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Let’s talk theme.

I may have mentioned in a previous rant or editorial that one of the first books my father ever suggested I read was “Alas, Bablyon” by Pat Frank. It was published during the height of the Cold War and dealt with the end of the world through nuclear war. At the time, it was a very real threat and the book hit home for many people. If you haven’t read the book, I advise you put it on your reading list. It’s not one to miss.

The point with “Alas, Bablyon” isn’t so much the nuclear war angle, but its apocalyptic theme. They’re fucking popular because something in them speaks to a reader. I know why the theme speaks to me; I’m sure it speaks to you for very different reasons. Mostly, though, great apocalyptic stories deal, not with the disaster, but with the survivors. The disaster is a vehicle that represents the era of the pose. This is why most people my age haven’t heard or read “Alas Babylon”; we’re not afraid Russia is going to bomb us with nukes. I have a slight worry a terrorist will detonate one in a populated area--which would suck--it won’t end the world on a national (or global) scale.

So what scares me now?

Those things that are more probable in my lifetime: Government diseases getting out of hand (The Stand), environmental shifts (The Day After Tomorrow), animal diseases we can’t cure (bird flu, swine flu, AIDs). I know there’s also a subset of people who fear the wrath of God and Judgment Day. I’m not one of those people (as I’ve now survived not one, or two, not even three, but four Judgment Days) but that doesn’t mean it’s not a very real fear for others. Or what about “Children of Men” by P.D. James? There’s an interesting, scientific end of world scenario.

Disease takes on two of the most worrisome slots of apocalyptic themes. Some movies and books deal with the disease factor in a conventional way by just fucking people up and killing them. I reference “Blindness”, “Contagion”, or “The Stand”, despite its spiritual/religious themes.

But the really interesting ones go one step further.

And this is where the zombies enter. Either Romero’s zombies (which have never been given an origin that I know of) or Danny Boyle’s ragers from “28 Days Later”.

And now, before I go further and people start trying to climb up my ass about things, I have to explain (in regards to zombies) I’m a big fan of zombie movies. I have read very little zombie literature; Max Brooks is still sitting in the pile of books I have yet to read, as is Jonathan Maberry. But remember, the zombies aren’t the most important thing here.

It’s the theme.

And that’s where we find ourselves with Issue Ten. All but one of the stories in this issue of TGH are apocalyptic. I didn’t plan it that way; it just happened. But damn, I’m glad it did. I like this issue. And it’s full, which means I’m running out of space for this editorial in a hurry.

Our lead story is “Highwater” by Daniel LeMoal. No zombies here, but something just as alien and unimaginable as the dead trying to make a meal out of you. Hang on to your hats and find a lofty perch with Karen and Jai as they try to survive the one thing we all need.

Returning once again to the pages of Title Goes Here: is Paul Anderson with his story, “Doubting Faith”. We’re once again transported to Paul’s zombie end of times. Like the other stories you’ve read here, the zombies aren’t the focus; the people are. That’s why his stories are so damn good! As the title suggests, Lisa is losing her faith, surrounded by the living dead and the dead living.

Next up is “Borders of Gray” by Valentine Rae. We delve into the life of a prisoner, rotting, and remembering. Valentine moves us away from the fantastic and into a very real world, built of four walls and bugs, gruel and misery. It’s more frightening because of its truth, not in spite of it.

What follows are a pair of flash fiction pieces by Geoffrey Smagacz. The first is “You Will Know Happiness”, followed by “The World is Too Much With Us” and these two pack a beautiful, apocalyptic punch. Read. Weep.

As you recall, I did say one story wasn’t apocalyptic. That is “As Cy Lay Dying” by Charles Austin Muir. For those readers who like our usual twisty, mindfuck stories, this one’s for you. Join Cy on the road trip of a lifetime and listen, learn what it means to be family.

We end this issue of TGH with a bookend of sorts. We return to the apocalypse with zombies, but from a different point of view. If I ever start wanting to eat my wife (for dinner, people! Minds out of the gutter!), I’ll turn to “Pork Chops” by R.P. Geffert for answers.

