THREE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING IS THE WITCHING HOUR. Forget midnight—too many pyre-inclined mortals are still awake and bungling about for sticks and matches at that time. No, what witches crave is a highly unpopulated hour to perform proper witchery in; an hour indistinguishable from the way things go in the grave.

Joey had begun to think of herself as a witch. Really not much else to do—not when you are awake, again, still, at 3:00 A.M. Up until the freaking three-A-of-M on the morning of June the eighth (the eighth, mind you), Joey’s knowledge of witches involved the usual school-patter about Salem, Massachusetts, The Wizard of Oz, and that old-timey staple of retro-TV, Bewitched. Joey saw something wrong with the Bewitched set up. Yeah, yeah, it’s just a show, I know, I know. But the idea of a powerful, beautiful witch getting married to become the barefoot and pregnant slave of some asshole with a face like something wonked-up by Dr. Seuss pissed her off. In her current state of being pregnant and six days past the due date for her first (and only–goddam right there, baby) child, Joey’s estimation of the male side of the human race was at an all time low; and with it being three–No! three-oh-two, in the morning (again and still) her rating of the fellas continued to plunge.

Lying there in the feeble light cast by the clock radio, she took stock of her sleeping husband, David. Unkempt and utterly defenseless, David didn’t look like he had been wonked-up by Dr. Seuss.

Instead, he resembled Shaggy, the bungling proto-dude ostensibly responsible for a dog by the name of Scooby Doo. Between Shaggy and Scooby there were maybe six good brain cells—and Scooby has most of them. Together this duo got the better of ghosts and werewolves and, yes, witches by the third station break. In the real world these individuals would be bilked for all their Scooby Snacks by online Nigerian princes. But not in TV-land—Oh, no. In TV-land men and their toadies are far more clever than witches. David was a mortal. It remained to be seen just who was more clever, now that it was the Witching Hour.

By the time the clock radio informed Joey that it was 3:04, Joey understood that she needed to complete an action of some sort that might allow her to sleep; an action that lay somewhere between prank and violence; an action that would make her current displeasure of her current situation the current number one topic in the mind of God. Forget the poor, the diseased, the unfairly persecuted–God did nothing for those people anyway, so she could have a moment under the spotlight and not fear any sort of karmic repercussion down the line. Plenty of justified complaints swirled about her over-charged brain; they swirled like waves of graveyard bats. For instance: why a clock radio? How backwards. There were at least six cells in the house that had alarm functions. Why not a rooster? Why not let one of those cox-combed menaces have run of the bedroom? Why hold on to a relic that you had from childhood? Something that his mommy probably bought for him. Go on, get a fucking rooster, let it terrorize your wife and mother of your child while you sleep away blissfully and oh so…

“KOH-zee,” Joey hissed softly. And she smiled the smile of persons who understand that the rules of logic do not apply to them. This was/is/always will be the Wiccan Way. The epiphany was given extra juice when the voice of her obstetrician, Dr. Milo Vance, spoke in her mind, in the form of a phone call that had taken place some eighteen hours previously. “Now, JoAnne,” he clucked, like a rooster (clucking is as close to mocking laughter as roosters get), “you have somehow misconstrued an estimated due date as an oral contract.”

Dr. Vance had probably added some chickenshit advice to that, but Joey couldn’t say because she had hung up on him. Then fucknut didn’t call back as she had fully expected. Required. Arrogant quack. Quacking clucking strutting mixed-up duck-rooster monster.

Joey reached down and plucked the family sized box of Lucky Charms that stood on the floor by her side of the bed. It was either it or her phone, but it was on the charger–plus it had become a bit of a bore, constantly siding with the world view of Dr. Cluck Cluck to whatever prolonged pregnancy questions she put to it. Lately Joey found amusement belittling and bemusing the Google Gemini AI for its lack of compassion. But you can only shake a cage for so long–plus the gizmo was way the hell over there, across the room. Anyway, this was an occasion in which only food would suffice.

