The aliens were putting Josh and Jill through the ringer. Communicating in both their own language and perfect English, they’d asked Josh and Jill a hundred questions about themselves and their habits . At the current moment, they’d setup an obstacle course of some kind. It looked like an Olympic decathlon.

“We are testing you to see hock is the finest specimen,” announced Glorp, the translator. His one yellow eye darting between Josh and Jill.

Jill was burning with jealousy. Josh was six feet and change, well built and Jill felt he had some idea that no matter what the task would be, Josh was going to make a show of beating her. This didn’t sit well with Jill. After all, she was in shape too. Jill was not about to be bested when representing the human race to outsiders. No, no. She was determined to succeed for the reputation of womankind. If these aliens were going to take notes about what the average human does, she was bound and determined for their notes to say “Subject Jill was the winner.”

Jill pushed herself and it paid off. She blasted past Josh in the 100 meter dash, destroyed him in the long jump; she excelled at shot put from her years of softball, but Josh’s long legs got him ahead in the high jumps. The 400 meters ended with a brutal tie. There was an intermission during which Jill fumed, silently. She was not going to be beat if it took her life.

The next portion started with 110 meter hurdles. Jill flew over each hurdle until the very end, when she missed the penultimate hurdle and was knocked to the ground. Josh took the round. Jill clenched her fists so tightly in anger she nearly drew blood from her palms.

Jill’s softball training came in handy again during the discus throw, a challenge she won; her lightness served her well in the pole vault. The javelin throw went to Josh - his long arms and developed upper body gave him an advantage. It came down to the 1500 meters.

Jill was perspiring with hatred. She was not going to let Josh win. If she had to sabotage him, she would.

Glorp raised one of his tentacles to the sky and fired his ray fun. They were off.

Josh’s long legs and huge stride took him further and further ahead. Jill’s rage propelled her forward. She closed the gap. Josh pulled ahead. Jill gained and took the lead. Josh was closing in. Neck and neck each lap, the end was in sight - they were beside each other sprinting toward it.

Josh started to pull ahead, Jill forced herself forward. She thought her nose may have started bleeding but that wasn’t going to slow her down. Finally, Jill had an inspiration. Sabotage it was.

“Hey Josh,” she shouted at him, “look over here!” As Josh turned his head toward her, Jill lifted her shirt above her head and flashed her breasts at Josh. He fell for it. Literally. Josh tripped with surprise allowing Jill to pull ahead and finish first.

Glorp proudly named Jill the winner and started leading her away from Josh.

“What do I get for winning?” Asked Jill.

“Well being that you have won the test for the finer specimen, you will be the human was use as sustenance this evening,” replied Glorp.

“Sustenance?! You mean this was an audition to be your dinner?” asked Jill in terror.

“Yes. You proved the better specimen and shall therefore be the one we happily ingest. The inferior being has been sent back to Earth. Congratulations, I’m sure this is an honor for you,” replied Glorp.

Glorp then wrapped one of his tentacles around Jill’s mouth and injected her with a tranquilizing serum.

Jill was the tastiest human Glorp and his comrades had enjoyed yet.

It was a day like any other. I got up nice and early, got some breakfast, fed the kids, warmed up my voice, sang a couple songs, and sat out on my perch watching the morning go by.

It had to be just before the midpoint of the day - judging by the light and the movement of the clouds - when I decided to go off for a little flight. The wings needed a stretch, and the kids would need lunch soon, so I leapt from my perch, spread my wings and flew off southward a spell.

I was nice and high up, enjoying the view. We birds really do have the best views. That was when I saw it. It came floating down from behind the clouds. Nearly knocked me out of the sky! One of the idiot animals that only uses two legs came tumbling out of the clouds! What the f*%! was it doing up here?! They’re only supposed to be down there! Who let it up here??

It was wearing some stupid looking covering that I just wanted to tear up to refit my nest. I was so angry at it for cutting me off I wanted to peck out it’s eyes, but they were encased in something.

It had the audacity to wave at me. It waved at me!! Can you believe that? Like this was a casual thing for this two legged thing to be up in my space. Then it continued towards the ground with the giant red cloud it was hanging from.

I shit on these beings. I shit on them because they’re (literally) below me and too stupid to know they’re beneath me. That’s the way the world is supposed to be: that two legged thing is meant to be below me so that I can poop on it and it can feed me seeds. They’re not supposed to be coming at me from behind the clouds!

Is this about to become a common thing? Have they somehow developed flight? I hope not. I truly, truly hope not - I’ve seen what they do down there and I am Not impressed. It’s a mess, and they can keep it. I don’t want them up here in the sky, this belongs to us birds and the clouds, we don’t need anyone else up here.