I hope you enjoy the issue. I am, as you can tell, a genre bitch. Won’t you be, too? You won’t regret it. And if you do, it won’t be for long; the end of the world is never that far from our thoughts.

Just ask Harold.

*** C. Bryan Brown the Genre Bitch is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Title Goes Here: Magazine, as well as a published fiction

The Rant:

By Inanna Gabriel

All my shows went on hiatus. That's where it started. Everything I regularly watch on television simultaneously went away, either at the end of its season, or on that strange midseason break that's becoming the norm in American programming. Conveniently, this coincided perfectly with my finally obtaining a decent streaming device, so I can at last watch Netflix on my TV like a civilized human being.

The first thing I dove into with my newfound Netflix access was a show I'd started on DVD but only gotten a few episodes into, Being Human. For those not familiar, Being Human is a seriously excellent UK television show about a vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost living in a house together in Bristol, trying to make a go at having a normal life among the human population. It goes about as well as you might imagine. It's a truly wonderful show, one of my very favorites ever. I highly, highly recommend it.

Here's where the rant comes in.

If you're a reader in the U.S., the title "Being Human" may be familiar to you. This is because there's a show on SyFy by the same name. The name is the same because it's the same show. In essence.

The characters all have different names, and slightly different lives and jobs. The plotlines have been reworked in some places, and expanded upon due to a typical American season being 20+ episodes while the original show's seasons are only 8 episodes. But it is, basically, the same show.

My question is: Why???? I have since managed to watch the American version of Being Human, and I won't claim it's not a decent show. I'll probably continue to watch it when Season Two rolls around. But I just can't, for the life of me, fathom why we need an American version at all. Why can't people just watch the British show and be happy?

Picture this scenario:

John Doe, a British screenwriter rings up Joe Schmoe, a producer for a local studio. "I just saw the most amazing film!" John says.

"Yeah?" says Joe, his attention effectively gained. "What was that?"

"Oh, it was excellent. There was this cyborg assassin from the future, sent back in time to kill this guy's mom. Guess down the line, he causes a lot of trouble, so they decided to handle the problem completely by preventing him from ever being born."

"That sounds great!" says Joe.

"Yeah," John agrees. "I'm working on an adaptation of the screenplay. Interested in collaborating? There really should be a British version of this film, so people in the UK can see it, too!"

"That sounds great! Send me your first draft as soon as it's ready!" agrees Joe, already counting the box office dollars in his head.

So, next question: How stupid does that sound? Can you honestly fathom the need for a British remake of The Terminator, just to make it accessible to the British population? What, is there a language barrier?

Of course not. They watch the American version of The Terminator in the UK, just like we do here.

Recent and current cable shows aren't limited to Being Human, either. Shameless, which is just about to start its second season on Showtime, is a UK remake, as was Queer as Folk.

This has been going on for a really long time. Looking just at television, I think a lot of Americans are aware that Three's Company was a remake of a British show called Man About the House. But did you know that both of the show's spinoffs, The Ropers and Three's a Crowd were also done in the UK first?

Sticking with the shows of my childhood, how about All in the Family and Sanford and Son? No, really!

Did you know they've tried to remake Fawlty Towers three separate times?

Can't imagine why that failed...

Why do we feel the need to do this in the US? It doesn't go both ways. If they like a US show in the UK, then they... wait for it... watch it!

Now, I'm not going to go into my theories on why Americans feel the need to take other peoples' ideas and make them their own. I'm not going to expound on my observations regarding the types of things we change when remaking a show, things like income, commercialism, and a general sterilization of everything. That would start a whole new rant, and this issue is already nearing the page max.

I just want to say, to all of our British readers out there, that it's not all of us. Not all Americans are xenophobes. Not all of us are too lazy to stretch our minds a bit to try to work through an unfamiliar colloquialism or to embrace a different culture's way of life.

In fact, some of us welcome it. Some of us celebrate the opportunity to learn about the world via rich characters and entertaining story. Some of us recognize television shows and movies from other cultures as windows into worlds we otherwise don't get to experience, and consider ourselves lucky for the chance to peek through those windows.

