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Allura 9

Jarrod, While I cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you're personally responsible for the large pile of dog shit found on the driver's seat of my dad's station wagon, my intuition senses your guilt. 1) **Your family has three dogs**: two Sharpei's and a Pit Bull. This means you're the only person in the neighborhood with access to that much dog crap. Sure, Mrs. Kringle has that impish lap dog Tinkle but we all know that its anus was sewn shut from lawn dart incident last summer. No way she squeezed Tinkle's colostomy bag out on a car seat. You are the prime suspect. 2) **You knew that my father never locked his car doors.** I'm almost certain that you overheard my mother yell to my father to "lock the doors" on several occasions. The first time she yelled because someone took her collection of Wheat Pennies from the coin tray (She had every year sans 1948 and 1949) and the second time because someone turned on all the switches so when Dad got in everything was supposed to go haywire. But all that really happened was that the wipers started going, the hazards started blinking, and NPR was really loud. More like Lakshmi _Scream_. Although my father's typical response to mom was that no person in their right mind would try to steal a 1984 Colt vista with a wooden bumper, it was mom's instincts that time has proven equitable. 3) **You were mad at my family** because my mother said you couldn't stay for dinner on Tuesday. We were having cornbread with ham & 1000 bean soup, but because there wasn't enough food for you my parents asked you to go home. Who wants that crap anyway? I remember it was funny that I thought that because you stormed out of our house saying, "Who wants that crap anyway?" and my mom yelling "LANGUAGE!" as the door closed. 4) **The shit had corn bits in it.** Everyone in the neighborhood knows that your family feed pets table scraps, and it's widely known that you're starch junkies. And I know that starch is basically polymerized sugars which explains why all the kids in your family are off-the-wall. I once saw your youngest sister scale a giant oak tree and start chewing acorns. While they were still attached to the tree. My father's reaction wasn't pleasant and his first order of business was to harangue me and my brother in to confessing who did it, as if one of us were somehow responsible. My father pisses me off sometimes but never to the point that I would build a pyramid of poo on his car seat. But he was convinced that if we didn't do it, we knew who _did_ and we were protecting their identity. I thought he was going to choke us. And to make matters worse, Mom, with a cynical smirk on her otherwise angelic face, shook her head at him and made the motion of a key being inserted in to a lock and turned. It was barbaric! Because we're too poor to keep a set of latex gloves readily available, my father resorted to turning plastic shopping bags inside-out to expunge the excrement. Dad is a salesman and because he doesn't have many material things (like latex gloves), he cherishes his business suits. He's the kind of guy who starches his shirts, keeps wooden shoe forms in his dress shoes, and refuses to fold his socks -- rather stacks them supine in the drawer "so they don't wrinkle." He refused to clean shit or drive the car while wearing his business slacks. This led me to explain to Mrs. Kringle that morning why my father was pantsless on the sidewalk beside a pile of shit. She's a godly old woman and it was hard to explain, so I made up a tale about Satan spiritually attacking our family with dog shit. This seemed like a reasonable explanation to her because she nodded her head almost as if to say, "Yes, I've seen such evil things." Dumb old bitch. Although it's been weeks since the incident, my father still drives while sitting atop phonebooks. The smell is awful, and to make matters worse, my mother rolls up the windows and locks the doors at night for fear of a repeat incident. Dad asked why she can't leave a crack in the windows so the car can aerate. "Not like they're going to squeeze dog shit through that little crevice!" he said. "LANGUAGE!" Every morning on the way to school the odor reminds me of a kennel and we leave a break of dog-dung aroma in our path. When I'm sitting in the back seat I can see other drivers faces contort and their heads swivel as they search for the culprit of this stench. "Are we near a treatment plant?" they must be asking. The smell is often too foul for me to stomach, so I'm forced to stick my head out the window. Like a dog. _Shitty irony_. I had a notion it was you, but I knew it for sure when you gave me a pine cone air freshener and pursed your lips. I'll be watching you. And I'll be watching your dogs take a shit.

