The girl scanning my midnight for-the-road M&M's looked terrified. She was too stunned to tell me the price, so I had to read it off the monitor. I handed her a ten and she silently gave me my change.

"Thanks. Good night." I tried to extend a simple courtesy, but all I got back was the word "killer" written in this poor girl's eyes.

It was true. I was a killer. Johnny Merlino, "the last true mafia boss," was dead by my hand, but I was no murderer. Just an executioner. Why couldn't anyone understand?

The news had made all this racket about how I shot Merlino in the back of the head while he was on his knees. Yeah, I did. So what? A guy who peeled off people's fingernails, castrated them, and ripped their eyes out for "smack talk" was dead before he hit the floor. Lights out. My mercy is saintly.

I wish I'd gotten his psycho nephew Danny too. The kid thought the mafia had gone soft and loved to rant about "returning to tradition," where "tradition" here meant breaking people's fingers for looking at you funny. It was the 21st century and he still wanted to live out Goodfellas.

My aim wasn't good enough. He was still in the hospital when I left New York. Last I'd heard he had just woken up from a deep coma. Unfortunately, it looked like he was going to live.

I stepped out of the gas station snack mart into the rain and ate a handful of M&M's all at once. I went to get into my car but I tripped getting in the door and spilled the M&M's everywhere. I sighed. I didn't have the energy to be angry anymore. I got in and started driving. Once I was on the freeway I grabbed some M&M's from the passenger seat and ate them individually, trying to savor them.

New York wasn't safe anymore. Frankly, nowhere was safe. Small town, middle of nowhere county, flyover state might work for now though. I had a friend who lived there and she had invited me to stay over for a bit. It was very gracious of her, although the phone call was kind of weird.

I had gotten a call from a number I didn't recognize. I ignored it, assuming it was a spam call. Then I got a text from that number that just said "call back," so I did. The person on the other end picked up without saying anything.

"Hello...?"

"Come over to my house."

"Lavender?"

"Yeah. Come over."

"Why?"

"My dad says you can stay here for a bit. Just come over." She hung up.

So, I thought to myself, she still lives with her dad. The guy who makes creepy robots. Amazing.

I hadn't been to her dad's place since our last Christmas together. I was a junior in college and she was a senior. He was a nice man but I could never get over his work. He made the most realistic humanoid robots available anywhere. A craftsman, he never went to work for any robotics company, though he was highly sought after, claiming his work was a matter of "artisanship" which could never be mass produced.

Their household was attended by a staff of his robots. They terrified me. They looked just like people and could talk like them but their eyes were empty and their movements had a certain uncanny quality. After that Christmas I never wanted to go back there, but at this point I had no other choice.

I got to Lavender's house at around 1 in the morning. I felt a little bad about getting there so late, but if she was still the Lavender I knew, she'd probably be up until 4.

I walked up the stairs and encountered a man dressed up like a member of the guard at Buckingham Palace, complete with a very realistic toy rifle on his shoulder. I looked into his dead eyes and instantly realized that he was a robot.

"Who goes there?" it asked in a commanding voice.

"Sunny Ruscoe."

"You are not expected."

"Friend of Lavender?"

"Not expected."

"Detective, NYPD."

The robot stood at port arms and chambered a round. The rifle appeared to be real after all. "Warrant?"

The door opened. Lavender's father stepped out.

"Hey Sunny! Sorry about him. He doesn't totally work yet. Still working on it! Come on in!" I followed him into the house's lobby. "It's good to see you again." He extended his hand to me and I shook it.

"It's good to see you too, Mr. Paulsen."

I heard soft footsteps behind me. I turned and saw Lavender standing there with a stern, unwelcoming look on her face. She was dressed in a black sweater with lavender flowers embroidered on it and a lavender-purple skirt that went down to her ankles. Her jet black hair was done up in lavender-colored ribbons. As she walked over I caught a whiff of lavender perfume on the air.

"Lavender." I said it more as a reaction than a greeting.

"Hi."

I reached out to hug her, assuming that was why she had come closer, but she held out her hand to prevent me.

"Don't touch me. There is nothing between us anymore. You're only here because I felt sorry for you. That's all."

Very blunt. I stepped back and put my hands up. "Alright, point taken."

"Plus, you stink." She wrinkled her nose and frowned even harder to display her disgust.

