B.C. GRAYER

Chumps, all of ’em, I thought.

There we were—me, Gary, and Jill—standing on one side. 

On the other side were the Raccaws. The freaky raccoon-birds. Looking small and ugly. And stupid. 

The Chief was the ugliest of the bunch—three feet tall and squat, with pointy teeth and pink eyes. Crazy underbite. His grubby little dark hands were pulling twigs off a big branch from a grotesque tree. One of those they engineered to grow in landfills. Stinky neon things. He threw the sticks in a pile between us. 

He kept one stick and went around his group of shorter, slightly less ugly versions of himself, tapping each of them on their beaks with it. 

A couple of them eyed me after he touched them, cocking open their long black chompers and waving their pink tongues at me. I could’ve yacked.

After everybody in his group was touched, the Chief tapped his own beak—crooked, like he’d smashed it at some point. Then the little man, no higher than my waist, waddled pathetically over to our side. I smelled him as he held up the stick, too short to reach my face. He smelled like bad chicken.

For a couple of seconds, I did nothing but stare into the little freak-bird’s soul.

“Kyle,” Gary whispered, eyes pleading. “He wants to—”

“I know what he wants,” I snapped. “I’m just not sure I want that stick touching my nose.”

“But it’s part of their mind-sharing ritual. This is the part where you agree to the shedding of your bad spirit. The ritual brings together the best of each of your spirits, to learn and grow—”

“Yes, yes, I know. You told me,” I cut in. I didn’t even know why I was waiting. Jill kept giving me side glances, her hand in her pocket. Clutching that Colt .45 of hers. She wouldn’t have fooled anybody with half a brain standing like that, but this group was mentally challenged. Myself included, since I bent over and let the Chief tap me on the nose with that neon twig of his. Got a big whiff of his bad chicken smell before he moved on to Gary.

Gary was all simpering deference. Such a dope. I heard his knees pop as he knelt in the dirt. He looked like he could’ve cried when the Chief tapped him. This was his dream, this mind-sharing ritual. Too bad it wouldn’t happen, I thought. But I was going to let it go on just a little longer. Maybe I’d let Gary watch them chant or dance or whatever came before the mind-sharing part really began. And then I’d say, Enough is enough. We’re getting our trash and leaving. Cue Gary’s shocked face. Probably tears. But he’d get over it. He always did.

After the Chief tapped Gary on the sniffer, he started to walk over to Jill, then stopped. Jill looked so tense I thought she’d pull out her pistol and pop him right there. I kept shooting her glances to cool it.

The Chief raised the stick to his crooked beak, and his face somehow got uglier. He turned around to look at his fellow birds, then turned to us. Shook his head. Opened his beak.

“De-ceiv-er,” he creaked. His voice grated like nails on glass. I could’ve punted him right then.

Behind him, the other Raccaws started shivering and moaning as a group.

“What’s happening?” I said, stepping backward.

Gary’s mouth was open, yellow teeth exposed, wordless. Clearly he didn’t know.

“DE-CEIV-ER,” the Chief creaked again, even louder. And he broke the stick in his hands.

My gun was out. A freshly oiled Glock. I looked at Jill and she started to pull her hand out of her pocket. Then she dropped the gun. Fucking idiot. She cowered away until it was clear the gun hadn’t discharged, then she picked it up. Cheeks red like a baboon’s ass.

Gary yelped, fat hands over his mouth when he saw we were packing. I didn’t acknowledge it.

I raised my weapon and stepped back. “Let’s just forget this whole thing, huh? We came here for trash, and we’ll get the trash now.”

And there it was. Gary’s shocked face. Most gullible man on Earth. Which was probably why he was my only friend. Because who else would keep coming back after so many lies, so many let-downs? That was his nature and this was mine.

The Chief’s pink eyes weren’t looking at me. They were narrowed on Gary. He and his fellow birds didn’t seem to notice or care about our guns, or what I’d just said. They closed in on Gary, absolutely surrounded him, while ignoring me and Jill.

I half-considered firing a shot in the air. I was annoyed. Didn’t they see I had the power here? That plans had changed?

The Chief kept yelling “De-ceiv-er,” as the birds, a dozen or so, circled my friend—my oh-so-gullible friend. He shook his head at me in that pathetic Gary way. I looked at Jill in a way that said, I’m about to start getting physical with these birds—cover me. I couldn’t tell whether she understood, dim as she was.

“There be a de-ceiv-er amongst you!” creaked the Chief, and he climbed up Gary like a tree. Gary actually let him do that, even though he outweighed the bird six to one. Even for Gary, I thought this was a new low. Letting some mutated bird leader scale you.

“Alright, that’s enough,” I said, and I cuffed the first bird in my way. I heard a hollow sound where the butt of my gun hit his head, and the little guy fell over. I did it again to his buddy beside him.

Then they all turned on me. I cocked the hammer on my pistol and raised it. “Stand down. This isn’t going to go your way—” I was ready to say more when suddenly a great cloud of dust ejected into my face.

I squeezed off a shot. Nobody let out a cry, so I figured my shot missed. I tried to shoot again, but my gun wouldn’t fire—it was jammed.

I heard Jill let out a yelp, and then something pierced my leg. Very quickly my body got heavy. My legs turned to wood. And just before the lights went out, I was cursing myself, cursing Gary and Jill as well, cursing my uncle for not having the balls to simply make a few bribes and creating this whole mess to begin with. Most of all, I cursed the birds. The stupid, ugly, smelly little bird-freaks that had gotten lucky this time and fooled me.

Lights out.

*

Yesterday I had popped into my uncle’s office, found all the blinds closed, saw him sitting in the dusty armchair in the corner, misty-eyed.

“What happened?” I said, even though I knew what had happened.

My uncle let out a choked sob, tried to speak, shook his head. I wanted to slap him, but I kept my cool. I gave him a minute.

“Some kind of malfunction,” he sputtered, mucus running down his face.

I nodded, pretended I didn’t know what he was talking about. The nano bots, under strict government regulator scrutiny, had escaped. Calls had probably come in. The news would soon be broken to authorities. Temporarily, at least, my uncle’s trash disposal facility would be shut down.

My uncle made a fist and pounded the chair’s armrest, springing dust into the air. “I just don’t understand. Somebody messed with the controls. Who would do that? Why?!” Then he started weeping like a little baby and my hands ached so badly to wring him by the neck. How did he not know it was me? How stupid was he? Also, what was the big deal?

So some nano bots with an insatiable plastic-eroding appetites were on the loose. It had happened before. The owner, if I remembered correctly, blamed it on a hacker. Then he paid off the regulators so he could keep his license. The same could happen here. Only my uncle was too weak-willed to grease the palms of a few inspectors. He just wanted to cry and cry and shake his head, take whatever punishments they threw at him.

