It started off as a local marketing campaign. Guerrilla-style.

“You mean we dress up in ape suits?”

Not everyone got that joke, that’s the sad part.

We wanted to have a Haunted House for Halloween. We wanted to go all out, which would be expensive for the couple of us organizing it, but more importantly, we wanted people to come. Because we were artists. And those of us who weren’t artists were artists, too—at least when it came to this.

So to get people to come to our Haunted House event, we figured what better way than a campaign of rampant terror? Strike hard, strike often and don’t let up.

Man, it was fun. We started off with a zombie attack. There were lots of people at the interest meeting and we wanted to keep that interest going by doing something everyone could be involved with. And when I say everyone, I mean we had total strangers getting “attacked” and playing along—even pretending to become zombies themselves. Some of them we recruited to swell our ranks, some of them just promised to come give us their money.

We had a clown attack—I participated in that one myself as a bearded lady, thank you very much. One professor let us do a “haunted classroom” spiel in every one of his classes one week.

Tim dressed up as a preacher and did a few (reverse) exorcisms on “sinful folk” that correlated with the deadly sins, it was a hoot.

And every time, we thought “Well, you know, what if something goes wrong? What if someone starts to take it too seriously?”

Contingency plans were in place for in case someone called campus security and we drilled those contingencies so hard we were actually disappointed that everyone was so game to play along. It’s hard to keep people scared if everyone around them isn’t scared, too.

But on the other hand…

The last one we did was supposed to be a virgin sacrifice. Part of the joke, of course, was “Try finding a real virgin in college.” The girl we had doing it, Nina, her whole deal was, she’d scream and scream about how she “had so much to live for”, and of course that “I’m not even a virgin, I swear!”

We did it on the main quad in broad daylight. Four guys in robes and hoods—two holding her, two holding ceremonial scepters—dragged her literally kicking and screaming to the middle of the open field.

We thought for sure someone would dial 911 this time.

In the middle of the field, all four of us helped pin her to the ground and then all four of us drew our knives and gutted her.

Katie was great with the fake blood. Just did a fantastic job. As zombies, we ate this weird oatmeal-and-corn-syrup thing that looked real and disgusting from a ways off, but not right there, although it was disgusting. For this one, we were supposed to actually puncture this blood bag. Which we did. But something was…

I knew it right away. I think it was the smell, although my memories are kinda muttled. I remember thinking to myself, no, no, reassuring, it’s supposed to look like that, thick and dark, Katie did a real good job this time. And Nina was doing a great job. Sounded like she broke her voice with that ear-shattering finale. Then she gurgled and went limp.

There was some scattered applause and I looked up just in time to catch a couple of lonely students take their earphones off and look at what all the fuss was about. We didn’t bow, though. Gorillas don’t bow, it breaks the illusion.

We just turned around and each walked to a different corner of the quad.

It took us each about a minute and a half to cover that distance, but it was five before anyone on the quad noticed or got concerned that Nina wasn’t moving, that she hadn’t even blinked her eyes. By the time they figured out she was dead, I was already in class and the others were all scattered to the winds—literally to the four corners. No one could identify us and once I started thinking about it, I realized I couldn’t really be sure who the other three were. We had all worn our masks the whole time. I knew my knife wasn’t real—just sharp enough to puncture the blood bag, not to break skin, let alone bone… but I couldn’t vouch for the others.

Everyone had just stood there. We were telling them what we were doing—were we just that good at it? Or had we trained them by then not to respond to a crisis? Had we somehow convinced them that the only danger in the world is found in art?

Oswald Osgood was an insufferable know-it-all. The fact that he was a college professor didn’t help him much and the fact that his specialty was William Shakespeare helped him even less. Studying “the Bard” only made him think more of himself and less of everyone else. “No one,” he liked to complain, “can ever reach Shakespeare’s level of technique, or have his command of or ultimate impact on the English language.” And you know what that means.

