Trailing fingers of daylight burned through the mists as the sun fell bellow the horizon, transforming the endless sea of gray into a seething expanse of reds and purples to match the sky above. Rare tufts of cloud marred an otherwise clear sky, small pockets of moisture which Korin lazily avoided unless it was too much trouble. His heart pounded in his ears, an endless beat that struggled against his heavy eyelids. Far below a colossal vine skimmed along the top of the mists, guiding his path. Once every kilometer a knot of foliage marred the otherwise unbroken bridge, the only evidence of the greatvine support that fell into the mists. Towroots, perhaps the greatest human achievement. Gaia was small, too small to support the growing population of those that called her home. Millennia ago – long before the first Ilaar war and when the Erithule still flew through the skies – Gaia had been the only island humanity called home, and she had been overflowing. Too many people and too little land to feed them lead to endless infighting for resources. To make matters worse this was before the unification wars, so even while small groups fought amongst themselves, rival duchies squabbled, rose, and fell, entire armies dying for a kilometer of rocky farmland. “Countless laws and decrees tried to curb the overpopulation, but they never really worked. People’ll have kids whether they’re planned or not, and the margins were dangerously thin. When your ‘nation’ is nothing but a single city, its hard to guess what your population needs’ll be in the future. Maybe there’ll be a plague or a costly battle. Suddenly you don’t have the people needed to work the fields or guard your borders, and even if you lift all the laws against having more kids than’s allowed, it’ll take years before that new generation replenishes what you lost. Most of duchies were just city states and just couldn’t survive that long.” “Enter Vadal Emcher, a court alchemist for some duchy or another. Most so-called ‘alchemists’ from the time were nothing more than bearded quacks who would get high off whatever they could find then decide their hallucinations were premonitions.” “Not Vadal. Bloke actually knew a thing or two. Story goes he was walking through a plum orchard when he sees a tree with two different colored fruits. Asks a field hand and they explain to him how it’s grafted. Vadal latched onto the idea and wanted to know more, so he started off doing experiments with roses and the like. Guy was obsessed, stopped responding to summons and locked himself away. Pretty soon he lost his position in the court and basically became a pauper, but he still couldn’t let it go. Years of failures passed until one day he tried grafting pulsevine with arrowhead. He’d used pulsevine before but this time he spent every last cent he had left chartering a ship to take him into the mists.” “About a klick down the graft exploded with pulse, sealing the joint and adding a whole foot of growth. Except it wasn’t just pulsevine anymore, and it sure wasn’t arrowhead either. Wait, I should probably tell you about arrowhead. It’s –” I don’t really care. “Your loss, it’d later be the graft that led to the bag.” Even more reason to skip it. Thanks to me you can already breathe at altitudes where those ridiculous masks stop working. The wyrm zipped before his vision, mouth stretched in an exaggerated yawn. Korin snarled but could not help himself as his own jaw wrenched itself open in an involuntary movement, fatigue shattering his focus. “Stop yawn that! You’re supposed to be helping me stay awake!” I just can’t help it, their lips peeled back into a devilish grin, It’s so fascinating. You just . . . copy me. It’s like magic, you can’t even help it. “Magic’s supposed to be fun. This is just another reason in a long list of why you’re a bully.” They huffed, I’m having fun, does that make it count as magic? “Nope, just means you’re sick. Can I keep going? It was getting to the good part.” Sure, another slight yawn followed by a chuckle, If it helps. Honestly, I’m surprised you know all this. You’re usually so resistant to anything that requires studying. “History’s not something you study,” Korin scoffed, “It’s just history.” Your logic never fails to astound. “It’s different, trust me. History’s actually fun, which by its very definition means you can’t study it. Everyone knows that.” I’ll file that away with the “things humans know”, right beside “grabbing a puckle with your hand is a good idea” and “Business before bath.” “We’re not doing this again.” All I’m saying is that realistically lots of things have defecated in your bathwater before you came along and decided to claim it, so adding one more really doesn’t make nearly as much of a difference as –” “Almost overnight Vadal’s discovery was all anyone could talk about. A slew of other alchemists calling themselves floramists – and even later floraficer – built off his work and started making discoveries of their own. Pulsevine grafted onto sage grows that stringy stuff they put inside bandages. Use flax instead and the oil you get from pulping the vines burns almost as long as glorm oil – cleaner too.” “But the real show didn’t start until Vadal’s protégé showed up: Emara. Genius of a kid, had half a dozen grafts to her name by the time she was my age, but no one really cares about those. Only thing she’s known for is when she tried a splice with some type of weed – Himdome? Rhisone? – whatever, doesn’t matter. When the new graft was flown into the mists the whole thing exploded with so much growth it nearly sank the ship. Several tons of these woody roots encrusted the hull in about as much time as it took the captain to breach. No one had ever seen so much material come out of so little pulse.” “At first they tried to use it for construction materials for houses and the like – but while they could make a lot of it the stuff it was still just intertwined roots: full of holes and too light to be used in anything structurally important. After a couple years of failed attempts to find a use for it other than mulch most people forgot about it.” Your tone says your about to introduce some other dead human’s name, and I’m telling you right now, I will not remember it. Intentionally and habitually. “Fine, that was until an absolute madman of an engineer came up with the crazy idea to try and make Gaia bigger. Using Emara’s graft he suggested building hundreds of kilometers of scaffolding and growing the roots all over them, then taking these long root ropes and trailing them out behind Gaia as she floated through the great currents. Whenever she crossed paths with a smaller island on its own journey you take a bunch of these ropes and connect them to it as it passed. Gaia’s weight does the rest and, assuming the ropes hold, humanity has a new plot of land.” “Of course something had to keep the towroots from falling into the mists so greatvine cuttings were seeded every kilometer or so act as supports so the whole thing stays in the air. But people being people everyone thought the engineer was insane and he was long dead before the first towroot was actually grown. It wasn’t until towards the end of the unification wars Queen –” Don’t care. “Had more money than sense and decided to give it a go. Little more than a thousand years and a hundred forty–nine islands later, humanity has more landmass than any other known cradle.” Congratulations, they started another yawn but Korin managed to look away in time, You managed to put someone who’s physically incapable of unconsciousness to sleep. “Why are you so adamantly against hearing about this? You love random facts.” Useful facts. I can’t even begin to fathom the thought process behind writing down – let alone reading about – the lives of long dead humans. “Weren’t you telling me how Snaps were able to see better? How’s micro-whatits in their eye goop anymore useful or interesting than history.” Because it’s about me. Or at least others like me. It’s another reason why humans would be little more than animals without us. Especially you. “So you only care when you’re involved?” Do my words mean what I think they mean? Yes that’s exactly what I said. “So many things make more sen –” Shh. “Did you just –” Shut up! Is that it up ahead? “Huh, really?” Korin squinted, straining to see anything in the dark. Looking away his peripherals could barely see a glimmer of light far ahead. “Ah,” he sighed, “Just a knot village. You remember how I said the towroots are held up by greatvines every few kilometers or so? Sometimes the seeded cutting gets a little bigger than expected and makes a tiny spot of land big enough for settlers. There’re thousands of little fishing villages spread out along the towroots. It’s still far too early for us to see the light from Port Grove.” Can we make a quick stop anyway, find something that’ll keep you awake better than boring stories? Korin chuckled, “I doubt they’ll have coffee. Or tea. Or another blackblood shot.” his limbs tingled, a dull numbness holding the pain of pulseburn at bay. “Besides,” he continued, “It’s probably a delver knot. Uniform like me shows up all alone I’m likely to get knifed. It’s better if we don’t stop. Now, let me tell you all about the unification wars and the fall of the Shailic church.” ––––– “Waypoint in two,” Glispin echoed with Lore’s voice, “Stow your stuff and find your seat. Ready on the core, Revan, mooring with half tick draw.” Her body stirred as it hung from the roots of the helm. Distantly she could feel her limbs shudder in anticipation of movement. How many hours had it been? It matters little, he said. I care, Lore griped, I’m the one that has to deal with the soreness because someone refuses to give me a hand. I don’t have hands. You know what I mean. Pain is important. It tells you when you’ve done something you shouldn’t, like drink twice your weight in beer or spend eight hours at a helm that doesn’t need your attention. Lore mentally winced, Eight hours? You sure you couldn’t just take the edge off? My answer is known. It’s not like I was wasting my time steering. Every ship takes time to get to know, and this one’s chock full of personality. Just this once? No. Well, you know I had to ask. You didn’t. Taking a moment to look through her body’s eyes she could see the glow of the waypoint through the helm viewports straight ahead. A soft, pale blue light bleeding through the mists. She had sensed it nearly an hour before, a knot of twisted pulse marring the otherwise smooth flow of the current through which they flew. Now that it was visible the glow grew stronger by the second, the shape of the waypoint slowly sharpening as they approached its craggy surface. An island, forever caught in the current and slowly floating through the mists came into focus. Forests of vines fluorescing in the surrounding pulse gave the massive lump of rock it’s eerie glow, and the only way Lore could navigate her way towards the docks was to sense where the vines had been cut away. Pulling in the sails she engaged the core, maintaining the flood of pulse through Glispin’s web even as she flared scale-like airbrakes on the outside of the hull. Unlike with their wind powered counterparts, pulsesails did nothing to drive the ship forward. Little more than sheets to gather the surrounding pulse, the thrust originated from the web. Starting at the core and grown entirely throughout and around the hull, suffusing the vines with pulse made the ship buoyant. Forcing even more power through the vines gave them thrust. But despite how it looked from the outside, the web was not a cohesive whole. Unless she consciously redirected the power, each sail only powered the part of the web that was closest to it. Currents were nothing more than hollow tubes of pulse twisting through the mists. When Glispin was directly in the middle, her shape and the orientation of the sails made it so that pulse was gathered equally from all sides, keeping her straight even when Lore was away from the helm. If the current started to turn, the sails closest to the edge would dip into a layer of denser pulse, pushing more through their side of the web, and correcting the ship’s course without any need for human input. But now was not the time for automatic adjustments. With the sails stowed Lore personally poked and prodded the web, drawing from the stored pulse in the core and applying it where she needed to maneuver Glispin with perfect precision. The silhouette of docks chiseled into the stone swam into view, outlined by loosely woven cords of glowing vines. Easing Glispin into position landing struts unfolding from below in the final moments before touching down. A final breath and she released the core, a terrible silence engulfing the ship as the web fell silent. Retreating back into her body Lore squirmed as a shiver ran down her spine. We are safe, he murmured, reassuring. Lore shook her head, “I know. Still makes me nervous. Sounds like death.” Her disquiet was forgotten the moment she took her first step. Every muscle screamed in agony, protest at having been still and standing for so long. Lore winced all the way from the helm as every movement sent a new tongue of fire through her limbs. “Too long,” she winced, “It’s been way too long since I did a full shift. Why didn’t you say something sooner?” Would you have listened? “No, but at least I wouldn’t’ve blamed you.” Doubtful. Easing her way through the hatch into the commons Jules greeted her by shoving a coat and two packs into her arms. The first was nothing more than a large satchel with a long, cracked leather strap speaking to years of use. The other was much smaller, and made Lore’s mouth twist in distaste. Nicknamed “the bag”, apparently it had once been just that. Thankfully Lore had not been alive during those times, else she doubted she would have become a sailor. Worn in front on the chest the bag was a small pouch made of multiple layers of a thin, fine cloth. Woven from the fibers from a graft of pulsevine, it allowed gas to pass through it while trapping any oxygen inside. A mask attached by a thin string of the same material fitted over the face and allowed its user to breath so long as there was enough oxygen in the surrounding air to make such a thing possible. A far larger version of the bag sat in the bowls of the ship - called the lungs. Holes at the bow and stern flooding its chamber with mist. “And here I was thinking I wouldn’t be needed for this run.” Jules grinned, “You know how it is. First waypoint, need as many backs as we have to stock up the stores.” Lore groaned, “You mean they’re empty? It’s a gambit run, the captain could have splurged a little so we didn’t need worry about food these first few stops.” “This isn’t Draken. No rockhopper’s able to afford a whole hold of rations. And even if we could, why waste the coin on what we can hunt?” Grumbling Lore pulled her arms through the coat sleeves, sucking air through her teeth as its weight settled on her sore shoulders. Stowing the bag in a thin mesh pocket purpose built into the garment she let the mask hang as she followed Jules into the back and down the ladder, past the core, and into the cargo hold. The three men were already waiting, masked and bundled. Looking past to the hold beyond Lore sighed at the depressing sight. Aside from a couple boxes of emergency rations, some spare tools, materials, and vital system replacements it was completely empty. At least the water tanks were full. “Nice landing,” Ivan remarked eyes smiling behind a wholly scarf, “Didn’t even need to use a handhold.” Revan said something that sounded like an attempt at a counterpoint but it was far too quiet to catch. Beside him Jules dug into a belt pouch and pulled several brilliant green tendrils from within. Handing one to everyone the tendrils slowly curled and wiggled on their own, silklike threads at one end undulating like whips. “Grew them just this morning. Strong crop, should have a range of a couple, maybe three kilometers.” While the others groaned Lore happily took hers and fed it into her left ear. Nobody liked the graft nicknamed “the worm”, but she could not fathom why. It made your ear feel plugged for only an instant before it was locked into position, and the moment before the small hairs stopped writhing it felt like they were scratching an itch she had not even known she had, and never could have reached. Hand on the release for the loading ramp Petal eyed Lore up and down, “No weapon? This island may be tame compared to what lies ahead, but that’s no reason to grow complacent,” unclasping his coat he opened one side to reveal a small armory of blades and short spears, “If you don’t have one, I could lend you one of mine. Perhaps even the crossbow if you can lift it.” He motioned to a massive piece of artillery slung over his broad back. It looked more a small ballista than a crossbow, the holster of projectiles beside it better described as a pod of spears than a quiver of arrows. Lore smiled, “No need,” she held up her hand over which she grew a layer of bark, roots like cruel claws slowly lengthening from her fingertips, “I prefer my own.” Nodding in approval the hunter disengaged the locks and heaved at the wheel, lowering the ramp. Cold mist rushed into the room, first covering the floor, then the entire hold in the dense fog. Beyond several windowless stone huts hacked free of vines waited beyond the dock, the footpath to them cleanly kept and outlined with tightly controlled foliage. “Something’s wrong,” Jules voice sounded clearly through the worm and echoed again behind Lore’s back, muffled behind her mask. “I feel it too,” Petal joined it, “A difference.” Lore looked out from the hold, unable to see anything out of the ordinary. The group stood in silence, ever member lost in thought. Ivan broke the silence, “Did anyone’s ears pop?” Everyone sighed a collective “Oh!” as the tension eased out of the situation. “My bad,” Lore laughed, “I slowly raised the cabin pressure on our approach. Makes opening the hold seal more comfortable. Didn’t think I’d need to mention it.” “And that,” Ivan sounded like he was grinning, “Is what comes from hiring a professional.” “I still think I might feel a little dizzy,” Revan pipped up. Jules scoffed, “We’re not nearly deep enough for that. If Carver’s not getting out of this trip neither are you.” Leading the way to the nearest hut Petal disappeared through an empty door frame, only to return moments later with several chain nets filled with traps and tools, each displaying varying degrees of rust. Dumping the contents in a pile in the middle he motioned for all to join as he started pawing through it, inspecting each piece of equipment. Once more feeling her soreness Lore slowly settled on her haunches and set to work. Jules said what Lore was thinking, “Honestly, we’re still on Lee’s current, some other crew had to have been here recently. They probably did a good enough job checking for us to skip this part.” “Its you,” Petal glared at her from across the pile, “People like you that are the reason behind this,” in his fist he shook a hunting trap that was more rust than metal. He tried to put it down but the violent treatment finished what time had started, and it fell apart before reaching the ground. “Look at it,” he sounded close to tears, “Perfectly good equipment ruined by neglectful, wasteful, careless –” Jules cut him off, “Then let’s just use ours. No need to bother with these pieces of junk when ours are so much better kept.” Ivan’s face scrunched together and he whispered a quiet “Well” before Petal spoke over him. “And add unnecessary ware to tools we’ll need for the next decade? Tell me, if one of ours breaks a year from now because you insisted on using it at every waypoint, how will we fix it?” Ivan was still muttering to himself, faithfully transmitted by the worm, “. . . ‘Better’ is a little generous . . .” Jules was getting louder, “Just do an iron run, grab the ore to fix it up.” “And tell me, floraficer,” Petal’s eyes flashed, “What blacksmith using what forge will make these repairs? Or do you think you just hit a rock with a hammer and a tool just pops out?” “. . . even ‘adequate’ might still be a bit of a stretch . . .” “How should I know? My stuff just grows, like tools should.” Lore felt the need to join in, “I mean it’s not as good as iron but I could grow you something in almost any shape out of vinewood.” “ . . . pretty sure some of the teeth are chipped. . .” “Wood!” Petal’s voice cracked as rattled the pieces of broken trap in her face, “You want to try making one of these out of wood? This is strong enough to crack the shell of an adult kruop and you think you could make one strong enough out of wood?” “Well, surely not that one,” Revan spoke yet no one paid him any mind. “ . . . couldn’t have afforded much more . . .” “I wasn’t saying it would or wouldn’t work, but if it helps I could –” Jules cure her off, “Don’t apologize to him. He’s just upset because I suggested we don’t waste hours on something he’d spend all day on if he could.” “I wasn’t apologizing I just –” Petal bellows echoed around their stone surroundings, “When we die of starvation surrounded by shattered wooden equipment and useless lumps of unforged iron ore I hope –” “Wait hold on, what?” The yelling cut as all eyes turned to the captain, mouth open, his next words dead on his lips. “Huh?” he asked, the picture of innocence. “What was that you just said? I could have sworn I heard the words ‘docking’ and ‘pay’ in the same sentence.” “Uh,” more moisture than could be blamed on the mist beaded on his brow, “Are we using our tools or the communal ones?” “The communal,” Petal said with a note of finality, putting an end to the argument. –––– That has to be it. Korin wiped the condensation from his face, squinting through the clouds. Half an hour before a thick layer of clouds had blown in from the west, obscuring the towroot and forcing Korin to fly dangerously close to the bridge of roots, lest he lose his way. Following the wyrm’s gaze Korin released an exhausted sigh of relief, worry and tension leaking out of him. Even through the wall of grey he could see the fierce glow up ahead, a sea of light bright enough to reach him. He tried to give a whoop of excitement, but managed only a pitiful gurgle that bubbled in the back of his throat. That’s the spirit, finish strong. “I don’t need the encouragement.” Keep telling yourself that. I’m the one that feels like I’m tied to a boat with more holes than hull. Korin wanted to reply in kind but his mind refused to cooperate. He could feel the blackblood wearing off, every moment he kept his body in the air feeling like he was pulling a mountain. Even so he climbed, punching through the clouds to the clear air beyond. Port Grove hung before him, a dizzying mess of lights and activity even in the late evening hour. Legions of oil lamps lined the streets, setting the sky above the city alight with the smoldering fire. Free from the night’s oppressive grip the docks bustled with bodies crowding on and around a fleet of ships heralding from every corner of Gaia’s web. Eyes drifting past the docks, he searched for something he had never before seen and been given only the barest of descriptions. “Crenels. What kind of description is that? Something with crenels? Everything has them! Who built this town?” She also said it was far too big for one person. “Like that helps,” Korin swerved to dodge a mast, heads tilting up and shouts ringing out as he passed, “An outhouse is can be too big for someone if you’re small enough. So we’re looking for something with crenels along the roof and either the size of an outhouse or mansion.” You’re making this harder than it needs to be. “You’re right. There’s an easier way.” Falling from the air Korin landed with a thud on the deck of a small caravel. Sailors jumped in surprise, one nearby falling over in his haste to back away. “You,” Korin jabbed a finger at the first sailor he saw, his voice a rasp from talking himself awake for the entire trip, “Where’s the governess’ house?” “I – um – it – um” his eyes looked everywhere except at Korin, his feet shuffling as he stammered. “Before we die of old age, please.” “It’s – um . . .” “It’s that way, sir” another man with a nasally voice spoke up from behind him, his finger pointing towards the eastern quarter of the city, “Take Turner street to –” Korin cut him off, “Not taking streets.” “Right,” the man flushed, “Right, uh – it’s got a wall? Grey cobble, I think.” “And a big garden,” another shouted from the rigging, “I seen it. Trees all overgrown with vine glowin’ brighter than the lamps.” “That’ll work,” Korin limped to the taffrail, the bruises down his legs making his movements unwieldy and stiff. “Thanks for the directions,” he called over his shoulder before rolling over the wooden rail back into the sky. He could hear a thunder of steps rock the deck as everyone rushed to one side, but by the time they had reached it Korin was already lost to the night. “See, easier.” You just bought their drinks for the next week with that story. “It’s not like they’ve never seen a bonded before. Probably more than a couple dozen ships from some of the larger companies docked here that have a couple dozen as guards.” And how many of those have they talked to? “I couldn’t begin to guess.” You don’t have to, the answer’s none. And are you telling me there’s no difference between a military bonded and a civilian? “No, of course not, that’s not what I was saying, it’s just the way you said that made it sound like I was the only one for kilometers.” You chose to hear that, and you were wrong. I can’t help you being wrong. Korin ignored them, “Down there. Think that’s it?” Grey cobble wall and a garden that looked like it got puked on by the mists? Yeah I’ll bet that’s it. Banking right Korin stumbled as he landed on the front step, collapsing into the door as he his legs gave out beneath him. The racket was a serviceable knock, and by the time he managed to regain a semblance of his balance the door had opened to reveal a woman in a starched vest and pants. The master servant’s mouth was set in a thin line below a scowling brow topped by slate grey hair held back in a simple braid. “What is the meaning –” she paused, seeing Korin’s uniform. Her eyes wandered over the rank on his left shoulder – a mere airman – then down to the insignia encircling both of his sleeves: a serpent biting its own tail, stitched in bronze thread and crossed by a single thunderbolt outlined in silver. “Can I help you?” She began again, still blocking entryway. At least she didn’t close it. “Sorry for the late hour, ma’am,” Korin gave a slight bow, unsure of the proper decorum. “But I have a message for the governess,” she said nothing, so he added, “An urgent message.” “The mistress is currently abed,” her voice was curt, “Give it to me and I will decide whether or not it is worth waking her.” “No.” Smooth. Her eyes widened and she inhaled sharply, preparing to speak, but Korin cut her off, “Apologies for my rudeness, but I’m too tired and this is too important for manners. Either you fetch your mistress immediately, or I’ll wake her myself by flying through each and every window on the top floor until I find her bedchambers.” Half a minute later Korin stood before a wide, oak desk as a small woman in an evening gown squinted at a piece of paper, eyes still clouded with sleep. Curtains of unbrushed, mousy hair fell before her face, yet she seemed not to notice as she read, captured by the message. In the silence Korin eyed a nearby couch, thoughts of curling up on its cushions making his heavy eyelids sag. After a moment’s deliberation he decided even the floor would suffice. A shuffle of parchment and the governess carefully placed the general’s message before her, eyes distant. Yet when she spoke her voice was steady. “Juana, would you be so kind as to pen a missive for me?” The master servant had a stylus and parchment in hand before Korin even bothered to look. “By order of Governess Kersh and under recommendation of Brigadier General Barlow, Port Grove is placed under a state of emergency, effective immediately. In accordance with article three of the Social Accords, all ships and manifest cargo, excepting items detailed under section twelve, are now military property. Captains are ordered to jettison all non-flammable cargo, excepting anything under protected classes “a” through “c”, and set heading for Fort Hearth with all possible haste. Lost tonnage will be reimbursed at three-fourths markup as per article seven of the Merchant’s Act using the most recent manifest filed with the Port Grove Registrar.” “Civilian bonded are hereby drafted and given the rank of recruit and must report to command at Fort Hearth within twelve hours or be charged with desertion and insubordination.” “Failure to comply with any orders given by the port guard or city militia will result in immediate incarceration and forfeiture without reimbursement of any assets in question.” “Signed,” she finished, “Governess Kersh.” Reaching into her desk she withdrew two seals. One was nothing more than a simple stamp which she pressed into a globule of candle wax Juana dolloped onto the bottom of the paper. The second was a larger, a wooden cube with the same seal raised on one side, edged with steel. Handing this seal to the master servant the governess rolled up the missive and tied it with a bit of purple ribbon. “Take these to the nearest press and have them start making copies,” She ordered, “I don’t want a particular number, just tell them to keep at it until they run out of ink. While they’re preparing the typeset wake the rest of the staff and have them scour the city, I want every crier and urchin with a pair of lungs on every street corner holding a copy of this.” Sending the master servant on her way the governess turned to Korin, “Solider, name?” Not a soldier, he thought, although at the moment it hardly mattered. “Airman Ashfall.” “Can you still fly?” she pointed at his hands. Small black tendrils reached out from beneath his sleeves, fine bruises outlining his veins and curling around the back of his hand. Korin cursed, hiding his hands behind his back. “Yes.” “Good,” she turned away from him, taking another sheet of blank parchment and slopping wax haphazardly down its middle. Another press of her stamp and she was pressing the still hot seal into his hands, “Take this with you and find the belltower west of here. Show this to the monks and tell them to keep at it until the sun’s up. Make sure they send word to the other monasteries as well, I don’t want anyone sleeping tonight.” She paused, the flurry of orders leaving her out of breath. When she spoke again it was much quieter, less sure. “Are you religious, soldier?” Korin grimaced, “Not in any meaningful way. If any of the stuff the monks say is out there really exists, I doubt they’d want to listen to me.” The governess nodded even as she frowned, “Then if you would, while you’re there, ask them to float every prayer of fortune for me? Tell them to use a placard of cedar.” Korin arched an eyebrow, “Pretty hefty for a simple fortune. Sure you don’t want anything else on it?” “I fear,” she shivered, “Asking for good luck may already be too much.” ––––– Lore sweat as she worked, the collar of her coat unbuckled to let the frigid mists cool her sweltering neck. Revan labored beside her, grunting as he helped lay the trap. Even beneath his coat she could hear his pendants clicking together as he worked. They were alone beneath the canopy of vines, the other three having left with different equipment for other hunting grounds. Jules had been right, the worms were a good stock. It had taken nearly an hour before the distance between the two groups had become too great and they had lost contact. A final heave, a click, and Lore stood, wiping her brow and surveying their work. “It’ll hold, hopefully.” Revan nodded, “And if it doesn’t, Petal doesn’t need to know. Someone just missed the spot of rust that led to it breaking.” She huffed, “Right. How many left?” The tech reached to his back where a limp chain net swung freely, “That was it,” he said, holding up the nearly empty bag. Though there were some spare parts none added up to a full trap. “Back to the start then. Think it’s been long enough?” “Hopefully not,” he griped, “Could use a spot of a break.” Lore grunted in agreement, though it held more annoyance than she cared to admit. Any other Navigator would not be half as tired as she was right now. Her bondmate stirred in her mind, feeling her irritation. No. “Did I say something?” she muttered, too quiet for Revan to hear. You did not have to, his words rumbled back as a deep purr, You must rely on your own body rather than on what our relationship affords. “Thanks for reminding me, I’d forgotten you felt that way,” she grumbled, “Just once I’d like to hear something different. ‘Sore muscles? That sounds awful. Here, let me just soothe those away for you. Oh, are you sniffling from a cold? Of course I’ll fix that right up. After all, we live in the same body, so it’s in both of our interests if I help keep it healthy and comfortable.’” *Your body would grow weak if I fought off every illness, eventually unable to withstand even the slightest malady without my intervention. * “I’m not asking for every illness, just the annoying ones.” That is every illness. “What’s his – her? – name?” Lore’s eyes snapped up from the ground, looking to Revan. Apparently she had not been as quiet as she had thought. Over the past hour the thin man had lost the air of awe he’d had upon meeting her. Now that she thought about it, even at the onset there had been less groveling. What had changed was a mystery to her, one she did not care enough to solve. Either way the result was welcome – ten years of adoration would have made the trip unbearable. Still, she would have preferred he had not grown quite so comfortable so quickly. “That’s a rather personal question.” Revan shrugged, “We’ve got ten years. Today I woke up to the sounds and smells of you destroying the privy three meters from where I slept.” Ah, she thought, mystery solved. “By the end of this we’ll know each other better than our own mothers, so the way I see it it’ll be easier if we just get all the personal stuff out of the way sooner rather than later.” “Your analogy doesn’t really work. Both my parents are dead.” “Oh,” he fell silent for a moment, “I’m sorry.” “Don’t be. Neither of them were Navigators and they were already in their mid-thirties when I was born. Barring any accidents, I was always going to outlive them by centuries.” Revan nodded, still subdued, “Was it peaceful?” “It was. Both in their sleep, about a week apart.” “Small mercies, then.” Several minutes passed, the only sounds that of their boots on the bare rock. Vines twisted on either side of them, trimmed back to outline the path like glowing hedges, cultivated by generations of previous delvers who had come before. Due to its relatively high altitude and prime placement along a major current, this waypoint was a guaranteed stop. Deeper in the mists the waypoints were sporadic, transient islands thrown up by the churn and wild in every way. Compared to those, this waypoint was effectively permanent. Perhaps a few centuries from now the vines that held it so high would die to some twist of fate, but for now, it was the next best thing to a delver home. Communal tools and traps housed in stone huts purpose-built to offer some protection from the mists, caches of materials for repairing ships, hunting paths marked by vine hedges, everything a passing crew might need was plentiful and within easy reach. It was safe. And boring. “Still waiting on a name.” Lore smirked, “Thought you’d forgotten. Talking about my parents usually kills most conversations for at least a couple days.” “Probably would’ve worked on someone with propriety. Just your luck though, I ran out this morning.” “Never met a delver who hadn’t.” Revan chuckled, “Stop stalling. Their name.” “Thalicivus, although I just call him Thal.” Revan whistled, “Lotta syllables to remember. Why pick something so long just to shorten it?” “Didn’t pick it. After we bonded that’s what he said his name was.” He arched an eyebrow, “That how it works? Thought you were the one to pick it.” “Me too,” she admitted, “And from asking around it seems that’s how it’s worked for everyone else. Not me, though.” Revan scratched the thin layer of wiry stubble on his chin, perplexed. “It’s a shame really,” Lore continued, “Given a little time to get to know him, I would’ve picked something far better. Curmudgeon, maybe. Cur for short.” “Sounds like you two get along.” She gave a warm smile, “Only in the best ways.” The placid walk had wicked the heat away from her skin, living only the oily film of dried sweat in its place. “So,” she picked up the end of the conversation, fiddling with the buckles of her collar, “You’re turn. Why take this job?” “Why does anyone take a gambit job?” he countered, “Money.” Lore barked a laugh, “Lots of ways to earn money that don’t take up a decade of your life, and every one of them’s safer.” “Maybe in the short run, sure, but ultimately? We make it to the end the hold’ll be so full of motes and silver none of us will ever have to work another day in our lives, maybe even you.” “Silver sure,” Lore held up a finger, “But don’t expect me to find that many motes. We come out of this with enough to fill a coin purse I’ll be ecstatic.” “With you at the helm? Can’t blame me for being optimistic. And sure, it’s long, but if I tried to make that much the usual way it’d take my whole life, and there’d still be a chance I’d die a pauper. Way I see it, this is the short route.” “That much money’s not as great as you’d imagine,” Lore mused, “Before you have it you think there’d be nothing better than sitting on your ass all day. Then a week passes and now you’re willing to take a job on an icerunner with more holes than hull just to feel the mists again.” Revan snorted, “You and I are very different. I’d give anything to never see this again.” He spread his arms, waving them across the rocky landscape. “So what, you get your cut and spend the rest of your days getting fat in the sun?” “I’m no prug,” he spat. Lore raised an eyebrow at the slur for islander, “But just because I don’t want to get eaten by a spinehusk doesn’t mean I’ll never breathe mist again. I had that kind of money I’d build my own ship. Have ideas for a custom core, even tried a few upgrades on Glispin.” “Is that why the engine room looks like pons?” “Yeah,” he chuckled, “Didn’t really have the underlying infrastructure I needed to make all the adjustments, so had to get used to a little clutter.”
