Even the end of the world couldn’t destroy free market capitalism.

It did, however, change how we did business and what most people considered worthwhile. Not to mention what we’ll tolerate from each other. If you happened to be one of those folks who got shunted to the future, or you’re just coming back to being within shouting distance of your right mind, I’ll make this recap as succinct as possible.

None of the religions called it right, not the Mayans, not the doomsday Christians, not ever Douglas Adams, and it also didn’t come in the form mass-media told us. No bombs, no unending heat, fire-baked trees, scorched grasses, and chard and blackened soil all bupkus. We didn’t get four horsemen, forty years of darkness, guy on a pale horse or St. Micheal fighting the dragon of hell. No frost giants or Midgard Serpent. Well... I suppose Ragnarok was kind of in the ballpark. Massive portals to other places opened up all over the planet, and a few elder gods came through and took a stroll across the contents. Oh, yeah, a couple came down from the moon. Millions died. Millions more mutated into things like tiny elder gods, only not so tall and not so scary, but still, taking time to get used to them. Millions more than that turned into blathering insane servants of the elder gods and, like lemurs, followed their new elderich masters back through the portals. The few million even more of us who managed to not die, not mutate, and not follow some elder god back through a portal to parts of the universe unknown were left with this planet where the physical trappings of civilization remained largely intact, just a whole lot fewer humans to make it run. Oh, and mutants. Oh, and magic. Oh, and odd environmental phenomenon floating around, but once we figured out what stuff was, it wasn’t that hard to avoid. Magic is cool. Not everyone has it, or can use it. A lot of folks don’t want to. It’s wild and unpredictable, you know, like it’s magic and not science. Sometimes technology is iffy, but that’s usually more amusing than dangerous. Most of the time the air is clear, most of the time...

June, at least I think it was June, the second June since the elder gods paid us a visit. Winds had driven heavy clouds of green smoke and over the 30,000 or so residents New Sactown. The perpetual green haze hanging in the air obscured the mountains during the day and the stars during the night. Everyone’s eyes watered and itched, and no one could stay outside for long, which sucked a bit because it encouraged mutant marauders to come raiding the crops just starting to grow. We also couldn’t fish. The green stuff wasn’t so bad in small bits of exposure, but spend a few hours outside and scales popped up on people’s skin. Spend a few hours out of the smoke, and the scales popped right off. Some days this process took less exposure, some days it took more. It made business rough for me. But... we what we gotta do to get by.
While most everyone in New Sactown sequestered themselves away after sunset, every night, I ride through the streets of New Sacramento on my bicycle, tacking playing cards to people’s doorways, protecting them from the nightmares that linger from Armageddon. You’d be amazed at how much people will pay or barter for a good night’s sleep, especially since things are straightening themselves out, and society is working toward normalcy again. It wasn’t what was considered, productive employment. I made out good through bartering, but for staying in the central city proper, I was at the mercy of my girlfriend’s family. They all contributed to the wellness of this new society work that helped the community as a whole with consistent and measurable work. Kat, my girlfriend, sewed. Her mother, who insisted everyone call her Mama or Mama Jackson, watched other people’s children while they worked. Vance, the younger brother worked the fields with grunt labor. Becky, Kat’s sister and youngest of the bunch, helped Mama Jackson. Me, I delivered dreams, which provided the family with certain luxuries.

During that June, I bundled up so I could keep making my deliveries. The patches of green bunged my nose. the heat clogged my lungs. My legs burned with the effort of peddling through that weird mucky stuff floating in the air. I missed my shorts and t-shirt. But I’d rather not have scales, so I wore sweatpants, motorcycle jackets, mask, goggles, boots, scarfs, gloves. Comfort be damned. I’d fight that iridescent emerald gas with every layer of clothing possible.

With a new batch of customers out by former Sac State University, my route took me past a blue house on J street. Someone had spray-painted “nogodNoGodNOGODnoGoDnogod” in glistering silver in line after line on the striped siding, almost like the lines of notebook paper. Every night around 3 am (morning starts at dawn for those of us up all night) I rode by an old homeless man who slept on a bench in McKinley park. He looked like he’d been a black man at one point, but now his his skin and hair were white. Not Caucasian. White. Like someone had sucked all the melanin out of him and pumped in paint. A scar ran like a battle-field crown majestically from cheek to cheek across his forehead. His right eye bulged, looking everywhere, even when I was almost certain he was asleep. He used a green duffel bad for a pillow and always had a a small transistor radio playing static on his chest. Strangest thing about him... the green mist didn’t seem to affect him. I saw him there every night, wearing nothing but a ratty old kilt and a Goonies hoodie, and not a single trace of those scales on him.
He looked familiar. Like I’d seen him before. I thought maybe we’d hung out at some of the same places before Armeggedon Day. I didn’t think too much about it. That way led to madness, and it never worked. If I just let the idea of him simmer in the background of my mind, I’d figure it out eventually.

At the end of my route, I’d take a bath in ice-cold water and then crash out, sleeping through most of the day. When my body naturally woke, I’d brew coffee, grab my sharpies, go to the chest of playing cards I’d collected from barter and raiding every Walmart, Target, Walgreens, (and queue Yule Brener) et cetera, et cetera, et cetera... and get to work for that night’s deliveries. I wrote the dreams on the back of playing cards. Sometimes I took them from my own dreams, but most of the time I just made them up. It didn’t matter which way I came up with the dream, if I put it on a door, everyone who slept in a bed somewhere in a structure attached to that door dreamed the dream I had written. It was a strange mix of cartomancy and empathic projection.

I discovered this power through such a crazy random happenstance. I was kind of a night owl anyway, and in the early days after the Elder gods, savaging at night was largely safer, well sneakier, than scavenging by day. One night, before I went out, I wrote a naughty little letter to my girlfriend and taped it to her door. That was before I had the bike, and so it took me longer to get around. When I got back, she told me she’d dreamed what I’d written on the card. We both blushed. After bit of experimentation, trial and error, we figured out what I was capable of. I also learned not to be too literalistic in what I wrote. My first customers were neighbors, and then word got around. Now I have sixty-seven houses I visit.

One time, Kat (my girlfriend) suggested maybe I also give out nightmares. As this happened after she got into an argument with a neighbor, I decided against it. Nightmares came easily enough, and the last thing I needed was to have the reputation of being able to cause them. That road leads to torches and pitchforks and being murdered when too many neighbors, or even strangers, go berzerk, blaming me for things that just naturally happen.

June went on, and I had trouble coming up with sixty-seven, brand-new new dreams every night. In the third weak of June, it became sixty-eight. For the sake of efficiency, I started reusing my dream cards, over and over, in rotation. That got me in trouble.

One night I found one of my clients waiting on the steps outside his house.

“Hello Peter. I’m not sure what’s going on. You’ve given me the Black Beard dream three nights in a row. I don’t know what’s going on, if you’re making a mistake or if it’s some recurring dream thing you’ve got going, but I don’t like it. I’d like a brand new dream every night, please.”

“Yeah. Sure. Of course.” I latched onto his words as a way to tap dance around the goof.

“You’re not the only one to talk to me about this new thing I’ve been trying out. Made a note of it.” I tapped my temple. “New dream every night. Got it.”

“Thank you.” He hobbled up the stairs and into his house.

