Kyle and Joseph each wore an empty jar around their necks as they stood on the side of the road and stabbed trash with their spears. The blazing sun of midday beat down on the back of their burned necks as they stabbed at the scattered litter.

“You know,” Kyle said, “the Church is the one that said we had to carry our souls in jars from now on.”

Joseph shrugged and stabbed a foam cup. “It doesn't make sense to me.”

“Sure, it makes plenty of sense,” Kyle answered. He jabbed a candy wrapper and continued. “The Church wants to see who's sold their soul, so they make everyone carry it in a jar around our necks.”

Joseph shrugged again. “Just because your jar is empty, it doesn't necessarily mean you sold your soul. That's like saying if your garage is empty, you sold your car.” He leaned down and looked at a sheet of newspaper for a moment before he stabbed it.

“What else would it mean?” Kyle asked. He twirled his spear in his hand and ran the wood between his fingers. He stopped and propped his weight against a concrete barricade.

“Well, what if you lost it?”

Kyle shook his head. “No way. Who loses something like your soul?”

“Who sells something like your soul?” Joseph retorted.

“If your jar is empty, then you sold your soul,” Kyle said.

“The Bible talks an awful lot about lost souls, right?” Joseph leaned against the concrete barricade next to Kyle.

“They didn't carry their souls around in jars when they wrote the Bible, now did they?”

“No,” Joseph answered, “I guess not.”

Kyle looked down at his empty jar and then glanced over at Joseph. “Maybe you're looking at this too literally. Instead of saying sold, try replacing it with traded.”

“Okay,” Joseph mused. “If your jar is empty then you traded your soul?”

“That's a better way to look at it,” Kyle answered.

“I never traded my soul,” Joseph said. “I just figured I'd lost it somewhere.”

Kyle looked back down at his empty jar. “The Church says that you trade your soul for any sin you commit.”

“Really?” Joseph asked.

“Really. Hell, with the things I used to do, I had probably sold my soul a hundred times before they passed the law about these damned jars. These things just keep us accountable, I guess. We can't barter with what we don't have.”

Joseph stood and poked idly at a piece of garbage. “Everything fun is a sin though, right?”

“It certainly seems that way,” Kyle said, “but I'm sure that's not the case.”

Joseph shrugged yet again and shook his head. “It's a damned wonder every jar in the world isn't empty.” He stabbed the piece of garbage and sank the end of his spear into the dirt.

Kyle nodded. “A damned wonder indeed.”

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Jon felt the dirt under his fingernails and on his hands, even though he couldn't see it. The scalding hot water couldn't get it off of his skin. The antibacterial soap couldn't get it off of his skin. The sponge couldn't get it off of his skin.

He turned the water on again and scrubbed his hands together underneath the faucet. The tips of his fingers were pruning, and they looked like sun-dried raisins. He shook the excess water from his hands and dried them on a towel. He plucked a moist wipe from the container next to the sink and used it to turn the faucet off. He flicked the wipe from his fingers and watched as it dropped into the stainless steel wastebasket next to the toilet.

The toilet.

A festering hole of germs he had to tolerate in his home. His skin crawled and he could see the bacteria, the microbes, the filth, crawling in the toilet. He leaned down and pulled bleach from beneath the sink. He unscrewed the cap and poured pure bleach into the toilet. The smell stung his nostrils and he screwed the cap back on.

A small drop touched his hand.

His heart quicked.

Bleach was poison.

He turned on the filthy water faucet and shoved his hands beneath the water. He held them there until the water grew to a scalding temperature and started to steam. He scrubbed his hands under the water and only reached from beneath it to grab his sponge and antibacterial soap. He scraped his hands together and against the sponge, beneath the scalding water. The skin of his hands ached and glowed a bright red color from the exposure to scalding water.

Jon flung the excess water from his hands and dried them on his towel. A lump rose in his throat. He hadn't changed his towel before using it again.

He shoved his hands under the scalding hot water again and scrubbed them together. He reached out from beneath the faucet to grab his sponge and antibacterial soap. He could still feel the filthy germs crawling all over his skin.

The antibacterial soap didn't clean his skin. The sponge held more bacteria than he liked to consider. The scalding hot water couldn't clean his skin.

He sucked a deep breath into his lungs and pulled his hands out of the scalding water. His heart pounded. He left the faucet running in hopes of allowing the water to get even hotter as he left the bathroom and walked into the kitchen.

He opened the kitchen cabinet and searched beneath the kitchen sink for something.

There.

A steel wool cleaning pad.

If nothing could clean his skin, he would scrub it off.

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The ring finger on Isaac's left hand twitched for the third time in a day which concerned him greatly. He stared down at his hand and watched the finger for a short period. No spasm ran through his hand while he was watching, but he was sure that the tiny hairs right above his second knuckle were brimming with excitement. He  squeezed his eyes shut, wrote the movements off as his imagination, and returned to his work.

His ring finger twitched again as he resumed typing.

He stopped and looked down at his hand again. His finger twitched this  time while he stared at it. He reached over with his other hand and pressed down on his finger. He felt the muscle in his finger fight back against him. His finger pulled up against his hand and he felt something in his knuckle pull tight, as if the tendons were being worked from outside of his skin, rather than the inside. Something inside his finger pulled tight, the muscles in his ring finger grew taunt, and then his finger twitched again. 

Isaac pulled against his finger with his right hand and felt the muscle relax. He took a deep breath and rubbed his ring finger. The sensation in his finger was enough to worry him more than usual, unusual enough to have him consider leaving work for the day. He stood up from his desk, and as he did, his knee jerked and banged into his office chair. He reached down and gripped his knee with his left hand. His movements felt jerky, spastic, as if each muscle lagged a half second behind his command. 

He straightened up and walked to his boss's office.

"Sir?" he asked, sticking his head through the door.

Isaac's boss, a fat man with no hair, stared out blankly from behind his desk. "Yes, Isaac?"

"I need to leave for the day."

Isaac's boss shook his head and pointed at the chair across from him. "No. You left early yesterday. Sit down and tell me what's going on."

Isaac walked to the chair and took a seat. As he sat, his finger twitched again.

"Well?" his boss said.

"I don't know what to say," Isaac said. "For the past few days I've been feeling weird. Like I'm going through the motions. I've got no drive, been down." He didn't mention his spasms. He took a breath. "Have you ever felt like a robot?"

His boss laughed. "Isaac, you're a working stiff. You are a robot."

Isaac frowned and looked past his boss. There were curtains behind his boss, something he'd never noticed before. He tilted his head and turned back to his boss. His boss was saying something, but Isaac couldn't hear it past his own thoughts. His ring finger twitched again and his knee jerked. He narrowed his eyes and looked down at his boss's fat hand. From the fat knuckles, a tiny red streak seemed to cut through the air. It was there for a moment, but then it was gone.