It's warmer than it should be this time of year. I've opened the window in our bedroom, but it doesn't seem to help. I thumb the flint wheel of the cheap Bic in my pocket. I didn't tell you that I've started smoking again? The hokey picture of us posing on the boardwalk, me as a muscleman, you as a blonde in a bikini, sits on the nightstand. Quickly glancing at the clock, I notice its late, very late. But like bad habits, time is of little consequence now. Perhaps its boredom, or maybe I've found some sort of motivation to get it together, but I flip through the Ikea catalog sitting next to our picture. Ah, kitchen ideas. We never did do that, did we? Always put it off. "Maybe next weekend, we'll just finally make a decision, pick up the supplies and get this over with". Your voice in my head isn't helping the situation. We both know the next weekend won't be coming. Checking my phone now. I have one missed call from you. No unheard messages. Not surprising. Talking never was much of our thing anyway. Glancing at the clock again. 11:47. Too late to call back? Probably. I'll try again tomorrow. I send a quick text wishing you a good night. In my head you are having the best night of your life. Dreamless sleep finally passes over me, with the lamp on, phone in my hand, and a moth circling overhead. You look good, you feel good. This is my mantra. This is what has gotten me out of bed for the last 17 days. Shower, masturbate. Brush teeth. Mouthwash. Shave. Shave again against the grain. Pressed shirt, pressed slacks, hair combed. The office is dull, but it keeps me from looking at that picture. I go through my email archive, looking at our past email exchanges. The phone snaps me out of my trance. Another closed sale. It doesn't matter. Time is money, and we have determined that time doesn't matter. Spreadsheets. Zip codes and cities. Cities that we've stayed in. Zip codes we've visited. Hotels we've slept in, now clutter the screen in front of me. I tell myself to stop it. This is business, and home was left at home at 7:38 this morning, now focus, dammit!! Coffee at the burger joint across the street. Sure, there's a Starbuck's on the ground floor, but this mud fits better with my mood today. My phone vibrates. Pulling it from my pocket I suspect its you. Its my boss. "Where are you?". "On my way back now. Want a coffee?" I reply. "Low fat mocha, no whip..." Home. My keys and Bic make a satisfying amount of noise hitting the dresser as I vacantly stare at the "Always Kiss Me Goodnight" message adorning the space above our headboard. I sit with the phone in my right hand, a tumbler of Laphroaig in my left. The glass sweats, sending droplets of water onto the hardwood floor of what used to be our home office. The closet door is open, and inside, mocking me, is a box. I can't see the words, but I know that in thick, bold Sharpie marker, it is labeled "Baby Clothes". Underneath that, I can envision the shipping label, with the name of one of your cousin's, or perhaps an aunt. Pouring myself a second scotch, my phone vibrates again. Before I even look at the screen, I know its you. Answering the call with a casual "Hello" and am greeted with 10 seconds of silence. This is how all of our conversations have started over the last 17 (or is it 18?) days now. You - "I'm Sorry" Me - "I know. Its OK" "It wasn't supposed to be like this" "Its OK. Are you safe?" "Yes" "Come home" "I can't" "I know" "I'm sorry. I need to go" Sleep. Its Saturday. My mantra has gone to shit for this special occasion. They say it takes 21 days to break bad habits. I've determined it takes 18 (or is it 19?) to revert to living like a bachelor. They also say (who the fuck are these people anyhow?) that lack of physical activity and sunlight can lead to depression. I say that your lover leaving with no warning and without a trace might compound the situation. A quick run to the gym and a good 50 minutes on all the machines that I haven't used since high school. My jog back to the house quickens to a run, then a sprint for the last 100 feet. Finally. Home. Light up, vomit. Ah, the day has begun. Working the network. Friends, family, does anyone know where she might be? Jesus Christ people. Help me out here. I just need to know that she is OK. Fuck! You call again. The conversation is the same. I can hear a voice in the background, but make no mention of it. This would be like me telling you the sky is blue. We both know that, that line of conversation would quickly