When I got back to the nest, I tried to tell the kids what happened and they looked at me like I was off my head. But I swear, it happened.

The doorway was thick. The layers of paint throughout the years had inflated the doorway so that the door constantly got stuck in the humid months.

The door was a gorgeous oak - resealed over the years, but still the original wood from when the house was built in 1880. There were a few scratches here and there on the back side from the family dogs: Bingo (1887-1902), Clark (1920-1936), Chief (1942-1960) and BoBo (2002-).

The floors had been redone at least five times. Once in 1903 to restore some termite damage, then again in 1938 after a small fire. In 1958 the original hardwood was covered with linoleum and carpeting, which was replaced in 1973 this time with linoleum and shag carpeting. This was done at the insistence of Mrs. Mary Hart Wilson (1926-2008) who read in Ladies’ Home Journal that shag carpet was here to stay.

By the time the floors were redone a final time in 1999 to remove the linoleum and shag carpeting (thankfully), Mrs. Mary Wilson’s fashionable shag carpet had half a dozen stains and bare spots, all with a different story. A large spot of red wine stain never came out after Uncle Joe Robbins (1922-2001) knocked over a bottle of wine Aunt Suzette (1930-2010) had just opened, while playing a game of charades. Uncle Joe was animated in his impression of Mickey Rooney. The red wine stain soaked through to the hardwood underneath where it became a plaque to game nights past.

The huge crystal chandelier Mr. Joseph Paul Wilson Jr. (1856-1938) had installed in the dining room in the fall of 1906, still caught the light of the huge bay windows, casting stars of tiny rainbows across the walls. If you listened closely you could hear the walls echoing the jokes and tales and tiffs of Wilson family gatherings from the past 150 years.

If the walls of the kitchen could talk, they would tell you about the lemon tart Mrs. Jane Powell Wilson (1860-1945) created on July 4th, 1895 which she would pass on to all three of her daughters: Janet Wilson McDougall (1905-1990), Suzanne Wilson Cummings (1908-1995), and Paulette Wilson (1910-2000), which they would then pass on to their daughters and on and on. The kitchen walls would also tell you about the time Timothy Wilson (1923-) broke two windows while playing hockey out in the yard. And the time Timothy’s sister Rose Wilson Jackson (1932-) was caught by their father Jacob Wilson (1903-1984) kissing her first boyfriend on the stoop.

On the Kitchen door jamb were hundreds of markings where growing Wilson children had measured themselves against the doorway.

There were cigarette burns in floors from days gone by; pinholes in walls where once hung family portraits keeping watch over the generations which came after; a larger hole in the parlor wall where Jack Wilson (1955-present) swatted a fly too aggressively, and if you chipped away at two layers of paint in the first bedroom on the left, you would still find traces of a fresco by Caroline Wilson (1958-1988) colored on the wall with crayon (circa 1963).

Throughout the old house, in every crack and crevice there were memories and stories. Ghosts of gatherings haunted every room on the first floor, reliving the moments when they were warmest on this cold earth. Past laughter floated on the breeze which blew threw the drafts. Tears of loss and heartbreak reverberated throughout the bedrooms on painful anniversaries. There was Wilson Family soaked into the grain of the house at 14 Birch Lane, Detroit, MI.

But, no longer.

14 Birch Lane was now no longer fit for dwelling and condemned by city officials. The last of the Wilsons had left in 2006, shortly after Mrs. Mary Hart Wilson was moved out of the renovated basement and into a nursing home. Greg Wilson (1963-present) had decided to sell the Wilson house after he had been laid off from work. The tenets who purchased the home abandoned the Wilson home in 2008.

Greg Wilson currently lives in Seattle, Washington with BoBo, the dog. They have lived there since the death of Mary Hart Wilson in 2008. For holidays and special occasions, Greg makes the lemon tart created by his great grandmother in 1895 in the kitchen at 14 Birch Lane.

In the graveyard waiting still Sits a shriveled, wrinkled, shrew Patiently amidst the chill She sits there waiting, just for you.

From the peasants to the priests, She does not care your revenue, Even come the birds and beasts To where she’s waiting, just for you.

There is none that will escape, Nor any thing which we may do To frantically avoid this fate, She sits there waiting, Patiently, for you.

The page waited, anxiously to be covered with words. It was blank, white and ready to be painted with prepositions, splattered with sentences, rouged with a rough draft fueled by artistic passion.