https://preview.redd.it/lxc5ahmpmhx51.png?width=1100&format=png&auto=webp&s=96377ee44f927e18fd1c787f45bb5d8e093ad3dc We have made it through the first eight weeks of the 2020 season and it’s time to hand out some trophies (not literally of course, since we have to wait until the year is over). I already did this when I predicted the entire season about a week before we kicked things off and a lot of the candidates I mentioned back then, you will here again, but at the same time, some guys have kind of come out of nowhere. For some of these categories, three names were enough, while for a few others I mentioned two more notables. So who have been my MVP, Defensive Player and Coach of the Year, among others, for the first half of the season? Plus, at the bottom I added my All-Pro teams at this point. Also make sure to check out my detailed recap of NFL week eight.
Most Valuable Player:
I think three candidates have kind of separated themselves from the rest of the pack in this MVP discussion and the guy I have at the top has been there all season long, because no other player has been more valuable to his team and their success. https://preview.redd.it/lghw4cpxmhx51.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=b0ae49df242209b2cf48fe6053ae79d306861177 1. Russell Wilson I have always said Wilson is one of the premiere quarterbacks in the NFL and that the only thing holding him back from quite putting up the same numbers other MVP candidates have produced is his own coaching staff and the conservative he plays in. Well, this year Brian Schottenheimer & company have finally listened to Seahawks fans screaming to “let Russ cook” and he has been smoking hot. Russ is top three in completion percentage (71.5%) and yards per attempt (8.4) and yards per game (307.3), leads NFL with a passer rating of 120.8 and 26 touchdown passes, which makes up for more than one TD every 10th attempt – also an NFL-best mark. And the crazy part is that his team has needed him to be that explosive, since Seattle’s defense has given up an average of 460.9 yards per game – easily the most of any team in the league. The Seahawks themselves are scoring an NFL-best 34.3 points per game and their season-low(!) 27 points came in a matchup, where he led one of his two game-winning drives on the season (versus Minnesota). He is also the only quarterback with multiple starts to not have lost a fumble all season long. The only blemish on Wilson’s resume and the Hawks lone loss came at Arizona in a Sunday Night game, where their quarterback threw three of his six interceptions on the year and that was his only performance that he had a passer rating below 100 in. However in that game, he lit up the Cardinals with the deep ball and made some incredible plays throughout the night. And if you break down the three picks he threw, two of them came by defenders who had to cover a ton of ground and no quarterback would have anticipated them to even be a factor, while on that third one D.K. slowed down for a back-shoulder throw The Seahawks put 35 points on the Patriots, 31 against the Dolphins number-one scoring defense and just now 37 against San Francisco – and it could easily been more if the came wasn’t completely out of hand in the fourth quarter. 2. Patrick Mahomes I know Mahomes has five TD passes less than Russ despite having played one more game, but he also only has one interception on the year – and that one came when he pushed it downfield on a 4th & long towards the end of the Chiefs’ only loss on the season. He is also behind only Wilson in quarterback rating (115.0) and first in QBR (86.8), with the latter thanks to what he has done taking off when nothing is there, which he has really gotten great at once he sees 2-man or other favorable situations. Of the 34 times he has taken off, nine have resulted in first downs and he finished in the end-zone twice. Of course this is still about Mahomes and Kansas City trashing opposing teams with all those weapons in the passing game. With defenses playing a lot more soft coverage against the Chiefs, Mahomes has taken advantage underneath with those short completions, while still finding ways to allow his receivers to uncover on secondary routes and getting the ball to them from all different angles. So his intended air yards may not be overly impressive, because of all the screens and stuff they draw up, and he might “only” be sixth in yards per attempt, but Pat is still tied for first with 31 passes of 20+ yards. He absolutely picked apart the Ravens defense in that huge Monday Night showdown, which tried every coverage and blitz package imaginable and the quarterback had an answer for all of them, completing some throws nobody in the league could make. The Chiefs’ season-low in points (23) came at the Chargers, when he certainly didn’t start out great, but still found a way to lead a comeback and win in overtime. And even in their only loss of the season against the Raiders, it was the opposing offense converting a sneak on fourth down, that denied Mahomes a chance to finish their late push. 3. Aaron Rodgers When you look at Rodgers’ most impressive statistic for his career it is his ridiculous touchdown-to-interception ratio of 4.47, which is a full point better than the next-closest guy (Russell Wilson) and twice as good as anybody that hasn’t played in the 2010’s. Well, right now he has the second-best rate for this season, behind only Patrick Mahomes at 20-2, and those two picks came in his only bad game at Tampa Bay. I’m not going to sugercoat this in any way – after going up 10-0 and once that pass-rush from the Bucs was unleashed, he could not get anything going. With that being said, he has been phenomenal in the six other contests, having throw less than 3 TDs in only of them and his lowest QB rating being at 107.6, with both of those thing coming against Detroit in week two, when the Packers just didn’t need him to crazy and still put up 42 points, as Aaron Jones got loose on multiple occasions. And Rodgers had not fumbled until that very last play we saw from him, as he was stripped from behind while trying to launch a Hail Mary at the end of the Vikings game. By the way, he was incredible in that loss as well, as the only two times the offense was stopped, Equanimeous St. Brown had consecutive passes go off his hands and then the refs for no apparent reason picked up the flag on a blatant pass interference against Robert Tonyan inside the red-zone. Rodgers leads the league with seven completions of 40+ yards and right now Drew Lock is the only starter in the league with a higher mark in yards beyond the sticks (0.9) – which when you look at the rest of the numbers isn’t always an endorsement for the second-year QB, as Lock has three more INTs on 100 less attempts. And outside of Davante Adams – who has missed some time – Rodgers hasn’t really been able to rely on any of his receivers, as they are tied for the most passes dropped at 18, even though the other two QBs with that number have played one more game than Green Bay. Notables:Josh Allen & Tom Brady
Offensive Player of the Year:
Of course, you could name the same three candidates from the MVP section here, but I tried to mix things up a little and give you three other names worthy of the award. And that includes only one quarterback. https://preview.redd.it/7bjpxm24nhx51.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=4e2bb387c610fbc6d543f166a0582537bfc07ba6 1. Alvin Kamara I know that this award is often given to quarterbacks as well and it looks odd that Kamara is 16th in the league in rushing (431 yards), but he is averaging five yards per carry and he is also second to only DeAndre Hopkins among all players with 55 catches for an additional 556 yards through the air – so just over 10 yards per grab. Right now he is on pace for 2256 scrimmage yards on right around 20 touches a week, while he would also easily break the NFL record for receiving yards for a running back (1271 over 1191 from Charley Taylor in 1966). And he leads the league not only in scrimmage yards but also percentage of his offense’s yardage (36.5%), while being tied for first with 12 plays of 20+ yards on the season. While he has caught a couple of key wheel routes and can win as a downfield receiver, so far 94.5(!) percent of his receiving yards have come after the catch, constantly bailing out his quarterback by making something happen after checkdowns and ripping off big gains in the screen game. I mean against the Packers he caught 13 of 14 targets for 139 yards and he was the only reason they were in that game in the first place. The explosiveness, the contact balance and the ability get six or seven yards when there should be only three is unmatched. Kamara has scored reached the end-zone seven times and his only fumble, he recovered himself again. He is by far the best player on this Saints offense and the team overall and in the absence of Michael Thomas, he has been asked to shoulder the load for them. Since his lowest output in the season-opener, Kamara has not been held under 119 scrimmage yards in any other week. 2. Kyler Murray While Murray is only 16th among current starters in passing yards per game, only Russell Wilson and by about half a yard Justin Herbert have put up more combined passing and rushing yards at 326.3 a week. Right now, only Joe Burrow and Matt Ryan have been responsible for more combined first downs and touchdowns, and those two have played a full matchup more than the Cardinals and both just won their second games of the season, while Kyler is doing it in service of a 5-2 team, which outside of his own production has averaged less than 100 rushing yards on a weekly basis. As a runner, he leads all NFL players (with double-digit carries) in yards per attempt at 6.7 and 35 of his 65 carries led to first downs or touchdowns (seven TDs). I would not call Arizona’s passing game overly explosive, as Kyler is barely in the top 20 in yards per attempt (7.3), 20+ yard throws (21) and average yards to the sticks (-0.9), but a lot of that has to do with what Kliff Kingsbury wants to do with his Air Raid-based offense, while his QB is tied for second with six throws of 40+ yards and already has an 80-yarder on his resume. Plus, with that guy at the helm, they have the potential to get as hot as pretty much any team out there. Kyler had one really bad game against the Lions, in which Detroit used a lot of different coverages that had them all over the Cardinals route patterns, but #1 has been outstanding the rest of the year and I don’t come away from a lot of games thinking that a lot of his production was served up by the play-calling. I said a couple of weeks that Deshaun Watson is the most elusive quarterback in the league, but nobody is quicker at evading defenders and keeping himself upright. We all love Russell Wilson and his ability to extend plays, but just compare these numbers – Russ has been pressured 79 times and he’s been hit or sacked on 50 of those, Kyler on the other has been pressured 44 times (significantly less due to more of a horizontal passing attack), but he’s only been sacked nine times and taken five more hits (14 total). And Kyler already outdueled Russ on Sunday Night of week seven. 3. Derrick Henry King Henry is once again holding the crown for the league’s rushing leader at this moment. His 775 rushing yards are 123 more than any other player in the league, and while that is in correlation with handling the most carries of all RBs, he still averaging 4.8 yards per attempt, despite being asked to grind away games for the Titans. Right around 30 percent of his touches has resulted in a first down or touchdown (43 total first downs and eight TDs) and about 58 percent of his total yardage has come after contact. Nobody wants to tackle King Henry, because he can plow through 300-pounder defensive linemen at the point of attack and throw DBs around like ragdolls, when he gets around the edge (looking at you, Josh Norman), but at the same time, once he gets rolling, he is as fast as any player on the field, which we saw already when he ripped of an NFL-long 94-yarder against the Texans a couple of weeks ago. The difference between Henry and some of the other franchise backs is that he doesn’t contribute a whole lot in the passing game outside of a few screens (10 catches for 81 yards), but nobody takes on a bigger load than this guy and he really sets the table for everything the Titans do, with the heavy play-action and bootlegs. Usually this guy really starts rolling over the second half of the season, but he has been dominant right from the start this year. When you look at the three games Henry didn’t put 112+ yards on the ground, in two of them the opposing defense totally sold out against the run and Ryan Tannehill completed 75 percent of his passes with seven TDs and no picks, while the team scored 33 and 42 points respectively, and the other one came against the Steelers’ dominant defensive front. On the other hand, he also has the most scrimmage yards in a game all season, when he destroyed the Texans for 264 yards and took over that one overtime drive, to win it. Notables:The three MVP candidates
Defensive Player of the Year:
I think there is pretty clear top three in this one as well and I can honestly see an argument for each one of them to be the pick, but I have stuck my selection (and bet) of a guy I believed would come back even hungrier in 2020. https://preview.redd.it/jztbsyebnhx51.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=5d42b8d0551d7a5a382c4c2f8cec7ef1a3f506b9 1. Myles Garrett This was my preseason pick for Defensive Player of the Year and similar to Russell Wilson’s MVP campaign, I have been riding this all season long. Myles Garrett is tied for a league-high nine sacks and only two players have hit the opposing quarterback more overall than him. The only two games he didn’t record a sack (the season-opener at Baltimore and this past week against the Raiders), the opposing team ran the ball on 56 and 65 percent respectively and somehow all those sacks he has put up have come in big moments – a strip on Joe Burrow to set up the offense at the Bengals 1-yard line after they were just stopped on fourth down in an eight-point game, another against Washington after the Browns finally extended the lead to more than one score, stripping Dak Prescott when the game was tied at 14 and set off a 27-0 run, setting the offense up in field goal range for their first points in the rematch with Cincinnati and while it won’t be found on the stats sheet, he also directly forced a safety on a throw-away by Philip Rivers to make it a two-score game against the Colts. The only other player that has forced four fumbles just like Myles is Ravens DB Marlon Humphrey, who has become a Peanut Punch specialist – and Garrett has also recovered a couple of those himself, with both of them directly setting up touchdown for the offense from short distance. Plus, he is excellent run-defender, who can yank blockers to the side and makes tackles around the line scrimmage, with only one miss on the season. Myles has grown so much with his technique as a pass-rusher, while obviously having that incredible combination of length and athleticism, but also might have gotten “looser” in his movement and how he can torque his body different ways. And the Browns are now using him as a mismatch against guards on passing downs quite a bit. 2. Aaron Donald Just like he has been the last five years or so, Aaron Donald is right up there with the favorite for Defensive Player of the Year and I would not be surprised at all if he won his third trophy at the end of the season. Donald is tied with Myles Garrett for the league-lead in sacks at nine and he is top five in total pressures (22) and QB hits (13), despite offensive lines sliding his way constantly. We have literally seen this man get triple-teamed and lift All-Pro offensive linemen off their feet, but only T.J. Watt has a higher pass-rush win percentage according to Pro Football Focus (25%). This guy is the only player with a four-sack performance this season and not only does he obviously contribute in a major way himself, but because of the way he gives his teammates one-on-one’s consistently, his Rams only have three other teams in front of them in terms of sacks as unit (26), despite not having a lot of names that you would recognize, outside a questionable former first-rounder in Leonard Floyd. And I just mentioned the only two players with more forced fumbles than Donald (Garrett and Humphrey), who has three himself. He has also recorded seven tackles for loss and only missed one of his 26 tackling attempts. The crazy part with his game is that for all the numbers you can actually see, there’s about twice as many plays he makes that don’t show up anywhere in the records. The only reason I don’t have him at number one is that he has four games without a full sack and that Garrett has been a little more consistent at coming up with those real game-changing plays. Still, AD is clearly right up there. 3. T.J. Watt And then this guy is as complete an edge defender as we have in the league. Watt can set the edge at the point of attack, he can chase ball-carriers down from behind as the unblocked man at the line and this past Sunday against Baltimore, we saw him take both guys at times on those read-option plays. Of his 25 tackles on the season, 12 have resulted in lost yardage, which is tied with teammate Vince Williams for a league-high. As a pass-rusher, Watt is “only” tied for fourth with 6.5 sacks, but his 21 hits on opposing QBs is four more than any other player in the league and the 27 total pressure are three more than the next-closest guy as well, while PFF has him tagged with the highest pass-rush win rate in correlation with that (27%). And he headlines the most destructive pass-rush in the league, as the Steelers defense leads the league with 30 sacks and easily has the highest pressure percentage of any unit out there at a whopping 35.0 percent. Watt has also batted down three passes and picked one off. He can do your classic flat drops or carry guys out of the backfield at times, but he can also stand up and move around the line to blitz from different angles or act as a spy at times. He surprisingly has yet to force a fumble this season, but I can remember right now on the very first play he was on the field against the Titans, a good 20 quarterbacks would have lost the ball in that moment with Watt swiping at it, and since he led the league in that category last season, I have no doubt he will rack up a few of those FFs still.
