The Half That You See by Rebecca Rowland (the two towers ebook .TXT) 📗

Colin managed to help Beth into the sea—she had been on the school swim team only two years ago—but all she could do was float now, with a little help from her father, and she soon became chilled.

Finally home and in bed, Colin had been lying awake for almost an hour, none of his usual tricks or fantasies soothing him to sleep tonight. Denise snored lightly against his shoulder, as she had done since a minute after she put her book aside. In the hallway, Eleanor padded around, her breathing loud and wheezy, muttering. Outside, the usual racket of late-night traffic. Somebody shouting, angry.

He took a long breath and counted down from ten, trying to make himself relax. He imagined himself somewhere walking out from the apartment block, really striding out, putting distance from all the problems and worries that it represented and himself. It wasn’t hard to put the yards in, then the miles, because he was the only person in all of London. The streets were empty. The houses were empty. He came to a pub and walked in, smelling the old beer smell. The lighting was low and he wandered around the back of the bar, pouring himself a glass of beer, which he took back outside, sipping it as he wandered.

After a while, he had to admit to himself where he was going, but that was ok. He came to a stop finally at the house Dr. Tambini used as her clinic, pausing as if for breath.

Colin knew why he was there, what he was about to do. He pushed into the hallway and stood for a moment, listening, hearing the low rumble of a man’s voice coming from her studio.

He entered without knocking, seeing his therapist look up in surprise, and a small, overweight man twisting in the chair, eyes wide.

Tambini came to her feet, palms out. “Colin! You can’t just…”

He ignored her. Ignored the man, spluttering with irritation. He took three long steps to the table with the big white plastic button, hand coming up. He smiled at her as he pressed, and saw her momentary confusion before she was gone.

Colin came awake as usual, just before the radio-alarm sounded. He reached out a long, slim arm and turned the volume all the way to silent, just as he did every morning. Then he lay for a while in the deep silence of the city. It was so profoundly quiet, he could hear his own heartbeat. He swept his arm across the other side of the bed, and smiled to find that he was completely alone.

Daughters of the Sun

Matt Masucci

Nestled between the slash pine and saw palmetto, all the violence of Florida’s flora, someone stood on the far shore from his house on the pond. As the fog breathed, small eddies of white mist shifted and curled revealing again the person, naked and unmoving. From this distance, though, he could not determine the gender.

Chilled air filled his lungs, made him feel alive, and even brought him out of the fog of last night’s nightmare. He whistled. It echoed over the water before the mist consumed the sound, just as it shrouded the person again. The mist would clear soon, revealing the entirety of the lake, its small island, and the far shore. Beyond stood mangroves and cypress, pines covered in kudzu, and a world draped in Spanish moss.

He whistled again. The mist whistled back.

Cornelius crashed out of the brush off to his left. The golden retriever ran up to him, not nearly as nimble as he used to be.

But then, neither was the man.

The mist departed, thinning before clearing completely. It would be back tomorrow.

He saw the far shore now, all greens and browns with a hint of red from the Brazilian pepper-trees, readying for blooms.

Still, the person hadn’t moved.

Hurried, he forced down a slice of dry toast and second cup of coffee. The propranolol pill hit his stomach, and a warm liquid poured down over him, then slid under his skin, until it pooled in his fingertips. The doctor had said it would help him control his blood pressure but to let him know if he experienced any side effects.

“Like what?” he had asked.

The doctor had closed his medical file. “Anything out of the ordinary.”

He had laughed at the doctor. “I don’t know anything about ordinary.”

Cornelius wound about himself next to his food dish. He wasn’t up for more exercise, so the man headed out on his own. He grabbed a machete from the shed. It hung on a rusty nail. He should have taken better care of the blade, but it was a consumer’s world, and a new one would be cheap. He gave it a quick sharpening with a whetstone before setting out toward the lake.

Walking past the water, he heard the echoes. The echoes grew louder like the beating of an approaching drum. Worms in his brain, writhing, clumped together, like bait wriggling in black dirt. The beating of his heart filled his ears. Flashes of bulbs, of photographs, photographs that spilled out of a dropped manila folder. Blood the color of pitch in black and white. Little pools of void.

Then, silence again.

The moment passed. Stickers from the bushes covered his legs. They broke through the denim, pricked his flesh. They prick and attach, but they do not let go. They infect. They take over. They look for a new home.

He was not their home. He ran the back of the machete blade along his pants leg and shook them off.

Despite the chill in the air, which faded some with the rising sun, a sweat broke out across his head and under his arms. From an outside observer, he might look like he was working his way through dense tropical jungle rather than through the saw palmetto. Off to his right, the morning fog cleared enough to see the island with the old banyan tree. Tall, rooted, complex.

In the