this work is copyright 1998 by Jemiah Jefferson. Please do not reprint, use, appropriate, or otherwise fuck with without written permission of the author. Just because this is online doesn't mean you get to do whatever you want with it. At least, not online. You can feel free to download and print it, but only if you also promise to buy this book should it ever be published and released.

PROLOGUE

Bellingham, Washington.

Sun slanting through the window onto the floor, a perfect diagonal line caught in the dust motes of old, decaying books and flakes of human skin. I stop for a moment and look at it. It reminds me of something. I don't remember; I keep shelving copy after copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves, the expanded new edition, oversized paperback. If it's important, I'll remember it. Stuff that I've forgotten is either best left forgotten or someone will remind me of it, in time.

It's a cold day, November. The day is almost over already and my stomach is still full of lunch, it's this northern latitude, 48 degrees north of equator. Not much sun we get up here in the winter, but the summer evenings are long and lush and lovely. I like Bellingham. I like Canadian TV broadcasts. It's still exotic to me after eight months and I hope the novelty never wears off.

Not many people have been into the shop today and my mother is bored, looking through the day's mail. She's taken off her shoes and she is wiggling her toes through holes in her sock. I stop shelving and watch the toes wag back and forth, and in circles. My mother's toes, the green paint chipping off the toenails. The coon cat, Bing-Bing, slumbers in her lap, the sound of his phlegmatic snores distinct in the stillness. The sound of her yawn and the creaking as she tips her chair back. I do wish she wouldn't do that. It makes me nervous.

"Michael," she says.

"Michael?

"Michael!

"Mork calling Orson. Squire, honey, c'mon, look sharp."

"Huh? What." I look up at her. She's smirking at me over her glasses. "Sorry, I'm just not used to being called Michael."

"You were fine with it last week."

"Last week," I murmur, turning back to the bookshelves. "That was last week."

"Anyway, you got mail, sweetie." She is waving envelopes at me -- small white ones, a fattish padded manila envelope, too big to be a mix tape from Shandy. And a magazine. Mom looks curiously at it. "The Fortean Times ?" she asks. "What's that about?" "Supernatural phenomena," I say, taking the mail. "You know, like vampire cults or the chupacabra. It's British and we don't get it here."

"Oh, do you want me to order it for you?"

"Uh, no, that's OK. I like to get things in the mail." I smile at her. "For me."

She kisses me on the cheek, a simple warm peck, perfect. She gives fantastic mother kisses. "Oh, I get it. That's fine with me. Besides, that's out of our 'market niche'" -- she makes pantomime quote marks in the air -- "the weirdos in Bellingham can get their vampire cult stories at the other bookstores."

"Thanks, Mom. I'm glad I qualify as a Bellingham weirdo."

"Take off. There's nothing doing. I'll finish up here." She slides out of her chair and her socked feet hit the floor with a nice thump -- a Mom-sized thump. "Go get a cup of coffee -- on second thought, go upstairs and have a nice cup of hot Ovaltine."

"Mom, you're so delightfully square."

"Hot Ovaltine kicks ass. I love hot Ovaltine." She begins to shelve more copies, and shrugs me away. "Go look at your mail."

Upstairs I wash my hands, then grab a bag of corn chips out of the cabinet and fling myself onto the living room couch and kick off both shoes with the same movement. I've been practicing it every day for a long time -- Mom doesn't mind it because she thinks it's good exercise. She isn't the sort to panic about a broken couch. I'm good at it now -- I pretend I'm in a John Woo movie, just without the twin nickel-plated automatics.

Naturally I open the big envelope first. Eat dessert first, you might not make it through dinnertime -- that's my motto. There's a little book inside and a piece of paper -- stationery. Stationery from the Wellington Bed and Breakfast, Perth, Australia.

October 31st

Squire,

I can't believe it's been almost a year! I'll try to keep in closer touch from now on. I actually ran into Kimmie and Renton Sutton and they told me you were friends with their father. They are really cool -- I met them in a pub a couple of nights ago and we've been hanging out a lot.

Here is one of your diaries which I happened to find when packing my stuff for shipping. I trust that you're feeling better -- your mother and I have kept in touch -- and that you might like to have this, so that you know that it's safe. Don't feel that you have to look at it until you're comfortable doing so. I miss you a lot and hopefully I'll see you again before too much time has passed. Give your Mom a kiss for me.

love (still),

Lise

I feel sort of guilty, sort of sorry for Lise. She obviously thinks that this is going to send me over the edge. She, like most people, doesn't understand that it's not like that. Objects and words do have a totemic value, but it takes more than reading about going crazy to make you actually lose your mind. Plenty of people have gone nuts successfully without having ever read Sybil or seen Psycho. Actually I've been waiting to review my diaries until I had all of them -- I wasn't being careful or anything. It's amazing how delicately everyone treats me, as though my sanity was made out of spun glass. They needn't bother themselves with worrying.

I go into my bedroom and slide the foot locker from under it, open the lid, then lie on my bed with my feet hanging off the edge and open the first notebook. As much as I try to deny the power that a simple object has over me, I still feel an almost supernatural jolt of emotional power just from handling the notebooks again.

Chapter One: On Any Other Day, That Might Seem Strange