Simon and Hess oughta be looking for me by now. There’s a slim chance they didn’t stop by Angel’s on the way home. No, they definitely got the message. They had to. I have to ditch this box now.

I turn a corner, slowing down for it. I’d hate to spin off the road in this rain. Dumb reason to get caught, yeah. Should have a couple hours, maybe at least one. No mistakes you goddam slob, you can do this.

There’s one way out of town. It goes on like that for forty minutes, then finally the road splits into two directions. Simon’ll expect me to go North, no doubt about that, and Hess will go South for sure because any guy with sense would go South.

Damn. If they drove together, they’ll need Angel’s car. Should’ve grabbed the keys when I was there. Didn’t. Damn.

So I go North. Hess knows these roads better than anyone, so I’ll stand a better chance of getting away from Simon, I’ve at least been here longer than him. So far that’s the entire plan, trying not to get caught even though that’s going to be damn short of possible.

I have got to get rid of this box.

Okay, think about this, what’s North? The river is South, so is Digger’s Death Canyon. Crap, everything is on the other side of the river! There’s nothing but tight goddam windy roads North! Why the Hell did I go North?!

Headlights behind me. They’re getting closer. Goddam this old minivan! No sense running any more, I pull over to the side of the road and run to the back door. There’s Angel’s box right there, black and steel and the reason I’m going to die.

By the time I get it out of the back, Simon’s already on me, just as I figured, his beady goddam bloodshot eyes staring me down, and his gun leveled right on me.

What the Hell happened at Angel’s, he asks.

I tell him what I know, but he doesn’t believe me. Not that he would, none of it makes sense unless I admit that I told Angel to do what he did.

You shouldn’t have run, he says. We trusted you until you did that, even Hess. Maybe even more than Angel.

That’s a goddam lie, I say. Both of those bastards hated me since what happened at the Cantina. They’ve just been waiting for a reason.

Simon moves to the side, doesn’t take his eyes off me. Not true, he says. Look in the box.

It’s all there. Angel was out soon, I was in.

Would’ve been in, anyway. Ain’t how it is now.

Hess said he wanted to see you first, he says, raising his gun. But I don’t think that’s such a hot idea.

And like that, all my luck just drained right out and all over the highway.

This was the day they met. Summer camp, twelve years old, she was fourteen, wearing a Road to Ruin t-shirt. He had the same poster at home, that’s what they talked about. Nobody else in the photo matters, just him and Lisa, side by side. She wrote her address on the back. It rests for a moment and then is gone.

When he was fifteen, he performed in Chicago. She came out to see him, to witness the unscheduled solo they joked about. He was kicked out of band class for it, but he had to, Lisa dared him. Her laugh was in perfect harmony.

That was the day he told her that he loved her, but this too falls and is lost forever.

Yesterday, they were dancing at their wedding. In her beautiful white gown, in his black suit, flailing wildly to the music. Laughing. This was their joke together, to play Sedated as their first dance.

And then they are torn from that day, and they fall in pieces to the water.

He remembers everything she said, every gesture, every smile. Oh, that smile, it always leaves him breathless, and then the memory gently fades. Down, down, and gone forever.

Thick fur coats, blankets, tents, food, fire; who could survive here without these things?

Someone says he must have died somewhere far behind, someone else says no, his body would’ve been found, someone else says to keep moving, it’s too cold to stop unless it’s to make camp. They say he killed two Mounties, they say he’s got to be caught.

He’s not a man, he’s the Mad Trapper of Rat River, a ghost. Can’t be caught. Hard to believe ’til you’re after him.

There’s new tracks now, a man’s, from the caribou tracks to the trees. That’s how he’s been hiding, that’s where he is now. Who knows how long ago, his footprints are almost snowed over. A few hours, maybe, but they’re deep and they’re straight, so he’s not tired. He’s running. Seventy-two miles, he’s still not tired.

The ghost goes to a canyon. The trees are thick, and it’s too dark to see anything but the tracks leading down there. Someone says to set up camp at the top, there’s mountains surrounding him, he can’t go nowhere without coming back this way. A storm hits. It’s gonna be bad.

Even with a fire, it’s the coldest night in months. Nobody knows how he’s staying warm or what he’s been eating. How’s a man on the run find time to hunt, to dry his clothes, to build a new shelter each night?

