There's always a time. Then there's always a place. For me that time and place happened to be my home on the night of holloween. Well, that was when I first found out what I had done. I suppose it truly started the monday before, when I had found some technical prints that were the envy of any collector who might dabble in such matters, and elected that it was my time to have one of my own. And so began several days of "overtime" which really meant abusing company machinery after hours because this was permitted in the shop. Several days later and many programs executed on the CNC machine I had manufactured it. After a bath in some high polish bluing solution that was the equal of colt's royal blue, I had done it. Assembling it bit by bit, part by part. Don't ask how I got the barrel done. It was just some CNC machine magic that went into the end of a broach and a lot of psychotic resolve. With the last few touches that had gone into it I'd put molybdenum into the bore and let it soak after washing out the bluing that would ultimately be stripped out in the first firing.
With my last touches I'd been hard pressed to select only the best of wood for the stock and handguard, which I had soon finished hand crafting and applied a beautiful red finish to the wood and polished it to a high shine.
After a drum magazine and a few box magazines had been stamped out, I'd found myself looking at the most beautiful gun in the world, the one I'd made myself and finished myself. Weighing in at ten pounds empty, chambered for .45ACP and stocked with a beautiful angled wood stock, it was a beauty to behold. The gun was something of a marvel to me, being that the Thompson model 1928 had always been my favorite and I never thought I'd get a hold of one, this example, machined with the highest degree of quality control a guy with access to CNC's and computerized heating equipment could achieve, was probably my greatest achievment. Forward from that, it was october 27 when I had gotten it home, so it was a time to admire my work, and maybe after the holloween party, shoot it.

October 31. 7:30 PM
>Guests had started arriving, friends, coworkers... maybe not the best two things to mix together.
>Between these two forces my house had been packed to the hilt.
>"So when you make nuts do you tap or..."
"Depends on the threads, if we're talking about something like a fine thread, then you can use a tap and it won't be too much of an issue with a tap wrench or something and it'll easily thread the hole, but I've never liked threading with taps with course threads. You need a fuck huge tap wrench, so I'd just stick with single point for that."
>"So you like to put in the work."
"Yeah. How else could I afford to live somewhat out in the sticks."
>"True, then again, something occurs to me. Rumor has it you've been working after hours for the last week and a half on a machinegun."
"Oh? What's it to you?"
>"Something along the lines of it being a thompson reaches my ear yesterday and I'm caught wondering where you got the prints for that."
"I got them from a pawn shop. They were in a guitar case fitted for a 1928 thomspon that I just thought would be cool as fuck to have. Seems I was right."
>"Shit man, could you make me one?"
"Probably-"
>A face emerges into our little bubble of interaction. It's old man Randy from the workshop. Legend has it he used to be out of the industry. Well, back now.
>"Hey, Anon, your girlfriend's looking for you."
>a pause falls over us for a moment while I try to react.
"...Who?"
>"She's looking for you."
"Oh for fucks sake, Randy, I'm not dating Jenny."
>"No, not Jenny. Carolyn."
"Who?"
>"I don't know, YOU'RE the one who's met her before, if you don't know who Carolyn is, I can't help you."
"Where is she?"
>"She's drinking at the bar in the kitchen."
>In a moment of clarity, I decide to play out this situation, since this could be a situation I may want to reverse quickly, I forego acting on the urge to tell of my relationship status being...well, nonexistent, and Begin moving through the crowd toward the bar.
>After about thirty seconds moving from one end of the house to the other, Randy following practically on my hip to point her out, I follow the invisible line from his index finger... to her.
>Whoever she was. I had the feeling Randy was right. He really couldn't help me on this one.
>The woman I'm told was Carolyn sat on a bar stool chatting with someone, a strong drink in her hand. For a few moments, she hadn't noticed me, guaging her overall appearance. To start, she was a tall, slim woman, her hair, a silky black and parted over her left temple, hung from her head in a wavy fashion until it ended at the top of her shoulders, large more extreme waves curling inward in thick coils that shortened it to just l
enough that it rested on her shoulders or draped slightly below their level.
>Her face, as pale and clear as porcelain held an overall oblong and vertically eliptical shape, which seemed not to falter even to the extremely subtle hollows of her cheeks, only noticable thanks to a slight rouge which was present. Much more noticable than that, however were her rosey red lips, which had quite noticably been stained somehow, giving just as much contrast as the pale color of her head to her thin and angular eyebrows, which quite noticably drew attention to her shadowed eyesockets and finally to her icy blue eyes.
