1 In the closing months of World War II, Bulgaria was taken over by Communist forces September 9, 1944, in conjunction with the westward push of Soviet Red Army forces. By 1946, Bulgaria was fully a Communist Soviet Client state with wide collectivization of farms and industry.

5

They sat across a kitchen table from each other, mother and son. It was my former mother, Judith. She was young and looked the same as I remembered her before the fire. The blue and white thin cotton robe was gathered tight around her small waist.

I looked around the room, if you could call it that, for it had no walls that I could discern, only a vast expanse of white. Glowing ivory light illuminated the room from all angles, if there were any angles. The faint, yet distinct sound of dripping water persisted in the distance. We looked at a blank Scrabble board before us, then at each other.

"I get to go first this time Bobby," she said eyeing the lettered game pieces in her tray. She looked up and smiled sweetly.

"I have my word." She began to place the tiles down one by one in a line across the center of the board. W E E V I L.

"Weevil," she said, "Like the bugs we had last summer. You remember don't you Bobby?"

"Yes Mommy, I remember." The voice that escaped my mouth was that of a child. I looked down to check my body and found my normal long legs stretched underneath the table before me.

"Let's see, that's four plus one is five, six, ten, eleven, twelve then doubled because of the pink square is twenty-four. Pretty good start," she said writing on the table without pen or pad.

"But Mom..." I stopped for a second after hearing my normal tenor voice. "But Mom, there's no we in evil."

She raised her pale blue eyes slowly until they met mine. The edges of her cotton robe and the ends of her brown hair blended into the ambient whiteness of the room. The water drip chirped like a metronome in the background.

"Hmm," she said, cocking her head as she looked at the word on the board, "we'll have to check on that." She looked into my eyes again and pointed to the edge of the board. "Aren't you going to open it?"

I looked down and saw a letter on the left side of the board and a wood-handled steel letter opener on the right.

"Go on, open it," she prodded.

I placed my hands on the letter and the letter opener at the same time, and when I did the room took shape around us. She didn't notice the change, but we were now back in the living room of our small Georgia home. I looked around and everything was the same, the green carpeting, the cheap wood paneling, the pictures in the hallway.

"Well, what does it say?" she asked impatiently.