-1-

We were noisy, all of us together, and we never heard it coming.

The newscaster, Nick Skinner—I knew him from lazy, old people kind of evenings at my Grandfather's house—spoke into a den of laughter and smoke, his voice lost before it even made it through the speakers. I can see him when I close my eyes. The colored lines of our ancient TV set squiggling his face into distorted fractions. I'd turned the captions on, for the heck of it, settled into a couch cushion that might as well have been a cistern for how far I sank inside it, and watched.

My friends weren't paying attention. Throwing crumpled paper. Swapping cigarette butts like chewed bubblegum.

"WARNING: THE GOVERNMENT HAS DECLARED A STATE OF EMERGENCY. THIS IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT." The words flashed up on the screen, fuzzy and bold.

"IF YOU SEE OR HEAR ANYTHING OUT OF THE ORDINARY, DO THE FOLLOWING."

Nick Skinner ran his fingers through his hair. The paper he read off, vibrated like a live thing in his hand. His gaze kept flickering toward me and then back at the table top he sat behind.

I remember thinking, this man has awards for how well he keeps his cool on national television, what the hell? But at that moment, I thought he might be sick in his Good Morning America coffee cup.

"OPEN ALL DOORS AND WINDOWS. DO NOT MOVE OR FIGHT. ANYONE INCAPABLE OF COMPLYING, SUCH AS AN ANIMAL OR SMALL CHILD, SHOULD BE RESTRAINED OR HIDDEN AWAY IMMEDIATELY.

STAY CALM.

AND ABOVE ALL, THE GOVERNMENT REQUESTS THAT YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES TO THIS THREAT. FAILURE TO DO SO WILL RESULT IN DEATH."

Berdy was reciting a passage by Bakunin, standing like a preacher on the coffee table. The TV screen went to colored bars—no signal. I could see my face in the bowed glass, reflected back at me in the black spaces between the pink and green, perplexed.

Then the lights went out. The world went blue.

And I closed my eyes.

-2-

I still don't know what killed my friends. I don't know what turned summer into winter at precisely 2:15 that afternoon; draining the warmth from the sun and leaving our world in a blue haze without seasons.

The night is marginally darker now. Not a remarkable deviation from the new daytime, but the bluffs and craggy places are smudgier when the aqua sun fades out of sight. And there are stars. That's how you really know the difference. The sun sets and wicked-white points of light speckle the sky. The air gets colder too—cold enough to freeze your balls off.

I almost died the first night (I should have died).

I still don't know what killed my friends. But I saw what they looked like afterward. My friends, I mean, not the Its that ended them.

I remember, the house glowed a particular shade of azure; an early dawn-behind-the-window-blinds kind. The kind of chilly blue light films used to give the audience a shiver. And I did shiver. No lamps were on behind their nicotine stained shades, and everywhere I looked, frost grew on the living room walls, flaky as mold.

I'd been sitting in one spot, all cramped up, elbows in, shoulders shrugged to my ears, and I remember how much it hurt to relax. To make myself open my eyes, and see my blue world. To see their bodies...

...well...

...what remained, anyway. Lying on the couch beside me, on the floor, or tossed over the coffee table, the vestiges of kids I'd known since grade school were deconstructed like old cars in a junkyard. Their bodies were missing things. Eyes and organs. Fingers and feet. Some were desiccated. Bled into a crumpled husk. Sucked lifeless like the soda dregs through a straw. All of them dead, dead, dead—

Except for me.

Matthias Murphy. Hello.

I remember, the air smelled sweet and stale. I visited my grandmother in the hospital, once, before cancer got her. It smelled like that. Medical.

Floorboards creaked, settling as I stood.

A breeze bloomed in the open window, clicking the shambled blinds.

Behind me, the TV sizzled white and gray, throwing weird shadows over my shoulder onto the blank wall above the overstuffed couch. I had sex on that couch. Now, Delia lay unzipped on the faded cushions, ribs spread eagle and poking through the front of her t-shirt. A quarter turn to my left, Than had the floor, stretched out in skinny jeans and duct taped trainers and his favorite M*A*S*H 4077 shirt. His doobie trailed smoke, still clamped between his lips. Only, his lips were the same color as the sky and the low lighting, and, even from a distance, I could see...

he had no eyes.