The page waited and waited, dreaming of what it would become. Would it become a magnum opus of class oppression? A farce that frothed with humor? A declaration of love, a binding contract, a strongly worded letter, a poem, a sign, what would it become? So full of potential was the beaming blank page, it was absolutely perspirative with anxiety. Though brimming with yearning to be decorated, the page said nothing. It sat patiently, quietly awaiting the author’s artistry.

The blank page would sit in anxiety, however, while the television entertained the author. And the cellphone blinked notifications at the author. And the snacks were gobbled, and the walks taken, and the drinks imbibed, and all the other distractions did their jobs of pulling the author away from the page. That eternally excited, eager blank page.

The cold breeze whistled about Simon, stinging his face like a small swarm of bees. The grey world of the frozen forest slowly faded into darkness the further he journeyed into the cave. All about him long icicles hung all about, catching the light in bizarre ways.

Simon began to think of the frozen cave as a monster, a large frozen ice monster that was swallowing him like Jonah and the whale. The dark cave became its open mouth, flung wide with hunger. The icicles, the monster’s long razor sharp teeth, anxious to pierce and chew. The damp stale air took on the quality of the monster’s breath.

“Hello!” Simon called into the monster, and heard his greeting echo back at him. The hungry monster was at least politely conversational with its potential dinner.

Simon imagined his echoes came from the belly of the beast around him. They were the cries of unfortunate campers who’d been sleeping near by one night when the monster came up from beneath the ground and swallowed them whole. Simon heard them calling from within the monster. A chilly sinister breeze blew about the cave as though the monster were laughing at the thought of Simon saving the trapped campers.

How to do it? Perhaps he could tickle the monster’s uvula and make it puke his victim up? Or he could tie a rope between himself and one of the larger teeth to climb down and rescue the campers? Or maybe he’d just be able to throw down a ladder for them to climb out, if the stomach wasn’t too far down?

The imaginary campers weren’t to be rescued that day, sadly, as riding on the breeze to Simon was the voice of his nanny calling out “Simon! Simon! It’s time to go!”

Slowly, and with resolve, Simon backed himself out of the monster’s mouth, not wanting to turn his back on the beast. Once clear of the cave’s maw he dashed back through the forest to his nanny. The monster would sleep well fed that night, and the imaginary campers would sleep another night in the stomach of the fantastical frigid imaginary beast.

I stepped out into the porch and breathed deep. The air smelt like a new start. I was content. I’d successfully left Derek Walters and all that he ignited in me behind. I was free from him here. Finally.

Derek had not only been my best friend in the world for ten years, he’d been my entire world. I Loved him like no one person should ever love another. If he called, I answered; he said “jump” I said “how high.” Our relationship was the stuff of legends. Whenever I’d meet his lady friends they’d all say to me “oh my gosh, you’re Ryan! I’ve heard so much about you!” We were often mistaken for boyfriends by every bartender, waitress and theatre usher we encountered.

It was a painful bliss, though. I carried this deep crush for Derek around with my like a loadstone on my heart. He couldn’t see, or at least I thought he couldn’t see what I was carrying deep down. It wasn’t until Ashley entered the picture that things boiled over.

He started bringing Ashley around about a year ago, and when I say “bringing around” I mean he brought me on their dates and vice versa. Ashley is sweet, I do enjoy her, but I also wanted to see her fall off a cliff. I wanted to rip out her eyes and ruin her hair, my jealousy consumed me, quietly. Every time I saw them kiss or cuddle or laugh or hold hands I’d nearly puke with envy.

A few months ago, they sat me down, showed me the ring and told me they’d set a date. I felt my stomach bounce off the floor. I dreamt of stabbing Ashley with a steak knife. I became a person I didn’t know. Irritable, short, and constantly haunted by how much I loved Derek.

Maybe if he knew. Maybe if I just opened up it would help.

So I took him out to dinner and just spewed everything that sat on my heart. I tore open my chest and let him see my heart thumping his name.

When I was finished with my protestations of love, he looked at me bemused. He leant in an said “thank you for saying all of that. It means a lot.” Here it is, here’s when he lets me down easy. Okay, this is probably what I needed, this is what I need to hear.

“And you’re right,” Derek continued, “we are in love. This is a romance between us. We’re in a relationship. It just happens that I am straight right now and also in a romantic situation with Ashley, but, you’re right, we are in love.” And then the sick bastard took my hands in his and kissed them.

What the hell was I supposed to do with this information? And what the hell kind of an answer was that? My thoughts were a cyclone of confusion and frustration that swarmed around my head like angry bees. I was driven mad with conflicting emotions for days.

The day I received theirs save the date was the day I decided to move. I wouldn’t tell Derek, I just wanted to quietly remove myself from that nonsense; third wheel stories don’t interest me all that much. So I moved three towns over.