Isaac followed the path cut through the air by the red streak, right up to the office's ceiling. For a few seconds, there was nothing there but a typical, boring drop ceiling, dotted with inset florescent lights that bathed the room in a pale, cold white glow. Then, the ceiling flickered in Isaac's eyesight and revealed nothing but a black abyss and a tiny silver wheel hanging from the darkness above.

He turned away from it and narrowed his eyes at his fat boss. The man was still talking, but Isaac's mind focused on other things. He searched his fat boss and happened to see the man's finger twitch.

The left ring finger.

Wavering like the beating sun reflecting off of a desert highway, the room shimmered. Isaac could see thousands of tiny red streaks, strings, running from his boss, up to the black void where the ceiling used to be. He sucked a shocked breath into his lungs and shook his head to clear his thoughts. He blinked twice but the strange sight didn't fade. He followed the red strings from his boss, up to the tiny wheel, a pulley, where the strings converged and ran along the black void to the dark curtains he'd spotted moments before.

Isaac stood up and ignored the twitch in his finger, and the sudden jerk of his knee, and rushed over to the black curtains.

"What do you think you're doing?" his boss bellowed.

Isaac didn't answer. He grabbed the curtains, and struggled to force his muscles to obey him as he tried to fling the curtains back. He pulled against the curtains, even as he felt his muscles spasm and struggle to disobey him. The curtains opened to reveal a window.

A naked man, save for black gloves, sat upon a throne behind the window, with millions of red strings running from every direction, each one attached to a muscle group on his body. He deftly worked the fingers of his black gloved hands, plucking and tugging and pulling and stretching hundreds and thousands of tiny red strings.

Isaac swallowed and nearly choked. As he did, he looked down at his twitching finger. Red strings ran from his hands, and his arms, and as he searched, he realized they ran from every portion of his body. The string on his left ring finger was tangled slightly, causing a spasm. He took a sudden breath and stared through the window at the man pulling the strings.

The man upon the throne looked up and locked cold white eyes with Isaac. No emotion was betrayed by his expressionless face, nor did his eyes convey anything. Without a sound or a pause in pulling the strings, the man reached over to a tiny silver tray and lifted a pair of scissors. He isolated a single set of red strings.

He snipped the strings, and Isaac fell to the ground like a rag doll.

The black curtains closed and the man upon the throne continued pulling the strings.

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"My greatest weakness? Uh, I've been known to be quite stubborn, to the point of clashing with upper management."

"Oh?" Mr. Moulton asked. He slipped a pair of reading glasses from his jacket pocket and leaned the spectacles carefully against his nose, so he could look over the simple one-page resume. "If you don't mind me asking, how does that usually turn out for you?"

"That's the thing," the applicant purred with a smile. "My last boss actually created a new department and transferred me out so I could head it up. That's where I've been working until just recently."

"According to your resume here, you held your last position for quite some time," Mr. Moulton stated. "Why the career change after such a long period?"

"I'll be honest for a change, because you seem like a fellow who understands the nature of business. My previous position was all about dealing, greed and sin. The truth is, with so many people already out there with these qualities, there's just not that much work for someone like me anymore."

"I'm sorry," Mr. Moulton interjected. "I see several different names and titles here on your resume. What should I call you?"

"You can call me whichever name suits your fancy: Satan, Lucifer, the Morning Star, the Fallen One, Samael - really, it's all personal preference. Everybody's got their own damned opinion."

"I'm just a bit concerned, to be honest," Mr. Moulton said, "because you were in a management position for so long, and this job is a far cry from that."

"That's no worry at all," Satan assured, "I'm a perfect fit for this job, really."

"Okay," Mr. Moulton continued. "Why don't you tell me, in your own words, something your previous co-workers may have found less than satisfying with your performance?"

"You're quite the negative Nancy, aren't you?" Satan asked. "Okay, let's see. Well, my employees and customers alike said I kept the thermostat too high, but to tell you the truth, it just gets hot as hell down south." He smiled and looked at Mr. Moulton with his black and gray eyes.

Mr. Moulton nodded. "I understand that. My own employees complain about my settings on the thermostat here."

"Well," Satan said, "I always figured if my employees weren't gnashing their teeth in constant agony, I was failing as a manager." He smiled and revealed his razor thin teeth again.

Mr. Moulton laughed and shook a finger at the Great Deceiver. "I like you. A funky sense of humor on you."

"Oh, I wasn't joking," Satan said with a friendly laugh. He stared Mr. Moulton directly in the eyes.

Mr. Moulton laughed again. "See, such a deadpan sense of humor, that's great." He shifted in his chair and placed the Devil's resume on his desk. "Let's get down to the real business here. I want to know exactly why you're applying for this job."

Satan sat forward in his chair and met Mr. Moulton's gaze with his own black and gray eyes. "I'm the best salesman in the world. No matter the price, I've always closed the deal. In the interest of full disclosure, I did fail to close one sale. I made my case, a super-tempting offer to my old boss's son, this one time in the desert. He turned me down. Don't ask why he was in the desert. Kind of a long, boring story. But other than that, no matter the price, I always close my sale." He flashed a smile.

Mr. Moulton looked the Morning Star over and pursed his lips for several quiet seconds. The office clock ticked each second off as Satan waited patiently with a smug sense of satisfaction oozing from his expression.

Mr. Moulton leaned forward and extended his hand. 

"Congratulations. You're our newest telemarketer."

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Jerry choked on the air and gripped his throat. Someone was putting something in his air.

The sound of the air filters, humidifiers, air ionizers and dust treatments all hummed their constant hum. Jerry eyed each one in turn to look at the power lights, to settle the suspicion that the filters were not working. Red lights, blue lights and green lights all flickered softly in the dark room.

Jerry dropped his hand from his throat and cautiously pulled a breath past his quivering lips.

He felt the potentially deadly air fill his mouth and nostrils first and then rush down his throat to inflate his lungs.

He waited and wiped sweat from the bridge of his nose.

When would it happen?

When would his lungs leap up, sieze, and close, to leave him a breathless husk on the floor of his tidy little apartment?

Would it be this breath?

The air sat in his lungs and fed his body.

His lungs quivered from his own anxiety and his heart ached as it pounded fast in his chest. But his lungs did not burn or itch. His lungs did not swell and close. The air did its work and he let the breath go.

He exhaled heavily and jerked his head away from the position where he had released the burned fuel back into the room.

He waved his hand to clear the air and held his breath until it was safe again.

His stomach trembled and his eyes watered. His body begged for air. Jerry glanced over at the air filters, the purifiers, humidifiers, and ionizers. His stomach burned, his lungs deflated and his brain threatened to shut him down.

He couldn’t take his next breath yet. He sucked in a small bit of air and clutched his throat as he choked.