Like Berdy. Berdy didn't have eyes either, staring up at me, bent backward over the coffee table on a bed of half-rolled joints and a slew of "Realize Real Lies" posters. He'd never finished his recitation.

No, because he was dead.

And Emilio—

Dead.

Suzy. Dead, and without a tongue.

Harper.

Dead.

Freddie—

I remember running. I almost died that first night, huddled beside a row of trash cans lined against the brick wall like soldiers waiting for the firing squad. The cold crept in and took my veins and then my skin. Funny, the Its didn't get me. But something just as invisible and dangerous had me by my last breath.

I say invisible because, to me, the Its were formless and faceless. And they still are a year later.

They killed off the whole world and I've never seen their faces (if they have any).

Here's what I do know:

They sound like a sandstorm approaching.

Small houses are the safest. If you get caught in a McMansion or a hotel, you're dead.

2:15 pm. COUNT ON IT.

Cold equals no-go.

Poppy saved my life.

-3-

I looked up the word coward, once. Poppy, Gretchen, and I kept to the YMCA for a while—not a good idea—and I found a dictionary stuffed inside an orange backpack, along with ACE bandages and a roll of HELLO MY NAME IS stickers. And a marker.

According to the Oxford definition, the word coward is a noun.

Or an adjective.

I prefer the descriptor over the state of being. "Excessively afraid of danger or pain" sounds less pathetic than the alternative.

"A person who lacks the courage to do or endure dangerous or unpleasant things."

According to the dictionary, all the brave people died on the first afternoon of the end of the world. Now, there's no one left but the chickens to inherit the earth.

But what do the Oxfords know?

They fought over commas.

-4-

When I say Poppy saved my life, I mean she woke me up, which stopped me from buying into the hypothermia that was prematurely trying to pop my number, so, in the grand scheme there isn't much difference.

I didn't know her name when I caught her searching my pockets. She had a fistful of my belongings and I grabbed her wrist, instinctively. Growing up in the school I went to, you had to be ready for shit like that.

Click. She flicked a flashlight on and shined the beam in my face.

"Oh, my God, I thought you were dead."

"Are you robbing me?" I squinted and unfolded her fingers.

My driver's license.

My leather wrap bracelet.

Peppermint gum.

"No," she said, defensive, and yanked away. I was too weak to hang on and slumped against the nearest trash can. Spots pricked my vision, even with my eyes closed. I was out of it. Stoned high. And it took me a few seconds to realize the wet thing snuffling my cheek was a German Shepherd's nose.

"Gretchen, heel!" the girl snapped. Rising from a crouch, she tapped her thigh with the flashlight. The brilliant beam jiggled in the blue-dark.

Gretchen obeyed. Standing up on all three of her legs, the dog wobbled and circled her mistress.

We were somewhere off Main Street, behind the Fiesta movie theater. I knew because the garbage stank; stale popcorn and syrup tainted the air. I didn't remember hiding. I remembered running. Running. Running.

I remembered the ghosts of people scattered like spent gum on the sidewalks. Corpses behind bloodied car windows. Blaring car horns. Smoky engines. I remembered my thoughts were static. Whitenoise.

Nosignalnosignalnosignal.

I was the colored bars that plastered the TV screen after the newscaster, the Emmy award-winning "Nick Skinner at Channel Live 8" said "death."

Everything was out of focus.

The girl left me there. In the cold. Walking off with her three-legged dog and my only source of light.

Summer's memory was less than seven hours old, and I wore a black tank top and loose jeans. My Timberlands were spattered with dried blood. My plaid shirt wasn't warm enough, not even with the sleeves rolled down. I didn't have the gumption to get up and go looking for a better place to sleep...

I flinched awake again as my belongings bounced off my shoulder, scattering into the shadows where I wouldn't find them.

"Come on," the girl said, bending and bracing to drag me to my feet. She wore a puffy hunting jacket. It was too big for her. And by the thick stench of aftershave I had a good idea, it didn't belong on her in the first place.