Now here I am! A new beginning! A new home! A new sense of self.

Oh! A moving van next door! Looks like the people next door are after new beginnings too! Is that? Oh my God. No, it couldn’t be. Son of bitch, it is.

Derek and Ashley are moving in next door...

“I’m just too tired today to conjure up a glass of wine, would you mind doing it for me?” Asked Susan of her friend Stephanie.

“You’re always too tired for conjuring,” retorted Stephanie as she flicked her wrist, causing a glass of wine to appear next to Susan. “Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you conjure anything at all.”

“Yes you have. You totally have!” Susan fired back. “See these boots? I transmogrified them from an old tree stump.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. Just last week! Only, it take so much out of me every time I cast a spell. I should maybe look into taking some vitamins or something. It may be a blood sugar thing,” explained Susan as she sipped her wine.

Susan Peters was the only non-magical person in all of Witchton, having bought a home there by mistake. She lived in terror that the community of witches would find out she was an ordinary mortal, especially after befriending her neighbors and hearing the awful things they had to say about non magical people. It soon became her lot to learn how to lie very convincingly.

“Susan! Why don’t you come join us? We’re going down to the river to enchant ourselves a picnic!”

“Oh, I’d love too but I brewed up a late breakfast this morning!”

“Susan! We’re having a little coven gathering at Mickey’s house tonight to talk with some old friends on the other side, join us!”

“Oh, you know I’d love to but there’s a really interesting spell I’ve been wanting to cast on my cat to make him talk. It’s really complicated, I think it’ll take me all night.”

“Susan! We’re having a quiet night in at Sam’s with movies and popcorn, will we see you there?”

“Oh, I’d love to! But I’m just backed up to my ears with so many magic things tonight. Like, soooooooo many spells I’ve got to cast.”

And so Susan got a reputation for being lazy and antisocial.

“There goes Lazy Susan,” Eudora Feldman said to Elmira Goff, “too damn lazy to fly a broom so here she comes through in her minivan.”

Everywhere she went, the folks of Witchton would marvel at how either strong or lazy Susan was to so often do things with magick. Little did they know Susan did actually have a magical power: the ability to lie her way out of anything.

Thurston Henry Howell sat triumphantly in his office at the back of his small hay and feed store in Kansas City, Missouri. He had just dispatched two letters: one to his fiancée, Ms. Willie Arnold; the other to his lover, Mr. Arnold William. The first was a letter gently ending his relationship with Ms. Arnold, the latter was a letter agreeing to abscond with Mr. William to points elsewhere. Such a relationship as theirs wouldn’t be possible in Kansas City, but if the newspapers were to be believed, relationships like theirs were not only tolerated, but de rigueur in cities like Boston, San Francisco or New Orleans. It was 1910, the Victorian broadcloth had started to fray in such places and Thurston was ready to join the march into modernism.

He’d dispatched the letters by hired courier an hour hence. He was fortunate that Mr. Williams resided across the street from Ms. Arnold, so the courier wouldn’t have all that far to go.

What misfortune he hadn’t accounted for was the confusion that his envelope addressing had caused the barely literate courier (the courier, after all, was only twelve years old; forced to sacrifice school for a career as a foot messenger). The courier stopped at Ms. Arnold’s residence first. She saw the envelope addressed to Arnold William and believed it to be addressed “Arnold, Willie” and so took the letter meant for Mr. William. Mr. William, in turn, received a letter from his beloved Thurston which read:

“My Darling, You cannot know the machinations of my heart which lead me to seek other partners and lead me, perforce, to end our relations. You will always have a space in my heart, though it be not in the compartment you would have occupied. My kindest sympathies, T. Henry Howell”

This abrupt and unexplained end to their clandestine affair hurt and confused Arnold William. The wounded lover stormed from his rooming house to a saloon, where he intended to imbibe himself beyond the point of feeling.

Ms. Arnold however, received a beautiful epistle outlining a supposed deep love and commitment to her from her fiancée, as well as the exciting prospect of life in a far off city. So enthralled and entranced was Ms. Willie Arnold, she raced to meet her fiancée.

You can imagine the shock that shook Thurston Henry Howell when he met the woman he assumed he’d ended things with meet him outside his hay and feed store in traveling clothes and valises.

Ms. Arnold thrust her arms around Thurston and gently kissed him. “My darling! Oh my darling! Yes, yes, a million times yes! I’d travel the ends of the earth with you my darling!”