>Her body language, for the brief moment seemed to indicate that underneath the somewhat demure appearance for a woman at a holloween party, she held a great degree of confidence and comfort in her environment, as well as an innate ability to read the room, which was demonstrated in the second before she spotted me, as she leaned over to her right, dodging a stumbling partygoer, who was then grabbed by a couple friends and taken to a couch.
>She started rotating back to conversation before she looked just past me, and then spotted me in the crowd before standing up, giving me a good look at her white dress shirt with its black, gold embroidered collar and cuffs, what appeared to be an ornate pendant tied neatly into the center of the collar, and two symmetrically protruding ribbons extending about two and a half inches each from the pendant. Below all these no doubt meticulously applied details was of course a black tube skirt with a distinctive white line running down the right hip.
>"Anon! It's been too long." She stated as I slid through the crowd and took a position next to her.
"I take it you're the one who's been looking for me?"
>"Indeed I have! I can't believe you haven't called me, are you running around with that Jenny girl from work?"
"Why does everyone think that?"
>"Come, come. Would you be so darling as to lend a lady a light and an ear away from prying eyes?"
"Certainly, Ma'am. right this way."
>With the conclusion of that exchange, she takes to my arm as I slowly creep through the crowd and out onto the porch in the cold night air.
"So, what brings a classy looking lady like you to a place like this?"
>"Don't you recognize me? Come on, you clearly have an eye for details."
"I'm sorry, I don't know any ladies that look like you. Makes it more questionable that I'm told you asked for me by name."
>"Come on, don't you remember me? You were just dressing me three days ago."
"I barely talked or even saw anyone three days ago. I spent most of it in the shop. I think I'd remember dressing someone else."
>"Oh, Anon, how can you be so cold?"
"How can YOU be so crazy? You show up and act like we've known each other forever."
>"After I've known you my whole life you pretend you don't even know me. Some times you make me burn, Anon. Speaking of which, got a light?" she says, drawing a cigarette from a pack of lucky strikes.
"Sure." I say as I strike the lighter and offer it to her.
>She takes a drag off the cigarette. She stares absently off into a field adjacent to my house for a moment, and then back at me.
>"Well, Anon, it's clear you have questions, so ask, and I'll try to satisfy your curiosities."
"Okay. I'll take that. So. How is it that you know me?"
>"Hard to miss YOU. The handsome fellow in the machine shop with a focus so intense one might mistake that look of focus for vacancy. Day in and day out, walking into the shop early, going to work, doing it all day without fail and then continuing on to machine out a bunch of gun parts with the same care you gave to the most expensive of Inconel and hastelloy parts, even the most blind observer would take note of YOU." she said, her face hanging in a smile that halfway said "You're fascinating." and halfway said "I ate the canary." At some point in the speech, her hand finding her way onto my cheek, eyes wide open and notably dilated as she stared straight into my eyes.
"But I was alone in the shop when I did that, how did you watch me? We're you in the walls or something?"
>She lets out a chuckle and her hand falls onto my shoulder before she answers with an ominous "Something like that."
"So, I imagine there was some game here. You clearly didn't bring me out here just for a smoke and to tell me about how many red flags I SHOULD have noticed when I was working in the shop. In fact, I've never seen you anywhere. So where have you been hiding?"
>"Like you suggested, I suppose you could say I was hiding in the walls, though I was much closer."
"You see, now you're just TRYING to sound like a walking red flag."
>"You see, I came here, or more accurately, showed myself here to give you a chance to volunteer." she explained, as though letting me in on some devious plot.
"What?"
>A grin, not appropriate for that tone of voice and wide set of eyes surface in her face as she began to speak, stepping closer to me, almost to the point of touching at the chest. "You see, I saw you, and I fell in love..." a slow rising inflection that might as well have been accompanied by a hard tilt of the head and maybe a crack of the neck leaking into her voice. "I first saw you working on the leblond over a piece of inconel, and I just knew I had to have you, I even watched and waited for you to take me home thursday and lied in wait for you to let your guard down so I could spike your drinks."
"WHAT? Ok, nevermind, I get it, you're fucking insane, get to the point."
