In Laymon's Terms

The cold water woke him up. He seemed surprised that he now sat with his back to the post, his hands tied behind him to the iron ring. Confused, he looked up at me as I stood on the bank, away from the incoming tide.

“Kate, what’s happened? Who put me here?”

“I did. I’m sorry, Ham.”

“But why?”

“It’s the law. If you intervene to save the life of a Visible you must take their place.”

“Kate?”

“I wish I didn’t have to do this. Good-bye.”

I walked back along the riverbank. Behind me lay the girl. She’d wake up cold to the bone, but she’d be OK. As for Ham Masen? The last I saw of him he was kicking his legs like he could drive the incoming tide back. He couldn’t of course.

And that’s where I’m going to leave it. Of course, if you’re deadly curious about what happened to Ham, as the water crept up over his chin, then I’m sure there’s the webcast somewhere out there in cyberspace. All you need do is shoot ‘Ham Masen’ into your search engine of choice.

That’s me done now.

Well...before I go, I might just gently blow into the back of your neck, while you think of lonely midnights and cold, cold river water shivering against your belly.

There...what did you feel? A breath of cool air perhaps?

Gina Osnovich

DON’T KNOW DICK, but his legend has left me with an untainted knowledge of who he was.

I don’t know Dick, but the friends he made, the family that exerts endless positive energy, helps me discover more.

I don’t know Dick, but if he was anything like the boy who just hit puberty that wrote his books, I would have reveled in knowing him.

Dick died a few weeks after I joined the HWA. I didn’t know Dick, but I cried. Perhaps no one can express their thoughts of loss and hurt better than a horror writer, and when Dick died, I knew him. I knew everything about him from others, and yet I hadn’t even scratched the surface.

I don’t know Dick, but I remember meeting Kelly. I was terrified, not only because she was everything I’d ever known about Dick, and as close as I would ever get to him, but because she was so much younger than I expected, and I didn’t feel it was my place to say “I’m sorry about your father.”

We have talked several times and each time I am honored. She called me on September 11^th to check if I got home ok. She didn’t know if I worked in Manhattan, but she called across the country anyway.

I don’t know Dick, but if she’s anything like him, I can understand the love his friends had felt.

I don’t know Dick, but I have seen pictures of him on everyone’s website, and heard the weird, fun-filled stories.

I don’t know Dick, but everyone has a story, and I learn a little more each time. I still feel intrusive when someone shares a memory. It’s not mine to listen to. I am not worthy. “I don’t know Dick,” I have to say when they ask for mine.

I don’t know Dick, but I wish I had that story to share. I wish I’d been part of that. I wish I had that experience. I wish I had known Dick.

Gina Osnovich

TEVEN STOOD NEXT to Monica in the St. Xavier High School yard while Cindy bent down to tie her shoelaces. Cindy’s plaid Catholic-school skirt, stiff by the nature of the fabric, didn’t wrap around her ass but stood out to salute the entire street. She would fold her skirt up at the hips as soon as the final bell rang so that her bellybutton peeked from her shirt. Her thighs were visible enough to make the entire enrollment at St. John’s School for Boys stop to stare.

The two schools were across the street from one another. Both were tough, but when 3 o’clock rolled around, the nuns couldn’t do much to stop what happened in the street that divided them. Cindy wasn’t the only girl hiking up her skirt and there weren’t enough nuns to put out all the cigarettes and break up all the kids making out against the parked cars.

Steven was allowed into the schoolyard at St. Xavier because his junior high let out at 2:45 and the nuns let him meet his sister so she could walk him home. This was one of his mother’s rules he never complained about. He usually arrived huffing and puffing at 2:55, fixing his hair and ready before the first girl came out of the doors and into the schoolyard.

He got there in time to watch all the skirts hike up, to watch the girls pull out their little mirrors and rub the glossy lipstick all over their mouths, to see them before the dicks across the street got their hands on them. He wasn’t stupid. He knew he was too young to ever approach them, but his sister was an in. They thought he was cute or they acted like he wasn’t there, and as a result, he got to see more glimpses of tiny pink thongs than any other junior-high kid.

Damn, that’s a fine ass, he thought, watching his sister’s best friend come back up and flip her blonde hair.

He dropped his pencil, using the chance to bend over and fix the hard-on jutting out of his Hanes and take a good look at Cindy’s legs on the way up.

“Hey, Mon?”