I put the Black Beard dream back into my satchel, pulled out another at random, and stuck it on the door.

Baba Yaga, a wolf, and a child — which is you — walk into a bar on Mars. You took a SpaceCar to get there. Doctor Teeth and the Electric Mayhem are playing the penultimate show of their Flabbergasted Vagina tour, guest staring, Gonzo the Great and the Chicken Candy trio. You’re watching the Great One lean over the mic. That hooked nose makes him seem so much more beautiful live than on the show. You press against the stage, so close you can see the beads of sweat dripping from the band members. You don’t care that they are muppets. It’s Mars after all, Mars after the end of the world. Everyone has learned exactly what the fox says. Even the wolf. Heck, even Baba Yaga is here, so muppets sweating is no big deal. Gonzo and Mr. Teeth are both looking at the child — which is you. They’re waiting for you to belt some mad notes, but you have no mic. They lift you on stage, and now you know why muppets sweat. You’re a muppet. Baba Yaga is a muppet. The wolf remains a wolf, not a muppet at all. The stage lights are liquid heat on you. Sweat drips from you too. You grab a mic and join the song. Vocal cords vibrating. Sweat dripping. “Nice set, bone daddy,” Baba Yaga says at the end of the show just before she leads you backstage, to where her chicken-legged house awaits.

“Define irony,” a voice said, waking me from my sleep.

Kat’s heavy feet pounded through the living room of the one-bedroom apartment. Again, not caring that I’d been up all night, performing the duties of the most lucrative profession in the household. Maybe not the most socially acceptable, but definitely the most profitable.

“The guy who gives dozens of people dreams every night,” she continued, “can’t ever make it to bed.”

I stumbled from the couch to something resembling walking toward the kitchen.

She laughed. “Good morning, sleepy dreamy man.”

I ignored her. Tried to walk around her. She got in my way, so I circumambulated her enough times for her to get dizzy enough for me to avoid her.

“Peter,” she said. “We need to talk.”

She and I had different priorities upon my waking. With her, it was always problems, problems, problems. My problems and what we needed to do about them. My priority, my ONLY desire before anything for a swig of piquant taste of coffee sliding across my tongue to shake of the soporific heat of summer in Sactown. Once I’d consumed that magic potion brewed from the remains of magic beens, the priority became writing dreams on playing cards. Lots of dreams. On lots of cards. It always worked out better if I got to those while I still had the freedom of silence before Kat’s relatives returned at sunset. Otherwise, they would add their gripes to the list of problems I had to deal with. For some reason, they all thought these gripes and complaint about my problems rated higher on the priority list than getting my actual work done.

“Work,” I said. “Talk after.”

Once I achieved coffee, I went to my desk by the window.

The coffee was cold. I tried to pretend it was nitro infused cold brew from Starbucks. I almost succeeded. Most people didn’t have access to regular coffee, but one of my clients happened to work at a coffee warehouse before Armageddon Day, and it happened to be standing in the aftermath. That warehouse made one of the most powerful and respected people in SacTown. Picked up my pen and made a mental note not to duplicate her dreams.

“Peter...”

“Work.” I waved my pen and a card at her. “Later.”

I met Kat shortly before things went to hell, almost literally. We both liked to have lunch at the same Irish pub. Nice place, run by a couple of Irish brothers. Miss it. Anyway, we both saw each other there a bunch of times, eating lunch at the bar, alone, usually on Tuesdays and Thursdays. You see a person enough times in the same place, again and again, you get talking. As far as romances go, it’s a pretty good story, especially since before we said a word to each other we had a bit of a contest to see which of us could pay for the other’s lunch first. That went on a couple of weeks. Then, one day Kat scooted down to my end of the bar, and over our fish and chips, she told me about giving two hundred to a homeless dude that morning. She paused, and I tried to gauge her bullshit level. She broke the silence with, “In pennies.” Another pause, and then we erupted into laughter. All her curves jiggling and rolling in the rhythm of her laughter, making her the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen. We blew off work that afternoon, retreated to her midtown townhouse, and I melted into her, exploring all her dusky curves and folds through the afternoon and into the night.

Armageddon Day started the next morning.

Now... I’m not saying that our afternoon-into-late-night love marathon caused the end of the world, but you can’t prove it didn’t.

We forged our early relationship finding her family and bringing them together. Talk about intense. Luckily I’d filled the tank on my F150 the day before, so we managed to get around town better than most could. First we got her sister Becky, at her elementary school. Then, her brother, Vance, at his high school. Finally her Mama Jackson, who was at home. It wasn’t as easy as it sounds, but I don’t want to relive that day. A lot of people did what we had to do to get through Armageddon Day...and what followed. Unlike his mom and older sister, Vance was thin. Rail thin. His baggy cloths made him seem downright scrawny. He shared the dusky hue with his two sisters, while Mama Jackson had a rather fair complexion. Guess they got it from their father. Driving us all back to Kat’s place, I asked about Kat’s dad. They all looked away from me and didn’t say anything in that tone of silence that told me not to bring it up again. I’ve often wondered whether he had left them before Armageddon Day or if we were leaving him to whatever fate lay in store for him at the end of the world.

One night after Armegeddon Day ended, and we worked at figuring out the new normal, I sat on the steps watching the sunset. Vance came home and sat next to me.

Through the weeks we’ve been together, he only spoke to me when the ladies weren’t around. I don’t ask him about that. All in all, I’d learned not to press any of them about anything. They would share or not, and pushing for anything from them always led to silence at best.

That night, Vance put a cigarette between his lips and lit it with a shiny Zippo lighter. He, lit it like a pro.

“Your mom letting you smoke?” I asked.

Vance snorted. Little tendrils of smoke floated out of her nostrils.

“She ain’t here to stop me.” He flicked the ashes from the end and took a long steady drag.

We sat there for a while, looking up at the stars, alternating between making up new constellations and enjoying the silence. During one of the silences, a man dressed in raggy old cloths came shuffling toward the house. Even in the dark of night, his skin was so white it looked like he’d been dipped in bleach.

“Fuck off outa here old man,” Vance yelled.

The man kept coming toward the house. Vance grabbed a hammer I’d been using that afternoon to fix up a fence around the front yard and waved it over his head like some medieval warrior.

The raggedy man stopped, and muttered a quiet, “Please?”

Vance leaped down the stairs, screaming.

The guy fled.

Vance chased him down the block.

I sat and wondered about that. Vance’s reaction didn’t seem too excessive. The general consensus of those living in the center of New Sactown was a zero-tolerance policy of transients. If someone had a skill or could provide strong arms and a solid back, they’d find work and the budding government and constables would find them a place. Lots of places to stay. Not enough official constables to go on making sure squatters didn’t overrun us. Several groups of volunteer brute squads made the rounds, chasing folks off who didn’t belong. If not for my hard-working girlfriend and her family, I’d be one of those getting chased away.

A few minutes later, Vance returned and sat down next to me. His gasping breath sounded like a bellows, and he rested the hammer across his knees.

“How about tomorrow I stay home and protect my mom and sisters,” he did not look at me as he spoke, “and you go find some way to contribute.”

I didn’t want to deal with his drama and attitude that night, so I went back inside. At that point, I walked a tightrope wire of nerves. Linda decided we’d divide the townhouse into girls’ room and guys’ room. She had some old-fashioned sensibilities, and so Kat and I melted together only in the rare moments when everyone else left. Twice so far.

