She’s got her back turned toward the sink when the big guy slides up to the bar, but she can smell him—a wet and musted odor, like a wool sweater long forgotten in the washer. His strange smell, although it makes her nose wrinkle, is almost a comfort. And truly not that much worse than some of the dancers when they come back off the floor, stinking of feverish want and unmet desires. Plus she knows he won’t order anything stupid and then wink or smirk or giggle at her, like he’s the cleverest person to ever sit at her bar. Not that she thinks he’s actually a person.

  “Evening,” she says as she lays a napkin on the counter in front of him. She’s surprised every time by his bulk, the way his clothes sag and hang from him like sloughing skin, the way the actual skin on his face also sags and hangs, wet rivers and furrows that slide down and down. She’s never asked his name nor he hers. “The usual?”

  “Please.” His voice is wet pebbles sieved through a screen. It comes to her under the thrum of the music in a way she understands is not possible based on what little she knows about how sound works. Like being under the ocean and hearing someone whisper your name.

  The usual means whatever she feels like making him. She’s been practicing this new drink since last time he came in, a few weeks ago now. It’s a tricky and complicated one, but she’s pretty sure she’s gotten the recipe right, the way the sweet blends with the sour, the slight umami that lands a moment in the back of the throat before it deepens. She adds a few drops of flavored bitters she brought from home, and gives it a gentle stir before she sets it before him. It’s an inky-purple swirl of liquid and ice, nearly glowing in its dark presence.

  “On the house,” she says. “For your services.”

  “Obliged.”

  It’s a ritual of sorts, this thing that they do, speaking the known as if it is the unknown.

  He lifts the drink to the bar lights, admires it the way someone might a perfect diamond or a perfect kiss. “Beautiful.” Sheb’s heart lifts a little, takes some of the weight off her breastbones. “What do you call it?”

  She’s been reading up on things, studying the language and the cadence. It’s a stab in the dark, really, but a stab that feels like it’s close to hitting something vital. “The Lamp of the Familiars?”

  In response, he takes a sip, closing his large dark eyes and showing her the extra set on the back of his lids. His second eyes watching her like this while he drinks what she’s made feels intimate in a way that most things deemed intimate do not for her. It’s almost too much, her pulse high in her throat, her need to rub her fingers together.

  The song ends, and nearly as one, the crowd undulates back, dripping with salt and musk, wracked with thirst and and a hunger unmet. They’re over being clever with her now, their prey’s moved to different quarters, and they ask for water, for rum and coke, for tequila shots, all while looking away, tracking their possibilities.

  He’s the only one that still looks at her, both sets of eyes as he blinks and drinks. She lets it rest on her, that heavy gaze, that intense regard, as she fills glasses and takes money, slips tips into the jar, refers the drunkest among them to the numbers of the car services she’s written on the blackboard behind her.

  Sheb’s no fool. She knows what he is, what he does. The services he provides for this bar were explained to her when she was hired on, by the thin little man called Charles who she’s never seen since. The woman who runs the place day-to-day, or rather night-to-night since the Cave’s posted hours are Dark to Light, doesn’t talk much, just smokes endlessly in the little closet beside the walk-in.

  Sheb doesn’t know what she wants from him. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Maybe just this, again and again, the break from the repetition, the lift in her heart when he gazes upon her, the way his presence makes her feel like her job, like her life, like she, matters.

  No. Not that. Exactly not that.

  His presence reminds her that none of this matters. Not this milling throng, not the way she sometimes pockets what she shouldn’t or makes the wrong drink on purpose or feels squeamish at the thought of someone touching her. Not the 3 A.M. wake-ups with her pulse thrumming in her neck, not the way the edges of her skin go soft sometimes, amorphous blobs of not-her that she doesn’t know what to do with, not the dreams that drowned long ago and now wash upon the shores of her subconscious at the pull of the moon.