If you're an American who has resisted, or just never considered, checking out the original versions of the movies and television shows the US has remade, I highly recommend giving it a try. Find BBC America on your local cable channel, or give Netflix a browse.

And, while I didn't go into it in this particular rant, while you're at it, don't stop at the British shows and movies. You're reading this, so I know you know how--give the subtitles a chance.

We don't typically tie the Rant into the magazine itself, but I'm going to here. One of the things I personally love about TGH, something that I think makes it stand out among its peers in the small press, is that we do embrace this more worldly philosophy. We're an American-based magazine, and do publish a number of American authors. But we publish just as many from Britain, Australia, and Canada. We've published authors who live in India and Slovenia. We don't dismiss a submission to TGH because it seems foreign to us. If it's a well-written story with a tight plot and makes a good point, then we publish it. Based on questions we've received, people can't tell what country we're based in just from reading the stories in our magazine, and that's exactly the way we want it.

***Inanna Gabriel is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Title Goes Here:, as well as a published fiction writer. She also does recognize the irony in this "love all cultures" rant coming from the Co-Owner of Misanthrope Press.

:Highwater

By Daniel LeMoal

June 30

I told many lies to my students during my 14-year career as an English teacher at Rosewater High School:

"You can be a doctor, lawyer, or anything you want if you put your mind to it. No one can end your dreams except you."

"People, by nature, are good."

"I remember each and every student I've ever taught; maybe not the names, but always the faces."

Some years required a few more lies than others. It had been a particularly brutal year at Rosewater. Students violated my car on a daily basis, while my classes had the tense atmosphere of a banana republic on the brink of revolt. When it came to breaking through that wall of apathy, drugs, alcohol, video games and various by-products of poor parenting, literature failed me.

And so, on the last day of school, I told my students one last lie:

"See you in September."

July 1

Instead of escaping to the nearest beach, Ian and I set to work on our major project of the summer: a backyard sundeck. It was the first of several renovations we had planned for our recently purchased house, a 114-year-old bay-and-gable that we couldn't really afford.

To offset the expenses, we rented out a separate suite on the third floor. Ian always joked that Rory came with the house when we bought it; she was already a tenant under the previous owner. I wasn't crazy about the arrangement at first, but Rory was a good kid who had just finished her second year of fine arts at university. We all got on famously.

Rory was kind enough to pitch in with the deck project. I enlisted another Rosewater High refugee, Jai Patel, to help as well. Jai was a history teacher who had endured an equally demoralizing school year.

"Are you really done?" Jai asked me, after Ian and Rory ran away to chase an ice cream truck. "With teaching, I mean."

"You know how Celine Dion and all of those other divas are always wailing about how 'the children are the future' and all of that crap?" I said. "Well, I have seen the future... and we are doomed. So yes, I'm done."

"So be it," Jai said, shaking his head. "Although at some point, you might find the courtesy to tell your husband."

Jai left me standing alone after that, while I wondered how I was going to lie my way out of this one.

:

By noon, the midday heat had driven us all into the shade; we left the lumber and power tools out to burn in the sun. It was around this time that we noticed a foul odour hanging in the air.

"Ian... either your deodorant has failed or the well's acting up," I said, trying not to breathe through my nose.

We all went to the back corner of the yard and pulled the wooden cover off the ages-old well. Why the previous tenants hadn't filled it in was beyond me; the entire city's water supply had been piped in from Birtle for the last 80 years.

"Definitely the well," Rory gagged, as we peered at our reflections in the water below. The surface was covered in a thick skin that resembled wet ink.

"The water table must be up quite a bit," I said. "I just hope it's not going to be as wet as last summer."

"I wouldn't worry about it," Ian said, as we put the lid back on the well. "They're calling for a drought this year."

If you were one of my students, I would tell you that by sharing this anecdote, I am using a well-worn literary device known as ironic foreshadowing. Of course, that would be another lie. I'm telling you this because it is one of the last memories I have of my husband.