When Thurston inquired whether she had received his missive, Ms. Arnold triumphantly presented the ill delivered letter to Thurston. Understanding there’d been a misunderstanding, Thurston said he’d been rash and that recent introspection had caused him to change his mind. Perhaps they’d move in a year or two after they were properly married, but for that night he wanted to get some affairs of business in order and he’d meet Ms. Arnold sometime tomorrow. He then hired them both a cab, walked Ms. Arnold to her door, bade her good night, then raced across the street to the room which was Arnold William’s.

Thurston found it empty. And would find the room empty everyday thence forth. The countless letters of explanation he’d send to Arnold would be returned, unanswered. Mr. Arnold William never sent any correspondence to Thurston Henry Howell again, not even to congratulate him and Mrs. Howell on their nuptials a month after he’d left for the saloon. Mr. Arnold William was never heard from again.

It was dark inside the elevator. So dark in fact, Oscar couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or not, so he blinked a few times to make certain. Cheryl, on the other hand knew what was happening. Ever level headed, she instantly began groping about the pitch darkness for her purse.

As Cheryl started to rummage about in her purse, Reality began to wash over Oscar like a tsunami. He possessed a debilitating fear of small dark places ever since his older sister locked him in a closet when they were young. Cheryl could hear Oscar’s breathing become frantic.

“Hey, just take it easy, buddy. Everything is going to be okay. Give me just...one...aha!” With a flick, Cheryl cast a light from a tiny lighter. The modest flicker cast its light up Cheryl and Oscar’s faces. Oscar’s was dripping with fear and perspiration.

“Th-th-thank you,” stammered Oscar, still hyperventilating, but noticeably less frantic.

“Let’s see if the phone still works,” said Cheryl with a soothing calmness.

Cheryl directed the tiny light source toward the elevator’s control panel and found the red telephone. Cheryl picked up the emergency phone and heard a recording answer on the other end.

“We are experiencing unprecedented power outages. Please remain calm and stay on the line.”

“Wh-what did they say?” Questioned Oscar, panic painted his voice.

“They said there’s power outages all over the city and we should remain calm,” replied Cheryl.

“Calm. Calm. Remain perfectly calm.” Oscar repeated this over and over to himself with minimal success.

“Are you gonna be okay? Hey. Everything is going to be fine.” Cheryl tried to sound reassuring.

“Yeah. Yeah. Everything is. Calm. Just stay calm.” Oscar stammered, gripped at his collar and let out a whimper.

“My name’s Cheryl. What’s yours?”

“O-O-Oscar.”

“Nice to meet you Oscar.”

“I-I-I don’t like the dark.”

“I can tell,” Cheryl tried to lighten the mood.

“D-d-don’t like sm-sm-small sp-sp-spaces either.” With this Oscar let out a heavy, exasperated sigh which blew out Cheryl’s lighter, plunging the elevator into darkness.

At this, Oscar screamed at the top of his lungs.

As she lit the lighter again, Cheryl did her absolute best to calm the frantic Oscar down.

“Hey, hey, Oscar, listen to me. I need you to calm down. I know that’s easier said than done right now, but freaking out like this isn’t going to get us out of here faster. Okay, buddy? You mind if I call you buddy? There, there. You’re gonna be perfectly okay. We both are. I’m sure it’s just a freak summer blackout, you know how those happen. Just keep breathing.”

“I-I-I can’t keep breathing, we’ll run out of oxygen and suffocate in here. We’re riding in a steel casket that will choke the life out of us eventually,” ironically, this made Oscar breath with more fervor and frequency.

“Oscar, buddy, elevators aren’t air tight. Here, you feel this?” Cheryl held Oscar’s hand up to a vent, he felt a tiny draft of air and Cheryl felt him become less frantic. “You see? Plenty of air. Until one of us lets one rip; hope you didn’t have beans for lunch today, Oscar.” Cheryl was trying her best to bring levity to the dark elevator because she, too, was starting to slip.

Apparently jokes about flatulence are a panacea in panic, because for a brief moment Oscar was too busy chuckling to remember he was having a panic attack.

“Hello? Hello?” A voice from the emergency phone spoke.

“Hello! We’re stuck in the elevator! 620 Broadway! The power has gone out!” Shouted Cheryl into the phone.

“Power is out across the whole city,” said the phone voice. “Push and hold the emergency stop button, the elevator should drop and open on the ground level.”

Cheryl did as instructed and the elevator did indeed descend and open on the ground floor. Cheryl and Oscar stepped out into the dark lobby and stared out into the blacked out street.

“You gonna be okay?” Asked Cheryl.

“My studio is going to be just like the elevator”

“Here, take my light,” said Cheryl “think of me as your personal Prometheus.”

“Thanks,” replied Oscar, moved almost to tears, as they headed out into the darkness.