>"He. heheh. Hahahahaha. You. It doesn't matter whether you're sleeping, working over a spinning lathe while I sit next to the oil cans, or a mill or even when you're getting flippant with me, you just never stop getting cuter. I have to have you, in fact, I WILL have you." she says, scooting in to the point of touching, her arm wrapping around my shoulders while her other found its way to the back of my head and held my face to hers.
>From this stare she tilted her head while keeping eye contact. Not closing the gap, but merely staring. seconds passed.
>Silence
>"No whip of the tongue? No emotional reaction? Why are you so quiet? So composed?
"Look, it's not that the crazy act isn't scary, it's just a bit banal, so tell me... who the fuck are you again?" I reply, an inexplicable calm stillness coming over me.
>"So stoic, too bad it won't help you, but, to satisfy your curiosity before I take you, all you have to do is look at the pendant."
>looking down at the pendant, I saw that it held an intricate but at the same time... simple pattern with a picture that seemed vaguely familiar of a man in obviously formal clothes with a small gun, not a pistol, but a relatively compact and somewhat modern looking gun with a very short magazine, barrel pointed up at somewhere around forty five degrees from the ground.
>For a few seconds I failed to recognize the picture until below it on the pendant, somewhere between the image scrawled in gold and the intricate patterns surrounding it, I saw the number. The last thing I'd remember before a hand drew my lips to hers was the number.
>1928

Somewhere. 
>I felt comfortable and warm, somehow different. Somehow, the warmth that keeps me absorbed slipping my mind. Looking up, I see a man standing around behind a counter. His blonde hair, blue eyes arranged as though they'd been untouched by sun, wind rain or any other forces of nature.
>on the wall behind him, was a copper mirror, in it, another man of similar physical appearance, this one different, covered in scratches, scars and sores, his eyes, and another, this one also relatively unscathed... next to the other one.
>This one seemed to have eye sockets, shaded purple in the inner halves and an asymmetric pink sunburn on his right cheek to go along with his otherwise deathly pale face and invisible scar in his left brow, leaving it with a subtle interruption and flare just off the bridge of his nose.
>The room seemed to be decorated in a very old fashioned manner, a bolt action rifle with only blued metal pieces resting on a mantle over a fireplace made of dark gray cobblestones in a wall otherwise clad in a light brown hardwood, along with rosewood floors, a parchment colored ceiling with a crystal chandelier giving off a copper colored light onto the bar's rosewood chairs, counter and Lacquered top.
>The unsoiled one looks to me as though seeing an old friend, and gestures for me to come to the bar counter, and after a second's hesitation I started toward the counter. The other two began shifting their gaze toward me.
>"Well if it isn't madness. Been a long time since we've all been together like this."
"Me?"
>"Who else?" The one with the more mild burnout appearance asked, facetiously.
>"You see, drive, it's good to see madness come home again. When he's out there he just seems to exist, it's like even when he's enjoying himself he's doing it to mask some compulsion to some discomfort." the one with the burnt face said to the one behind the counter.
>"True, audacity. He's been spending too much time alone with self preservation. I saw him last week, but it's like nothing is new to him, even something he's never done before. Madness, what do you think?" The man behind the bar says.
"You know? I'm not sure. Why do we all look the same? Come to think of it, what is this place?"
>"Why, it's YOUR place. Self styled it and everything."
"Have I lost it? Is that why we all look the same?"
>"No, you haven't lost it. In fact, if you were to really think about it, you might have acquired it if you weren't IT."
"Hmmph. Honestly, there's something just grand about this place. The fireplace, the warmth, you know, I know I've never seen you all before but honestly it feels like I'm among old friends."
>"All necessities provided." The man behind the counter stated, turning to grab a rather old looking bottle of whiskey, apparently beginning to set up some whiskey glasses.
>"All anxieties tranquilized." the one with the scars said aloud, reaching for the first of the poured glasses of whiskey.
>"All boredom.. amused." the one with the sunburned cheek muttered, taking the second glass and passing it to me before grabbing one for himself.
>"Drink." One of the identical voices stated.
>Glasses rose, fell and in the distance, through a window dripping with raindrops, we watched as a shadowed figure moved through a cloud of black fog that followed it from right to left, stopping to glare at us, only to continue moving a moment later and cross out of our line of sight while the fire in the chimney continues to crackle, lending a warm glow to the room.
>In a moment I'm no longer on my feet, no longer looking at the parchment ceiling and the warm glow of the chandelier and the fire crackling in the chimney.
>The right temple head with sleek black hair draped across the other side away from my eyes obscures most of my field of vision as it twists and rotates an unknown distance from my face.