July 3

When I woke up on Monday morning, I could hear Ian downstairs, rushing through his pre-work routine. We were both hung over; by the time Jai left the previous evening, the sundeck had been christened several dozen times. Only poor Ian didn't have the luxury of being a teacher or university student; he was out the door at the crack of dawn, headed downtown for his office job as a payroll administrator.

Jai and I had agreed to start staining the deck by 10:30 a.m. While I waited for Jai to arrive, I went to retrieve my brushes from the basement. I opened the door that led downstairs and was faced with a shimmering, rectangular pool of black water; most of the staircase had already disappeared. A foetid odour invaded my nostrils and settled on the back of my tongue.

"Deck's going to have to wait," a voice said behind me; it was Jai, letting himself in the back door. "My basement's completely flooded. Toasted the electrical too... you have a pump I can borrow?"

"No shit," I fumed, reopening the basement door. Jai looked at the new swimming pool and laughed, which made me even angrier. "I don't know how you're able to stay so calm about this."

"What are we going to do about it now?" Jai said with a shrug. "Did you take a good whiff? That's obviously sewage. The whole neighbourhood is probably backed up."

Our portable pump and hoses were in the basement, of course, sunk under 12 feet of water. As I cursed to myself, Rory came into the kitchen with a basket of laundry. Jai and I watched her walk past and head for the basement. She hollered and ran back into the kitchen.

"Thanks for warning me," she said, jabbing me in the ribs. "I nearly walked the plank."

I was just about to pick up my cell phone when it rang. It was Ian, talking fast.

"Karen," he said. "Is the house flooded?"

"That's a good guess," I told him, trying not to sound too demoralized. "I think it's the whole neighbourhood. Is it on the news?"

"Don't touch the water," he said. "The whole downtown is flooded..."

"What?"

"I'm looking down at Main Street right now," Ian said; if I didn't know better, it sounded like he was about to cry. "And there are lots of people floating in the water. Nobody's moving. It just came up from nowhere, in a few minutes... it must be poisonous or something..."

I didn't immediately panic. Ian's office was stacked in the middle of a 40-storey tower. Then Jai spoke, as he peered downstairs.

"Karen, it's coming up again."

"Don't let them touch it," Ian said.

"Get away from the water, Jai," I said. "Ian said it's toxic. People are getting sick downtown."

"People are dead, Karen," Ian corrected.

"I'm serious," I said to Jai. "Don't get any on you."

"Well move, then," Jai said, jumping into the kitchen. "It's coming in here."

As Jai said this, the black water reached the kitchen floor, creating a Rorschach pattern on the white lino-leum. Jai shoved me into the hallway and up the stairway, while Rory was already hovering several steps above us. The black water bubbled slightly as it swept into the hall. Thankfully, the water stopped fizzing and halted its ascent at the first stair.

Rory peered through the window on the second floor landing. She immediately dropped her clothesbasket. I looked out the window from behind her and saw that the lawns, sidewalks and streets were now hidden under the same dark water.

"Karen," I heard a voice say; Ian was still on the phone. "What's happening over there?"

"The whole neighbourhood's under at least a foot of water," I said. "We're marooned on the second floor."

"Just stay there," Ian said. "I'm going to go. I should save my cell phone battery in case the land lines go out."

"All right," I said, failing to find any words of comfort. Down below, I could hear our microwave issuing that brief electronic bleat it always made when the power went out. "Well, there goes the power."

"I'll find a way to get back home. Just stay with Rory and Jai until things get sorted out."

With that, I said goodbye to my husband and hung up.

:

At first, I was really only worried about our house; Ian was the one who always read the fine print on all of the paperwork, such as insurance policies. I had no idea if we were even covered in an event like this.

Rory let Jai and I make ourselves at home in her third floor unit. It was littered with paintings, sculptures and drawings, all in varying stages of completion.

I wandered out to the small balcony that Rory used regularly for reading. The scene below was surprisingly quiet; most of the neighbours were likely still at work, wondering how they were going to get back home.

The silence was broken by a crash of waves and the hum of a car's engine. A neighbour who lived just three doors down from us was returning home. I tried to remember his name; he and his wife had come over to introduce themselves when we first moved in. He may have been a youth worker of some sort.

