Tippy Cumber relished the warmth of the noodle bowl as he carried it to his living room throne. After another long day delivering mail to a thankless neighborhood, sloshing through un-shoveled snow and un-scooped piles of dog doo, he gladly received this meager reward.
The couch was once a rich shade of green, but fifteen years of sunlight faded it into a lifeless gray. It still served its purpose, though, which was to give its owner something to sit on while he ate his buttered noodles.
Tippy eased his bulk onto his beloved couch and nestled into its familiar indent. He slurped his first mouthful, which naturally dribbled down his chin. His right sleeve served as a napkin.
The local news was on TV and he couldn’t find the remote so that’s what he watched while he stuffed the carbs.
He placed the empty bowl on the cluttered coffee table and wedged deeper into the couch cushions.
The news ended after a short segment on the local animal shelter’s twentieth anniversary. The Wheel of Fortune then came on, and Tippy’s eyes were tempted with drowsiness. Before the Wheel’s first spin, he slipped into sleep.
A flash of light filled the room. He flinched, and when his eyes adjusted, he frowned at the new scenery. He was still on the couch, but his house was gone. A canopy of oak branches loomed above him. Sunlight filtered through the dark green leaves and illuminated the clusters of pollen that filled the air. A gentle breeze carried an aroma as poignant as the first Spring thaw.
He sat up and chuckled at the couch, which was overrun by grass. Their clusters pressed against its flanks and their slender blades seeped through the cushions, making it look like the couch had always been a part of the forest.
He stood up, giddy at this strange reality, and began to wander. The forest was filled with mature oaks, creating a spacious understory that gave ample visibility in all directions. He soon stumbled upon a gravel pathway that meandered through the trees. It wound up a gradual slope and out of sight.
The wind rattled through the branches and wheezed through the trunks. Like a lover’s touch, it brushed over Tippy. He stopped, closed his eyes and welcomed its embrace.
Then a rush of birds swooped into the branches above and began chirping frantically. Tippy opened his eyes at the peculiar way their song sounded like actual words.
But he was immediately distracted by a woman on the pathway. She was the forest personified: her hair matched the hues and texture of the surrounding trunks, and the greenery of the leaves were woven into her dress.
“Uh,” he muttered.
She stepped towards him. Her footfalls were delicate and the movements of her body accentuated her beauty with every step. Her eyes, never swaying in their gaze, were fixed on him. Her movements trapped Tippy’s gaze with an abrasive allure, forcing him to goggle. His insides were undone. His heart lurched and his stomach sloshed. His feet grew numb, causing him to sway. He needed something to do, so he rubbed his eyes.
“Welcome to Sun Land,” the woman said. Her voice was sweet–so sweet that he, quite strangely, thought he tasted vanilla. “Are you Tippy?”
“Tha’s me.” His voice was loose, a fumbled mix of sound and breath. “How d’ya know me?”
“I’ve been waiting for you.” She stopped a few steps in front of him. Her face mirrored the allure of her voice. Her green eyes were too intoxicating to look at directly, so he fluttered his gaze around.
That’s when she became something of a mirage. Her hair fluctuated between red and brown, depending on the angle of his attention.
“My name is Mera,” she said, smiling, “and I’m yours.”
“Wha…?” His voice cracked.
“Will you join me on a walk?”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. You’ll always find something beautiful in Sun Land.”
He nodded, fighting a smile of his own.
“How about the bluffs?” she said, extending her hand to Tippy.
He didn’t care where they went. He took her hand, and a wave of warm tremors coursed through his arm and into his body. A flood of strength swept into him. He could feel it in his legs and arms. He bit his lip, snuck a grin and turned his face away to savor the fervor.
Indistinct voices carried his attention to the left. He squinted through the grove and saw a group of men in a thicket, hacking down saplings in a robotic fashion. They didn’t seem to notice Tippy and Mera.
“Who are they?” Tippy asked.
Mera pursed her lips and studied them. “Other residents. Never mind them.”
He gladly obliged the command and silently followed Mera through the trees.
He snuck glances at her in the vain attempt to soak in all that she was. She didn’t seem to notice. She didn’t even look at him. This made him wonder if she was lying about what she said about ‘being his,’ but her hand, gradually tightening on his, told him all he needed to know.
They came upon a cluster of fallen bur oaks, each one cracked near the base. They formed a wall of barbarous branches that snaked in all directions.
