We don’t always get what we want.

I remember my dad telling me that, sharing it like some secret piece of wisdom, back before a vile, malignant crab of a disease stole his voice and then his lungs and then his life. It was one of his favorite sayings, a way of spitting in fate’s face whenever the bitch shoved something painful or broken down our throats, and then he would laugh and mangle the rest of that Rolling Stones line: We get what we need.

I thought of that as I woke up on the face of the cliff, startled back to life by the crash of water and the spray of salt. We don’t always get what we want.

I held onto the lyrics. I heard the plaintive, strained chords in Mick Jagger’s voice, muffled by cobwebs, drawn out from the memory of some childhood radio lost in the back of my mind. They were either joyful or sad. We get what we need.

I tried to sit up and settled for leaning back on my elbows. The ledge was just over two feet wide, slick and rocky and sloping gently toward the void. A glance off that way revealed the ocean at night. A hundred meters or more below the waves crashed against the stony shore, breaking into geysers that rose like the swell of breath and gently fell back to the sea as mist. The air stank of salt and fish and wet rock and blood. The constant, steady pounding of the waves shook the cliff like the beat of a titan’s heart.

“F-fucking hell...” What should have been an exclamation emerged as a breathless whisper. I tried to inhale, but my throat spasmed shut. A giant fist squeezed my chest. I pressed against the cold cliff wall, wishing my body smaller and thinner and further from that awful fall, and I clenched my eyes shut.

We get what we need. I coughed and managed to gasp in a pained breath, then looked up the cliff. The rocks extended for dozens of meters, slick with water, discolored by salt, silvered with the light of the moon. For a moment they looked like ice.

This was fine. Everything was fine. I waited for my heart to slow from crazed to merely frantic and focused on my breath. In and out, little sips of air that gradually eased the pain in my chest.

I stood carefully, pressing my hands against the stones, fitting my fingers into the little cracks and crevices there. The rock was cold and wet but offered good purchase nonetheless. Here and there I saw little indentations where my bare feet might fit. This could work. I squeezed my toes into a suitable looking break and pushed with my legs, beginning the slow climb to whatever waited for me above.

There were times when I wished I could stop waking up like this. Mostly, though, I wished I wasn’t getting so used to it.

---

The climb to the top of the cliff wasn’t as long as I feared. Only a few meters. That was nice.

Things went downhill from there, though. Don’t mind the pun.

The cliff led to a plateau barely large enough to earn the name. Big enough to fit a house, perhaps, if you didn’t mind a long drop for a front yard. A few scraggly, cowering scrub pines clung to the broken rocks, their roots prying the stones apart and opening deeper cracks. In time, perhaps, these little trees with their questing roots would dig deeper and deeper, fracturing the weak limestone rockhead and sending chips of it tumbling off into the void with the wind, and with each generation of trees the plateau would grow shorter and shorter, until someday, millenia from now, the last tree would break the last rock and the waves would wash over it all for the last time.

But that was someone else’s problem. I staggered away from the edge and grabbed at a twisted pine trunk, holding it for purchase against the wind. It left rough splinters in my bloodied palms. Out beyond the drop the ocean extended as far as I could see in the dim moonlight.

The snake was waiting for me. He was always waiting. Two meters long, black, with little rubies for eyes, it slithered along the branches and up my arm and across my shoulders. Its hot scales were the only dry thing I’d touched since I’d woken.

“Sslow,” it whispered. Its forked tongue tickled my ear. “Perhapss you no longer care for thiss?”

I swallowed before answering. “I’m fine. What is it this time?”

“A little bird.” The snake wrapped around my neck like a scarf. He coiled just tight enough to remind me that he was there, and that he could squeeze much harder if he wanted. “With jewels for feathers and a tiny golden heart. It roosts in that tree over there.” The snake squeezed, and my head turned of its accord to view the tree.