  He protects her from the danger of her own thoughts by sitting at the bar the same way she protects others by putting napkins on their glasses. It’s not part of her job or even part of her purpose, but she does it anyway, because she can, because it means nothing to her but it might mean everything to someone else.

  He is done with his drink and somewhere the moon is falling down and she knows what comes next. “Pest control,” Charles had said. “Keeps the place clean of vermin.”

  Of course, she’d thought rats, mice, scorpions, spiders, the creatures that crawl through the dark and hidden places of the world. But that was before she’d met him, before she made him his first drink and watched him watch her like she was starlight dancing on a dark ocean.

  “My thanks,” he says to her as he slides the now-empty glass across the bar toward her.

  “It was my pleasure,” she says, although it wasn’t, exactly. It is more a momentary absence of dread, which is perhaps as close to pleasure as she has.

  He slides away, intent now on his doing job. She has never seen him hunt and stalk and feed in the morning gloam, in the wee hours after last call, but she can imagine it. Has imagined it.

  She thinks, as she often does, about following him into the darkness. But there’s something there that is still too heavy for her to witness, too much like drowning when all she really wants is to sink for a while.

  “Last call,” she says into the throng. No one can hear her above the din, but it doesn’t matter. They all know what she knows, beneath their last-ditches for life and love.

  Closing time is coming. Closing time is here.

  Gnocchi

  ~ Simone Cooper

  Darling, I am dictating this record for you, since I'm not sure how soon I'll lose the use of my hands, or which of us will change first.

  Our last dinner together as members of the species Homo sapiens will include gnocchi. That's always been your favorite. I usually buy them premade, because the slight difference in result never seems worth the effort. But now that our assimilation is imminent, why not? What I do for love is the only meaning I have left.

  I shopped in the early afternoon, when there were only a few other shoppers. They seemed calm. Normal. They didn't know what I knew. I could have run through the aisles screaming, "Wake up!" but they wouldn't have understood. Then I'd be spending these last hours drugged and raving, or cooling off in the drunk tank instead of working this dough, shaping the tiny pillow dumplings, inhaling the sensual aroma of olive oil and basil and bursting roast tomatoes.

  I paid at the self checkout and packed the produce in a reusable bag that will never take up room in a landfill.

  The envoy, It who Embodies Time, whispered to us first through dreams. In the world after the assimilation, words like pollution and garbage will be meaningless. There will only be matter and energies, life and unlife, thought and color. This dream made everyone in town weep, off and on, for days, without knowing why. Only you remembered the dream. Even I did not, until you reminded me.

  POTATOES: Here are the potatoes, russets the size of a double fist, a little soft, a little old, like the muscles on the undersides of my arms that are beginning, just beginning, to wobble. Bake the potatoes long and slow until they are cooked through. Take them out and cut the skins open to release their steam. Close your eyes and breathe in the miracle.

  The envoy, It who Embodies Purity, told you not to worry, and you told me. There will be potatoes again, after the assimilation. Perhaps that word was not exact, it admitted. Tubers was closer. But they will be pleasurable, those tubers. Like potatoes, they will open with a burst of heat and the scent of earth and plant sugars. Your mouth will not be a mouth, but it will ingest the tubers just the same.

  FLOUR: Add the flour to a large bowl with the cooled flesh of the potatoes. Leave plenty of room.

  I bought flour, just in case, but of course I didn't need it. There's always an unopened bag of flour at the back of the cupboard that I never remember is there. Now, there are two. You used to tell me, for a woman who loves cookies, I don't do enough baking. I'd answer, my belly is big enough as it is. I was wrong. I should have made the cookies. Brown butter pecan would have been a good flavor, if I had to pick something to remember being human by. That, or your lips, or the salt air I would gulp cold, pre-dawn, watching the mist rise from the shore of the bay, and listening to the seagulls gossip.

