Raserei stood at the mouth of the alley, a smatter of green coins the size of shirt buttons rolling out from under his pant leg and onto the pavement. The cherry of his cigarette glowed like the eye of a demon as he dragged on it, and the smoke issuing from his mouth jerked and whipped upward and out. But smoking was purely mechanical at this point. His focus was completely on the building kitty-corner to his current position, the abandoned house with green shutters. The tower in the corner of the house looked like it imploded. Its sides were crumpled inward, and the entire turret listed dangerously away from the house. All of the windows of the house were boarded up, the roof was pocked with holes, and the hedge along the perimeter of the lot had grown wild and unkempt. The house was built on a small corner of the lot, as if the owner had plans for expansion. The width of the parcel was substantial, but its depth was greater than most of the others in the neighborhood. The rest of the houses on this street exuded pride in their freshly painted siding or neatly trimmed lawns. Up and down the road, street lamps shone brightly upon the pavement in pools of peach light. But in front of the abandoned house, the street lamps flickered and sparked, constantly struggling to reignite.

"You're reading it all wrong."

Raserei dropped the cigarette and quashed it under his shoe, quickly grinding the embers to ash. He stepped back further into the alleyway shadows, listening. A few more green button-coins issued from his pant leg.

"What makes you think there is a right way to read it?"

Two men walked west on the opposite side of the street from Raserei. Small green coins emitted from their pant legs as they strode along the sidewalk. They moved with their hands in pockets and shoulders hunched forward to guard against the gusting wind. One man turned his head to the other.

"Authorial intent." Smugness tinged his words.

The other man shook his head. "Authorial intent is irrelevant to understanding a work of literature."

They stepped into the light of a street lamp, and from his vantage, Raserei saw Tom and Larry. They looked older than he remembered, but then again, he would likely look the same to them.

Larry's smile never faltered. "Literature is fundamentally entwined with the psyche. The author may put in overt imagery, but his unconscious will add even more; more than he would ever realize. Even his word selection can tell us about the intent."

"That's some psychoanalytical bullshit." Tom quickened his step, digging his hands deeper into his pockets and thrusting his shoulders. "Ебать меня, it is cold!"

As they entered the darkened patch in front of the abandoned house, Larry slowed to a stop. "I wonder why they don't just tear this down, make room for someone else."

Tom, who had advanced a distance from Larry, turned around. "You know why. Who knows when or if someone shows back up? It's not like we're lacking space that newbies can't get in. How would you feel if, after an absence, we tore down your place and let someone else move in?"

"It's been empty for years." Larry ran his hand through the slovenly hedge as a silver coin the size of a bottle cap rolled out from under his pant leg and into the street. "Just a simple deletion. Who would know? Certainly would cheer up the place."

"Come on, only the Admins or the User could do that. Would you hurry up? The Shrike said he'd only save the seats until midnight." Tom turned and continued walking.

Larry took some tentative steps as he gazed upon the dilapidated building, then turned away and caught up with Tom. "So, what? Are you a Wimsatt and Beardsley lap-dog?"

"I'm saying that the events of an authors life is literary biography, not literary criticism."

As their voices waned, Raserei slunk toward the corner of the alley and crept his head around the brick edifice. Their hunched backs slipped in and out of lamplight as they walked down the deserted road. He looked the opposite direction for any more traffic, then bolted across the street. He got to the unruly hedge and found a parting in the branches near the tilted mailbox. It's numbering, 661, had faded to near imperceptibility. Slipping through the parting, Raserei stole across the tattered lawn toward the front door. He reached for the doorknob, but froze when he saw the large padlock.

"Locked out," Raserei breathed. "Sure, don't delete a place, but make sure you can't ever get back in." Quietly, he tried to yank on the padlock. The mechanism was solid. Raserei stepped back to assess the exterior, looking for a way in. He noticed the graffiti on the boards covering the window. The lower east window had a pair of narrowed eyes in purple paint with the caption "KUKE SEES YOU" below. Underneath that, in smaller script and written in marker, read "HE WILL BURN YOU WITH LASER EYES." The boards on the window to the left had only a piece of cake with a lone candle tucked into the frosting. The detailing was remarkable. The caption beneath the dessert read "This is not a cake."