Turns out, her klepto-shame had kicked in early.

We were both messed up.

Coward. I hadn't looked it up yet, but the word was already implanted in my brain, a split second before I closed my eyes and listened—just listened—to my best friends in all of Colorado die.

I decided right then, this chick could steal whatever she wanted if it made her feel better.

We spent the night with Gretchen between us, underneath the blank, rippled screen of theater three. Poppy pulled down the velvet drapes and wrapped me in them to stop me shivering.

In the morning, we cleaned out the concession stand. Because that's what you did when the world ended: hunt and gather.

I tossed back a handful of gummy candies for breakfast, wearing a drape like an animal skin robe. I felt like a skinwalker. Whoever stood here, watching Poppy hop up onto the countertop, it wasn't me. And I had a strange notion that equation alone would invite further trouble.

I told myself, the worst had already happened.

Poppy walked the cashier's counter in her stolen hunting jacket and a pair of high-end oxford flats (the handsewn soles alone were expensive). Her slim frame was swallowed whole by the ugly coat; her jeans a size too big, riding low on her razor hips. She had a million braids. Tiny plaits that sprouted from her scalp and tumbled below her waist.

I wanted to know her. This black girl with the freckles and really, really great hair. She was beautiful.

She didn't give a shit.

And the only thing she actually owned were her shoes.

Poppy broke a ball point pen off the chain and found a scrap of receipt paper. Sitting cross-legged beside the register, she started scribbling. Fiddling with her wire-thin nose ring every now and again, deep in thought.

She asked me if I remembered.

I did.

Together, we wrote down the government's rules that we were to follow. A practical first step in our alliance. See—neither of us believed help was on the way, because when we tried our cell phones, and then the payphone on the corner...

...well...

...dial tones have a way of letting you know you're being ignored.

-5-

Here's how Poppy explains the world ending. Daddy lent her the Corvette (I was doubtful until she showed me the sleek thing, all shark-nosed and navy, parked outside of Roads) to go shopping.

(Shoplifting.)

-6-

The Its came back for a second event.

I don't remember the day. I never knew it.

We were out. But it didn't matter. The Its are everywhere at once, or they're just efficient. Unlike the postman, who leaves a yellow, "sorry, we missed you" card jammed into the mail slot, the Its never miss us and they're never sorry.

The Its have a pattern, but we didn't know that back then.

We thought it was a one time gig.

Poppy was downstairs when it started. I could hear cabinets whine open and bang closed as she searched the kitchen. We'd gone food hunting. Canned beans and a box of fortune cookies was all we had left after three/four weeks of camping out in the YMCA front lobby.

The clatter stopped, and I knew she'd found a snack. Something that wouldn't make it back to our camp cache. Noodles, probably. Poppy ate uncooked pasta like limited edition Lay's.

I was upstairs when it started. The carpet squished under my knees as I shuffled to rest my hand on the grimy surface of a nightstand. Marker fumes permeated the fibers of my bandana-mask. I didn't know whether I was a bandit or a surgeon, but I did know—

Dead people smelled.

Even in the constant cold.

I squeaked out the first male name I could think of—Andy—and peeled the sticker from the wax paper backing. Labeling corpses made me feel better. If I couldn't bury everyone, at least, I could make them a person again. Even if the names were, at times, faked.

Not everyone carried a driver's license or a wallet. Babies were the easiest, everything they owned was monogrammed.

(Borderline brainwashing.)

Gretchen waited beside me, lying on her belly; each eyebrow moved independently as she soulfully stared at nothing, chin resting on her single front paw. I rubbed the HELLO MY NAME IS sticker flat on Andy's shriveled chest and stood, taking my orange backpack with me.

I'd finished labeling everyone in the house. The whole family died behind barricades, shuttered and locked. I busted a few brass handles to get into the rooms, but I made sure to leave every door and window open after I left. It was a nervous tick, except, the most outrageous and ridiculous thing my mind could conjure had already happened, so, it wasn't a neurosis.

