Rupert--Day 1

Rupert Jane dove into the empty irrigation ditch beside the gravel road, crashing through crusty weeds until he lay prostrate in the silt. "Fuck," he swore as the knife wound in his left shoulder began burning. He'd torn it open again, but it didn't matter. He pushed the pain down and cautiously lifted his head.

A golden light pulsed from the hole in the sky, giving the edge of the ditch a bizarre halo. Weeds swayed gently, their yellowed stalks in a macabre dance. Gradually, the edge of the disc rose into view like a second sunrise, pulsing against his skin until the flesh puckered.

He scanned for better cover. The safety of the library seemed miles away rather than blocks. He doubted it would actually be any safer. A hundred feet ahead, concrete railings marked the culvert of the overpass. The abutments might offer better shade while he took stock. Crawling to them through the ditch was out - didn't want to be trapped in that pipe.

Unnatural light crawled higher over the ditch bank as he tensed for the sprint. He kept his shoulders low while his legs worked their way underneath him. A housecat with his ass in the air, preparing to pounce on a dust ball. He burst to his feet, running while the skin on his back squirmed under the light and pressed him forward. He vaulted the concrete and tucked into its shadow.

"Fuck is that thing?" he panted. He didn't believe in UFOs – beyond weather balloons and wishful thinking. At least he hadn't. He'd ignored this morning's headlines about "strange sightings." Now, he wished he'd at least skimmed the article. He grinned. I'll definitely read tomorrow's if I'm still alive," he thought.

He heard nothing except a buzzing in the back of his brain like he was standing too close to a high-voltage line. Not the bark of a dog, not a car. Nothing. It was too quiet. Someone should be moving somewhere.

He squinted at the object hovering overhead as a twinge reminded him of his shoulder. He reached inside his shirt and drew back a hand covered with blood. His lip curled. It'll probably get infected again. He pulled his shirt off and pressed it to the bleeding, grimacing at the pain.

"Fuck."

The rays of the second "sun" poured over the protection of the abutment. The pulsing returned, raising the hairs on the back of his neck with the same heavy, erotic, electrical feel that heralds a lightning strike. He couldn't really get his eyes to focus on the shining disk. Sometimes, it seemed small and close. Other times huge and far away. He unconsciously shrank deeper into the narrow shadow of the concrete, still feeling exposed. He couldn't stay here. He needed to get to the deeper cover of the bridge.

His brain barked the order, but he didn't move. The pulsing stroked across his skin, petting the scar at the crook of his nose (Yemen), caressing the white patch on his cheek (Ejército Popular de Liberación. M43 rifle. Lost three molars), tickling the starburst under his right ribcage from South Asia. At least it somehow eased the pain in his shoulder. That was his newest - from the Ugandan border last month. The light pulsed through his veins, through his nerves, to his brain. He felt naked to it - stripped and exposed. "Is this how death feels?" he wondered. "Fear. And pleasure. Pleasure so intense it turns to Hell?"

He lay there in grit. Thinking about death. And remembering. Remembering lying next to piles of the dead while feeling the pounding of still being alive. Sometimes, he was whole, sometimes less so. He remembered being still alive and watching a sucking chest wound choke the life from a young mother while her baby still cried in bloody arms. It was mostly reflex that saved him, and he'd got the Silver Star for it. She'd had a VC stick grenade in her hand. He remembered the village where it happened. They called it Flyville since flies were the only thing left living. He remembered still being alive in places that didn't officially exist: no mobile medical, no band-aids, no evac. If you couldn't take your friends with you, you helped it be quick, like the screaming gomer after the shellburst tore out most of his back and legs.

He cried out, but no one heard. No one saw him curl into a fetal position, blood crusting on his shirt. No one saw the dry heaves from an empty stomach or the tears that stung his eyes. No one except the Dream Woman. She came, as always, out of the shadow of memories, weaving them into tapestry. Gently collecting the loose threads of his mind, making a sense of them even he didn't understand. She stood over him, her body draped in loose fabric, hands stroking his forehead, calming him. For an instant, her face hung in the shadows the way he had always seen her when she'd calmed his childhood dreams. Full lips and hair black as a mirror. Gray eyes under a brow knit with sorrow. Her features were clear, but he couldn't quite seem to put the parts into a whole.

She faded, and he slept.

