The party encountered a hole in the ground. While the group argued whether this hole was actually a traversal into a lucrative, goblin-filled tunnel or a forgotten sewage pipe, majority-ruled that they should all enter.

While the entranceway was bathed in the soft morning light, creating tranluscent shadows below the burgeoning shrubs and trees, the inside of the hole was dark and dank. As some of you may have come to realize, it’s difficult to describes things in the dark. Friend and foe, sword and shield, goblin and orc— although these two are still difficult to distinguish in the light— are more or the less the same, at least by sight.

One of the adventurers decided that touch would be the best way to continue down the dark, dank hole. So in pairs, one group took the right side of the cavern and the other to the left. At first, the pairs called out what they felt and, like the soothsayer that foretold their arrangement, they predicted what lay ahead: dragons, trap doors, more slimy walls.

The groans of disgust and boredom slowly gave way to silence.

What the party didn’t see, and what the soothsayer neglected to disclose, is that there were hidden occupants of the hole. Along the roof of the cavern, a small band of bat-goblins patiently followed the group. Putrid things, really. All the ugly of a goblin and all the ugly of a bat. They really could have gotten away with calling them just goblins, or just bats, but who are we to judge?

Something that makes bat-goblins particularly clever tricksters is their impecable vision and hearing. The bat-goblins knew the gnarled twists and turns of the labyrinth like the back of their hand-wing.

They watched as the left-inclined adventurers continued in silence, unaware of the fork in the path. They stifled snickers as they watched the right-inclined adventurers continue down the right path.

The dark, dank hole in that placid clearing would remain a mystery. And the bat-goblins would await their next victim.

“And you, our guest,” the voice pierces from across the table, “what is it that you do?”

My fork clatters on the plate. My voice slips past the unmasticated food and out through my curled lips and crooked teeth. “Thank you, sir, for your having me on this unfortunate night,” I say through coughs and painful swallows.

“We’ll come back to that.” His gaze looks through me. He furrows an eyebrow and shakes his head. I turn around hoping his contempt was for someone else. A gangly waiter holding a platter with intricately carved glasses whooshes behind me. As the large platter eclipses the top of my head, the liquid sways and splashes onto my lap and arm. He disappears through what must be the kitchen on the other side of the room.

He continues, ignoring my desperate but silent pleas for a towel or napkin. “I asked you what you do? Please indulge me. I’ve already given you what you wanted,” gesturing to the plate in front of me, “and a little bit more.” He cackles and gives a nod in my direction. “Cicero, fetch a towel. You’ve made a mess.” The waiter named Cicero appears to my left with a towel no bigger than my palm. I forge a smile and begin vigorously dabbing. “Well?” the man persists.

“Oh, right. I’m an educator.”

“How noble! What an honor it is to be bound together, even for one evening, with a woman so devoted to depriving herself of material comforts and respect. Your lot never gets what they deserve,” he tisks. His gaze catches something from across the room. He lingers, again in my direction, but this time above my head. I turn around to see Cicero standing just beyond where the circular puddle of light illuminates the dining room’s floor. I decide its probably best to continue eating than wait for whatever rite Cicero is about to perform next.

The man across the table’s eyes glaze over and his mouth slowly unhinges, widening his maw. Like an untimely show curtain, his thin lips rise and reveal small, pointed teeth. I drop my fork again. A loud clap breaks the silence and I turn to its origin. Cicero stands behind my chair, emotionless.

“Right, Cicero,” his cadence returns. “Apologies, when you get to be my age, it’s easy to lose track of time and your mind. That’s why it’s important to do things that make you feel young. Like hosting an impromptu dinner.”

“Again, sir, I am very grateful for your feeding me and taking me in while I wait for someone to help me with my car.” The man nods. “I do feel rude; I must admit. I have been scarfing this delicious meal while your plate has been empty. Are you sure you won’t join me in eating?”