A rifle is fired, it wakes everyone up, it kills the man on watch. Somewhere down in the shadows, the Mad Trapper is fired upon, and at the top of the ridge, given away by the campfire, two more Mounties die.

In the daylight, his tracks go from the top of the ridge, down through the trees, to the face of the mountain. There they stopped, nowhere to go. The ghost either vanished or the man climbed up, at night, during a blizzard, rifle in hand.

Everyone says he’s a ghost.

He paused at the edge of the clearing. Hundreds of leaflets littered his crops. There had been an airplane the day before, but Onada couldn’t tell if it was Japanese. He hoped it was, hoped that his commanding officer had come to relieve him. But of course it was not, orders were not dropped from passing airplanes. They were given in person, face to face. They were accepted reluctantly and obeyed completely.

Onada retrieved a leaflet and retreated back to the forest. It wasn’t safe out in the open, in the garden that he came to only when he must. If it were too well cared for, the enemy would know he was alive, so he let most of the crops wither, even when he was hungry.

The leaflet read: LIEUTENANT HIROU ONADA, THE WAR IS OVER. JAPAN HAS SURRENDERED TO THE UNITED STATES.

Did the Americans think he was a fool? That such an obvious trick would coax him out to be captured? His name was misspelled, his rank was incomplete! Such poor forgery! No protector of Japan would ever accept such shame as surrender! Never would the mighty Empire of Japan fall!

Onada remained vigilant. Here, on this island, to this soldier alone, the war raged on for thirty years.

Almost 72 years before His arrival, an outside planet was discovered that we came to call Heaven. Its unusual orbit around our sun was equivalent to 3741 Earth years, and because of its unusual trajectory, it was only visible to us for 218 of those years when it was closest. Its atmosphere was like ours and a race of sentient beings existed there, in many ways similar to us. We called these beings Angels, and among them — an Angel Himself — God was their representative.

Millions of years earlier, colonies were sent to populate our planet. They died almost immediately. However similar Heaven and Earth are, its geological differences were still too drastic for their species. Only their basic DNA structure remained on Earth, and over time, Angels guided its evolution into a similar species that could withstand Earth’s atmosphere and gravity. This, we learned, was the origin of humankind. No longer a marvelously unique and intelligent being in the Universe, but a primitive version of a species far greater than ourselves.

God arrived on Earth violently. Heaven was no longer habitable, its luxury stripped and its beauty polluted. The Angels came to our planet as conquerors, all of them our masters. We built their enormous cities. We built the cages we were kept in. We could not resist them.

And like that, God reined over Earth, our Lord.

I’d been in town long enough to know who the strangers were, and one day this ship came in looking for crew, a guy I’d never seen before. Says he’s looking for two men, three nights, no questions asked. The pay is great so I get a friend, and no questions asked, we load the ship up around midnight and set sail before sunrise.

Right away I get into it with the boss. Won’t tell us where we’re going or what we’re carrying. Big heavy crates, no labels, doesn’t even say which end is up. I must’ve asked a dozen times what was in ‘em, nothing. Could be dangerous, I tell him, allergies and all that, but he doesn’t care.

We sailed all night, then the next day, and after dinner he tells us he wants an overnight watch. Says he’s a heavy sleeper and doesn’t want any surprises. Me, I’m used to getting more than a full night’s sleep, and I tell him that, but it’s part of the job, he says, and if I can’t do the job, I can swim home. It’s a long way to shore.

My first watch, two in the morning, I decide there’s no way I’m going to stay another night out alone on deck. Just can’t work for this twit any more. So I check the lifeboats, make sure they’re working, make sure the lowering boom is quiet, and it is. Only fifteen feet down to the water. The boat’s got oars, blankets, rations. Should be good for a couple days.

My friend says the captain won’t sleep through that much racket. But he does.

And that morning before sunrise, the ship floated away earlier than planned, well before sunrise, leaving the lifeboat well behind. We docked at the first port we came to, and sold the ship and everything on it for a couple thousand dollars. Now that’s a lot of money back then, more than the boss promised, but not nearly as much as the ship was worth. Hell, the cargo alone might’ve been a hundred thousand, and I sure regret not checking what it was first. I figure it was whiskey, but who knows. Could’ve been anything.

