On Wednesday, Sylvia announced that she would, at the end of the month, renounce all her possessions, her boyfriend, her bra and her bumblebee-striped tights, her hair-curlers, her pilates and her Pekingese terrier, and move to Tibet to become a monk.

Everyone at the party clapped and congratulated her, and quietly seethed while formulating their own plans for one-upmanship. Everyone but Derek. His idea came to him as clear and searing as Nagasaki, and he jumped to his feet, knowing he couldn’t back away from this one; he couldn’t let it slip.

He raised his glass. “While we’re speaking of spiritual journeys,” he said, “spiritual and physical journeys, I thought I should let you all know that tomorrow I’m going to quit heroin.”

He waited for the lull, counted to three. “And, of course, you’re all welcome to watch.”

*

Except that, as Brightsides pointed out later, after Derek’s friends had dispersed into the night (all quietly furious that they had not thought of such a fantastic spectacle first, he was sure), Derek had never used heroin.

Brightsides was his dealer. Derek called her as soon as the party was over and she was outside twenty minutes later, propped on her fixed-gear bicycle, electro spitting from her headphones. It was eleven PM.

“You can’t fake heroin withdrawal,” she said. “It’s a bit more than red eyes and itchy fingers.”

“I quit smoking. How hard can it be?”

He’d been buying from Brightsides almost eight years now. She wheeled the streets with a backpack stuffed with pot and speed and MDMA and the occasional downer for when he needed to be especially morose. She’d once sold him a double-hit of LSD that he tongued while touring the Detroit Sweeps. That was killer; Sylvia had called him a “post-societal neo-anarchic hero,” and squirreled into his bed not once but twice, as if his neo-anarchic power would spread to her via shared fluids.

Cooper had one-upped him soon after by giving all his clothes to charity and walking the streets naked for a week, and that really got Sylvia’s attention. But for four days, those ninety-six glorious hours, he’d been king.

“I’ve seen people go cold from heroin. It’s hard. You’re gonna get a fever, get sick, get paranoid. You’ll shit yourself. You think this’ll impress them?”

“You don’t know my friends,” Derek said. “Weeb says he’ll live on a dollar a day, just to see how it feels. Cooper says he’ll manage on fifty cents. So I have to say I’ll only eat garbage for a fortnight. Enlightenment through suffering.”

“Even when you fake it?”

“Like Sylvia is really going to become a Buddhist?” Derek shrugged. “Half of enlightenment is sincerity.”

Brightsides shook her head. “You’re an asshole. Do you even know heroin lingo?” She held up a lump of grey putty. “What’s this. Come on. Ten seconds? You lose. It’s base. And this?” A baggie of clear liquid the size of her thumbnail. “Seriously? Why do you get yourself into this shit?”

He didn’t have an answer.

*

They arrived the next morning; Cooper and Weeb and Amy and Pablo and Sylvia trailing behind. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, in a bathrobe, legs crossed, calm.

The questions came rapid-fire. Since when did you use heroin? Six months, now. How did we never notice? I’m what you call a functioning addict. You don’t have any trackmarks. I usually inhale. Usually?

“You don’t look close enough,” he said, and rolled up the sleeve of his bathrobe to above the elbow to reveal the purple puckers of needlemarks.

“Four, five times a month, max,” he said. “The rest of the time, I snort. But it’s time to close it off, now. Time to… transcend.”

Sylvia was the only one that frowned at that; he could see the fury boiling behind her eyes. Too late now. He’d already won the game; her pathetic Buddhist retreat was moot. Derek, the new prince regent of enlightenment. They’d lick his feet for months.

“I took a hit at midnight last night.” He opened the drawer beside his bed, showed them the needle rattling inside, the blood dried black on the tip, the heat-sealed baggie of chunky-brown Brightsides had left behind. “Withdrawal will set in soon. It’ll take three to four days, and then I’ll be clear. I’ll flush everything left over. I’ll be free again.”

“Hardcore,”  Weeb whispered. “Will… will you see anything? Like, visions?”

“I’ll see whatever I’m meant to see,” Derek said, and smiled his most winning smile.

*

Brightsides had sold Derek a mixed bag of amphetamines and downers that he’d hidden all over the room; single tabs tucked into the lining of the bedspread, or buried deep in his pillowcase. He’d let two tablets of Benzedrine dissolve under his tongue just before everyone arrived, and now the sweats were beginning. He made a show of wiping his forehead.

