How the Apocalypse Cured My Social Anxiety

A Short Story from the “Wormhole Series”

Before the end of the world, I lived in a really small town high up in the mountains of North Carolina. It was so small, you’ve never heard of it. Not much there except for an inn, a gift shop, a couple of restaurants, and a church. Most outsiders who came to our town came because they wanted a mountain vacation, but I grew up surrounded by mountains and felt hemmed in by them. I wanted with all my soul to see what lay beyond the mountains, out there in the real world, and eventually I got my wish, though it wasn’t anything like I expected it to be, not by a long shot.

I was the only boy in a household of women once my grandpa passed on. My mama, granny, and aunts raised me, and all my cousins were girls. Before my grandpa passed away, he lamented loudly and often that the women of the family were fixing to sissify me—but I never saw it that way. Aside from the undefined shame I felt because he apparently thought I was missing some vital piece of manhood (which he never offered to give me himself), I was not aware of anything unusual in the arrangement. I never felt that my family doted on me, as you might expect they would; they merely treated me with an absent-minded, mostly benign tolerance, not seeming to know what to do with me other than leaving me to scramble up the best I could. I spend all my early years feeling that I had missed out on developments that were crucial to becoming a man. I was horribly shy and did not know how to turn to any of the men in our town who might have been willing to share what they knew of being a man. If I had, I’m not sure they would have been willing to help—the faint hostility I sensed told me I’d been written off as a lost cause.

You may be wondering where my father was in all this, and all I can say is that I never knew him. He took off to start a new life, running off with Preacher Sizemore’s daughter when I was just a baby. He was always spoken of in dismissive terms, as if the fact of his absconding was no particular cause for regret, but I had the sense I understood something of what motivated him. I, too, longed to make a break for the freedom I imagined down in the flatlands. I wanted to see cities and coastlines and maybe even foreign countries. I was a dreamy boy, they said, always with my nose in a book. It was the books that gave me those ideas, but no one seemed really worried about it. They must have known there wasn’t much to keep a young man in such an isolated place. Or maybe, what it really it was, they doubted I had the wherewithal to break free to begin with, rendering the whole thing moot. My lack of confidence in my own abilities was so profound that it almost amounted to a disability. I saw a program on HBO the other night in which a  character kept talking about her anxiety disorder. Yep, that was me all right. Never knew there was a name for it, so that was good to find out, though it doesn’t matter that much anymore.

When I was 15, someone from outside the family finally did notice me, and that was Deacon Pilbro, an elder in our church. Despite the fact of my father’s running off with the Sizemore girl, two of my aunts still attended the church regularly, Sundays and Wednesdays both, usually insisting on taking me with them. The church was a half mile walk from our house, up a steep hill and through some trees. Deacon Pilbro at some point began asking me to stay behind to help with chores—chopping wood for the stove, shoveling snow in winter, and doing repairs to the roof. My aunts resented these occasions because they relied on me to escort them home, but because it was doing the Lord’s work, they felt unable to complain. The Deacon used to ask me questions about school and home while we worked and seemed genuinely interested, though he mostly talked about himself and how he never would have imagined being stuck in such a small parish, but when the Lord called you, you answered, until such time when you could go in for a better opportunity. He used the word “opportunity” a lot, and seemed struck by the idea that he was destined for better things. But when he asked about my plans, I just shrugged. I was shy about sharing my dreams with people—I had to keep something to myself just to make it day to day. If you had told me back then that those dreams wouldn’t come true, I don’t know that I wouldn’t have just hurled myself off the mountain.

The real trouble started (not the really bad trouble but my personal trouble, which ended up seeming like the same thing) when the Shrumfelds moved to the little house behind the Brookside Inn so that her parents could help run the place. Carlie Shrumfeld was my age and ended up in several of my classes at school. She came from New Bern, a place of unimaginable sophistication to me, and I thought she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, with her clear blue eyes and long silky hair. We started spending time together after school, and although I was mostly content just to be with her and listen to her talk, watching the light in her eyes and admiring her graceful ways, she was well ahead of me in the courting and sparking department and soon let me know that she was willing to share what she knew with me. We had started finding places to be alone, and the most private place we had found was the little shed behind the graveyard where we kept the mowers and the shovels for yard work at the church. Carlie and I had already gone far enough for me to know this was something I wanted to do every chance we got, and on that spring afternoon when we finally went all the way, not once, but three times, we were found out by none other than Deacon Pilbro, who pushed open the door to find the two of us tangled in a heap on top of some coal sacks.