Joey was amazed by the wonder of Lucky Charms. She had known about the stuff as long as the average person, but it was not until the last month, at the ripe age of twenty-four, that the awesome splendor of Lucky Charms opened for her. Being a lady of refined and ever-changing tastes, Joey had developed a gourmet’s knowledge of Lucky Charms over the course of the past month. The brown filler, which resembled horse chow, was good enough to cleanse the palate; it allowed the complex subtleties issued by no less than two hundred or so calcified charms to mince at the tip of her tongue.

Except for the stars…Joey wouldn’t rather eat a steaming pile of dogcrap than one of those grimy orange stars, but that didn’t mean they were far off from a similar estimation.

“Jesus Christ, Jo, why won’t you eat the stars? Isn’t all that stuff made from the same shit?”

Even in the darkness, only slightly aided by the glowing numbers of the clock radio, Joey was able to remove the stars, mainly by feel. By 3:23 a little pile was building near her water bottle, which stood beside the glowing clock radio on the nightstand–if six and one misread moon constitutes a little pile.

She reran David’s statement about the stars in her mind. She added a merry little light in his eyes and an insulting tilt of his head to the rerun, a tilt like that of his ever incredulous Mommy.

She struggled up onto her elbows and gazed at him with extreme virulence. “Because they taste funny, fucker. How dare you and your mummy think, I, your wife, and mother of your child, mind you, double dare say the stars are good enough for me.” These words seethed across low and quickly. Temporarily sated, Joey opened the water bottle and took a drink. Inspiration struck. She then poured a little in the bottle’s cap (again by feel and by the glow of the clock which now read 3:27). Joey dipped the stars (and ate the misidentified moon) in the cap and stuck them to the side of David’s neck, good and firm. The concept was to create a star for him to see upon waking. But to do that she would require far more materials, at least nine.

Then it happened. Precisely at the click of 3:28 it became evident that whatever Angel or Demon in charge of JoAnne Carter flipped a switch and the birth machine kicked on all at once. Water broke, contractions began and Joey rammed her thumb (a time honored attention getter for a girl who grew up with four brothers) into David’s armpit and yelled “Up Fucker!!! Now Now Now!!!” directly into his ear.

*****

A Brief Intrusion by the Author

As it should be the case in all fictional stories in which a baby is born, it went perfectly and there were no complications and the child, a girl (name her whatever you like), entered the world just before dawn on 8 June of whatever year you would like it to be (as long as you understand that cell phones and Lucky Charms must exist at that time–unless you want to go to the trouble of inventing a parallel universe for those to be around in the 1920’s–your call. Seems like needless work to me, but as staged, your call).

This tale is based on actual events that occurred in 1986 and it pleases the writer that all three parties are still about in the world and none have ever gone to prison or run for political office, which is always a good thing to know. Yes, it has taken nearly forty years for it to get this far. It predates cell phones that came along, as well as Wikipedia. But Lucky Charms have always been the soul of it.

Therefore this tale is one of the oldest in the Leila Allison canon, actually the Irene Allison collection–or should I say half story because I, Leila and Irene, have never discovered a decent way to end it. But now that forty years have passed (or will this June–the actual date where most all else is fabrication–except the Lucky Charms, which did happen), I, Leila, feel a strong need to complete Overtime and release it from its almost eternal mooring in the boatyard of my mind.

For an ending, I could baffle the readers with bullshit. Do you know that a “hidden key” could be summoned in the charms with the addition of milk in 2005 (when the tale was a callow nineteen)? It’s all right, do not curse your ignorance, few people know about it. It preceded the arrival of the hourglass charm in 2008 (remember the Year of Change, Americans? Overtime turned twenty-two that year. Again it is all right if you do not because that was political jargon which has the shelf life of Mayfly shit and should not be taken seriously). 2008 was also the year that the creepy looking cartoon Leprechaun’s name was changed from “Lucky” to “Emerald Elder.” The only thing interesting about the change is that someone was actually paid to come up with the name, which, perhaps for me only, is the most pedo-sounding name since Wacko Jacko and/or Rupert Murdoch.

Sigh, as you plainly see, thinking up an end for Overtime has been a challenge. So I have dusted off the original closing and now present it to you, the Patient Reader.