“When are the inspectors supposed to come?” Already I had hatched a plan to save my uncle’s sorry ass. Yes, I had fudged with the controls for my own money-making scheme and created this problem, but boy would’ve things been easy if my uncle wasn’t such a blubbering goody-goody.

“Tomorrow,” he said, barely above a whisper. “Who was it, Kyle? Do you know?” My uncle leveled those pathetic watery-pink eyes at me.

I looked right at him and shook my head. The fool had no idea whatsoever. Even though I’d lied to him countless times before, berated him when he was weak, expressed how much better his life would be if he grew a goddamn spine. Some people just behave like sidewalks. They beg to be walked upon.

But I needed my uncle and I needed my position at the facility. I needed a paycheck and I also needed some discretionary earnings from the leftovers I had been scrounging from trash brought in, before the nano bots escaped. I would tweak the nano bots controls once more, unbeknownst to my uncle, but not so much as to allow the nano bots to escape. That mistake needed corrected. But before that, I would have to lure the nano bots back before the inspectors came. There was one place where good ol fashioned trash could be found, and if I dug it up and brought it back to my uncle’s facility, there was a good chance the nano bots would come back to feed. They loved old trash, anything pre-2030s and plastic was their jam, and there was one place I could find that.

The city landfill, underneath the Raccaw Preserve. And to get into the Raccaw Preserve I would need to talk to Gary. Right then we weren’t on such good terms. But I knew I could change that. He was such a gullible schmuck.

*

I came to with slobber running down my chin. It was still night. I looked at my watch and saw a couple hours had gone by.

Instinctively I touched the ground about me for my glock. Instead I found a dead bird. So I had gotten one of them before the dust flew. But they’d taken Gary. That didn’t bode well at all.

I got to my feet and spotted a lump of shadow in the distance. Jill. From fifty feet away I could hear her snoring. Clearly she’d tried to run, abandoning Gary and I, but they caught her anyway. I half-wished the freak-birds had taken her as well, just for abandoning ship in my time of need. But I needed her to help dig up the trash. And now we had a rescue mission and no guns.

Jill’s cheek was pressed to the dirt, her mouth open. I pushed her onto her back with my foot. “Wakey, wakey, Jill. We’ve got a job to do,” I said.

Jill moaned and I nearly shivered in disgust thinking about her and her husband. Against my will, anytime I’d passed by my uncle’s front office, I had to hear about her kids. I knew she had three. All boys. All scouts. She was always gushing about some badge they’d earned, some ludicrous high honor they’d gotten playing survival games in the woods. But maybe that would come in handy now.

I nudged her more forcefully, this time into the soft rim of her gut.

She jerked and bolted up. The whites of her eyes gleamed in the slice of moon above us.

“Easy. We were knocked out. They took Gary. We gotta get him back then get our trash,” I said.

Jill frowned and shook her head. “No way. I’m out. This is beyond my pay grade,” she said.

“How about double. Twenty Gs,” I said. I’d offered her ten initially, five up front and five later. I also signed a completely bogus paper claiming that I forced her to break into the Raccaw Preserve, so she wouldn’t be liable were we to get caught. The dimwit didn’t understand that taking payment completely nullified any kind of letter like that.

“Nope, sorry,” Jill said, still shaking her head. I’m not a lady beater, but I coulda smacked her then. I was pissed. I’d given her five and she’d done nothing. Hadn’t even stuck around to cover me when the freak-birds covered me in dust.

But I knew better than to get angry. People like Gary could be bullied, but not Jill. Those mom hormones made her different, even though she was an idiot, she would stand her ground.

“Uncle Fred needs this bad, Jill. What will it take? Stake in the company? A college fund for the kids? How about a four week trip to Europe, paid vacation, expenses paid, plus the twenty Gs, plus ten percent of the company?” I was just making shit up. My uncle would never agree to any of this. He wouldn’t even have agreed if we’d done this out of the goodness of our hearts. He followed all the rules, even the nonsensical ones like crossing crosswalks when a street was completely dead, there were no cars, not even witnesses. If there was a rule, he knew it and followed it to a T. So none of this would pan out for her, but I needed to get her on board.

“Five weeks,” she said, arms crossed. 

“Deal,” I said, and offered a hand.

Jill started looking around for her Colt 45 and I said they were gone. Right away I could see she was regretting this new deal of ours, so I told her how Raccaws couldn’t fire guns. The bone structure of their hands was too small, they hadn’t the hand muscle strength to hold the weapon steady or even squeeze the trigger. It was all bullshit, but I also had this hunch there was probably some truth in it. 

Jill hesitated, and then I said we would turn around at the first sign of real danger and she relented.

“So where do we start?” she asked.

“Let’s get the trash first,” I said, and took the folding shovel out of my backpack. 

“What about Gary? Isn’t he in trouble?” Jill asked.

“It’s already been two hours. If they wanted to harm him, they could’ve already. Plus, I want to have the trash ready in case things get dangerous. You can leave and take the trash back to the facility. Just open up the bag in the nano bot consumption area.”

I could see Jill’s dim mind working, trying to work through the logic of this. “Did you tell your uncle about our agreement?”

“Yes,” I lied.

Jill nodded and helped me unload all the digging tools. In the back of my mind Gary was being tortured a bit. I didn’t think they’d kill him. I’d never heard of Raccaws doing things like that. And probably the torture would toughen him up, give him a spine for once.

*

After leaving my teary-eyed uncle, I drove to Gary’s. On the outside, Gary’s apartment looked as sad and pathetic as him. There was a dead tree in front. Weeds overtaken the mulch beds under the windows. There were cracked blinds in one of the windows. Mildew growing on the siding. Gary paid rent, so he could’ve easily bitched to his landlord to have this spruced up. But he didn’t. And so, like my uncle, though a bit less industrious, he let people walk all over him.

I knocked on the door. A bit too forcefully, perhaps.

A heard a thud inside. I pictured Gary getting up front his computer station. He had this absurd looking wrap-around desk with three screens so he could “work faster” for the people paying him. He solved IT issues. None of his colleagues, I imagined, had three screens. And I doubted his employer had paid for them. But surely they benefited. The thud was his computer chair whacking the desk, because he moved quite awkwardly. He was a lumpy guy. Overweight, potato-headed. A bit of a foot-dragger. Always had been. Even when I met him in first grade, the lumps were there.

I heard him shuffle to the door. Then there was a pause. He was eyeing me through the peephole. Probably having his doubts.

Gary opened the door just a few inches and fixed one of his sad eyes on me. “What do you want?”