“They have clinics for this,” Sylvia said. She’d brought him a glass of water while the others milled, unable to stare but unable to look away. “This isn’t healthy.”

“Heroin is never healthy.”

“Then why’d you start?”

“I thought there’d be something to learn,” he said. Sweat ran into his eyes. His cheeks were flushed. The perfect symptoms. “You could try it.”

“You’re a dumb motherfucker,” she said, and Derek chose that moment to jerk and spasm. She squeaked, jumped back, hands flying up to her mouth. “Are you okay? He’s really doing it. He’s not screwing around.”

“I feel sick,” Derek said. Too much, he thought. Moving too fast. Rein it in. Slow build of symptoms, just like Brightsides has taught. “Could sure go some McDonalds right now.”

A nervous laugh that died before it could echo around Derek’s apartment. Amy shifted her weight from foot to foot and Cooper was gnawing his knuckle, not daring to meet Derek’s eyes. He had them convinced. You’ve won, he thought. You’ve already won. The next three days is just the parade.

“You want to know about enlightenment?” he said. “You can’t just buy it at a retreat. You have to earn it. You have to throw yourself into the well and climb back out.” He grinned through gritted teeth. “Put those down as my last words. I don’t think I’ll be talking much over the next few days.”

Sylvia rolled her eyes but the others were silent.

*

By afternoon he had the shakes. Cooper asked nervously if they should put a rag in Derek’s mouth to keep him from biting his tongue, and he filed that away as a perfect day-three symptom. He bucked and rolled and made the bed shake so hard the headboard dented the plaster wall. He spat foam. He moaned and gasped and dribbled.

Then, just after the clock on the wall read eight, he relaxed into the tangle of sheets. “It hurts,” he whispered. “I feel so sick. I need to piss.”

It was Sylvia who finally helped him to his feet and walked him into the ensuite, where he slumped against the wall and slapped weakly at his belt buckle. He hadn’t had a drink in six hours and the amphetamines had left his mouth dry as terracotta. He feigned clumsiness until Sylvia sighed and yanked his pants down around his knees. “Better?”

“Thankyou.” Most of it went in the bowl. “Oh, God.”

“What now? This isn’t funny any more. You see me laughing?” She crossed her arms, glowered. “Okay, I get it. Me and Cooper get close, so you ruin my Buddhist idea. You win. It’s over.”

Derek grinned through dry lips. “Not over. Three days.”

“Oh, fuck off. You’ve never done anything harder than ecstasy. You wouldn’t have the balls to inject.”

“If you say so.” Derek spat. His head hurt. His cheeks hurt. But it was nothing compared to the real pain of withdrawal, and that made things a little easier. And it was nothing compared to the pain of losing.

He tripped on the way back to the bed and made sure to tremble on hands and knees until Weeb finally helped him back under the sheets. He clutched his ribs and wailed. “Oh God,” he said. “It hurts, it hurts!”

They watched him until late, and whispered among themselves, and he squeezed his eyes shut and hissed in imagined pain until the lights clicked off. He was alone.

He cried a while longer, just to make sure.

*

Their footsteps on the stairs woke him; he downed a glass of water and two dexys and curled up in the foetal position.

He heard Sylvia tut. “He’s still trying? Pathetic.”

“Shhh.” That was Amy, sweet miniskirt and cardigan Amy who played the ukelele to her cat and swore that psychoactives made her poetry pure. “This isn’t easy for him.”

“What? His performance?”

“Shh!”

Derek made a choked noise, one he hoped resembled a drowning puppy. His hands trembled against the bedspread. He whispered, “P-please…”

“He’s not even a good actor!”

“Please,” he said again, and then, “Go away. Go… go away. Ah! Ah! Ffff-” He tensed his gut, relaxed, tensed again, until everything below the ribs was a mass of splintered pain. “Uh-uh-uh. Uh. Oh God.”

“Can’t you see? He’s never even done heroin – ”

That was when Derek tensed one last time and vomited down his chest, and Amy keened like a cat and rushed across the room to lift him and comfort him, and he was glad the pain in his stomach masked his smile.

*

He kicked off the sheets. He dribbled. He swore and sobbed and spoke of colours and darkness and men plunging knives into his heart. He rolled his eyes back in his head and said, “I see you. You’re so bright.” Across the room, Weeb squeaked.