"Ah, yeah, sorry. I slept in my car these last two days. It seemed safer than checking into a hotel."

"Smart," Mr. Paulsen said. He turned to Lavender. "Why don't you show Sunny around the house a bit? We've moved some things around since he was last here."

Lavender shot her dad a dirty look and then beckoned for me to follow her. She showed me the bathroom first. "This is the bathroom. You will shower here. Soon." She pointed aggressively to the shower. I laughed but she was dead serious.

"Yeah, yeah. I remembered where that was."

She proceeded down the hall and up the stairs. We got to a door with lavender plants painted on it. "This is my room."

"I couldn't tell."

Lavender was unamused. "Don't go in there. Ever."

"Roger."

I followed her to the next room, where a robot butler was making the bed. "The guest's room will be ready soon," it said.

"Hurry up," Lavender ordered the robot with annoyance in her voice.

She pointed down the hall at an unmarked door, the room that was hers last time I had been there, the one we had shared then. "That door will always be locked. Stay away from it. Never go in there. I'm serious."

"What's in there?"

"None of your concern."

"Alright."

Lavender retired to her room without another word. I went into my temporary quarters and talked to the butler until he was done tidying up. All of Mr. Paulsen's robots were programmed to be good at smalltalk. They had invented backstories to talk about and everything. Some of them were quite interesting. The butler had apparently been an attendant for a wealthy English lord at his countryside estate before he came to work for the Paulsen family.

I showered and got ready for bed. I thought about how nice it was to be all the way out here and not have to look over my shoulder constantly. I thought about how nice it was to not be in jail or in a courtroom. I was very grateful for the Paulsens' hospitality.

I laid down in bed and I could hear some faint noise from Lavender's room. It sounded like she was playing video games or maybe watching TV. I would hear her say something occasionally but I couldn't make out what. I fell asleep listening to her and trying to surmise what she was up to.

-

I woke up to the smell of breakfast wafting up from downstairs. It was 9 AM. I had gotten about seven hours of sleep without waking up in a cold sweat. A new record since the incident.

I went down to the kitchen where Mr. Paulsen was working on a computer. We bid each other good morning and he told me to help myself to breakfast once it was ready. A robot was making eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee.

"Is Lavender up yet?"

Mr. Paulsen shook his head. "She usually wakes up around 1, then stays in her room until about 3. Then she has lunch. Some days she goes for a walk after."

"I see."

"You're in the news today."

"What else is new?"

"Someone in New York reported you missing."

"Just to get the police to look for me, I assume. Get them to do their legwork. Or in the hopes that someone will report seeing me."

"Are you scared?"

"Not really. If anywhere is out of the mafia's reach, it's here."

The robot served me some breakfast and I started eating. I was starving. Mr. Paulsen looked pensively into his coffee cup.

"I think you should go into town today. You didn't really get the chance last time you were here."

"I don't think that's a good idea. Everyone seems a bit scared of me."

He thought for a moment. "You know, I don't think anyone really hates you. There's a lot of drama around this whole thing and people might regard your actions as..." He thought about how to describe them. "Ruthless. Maybe a bit rash. Brutal, perhaps. But fitting for a brutal world. That guy really had it coming. Even if the case hadn't been dismissed, I think the jury would have found you innocent."

"Fortunately my lawyer is a miracle-worker so we didn't have to take that chance."

He laughed. "Yes, Mr. Teller is going to become a very rich man after all this. He's your generation's Johnnie Cochran."

I thought about people's nervous stares everywhere I went. I supposed they still hurt less than Lavender's scorn, although part of me did want to stick around and wait for her.

As if he could read my mind, Mr. Paulsen said, "If you stay here waiting for Lavender to come out, I think you'll be disappointed."

I didn't really know how to respond to that. I wanted to say, "What's her problem?" But asking your ex-girlfriend's dad that felt wrong. She had been a very up-and-down sort of person when we were dating, but she had never been quite this down before, except when we broke up.

"Is she okay?" That felt like the more sensitive version of what I had wanted to ask.

"I think so. Despite appearances I don't think she's really 'unhappy.' I don't want to push her." He was gazing out the window now, at the farmland that belonged to the neighbors. Some cows grazed, their tails lazily swishing back and forth at random, with neither the ecstatic character of a dog's tail nor the nervous character of a cat's tail, but with something that looked more like boredom.