“First, I want to apologize,” I said. And right then I was trying to recall the specifics of our last encounter. Something about borrowing his jeep to haul junk out of my uncle’s facility to sell to some guy on the other side of town. Gary wanted to know what was being hauled. I told him it was sawdust and soil. It was actually four-dozen kilos of angel dust, but I knew he wouldn’t have helped if he’d known that. When we got to the bad neighborhood, parked across the street for a group of thugs sitting on a porch, and one of them brandished a gun, Gary started freaking out. Nothing bad happened, but Gary whined the whole way home, saying we could’ve been killed, they could have robbed us. He kept glancing in the rearview mirror thinking somebody was following us. I told him to chill out. He wanted to know what was really in those boxes and had he been an accomplice in a crime. I told him to stop worrying. That was six months ago.

“I should’ve been more forthright with you about what was in those boxes,” I said, trying to put on my most regretful face.

“What was in those boxes?” Gary said, still hiding behind his door, cowering from his good friend.

“A bunch of things,” I said. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to be implicated.” That was a lie, but I thought it was a pretty good one.

“What kind of things, Kyle? Illegal things?” Gary said, chewing on his beard. Such a dope. What kind of question was that? How stupid could he be? Did he think those thugs wanted discount powdered milk?

“Some of it, yes. But some of it was life-saving stuff, too,” I said. I created this vision of people saving their own lives with PCP. It didn’t seem likely, but it wasn’t strictly impossible either. What was I, a chemist? The human spirit could benefit from all kinds of toxins, taken at the right time.

“You mean like insulin?” Gary opened the door a bit more. His potato head had yellowed in the months since our car ride. He looked terrible but I showed no sign of receiving him that way.

I simply nodded, trying to keep a straight face. Hilarious to think of hawking boxes of insulin to a group of thugs in a bad neighborhood. Diabetic thugs?

“That’s what you came to tell me? That you’re sorry?” Gary asked.

“Well, yes, but also I have an opportunity for you,” I said, trying to smile my most genuine, convincing smile.

Gary nearly shut the door. “My jeep is off limits. Also I’m not giving you any money. I’m saving for a house.”

“Nothing like that. Remember what you told me about Raccaws? How they have that joining heads ritual?” I had to be careful here. I knew that if I told Gary my real reason for wanting to go to the Raccaw Reserve, he would shut that door. We were on tenuous ground here. I’d pretty used him time and time again the past few years. His mother called me a vampire. 

“Yeah… why?” Gary looked wary as ever. I could feel him waiting for the scheme, waiting for me to confirm this was just another use-job. So I decided to take a different route.

“Well, I’ve been thinking about how I messed up I’ve been to you over the years, man. I’ve used you, I’ve lied, I’ve treated you badly. I’m trying to make amends for that, but I keep coming up short. I was born bad, Gary. Selfish. A liar. I don’t want to be that way anymore.”

Gary opened the door fully, and that was how I knew I had gotten him. “What’s that have to do with the birds?”

“You go to the Raccaw Preserve. You talk to them. Would you be willing to do a joining heads ritual with me? I want to come clean for everything I’ve done, man. Clean slate. I want to be a better man,” I said. I think I’d actually forced tears out of my eyes. I hadn’t cried in so long, they hurt. They stung. And I felt like an idiot, but I could see it was working on Gary.

“I can try, but I can’t guarantee anything,” he said, scratching his crusty chin. I spotted a piece of macaroni in his beard. I tried not to wince.

“I’m desperate. What are you doing later today? Do you think they’d take us this evening?”

Gary practically flinched. “That soon? I don’t know. Um, I guess we could try…” He looked a little wary again, but I could see he was already in my grasp, he’d already agreed.

“Great! How about I pick you up around six?” 

Gary nodded warily, pale-faced, and closed the door.

Was this probably the final scheme I could pull on him? Maybe. Or maybe not. Give him a couple years and perhaps we’d do it again. Was this a friendship? I thought so. Did friends use each other? They did. Did sometimes use each other unevenly? In my case, always.

*

I unfolded the shovel to its full length and activated its hypersonic vibration mode. It slid easily into the packed dirt and I threw spade-fulls over my shoulder. Jill had to sidestep me. She was unfolding a large bag-tarp while I worked. 

Then she turned on the metal detector I’d handed her. “It says here there’s something about four feet down.” 

That was the metal rivets they put on the rubber cap of the landfill. I’d read all about it yesterday. This landfill was one the last to close, and per standards of the day, they sealed all the trash they buried with three-inch thick rubber sheets, bound together with steel rivets.

Five more minutes of digging and the metal detector started to whine. When we hit rubber, I took out my blow torch and turned it on the dirty black circle of rubber. Once it was soft and gooey, I brought the ultrasonic shovel down on it. It gave like fresh putty.

Ten more minutes of digging and Jill and I were into the golden age of trash burial. Plastics of all shapes, sizes, and varieties. Plastic dishes, bags, boxes, appliances, furniture, even in the clothing. Among it all, tons of food waste. Putrid decay. Jill pulled the collar of her shirt over her face. Exposing her middrift flab. Her c-section scars. No shame in the slightest.

I shoveled a few cubic feet of plastics in the bag tarp and threw in the nano bot deactivator beads. Little bluetooth devices that would shut the trash eaters off when they came to roost. I pulled the bag closed and handed it to Jill.

“In thirty minutes, all the nano bots will be in this bag, sound asleep. First sign of danger, you just run out of here. Take it to the facility and throw it in the disposal area. Don’t worry about me and Gary,” I said, knowing she couldn’t give two shits anyway. She would run regardless, and probably without the bag if I didn’t threaten her. “If you don’t bring the bag back, the deal’s off.”

She gave me a hostile look. “That wasn’t part of our agreement!”

I shrugged. “It is now. What good is ten percent stake in the company if Fred loses his disposal license?”

I could see her mind working out the logic. All three brain cells working their damnedest. “Fine,” she said finally. “Now what?”

“Now I need you to put your tracking skills to use. We need have to locate Gary.”

*

My third stop yesterday was back at my uncle’s facility. I parked in front, like a customer dropping off a load of trash.

In the front office, I found Jill playing on her phone. She was still here for some reason, even though the disposal arena operators had all gone home.

“Big K,” she said, not looking up from her phone. “You hear the news?” At some point Jill had just decided to call me Big K. The name hadn’t had come from anybody or anything. I wasn’t really that big of a guy. 6’ 2’’. Taller than her. Taller than her kids and her husband. But I think she was just one of those idiots that needs to have a nickname for everybody. My uncle was bossman. Her husband was hubby. The mailman was Mister T, which I know he hated. Terrance. I could see it on his face anytime he had to roll into our office. If he saw me standing out front, he would make a b-line to drop the mail off to me to avoid Jill entirely.