They lapped it up.

At four PM there was a moment of lucidity. He opened his eyes wide, stretched his fingers, and said, “I’m dying.”

Pablo was by his side. “You’re doing fine. You need anything? You need water?”

Pablo had never done anything special. He’d never been king. Derek didn’t need anything from him and told him so. He let himself slip back into an approximation of madness and continued that way until sunset.

They left long after dark. Derek lay alone, waiting for the strength to return to his limbs. The thirst pounded in his skull, digging nails into the roof of his mouth. He hadn’t had a drink since morning.

Slowly, he stood and shuffled across the cold wooden floor to the ensuite.

The chemical light reflecting off the bathroom tiles turned his reflection into a corpse. His eyes were sunken and the skin of his cheeks was bruised almost black. There was vomit dried on his chin and in the whiskers of his upper lip. His hair was matted and filthy against his forehead. With a few scabs on his neck he’d be a perfect leper.

“You win,” he said, so quiet he couldn’t even hear.

His lips were so dried and numb that at first he couldn’t tell whether the water was running at all. Then the first drop slipped through and hit his teeth and the shock of the cold made him tremble. He tongue was cracked deep like desert soil and the water rushed around the root without taste, without weight, until finally the dead nerves responded and he slurped and sputtered until the faintness passed.

Not too much, he reminded himself. In a day, he could drink all he wanted. But for now, for the next twenty-four hours, he was in withdrawal. He had to look the part.

Back to bed. Back beneath the stinking sheets. The headache echoed and scraped, steel on steel.

I win, you fuckers. I win. I win.

*

“I don’t think he’s going to make it.”

That was Weeb, he was sure. Their voices were blurring. He regretted not eating during the night. A hand on his shoulder. He didn’t react.

“Should we call a doctor?”

“He’d kill us if we did.”

“And if he dies?”

“He’s not going to die. He’s too much of a bastard.”

That was Sylvia. He stilled the urge to laugh. Even her, now. Every one of them, so gullible.

He wondered how easily he’d been fooled in the past. Whether Cooper had really given away all his clothes. Whether Weeb had really given road-head to the Mayor. Because that’s how it is, he’d said, wiping his mouth. Fucker didn’t even say thankyou. That’s government.

How many lies had he eaten?

“We should watch him,” Sylvia said. “Just in case. This is the hardest day. I read about it.”

Derek counted to three, and had a fit.

*

He had two more fits that day, thrashing until they had to hold him down on the hard floor and jam a sock in his mouth to stop the screams. He coughed until his throat ached and when Amy leaned in close he whispered, “I need a hit I need a hit I need a hit, ple-e-ease…”

They carried him back to the bed and wiped his face, and Sylvia ran a finger over the needlemarks in the crook of his left elbow. “They’re real,” she said. “I didn’t believe him.”

“He looks awful,” said Cooper.

“Yeah.”

“Like, dying-bad.”

“Yeah.”

“I hope he makes it,” Cooper said, but Derek didn’t miss the sharp edge in Cooper’s voice. That note of bitterness.

Missed your chance. Only one king. Fuck to you.

“I could’ve been in Tibet by now,” said Sylvia.

“You can always go next week. He’ll be out of it by then.”

“Or dead.”

Derek cracked his eyelids open the barest fraction. Through the blur of exhaustion, he could just make out that Sylvia and Cooper were holding hands. There was fire in his gut, fire in his bones. He hated so hard he could taste it.

“One more day,” Cooper said, and Derek could hear his smile.

He shit the bed. Derek one, Cooper zero.

*

He slept a while, and woke to see six sets of eyes reflected in the darkness. The clock on his bedside table read four am.

He heard Weeb say, “This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“The stupidest, you mean. Should’ve just checked into rehab.”

“We’re his friends. Of course he came to us.”

Then Brightsides spoke. “If he’s made it this far, he’ll be okay. Day three is the hump. Just keep him hydrated.”

“Why’d you sell him H in the first place? You know he’s too stupid to manage anything like that.”

“The man asked,” Brightsides said. “He pays, I provide.”

His lips were too dry to grin but he felt it inside. Of all the people to have his back, he’d never expected it to be his dealer.

“Over the hump, you say.”

“Yeah, by now.”

“Thank Christ,” Sylvia said. “About time.”

And then darkness again, and sleep. There were no dreams.