“Shakespeare wasn’t even a Bard,” said one of his students, Stephanie Wing, “I mean, not really. He wrote on commission for, like, noble people and even for the Queen herself, right? It’s not like he went from town to town singing songs.”

Her male friend who was not her boyfriend, Justin Leech, had some things to say about that on a factual level, but instead scooped up the heart of the statement and agreed that “Shakespeare is not really all he’s cracked up to be. His writing is delightful, sure, but so much of the ‘myth of Shakespeare’ is perpetuated by the endless cycle of scholarship on the subject.”

And yet so much of that scholarship relied on information that was incomplete. “There is so much that we still don’t know,” Professor Osgood often lamented in his classes. “There are whole plays that have been lost to us—the Cardenio, which we are certian was based on an episode from the Don Quixote, and Love’s Labour’s Won, which might have been one of his later comedies under a different name, but I, for one, don’t think so.”

This would then trigger one of Professor Osgood’s favorite lecturing subjects: “If you look at the plot,” he said, “of Love’s Labour’s Lost, you’ll find two things of equal and related interest: the first is that there is more than one strand of action left utterly unresolved at the play’s conclusion; but more striking still is the fact that, despite its status as a comedy, structurally it can be called a tragedy in that the ending does not feature a wedding but rather the death of a king. This is monumental and should be considered incontrovertible evidence that Shakespeare had in fact intended to write what we now call a sequel to this early play, and we know from the records that a play with that title was performed. We just don’t have access to any of the text.”

“Maybe it just sucked,” Stephanie suggested. But that was, of course, not an argument that would hold water for torch-carrier Oswald Osgood.

Imagine the reaction, though, given Oswald’s obsession, when he came back to his office one day to find a box at his door marked “urgent and confidential”; he brought it inside with him, opened it up and discovered a faded and weary manuscript entitled “Love’s Labour’s Won: A New Play by William Shaksper”.

It wasn’t possible! It was some sort of joke, some sickly scheme. Wasn’t it?

Who would do such a thing?

Yet who could do such a thing?

Careful with the fragile pages, Oswald set about reading the text, and it was wonderful. Delightful, even. Filled with precious little quirks and four-hundred-year-old plot twists that still made him cry out “I knew it! I knew it!” in jubilation at their conclusion.

It was everything a Shakespearean scholar could ever possibly want and more.

But where had it come from?

“Oh, who cares!” Oswald reasoned, “if they sent it to me, it’s because they wanted me to have it—they probably didn’t know what to do with it anyway.”

But he knew what to do—in fact, he knew exactly whom to call.

“You’re kidding! said his old friend Gordon Mickiewicz. “Is it any good?”

Oswald could tell from the condescension this was one of those stuffy hipsters who didn’t fully appreciate the genius of the Bard’s early works. “I am telling you, it’s great! It’s going to revolutionize the study of Shakespeare’s cannon and who knows? It might even revitalize the Theatre Herself!”

“The Theatre Herself!” Professor Mickiewicz exclaimed. “Well, then, let’s not keep Thaleia waiting, send the darn thing over!” (Editor’s Note: Thaleia is the Greek Muse of Comedy)

Oswald promised to do just that once he had the whole thing transcribed. Mickiewicz had a computer that could identify authors from text with pinpoint accuracy (except Hunter S. Thompson—for some reason, it kept identifying him with bad translations of Karl Marx) so his blessing was the first step towards solidifying this new play as Shakespeare’s 38th (39th if you include The Two Noble Kinsmen, but Oswald turned his nose up at that idea).

In the meantime, though, he took the liberty of spreading the word and in particular of alerting the press. This level of notoriety was hard to come by, even in an age of instant access and lack of gatekeepers, and he found now that he wanted it.

“So,” said eminent members of the Shakespeare Society, “wherever did you dig up the text?”

“It was in our library, believe it or not, we do have a rare books section, small though our college is, and I found it hiding behind a second printing of Gorbaduc—or all places!”

“Curioser and curioser,” the Society remarked. “And has it been authenticated?”