The Ending

As you already know,everything went well at the hospital. Sometime after sunrise, Joey gave birth to a hella-noisy little girl named Susan Marie (You still may call her what you want, but Joey chose Susan Marie. The first for Joey’s mother, the middle for David’s mummy, who noticed the rank but couldn’t really say shit about it without coming off like a bitch–which was Joey’s intent, also figured out at three in the morning).

Sadly, David missed the delivery because he needed three stitches sewn into his head on account of his recklessly nailing it on the clock radio after he had “dreamed” that someone had shouted “Up Fucker!!! Now Now Now!!!” into his ear. It should be stated that everything went well except for David banging his head during the hectic moments after the said Angel/Demon had flipped the switch. But considering he had little to do with the physical part of the pregnancy after conception, he was wise enough not to bring up the subject for twenty years, and at that time he quickly dropped it remembering that the possession of an occasionally leaky memory was one of the key aspects of a lengthy, if not entirely happy, marriage.

Eventually, the newly minted family of three got together for the first time. This happened in Joey’s room, which she had to herself because of Susan Marie, whose deafening howling power matched that of a possessed leaf blower. She was perfectly healthy, just someone who enjoyed self expression early and often. Normally hospitals treat and street mothers ASAP, but in a rare bit of genius David had paid for a two day stay ahead of time. Motivations for acts of genius are often cast under the light of suspicion, as do their sudden appearance in literature. The best thing to do there is “go with it.”

“Does your head hurt much, darling?’

David almost answered honestly but he was (and remains) always smarter than he looked.

“Ummmm, no,” he said.

Susan Marie gave up the howl and gave both her parents a knowing glance over, even though science says such is impossible for children her age.

“She seems to be sizing us up,” David said. He extended his index finger toward Susan Marie’s hand, which she grasped and held onto.

“I swear she’s smiling Jo–can they do that this early?”

Joey laughed. “She’s a Daddy’s girl,” she said. And she was very happy to know it because right then and there it was clear just who would be bringing th bottle at the Witching Hour.

(This Saragun piece will appear at 3 A.M. Pacific Time, USA, to honor matronly Witches)

Leila Allison

(Note: This really is an oldie. First written when Bill and Monica were an ugsome item in the White House, it has seen many changes over the years. I had high, high hopes for this once; it felt like it could have been something more, but never quite made it. I learned things are what they are destined to be–Leila)

The cataract sky saw not, yet watched; the wind moved not, yet listened; God spoke not, yet instructed. The day simply was and would be until the last mind summoned the strength to stop thinking about it. A low slung blotch of scuzzy radiance, which Amy assumed was the sun, slouched west within the ashes.

Amy gazed out the living room window. Only a double thickness of glass lay between her lungs and the poisons of an imagined alien atmosphere.

The cul-de-sac that had always been Amy’s home lay beneath the depthless sky. All around the remnants of happier times rotted like the crabapples that not even the crows would eat: Cheerful summer barbecue grills tucked under blue tarps held in place by cinder blocks; formerly lush and profuse gardens, now forlorn mudholes; abandoned toys sporting mossy growths, and what had gone unraked of the fiercely luminescent October leaves lay bunched in the gutters and storm drains.

Even at just sixteen, Amy knew this time of year well. It was the annual “Pause” that came over the well-fed cul-de-sac between the termination of Halloween festivities and the agreed upon going up of the Christmas lights on the Sunday of the Thanksgiving weekend. There was something affected and childish and selfish about this collective mood; something which Amy and her like-minded friends cleverly disparaged. With just enough education in their heads to make them annoying, the kids had wonked-up several alliterative titles for the event: The Morbid Malaise and the Enormous Ennui had been Amy’s contributions to that year’s gathering at the Round Table—but, alas, the others had favored the lowest common denominatorish, Poopy Pout.

The grandfather clock lashed four tones. This startled Amy out of her thoughts. Each chime had landed on her soul. Until that moment the grandfather clock had always been a benign friend that had never behaved rudely. Something about this feeling made Amy feel like a stranger in her own home.

She had purposely left the house still upon her arrival. Under normal circumstances, Amy felt ill at ease in places where darkness, silence and contemplation were the chief components. She had even gone to the extreme measure of turning off her cell—which, for Amy, was tantamount to plucking out an eye.

