I fed the words of a tantalizing new challenge into AI. In seconds, it created a work of prose better than my mind could comprehend. It gave me pause. Made me question the purpose for my existence.

My one small skill to manipulate words into satisfying forms communicating my feelings, immediately diminished. Once you lose your self to a formless creation of 0s and 1s, of what is left to redeem my entire life?

I write this knowing if I fed it into AI, a better verbal expression would emerge.

"My god, what year was that?" She asks the question with a grin I can hear through the phone line.

"Probably 1984. Maybe 1985."

"Wow. That's a long time ago."

I agree, but I don't tell her that I remember the day like it was last week. She moves on to talk about her husband and her son. She's a nurse, he's a union worker in a factory, and retirement is close. The kid is a sophomore in college.

They built a house along the banks of that river, but way downstream from the place we met. Learning from the mistakes of our grandparents, she found a homesite atop a bluff that, barring an incredible catastrophe, will be impossible to flood. She sent me a photograph. It's gorgeous.

The last time I saw her was not long after we graduated. She missed my mother's funeral, having not found out about it in time to attend. That's when she called me, nearly in tears, guilt-ridden about not having been there for me.

We've known each other since 1985, and she was the first friend I made at That River.

I'd been going there since before then, but it was always just me and the grandparents. Maybe a cousin or two from the spot next door, where my grandfather's brother had a place. That uncle died fairly early on in the river years, though, and visits became far less frequent. His widow held on to the place for a while, but she let it go because she rarely went.

I had a box of toys kept under the bed on the porch. That bed still sits on a porch Back Home, and eventually, I'll claim it for my own screened-in sanctuary. From the box of toys, I still have two, and they sit on a shelf in my office. One is a Carter Hall can filled with crayolas. This box kept me company until I made this first friend.

When I was 12 or so, I wanted her to by my actual girlfriend, but she declined. It's probably for the best that she did. We used to visit each other frequently; our houses were only a couple of miles apart after I moved to be near that river, and we'd ride bikes back and forth. I was passing friends with her little brother, but honestly, I always thought he was a bit of a shit. Turns out he didn't improve much into his adulthood.

She was always a solid B student, a solid second-string athlete, but an A-level friend in those formative years of early high school. The friend group she chose was parallel to mine without necessarily forming much of a Venn diagram. Everyone knew each other and got along, but none of our people spent time with one another beyond school hours or extracurriculars.

We stayed in touch throughout high school, though. Chatting, calling, seeing one another sometimes. Things just sort of fell away as things do after graduation. It didn't help us stay in touch when she took those first couple of years of college far more seriously than I did. She was working full shifts and overtime before I could even call myself a junior; of course, she didn't have to work full time at night to then go to classes during the day. I use that as an excuse, really. I mean, it's true, I did clock in from 7pm to 7am more often than not to then arrive on campus for 0800 classes, but I skipped an awful lot in favor of sleep, too. Truth is, I skipped an awful lot even when I wasn't tired. But I digress.

We chatted for nearly two hours as I drove back country roads. Surprisingly, cell signal held out.

She told me about people we know, people we knew, and people we wished we didn't. I laughed a lot, and she asked me how I was doing since the funeral.

I thought about that day we met. It was a day like any other, but here we are, ripples in a pond forty years later. Friends once, and friends still. On that day, so far away but still so close, caterpillars had formed swarms. They were writhing piles on tree trunks, and should have been gross, but weren't. Each was a beautiful blue and green, and tickled young hands when scooped from their hardwood nests. She screamed and laughed, and I chased her as boys do.

"I've been fine," I lied.

As boys do.

Ethan stepped onto the elevator with a plastic takeout box in hand. It had been a long evening spent hunched over his desk. He leaned back on the railing, watching his office disappear as the doors slid closed. The doors stopped before they closed completely, apparently caused by the shiny black stiletto poking out from the bottom.

The doors scraped back open to reveal the loveliest face Ethan had ever been close enough to reach out and touch. Her eyes were wide, but severe, like she wasn’t quite sure of whoever was looking back at her. A manicured hand held a manila folder tightly against her chest.

Ethan cleared his throat. “I’d introduce myself, but I’m 80% sure I’ve got soy sauce on my shirt somewhere.” The woman smiled politely but quickly shifted her focus to the elevator panel. She pressed her button and stepped back, pressing her spine against the wall. The elevator crawled down, the numbers blinking down with it. It lurched to a stop, turning the numbers into a sputtering mess of lights on the screen. The emergency light flashed on, casting a soft red glow on every surface. “Looks like my food’s going to get cold,” Ethan chuckled.

“You’ll live,” the stranger replied dryly.

Ethan nodded and fixed his eyes downward. The gentle hum of the machinery echoed off the metal surfaces. “So, which company are you with? I don’t think I’ve seen you around here.” He took a step toward her and caught a faint whiff of vanilla.

