Out across the night, a leviathan was dying near the holding ponds, killed by a flying monster. Out across the night, something emerged from the carcass in its last moments that the dark bird thought she recognized. A person. One of the three, yet not one of the three. But she had no edict from the Company to intervene, and knew this meant the flying monster had taken over her role. Which made the thing inside her furious.

Murder control, read me a story. Murder control, read me a story so I can sleep. Or so the thing inside me can.

Any story at all will do.

~ The Magical Garden ~

I have a magic garden in a secret room. I have the voice of God in my head. I have the voice of my father in my head, too. But I have a magic garden in a secret room. It is there that I hide this journal for now, but not for later. There that I fix the mistakes. I pile the mistakes in the corner of the magic garden with so many beautiful animals and plants. My duck is there. I remember when she was a duckling. When she would be frightened when I entered the magic garden, although I had left her at the top, at the very top, where she could thrive. There was so much to eat, among my mistakes. It was a land of plenty and it was my secret.

When my father brought me to the Company for good and all, I did not at first hear from God or the Company. I heard only from my father, and he put me in charge of extinguishing the broken things, the discards. I did this faithful for several years as his apprentice. I would extinguish the broken things. I would put them in the wood chopper or I would drown them or I would poison them. Each to its own passing. Whatever seemed to make sense, and not because I wanted to. No, I wanted to fix them. But I wasn’t allowed to, because the Company didn’t want them fixed and so my father didn’t want them fixed either.

Do you understand? Nothing thrives without being broken. Nothing exists without being dead first. I could not escape the voice of God, the voice of the Company. It would boom through like God. Like the Company. And who could say which was better or best? I could not. If it was not God, then it was the Company, and if it was not the Company, then it must be the ghost of my father, curled up inside of my brain, my mind, my skull. I could not get it out if I drilled a hundred holes in there all at once. I could only get it out if I did what the voice said.