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nondescript vehicle outside and entered his cookie-cutter home. Furniture was strewn about in a still-life portrait of an Ikea showroom. It didn’t matter. He never noticed it anyway. The door to the stairs was the same color as the walls, though it was more like an absence of color really, a beige so neutral it hid from the eyes. Making his way down rhythmically creaky stairs, he entered his workshop.
The basement was large. Larger than would be expected considering the size of the house above it, but if his house didn’t have to obey reality, it certainly didn’t have to pay attention to zoning policies. Tables took up most of the center of the room, arranged at odd angles to allow space between and around them. Buildings sat atop the tables, tiny and utterly exact. Perfect little windows, perfect little doors, but no perfect little roofs. Nothing had a roof. Perfect little cars whizzed by on perfect little streets, with perfect little cops sounding perfect little sirens as they gave chase. The man with no shadow wandered the tables, searching for the right location.
There, on this table, was a dainty street corner, a coffee shop besides a natural foods store, a few blocks from a movie theater. Reaching into his pocket, he took something out and placed it behind the counter of the tiny coffee shop. He watched the perfect barista go about her business, unaware of any reality-shattering changes in her life as she poured coffee for tiny customers. Customers were easy. He didn’t bother researching extras, just snatched them when they took his fancy. Some found places in other buildings, but some simply lived in the stores, forever ordering coffee, finishing it, and then ordering more.
Next he found a place for the CEO. That one he put at the top of a tiny skyscraper. The CEO immediately got in the elevator and headed down to a meeting. The man with no shadow watched him giving a
Hunter
by Maura Bobbitt
Grey dawn, and the musk of a hickory fire
lingers still in the fibers of my jacket.
The trees are bare, but not quite asleep.
As you creep through the brush, seeping
as silent and wild as spilled water, the grace
of your gait says man is meant for this.
As I follow, the warning snap of my stepping
answers that I am not.
But still we continue, because it's November
and this is Texas, and you are my father,
and you wanted a son,
and this is the land that I will inherit to manage
when you are gone.
Once you have gone, this steel in my hands
will be locked away for good. Eventually
the deer will forget the sound of our voices
and the haunted house will put on its chorus
of discordant groaning for no one but the rats.
But for now we hunt, because you grew up
in black and white, and you're a good man
and we only ever could speak with footsteps,
and even with words, you would never believe
that deer don't exist to be eaten.