(O is for octagonal)

From the outside, the two-story twin was no different from its other half – the wrought-iron porch railing, the neatly painted trim, a cheery pot of geraniums on the step – but inside, the mood was somber. Detective Mike O’Neill sighed and shook his head. Another senseless death, another young man who might have been saved if he’d only reach out for help. The coroner confirmed what he already knew – suicide. A neighbor, an older man who lived next door, had called police at two-fifteen a.m. to report hearing a single gunshot.
“Any note?” the coroner asked. He finished examining the body – Hugh Palmer, according to his driver’s license – as it lay, slumped over a desk, the wood stained with blood, a handgun on the floor. He nodded to his assistant to move the body onto the gurney and out of the house.
Mike sighed again. “Not that we can find. They don’t always leave one.” He and his partner had carefully searched the house, but turned up nothing except the odd fact that most of the rooms had at least one mirror and that all of the mirrors were covered with black fabric.
The body had been gone only a few minutes when a young woman shoved open the front door. Mike and Tom, his partner, were making one more sweep of the house to look for a suicide note.
“Where is he?” The woman was crying, her mascara streaked down her face.
Mike broke off his search and took out his badge. “Police, miss.” He blocked her way. “We’re conducting an investigation. And you are–?”
She dug in her handbag for a tissue and wiped her nose. “Renee Palmer. Where’s Hugh?” She grew agitated again and tried to slip past Mike.
He gently guided her to a chair off the foyer. “Please sit, Miss Palmer. Hugh Palmer is related to you?”
“He’s my brother,” she sobbed. “He called me last night, late. He was distraught. He said he had a gun. I begged him—“ She stopped, unable for a few moments to go on.
“Your brother threatened to harm himself?” Mike took notes.
“I told him to stop talking nonsense. I told him I loved him. But he goes through these spells when life seems unbearable.”
“Did you call anyone after you spoke with him?” Mike said. “The police? 911?”
The young woman covered her face with her hands. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
Tom came in the room then, and held out a small, folded paper to Mike. “This might be it. I found it in the mirror, the octagonal mirror, in the bedroom.”
Mike unfolded the paper. It was a half sheet, with an inked scrawl in two short lines. The lines ran on a downward arc, as though the writer had been in a hurry.
Renee Palmer jerked the paper from Mike’s fingers. “From Hugh?” She studied the paper, then held it to her cheek, in a caress, moaning in grief.
Tom caught Mike’s eye and raised his eyebrow in a silent question.
“The words to a song,” Mike shrugged.
Just walk away, Renee,
You're not to blame.

Winged victory

(N is for nervous and noxious)

The ants swarmed on the bedroom carpet, a churning black mass that spread toward the picture window. Those with wings flew a few feet, then dropped onto the comforter and pillows.
“Oh my god,” Ned’s wife shrieked. “Do something about them.” She batted the flying ants away from her face and fled the room, still in her pajamas.
Ned hated spring because it brought the annual influx of carpenter ants – and his wife’s insistence that he get rid of them. He guessed that the swarm had reached capacity in some hidden area of the house, having feasted on the joists that held up the floors, and now were heading for fresh forests to fell. Uneasily, he wondered if one morning, as he rolled out of bed, the entire upper story might collapse from the invisible damage the ants had wrought.
After breakfast that Saturday, Ned vacuumed up all the ants he could see, even sucking some out of midair. It was a satisfying feeling. Then he drove to the hardware store and bought a pump sprayer and a general-purpose insecticide. The hardware clerk tried to sell him dusting powder, arguing that it was safer, but Ned figured whatever spray he didn’t use on the ants, he could aim at the garden slugs and paper wasps that built nests under the eaves.
“Dad, can I watch?” Ned’s son, Anthony, tagged along behind Ned as he climbed the stairs to the bedroom, armed with the sprayer.
Ned set the sprayer down in the bedroom doorway. “Go play outside with your sister. This stuff is bad for you.”
“But I wanna see ‘em die,” the boy whined.
Ned was firm, and Anthony stomped down the steps. The day was cool, with a fresh breeze, so Ned opened the bedroom windows wide to vent any noxious vapors from the bug spray. Despite the draft, he was sweating slightly. He was nervous, but not sure why – these were ants, not tarantulas.
With the sprayer tank in his left hand and the nozzle in his right, he worked his way around the baseboard, evenly coating the wood. He wasn’t sure where the ants were coming from, but they had first appeared on the floor. After making a complete circuit of the room, he paused to decide what else to spray. The scent of the insecticide was mildly sweet. Two ants crawled out of an electrical outlet, made their way down the wall to the baseboard, frantically waved their antennae and fell to the floor.
“Gotcha,” Ned said, pleased with his work. “Let me just take care of any of your buddies hiding in there.” He knelt down to better aim the nozzle into the outlet. His wife found him later, when she went to find out why the breaker had blown. He was stretched out on the carpet, dead.