But instead of finding a way around it, Mera walked right into the tangle. She released Tippy’s hand to pull herself through.
Immediately, his knees buckled. He collapsed to the ground with a tight chest and his vision blurred.
“Easy!” Mera quickly stooped to help him up.
His strength returned with her touch.
“I’m going to let go again, OK?” she said. “I won’t leave you.”
Tippy nodded, feeling silly at the patronization in her voice.
When she released him, the weakness returned, but he anticipated it and grabbed a nearby branch to steady himself. He flopped into the brush and languished in pursuit of his vixen.
The birds returned with a vengeance. They chirped, cawed and even chortled.
“Begone!” Mera’s voice sneered amidst their cackling fury.
Tippy’s bones ached with each movement as he passed through the labyrinth.
The birds landed in the oak.
Tippy cowered. “Go away!”
An odd-looking blue bird landed dangerously close to him. “Tippy! Tippy!”
He frowned at it, puzzled.
“Did you just…” Tippy could only whisper such a question, “say my name?”
“Shoo!” Mera smashed branches to scare it away.
A sigh of wind crept over them, gradually rising to a gust.
The birds fluttered and let out panicked squawks, but still remained close to the oak.
The gust grew to a scream, tearing leaves from branches.
Tippy cowered the moment he heard limbs snap. He covered his head until the wind subsided, and by then, the flock finally disappeared.
“What was that about?” Tippy asked before resuming his crawl.
“The birds are…unyielding.” Mera’s voice lost some of its vanilla.
When Tippy wormed through the brambles and collapsed on the other side of the burrs, he eagerly extended his hand to Mera’s.
Her fingers firmly clenched in return. She raised him to his feet, gave him a wink, then nodded ahead.
Through the trees, Tippy spotted three bluffs on the horizon.
She led him onward, but she kept to a lazy pace. Like woozy young lovers, they said little.
Thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance but Tippy couldn’t see any clouds. He almost thought it sounded like the knocking of a giant door.
“Are you married?” she asked.
“Never even dated.”
She smiled and said nothing.
“What?”
“Nothing, just surprised.”
“Really?” He leaned forward, searching her face for more information.
Their eyes met for a brief moment before she looked away, but it was enough for him to catch a curious glint in her eyes. Her grip made his hands numb, but he didn’t care.
“I love this place,” he said, still looking at her.
“Doesn’t it just erase all the turmoil? All that’s wrong with life?”
Tippy said nothing as he watched an eagle soar alongside the face of the central bluff. A gust of wind wafted the scent of the sun-heated grass into their faces. “It’s perfect.”
The thunder returned, this time rattling the ground. Mera didn’t seem bothered by it, so Tippy chose to ignore it.
“Just wait ‘til you see the view from above,” she said, leading him through a thick patch of junipers that encroached the rising land around the bluffs.
One of their spindly branches caught her arm and whipped his face. He flinched for the impact but the branch never hit.
He opened his eyes. Pat Sajak was on the TV, the Wheel of Fortune was on its final spin, and Tippy was still on the couch.
No! It was all a stupid dream!
He turned the TV off, grabbed his empty bowl and went grumbling into the kitchen.
Good dreams are the worst.
The front door thundered with knocking.
Puzzled, he returned to the living room and peeked out the window. Illuminated by the exterior light was Cru, his neighbor. Although both bachelors with similar interests, he and Tippy seldom interacted. They had an unspoken rule of mutual avoidance.
Tippy opened the door. “Hey, Cru. Wha–”
“Tippy, I thought you were dead in there! I was just about to break-in.”
Tippy frowned, then stepped aside to let Cru enter.
“I tell you,” he continued, “this is fate or something. I just happened to be taking a nap when I found out about you. I mean, what are the chances that we’re neighbors?” He plopped on the couch. “Maybe it’s, like, contagious or something. Like a local dream? I don’t know.”
“Umm,” Tippy mumbled.
“I’ll explain everything at the forest,” Cru reassured.
“What forest?”
“About Mera.” Cru said, pulling a bottle of pills from his pocket. “Get two glasses of water.”
Tippy was too dumbstruck at the mention of her name, so he quietly obliged Cru’s request and shuffled into the kitchen.
How does he know…?
He filled the glasses and kept a befuddled frown as he walked back to Cru, handing him a glass.“How do you know about Mera?”