It sat off by itself on its own ledge, separated from the plateau by a yawning gap. I walked toward it, hands grasping from tree to tree, and stopped at the edge. Down below the waters roiled, waves spinning into clouds of mist. Something huge and unseen swam beneath the surface, its mass sending ripples and eddies spiraling out to mix with the froth. A fin crested the waters, flashed silver in the moonlight, then sank again with a splash.

I stared at the gap. It was longer than I was tall, with slick rocks on both sides of the jump, and only the tree on the far side to grab. “I don’t think I can make that.”

“You don’t have to,” the snake whispered again. “Just say the wordss, and we can be done. You can go home.”

I swallowed. Despite the wet, clammy air, my mouth was dry. Staring at death did that to me. I leaned out over the gap, gazed down, then pulled myself back.

“But… it is right there,” the snake said. Its head brushed my cheek, directing my gaze toward the tree. It was taller than the rest, with wind-swept branches that flowed like clouds out past the rocky ledge. Thick knots of needle leaves sprouted from the twisted branches like clots of blood, and amidst one on the highest branches I saw it: the bird, a tiny thing, no larger than a sparrow. Emerald feathers reflected the moon and the stars. It bounced from twig to twig, wings flapping for balance.

“Picture how easssy it will be.” The snake shifted, drawing its long body up my face and draping a loop across my eyes. “You know you can make it. Jusst… don’t look down.”

Right. Fuck. My wrists felt like they were on fire. I released my death grip on the little pine one finger at a time, until I stood unaided just feet from the drop. A stiff wind could kill me now. Across the gap, the tree swayed. Some of the lower branches would make good hand-holds, I reasoned. I could… I could get a running start, jump, and grab one of them. Then the bird would be mine.

I took a step away from the edge, then another. Enough to build up some speed. The wind wavered and paused; the waves below seemed to settle. The world held its breath for me.

We don’t always get what we want. I ran. My foot touched the stone just inches from the edge, ready to push, and slipped on the slick rock. Momentum flung me out into the void, and for a long second I flew.

I slammed into the far rocks chest first. Something snapped, and my lungs burst. A root scraped my cheek. I clawed at it, fingernails scratching the wet bark and tearing away. Gravity returned. The tree and the ledge began to rise away from me.

My hand caught something. My shoulder popped and the arm went limp. I tried to scream and realized I couldn’t breathe. Below, far below, the roiling waters reached for me with their waves.

“Ssso close.” The snake said. I twisted my head and saw him coiled around my wrist, his tail anchored safely around the tree. The muscles beneath his scales bulged, grinding my bones. “Well, perhapss next time.”

“P-please.” Each sip of air was a fire. I could taste the blood seeping into my lungs. “Not again.”

“You know the deal.” The snake’s mouth opened wide, but instead of needle-sharp fangs his jaws sprouted row after row of serrated shark’s teeth. Wider and wider it opened, wide enough to swallow me whole if he wanted.

But, of course, that wasn’t what he wanted. It never was. The snake lowered his monstrous jaws to my shoulder, as gently as if he were placing a kiss on my cheek, and his teeth began their terrible work.

We get what we need. Despite the shattered ribs and punctured lung, I still found the breath to scream.

---

I woke up in my bed. Not a bad place to start the morning; second only to someone else’s bed. I guess things could always be better.

I rolled to the side of the bed, pulling the soaked sheets with me, and retched onto the carpet. A thin stream of acid-tasting spittle and nothing more dribbled out from my lips. I coughed and spat until I thought my lungs would end up on the floor. My vision went dim around the edges, and for a moment thought and gravity and even the pain in my shoulder went away, and I teetered on the edge of the mattress, wondering how I’d come there.

Then I was on the floor, and the pain was back. It rolled in waves up my left arm. The sheet was tangled around it, and I peeled it away to view the damage this time.

From the shoulder down the arm was gray and transparent, like fogged glass. I could see the light of the window shining through it. The bones were denser, darker suggestions lurking beneath the flesh. If I stared hard enough, I could see blood flowing through the watery vessels.