>as feeling comes to me I realize exactly the distance. None.
>In a moment, her head withdraws and rests just beyond my shoulder, lips away from mine, though a metallic taste had already been laid onto them.
"What the fuck are you doing?"
>"Oh, nothing. Just humming to you."
"Right. Humming. Into my mouth. What the fuck kind of sick animal are you? What the fuck else have you been doing while I slept?"
>"Oh, so I'm the crazy one?"
"Yeah, you are! Speaking of you, who the hell are you?"
>"Come on, baby, don't you remember me?"
"Oh. From the party. Right."
>"Thaaat's it, sweetheart. Now that you aren't mumbling along the lines of 'PUT THE RATS IN YOUR MOUTH AND OPEN THE GATES OF HELL!' why don't I make you breakfast?"
"Did you drug me?"
>"In a manner of speaking. Don't say I didn't warn you. All you needed to do was volunteer. Now, before you start to truly know what I meant when I said by force, how about I go make you breakfast."
>For a moment I thought about the exact language of the sentence I'd just heard, and then resigned myself to whatever drug she likely put into me.
"Alright, but before you go, why do I taste metal?"
>"Lets not spoil the surprise before the cravings set in." She said before she flung the sheets off and stood from the bed, standing fully exposed in her naked form while she walked from the room.
"Well, she's crazy as fuck but I can't say she doesn't look good."
>Standing from the bed and finding some clothes for the day in my dresser, I noted a buzzing sound. Looking into the screen of the phone I saw names like Randy, Jenny, Henry and Ken just to start an apparent flurry of messages from friends and coworkers, many ranging from "Loud" to "you two went to bed too early." to "What animals were you two slaughtering in the bedroom?" and of course a rather unprofessional "Why couldn't you have taken ME?" from Jenny.
>A quick step out onto the front porch of the house confirmed what I'd know to be true without looking at the watch. It wasn't even noon. Then again, it WAS a weekend and those were best spent in the straights of relaxing or pursuing one's own interests. 
>I walked back inside with one thought foremost on my mind... Time to shoot the M-1928.
>"It's a nice day out, wanna go shoot later?" Carolyn asked as she looked over her shoulder to me.
"Yeah. Sounds about right. Say, have you seen the Thompson?"
>"Very Funny, we'll see how many jokes like that you'll be making tomorrow."
>A few minutes and a walk out into the fields later I found myself loading the first mag of the thomspon and then another in the cold morning air. At the time, I'd been thankful to have chosen appropriately warm winter apparel, and just the right size gloves as I finished loading a third magazine. 
>In this moment of enjoyment, I clicked the button on the side of my earmuffs and a slow hum of music came to my ear, reminiscent of the nights that had once been spent in serene night clubs, now overcome with an advent of western civilization known as "bad neighborhoods" and reduced to once great and long fallen landmarks of the society that couldn't see where it was going.
>As the smooth tones of Martha Tilton filtered into my ears, singing a long lost and forever gone in time song immortalized in the glimpsing tableau of a tape in a recorder, called "that is my desire." I pulled the bolt of the thompson to the rear of the receiver, the greased metal sliding against itself like glass on rollers before the long awaited moment when I slid the magazine up into the receiver, placing a round smoothly in fron of the face of the bolt.
>In the next moment I found myself back in reallity as I looked down the sights to a target I had set down range, a steel plate, as it appeared in my sights.
>Thumb met selector, switching the gun to semi auto before once again presenting the thompson's sights onto the center of the target before the trigger was pulled to the rear, and all at once the bolt flung itself forward into the most linear of motions before flinging itself once more to the back of the receiver and coming to rest on the sear as I released the trigger and reset it before letting fly two more rounds, each of which flew with the concerted fluid motion which neither seemed to shove of hit at any point in its motion, but simply move even as the bolt slammed into the breach, even as it struck the back of the receiver, as the remaining energy was transfered to the shoulder, and even as it came to rest on the sear.
>Assessing the target downrange, I saw that my aim was true, though the sights were not. The group on the steel plate sat to the left of center toward the edge, and after some lateral adjustments to the sight, I once more presented the weapon.
