It's a sick joke. It has to be that - a joke. I'm holding almost a dozen full length publications, with my name on them. More than I've ever published, even after the six years I spent in the Amazon being eaten alive by bugs. I'm looking from cover to cover, and I think I'm gaping, no, I'm definitely gaping, because this is all me. The titles, the synopses on the back, it's my writing. You can't fake that: I don't know the words but the cadence, the flow - I can predict what's coming next before even reading it, like I knew it all along and it's just now sneaking out.

My daughter's gone quiet, and I think the rest of the bookshop has realized that something isn't quite right. I'd been mobbed almost the instant I set foot inside, which I guess explained all the second glances and stares that had chased me all along this Busch Gardens knockoff street from the hotel. Tavern. Inn. Whatever they called it here. Only my daughter lived with my wife, here in England, while I kept my roots solidly in Maryland. Driving on the wrong side of the road was as weird as the terms they had for things. I thought they were playing me a fool when Ellen called me and said our daughter had been accepted into a school for 'witches and wizards'. Took an owl landing on my mailbox and trying to peck my fingers off to get me to put aside my current project and fly out. She covered the ticket at least - and thank god for that, it's not like I was rolling in money like some people were. Field research biology isn't exactly where you go if you want to live it up.

Ellen, of course, had left Naomi with me. Dumped the information about all kinds of seriously ridiculous things like giant gold coins and magical wands on me, along with a pile of letters on cardstock and said she had business in Frankfurt, but she'd be back in a week to see Naomi off to the school. I still couldn't bring myself to say the name, or even think it.

If I could think, Naomi probably deserved better than her parents. It wasn't her fault that she was sort of unplanned, and that her parents hadn't actually really loved each other for a long time, that her dad had always been forgetful and not always around for her childhood...but when your sense of reality if crumbling like fucking bread crumbs, it can be a little hard to focus on anyone but yourself.

I'm barely even aware of my fingers flipping through the pages, skimming past diagrams and lengthy descriptions, past anatomical studies and field sketches and photographs that clash with the weird moving gifs somehow printed next to them.

Magic, I have to tell myself. It's magic. The animals that I apparently studied for fucking months are clearly magic: here's a passage as I'm describing the alarmingly physically illegal abilities of this beast to, and I quote:

"periodically and without provocation render itself intangible and capable of passing through the following materials, but showing a marked inability to bypass high voltage currents:"

Everything is just like the half dozen publications I've worked on in the past twenty years. The layout is the same: the same rambling, half-narrative, half-analytical, half-stream-of-consciousness tracts about not only the particular species but my time studying them, too.

But I couldn't have done these!

They're all dated, clearly, on the first few pages, with strange symbols and legalese that's at odds with the Puffin-standard word salad I'm accustomed to. This one: Nightwings: Aswangs of the Phillipines, dated 2002. Which was impossible, because at that point in time I was laid up for almost four months with a particularly stubborn case of bronchitis - luckily during the summer, between my teaching sessions at Frostburg.

Or this one, about something called a 'bunyip', which was dated for 2011. That year I had been holed up working on a paper on sustainable fisheries for Frostburg, and spent most of the year in Appalachia counting trout.

Or...it was sort of like something unpacking in my head, that kind of feeling I got when I was looking over recorded tracks of critters, and I started to see the pattern, when the data decided to roll over and offer it's belly. Naomi was tugging at my arm, saying something, but its like the world was silent, except for the ringing in my ears.

Every single book - I'm ripping each one open, looking at the date, throwing it aside. 2009: I had acute mono for three months. 2010: Government research paper that never saw the light of day. 2012: Four month expedition into Peru wasted. 2013: shingles. 2014: bronchitis.

For fuck's sake, apparently I found Chessie in 2007! These were the most active years of my life, when I had met Ellen, when I had been constantly flying around the world, tramping into the deeps of whatever country I could get a visa for.

One of my-would be admirers is only a few feet away, tentatively clutching one of the discarded books. Some bitter part of me says it's probably worth more because I touched it. I have to swallow a few times before I can be sure to trust my voice - I clear my throat.

'I'm new to all this magic and stuff,' I say, and it's actually a little surprising how even the words come out. 'But I have a question?' The boy, no more than fifteen, brightens, and he's probably thinking everything is ok, and that's he's going to get a nice autograph from his childhood fucking hero -

'But are there such things as-' I cough, and swallow again, and clear my throat. '-memory spells?'

The boy frowns.

'Yeah, sure. The Ministry uses 'em when Muggles find out about our stuff, you know. Keep it all quiet.'

Red. I'm seeing red. I always thought it was a cliché.