***

In the bars where mercenaries gathered, Rupert's nickname was "Cutter" - in deference to the ever-present Ka-Bar "utility" knife on the back of his belt. Or they just called him Rupert, because you were careful what you called a man with his face. Behind his back, they just called him "the old man" because he'd survived to be one – relatively speaking for his career.

And survived he had, despite the bayonet coming at him on the overgrown jungle trail. He'd been lucky. He managed to put his knife in the side of the man's throat, slaughterhouse style. It was only after that he realized the blood down his shirt was his own. The wound itself wasn't much. He'd stopped the bleeding and field-dressed it. But the African insects had gotten into it, and he'd raved with fever on a hospital bed for weeks.

Afterward, atrophied and thin, he'd crawled home for the first time in fifteen years. It was an uncomfortable homecoming. He'd long left that part of his life behind and didn't plan on staying long. His parents lionized him, and he'd always gotten on well with them. He still did with the elderly strangers they'd become. They re-introduced him at bridge club and senior dinners to people he'd once known but were now much older than he'd expected. They watched with wary eyes and offered him more salad. The people he'd gone to high school with had wider middles, cheap dress clothes, and the uncomfortably leathery faces of those who spend most of their time outside. Most farmed, although a few worked at the grain elevator or the feedlot. The women were grayed, and tired, and broad in the hips from babies and too much cheap, starchy food. They talked of family and flirted a little too obviously. The men looked into his eyes, bragging of inconsequential successes and laughing too loudly.

He'd spent a lot of his time at the small library, catching up on current events.

***

The hole flowed across the sky, following the sun and illuminating the ground under the bridge like a strobe that caressed him as he struggled with memories and dreams. Gradually, he slept more deeply. The blood clotted at his shoulder, and the wound closed again. After sunset, when he finally roused and dragged himself home, his mother pressed him to see the doctor. But the wound had closed without needing new stitches, so he refused and talked her into helping him wash it and tape down a fresh bandage.

While he'd been at the bridge, his parents had huddled inside the house, wondering where he was. Fearful for themselves - at the same time, concerned about him and counting on him for their own safety. Static had jammed the phone lines when they tried to call the neighbors, but they'd been afraid to go outside under the pulsing light. The bursts of noise on the airways had grown into a steady scream of static. The static finally cleared about an hour after dark when Rupert and his parents ventured out to talk with neighbors. Awe and fear mingled with speculation in circular conversations, always leading back to the same questions; "What is it?" and "Will it come back in the morning?"

Even with the airwaves cleared, radio and television were of little help. Scientists and politicians argued to explain the "huge disk" (not a hole after all, then.) They claimed it's "too regular to be a natural phenomenon" and that it orbited about a thousand miles up. They urged calm while they evaluated the extent of the threat. Their reassurances did ease the minds of Rupert and the neighborhood. Obviously, the disk was not a local spectacle or even national. As bewildered Americans jammed telephone lines and highways throughout the night, the disk pulsed its way over the Pacific, Japan, China, Australia, and eventually Europe - according to the jumbled communications from overseas.

Rupert finally sealed the window with the drapes and went to bed, sleeping fitfully. His mind churned around the disk - sometimes awake, sometimes in dreams. He thought he'd been awake when the Harlequin, covered in a patchwork of oranges and blacks, came to him – gesturing at him to approach the disk pulsating behind it. "Why!?," Rupert screamed against a nonexistent noise as the Harlequin morphed back into the shapes and shadows of the room. He'd been asleep, after all.

As Rupert reoriented to wakefulness, he noticed light was again pulsating around the edges of the curtains, reflecting off the walls and floors. Still here, then. He rose and stood in front of the window, pulling the drapes slowly apart, letting the light pulse around him. His skin drank it in, rippling with glee as it had the day before.

As the painful memories of yesterday flooded in, he closed the curtains and backed into the room – staring at the window for a long time before turning away and searching for his clothes.

They kept the drapes closed all that day, trying to shut out the light flashing against window dressings - as if they were on the wrong side of a movie screen. Rupert spent most of the day in the basement, away from the larger windows, sorting through boxes he'd left years ago. Things that had once seemed important were tossed aside: letters from girlfriends, old books, photos of college classmates he didn't remember. He felt oddly compelled to close out the past.

That night, it seemed to take a few minutes longer for the noise to clear from the broadcasts. As the reports came streaming in, they silently wondered why they'd bothered to listen. Authorities remained baffled. While the scientists all agreed that the disk was not naturally occurring, they argued over who, or what, could have made it. The consensus was that it was probably not of Earth origin. Some argued that The Thing was an artifact, although uncertain of its source or purpose.