“Fuck.” I set my head on the floor, not minding the heavy thud that shook my skull. I wouldn’t mind being a bit addled, to be honest. Some alcohol would’ve been pretty great, too.

Outside, the sun moved across the sky. In time clouds rolled through, dimming the afternoon light. The pain receded as well. When I checked my arm again it was denser, fuller, more colorful. I could still see the bones through the flesh, but only as vague shadows. In another hour or so my soul would be completely healed, and I could do it all again.

“Fuck,” I whispered. For not the first time, I thought about just giving up.

The sheets on the bed rustled as something stirred within them. A black shape that drank in the light slithered over the edge, coiling around the bedpost by my head. The puddle of spit and sick from earlier sizzled where it touched the snake’s scales.

“Sso pitiable.” It rested its head atop the long loops of its body and regarded me with those deep, empty red eyes. “Do you think thiss is what she wanted?”

“Shut up.” I swatted at the damn thing, but my hand passed through it like smoke. Like the snake was smoke, that is – my hand was close enough to a normal hand that it struck the floor with enough force to sting.

“Apologiess.” The snake slithered across my chest and lay there like a puppy. “We don’t mean to offend our best customer. You feed usssso well. Better than any of the otherss who sought our bargain.”

“I should quit,” I said. And I actually thought about doing it. Just pushing the damn thing off my chest, maybe giving it a stomp for good measure, and walking out of the apartment forever. It wasn’t like anything was left here for me.

The room was… a mess, to be generous. The carpet hadn’t felt the gentle touch of a vacuum cleaner in years, and the original cream color was now a variegated mix of spills and dust and a brown line of ground-in dirt from the shoes I sometimes forgot to remove at the door. A plastic trash bin near the bed was almost full, and soon all its contents would join the trash bags resting beside it, and the cycle would begin again. Carefully considered piles of clothes occupied most of the floor, loosely organized by season. As it was now May and getting warmer, the pile of jeans and long-sleeved shirts near the desk was beginning to phase out of rotation, replaced by the khakis and short-sleeves beneath the windowsill. The less said about the smell, the better. The rest of the apartment wasn’t much better. To the extent it was cleaner, it was only because I spent less time in the other rooms.

I looked at the room with fresh eyes. She’d have been shocked to see it like this. Horrified. Concerned – probably with good reason – that it reflected on the crumbling mental state of the man who lived here. A home as a deliberate metaphor.

I could clean the place. Or not. Just walk away and let it all rot. Let the city seize it for unpaid taxes in a few years. Move to another town, another state. Another country. Forget everything and start over.

The snake said nothing. If he breathed, I couldn’t see it. In time he slithered off my chest, back to the bedpost, and up onto the bed. The thick wood creaked beneath his weight.

I spat out the last of the bile and sat up. The day was half over already. Just a few more hours until our next hunt. Unless I backed out now. I entertained that fantasy for another moment, then shook my head.

“Sstill in?” the snake asked. The mattress sagged under its weight. It always seemed bigger after feeding.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Good.” The demon that was shaped like a snake began to dissolve, boiling away like inky water. Still its voice remained to tease me. “You’re almosst done, you know. Just a few more pieces and you’ll have her back. And we will be sso glad to have helped you.”

Right. So generous. For a moment my arm hurt again, a phantom pain haunting my nerves. I squeezed my hand into a fist, just to make sure I could.

The last of the snake vanished. The mattress rebounded. But his voice came back again. “Ssleep well. We will ssee you when you wake. We think in a forest thiss time.”

“Right. Thanks.” I bit back the rest of what I wanted to say. I couldn’t afford to curse out my boss. Or my business partner. Whatever he thought he was to me. Whatever Faust thought he was signing his bargain with.

They taught us in Sunday School not to make pacts with dark powers. Not if you valued your soul. But the Sisters forgot that some things are more valuable than our souls. That if a man is desperate enough, if he has lost everything else, then a soul can start to seem like easy coin to spend.