Funny. I used to drown under daily life, all the input and the mind-numbing idealism and injustice and lies. Governments. Religions. Parents. Social constructs and racism. Plains. Trains. And automobiles.

Now, the world was quiet. No schools, no clubs, no newscasters, no noise.

Now, I had to fill it with my own structure. Opening doors and windows, name-tagging corpses, foraging for pasta—

The Its come on the cold. That's what I learned during the second event. Stepping into the hallway was like entering the walk-in freezer at the Main Street Diner (I quit that job when management withheld my yearly raise). A slap of damp plastic sheets. Room temp. Then zero-below.

The air tingled, sending gooseflesh up my arms. My breath went white, lingering in front of my nose. What little off-blue light there was in the house, dimmed, and frost, like delicate vines, crept along the wallpaper.

I checked my wristwatch,

2:14 p.m.

"Poppy!"

I slapped my thigh, beckoning Gretchen into the hall after me. She scooched and hopped in a rocking motion, nails clicking on the hardwood floor. Oblivious. Happy. I accosted her against the balcony rails. Ripping the red bandana off my face, I tied her muzzle shut, my heart stuttering.

Notagainnotagainnotagain.

"You'll thank me later—Poppy!"

No answer.

I don't remember much about that second event. I forget things, when the panic takes over and I'm trapped in a knock-off game of sardines—one where you can't shut the door but you hope whoever is It still doesn't see you. I was never good at hiding. I always needed to pee.

I remember pieces, though. Slivers.

Fisting Gretchen's warm scruff.

The ridges on the balcony spindles pressed into my side.

The gut dropping realization that the transom above the front door in the foyer, was, in fact, a window.

An unopened window.

I remember grabbing a baseball from an abandoned sports bag near the top of the staircase.

Glass shattered.

2:15.

I squeezed my eyes shut and covered Gretchen's with one hand, cowering over her—holding her so tight, I could imagine her bones breaking.

I remember willing her to sense my message beneath the sound of wings and scraping sand and the rush of a million, chaotic heartbeats.

Good doggie, good doggie, good doggie. Stay calm.

-7-

I asked Poppy that night in the theater, between chattering teeth, who it was that Gretchen belonged to. She shrugged.

"I found her at the pound."

"You adopted her?"

"No. I went to the shelter after...it happened. I figured if the world was ending then all those caged animals were in serious trouble."

"Wow," I said, touched, and embarrassed that my first thought was to hide my ass while hers had been for the local, homeless Canis familiaris. "And?"

"Gutted," she said. "Every last puppy and kitten, except for her. I found her groggy in a backroom on an operating table. I think they were in the middle of euthanizing." She flicked Gretchen a popcorn kernel. The smack of the dog's old jaws sounded like stripping velcro. "I guess it didn't take."

It probably saved her life.

-8-

As I said, I still don't know what killed my friends. I don't know what turned fall into summer, or what drained the warmth from the sun, leaving our world in a forever-blue haze without seasons.

It's been a whole year since the first event.

Eleven months since the second.

We've got a nest, the three of us. As many blankets and pillows and coats as a parking lot D.A.R.E. box. Necessary, when you live in a house with no doors or windows.

Poppy and I, we have a pattern. I mark the dead and she marks the walls. And Gretchen, well, she just lives...

Fading sun leaches between the bare patches of our roof. The ancient timber beams hold back the cliff face above us, which in turn, serves as a platform for the sky. We're snuggled now in the least crumbled corner of our home. Poppy uses me as a pillow and Gretchen chews a rawhide bone beside us; a product of today's scavenge.

Pet supplies aren't hard to find. Neither is anything else. Most of the animals died in the first event and I've never seen a person yet—not a live one, anyway, just dead ones. Nothing rots in these temperatures, bodies are more common than interstate litter these days. They putrefy, a little. And smell chemical. But that's it. Sometimes, I think we're the only survivors left on earth.

Cowards. The only cowards left on earth.

Poppy leans away from me, and the cold swarms her empty spot on my chest. I shiver. We're both wearing twin panda pajamas under our ski jackets. The kind of full-suit sleepwear that has a hood with ears and embroidered eyes. Poppy thinks they're hysterical. And she doesn't find much funny.