Rumors were plentiful, and the news channels chased each one down with glee. Someone knew someone who said that an alien told him the sun was about to explode and the disk was a shield sent by a vastly wiser race. Or, it was space pirates come to ransom Earth's treasures. Or, it was a living creature grazing on the sun's energy.

The preachers had the most fun in their speculation. They came on airwaves at night, frequently on one of the many new pirate radio stations popping up, detailing the evils of Earth and how we had sown the seeds of our destruction. The disk-like hand of God would smite mankind. They delighted in spelling out the sins of Earth that had called forth The Visitor. Or they called the disk The Devil's Mouth that would swallow Earth's corrupt Soul. Some said (in identical hysteria-pitched voices) that the disk was from an alien race of gods - or beings as wise as gods - who would lead Earth from its follies to a new golden age.

These were some of the saner speculations.

While the disk pulsed overhead, all electronics failed. Cars wouldn't start, clocks stopped, kitchen microwaves wouldn't run. Except for the afternoons Rupert spent dozing on the lawn - the city now lived at night. Rupert paid little attention to the rumors. His relationship with the disk was personal. He'd become used to the light's pull against his mind and body and had begun laying on the lawn so it would wash over him. The disk didn't smack of the supernatural to him, and he dismissed the idea of gods being involved. But his struggle with it had a religious quality as well, so one night he took down his parents' bible and read about Jacob's struggles with the angel, pondering if there was any truth to it.

Laying there each afternoon, the memories from that first day returned - but less intensely - until he could finally see them without sweating and gritting his teeth. His body healed as well. The knife slash closed nicely, and the accumulated pain of his wounds faded. The ache was baked from his bones, and the raggedness passed left his nerves. This worried him. He sensed a ravenousness in the disk. An overwhelming intelligence that had a purpose for him he was unwilling to take up. In the twilight of consciousness, he'd lay under its pulsing, resisting, tempted by the Harlequin, protected by the Dream Lady. He knew that the Harlequin's oranges and blacks were not a costume but the colors of the figure's body. Yet, this did not repulse him. At night, the Harlequin's presence was stronger. Once, in a dream, they had also wrestled. Rupert sitting in for Jacob with his own grotesque angel. He awoke exhausted and unable to remember who had won.

But because Rupert slept outside during the afternoon, he happened to be looking up on the afternoon of the disk's tenth day in the sky when a smaller bright flare detached itself and curved in a long arc toward the horizon. Rupert waited, watching the spot, holding his breath.

When the Earth didn't end in a mushroom cloud, he went into the house.

"The waiting's over," he told his parents in the kitchen. Over his mother's shoulder, he thought he saw the Harlequin grinning at him from a shadowy corner.

The Rev. Ed Mason--Day 1

The Reverend Mister Edmund Mason had also seen the disk arrive from the window of his study. For him, the palpitating light appeared abruptly in an immensely deep, ominously blue sky. Its strobe-like pulsating fluttering over the bright summer landscape surpassed all his imaginings of Hell.

"Is this the Hell I was taught about? Is today the day about which I've been warned?" The flashing burned shadows into his retinas. For an instant, he recalled the harsh black-and-white images of the early moon landings on television. The images where, for the first time, he'd seen the hell-pits called "discos" - over which he'd lamented Sunday after Sunday.

In terror, he fell to his knees and prayed, "Oh, Lord, forgive me! Show me the glory of your justice! Save me!"

The familiarity of prayer calmed him, and focus returned to what his eyes were seeing through the window. Although transformed by the pulsing, the shape just before him was undoubtedly the church. He'd not been transported, then. The world itself had changed. The light was real. A movement at the corner of his eye drew his attention. The couple who lived next door to the church ran frantically toward their house, throwing frightened glances toward the sky.

"They see it!" The vision was not his alone. He felt disappointed that it would be granted to lesser persons, too. But then he understood. "The last days have arrived. Judgment is at hand," he thought as exultation rose within him. "Praise be thy name, Oh Lord," he shouted. "Now, those who refuse your teachings will feel your wrath. Let them run crying in the streets, begging for mercy and forgiveness. Let the sinners and the unbelievers come to know their doom, and those who deny us see what they have wrought by their refusal! Praise be!"