With a reluctant sigh, Amy performed her one and only chore; an action that she could be relied on doing about three times in five: she flipped the porch light on for her parents, who’d be home from work within the hour.

Amy’s bedroom lay adjacent to the living room and faced the cul-de-sac. Unlike the rest of the tidily kept house, her room was a disorganized mess which resembled an open archeological dig over-topped by a pop culture village. It was a mixture of the distant past and the oh-so-now. Here and there were fissures in the debris field that allowed forgotten toys and games from Amy’s deeper childhood to emerge like trilobites for the picking. Items such as realistically dead virtual pets and dogeared Pokemon cards lay intermingled with current issues of celebrity scandal sheets and the spent husks of no less than six cellulars—Oh, and there was a weird, fruity smell in the room too. Amy had theorized that the odor was caused by a known perfume spill interacting with the upending of an older fragrance. Theorizing on the subject was as close to doing something about it as she got.

The splay of the room was simple enough: bed, desk and stuff. The first two were constants, the third was ever-changing. Atop the various variables which are important to a young lady of Amy’s social status and economic circumstances, lay a smattering of pamphlets. She had gotten those that very afternoon. Amy had hurled the pamphlets at her room when she got home in vain hope that the accumulated ghosts of her childhood might do something about them. No such luck. In the feeble light cast by the perpetual gloaming, Folic Acid And You (a way too happy-clappy missive which extolled the virtues of the gross bean family) stood out like a missionary who had entered the jungle with a cross in one hand and a rifle in the other.

“No, no, no,” Amy hissed as she performed a backwards dive onto her bed. This was an ancient action of hers which sometimes toppled perfume bottles, and had recently earned her three stitches in her left elbow because Amy had forgotten about the (alleged) coffin nails Ty had given her on their first date. Amy had heard that some guys bring flowers and/or candy along for that sort of thing; but, alas, Amy was attracted to guys who saw the upside in gifting (alleged) coffin nails.

There was a row of school pictures starring, naturally, Amy, hanging below the crown molding in Amy’s room. The queue of ten portraits ran left to right and ranged from the first grade to Amy’s sophomore year in high school. Daddy had hung the first seven or eight, but toward the end of his conscription Daddy had cracked-clever forty times too many about the possibility of quicksand that she had to drop him from the portrait hanging team.

Lying in the gloom, Amy took stock of the Ghosts of Amy’s Past. Outside business transacted with the Tooth Fairy, Amys One through Three were basically the same person; slightly round in the cheek and grinning shyly, each of Amy’s earliest incarnations had bobbed bone-blond hair and had been installed in a jumper that had been designed to be girly and rugged at the same time. Four had a touch less fat in her cheeks and her hair had begun the long process of extracting what’s right about red from the sun and including such in its sheen; these trends progressed further in the faces of Five and Six.

To be frank, Six had been the final Amy to show her portrait taker a scintilla of respect. Six was the last Amy to grin shyly for the lens. Seven had concocted a goofy, off-kilter grin that suggested that she might have been high on something (which hadn’t been the case). And Eight, well she just flat out sneered at the camera. Amy recalled the photographer asking Eight if she really wanted to come off that way, and she also remembered him shrugging in a Okay-kid-I-don’t-give-a-shit way when Eight had replied, “Oh, yes indeedy.”

Nine had been high on something. A member of Amy’s coven had relieved her mother’s purse of excess Vicodin that Picture Day. Glassy-eyed and neither grinning nor sneering, Nine was the least there in the queue.

Something had gone wrong with Ten. Only Amy was aware of the problem. No one else looked beyond Ten’s neon pink hair or the mascara and foundation that had been laid on with a trowel (now, no one is suggesting that girls who look this way aren’t what they should be). No, what had gone wrong with Ten lay scattered throughout her face like a sky composed of cremated bones.