“Private consultant. I’m just here for the day.” As an afterthought, she threw in a half-hearted smile to soften the edge in her voice. Then the woman turned back to Ethan, her eyes dark. “I shouldn’t say this, but keeping it in is worse.”

Ethan slowly turned his head toward the mysterious stranger. The emergency light had turned her white blouse a bright pink. “I can keep a secret. Might as well get to know each other a little bit while we’re trapped in here.”

“Yes, might as well,” she murmured. She let the silence fill the room again for a moment. “Isn’t it interesting how the longer you let silence grow, the heavier it gets?”

Ethan lifted an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

The woman kept her eyes fixed downward, as if she were confessing to the floor instead of Ethan. “I once worked at a community center. I thought I was helping the kids. I couldn’t have known. But when I did know… I did nothing. Worse. I covered it up. Every last cent that should’ve gone to those kids. It all went straight into the program director’s pocket. But what was I supposed to do? I could barely make rent, and he threatened to fire me if I so much as breathed a word to anyone about it.” She shook her head.

“Woah. That is heavy.” Ethan glanced at the woman, then quickly looked away.

The stranger was staring intensely at Ethan now. “Alan Nolan. I would call him a snake, but those creatures don’t deserve the comparison.”

Ethan felt every muscle in his body tighten. “Did you just say Alan Nolan?”

The woman smiled slyly. “Why, do you know him?”

Ethan was brought back to that night two months ago. The night he almost did something he would regret forever. “He remembered how the man begged to keep his finger. “I’ll get you your money tomorrow, I swear, E!” Ethan slapped the man across his face.

“Tomorrow? You’ll be lucky to see a tomorrow, Nolan, you miserable mother—”

“Ethan?” The woman reached out to rest a hand on his arm. “Do you know Alan?”

Ethan shrugged his arm away. He could still feel the blood drying on his knuckles. He said that day that he was going to find a way to get either paid or payback, but he didn’t imagine it looking like this. He sure didn’t expect a pretty lady to serve him blackmail on a silver platter.

The woman leaned in. “I know who you are, Ethan. That’s why I told you. I need your help to make this public, but I can’t be the face of it.”

Ethan rubbed his knuckles. “What do you want me to do?”

“Don’t let him get away with it. Tell everyone you know about what he did.” She handed him a piece of torn notebook paper with a phone number scrawled across it. “This is a secure number. Call it once and only once, and I’ll give you everything you need to blow the whistle. There’s a years-long paper trail of this fraud. I trust you understand what to do?”

“Yeah, sure. Time to make this news public.”

“Just one thing, Ethan. If for any chance you have a change of heart, just know that there’s still time for me to implicate you in all this.”

Ethan’s eyes widened. “What? What did I do?”

“Nothing yet.” The woman inspected her polished nails. “That’s the point. How this story plays out depends entirely on what you do next.” She pressed a combination of buttons on the elevator panel, and the elevator roared back to life. The emergency light disappeared, replaced by the stark white fluorescent lights. The elevator rumbled and came to a stop with a loud ding. The elevators opened, revealing the busy lobby. The woman slipped out and into the crowd.

Ethan peeled himself off the elevator wall and absent-mindedly tried to follow. He tried weaving through the crowd, but the woman had disappeared for good. The stranger was gone, but her ultimatum clung to him like blood he could never quite wash off. Like the blood he got on his sleeve that night. Funny how seven minutes in an elevator can trap you for the rest of your life.

It was to wet to go out and play.

It rained and rained,

It rained all day.

There we sat as we looked outside.

We were so bored, we didnt want to hide.

There we sat just us two,

We wanted to play games

Instead we cried "Boo hoo!"

We wanted to run and play in the sun.

We wanted to jump and have some fun.

The rain kept falling the sun didnt come.

The water was rising, we were afraid we may drown without having fun.

Mother and father came in with some gear!

They said

"Come on ladds, lets go make cheer!"

We put on rain boots, a rain coat and hat,

then we went outside just like that!

We stomped in puddles, we splashed and we played, we pretended we were duckies having fun in the rain!

Mother and Father said "Okay sweethearts we've played long enough, it time to go in, its time to clean up!"

Then after supper all tucked in our beds, after we said our prayers,

Mother and Father kissed our foreheads.

"Sweet dreams and angels kisses!" Said our Mum. "Tomorrow we can play out in the Sun!"

Deona Hand Boyle

2025

A day that stretched and yawned,awaiting the morning.

Minutes grew as I waned shorter in patience.

A missed opportunity to awaken the what if?

A possibility with unfathomable outcomes.

Probably just an equation hanging in the depths of my pallid imagination.

Do i roll over and play dead?,or do I dress in my favourite pj's and sleep walk the day away?