So, every night, I said yes to the snake. Some nights I got what I wanted, and he went hungry. Some nights I flubbed the jump, or lost the fight, or missed the shot, and the demon did not go hungry.

We get what we need. I stepped between the piles of clothes and went to get a shower.

---

Dinner was Chinese take-out. It tasted like grease and MSG. The fortune cookie told me to look for wisdom in lowly places, and also that my lucky numbers were 4, 13 and 17.

In the Christian telling of the creation of man, God cursed the snake to be the lowliest of animals, to crawl on its belly forever. There was a bible somewhere in this apartment, perhaps still in one of the moving boxes. I wondered how my snake friend would react if I brought it with me tonight. I wondered if it might burn him to see it. Then I wondered if it might burn me.

The clouds that obscured the sun throughout the day slowly drifted to the east as night fell, and the stars emerged to weakly contest the pollution of the city below. Between the haze and the light, I could only see a few dozen of them outside my window – a far cry from the thousands that filled the sky in my childhood memories. I stood at the window and watched them for a while, putting off the moment when I would have to climb into bed.

Coward, a voice in the back of my mind whispered.

“Yeah.” I pried my hands away from the windowsill, pulled the blinds tight, and shuffled over to the bed. The white sheets, stained yellow with age, stank of sour sweat and worse. They felt greasy against my skin. Maybe I could wash them tomorrow. Or just buy new ones.

I was almost done. That’s what the snake had said. Just a few more pieces left to find. Of course, the snake wasn’t exactly to be trusted. I’d learned that lesson the hard way more than once. But in the end, in the final accounting of things, I had to trust the snake. That he was keeping his end of the bargain, even if he might deliberately sabotage me along the way. I had to believe that our deal was in his interest to uphold as well as mine. If I couldn’t believe that, then what was the point of this nightly quest?

But that belief didn’t mean I was a fool. A fly cannot always rely on the spider to remain in her web.

I fell asleep thinking of small things with many legs.

---

I woke surrounded by trees.

The ground was soft beneath me, and dry, and smelled pleasantly of pine. Crisp brown needles fell away from my shirt as I sat up. A cool breeze filled with the hum of insects and the distant babble of water on rocks touched me. Dappled shadows danced on the moss in time with the swaying branches overhead.

I stood slowly, brushing more needles from my pants. Nothing leapt out of the shadows at me. There was no canyon or fire or howling mountain or hungry sands. Just a quiet woods, free of clutter, ruled over by pine and aspen. The ground sloped down at a gentle angle, leading to the mouth of some distant valley.

The dreams were never the same, but the rules never changed. Somewhere in this false world was a token of our lives together, animated by our love and waiting for me to claim it. And every piece I found brought her one step closer back to me.

I turned in a circle and started walking down the slight grade toward the sound of water.



I found the snake basking on a rock by the river. He was stretched out to his full length, belly pressed against the sandstone to soak up the heat of the sun. He lifted his head as I approached.

“A pleasant place, for once,” he said. “Perhapss you are getting soft.”

“I wouldn’t mind that.” I stopped by the rock and held out my hand to the serpent. His tongue flicked out to tickle my fingers, and he slithered up my arm to drape across my shoulders. “What am I looking for?”

“A little sspider,” he whispered in my ear. “She decorates her web with dewdrops and diamondss. And they say her bite brings eternal peace to those who find her. Oh, I hope you will be more… fortunate than last time.”

What does hunger sound like? A snake, whispering hopes. I froze for a moment, and the urge to tear the snake off my shoulders and fling him into the river flashed through my veins. And then I could wake and forget our bargain and never tread upon these haunted dreams again.

The snake tensed. His ever-flicking tail fell still. Had he read my thoughts? Or felt the tremor in my arm as I imagined dashing his head against the stone.

Finally: “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

“Yess, of course.” The snake relaxed. His tail began to dance again. “Well, shall we go on?”