Carlie screamed and scrambled for her clothes, holding them against her as she jumped up and ran, without ceremony, out the door. The Deacon just stood there staring at me, so red in the face that I thought he might have a heart attack right where he stood. All I could think to do was to cover myself, because otherwise I was frozen. I could no more have thought of anything to say than if I had been struck mute, so shocked I was to see him. After staring at me angrily for several long seconds, the Deacon did something I was not expecting: he started taking off his own belt and began yelling, somewhat incoherently, about sin and absolution, and at that moment, I found my limbs again, scrambling to my feet and pulling up my pants as I hopped toward the door. The Deacon tried to catch me, but I was a good runner, and I got away, shooting off through the woods any old way, my only thought to put as much distance as I could between myself and the wild man the Deacon had suddenly turned into. I could hear him crying and shouting for me to come back, yelling that he meant no harm, but I kept going, my feet barely seeming to touch the ground until I was at the top of the mountain. I paused in the little clearing where my grandfather’s grave was nestled along with the graves of several other deceased Jaspers who had been unwilling to be buried next to the church.

It was when I paused in the clearing to catch my breath that I saw it: the cloud that would change everything. It had exploded in the north, far off beyond the ranges of the mountains, which seemed to go on forever, except that there was now something beyond them all right, this enormous mushroom cloud, billowing with fire and ash and reminding me of the throne scene in The Wizard of Oz, which I had seen on the Inn’s television as a special Easter treat several times when I was small. But I knew this was not a thing of childhood imagining—this was the end of the world. Somewhere far off, a bomb had fallen. Even as I watched the specter climb higher and higher into the sky, three similar clouds blossomed to the north and west of me.

I stood and stared. Where could I run to get away from such a calamity? It would reach us in the mountains, too, and we would all be poisoned, sooner or later. I was trying to decide if I should run back to our house and warn everyone when two more clouds appeared, and then two more, and a sound like the explosion of a volcano reached my ears. Everyone would have heard it by now. Doubtless, it was already on the TV news at the Inn. I could go back down and wait for the end with my family, a terrible certainty coming over me that it would not be a long wait. I had half-turned to go back down the mountain when I suddenly noticed a door, standing between two tall elms at one end of the cemetery plot. While I was trying to process what I was seeing, the door, which was of plain oak with a brass knob, opened from the other side, and I saw two strangers, a man and a woman, beckoning to me. Without speaking any words aloud, they conveyed to me that there was nothing I could do, that the forest would be incinerated within a minute but that there was an escape if I wanted it. We will not harm you, they said. We are here to help, but you must decide. You will be dead as will everyone on this mountain before you even go 30 paces.

Like a sleepwalker, I stumbled through the doorway, which looked as if it led only to the forest behind it until I stepped though it and found myself at the bottom of a silver staircase with the vastness of space all around me. The door shut behind us, and I had left the world completely behind. All around us was a silence broken only by a faint crystalline sound of bells. A shooting star streaked by as we climbed the staircase, through a blue-black vastness studded with stars. Up above, perhaps a mile distant, was the moon. The serenity of the scene could not have been in greater contrast to the calamity we had left behind. The staircase was broad and zigzagged gently on its way up. When we reached the top, we were standing on a tiny platform in front of a small brick building. Through the windows, I could see what looked like an office. When we stepped inside, the staircase dissolved behind us, and I found myself in a smallish room with an office desk, a filing cabinet, and a water dispenser, along with a small sink, a mini refrigerator, and a microwave oven. There was a clock with black numbers on the wall. Inside the door to my left was a small washroom. A short staircase—an ordinary one, not made of starlight—led up into the moon itself.

The man and woman were very kind, fully understanding how bewildered I was. They sat down with me at the desk and explained that they were not actually humans, although that was the form they had taken. They said they had seen the disaster unfolding from afar and had tried to save anyone who happened to be near what they called “portals.” My family’s private plot happened to have an open portal while I was standing in it, although they also told me that sometimes things happened like that for a reason. They said I would not be the only survivor, although the chances of my seeing anyone I knew ever again were unknown and not to be counted upon. They said that there were ways of mitigating the disaster, and that they would do what they could to stop it from spreading any further than North America. I would be able to go back one day, they said, if they were successful in their efforts. In the meantime, I should wait here, where there was an endless supply of food and refreshments, a comfortable bed, board games, a stereo system, a flat screen TV, a fitness room, a music studio, hot showers, and a back porch with a view of the Milky Way.