We took them from the Roads Department store that afternoon, doing a little war dance in the dusty changing room to keep our blood moving. The jammies are warm as long johns. Nice insulation, despite the absurdity.

But embarrassment isn't a thing when society vaporizes.

Hello, panda pajamas.

Goodbye, Planet Earth.

Poppy jabs a fireplace poker into the campfire coals and rifles around for more warmth. Fires burn blue now, too. I don't know why. But it's interesting to study the powdery sparks as they fizz upward toward the ceiling, floating, neon flecks.

Poppy crosses her legs and arms and stares up at the walls. Where we live now, everything is pocked sandstone; the surface covered in tiny craters like pimple scars on your chin. The floor beneath me is sand. The scratched roads outside are sand. In our new environment, the desert occasionally glows purple. The red plains meshing with the blue light.

"I hope we got the day right," Poppy says.

In between the shadows from the flames, I see white hashes on the grainy wall. They're tick marks. Every inch of bare stone is covered in them. Each chalk line represents a day, but we're not counting down to holidays or birthdays. When time stopped at 2:15, so did our calendar. We've been trying to catch up and figure out what week and what Tuesday, Monday, or Sunday we're on, but it's trial and error.

Without seasons, the months are a mystery. And even when I had a calendar, and school to remind me, I never knew what day it was.

Too much in my head.

The Its come back every thirty hash marks. Roughly. Poppy uses red chalk for those days. We're trying to preempt their returns. To plan, so we're safe, and not stuck somewhere with too many closed doors or windows.

We did our shopping today because tomorrow might be zero hour. Twelve times they've been back, culling, cutting up. The only reason I know we aren't the last survivors on earth is by the rash of fresh corpses they leave behind.

Sometimes, cowards get curious.

The sun is setting outside. The shadows swell our little pueblo, gagging the space in noxious, intangible, ink.

Like closing your eyes.

I move the silver space blanket and duck under the lopsided door frame. Outside, Mesa Verde unfolds at my feet. Hollow cutouts in the shapes of buildings, sprawl along the sloping road. A city carved from the cliff face like a pop-up storybook. Tourists used to visit here. DO NOT TOUCH signs guard crumbling walls, covered in fine sediment.

There's a kiva near our door—a deep hole, it's roof long splintered by age—and I stand on the edge. The air is bitter. I chip crumbs from one of the broken bricks near my boot, watching the bits tumble into the dark pit below.

The people who lived here took refuge in these holes, worshiping. Kachina. That was the word my grandfather spoke, whenever he could corral anyone younger than thirty at family gatherings.

Kachina. Spirits. Messengers.

Invisible, but not deadly.

Not like the Its. The Its aren't invisible, you don't have to dance in a mask to make them appear. All you have to do is look.

I thumb my lighter. The mirrored surface winks in the draff from the pale blue sun. I pinch a cigarette between my lips and cup my hands against the wind to light it.

I wonder about my grandfather and my parents back home in Arizona; the grownups who couldn't understand the anarchist me.

(Ex-anarchist.)

Are they dead?

Nick Skinner—how many people listened to him? How many people volunteered like sheep; closing their eyes and opening their homes to the unknown at the word of a newscaster on TV?

Why weren't we told? Someone somewhere had to know what was happening, they knew enough to warn us.

Why did I blindly obey? I didn't even warn my friends. What did that make me?

I don't hear Poppy's approach until her hands are at my waist. She pretends to shove me off the edge and I inhale sharply, swallowing smoke, choking.

She laughs and plucks the cigarette from my fingers. "Wuss."

"Brat." I rasp when I finally stop crying hot tears. She keeps the cigarette out of my reach, moving her hand up, down, left, right—

I give up.

Shadows settle on the plain in the distance. Together we watch the sunset.

Poppy tips her head and exhales the smoke from her lungs like the stack on a moving train, "What's wrong, Matty?"

What's wrong? I eye her. Cautious. I know she's not asking about the morgue world we live in, but I can never tell if she's joking or if she's serious and it's been the source of a few heated misunderstandings between us.