Would this be the breath?

He surveyed the lights on each of the filters.

He opened his mouth and pulled a deep breath in as he looked outside to the world. Down in the streets, dirty cars spewed exhaust. Smoke churned out into the sky from the smokestacks of a factory just across the street. Planes flew in the skies and rained poison to the world. Slight breezes blew to distribute the poison to everyone.

To everyone but him.

Not him. He stayed ready for the pollution, the poison, the death that floated from every pipe and from every mouth. He kept strong against every irritant, microbe or molecule in the air.

He was ready for it. Someone was putting something in his air.

He was taking it out.

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A storm brewed outside and covered the sky with a thick blanket of angry black clouds. Devin pulled on his coat and stepped out into the dead evening.

The wall of humidity from the storm hit him and made his skin feel sticky, but he adjusted his dark wrap-around sunglasses and adjusted his courier’s bag at his side. He clutched it tight and flexed his hands in his fingerless gloves. He glanced up at the sky and checked the cloud cover.

The rain would start at any time, Devin knew, but it was safe to move as long as the cloud cover remained hung over the gray city like a death threat.

The Eyes in the Sky could not see the streets through the cloud cover. For the time during the storm, while the cloud cover remained in place, Devin felt a rare feeling of privacy. The ones that watched from the Eyes in the Sky could not see him now.

He fidgeted with his courier’s bag and started down the sidewalk. Most of the time, the sidewalks were empty and mostly abandoned. With the welcome cloud cover overhead, there were others out, moving down the sidewalks and crossing the streets. Most of the ones that moved under the cover of the thick clouds were couriers of the Movement, just like him.

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Seeing other couriers boosted his morale and made him think for once, perhaps the Movement had a chance to break free of the new rules, and to finally be outside of the bubble of oppression erected by those that watched from the Eyes in the Sky. He felt a cold raindrop hit the top of his head. The cloud cover would likely move on after the storm.

Devin knew he needed to move quickly.

A single gunshot ripped through the quiet, cloud-cloaked city.

Devin jerked and looked over his shoulder to find the source of the gunshot.

He saw them before they saw him.

The Troop.

They were clothed in black tactical gear from head to foot and armed with pistols on their hips and tactical rifles in their hands. At their feet, a pool of blood trickled from a fallen courier.

Devin ducked quietly into an alleyway.

How did they know that courier’s for the Movement were out? he wondered. The clouds are too thick; the Eyes in the Sky couldn’t have sent an alarm.

He glanced down at his satchel and closed his eyes. There was no rain in the forecast for the next two weeks.

The package had to be delivered now, under the cloak of the cloud cover. Devin’s breath caught in his throat and he choked on his uncertainty. The cloud cover was now useless, clearly.

But how?

The Eyes in the Sky shouldn’t have seen anything under the clouds.

Devin ran out of the alley and darted down the sidewalk in a jagged, erratic path. He knew The Troop would see him, probably alerted by the heavy, panicked, determined slams of his shoes against pavement.

He darted back and forth as he ran with the satchel rising and falling against his side with his movement.

A gunshot ripped through the gray city.

Devin fell.

Pain radiated through his back and his eyes bulged. His erratic path had done nothing, he realized as he rolled over onto the stick wound in the center of his back. His legs jerked and his temples felt as if a stick of dynamite exploded behind both in unison.

A faded black tunnel closed in on his sight.

The Troop closed in on him and the leader stepped forward to collect Devin’s satchel.

Devin struggled against pain and fading control over muscle function.

“H-how did you see? Th-through the clouds?”

Blood pooled around him as he watched The Troop collect his satchel.

The Troop leader stepped forward and looked down from behind his tactical mask. His voice crackled from behind the mask, as static cleared his radio.

“We see everything.”

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Tick.

Samuel sat surrounded by his clocks, with a bottle of glass cleaner at his side. A bottle of wood cleaner sat next to the glass cleaner. Twelve rolls of paper towels sat next to the glass and wood cleaners. 

Tock.

He grimaced and looked around at all of his beautiful clocks, each one attractive for a different reason. Some, he'd purchased because of the manufacturer, others, because of the typeface used for the numbers, and others still, he'd purchased simply because they were clocks. Each clock hung on the wall or sat on a shelf and ticked and tocked dutifully in the job it was created to do.

Tick.

But the dust never stopped. Even when the power went out, or the batteries died, and his clocks stopped keeping time, time continued and that was evidenced by the tiny specks of dust floating and falling and coating his world.

His clocks.

Tock.

He squinted and choked down the rising anxiety. The thought of the dust that dared to touch his clocks brought his stomach to sick lurches. He bit down on the inside of his cheek until he tasted pennies.

Tick.

He started to count his clocks and tapped his pinkie finger to his thumb with each number he counted through.

"One, two, three, four," he started.

The numbers flew off his tongue faster and faster as he found his rhythm and his fingers tapped together until the tip of his pinkie and the base of his thumb ached with the repeated touch.

Tock.

He continued to count and felt his stress rise. His heart pounded in his chest and sweat pooled in his armpits. He wanted to look down and make sure his paper towels and cleaning supplies still sat next to him, but he couldn't break his rhythm. If he didn't make eye contact with each and every clock, he might lose it in the shuffle.

Tick.

Each number carried stress and a tremble on the sound and his breathing grew erratic. His cheeks turned red and his lips ached. His hand jerked and he fought his physical response with the mental stress. He struggled to get his tapping fingers back in time with his verbal count.

Tock.

He saw it as he counted. The dust fell; each speck weighed a ton, and held onto the surfaces of his clocks like beasts dragging an imaginative child under the bed. He swiped his free hand over his forehead and strained his voice to continue the verbal count. The dust, though, built its strength, and started to distract him.

Tick.

He kept up with the count, turning around the room as he ran out of clocks on the walls and shelves of the first and second wall. His count numbered in the hundreds, and the dust - the dust numbered in the billions. He could see it, strengthening their numbers, carrying filth and disease with each nearly microscopic speck. His throat tightened and his stomach lurched. His knees wobbled and lost strength. He nearly collapsed beneath the weight of the rising voices screaming to him in his ear. Too much dust, the voices said, too much dust, you have to clean now.

Tock.

His count felt as if it lasted all day, but it finally came to its end. He stopped, and repeated the total number of clocks to himself, 12 times. The dust had gathered their legions, and it was time now for him to prepare for battle.

Tick.

He reached down and lifted the bottle of wood cleaner in one hand. From underneath, he grabbed the yellow rubber gloves. He put the wood cleaner down and pulled on his gauntlets of battle, pulling each rubber glove up to his elbow. Sweat rolled down his forehead as he glanced around at all of his clocks and all of the hiding places for the dust.

Tock.