Inside, I found Kat still cleaning the kitchen from dinner, leaning into the counters and scrubbing dishes. After a few moments of staring at her, she looked back over her shoulder at me. Her eyes sparked, and she gave me a coy little half-smile, the one that stabbed right into my chest and shot down into my crotch. She looked so good, I wanted to something special for her, something to remind her how much I adored her even though we hadn’t gotten to have much time too... Only twice.

After she went to bed, I searched through the townhouse trying to find something, anything I could use to make some cheesy artsy-craftsy kinda present for her. In a desk drawer, I found an odd collection of mismatched dice, cards, and other game pieces. I found the queen of hearts and wrote a naughty little poem on it about us in a fantastical lovemaking session on a bed of rose petals. I taped it to her door.

Okay, so luckily she found it first and not her mom or sister. I hadn’t really thought the whole thing through. And luckily, she had the dream, but if the dream had gone to Mamma Jackson or Becky instead, I don’t think I could take the blame for that one. I had no idea I could do such a thing.

The next night, I gave her another dream. I also gave Vance a dream. The night after that, I gave them all dreams. In the morning, they told me they’d all gotten the dreams. More than that, each one of them had the dream I’d written for them. Linda hugged me I decided that Vance could stay home. I had something unique to offer in this new world. I got two clients on that first day.

You are walking down a dark alley, alone. You are headed to a restaurant, an exclusive one that doesn’t advertise. You have instructions on how to find the door, but you don’t quite understand them. You keep looking at the letters on the paper in your hand, but you can’t read it. You’ve forgotten how to read, and you need a password to get in. The password is is on the paper. Whoever gave you the instructions forgot to Teach you how to read. “Excuse me,” you say to the man you see behind the dumpster. “Can you read this for me.” You never doubt that this man will know how to read. He comes out from behind the dumpster and you almost lose your mind. It’s the Great One himself, Wayne Gretzky. Back before the end, you worshiped the ice he skated on. Now he’s going to help you get into the restaurant by giving you the password. “Yeah,” he says, “Just a second.” He hacks at something behind the dumpster with his razor-sharp hockey stick. You crane your neck. He severs Michael Jordan’s upper-most vertebrae. Next to Jordan you see Joe Montana, Babe Ruth, Mary Lou Retton, Tiger Woods, Dale Earnhardt Jr. All with severed vertibrae. Gretzky takes the paper, looks at it, and says, “Anti-contrarianism.” You smile and say thank you. You ignore learning that The Great One is a sports superstar serial killer. Just like you ignore the fire he’s starting in the dumpster. Partly because of Wayne Gretzky's elegant loquacity, bus also because you’re getting into the poshest restaurant in the world.

Three weeks into the Summer of Smoke, as we called it after the fact, I sat at my desk, staring at the playing cards scattered over my desk, and twirled a sharpie in my fingers. Every day, thinking up new dreams became harder and harder. Some days I didn’t come up with any at all. I stared at the graph on the wall next to the desk indicated. 173 dream titles on the Y axis. 57 client names on the X axis. Dozens and dozens of boxes filling the paper. Some blank. Some with little black X’s. Each day I marked in more and more X’s. Especially with more and more days where I added new clients to X and more and more days when I didn’t add new dreams to Y. Before settling into the couch after coming home that morning I had promised myself I’d add at least two more entries to Y. An hour of alternating between looking at the window, scanning the list of dream titles hoping for inspiration, and doodling chaotic scribbles on a piece of paper had resulted in no new dream ideas.

The door to the apartment opened. Kat came in. That entrance surprised me. Mamma Jackson usually held Sunday afternoon family picnic as sacred. She went on and on about how she wanted to keep at least one family tradition alive form before. I only managed to get out of picnic day due to my wonk work hours.

A man followed her. That surprised me more. He was Middle-aged, sallow-skinned, balding, rectangular-rimmed glasses (a rarity in the post Armageddon Day world, or at least Sac Town), and wearing a suit that might have been top of the line once upon a time. Kat had two scales on her right forearm, one on her right cheek, and one on her forehead above her left eye. The man had only one visible scale, right at the edge of his fading hairline on the top of his head.

“Hey,” Kat said. “This is my boyfriend, Peter. Peter, this is James McRidge. We met today at the park. Other families have started having picnic. He’s trying to get a regular newspaper started.”

“Huh,” I said.

Looking back and forth it took me a moment to realize I’d been alone all afternoon. I didn’t know how I felt about that.

“Hi Peter,” James McRidge said.

I hadn’t decided if he was a “James” or a “Mr. McRidge” so my mind put it all together.

“Hey,” I replied.

“Kathrine tells me you’re a bit of a writer,” James McRidge said.

He flopped down on the couch. I forcibly smothered the desire to make any reference to McRib sandwiches and how they might be responsible for the straining of seams, buttons, and belt of his suit. How could anyone gain weight after Armageddon Day, especially that much. Even Kat had thinned out a bit.

“Yeah. I suppose.”

“I’m looking for writers,” he said.

“Oh. Ah. Um.”

This felt almost, but not quite, like one of my dreams. Nearly everyone knows the dream of being late and unprepared for a big test. The spontaneous job interview transformed this from the old cliche into something I could work with.

“One second,” I said.

I turned back to the desk and scribbled some notes. Some bits that I could use to grow something for my Y column. Now to get rid of McRidge and Kat in an orderly fashion so I could transform those notes into dreams for my customers.

“What’s up?” I asked without completely looking back at them.

“I told Mr. McRidge about you,” Kat said. “He’s interested in having you as a staff reporter for a newspaper he’s starting. It’ll get you out of the house, into the community. You can stop the dream thing so you can sleep nights again.”

“Huh,” I said.

The dream thing.

“You guys talk,” Kat said. “I’ll make coffee.”

She left us alone in the front room.

“You have coffee?” James McRidge.

“Yes,” Kat called from the kitchen, raising her voice over the hand-cranked coffee grinder.

“Peter is such a great writer. One of his readers from the dream thing pays him in coffee.”
The dream thing.

She never made me fresh coffee in the afternoon when I woke up, even though the dream thing, my dream thing brought the coffee into the apartment in the first place.

“Kathrine tells me you wrote for the News and Review before Armageddon Day,” James

McRidge said.

“Yeah. For a couple years.”

“Awesome sauce.”

Jeez... Was that a thing again? Or still? I’d hated that expression before the end of the world. Some things needed to remain dead.

“I guess.”

“Modest. Coolio. I got you.”

Coolio? Ugh...

I envisioned relic slang terms from past eras that could have died their necessary deaths if not for this guy being a one-man preserve hoping that by using them he could return them to common usage again. A montage of days and weeks and months and years of him checking in on my progress of this story or that article ran through my brain. Far out. Groovy. Tubular. Radical. Bitchin. (Okay, that one wasn’t so bad.)

“Was that what you were doing just before Armageddon day?”

Yes. But I didn’t want him to know that. I wanted out of this interview and he’d given me the ammunition I needed to blast it to smithereens.

“No, sir.”

“Why’d you leave?” he asked.

“Oh, I didn’t,” I said in my most nonchalant tone. “I got fired.”

James McRidge sat up straighter. “May I ask why?”

“Sure.” I twirled a sharpie with my fingers. “I started making shit up.”