  The envoy, It who Embodies Communion, showed you the seagulls we will know after the change. They will all be connected, the same as they are now, except instead of by sound it will be by threads of digesting mycelium, and when they fly, it will be all together like a single, great, undulating wing. The vision of them will be so beautiful, we won't need eyes after we see them. Your own eyes curdled opalescent, just thinking of it.

  RICOTTA: The brand of ricotta we can get in the local store is too bland and too grainy. I'd complained at the checkout before, but still, this time, I bought it.

  Scoop the ricotta from its container and add it to the potatoes and the flour, white on white on white.

  The sound of the spoon in the plastic tub brings Bugle the beagle from his bed by the door. He's mostly blind and smelly, and I let his nails get too long, and sometimes I can't get him outside fast enough to do his business, which embarrasses us both. But I had him before I even met you and long before the sky in the corner of the window changed color, so even though the recipe wants a whole cup, I let him have the last spoonful. I imagine in this moment he is, again, every time, the happiest being on our whole, sad, planet.

  The envoy, It who Embodies the Starless Void, said there will be no division of dependents and caretakers after the assimilation. We will all be animals and we will all be people, and those who cannot care for themselves as individuals will be loved and upraised by all through the ecstasy of eternal consumption. I was skeptical and joked to you that Bugle would be okay with that, so long as eternal consumption tasted like cheese. You laughed, but prismatic light came out of your mouth instead of sound, which embarrassed us both.

  PARMESAN: Is any cheese more adulterated and abused by the New England grocery store than parmesan? Luckily I still had the wedge we bought with your mother at the good cheese shop in Scarborough.

  Grate the parmesan. Make the traditional knuckle sacrifice to the grater. Add the cheese to the bowl. Near the rind of the cheese, where even the tiniest sliver coats your tongue with buttery richness, the cheese may be oily and hard.

  Honestly, I had nearly half a cup by the time the whole wedge was grated, but I decided to use it all. The gnocchi might come out too salty, but at least the cheese won't go to waste.

  The envoy, It who Embodies The Space Between, revealed to you that the assimilation is only the first stage of our evolution. Eventually, the energies and colors of our bodies will be food for the food of those like the envoy, like grain is food for our chickens, and then even those beings will be food for beings more infinite and more unknowable. What fulfillment, what beauty there is in such singular purpose! Iä! Iä! you said. Cthulhu fhtagn!

  EGG: Just one egg. Crack it into the bowl with all the dry ingredients.

  What if I don't stir the ingredients together? What if I don't let time progress, and the birds fly on and Bugle lets out more aromatic sighs and your mother calls to say she's out of her favorite aged gouda again, would we like to join her? Would the white marbles of your eyes clear back to brown? Would your laugh return? Would you kiss my neck while I'm cooking, even if I was the one who stopped and all the world went on?

  But that is not how it will be. I have mixed the dough, haven't I? My fingers remember the feel of it, silken and dry on the surface, sticky inside. I remember marking each dumpling with the tines of a fork, as humans mark all things, as the envoy marks us. I've roasted the tomatoes and garlic and the greens from beets we ate last week. I've opened the oven to the heaven of their smells, pulled out and set aside the sizzling tray.

  Before I can put the dumplings on to boil, my hands are gone. So is my mouth, though my thoughts spool on.

  The elements that form forks and bowls, houses and grocery stores, shorelines and water birds smear together like oil paints across a palette. As I join them, I recognize one specific shade of indigo. It's you! That ochre, scampering? An old beloved dog.

  For an instant I am only joy.

  I made you gnocchi. I loved and was loved.

  Enough.

  Blood and Glitter

  ~ Jessie Kwak

  Sell me to the witch, I told the trader.

  She’ll come to you dressed all in black, I told the trader, fingers stacked with silver rings and eyes sunken into dark smudges from long years of service to the Masters.

  It will be impossible to mistake the witch, I told the trader.

  And it should have been impossible. But somehow, instead of the witch, the idiot trader has sold me to a goth girl fresh from a shopping trip to Claire’s.