The dust practiced a mixture of overwhelming numbers and guerrilla warfare. Samuel sucked a deep breath in through his nose and coughed. The dust could be airborne. He reached down and lifted the glass cleaner, to pluck the dust mask from beneath it. He pulled the thin yellow strap over his head and positioned the mask over his mouth and nose. His helmet.

Tick.

He grabbed the wood cleaner, the glass cleaner and the first of twelve rolls of paper towels.

Tock.

He walked to the first wall of clocks, placed his finger on the bottle of wood cleaner, and started his assault.

Tick.

Tock.

Tick.

The silent sounds of his daily war filled his home.

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Trevor arrived home after he received the call from his landlord and found the situation exactly as she'd described it. Red boxes with white lids lined the hall from the entrance and blocked several of the other tenants' doors.

39 of them, his landlord had screamed in her bitter, broken, cigarette ravaged voice.

He looked at the stack of boxes closest to his door and pulled the white packing slip from the top of the teetering stack.

"File."

The glossy sheet of paper shined in the dim light of the hallway and reflected differently in certain places. Trevor realized the paper had a watermark.

He tilted the paper and squinted at the lightly shaded watermark. An "A" surrounded by a triangle. There was a single word beneath the triangle, in a sans-serif font. A straight, angular font with angry, sharp letters.

"Archive."

Trevor leaned back and looked down the hall lined with the boxes. He searched the boxes for a phone number or something to identify the sender, the delivery service or the contents of the boxes. 

Nothing.

Despite the hot day, Trevor broke into a cold sweat. The bright, solid red clashed with the plain white of the box lids and made his stomach shift. He opened the top box, still clutching the plain white sheet of paper in one hand.

On the top of the papers packed into the box, Trevor saw his birth certificate. A cold shiver ran through his teeth, as if he'd just bitten a metal spoon after a new filling. He peeled up a corner of the certificate and his breath caught in his throat until it became uncomfortable.

Under his birth certificate, his social security card looked up at him. His stomach churned and he realized he couldn't swallow. His hands trembled and his body tingled.

He shoved the top back onto the box and started the long job of moving the boxes into his apartment.

---

All of Trevor's furniture and home decor lined the walls, shoved there haphazardly. He sat in the middle of his living room, surrounded by paperwork, photos, contracts, documents, emails and phone call transcripts.

He'd already thrown up several times, but he could feel it rising again.

His life surrounded him, a sea of surveillance; 39 boxes contained his 31 years of life. Photos, hundreds, possibly thousands, contained countless private moments.

He trembled and turned to the last box. The only box not opened sat just in front of him. He leaned forward and closed his eyes as he pulled the white lid from the blood red box. The box was mostly empty, except for a pale sheet of paper and a black box beneath it.

He lifted the sheet of paper out of the box and looked at it.

"Date of death."

It was his death certificate. The date on the document was two years away. His heart choked on blood in his chest and skipped a beat. His mouth dried up like a sponge in a skillet.

He painfully opened his mouth and sucked a deep breath into his chest.

He leaned over and opened the last item. He opened the black box and looked inside.

The box contained a book and a pistol.

Trevor picked up the book and opened to the first page. 

Script: Trevor Winters.

He flipped through the pages and exhaled. Each scene, he recognized. It was his life in nearly perfect words. The book flopped over, and his eyes fell on the last page. 

Trevor read the suicide scene and mouthed the last words on the page.

END SCENE.

He closed the script and stood up just as a man in a black suit walked into his apartment.

"How did you get in here?" Trevor asked. He backed away from the man and held his hands up in defense.

The man in black held up a gloved hand. "The key," he said, flashing the bronze key in his grip.

"Who are you?"

The man in black looked like a cancer patient. His skin clung to him tighter than wet plastic wrap on good leather. "Oh, forgive me. You can call me the Playwright. You see, I'm responsible for the script you have in your hand. We've been watching to make sure you follow the script."

"What is all of this?" Trevor demanded. He dropped the script and glanced into the last box, at the gun.

"This," the Playwright said, "is your life. Every gloriously crafted second of it. Except the boring parts. The good writers skip the boring parts."

"Just -- just get out of my house," Trevor said.

The old man looked around at the scattered contents of the 39 boxes and shook his head. "I came to get what belongs to the Archive. You weren't supposed to see this, you see? With the amount of paperwork we deal with, there's bound to be a clerical error or two."

Trevor dived for the gun.

The Playwright watched as Trevor lifted the gun and pointed it at him. He calmly reached into his coat pocket and frowned. 

"I knew those last few scenes weren't going to work out," the Playwright said. "Looks like I have to make a few edits."

Trevor trembled and pointed the pistol at the Playwright. 

His finger tightened on the trigger.

The Playwright pulled his hand from his pocket and produced a sharpened pencil. He stepped toward Trevor and closed the distance between them.

"Stop," Trevor ordered. He pulled the trigger and heard the disappointing click of an empty gun.

"That's a shame," the Playwright said.

He jammed the pencil into Trevor's throat.

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A particular doll stood out from the cluttered shelves of the old, dusty toy shop. The toy cars were missing wheels. There were tattered and stained stuffed animals. The wind-up chimps no longer clashed their cymbals in an everlasting pingpingping of insanity-inducing, alcoholism-encouraging buyer's regret of racket. But only the doll on the shelf caught Evan's eye.

The doll sent a shiver down Evan's spine. He stepped toward the doll and ignored the pile of toys on the floor that shifted and fell.

The doll's black eyes stared at him, and its rosy red cheeks puffed out in a forced, strained, porcelain smile. Ruffles poked up around the doll's neck and a dainty, girly dress flowed down over the doll's body. Her little hands were clenched into tight fists. Her tiny little feet were covered with discolored socks that were white, once upon a time.

Evan frowned and stopped, surrounded by toys long forgotten by the children that once owned them. Those children, the ones that once owned and played with these toys, were likely long gone. Dead or back in diapers and drooling like babies too young to play with the toys.

He shivered again and looked at the doll. He stepped over another fallen toy in the aisle and grabbed the doll by her midsection. He picked her up.

He grunted softly at the doll's surprising weight. Her black eyes stared up from Evan's hands, into his locked gaze.

He placed the doll on the shelf, carefully placing her with her back to the store, looking away from him. Her black eyes set loose a fire of unease in him. He turned to look toward the front of the store.

When he turned back, the doll faced out into the store. Her porcelain smile seemed relaxed. Her black eyes seemed the slightest bit wider.

Her rosy cheeks, paler.

Evan stepped a bit closer and looked into the doll's black eyes. He leaned down to stare, and looked right past the black glass that made her fake eyes. Behind the glass, the inky black eyes, something moved.

Round, like a pupil.

Evan narrowed his eyes.

A soft whir of something strange hummed from inside the doll's porcelain head.

Evan looked closer at her black eyes. Something sat just behind the black glass eyes.