*

And then the cutting glare of morning. He moaned, just in case there were people watching.

There were. All of them lined up, staring as he blinked and licked his lips. Weeb with his hands in his pockets, his pupils tiny, excited points. He said, “Hey man. How you feeling? Better? Over the hump?”

He raised one hand and five pairs of eyes followed. He let it drop and five pairs of eyes traced the arc through the air. I’m not just your King, he thought. I’m your God. If there was ever a game I’ve transcended it. This room stinks of shit and you still worship.

“Need water?” said Sylvia. “Need food? Come on, up with you.” She grabbed him under the armpits. “You’re almost done. Past the hardest part.”

He tried to say no but his lips were too tired. He waved weakly. His wrist was so thin he could see the jag of bones. Who knew withdrawal burned so many calories?

Water was at his lips. He tried to swallow but couldn’t, and it ran cold down his chest.

“N-no,” he managed. “Hurts.”

“Of course it hurts. Over the hump, now. Only better from here.”

Against the wall, Cooper and Amy and Pablo were standing mute, waiting for something. What? Faces were a blur. Maybe they were speaking and he couldn’t hear. Waiting…

Waiting for him to stand. Waiting for him to say, I’m cured. I can walk again. Waiting for him to thank the Lord for giving him strength.

That wasn’t rapture on their faces, he realised.

It was boredom.

They watched while the game was on, but he was over the hump and they were already eyeing his crown. Because he hadn’t cared whether Cooper escaped the police when he ran naked in the streets. He’d cared about Cooper being cold, and the ice riming between his toes as he stamped in the snow. Nobody had given a damn about Sylvia’s enlightenment. Only the scratching of the woolen robe, and the bare Tibetan monastery cell, and the stone floors, and the silence.

Derek thrashed, and the glass fell from his lips and exploded against the floor. He threw his head back and cracked it on the concrete wall. He gagged. He twisted like a dervish.

“Hold him down.” Cooper spoke in monotone. Ambivalent. He’d seen it before. There wasn’t any way to improve upon shitting the bed. “Just grab his arms-”

Derek swung. His fist caught Sylvia across the bridge of her nose and she fell back, shrieking. Cooper was rushing in, but there was time enough. He yanked open the drawer on the bedside table and snatched out the plastic bag.

They were shouting. He didn’t care. This was theatre. This was the final audition. He had his lines.

He said, “It hurts need a hit need a hit oh God oh fuck it hurts gimme a hit.” He’d heard those words once, from a junkie in a cop show. They’d sounded good, then. He hoped they sounded as good now.

He tore the bag in half, crushed the base between the heels of his hands and inhaled.

The fire wasn’t just in his bones. It was in his eye sockets and in his skull and in the tips of his fingers.

The yelling had changed. It was applause.

He felt invisible hands lay the crown upon his head.

The day’s going fine until the woman in the leopard print swimsuit sprawls beside us.

Jade does that sideways thing with her eyes as the woman spreads oil down one long dark leg and mutters out of the corner of her mouth.

“God, look at those hands. She’s an Amazon.”

The woman’s hands are now briskly rubbing shoulders wide enough to be a man’s and she smiles at us with brilliant white teeth before stretching out on her towel.

Jade sighs, flopping onto her belly, and says she’s the sexiest thing she’s ever seen.

I shrug like always and look at my own pale skin that burns so easily in the sun. Jade squints at me through her shades, waiting for me to say something. I don’t know if I should be focusing on the fact that she’s a woman or that she’s black.

“What about Danny?”

Jade’s grin shows her tiny perfect teeth and I know I’ve missed the mark again.

“What about him?”

I blush as Jade stands and brushes sand from her short legs. She’s always been tiny. I think they’re the same length as when we were still ignoring make-up and stealing fruit from neighbours’ trees.

“I’m going in,” she says without looking at me and runs into the water, skipping over the churning whitewash. I lurch up on my feet and each step I take towards the ocean is sucked into the hot sand and I sway a little like I’m drunk. I walk until the surf is lapping around my waist. I step up on tippee-toes as a wave rolls through me and don’t see that she’s snuck up behind.

I yelp at her tackle and we go down with her legs wrapped around my waist and the bubbles rush through my ears. Her hands slide over my shoulders, slippery with sunscreen lotion and as we splash back up for air and I get a face full of wave and go down again. Through the burning in my nose I kick up hard and launch myself at her and she’s laughing so much she can barely swim. As my hands grab onto her waist I remember how it was at the beach when we were still young enough to play these games.