“I did hear the news. What are you still doing here?” Apparently the dimwit had to be told she could go home, even though there was nothing for her to do.

“Bossman hasn’t told me otherwise. He’s been in there all day making calls. Who do you think it was that’s been messing with the nano bot safety controls?”

I shrugged. “Probably some hacker. Listen, my uncle has a job for you,” I said, lowering my voice to a whisper. There was nobody else with us, but I wanted her to think I was nervous and worried.

I explained everything about the inspectors coming tomorrow, how the Raccaw Preserve sat on a landfill that we could excavate from to lure them back.

“We aren’t allowed to go there,” she said in a low voice. “As much as I like the bossman, I’m not going to break the law for him.”

I wanted to spit in this woman’s face. She always spoke like she knew what she was talking about, but she was clueless.

“First of all, if the Raccaws permit us, then it isn’t illegal to enter. Second, you will be paid handsomely.”

Jill cocked an eyebrow, waiting for me to say a number.

I told her the number and she nodded slowly.

“Why isn’t he asking me himself?” she asked.

“He’s embarrassed. You know how much pride he has in this company. Plus, he has to deal with the inspectors. He’s talking to them now, trying to explain the situation,” I said, trying not to sound annoyed at her inane questions.

“Digging up the trash is illegal, though,” she said, biting her lip.

“I’ll take the heat for that,” I said.

“But I’ll be an accomplice,” she countered.

“So I’ll write you a letter, saying I forced you to do it, how about that? This is really important, Jill. If we can do this, we’ll save my uncle a lot of grief,” I said, in my best pleading voice.

“Okay, Big K. But I want half up front,” she said.

I kept my cool. I had to respect her shrewdness, even if it was idiotic to ask for money up front and the letter at the same time. Jill hadn’t much brains, but she didn’t let people walk on her.

“Deal. I’ll handle getting us into the Raccaw Preserve. I have contacts,” I said, keeping it vague. Jill was a nosey person, and I didn’t want her knowing anymore than she needed to.

“Heads up. I’m bringing this,” and Jill pulled out her Colt 45. I had to respect that. It was probably the thing I respected most about her. Though it didn’t make up for her stupidity. The letter I would write for her wouldn’t make any sense if she was carrying a gun. “I don’t trust those birds,” she added.

I told her fair enough. I penned her stupid letter and told her to meet me and Gary at the little park next to the Raccaw Preserve at six-thirty o’clock that evening. Then I went out back and got our supplies from the shed next to the disposal arena. The hypersonic shovel, the tarp bag, the bluetooth nano bot deactivator beads, and the metal detector. In a safe next to all the equipment, I took out my uncle’s glock. I’d watched him enter the number a dozen or so times, unbeknownst to him. He took it out every couple weeks to oil it, even though he never fired it. Such a diligent dope.

*

I waited while Jill examined the dirt next to the dead Raccaw where Gary was taken. I couldn’t tell if I was actually smelling bad chicken again or imagining it.

Darkness was all about, the slopes of the Raccaw Preserve was touched with silvery moonlight. The hills stretched several miles in all directions. If Jill’s survival skills–whatever she’d absorbed from her three boys playing scouts in the woods–didn’t pan out, I was debating on sending Jill out of here. Did I want to stay through the night, looking for my pathetic potato-headed friend? No. Did I want to deal with the consequences of Gary’s work filing a missing persons report and the authorities tracking Gary’s cell phone to the Raccaw Preserve, which would most definitely implicate me? Definitely not.

“I think they went this way,” Jill said, toeing a grassy area. “See this imprint? How the foot’s pointed–”

“I believe you,” I cut in. “Let’s go.”

Jill led the way, through some tall grasses and over a couple hills. She knelt down again and studied the ground. I was gripping the ultrasonic shovel like a baseball bat. I decided I was going to go berserk on that pack of birds for what they’d done to me, flinging dust in my eyes and hitting me with that sedation dart. It would be like fighting a pack of five-year-olds. If I moved quick enough, I could dispatch them in waves, quickly move in and out like a tornado. I could be pretty agile. Especially when enraged.

“So how long have you and Gary been pals?” Jill asked, running her fingers along a patch of grass.

The question vaguely annoyed me, but I figured she was just after idle conversation. I needed her to focus, but I also knew Jill’s mouth ran on autopilot. “Early grade school. Why?”

Jill shrugged. She pointed in the distance. “That way. Just curious. Are you guys pretty close?”

“He’s my friend, I’m his friend,” I said, following her lead. “We’ve known each other forever.”

Jill said nothing as we walked a few clicks. She knelt on the grass again. “They turned here. The tracks are getting fresher. I think we’re close. What do you like about him?”

I could’ve laughed. I wasn’t sure what Jill was driving at, but the thought that Gary had any likeable qualities was hysterical. “I like that we’re friends. Let’s focus on the trail here. How much further out do you think they are?”

“It’s fine if you don’t want to talk about him,” she said, lips quirking into a stupid half-grin. I would’ve loved to slap her right then.

“What do you want me to say? Gary is a bit of a sad sack. Sometimes I use him. As long as he’s gullible, somebody ought to benefit. That doesn’t mean I want to see him get hurt. That’s why we’re rescuing him,” I said.

Jill didn’t say anything. We walked to the bottom of a slope and she tapped her foot on something metal. “They’re down here. This is where the tracks stop.”

I was feeling on edge all of a sudden. I had a lot of rage inside me. My arms ached to bash some bird heads in. They also ached to throw Jill in there ahead of me, for having the nerve to question my friendship with Gary.

I pulled the metal cap off the ground and threw it in the distance. Quite far even though it was heavy. And it made me wonder how the Raccaws managed to move it themselves. Probably it took six or eight of them. 

Jill’s hands tensed around the bag tarp on her back. She looked ready to run at any moment.

Down in the hole we heard the Raccaws chanting. In that creaky voice they all had. I gripped my shovel and readied myself to jump down the hole. From the sound of it, they didn’t look far off from where I’d land. As soon as my feet touched ground, I’d need to start swinging. 

“Here goes,” I said.

And I jumped.

*

Gary had called me while I was packing up supplies. It couldn’t have been much more than an hour. He was all breathless and excited.

“I went over to the Preserve on my lunch break,” he panted. “The Chief said he’d dreamt of your coming a week ago. He says they’ll be ready to receive us just after sundown. The mind-sharing ritual takes three hours. And he said you’ll need to prepare.”

“Prepare how?” I tried to sound open and excited for this ritual, which in reality was not going to happen.