They made it clear that it was up to me whether to stay or go. I could go back to Earth at any time, though they did not recommend it due to extremely unstable conditions that would likely last for quite a while.

“We will come to visit you,” they said. “There are others of our kind, and you’ll probably meet them, too. Eventually, we hope to reestablish some form of stability on the Earth, but you must be patient. You are safe here, if you decide to wait, which we strongly suggest that you do. Any questions?”

It was strange how calmly my mind accepted what they were saying. I wondered what they really looked like but decided that I’d rather not know as that was altogether too much to chew on just then (later, it began to seem like the least important thing about them). I wondered if they were space aliens, or angels, or creatures from myth, and although they never actually cleared this point up for me, I eventually decided that the precise truth, if any, was another distinction that had no meaning.

They showed me into the moon itself, which they gave me to understand was just a simulation moon, built with all the comforts of a small house: a bedroom, a balcony with a view, and what they called an en-suite bathroom with a rainfall shower head and a sunken tub. I had never seen anything like it, even at the Inn, which was my previous gauge for fancy living. After we had talked for a couple of hours more, with their constant reassurances and quiet explanations that they were prepared to deal with just such a situation as was now taking place, and that they had long been concerned it would happen, they asked if I was tired and would like to sleep. I was about as bone-weary as I had ever been, and when they left me, with promises of seeing me again soon, I sank back on the bed, which was the softest I had ever slept in, almost like sleeping on a cloud. The soft lights dimmed even further, to a pale white that made the violet and blue of the wall coverings and bedding glow like twilight over the western mountains.

I wondered if I would ever see that sight again; the thought that I would not was overwhelming. When I thought back over the day, it seemed incredible that the first time I’d ever had sex coincided with the end of the world. It would have seemed almost funny except for the thought that I had no idea where Carlie was or if she had even survived. The space people had told me before they left that there were likely few survivors in our part of the country but not to give up hope entirely. They also reassured me that my having had sex was in no way connected to the calamity itself, even though they knew it might seem that way to me. “Unfortunate timing,” is how they described it.

So I settled into what was now my new home, with a view of the universe outside the large picture window in my bedroom. I wondered why I had been spared. Although there was never really an answer to that question, all of the space people who visited from time to time seemed to hint that despite the terrible thing that had happened, there was always an underlying order and a reason for things. It was their assurance of this that helped give me a reason to go on: I wanted to see what would happen next and how I might fit into the future that was unfolding. I had wanted to see the wider world, and now I had found the universe was vaster than I had ever realized.

Whenever I opened my refrigerator, there was always a new store of food that replenished itself by some means unknown to me. I could make things on the cooktop, since I had a whole pantry of raw ingredients, or I could take ready-made dishes out of the fridge and put them in the microwave; they were always delicious. I could make hot chocolate or coffee, which I’d always drunk at home. There was a screen behind the sunken tub that changed scenes periodically, sometimes looking like a misty forest, sometimes like a pool on the edge of a cliff with an awesome view of the ocean, sometimes like a nook at the base of a waterfall. It had sound effects, too: the singing of tropical birds and the splash of cascading water, or sometimes the sound of rain dripping off leaves. 

After a couple of days, the streaming service began to work on the stereo system. I never had to change the station, because it always seemed to anticipate what I might like to hear next. There was no news at all from Earth, an omission the space people said was for the best, but I could get Netflix, VUDU, Redbox, and Amazon Prime as well as TCM. They were all re-runs, but I had never seen any of them anyway. I shot baskets on my mini-basketball court and used the weight equipment and treadmill to get in shape. I could go out on my balcony any time and watch the shooting stars and the constellations wax and wane, as if they were on a giant scroll unwinding above my head.

The only real problem was the not knowing, the uncertainty of whether it would be months or years before anything changed. I had so many questions, and so few answers. I had felt my crippling shyness fall away, as if the shock of my new existence had suddenly revealed another much less anxious person who had always been inside me. I enjoyed talking to the space people; I learned to cook lasagna; I listened endlessly to the Putumayo World Music Hour (syndicated); I taught myself to play the electric guitar. I was rarely bored.