He had used those words in a sermon just two Sundays ago. "It was prophetic," he thought, squinting into the black-and-white world created by the harsh light outside his window. "The light burns away all the grays. Now, there are only those who walk in the Lord's light."

Rapturously, he ran into the yard, raised his arms toward the disk, and waited for Gabriel's Horn to open the Pearly Gates so he could enter the Golden Streets of Heaven. The light pulsed around him, searing his nerves and Soul, burning away the shards of sin, cleansing him with a pure fire of joy and of retribution. Heat filled him, blossomed, and he fell quivering onto the grass.

The parishioner found him there, her duty toward Sunday services overcoming her fear and driving her to brave the walk to the church. As she entered the churchyard, she saw the minister lying in the grass before the parsonage next door. "He's hurt," she gasped and went to him.

Fearfully, she touched him, jerking her hand back as a jolt of electricity sparked between them. A flush came to her, and she fell against him, letting the current flow. "Yes," he whispered and drew her onto the grass beside him. The current turned to flame as they frantically shed their clothing. He rolled between her legs and entered her with the light pulsing against their skin, pounding along their veins and nerves. They moved until the fire in their bodies exploded, and they sank back into the grass.

He knew what he had done. He knew the woman, Sarah, and had groaned her name at the peak of their pleasure. He was horrified that he had come together with this member of his congregation - until the rapture and the light overwhelmed him again. He reached across the grass and touched her. They came together again and again as the disk pulsed and waned across the sky. The pain of the joy seemed more than he could bear and he must have lost consciousness. When he became aware of the disk again, it hovered just above the western horizon, and he continued to stare at it. As darkness rose, Sarah watched him silently with dark eyes and touched his chest to be sure he still breathed - then drew herself away and crept home, ashamed.

He lay there until long after dark – long after the sun and the disk had set. He was aware that he was stretched naked on the grass, exhausted, too physically fatigued to move, too mentally fatigued to do more than wonder at the glories the Lord had shown him. He stared into the aurora that streaked the night sky from the disk's ionic excitement and gradually sank into depression that Gabriel's trumpet had not yet sounded. The world continued around him. He heard his neighbors' voices and those of his congregation who had come to seek his counsel and instead found him stretched bare on the grass.

He could not express to them what he had felt but tried to let the wonder show in his eyes as he looked up at each in turn. He knew Sarah's husband, John, was one of them and could not meet his eyes. What had happened with her was an abrasion in his thoughts.

The men were uncomfortable at his nakedness, scandalized by it. Yet they felt the burning in him and saw it as holy. Gently, they lifted him and carried him into the parsonage, laying him on a couch and covering him with a blanket. At last, when he could talk, he whispered, "I touched the Glory." He said it reverently, "The Hand of the Lord is touching Earth." He glanced anxiously at the concerned faces looking down at him. "Tell me. I was lost in the wonder of it and did not hear. Did the last trump sound?" They looked questions at each other, then stared back at him and shook their heads. "If it did, we didn't hear it," John said—a condemnation of themselves. Mason looked away from him as disappointment erupted for an instant in his face. Then the joy returned.

"It will," he exulted. "It will! Now is the end of days which have been foreseen!"

Yet, as days passed, the trumpet did not sound. Still, he bathed in the light each day, as did Rupert, feelings of joy flooding him, expecting yet to hear the final note. But the horn did not sound, and disappointment moved permanently to the forefront of his mind. "Why does it not come? Have I made a terrible mistake?" he thought, lying in the light. "Is this not from God, but a temptation of the Devil in which I've let myself be entrapped?" Thoughts of Sarah came to him, powerfully erotic thoughts. But he pushed them anxiously away. If the gates opened, would he be accepted now?

"Damn you," he shouted. "Sound the horn!"

The almost magnetic attraction the disk exerted worried him. It tugged at the depths of his Soul. At night, when he listened to the other's sermons, he wondered if they had the truth - instead of what he had seen as truth. Was the disk draining the very Soul of the Earth? He struggled with his thoughts, trying to cleanse himself of the memory with Sarah, and continued his daily vigil of the disk so that he, too, saw the smaller disk erupt from its mother and fall to Earth.

He rose and spoke to the men who had started seeking refuge in the church, seeking his counsel and his certainty.

"It's coming," he said in rapture. "It's coming!"

He glanced at John, who stared back at him with burning eyes. Mason wondered if Sarah had told him. What would this man do if he knew? Fear and shame overwhelmed him. He reeled back, the pulsing touch of the disk heightening his fears.