Her plaits are gone. The waterfall of braids she had when we first met traded for a cropped cut. I helped her do it. She still has her nose ring. And her edges still poke through all her clothes. Hugging her is hard. We've only ever hugged once, though. After the second event, when I tripped down the stairs carrying Gretchen, terrified I'd find a body with pulled teeth or a missing liver.

But Poppy was fine, sitting on the marble counter shoving flat egg noodles into her mouth. I'd never hugged someone so hard in my life. If death was gonna happen, I didn't want to be left on my own.

She's still waiting for my answer, and when she offers me the cigarette, I decide she's serious.

The wind whips the warmth from my face, eating into my nose and staining it red as I take a drag.

"My grandfather used to tell me about this place," I say, nodding to the twilight city at our feet. "He said, when it was discovered in the 1880's, it looked like the inhabitants had, just, vanished. Tables were still set for dinner, and they found shoes sitting in the corner, undisturbed."

Poppy picks a paper flake from her tongue, "Frakking creepy." She knocks my arm with a pointy elbow. "Hey, maybe the Its got 'em."

(Poppy still theorizes that the Its are aliens. From Mars, probably.)

"We close our eyes," I blurt out.

Poppy watches the sun disappear on the horizon. She knows. Of course, she knows. And she nods, slow. "Alright, so tomorrow we don't."

-9-

Than was Tewa and my best friend. I am Navajo, but Than was my brother. Not in the mystical juju way like in the movies. And not because we were both Indian—geez.

I knew he was slightly agoraphobic and claustrophobic, which is why he never played outdoor arena sports. I knew that he was afraid of spiders and the concept of the big E.

Eternity.

He knew I got a rash from eating chocolate, and that at sixteen, I accidentally walked into a door and got a black eye, but told everyone at school I'd been in a bar brawl.

Being friends since second grade made us brothers, which was why returning to the house to label his body was the right thing to do. I went back when Poppy caught a fever. There was medicine in the bathroom cabinet. I went alone.

I couldn't even close his eyelids since he no longer had any.

Kneeling over his graying corpse, I pressed a name tag to his chest and tried to imagine what he would say about this whole, damn, mess.

About me.

Delia, Berdy, Than, Emilio, Suzy, Harper, and Freddie—we all believed in freedom, liberty, equality. We knew the government was wrong, filling people's heads with poison, starting wars, and separating classes—pitting human beings against each other—using fear to maintain control. Lies lies lies.

Than looked.

All my friends did.

I didn't. What kind of anarchist was I?

A live one. But I don't even know why we have to open the doors and windows.

I don't know what I'm scared of.

-10-

Here's how Than would explain the world ending. The Its keep us cold to stop us spoiling, kinda like a morgue. Then they harvest. Planet Earth is one giant ice chest, and we humans are the organs, waiting for a transplant.

Into what? Well, I doubt even he'd know that.

-11-

Poppy picks the place for our last stand.

Her house.

I don't know what to expect since she never talks about herself. (I don't even know her surname.) But as we pull off the highway and onto a flat road trimmed in dry grass, I'm happy to learn I guessed right about one part of her.

She is rich.

Her house is massive.

The Corvette crunches into a circular driveway, past a plaster fountain. Poppy parks us under a portico shielding the double-wide front doors and kills the ignition.

"Home sweet home," she says.

Her house looks like it grew from the desert in octagons and squares. There are three garages—one super tall one, made for what I can only imagine is a motorhome—and a million, glittering windows. The house is made from stone. Everything is a kind of rose-brown color. Kind of...dead.

I leave my car door open, letting the ping ping of the internal sensors stir the empty air.

Poppy checks the front door. It's locked.

"Do you have a key?" I ask, trailing her to the first-floor bay window.

"No."

I catch my reflection in the glass. I'm wearing the panda pajamas, my slippery ski coat, and a yellow and orange striped hat with a pompom on top. (Poppy calls it my Jayne hat. Whatever that means.)

Funny thing about this weather. It's always cold and it never snows.