But sometimes in the evening (there was no real difference in space between morning and evening, but evening was when I went to bed), I would find myself thinking of my family and of Carlie, and in the moments before I went to sleep, about how much nicer it would have been to have her there with me. It seemed sort of a shame that I had to be deprived of sex right after I had learned how to do it, with the first girl who had ever told me I was a knockout. (I never knew that, and I still like to think about it, even though there is no one here now to think about it but me. God will probably strike me dead for vanity one day.) It’s a comfortable life but a lonely one. In my head, I can hear my aunts chastising me for being selfish and vain and any number of other things. But the truth is, I know: I’m a very lucky boy, and I really can’t complain. My fondest hope is that Carlie made it through somehow, and that I might see her again one day.

Rapunzel Rap

An Annotated Fable

Yo, ya’ll, once upon a time there was a girl who lived in a small town at the edge of a forest. She made her living as a baker’s assistant, delivering fresh bread and rolls to the people of the town six mornings a week on her bicycle. One morning, which started out like any other, she was nearly finished with her deliveries for the day when she was surprised by a sudden blow to the head, which knocked her unconscious right in front of the shoemaker’s shop. [We assume from this intro that the young lady is on her own in the world, since she obviously fends for herself. Probably an orphan. That’s how a lot of these stories start.]

When she came to, she was lying in a strange bed, wearing clothes that were not her own. [Kind of creepy, at the get-go.] She wasn’t hurt other than having a very sore head, but she found that not only could she not remember how she got there, she couldn’t remember anything at all, including her name. [Right away, you know this isn’t going to be good, OK?] She was in a small house and could see trees through the windows and hear an occasional bird calling, but otherwise, everything was silent. That is, until she heard heavy footsteps outside and a sudden loud knocking on the wooden door. A very tall, very thin older woman came from the back of the cottage to open the door, which was fastened with a padlock. She unlocked it with a large key hanging from a chain around her neck, and the door swung open, revealing what could only be an ogre: tall as a middling tree he was, with unkempt hair and a beard.

He said to the girl, “I see you’re awake at last. It’s about time you got up and started doing your share around here.”

The old woman whined, “I tried to make dinner, but I couldn’t find the kettle.” [This woman has the beginnings of dementia and is not as dangerous as the ogre but still dangerous enough, due to her strength. She was a fierce ogress herself before she went through the change and started to lose weight and her bearings.]

The ogre began stomping and cursing her stupidity and said to the girl, “You. You’ll have to get the oven going and all. Get started or we’ll never have anything to eat today.”

“But who are you? And where am I?” The girl said wonderingly. [As well she might, you feel me?]

“Where are you? Who am I? I’m your husband, that’s who. Don’t tell me you’re getting as addled as the other one. I can’t afford to have two addle-pated wives. Now get up and get cracking before I have to knock some sense into you again. Where’s Anna?”

Now, none of this sat well with our heroine, who was equal parts dismayed and confounded, for although she was presently not even in possession of her own name, she was pretty sure she was not someone who would have agreed to a group marriage. But seeing no choice except to play along until she could figure things out, she got up, rubbing her head. “I don’t know where Anna is. Who is Anna?”

The ogre cursed again. “Your daughter, you dingbat. You can’t remember your own daughter’s name? Sophie, you’d better take her to the kitchen since she probably doesn’t remember where that is either.”

Now, having a daughter also came as news to the girl, who was as sure as she could be of anything that she would have remembered having a child afoot. She was even more convinced when she came upon the child, who was probably five years old, playing in a pile of grain she had knocked over in the kitchen, lifting it with a wooden spoon, then letting it fall, over and over. [In another story, our heroine would be tasked with having to sort the grains to find the one speck of gold hidden among them or some such thing, but I’ll set your mind at rest—this is not that story.] The child turned a sneering faced toward the girl and began to whine. “Where’s dinner? I’m hungry. You’re so lazy, mama. I don’t know why father keeps you.”