How we would swim out past the second sandbar and our hands would eventually slip beneath bathers. How our giggles became breath held underwater, and how cool that water felt against the heat of her hands.

I realise she’s stopped her thrashing and giggling. We settle in the water, still touching, and she kicks her legs together like she has a fin and glides away. I swim after her but she’s too quick. She duck dives to the surface and I watch her swim back to shore.

*

On the drive home she pushes her finger deep into my forearm and a white oval blooms.

“You’re sunburned.”

I sneak a look down where she pressed and see a fine crescent marked there. The mark is a little jagged because she’s been biting her nails again. She points at the side of the road and squeals as I take the turn-off to Danny’s house.

“Look at the blackberries. Remember how we used to pick them on the way home from the beach?”

She smiles as we pass the brambles, entangled in the barbed wire fences at the side of the road.

“Remember how you cut your hand on the fence?”

I shake my head, still smiling at the road but her voice changes to flint.

“Of course you do. Remember how I dressed it with a piece of my t-shirt I ripped off?”

I swallow the taste of salt but I don’t answer and we drive the rest of the way in silence until we pull up in Danny’s driveway. She makes no move to get out and reaches towards me. I see that her fingers are shaking as they rest against my thigh.

“Are you sure you don’t remember?”

I reach out for her hand but it withdraws and Danny is leaning in the car, kissing her neck and asking how the surf was. I keep my smile on and reverse out while Jade stands on the lawn and watches me leave.

Of course I remembered how we’d pick them.

How we would pretend we’d gone wild in the woods. How she’d pluck off a blackberry and pop it in my mouth to prove we could survive. How once she pushed me back into the brambles and kissed me hard with the taste of blackberries in both our mouths. How I groped at the fence as she pulled off my bathing suit and I didn’t even notice it ‘til later, when we were dressed again, and she tore off the bottom of her t-shirt and wrapped it around my hand.

We never spoke about it and we never went picking blackberries again. Sometimes I’d go alone and see the perfect berry just out of reach. I’d weave my hand inside even though the thorns would tear at my skin, and my blood mingled with the inky berry stains. I’d push through to the ones that the birds couldn’t get to.

“Come!” Luc caught Ethan’s arm after dinner, and the man’s smile was malicious. “There are things every man must learn. Even you.”

Ethan jerked free, though three others surrounded him. Jean shoved him forward.  He couldn’t decide what bothered them more – that he was British, or that he had married the girl Jean had been trying to win back. It didn’t help at all that his wife’s sister was also married to Jean’s cousin. These Frenchmen thought that made his wife their property, and Ethan was tired of them whispering in her ear, under the guise of protecting her.

Luc led the way out a side door, hissing in French at his friends to hurry. They stopped in a barn on the way to wherever they were going, collecting ropes and poles and grinning at one another. The horses stirred, shifting in their stalls and poking their heads out. One nosed around Ethan’s ear, and he flinched away, making the others laugh.

The poles seemed to serve no greater purpose than to prod him forward, and Ethan gritted his teeth to keep from showing his irritation. As long as he cooperated, perhaps they would finish their hazing sooner rather than later, and he could get back to his own evening plans.

They left the manor behind, the men talking in French so fast he understood only one word in three. Something about a bull in one of the pastures.

Jean gave him a jab with a pole when he balked at vaulting a fence.

Luc laughed.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” he said, in French. “If you can’t even jump a fence, you’ll never leap a bull.”

Ethan stared at him. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Jean prodded him on. “You’re lucky at least that the moon is full and you’ll be able to see the bull coming.”

“Wonderful,” Ethan muttered. He rolled his shoulders and hoped he could avoid being gored. If they wanted him to leap a bull, he would do it, and so help him, he wouldn’t even whimper if it ran him down. And if this earned him enough respect to keep Jean and Luc from pressing his wife to leave him, all the better.

One of the others, Marcus, disappeared into the dark, returning a moment later with an animal too docile to be the bull. The creature let itself be led placidly along, chewing its cud, and he wondered just how often it was stirred from its sleep for whatever duty it was now expected to perform. Did bulls become more or less ornery when woken from a doze?

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Ethan said.

