SIN AND SACRIFICE

BY

Phil Emery

There was absolutely no question about it, every Friday during the September to June school year, we had to go to confession. The nuns didn’t ask, "Who needs to go to confession?" I guess in their minds we all needed to go. For how could one go a week without committing a Sin! At least a Venial sin. So, about Friday 3 pm all of us—grades one through eight—walked up half a block to the church. We followed behind the nuns in "columns of twos," as the army says.

I never came up with any mortal sins, as I had not committed murder, or stolen, nor had I coveted my neighbors’ wife, etc. In fact all my neighbors’ wives were more-or-less rather uncovetable, as in my young opinion, they were old bags.

However, since I had to go to confession (under the watchful eyes of the nuns) I had to have something to confess every Friday—except during our apparently sinless summers. It would have been "bad form" to tell the nuns I did not need to go to confession. No way I could go into the confessional booth and say, "bless me father, but I have NOT sinned." I developed a standard groups of sins. Most often I had cursed and used indecent language. Another often used sin was indecent thoughts (the number increased as I grew older).

My average confession went about like this, "Bless me father for I have sinned, my last confession was a week ago. I had indecent thoughts six times and I cursed and swore twice." Old Father Hard would then mumble my usual penance, "Say three Our Fathers, three Hail Marys, and the Act of Contrition."

Following the confession I knelt in a nearby pew and silently said the penance prayers. It was important to say them slowly, as the nuns were watching, and I did not want to appear to be in a "sinful" hurry. I usually knelt there for a minute or so afterward to make sure I had taken enough time so the nuns and others would not think me sinful and indifferent. However, if I stayed too long, they might think I had a lot of sins, and therefore had been extra evil! That was the "hell of it."

After going to confession and saying my penance, I always had a great feeling of relief. Relief not from having confessed, but relief the whole thing was over, for another week. Also, I could go home and play all day Saturday and Sunday, except for Sunday morning, when we had to go to mass.

During Lent we always had to sacrifice—give up something. I usually gave up licorice. The biggest sacrifice I recall had nothing to do with Lent. It was the Catholic "no meat on Friday rule," which meant not eating hot dogs at the Friday night high school football games. Those "damned" (and we were taught they probably were) Protestants would sit there and stuff those hot dogs down while I salivated. The only time I got to eat hot dogs was the Fourth of July or when my mother boiled them to have with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes.

Anyway, I have yet to commit a mortal sin. I have not been to confession for about 50 years. I guess I have accumulated at least 20,000 venial sins—mostly cursing, indecent thoughts, and Friday meat-eating. Also I stole some ball-point pens from the office. I estimate I need to say about 20,000 penance-prayers to balance things out.

Assuming I can say 10 prayers per minute, then I will need 2,000 minutes to say 20,000. There are 1,440 minutes in the 24-hour day. So, I can "catch up" by continually praying for about 1.4 days. Hey—I can do that! But then I also stole a watermelon from old man Hogan’s garden, and then there was the time . . .

THE END

911

The room was plain; the only decorations were a couple generic paintings and a tall plastic plant. A long countertop ran the length, supporting three computer monitors, keypads, and headsets. Pencils and pads lay nearby. Several office chairs on rollers sat alongside.

"See you tomorrow," a woman said, leaving the room.

Lindsey sat down in front of a monitor. She positioned a telephone headset over her ear, the mike in front of her mouth.

"Relax, Lindsey," Helen said, standing behind her. "Just remember your training."

"How many calls do you normally get on a Wednesday afternoon?" Lindsey asked.

"Maybe three. It’s a small town. Middle of the week’s the slowest. Friday and Saturday we have two operators on. Calls are automatically routed to the police dispatcher if our lines are busy."

The phone buzzed. The computer screen automatically changed to accept the incoming information.

"Go ahead," Helen said.

Lindsey pushed the answer button. "Nine-one-one."

"Oh my gosh," a man yelled, "I’ve got a Sasquatch outside my house!"

Lindsey saw the caller’s address come up on the screen. "Sir, I’m sending the police," Lindsey said. "What’s your name?"