“I’m going to teach you some things about the Raccaws. Their history. Their way of life,” Gary said. His excitement had his voice in a tremor. He’d been going to their Preserve, speaking with their elders ever since high school. Over the years he would bore me with this or that tidbit about them. The Chief said this, the elder said that. At times I would tell him I didn’t care or just tune him out, so eventually it wasn’t a topic of conversation he brought up. But now he had a reason, and so he was going to give me an ear-full.

“Well, I know some stuff you told me. How long will it take?” It was close to four o’clock. I wanted to shower and eat. Maybe take a nap.

“Kyle, if you’re really mean to do this, then it’s important you have a basic understanding of the Raccaw people.” A rare adamance had entered Gary’s voice. He was, for once, insistent. I had to respect that.

“Okay,” I sighed. “I’ll be there in an hour.” Probably it would be more like an hour and a half.

“Don’t be late,” Gary said, and hung up.

And with that I thought, Is he testing me?

But that wasn’t the Gary I knew. The potato head was just excited. Anything involving Raccaws lit a bit of a fire in him.

*

I hit the dirt with my shovel readied, and within seconds, a half-dozen birds were charging me. I hadn’t even fully taken in the scene as my hypersonic shovel was swinging. I swept the spade in a long arc and heard several hollow sounds, bright red and blue feather-forms crumpling upon impact. 

There was a great crowd of them in the distance, a sea of vivid reds, blues, purples, and green feathers before a stage. Maybe fifty of them total. A dozen of them turned, saw me holding the shovel and saw their felled brethren at my feet. They charged the same, their short, stocky legs taking them eons to close the distance between us. Several seconds passed and I glanced at the situation on stage.

Gary was shirtless, strapped to some kind of board. Weirdly, he turned his head and looked at me, grinning. It was so confusing. I was expecting him to be whimpering, red-faced, pleading for them to stop. All over his pale, flabby front were black marks. The Chief was holding a long stick with a glowing ember on the tip. Smiling through that ugly underbite of his. I took in the whole confusing scene quickly before going back to clobbering bird heads.

Hollow clunks in twos and threes rang out as I swung. I had a dozen or so birds at my feet before the rest of them kept their distance. It was clear then that I had the upper hand. Nobody was blowing any dust, but I wasn’t going to let any of them get close enough to blind me like that again.

“Come on down,” I called up to Jill. “I’ve got things mostly under control. But I could use a hand.”

“Mostly?” Jill called down.

“Get down here,” I ordered.

And sure enough, Jill jumped down the hole, grunting when she landed. She looked at the bodies around me, looked at the crowd of birds, looked at the stage, with the Chief and Gary, arranged as they were. Mouth open, wall-eyed. “You call this under control?”

I ignored her. I just needed her presence as insurance.

“Listen here,” I started, and before I could continue, Gary started to laugh. A big, long chuckle. Head tilted back, throat open. Wild-eyed.

I’d never seen anything like it.

“I don’t know what they did to you, Gary, but–” And then the Chief was laughing too, just like Gary, and somehow that laughter spread through the entire crowd of freak-birds. It was like they’d all gone insane.

“This is insane,” I said, and glanced at Jill. She had moved halfway up the ladder, bag on her shoulder.

“Deceiver call you insane!” Gary creaked. His voice sounded just like a Raccaw’s. And then he erupted with laughter again. And so did the Chief. So did all of them.

“Jesus Christ, what did they do to you?” I felt my arms shaking. My knuckles went white, gripping the shovel so hard my fingers ached. I was going to make them pay for this.

The Chief raised the stick with its glowing tip to Gary’s cheek. There was not an ounce of fear in my friend’s eyes. I didn’t know who I was looking at. It was not the Gary I knew.

“DE-CEIV-ER,” the Chief called, fixing his ugly gaze upon me. “Admit your sins or I burn his face.”

This was an interesting tactic. From everything Gary had told me, the Raccaws were generally peaceful creatures. What I was seeing here was sadistic, and quite smart. I gauged the time it would take me to bulldoze through the crowd of birds and mount the stage. Probably five seconds? Maybe six. Enough for the Chief to put that spear straight through Gary’s head. Then it would all be over. I could kill every single bird in here. I could kill them all on every Preserve in America and still Gary would be dead. And Gary didn’t deserve that. And more importantly, that would be bad news for me.

“What sins? We came in peace and you started disrespecting my friend,” I said.

“The deceiver talks of disrespect!” cried the Chief. A lot of the creakiness had left his voice. Their was a whininess to his words now, and vaguely I recognized it. “You never came here to mind-share. Admit it!”

So much hurt in that voice. As if I’d personally insulted the Chief. I shrugged. I thought maybe I could get the upper hand by playing along with whatever the hell this was. “Maybe not. But I was here to help my uncle. I needed trash,” I said.

“Your lies are built on lies!” cried the Chief, and I could’ve swore I was hearing Gary right then. Gary speaking through the Chief. He turned the glowing tip onto his own feathery chest. “You know how it feels to be lied to your whole life? For your whole friendship?! Like this,” and the Chief buried the glowing tip into his chest. I heard it sizzle and a ribbon of smoke drifted off him.

The crowd of birds moaned in unison.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re just a bird with a couple human brain cells. What do you know about friendship?” Words were just kinda flying out of my mouth at that point, I was losing my way a bit, getting caught up in the Chief’s accusations.

The Chief shook his head in a sad, pathetic way. A way Gary might’ve. And slowly I was beginning to understand what had happened. “You treat people like chess pieces, Kyle, you know that? I called your uncle and he told me what happened. I knew right away it was because of you.”

I squinted into that ugly creature’s feathered face. “Gary?” I asked. 

The Chief ignored my question. He walked over to Gary, still smiling and wild-eyed, not looking like my friend at all. “Every lie. Every manipulation. Every time you take advantage of people in your life.” The Chief dipped the tip of stick in the fire on the stage and touched it to Gary’s chest. Gary winced, baring his yellow teeth. It was like my friend was in a trance. And the Chief was speaking for him.

“What am I supposed to say, huh? Sorry? Sorry I’m a bit of a people-user? Sorry I don’t feel bad when I walk on people who behave like sidewalks?” I took a step towards the stage. My hands were ready to start swinging the shovel if the birds closed in on me. But instead, I saw them backing up. And so I was one step closer to ending whatever the hell this was, this mock-trial by the ugly bird, speaking as if he were who? My friend Gary?

“Admit your deceptions. You lied to your uncle about what happened with the nano bots,” the Chief said, turning the glowing point of the stick onto his arm, then Gary’s arm. 

“I did,” I said, taking another step towards the stage. The smell of burnt flesh entered my nose.

“You lied to Jill. You promised money you do not have,” the Chief went on.