“All in good time!” Oswald assured him. “I can vouch for its authenticity—been reading Shakespeare all my life, you know!”

The hype was like nothing Professor Osgood had ever seen. TED talks, talk shows, conferences, magazine interviews, online things; and what’s more: theatre troops were clawing at Oswald’s inbox to get their hands on the script and expand their repertory. He had everything but the one thing he really needed as an academic: articles in peer-reviewed journals.

“You know you’re going to have to send it to me,” Mickiewics reminded him. “Nobody’s going to take you seriously until you do—at least not within the academic community.”

“Oh, who cares about those stuffy old farts,” Oswald found himself saying, even though he knew his friend was right. “I know what I know and what I know is, it’s the most authentic thing I have ever laid eyes on!”

In fact, the more Oswald read it, the more convinced he became that it was his favorite Shakespearean text, not just among the comedies. There was something about the Princess and her grief for her father that brought tears to his eyes and put Hamlet himself to shame. Which made it all the more embarrassing for Oswald when Professor Mickiewicz got back to him with the results.

“Well, it’s a beautiful play, obviously,” Mickiewicz admitted, “but sadly, there isn’t the slightest chance that Shakespeare came up with it.” He went on and on about the science of it, which Oswald drowned out until Mickiewicz added “every chance that it’s actually a twenty-first century writer.”

“Twenty-first century!” Oswald was mortified. “I am willing to accept Marlowe or Edward de Vere or the Marquis the bloody Sade as the author, but I can tell you with absolute conviction, Gordon, that no one from this artforsaken twenty-first century of ours is capable of imitating Shakespeare to that degree or with that kind of quality!”

But Mickiewics responded with jargon and gibberish and finally, Oswald hung up.

It was then there was a knock on his office door. “Come in.”

“Hello, Professor,” said the student who had managed to do what no one could and imitated Shakespeare. “Perhaps you’d like to chat?”

He went out there to be alone. The great American cliché. A man leaving behind hearth and home, all sense of family, to find himself. How often does that work out?

City highways and byways gave way to a thick-wooded wilderness of needled pine—what the rest of the country might think of as Christmas; but providence was not on Santa’s priority list here.

Further North still as he climbed in search of himself, thin woods and brush gave way to frozen wastes, to the sheer white of a black slate, a canvas for a new life. The mind plays tricks, rolls over, does cartwheels all as a distraction to pick your pocket while you’re looking for the button, to steal your time.

If you’re far enough North, a day can last half a year, and in that endless day is where he finds her. The small cabin reminds him of fairy tales—it’s practically made of gingerbread, look at it! The colors, the curlicue spires, weird angles like it was grown from the ground like a tree—

But nothing grows here. Nothing. This house might not look out of place in a fantasy of Medieval woods, but here at the barren tip of the globe? How could there even be smoke rising from the chimney?

“Come in, come in,” says the middle-aged woman when she opens the door. The inside is no less astounding. The number of knicknacks a person can fit over the 60th parallel would strike fear into any man’s heart, to say nothing of the taxidermy. She offers coffee, hot cocoa, hot cider, a hot meal.

“Who are you?” he asks in return. “How do you live up here?”

She miles coyly. “You don’t really expect a straightforward answer, do you?”

She invited him to stay for as long as he wanted, and as it turned out, that was how he wanted it. She was older than he was by more than a decade, but he didn’t let that stop them from becoming lovers. Why should he? Within three hours of catching sight of the house, it had started to feel like home. He had known (or felt, suspected) that up here above the world he would find himself, and he had, but not in the way that he’d suspected. He still left the cottage every day (for a large portion of the time he was awake, that is) ranging out into the tundra for what wildlife there ventured—fish, mostly, under the lakes.

One time, he wrestled a polar bear. He thought for sure he was going to die and be eaten, but he managed to find a strength deep within himself, like a nitro injection to a fuel tank that sparked him to do the impossible and snap the beast’s meaty neck.

He had never felt so powerful. And he owed it all to her.