"Mush-on-the-carpet, if you don’t hurry."

"Your name, sir? It’s important," Lindsey said.

"Ansonius Zaremba," he said.

Lindsey struggled trying to spell it on the keypad.

"Oh please, he’s tearing through the front door! He smells my fudge!"

Lindsey typed an event description on the computer, which was relayed to the police department. "Is there a safe room you can move to?" she asked.

"I said it’s a Sasquatch!"

"Antonio, go to the room in your house with the strongest door," Lindsey said.

"Ansonius. I’m Greek, not Ital . . . oh my gosh it’s huge--" Lindsey heard fast, muffled footsteps, and panting from the phone.

"This is unit seventeen," a patrolman said, "I’m en route to the nine-one-one." The words came from a speaker beside the monitor.

Suddenly, a man burst into the room aiming a pistol. "Which one of you is the operator!"

"She, she . . . she is," Helen said.

"Wait a minute," Lindsey said, hands waving. "I’m a trainee."

He shook the pistol at her. "You don’t try anything, I can hit a bumblebee on a cat’s nose."

"The Sasquatch is tearing down the bathroom door!" Ansonius yelled in Lindsey’s ear. "I’ll stack these towels in front of it, maybe they’ll slow him down. Tell my wife I love her--"

"Ansonius, can you get out the bathroom window?" Lindsey asked.

"What?" the gunman said.

"I have an emergency here," Lindsey said to him, covering the mouthpiece.

"I had an emergency last week," he said, "nobody even gave me the time of day."

Lindsey maintained eye contact with him, but was still able to type: Emergency 911 office send police. "What’s your name?" Lindsey asked him.

"You can call me Mr. P.O. I can’t even get help when I come here in person!"

"I’m huddled behind the shower curtain," Ansonius whispered. "The towels are working, I can see him through a crack, he’s smelling the fabric softener. Where are the cops!" he hissed.

"They should be there any moment, Ansonius. Stay on the line," Lindsey said.

"Talk to me!" Mr. P.O. demanded.

"All right," Lindsey said, "tell me what happened last week?"

"You stooges wouldn’t come get my lure out of the lake," he said. "And I lost it."

"A fishing lure?" Lindsey asked.

"Yes! It was tangled seven ways to Sunday."

"That was you?" Helen asked.

"Why do you think I’m standing here? Someone’s going to pay. It was a twelve-dollar bass lure . . . my best."

Helen’s eyes rolled up in her head and she slowly fainted to the floor.

"Helen!" Lindsay said.

"Forget her," Mr. P.O. said. "Why wouldn’t you untangle my lure?"

"You can’t call nine-one-one to undo your fishing tackle," Lindsey said.

"He sees me!" Ansonius screamed in her earpiece.

Lindsey jumped in her seat.

"I said don’t try anything!" Mr. P.O. shouted.

"There’s a man on the phone who has a Sasquatch in his house," Lindsey said. "Please, let me help him."

"A Bigfoot? No kidding? . . . Ask him what it looks like?"

"I got him--" Ansonius was breathing hard, the phone sounded as if it were moving. "I squirted him in the eyes with shampoo."

"Get out of the house, Ansonius," Lindsey said.

Mr. P.O. moved closer, trying to listen in.

"I can’t outrun him," Ansonius said. "My best chance is to hide." Something squeaked. "I’m under the sink," he whispered, "inside the kitchen cabinets."

"Maybe he’ll go back out the door," Lindsey said.

The sound of banging pots filled her earpiece. "Oh no, he’s come for the fudge!" Ansonius yelled. "I knew I shouldn’t have made it."

"Is there anything you can use to protect yourself?" Lindsey asked.

"Brillo Pads," Ansonius said. "But I’m afraid to get that close."

Mr. P.O. pulled the headset off Lindsey’s head. "Take this." He pushed the pistol into her hand, sat down, and slid on the headset. "What does it look like, man? Is it like a werewolf?" Mr. P.O. listened for several seconds. "Tackle it. Just jump on its back and hang on. You know what the National Enquirer will pay?"