Cru immediately threw a pill into his mouth and flushed it down. “Just take the pills.” He tossed the bottle to Tippy. “They work fast. Sit down before you take them. Someone your size will need twooo…” He collapsed on the couch, unconscious.
Tippy hesitated to process everything. He wasn’t sure if he could trust Cru, but the unanswered questions pressed him too hard. He popped the cap, placed two pills in his mouth and swallowed.
The world faded faster than he anticipated, and he barely reached the nearby armchair before he likewise drifted into sleep.
He awoke in the familiar forest, sitting in the armchair. Cru and the couch were nowhere in sight. He stood to scan for his neighbor, but he could only see trees.
Suddenly, a flash of green leapt into his periphery.
“Tippy!” It was Mera. “You’re back early.”
He gave a generous smile. “My neighbor gave me a pill.”
She raised an eyebrow in plain confusion when something whizzed from the left and struck her in the side.
It was a wooden arrow with gray fletching.
Tippy howled in shock.
Without a sound, she swayed to the right and collapsed against a nearby oak. As her legs lost their strength, her hands ripped and scraped at the bark in a futile attempt to stay upright. She slumped to the ground in a quiet moan, and after a slight twitch, laid motionless.
Tippy dashed beside her and shook her. “No, no!”
Blood rushed to his head and his hands rattled. He stood up and pivoted with hands clenched. His gaze ripped through the forest for the attacker.
As if on cue, a man emerged from behind a thicket with a primitive bow in hand. It was Cru.
“You!” he said, propelling towards him.
Cru made no attempt to prepare for Tippy’s assault. His arms hung at his sides, his face relaxed.
Tippy lowered his head and lunged at him. Cru sidestepped, letting Tippy crash into the thicket.
“She’s a dream,” he said, whimpering with weakness. “You can’t cling to her. She’ll kill you.”
Tippy scrambled to his feet, clenching his fist again.
Cru stepped back, nocked an arrow, and held the bow half-taught. “She’ll be awake soon.”
Tippy froze, but didn’t soften his frown.
“She’s not dead,” Cru added.
Tippy’s face loosened slightly, but he kept his fist tight.
Cru lowered his bow and un-nocked the arrow. “This is a dream, remember? That’s what makes her immortal, like her father. His name is Kurr, and he’s the enemy.”
“Enemy?”
“And a nasty one, too. Satan on steroids. This world may belong to him, but his house is in Lamoor Forest. And from that festering swamp come his legions of daughters. And all their delicious lies.” He pivoted and strode up the gradual slope.
Tippy trotted up beside him. “What do you mean?”
“What do you think of Mera?”
“She’s great,” Tippy said, “almost unbelievable.”
“Exactly.”
“Huh?”
“Sun Land is a ‘dream world.’ Every man here came here accidentally, but once here, there’s no escape. Every time we sleep we return to this.”
Tippy scanned the oaks. “Only men?”
“I’ve only seen men. Maybe women have their place too. But something about Sun Land feeds on men. I mean, don’t get me wrong. You can see why most guys love it.”
They came to the path and followed it up a slope through the grove.
“And like the heating of water for an unsuspecting frog,” Cru spoke through breaths, “Kurr’s daughters gradually lure us into Lamoor Forest.”
“Wait,” Tippy said, realizing something, “how did you know I came here? Did you see me in the forest?”
“I heard from a little bird.”
“No,” Tippy chuckled. “Really. How?”
“A little bird!” Cru looked at him with serious eyes. “From the birds of Lark. They tweet our names.”
Tippy shook his head. “I don’t have Twitter.”
“Look,” Cru sighed, “it’s all very complicated. What matters is that the birds don’t belong to Kurr. They belong to Lark.”
“Lark is the good guy?”
“More than good. He’s like a virus in this grotesque paradise. Kurr and his daughters have it out for him.”
Tippy glanced behind for a sign of Mera’s green, but returned frontward when he only saw trees. “So what happens in Lamoor?”
“No one knows. Every man who goes into it never comes back. Some say they die.”
“Mera was taking me to the bluffs, not Lamoor.”
Cru shook his head. “Boiling frogs, Tippy! It can take weeks, months, but sooner or later, the pull becomes too much. We can’t explain it. We just need it.”
“Well,” Tippy rubbed his cheek, “I believe Mera’s different. She’s the real deal.”