“The kettle’s around here somewhere,” the older woman mumbled, with a vacant smile, as she wandered around the kitchen, bumping into things, without, however, making any progress on finding the kettle—which our heroine immediately retrieved from the shelf in a corner where it was sitting in plain sight. “All right” she said, adopting a surly tone herself. “If it’s dinner you want, you’ll be getting out from under my feet so I can hear myself think.” The other three looked a bit taken aback but left the kitchen with ungracious muttering and stomping about, encouraged, perhaps, by the thought of dinner. [Guerrilla Psychological Warfare 101.]

The girl looked around and found a few carrots, some old potatoes, an onion, and a bit of what looked like leftover mutton, heated some water for broth, and then threw in the vegetables. She remembered, while she stirred, that she knew how to make bread and cakes but decided to keep that to herself. [Kids, this means she didn’t care to cast her pearls before swine. Quite wise.]

After taking bowls of the steaming soup to the dining table, she went back to the kitchen to eat her own dinner in silence—so she could plot. The situation was obviously untenable. She would have to get away somehow, but since she didn’t know where she was, she would need to get the lay of the land before she ran out into the woods and got lost. She opened the back door to sweep out the leavings from the kitchen and saw a road winding over the top of a distant hillside. It was several miles away at least, but a road nonetheless. It had to go somewhere. And she would have to plan her escape before things went too far here. The longer it went on, the more difficult it would be to get away.

When she went out to the main room, it was already dark, and the little girl was asleep in a corner cot. The ogre stamped around, causing the whole house to shake, locking first the front door and then the kitchen door with keys of his own. Having first tamped down the fire in the hearth, he climbed the ladder up to a loft where she could see the edge of a large bed stuffed with straw. “Come to bed, wives, it’s time to sleep,” he called over his shoulder. The girl, pleading dizziness, said she would sleep on the downstairs bed near the kitchen door. Sophie lingered, offering to help her change into her nightdress, her cold fingers probing and picking at the girl’s buttons. “Annabel, my dear, let me help me, you must be so tired.” Her fingers were surprisingly strong and persistent, but the girl merely pushed her away. “Don’t worry about me; go on to bed,” she said, a bit concerned that Sophie meant to climb into bed with her. But Sophie finally turned away and followed her husband to the loft, murmuring to herself.

Once the house was quiet, the girl sat up with a start. The woman had called her Annabel, but she knew that was not her name. She suddenly remembered that her real name was Jessie. She could remember nothing else, but that was a beginning. She lay back down, deep in thought. She would have to get up to make breakfast, which would no doubt be expected early. Then she could set her plan in motion, though she wasn’t sure yet what that was. As she tried to settle into the somewhat lumpy bed, it shifted, and she heard something slide down the wall. Once she heard double snoring from the loft, she reached her hand quietly down the narrow gap between the bed and the wall, reaching blindly until her fingers brushed against a bag with a strap. Pulling it up quietly, she saw that it was a purse—her purse! They had hidden it but not had time to get rid of it, which they most certainly had planned to do. She had probably been here less than a day. Rather than risk drawing any attention by opening it, she slipped it back beside the wall. She would not sleep at all that night in case someone remembered the purse and come to take it from her. [Of course she has a purse, sillies! What self-respecting girl of any era does not have a purse. It probably contains a cell phone and a lipstick, too, at the very least. And maybe some Kleenex and allergy medicine.]*

She lay awake all night and watched the dawning light seep slowly into the darkness of the cottage, taking it from pitch black to a dim gray light, until finally the ogre began stirring and griping upstairs. She heard him put his feet on the floor, one after the other, BAM, BAM. Then he was calling down to her, “You. You’d best get the breakfast going. I can’t wait around all day.” That was what she was waiting for, and she had to stop herself from springing up too quickly, remembering that she was still supposed to be an invalid. She slipped her purse underneath her jacket, where it was invisible, and pretended to be dressing herself, though she had slept in her clothes all night. Forcing herself to walk slowly, she went out to the kitchen, putting the water on to boil. When it was ready, she threw in some oats along with a goodly number of crushed Benadryl tablets she’d found in her purse. [What do you think this is, the Middle Ages?]