fizzle and die. I suppose I could go to church today. Neither one of us have done that for a while. Do we even belong to a church? Not knowing anything else I sit in the back pew of the church we were married in. You know the one. Built just 100 years ago, but with Gothic architecture and flying buttresses. Very Catholic, but from what I gather I think its Episcopalian. Like most things, this is merely a trivial fact at this point. I'm eating Spaghetti-Os straight from the can, cold, when you call again. "Hello?" "Hi. I'm on my way" "How long?" "A few hours, maybe? I don't know. I might need to stop a few times on the way" "What can I do?" "Don't wait up. Its late." Restless sleep. I'm awoken by your key hitting the front door. I turn on the lamp and sit up, waiting. "I told you not to wait up" "I've been waiting up for weeks" "You shouldn't have" "I know. We have some things to talk about" "Can it wait?" "Yes. Come to bed" It's been 12 days. I'm assembling cabinets in the dining room. We've talked, but we haven't talked about 'that'. I've told you about my days when you were gone. Told you about how I would jerk off in the shower while thinking about the time we were visiting your parents and you pulled your pajama bottoms and thong (god, I love how you only ever wear thongs) around your knees and mounted me while facing my feet. Reverse cowgirl they call it. Your feet planted on the floor by my hips, bouncing your white-ass up and down on my pelvis. No foreplay. No checking to make sure everyone else was asleep first. Just carnal fucking for the sole sake of your orgasm. Me lying on my back on your parent's rug, still as can be, relegating myself to the role of your fuck toy. I tell you this is the memory that I masturbated to. I don't tell you about images of Mr. X reaming your lips, leaving you gaped, gasping and begging for more with a wet sheen on your inner thighs are what would flash in my mind just before my legs would quiver and my cum would hit the floor of the bathtub. I don't tell you about my google searches for "cheating bride video". We are OK now, right? All-American family? Mortgage, 2 car payments, a house in a safe neighborhood with a school on the corner. We wave to the neighbors in the mornings and evenings and chit chat about our gardens and the weather. Its getting hotter still. We are fine. Its July, but the humidity feels like August. We are lying in bed, the comforter has been retired to the linen closet. The four post Queen, 600 thread count sheets and heat have us both in the mood. This will be our first time in months. You are doing laundry. "How was it?" I ask "Just as a remember" "Is that good or bad?" "Good, I think. I don't know" "Better" "Than?" "You know. Its OK to be honest with me." "Yes, its better." The summer swelter has finally passed. Its cool enough to start working in the garden again, but no so cold that our efforts will be futile. I'm taking out ads. Casual encounters. Couple for male. C4M. I'm learning the terminology and the code words. Why can't I get this out of my head? Why do I need to see my bride getting fucked while she looks me in the eye and moans, fighting for breath? I'm at the fabric shop. $3.99 for a fabric tape measure. I'm sitting in our bathroom, my ass pressed against the cold granite countertop as a stroke myself. I just need to be hard. I don't need to finish. I'm 6 and 1/4" long with 4 and 1/2" of girth. How I made it to 29 without knowing this is beyond me, but I guess it has never crossed my mind. Most of the girls I've been with tell me I'm bigger than average, but the internet forum says I'm below. This is my one screening factor. I'm looking for something huge. My Moby Dick if you will. I haven't told about this, of course, but I'm sure I will someday soon. Just slip it in during a casual conversation. "So I was thinking. How would you feel about bringing another guy into our bedroom?" I'll ask. And you will say "If that's something you would like to try, I would too." End of story. Its quick and to the point. "We are looking for a straight, STD-Free, good looking male to fuck my wife while I watch. There will only be straight sex, and the husband will not be joining in at all, masturbating at most. Must have a larger than average penis and be willing to break off all contact afterwards. Please submit cock shot and full naked torso shot upon reply." I haven't told you yet. I'll get around to it. For now, I wait, screening photos and looking at hotels.