Lindsey stood, backing up, shaking the pistol. "No! Quit telling him to attack it."

"This is a man thing," Mr. P.O. said to her.

"Step away from the phone," Lindsey said.

"Have you been deer hunting?" Mr. P.O. said into the phone. "Did you put that doe-in-heat scent on yourself? That stuff wont wash off for a month. Last year, when I was deer hunting--"

"Get off the phone!" Lindsey yelled.

"Just a second." Mr. P.O. slowly reached into his denim jacket and laid a sergeant’s badge on the countertop.

Helen began laughing on the floor.

Lindsey felt the empty pistol go limp in her fingers.

"I’d give her a solid nine-point-five, Ansonius," Mr. P.O. said. "A Sasquatch, a maniac with a gun, and a fainting woman. I think she passed."

THE END

IF ONLY I HAD ASKED

In the summer of 1988, I was living in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, working in the petroleum industry.

I had only been in the country for a month, and didn’t know a palm tree from a camel’s rear end, when one afternoon my supervisor came walking across the equipment yard with a frown on his face.

"What’s up, Keith?" I asked.

He shook his head. "You have to go to North Yemen this afternoon. They need someone to fill in for a sick guy."

"Cool!" I said. "Finally get to see some country."

"I’m sorry, man . . ." He handed me an airline ticket.

"Sorry?" I opened the envelope. "Part of being here is the chance to travel."

Keith studied me with an odd look on his face.

# # #

"So what’s got you flying to North Yemen?" the man sitting beside me asked.

"Oil-field work," I said.

A flight attendant came down the aisle, pushing a cart rattling with glass and metal.

"I thought I’d be the only Yank on the flight," the man said.

"Why’s that?"

"Because of the travel advisory."

My jaw went limp; I turned completely toward him. "What travel advisory?"

"Didn’t you talk to the American Embassy in Dubai? They’re advising all Americans to stay out of North Yemen, because of a possible civil war."

The flight attendant leaned over me. "What can I get you, sir?"

"Two bloody Marys . . . ," I said, "and make them doubles." I melted back into my seat. If only I had asked Keith why he was frowning.

# # #

Our plane arrived in Sana, the capital of North Yemen. Outside the airport a Bedouin dressed in a white robe stood holding a piece of cardboard with my name on it. He led me into the parking lot where a dust-caked four-wheel-drive pickup sat underneath some palms.

Sana was a typical Middle-Eastern city: the roads were rough, full of potholes; the buildings were all one and two story, mostly shades of white and beige; donkeys pulled carts down the streets; everyone was dressed in white or black robes.

As we bounced along, I noticed something vibrating out from under the driver’s seat.

Curiosity had me leaning over. An AK-47 . . . why does he have a machine gun under the seat?

"Not for you!" The driver’s sandaled foot came off the gas pedal and stomped the floorboard bedside the gun.

I sat back upright, and saw a Russian tank sitting at the traffic light in front of us.

"Do you have airplane papers?" the driver asked.

"Why do they have a tank in the road?"

"Do you have papers?"

"They brought a tank to check my ID?"

The driver slowed and a skinny army officer made his way to my window. A boy, who couldn’t have been more than sixteen, held an Uzi aimed from the hip with a sour look on his face.

I slowly arched my hips and pulled out my passport.

Minutes later, we left Sana, making our way down through the mountains. We swerved around a curve at seventy miles per hour as the driver slammed on the brakes, skidding on the asphalt, then accelerating again.

I held onto the door’s arm rest. "Can you slow down?"

"No," the driver said. He gassed the truck around another turn.

I felt my stomach drop. "Would you slow down, please."

He ignored me, his eyes glued to the road like a NASCAR driver.

"I said slow down!"

He glanced at me. "To slow down is to get shot. There are snipers in the mountains."

If only I’d taken a minute to call the embassy.

I looked out the side window; suddenly aware of every little nook and cranny in the landscape. "Can you drive any faster?"

# # #

Three hours later, we drove across a cattle guard between a tall chainlink fence and into a desert camp made up of small rectangular portacabins; surrounded by oil-field pump trucks, cranes, and other equipment.