"How do we get in then? Whoa—"

Poppy pulls a golden woman from the vette's glovebox. She's holding a world of rings in her hands; wings sprouting between her tiny shoulder blades.

"Oh my God, is that an Emmy?!"

Poppy shrugs and saunters back to me and the window, statue resting on her shoulder. "It's my dad's."

"Your Dad kept a fake Emmy Award in his car?"

"No, it's real, and I took it."

I must have made a face, because she rolls her eyes, exasperated, "I've stolen everything from iPhones to underwear. I think I can sneak a piece of chintzy-shit out of the house when my parents aren't home. Stand back."

The statue crashes through the window. A loud alarm pierces my eardrums, but only for a second. Poppy's unlocked the catch and scrambled over the sill to plug in the keycode before the alarm ratchets into air raid siren.

She pokes her head outside again, "Come on."

I wiggle a gloved finger in my buzzing ear. My heart flutters. The phantom fear of getting caught ghosts under my ribs. It's ridiculous. There's no one around to catch us. But ingrained, childhood rights and wrongs are hard to squelch.

I lean on the window sill. Poppy offers her hand to help me climb inside. "You're nuts, you know that."

"My psychiatrist called it poor impulse control. Something to do with my frakked up neurotransmitter."

The mansion is even bigger on the inside—if that's possible—and I'm glad we left Gretchen behind. Standing in the vacant foyer, I'm reminded of the last time we took her with us. The second event. Now, there are too many transoms and not enough baseballs and Gretchen dying is low, low down on my list of things-I-want-to-hear-in-my-final-moments.

She's learned not to react when the Its arrive. She's almost blind anyway (cataracts). We've left out the kibble. She'll be safer in the pueblos than in the desert—

Besides, we might come back.

It's never occurred to me that I might not die. I mean, I know I've come here to die, and it's not like premeditated suicide, more like an inevitable outcome.

I'm tired of not knowing.

The mansion is musty. Sealed shut, tight as a tomb. My footsteps echo off the high ceiling, shaking the chandelier crystals as I investigate the marble entrance way, mentally noting the paintings on the walls and the iron boot scraper.

I open the front door.

There's a table sitting under a big mirror. I catch Poppy watching me from the staircase as I flip through the brittle mail stacked neatly in a pile, waiting to be read.

They're all addressed to one person. A name I couldn't forget if I tried. My brain sighs in relief as I make the connection, as the pieces I missed finally clip into place.

"Holy shit, you're Nick Skinner's daughter?!"

Poppy groans and plunks her butt down on the stair tread. "No, I'm not. I'm me."

I turn, "Yeah, but, didn't he know about all of this?" I'm waving my hands, suddenly excited, not fearful. "He made the announcement. He gave us the rules. Didn't he know what the Its are?"

"He read off a script!" Poppy snaps, she stands up so fast her joints pop. She stomps toward me, her boots strewing bits of hard dirt behind her. "If he did know, why would he let me leave?"

"Look at this place, Poppy," I say, quietly, because I can see the sadness inside her. Her eyes don't hide it well. "It's a death trap."

As if on cue, the temperature plummets. We both check our watches.

2:15 p.m.

Poppy takes my hand, her fear travels through my bones, colliding with mine in an electric explosion in my chest. "Let's close our eyes, and then on the count of three..."

I nod.

That's when we hear the sound, a dull thumping paired with wings flapping, like a million bats, getting closer, closer, closer...

"One."

The Its surround us; a weight, a palpable sting that settles on my body, burning through my clothes. I still don't know, I still don't know—

"Two."

I hear heartbeats. Whump, whump, whump. Mine. Poppy's. A million different hearts pumping out of sync. Underneath it, the hush of sand blowing in the wind or maybe it's steel, sharpening.

"Three."

I am not a coward.

-12-

I didn't tell myself the truth. My friends, they didn't even know looking would hurt them. It wasn't a choice, it wasn't bravery, it was ignorance.

-13-

I open my eyes.

A/N: My third entry for Nyhterides The Glamour of Grotesque contest, inspired by Eiffel 65's 'Blue (Da Be Dee)' and Daughter's 'Youth'.