"I'm not worthy," he cried, looking furtively at John and then away. He fell to his knees. "Let us pray," he said. The men slowly joined him on the floor.

Verna--Day 1

When the disk first appeared, Verna Carroll was standing over a sink full of soapy water, staring vaguely out of the kitchen window as she scrubbed egg stains from breakfast dishes.

"I could get a job," she thought to herself, pausing with a dish half into the hot rinse water. "I don't think I like housework." She thought, testing the words. "Yeah. I definitely don't like housework," staring at the half-rinsed plate.

"Damn fine time to discover that," she thought sourly. Having her own home had seemed a terrific idea three years ago when she'd married Tim. Being a housewife had been fun, particularly when they made love in every room on a whim. Then she'd gotten pregnant, and Tim got a promotion, which kept him late almost every night. After the baby came, she was initially so enrapt with him that little else mattered. Only lately did she realize she was bored and that little Timmy didn't make up for Tim's absences anymore.

"God, I am bored," she said aloud, dropping the dish into the sink with a messy splash. "I was a good student.," she thought as she leaned with both hands on the counter. "I was a good employee - when I'd had a job. I'm not a good housewife. Maybe I could go back and finish school. Margaret did."

Automatically, she pulled the dish out of the rinse water and set it in the drying rack. "Tim wouldn't like it, though. He hates it when I leave Timmy with a sitter." She scrubbed another plate angrily. "It's my life, and Timmy would have fun with the other kids, and Tim wouldn't miss me. He's always working, anyway." She rinsed the plate. "Probably working." She thought about that, suddenly surprised at the idea Tim might have a girlfriend and surprised that it really didn't bother her. Surprised, in fact, that it didn't mean anything to her at all.

"Huh," she thought, "how 'bout that." Once, a thought like that would have driven her crazy. She stood with her hands in the water, looking out the window, and let the thought roll around in her brain. Gradually, she realized that outside didn't look right. The sunlight, which had just reached into the backyard, seemed to throb. She dried her hands on a dishtowel and went into the living room that looked east - and gasped. A hole hung like a beating heart in the sky, just below the sun. The light seemed to ripple in time with her breath, like as she'd once seen the Northern Lights do. The pulsing light felt like it was reaching for her, making her skin curl and causing strands of her hair to tickle against her forehead.

She pulled the drapes closed on the large window, glad now that Tim had spent the extra cash for heavy material when he was on his "energy savings" kick a few years ago. Then she moved back into the kitchen to close its blinds as well. The dimmed light was reassuring, although she could still feel the pulsing.

"Timmy! My God!" She ran through the kitchen and out the back door, coming to an abrupt halt at the foot of the steps. The air seemed to pulse white, then black, then white again - and the grass stood straight. The tractor tire that was Timmy's sandbox and the baby inside it staring at the disk seemed to pass in and out of existence.

Gathering her wits, she ran toward the sandbox. The baby ignored her until she reached the edge of the tire and bent down to scoop him up. As she lifted him, he squirmed and cried, "Mommy, tickle! Tickle!" She ran back through the yard and up the steps, clutching Timmy like a sack of flour. He giggled and waved his arms. "Tickle!" he shouted.

Slamming the door, she pulled Timmy off her shoulder and held him as she leaned back against the door.

"Mommy! Down!" Timmy squirmed. "Tickle."

She felt "tickle" crawl up her back and jerk away from the door's window. Timmy fought to be free as she took him into the shadowy living room. As soon as she sat on the couch, he crawled off her lap, heading for the back door. "Tickle!" She chased him to the door between the living room and kitchen, pulling him back onto her chest and slamming the door shut.

Sitting back on the couch, Timmy quieting in her lap, she became aware of the silence. The normal morning sounds were absent. Normally, you'd hear an occasional car door slam, a playing child's screech, or the grumble of a lawnmower. Now, nothing. She assumed others must have seen the hole, too. If others saw it, it was real. She wasn't alone in a nightmare. Hopefully, she turned the television on to the distorted face of a man. She could make out the face of a national newscaster holding a sheaf of papers but couldn't hear him through static. He looked like he was on a cable station she didn't pay to have. "Shit"; she clicked through the channels trying to find decent sound. But except for being able to make out an occasional word, she could understand nothing. Frustrated, she flicked the set off.

"Mommy, dark."