“Printer!” barked the General. “Will you make posters to hang in the city! Will you tell the people the truth about their glorious President!”

Work was slow and money hard to come by. Food was nearly impossible to find anywhere, every market was empty. The Printer was shaking, he had so little to eat.

The President was generous to his few loyal supporters. His General was ruthless with the rest. It was unwise to disagree with their requests, and really, what bother is it to anyone if it’s truth being printed or not? And what was truth anyway? Truth is printed all the time, by anyone! Let the people do as they will!

At the end of each day, he returned home and in the abundant food for his family he found truth. And each morning, it was lost, and he entered his shop a liar. When the door closed behind him, it sounded like thunder.

And so it went each day for months and years, his hands covered in the dark ink of the government. He could not care what horrible shapes the ink took. He would not look at it any more than to check the coverage. Day after day, he laboured.

The colour was the richest black. It was his pride.

When she was seven, Emma’s t-ball team was going out for hot dogs, and when she bit into hers, she also bit into a severed pinky finger. (It belonged to one of the workers at the factory where the weiners were made.) As soon as she pulled it out and saw it pointing right back at her, she refused to eat meat ever again.

When Emma was nine she found a gelatinous gob of something icky white on top of the butter, and a little while later there was an incident with chocolate milk that she never talked about. On her tenth birthday she found what she thought was a frog’s eye in her ice cream cone. (It wasn’t actually a frog’s eye, though, it was a completely different animal.) This is when Emma stopped eating dairy.

Finally, when Emma was thirteen, she stopped eating processed food. This was an unusual year, actually, even for her. One time she found a little green worm in a fruit bar, another time a hornet’s nest in a bag of chips. A can of pop she nearly drank out of was full of nails, a donut was actually an angry coiled-up rattlesnake, and she found a paint-soaked sponge in a package that was supposed to be her favourite organic tofu. Who knows how these things happen, but they did, and they happened to Emma.

One day, Emma is going to stop eating most fruits and vegetables, all rice and beans and nuts, and everything except for a specific type of apple that she will grow herself. And then one day, something will happen, and she’ll stop eating even that.

But as Emma always said, don’t go letting her stories stop you from eating what you want. She just had bad luck, is all.

When he proposed to his wife so many graying years ago, he promised her everything. They had nothing at the time so everything was easy to give, like a house, a family, food on the table. And all these things, he gave her.

They bought a store together, a little corner store in the small town where they lived. He liked the work but never quite understood the bookkeeping, so she took care of that. And every day, together, they ran the store. People went there for groceries, to rent movies, to enjoy a home-cooked meal. They raised their children there, and their children grew up to raise their own children there, and still, always together, they ran their store.

Looking around the dark room, Marcel wiped his eyes dry. All this furniture ordered from catalogues and shipped here, all set up and arranged and regularly cleaned. He had so many questions. He wanted none of them answered. He wanted out.

Last year, she told him that she was dying. She knew for a while, but she kept it to herself. It didn’t make sense, maybe, or she didn’t believe it, or she forgot. Her mind was getting old, she said. Foggy. She forgot some things, and remembered other things, things that never happened. Sometimes she didn’t recognize where she was.

He thought she was just tired.

She was tired for a long time.

Marcel made sure the For Sale sign was visible in the boarded-up windows. He locked up the building across from their store and put the key that the locksmith made into his pocket. According to the deed, they bought the building together years before she passed away, but this was the first time he’d seen this foggy place. He did not want to come back.

I was honestly crying but I don’t know if I was honestly sorry. Maybe I felt guilty. I definitely was.

She had no idea. I shouldn’t have said anything, but I had to. I had to.

“When we started dating –- actually seriously dating, the second time around –- do you remember when I surprised you? You got off work early and found me in your house and I said I was there to make you dinner?”

“Yes,” she said. She was nervous. Of course she was. She had every right to be and she didn’t even know why yet.

“I wasn’t there to make you dinner.”

We had a big fight at her place, in her bedroom, and she stormed off to the bathroom. I was so angry. I didn’t think I’d see her again, so I took something. I didn’t have to tell her what it was, she knew me well enough now. And then two months later we were dating again, and she gave me a key. I had to put it back.

“Forgive me.”

Her face went dark and unreadable. I didn’t know who she was anymore. She didn’t know who I was. And this time when I left, I had nothing.