Offensive Rookie of the Year:
This award has two quarterbacks battling it out at the top right now, with one young star receivers and a couple of running backs – one picked in the first round and the other going undrafted – who are also in the running. https://preview.redd.it/s59hxqbhnhx51.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=1367e2c355593e297cd3e85ba8c94c1f6a3ee3f6 1. Justin Herbert I get that coaches always try to protect their young quarterbacks and want to give them time to learn from the sidelines, but I hope everybody gets that Herbert and Tyrod Taylor aren’t even close to each other. And I have always liked Tyrod as a bridge-starter or game-manager type, but this rookie QB has taken this offense to a completely different level. When you just look at the schedule, you see that the two QBs have the same amount of wins on the season (only one for Herbert against the Jaguars), but in the season-opener the Chargers only put up 16 points against the Bengals, who have given up 28.2 per week from that point on, and L.A. has scored 27.2 points a game since then. It is not Herbert’s fault that his defense has let him down in the second half of games and allowed big comebacks. He took Patrick Mahomes & company to overtime, had his team up 24-7 against the Bucs before a fumble a minute until halftime started turning things around, he outplayed Drew Brees at the Superdome and was inches away in overtime from pulling off a game-tying or -winning drives and before the Bolts defense allowed an epic collapse last Sunday, they were dominating the Broncos 24-3 midway through the third quarter. The way Herbert has opened up the offense with the deep ball is incredible, with two 70+ TDs on the resume already, and he makes the whole field available, after they were very limited before. Among current starters, Herbert is third in passing yards per game (303.3) and second in combined touchdowns per game (3.0), while also being top ten in completion percentage, yards per attempt, quarterback rating and QBR. He is on pace to throw for 4550 yards and 38 touchdowns to go with about 350 rushing yards and five more TDs on the ground, over the course of a 15-game season. Those numbers would shatter all rookie records. 2. Joe Burrow No other team has thrown the ball more than the Bengals (330 pass attempts) and their quarterback leads the league with 221 completions on the season (67% completion percentage). With 11 touchdowns compared to five interceptions, that ratio doesn’t look overly impressive, but he has set up a lot of short rushing TDs, while Cincinnati barely cracks 100 rushing yards per game as a team and only one other squad averages less yards per carry (3.7). Until this past weekend, Burrow was tied with Carson Wentz for the most-sacked quarterbacks in the league, but thanks to a non-existent pass-rush for the Titans, in large part due to the spread-based passing attack the Bengals bring to the table, a clean week has the Bengals QB at “only” 28 sacks so far. However, he has been under the fire all season long, being tied for third with 79 total pressures, despite only eight quarterbacks spending less time in the pocket. And Burrow has yet to complete less than 60 percent of his passes in any game. I know the Bengals were blown out in that one Ravens game, but do we realize that was their only loss by more than one score? They tied the Eagles in a game where Burrow was sacked eight times and hit every other snap, they scored 30+ in their two matchups with the Browns, they were up 21-0 against the Colts in the second quarter and just this past Sunday they beat the recently 5-1 Titans by double-digits. And I would argue their rookie quarterback is by far the biggest reason for it. They are already guaranteed a better record this year than last season, as we are halfway through the season – and they are getting better every week. This guy is the future in Cincinnati. Now they just need to protect him and get that defense going. 3. Justin Jefferson I know that Odell Beckham Jr. was the only wide receiver to be named Offensive Rookie of the Year in the last ten years and I wouldn’t put anybody on the same level as that historic season, but since then this is the most impressive start we have seen for a rookie receiver. Through seven games, Jefferson has caught 31 of his 40 targets for 563 yards and three touchdowns. That puts him 12th among all receivers in yards per game, while having recorded a league-high 14.1 yards per target and 22 of his 31 grabs has resulted in a fresh set of downs. After a rather slow start, with five catches for 70 yards through the first two weeks, Jefferson came onto the scene with 71-yarder against the Titans and now already has three games of 100+ receiving yards, while only having played 74 percent of the snaps on the season. Jefferson has only dropped one pass and not fumbled once, while Kirk Cousins when targeting the rookie receiver, has a passer rating of over 100 despite having thrown four picks and I wouldn’t put a single one of those on the receiver definitely, as on a couple of them there was a linebacker dropping underneath a deep crosser that Cousins stared down the whole way, a badly underthrown pass into a tight window and on another one he and the rookie wideout clearly weren’t on the same page in terms of the route he was supposed to run. Through eight weeks, Jefferson is Pro Football Focus has the second-highest grade among all NFL receivers. I have always been a fan of Adam Thielen and he is Cousins’ favorite target, but to determine who opposing teams believe is more dangerous, all I have to do is watch the Packers put Jaire Alexander on the first-year man for almost the whole game last week. Notables:James Robinson & Clyde Edwards-Helaire
Defensive Rookie of the Year:
For the defensive side of the ball, this rookie selection was a little tougher, because there are a few guys that have filled the stat sheet across the board, but you don’t have those typical front-runners with a lot of sacks or interceptions, which usually take home the honors. https://preview.redd.it/6feckarlnhx51.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=99ff1c8f00a81987ead19327f1465ccee3e50f17 1. Antoine Winfield Jr. When I look at who I believe is the best pro player among all defensive rookies already, I would say this is the name that comes to mind. Tampa Bay’s defensive scheme isn’t simple. They ran a lot of different coverages, they can blitz anybody and there are a lot of rules that you have to understand as a member of that unit. Winfield has come in and looked him he belonged from the first time he touched the field. The rookie safety has played 515 of 522 snaps on defense and he shows up quite a bit in the box score. He has recorded 31 solo tackles and only two misses all season long, showing off what a dependable tackler he is in space. He has intercepted a passe and broken up four more, plus he has forced fumble. And call it P.I. or not, he denied a two-point conversion to potentially tie the game this past Monday Night against the Giants. To go with that, he has asked to blitz 29 times in Todd Bowles’ pressure-heavy scheme, resulting in two sacks and three extra hits on the quarterbacks. What made me a big fan of Winfield coming out of Minnesota was the versatility he presents and the fact he played so much bigger than his size would indicate. The Bucs coaching staff has utilized a lot around the line of scrimmage a lot and I love how he drives on routes in quarters coverage. He gas been “credited” with giving up just over 200 yards and two touchdowns, to go with a passer rating of 114.4 in coverage, but I think about half of that production came on two plays in the Chargers game, once with him ending up as the closest defender on a deep bomb, when the other safety should have actually opened up and then on a scramble drill play, where Keenan Allen uncovered late against him. 2. Patrick Queen Baltimore has a rich tradition of middle linebackers, but not so much when it comes to LSU players, with Ozzie Newsome as an Alabama alumn not having drafted a single Tigers player in over 20 years as the Ravens GM. This year, with Eric DeCosta calling the shots, they wanted to bring in a dynamic player to put in the middle of their defense and when Patrick Queen surprisingly was still on the board when they were making their first-round pick this past April, it didn’t matter which college he came from. Queen was immediately put in the starting lineup and he has been filling up the stat sheet from the start. In seven games, he has recorded 48 combined tackles, four of them for loss, two sacks to go with five more QB hits, two fumbles forced and recovered, including a long scoop-and-score. His speed at the second level to string guys out to the sideline or get to the quarterback on delayed blitzes has been a big reason this defense has gone to a higher level in 2020. Of course, he is still a first-year player and not perfect. Queen has already missed 11 tackles and there have been some moments where the rookie seemed a little confused. Two that come to mind right away – the Chiefs running that double-swing fake before throwing the TE screen over the middle, where they had Queen’s head spinning and then last week against the Steelers, where I’m pretty sure he should have covered tight-end Eric Ebron in man, but thought he had the back and that allowed Ebron to easily score on a shallow crosser from 18 yards out. He is learning and we have already seen moments, where he just sees it and goes, shutting down plays before they can even get going, while he obviously has a knack for the ball. 3. Jeremy Chinn One of the small-school prospects I loved in this most recent draft was this 6’3”, 220-pound safety from Southern Illinois, who put up ridiculous numbers at the scouting combine and showed incredible potential on film. So far, he has put up 38 solo tackles – most by any rookie in the league, has intercepted one pass and broken up another five. Chinn has been all over the field, with his ability to cover ground and erase angles for the ball-carrier. One of the two or three negatives I had about him and why I had him around the top 50 and not even higher was the ability to process information post-snap, to not just have his talent take him to the ball, but also the anticipation and identification of certain keys to react quickly. I believe Matt Rhule, defensive coordinator Phil Snow and that entire staff has done an outstanding job of simplifying Chinn’s assignments and just letting him around and make plays. Once he sees something happening in front of him, he can get there as fast as pretty much any player in the league and the Panthers have allowed that talent to flourish. The biggest issue for him are the ten missed tackles so far, but he’ll clean that up as well. Through eight weeks, Chinn has played 96 percent of the defensive snaps and been a fixture on the punt team as well, where he had a huge first-down run against the Falcons in last week’s Thursday Night game on a fake. As he gets more comfortable in the system, I expect him to become a bigger part of the pass-rush, because his closing speed as a blitzer is just absurd. Notables:Jaylon Johnson & Julian Blackmon
Comeback Player of the Year:
As I say every year when making my preseason picks, this is the most vague award of the list, because there are so many different ways you can look at it – players who were hurt for most/all of last season, guys who had a few off-years and then those who were out of the league altogether. https://preview.redd.it/azaaj8wonhx51.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=0b8d658e734d0fbb7dab6ce01769d86131a0227f 1. Ben Roethlisberger Roethlisberger is completing 67.9 percent of his passes and while he is only 25th in passing yards per game (232.6), a lot of that has to do with being part of a 7-0 team with the best defense in the league and trying to run down the clock late in games a lot of times. Big Ben has been really steady for Pittsburgh, not having completed less than 63 percent of his passes yet for a total of 15 touchdowns compared to only four interceptions, with five games that didn’t include any turnovers from him. Of those four picks, one came on a wobbling 50-50 pass, where Juju immediately called for pass interference, one came in the end-zone on the final play before halftime and another was batted up by a defensive lineman right into the hands of a linebacker. The Steelers are tied for third with converting 49.5 percent of their third downs and even though their run game is about average, they control the clock primarily with the short passing game, where their quarterback gets everybody involved. And when his team has needed him most Big Ben has come through, with two go-ahead touchdown drives in fourth quarters and taking over on crucial drives, with no-huddle attacks and almost exclusively going in the shotgun to spread it around. In the battle of unbeatens at Tennessee, the Steelers were up 24-7 at halftime, with Roethlisberger converting all four third downs with nine or more yards to go. This past Sunday in Baltimore in a huge AFC North clash with the Ravens, the Steelers offense could not get anything done for the first half plus, with Lamar Jackson gifting his opponents 14 points directly off turnovers, but when Pittsburgh needed to a couple of touchdowns to go ahead, their quarterback came through, as they threw the ball on 15 of those 18 plays and the three runs resulted in -1 yard (+ a touchdown). To do this after a season-ending elbow injury on his throwing arm last year is impressive. 2. Jason Verrett For this one we have to go all the way back to like 2015 and even before that. Jason Verrett was a first-team All-American selection in 2013 and then a first-round pick for the Chargers coming out of TCU. After showing a ton of potential in an injury-riddled rookie campaign, he became a Pro Bowler in his second season with three interceptions and 12 more passes deflected, including a pick-six. The next two years, he only played a combined five games with consecutive ACL injuries and then missed all of 2018 with a torn Achilles. His bad injury luck would follow him to San Francisco however, as he would go on IR with an ankle injury shortly after signing with the 49ers last year. Now, finally in 2020 he is back on the field and balling out. Verrett had a big interception in the end-zone against the Rams a couple of weeks ago and three PBUs the rest of the season, having started the last six games. However, it is the more advanced stats about what the veteran corner has done in coverage that are really impressive. On 25 targets, he has given up just 123 yards and no touchdowns. Plus, he is a highly dependable tackler, having only missed one attempt all season and holding opposing receivers to just 32 yards after the catch. The 49ers had major issues with their corners for large stretches of the season, as Richard Sherman has been on IR since week one and the with Emmanuel Moseley also missing some time, those other guys on the boundary have gotten roasted in some of their matchups. Not with Verrett. He has easily been a top ten player at his position so far and I don’t know how you can take him out of the starting lineup, once they have Sherm and Moseley back together. 3. Aldon Smith I thought long and hard about putting Rob Gronkowski here, because after Gronk look like his feet were stuck in mud early on, he and Tom Brady are not operating at a really high level again, and it almost seems like the big tight-end got his confidence back. However, I decided to go with somebody who was not one but five(!) years out of the league and as we all know, this award is a lot about the stories of these players. When Aldon Smith was drafted in 2011, it was immediately between him and Von Miller as the best young edge rusher in the league, and Smith out-produced the Broncos All-Pro with 14 and 19.5 sacks in his first two years, before he entered a rehabilitation center midway through 2013 season, when he has on path for another one of those years. The two following seasons, he looked like a shell of himself in San Francisco and then Oakland, as his mind clearly wasn’t right, with several off-the-field issues leading two suspensions that cost him the 2016 and ’17 seasons. Now, all the way in 2020, he is back with the Dallas Cowboys and especially early on he looked like a dominant player on the edge. Smith is now at five sacks on the season, with three of those coming against the Seahawks, as he was the only defensive player that kept his team in the game, with additional hits on the quarterbacks. To go with that, he has made some nice tackles in the run game, fighting off blocks and getting hands on the ball-carrier. He has cooled off a little bit these last few weeks, but the lack of production is more a product of how bad the Cowboys defense has been as a whole and long much they’ve been on the field. If he was on a team right now, that allowed him to rush in obvious passing situation, he could potentially be in the Defensive Player of the Year conversation. Notables:Rob Gronkowski & Alex Smith