“I cannot,” he shakes his head again, probably at Cicero. “I usually eat either much earlier or much later. You’ve caught me in a certain purgatory.” The man smiles for the first time this evening. His thin lips are demarcated with deep cracks that fissure under the pressure of his contorted smile. Even with thin lips, he manages to conceal most of his teeth. Still, some needlelike spires emerge through. “As a matter of fact,” he covers his mouth, “you’ve come at an excellent time. Thank you for pointing that out, my Cicero. It’s been a long time since Cicero and I have had a guest. It’s been a long time since someone has savored Cicero’s food. And, I would guess it’s been a long time since you’ve been alone.”

“Excuse me. How do you— Why do you think—“ I stammer.

“Your engagement ring is absolutely fabulous. If I wasn’t so rich, perhaps I’d cover it.”

“Right, thank you, I guess. My partner knows I’m here,” I inform him, “I also called them earlier.”

“It’s easy to notice things when you’re not consumed with food. Have you ever seen a wild dog eat? At first it’s hesitant, lurking in the bushes in noseshot of the rotting carrion. So decayed that it is below the most noble beast. But, when starvation consumes you, anything will do. Then the dog decides to risk its own life just to just live another day by entering the clearing to investigate the rotting thing. It doesn’t matter what it was, a deer, a human, a brother.”

“What’s the point of this?” I interject.

He continues like a devoted actor in the throngs of a self-serving monologue. “The dog eats, always with caution. It peels the flesh and then darts around so it won’t become the next wellspring. It cracks a bone and looks over its shoulder, always watching so it cannot be watched. You’ve lost that.”

“Pardon?”

“You ate so ravenously and trusted so blindly that you haven’t noticed where you are.”

I slowly put my utensils down and swallow hard. I slip the knife into my sleeve. I try to run for the door but Cicero emerges from the shadows to grab me. I take out the knife and jab furiously until he collapses in front of me.

The man across the table bellows, “What you didn’t notice, what you didn’t learn from the dog, is that you are my meal, sweet. And you have willingly entered my domain, my hunting grounds.” He hisses revealing rows of pointed teeth.

The man lunges from across the room and I ready myself for the end.

No one would come to save me.

Years later, a minute in a life of immortality, we receive a knock on the door. A young man, desperate and harmless, asks for shelter in a cataclysmic deluge. The rain spites the man from all directions. I let him inside and tell him to wait in the dining room for the host to arrive. There, he will find a wonderful meal.

I lurk in the shadows as the young man and the man across the table trade small talk. I wait on contradictory and tired nods and shakes of his head, waiting for the right time to do his bidding. I hope this one will kill me as I killed Cicero many years ago.

Above, the lights from the apartment, etched with the linings of brick, flicker until only one remains. The stubborn light shines from the third floor, second apartment to the right. The windows are obscured by an orange and yellow cloth. Shadows dance and turn, obscuring the light shining through. A faint hum lazily saunters to the driver’s seat of my unassuming white sedan.

I gently hum along, as I pull the blanket over my head and think about how I wish I was sleeping. I hear footsteps approaching, interrupting the ambiance and my train of thought. It gets darker— it´s not difficult to tell through an eighth of an inch of cheap fabric. The darkness lingers and I pray that it´s not a cop who will make me move for the second time tonight.

I hold my breath and do my best to be inconspicuous: just your run-of-the-mill person-shaped pile of blankets, nothing to see here. I tug at the blanket from my waste. I see there’s a woman checking her teeth about two feet above me.

From the darkness I raise my thumb. She shrieks, unlocks the door, and disappears into the stairwell.

The light from the apartment on the third floor, second from the right, vanishes.

I drift into sleep with better lighting and no more distractions.

Francisco Sombra assumed there would be more to life than this. As a retired royal poet, and old enough to welcome his meeting with death, Francisco concluded that he had experienced all life had to offer.

He was awarded honors, given nobility status of a conquered island nation, and even witnessed, documented, and published the world’s only description of the panthera nautilus, a ferocious ocean predator the size of the kingdom’s finest merchant vessel. At one hundred and nine years old, Francisco was certain there was no surprise left in his life.

