Free Unquiet Dreams by K. A. Laity

that.
    "Hello, Miss Bennett, nice weath—" He stopped, gazing at her in horror, his mouth a small o. She blinked back at him, then remembered: she was covered in blood.
    "Oh dear, my mother's had a terrible accident! Please, you must help me!"
    Gallant to the last, he threw off his mailbag and dashed into the house while she stepped back to accommodate him. "Where is she?! Have you called 911?!"
    "In the back!" She pointed. He sprinted off down the hall. Emma walked over to the La-Z-Boy and retrieved her axe. She did not wait for the voices; she was not saving his soul. But it was going to feel good anyway.
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A Case of Dead Faces
    for the man on the 59 bus
    I ran into the Buddha on the bus. I know if you run into the Buddha on the road you're supposed to kill him, but I didn't know the protocol for meeting him on the bus. I know it was him, because he was wearing a t-shirt that announced that fact and I always trust in the word of the shirt.
    "You're jake with me," I told him without prompting, because it seemed like a good idea to be cool with the Buddha, not like reverential like you would be to a god, but you know you owe respect to the enlightened one.
    He looked at me and smiled seraphically. "You are blessed," he said, a hand of benediction raised, several silver bands wrapping his fingers as they curved like bananas before me. "Life is a dream."
    "Yeah, well for some it's more of a nightmare, you know what I mean?" I said by way of making conversation. "I can't complain much, though I often do."
    The Buddha looked at me. "What do you do?"
    I shrugged. "Thump the skins with a couple different outfits. Doesn't pay much, but I don't need much for hearth and home, as they say."
    "You have a higher calling," the Buddha said wisely.
    Everything the enlightened one said sounded kind of wise, but this seemed particularly so. I was determined to believe that I was getting the real deal from him. After all playing gut bucket rhythms with a bunch of low rent wannabes wasn't really paying off in more than a inconsequential way if you get my drift.
    "What might that be?" I queried as we sailed over Waterloo Bridge.
    He pointed straight at my forehead, touching the bit between my eyebrows, what I later learned was the location of the mystical third eye and said something that sounded like, "No, these-aw-tone."
    Perhaps it was Buddha-speak for something particular. I didn't get a chance to ask because the enlightened one hopped it and left the bus at the end of the bridge. Maybe it was some kind of lingo, but I needed a dictionary to know. I jumped off the bus at Aldwych because I knew there was this witchy book shop in the vicinity and people there would likely know what the Buddha had said and what it meant.
    I was just about to give up the search when I finally spotted it. The window was full of crazy tomes with mystic symbols and diagrams. I leaned on the iron railing and took a quick butchers inside. It seemed to be mostly deserted, just one choice bit of calico who appeared to be working there. Not my sort of scene, but I had an itch to know about the enlightened one's wacky message.
    "What you got on the Buddha?" I asked walking in, smooth as melted butter. The chick at the desk looked up and I was surprised to see that despite her bins she was a real treat. A hank of auburn hair twisted on top of her head in some kind of knot and a blue silk shirt open just enough to give a guy ideas.
    "The Buddha?" she repeated, frowning as if I had said something amiss. "His life? His teachings?" She was already walking over to a shelf and reaching for a colorful spine. "This might be a good one to start with."
    The tome thrust into my palms had a little circular picture of the Buddha's face which of course looked a lot different than the Buddha I had met on the 59 bus, but I figure that statues of a man are always going to look a lot different than the man himself. And I knew enough to realise that the Buddha had lived many