A man in coveralls waved for us to hurry and get inside the compound. We parked and he came to my door.

"You the guy from Dubai?" he asked.

"Yeah . . . Joe." I offered my hand and we shook.

"I’m Tom," he said. "We’ve got a situation. It happened a couple hours ago."

"What?"

"A sheik’s wife drove her car into a village and the army soldiers noticed the registration was expired, so they confiscated the vehicle," Tom said. "To get even, two of the sheik’s followers hijacked an army jeep. When the sheik found out, he went nuts and told ’em to return it. But when they did, the army opened fire on ’em. So now the Bedouin tribes are going to war with the Yemeni Army."

I looked around and noticed a bunch of SUVs surrounding the camp.

Tom saw my gaze. "Bodyguards," he said. "To make sure no one starts any trouble inside the camp."

"How safe is it here?" I asked.

"This is perfect . . ." Tom grabbed one of my bags out of the pickup. "Tonight’s barbecue night, and we’re sure not going to be catching any jobs."

# # #

That evening, two dozen men gathered around the picnic tables and barbecue pit at the middle of the camp. There were Americans, English, and some Yemenis. We were drinking beer and loading paper plates with baked potatoes and beef ribs when Tom came running from a portacabin with a mobile phone. "Everybody get packed! The army’s air evacuating us out of the camp, the fighting’s getting worse--"

"Look!" Someone pointed to the horizon. The sun was just beginning to set as we made out flashes of artillery fire in the distance.

Plates of barbecue spattered on the ground as flip-flops and tennis shoes ran toward portacabins in search of duffel bags and passports.

Thirty minutes later, two helicopters landed and took everyone onboard.

I looked out the window at the fading desert camp and the army personnel carriers and jeeps making their way along the road beside it. If only I had a camera.

THE END

THE OMEGA WRITER

Neville pushed a shopping cart through the Office Depot. He stopped at a display rack of inkjet cartridges. He picked one up and opened it. Holding it toward the light of the windows, he shook it. "Dry." He tossed it over his shoulder, then opened another. "Gooey." He dropped it to the floor and opened a third. "Usable." He continued opening ink cartridges and dropping the good ones in his cart.

Neville pushed the cart down another aisle toward the copy paper. He blew the dust off the top of a stack and picked out ten reams of the best white. He moved the cart toward the checkout counters.

There was no one to stop him as he rolled everything out the front door.

Litter blew across the parking lot, not a car was moving. It was exactly the same as it had been on that day six years ago.

The sun was beginning to set. Neville glanced at his watch. "Oh no, they’ll be waking up soon!"

He ran with the cart to his Jeep and quickly threw everything in back. He jumped in, started it, and raced through the parking lot. He drove onto the street, swerving around the stopped cars.

Twenty minutes later, he was slowing in a downtown neighborhood. His home--the home he had chosen--was an unattached three-story townhouse. He skidded to a stop on the driveway and pushed the automatic garage-door opener.

Suddenly, two figures dressed in black jumped into the open Jeep. They grabbed at Neville’s throat.

The garage door opened. Neville gunned it, racing inside, then slammed on the brakes. The two attackers sailed forward knocking down the windshield, crashing over the hood, and hitting the garage wall.

Neville got out of the Jeep. The two men jumped to their feet and rushed him. Neville pulled a blade, which he had taken off a paper cutter, and began swinging it. The ghoulish figures retreated out the open garage door.

Neville saw them run toward a crowd that was fast approaching. He pushed the remote, the door began to close; with only inches left, a clump of bound papers flew under the crack. He picked it up. "Another contract . . ." He tossed it over his shoulder, then walked to a diesel generator and fired it up. He flipped a switch on a fuse box.

The outside of his building was instantly flooded with light. Neville could hear moans and cries as the mutants, dozens of them, shielded their eyes with the hoods of their robes, and ran into the shadows of the houses and alleyways next door.