“Don’t worry, Monsieur.” Luc flashed him a smile as they crested the hill. Another fence stood in their way at the bottom. “We will not let you be hurt too badly. Give him a pole, Henri.”

Jean gave him another shove, knocking him to his knees in the dirt. The others laughed, and Henri dropped one of the poles next to Ethan as he passed. Apparently they didn’t feel a need to keep him moving now that they were in sight of their destination. Ethan’s hand closed around the wood, burnished smooth, and he rose. The poles had gotten a lot of use, it seemed.

“We could be making you leap with your legs and feet tied together from a standstill,” Jean called.

The four men were already in the pen, the cow tied to a fence post outside. It lowed softly, and another animal answered with a bellow.

“Are you going to come willingly, or am I going to have to throw you in?” Jean asked.

“Perhaps he lost all his courage when he failed to please his wife on her wedding night,” Luc said. “It’s just a little country bull-leaping, Monsieur.”

Jean snorted. “Maybe we should show him how it’s done?”

“Marcus?” Luc nodded to him and Marcus jumped off the fence where he had been sitting. Ethan could hear hoof-beats now, and then the bull was in full sight, a darker shadow against the grass – except for its horns, like crescent moons fallen from the night sky.

Marcus bounced lightly on his toes, shaking out his arms before falling still as stone.

The bull tossed its head, then lowered it and charged. Blunted horns or not, Ethan didn’t know how Marcus could just stand there with the bull coming down on him full tilt. Ten meters, then three, then one.

Marcus leaped just as the bull’s horns began to sweep up, turning his body sideways in midair over the animal’s back. He landed lightly on his feet behind it.

The bull grunted and twisted, but couldn’t change direction quickly enough. Jean and Luc were already in the pen, clapping their hands and distracting the animal from their friend.

“See how easy?” Marcus called. “I show you how to use the pole next, oui?”

Ethan shook his head. In spite of himself, he’d joined Henri at the fence line. The wind turned and he could smell the bull’s musk, sour with frustration. “You people are insane.”

Henri laughed from his seat on the fence. “Bull-leaping is the least of it.”

Marcus had a pole in his hand now, and this time he ran toward the charging bull, rooting the pole in the dirt and throwing himself over the animal in a tremendous twisting vault. It looked safe enough – if Ethan could land on his feet the way Marcus just had. He tightened his hold on the pole, wishing for some kind of grip, traction on the smooth wood.

Luc and Jean cheered and Marcus jogged to the fence, bouncing over it just as easily as he had the bull. He clapped Ethan on the shoulder. “Your turn, oui? Now that Bruno tires, it is easy.”

The beast pawed the ground and bellowed.

“Go, go!” And before Ethan could voice his objection, Marcus and Henri had thrown him over the fence, pole and all.

Ethan scrambled to his feet. He hadn’t had enough to drink for this. But there was no way he was going to let these men call him a coward. Not over a little country bull-leaping.

The bull had turned again, guided by Luc and Jean. It went against every instinct in his body to start running at it, but he forced himself into a jog, the pole held tight in his hands. His palms were sweating. Don’t slip.

“Not yet!” Marcus shouted from the fence. “Wait until you see his eyes!”

He waited, willing himself to run faster. He waited another two heart-beats after he saw the bull’s eyes before he planted his pole and launched himself up.

Too slow.

The bull caught the pole with a horn and twisted its head.

The wood snapped before Ethan finished his leap. Instead of moving gracefully over the bull, he landed sideways on the animal’s back. The air left his lungs even before it bucked, and Ethan tumbled off into the dirt, rolling instinctively away. The back hooves kicked out where his body had been, barely missing him.

Luc and Jean were already shouting, and one of the others grabbed him by the arms, dragging him from the path of the bull’s temper before he was trampled.

“Sooner, next time,” Marcus said, helping him stand up.

Ethan glared at him. “You told me to wait!”

“You wait too long, you catch the horn,” Marcus grinned and passed him another pole. “Jumping is easy. Knowing when to jump, not so easy.”

“Bloody fools.” Ethan swiped the pole from the man’s hand. This one was textured with grooves. Just like them, he thought, to give him an inferior tool for his first try.

“Try not to tickle Bruno’s back this time,” Luc called as they drew the bull toward him.

Ethan twisted his back, testing the muscles. He’d have a bruise on his ribs in the morning, but he’d been remarkably lucky not to have broken something.