Cru halted and squared himself to Tippy. “Trust me, man. Mera is not what you think she is,” he waved his hand, as if in an argument, “at least listen to what the others say. Maybe they’ll help you change your mind.”
At the top of a grassy knoll, Cru paused to point ahead.
“There’s Lamoor Forest,” he said. “Just past the village.”
The village, a mere cluster of rustic buildings, was dwarfed by a dark, green monstrosity that laid beyond it.
Cru led Tippy down the knoll and into a narrow alley, lined with shovels, rakes and other miscellaneous tools.
They came into a courtyard, where a short man was trying too hard to hide his loitering. His blonde hair was bound up in a ponytail. He wore a hard leather chest piece and matching greaves. He nodded to Cru and then faced Tippy, grabbing his arm in a firm, but friendly, grip.
“Tippy,” the man said.
“You know my…?“ He caught himself with a smile and tapped his temple. “Right. The little birdies.”
They quietly filed inside the nearest building, which was swarming with men. A few of them looked pale, donning outdated clothing, as if they had accidentally walked out of old photographs. The rest of the men were what one would expect: a mishmash of cultures and social echelons.
What was unexpected, given this diversity, was the way they all acted like family. Tippy got a strong sense of a shared purpose.
“No daughters follow you here?” Came a loud voice in the throng.
A wave of affirmations responded.
Cru came beside Tippy and nudged him. “That man in the gray hoodie. He’s the leader of our little coup. Name’s Barth.”
“Did Neil and Mark fetch the weapons?” Barth asked.
“Yup,” Ty said.
“Everyone remember your groups?” Barth asked.
“Is Tippy here?” Barth said, eyeing the men in the room.
Ty and Cru each grabbed one of Tippy’s shoulder and pushed him to the center of the men.
“Welcome, Tippy Cumber,” Barth said, waving his hand in a slow arch around the room, “to the Uprising.”
The men voiced a rush of deep mumbles and raised fists.
Two men, presumably Neil and Mark, entered the door with long canvas bundles. The crowd cleared the way as they laid them on the floorboards. Like a horde of zombies, the men attacked the bundles and pulled out a myriad of awkward spears, pitchforks and homemade bows with quivers of makeshift arrows. Soon everyone, including Tippy, held a weapon.
“We all will give all,” Barth said, “but it will only take one of us to find victory! One of us will plunge that fatal blow into that rotten Kurr.”
Tippy looked at the pitchfork in his hand as the men roared again.
“Kill Kurr!” Someone started to chant. “Kill Kurr!”
Tippy’s stomach shrunk.
The room erupted in unison. “Kill Kurr! Kill Kurr!”
Tippy looked at Cru, whose mouth dribbled with the war chant. His brow twitched with every syllable.
“Enough!” Barth roared, suddenly appearing in front of Tippy.
The room went silent.
Barth palmed Tippy’s shoulder. “I understand you’re new here. So I apologize if this seems abrupt or confusing. But do you know who Kurr is?”
“Uh, Cru told me.”
“Then you understand why he must be stopped.”
Tippy nodded halfheartedly.
“I don’t think you understand. You see–”
“Barth,” Ty interrupted, “we need to act while we have the numbers. The Jenson Brothers will wake up soon and–”
“Then let ‘em wake!” Barth snapped. “You lose faith. It will only take one of us to kill that demon. Now,” his voice softened as he proceeded, “if Tippy is with us, he needs to know why.” He took a breath. “We’re caught in limbo, Tippy, between wanting and having.” He closed his eyes as he fluttered his fingers to the ceiling. “A bite of steak to only find fat.”
“Mark’s gone,” Cru said. “Woke up.”
Barth ignored him. He kept his intense gaze on Tippy. “We belong here because it owns us. Our names. Our faces. Our memories. All of it.”
“The men are assembling,” Ty said as the room shuffled into action.
Barth gripped Tippy’s shoulders. “It’s a limbo. So I ask: do you want to have something real, Tippy?”
The men exited.
Barth leaned close, proffering a sword. “Freedom,” he whispered, as if speaking made it fragile.
Tippy took the weapon without question. His fingers embraced it limply.
Barth slapped Tippy’s back and escorted him to the door.
“Down with Kurr!” Someone wailed outside.
“Time to end this!” Another joined.