She shuffled herself up onto her elbows to get a better look at Ten. Unlike Seven through Nine, the expression on Ten’s face was honest (even snarly Eight had shone a little light in her eyes that told that she wasn’t as put out as she pretended to be). Yet there was a ruthlessness emanating from Ten which Amy couldn’t understand; an incipient hardness that had no business being in the face of a cul-de-sac kid. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened that Picture Day, but for the life of her Amy couldn’t remember the actual taking of her portrait—which was odd, for Amy never forgot anything about her life. Some persons are that way, you know; some persons who fail at turning a porch light on  twice in five can be the same kind of person who has total recall in regards to where they were, what they had worn and who said what about whom on a meaningless day that had come and gone so many ends of the world ago.

When Amy was four, she had stolen a cranberry off the table at the grocery store. She recalled expecting a flavor similar to the sugary concoction that came out of the can, and was unpleasantly surprised by a ferocious bitterness. This had happened on a Tuesday afternoon, right after preschool.

When she was seven, an ambulance came to take Amy’s former next-door neighbor, Mrs. Carlyle, away from the cul-de-sac for good. Until that July 23rd, a Thursday, Mrs. Carlyle had been a friendly pest who punctuated her every observation with a tittering laugh. Though Mom had tried to keep Amy from gawking at Mrs. Carlyle as the old lady lay on a gurney, it had been too late: Amy had seen the feverish, insane mania in Mrs. Carlyle’s face as well as getting a clear look at the horrible sores that covered her hellishly white fishbelly thighs. And there had been that wonderful, magical October Sunday morning, two years back, when a blanket of ground fog suddenly contained the head of a deer poking up like a submarine’s periscope at the treeline behind the cul-de-sac.

A voice spoke up from the mists of Amy’s mind as she lay in the increasing darkness. This voice was composed of the worst things in life. This voice had its own weird, fruity imagined smell; a breath which wasn’t the mingling of divergent off-brand perfumes forming a third, uneasy scent, but was the decaying stench given off by a car killed pet. The timbre of the voice matched the dusty click made by sun-broiled Scotch broom pods. And this voice gave birth to unwholesome visions such as “green-rimmed fiery pustules forming on fishbelly thighs” (that was written by Amy in her second discarded attempt at a diary, not by her author). Amy thought this the voice of Ten.

“You can still beg for a do-over,” Ten said. “It’ll be like the story you didn’t get in Lit class: ‘they let the air in.’”

There was something beguiling about Ten’s suggestion. Something practical. But the more Amy turned it over in her mind, the more she found herself thinking cold, reptilian thoughts; thoughts Amy equated with the suicide of the soul.

The grandfather clock spat out the half. A ghostly pattern cast by a set of headlights formed on the bedroom wall and slid away.

Amy rose off the bed and went to the full length mirror which was attached to her bedroom door. She stood sideways and ran her hands from her shoulders to her hips. She then laid her hands on her flat belly. An expression of horror formed in her eyes; it stood out like a flame in the twilight.

“No,” Amy said breathlessly. “No. The air is poison.”

(First published in 2015)

It’s three feet farther to hell for people who jump off Torqwamni Bridge. The City of Charleston has recently installed an eighteen-inch extension to the span’s rail. In my opinion, the city has wasted its money. The Torqwamni goes up to a fatal height almost immediately, and at its middle it stands better than ten stories above the churning and hungry Port Washington Narrows. Only Serious People go over that bridge; less than serious types, those who need just a little attention to feel better inside, never go to Torqwamni Bridge to perform on the off-chance that they might fall off. No, I don’t see a foot-and-a-half—in both directions—getting in the way of a well prepared and dedicated serious person.

Such ran through my mind as I drove Gram to yet another doctor’s appointment. At the age of twenty, I was getting awfully familiar with doctors’ clinics and the technologies designed to prevent, for as long as possible, what I had once heard described as an “end of life event.” Nobody speaks frankly about anything at doctors’ clinics after the insurance is settled. In a decrepit and mournful sort of way, visiting any of Gram’s phalanx of medicos was like going to Neverland; but instead of recapturing the spirit of youth, we found Tinkerbell in bifocals and Peter Pan attached to a colostomy bag.

It was a typical Pacific Northwest March morning. The bipolar weather changed its mood every ten minutes or so. Wind driven slaps of rain, hail, and perhaps, locusts, would suddenly stop and give over to sunshine so cheery that I was certain that it had to be up to something. Sure enough, the lovely light soon faltered and the whole evil process began again from the top.