>In threee more shots, each one's movement as passive as the last, I lowered the weapon to a high ready and looked on at the three gray spots in the plate's black surface, placed neatly into the center of the target. Looking at it, I felt a present and warming sense of satisfaction coming from both my own mind, and some other presence in my head, which I concluded to be the spirit or whatever inhabited the weapon feeling her own sense of satisfaction, turning to greater excitement as thumb came to selector once more to switch the gun into full auto before bursts began to spray forth from the muzzle.
>As the five bursts came from the muzzle, I couldn't help feeling the joy of a skilled task being completed with the greatest of fluidity and grace, both from my end, in the recoil that seemed less like a push or a shove, or even a punch, and more of a gentle guiding movement that tenderly guided one's shoulder rearward, and from the end projecting into my mind, the sensation of carrying out a practiced movement with the greatest of ease and perfection.
>In a moment, the bolt slammed forward, allowing the feeling to fade for a moment before I racked the bolt back to the rear and replaced the magazine with a fresh one and started off again.
>In another few moments, the center of the target had become mostly gray and pocked with splashes where the bullets had disintegrated and turned blasted away the paint.
>Carolyn manifested herself with an incredible spring about her as she hopped about in her prairy dress, a smile as innocent as a puppy and the joy of a playful child across her face, presenting itself to such extent that one might easily forget that she was in fact, a predator of rather high order.
>"Oh, I haven't felt this good in almost a decade! Thanks, Anon. You've been so good to me."
"A decade?"
>"Later, let's keep shooting, I'll tell you at home."
>A few hours and several hundred rounds of .45ACP passed before I got home with her, the implications of the decade thing lingering in the back of my mind the whole way.
>We'd just gotten settled in before it came back to the surface, and I finally asked.
"So... about the 'decade' thing."
>"Yeah... sit down. This one's a long story, don't bother asking questions about details, a geist can't tell secrets of the living who were around when she was still human."
>Sitting down, I noticed something shift quite directly in Carolyn, as if she'd switched to another personality, or remembered some vast and crushing reality, dight of which had been regrettably lost long ago.
>"yeah. There was a time I lived a happy life. well, anyway, I knew this guy, you'd know him if I could mention his name. He wanted to change scenery, I wanted to stay. I really loved him. Well, I never really staked a claim on him and about 2013 he left. Came back in '17 during the border skirmishes. fighting back refugees from a place on the border, in the woods, well. We crossed paths for the first time in four years and the last time at a crossroads. I said there's communists that way, and he kept walking his way. When I tried to warn him that there were only weirdos bent on building a parallel society the way he was going, he just turned to me and said. "Yeah. Ashlynn, it's important to know something about fighting. When the battle's over, and what you do and don't have."
"That sounds... TERRIBLE. heart breaking, and you speak so fondly of it."
>"Well. Now I know why he headed east while I wanted to fight west. He knew his fight was ending, and I wasn't his. He let me go long before. The difference between us was that I went on from him with only the heartache that I finally realized I'd been left behind by this man I'd held such affection for, fixated on for so many years even when he was long gone to me.... He went on guilted almost to tears at the prospect of hurting me like he did. A week later I was killed in a blastwave while he was tending to a woman he'd met in the woods and carried to safety after she mistook him for an enemy and charged him with a bayonetted sks. Even now I can sense him hunting or being hunted somewhere beyond the sea, but was I surprised to see what became of him and that woman from the ether.
"So... he just left you and went on to the next woman?"
>"No. He was never with me to leave ME in the first place. Something I regretted every day for those four years. He just moved on when there wasn't something for him, nothing that rooted him. He came back for something that did, and he'd just moved on, as one must. I can't blame him for that. Well, anyway, the next day he was in a shoot out when from the corner of his eye, he saw something charging him, turned just fast enough to identify the bayonet and deflect it with one hand, and throw a pretty vicious punch with the other."
"What uh... what became of him?"
>"Once he looked down and found that she wasn't an enemy, that she'd been wounded, by a bullet through the side and was still tough enough to try and fight in a frenzy until she ran into his fist, he decided it wasn't wise to hold his position anymore."
>"He started shooting, and picking off targets faster and faster until there was a break in the fire coming his way and then he slung her and her SKS over his shoulder and ran like hell until he found friends. Well, they established a little hospital in that parallel society they built and he volunteered his now empty time at her bedside monitoring her vitals, making sure the doctors would get alerted if she had spikes or falls, he took care of her, kept her company while her family wasn't there, then when she'd been discharged, no longer needed him, he left to earn his keep and a place to sleep out of the rain"
"That's... remarkably giving."