Play of the Year:
https://preview.redd.it/e7hgczoznhx51.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=367a15768a5e30164afcabc575cbf2e6700ff75f 1. D.K. Metcalf chase-down tackle on Budda Baker after the INT One of the greatest hustle plays you will ever see and it started a meme fest on the internet. 2. Derrick Henry 94-yard touchdown run vs. Texans The combination of speed and power is freakish for this dude. He tore Houston a new one. 3. Odell Beckham Jr. going 60 yards on the reverse vs. Cowboys Of couese bad effort and angles by the Dallas defense, but this looked like Giants Odell.
All-Pro teams:
Since this is not about building a team or anything like that, I just went to the most used personnel sets for either side of the ball – 11 personnel and nickel defense – and filled up those spots with who I believe have been the best players at those positions. So there is differentiating between left and right tackle, 4-3 defensive end and 3-4 were put together as “EDGE” and there are just any two stand-up linebackers inserted.
Offense:
LT David Bakhtiari LG Quenton Nelson C Corey Linsley RG Wyatt Teller RT Duane Brown Second team:Laremy Tunsil, Michael Onwenu, Jason Kelce, Gabe Jackson & Ryan Ramczyk WR DeAndre Hopkins WR D.K. Metcalf WR Davante Adams TE Travis Kelce Second team:Calvin Ridley, Stefon Diggs, Justin Jefferson & George Kittle QB Russell Wilson RB Alvin Kamara Second team:Patrick Mahomes & Derrick Henry
Defense:
DE Myles Garrett DT Aaron Donald DT Chris Jones DE T.J. Watt Second team:Khalil Mack, Jeffery Simmons, Cam Heyward & Calais Campbell LB Fred Warner LB Lavonte David Second team:Darius Leonard & K.J. Wright CB Kyle Fuller CB Jaire Alexander NB Marlon Humphrey Second team:James Bradberry, Jalen Ramsey & Jason Verrett FS Minkah Fitzpatrick SS Budda Baker Second team:Jessie Bates & Antoine Winfield Coach of the Year in the comments!! If you enjoyed this content, I would really appreciate if you could visit the original piece - https://halilsrealfootballtalk.com/2020/11/05/nfl-2020-midseason-awards/ Also make sure you check out my detailed recap of the NFL's week eight on Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXx87t1Dcvk
I hadn't seen Miles in fifteen years when we bumped into each other at the grocery store. Back then, we'd gone separate ways. He'd dropped out of high school to start learning a trade, and I'd gone to university. Our lives diverged and we fell out of contact. But our recognition was instant, and after a few minutes of conversation he invited me to his house. It was on the way that we caught up in broad strokes. I was married; he wasn't. I had a kid; he didn't. I worked for a corporation in a mid-level office job; he was self-employed. When I asked him what he did, he smiled a little mischievously and said, "I'm a bookie, but you could say I'm a bit of an employer myself these days." When I asked what he meant, he said I'd see soon enough. What I saw first was that his splendid two-storey yellow brick house was situated deep in the suburbs, and seemed decidedly too big for a single guy in his thirties. Nevertheless, I was impressed he could afford it. My wife and I didn't have our own house yet. "Renting or owning?" I asked as we approached the front door. "Owned," he said. "I've had a good run these last two years." Although the house had looked normal from the street, when we got closer I noticed that the front doorknob was odd. It was shaped like a human hand. Miles was carrying groceries, so he motioned for me to do the opening. "It's not locked?" I asked. He smiled just as I touched the doorknob—the warm, living doorknob!—for it didn't just look like a human hand; it was a human hand! Obediently, the front door swung open, and huddled in the triangular space between the door and the wall was a hooded, black-clad figure whose gold-painted fingers I had just touched. Without even raising its head, the figure shut the door behind us and replaced its hand into the door hole. Miles paid the figure no mind and continued to the kitchen, where another similarly dressed figure stood motionless by the light switch. Miles set down the groceries, clapped his hands and the figure turned on the lights. By now I had to ask: "What is—" "Look, I get that it may seem a little weird," he said, "but hear me out. These are people who owe me money. They're unemployed and they can't conceivably pay it back anytime soon." I followed him to the living room, where another figure turned on the lights, illuminating several pieces of human furniture. "So they're working off their debts." Miles whistled, and yet another figure appeared, this one holding two imported beers. Miles handed one to me before setting the other on his nude female coffee table, who / which reacted instinctively to the cold glass bottle by momentarily arching her / its back. "It's perfectly consensual," he added, anticipating my concerns. "And what would be the more humane alternative, breaking their knee caps?" By now my initial discomfort was turning into a chilled fear. I kept remembering how the doorknob-hand had felt in mine. Ostensibly both were human hands, but the gap in— "Dignity," I said, then repeated the word in a whisper so as not to let them hear. "Don't you think they lack dignity?" He chuckled. "See, even your natural reaction is to treat them as if they're invisible. As for dignity, they most definitely had it. Because they mortgaged it, and now they're working to earn it back. I didn't force them to gamble. Now they're house servants, that's all. Are you opposed to house servants?" I admitted I supposed I wasn't. "But this is such a strange form of it," I said, starting to stammer like in my elementary school days. By now the stress of being in this bizarre place combined with the mundane act of drinking beer was twisting me psychologically in ways I couldn't understand. I wanted suddenly out, but the most I could tactfully bring myself to do was ask about the location of the bathroom. "Just down the hall," Miles said. I stepped with dread. The bathroom was large but felt immediately cramped by the presence of two figures: one wrapped entirely in bath towels, and the other kneeling by the toilet, its hooded head down and arms up, holding a roll of toilet paper as if it were the idol of a long-forgotten god. Of course, I couldn't go in these conditions, so I waited uncomfortably for a minute, listening to the figures breathe, before washing my hands. "Are you OK?" I whispered to them. No response. "Do you need help?" Silence. I shut off the water faucet, turned— And nearly fell back against the bathroom mirror as the towel-wrapped one rubbed his / her / its moisture-absorbing material / body against my wet hands. "Please, don't," I begged quietly, escaping backward into the hall. Miles was casually drinking his beer. "Did you try to save them?" he asked. I nodded. "They don't need saving." He gestured for me to follow him, and I did, down the hall and up the stairs to a bedroom. But it wasn't Miles' bedroom. "I had it prepared just for you," he said, "in case you wanted to spend the night." The room was spacious and clean, decked out with an array of speakers, a large TV and a human night table flanking a queen-sized bed, freshly made and topped with a beautiful handmade quilt, on which rested a mattress-long body pillow, its linen case rising and falling gently with the breath of the human inside it. I wanted to back out, but Miles caught me by the shoulders. "Remember when in high school you told me I wouldn't ever amount to anything?" His grip was firm. "I'm sorry," I whispered. "Don't be sorry. You were wrong, that's all." "How long do they work for?" I asked, watching the body pillow shift slightly on the bed, desiring more than anything to change the topic. But also curious, genuinely and morbidly curious. "However long they want. Eight hours, twelve hours, twenty-four hour shifts. It's really not a bad gig, lying in a pillowcase on a comfortable bed for twice the minimum wage." He nudged me forward. "Go ahead. Try it." I didn't want to, but there was a menace in his voice, an unpredictability that made it feel safer to obey than disagree. He may not have been threatening me directly, but the threat was in the air, invisible and atomized like a perfume. I got on the bed. Miles watched my every uncomfortable move. "Like it?" "Yes," I said, "it's a very nice mattress." For a second, I imagined that the mattress was filled with people and I was lying on top of them, crushing them—but as I shifted my weight I felt the more familiar support of springs, and I could breathe again. "Try hugging the body pillow," Miles instructed me, the coolness in his voice betraying how used he'd gotten to being the boss. I didn't want to do that either, but I did it anyway, not only pervasively conscious of the army of servants Miles had amassed, which he could turn against me at any moment, but wanting desperately to feel even a fraction of the power he wielded over them. Inching closer to the body pillow and turning over onto my side before lightly placing an arm on top of— It squirmed, bony, warm and human underneath the crisp linen case. The person inside was a man. I wondered who and what he had bet on and how much he owed and whether it was really so bad what Miles was doing and if it would have been better for the man to be working two or three part-time jobs, probably labour, probably more tiring and dangerous, than being paid to be this objectified: this passive: this utterly domesticated. "Nice, right?" Miles asked. "Yes." "You can get up now." I got off the bed, smoothed my clothes and followed Miles wordlessly into the hall, down the stairs and into a spacious gym. He was so confident that not once did he look back; he knew that I was behind him. Although we didn't go inside, on the way we had passed a room outfitted with cameras, lights and a circular padded stage, and my imagination was running wild with thoughts of the recordings made in there— The gym lights flashed cold and bright. I squinted. Arranged before me was an impressive collection of weights, workout gear and exercise machines, but it was the object occupying the centre of the room whose existence sent an electric shock down my spine. A leather heavy bag hung ominously from the ceiling. Miles passed me boxing wraps for my hands, then began wrapping his own. "I know this is a lot, and I know how it feels, the pressure building up inside you right now. Believe me. Jealousy. Disgust. Maybe even anger: at me, the world, your own fucking life. When I get that way, I come down here and work those emotions out. It's not healthy holding them in. Whatever you do, you can't let them grow inside you." When he was done with his wraps, he handed me a pair of training gloves. I put them on, constantly eyeing the heavy bag, which was swinging now ever so softly from the steel ceiling mount. "Give it a shot," he said. I stood frozen in place. I knew there was someone in there. "I can't d—" "Of course you can," he said, then pulled his arm back and delivered a wicked right cross to the heavy bag. It responded with a dull thud followed by a reverberating groan. "Just like that." "It's a person," I said, my voice rising. "Which makes it even easier. Just ask the person if you can hit her." Her. "Do you want to get hit?" Miles asked the heavy bag. "Yes," a muffled voice responded. "See? She wants you to do it. If you don't do it, you're deciding for her, and how condescending would that be—for a man to tell a woman what she can and can't do." "Hit me please," the heavy bag mumbled. I made a fist and threw a light jab. Just enough to feel the bag: the padding, and the contour of the person hanging inside. "Come on, man." It made me sick to my stomach. But as I lifted my hand to my mouth to keep from retching, Miles put in a thudding left hook that lifted the bag on impact. I could hear the stifled pain within. "She gets paid by the punch," Miles said. "Ask her if she wants another." I didn't want to, but the answer came anyway: "Hit me." "One thousand dollars off her debt if you give it all you've got," Miles said. "Do it please," the bag begged. I planted my feet, exhaled—once, twice—loosened my shoulder, and put all my weight behind a looping shot that connected sickeningly with the side of the bag, my mind frantically trying to decide where I'd connected, face, ribs, hip, because I was sure I'd felt bone, as the bag bounced, the ceiling mount screeched and the woman inside moaned in pain. For a while: silence. Then, "Thank… you," she whimpered. "Nice one! What do you say, another grand?" Miles asked with a smile. "Again please." So I got her again, and again. And again. Each time connecting with everything I had; each time shaving a thousand dollars off her debt. Good deed followed by good deed—until Miles himself grabbed my arm and pulled me away, and I realized, over the pounding of my beating heart, how much anger there was in me. "Easy, easy," he repeated. After I'd calmed down, I felt the horror of it: of what I had done. I had beaten someone, a woman, and all her begging and thanking couldn't convince me it was right. Not that she was speaking now… Miles unhooked the heavy bag and laid it reverently on the floor as I took off my gloves and undid my wraps. He unzipped the bag. "Do you remember our prom?" he asked as if out of the blue. "Vaguely." "You went with Rashida Parker," he said. I did remember that. "Who did you go with?" I asked. Miles had pulled a body wrapped in a thick, bloodied sheet from the unzipped bag. He picked it up and cradled it. She looked small and fragile in his arms. For a second, I thought that maybe she was dead, but then she murmured something swollen and incomprehensible, and I knew I hadn't beaten her to death. I had almost forgotten my own question when, "No one," Miles answered. "I was supposed to go with Rashida, and she'd even said 'yes' to me"—he had unwrapped some of the sheet, revealing a tangle of black hair, and I thought, No, it couldn't be, but it was: she was—"when you asked her and she said 'yes' to you. After all, why would she go with some skid who smoked cigarettes by the railroad tracks, a future deadbeat whose parents worked in a factory and who couldn't read Shakespeare, when she could go with someone like you?" He unfolded the remaining sheet from Rashida's body and laid her on top of it. Her eyes were swelling shut but she could still see, and all I could do was avert my gaze as she slowly pronounced my name, each syllable willed into a hurt existence, before thanking me repeatedly with her fattened lips. Although she looked barely like the girl I'd fallen in love with, it was unmistakably her. After she could speak no more, she crawled forward, reaching pathetically for my legs, her broken body a coloured patchwork of various stages of bruising, as I backed instinctively away. I was scared and I was ashamed. "You'll appreciate the irony," Miles said. "She lost her money betting on mixed martial arts." He laughed. There was something about that laugh, something devilish and deep, something true that made me lunge for him—for his despicable throat! But even that did not stop the laughter, which resounded through the gym as we fought like boys on the padded floor. And still he laughed when his hooded minions arrived and pulled me off him, swinging wildly at the air. I'd bloodied his nose but nothing more, and as they dragged me away, up the stairs and to the front door, Miles followed us with a monstrous smile. "I am the way the world is," he said. Then I was out the door and it was closed and it was dark and suburban and I was sitting on the concrete front step, staring at the golden doorknob-hand jutting profoundly through the hole in the door of a yellow brick house. I got to my feet and descended the steps to the street, all the while trying to act cool and not make a scene, because that seemed like the worst thing imaginable: drawing attention to myself. My fighting spirit had evaporated. I was a coward once more. I buried my hands in my pockets and kept my head down, walking briskly through the cold night air, but when I reached the nearest intersection I turned and started to run. On both sides houses flew past at a blur. Illuminated windows. Imagined conversations. I knew Miles wasn't behind me, but because I lacked his natural confidence I kept glancing back—yet the only thing which followed were his words, I am the way the world is, and when I stopped to catch my breath, I looked directly upon a lighted window: several silhouettes gathered around a table. Was it a family or a group of hooded servants waiting on their master? I couldn't tell, but they must have seen me too because suddenly the curtains were drawn and the illumination ended. I am the way the world is. He was wrong. I didn't want to believe it. I couldn't believe it. Miles was the anomaly—the evil—and in every other house, behind every other beautiful brick wall, there were normal people with normal needs and normal relationships. They desired normal things and they worked normal jobs, just like me. In my stillness I felt suddenly the autumn cold and took out my phone, and almost without thinking I swiped toward the Uber app— That's when I understood. I smashed the phone against the sidewalk. Faces looked out. Miles was right, and I walked home for hours that night, terrified of myself and of every house I passed in which uncounted silhouettes passed silent and unseen.