It wasn't until his car door opened that I remembered Ian's warning.

"DON'T TOUCH THE WATER!" I yelled; the water gave my voice a discordant echo. "STAY IN YOUR CAR!"

My neighbour stepped out of his vehicle and turned to face me. Although the water barely reached his ankles, his legs buckled immediately.

"GET BACK IN YOUR CAR!" Jai yelled from behind me; by this point, it was already too late. The man fell to his knees and fainted face-first into the water. Within seconds, an epileptic jolt passed through his body; he rolled on his back and began to scream.

"Oh my God," Rory said, being the first to notice the change. The man's skin had turned a ghastly white colour; his whole body swelled rapidly, so much that it popped the buttons of his dress shirt. My neighbour's screams were soon strangled out by his severely swollen throat, which gave his head the appearance of a pale pumpkin. In less than a minute, he stopped moving entirely.

"He looks like he's been dead for a week," Jai said, his voice fluttering.

I thought at that moment about all of the kids who were stuck in summer school at Rosewater. The building was never pretty to look at, a sprawling mess that was all one-storey high.

:

I have to give Jai credit for immediately taking the long view; Rory and I were still in shock from the death of my neighbour.

"Karen, we should get whatever food we can out of the kitchen," he said. "In case the water rises again."

"What?" I said, feeling inexplicably angry towards Jai.

"We might have to stay up here for a while," he said. "Especially if this is all over the city."

"How are we going to even get to the kitchen?" I said.

"We'll bust through the wall on the stairs, keep to the counters," Jai said. "I'll fix your wall later, Karen. I promise."

Perhaps sensing my despair over the house, Jai was kind enough to let me choose the point of entry; and so, wielding one of Rory's statues--a multi-breasted Buddha--I smashed a sizeable hole through the drywall. The hole opened directly over the stove. I recovered whatever food I could get my hands on, raiding the upper levels of the cupboards, pantry and fridge.

"Grab everything you can... bowls, cutlery... and don't forget the can opener," Jai said, as he handed supplies to Rory. We crammed whatever perishables we could into Rory's tiny refrigerator; although the power was out, we hoped that it could still act as a cooler for a day or so.

"Not much for liquids," Jai said, as he took a grim inventory of our rations.

Rory lit up slightly: "You do know that the water truck came today, right?"

Sure enough, I looked over the edge of the balcony and saw ten full cooler jugs of water parked on front porch.

"Well, we could just put another hole in the wall," Jai said.

"I was afraid you were going to say that," I fumed. The busty Buddha was deployed once again, smashing through the other wall in the stairway. This hole opened up over a leather love seat, a gift from Ian's parents. The living room was raised a step higher than the back portion of the house, meaning that the black water was just lapping at the hallway entrance.

Jai volunteered to lug the bottles up the stairs, while Rory and I retrieved the containers from the porch. We were almost done when Rory stopped to stare at my dead neighbour.

"Don't look at him, Rory," I told her. "He's far away from all of this now."

This was the sort of bullshit I would have said to one of my students. The fact was, I couldn't help but stare as well. Feeling the beginnings of nausea, I gripped the porch railing and diverted my eyes to the water below. It was impossible to see anything beneath the surface; those depths could have been bottomless.

Suddenly, the surface of the water changed: it swelled and began to bubble.

"Get back up here!" Jai yelled from the stairs. "It's coming up again!"

By the time Rory and I reached the hole in the wall, the water was already rolling across the floor, erasing our beloved Indian carpet from existence.

From the second floor landing, we watched in disbelief as the water level rapidly ascended. In minutes, it was pouring through the two holes we made in the stairwell. Somewhere in the distance, I could hear a woman yelling profanities.

"Stop, already," Jai said, as though placating the rising tide. "That's enough. Time for a rest."

As if on command, the water halted midway up the stairs.

"Nice work, Moses," Rory said, patting Jai on the head. I appreciated the attempt at levity, but with one look at her horrified face, I knew it was all for show.