We fell into a companionable silence as I walked along the river, following it downstream. It was only a few meters across, and gentle. The current swept the stones in its bed clean of mud and silt, and they formed a long road of round, polished cobbles, swimming with tadpoles and tiny silver fish. Along the banks, beneath the shadowed overhangs, larger fish hid from the birds, and once I saw the angled shape of a snapping turtle’s beak lurking among the roots. It ducked into hiding as we passed.

I picked my way over a fallen tree that lay astride the banks. “Yesterday, you said I was almost done.”

“I did,” the snake said. “Do you feel it?”

“No.” I shook my head. “It still feels like the first. Like I haven’t found anything.”

“But you have. Dozens of piecess, now, and only a few remain. You’re sso close.”

Very chatty today. Usually the snake kept his peace. I ducked under a tangle of thorny swamp roses growing across the game path and picked a few stickers from my sleeves. “Have any of the others ever made it?”

“Oh, yess. Many of them. Perhapss… one in ten?”

That didn’t sound like many. I swallowed the sudden knot in my throat. “That’s all?”

“That’ss all?” The snake laughed, a twisted, hissing sibilant breath that went on and on. “All the rest of the men and women in the world go to their gravess with regrets weighing their heartss, but one in ten of my sservantss are unburdened of their woess. You should call me generouss.”

“Generous?” I laughed myself, wild and out of breath. In all the years of our bargain, I’d never asked the snake’s name. I wasn’t even sure he had one. “Very well, I name you Generous, then. Generous the snake, friend of all mankind.”

“You mock me.” Generous’s words dripped with false pain. “I, who am your closesst friend.”

“Friend.” I smiled. “Well, friend, let us search on, then.”

I plowed forward through the thickening brush. Generous wrapped his coils tighter around my neck.



The river widened in time. The trees grew older and larger, their branches swallowing the sky and casting deep shadows on the forest floor. The undergrowth thinned; ferns and mushrooms replaced the choking honeysuckle. We left the last of the roses behind hours ago.

I stopped and considered the signs before me. Drops of fresh blood dappled the dirt path. Faint impressions in the dust beside them suggested a hare.

“Ominouss,” Generous offered. His tongue flicked out to taste the air. “Not all is peaceful in these woodss.”

I doubted he cared much about a rabbit, except as a possible meal. “Are we getting closer?”

“Perhapss. Perhapss you should follow the sspoor.”

So helpful today. “Alright.”

The drops of blood were widely spaced. Sometimes I would walk for minutes before finding another. But they were all still fresh, wet and barely sunk into the dirt. We weren’t far behind the poor thing, and each trace of blood was larger than the one before. The bleeding was growing worse. Memories of decades long past teased me: crouching by my father’s side in a woods much like these, rifle clenched in shaking hands, listening to him explain in sotto voce the rules of the hunt.

“You said we’re looking for a spider,” I said. “Not a rabbit. Not any kind of game.”

Generous was silent.

“Every other dream, something has tried to kill me,” I continued. “Why is this place so… quiet?”

“Not all death is fearful and loud,” Generous said. “Perhapss thiss dream offersssomething more… gentle.”

I snorted. “Right. Something gentle got to this rabbit?”

Generous shrugged. I know snakes don’t have shoulders, but that’s what he did. It rippled up his body to his head, which brushed against my neck. “Find it and assk.”

“Fine,” I growled. If the damn snake didn’t want to give me answers, I could find them myself.
Onward we went, following the scent of blood.



The rabbit was laying astride the path. Its chest pulsed rapidly with its breath. A bright red stain marred the ivory fur on its belly. As we approached it tried to rise, flopped weakly, and fell again.

“Poor, delicouss thing,” Generous said. He tightened around my neck.

“You said we were looking for a spider.”

“We are. And yet, why ignore ssuch a gift?”

I had to resist the urge to punch the snake. “Don’t you get enough to eat from me?”

He laughed. “Yess. But no predator is ever really ssated, you know. Men never are, either.”

Whatever. I stared at the puddle of blood slowly growing beneath the rabbit and swallowed.