The dust of seventy years of silence and decay lay thick on the floor, so thick that when Oleg pushed open the ancient iron blast door into the corridor it barely shifted in the momentary breeze. Clutching his pistol and penlight in hands that were sweaty despite the cool of the underground, the young man stepped over the threshold and held up his light. The narrow beam completely failed to pierce the darkness that began ten meters from Oleg's face. The air was different down here. It didn't seem to want to move. Taking a deep breath despite the musty odor of damp concrete and peeling paint, Oleg began to move down the doorless corridor with short, careful steps. Roughly thirty meters in, Oleg came to a junction. A blank wall was before him, the lettering that once directed unknown personnel to the left or right nearly gone. Faced with the oppressive darkness of the subterranean complex, Oleg once again silently cursed his miniscule light. He had long since holstered his pistol, giving up hope of finding even a single rat in these stygian depths. Looking to his right, he could see that the same corridor continued for at least another fifteen meters. Beyond that, his light could tell him nothing. Turning to his left, Oleg froze. Something was wrong with this darkness. He felt an immediate sense of vertigo, which took some time to reconcile with what his eyes could just barely percieve. As far as he could tell, after a few meters, the corridor *ended.* There was no dead end, no long-forgotten storeroom or office. There were no walls at all. It was as if all of it, walls, ceiling, and floor, had been torn away. The blackness simply opened, like a mouth. Making no small effort to steady himself, slow his beating heart, Oleg once again drew his pistol. For what reason exactly he couldn't possibly say--simply feeling the smooth grip against his palm was a comfort. He kept his eyes, and the penlight they relied on, trained on the opening in front of him. After a moment, he took a step. Then another. After a few moments, which Oleg's furious heart spun into hours, he stood before the opening. The blackness was like a wall--impenetrable, indestructable, ageless. It took all his nerve not to step back when all his senses screamed that he was walking into something solid. Oleg turned the narrow beam of his light downwards, and this time could not help but quickly step back from the edge--for he now knew he had been standing on a precipice--of a pit. It had been no illusion that drew him in this direction. The walls, ceiling, and floor had been severed--torn away--by some monstrous force. Jagged concrete and rusted, sawtoothed pipes, interspersed with rebar like severed tendons from a limb jutted out over the edge. Oleg slowly knelt, pointing his light further downward. After a moment, he could make out a sloped dirt surface, which had eroded away from the ruined floor over the decades, resulting in the drop he saw before him. With this new information, Oleg calculated that it was only a drop of about three-quarters of a meter. His previous fear almost forgotten, Oleg re-holstered his pistol, clutched his sweaty penlight between his teeth, and lowered himself over the precipice, taking care not to cut his hands or legs on the jagged sections of pipe that jutted here and there. He landed on the dirt, his weight causing the slope to crumble further. He slid for a moment before planting his feet and retrieving his light from his mouth. Not wanting to move any further before seeing what lay before him, he played the beam up and down, pointing it away from him. His search revealed a sloped dirt wall about ten meters in front of him, evidently some kind of cave-in blocking him from reaching where the amputated corridor continued. Thus satisfied, Oleg turned to further explore this new area and froze for the third time. Once again, his light disappeared into an impenetrable darkness. Spinning to his left, he had the same result. Clearly, this was some kind of cave, the formation of which had been caused by the same event that shattered the concrete and rebar of the corridor. Pointing his light straight up, Oleg could barely make out a ceiling. It comforted him to have some idea of the dimensions of this cave, even if he had no idea how far it stretched to his left or his right. Picking a direction at random--his left--Oleg began to walk the length of the cave, moving his light from wall to wall to ensure he stayed in the center. It was several minutes before he realized that his boots were making an entirely different sound as they impacted the dirt than when he had first entered the cave. Where the cave floor had been slightly softened with loose dust and dirt, it was now packed extremely hard, almost solid. Oleg pointed his light straight down as he pressed his boot into the floor of the cave, noticing that it left hardly any print at all in the thin layer of loose, dry dirt coating the hard-packed earth underneath. This was entirely odd. The cave showed every sign of having been created recently, as the result of the same seismic activity that had severely damaged the complex far behind him. However, this kind of packed strata suggested immense pressure, some great weight bearing down. Oleg stopped in his tracks, stomping down hard on the packed earth from time to time and noting the echo it produced. Trying to determine what kind of layering was present in the walls of the cave, Oleg turned his light to the wall and moving it upwards in a straight line, watching carefully for a change in its color, which would signify changed in its geological makeup. What he saw made him reach for his gun. The walls weren't slanted. They curved. There was a single, smooth curve that made the entire wall into a concave depression that met the ceiling and curved down the other side and met on the floor of the cave, where Oleg stood--he saw, now--in a similar shallow depression. This was no cave, then. *It was a tunnel.* Oleg's heart, already racing by this time, began to pound painfully. His brow felt cold and hot in turns. If this was a tunnel, then who...what had made it? How was such a thing even possible? Oleg's legs began to tremble, but as he tried to calm himself (a vain effort) he realized that it was not his body trembling, but a growing tremor in the earth itself; a vibrating that was becoming more and more pronounced. Oleg spun wildly, in a panic, casting his light jerkily along tunnels walls that now showed signs of trembling, a slight crumbling. Then there was the sound. It was the unrelenting, hellish groan of the planet. It was like a million diesel trains, moving along massive tracks and sounding their pressurized whistles in unison. A growing **HOWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM** roared up through the tunnel, shaking Oleg to the smallest cells in his body. His very mind seemed to disintegrate under the force of that rumbling howl of what he was sure had once bored these tunnels. How? How? he thought feverishly, as if to echo that loathsome sound. How could this be? How could this be? An orange glow lit the depths of the tunnel before him, as if the roar of this creature, this monstrous worm had set the stale tunnel air ablaze. The earth shook as if pounded by hammers the size of galaxies. For a moment, Oleg was utterly paralyzed, simply staring into its dozens of fiery eyes. His penlight dropped, useless, to the ground. Then it was upon him, and *THE TEETH...