“Reena?” Gram said, not at all sounding like the mindless old woman who had earlier killed a half hour whining like a two-year-old because she couldn’t find the hideous “rose” blouse she that she already had on.

“Hmmm?” At that time I was struggling with the wind as to hold my lane on the bridge.

“Tell me we’re goin to VIP’s for bloody Marys; tell me we’re goin for butts—Tell me anything but Group Death.”

“I thought you were dead,” danced on the tip of my tongue. But as I looked over at Gram, I saw the woman I had known and loved for life. It broke my heart knowing that her soul was still in there; trapped like a miner given up for dead; unrescuable; a flickering flame eating the last of the oxygen.

Gram and my late Grandpa Henry had raised me after my mother, their daughter, had abandoned me in my infancy. They were in their late middle-years at the time, and both were hard working sorts who never let the drudgery of their menial jobs get in the way of having fun. This fun included booze. So what? They had loved me and had gone out of their way to see to my happiness.

Not long after Grandpa Henry had died from a mercifully swift heart attack, Gram had suffered the first in a series of small strokes. For five snarly and prideful years, Gram had fought back while keeping her dignity. Even though death had meant to take her one piece at a time, Gram had kept her sense of humor. I remember the morning when Gram had to weigh herself to see if she had accrued fluid due to her failing kidneys. “Christ, I’m getting fat,” she had mumbled through a Winston. Upon seeing that she had lost three pounds, Gram winked and said: “Probably cancer.”

But even the best of us have only so much good dying in our souls. And on the afternoon Gram had to endure another stroke that wouldn’t kill her, by itself, she knew that the game was up. “Reena, honey,” Gram had whispered as the ambulance took its customary route to our house across the street from the Ivy Green Cemetery, “I’m so sorry about this…There’s still time…Time to get the Demerol…”

Dear God, how it used to be: The laughter; the living and dying for the Seattle Mariners; the childlike looking forward to payday; ashtrays which resembled beaver dams; last night loganberry flip glasses left on the “occasional” table; watching Thin Man marathons on TCM over popcorn. Those, and more, yes, were the backdrop of my happy childhood. But, at twenty, the roles of adult and child had been swapped around. This was a poor trade because I couldn’t provide Gram with happy memories; that part of her life was over. Gram wasn’t going to get better because the ravages of time and choice had ensured that there was no level of better for Gram to get back to. Still, within it all, I had learned something of value: The worst universe possible is a godless void in which a sentient chemical accident know as humankind is the sole inhabitant. Yet here, even here, especially here, if an otherwise meaningless being does right by a fellow meaningless being minus the promise of heaven or the threat of hell, as my grandparents had done for me, life has a meaning, and it should be wailed for upon its diminishing, more so than upon its passing.

I had time to think all this because whatever appropriately snarky remark I had shot back at Gram after her “Group Death” comment had landed on a mind that changed even more rapidly than the weather.

“Hmmm?” Gram replied vacantly, very much sounding like the mindless old woman who had whined about the rose blouse.

“Nothing…Nothing at all.”

How I hate doctors’ clinics: decor that is offensive because it is designed to be the opposite; pushcart muzak around only to stave off silence; fellow wranglers tending their charges; Everest College-types behind counters secretly texting their boy friends. But, mostly, its the walkers I hate most. There’s something about a cane that allows its user to retain his or her independence; walkers are cribs on wheels. You can smack someone with your cane if that someone offends you. All you can do in a walker is shuffle forward, head down, as though you now weigh more on Earth than you would on Jupiter.

Sometime during my brief life, civility, actual and feigned, has been, as Gram would’ve said, before the loss of her mind, “shitcanned.” Once upon a time strangers used to speak to other strangers by formal address until they were given permission to do otherwise. Perhaps I’m proof that even a twenty-year-old girl can have a lot of humbugging fogy in her; still, there’s nothing more irritating than have someone unknown to you call you by your first name as though you are a dog or a toddler.

“Has Elizabeth fasted?” The Everest College-type asked me upon check-in.

