Free Itch: Nine Tales of Fantastic Worlds by Kris Austen Radcliffe

six-pack rings and trashed plastic shopping bags. Sometimes their necks get caught in the handles and they choke to death, but for the most part, they dogpaddle on by, slowly but surely headed for that gleaming far shore of the end of it all.
    But Willa here, she’s kind of determined. Her room’s this big bright space—it was supposed to be a double but her family’s rich—and she’s got her special old person adjustable bed and her special old person heated recliner for watching her giant special rich person wall-mounted high-res monitor. And she’s got systems.
    They’re in a cabinet under the monitor. I hear them buzzing in there; my guess is that she’s running a full server node along with a couple of gaming consoles and probably some random regular shit. I’m not sure. Can’t see what’s behind the locked metal doors.
    And when I say I can’t see it, I mean that literally. Whatever she’s got going never comes out. Never sees the light of day. Never changes even though it changes all the time.
    It’s distracting. I work with her today, like I do every day, doing this crazy crafty thing with the obnoxiously bright jewelry-making clay I bring her, the polymer stuff, because she’s good with it and makes these little ball beads the nursing home sells for lots of money as a fundraiser. I just think they’re fleecing the inmates, that’s all. Old people labor to bloat the salaries of management, because God knows they don’t pay the staff worth shit.
    Which is why I’m a volunteer. The head therapist, a round woman named Rhonda who likes her clothes as smoothly curved as her knuckles and her ass, is constantly telling me she’d hire me on, “But there ain’t no funds for it, darlin’. Sorry, sweetie.” Then she’d smile, or will smile, because I have no idea how many times she’s said this to me, or will say it, or is saying it right now. “Can you please go check on Willa? You two got a rapport.” Then a sniff of her circular nostrils. “You make them all feel so special.”
    Yeah, I make old people feel special. I’d walk out of Rhonda’s office, her couch’s weird scent of artificial flowers following me out like some overly dependent poltergeist. She changes up the fake floral smell enough I form memories around it, at least. Lilac in the spring, lilies in the summer. In the winter, she likes pine, but every so often she’ll mix things up. Throws in some cranberry.
    At least I’ve got that. Otherwise, I see my encounters with Rhonda for what they are—one of the many identical pushpins tacking my life onto the bulletin board of this place’s existence.
    Willa’s looking at me now. I think she’s concerned and maybe a bit surprised. Can’t tell. Can’t see how she’s changed since we sat down across from each other here in her cavernous room inside this old people warehouse. She’d set up a card table under the big window overlooking the “green space” between the A and B wings of the building. It sits askew to the window’s frame, a little off-center and turned so it angles just enough anyone sitting on two sides would have to look over their shoulder to see the door.
    The other two sides have a perfect view.
    Willa always sits with her back to the door. Me, I sit where I’m supposed to.
    The table never moves. Like the building, the card table never changes. Not an inch in either direction, not a twist or a march or a rip in its black vinyl covering. Nope, the table doesn’t see time, either.
    Which was why I like visiting Willa. That, and her curious trove of hidden computer hardware.
    She taps the table. “Honey, blue or red?”
    I blink, suddenly aware that this is a choice moment, one where I might be able to anchor a memory if I try hard enough. Maybe if I lick one of her beads while asking her the date, I’ll get to make a fixed point in time.
    I try every so often, more because I want to know where I am in my own life than because I care. The pushpin stuff—the