:

The sun was setting; the streets outside, usually so noisy in the summer, were completely silent. I sat on our bed, staring at the battery icon on my cellular phone. There was half a charge left. I had tried calling Ian every half hour for the entire afternoon and into the early evening, but failed to get an answer. Either his phone was turned off, or he was "out of the service area." I left the phone on, in case he tried to call.

Jai came into the bedroom and resumed an argument that we'd been having over the past few hours.

"Stop being an asshole and come upstairs," he said.

"Please Jai," I said. "I just want to sleep in my own bed."

"You saw how quickly it came up," he said.

"So how much more can there be?" I said. "Let's try to think about this rationally. If it's sewage, or some kind of dam break or spill or whatever, it's not going to keep rising arbitrarily. Not without rain."

"Karen, it's been rising arbitrarily all day," Jai said, his voice cracking with frustration.

"Look, just go upstairs and grab a couch. I'm not going to bed for a while anyways. I'll keep an eye on things."

Jai sighed loudly and left the room, his heavy footsteps creaking on the stairs up to Rory's unit. I lit a decorative lantern and placed it on the floor in the hallway.

In my exhausted state, I managed to fall into a fitful sleep for close to an hour. When I awoke, the lantern was out; only faint candlelight shone down from Rory's apartment. As I walked into the hallway, I felt an odd compulsion to look down the stairs. I curled my toes around the top step and felt the water's presence below, as it lapped against the walls of the house. A sickly humidity hung in the air, so thick that it felt like the water was inches away from my face.

"Karen?" a voice said, from the end of the hall. Rory came out of the shadows. "You should sleep upstairs with us... I don't think it's safe down here."

I turned away from the water and followed her upstairs.

:

It was still night when I heard Jai's voice.

"You owe Rory and me a big steak dinner when we get out of this," Jai said, kicking my mattress. I had set up camp in the middle of Rory's living room, close to the couch where Jai had slept. "Come take a look."

The water was rippling against the first stair up to Rory's unit, having silently taken the second floor sometime over the previous hour.

"Fuck," I muttered. "Where's it all coming from?"

"No theories at the present time, my friend," Jai said.

"Try calling somebody again," Rory said, emerging from her bedroom. "Someone has to know what's happening."

No one had any luck so far with a cell phone, but Jai gave it another shot.

"I'll call my brother," Jai said, flipping open his phone. "It'll be a miracle if he answers... frat boy..."

Jai dialed and lit up with surprise after a few seconds.

"Sam!" Jai said. "I can't believe you're actually home... is there anything on TV about us?"

A look of confusion crossed Jai's face.

"No, not about you, about us... talk louder, Sam, I can't hear you..." Jai continued; he looked as though he had just been punched in the stomach. Jai chose to continue the conversation in the bedroom. When he reemerged a few minutes later, I assumed that someone had died.

"Jai," I said. "What is it?"

"It was hard to tell what he was saying... the reception was bad..." he said, dropping his head.

"Well, what did Sam say?"

"He said it was everywhere."

:

Jai was extraordinarily generous with volunteering his phone, knowing that I wanted to keep my line clear for Ian. In the next twenty minutes, he made close to two-dozen calls. He wasn't able to reach a single soul, including Sam.

"It can't be everywhere," Rory said.

"Sam caught the news before the power went, but there wasn't much information. It all happened so fast," Jai said. "We have to face facts. Even if this isn't everywhere, we know that it's widespread, or at least as far away as Chicago. The chances of the army or Red Cross getting here in any short amount of time are slim. They are going to be inundated."

"Surely they'll mobilize somebody," I said.

"We can't bank on that," Jai said. "We need to conserve food and water and find a way to get out of here."

We didn't have much to say after that. Everyone was tired. I went back to my makeshift bed and hid under the covers, dialing Ian's number over and over.

July 4

The house felt like a paddleboat now, grounded amidst a filthy river. I stood on Rory's balcony and tried to figure out if anyone was still alive in my neighbourhood. The bungalows were almost totally submerged, with only the highest peaks of their roofs visible. There were several two-storey homes, as well as a pair of three storey homes that were carbon copies of my house, but there was no movement.

