In the woods behind my house is a cabin that is only there on some nights. The door is always locked and the windowshades are drawn. On nights that it is storming, I see a little boy dancing on the porch, drenched and shivering. One night, after a snow, when the woods were deafly quiet, I saw the boy crying as he was escorted inside by a tall figure in a trenchcoat with long sharp knives for fingers. The boy turned to me, tears in his eyes as he entered the dark cabin, and he had my face. I don't go into the woods anymore.

Somewhere in the middle of the Sonora Desert I once took a wrong turn down a dirt road and came to a small liberal arts college on the edge of a canyon. I stopped inside and saw two girls playing with turtles in the fountain. They asked if I wanted to take one home, and I politely declined. They pouted, and there was a bell. The students gathered in black robes at the back of the courtyard, and cast a blindfolded old man into the canyon. I ran away.

I found an old overgrown tank down by the river one day, with an old soldier living in a tent next to it. He told me that it was his tank, and he was waiting for the tide to fall so he could drive it back to where it was supposed to be. When I asked where that was, he hissed and told me that I had no right to know. When I came back, the tide had risen, and the tank was gone.

When I was a teenager, I saw a tiny sun on my way to school one day, floating down a side street and away from me. Grass would scorch from great arcs of fire from it, and the street lights would blink and spark at its approach. I was late enough as is, so I continued on. When I passed by again later that day, the scorch marks were gone.

I met a homeless man in a tunnel underneath 3rd Street once. He wore a blanket and told me his body was half squid. He gave me a silver coin and asked me to bring him a pizza. When I returned with the pizza, there was a crate of fish next to a sign that said only to leave it and take the payment. I had nowhere to store the fish, but I took them anyway. The fish had no smell, and did not rot. I could never bring myself to eat any of them, and left them in the attic when I moved.

Spiders gather in my basement and whisper secrets to my cat that she tries to share with me, but cannot. She meows at the shadows now, and sings to the clouds.