He lifted the doll and looked at her porcelain frown. He scratched at one of her black glass eyes.

The doll's head hummed, like the sound of an old television's high pitched whistle.

Evan scratched the doll's eye and forced the edge of his fingernail behind the black glass eye. He pulled.

The doll's lips were locked in a porcelain grimace, her rosy cheek's sunken like a drug addict.

Evan clawed and pulled.

The black glass eye popped from the doll's wide socket and bounced on the toy shop's floor.

plinkplinkplink.

A soft gray mass rested inside the doll's porcelain head. Evan narrowed his eyes and looked around to ensure the shop owner hadn't seen his actions.

He looked back down.

The doll's smile met him, wide and genuine. Her one black glass eye stared up at him.

"Hello Daddy."

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For this week's fridayflash, I'm doing something a bit different and outside of the genre I usually do for #fridayflash. Maria A. Kelly wrote a fantastic story called Telescope Moment and created a truly frightening character. With her permission, I've explored that character a bit further. Please read her story, Telescope Moment, if you have not.

***********

Breathe. Pan across. Adjust focus.

No telescope separated him from Ms. 610 this time. Just his eyes.

He shivered from the smell of her bathwater as he stood in the bathroom doorway. 

Ms. 610 finally made the fatal error. When she left for work, she forgot to lock her door. He slipped in minutes before she got home, and waited quietly in the closet.

He'd watched long enough to know her routine. Come home, turn on soft music, run a bath.

She closed her eyes and leaned back in the bathtub. His stomach fluttered with butterflies and his body shivered with anticipation.

Inhale. Exhale.

He stepped from the darkness and into the bathroom. He carried the syringe of sedative in his right hand and injected it into her neck in a single, practiced movement.

He reached down and tenderly cradled her head as she opened her eyes and looked up at him in shock. Moments later, Ms. 610 fell into his hands. 

Right. Where. She. Belonged.

***

"You can call me Mr. Slivers," he said from the foot of her bed as she stirred and tested the bindings constructed from the silver duct tape.

He squirmed. He could smell the sweet lavender soap from her bath as it dried on her body. The veins on her hands bulged and the skin turned red. The duct tape inhibited her bloodflow.

Ms. 610 moaned under the homemade gag he'd stuffed in her mouth. He smiled, a cruel expression. He enjoyed the terror in her eyes as she choked on the cloth.

"That's my underwear in your mouth," Slivers droned.

She moaned again and stuggled against the bindings that held her in place.

His voice, cold and monotonous, lifted in the darkness at the foot of her bed again. "None of my girls have broken the duct tape yet. But feel free to keep trying. I like when they struggle."

His hands, gloved in black latex, opened garbage bags one at a time.

"I like to use as many things from the household as I can. It keeps my travel light. It's a shame, you've only got 13 gallon bags. I'm used to working with 33 gallon bags."

He shrugged and stepped around to look down into her terror-filled eyes.

"You know the ones I mean, right? The ones that you put leaves in after you rake them into piles? The bags that they decorate with the god-awful jack-o-lantern faces around Halloween."

Ms. 610 struggled against the duct tape again and tried to spit the gag out of her mouth.

"Shh," Slivers droned. He caressed her face and continued. "I usually use a knife to do it. But you're just too pretty."

He reached down to his pants and adjusted himself into a more comfortable position. 

His latex-gloved hands wrapped around the girls throat and squeezed. Ms. 610 writhed under his grip and fought to break free. 

He moaned aloud. "Yes, just like that," Mr. Slivers whispered down at her. He thrust his hips against the air.

She strained her wrists against the duct tape and released a muffled scream through the underwear stuffed into her mouth.

"It's okay, darling. You remind me of my first." He leaned down over her and kissed the air above her forehead. He thrust his hips again against the air and grunted.

His eyes widened as he found release.

Ms. 610 found release.

Her eyes rolled back in her head and capillaries burst in her cheeks and eyes, flushing her face with a beautiful rosy complexion.

He shook and shuddered over her. His breath caught in his throat and he clamped his hands tight around her breathless neck as the final washes of pleasure rolled through him.

He leaned back and looked down at her.

So peaceful.

He adjusted his pants and felt the sticky mess left over from his release. He looked down at the tiny garbage bags with disdain as he pulled his knife and saw from his bag.

He had work to do. Smaller bags meant smaller pieces.

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Derrick threw up after his long night drinking and wiped his mouth. His hands trembled and a roll of heat rushed over his neck and the back of his head. He stared down into the floating remnants of last night's hot wings, clouding the toilet water.

He narrowed his eyes and flicked a tiny chunk of food off of his lip with the tip of his tongue. Something caught his eye and Derrick looked a little closer.

At the bottom of the toilet, a small black square rested in the porcelain depth, heavier than the chunks of his upchuck.

He blinked and squinted at the small black square.

"What the hell?" he muttered. The explosion of sound from his voice made his ears ring. He reached up and clamped his hands over his ears. The hangover wasn't letting go easily.

After the cymbal-clash in his ears subsided, he resumed his study of the black square resting at the bottom of the toilet bowl.

His heart thumped heavy against his ribcage and he sucked a nervous breath into his chest. He looked away and plunged his hand into the toilet, and fished his fingers along the bottom until he felt the sharp edge of the small black square. He couldn't look; the hangover ensured his stomach stayed queasy. He choked back a gag and pulled the black square out of the toilet. He tossed it onto the counter next to the sink and washed his hands.

"What is that?" he muttered.

His words still slurred and sloshed around in his mouth, and a quick glance at his wristwatch told him that only two hours ago, he was 12 shots into a 25 shot night.

He wiped his wet hands on his pants and leaned down over the suspicious little square; details of the square became obvious.

A tiny, tiny circuit board lined one side of the square, and the other side played home to a myriad of raised silver dots.

"A chip?" he wondered aloud. He clenched his teeth and waited for a wave of nausea to pass.

He thought back to last night.

His thoughts immediately fell on a strange man from the night before. A man in dark glasses that asked Derrick for the time, then bought him a shot - and then just left.

Derrick stood up and swayed in the bathroom. He shoved his hand down into his pocket and ripped his phone out to look at it. The phone's screen was black. He turned the phone over and opened the back to look at his battery. The battery in the phone wasn't his.

He dropped the phone into the toilet and flushed, ignoring the clang of the cell phone as it swirled around and through the pipes.

Derrick's home phone rang, a high, shrill noise that aggravated the threatening headache Derrick tried so hard to ignore. He squeezed his eyes shut until the high pitched ring demanded his attention.

He dragged his hands off of the counter top and stumbled out of the bathroom to answer the phone.

"Hello?" he growled into the handset.

Derrick heard someone breathing.

"Hello?" he repeated. "I can hear you."

The phone call disconnected.