Neville opened the elevator door and pushed a button, seconds later he stepped into the third-floor living area. Oil paintings, worth millions of dollars, lined the walls, along with priceless sculptures. One entire wall running the length of the apartment was a floor to ceiling library. Another wall was lined with antique desks and cabinets supporting several different computer systems and printers. His living-room furniture was made from the best imported leather, marble, and rosewood.

Neville put a CD of classical music into the stereo and turned it on. He poured himself a glass of wine from the kitchen.

He could hear the taunting from outside, down below. "Neville . . . Neville," they said his name with a sick whisper. Laughing behind it. Mocking him.

# # #

Six years ago the world was changed forever. A Mars’ rover had returned from the red planet with deep-soil samples; unlike anything brought back before. The laboratory analyzing them had no idea what they were dealing with. A bacterial organism that had been dormant and undetected in the soil began to multiply. Before the scientists knew what was happening, it had accidentally spread outside the lab and contaminated the entire country within hours, without warning. The plague was beyond biblical proportions, it consumed ninety-nine percent of all warm-blooded life within days. And as life ended, so did the organism.

The only known survivors at the time, in the United States, was a group of people holding a conference at the Greenbrier hotel in West Virginia.

The Greenbrier housed an enormous underground bunker. Built during the Cold War, it was intended to house the Washington legislature. The complex became public knowledge in the nineties, and at the end of the Cold War the hotel began renting the conference rooms to different organizations for conventions. There were several underground auditoriums, the largest accommodating nearly a thousand people.

The day the bug got loose, the bunker was full of literary agents attending the National Literary Agents’ Conference. Neville had been there too. Trying to get in and pitch a novel. He happened to be in the doorway when news of the bug reached the bunker and the twenty-five-ton hydraulic doors closed.

Ninety days later, he found himself clawing at those same doors, begging to get out. The doors finally opened after a reading of the atmosphere determined the bug was no longer present.

"Let’s do lunch sometime, Neville, I want to talk about your novel . . ."

Neville found a car and drove as fast and faraway as he could.

With all the writers and artists gone, there was no creativity left on Earth. The planet belonged to a handful of lost souls roaming its surface in search of meaning.

When the thousands of query letters stopped coming, the literary agents went insane. Within a year they had formed a dark, bizarre cult. They shunned all modern technology: automobiles, radios, firearms. Yet they worshipped word processors and printers.

They rounded up the few writers that had somehow survived and tied them to chairs in front computer keyboards, forcing them to write nonstop. When the material wasn’t mainstream enough, the agents would tie the writers to stakes and force rejection letters down their throats until they choked. That which was once figurative, was now real.

The agents already had weak eyes from reading all the time, that combined with the contamination of the food supply had damaged their eyes even further, making them light sensitive. Sunlight was blinding to them. Neville, however, had been smart enough to only eat canned food.

# # #

Neville approached the balcony overlooking the street. The harassing voices continued.

"Stop it!" He threw the wine glass, crashing against the French doors. He paused; breathing deeply. Then walked on, out to the balcony. Sandbags and barbwire were stacked even with the handrail. Bright floodlights lit up the night.

He could see the black figures scattering in groups, glancing up, shielding their eyes. "Neville . . . ," they said, smirking behind it.

He prepared to fire.

"Tell me," Neville shouted.

The agents moved out from the shadows like roaches, to listen.

"Why was Hemingway so great?" he asked.

Moans of pain shot through the crowd. There was crying and gnashing of teeth.

"Answer me," Neville said.

"It was the prose!" one of the agents yelled.

Tension lifted from the crowd as they consoled one another with the reply.

"Give me Michael Crichton any day," Neville said.

"Blasphemer!" Fists began to shake.

A movement from the corner of Neville’s eye. He spun. A black ghost jumped forward. It was Nicholas Sparks’s agent, hands raised to attack. She had somehow scaled the building and made it over the barbwire.

"Wait!" Neville said. His hands went palms up in front of him. "I have something for you."

"It better be good--" She paused, her pale face turning to a gruesome frown. "I haven’t had a sale in six years."