(M is for magic, maniacal, and muskrat )

Breathing deeply and slowly, Zib began to prepare for the long swim ahead of him. He needed to pass from the Great Marsh unnoticed into the royal canal and then beneath the Grand Lodge, a distance of at least a quarter mile. Twenty minutes under the surface, without a breath. He had stayed under that long easily when romping with his siblings, but this time, the fate of the rebels lay in his remarkable ability.
“Remember to come up quietly, don’t gasp, or you’ll alert the guards,” Max told him. Besides the rebel leader, at least a dozen other muskrats crowded around Zib, eager to see him off.
“I know, I’ll be careful.” Zib continued to breathe in a steady rhythm. Dusk had fallen and the spring night was coming on quickly. He felt in his pouch for the owl feather, and touching it, immediately relaxed. Although he was skeptical as to the feather’s magic potency, it wouldn’t hurt to have it with him, a talisman against the unknown.
Last night, near the end of a two-day secret meeting to organize the planned coup, his father had finally acknowledged the danger and wished him luck. “Someone or something has got to stop Ondatra,” his father said. “He’s maniacal. We have only suffered under his reign.”
The rebels had chosen Zib to begin the campaign. He would enter the king’s compound, wait for Ondatra to retire to his bedchamber and strangle him. Ondatra’s son, Prince Wallace, favored the rebels, they had been told, and might not retaliate. Then again, it might be a suicide mission.
Max took Zib aside after the meeting to give him the wing feather of the great horned owl. It had provided protection for several generations in the Great Marsh, and now would bestow on the young muskrat a way to slip into the Grand Lodge scentless, a kind of invisibility that would give him extra minutes to hide.
“The future of this kingdom rests with you, Zib.” Max was solemn, but a smile played across his face. “You’ll do fine. We’ll be waiting for the signal.”
With one last, deep gulp of fresh air, Zib slid off the bank and into the Marsh.

The Wait

(L is for luminous, limousine, and lucky)

Every night after work, Beverly Green sat on her balcony, waiting for her son to call. She watched the limousines passing beneath her on Pine Street, as they came and went to the nightclub around the corner. She resisted the urge to call him, because the three-hour time difference between Philadelphia and Los Angeles usually meant he was still at school, finishing up his paperwork, and couldn’t be bothered. And so she waited. Two weeks earlier, he had confided that he was going to ask his girlfriend to marry him, and Beverly began to worry. “This is what I feared when he moved to California,” she told her therapist. “I lost my husband and now I’m losing my son.” Her therapist reminded her that her husband had moved out and that her son was only an airplane ride away. But she knew family ties could loosen as the miles between people grew. “He’ll marry and I won’t be welcome anymore,” she said, certain in her prediction and already planning how to lure him back east.
On Thursday evening, when Beverly was on the verge of chucking the phone into the street below, he called. He had taken his time bringing up the subject to his girlfriend, Charlotte, who had warned him she didn’t like deep discussions of any kind. After ten minutes of rambling, he told Beverly what she wanted to hear. “She said no, even when I begged her.” He sounded perplexed and sad. “I thought she loved me.”
Beverly smiled, feeling a sense of victory over this unknown Charlotte. It’s not your fault, Beverly told him. Think of how lucky you are to have a place to come home to, a place where you can nurse your wounds and recover. “By the way,” she added. “Nancy’s back in town. You know, she never stopped loving you, even while she was married to that guy from South Jersey.” When her son didn’t respond, Beverly offered more details about Nancy and her painful divorce and her new condo, near the Art Museum. “So, when are you coming back?” She would get his old bedroom repainted and order new drapes, then invite Nancy to dinner as a welcome home surprise.
He broke into her plans. “Why would I move back?” he said. His job was in California, and Beverly understood then that she was the only one who assumed the journey out west was temporary. He had new friends now, and he was making new memories that didn’t have to include her. Deflated and disappointed – more with herself than with her son – Beverly let the minutes slip by on the balcony, as the full moon hung, luminous, over a cityscape sprinkled generously with light. Then she called Nancy. She could still invite her to dinner.

(K is for kleptomaniac, kaleidoscope, kindred, knucklehead, kite, and kitten)

“I’m going to read a list of words, one by one, and after each one, I want you to respond with the first word that comes to mind. If I said, ‘kitten,’ for instance, you might say, ‘cute.’”
Zoe Walker nodded, but she was baffled. Her job interview had gone well. Peter Klarke, the founder of Klarke & Co., had told her he was impressed with the list of clients she’d snagged running her own PR business. She was confident that he would hire her – she was a good fit for the prestigious marketing firm, and she really wanted the position. She wanted the chance to play in the big leagues, to have a posh private office and a hefty expense account. But now she was sitting in HR, where, she was told, she had to pass a personality test before she could complete the job application process. Kind of kooky, she thought, but if it sealed the position for her...
“Kaleidoscope.”
Zoe didn’t hesitate. “Colors, prisms, swirls, beauty.”
Mr. James, the HR associate, frowned. “Only one word, Ms. Walker. Just the first one that pops into your head.”
“Sorry.” This was weird. Why should it matter how many words she came up with? She was in marketing, and brainstorming ideas was second-nature. Zoe tried a disarming smile, but Mr. James was studying her file folder.
“Kindred.”
“Family.”
“Knucklehead.”
“Why do these all start with K?” Zoe glanced over her shoulder, sure that Peter Klarke would pop in the door to tell her this was all a joke.
“Ms. Walker, shall we stop the test? Perhaps Mr. Klarke was too hasty in sending you to HR--”
“No, no. Please continue.” She kept her tone neutral, but inwardly defiant, she stared at the name plate on his desk. “James,” she said.
“Beg your pardon?”
“James – that’s my answer. James is the first thing that popped into my mind.”
“For ... knucklehead?” He seemed puzzled, then her answer registered and his eyes narrowed. He made several notes in Zoe’s folder. “Kite,” he said softly, distinctly.
“Tree.”
“Kitten.”
“Sneeze.”
“Kleptomaniac.”
Zoe laughed. “I’ve changed my mind about the job.” She picked up her portfolio. Her home office beckoned, even if it was tiny and she had to juggle being boss, secretary and sales staff. “I don’t think I’m crazy enough for you.”