Derrick hung up the phone and walked back to the bathroom.

The tiny black chip was gone.

Someone knocked on the door.

Derrick jerked in surprise and looked down the hall toward the apartment's front door. He turned again to look at the counter where the chip had been. He searched the floor quickly, but didn't see the tiny black square.

Someone knocked on the door again.

Quietly, Derrick approached the front door. He held one damp hand over his heart to keep his ribcage from shaking itself apart. The door shook on its hinges as the person knocked again.

Derrick leaned forward and pushed his right eye against the peephole. A man in a gray suit stood in the hall.

Derrick did not recognize him.

He waited for the insistent man at the door to leave before he walked into his living room and opened his laptop. Immediately, he noticed the tiny green light on his webcam, telling him it was on.

The laptop clapped as Derrick pushed it shut and leaned away from it.

His home phone rang again. He ignored it this time and walked over to his living room window. He squinted out into the bright sunlight and looked down at the street below. A utility truck sat, double parked in the street below.

"It's Sunday," Derrick said.

Utility trucks only responded for emergency maintenance on Sundays.

His chest shook and he pulled in a pained breath. Across the street, he saw someone holding a camera with a zoom lens, standing in an apartment window.

Derrick jerked the curtains closed and walked over to the couch.

Someone shoved a white envelope under his door.

The phone rang.

The laptop hummed.

Someone knocked on the door.

Derrick leaned back on the couch.

Paranoia set in.

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Pops and snaps of Matthew Wilder's "Break My Stride" broke through the breaks in speaker static. The sound bounced around through the corridors, the halls and all the rooms in the crumbling apartment building. The chopchopchop of helicopter blades overhead provided a thudding cadence for the music.

Devin sat in the corner, propped against the cracked wall, the rough texture digging into his skin through his shirt. He nursed his broken, bloody legs.

It was only a matter of time, he knew.

The Enforcers were there.

He could hear the crackle of their radios over the buzzing speakers. He could hear the self-entitled sounds of their voices as they searched for the Unplugged.

That was him.

He saw the shadows approaching, falling long against the walls. He gripped his thighs and groaned against the wash of pain. His knees against an Enforcer's nightstick really posed no contest.

The long shadows of the Enforcers grew shorter, which told Devin his time grew short.

He swallowed hard.

Matthew Wilder's high-pitched voice broke through the speaker static, but cut out as the Enforcers' radios interfered with the signal. Black-clad officers stormed into the room where Devin leaned against the wall, surrounded by his blood and pain.

"Do you realize what you're doing?" Devin screamed.

The Sergeant, marked with a white band around his white arm, spoke. His voice cracked through the radio that passed his words through his faceplate. "You removed your earpiece. All subjects are required to stay plugged in."

"Just put me out of my misery," Devin urged.

"One last chance," the Sergeant said. "The earpiece is required by law. Plug in now or be terminated for non-compliance."

"The earpiece, it's maddening," Devin cried. "Just finish me. I've heard my last ad."

The Sergeant lifted his gun and fired a single shot, point blank into Devin's forehead. "Alright, Enforcers. Let's move out."

Devin's body slumped and fell down next to his earpiece, where it sat on the floor.

His chest heaved, and as his brain shut down, he heard one last crackle from his earpiece.

"Remember, subjects, wearing your earpiece provides advertising revenue for your country. Be a patriot. Wear your earpiece."

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Mary pulled her coat tighter around her body as she stepped through the door with her husband Paul. She wrinkled her nose and turned to look at him.

"Are you sure we should buy one from here? It's dirty."

Paul pulled his arm around her and nodded. "We could go to a shelter and pay for all the shots, vaccines and the adoption fee. Or we could just pay these backyard breeders and feel good about it."

"Feel good about it? Look how gross this place is."

"I know," Paul said, "but even if we buy from here, it's still technically a rescue. So yeah, we can feel good about it."

Mary shrugged.

A man with dirty, stringy hair walked up and smiled a gap-toothed grin. "You the folks?" he asked.

Paul pulled Mary closer and nodded. "My wife and I are a little concerned about your operation here."

The man laughed and held his hands out as if to show off the cages lined with urine stained pads and the stinking, unattended food bowls. "If it's health concerns you got, I can put those to bed. We got full pedigrees on every one here and we've got signed statements of health. All shots and vaccines already given. Dewormed, nails clipped, nicely groomed. Oh, and most of them are already house trained."

Mary leaned up to whisper in her husband's ear. "If we do this, we've got to get all the paperwork so we can have them registered."

Paul looked at the dirty man and then back to his wife. He sighed and looked at the cages around them. "Let's talk price. Your email didn't make any mention of it."

"Depends on which one you want. Smaller and younger are in high demand. Nobody wants the older scraggly bastards. You know how it is."

Paul frowned. "No, I actually don't."

"We got white ones, brown ones, black ones, little ones, big ones; hell man, we got anything you want. Short haired, long haired, we even got a couple of the ones with different colored eyes."

Paul looked down at Mary. "Do you have a preference?"

Mary looked up at her husband with tears in her eyes.

"I just want to give you the child you've always wanted."

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Devon stood at the doors and stared straight ahead. His eyes focused on the metal seam where the two steel doors came together. 

The corridor opened up with a hiss as the steel doors slid in their tracks.

Devon stepped through, flanked by four guards. Two guards followed on his left and two followed on his right. The five of them approached another door.

Once more, Devon stood at the doors and stared straight ahead. His dark eyes never shifted away from the steel doors and never truly focused on anything but what sat straight ahead. He moved through the towering doorway without hesitation when the doors hissed and opened.

The four guards followed wordlessly. Devon's steps fell in time with the guards. Perfect timing. Robotic. Practiced.

Devon walked the steel grated corridor, to a third steel doorway. A guard stood at the door with his rifle at the ready.

"Is it here?" Devon asked the guard.

The guard nodded and held his hand up. A metal contact plate tipped each finger of the guard's raised hand.

Devon lifted his hand and pressed his own fingers to the guard's fingertips.

"You are cleared," the guard said.

The doors hissed and opened.

Devon stepped through, into a giant room. He approached a pedestal surrounded by armed guards and men in bio-hazard suits. He looked at the small, rectangular item on the pedestal. The item sat under glass.

"What is that?" Devon asked. He eyed the suspicious item.

A man in a bio-hazard suit stepped forward. "It's a book."

"Book?" Devon asked. He glanced back at his guards.

"Ink on paper. It encourages free thought."

Devon stepped forward and looked down at the book on the pedestal. His dark eyes search for words on the cover, but he could make nothing legible out. He stepped back.

"Destroy it."

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"Why are they watching us?" Michael asked from the top of his crate. He preached his message in the park every weekend. No one usually stopped, but today Michael had a single listener. He still preached as if he stood in an auditorium, a coliseum; he preached as he would if he were to speak to the entire world.