"It’s my opening line," Neville said. He cleared his throat. "Her . . . her lips tasted like honey; dripping from a soft strawberry. The way the sunlight lit her blond hair was like a diamond soul stirring through cream."

The agent’s eyes glassed over. "That’s . . . beautiful," she said.

Neville stepped toward her. "I have more." He suddenly pushed her over the guardrail, she bounced off the bushes thirty feet below and rolled onto the grass cursing.

Neville leaned over the sandbags, looking down. "You can dribble that syrup over pancakes for all I care."

When he raised his head, he saw a group from the William Morris Agency pulling a catapult down the street.

"Not these guys," Neville moaned.

They stopped in front of his building, forty yards away. Two of them worked at loading a kerosene-soaked ball made of compressed paper into the catapult.

"What do you want?" Neville said. "I didn’t query you. I’m not a celebrity, remember?"

"You’re the last writer," a Morris agent said. "If that doesn’t make you a celebrity, I don’t know what does. We’ve got your autobiography all planned out."

"Parasites--," Neville said. "You’re worse than the Mars’ bug. At least it was quick and painless."

"We promise . . . we wont ask for rewrites."

"Liars! Get out of my sight."

"We know you’ve written scripts. We’re not leaving without one!" Several of the Morris agents led two robed figures to the front of the group. An agent pulled back the hood on one of them . . . a shriveled-up, pasty Tom Cruise.

"I thought he was--," Neville began.

"Dead?" a Morris agent said, a smile of teeth from in back of the hood. "We pilgrimage from the Mecca, Hollywood. Anything is possible with plastic surgery. Now give us a script or face the fire."

"Have it your way," Neville said. "Spec script or shooting?"

The Morris agents huddled amongst themselves, whispering. "Spec," one of them finally said. "If it’s good, we’ll hire you for the shooting."

"Hang on." Neville left the balcony, and returned a minute later with a script. "It has a light-blue cover, I hope you don’t think I’m unprofessional."

"Give it to us!"

Neville threw the script down to the street. One of the mutants ran forward and grabbed it. He began screaming as if it were burning his hands. "You used three brass fasteners!"

"Give it to me," a senior agent said. He grabbed it from the other’s hands and began reading. "It’s a Western! You’ll burn for this!"

Tom Cruise screamed and ran away pulling out his hair.

The Morris agents lit the ball on the catapult and launched it toward the balcony. It hit with a splash of fire.

Neville ran inside for the extinguisher.

The other agents moved toward the Morris group. "Burn his hands and he wont be able to work!"

"We only need him from the neck up," a Morris agent said.

Neville put out the fire with the extinguisher. He addressed the crowd: "I have what you want."

A silence came over them.

"What you’ve desired from the beginning." Neville paused. "My life’s work," he said. "A story of love, betrayal, friendships, triumphs of the human spirit."

"Is there action and a three-act plot?" a Morris agent asked.

"Shut up," another agent said. "Film’s dead. We’re self-publishing now." The agent looked up at Neville. "See, Neville, we’ve brought the publishing world to you."

A group of people pushed a wagon onto the middle of the street. Two of them jumped up on it and pulled the cover off a huge printer.

"It prints as well as binds," the agent said. "With your manuscripts, we can publish on demand within hours."

"Who’s going to buy these books?" Neville asked.

"We’ll put you on the book tour. Granted you may only meet one person at a time, but it’s a start."

This is my chance to be rid of them forever, Neville thought. He walked back into the apartment and returned with a huge bundle of paper. "You asked for it. Here it is. Three hundred thousand words."

"A miniseries!" a Morris agent shrieked. "Find Tom."

"The best work I’ve ever done," Neville said. "All for you--" He threw the manuscript off the balcony; the papers separated, floating down in all directions.

The agents ran forward, trying to catch the pages, tripping over their robes, each of them grabbing sheets.

"It’s single-spaced!" one of them screamed. She fell to her knees, covering her face. "My eyes, my eyes!"

"There are no page numbers--," another said, and passed out backwards.

"No white space!"

It was true; Neville had printed the whole thing as one big single-spaced paragraph. It would take them months to figure it out. But instead of driving them away, something else was happening.