grifting as a digital gangster will insure that you never become poor, so long as you lower your moral standards. you will need: a stolen paypal account that doesn't belong to me or a fellow dg (stolen paypal accounts are fairly easy to come by - a lot of people use the same password for their email and their bank and their porn site, you fill in the blank on that one) balls sunglasses and a hat first, find a thing you want on ebay being sold in a general locality you find yourself in that ends in a few days or is set buy it now by a private seller. contact the seller and tell them that your brother's/sister's/cousin's/pastor's birthday is TOMORROW, and the thing that they have for sale is exactly what your brother/sister/cousin/pastor has been raving about and you can't find it anywhere. tell them you want to come over and check it out, and you will buy it immediately if they end the auction early for 20% above what the current bid is at (what do you care, it isn't your money) or if it is buy it now, just say you want to roll over and peep that lil whodi before you commit. roll over to their crib in your "disguise" and check out the item. tell them you don't have the cash on you, but you have plenty of simoleans in your paypal account. ask to use their computer. sign on to the stolen paypal from their computer and pay the seller some stolen money from their computer, giving them a firm handshake as you exit the premises. ride off into the sunset like a boss. optional: if you bought a go-kart, ride off in that. when the seller finally catches wind that he/she has been scammed, they will tell the police that some guy came over to their house, used their computer, and paid for their item using a stolen paypal. likely story. the officers take this statement from the seller but they aren't exactly buying the story. one policeman turns to his partner and gives him a slight nod, and the seller (let's assume the seller is male) gets arrested and rides in the squad car to the county jail. in county, he has a couple visitors from family and friends, but no one wants to bail him out. you see, he had a history of alcoholism and generally treated his kids like shit, and most everyone in the neighborhood knew it. his wife is glad she is finally away from his verbal and physical abuse, and while she secretly believes his story is genuine, welcomes the fact that finally, some karmic balance has been restored to the world. while awaiting trial, his wife (with the help of a local attorney) files divorce papers to dissolve their marriage of six years. he paces his jail cell and the common area, clutching his divorce papers, weeping softly, wondering if he had just been a slightly more attentive husband and went to his AA meetings regularly, if this whole mess ever would have happened. at his trial, the judge reads aloud what he has been charged with, and if he has anything to say for himself. "NO," he exclaims to the judge. "I AM NOT GUILTY!" fighting back tears, he scans the courtroom - his friends and family are nowhere to be seen. the jury continues staring the defendant down with obvious contempt as the prosecution mounts their case. the prosecutor, a young, handsome hotshot, makes eye contact with the dumbfounded ebay seller. if there is one thing he learned in law school, it is that the face of this seller in particular is clearly showing no remorse for his actions. following the conclusion of the defense's unconvincing, public-defender-esque argument, the judge bangs his gavel and the jury convenes to deliberate the case. no character witness has come forward to attest that deep down, our seller truly is a nice person, just misguided and damaged. his youth was marked with abuse, and he knew no better than to follow the same example in adulthood. in no less than fifteen minutes, the jury returns. slowly, the dejected seller rises to his feet, fidgeting nervously. "...we find the defendant guilty, " the jury foreman states with a hint of disdain in his voice. sentenced to one year in prison, the seller begins writing a memoir detailing his experience as a child and the subsequent problems that followed. collect call after collect call, letter after letter, he continues to profess his innocence to his estranged ex-wife and children. after going through a series of substandard boyfriends, his ex-wife finally realizes that perhaps the seller is not such a bad guy after all, and the experience of jail has changed him for the better; she decides to contact a better lawyer and begin to mount an appeal to set her ex-husband free. one day in the common area, a fight breaks out between the seller and a former gang member (who was incarcerated for a drug distribution charge) over a pair of stolen slippers. amidst the confusion, the seller accidentally stabs a correctional officer, severely wounding him. this effectively erased ALL of the good time the seller had accumulated (3 months) and he was sent to administrative segregation for his crime. a judge finds