-

Around noon I started getting ready to head out. Mr. Paulsen stopped me in the lobby. "I have something for you."

I followed him into his workshop behind the house and saw a robot that looked like the palace guard at the door. It was dressed in baggy, casual clothes but, as a cop, I could tell that it had a pistol holstered in its waistband.

"A bodyguard!" he announced. "It's the same model as the guard outside but I've programmed it to keep you safe."

"The same model as the one that threatened me?" I didn't want to sound ungrateful but I couldn't help but be a little nervous.

"That rifle was loaded with blank cartridges. You weren't in any danger."

"What does this guy have?"

He reached into the robot's waistband and pulled out the gun, a revolver.

"Is it loaded with real ammo?"

"Yes."

"I appreciate the offer, but I'd rather trust my own gun." I patted the side of my jacket.

"Can he follow you unarmed? He could warn you if he saw anything suspicious."

I thought about it for a moment. The robot could at least make the day a little less boring. I wasn't planning on talking to anyone in town, since I'd never been a very extroverted person, but it would be nice to have someone to make conversation with.

"Sure, I'll take him. What's his name?"

"Reginald."

"Let's go, Reginald."

The robot rose to its feet and looked at me with those cold, dead eyes. A chill ran through me.

-

The day ended up being rather uneventful. Reginald and I walked around the town. We went to a park and a coffee shop. I asked him about his backstory. He said he was a member of the Secret Service who protected the president for many years before leaving to serve as the Paulsens' personal guard. I didn't really care but I asked him questions about his story to fill the silence. It was very elaborate. I wondered if Mr. Paulsen had hard-coded all of the minute details of the story or if his robots had the capacity to fill in the blanks.

I caught a few odd glances walking around but overall it seemed like nobody was too bothered by my presence, which was a relief. Just going outside had become a whole ordeal back in the city. People would shout at me on the streets and take pictures. The city, with my permission, had assigned cops to tail me in case I was attacked. This quiet town wasn't a complete respite from the attention but it was a great improvement.

While we walked I couldn't help but mentally wander back to my relationship with Lavender. We had both gone to the same university in New York. We both started in engineering, which is how we met, though she stuck with that path while I couldn't take the heat and switched to psychology. She was smart enough to do anything she wanted, but her true passion was drawing. I think it was the fact that she was such an excellent artist that really made me attracted to her. She could bring anything she imagined to life.

Lavender had always been a dramatic person. "Theatrical" might be a more suitable word. I found it endearing until it became a serious problem. She seemed to view life like it was a movie or a TV show. I wondered how much of her current behavior reflected her genuine feelings and how much it was her trying to play the role of "scorned ex-girlfriend" in a way that would entertain an imagined audience.

I don't think anybody could love her the way she wanted. They would have to be around her constantly, doting on her and muttering sweet words into her ear. I'd given it my best shot.

As I turned the confusing girl over and over in my mind, Reginald and I wandered from sidewalk to road to gravel to dirt path, and found ourselves in the woods. I felt like it had been so long since I'd really been in nature. I inhaled deeply, the smell of pine. I was home. As a human being, I was home.

We climbed a small hill and from the top we could see the entire town. It really was a tiny place. A main street with some shops, a couple parks, the residential areas, city hall with its dome, a library made of bricks, one K-12 school for all the town's children, a cemetery with the red, white, and blue of little American flags just visible, and farmland stretching off into the distance. The sleepy peace of this place was somehow exhilarating.

-

We got back to the house around 5. I heard the whirring of machines in the workshop. Mr. Paulsen was at work inventing things. When we went inside, Lavender was lying down on the couch in the living room, looking at her phone.

"Hey," she said. I was surprised. I had expected to be ignored.

"Hi."

"Where did you go?"

"We went to-"

"We?"

"Your dad gave me a bodyguard robot."

"Oh. Okay."

"We went to the park, then to the Bohemian Cafe, and then we went up the hill overlooking the town. It was nice. The air here is much fresher than in the city."

"Yeah, it is. The city is awful! I'm so glad I never have to go back there." She kicked at the couch to emphasize her hatred of urban life.

"There are good and bad things about the city and the country I think."

"That's a really boring thing to say."

Fair enough. It was a complaint she'd often lodged about my conversational skills, that the things I said were too passive and non-committal. Maybe everyone thought that and she was just the only one willing to say it.