James McRidge chewed his lower lip and his nose twitch so much his glasses trembled. I thought they might fall off.

He looked at me, eyes squinting and face scrunching, in the way people do when they know they heard you just fine, but they don’t want to admit they did.

“Excuse me. Made shit up?”

I nodded and went back to doodling.

“Sactown was pretty dull back then. Boring. A yawn fest. Still, I had deadlines. Got yelled at if I didn’t make them, despite nothing going on worth writing about. So, I made some shit up. And it worked. The longer it worked, the more weird and outlandish shit I tried to get past the editors. That lasted months longer than I thought it would.”

“Interesting,” McRidge said. “Well, maybe we’ve got enough interesting things going on to keep you interested in relating facts. After all, it’s a brand new world out there, with new and mysterious things going on each day.”

I shrugged. “Even the bizarre gets mundane after it goes on long enough.”

“Well, you never know.” McRigde came over to the desk. “Think about it. Your dream business is really cool. Giving people comfort. It’s good, really good. I just think you have far more to offer New Sactown than that.”

He reached into his pocket and set a small, wrapped package on the desk next to me.

“Here’s something I picked up recently that you might find interesting,” McRidge said. Then, he called back to the kitchen. “Thanks for the coffee, Kathrine. It was a rare treat.”

McRidge left. Seconds after the front door closed, Kat stomped out of the kitchen

“What the actual fuck, Peter Thomas?”

She only used my middle name when I’d done something to get her to stand with her feet wide, arms folded under her breast, and breathing so hard through her nose, in and out, that it sounded like the kind of series of sniffs people make when trying to locate the source of the rotten smell in the house. She didn’t understand why this tickled me so much. I’m only vaguely aware of having once read a book where that had been a thing. Don’t remember much else, but that stuck with me, especially as Kat did that more and more over the weeks of the Summer of Smoke.

“That went better than I expected,” I said. “I feel like some fresh coffee. You started a pot, right?”

“Don’t you want more?” Kat asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’d love more coffee. Especially hot coffee for once.”

I got up and went into the kitchen. The aroma of java filled the room, I drew in a long, lingering inhalation through my nose that was completely unlike the rapid-fire sniffs Kat made. That gave me a moment of sweet, blissful transcendence before Kat’s voice brought me crashing back to my post-Armageddon Day life.

“I meant more than your life now.”

I poured coffee into a mug.

Without facing her, I asked, “More than what, Kat?”

“Christ almighty, Peter Thomas,” Kat shrieked. “How many times have we talked about this?”

I held the mug of coffee in both hands. The warmth seeped through the clay and into my palms. I let the steam rise into my nostrils for a moment, then took a drink. Savored it. Swallowed. Warmth all the way down. Settling into my stomach. Centering me. Brining my resolve to completion.

“You mean, how many times have you talked to me about this? I don’t seem to remember saying much in those previous conversations.”

She stared at me for a moment. Her mouth opened and closed. She blinked. I had never stood up for myself before, just made non-committal grunts and noises until her interest in nagging at me gave way to something else. Her continued silence seemed to indicate some difficulty in processing this break in our pattern. The hall echoed with her footsteps when she fled to her bedroom.

I stayed in the kitchen, leaning against the counter and finished the coffee. The whole pot. I listened to Kat’s sobs from the first sips, through the second cup. Sometime during the third cup, she cried herself out. I poured a fourth mug and looked outside as I drank it. The old, albino black guy shuffled down the street. I drank and watched him until he turned the corner at the end of the block. The floor of the kitchen creaked. I the last dregs of my fourth mug and turned around. Kat stood just inside the kitchen, eyes puffy, nose red and shiny.

“Why are we still doing this?” she asked. “Why are you still here?”

I kept eye contact with her, something I never did during a fight.

“Did I ever tell you there’s this homeless man on my route? You know of the dream thing.”

She glared at me. “You’re changing the subject.”

I maintained eye contact.

“I’ve seen him around the house a couple of times. The first time wasn’t on my route. I first saw him pretty soon after Armageddon Day ended. Your brother chased him off.

“What’s your point?” She asked.

I finally broke eye contact and put my coffee mug in the sink.

“He’s out in the smoke all the time, and he never gets the scales. Not ever. He listens to an old radio. Nothing on it but static. He’s on the same bench, almost every night, listening and staring into the sky or sleeping.”

“What. The. Fuck. Is. Your. Point. Peter.” Each word an attack, fired like a bullet. Each a demand.

“I don’t have a point, Kat,” I said. “None of us have a point. We’re just here, living in the remains of the world that’s lost its point. Even though we have this apartment, Armageddon Day made us homeless. Or, worse than homeless. Trapped. That albino black guy has more freedom than we do. He can go where he wants when he wants because, for some reason, the smoke doesn’t affect him. The guy has a scar across his forehead. It’s like a tattoo to commemorate some great moment of his life. Was in a fight, an accident, some strange experiment from a mad magical scientist of the new world that makes him immune to the smoke?”

“I just don’t understand you,” Kat said. “Why are you so fixated on the dream thing?”

The dream thing.

The floor creaked again. I didn’t need to turn around to know she’d gone back to her bedroom.

Outside, Vance ran through the view outside the window, heading in the same direction as the enigmatic homeless man.

I looked at the package McRidge had left. The brown paper taunted me. I didn’t want to open it. The thing symbolized Kat’s scheming to get me out of doing the dream an into something she thought was better, more respectable. I should throw it out the window or burn it. My mind kept whispering, get rid of it. Otherwise, the obligation to consider talking to McRidge again would linger in the back of my mind.

“Screw it,” I said, and ripped it open.

Tarot cards. Nice ones. The images of the was gorgeous. Art deco in shades of blue and gray, with the occasional red—scarlet and blood—for highlights and accentuations. The control of the lines and curves in each of the cards contrasted with the chaos and random oddities of the world after Armageddon Day.

Yeah. This was a bribe. And a good one.

I opened the bottom drawer of my desk and buried the deck underneath all the random crap I tossed in there that I thought I might need someday, but usually just forgot about. Like those Starbucks gift cards.

Because even the end of the world can’t stop free market capitalism, someone started up a Starbucks. You and your best friend are talking over Irish Coffees, because business have no regulations after Armageddon Day. “I’m moving to Europe.” Your heart sinks. You guys have been friends since second grade. “Why?” He shakes his head. “The Djinn in my house fulfilled all his wishes. He’s officially off my clock, and I’m the last one with any wishes left in the house. We’ve got to take care of everything ourselves now. How many wishes you have left?” You shrug. Your spouse is the one keeping track of those details. You’re pretty sure you have quite a few left. Your seven kids haven’t used their wishes yet. Neither have your sister and mother. You all have the plan to wish for more rooms to get more roommates once the wishes start running low. “We’re never going to see each other again.” He shakes his head. “We’ll keep in touch. They don’t bother with Djinn over there. Every house has a full compliment of fairy servants, including owl messenger.” Something about that makes you think he’s got some of his source material mixed up. But regardless, no one gets across the Atlantic. Not any more. Not even owls. Then you jump out of a SpaceCar. You’re skydiving with him, tandem, over the maelstrom that is the Atlantic. He is behind you. He is huge, so much bigger than you. The lightning around you is effulgent. You’re both laughing. “This is amazing,” you both yell together! Through the clouds and lightning below, you see a massive squid, waiting... waiting... waiting... And the barista calls your next order ready. You take it home. A wish is waiting for you. You can keep your friend from leaving.