One of the other three-storeys was directly across the street; an elderly couple lived there, Hugh and Clarrie Gudmandson. I surveyed their home for signs of life, even yelling across the street a few times. Eventually, I noticed two bodies pressing up against a second floor window. They were in similar condition to my young neighbour: horrifically bloated skin that almost glowed in the water. Then I noticed that one body was much smaller than the other; I remembered that Hugh and Clarrie were grandparents.

Despite the horror of it all, my eyes kept returning to that window. There was no one to place a sheet over the dead now, no one to preserve the sanity of the living.

The so-called "higher ground" of our neighbourhood was a four-storey apartment block that lay at the end of our street. We were only four houses down from the building, but it could have been an ocean away.

"Kindly step aside, Mrs. Lee," Jai said from behind me, clad in rubber dishwashing gloves. He stepped onto our balcony with a homemade well bucket, built from a margarine container and a length of drapery chord.

"What are you doing?" I said. "Just leave it alone. A drop could be all that it takes."

"That's why I am going to be very... careful," Jai continued, tossing the container off the balcony. Once he managed to retrieve a small volume of the black liquid, we stared down at the noxious brew in silence.

Using an eyedropper scavenged from Rory's medicine cabinet, Jai put a droplet of the liquid on one of her ferns.

"What are you hoping to accomplish with all of this?" Rory asked Jai. "That plant has followed me around since I was 16."

"A small, rather unscientific test," Jai said. "Maybe we'll get a better idea of what we're up against."

:

"Hey... it's coming up again."

Rory had taken the night shift, although nobody was sleeping much. We joined her at the top of the stairs and peered into the darkness with what little candlelight we had. All we could see was a moving shadow at the bottom of the stairs; the water hissed ever so slightly as it rose.

"What are we going to do if it comes up here?" Rory said, her voice bordering on panic.

"Head like mad for the balcony, climb up to the roof," Jai said.

"Then what?" she replied. Neither Jai nor I had an answer.

It felt like we were watching the water for hours, but it really must have taken only a few minutes for it to swallow up five stairs. Thank-fully, the hissing subsided; soon, all we could hear was the now-familiar creaking of the house.

Rory retired to her bedroom, leaving Jai and I to take over the watch. We put the water jugs and a few sealed containers of food on the balcony, just in case the water rose to the third floor.

"Are we even going to be able to toss this up on the roof when we need to?" I asked Jai.

Jai rubbed his eyes and sighed: "I suppose we should keep a store up there just in case. Maybe we can build a platform inside the chimney stack."

That task would have to wait until the morning. It was a cloudy night and everything beyond the balcony was in complete darkness.

"Karen, we need to come up with an escape plan," Jai whispered. "We have to be ready if we lose the house."

July 5

We sat on the living room floor, watching as Jai doodled on one of Rory's oversized drawing pads.

"It won't be much for traveling in," Jai said. "We have to think of it as more of a life raft."

"I don't know Jai. A wardrobe?" I said.

"Sure. We can use the water cooler jugs as pontoons," Jai said. "Come on, Karen. Remember the cardboard boat race at Rosewater?"

"You mean the one where our boat stayed afloat for 43 seconds?" I said.

"Look, all we had then was some cardboard, garbage bags and duct tape," Jai said. "Rory's got a virtual artist's emporium here. Contact cement, canvas, nails, frames... we could build a sailboat if we wanted to."

"And Dad told me that a Fine Arts degree would get me nowhere," Rory said, smiling for the first time in days.

After measuring to make sure the wardrobe would fit through the balcony doors once we were finished, we set to work. Most of the day involved stripping the wardrobe and water-proofing as best we could. All we had for that were two of Rory's raincoats and her shower curtain, which we cemented along the bottom of our boat.

The pontoons would be tricky. Ideally, we would have empty water bottles running along each side of the raft. But this would mean that we would have to wait until most of our water was gone for the vessel to be functional. We could only find so many pots, pans and bowls to store water in, and none of us trusted the drain plug in the bathtub. The best we could manage on short notice would be a water bottle in each corner of the raft. Likely not enough, but nobody knew for sure.