He sighed, then began circling the building. He didn't have time for this. Green button-coins flew from his pant legs as he jogged lightly around the building. Every window was boarded, and each one on the ground floor bore graffiti. He didn't have anything to pry open the planks. Raserei thought about getting to the roof and slipping in through one of the holes, but had nothing to get him up there, and no purchase could be found in the exterior. He stood again in front of the door, thinking.

A small scritch emanated from his right, and he turned his head in time to see a colony of bats erupt from the tower. A large, fat raccoon waddled after the colony, swatting at the slowest of the bats. Raserei moved to where he saw the bats and raccoon exit, and found a crevice had formed between the foundation and the leaning tower.

Without hesitation, Raserei crawled through the opening. He felt some of the bricks dislodge from the edge, and heard a rasp that shot up the side of the tower, and tried to move as carefully as he could. He wiggled inside and stood, retrieving the Zippo from his pocket. Flicking the flint, amber light grew outward.

The room was thoroughly ransacked. It use to be a bakery tower, but anything that had been valuable had long been stolen, and everything else was destroyed. Tables lay snapped and tossed against the far wall. The oven door had been ripped off and rested askew against the sink, which was missing its faucet and spigots. Shards of ceramic mixing bowls covered the floor like a slapdash mosaic, and the chandelier had been replaced with a pineapple shoved into the socket. The room smelled of droppings and rot.

"Man, Ghavrel would be pissed."

Green coins emerged from Raserei's pants and plinked against the ceramic shards. He grimaced and moved toward the door that led to the rest of the house. A quick shove knocked it ajar, and he stepped through. Here too were things in disarray, chairs overturned and bookshelves rent from the wall. Raserei exited the parlor and crossed the hallway into the study, where paper littered every surface. The books had been stripped of their pages, and whole sheaves of notes and graphs had been upturned from their folios and scattered everywhere. The desk against the east wall was still in decent shape, aside from the fact that nearly all of its drawers were missing. One drawer, the top right, tilted at a sharp, downward angle. Inside, he would see two mice nibbling away on some found morsel.

Raserei pulled the drawer and unceremoniously dumped out the two mice. They chittered as they scattered to the nearest hiding place, likely scolding him on his manners. He reached into the hole where he pulled out the top, right drawer and stretched toward the back of the desk. Raserei was up to his armpit, attempting to extract every inch possible in his effort. Green coins jangled out of his pant leg and lay on the white papers like bacteria colonies. His fingers scraped against wood until he found it. He traced the outline to reassure it was really there, and then Raserei ripped it from the desk.

He stood and looked at the key in his hand. He removed the tape that still stuck to it and dropped it on the ground. Turning, Raserei crossed to a bookcase. The books had been removed, and in their place rested dozens of plastic salamanders. He wondered, briefly, who would assemble and display these trinkets. Then Raserei yanked the bookcase from the wall and let it tumble onto the floor.

Behind the bookcase, a safe appeared among a more vibrant patch of wallpaper. The sun and dust had kept this portion of the wall free from fading, but now it looked depressing amid the squalor. Pushing the key into the slot and turning, Raserei smiled for the first time all day. There, laying in neat rows, were packets of banknotes. He picked up a grey-blue stack and thumbed through it. Each had "1 Hour" inked on the corner. He stuffed them into his pockets, then reached for the red and white daybills, the purple-black weeknotes, and the dozen gold notes underneath them all—yearbucks, precious tender to receive or give. A hefty sack of silver minutes from the back, and Raserei had emptied the safe in short order.

"I've bided long enough, I believe," said Raserei as he shook the bag in his palm, hearing the soft metallic chime of minutes striking minutes. "Time to invest."

Raserei chuckled and left the room. He crossed the parlor and back into the bakery tower, where he heard the rustle of creatures above him in the rafters. Hoping he wouldn't meet face to face with a raccoon, Raserei squeezed through the crevice and back out into the biting cold air, slipped back beneath the hedge and out into the deserted street. The wind gyred about him as he walked sedately away. Raserei began to whistle as he wondered just how he should spend his time.