Before I could think twice, I reached down and carefully lifted the wounded thing, gathering him in the loose folds of my shirt and holding him against my belly. It scratched at me, weakly, then fell still again except for the rapid beat of its tiny heart. A red stain began to grow beneath my hands.

“What are you doing?” Generous asked. “It’s dying. You can’t ssave it.”

Yeah. That was true. I started walking down the path again, carrying two animals now. Or carrying a demon and a figment of my imagination. Pick your poison.

“It’s warmer now, at least,” I said. “It won’t die in the dirt.”

“Bah.” Generous turned his head away from me. “Ssentimental.”

Maybe. But still, somehow, I felt better, carrying the dying rabbit with me.



The spider’s web stretched across the path. A single beam of the setting sun somehow broke through the layers of the canopy above to strike the gossamer strands, lighting them like diamonds. And in the center she hung, a golden jewel with eight legs as long as my outstretched hand. She bobbed gently in the wind, patient, waiting endlessly for prey to fall into her trap.

So, that was it. I let out a long breath. “What’s the trick?”

“Trick?” Generous asked. “Why should there be a trick? Just pluck her from the web, and you will have another piece.”

Fucking liar. There was always a trick. It was how he won so often. I couldn’t even count the times I’d been so close to victory like this, only to have it snatched away by some mistake or treachery. And every time he’d fed on a piece of my soul, his payment for our bargain. His victory.

“You see?” Generous pressed his head against my cheek, turning my gaze back to the web. Above the spider, barely within reach of my arms, a tiny ring sat tethered in the strands. Gold, slender, with a single diamond in a humble setting. I knew, without looking, that the inside of the band would bear her name.

I squeezed my eyes shut. Still, hot tears managed to escape. I waited until my breath was under control again before speaking. “It’s not the spider. It’s the ring.”

“Yess. Take it.”

I reached up for the ring. It was just feet away, bound by those invisible strands. I could tear it free in an instant and be gone.

The spider twitched. One leg lifted, sensed the air, and set down in a new position, tugging at a strand of the web. Eight glittering eyes watched me.

Right. This was the trap. I had to be faster than the spider. Like that game we played as children, slapping each other’s hands to test our reflexes. And how fast could a little spider be? It would take her seconds to crawl up the web to the ring and bite my fingers – by then I would be long gone, and the spider and the snake both missing their meal.

Easy. Easy. I started to reach again for the ring, when another twitching caught my attention.

It was the rabbit, cradled with my other hand. The bloodstain around it had grown and dripped down my arm. The rabbit spasmed weakly, its legs drawn up against its wounded belly. Even I, insensitive as I was, could see its pain.

“Tell me about the spider again,” I asked?

Generous was slow to answer. Reluctant. “She decorates her web with drewdropss and diamondss. And they say her bite brings eternal peace to those who find her.”

Ah. I brushed my hand through the rabbit’s fur. And then I gently unwound it from my dripping shirt and placed it on the ground beneath the web.

The spider moved faster than thought. Faster, perhaps, than light. She was in the center of the web, and then she was atop the rabbit, her fangs lowered to its neck in a silent kiss. The rabbit kicked its legs one final time and went still.

“Sorry,” I said. I even meant it. But still I reached up to grab the ring. With a simple tug it came free, and I held her engagement ring in my hand.

“Clever,” Generous mumbled. Hunger tinged his words again, but still he honored our bargain.

The world began to dissolve. The last thing I felt was his dry scales scraping against my neck, and then true sleep found me again.

---

I woke in my bed. It was early still – the late Spring dawn was yet to intrude on the horizon. The only light came from the orange glow of my alarm clock.

A hard point pressed into my palm. I lifted it, and in the soft, artificial light I saw the glint of a diamond. Her ring. They one they had buried her with. I wondered, in that absent, sleep-fogged state that accompanies early mornings, if I held a copy of it, or the real thing. If my love now slept beneath the earth with her finger stripped of its treasure.

It didn’t matter. I closed my hand around the precious thing, held it against my chest, and surrendered again to the night.