I hadn't seen Miles in fifteen years when we bumped into each other at the grocery store. Back then, we'd gone separate ways. He'd dropped out of high school to start learning a trade, and I'd gone to university. Our lives diverged and we fell out of contact. But our recognition was instant, and after a few minutes of conversation he invited me to his house. It was on the way that we caught up in broad strokes. I was married; he wasn't. I had a kid; he didn't. I worked for a corporation in a mid-level office job; he was self-employed. When I asked him what he did, he smiled a little mischievously and said, "I'm a bookie, but you could say I'm a bit of an employer myself these days." When I asked what he meant, he said I'd see soon enough. What I saw first was that his splendid two-storey yellow brick house was situated deep in the suburbs, and seemed decidedly too big for a single guy in his thirties. Nevertheless, I was impressed he could afford it. My wife and I didn't have our own house yet. "Renting or owning?" I asked as we approached the front door. "Owned," he said. "I've had a good run these last two years." Although the house had looked normal from the street, when we got closer I noticed that the front doorknob was odd. It was shaped like a human hand. Miles was carrying groceries, so he motioned for me to do the opening. "It's not locked?" I asked. He smiled just as I touched the doorknob—the warm, living doorknob!—for it didn't just look like a human hand; it was a human hand! Obediently, the front door swung open, and huddled in the triangular space between the door and the wall was a hooded, black-clad figure whose gold-painted fingers I had just touched. Without even raising its head, the figure shut the door behind us and replaced its hand into the door hole. Miles paid the figure no mind and continued to the kitchen, where another similarly dressed figure stood motionless by the light switch. Miles set down the groceries, clapped his hands and the figure turned on the lights. By now I had to ask: "What is—" "Look, I get that it may seem a little weird," he said, "but hear me out. These are people who owe me money. They're unemployed and they can't conceivably pay it back anytime soon." I followed him to the living room, where another figure turned on the lights, illuminating several pieces of human furniture. "So they're working off their debts." Miles whistled, and yet another figure appeared, this one holding two imported beers. Miles handed one to me before setting the other on his nude female coffee table, who / which reacted instinctively to the cold glass bottle by momentarily arching her / its back. "It's perfectly consensual," he added, anticipating my concerns. "And what would be the more humane alternative, breaking their knee caps?" By now my initial discomfort was turning into a chilled fear. I kept remembering how the doorknob-hand had felt in mine. Ostensibly both were human hands, but the gap in— "Dignity," I said, then repeated the word in a whisper so as not to let them hear. "Don't you think they lack dignity?" He chuckled. "See, even your natural reaction is to treat them as if they're invisible. As for dignity, they most definitely had it. Because they mortgaged it, and now they're working to earn it back. I didn't force them to gamble. Now they're house servants, that's all. Are you opposed to house servants?" I admitted I supposed I wasn't. "But this is such a strange form of it," I said, starting to stammer like in my elementary school days. By now the stress of being in this bizarre place combined with the mundane act of drinking beer was twisting me psychologically in ways I couldn't understand. I wanted suddenly out, but the most I could tactfully bring myself to do was ask about the location of the bathroom. "Just down the hall," Miles said. I stepped with dread. The bathroom was large but felt immediately cramped by the presence of two figures: one wrapped entirely in bath towels, and the other kneeling by the toilet, its hooded head down and arms up, holding a roll of toilet paper as if it were the idol of a long-forgotten god. Of course, I couldn't go in these conditions, so I waited uncomfortably for a minute, listening to the figures breathe, before washing my hands. "Are you OK?" I whispered to them. No response. "Do you need help?" Silence. I shut off the water faucet, turned— And nearly fell back against the bathroom mirror as the towel-wrapped one rubbed his / her / its moisture-absorbing material / body against my wet hands. "Please, don't," I begged quietly, escaping backward into the hall. Miles was casually drinking his beer. "Did you try to save them?" he asked. I nodded. "They don't need saving." He gestured for me to follow him, and I did, down the hall and up the stairs to a bedroom. But it wasn't Miles' bedroom. "I had it prepared just for you," he said, "in case you wanted to spend the night." The room was spacious and clean, decked out with an array of speakers, a large TV and a human night table flanking a queen-sized bed, freshly made and topped with a beautiful handmade quilt, on which rested a mattress-long body pillow, its linen case rising and falling gently with the breath of the human inside it. I wanted to back out, but Miles caught me by the shoulders. "Remember when in high school you told me I wouldn't ever amount to anything?" His grip was firm. "I'm sorry," I whispered. "Don't be sorry. You were wrong, that's all." "How long do they work for?" I asked, watching the body pillow shift slightly on the bed, desiring more than anything to change the topic. But also curious, genuinely and morbidly curious. "However long they want. Eight hours, twelve hours, twenty-four hour shifts. It's really not a bad gig, lying in a pillowcase on a comfortable bed for twice the minimum wage." He nudged me forward. "Go ahead. Try it." I didn't want to, but there was a menace in his voice, an unpredictability that made it feel safer to obey than disagree. He may not have been threatening me directly, but the threat was in the air, invisible and atomized like a perfume. I got on the bed. Miles watched my every uncomfortable move. "Like it?" "Yes," I said, "it's a very nice mattress." For a second, I imagined that the mattress was filled with people and I was lying on top of them, crushing them—but as I shifted my weight I felt the more familiar support of springs, and I could breathe again. "Try hugging the body pillow," Miles instructed me, the coolness in his voice betraying how used he'd gotten to being the boss. I didn't want to do that either, but I did it anyway, not only pervasively conscious of the army of servants Miles had amassed, which he could turn against me at any moment, but wanting desperately to feel even a fraction of the power he wielded over them. Inching closer to the body pillow and turning over onto my side before lightly placing an arm on top of— It squirmed, bony, warm and human underneath the crisp linen case. The person inside was a man. I wondered who and what he had bet on and how much he owed and whether it was really so bad what Miles was doing and if it would have been better for the man to be working two or three part-time jobs, probably labour, probably more tiring and dangerous, than being paid to be this objectified: this passive: this utterly domesticated. "Nice, right?" Miles asked. "Yes." "You can get up now." I got off the bed, smoothed my clothes and followed Miles wordlessly into the hall, down the stairs and into a spacious gym. He was so confident that not once did he look back; he knew that I was behind him. Although we didn't go inside, on the way we had passed a room outfitted with cameras, lights and a circular padded stage, and my imagination was running wild with thoughts of the recordings made in there— The gym lights flashed cold and bright. I squinted. Arranged before me was an impressive collection of weights, workout gear and exercise machines, but it was the object occupying the centre of the room whose existence sent an electric shock down my spine. A leather heavy bag hung ominously from the ceiling. Miles passed me boxing wraps for my hands, then began wrapping his own. "I know this is a lot, and I know how it feels, the pressure building up inside you right now. Believe me. Jealousy. Disgust. Maybe even anger: at me, the world, your own fucking life. When I get that way, I come down here and work those emotions out. It's not healthy holding them in. Whatever you do, you can't let them grow inside you." When he was done with his wraps, he handed me a pair of training gloves. I put them on, constantly eyeing the heavy bag, which was swinging now ever so softly from the steel ceiling mount. "Give it a shot," he said. I stood frozen in place. I knew there was someone in there. "I can't d—" "Of course you can," he said, then pulled his arm back and delivered a wicked right cross to the heavy bag. It responded with a dull thud followed by a reverberating groan. "Just like that." "It's a person," I said, my voice rising. "Which makes it even easier. Just ask the person if you can hit her." Her. "Do you want to get hit?" Miles asked the heavy bag. "Yes," a muffled voice responded. "See? She wants you to do it. If you don't do it, you're deciding for her, and how condescending would that be—for a man to tell a woman what she can and can't do." "Hit me please," the heavy bag mumbled. I made a fist and threw a light jab. Just enough to feel the bag: the padding, and the contour of the person hanging inside. "Come on, man." It made me sick to my stomach. But as I lifted my hand to my mouth to keep from retching, Miles put in a thudding left hook that lifted the bag on impact. I could hear the stifled pain within. "She gets paid by the punch," Miles said. "Ask her if she wants another." I didn't want to, but the answer came anyway: "Hit me." "One thousand dollars off her debt if you give it all you've got," Miles said. "Do it please," the bag begged. I planted my feet, exhaled—once, twice—loosened my shoulder, and put all my weight behind a looping shot that connected sickeningly with the side of the bag, my mind frantically trying to decide where I'd connected, face, ribs, hip, because I was sure I'd felt bone, as the bag bounced, the ceiling mount screeched and the woman inside moaned in pain. For a while: silence. Then, "Thank… you," she whimpered. "Nice one! What do you say, another grand?" Miles asked with a smile. "Again please." So I got her again, and again. And again. Each time connecting with everything I had; each time shaving a thousand dollars off her debt. Good deed followed by good deed—until Miles himself grabbed my arm and pulled me away, and I realized, over the pounding of my beating heart, how much anger there was in me. "Easy, easy," he repeated. After I'd calmed down, I felt the horror of it: of what I had done. I had beaten someone, a woman, and all her begging and thanking couldn't convince me it was right. Not that she was speaking now… Miles unhooked the heavy bag and laid it reverently on the floor as I took off my gloves and undid my wraps. He unzipped the bag. "Do you remember our prom?" he asked as if out of the blue. "Vaguely." "You went with Rashida Parker," he said. I did remember that. "Who did you go with?" I asked. Miles had pulled a body wrapped in a thick, bloodied sheet from the unzipped bag. He picked it up and cradled it. She looked small and fragile in his arms. For a second, I thought that maybe she was dead, but then she murmured something swollen and incomprehensible, and I knew I hadn't beaten her to death. I had almost forgotten my own question when, "No one," Miles answered. "I was supposed to go with Rashida, and she'd even said 'yes' to me"—he had unwrapped some of the sheet, revealing a tangle of black hair, and I thought, No, it couldn't be, but it was: she was—"when you asked her and she said 'yes' to you. After all, why would she go with some skid who smoked cigarettes by the railroad tracks, a future deadbeat whose parents worked in a factory and who couldn't read Shakespeare, when she could go with someone like you?" He unfolded the remaining sheet from Rashida's body and laid her on top of it. Her eyes were swelling shut but she could still see, and all I could do was avert my gaze as she slowly pronounced my name, each syllable willed into a hurt existence, before thanking me repeatedly with her fattened lips. Although she looked barely like the girl I'd fallen in love with, it was unmistakably her. After she could speak no more, she crawled forward, reaching pathetically for my legs, her broken body a coloured patchwork of various stages of bruising, as I backed instinctively away. I was scared and I was ashamed. "You'll appreciate the irony," Miles said. "She lost her money betting on mixed martial arts." He laughed. There was something about that laugh, something devilish and deep, something true that made me lunge for him—for his despicable throat! But even that did not stop the laughter, which resounded through the gym as we fought like boys on the padded floor. And still he laughed when his hooded minions arrived and pulled me off him, swinging wildly at the air. I'd bloodied his nose but nothing more, and as they dragged me away, up the stairs and to the front door, Miles followed us with a monstrous smile. "I am the way the world is," he said. Then I was out the door and it was closed and it was dark and suburban and I was sitting on the concrete front step, staring at the golden doorknob-hand jutting profoundly through the hole in the door of a yellow brick house. I got to my feet and descended the steps to the street, all the while trying to act cool and not make a scene, because that seemed like the worst thing imaginable: drawing attention to myself. My fighting spirit had evaporated. I was a coward once more. I buried my hands in my pockets and kept my head down, walking briskly through the cold night air, but when I reached the nearest intersection I turned and started to run. On both sides houses flew past at a blur. Illuminated windows. Imagined conversations. I knew Miles wasn't behind me, but because I lacked his natural confidence I kept glancing back—yet the only thing which followed were his words, I am the way the world is, and when I stopped to catch my breath, I looked directly upon a lighted window: several silhouettes gathered around a table. Was it a family or a group of hooded servants waiting on their master? I couldn't tell, but they must have seen me too because suddenly the curtains were drawn and the illumination ended. I am the way the world is. He was wrong. I didn't want to believe it. I couldn't believe it. Miles was the anomaly—the evil—and in every other house, behind every other beautiful brick wall, there were normal people with normal needs and normal relationships. They desired normal things and they worked normal jobs, just like me. In my stillness I felt suddenly the autumn cold and took out my phone, and almost without thinking I swiped toward the Uber app— That's when I understood. I smashed the phone against the sidewalk. Faces looked out. Miles was right, and I walked home for hours that night, terrified of myself and of every house I passed in which uncounted silhouettes passed silent and unseen.