A week after Kat brought the McRidge guy to see me, I sat at my desk trying to come up with a new dream for my rounds that night. The green smoke had been clearing up nicely, which was good all around. However, three days had passed without an idea for a new dream, and it looked like I was heading for a forth. Not really all that great. Still, it was a good trade off. Up until then, I’d been getting more and more scales each night on my route, and they took longer and longer to pop off.

In the midst of wondering about smoke and scales and facing the looming existential dread of not getting any more dreams, someone pounded on the front door.

Kat got up from playing monopoly with Becky. I gave her only a small bit of attention. The better part of my mind wandered about the writing of dreams, the old man on the bench, the green smoke, missing sex with Kat, Vance’s escalating attitude toward me, and how much I wanted a hot cup of coffee. If I lived on my own, I could have hot coffee whenever I wanted.
The beginning of the conversation droned on until I heard Kat’s tell-tale stalling, “uuummm,” followed by, “My mother?” She only ever used that tone when something really worried her. Becky stood up from the game and headed to the back of the flat. Sighing, I pushed my chair back, stood up, and walked to the door to save my girlfriend.

Two Sactown constables stood on the porch. Both were white. Their uniforms reminiscent of old-world police uniforms, only with over-sized shirts pulled over chainmail. The elder of the pair had a revolver on his hip and carried himself with a confidence that made me think he might have been a cop back before Armageddon Day. The second constable was younger. He had a shotgun on a slung under his left arm and looked about as if waiting for something terrible to happen at any moment. Both held hefty billy clubs in their right hands.

“Good afternoon, sirs,” I said. “What can we do for you?”

“I’m Constable Clark,” the older said. “This is Constable Daniels. We need to speak to the mother of Vance Jackson.”

“Hey,” Constable Daniels said, “Aren’t you the dream guy?”

I nodded. “Yes, sir. What’s this about?”

Daniels started, “We found—”

Clark held up his hand. Daniels made an expression as if he’d swallowed warm, flat beer when he’d been expecting whiskey on the rocks.

“Found what?” Kat asked. “Found who?”

“I’m sorry, miss,” Clark said. “We need to talk to your mother before we can say anything.”
I put it together at that Vance was in some kind of trouble. He hadn’t been around all day, and he was usually home well before I got ready to head out on my route, “To protect my family while you’re out, ya know?”

Kat’s hands shook. Her shoulder’s trembled. She leaned against the door frame and made little gasping noises as she worked her way toward hyperventilation.

“Constables,” I said, “can you at least tell us if Vance is alright. Please? Give my girl, his sister here, that much.”

Daniels looked at Clark. Clark looked from me to Kat and then back to me. His mouth tightened, and he took a deep breath.

“Yeah okay,” the older constable said. “He’s not hurt. We just need his mother...”

And that’s when Mrs. Jackson came into the main room. She looked less haggard than normal, but then, since Vance hadn’t been around, he and Kat hadn’t had their afternoon fight, which, in turn, meant that Mrs. Jackson hadn’t had her afternoon fight with her son. I don’t know how long those went on. I always left for my route just about the time they got to the point their voices carried through the walls enough for me to make out most of the words.

“I’m Genevieve Jackson,” Mamma Jackson said. “What’s this about my son?”

“I’ll need you to come with us Ma’am,” Clark said. “We need you to identify some people for us.”

Mamma Jackson looked back and forth between everyone there: first me — which I found strange, then Kat, Becky, Clark, Daniels, then back at me.

“Can you—?” Mamma Jackson asked.

“I’m afraid it has to be you ma’am,” Clark said. “The situation is, um,” he glanced toward the ceiling, looking for a word, “complicated.”

Not a great word, but safe.

“I just don’t want to leave my daughters alone,” Mamma Jackson said. “Peter has a job to get to.”

“It’s alright,” I said. “I can watch them.”

“No,” Kat said. “We’re a family. If it has something to do with Vance, we should all go. Is there a problem with that Constable?”

Clark’s face tightened in consternation. I really wish I knew what moral struggle waged in his mind. Well, one side of it was about whether or not to let everyone go. But, what was the other side?

“One moment,” Clark said.

He gestured toward the street with his head. Daniels followed him down the steps and into the middle of the street. They spoke in hushed tones, occasionally looking back up at us.

“Tell you what,” Clark said. “Constable Daniels will stay here with your younger daughter, and the three of you can come with me.”

“I want to go to,” Becky said.

“No. You stay.” Mamma Jackson’s tone struck us all like a knuckle thump to the forehead and let us know she had a zero bullshit tolerance on that night. She looked at Constable Clark.

“Let’s go.”

Clark led us through the streets. The green smoke got thicker and thicker the further we followed him away from the house. Despite the heat that still lingered in the summer evening, we all wrapped scarves around our faces and pulled hoods up over our heads. I slipped my gloves on while Kat and Mama Jackson stuffed their hands into their pockets.
A few blocks later a scene like something out of one of my dream cards came into view. A crowd faced off against five constables who stood straight, weapons at the ready, though none pointed at anyone in the crowd. Two other constables stood in the middle of the street. Peter was with them, handcuffed. A sheet covered a body just behind them. I didn’t know for certain that the sheet covered a body, but it wasn’t that big a leap of logic.

Mama Jackson gave a pained cry of surprise and despair. She took one step forward and both Kat and I grabbed one of her shoulders. No need to add hysterical mother to the already tense situation.

“It’s going to be okay, Mama,” Kat said. “It’s going to be okay. Let’s see what happened. Just let them tell us what happened. It’s going to be okay. We’ll figure it out. We’re alive and safe and everything is going to be okay.”

I gave Mama Jackson’s shoulder a squeeze. “Do you want me to see what’s going on?”

Mama Jackson looked from me to Peter and back to me. She nodded.

“Is that okay?” I asked Constable Clark. “She’s here. Let’s keep her out of the center of things.”

I craned my neck at the crowd. “No telling what might set them off.”

Clark nodded. Together we walked past the crowd. I heard someone say, “Hey, isn’t that the dream guy?” Never realized I was that much of a celebrity.

When Clark and I reach where Peter knelt with his hands cuffed behind his back. Peter’s face was pretty banged up. He had a swollen lump on his forehead above his left eye and scrapes on his nose, cheek, and chin.

I scanned Peter’s face. Something seemed wrong. Not really wrong, more like... different... in a one of these things is not like the other kind of ways. It felt like something I should get right off but for some reason, my mind couldn’t put the pieces together. Was it because he was a bit bruised up? Not surprising considering the circumstances. I’d be more weirded out if the constables hadn’t roughed him up. A scenario of Peter not resisting the arrest, at least a little, popped into my mind, and my mind rejected the scenario.

“Sir,” Constable Clark said. “Sir? Sir!”

My revelation stalled out my brain making the connection that I might be The “sir” to whom Clark was addressing.

“Sorry," I said. “What were you asking?”

“You know this young man?” Constable Clark gestured toward Vance.

I nodded. “His name is Vance. He’s family. Well. He’s their family. I’m his older sister’s boyfriend. Can you give me a minute with him?”