We get what we need.

---

Days went by before the snake found me again. It was like that, sometimes, especially after he lost. I wondered if he needed the time to lick his wounded pride.

He came to me again a few days… maybe weeks… later. I didn’t really keep track of time that well. When all you do is stay in your house stare at the TV, time starts to…

Anyway, he came back. That’s what matters.

Generous slithered up the side of the couch. The faux leather hissed beneath his scales. I stretched out a hand to brush his cheek like a returning lover.

Wow, that was a little fucked up. Maybe I was getting a little too close to my demon partner.

“Missss usss?”

“Yeah. Whatever.” I pulled my hand back to my lap. “What’s next?”

“The lasst piece.”

That got my attention. I sat up straight, then stood, nearly stumbling. Empty cans crunched beneath my feet. “What?”

“What?” Generous mocked. “Jusst that. The lasst piece. What you’ve been waiting for all these yearss.”

I stared at him. Time seemed to fall away. The room vanished, and all I could see was gray. Gray, and the snake, hovering in the center of my vision. A distant ring began to sound in my ears. Even gravity left me, and I floated there, endless and senseless.

The last piece. The last piece I needed—

We get what we need.

—to set everything right. I gasped in a shuddering breath, and the room and the snake and sound and gravity all returned in a rush. I caught myself on the couch’s arm before collapsing.

Generous gave me a minute. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah.” I swallowed. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“It’ss no worry.” Generous slithered across the back of the couch to my hand, up my arm, and around my shoulders again. He settled in like an old scarf. “So close, now. We are praying for your successss.”

I barked out a laugh. “Can demons pray?”

“Oh yess. We were the firsst to pray, back after the fall.” Generous flicked his tongue through my hair. “And sstill we pray, though we go unanswered. Never say that we are without hope.”

“Right.” Stupid. I shook my head. I didn’t care about demons. I didn’t care about prayers. All I cared about was her. “What… what’s next?”

“A castle. You will… find it quite familiar, I think.”

A castle? I’d never been to one, unless you counted the Magic Kingdom at Disney World. “What do you mean?”

But the snake didn’t answer. He boiled away into inky mist, and I was alone again.

---

I woke in a castle, just as Generous promised. Except…

It took me a while to understand what I was staring at. Stone walls rose before me, yes, but they were hidden beneath scores of black carbon. An oppressive, gray sky wept on the fallen timbers around me. The acrid stink of ash and burned flesh stung my nose. I doubled over and gagged.

A slurry of cinders stained my shoes. The water mixed with the ashes and formed a pale mud that stank like nothing I’d ever smelled before. It was worse than shit. It was worse than putrescence. It smelled like the last night—

I fell to my knees and retched. My empty stomach heaved, desperate to eject something, anything to escape that terrible smell. I felt the veins standing out in my neck as my chest strained, clenched, pressed, desperate to void itself of this poison.

Something scaly and dry touched my fist. I grasped it reflexively, eager for anything to hold that wasn’t the wet mud of ashes. Generous writhed in my grip, wrapped around my arm, and slithered up to my neck.

“Calm, calm,” he whispered. “Remember what thiss iss, and what it iss not.”

“Fuck you,” I gasped. I sucked in a breath, gagged again, and vomited once more all over my hands.

Generous said nothing. But he held me while I shuddered. And in time the stinging scent lost its potency, and the sickening pressure in my chest eased from something irresistible to something merely terrible. I sat on my heels, knees digging into the broken flagstones, and wept.

“You do her no favorss like thiss.”

“Fuck. You.” Never before had I believed so truly in any words I had spoken. “Why? Why?”

“You assk for something difficult. Something that violatess His lawss,” Generous said. He tilted his head to peer up at the clouded sky. “That demandss something terrible in return, doess it not?”

No. Maybe. I swallowed a mouthful of bile. “I hate you.”

“Ah. Do you wish to quit, then?”

I shook my head. “No. What… What am I looking for?”

No answer. The snake tucked his head against his coils and sat around my neck, silent.

