The lanky visitor enjoyed his Scotch in silence and took his time. What was time to him anyway?

Mickey Callahan looked over at his guest, his eyes a little watery, his determination a little less solid than it had been a half-hour before. It wasn’t longing that was in Mickey’s eyes, it wasn’t regret … it was the attempt to flush those two sensations from his mind and to steel himself, the way a mountain climber might stop halfway up a slope to rid himself of the thought of turning back.

Then the lanky visitor reached into his jacket and pulled out a cracked, rolled-up scroll. “That’s it, isn’t it?” asked Mickey. The other nodded his head.

As Mickey was almost ready to leave his house, his family, and himself for all eternity, the other tossed the parchment in the fire. The lanky visitor then sat there, sipping his drink, as the old paper slowly burned away in a rainbow of multicolored flames. He didn’t make a sound. He watched, consumed by the spectacle of his own making, occasionally sipping from his nearly empty glass.

Mickey gaped. He had been readying himself for years for an afterlife of pain and punishment. He had been waiting, believing like a fool that he had been ready to go. But as he watched the contract on his soul burn to nothing, he could only stare. The piece of paper, which a foolish young teenager, orphaned and on his way to an early and bloody grave, had signed in order to dig himself out of the mound of shit that was his life, was now reduced to ashes. His shackles had been opened, but the prisoner stood there, disbelieving and confused.

Mickey Callahan slid listlessly from his chair, and half-sat, half-kneeled on the floor. The glass of Scotch was still in his hand, clutched in white knuckles, but he couldn’t look at the devil sitting next to him. “Why?” was all he could stammer after his throat eased and allowed a little air out of his lungs.

The lanky visitor leaned back in his chair, his face a blank slate. “Why?” he parroted. He then hissed deeply in his throat. “I wanted to see what it feels like to do something good.”

Mickey turned to face him. He lifted his shoulders in a nonverbal prodding.

The Son of Morning sat up, handing his empty glass to his host. “Nothing. That’s all I feel.” He then stood up, and laughed at his frustration. “Kindness is one feat of engineering that I don’t have the ability to understand,” he said.

The lanky visitor stood for another moment, staring through the fire. “I used to be beautiful,” he said to whatever was back there.

Then, he turned to the doorway. “Have a nice life, Callahan,” he called out over his shoulder as he stepped into the dining room, which was blinding by comparison. He didn’t stop to look in the mirror on his way back and made it to the front door where Mickey’s granddaughter still stood, still holding his coat. She hadn’t moved, hadn’t hung up the stranger’s coat on the rack three feet behind her.

Without acknowledging her, he took his coat from her hands and threw it around his shoulders, and grabbed his hat that dangled in her other hand. Opening the door, he stepped out underneath the tumultuous sky, the rain coming down even harder than it had been when he arrived. He shook his head, muffling a grunt through clenched teeth. He turned his face towards the sky and said, “You would think it would at least stop raining.”