The constables looked back and forth at each other. Finally, Constable Clark nodded.

I took a knee next to Peter. “How are you holding up?”

Peter didn’t bother looking at me when he snarled a, “Fuck off.”

“Look.” I kept my voice even and steady. "I know you don't like me," I didn't add my feelings about him. A little honesty could help here, but too much honesty could set him or the constables off. I didn't want to find out how bad things could get after that. "I'm here to help. Really. Cut me a little slack tonight and go back to hating me tomorrow."

We looked each other eye to eye. I glanced over my shoulder to Mama Jackson and Kat. Peter looked that way as well. His Mother leaned on his sister. Tears streaked Mama Jackson's face, but otherwise she held it together.

I turned back to Peter. He looked at me. I shook my head.

“Don’t,” I said.

Peter glared at me harder.

“Serious, don’t look at me,” I said. “Look at them. Look at your family.”

It took about ten seconds, but Peter relented and shifted his gaze to them.

“Good,” I said. “Now keep looking at them and listen to me. I managed to keep your family together after Armageddon Day. Let me help do it again today."

Peter looked back at me and nodded. I stood.

“So, constables. What can I do to help sort this out?”

A short, stocky man in a uniform stepped up to me. His sunken eyes and flabby jowls made him look like the caricature of the inept cop in a noir mystery movie. Three tiny scales broke through the skin on his face: one on his right cheek and two on his forehead. He’d been out here a while.

“We have witnesses saying the kid killed this man,” the jowly-faced constable said.

He nodded at one of the other constables, who pulled the sheet up a little

I muttered, “Holy shit.” Though, honestly in hindsight, I don’t know if it was because of hearing Vance had murdered someone, because I saw the albino homeless guy, or because all this weirdness clicked together.

The oddness wasn’t about anything I’d seen. It was about something specific I wasn’t seeing. I looked at the constable who had pronounced the crime, the albino, and Vance. Several times. Just to make sure.

The kid didn’t have any scales on him. Neither did the albino. I took it in stride that the albino never had the scales. He radiated such a high weirdness field around him that I didn’t think too much about anything having to do with him. The dude was just this odd fixture in the periphery of life.

The strange part about this was that I hadn’t ever seen any sigh or a scale on Vance at any point during the Summer of Smoke. I considered every moment I had seen him since the smoke first came. Vance had always taken the same precautions as everyone else, but I hadn’t bothered to notice how much longer he stayed out of doors in comparison to everyone else. Nearly all day, every day. That observation probably slipped by me due to my preoccupation with coming up with dreams and my rising anxiety as my dreams in the bank grew smaller and smaller.

In the midst of my observations and revelations, the constables cursed and scrambled away from the sheet and the body underneath it. Shock still dulled my awareness to the present, and so, just like with Constable Clark’s “Sir, sir, sir,” I didn’t register the smoke billowing out from underneath the blanket until it was just about at my feet. I cursed and scrambled back too.

People from the crowd started freaking out.

With the constable’s scrambling back, the edge of the sheet was down at the center of albino’s chest. Everyone could see his face. We all saw the greenish smoke wafting out of his nose and mouth. Seriously a WTF moment.

Momma Jackson screamed. “Save my baby!”

The smoke had just about reached Vance. He tried to to get away, but only managed to fall over. He struggled to scoot away from the smoke, and his breath came in ragged gasps. I slid forward to pull him away from the green tendrils of smoke and grabbed his shoulder. My effort came a little too little, a little too late.

Time seemed to stand still. Everyone watched in that I-can’t-look-away-from-it way we did with accidents or horror movies back before Armageddon Day. Vance breathes the smoke in. And not just a little bit of the smoke. Like all of it. A steady stream of smoky tendrils wafted from the homeless albino to Vance. With each passing moment, the albino gained more and more color, and Vance lost more and more of his pigmentation.

When the smoke stopped flowing, dawn showed in the eastern sky. The homeless guy still lay dead. He was no longer an albino. I realized why he had always seemed so familiar. I’d seen reflections of his features every day in his children: Kat, Vance, and Becky. I didn’t know for sure they were related. Still don’t, but I’d bet just about anything that I’m right. I figured that provided motive for Vance killing the guy. The people around the crime scene remained miraculously free of scales anywhere on our bodies. The constables took Vance away to be held for trial. The crowd dispersed. Kat and I led Momma Jackson home.

I wondered how many clients missing my rounds that night would cost me.

At the end of an old logging road, the pines shrivel and die. Beyond the broken trees, nothing lives or crawls for seven and a half miles. You won't find an ant marching, a worm tunneling, or a mosquito sucking blood. You'll find the skeletons of nine foresters, seven state troopers, eleven national guardsmen, six scientists, and roughly a dozen dogs. Not quite a plethora of bodies, but close.

You get to the line, that almost perfect barrier between life and rotting death...but you do not pass. Not yet. You steady yourself. You and only you can deal with this, only, you don’t remember why. Whatever you see, hear, smell, feel...put it in your report. But I don't think I need to remind you that it goes no further. Whatever you find out goes to the grave with you. You can't talk about any of this with anyone—ever. We're understood on that point.

You take three steps over the line and feel like you have the worst flu of your life. Sweating. Chills. Nausea. Three more steps feels like the round of chemotherapy that finally kills you. Any further than that... well no one's gone that far and lived... But you’re here for a reason.

You’re the only one who can do... you don’t know what... Something...

You test your luck. Take another step.

And then you see the thing that really parts your hair. The thing that makes you forget how crappy you feel. Through haze rising from the ground in the death zone, you see an early type of RV that they made before the war—somewhere around 1937. But it doesn't look like it's almost a hundred years old. It looks brand-new. A light comes on in the RV. You see shadows moving in front of the curtains. The curtains open. You can tell someone's standing there, but you can't make out any details. The curtains close. The door opens.

BAM!

Something slams into you. Your weight shifts. Your body lifts. Up. Up. Up. And just like Hulk Hogan body slammed your ass right back on the ground. You gasp, cough, and stutter. Once your breathing is under control, you feel something on your chest. You look down. A puppy sits on your chest, panting with that effulgent little doggy smile all puppies have. It’s infectious. You smile.

The puppy looks past you and growls.

You look in that direction.

A cute, fluffy, white, bunny is hopping toward you.

How is it these two bundles of youthful cuteness can exist in this field of rotting death?

You’re about to try and calm the puppy down, but it gets heavier. Painfully heavier. And bigger. And decidedly less cute.

The bunny growls. Wait! Bunnies don’t growl. But that one did. You look at the bunny again. It’s bigger now too. It’s also decidedly less cute.

The werewolf and werebunny battle above you. Fur and hair and blood and guts rain down on you, giving you the super-natural, bio-genetic equivalent of a tar and feathering
Then the RV rips open, and the dire weresquid sort of slithers forward toward the fighting. This is your cue. That’s enough for your report. Time to make like Wayne Gretsky and get the puck outa there.

Your chopper leaves in thirty seconds. You kiss and rub your lucky rabbit foot - the reason that you were able to survive there in the first place. A few prayers can’t hurt so you mutter and rub, rub and mutter. You make it to the chopper with only 3.14159265359 seconds to spare. The intel you got just might save the world.