I hadn't seen Miles in fifteen years when we bumped into each other at the grocery store. Back then, we'd gone separate ways. He'd dropped out of high school to start learning a trade, and I'd gone to university. Our lives diverged and we fell out of contact. But our recognition was instant, and after a few minutes of conversation he invited me to his house. It was on the way that we caught up in broad strokes. I was married; he wasn't. I had a kid; he didn't. I worked for a corporation in a mid-level office job; he was self-employed. When I asked him what he did, he smiled a little mischievously and said, "I'm a bookie, but you could say I'm a bit of an employer myself these days." When I asked what he meant, he said I'd see soon enough. What I saw first was that his splendid two-storey yellow brick house was situated deep in the suburbs, and seemed decidedly too big for a single guy in his thirties. Nevertheless, I was impressed he could afford it. My wife and I didn't have our own house yet. "Renting or owning?" I asked as we approached the front door. "Owned," he said. "I've had a good run these last two years." Although the house had looked normal from the street, when we got closer I noticed that the front doorknob was odd. It was shaped like a human hand. Miles was carrying groceries, so he motioned for me to do the opening. "It's not locked?" I asked. He smiled just as I touched the doorknob—the warm, living doorknob!—for it didn't just look like a human hand; it was a human hand! Obediently, the front door swung open, and huddled in the triangular space between the door and the wall was a hooded, black-clad figure whose gold-painted fingers I had just touched. Without even raising its head, the figure shut the door behind us and replaced its hand into the door hole. Miles paid the figure no mind and continued to the kitchen, where another similarly dressed figure stood motionless by the light switch. Miles set down the groceries, clapped his hands and the figure turned on the lights. By now I had to ask: "What is—" "Look, I get that it may seem a little weird," he said, "but hear me out. These are people who owe me money. They're unemployed and they can't conceivably pay it back anytime soon." I followed him to the living room, where another figure turned on the lights, illuminating several pieces of human furniture. "So they're working off their debts." Miles whistled, and yet another figure appeared, this one holding two imported beers. Miles handed one to me before setting the other on his nude female coffee table, who / which reacted instinctively to the cold glass bottle by momentarily arching her / its back. "It's perfectly consensual," he added, anticipating my concerns. "And what would be the more humane alternative, breaking their knee caps?" By now my initial discomfort was turning into a chilled fear. I kept remembering how the doorknob-hand had felt in mine. Ostensibly both were human hands, but the gap in— "Dignity," I said, then repeated the word in a whisper so as not to let them hear. "Don't you think they lack dignity?" He chuckled. "See, even your natural reaction is to treat them as if they're invisible. As for dignity, they most definitely had it. Because they mortgaged it, and now they're working to earn it back. I didn't force them to gamble. Now they're house servants, that's all. Are you opposed to house servants?" I admitted I supposed I wasn't. "But this is such a strange form of it," I said, starting to stammer like in my elementary school days. By now the stress of being in this bizarre place combined with the mundane act of drinking beer was twisting me psychologically in ways I couldn't understand. I wanted suddenly out, but the most I could tactfully bring myself to do was ask about the location of the bathroom. "Just down the hall," Miles said. I stepped with dread. The bathroom was large but felt immediately cramped by the presence of two figures: one wrapped entirely in bath towels, and the other kneeling by the toilet, its hooded head down and arms up, holding a roll of toilet paper as if it were the idol of a long-forgotten god. Of course, I couldn't go in these conditions, so I waited uncomfortably for a minute, listening to the figures breathe, before washing my hands. "Are you OK?" I whispered to them. No response. "Do you need help?" Silence. I shut off the water faucet, turned— And nearly fell back against the bathroom mirror as the towel-wrapped one rubbed his / her / its moisture-absorbing material / body against my wet hands. "Please, don't," I begged quietly, escaping backward into the hall. Miles was casually drinking his beer. "Did you try to save them?" he asked. I nodded. "They don't need saving." He gestured for me to follow him, and I did, down the hall and up the stairs to a bedroom. But it wasn't Miles' bedroom. "I had it prepared just for you," he said, "in case you wanted to spend the night." The room was spacious and clean, decked out with an array of speakers, a large TV and a human night table flanking a queen-sized bed, freshly made and topped with a beautiful handmade quilt, on which rested a mattress-long body pillow, its linen case rising and falling gently with the breath of the human inside it. I wanted to back out, but Miles caught me by the shoulders. "Remember when in high school you told me I wouldn't ever amount to anything?" His grip was firm. "I'm sorry," I whispered. "Don't be sorry. You were wrong, that's all." "How long do they work for?" I asked, watching the body pillow shift slightly on the bed, desiring more than anything to change the topic. But also curious, genuinely and morbidly curious. "However long they want. Eight hours, twelve hours, twenty-four hour shifts. It's really not a bad gig, lying in a pillowcase on a comfortable bed for twice the minimum wage." He nudged me forward. "Go ahead. Try it." I didn't want to, but there was a menace in his voice, an unpredictability that made it feel safer to obey than disagree. He may not have been threatening me directly, but the threat was in the air, invisible and atomized like a perfume. I got on the bed. Miles watched my every uncomfortable move. "Like it?" "Yes," I said, "it's a very nice mattress." For a second, I imagined that the mattress was filled with people and I was lying on top of them, crushing them—but as I shifted my weight I felt the more familiar support of springs, and I could breathe again. "Try hugging the body pillow," Miles instructed me, the coolness in his voice betraying how used he'd gotten to being the boss. I didn't want to do that either, but I did it anyway, not only pervasively conscious of the army of servants Miles had amassed, which he could turn against me at any moment, but wanting desperately to feel even a fraction of the power he wielded over them. Inching closer to the body pillow and turning over onto my side before lightly placing an arm on top of— It squirmed, bony, warm and human underneath the crisp linen case. The person inside was a man. I wondered who and what he had bet on and how much he owed and whether it was really so bad what Miles was doing and if it would have been better for the man to be working two or three part-time jobs, probably labour, probably more tiring and dangerous, than being paid to be this objectified: this passive: this utterly domesticated. "Nice, right?" Miles asked. "Yes." "You can get up now." I got off the bed, smoothed my clothes and followed Miles wordlessly into the hall, down the stairs and into a spacious gym. He was so confident that not once did he look back; he knew that I was behind him. Although we didn't go inside, on the way we had passed a room outfitted with cameras, lights and a circular padded stage, and my imagination was running wild with thoughts of the recordings made in there— The gym lights flashed cold and bright. I squinted. Arranged before me was an impressive collection of weights, workout gear and exercise machines, but it was the object occupying the centre of the room whose existence sent an electric shock down my spine. A leather heavy bag hung ominously from the ceiling. Miles passed me boxing wraps for my hands, then began wrapping his own. "I know this is a lot, and I know how it feels, the pressure building up inside you right now. Believe me. Jealousy. Disgust. Maybe even anger: at me, the world, your own fucking life. When I get that way, I come down here and work those emotions out. It's not healthy holding them in. Whatever you do, you can't let them grow inside you." When he was done with his wraps, he handed me a pair of training gloves. I put them on, constantly eyeing the heavy bag, which was swinging now ever so softly from the steel ceiling mount. "Give it a shot," he said. I stood frozen in place. I knew there was someone in there. "I can't d—" "Of course you can," he said, then pulled his arm back and delivered a wicked right cross to the heavy bag. It responded with a dull thud followed by a reverberating groan. "Just like that." "It's a person," I said, my voice rising. "Which makes it even easier. Just ask the person if you can hit her." Her. "Do you want to get hit?" Miles asked the heavy bag. "Yes," a muffled voice responded. "See? She wants you to do it. If you don't do it, you're deciding for her, and how condescending would that be—for a man to tell a woman what she can and can't do." "Hit me please," the heavy bag mumbled. I made a fist and threw a light jab. Just enough to feel the bag: the padding, and the contour of the person hanging inside. "Come on, man." It made me sick to my stomach. But as I lifted my hand to my mouth to keep from retching, Miles put in a thudding left hook that lifted the bag on impact. I could hear the stifled pain within. "She gets paid by the punch," Miles said. "Ask her if she wants another." I didn't want to, but the answer came anyway: "Hit me." "One thousand dollars off her debt if you give it all you've got," Miles said. "Do it please," the bag begged. I planted my feet, exhaled—once, twice—loosened my shoulder, and put all my weight behind a looping shot that connected sickeningly with the side of the bag, my mind frantically trying to decide where I'd connected, face, ribs, hip, because I was sure I'd felt bone, as the bag bounced, the ceiling mount screeched and the woman inside moaned in pain. For a while: silence. Then, "Thank… you," she whimpered. "Nice one! What do you say, another grand?" Miles asked with a smile. "Again please." So I got her again, and again. And again. Each time connecting with everything I had; each time shaving a thousand dollars off her debt. Good deed followed by good deed—until Miles himself grabbed my arm and pulled me away, and I realized, over the pounding of my beating heart, how much anger there was in me. "Easy, easy," he repeated. After I'd calmed down, I felt the horror of it: of what I had done. I had beaten someone, a woman, and all her begging and thanking couldn't convince me it was right. Not that she was speaking now… Miles unhooked the heavy bag and laid it reverently on the floor as I took off my gloves and undid my wraps. He unzipped the bag. "Do you remember our prom?" he asked as if out of the blue. "Vaguely." "You went with Rashida Parker," he said. I did remember that. "Who did you go with?" I asked. Miles had pulled a body wrapped in a thick, bloodied sheet from the unzipped bag. He picked it up and cradled it. She looked small and fragile in his arms. For a second, I thought that maybe she was dead, but then she murmured something swollen and incomprehensible, and I knew I hadn't beaten her to death. I had almost forgotten my own question when, "No one," Miles answered. "I was supposed to go with Rashida, and she'd even said 'yes' to me"—he had unwrapped some of the sheet, revealing a tangle of black hair, and I thought, No, it couldn't be, but it was: she was—"when you asked her and she said 'yes' to you. After all, why would she go with some skid who smoked cigarettes by the railroad tracks, a future deadbeat whose parents worked in a factory and who couldn't read Shakespeare, when she could go with someone like you?" He unfolded the remaining sheet from Rashida's body and laid her on top of it. Her eyes were swelling shut but she could still see, and all I could do was avert my gaze as she slowly pronounced my name, each syllable willed into a hurt existence, before thanking me repeatedly with her fattened lips. Although she looked barely like the girl I'd fallen in love with, it was unmistakably her. After she could speak no more, she crawled forward, reaching pathetically for my legs, her broken body a coloured patchwork of various stages of bruising, as I backed instinctively away. I was scared and I was ashamed. "You'll appreciate the irony," Miles said. "She lost her money betting on mixed martial arts." He laughed. There was something about that laugh, something devilish and deep, something true that made me lunge for him—for his despicable throat! But even that did not stop the laughter, which resounded through the gym as we fought like boys on the padded floor. And still he laughed when his hooded minions arrived and pulled me off him, swinging wildly at the air. I'd bloodied his nose but nothing more, and as they dragged me away, up the stairs and to the front door, Miles followed us with a monstrous smile. "I am the way the world is," he said. Then I was out the door and it was closed and it was dark and suburban and I was sitting on the concrete front step, staring at the golden doorknob-hand jutting profoundly through the hole in the door of a yellow brick house. I got to my feet and descended the steps to the street, all the while trying to act cool and not make a scene, because that seemed like the worst thing imaginable: drawing attention to myself. My fighting spirit had evaporated. I was a coward once more. I buried my hands in my pockets and kept my head down, walking briskly through the cold night air, but when I reached the nearest intersection I turned and started to run. On both sides houses flew past at a blur. Illuminated windows. Imagined conversations. I knew Miles wasn't behind me, but because I lacked his natural confidence I kept glancing back—yet the only thing which followed were his words, I am the way the world is, and when I stopped to catch my breath, I looked directly upon a lighted window: several silhouettes gathered around a table. Was it a family or a group of hooded servants waiting on their master? I couldn't tell, but they must have seen me too because suddenly the curtains were drawn and the illumination ended. I am the way the world is. He was wrong. I didn't want to believe it. I couldn't believe it. Miles was the anomaly—the evil—and in every other house, behind every other beautiful brick wall, there were normal people with normal needs and normal relationships. They desired normal things and they worked normal jobs, just like me. In my stillness I felt suddenly the autumn cold and took out my phone, and almost without thinking I swiped toward the Uber app— That's when I understood. I smashed the phone against the sidewalk. Faces looked out. Miles was right, and I walked home for hours that night, terrified of myself and of every house I passed in which uncounted silhouettes passed silent and unseen.