One day, when Francisco stopped, as he often did, to admire his favorite mural during his morning route, which included one coffee with a pinch of sugar and a mint leaf he produced from his threadbare jacket. Today, he was especially interested in not the painting itself, but the deteriorating effects of rain, light, and tactile admiration from other pedestrians.

At first, he examined only with his eyes and allowed his feet to guide him. The mural was of an outdated depiction of his most famous discovery. The mural of the panthera nautilus covered nearly a whole block and, at one end, began with its six spindly arms (even though Francisco’s official account documented just two spindly arms and two pairs of grasping tentacles) and ended with an embellishment that was both a horn and shell (this was, of course, proven to be true as the creature sported both meandering horns and a shell that protected its pectoral region, according to Francisco Sombra’s official account).

Francisco Sombra so enjoyed this mural because it showed how confident people can be, even when they were absolutely wrong. If it weren’t for people like him, people who dedicate their entire lives to the pursuit of truth, people would be wrong and be happy in their being wrong. This, he calculated after he had accumulated lifetimes of experience and knowledge.

He could not predict, however, why, when he lifted his hand to touch the beast’s snout, his shadow did not meet him there. Francisco spun around as fast as a centennial could and confirmed that the sun was indeed behind him as it was—he checked his pocket watch that was gifted by the Sultanate of the Blood Sea—6 PM and the sun was indeed setting behind him.

He looked down and saw that no dark form stretched from his feet.

Looking for another to share his panic, Francisco Sombra heard a loud group of people gathering near the town’s small port. He shuffled his way two blocks down, being so much in a hurry that his spare mint leaves drifted behind him, meeting their shadows when they floated to the ground.

The commotion appeared to be a celebration.

“The panthera nautilus has been caught!” a local marine collector rejoiced.

“We will commemorate this day and celebrate it for generations to come,” announced the coastal prince who was also Francisco’s benefactor for his third memoir “One Hundred and Nine Lives Lived.”

A rival naturalist and muralist, coincidentally the same one Francisco pitifully admired, smirked and said, bumping Francisco’s fragile side, “Our creature has six arms, old man.”

As Francisco readied his rebuttal, he caught a glimpse of the fisherman. A figure, about his size, stood proudly next to the coastal prince. It was faceless and shapeless. As the sun continued to set, its form, began to disintegrate into the night.

The feast and celebration of the catching, describing, and immortalizing the great panthera nautilus continued for weeks. While Francisco’s appetite for life returned, his shadow did not.

“A small price to pay for scientific truth,” he concluded.

The work of a soul suture is one of tradition, precision, and timing. Soul sutures live on the margins of past and present, life and death.

An oft forgotten, but important role for humanity, the soul suture intervenes at the moment of death and carefully extracts the soul from its corporal husk.

Timing is especially key. If the soul suture reaches its ethereal fingers into the flesh and prematurely siphons the soul, a life will be cut short. If the soul suture hesitates and loses its opportunity, the soul will harden and perish without relief.

At the moment of death, jagged yet amorphous limbs of dark mist descend from the in between. Its arms pull back then lunge like a praying mantis. Stopping before incision, a pair of red, glowing eyes appear between the arms to locate the soul. The soul suture’s eyes freeze the soul in its place as metallic talons extend from the etherial smoke. With a quick slice and jab, the soul is retrieved and freed.

At the moment of death, or perhaps damningly late, the soul suture will make its incision.

When Ernesto last saw his wife, it was when she was being lowered into the ground.

It was a simple funeral. Only Ernesto and the apathetic priest were present when they laid her to rest in the solemn hill.

Euphemia, the deceased, had no other family other than her husband. So, he supposed that she might find rest with her ancestors and relatives in the afterlife. His final words to her, and the last he would ever say were, “I would give up anything to bring you back.” He was not certain how, but he knew she heard.