But it's not actually red. It's the sensation of it, and it's called red because how exactly do you put into words the urge to put hands to everything you can possibly see and to rip it apart and smash it and that's only a kid but I want to break his hopeful little smile because of what it means and and and

Naomi is pulling me now, hard, and I guess I let her because we're out in the alley and under the quaint little awning and-

Holy shit.

Holy shit.

I look at the books still in my hands. Just stole them I guess. What's it like, holding the acid proof that your life isn't what you thought it was, that someone reached in and fucked it? Everything is slamming together with the finality of a mallet between the eyes.

I hadn't published in almost ten years. I had lost my focus. My talent. Expeditions were coming up empty. I was losing equipment. Getting sloppy. Forgetful. There had been nights I couldn't sleep, lying in bed shivering and trying not to imagine what Dad looked like toward the end, so empty and broken, when he couldn't even recognize me, gut churning, terrified that I was going the same route-

Holy shit.

They took a third of my life from me.

I look down at Naomi, at her wide eyes. I'm freaking her out.

Good. She should be freaked out.

These monsters were going to steal her too.

She's talking, and I'm not listening. She's crying, shouting something, but I'm hauling her almost bodily along through the alley, back up the street, past the horrorshow windows of madness. Past the giant, frowning edifice of a bank and back to the hotel. They stole my career from me. They tried to steal my daughter.

I'd never felt this protective about Naomi in my life.

I never want to lose this feeling.

I never want to forget this feeling.

I bundle her into my rental car, and the speeds I'm hitting en route to the airport are far beyond illegal. There's a mantra in my head - need to get into crowds, need to get into crowds. Get lost in them, surround myself with people. They can't make a scene, if they're willing to fucking obliterate a man's life like that to stay hidden. London-Heathrow is perfect. Naomi isn't crying anymore, I think she's clued in that Daddy is very angry and very scared, that this is way beyond her not getting a wand or a cat or a pumpkin scarecrow or whatever the fuck and she probably should be too. The drive is silent, and it feels like seconds later we're there.

'Dad-' she whispers, and I whip into a parking space. Don't even have any of our luggage. 'Dad, what's going on? Are we ok?'

I can take a minute, I think, I hope. I can take a minute, talk to my daughter. But I'm scanning, I'm looking, every face in the crowd feels like they're watching.

So I lock the doors, turn on the child-locks on the windows, and twist around in my seat to take my daughter's hand in mine.

'We're going to be ok. But we need to go back to my place in Maryland. We'll let Mom know as soon as we get there, but we have to go. And you can't trust anyone, Naomi, do you understand me? Not anyone. Don't talk to anyone, don't look at anyone, and if anyone tries to take me, you run, you run and you hide.' She's past words, eyes round and red, because she's never seen me like this.

'Tell me you understand. Please. If anyone comes for me run and hide. Don't tell anyone who you are.'

'Why?' It's barely a whisper, almost just an exhalation, and I don't know what to tell her. What can I tell her? I barely know more than she does: all I have are a dozen books I wrote but didn't, and a worldview burnt to ash that's choking me with every breath.

'Because there are very, very bad people out there.' Shaky inhale from me, and then I'm kicking the door open, darting to hers, yanking it open, fumbling for her seatbelt.

'And I can't let them hurt you like they hurt me.'

We vanish into the crowd in the airport. I'm carrying Naomi like I haven't since she was in elementary school, her arms in a death grip around my neck, and I don't even realize I still have the fucking books, but nothing will take her from me too.

I hope.

But would I even remember if she was?

Howdy folks, this is an unexpected one.

I wrote it months ago for /r/writingprompts, and then kind of forgot that I ever wrote it. It came back to me today, and I tracked it down so I could painstakingly copy it into my archives, and I decided hey, it's technically a fanfiction, so why not throw it up here.

This is pretty much a oneshot, I don't really have the drive or interest to go father, but I did have some vague ideas including Faraday cages, secret cabals, leadlined rooms and whatnot, but I find I don't really care to devote that much time and energy to Harry Potter, of all fandoms.

Yes, I do have some issues with Harry Potter. I think it's a fine children's story, but I fear that it was too much a children's story when Rowling decided to segue it into being a more serious YA series. As such, there are some massive and horrifying moral issues in the novels, and by some I mean a shitload and by a shitload I mean the wizarding world is a goddamn nightmare to imagine. I reckon this could be considered an author tract, and comes about as close as I ever will to a story actually reflecting my own opinions, which is something I enormously avoid.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm just trying to make my "Author has written X stories for..." section have the oddest possible collection of franchises.

Until next time, I'll be putting rims on wraithlords and generally avoiding anyone from Biel-Tan;

the bonesinger of yme-loc