Worried that the others might notice the small pink bits amid the clumps of oats, she chopped up some pieces of an old apple with the skin still on and added that to the pot. The medicine was now indistinguishable from the apples, and she hoped the bitter taste would go unnoticed since the oats were already pretty rancid. She had ladled a bowl of oats for herself before putting the crushed pills into the pot, and she now carried the three other bowls into the main room, making a show of putting another log onto the fire and building it up, being sure the others were eating before she went back to the kitchen. She was nearly certain they would shovel everything in before they noticed anything, and that is precisely what happened. The ogre began yelling for his coffee, and Jessie took that opportunity to pick up their bowls and head back to the stove, where the old tin coffeepot, laced with additional Benadryl for good measure, was a-boil. Carrying a large mug of it out to the dining table, she received the fright of her life when the ogre suddenly clapped his hand on her wrist, shouting that maybe, just maybe, she might be good for something after all. [Sophie made terrible coffee, so his standards were very low.] Counting to ten, she said nothing, simply pouring the rest of the coffee into a smaller mug for Sophie.

“The coffee isn’t as bitter as it normally is,” muttered the latter. “I always get the grounds into it. Oh well. Amelia!” She cried suddenly to the child, who was shaping the last bit of oatmeal in her bowl into a lump prior to sticking it on her nose. “Finish your porridge and go outside to play, child! Annabel has a lot of work to do in here. Father said she had better start earning her keep, or else. Go on, child. Shoo.”

“Or else!” Echoed the child, who stuck her tongue out at Jessie before heading out the door, dragging a dirty-looking rag doll with her. “Father won’t feed her if she doesn’t do what she’s supposed to.”

“That’s right,” said Sophie, “Go on, little angel. Don’t worry, I’ll see that Annabel does her chores.”

Jessie wiped the table and carried the mugs into the kitchen. She washed the dishes and scoured the pot, which was none too clean to begin with, and forced herself to eat just a couple of bites of undoctored oatmeal. Once the counters were wiped and the cobwebs swept out of the corners, she took a quick peek through the kitchen door. Both the ogre and his wife were sound asleep on the table, snoring loudly. Through the open door, she could see the little girl asleep near the wood stump, her rag doll collapsed in a heap beside her. Moving quickly, Jessie pinched the key to the back door padlock, made her way silently through the kitchen, and slid the key into the lock. It came open in her hand, and she slipped out quick as could be, running all heggedy peggedy through the woods in a straight line in the direction of the road she had seen before. She wasn’t sure how long it would be before the ogre family woke up but estimated she had several hours at least. [What a resourceful girl! Why wasn’t she running the bakery herself instead of just making deliveries?]

It took her less than an hour to get to the road, where she soon caught a ride with a gypsy family who were heading into town to sell honey. It was not the town she was from, but another larger town two counties over—the ogre, with his giant legs, must have carried her away in record time, but she could never have made her way back there as quickly. Once the wagon arrived in the town, she opened her purse for money to give to the gypsies and noticed that there were messages on her cell phone. Inside her wallet, she found her credit card and ID, and there was her name, plain as the nose on your face, Jessamyn Cashel. She remembered it all now.

Even her checkbook was still inside. Apparently, they hadn’t destroyed her purse because they hoped to get some use out it, but no matter now. When she checked her bank app, her account was untouched. She walked into the nearest shop, bought several shirts and pairs of pants, walked to the town hotel [the Hotel d’Ville, for your records], reserved a room, went upstairs, and washed, throwing the old clothes into a trash bin once she was finished. Then she sat down, her hair in a towel, to weigh her options.

She could go back to the bakery, but the fact that she’d been kidnapped in the middle of a public street without anyone apparently noticing was making her question the wisdom of her life choices. Maybe Piddlebrook wasn’t quite the town for her. The baker liked her, but she knew he could replace her easily. She had actually never been very far from Piddlebrook until her abduction, but now that she was here, in this bustling market town, the world was beginning to seem a little wider. She glanced at her phone again. There were a couple of texts from someone named Jem Ainsworth.