In the last few hours of daylight, Jai retired to his "mobile lab" on Rory's desk. This consisted of several cups of the black water, each soaking pieces of wood, rubber, plastic and fabric. Jai stared at this experiment intently.

"Do you really think this thing is going to float?" Rory asked Jai.

"Can't say for sure," Jai mumbled. "But it beats swimming."

July 6

It was sometime in the afternoon when I first heard Kevin Collier shouting my name. I was on the balcony, taking a break from the raft project.

"MRS. LEE!"

The voice wasn't far away; I looked across the street and saw a figure on the third floor balcony of the apartment block. He was shirtless and waving a bed sheet.

"HELLO!" I shouted, waving wildly with both arms. I can't tell you how grateful I was to hear a voice other than Jai and Rory's.

"DO YOU REMEMBER ME?" he yelled back. "KEVIN C.? YOU TAUGHT ME IN GRADE 11 ENGLISH!"

"YEAH, YEAH!" I replied, my enthusiasm immediately evaporating. Of course I remembered Kevin Collier. Borderline kid for several years, a personal project of several Rosewater teachers, including me, I suppose. He was expelled in Grade 11. Kevin and two other Rosewater students stripped a Grade 9 girl naked after school and shoved her clothes, books and shoes down a sewer grate. The school was already locked for the day and she ended up walking home. I remember her name too: Loralee Hunter.

As for Kevin, I decided you only have two hands to lend and cut my losses. I heard stories of drug problems after he exited juvenile hall, but as far as I can remember, drugs were always an issue for him.

"IS THERE ANYONE ELSE OVER THERE WITH YOU?" I shouted, as Jai and Rory came onto the balcony.

"NO," he said.

"HAVE YOU CHECKED ALL OF THE OTHER APARTMENTS FOR FOOD?" Jai yelled, getting in on the conversation.

"YEAH... THE ONES I COULD REACH. NOT MUCH AROUND HERE," Kevin replied. "DO YOU HAVE ANY WATER OVER THERE?"

"YES," Jai shouted back. "WE'RE BUILDING A RAFT. WE CAN GET TO YOU IN A FEW DAYS. JUST HANG TIGHT, OKAY?"

"I'M NOT GOING ANYWHERE," Kevin Collier replied, before he went back inside the apartment.

"We're not seriously going over there, are we?" I asked Jai. "I thought that was our last resort."

"We've got to find out if this thing can float at some point," Jai said.

:

As Jai and I were making dinner, Rory called us over to Jai's lab.

"The fern... look," she said.

The plant was leafless and rotting, as though it had been sitting in a compost barrel for a month.

I eventually went back to the kitchen and Rory resumed work on the raft. But Jai sat there for some time, gazing at the plant's remains.

"What are you thinking about, Dr. Patel?" I asked him later, when he hadn't moved an inch.

"The trees, Karen," he said. "I'm thinking about the trees."

July 9

Jai slouched over the balcony railing and stared down into the dark currents below. A blanket of yellow leaves now covered much of the water; Rory's fern had been the canary-in-a-coalmine in that regard. The barren trees—some of which had been standing for close to a hundred years—jutted out of the water like charred, skeletal hands.

In the distance, a pillar of smoke spiraled up into the clouds. Judging by the origin point, I could tell that a house was burning.

"Fire of London," Jai murmured beside me.

"What?" I said.

"The Great Fire of London," he said. "1666. Imagine the confusion... I wonder how many of them thought it was the end of the world."

"So what is this, Jai?" I said. "The end of the world?"

"No," he said, flatly.

"I wouldn't rule it out," I said. "Every bible has a final chapter. The world has to end sometime."

"That all depends on whose bible you're talking about," Jai replied.

Neither of us heard Rory walking onto the balcony behind us.

"I think you both need to be quiet," she said, matter-of-factly. "Let's see if we can get through today without talking."

July 10

It was Kevin Collier who broke Rory's imposition of silence; his screaming woke us up sometime before sunrise. I pulled open the living room window and heard his voice echoing off the water in the darkness.

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