  The goth girl drops me unceremoniously into her book bag where I wedge between an Algebra 1 textbook and her Walkman, and I curse the trader’s soul into the depths of oblivion.

  He can’t hear me.

  No one can.

  I’m trapped inside glass.

  The witch was supposed to free me on this full moon night, calling my presence into this plane with her own cursed blood. The ritual was meant to be the fulfillment of her entire life’s work; she would die screaming in agony at the pinnacle of the ritual, of course, but she would die knowing she’d ushered in the reign of the Masters by releasing me, their Spawn.

  I have waited aeons for this night, when I am meant to take my rightful place on this plane. I have outlived stars waiting to hear the humans scream and watch them cower before me, blood running from their eyes and teeth gnashing tongues to ribbons.

  This cannot be happening.

  I will make the best of this.

  I will ascend.

  I take stock of my surroundings and assess the damage.

  The good news: The false witch girl has blood in the cartilage of her right ear from a new cheap piercing. If I can get her to fidget with it and then touch this glass vessel I will still be born into chaos and screams of eternal torment, witch or no. The ritual is important, but the blood is more so.

  The bad news: The false witch girl has company. Her older brother is picking her up at the mall with another of his soccer teammates already in the passenger seat of his Geo Metro. The teammate who I can sense this girl has recently developed feelings for.

  It is disgusting, to sense these feelings of humans. But soon I will burn them all away.

  “Krissy get in!” her brother shouts, then laughs. “You look like a psycho. You look like you made out with Marilyn Manson and his clown makeup rubbed off on your face.” Her brother grins wide at his own joke; I can feel the girl’s embarrassment emanating secondhand through her book bag, and it sparks against my own frustration.

  Woman, you hold destiny in your hands, I scream through the Void to her. Smite him! There is no room for hesitation, no room for shame!

  But I’m powerless in this form. Krissy the false witch can’t hear a thing.

  “Fuck you,” she says to her brother. She flips him a middle finger beringed with obviously (obviously!) fake silver.

  “I’m telling mom you swear,” says the brother.

  “I’m telling mom you jacked off with her nice hand towel,” says Krissy. “Hey Seth,” she says to the hot friend, who had not laughed at the brother’s joke, but does laugh at hers.

  “Hey, K,” says hot Seth.

  The car peels away from the curb. As it does, I see the witch hobble-run out of the mall, clawed hands waving in the air as she searches for the one who bought me. If she spots Krissy, she can save me. She can complete her life’s work of servitude to the Masters. My rule of dominion on this plane can finally be realized.

  I’m here, I scream, but the glass bottle thwarts.

  The witch doesn’t see Krissy’s brother’s Geo Metro, and I feel her presence stretch, snap. The witch vanishes from my awareness.

  I will not wail in disappointment and despair.

  I will not wail.

  But if I can’t ascend on this plane I am doomed. I have been raised for this moment, the Masters who spawned me ceaselessly reminding me of their expectations and obligations. If I fail, I will be worse than a disappointment to them, I will be Grounded, confined to the eternal tortures of the Void, to the agonies of—

  Fuck. Fuck, fuckfuckfuck: now Krissy’s brother is blasting Nickleback.

  This can’t get worse.

  I will find a way out of this disaster.

  I have learned a new human ritual tonight.

  It is called a “slumber party,” and I hate it.

  Krissy’s brother didn’t drop her off in the heart of the woods to summon the Masters’ Spawn in a circle of waiting cultists. Instead, he dropped her off at another adolescent human’s dwelling.

  This one is called Nicole. Where Krissy is gangly with dramatic makeup and dyed-black hair (it is witchy, I suppose), Nicole is soft and small with shockingly unstable red curls and a Scooby-Doo T-shirt. She likes musicals. Her bedroom is plastered with posters labeled Phantom of the Opera and Cats and Little Shop of Horrors. She insists on playing a CD of something she calls Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat until the others show up.