>"Well, even when you don't expect a reward, maybe a good deed doesn't go unpunished."
"So... hang on a minute, we're off in the weeds."
>"True. Anyway, what were we talking about?"
"So, if you're DEAD, why are you HERE, manifesting my gun?"
>"You just had a spark of madness that could summon a spirit to a gun when you were making it. A geist doesn't come from nothing nowhere, afterall. Nothing does. You just happened, like many such men who put their energy and passion into their crafting to capture a spirit ill at peace. You think the rumors about weapon spirits are false? No, there's plenty of them out there, and they can die once they find peace, or the missing part of their souls or whatever else ails them, or they can live forever, haunting the world like monument, all meaning to which was lost to time."
>"In fact, if you don't believe me, there's a Rhodesian child killed in the viscount incidents who came to as an R1. He regressed so hard from peace that he became part human again. and part R1. Now he's married to a Russian VSS and the day his second body dies, his soul and that of his VSS will just... move on. So one day in kentucky, a coulple will go missing and all that will be found of them is a probably strangely placed FAL and VSS found somewhere in their home."
"I don't know what to say. Honestly, now I feel some kind of pressure to give you a peaceful life."
>"Oh, it's better you just... forget about that bit." She said, changing her posture, notably leaning forward as if poising herself.
>"Where were we? Oh yeah, off in the weeds. He lived happily for three years with that woman. before some 'people' broke into his house while he was away and murdered her. He went back to wondering for many years now, though he's too old to really be doing it... I wonder if he'll wonder the earth as a geist." she mused, now clearly poising herself.
"You're not going to drug again, are you?"
>"I have to. I can't have you remembering any one this."
"Please don't." 
>*Pounce*


Time: 0942 hours
Date: 9-30-25
>From a dense dark haze I can sense only something firm but with a little give, separated by a soft layer of fabric while something like human speech coming through the ether, muffled and incomprehensible but not really calling me to alert.
>"mmhhhmm mhmh  mhm hmhmhmhm mmhmhmhmhmh. mhmhmhmhmhmhm mhhm."
>Something in the tone then, just slightly overpowering the fog of the ether something started to come into definition, though it still didn't seem like anything more than the next thing.
>"YOU HAVE MEDDLED with the primal forces of NATURE, mister Beale, and I WON'T HAVE IT! IS THAT CLEAR? YOU THINK YOU MERELY STOPPED A BUSINESS DEAL, THAT IS NOT THE CASSSE. THE ARABS HAVE TAKEN BILLIONS OUT OF THIS COUNTRY AND NOW THEY MUST PUT IT BACK! IT IS EBB AND FLOW, tidal gravity, ecological BALANCE. You are an OLD MAN who thinks in terms of nations, and peoples. There ARE NO nations, there are no peoples, there are no Russians, there are no Arabs, there ARE NO THIRD WORLDS, THERE IS NO WEST. THERE is only ONE HOLISTIC system of systems, one Vast and immane mhmhmhmhmhmhmhmhmhmhhmmmhmhmh MULTINATIONAL DOMINION of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rands, rubles, pounds and shekels."
>A voice seemingly more connected to me, seemingly... "here" entered into the ether much clearer than the other one, seeming to come from somewhere inside the ether more than out.
"Aaaauugh. Who's watching Network?"
>A girly giggle is discernible before the noise in the background, some half intelligible raving and howling finally faded fully into obscurity.
"Shut up, Hacket."
>Soon everything but the feeling of what I was rested on faded back into total obscurity, but for one reason or another, I couldn't really be totally unconscious.
>Soon, something, a friendly warm presence almost familiar seemed to come from either nowhere or somewhere very near. And so, I awaken, coming to consciousness in the presence of a television, the familiar image of Howard Beale giving his final fire and brimstone "we're in big trouble' speech, silently howling to his death, informing the audience of the original fake news.
>below my head, I see a silky soft fabric, seeming to be part of a prairie dress. Turning my head and rolling my body a bit, I find Carolyn looking down at me with a soft smile, and stroking my hair.
>She gently lifts my head and stands up before letting it down on the cushion of the couch before she turns off the TV and goes to the front of the house, where she puts a song on the speaker and comes back to me.
>"Get up! Come on, dance with me." she says as she guides me to sit up and then pulls me off the couch.
>moments later Carolyn and I are swaying around the room. Nothing could be said of this moment save for that it is comfy.
>And then there's a knock on the door.