When Vance had been in custody of the Constables for three weeks, they finally let him out for an afternoon with his family. The Summer of Smoke was almost over, both because the days crept into September and the Constables had been walking Vance all over the city sucking up tendrils of the odd smoke every time they found one. That’s the one thing that had saved him, being able to suck up the smoke. After Armageddon Day, punishments for breaking laws got harsher, especially for theft and violent crimes. But Vance had a gift. Something no one else did, and so he got remanded to Constable custody and paraded around New Sactown every day. Pretty much everyone in the knew who he was and what he had done. Even without social media, word travels fast in New Sactown, especially when the object of that news gets paraded around town almost all day, every day.

We were having picnic day in the park near the house. He couldn’t be completely unsupervised, being a murder suspect, but Constable Daniels did a pretty good job of letting us forget he was there. Well, except for Kat and me. Kat kept glancing at him on the other side of the park. She tried being subtle, at first. The awkward silence made it hard not to notice all the people walking by the park looking at us and glaring at Vance, Mamma Jackson on the edge of tears most of the meal, Vance shifting uncomfortably under his mother’s gaze and giving me a look of please-save-me, Becky not really eating anything but moving the food around on her plate so her mom wouldn’t say anything, and Kat kept glancing over to the constable watching over us.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have come to the park, Mamma,” I said. “We could have more privacy at home. Not all these people walking by.”

Vance nodded a little eating around his post-Armageddon Day potato salad.

“This is where we always go on Sunday afternoons,” Mamma Jackson replied.

Becky mouthed the words along with her, with a defiant-teenager wobble of her head. That foreboded dangerous times ahead with both Becky and Vance throwing their defiance around like... like... well frankly like the elder gods throwing around chaos and insanity on Armageddon Day.

“Couldn’t we just go in the backyard?” Becky asked. “I hate being stared at.”

“No,” Mamma Jackson said. “This is the only thing we have as a family anymore.”
And so silence covered the picnic again, punctuated the occasional offensive call from someone passing by the park, Vance’s chewing, and Mamma Jackson’s occasional quiet sobs.

Becky continued to shrinking inside of herself. She had lost weight and more and more looked like just a shriveled bag of limbs.

Kat’s glances to Vance’s watchdog grew longer and longer, until they weren’t really glances any more... and then... the sigh happened. Kat probably didn’t even know she’d let out that distinct twitterpated utterance. Vance and Becky heard it. They looked up at Kat, followed her gaze to Constable Daniels, and then gave me a look of such profound pity that what little food I’d eaten threatened to come up.

In a last-ditch effort to salvage something with Kat, I reached for her hand, laced my fingers with hers—a gesture I rarely gave her any more. She looked at me, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. It took everything I had to keep eye contact with her and not look at Daniels. I raised her hand to my mouth and kissed the spot between her middle and ring fingers. My dry lips grazed her soft skin. I drew in a breath. She smelled vaguely of soap and citrus underneath the fried chicken Mamma Jackson had made special for this first picnic again as a family. Something about the mix of those scents and smoothness of her hand on my rough, almost-chapped lips stirred something in me I hadn’t felt in a long time. I pressed his lips more firmly into her skin, trying to convey my desire for her and apologies for every time I tried to ignore her trying to fight with me. Kat glanced at me. We looked into each other’s eyes for a good, long while over her knuckles. I remember wondering if I brought her any comfort or happiness anymore? Did I make life after Armageddon Day any better? I opened my mouth but couldn’t bring myself to ask her. She answered for me when her eyes looked at something over my shoulder. I knew exactly what that something was. My heart wanted to believe that she had actually managed to disguise her sigh as yawn. My brain overrode that impulse.

“Kat,” I whispered.

Kat pulled her hand away. It wasn’t a jerk. Not quite. She still didn’t look at me. Her slight leaning away from me told me everything I needed.

“Dreams,” I said, and stood up. “I have dreams to write. Can’t fight the muse.”

In that moment, with me standing over them at just the right angle, and with the light of the late afternoon hitting them in just the right way, and all of them looking up at me, I saw a similarity between the kids not shared by their mother. The height of their foreheads and the set of their eyes was completely different than Mamma Jackson’s. It reminded me of the homeless guy. The murdered guy. The guy that Vance had murdered, probably his father, and for reasons all four of them knew but weren’t sharing with me.

“Dreams,” I said. “Gotta write dreams.” I took a step, and added, “And I... I... need to go to the bathroom.”

I walked away. When I’d gone ten, maybe a dozen steps, I heard Vance say, “Fuck this. Hey, Daniels, I’m ready to go.”

“Vance,” I heard Kat’s voice at last, “Wait Vance.”
I tuned her out after that.
About halfway back to the Jackson house, a middle-aged guy and I walked past each other. His step faltered a bit, and he did a double-take. I had a feeling I knew what was coming, so I quickened my step.

“Hey,” the guy said. “Do I know you? The dream guy, right?”

Seems I didn’t speed up fast enough. Not wanting to upset a customer or maybe lose out on a potential customer, I stopped and turned around.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s me. How’s it going?”

“Not bad. Not bad.” His grin almost split through the terrible experience I’d just lived through. Almost. But not quite. “Just on my way home from the farms. We’re getting ready for harvest. Looking forward to my dream tonight.”

“Cool, man.” I did my best to give him a convincing smile. “Glad you like them. I gotta get to working on some new ones for you guys.”

I turned. I just wanted to get back to the house, pack my crap up and figure out where I was going to sleep the next morning after I made my rounds.

“I get you,” the guy said. “Just wanted to let you know how much it means to have good dreams. But the coolest part is knowing that other people are having the same dreams. Me and a couple of the other guys in the fields talk about the ones we’ve all had. Share the details we remember. Laugh at the stuff we forget. Makes us feel there’s more to being here than just trying to survive beyond elder gods, green smoke, or gangs trying to get ahead by being younger and stronger. You really do make a difference to a lot of folks.”

For the first time in a long time, someone else’s words got through my ears and into my head. I heard him. Really heard him. He meant those words, and those words meant something to me. The dreams mattered. They meant something.

I turned back to him and extended my hand.

“Thanks.” I meant it.

Instead of heading straight back to the house, my path wandered through the neighborhood. I noted which houses I visited every night, how long I’d been giving dreams to each one, and how little I knew about each of my clients, even the ones who had been with me since I started.

Then No-God-No-God-No-God filled my vision, and the old guy’s face came to my mind’s eyes. I’d been living with Kat, Vance, Becky, and Mamma Jackson since the beginning of Armageddon Day. I knew nothing of their lives before, least of all the man I knew, knew, was the kids’ father. What had happened that made Vance kill the poor guy? Staring at the spray paint on the siding of that house, my gut told me that I’d never know.

I shrugged.

That didn’t matter as much as realizing how separated we’d all been, despite living in the same house. My dreams could be so much more, serve a greater purpose.