I stood up. The ashen mud squished beneath my feet and dripped down the front of my pants. “Well? What am I looking for, dammit?”

“Can’t you guesss?”

I could. I didn’t want to, but I could. “Tell me.”

Generous was slow to respond. “Very well. A lighter. A—”

“A Zippo lighter.” I closed my eyes, picturing it. “Chrome, with my initials stamped on the side.”

“Yess.”

Okay. Okay. I waited until the dizziness passed. Until I could ignore the acrid stench of ashes. I blinked away the stinging fumes, let the rain wash my face clean, and began my search.



It wasn’t a large castle. About the size of a double-wide trailer, actually. Funny how that worked out.

The roof had fallen during the fire. Mounds of broken stone covered half the floor, while shattered timbers and crushed furniture filled the rest. I recognized an EZ-Boy chair, and the cheap plastic table we used for dinner in front of the couch. There, in the corner, was our bed, now smashed into pieces. And there, opposite, was Todd’s bed, fire engine red, with a black racing stripe down the side. The blue sheets of his Cars bedspread survived in places, peeking through the ashes.

I knelt beside what had been a plastic box of toys. Nothing remained of it but a puddle of melted colors. Here and there a piece of metal, all that remained of some Lego construction, emerged from the ruin like stalks of grass from the Spring ground.

It was here, I thought. Here, where they found it. Here, where I set it down after grabbing one more beer for the night. Here, where curious hands could touch it and play with it and—

I brushed away the ashes. Beneath the ruins of the window drapes, a piece of bright silver called out to me. I touched it with shaking fingers, felt the cool metal, and gently lifted it from the ruins. A Zippo lighter, chrome, small enough to fit in my pocket. An ornate ‘TZ’ was stamped on the side.

“That’s it?” I asked. My voice cracked. “No trick? No fall? No monsters, waiting for me?”

“Jusst that,” Generous said. “Everything else your doing. You created the fall and the monsters yourself. Just like this dream.”

I stood. The thin tin lighter dimpled in my fist. “Is… is it real, then? Our bargain? You?”

“Bargaining iss a natural part of grief.” Generous slid down my arm, through the ashes, and onto a spot of bare stone. “And now, you have fulfilled your part. And I shall fulfill mine.”

So saying, the snake boiled into smoke. But instead of vanishing this time, the smoke rose, growing, shifting into a new form. It contracted, twisted, grew depth and color, and finally there she stood. Jennifer stumbled, caught herself, and looked around with wide, confused eyes.

I caught her in a fierce hug. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m right here.”

“Tom?” Her voice trembled. “What is this? What’s going on?”

“Listen.” I stepped back and held her by the shoulders. “Listen, this is very important, okay? We only have—”

“What’s going on?” Panic entered her voice now. She tried to pry my hands free. “What’s happening? There was… There was a fire! Todd! Where’s Todd?!”

“Listen!” I shouted over her. “Todd is… It doesn’t matter, okay? It wasn’t your fault, okay? Nothing was your fault!”

She shook. Her legs gave out, and I nearly stumbled holding her up. “There was a fire!” she sobbed again. “It was my fault! I left the burner on the stove on, like before, and you said—”

“Stop!” I yelled. “I lied, okay? I lied! It was me! I was afraid, so I lied and said it was you! I didn’t know… I didn’t know you would…”

I couldn’t finish. My knees failed, and we both fell. She scrambled away.

The rain picked up again. It slowly washed the ashes away from the stone. Where the droplets touched her, the color seemed to bleed away from her skin. As I watched her beautiful face began to fade.

“I’m sorry,” I said. My voice was nothing more than a whisper now, broken. I’m not even sure she could hear it. “It was my fault, not yours.”

They were the last words I would say to my wife, dead now all these years. To her ghost. The rain poured down, and she washed away from me again.

In her place remained a long, black snake. He stared at me, flicked out his tongue, then slithered away through the broken remains of the castle, our bargain at last complete.