"What do they want to achieve from constant surveillence?" 

Michael paused for dramatic effect.

"There are cameras everywhere, eyes in the skies, silent observers. There are cameras outside houses. There are cameras inside stores. The cameras used by the media are only another way they get their eyes on us."

He licked his lips and eyed his single listener.

"There are cameras in supermarkets, in banks and in police stations. There are cameras in police cars, in taxis and in buses. There are cameras on planes, in trains and on every vacation cruise you take."

His eyes locked with his single listener.

"There are cameras in museums, at the zoos and underwater. There are cameras following politicians, businessmen and executives. Cameras on cars and vans to map the world. The cameras are above the streets, at traffic lights and toll booths. There are cameras in computers, in phones and right in your face at the ATM."

He pointed at the single listener.

"There are cameras everywhere, watching everything we do." Michael paused, and then asked of his listener, "So why are you smiling?"

Michael's listener said, "I'm the guy that installs the cameras."

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Kevin propped his gun against his shoulder and stopped to glance up at the darkened sky. He squinted to make out the soft pinpricks of pale light from the first stars of the evening. The stars were barely visible to him.

The game warden would have Kevin's ass if he was caught after sunset trying to scare up birds, but Kevin didn't care. He broke the law to compensate for his lack of hunting skill. Four times this week he had walked this field and had yet to kill a single dove.

He considered leaving, but caught the softest rustle in the underbrush.

A smile slipped over his face and curled his lips up into a pleasant shape. He stepped in the direction of the sound and kicked at the grass and undergrowth in front of him.

A flurry of wings blasted up from the field as at least twenty doves took flight, each bird taking their own erratic, panicked path toward the sky.

Kevin jerked his shotgun up into position, with sloppy, unpracticed form. The shotgun's stock slipped off of his shoulder and his eyes searched the flurry of doves heading into the sky. His eyes locked on one in particular. It was a white dove, an unnatural color mutation in the wild.

He fired his shotgun, focused on the rare white dove. The pump action emptied six blasts into the sky. The white dove spiraled out of control.

Twenty feet away from Kevin, the rare white dove hit the ground with the soft thud of a feather covered body against dirt. Kevin rushed to the spot and looked down at the white dove. The creature cooed; it was still alive.

Kevin sighed. He reached down and grabbed the white dove by the head and lifted it. He snapped his wrist up and then down, whipping the dove like a towel to snap the bird's neck.

As Kevin left the field with his kill in his hand, he didn't notice that the stars were no longer trying to shine.

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Daniel stood in the line of wall washers. He stood in position four and had perfected his timing over the forty years at his post.

Wall washer. Position four. Wipe and swipe. 

His technique stood out as a practiced swing of his right hand brought the sponge across the white surface of the towering building. His left hand moved the rubber wedge to dry the wall. In his peripheral vision, he saw a Supervisor walking with a new hire. 

Daniel's lips twitched at the thought of another new hire on the wall washer line. He would have to slow down his technique by a half second on each hand to accommodate the new hire. He glanced down the street to observe the Supervisor with the new hire.

White buildings lined the street, towering above the line of day workers that kept the city clean and pleasant. The Supervisor and the new hire started back up the street.

Daniel returned his attention to the wall. He wiped the wall, then swiped the water and grime away. Each wipe and swipe brought a swell of pride in his heart. For forty years, he worked to perfect his technique and washed the city's walls. His dedication showed in each deliberate movement he made.

Wall washer. Position four. Wipe and swipe.

The Supervisor tapped on Daniel's shoulder. Daniel turned and smiled to the Supervisor, but his smile disappeared when he spotted the number four on the new hire's chest.

"Sir," Daniel said, "there's been a mistake. The new hire is wearing my number." Daniel thumbed his chest to indicate the number there.

The Supervisor reached out and peeled the number off of Daniel's plain white workshirt. 

Daniel's heart choked him; it turned into a lump in his throat. He looked down at his chest. Instead of black, his number was now pink.

"Sir?"  Daniel's confusion resounded in his voice.

The Supervisor said nothing. He pushed the new hire in next to Daniel and pulled Daniel out of the line of wall washers.

Daniel dropped his sponge and rubber wedge and wallked away from the Supervisor without any further instruction. He stepped to the curb and pursed his lips as he glanced up at the sky. Against the backdrop of the white buildings reaching to touch the heavens, the sky seemed white rather than blue. He glanced back to the line of wall washers and then fingered at the pink number four on  his chest.

Wall washer. Position four. Wipe and swipe.

He searched the street for the Human Resource department. He knew it was almost time. The Supervisor had pink slipped him nearly two minutes ago. 

A Human Resource van approached with a soft electric hum. The van pulled to the curb and stopped in front of Daniel. A worker, dressed in white, opened the van's sliding door.

Daniel stepped closer to the van. "Daniel. Wall washer. Position four."

The worker leaned back in the van and Daniel climbed in.

The Human Resource van drove away into the city, to do the dirty work required to keep the city perfect.

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"Whatever helps you sleep at night."

David stroked the cold polished metal of the hospital bed's frame. He looked down at the old man and smiled. "I have no trouble sleeping."

The old man struggled to inhale. "I know what you are. You're a Penny Pincher. You're one of the government's cost saving measures."

With a sigh, David stepped around the bed and adjusted the flat black tie looped around his neck. "The official position of the government is that the Penny Pinchers do not exist."

The old man fought for another breath and looked toward the closed door of his hospital room. "At least let my family arrive before you do it."

"They will be here soon enough," David answered. He eyed the readout on the medical equipment and placed his briefcase down on the old man's legs. He popped open both latches and pushed the briefcase open. He plucked two latex gloves from a small box inside his briefcase and pulled the gloves onto his hands. "You're dying. After an analysis of your cost to the taxpayers and other factors in your case, we've reached a decision."

"You're going to murder me," the old man said. The sound of his voice spoke more than the words. He accepted his fate.

"No," David said. He calmly opened another case inside his briefcase and uncoiled several wires. His latex shrouded fingers clipped the wires from his briefcase onto the wires leading to the old man's medical equipment. "Murder is a strong word. One I am not a fan of."

"What's it going to be, Penny Pincher? What's my obituary going to say?" Each word limped past the old man's lips, tripping on the tubes delivering oxygen blasts to his lungs.

"I don't write the headlines," David answered, preoccupied. He checked the readout on the machine and then from the old man's medical equipment. He pressed a button inside his briefcase and the medical equipment went dark.

"So this is how the government keeps its death squads disregarded as myth? Altering the equipment?"

"As far as this machine is concerned, sir, I was never here. In two minutes, an alarm will sound. Respiratory failure. They'll call it shortly after. I'm not involved."