Tippy promptly found himself in the whooping men. Their momentum carried him across town and down an alley where a wooden gate awaited. It was buried under a layer of moss. Two men ran up and pried it open and a draft of cold air seeped over the entourage.
A narrow pathway led to the pines of Lamoor Forest. It was dark, damp and alien compared to the rest of Sun Land.
The men raised their weapons in unison and resumed the kill chant. Someone shoved Tippy to the front.
“Wait,” he said, “I–“
“Kill Kurr! Kill Kurr!”
The forest floor sloped down to a bog, where mist formed around eerie, leafless trees. Their spindly silhouettes crouched on either side of the path.
Brisk air breathed over them like an early winter storm: cold and unwanted. The farther they went, the more bitter it became.
Tippy stopped. He couldn’t move even if he wanted to. Men tried to push him but he resisted.
“Forward!” Barth commanded.
Tippy turned to him but he couldn’t find the words to voice his rising fear. His vision blurred as he searched for a way to slip back to the village.
“Tippy,” Barth said, “you–”
Creak!
Everyone flinched at the noise.
“Wind!” Someone warned in a hoarse whisper. “The Daughters have come.”
Creak!
Weapons clamored to address the tree causing the alarm.
Barth stepped forward, frowning at its surface. “This is no wind.”
The tree’s limbs twitched, as if it were a hand. Its bark wrinkled into a face. Eyes opened.
The militia stepped back as one.
The tree’s mouth gaped in a silent plea.
“Wha…” Ty stammered, “what is that?”
“A lost man.” Barth nearly whimpered out the words. “One of Kurr’s trophies.”
More trees formed faces.
“This was a mistake,” someone stammered. “Someone wake me up!”
The wind whispered, as if awakened by the men’s rising panic. Mist wheezed around them.
“There!” Ty pointed. “A daughter.”
Mera glided out of the shadowy haze.
Tippy’s insides flipped at the sight. “Mera, you’re alive.”
“Didn’t you hear me, silly?” She said with a wink. “I’m never leaving you.”
She raised a hand, marshaling a stronger wind. It grew in pitch until trees bent. Then her face contorted. Her eyes glowed green and her skin was darkened and shiny like a cloven obsidian stone.
She stretched her hands out, manipulating the elements with subtle twitches. A loud pop sent three men back through the air. One struck a tree, falling unconscious and disappearing. The other two bounced along the ground before regaining their balance.
Barth fought bravely, but found a nasty fate before disappearing to the waking world.
Tippy remained motionless, watching his woman defeat the men. Something gripped his shoes, and he looked to see moss flowing around him.
Suddenly, the figure of a man rose from the mist, as if the wind was calling him forth. This featureless humanoid, covered in moss, canted his head at Tippy.
Mera appeared beside the man, whom Tippy now realized to be Kurr.
“Stab him!”Cru bellowed from somewhere behind. “Now!”
“Fool,” Mera sneered at him. “He is already mine.”
Kurr said nothing. He simply opened his arms, taunting Tippy.
“End it!” Cru pleaded.
Tippy looked at his sword, hands quivering. The scent of vanilla choked him. He tossed the sword into the mist.
Mera grinned.
Cru howled.
Kurr hissed.
Tippy flinched, staggered and collapsed. The moss swarmed around him.
“Mera!” He pleaded.
The moss eased over his chest, pinning him.
“Poor soul,” Mera loomed over him.
Kurr strolled up, voiceless. The ground seemed to creak from his effort.
As Tippy imagined himself turning into one of his tree-trophies, a bird swooped overhead.
Only Mera reacted, swatting at it before craning the sky for more.
Another bird fluttered in her face.
“It’s him,” she snarled. Her beauty was gone in an instant. She was a twisted, ruined visage of humanity. More loathsome than a witch, her gnarled face and sunken eyes personified death itself. “He’s…withering me apart.”
Kurr moved to strike Tippy, but a raven landed and pecked his ear, forcing him to coil in defense. A vulture joined the fight, pinioning Kurr in the back. Five chickadees tore out some clumps of moss from his face.
“I must go, my love.” Mera dashed forward to crouch by Tippy. “He’s come to destroy me.”
Her breath, no longer vanilla, made Tippy feel like a sun-baked carcass had been placed over his head.
She stood with sadness in her face. “I wish I could see you again, but I’m afraid there is no coming back.”
“What?” he croaked, shocked to still find a lingering desire for her.