God, she'd forgotten how scared of the dark Timmy was. She groped across the room to the light switch. "Dammit!" she griped in a tight voice as she banged her shin on the misjudged outline of the coffee table. The room brightened after she flipped the switch for a moment, dimmed, and brightened again into a bright flare that hurt her eyes. It popped, plunging the room back into shadow and spraying glass across the carpet. She glanced anxiously up at the destroyed light cover.

Timmy sobbed, "Mommy! Dark!" She looked at the drapes.

Cautiously, she pulled them back—just a bit. The "heart" still throbbed in the sky, pulling at her through a sliver of exposed glass, raising the tiny hairs on her arms and legs. Timmy chortled, "Tickle!" She wished he wouldn't sound so pleased. Her mind whirled, and she felt the tension at the back of her head that heralded a bad headache. She was shivering.

"I'm in shock," she thought stiffly as the headache bloomed behind her eyes. She closed her eyelids. Someone started massaging her neck and, "Oh God, that's nice. Yeah, right there," she thought.

Snapping her eyes open, she spun fearfully to look behind her. There was no one there, and no one touched her. Instead, muscles quivered in time with the disk. She closed her eyes again, relaxing into the pulsing, hands tugging gently at the skirt covering her hips. The light probed her, and she blushed with the emotions it created.

"Tim, please come home," she breathed.

A noise interrupted her private intimacy as she heard singing outside. She peeked out the splinter of exposed window at that weird, single guy from across the street ("Professor something-er-other," she thought) standing in his front lawn, arms raised, belting out like a cartoon Pavarotti. A misty black and white Harlequin whispered soundlessly into Verna's ear.

She left Timmy. Stumbling out the front door, her mind fuzzy, she followed an unfocused Harlequin as it danced jerkily across the street and merged with the professor. To her mind, this all seemed to make sense. Quite normal.

As she was being drawn forward by him - by it, no by him, by both of them – he walked across the street to meet her. She saw desire and pleading in his eyes as he continued to comical overact some opera of his mind. She held out her hand to the smiling Harlequin shining within his features. He took it, and she turned, leading into the front room, where Timmy rolled in the light, gurgling happily.

Hungrily, she pulled the man to her. He followed easily, his body and lips unbearable against hers. Static sparking between them, he tore at her house dress as she pulled off his T-shirt and jeans. They fell together onto the carpet, light pulsing about them, cloaking them, teasing them, pounding them into each other again and again. Timmy looked at them momentarily, with indifference, before laughingly returning to his "tickle."

They were not aware that Tim had come home early until he stood wild-eyed above them. Verna looked up as guilt flooded her. God! What had she done!? She threw the man off her, scrambling to her feet, arms reaching for him.

"Chrissake, get dressed!" he barked, turning his back.

Awkwardly, she pulled her clothes on. The man found his way to his feet, fumbling with his clothing and sweating. He clumsily balanced on one leg as he pulled on his trousers. She could have laughed. Almost. The Harlequin was gone - replaced by this tired, plain, ridiculous fifty-something man.

Timmy laughed, and Tim - only just becoming aware of the child - scowled at them as he picked the baby up and carried him into the kitchen. The professor jerked on the last of his clothes and timidly shut the door behind him, holding his shoes in one hand. A mouse trying not to be noticed. Verna stood in the middle of the room, fretting about what Tim would do. She wanted to go to him but was too ashamed. "He's never had a temper," she thought, but there was a burning in his eyes she'd never seen before. "This light is bound to aggravate him," she thought.

Tim came back through the door, walking aggressively towards her. She backed away, waiting for a punch – almost wishing for it. Punishment. Passion. But when she looked into his eyes, they were dead. She knew he wouldn't.

"For all his anger, he doesn't really give a damn." The thought sank in as she finally embraced the truth that had been lingering in their marriage like a stale rot. "His pride's hurt, not his love. He's got a girlfriend, but that doesn't matter. I'm the one that got caught."

"You make me sick," Tim muttered. "Fucking some stranger while the baby watched. How many times?!" his voice raised, fist clenching.

"Here it is," Verna thought. But he caught himself, sighing deeply, eyes going cold. Verna stopped caring.

"If you think I'm gonna live with this shit, you're fucking crazy. You're leaving. Right now." He grabbed her upper arm, dragging her to the bedroom and shoving her into the wall. He yanked a small suitcase from the closet and started throwing her clothes into it.