This time, he ran forward without any hesitation, ignoring Bruno’s bellow. This time, he was going to leap the damn bull so that he could put all this behind him and take his wife to bed. This time, he planted his pole at the first glint of the bull’s eye and threw himself up with everything in his body.

The pole bent with his weight, but didn’t snap, and Ethan hung in the air for the shortest time – too bright stars above and wind howling in his ears over a pounding heart. Gravity caught up with his jump before he managed to get his legs beneath him. For a terrifying moment, arms pin-wheeling, he thought he was going to break his neck.

He landed face down in the dirt, checking himself at the last minute from trying to stop his fall with outstretched arms as he came down.

The Frenchmen cheered, clapped, and hooted while he spat dirt. Ethan closed his eyes and prayed for the strength to rise without showing his pain. Someone hauled him to his feet, dusting him off, and then clapped him on the back so hard he nearly fell to his knees again.

“See?” Marcus said. “Easy!”

Ethan grunted. His ribs felt as though they had been knocked loose in his chest. Henri eyed him, and then opened the gate for the cow.

“Take him back,” he said to Luc. “Another fall like that and his wife will notice the bruises.”

“Too bad,” Luc said. “Another couple of leaps and he might have learned to land on his feet.”

“Next time,” Ethan promised.

Luc grinned. “We’ll hold you to it.”

“Drink up!” Marcus passed him a bottle of wine. Ethan didn’t know where it came from. “Next time I teach you to leap with your legs tied!”

One bottle of wine was not going to be enough.

It’s cold, but Victor keeps waiting. They’ll be coming out soon. He moves the snap pistol to his other hand and the wintry metal bites. There is nothing warm in Mauthausen. The packed dirt streets are frosted. The air is chilled. The people are frozen in their own way, if Victor thinks about it. Sometimes they look more like a photograph…

The butcher shop opens with a slink of steam and light.  The assassins emerge, squabbling about directions.  One of them is Austrian-looking, with plastered blonde hair and well-synthesized clothes. The other is not. His muddy, post-racial melanin stands out sharply against the pallid villagers. A Diaspora handgun winks in and out of view with the motion of an untucked shirt. Victor is surprised; he doesn’t recognize the model. He supposes it is a few years ahead of his time.

Time. He needs to ensure the Quo.

“Gruss Gott,” Victor says, rounding the corner of the alley after them. They both whirl. They have frantic eyes, unsteady. They are terrified and elated at once by what they have come to do. There is a hunger and a purpose shining in beautiful irises. Neither of them speak High German.

“Get lost, you fucking puppy,” one of them mutters, waving Victor off.

“We must be close,” the other says. “Oh, God, we can do it. We’ll actually do it.” Victor has to wonder again how so many have slipped through. Bribery, for the most part. Social conscience could be another factor. Some officials might not try their hardest to prevent an illegal rewind if they secretly sympathize with the cause.

“As unlicensed rewinders in a restricted time and area, you are in violation of the Quo.” He didn’t mean to mention the Quo. That slips out unbidden. There is a section and subsection he should have snarled at them instead. Victor has already scanned them for bombs, so he snaps a bullet into each of their foreheads. The shooting is very quiet.

Victor covers the bodies with nanoweave, tucking sprawled limbs under the tarp with practiced motions. He can do disposal later, during the night. Victor leaves the alley as an empty stretch of cold dirt in the eyes of passers-by. He’s returned them to the dust. That’s the Quo in its essence: some have to return, some have to stay.

One in particular has to stay. It begins to snow, but the flakes don’t reach the ground.

*

They come every so often, the rewinders. Every few months. He waits for them, like partners in a very slow dance, and eventually – after weeks of trudging through dirty Mauthausen and bundling wood for food, weeks of watching for new faces very carefully – they will appear. Victor is out on the street again, with the snap pistol hidden safely in his pocket and now the Diaspora as well. He’s passing through the square. The villagers used to seem like ghosts to him, but he understands better now. He’s the ghost.

The hut is waiting for him on the outside of the village, a cramped thing where he either sleeps or masturbates. Dirt floor, wooden walls. Victor picks a nail out of the rotting door frame as he enters. He never bothers making repairs. The family will relocate again soon, hopefully closer to Linz. Mauthausen doesn’t suit him.

Victor sleeps and has bad dreams. He wakes up when the night is sufficiently dark to move corpses.