Yet at the same time, every day when he returned, inexplicably there was food on the table, without his participation. “Where does it come from?” he kept asking.

“It’s magic,” she said with a smile, leaving him to choice but to believe her.

“I’m sick of this,” he finally blurted. “I want to know what the hell is going on here.”

“Why? Aren’t you happy?”

“Of course I am!”

“Well, then.”

“A man has needs,” he said. “A need to provide. A need to be needed. What the hell am I doing around here?”

“You’re here to achieve divinity,” she said, her back to him.

This fresh-hell double-talk took him off guard. “Divinity?” Of course, he thought, was’t that the reason he’d come here? In a way? To access his own divinity? “Me?” he said, “A God?”

“No, I’m sorry,” said his lover and benefactor, “I misspoke. I am not here for you. You are here for me.”

His confusion was compounded.

“You’re the last step, see?” she said. “Well, next-to-last. The first tread on the last flight of steps, as it were. I have everything I need here, all the power that nature will impart me. But you—you are the one thing she can’t provide: you are an audience.”

It should be possible, I think–or plausible, at least.

Divorce. Man leaves wife for the younger model. Later, younger wife tires of the little blue pills and finds a younger man. But once the younger man starts to need the little blue pills, he resents his old wife’s wrinkles. Generations may shift, but this trend could go on forever in a long, unbroken line.

So imagine if each permutation, each couple forged in the ruins of the last, had children. One child, at least. What you would get, what you could end up with, is an endless string of half-siblings reaching from here into the dark backward and abysm of time. And what’s more, all of these children, from Timmy to Caesar, if it be, they could every one of them be seen as the same generation, half-sibs of half-sibs as far as the written word can read, and farther. Was that your great-great-grandfather, or your half-sister’s half-bro seven times removed?

Now imagine an object, like a watch or a quilt. An heirloom or a toy, doesn’t matter. Each half-sibling (or one of the bunch) makes a vow to the last to pass on the object to the next half-generation, when it arrives. So out of the tragedy of death or divorce, a living history breathes affection into the future, and the legacy continues until the last bro or sister survives both parents, further childless, and the quilt or toy or time-piece is buried in their grave.

You know him as Good-Man. He came to your city as a superhero, fighting crime primarily at night, beating up the bad-guy and saving the girl—he was nothing if not a traditionalist.

The problem was, he didn’t live in enough of a fantasy world to suit himself and soon, there was a warrant out for his arrest on the charge of vigilantism.

Do you remember how he turned himself in? Do you remember the heartfelt apology all over TV for six months? Of course you do—who could forget such sincerity? And do you remember how he served his time in jail and came back a broken man, disgraced?

Of course not, because that didn’t happen.

Because he was a white man, strong and powerful—superpowered! Their excuse was, they didn’t think they could build a prison that could hold him, and they’re probably right, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t deserve to go to prison.

In the course of his so-called crime-fighting, several bystanders were injured and some even killed, and even some of the alleged perpetrators turned out to be innocent people who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, making Good-Man guilty of not just brutality but of wrongful conviction.

And yet no civil suits were heard.

Instead, he not only patrols the streets, he does so in broad daylight—with a badge!—a one-man SWAT team striking fear in the hearts of anyone even vaguely aware of crime, and he is coddled by the system he supports.

But I do not support this system.

You know me as the Antagonist because that is how your Media presents me: an enemy to all that is good and just, a threat to middle-class white girls everywhere and the wealth they are set to inherit. Yes, I have done things that are illegal. I have robbed banks and crumbled investment companies—but what have I done with the money? Bought houses for the men and women ruined by unethical banking decisions. Helped invest in infrastructure not just in countries crippled by poorly executed foreign aid, but right here at home, too, in Detroit and greater Michigan. And I have bought medical debt only to turn around and forgive it. I have done nothing that wouldn’t rightly be ascribed to a modern-day Robin Hood.

And have I killed anyone? No one who wasn’t trying to kill me. Or someone I cared for. Or an innocent victim who deserved better.