Verna leaned against the wall where she landed, staring blankly at his production. She yawned, feeling her jaw crack at the hinges. She's so tired.

Tim smashed the suitcase shut. Grabbing her by the arm again, he dragged her and the suitcase into the garage and shoved them both into the back seat of the car – the suitcase landing painfully on her lap. Tim jumped behind the wheel and squealed backward out of the driveway.

After three blocks, she asked, "Where are you taking me?" He was speeding so badly that she hoped they'd get the attention of a cop.

"Motel," he snarled. "…until I can arrange a divorce. After that, you're on your own. Maybe you can go pro. You're already acting like a hooker."

She slumped deeper into the seat and yawned again. "God, I'm tired."

Sleepiness had superseded any anger or fear. Her eyes kept closing, making it seem only minutes before Tim yanked her awake by dragging her from the car. She tripped as he pushed her up a short concrete step and stumbled through the door. Verna glanced around in a daze, not really seeing the room - letting the fatigue sweep over her. Tim threw her onto the bed, tossing a handful of bills in her face. She felt them land, her eyes closing again.

"That'll keep you until I get back," he grated.

"Mmm…", she managed, rolling over. She didn't hear him leave.

Tomas--Day 1

Tomas Romero felt the disk arrive, although he didn't realize it. The constant murmur already within his mind abruptly swelled to a roar, and he found himself sprawled on the newly mowed grass behind the lawnmower, twitching with each new burst of noise that cascaded through his consciousness. This new presence jammed the already overloaded circuits of his brain. He reflexively tried to push the noise out of his brain, managing to think, "I am Tomas." Before the noise roared back, and everything went black.

When his father came to call him for lunch, he found him on the grass. Choking back sobs, he gathered his boy up, carried him into the house, and put him on his bed. Tomas twitched and mumbled nonsense as his father raged silently at the thing in the sky.

"She will be great.", Tomas murmured suddenly.

His father leaned anxiously over him. "Who?"

"Come, follow me, and be my love.", Tomas muttered, oblivious. "Give up all that you have and come with me." The boy's eyelids blinked rapidly and randomly.

"Tomas," his father pleaded for his attention, but he'd returned to the babbling. The boy rolled off the bed, hitting the floor with his withered left arm and leg. Gently, his father picked him up to set him back onto the bed, but Tomas writhed frantically to free himself from his father's grasp. Tomas stood erect now, trembling, twitching, swaying. His father grabbed his good arm, but the boy pushed him away with the left - wasted muscles twisting under fire-orange flesh. Free from his father's grasp, he stumbled through the door, bouncing hard against the frame with a weaving path. His father bear-hugged him from behind, pulling him off his feet, and carried him back to the bed.

They continued to wrestle. Tomas twisting, drooling, his eyelids fluttering wildly. His father grabbed him by the shoulders and the waist, pulling his arms and hugging him. Tomas' head jerked and rotated, arms and legs dancing to the random rhythms in his mind. His father tried to drag him back onto the bed with his own weight, falling with him – but the boy pushed, and the man fumbled back and fell onto the bed alone.

By the time his father was on his feet again, Tomas was no longer there. He blinked and rubbed his head. "Did I knock myself out ?" There were no lumps or blood on his scalp. His head didn't hurt. He ran into the next room. Empty, too. He staggered wildly out of the house, calling his son's name. While he ran, he cursed the disk. That devil had taken him!

Then, he stopped and stared. His son lay on the grass where he'd found him earlier. Again, the boy lay slack, twitching randomly, saliva running down his chin. He ran to his son, reaching to pick him up, when an electric charge shot up his arms. Convulsing backward, and landed heavily on his ass. Crawling to his knees, he tried tenderly to touch the boy again. The jolt knocked him to his back even though he was ready for it. "God damn you!" he screamed at the disk now filling his vision. Eventually, the father staggered off toward the neighbor's house.

***

"I am Tomas."

The boy surged to the surface of his own mind long enough to state his name again. He didn't remember being taken into the house or realize he was lying again on the grass he'd been cutting. His world centered around the noise in his mind, the roaring wind that occasionally ebbed, allowing sentences to form. He tried to concentrate on those sentences, to understand what he was thinking - and he sweated with the useless effort. He focused on each sentence in the tiny intervals given to him but couldn't make sense of them.

"I am Tomas," he repeated before the storm roared back in. He lay in the grass calling, "Come!" as his arms waved wildly, urging phantoms to approach.

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