“The rules forbid it,” she said. “You’ve seen…my true self.”
The moss squeezed around Tippy’s sides, frigid like snow, as she sauntered into the shadows of the swamp.
“I’ll always be with you,” she said before disappearing.
He tried to move his head to follow her, but he was frozen. He attempted to move his hands and feet, but they were immovable.
The figure of a man suddenly appeared above him, but it wasn’t moss-riddled Kurr. A tattoo of bird wings spanned his face, mirroring itself on either cheek.
“Be at peace, Tippy,” the man said in a rich voice. “The wind is in their hands, but the air belongs to me.”
Moss covered Tippy’s mouth before he could reply.
“Wayward desires breed death,” the man continued. “But death brings new life. I’ll find you in the waking world. There you must listen to my word.”
When the moss crept up to his eyes, Tippy awoke in his house. He had fallen out of the chair and was now on the floor. After a few steady breaths he sat up to see Cru on the couch, glaring at him.
His neighbor opened his mouth, but paused and lowered his head with a slow shake.
“Cru,” Tippy ventured, “I’m–”
Cru threw the pill bottle at Tippy, striking him in the chest and bouncing to the floor. The pills rattled inside it as it rolled to a stop on the hardwood floor.
Cru stood up and towered over Tippy. “Don’t you realize how hard it’ll be for us now? The Uprising was exposed. Kurr’s wrath will come down on all of us.” He looked away, shook his head, then stormed to the front door, whipping the door open.
“Lark?” Tippy asked quietly.
“What?” Cru said without turning.
“Was that Lark? With the tattoo?”
Cru just slammed the door behind him.
Tippy slumped his head and remained motionless for more than an hour. As the night progressed, the bone-ache worsened. He ate more noodles in an attempt to mask it.
He moped aimlessly around the house until 2 A.M., when he finally collapsed on his bed. Before he drifted off, he hoped to see Mera in Sun Land.
But he woke up at 9–late for work. In the midst of scrambling to get ready, a realization sank in: Mera was right. He was banished from Sun Land.
He worked for another month until he was fired for consistent tardiness. Chasing the rainbow’s end, he hunted for Mera, finding solace in disreputable websites that paraded beauty for ravenous eyes. He spent the greater part of his savings on a stockpile of food–the rest on seedy magazine subscriptions.
One morning, Tippy opened the front door, expecting to find the next volume of smut on his front steps. But instead there was a little black book and pamphlet. He picked up the pamphlet to read:
We’re bound, all of us, and we cannot free ourselves. But all who look to the Lord rise up on the wind like eagles. Holy Dove Church invites you to experience the life-changing power of Jesus Christ.
Tippy chuckled, brought the items into his living room and tossed them on the coffee table. He wasn’t surprised to see the silver letters, “Holy Bible,” embedded on the binding of the black book. He opened it to the middle. Religious language and unpronounceable names riddled its pages. He flipped around and came to a section with the title, “Ecclesiastes,” and started scanning the page.
I have seen everything that is done under the sun,
and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.
So true.
He grabbed a thick group of pages and flipped near the end. The header read, “Matthew.” Certain groups of words were written in red.
The words of Jesus.
After scanning through some of them, a simple statement captured him:
Whoever would save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
For what will it profit a man if he gains the
whole world and forfeits his soul?
He closed the book and reclined deeper into the couch. The blank TV screen acted as a grainy mirror through which he stared at his slumped form. The distant sounds of a lawnmower and kids playing on the sidewalk came through the open windows.
Vanity?
Placing his elbow on his knee and nestling his chin into his hand, he fixed his eyes on Cru’s pill bottle on the floor and remained motionless for a few minutes.
“Ok.” He went to the kitchen and filled a glass of water. “Sorry, Jesus.” He went to get the pills. “But at least I know Mera is real.”
He picked up the bottle, popped the cap and swallowed them all. The world blurred. The glass slipped out of his hand and shattered on the floor. He collapsed onto the couch and embraced the shadow. He smiled and closed his eyes, mind dancing with thoughts of the green dress, the oak hair and the emerald eyes.
A week later, a nosy neighbor called the police due to inactivity at the Cumber residence. Tippy’s door was unlocked and the officers followed the stench into the living room, where his body laid on the nasty couch.
He had no family, so there was no funeral. He was cremated and his ashes were buried in a small cemetery near Rockford.
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