Unpracticed in grief, he hid himself from the world. His will and his very being began to rot with each passing day without her. He sat, motionless, in her favorite seat, an artisanal wooden chair that looked like it had been bought, sold, and forgotten many times.

This night, exactly one month after her death, Ernesto sat in that same chair next to a struggling oil lamp that flickered at his breath. As the light dimmed to darkness, he thought, “Why do I have this voice with no one to hear it?” As he drifted into sleep, he relinquished it.

The next morning, Euphemia sang a familiar tune and woke up her husband with a whisper. He woke up like one falls into freezing water and looked around to see his wife again. But no one was in the room with him.

“Ernesto, it’s me, your loving and grateful wife,” a voice said softly. Ernesto stared blankly in disbelief. “Thank you for your voice, cariño. You’ve given me more in death than you ever could in life.”

Ernesto gladly listened to his wife, unable to respond, but he was glad just to have company. While she talked for hours the first week, oddly asking questions about the world as if she had never lived before, she became silent again.

Euphemia woke up her husband the same way she did a month ago. With a song and then a whisper, she said, “Thank you for your voice, cariño. You’ve given me more in death than you ever could in life.” She paused. “But, I don’t feel connected to this world like I used to. Please, mi amor, give me your legs so I may walk this world again.”

Ernesto smiled, then frowned, looking down at his rarely used legs. He shuffled in his chair, huffed, and nodded in the direction he imagined his wife.

The next day, the sound of her footsteps filled the house like it used to, skidding and sliding across the tile floors. Coming from another room, she laughed and said “I used to sit in that chair all day, dreaming of a world outside. Now,” the voice and footsteps moved closer to Ernesto, “it is you who is stuck in my chair. Thank you, Ernesto.”

By the end of the month, the house fell silent again. Until, Euphemia woke her husband again, and conceded, “You’ve given me more in death than you ever could in life.”

This time, she asked for his arms, so that she may feel the world. A month later, she asked for his ears, so that she may hear life breathe, ache, and cry.

He gave and gave, month after month.

A year after her death, Euphemia looked at her favorite chair, thought of her melancholic husband who temporarily took her place, and said, “You’ve given me more in death than you ever could in life. Thank you, my husband.”

It’s really unlike me to surprise. Most say I’m routine, consistent, normal. And that’s the way I’ve liked it.

So, when I woke up last Tuesday, right at 5:44, exactly one minute before my alarm would be predictably late to wake me up, I was surprised.

The beauty of them, surprises that is, is that everyone knows it coming except for the one surprised.

Surprise party? Meticulously planned. Organized. Coordinated. Executed.

Jump-scare? Directed. Acted. Edited. Screened.

Everyone is in on it, except for you.

You see, when things are planned, you realize there’s no surprise. Somebody’s pulling the strings. Or, so-called surprises can be predicted with scientific accuracy. Even a cosmic Armageddon would be screened for hours, weeks before our doom, long enough for it to be forgotten when our time is already up.

Therefore, it was a shock to me to wake up a fish.

It was hard to notice at first, really. It wasn’t like I could feel my fins instead of hands. Really, what does it even mean to feel your hand, or your knees, or your toes?

I noticed when I no longer had to breathe. I couldn’t even hold my breath.

Also, I was no longer in my room. I was, I didn’t know where I was until I saw a curious grocer eying me and my other identical cell mates through the glass.

We swam, emotionless, in place until a green net attached to a flimsy stick plunged into the water.

Since that day, I’ve woken up every morning as a fish. I don’t think it’s the same fish, I’m the same fish. When I’m caught by that little green net, I wake up at home as I’m returning from work. I think. My bills seem to be paid. I’m still getting my meager paychecks. I always have groceries at home. My plants are watered. And my mail is organized alphabetically.

I haven’t questioned this talent; I’m moreso grateful for it.

I’ve never felt more fulfilled. Providing for others and myself so that we’re both satisfied.

With this talent, I can tune out the routine that once consumed me and swim.