I glanced at Jill, who was still standing halfway up the ladder, frowning.

“No way,” I said. “I paid her what we agreed upon. Five grand,” I added, “Right Jill?” And as I spoke, I continued to step forward.

“Your lies do not work here!” screamed the Chief, his voice turning shrill with what I could only detect as a note Gary would hit. When he was most upset at me. After whatever scheme or lie he’d caught onto of mine. “Jill, speak his lies. What did he offer you?”

Jill cleared her throat and rattled off the five weeks vacation in Europe, the twenty Gs, the ten percent stake in my uncle’s company.

Three times the Chief dipped the stick in the fire and touched his body and then Gary’s. All on the chest and below. He was looking like a burn victim. I was wondering if I’d have to take him to the hospital.

“Jill, do you think a man who admits to deceiving his uncle is likely to honor an agreement with his uncle’s employee?” the Chief asked.

“I guess probably not,” Jill said, wiping her nose. She was teary-eyed, lower lip pushed out, looking like a kid who was told No, in fact, Santa isn’t real.

All the while I was inching myself towards the stage. The crowd of birds were not blocking me any further. They’d made room for me, dividing themselves to either side.

“So what? I’m a liar, I admit it. I didn’t have a lot of parental guidance. Or maybe I was just born this way,” I said, approaching the stage.

“Finally we get to Gary. Gary, your supposed long-term friend. How many lies have you fed to him, huh?” The Chief stood right next to Gary. He dipped his stick in the fire and held it close to my friend’s eye. Even if I’d been on stage, there was no guaranteeing I could close the distance between us before permanent damage was done. Damage Gary’s mother would make me pay for. A civil lawsuit? Maybe a criminal one. I needed to put distance between Gary and the Chief.

“Too many to count,” I said, shaking my head. “I admit it. I’ve been a bad friend. I don’t know why, but I’ve never been good to Gary. Even though I’ve known him forever. I know his mom. I know everything about the guy. I love the guy.” That last remark made me giggle internally.

“You love self only,” Gary creaked, baring his yellow teeth. In a way my friend never would have. Eyes wide, wild, and fearless. Who was I looking at here? Where had Gary gone?

Then it clicked. While Jill and I had been passed out, they must’ve performed the mind-sharing ritual, the two of them. So they were behaving like each other.

While we all there looking at each other, the Chief’s glowing stick point started to fade. He moved it away from Gary, towards the bowl of fire. In one fell swoop I mounted the stage and swung at the Chief.

The Chief turned away as I brought the spade down on him, smacking him in the back. He let out a cry and dropped his stick. 

I heard a ruckus of birds behind me, and when I whirled around more than a dozen had come onto the stage, several crowding around Gary, pecking at him. At his stomach and face and legs.

I let out a cry and started to smack them off of him with the shovel. Then I felt something stick me in the back. I whipped my head around and saw the Chief holding the end of the stick, lodged in my flank. I made a big, vicious arc with my shovel and heard a bunch of hollow thunks as I felled a half-dozen birds.

I was hurting but I was enraged. I wasn’t going to let these ugly freaks win.

And just when I thought I had things under control, I felt two arms seize me by the waist. I looked down and saw Gary’s arms wrapped around me. He was pulling me down with his weight. Even though I was stronger than my friend, I was worn out, with all the swings.

Several Raccaws jumped on me with him, and once again I felt a prick in my leg. Everything got woozy as I stared into my friend’s wild face, his eyes wide and slightly pink, his jaw jutting out. Looking so Chief-like, of course because of the mind-sharing.

Then it was lights out.

*

I showed up to Gary’s about an hour before we were to appear before the Raccaws. Right when I said I would originally. About an hour after I said I would on the phone.

Gary opened the door before I could knock, frowning. “This doesn’t bode well for the ritual. You think I can prepare you in just sixty minutes? This isn’t a thing you should take lightly.”

I apologized. I told him I was brushing up on Raccaw history while I was eating.

Gary’s eyebrows raised. “Go on.”

I told him I read about how the Raccaws were created. I spoke in a respectful tone, even though the animals were ridiculous and stupid, a complete waste of taxpayer money. The gist was: lab experiment gone wrong fifty years ago. Raccoon bird genes spliced with Macaw genes spliced with some human ones. Out came a three-foot creature with middling intelligence capable of speech and planning, in ways that rivaled a nine-year-old’s.

Gary shook his head. “That’s why I needed to speak with you. It’s all lies, Kyle. I never told you the truth because you never seemed interested. The Raccaws came from a lab, yes, but they aren’t just those three animals. They have genes from almost every animal, and so they feel a bond to every living thing on earth. They can communicate in ways we could only dream of.”

“How so?” I was kind of curious, but I also thought this was a bit of animal rights activist nonsense. Those people were always claiming the Raccaws were being abused by the powers that be.

Gary took a deep breath and let it out, leveling his sad eyes on me. I tried to look genuine in my attentiveness, even though this was all just a way for him to help me get into the Raccaw Preserve. “The eyes say a lot more than we think, Kyle. Scientists have shown that the Raccaw culture has developed from listening to all the creatures on the planet. Thousands upon thousands. Staring into their eyes and feeling their suffering. Scientists have seen that the Raccaw brain can mimic the activity in another animal, simply by looking in their eyes. And so, we truly cannot gauge their intelligence. They might sound stupid, but that is just because they’re using our words. In all likelihood, they could be smarter than us. Smarter than anything else on the planet.”

I almost laughed. Raccaws smarter than us. Smartest thing on Earth. The statement was so laughable. I didn’t know what my potato-headed friend was smoking, what kind of crazy shit the Raccaws had said or done to him to believe this nonsense, but I made no clear expression of skepticism. I simply nodded my head.

“Why do they live how they live then? If they are a smart as you say, why did they let the government imprison them on Preserves? Couldn’t they outsmart us?” I said all this in slow, even words. I knew the answers to my questions, and now was not the time to show Gary I thought he was idiotic. But to simply swallow this shit whole, I guess I couldn’t abide.

Gary nodded slowly. “Do you think Jesus was smart?”

I didn’t know how to answer that. I didn’t think he was a complete idiot, and yet, if I’d been in his shoes I would’ve made some different choices.

Gary read something on my face and nodded. “Do you think you’re smarter than Jesus?”

I shrugged.

“How about Mother Theresa?” he asked.

I half-shrugged again and shook my head. “I have different ideas about the world. Maybe smarts isn’t the best way to compare me and Jesus.”

“Exactly,” Gary said, a grin spreading across his potato face. “The Raccaws are all about building understanding. Helping individuals see others and creating bonds across vast differences. I’ve heard of them facilitating conversations between farmers and their cows.”

