Issue #3: SUNDOWN TOWNS

Author’s Note: This piece was commissioned and then declined by a prominent magazine. The only information that has been altered/omitted are locations, as those have been deemed a national security risk. Re-post and share at will.

Naheem is our last great exorcist.

When you point this fact out to him, he barely blinks. It is a title he accepts, not with humility or even resignation, but with frustration. “We should have dozens like me out there on the streets,” he argues, “hundreds. It’s why we’re in this mess.”

When Naheem gets worked up, he gestures emphatically, fingers twitching with every word.

Julius knew the minute she walked by that she’d be trouble—he could see it in that slow, awkward shuffle, the way her dark-eyed gaze darted up and down the street, her wiry muscles tensed, ready to run at the slightest provocation. He almost wanted to jump out and say, “Boo,” but then he glimpsed the edge of the thick, plastic cuff around her right arm. She wore a black hoodie that engulfed her frame, but the cuff’s vivid glow demanded to be seen beyond the hem of her sleeve. Emerald green light—not violet, indigo, or yellow—splashed her brown skin. So…she was a Sun Shifter.

Squirrel had been spending the afternoon scrambling about the front yard hunting through the grass for fallen acorns dropped from the branches of the nearby tree, then filling his cheeks to bursting and running up the fence to the comfortable home that he shared with his grandfather. Up and down and up again he went preparing for the winter to come, storing his findings neatly into their storage compartment within the trunk while Grandfather Squirrel busied himself baking loaves of his best acorn bread.

As the cool of dusk descended hinting at the end of the day…

Asad Gregory Johnson counted the beat of his heart in the closing of doors.

That was how he knew it was time to wake: when throughout Boston, one door after another after another slammed shut. Windows closed without so much as a single crack. Blinds shuttered with one last nervous glance. Runners pushed up against the bases of doorframes, stopping the gaps beneath. Vents snapped air-tight. Each day the sound swelled like rain, fleeing in advance of sunset in a wave across the city.

Asad sat up in bed, leaned against the headboard, and watched the sun sink across the horizon…