But maybe they are right. Maybe I am an Antagonist. That certainly is how they see me, and they should. I am not one of them, which, by their own standards, makes me an Other. And there are only two kinds of Others: victims and threats.

I do not like them. Their way of life is demeaning and I will do everything in my power to break this system of injustice that they have put in place to oppress those who have nothing—but does that make me the Antagonist?

Is Good-Man the Protagonist, then? With his feats of arms, his monopoly on violence, how he protects the system that I know is corrupt? You know it, too. There is something deeply wrong with the way the world is made to work nowadays. Why is he cheered on and applauded, awarded, for keeping it that way?

But he can’t really be a protagonist, can he? Not anymore. He had his big change, his arc, when he threw himself on the mercy of public opinion and became their champion. That was it. That was the end of his story. He has reached his height—nothing he does now matters.

My ambitions are loftier than that. I don’t want a gold star on my chest or my face on any magazines—I want results. I want justice. I want mercy for the innocent and providence for the poor; and for rich nobodies who live off the backbreaking labors of those they consider less-than, I want nothing. I want humility—is that so much to ask? That you realize your parents’ money or the color of your skin does not entitle you to privileges not afforded to those you consider Others. I want you to share. I want you to realize that there is a problem and work towards a system that eliminates it. That is a goal. That is a change. Something to strive for.

But you don’t want to strive. You don’t want a vanguard forging into a brighter future, you want a bulwark against the floodtides of history. So you take away my trumpet in the hopes of protecting your Jericho’s walls.

What do you want? Security? For yourself, for your children? If that were so, that would be noble. I would applaud you. But security is not what you want. What you want is freedom. The freedom to take what you want. That freedom is a function of power and with power comes responsibility, so it is that you want freedom from: freedom from consequences.

You are the Antagonist. You are the great evil empire in the West and I am the Protagonist. I may not be the hero. I may not be that virtuous ideal. But I know what I want and what I want is peace and justice and mercy. So tell me again, remind me how what I am is the real threat, and not the man who beat me without due cause.

In the cul-de-sac at the end of Amethyst Place, there are six houses. These are the families who live there—you’re gonna love this, I swear.

First of all, there are the Larchman-Sheehans. They have seven children, three boys and four girls. The father, Steve Sheehan, is from out of town, but no one seems to know where—like, they can’t even all agree on a country, and his accent is unrecognizable. Both Steve Sheehan and Linda Larchman (his wife) are dwarves, as are all of their children—which is statistically really unlikely.

They are the most normal family in the Amethyst cul-de-sac.

Next, there are the Goodkinds. George and Mary Goodkind have seven daughters, including two sets of twins: Truth, Grace & Glory, Faith, Chastity & Charm and Joy. Told you you were going to love this. Hold on, it gets better: I’m pretty sure they’re all witches.

All right, I’m gonna do the Robbins family next, and then catch up to the Joneses. I’m actually not positive how many children Xander and Alicia Robbins have, everyone keeps giving me conflicting data, but if I had to guess, I’m thinking twenty-six. I say this because the ones I’ve met have names that go in alphabetical order and the youngest child is Zoë. But I can’t get an accurate count because some of the children, from what I can tell, never actually leave the house—which is huge, by the way, but doesn’t look to be anywhere near huge enough to hold twenty-six kids (though I am pretty sure some have left home already).

As for the Joneses, Kurt and Kayla Jones don’t seem to have had, or been able to have, any children of their own, but they have adopted and fostered about a dozen or so, from what I can tell, at least right now—but I understand that they might sort of cycle through some of them, they may come and go. As with the Robbinses, though, I suspect there are some of these Jones kids I’ve not seen yet.

Finally, there’s the Norman household. I haven’t been able to confirm this because the records are hard to get hold of, but it sounds like the Normans’ ancestors were slaves who killed their own masters and the end of the Civil War? And then moved into their house? That doesn’t really make any sense to me, I could go on and on, but that’s what I heard. There are three women living there, I think maybe early sixties? Sisters, and then one of them has a teenage daughter. At least, everybody says Pearl’s mother lives in the house, I don’t know, they can’t seem to agree, like everything else when it comes to that cul-de-sac.