That sounded like some woo-woo hippy crap, but I simply nodded, feigning appreciation. “So that’s what we’re after, huh? Mind-sharing.”

Gary nodded, then frowned. “I think you’ve got a serious uphill battle, Kyle.”

I had trouble keeping a straight face. “I know I haven’t always been the best friend. That’s why I’m doing this,” I lied.

He took my hand in his, sweaty and cold. I wanted to rip it away. “We have a lot more to cover, but before we do that, repeat after me: As soon as I cross over, there’s no going back.” 

“As soon as I cross over, there’s no going back,” I repeated, and at the same time thinking bullshit. Nobody can tell me what I will or won’t do. Nobody ever had and nobody ever would.

Gary grinned and flashed his yellow teeth. I’d never seen him so happy. He looked almost crazy. Like all the lies I’d ever sold him, all the wrongs I’d ever dealt him were about to be forgiven.

Only in his dreams, I thought.

*

When I awoke, my eyes were already open. Pried open. My eyelids pulled up. I felt little hooks in them, attached to little strings that pressed into my forehead, anchored onto a leather headband around my head.

A red Raccaw with a spray bottle misted my eyes. Beside him stood the Chief, grinning with that ugly underbite of his. Gary sat in a chair beside him, shirt back on.

I was in a chair myself, strapped down. My shirt was off. I was facing away from the hole where Jill and I had come in.

“Did Jill go?” I asked.

“She did,” Gary said. He no longer had that wild-eyed look from before. And his voice was no longer creaking. Whatever had happened to him, he was back. My best bet from here was to start apologizing and making amends for whatever transgressions he’d thought I’d done. Then as soon as I was free, I would get the hell out of here. But maybe that would take time. Gary seemed different now, even without that wild-eyed look. 

“Did she take the bag?” I said, trying to turn my head, but the chair I was strapped to had some kind of board that fixed my head and neck and torso and arms. The only thing I could move much were my eyes, and not far enough to see the ladder leading up to the surface.

“She did not,” Gary replied. He wore no clear expression. He looked as if all the sadness and patheticness had been drained out of him. And maybe it had. Maybe that mind-sharing business and the torture had done him some good, but I wasn’t planning on letting the same be done to me.

“Well, whatever you’re planning to do, I’m really, truly sorry, Gary,” I lied.

“No you’re not,” Gary said flatly.

“You’re right,” I said. “I’m not. But I wish I was. What time is it?”

Gary looked at his watch. “Six-thirty,” he said.

I cursed and struggled against my restraints. “Don’t think about me, Gary. Think about my uncle. We don’t have a lot of time. The inspectors will be at the facility in ninety minutes.”

Gary shrugged. “I’m sure he’ll survive.”

“Screw you,” I said, and spat at him. 

“De-ceiv-er getting ang-ry,” creaked the Chief.

“Screw you too,” I said. And then my eyes started to burn.

The red Raccaw with the spray bottle misted my face again.

“Why don’t you drop the bag off at the facility Gary and come back. Then you can do to me whatever you want. For days or weeks. Just leave my uncle out of this. He’s under fire for my bad decisions,” I said. I could feel wetness streaming down my face. For some reason.

Gary slowly shook his head. “Your uncle wouldn’t take that bag if he knew how you’d gotten it. What lies and crimes you committed to get it to him. Don’t you see? You think of nobody but yourself. You’re acting as if you’re the only person in this world.”

“Better than being the sad sack you are,” I said. “Nobody respects you. People think you’re a joke.”

“Man who think of no one but self think people don’t respect Gary. Think they laugh,” the Chief chuckled, in that creaking voice.

“You’re ugly and you smell,” I muttered. I struggled against my restraints again. I wanted oh so bad to break free and have that shovel in my hands again. To start swinging.

“Let it out. All that hate. All that venom,” Gary said, and placed a headband just like mine on his face. Hooks pulling up his eyelids, yellow spots on the top of his eyeballs showing.

Then the Chief started tugging on a rope at the back of the stage. A large tube lowered into the space between us. It had string on either end which he tied to the back of my head. Then Gary’s. Suddenly I was staring at Gary’s ugly eyes on the other end of the tube. Little pinholes of light glittered on the ceiling of the tube. 

We looked at each other for what felt like an eternity. Probably it was no more than a couple minutes. The longer I saw Gary’s eyes, the more they seemed like two tunnels. Framed in gray-blue. I realized then I’d never paid attention to the color of my friend’s eyes. Ex-friend. 

Deep in the tunnels of Gary’s pupils I could see my own eyes. Brown. Tough-looking. Always striving. That was all I was seeing. It was all I ever would see, I thought. What I needed to do, was play along and really pretend like I was converted. I really needed to act like I cared. I would cry. I would convulse with emotion. Like the people did before the priests of those mega-churches. I would perform for Gary and the Raccaws to get out of here.

“Gary… I’m seeing you,” I said softly.

Gary said nothing.

“I’m really, truly seeing you. I… I just didn’t know…” I said. 

And then Gary’s eyes disappeared. So did the tube. And all the lights.

*

Gary and I pulled into the park next to the Raccaw Preserve shortly after the sun went down. Twilight and a bright moon gave everything a silvery glow.

I was about to step out of the car when Gary stopped me, grabbed me by the shirt. Something he never did. Never had done.

“You don’t have to do this, Kyle,” he said, eyes tight and serious. 

“Yeah, I know, but like I said–” I started.

Gary shook his head. “Seriously think about it. People come out of mind-sharing feeling like somebody else. Feeling like their old self died. Are you prepared for that?”

He was such a fool. Such an unwitting simp for the birds. I honestly felt bad for him. But not bad enough not to go through with this. I needed those nano bots back, so did my uncle, even though he was too much of a wuss to do what needed to be done. I would do it. I was always doing the hard things while everyone else was quibbling and crying over this or that rule or feeling.

“I can handle it,” I said, thinking about all that needed to be done. Find Jill. Get into the Preserve. Break the bad news to the Raccaws and disappoint Gary, for the last time for a while. Maybe a few years, who knew. Dig up the trash and lure in the nano bots. Leave without incident. Release the nano bots back into the disposal arena. Call my uncle and tell him the nano bots came on their own. Like magic. And fix the changes I’d made to the nano bot control system, so that the inspectors wouldn’t ask questions. Then I would tell my uncle I wasn’t feeling so good, and sleep through most of the day.

All would be back to normal by the following day. 

Oh, and dealing with Jill. Jill’s disappointment that five Gs was all she was getting. I would break it to her that the whole plan was my idea. That my uncle would fire her if she said a word. And that would be that. Burn two bridges, Gary and Jill, and save my uncle’s business. 