"Get him!" Another fireball sailed from the catapult and exploded on the balcony.

Neville ducked down to the floor. He noticed the burning fragments beside him; script pages from Waterworld and John Travolta’s Battlefield Earth.

"Shred him!" Now all the agents were rushing the building, pounding the garage doors below.

Neville felt the building shake. I have to get out. He grabbed a scissors, ran to elevator and got in. The elevator stopped in front of his Jeep as the garage door burst open under the mutant force.

Neville ran to the diesel generator and dumped the two ten-gallon fuel cans onto the floor.

The agents rushed in as Neville tossed a Zippo lighter on the fuel.

The agents screamed, recoiling away, pulling their hoods to shield their eyes from the blinding fire.

Neville got in his Jeep. Two agents jumped in, fighting in a blind rage. Neville managed to push them out and start the vehicle. He raced backward through the fire, skidding onto the street.

"Don’t let him get away!" The agents clawed at the sides of the vehicle.

Suddenly, one of them grabbed the steering wheel and spun it out of Neville’s hands. The vehicle whipped around as Neville pushed the agent off. The Jeep skidded sideways and flipped upside down at the entrance to a narrow alleyway. Neville flew out, landing hard against a brick wall.

Gas poured from the tank onto the ground.

Neville tried to get to his feet. The mutants were about to climb over the Jeep when it burst into flames. They ran backwards.

Neville stood up. My arm’s broken. He stumbled down the alleyway, distancing himself from the mob.

A robed figure stepped out of the shadows in front of him. It was the other person who had been standing beside Tom Cruise.

"Go ahead," Neville said. "Finish it . . ."

"Come with me if you want to live," she said.

Neville fell forward, almost passing out. He saw the face in the hood. "Kathy Bates?" he said, weakly.

"No, darling . . ." She picked him up. "Your biggest fan."

THE END

Note:  The following story was written as an exorcise.  We went around the table at a Twin Lakes Writers meeting and each person threw in a word; the challenge was to make a story out of them.  The words were:  intellectual, thunder, help, shadow, claustrophobia, passion, passes, volcano, blank, and AK-47.
 

An ocean cruise is intended to give one a chance to relax. Little did I know, the cruise I was on would more resemble the voyage of the damned.

The Twin Lakes Writers group had signed up for a literary cruise. A dozen best-selling authors were our hosts, along with prominent publishers and agents. Altogether, there were about five hundred aspiring writers onboard.

The trip took us below Alaska, then south to the Hawaiian islands.

The madness began on the evening of the fifth day. I was strolling the promenade deck beside the lounge chairs when I rounded a corner and ran into Phil and Nancy, standing one to either side of Susan, holding her up as she sobbed with a handkerchief pressed to her face.

"What’s going on?" I asked. "What’s wrong?"

"Oh, Joe!" Susan said. "It’s horrible! Just terrible!"

"What is?"

She gathered herself as best she could. "I was standing out here talking with John Grisom. I was telling him how I felt there was too much narrative summary in the courtroom scenes in Runaway Jury and he started arguing with me. I had to be honest with him." She blew her nose, then went on. "He started shouting, so I shouted back and then . . . then, oh, God . . . Phil came around the corner and thought Grisom was assaulting me, so Phil grabbed him and threw him overboard."

"He what!" I ran to the rail and looked over at the water rushing past.

When I turned around Nancy was staring at me. "We’re all in this together now, Joe, what’s done is done. Besides, I read Runaway Jury and there’s nothing intellectual about it."

"We have to get help," I said.

Thunder sounded in the distance. "No," a voice said. Then Mary Nida emerged from a shadow. "If we report this, it’ll be the end of our writing group for sure. We’ll be the scourge of the literary world. The group who killed John Grisom. No . . . we have to keep this whole thing quiet."

Phil glanced at his watch. "It’s time for our critique group. If we’re not on time they’ll get suspicious. We have to go."

I shook my head and took one last look out into the blackness.

"Don’t worry, Joe," Susan said. "With Grisom’s luck he’ll land on an iceberg and have four books out before any of us even get an agent."