You leave them all at the restaurant. An Applebees. It used to be your favorite place. Used to be. Until just now. They used to be your favorite people. You walk out the door, and even though you want to, you refuse to run. Walk. Retain your dignity and walk. Past the intersection where that guy died; through downtown streets, weaving left and right and cutting across yards—you know where you’re going; you pass the house with the siding that reads, in black, “nogodNoGodNOGODnoGoDnogod” and begin to say it as you walk, each syllable with each thwap of your bare feet on the sidewalk... “nogodNoGodNOGODnoGoDnogod” You reach the bench, that bench, and suddenly, it’s dark, it’s night, and the old man is there, crown-like scar and bulging eye and all. He’s carefully rolling out his sleeping bag on the wood slats. He says, “Catch your breath, son. Take it easy now.” But then you’re at your desk, cards scattered everywhere, pen in each hand, behind each ear, and one in your mouth. Your legs and but have grown into the shape of a chair. Your fingers on your right hand transform into pens. Your left hand becomes a 3-D printer that only prints playing cards. The first card you print is The Fool. You stare at the motley fellow. He seems to be staring back up at you. His smirk tells you that this is where you’ve been headed all along. It’s a metaphor, of course. All of it. This dream and that dream. Each one getting you ready for the next level. It’s a world of new stories and new adventures. You’ve been timid for far too long. You realize it’s time to embrace all that this new world has to offer. You also decide that this dream is just for you, and you alone. You wonder… Can you give yourself dreams? If so… perhaps this is one to give yourself from time to time. As a reminder.

James McRidge and I stood side by side on the sidewalk and looked at the words, “nogodNoGodNOGODnoGoDnogod”, spray-painted on the siding of the house. My nerves had sent my peripheral awareness of the charts, and so I sensed every time Mr. McRidge shifted and shuffled next to me. Heard his feet on the concrete and the rustling of his suit.

“That house?” he asked.

I nodded. “That house.”

He looked at me. Saw that out of the corner of my eye.

“You’re absolutely sure? Absolutely?”

“Yes, sir.” I nodded with even more vigor and emphasis than before, as if that would be enough. “It’s gotta be that house.”

He wasn’t sold, not yet. I needed a poignant gesture, I walked over and sat on the bench. He looked at me, waiting. My stomach quivered a bit. I didn’t know how to react to him showing me this level of respect and attention after how I’d After a few moments, I realized that my sitting wasn’t going to be enough. I lay back. Only white clouds populated the crisp blue sky above me. The Summer of Smoke had been officially over for a month. The weather had decided to grant the citizens of New Sactown a reprieve. I knew it wouldn’t last. The world beyond Armageddon Day wouldn’t stay kind to those of us who remained behind. Well, not for very long. I had a feeling whatever winter had in store for us would make us nostalgic for the Summer of Smoke. Still, I enjoyed the blue sky and white clouds while I could.

“You know that homeless guy that got killed?” I didn’t stop looking up. “The one who belched up a bunch of that smoke and then the accused murderer sucked it all up?”

“Yes,” Mr. McRidge said.

“That happened right here,” I said. “When the constables brought me to the scene, the old guy was laying in the street. The whole thing probably started on this very bench.”

“How do you know?” McRidge asked.

“This is where I saw the guy every night while I was delivering people their dreams.” I sat up, looked McRidge right in the eye, and patted the bench. “Right here. Every night.”

He looked at me for a good, long while. I said nothing. His eyes squinted. He studied me, and he studied the bench. He let out a sigh and came over and sat down beside me.

“Okay. You have a plan. I’m missing something. So... walk me through it. Convince me.”

“You said you want to do something to bring people together,” I said.

“That’s right.” He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. “I’m a businessman. I won’t lie about that. But success in business comes in serving others. We can serve more people by building a community, a shared culture. Something all of us have been lacking since Armageddon Day. Everything we thought we knew about everything went up in smoke.”

I snickered. I couldn’t help it.

“Sorry,” he said a bit sheepishly. “That was kind of bad. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“That’s why it was funny,” I said. “If you had meant it like that, it would have been dumb. And I would have to reconsider working with you. Look. I’m not into the business part of this. But after everything with Vance, his dad, the rest of the family, and how all the bullshit went down in the aftermath of the murder and the Summer of Smoke, I want to build New Sactown into something more than bands of strangers trying to survive.” I took a deep breath. “You get the business going, find me someone who can draw new cards, get me that house,” I pointed at it with my thumb over my shoulder, almost like I wanted to hitch a ride... which I suppose I kinda was hitching a ride from him, “And I’ll help you build New Sactown into something more.”

“How?”

“Dreams man,” I said. “I heard some guy mention somewhere, ‘Man must have his dreams or he is lost.’ All the clients that keep asking for new dreams kinda make me think that guy was onto something. Hell, even the line, ‘I have a dream...’ sparked of a movement. I can connect the people of this community through dreams. And not slapdash, whatever I happen to be thinking about and write down. We allow them to experience each other’s lives. Get me an artist that can make new cards, cards with images that will tune into the dreams I give people, and we’ll build a collective culture in this city that would have been impossible in the old world.”

“You really believe you can do that?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I know I can do that. I just need someplace to get it started. The right place to get it started. If you want this world to be more empathetic and heart-centered as much as you say you do, I’m your man. And, that house where it’s going to start.”

I extended my hand. He looked me over, assessing. His gaze shifted between my eyes, my hand, and the house. Keeping my breath steady was the hardest part of this whole thing.
“Alright.” James McRidge took my hand. The handshake was firm, solid, and honest. “I’ll take the appropriate steps with the provincial mayor’s office that you’re actually providing a service for the community, granting you the right to property.”

The handshake ended, and I walked over to the house, reached into my bag, and pulled out a can of pink spray paint.

The word KVELL joined nogodNoGodNOGODnoGoDnogod on the house’s siding.

“Kvell?” McRidge asked. “What’s that?”

“It means, happy and proud,” I said. “Perfect word to start with.”

He blinked at me. “Start?”

“We’re just getting started.” I held out the can of spray paint to him. “Your turn.”

“My turn for what?” he asked.

“Add a word,” I said.

“What word?”

I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Just at a word. Anywhere you want.”

James McRidge looked at the wall. He shook his head.

“I don’t get it.”
“So?”

He gave a little laugh. “Okay. Sure. What the hell.”

Kindness joined KVELL and nogodNoGodNOGODnoGoDnogod.

It didn’t take as long as I expected for McRidge to find an artist. Alex drew copies of the Judgment card, and I wrote the first mass dream for New Sactown on the back of each one.

You sit next to him as the constables dig. Decent of them to not make him do it himself. You don’t know why this scared young man asked for you to be here. He never seemed to like you. That made it hard to like him. Neither of you talks. You just sit there on the grass behind the house where he committed the crime. This was where he wanted it. This was the only thing he asked for in exchange for helping end the Summer of Smoke. Crime is treated far more harshly after Armageddon Day, and even with sucking up all that smoke, the kid had to face up to being a murderer. The trial was a formality. The sentence was what the sentence always was for murder. Only, they couldn’t hang him. This was the only way. Hanging, or any other way really, runs the risk of the smoke might get out of him. For his service in getting rid of the smoke, they let him have someone to sit with him. And yo you sit with the kid because he asked for you. Not his mom. Not his sisters. Not any of the other young men he’d run about New Sactown with. You. Neither of you says anything the whole time the constables dig. At one point, the kid starts crying. You put your hand on his shoulder. When the time comes, the kid gives you a hug, climbs into the hole, and lays down.

“Any last words?” the head constable asks.

“Don’t let them forget me,” the kid says.

“They won’t," You say. “I promise.”

And despite how hard it is, you watch, without blinking or turning away, the whole time the constables carry out the sentence. Once they finish, you remain there the rest of the day and through the night, to stand vigil for a lost and lonely soul.