—Hey, hope you are well. [the first one read] I hope you remember me. I was passing through that summer when my engine died and I ended up staying for three months to save up money to fix the car? Val’s cousin. [Jessie did remember him. A polite boy who knew nothing about groceries but worked in the general store all summer and sometimes hung out with her and Val when none of them were working. He was never a big talker, but they all got on well and the months had gone by a little faster when they had someone new around to break the monotony.] I’m coming your way, thought I’d say hi, I know Val moved with his family, but thought you might still be there. Later.—

The second one had been sent only this morning. —Hey, still heading your way. I’ll stop by the bakery to see if you’re there. Otherwise, shoot me a line if you ever get a chance. I live out on the coast now, and I’m heading back there.—

Jessie pictured his sandy hair, always falling into his eyes. She remembered him, although she had never expected to see him again. [Fate steps in to pull you through, once in a while, maybe. There’s a song to that effect.] She texted back —I’m at the Hotel d’Ville in Earlytown. Are you in Piddlebrook?—

Three minutes later —Hey, I’m almost there. What takes you to Earlytown?—

—Long story. YWBT. I was hit in the head and kidnapped by an ogre. An actual OGRE, not just someone who looked like one. I got away and came here.—

—Dude, are you serious.—

—I’m afraid so. I’m not hurt. I got away fast. The guy was apparently looking for another wife.—

—F—k that. You’re sure you’re OK?—

—Believe it or not, I’m mostly OK. Just in shock. Hit me on the head when I was on my delivery rounds and no one stopped him. It’s like something out of fairy tale. Just a random ogre from the woods.—[Fact: Being self aware does not necessarily mean a character is not in a fairy tale. Just like being self aware in a dream does not mean you’re not dreaming.]

—F—k that s—t. Well I’m on my way over, probably be half an hour. Can I give you a ride anywhere? Sounds like maybe you should blow out of here for a while in case he decides to come back.—

Jessie was now realizing what a real possibility that was. The Seven Counties were not that big an area, and who knew how many people were actually against ogres, now that she thought about it. She’d always taken it for granted that no one really liked them, but now—

—Yeah, I think the bakery can get along without me. I think this is a sign that I need to set my sights on something else.—

—Think you could be right. I always wondered if you’d really be happy in that little town. Some people are, tho.—

—Where are you headed?—

—I’ve started a bookstore with some friends. It’s a co-op, too. We finally bought the building and have some living space upstairs. In North Beach. It’s cool. You ever thought of going out there?—

—It sounds great, actually.—

—I’m still in touch with Val. He’s coming out in a couple of months. We could hang out, you’ve def got a job if you want. We need help actually. We pay for help, though. We don’t knock people in the head and drag them off the street. ;-) No pressure, just an option.—

—I’ve always wanted to see the ocean.—

—OK. I’m on my way.—

—Hey, Jem, would you mind pulling around to the back of the building. I just can’t face any more ogres today. Just in case he’s on my trail.—

—No worries, man. See ya.—

Jessie was looking out the window 20 minutes later, but she heard the van coming before she saw it, an old Volkswagen bus with a sunroof, blue as the sea. She waved to Jem from the window, and he waved back. She picked up her newly purchased weekend bag with all her clothes and her purse and put one leg over the window ledge. Out on the fire escape, she pulled the window sash down and then ran down the rickety stairs. Jem had parked the bus, no questions asked, directly under the fire escape. When she got to the bottom, it extended down to just above the sunroof, so she tossed her bags in and then climbed down.

Jem looked about the same, though he wasn’t quite as thin as he had been four years ago. He was smiling. “Full points for style on that entrance.”

“Well, I did pay my bill. And maybe it wasn’t strictly necessary to leave by the fire escape, but—”

“You wanted to make a dramatic exit,” he agreed. “It’s understandable.”

“I guess I am a little spooked,” she said. “It’s not every day you get kidnapped by an ogre.”

“Let it be the last time, then,” he said, putting the van into gear. There was a bauble hanging from the rear-view mirror that said SEE OSGILIATH. The backseats were piled with gear and clothes and small pieces of furniture. “Picked up some hand-me-downs from home,” he said. “I’m glad you answered my texts. I won’t be coming back this way for a long time.”

“Seems like it could be fate.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I’d like to think so.” [You may be thinking to yourself, oh, no, not another story where some guy has to rescue a damsel in distress. I would merely point out that she did a pretty good job of rescuing herself. Technically, all he did was give her a ride out of town. What happens after that is anyone’s guess.]

And they all lived happily ever after, except for the ogre and his family, who are still asleep out there in the woods, since Benadryl has the side effect of turning ogres into stone. Jessie didn’t know this when she gave it to them, but if she had known, she would most certainly have done it anyway. So there you go.

*The technical term for this is foreshadowing.

Moral: Gaslighting is mean, and mean people suck. Don’t gaslight, and maybe you won’t ever have to worry about being turned to stone by Benadryl.