A couple months from now I’d go back to tweaking the disposal arena controls. Figure out how to get the nano bots not to eat the valuables that came through–drugs, precious metals, collectibles–without trying to escape. I’m sure I could figure it out. But right now I had more pressing matters.

Gary looked at me in silence for a couple seconds. Fixing those sad eyes upon me. Pleading almost.

“Can we go already?” I asked, and without waiting to hear him answer, I stepped out of the car.

*

There I was looking at myself as a boy. Brown eyes, dirty blond hair. Skinny arms and legs. A hardened face. I was looking right at me, sizing me up.

Then I looked down and saw a chubby belly. Two chubby legs. I was somebody else.

“Hey kid,” the young me said, looking right at me.

“Hey,” I replied, feeling my chest go tight. I couldn’t look at me. I was scared.

“Kid what’s your problem? Why are you looking at the ground? You afraid of me or something?” the boy that was me, hardened eyes, stuck his face right into mine, and blew air.

I flinched and he laughed. I recognized my laugh. I didn’t like it so much hearing it like this.

“What’s your name, scaredy cat?” the boy asked, and then started making meow sounds.

“It’s Gary and I’m not a scaredy cat,” I said, even though I was terrified, shaking so bad I thought I would pee myself.

“Gary the scaredy cat. Meow,” he said, laughing. “You wanna be less scared? I can teach you.”

I looked up at the boy’s hardened face. He was grinning like a little wolf, but somehow this was better than before. 

“Let’s trade backpacks and I’ll teach you,” he said. I looked at his backpack. It was a dirty canvas bag with holes and stains on it. Mine was dinosaurs, bright and clean. I didn’t want to give him my backpack, but I did. I handed it over.

“I didn’t mean everything, you idiot,” the boy said, and he unzipped my backpack and turned it upside down. Out came my water bottle, my coloring book, my pencils, everything.

Then the boy unzipped his backpack and dumped in mine.

“Okay, Gary the scaredy cat, this is what you do,” the boy said. He sat on the ground in the dirt with me. A teacher across the yard yelled recess would be up in five minutes. The kid with the wolfish eyes dug his fingers into the grass and dirt until an ant was crawling on his hand. 

He held it up to my nose and I shrank away.

“This is your problem,” he said. “Everybody is an ant. Just a little bug, don’t you see?” I watched the ant run up and down his fingers looking for an escape. Suddenly he slapped his hands together and showed me the crushed ant, smeared across his palm.

“Why be scared of that?” he asked, and stood up. He picked up my backpack and walked off.

I wanted to know his name, but I also didn’t. The boy scared me. So did all the ants. All I saw for the rest of the day were ants.

I blinked and suddenly I was looking at a pair of eyes. They were my own eyes.

I pulled my head away from the tube and stood. I was looking at myself now as an adult. Kyle. Tall and thin and so tense. Veins at Kyle’s temples spidered out into his brain. A complete sociopath. A compulsive liar. A narcissist. A user of anybody and everybody.

I stepped back and let the Chief connect himself with Kyle, who was struggling against his restraints, mumbling to himself. His shirt was drenched in sweat.

I looked at the crowd of my brethren, tending to those who had suffered at the hands of my friend’s violence. Some would never be the same. Dysfunctional for the rest of their life. But that was okay. That was a cost the tribe could absorb. Just like Kyle’s megalomaniacal mind.

The tribe would eat it whole.

*

“Big K, who’s your friend?” Jill asked, approaching us from the other side of the parking lot. 

“His name’s Gary,” I called out. “Give us just a sec Jill.”

And I turned me and Gary around. “I forgot to tell you she was coming,” I said, and put my hand around my friend’s back in as warm of a way as I could muster. His back was damp.

“I didn’t tell them that,” Gary said, frowning.

“She just wants to see it,” I said. “She won’t be in the way at all.”

Gary nodded reluctantly.

“Ok, come on over,” I called to Jill.

Jill walked over with her hand in her pocket. I swear I was going to cuff her if she brandished her gun in front of Gary. “You guys planning something secret?” she asked.

Gary shook her hand. “No, he just told me you were interested in the mind-sharing ritual. Do you know anything about it?”

Jill glanced at me and shook her head. “Not a lick.”

Gary looked at me confused. I said, “She knows there’s a lot of garbage I need to get out. The ritual is a means to do that. Isn’t that right Jill?”

If she wasn’t catching my drift, I didn’t know what I’d do. Maybe I’d tell Gary my initial plan was to take trash from the landfill. But then once I’d read about the mind-sharing ritual I was serious. I was really kicking myself for having not told Jill beforehand that Gary didn’t know anything about my plans for the trash.

Jill shrugged. “Shall we go?”

We walked through the park to the great twelve-foot fence of the Raccaw Preserve. Barbed wire at the top. I heard a faint buzz coming from it, indicating it was electrified. 

“So how exactly do they let us in?” I asked.

“They have their ways,” Gary replied, and as if on cue, the fence’s buzzing ceased. Then he walked over to the fence and felt about it. A door-sized opening came loose and he pushed through the chain-links to the other side. He held the fence behind him to let us through.

And just before Jill and I crossed he said, “Last chance, Kyle. Jill, you will just be watching tonight. But our friend here will be undergoing a radical transformation. Whatever you thought this was going to be, whatever you thought you were going to do, this is your final warning. Cross and there is no going back,” Kyle said.

Jill giggled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just here to get paid,” she said, and walked through.

Gary made no face. No expression at Jill’s words. That surprised me, but not enough to stop me.

In the moonlight, dotting the great mounds behind the fencing, mounds that contained decades if not centuries of trash, I spotted countless pairs of Raccaw eyes watching us, waiting for us. A sea of golden eyes, distinctly raccoon-like, but also bird-like. I was creeped out. And it was then that I started to wonder.

* 

The one called Kyle. He changing. He crying all the time now. He feel the cut and scrape of friend Gary. Also the Chief. Also mother and father of brother he felled. He have new brothers and sisters. He cry for them too.

It been many days and so much weeping. Sometime Gary let his friend up from chair to eat. His friend so emotional. Cannot look at Gary. Then back to chair.

More brothers he see. Brothers who talked to cows. Whales. Elephants at zoo. 

The one who call Kyle in so much pain. He like a baby coming out of womb. Breathing for first time. Never felt emotion like this before.

Now they don’t restrain him. The one who called Kyle just sit there. He keep eyes open. He keep face glued to tube. He want to look. He want to feel. But it hurt him to feel.

When dawn come, Gary leave. He have to go to work. But Kyle stay. Kyle keep crying. Kyle still seeing so much.

Kyle not leave for long time.