One more thing, though: one of the houses is empty, the middle one, which is actually between the Joneses and Robbinses, almost abutting them both. It’s the house whose property directly leads into the mysterious forest that shouldn’t actually be there.

The other families that live on Amethyst Place are standard fare for this part of the world, more or less: a redneck trailmix of good ol’ boys’n’girls and decent folks, but however liberal they may admit to being around a city girl like me, every last one of them knows not to go into that cul-de-sac. I guess they might if they’re invited to the neighborhood cookouts they host (don’t wanna be rude, after all), but I can see where those could get awkward when guests come a-knocking.

Basically, they’re scared to death of those five families. Actually, I’m pretty sure the whole town is. I just can’t figure out why.

Before I left New York, there were rumors. There are always rumors, of course, in the Big City—alligators in the sewers and whatnot, but these were specific and they were consistent. A superhero, they called it. Not just some nutjob vigilante, but someone with actual powers. There are levels to believing a rumor. “it’s not powers,” my boyfriend, the “real” journalist, said. “If it’s happening at all, it’s a guy in a suit with elaborate gadgetry. If I were you—or if I believed it at all, which I don’t—I’d start looking into really rich orphans.”

But there was no mistaking it. “I’m talling you, mom,” said one thug in police questioning, “I could feel motherfucker’s hand on my threat even though he’s at the end of the motherfuckin’ alley. Motherfucker picked me up four feet off the motherfucking ground, threw me into the mutherfucking wall. I’m telling you, that motherfucker is real!”

So how should we account for this oedipal demigod?

He stood accused of Telekinesis, but of something else, too.

Before he came, there were whispers. Every windless (though admittedly some of them only when pressed) remarked that just before the “creature” appeared, they heard whispers that seemed to be coming from inside their own skull. “Who’s there?” they might say, or “The fuck is happening to me?” and in the case of violent crimes, usually this distracted them enough for their (intended) victims to get away.

Then NightShade would get to work.

That’s what they called him. He’d sweep in “like a shadow in the night”—all anyone ever saw was his silhouette against slightly-lighter backdrops. It was fitting because he did act like a poison for the people he attacked.

The problem was, not all of his victims were guilty.

I guess that’s really the issue with every vigilante, whether or not they have “superpowers”—there’s supposed to be due process, protections for the innocent, but this NightShade isn’t subject to any of that.

It wasn’t long before the NYPD came up with a task force to track down this vigilante, but of course that didn’t work—it couldn’t possibly. NightShade has superpowers, for crying out loud, and apparently knows very well how to use them. None of the cops were ever able to even get close to him. How can you exert authority over something you can’t destroy? Or even hurt? And so the reign of terror continues. Last week, apparently, a young father was flung around an alleyway and strung up by his ankles to dangle from a fire escape, apparently just for yelling at his kid for misbehaving. Even if that was a crime, what kind of punishment is that? I managed to pull some strings and get hold of the transcripts of the report. The young father was one of the few who said he could actually make out some of the whispers he heard beforehand. Words like “trafficking”, “kidnapping”, and finally words like “molest”. I’m not going to mention the guy’s name, out of privacy and such (though it’s remarkable how few news outlets are respecting that) now that he’s essentially been accused of child abduction.

Here’s what really bothers me, though—well, two things: first of all, of course, if he’s such a nutjob, how are we ever going to catch him or even negotiate with him? But perhaps more importantly, at least the one that really strikes me: these whispers. I mean, he’s obviously telepathic… how is he getting things wrong? How is he making any mistakes? I mean, clearly he’s out to clean up the streets… is it possible he knows something we don’t about these people who are supposedly innocent?

I’m not saying we should trust NightShade blindly and crown him king or anything weird like that—at the very least his methods are cruel and unusual.

But what if he’s right?