“How should I know what Elizabeth is up to?” I said cheerfully. “She could be off waxing her tramp-stamp, for all I know. Mrs. Allison, Mrs. Elsbeth Allison has fasted.”

Surprise! My little remark pissed the Everest College-type off something awful. Unless I was horribly mistaken, the evil light that shone through her previously bored expression communicated her desire to watch me starve slowly in a sealed room.

“Have a seat,” the E.C.-type said through clenched teeth. “The nurse will be with you.”

“Why thank you, um, Misty,” I said after I made a big show of reading her name badge. “I’m sure it won’t take too long for that to happen—even though it will give you and I less time together.”

Dante would lose his mind if he could see that humankind hasn’t taken The Inferno as a cautionary tale, but has used it as a blueprint from which to devise smaller hells on Earth.

Call this an overreaction, if you must, but I have spied concentric circles of increasing misery inside every doctors’ clinic I’ve ever been to. The first circle has to be the waiting room; which is guarded (as you already know) disinterested E.C.-types who wear pastel scrubs and too much makeup. The second circle involves a mute tech who points at an old timey scale better suited for weighing livestock than humorous human beings. The Nurse (who is likely the brains of the outfit) inhabits the third circle. Every The Nurse is an intimidating and omniscient person who has learned her (never his) skills from repeated watchings of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and/or Godzilla.

The fourth circle is excruciating. This si where you cool your heels in a cruddy cubicle waiting for the doctor to come talk at you as if you have the IQ of a pineapple. Old Gram (the person whom I knew and loved, not her insufficient doppleganger) used to go to special pains to make herself unendurable for the doctor whenever she felt she had waited too long: “There’s dustbunnies ‘neath that table—Hope y’all wipe better than that.” That sort of unendurable.

I heard muffled chatter, hard by. I imagined the doctor reading (probably for the first time) the results of Gram’s last blood draw (she’d have another on the way out; think circle five). I imagined him being able to give names to each of her few remaining red cells as though they were a box of kittens. I imagined nothing good. Instead, I loaded my mind with unendurable remarks enough for two.

Dr. Zale made his entrance. Though I had been taking Gram to see this particular physician for over a year, I always got the impression that every time Dr. Zale saw Gram was like the first time. To be fair, Gram 2.0 has never been all that memorable. If she and Dr. Zale had known each other a bit longer, as little as three or four months, he would have brought a whip and a chair.

Dr. Zale, however, remembered me. Not by name, but by sight. It did my heart good to have his confident I Am The Scientist, You Are The Zombie demeanor slink off and get replaced with an “Oh, no, not her again,” expression—which, to be frank, I get a lot of.

He smiled weakly. “How are we, this morning?”

“I suppose that depends on what the test results have to say,” I said.

Dr. Zale shrugged and held his weak smile and went over to where Gram was seated, but he never took his eyes off Yours Truly. “How are you today, Mrs. Allison?” he asked, still looking me in the eye.

For our miserable year or so together, I had been struggling to develop an actual opinion about Dr. Zale. His use of Gram as a prop to deliver sarcasm my way ended the struggle.

Something along the line of “Listen, fuckstick, eyes on to whom you’re speaking,” had entered my mouth like a shell slammed into the chamber of a shotgun. And I would have said it too, if a voice hadn’t called out from below the insurmountable slag that over-topped it.

“It’s three feet further to hell for folks who’d jump off the bridge, Dr. Zale,” Gram said. “On the drive over this mornin’, I noticed that the dumbass city put an extension on the Torqwamni’s rail.”

I could actually feel my eyes dilate, and a weird tingling erupted in both my hands and thighs. I sat down heavily on a nearby stool, and I wondered if I was not too young to suffer a stroke of my own.

Dr. Zale became nonplussed; he had never heard Gram speak before, save for yes and no and general gibberish.

Gram looked at me. Though her pallor remained that of old paper, the lightning blue I had always remembered being in her eyes was fully charged. A wicked, lovely, vicious, warm grin had broken out in her face. “We think a lot alike, don’t we Reena baby?”

“Ye-yes, Gram, we sure do,” I replied. I wanted that moment to last forever. But, already, the befuddled fog again gathered between reality and the survivor.