She went on, "You've literally killed people before and you're still talking like that? Are you kidding me?" A wry grin crossed her face. I was relieved. She was loosening up.

"The country is what's really boring," I shot back. "Nothing to do around here. We were looking around all day."

"All the things they load up cities with are just distractions for stupid people."

"So what do you do all day?"

She thought for a moment and then stood up and walked out of the room. At first I thought I'd offended her and she was running off in a huff, but then she peeked back in and told me to follow her. She guided me up to her room and took me inside.

The inside of her room somehow gave the simultaneous impressions of being hopelessly cluttered and obsessively organized. All around were shelves covered in trinkets and small potted plants, mostly succulents and cactuses besides some vibrant purple flowers in the window. The walls were a soft pink with green ivy painted crawling down them. The ceiling, a dark blue, was decorated with glow-in-the-dark stars that were just faintly illuminated in the room's dim light. They seemed to be organized according to an actual star chart, with the night's constellations radiating out from Polaris in the center.

Rows and rows of drawings lined the walls of the room like ranks of soldiers assembled. These drawings possessed the same uncompromised accuracy as her older work, with no visible fault in the perspective, lighting, or coloring. However, they lacked a playfulness that her art used to have. I wouldn't say that they seemed "stiff," but they looked like they had been drawn in strict accordance with a textbook. They were academic in nature. Many of the drawings were outright anatomical diagrams, of both humans and animals.

"So, you spend your days drawing then?"

"Sometimes. It's not my main focus." She pointed to a large book on her desk. It was a book of drafting paper, opened to a half-finished design of some kind of machine, held down to the desk by straps so that it wouldn't slide. I switched on her desk lamp and turned back to the first page. It said "LAVENDER PAULSEN'S DESIGN BOOK" in ornate lettering that reminded me of medieval illuminated manuscripts. I flipped through the first few pages. There were designs for all sorts of devices: robots, guns, and vehicles to name a few. The guns in particular caught my attention. They were very inventive, with my favorite being a handheld railgun she had designed.

"Have you built any of these?" I asked her.

"I've built a few of them. Dad lets me use his workshop on weekends."

She walked over to look at the book with me. She stood very close, just barely not touching me, and I could hear her breathing, slow but intense. Why? Was she nervous about showing me her work? Or was it something else?

I leaned a little closer to Lavender, so that our shoulders brushed against each other. To my relief, she did not recoil, but instead leaned in herself so that her arm pressed into mine. I continued to flip through pages of blueprints but I wasn't paying much attention to them anymore. She would make an occasional remark about whatever design we were looking at but it was clear her mind was elsewhere as well.

Should I kiss her? I asked myself. Or maybe put my arm around her shoulder? Would she like that? You wouldn't get this close to someone if it didn't mean anything...

I thought about what she had said earlier. I had killed someone. I had acted decisively, to the point that it almost ruined my life. Yet there I was, like a teenager, deliberating whether I should kiss the girl I liked, a girl who was so close to me that I could feel her heartbeat, the one and only girl I had ever known completely.

Then again, this Lavender was a different person from the one I knew back then. That much was clear. She had always had an obsessive personality but it seemed like she was digging down into her own inner world, digging a hole so deep she wouldn't be able to climb out of it. A world with no room for other human beings. I felt ashamed that, when this occurred to me, I realized that I didn't want to pull her out. I wanted to join her down there.

Lavender leaned more of her weight into me, so much that it felt like she would topple over completely if I moved away, and tilted her head towards me. I kept absentmindedly flipping pages but my thoughts were racing.

Should I kiss her on the head? Or on the cheek? Should I take her face in my hands? I just need to make a decision.

I started to turn towards her but at the very same instant she pulled away from me. Had she sensed my intentions and decided to back out? Or did I just have bad timing? I couldn't tell.

"Check these out!" She opened a cabinet in the corner of the room. It was filled with dolls. Each one was seated and hunched over slightly with a peaceful look of rest on its face, like someone who had fallen asleep under a tree.

Lavender took a doll down from the top shelf. This one had red hair and wore a green dress lined with shiny gold lace. It was an endearing design. It seemed like she had been going for an Irish inspiration with this one. A few of the others seemed to have a similar impetus, being adorned with traditional Chinese, Slavic, and Inuit clothing to name a few. Others were dressed based on profession, such as a soldier, a sailor, and a nun. Still others were dressed in various casual outfits.