I hadn't seen Miles in fifteen years when we bumped into each other at the grocery store. Back then, we'd gone separate ways. He'd dropped out of high school to start learning a trade, and I'd gone to university. Our lives diverged and we fell out of contact. But our recognition was instant, and after a few minutes of conversation he invited me to his house. It was on the way that we caught up in broad strokes. I was married; he wasn't. I had a kid; he didn't. I worked for a corporation in a mid-level office job; he was self-employed. When I asked him what he did, he smiled a little mischievously and said, "I'm a bookie, but you could say I'm a bit of an employer myself these days." When I asked what he meant, he said I'd see soon enough. What I saw first was that his splendid two-storey yellow brick house was situated deep in the suburbs, and seemed decidedly too big for a single guy in his thirties. Nevertheless, I was impressed he could afford it. My wife and I didn't have our own house yet. "Renting or owning?" I asked as we approached the front door. "Owned," he said. "I've had a good run these last two years." Although the house had looked normal from the street, when we got closer I noticed that the front doorknob was odd. It was shaped like a human hand. Miles was carrying groceries, so he motioned for me to do the opening. "It's not locked?" I asked. He smiled just as I touched the doorknob—the warm, living doorknob!—for it didn't just look like a human hand; it was a human hand! Obediently, the front door swung open, and huddled in the triangular space between the door and the wall was a hooded, black-clad figure whose gold-painted fingers I had just touched. Without even raising its head, the figure shut the door behind us and replaced its hand into the door hole. Miles paid the figure no mind and continued to the kitchen, where another similarly dressed figure stood motionless by the light switch. Miles set down the groceries, clapped his hands and the figure turned on the lights. By now I had to ask: "What is—" "Look, I get that it may seem a little weird," he said, "but hear me out. These are people who owe me money. They're unemployed and they can't conceivably pay it back anytime soon." I followed him to the living room, where another figure turned on the lights, illuminating several pieces of human furniture. "So they're working off their debts." Miles whistled, and yet another figure appeared, this one holding two imported beers. Miles handed one to me before setting the other on his nude female coffee table, who / which reacted instinctively to the cold glass bottle by momentarily arching her / its back. "It's perfectly consensual," he added, anticipating my concerns. "And what would be the more humane alternative, breaking their knee caps?" By now my initial discomfort was turning into a chilled fear. I kept remembering how the doorknob-hand had felt in mine. Ostensibly both were human hands, but the gap in— "Dignity," I said, then repeated the word in a whisper so as not to let them hear. "Don't you think they lack dignity?" He chuckled. "See, even your natural reaction is to treat them as if they're invisible. As for dignity, they most definitely had it. Because they mortgaged it, and now they're working to earn it back. I didn't force them to gamble. Now they're house servants, that's all. Are you opposed to house servants?" I admitted I supposed I wasn't. "But this is such a strange form of it," I said, starting to stammer like in my elementary school days. By now the stress of being in this bizarre place combined with the mundane act of drinking beer was twisting me psychologically in ways I couldn't understand. I wanted suddenly out, but the most I could tactfully bring myself to do was ask about the location of the bathroom. "Just down the hall," Miles said. I stepped with dread. The bathroom was large but felt immediately cramped by the presence of two figures: one wrapped entirely in bath towels, and the other kneeling by the toilet, its hooded head down and arms up, holding a roll of toilet paper as if it were the idol of a long-forgotten god. Of course, I couldn't go in these conditions, so I waited uncomfortably for a minute, listening to the figures breathe, before washing my hands. "Are you OK?" I whispered to them. No response. "Do you need help?" Silence. I shut off the water faucet, turned— And nearly fell back against the bathroom mirror as the towel-wrapped one rubbed his / her / its moisture-absorbing material / body against my wet hands. "Please, don't," I begged quietly, escaping backward into the hall. Miles was casually drinking his beer. "Did you try to save them?" he asked. I nodded. "They don't need saving." He gestured for me to follow him, and I did, down the hall and up the stairs to a bedroom. But it wasn't Miles' bedroom. "I had it prepared just for you," he said, "in case you wanted to spend the night." The room was spacious and clean, decked out with an array of speakers, a large TV and a human night table flanking a queen-sized bed, freshly made and topped with a beautiful handmade quilt, on which rested a mattress-long body pillow, its linen case rising and falling gently with the breath of the human inside it. I wanted to back out, but Miles caught me by the shoulders. "Remember when in high school you told me I wouldn't ever amount to anything?" His grip was firm. "I'm sorry," I whispered. "Don't be sorry. You were wrong, that's all." "How long do they work for?" I asked, watching the body pillow shift slightly on the bed, desiring more than anything to change the topic. But also curious, genuinely and morbidly curious. "However long they want. Eight hours, twelve hours, twenty-four hour shifts. It's really not a bad gig, lying in a pillowcase on a comfortable bed for twice the minimum wage." He nudged me forward. "Go ahead. Try it." I didn't want to, but there was a menace in his voice, an unpredictability that made it feel safer to obey than disagree. He may not have been threatening me directly, but the threat was in the air, invisible and atomized like a perfume. I got on the bed. Miles watched my every uncomfortable move. "Like it?" "Yes," I said, "it's a very nice mattress." For a second, I imagined that the mattress was filled with people and I was lying on top of them, crushing them—but as I shifted my weight I felt the more familiar support of springs, and I could breathe again. "Try hugging the body pillow," Miles instructed me, the coolness in his voice betraying how used he'd gotten to being the boss. I didn't want to do that either, but I did it anyway, not only pervasively conscious of the army of servants Miles had amassed, which he could turn against me at any moment, but wanting desperately to feel even a fraction of the power he wielded over them. Inching closer to the body pillow and turning over onto my side before lightly placing an arm on top of— It squirmed, bony, warm and human underneath the crisp linen case. The person inside was a man. I wondered who and what he had bet on and how much he owed and whether it was really so bad what Miles was doing and if it would have been better for the man to be working two or three part-time jobs, probably labour, probably more tiring and dangerous, than being paid to be this objectified: this passive: this utterly domesticated. "Nice, right?" Miles asked. "Yes." "You can get up now." I got off the bed, smoothed my clothes and followed Miles wordlessly into the hall, down the stairs and into a spacious gym. He was so confident that not once did he look back; he knew that I was behind him. Although we didn't go inside, on the way we had passed a room outfitted with cameras, lights and a circular padded stage, and my imagination was running wild with thoughts of the recordings made in there— The gym lights flashed cold and bright. I squinted. Arranged before me was an impressive collection of weights, workout gear and exercise machines, but it was the object occupying the centre of the room whose existence sent an electric shock down my spine. A leather heavy bag hung ominously from the ceiling. Miles passed me boxing wraps for my hands, then began wrapping his own. "I know this is a lot, and I know how it feels, the pressure building up inside you right now. Believe me. Jealousy. Disgust. Maybe even anger: at me, the world, your own fucking life. When I get that way, I come down here and work those emotions out. It's not healthy holding them in. Whatever you do, you can't let them grow inside you." When he was done with his wraps, he handed me a pair of training gloves. I put them on, constantly eyeing the heavy bag, which was swinging now ever so softly from the steel ceiling mount. "Give it a shot," he said. I stood frozen in place. I knew there was someone in there. "I can't d—" "Of course you can," he said, then pulled his arm back and delivered a wicked right cross to the heavy bag. It responded with a dull thud followed by a reverberating groan. "Just like that." "It's a person," I said, my voice rising. "Which makes it even easier. Just ask the person if you can hit her." Her. "Do you want to get hit?" Miles asked the heavy bag. "Yes," a muffled voice responded. "See? She wants you to do it. If you don't do it, you're deciding for her, and how condescending would that be—for a man to tell a woman what she can and can't do." "Hit me please," the heavy bag mumbled. I made a fist and threw a light jab. Just enough to feel the bag: the padding, and the contour of the person hanging inside. "Come on, man." It made me sick to my stomach. But as I lifted my hand to my mouth to keep from retching, Miles put in a thudding left hook that lifted the bag on impact. I could hear the stifled pain within. "She gets paid by the punch," Miles said. "Ask her if she wants another." I didn't want to, but the answer came anyway: "Hit me." "One thousand dollars off her debt if you give it all you've got," Miles said. "Do it please," the bag begged. I planted my feet, exhaled—once, twice—loosened my shoulder, and put all my weight behind a looping shot that connected sickeningly with the side of the bag, my mind frantically trying to decide where I'd connected, face, ribs, hip, because I was sure I'd felt bone, as the bag bounced, the ceiling mount screeched and the woman inside moaned in pain. For a while: silence. Then, "Thank… you," she whimpered. "Nice one! What do you say, another grand?" Miles asked with a smile. "Again please." So I got her again, and again. And again. Each time connecting with everything I had; each time shaving a thousand dollars off her debt. Good deed followed by good deed—until Miles himself grabbed my arm and pulled me away, and I realized, over the pounding of my beating heart, how much anger there was in me. "Easy, easy," he repeated. After I'd calmed down, I felt the horror of it: of what I had done. I had beaten someone, a woman, and all her begging and thanking couldn't convince me it was right. Not that she was speaking now… Miles unhooked the heavy bag and laid it reverently on the floor as I took off my gloves and undid my wraps. He unzipped the bag. "Do you remember our prom?" he asked as if out of the blue. "Vaguely." "You went with Rashida Parker," he said. I did remember that. "Who did you go with?" I asked. Miles had pulled a body wrapped in a thick, bloodied sheet from the unzipped bag. He picked it up and cradled it. She looked small and fragile in his arms. For a second, I thought that maybe she was dead, but then she murmured something swollen and incomprehensible, and I knew I hadn't beaten her to death. I had almost forgotten my own question when, "No one," Miles answered. "I was supposed to go with Rashida, and she'd even said 'yes' to me"—he had unwrapped some of the sheet, revealing a tangle of black hair, and I thought, No, it couldn't be, but it was: she was—"when you asked her and she said 'yes' to you. After all, why would she go with some skid who smoked cigarettes by the railroad tracks, a future deadbeat whose parents worked in a factory and who couldn't read Shakespeare, when she could go with someone like you?" He unfolded the remaining sheet from Rashida's body and laid her on top of it. Her eyes were swelling shut but she could still see, and all I could do was avert my gaze as she slowly pronounced my name, each syllable willed into a hurt existence, before thanking me repeatedly with her fattened lips. Although she looked barely like the girl I'd fallen in love with, it was unmistakably her. After she could speak no more, she crawled forward, reaching pathetically for my legs, her broken body a coloured patchwork of various stages of bruising, as I backed instinctively away. I was scared and I was ashamed. "You'll appreciate the irony," Miles said. "She lost her money betting on mixed martial arts." He laughed. There was something about that laugh, something devilish and deep, something true that made me lunge for him—for his despicable throat! But even that did not stop the laughter, which resounded through the gym as we fought like boys on the padded floor. And still he laughed when his hooded minions arrived and pulled me off him, swinging wildly at the air. I'd bloodied his nose but nothing more, and as they dragged me away, up the stairs and to the front door, Miles followed us with a monstrous smile. "I am the way the world is," he said. Then I was out the door and it was closed and it was dark and suburban and I was sitting on the concrete front step, staring at the golden doorknob-hand jutting profoundly through the hole in the door of a yellow brick house. I got to my feet and descended the steps to the street, all the while trying to act cool and not make a scene, because that seemed like the worst thing imaginable: drawing attention to myself. My fighting spirit had evaporated. I was a coward once more. I buried my hands in my pockets and kept my head down, walking briskly through the cold night air, but when I reached the nearest intersection I turned and started to run. On both sides houses flew past at a blur. Illuminated windows. Imagined conversations. I knew Miles wasn't behind me, but because I lacked his natural confidence I kept glancing back—yet the only thing which followed were his words, I am the way the world is, and when I stopped to catch my breath, I looked directly upon a lighted window: several silhouettes gathered around a table. Was it a family or a group of hooded servants waiting on their master? I couldn't tell, but they must have seen me too because suddenly the curtains were drawn and the illumination ended. I am the way the world is. He was wrong. I didn't want to believe it. I couldn't believe it. Miles was the anomaly—the evil—and in every other house, behind every other beautiful brick wall, there were normal people with normal needs and normal relationships. They desired normal things and they worked normal jobs, just like me. In my stillness I felt suddenly the autumn cold and took out my phone, and almost without thinking I swiped toward the Uber app— That's when I understood. I smashed the phone against the sidewalk. Faces looked out. Miles was right, and I walked home for hours that night, terrified of myself and of every house I passed in which uncounted silhouettes passed silent and unseen.
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