*

Someone else is in the alley. Victor doesn’t differentiate the crouched shape from the other weird shadows until it steps forward, pointing a weapon at him. He can’t see the face, so he looks down instead to where the nanoweave has been stripped away and discarded in the snow. The men he killed earlier in the evening are going blue and black, tangled side by side like crooked insects.

“English?” the man demands.

“If you want,” Victor says. The voice sounds young. The stance seems competent.

“This is your job, yes? You’re one of their monitors.” He is staying in the shadows. Victor wonders if he has been careless. Nobody should ever find the bodies, even with tracing equipment. But then, there have never been two attempts in such quick succession. Maybe the third rewinder has been here all along.

“Empty your pockets,” the rewinder says. Victor reaches into his coat and pulls out the Diaspora. He unloads it and drops the dissembled weapon at his feet. “And the other. There’s weight in both.”

Victor drops the snap pistol.

“I’m going to kill you,” the rewinder says. “But first, I have to ask. I have to.” Victor is familiar with the question, though usually he hears it from a man or woman dying at his feet. He gives the same answer.

“I’m maintaining the Quo,” he says simply.

“That’s what they call it? That’s what they write on your memos?” The rewinder has a tremor in his voice. Disgust, maybe. He doesn’t understand.

“That’s what I call it. Chronology has to be preserved. The cost doesn’t matter.” It feels good, surprisingly, to talk to someone in English. He has missed it.

“Turn around,” the rewinder says. “I’ll walk you to the back of the alley.” Victor turns on his heel, waits. He feels the gun poke into his back, and then they walk. He finds himself looking at a dead brick wall. There’s soot on it.

“What’s it like, now?” Victor asks. The rewinder doesn’t answer for a moment.

“The same. We’ve broken time itself, and things are the same.” He makes an angry noise. “Your bosses make sure of that. But, this year, things change. 1894. Anything of note happening this year?” Victor’s hands are cold. He puts them in his pockets.

“Kate Chopin writes a short story. Coca Cola sells in bottles.” Victor stares into the brick. “Nothing here in Austria.” The muzzle of the gun jerks forward and he lets his head bob with it, like a puppet on a stick.

“I think there will be, tonight,” the rewinder says. Victor still has a nail in his pocket.

“It’s going to be harder than you think,” Victor says. “You won’t like it.”

“I’ve used this before,” the rewinder snaps. Victor rolls it with his thumb.

“Not me,” Victor says. “Him. He’s young.” He feels the man take a step back. Hesitate.

“It’s easier to crush a snake egg than kill a cobra,” the rewinder says. “It’s more certain this way. And I can override any compulsion, social or biological, if it means preventing Auschwitz. Saving millions.”

“There’s no certainty,” Victor says back. “That’s the point.” He slams his hand backward towards the voice with a rusted nail locked between his knuckles. His other hand comes up as he turns and jars the gun away. There are flesh sounds. The gun goes off and his eardrums implode, his eyes are filled with oil spills.

Then the man is lying in the dirt and Victor is over him with the gun held steady in cupped hands. The rewinder is not old. He doesn’t look out of place in his ragged coat and wool trousers—he could be the son of the butcher. Same age. He is trying to knead his eye, but the nail gouged it out and there is only gouting blood and torn socket.

“You’re killing those people,” he gasps. “You’re killing them all. You’re turning on the showers, goddamn you, goddamn you.” His chest is spasming.

“I know,” Victor snaps. He knows. It’s the nature of the Quo. “But if you prevent that, what do you cause? Do you know that? No?”

“Coward,” the rewinder sputters.

“It’s not worth the risk,” Victor says. “Better a known atrocity than the unknown. No matter what it is.” He doesn’t want to hear a counter-argument, so he shoots him. He has enough of those. For all Victor knows, the other bodyguards and monitors have already failed their assignments, and the world is not as it should have been. If he came this close to failure, here behind this butcher shop, how could he be sure that others hadn’t? The Quo might already be demolished, and his job might be a farce. A farce set in the shithole of Mauthausen.

There’s no certainty, not even in the Quo. He hopes he is preventing catastrophe, but sometimes he dreams he is a monster in the dark, saving Belial and murdering angels. In the morning, Victor goes to the house. As has been his tradition since being deployed five years ago, to Braunau-am-Inn, he finds the small dark-haired boy and watches him play in the yard for a little while.

He wonders if he is a good man or a bad man.