Lavender reached under the doll's hair behind its neck and flipped a switch, and the doll sprang to life. It awoke with a jolt, and then started to examine its surroundings with a dazed, despondent expression. It looked up at each of our faces in turn. I was impressed that it had none of the usual uncanniness that dolls have. It managed to lean enough into a cartoon character appearance while still being believably animate.

"Did you make all of these?" I asked.

"Yep. I designed and built every one. I like to think I put a bit of myself into each of them."

"How long have you been working on them?"

"I think I made the first one two years ago and I've been building a new one every couple months since. It's gotten a lot easier over time. I make each one unique but there are patterns I've been able to repeat."

"What do they do?"

"They're kind of like pets. A lot of times I'll just have a few of them walking around here while I'm working."

The doll struggled to its feet and wobbled for a moment, tiny arms outstretched, trying to find its balance. It wandered around the desk, touching each thing it came across, apparently fascinated by the different textures. I stuck my hand out for it to examine and it took my pointer finger in both of its hands. They were soft like velvet. It put its face to my hand and closed its eyes.

"What's it doing?"

"I programmed them to enjoy human contact."

"So this feels nice for it?"

"To the extent that a machine can 'feel' anything, yes."

I stroked the doll's cheek gently. Its dour, melancholic face became tranquil. The slightest hint of a smile appeared. I felt strange, maybe a little creeped out. I pulled my hand away and its gloomy expression returned. It opened its eyes and wandered back to the other side of the desk.

I resumed looking through the book of designs. I soon got to the section where Lavender had been planning these dolls. Each part was drafted in meticulous detail. The intricacy was unbelievable. It amazed me that all the dolls were homemade, since I would have assumed it would take a factory to manufacture each part.

"You ever think of making a business out of this?"

Lavender's response was swift. "No. I would never give them away." Her tone didn't welcome further discussion.

I got to the end of the doll section and was greeted with something that sent a shockwave through me: a perfect drawing of my own face. Several perfect drawings of my face, actually, each with a layer removed. Hair, skin, muscle, cartilage, bone. How exactly does my face work? Apparently Lavender knew.

"Lavender, what is this?"

She didn't answer. She reached back behind the doll's head and with a click it dropped to its knees and slouched forward, limp. I shuddered.

"I think you should go now." The expression on her face confused me. There was a bit of shame, maybe anger, but what it reminded me of most was a pained grimace, as if to say that what was happening now had to happen, unfortunate as it may be. She brought me here, she showed me the book, and she let me look through it, so she must have, on some level, wanted me to see this, but she didn't want to want me to see this.

I flipped to the next page. More anatomical drawings. My anatomy, down to a tee, minus the weight I had gained since college. Still, I recognized the body I saw in the mirror every morning.

"Sunny, I said go." She shoved me away and closed the design book.

"I'm sorry, I just-"

"Leave. Now."

"I don't understand, but I'm sure-"

"GO!"

I heeded her words and left the room. She slammed the door shut behind me. I felt a little sick.

-

One thing was everywhere on the news that night: Danny Merlino was gone. Not dead, unfortunately, but disappeared. Spirited away. Two days before he was set to be discharged from the hospital and handed into state custody, a major fire broke out and three whole floors had to be completely evacuated. In the chaos, he had managed to slip by the US Marshals guarding him and was now officially a fugitive from justice, an instant top pick for the FBI's Most Wanted list.

I didn't have as easy a time sleeping that night as I had the night before. That one horrible and wonderful day played in my head again and again. I remembered the precise timing of every gunshot that rang out during my fifteen minute bid to end Sicilian organized crime in America. What a naive goal it had been, and I knew that then, but it was my one chance and I knew I wouldn't forgive myself if I didn't take it.

One moment was stuck on repeat like a scratched record. I shot Danny three times, center mass. How did he live? I felt like I was yelling at my past self, "Shoot a bit higher! Shoot him again!" He needed to die.

He had this sick smile on his face as I shot him and as he slid down the wall that only faded as he crumpled up on the floor. He delighted in all forms of violence. I wondered if his delight in that moment came from the brutality on display, even though he was its target, or if maybe he loved the look on my face. I had no doubt that my expression was one of abject terror. It turned my stomach. It made it feel like, in a way, he won. In his confidence staring down the barrel of a gun, he beat me, wide-eyed and white behind its trigger.