Inside the conference room, champagne and hors d’oeuvres were being served to the fifty people present as David Dines finished reading a poem.

Sheri and Cindy approached me. The expressions on their faces looked as if Phil might have tried to throw them over the side as well.

"The fact that me and Cindy’s cabin is almost giving me claustrophobia is bad enough," Sheri said. "But it’s right next to David’s, and all we hear all night long is him laughing and working on that damn laptop."

A tremor went through Cindy’s shoulders. "He’s driving us insane."

"You know what they call a sailor swabbing the poop deck?" David asked as he walked over.

"We appreciate your passion, Dave, but the one-liners are getting a little passé," I said.

"A pooper scooper!" He laughed. "Get it?"

"I prefer it when you write poetry, Dave," I said flatly.

"At least I can," he snapped and knocked back a glass of champagne.

"I write poetry."

David clapped his hands. Heads turned. "People! People-- Joe says he’s written a poem." He turned to me. "Go on, we’re all dying to hear it."

I thought fast and cleared my throat. "Umm . . . Just a good ol’ boys. Never meanin’ no harm. Beats all I ever saw. Been in trouble with the law. Since the day they was born."

"That’s not poetry!" David shouted. "It’s the theme song from the Dukes of Hazard. You can’t call that your own!"

I shook my fist. "This is the last time you’ll mock me, Dines."

The crowd laughed as I slammed the door and stormed out into the hall.

"What’s wrong?" David Jardane asked, coming from the restroom.

"You still got your black ops connections from Vietnam?"

"Yeah," he said. "Why?"

"I want you to order me something and have it delivered to Honolulu."

"What’s up?"

"It’s the other David . . . this time he’s made it personal."

The ship arrived the following afternoon in Hawaii. Our group had arranged a tour of the Mau Kissano Volcano with Mary Higgens Clark.

We loaded into a sightseeing bus as David Jardane came running with a briefcase from a nondescript blue sedan parked in an alleyway.

"I got it," he said, out of breath. He handed me the briefcase and got onboard.

We were traveling along a winding seaside road toward the volcano when David Dines perked up on his seat and looked back toward the group. "What do you get if Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones fall into a volcano?"

Everyone sat with blank looks.

"Lava rock!" David laughed.

Others giggled and shook their heads. I sat far in the back stroking the briefcase, a bent smile on my face.

The bus arrived at the volcano, where we disembarked and began our hike up the hillside trail.

An hour later we neared the top. A waist-high fence protected onlookers from the vastness of the crater. The heat was almost too much to bear. Smoke wafted up from the bottom, several hundred yards below.

"I must capture this moment in words." David opened his laptop.

My teeth were grinding to the point of shattering. Do it, I thought, before he has a chance for another one-liner. I dropped to my knees, flipped open the briefcase and pulled out an AK-47 machine gun.

As I spun with the AK Susan formed a human shield in front of Mary Higgens Clark. "No, Joe! I know how you feel about romances!"

"I’ve got bigger fish to fry." I motioned to David with the barrel. "Get your butt on the other side of the fence and bring your laptop."

"No!" Mary Nida shouted. "Another death and the publishers will blackball us all!"

I backed David to the very edge. The ground crumbled behind him.

"Do it," I said. "Throw that laptop into the lava."

"But all my one-liners will be gone!"

"That’s the idea. Now get to throwing."

"Please. Allow me these last words." David paused, looking up at the clouds drifting by. Then began: "It’s not my poems that you hate. For great laughter they do generate. It’s all my one-liners. Though you knew you could find non finer. That have led to my demise. Very much to my surprise. Now I stand. Laptop in hand. Wishing there were some way you’d say no. To ending my career in this hellish vol-can-o."

My eyes filled with tears; from both joy and agony. I lowered the weapon.

Suddenly, I was tackled from behind by Mary Higgens Clark who took the machine gun, ran down the volcano, car jacked a taxi and barricaded herself in the campus tower at Honolulu University where she wounded seven students and after a twelve-hour police standoff was finally captured by a SWAT team.

The End