"Not involved?" The old man coughed. "You're going to kill me."

"I don't kill people. I cut costs." David plucked a small black vial from his briefcase and screwed a tiny needle to the end. He gripped the old man's lip and pricked the inside of the man's mouth.

"So that's it?" the old man asked after David released him.

"That's it," David said. "You're just not cost-effective." He gathered his items and closed his briefcase.

Two minutes later, the alarm sounded.

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Just like any other day, Elias waited at the bus stop for the bus to arrive. While he waited, he sat on the bench and scraped a piece of folded paper off of his shoe. The small scrap of paper clung to a sticky spot on his shoe, probably the result of an ill-placed step onto chewed gum.

He peeled the paper away from his shoe and chuckled as the words on the outside of the scrap became apparent. The messy letters read “The Meaning of Life.”

The idea amused Elias, especially when he considered the absurdity of the meaning of life existing in a form concise enough to exist on such a small scrap of paper. It amused him even further when he considered life actually having a single, well-defined and universal meaning. He opened his hand and flicked the paper with one finger but the folded scrap stuck to his thumb. He shook his hand but the scrap stubbornly clung to his skin.

The scrap fluttered in the wind as he shook his fingers and looked down the street to see if the bus approached yet. The bus hadn’t come around the bend, so he took the time to unfold the paper. Elias laughed at his curiosity and unfurled the scrap's edges to view the words inside the folds.

He whispered words softly as he read, though the words were lost to the soft summer breeze. His smile disappeared and he stood up from the bench. His hand trembled and he closed his fingers to form a fist and crush the paper into a ball in his palm. The color rushed from his face.

Elias reached into his pocket with his free hand and pulled out his cell phone. He dialed his work number from the phone's memory.

“Hello? Boss, I’m not feeling well this morning. I won’t be coming in today.”

He disconnected the call before his boss had any chance to respond and he walked home.

***

Elias ran a cold bath and immersed himself. The lights in the bathroom were off and the door was closed.

He chewed his bottom lip as he considered the scrap of paper and the writing on the outside. The messy writing warned him. The meaning of life, it said. He knew now he had been ignorant to open the scrap of paper. He sat back in the bathtub and reached out to pick up the hairdryer on the sink counter top.

He sucked a deep breath into his lungs, turned the hairdryer on and opened his hand. The hairdryer dropped toward the silent surface of the bathwater, a silent reaper, destroyer of secrets.

***

Thomas sat at the bus stop and wondered why he had not seen Elias in weeks. For years, he and Elias had held casual conversations while they waited for the bus. He leaned forward on the bench and noticed a curious scrap of paper stuck to his shoe.

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Samson Little looked up at the skyscraper.

The machine sat inside the giant building. It sat beyond the revolving doors, past the lobby with the marble floors, and up the elevator to the forty fourth floor, but it sat there in its glass case waiting for him.

He looked down at the suitcase in his hand. The suitcase weighed as much as any suitcase containing 29,000 dollars should. With a deep, nervous breath he stepped through the revolving doors.

Inside the building, a massive lobby met him, along with a single guard in a black suit. The guard studied Samson for a tense moment and started across the lobby. Without a word, Samson followed the guard and listened to the sounds of their shoes against the floor, vaulting about the huge lobby. 

The guard stopped at the elevator on the far wall and turned to face Samson. "Sir," he said, "do you have the money for the machine?"

Samson tapped the briefcase against his leg and nodded. "It's all here. What do I do?"

"Use the elevator; use the machine." The guard stepped away from the elevator.

Samson stepped forward and jerked in surprise when the doors opened with the cheerful "ding." He boarded the elevator and turned to face the doors as they closed.

The elevator seemed angry as it climbed the many floors, and remained silent the entire way up. Samson listened to the soft whir of machinery and the purring of the stretched metal cable that secured the elevator. He thought it rather strange taking an elevator that provided no jaunty music or soft whisper of violin.

The elevator jolted to a sudden stop. The doors slid open and the ding failed to sound as Samson disembarked. He stood in a room surrounded by white support columns and dust-covered relics of an open office space. Samson searched the giant room; he surveyed the covered desks and other office furniture. Bookshelves still bore their books; the windows were still covered with industrial sized window blinds. The office could be rejuvenated with the pull of a few sheets to uncover desks, and a nice rag to clear the dust. Samson waited - for what, he didn't know - and adjusted his grip on the suitcase.

A loud, digital phone rang with the reverberating noise that demanded to be picked up. Answer me, that ring said. Answer me.

Samson searched for the source of the digital ring tone and spotted a small red cellular phone on the nearest desk. He wondered in passing how he missed the phone when he first stepped off the elevator.

The phone rang again and demanded an answer. Samson reached his free hand out and lifted the cell to look it over. He flipped the cover up and pressed the green talk button.

"Hello?"

"State your name and your purpose with the machine."

Samson glanced down at the briefcase in his hand. "Samson Little. I heard the machine creates inspiration."

"Samson Little. Bestselling author, last published work - 11.2 years ago."

Samson tried to question the voice on the phone, but the voice continued on.

"You were misinformed. The machine reads the current collective thought of humanity. It does not create inspiration."

Samson frowned. "If that doesn't create inspiration, I don't know what will."

The voice on the phone displayed its complete lack of interest in Samson's words. "You understand the terms? You provide funds for operation of the machine. You use the machine. The machine takes something of value from you."

"What will it take?" Samson asked.

Silence answered him.

"Hello?" Samson asked. "What will it take?"

The voice did not answer; the cell beeped to indicate an ended call.

Samson put the phone down and noticed a small piece of paper on the desk where the phone previously sat. At the top of the small slip of paper, it said "Receipt." He picked the paper up and shoved it into his pocket. The weight of the briefcase reminded him of the money he carried. He sat the case on the floor.

On the other side of the large room, a green arrow blinked above a small black door. Samson walked to the door and stepped through to the machine.

He stepped out of the room only moments later and looked at his hand. He had touched the machine; that's all it took for him to see the collective thoughts of humanity. And he had the best idea now. It burned on his brain, insisting that he write it. He smiled and whispered aloud, "You're back, Samson."

***

Samson sat at the computer and prepared to begin writing. The idea burned in his head and screamed to get out. He tried to start.

No matter the coaxing, his fingers would not move.

He tried to start again.

Still nothing. No words.

His heart pounded in his chest and a lump rose in his throat. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the receipt provided by the machine. The flimsy paper fluttered in his hand as he read the fine print aloud.

"In return for use of the machine, and access to the collective thoughts of humanity, you agree to our terms. Fully read all fine print before using the machine, as each price is different. To operate the machine, something of value is required. You, Samson Little, have nothing of value other than the things you create. The machine has decided on a price."

Samson released a choked sob from his throat as the final words on the receipt came into view.

"You will never write again."

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