the seller guilty of assault with a deadly weapon against a correctional officer and extends his prison sentence seven years. it would have been longer but his ex-wife, in a show of newfound love and respect, asked the judge for leniency in his case. she truly believed her former lover had turned over a new leaf, and had begun marking a calendar, counting the days until she could be with her husband again. after fulfilling his debt to society (which actually began as your debt to society), the seller is released from prison, his memoirs now 800 pages thick. his children, once bright-eyed elementary school students, were now in high school. even though their father was in jail, it seems they turned out to be responsible young adults, making the honor roll and abstaining from drugs and alcohol use. watching the news on a lazy sunday afternoon, you recognize your victim's mugshot as they tell his story and discuss his memoirs. realizing the error of your ways, you drive to his house in your stolen go-kart and ring the doorbell. the seller answers the door. "hello seller," you quietly mumble. "you probably don't remember me, but i am the reason you went to jail many years ago." after a few seconds of uneasy silence, the man replies. "yes, i remember. for the longest time, i thought about nothing but getting revenge on you. you took my family away from me. you took my youth. you took my go-kart..." a lump forms in your throat as his eyes well up with tears. he continues: "if it wasn't for you, though, i never would have faced my past demons. since i've been out of jail, i have a boundless appreciation for life, my kids and my wife love me unconditionally, and i have been clean and sober for a long time. i owe it all to you." "come on, " you say, putting your hand on the man's shoulder. "let's take a ride." turn to page 127 if you drive the man to the bar and get him piss drunk, breaking his pledge of sobriety. turn to page 120 if you email oprah to consider making him into a best-selling author with his memoirs.

So I checked my mail today. A single lonely envelope this time, and by the handwritten address on the front I knew immediately who it was from. Two nights ago my father sat down and wrote me a letter. This isn't normally how my dad and I correspond. The occasional phone call is far more likely, and since my son was born almost three years ago the calls have gotten far more frequent. For a period of time when I was in my teens it wasn't unlikely to get a call from the man maybe once a year, usually around my birthday, and usually when he'd been drinking. My parents had divorced when I was about 10 years old and my dad simply thought it was best to take a backseat to my life at that point. At the time, I suppose I can't say I cared much. These days I'm at least somewhat happier to get a call from the man. When my father calls it's usually to ask the same three questions: "How's life treatin' ya? "How's my grandson?" "How's yer mother been?" And when the conversation's over he always ends with the same three words: "Hook yer seatbelt." When the phone rings and I see the name DAD on the caller ID I immediately do a quick review in my mind over the answers to those three questions so I can get the call over and done with hastily. My dad has a way of going on tangents you see, anything I say that sparks a hazy memory in his mind can quickly become a long winded story about how many years ago there was an instance oh so similar to mine that he had to deal with. And I get to hear about the people involved and the colorful locations where these happenings took place. Something as simple as telling him my check engine light came on the other day can suddenly be spun into a story about the time he was in New Mexico as a teenager with a couple of friends he hasn't talked to in decades, getting stuck in some out of the way little town and my god son you should should see the countryside out in that area, if I was still with your mother I'd buy a Winnebago and just drive her around the west... I've gotten to hear stories about a lot of people and a lot of places over the years, most of which I've rolled my eyes through, flipped through the channels or just nodded along with patiently. I'm fairly certain by now I've had to sit through the life stories of every man woman and child my dad has ever met, the short versions and the long, and not a single one of these names would still register in my brain if I came upon them in a phone book today. All but one that is. Maybe it's the nickname this one had, which always made me chuckle. Maybe it's the stories he's told about this person and the elaborate build-up he'd begin with, setting the stage for some of the most ridiculous endings to any of the tales my dad's had the pleasure of telling. Maybe it's the number of times he's told these particular stories. A good story is like a pair of jeans, the more worn they are the more likely they are to be worn, and they eventually become your favorites. My dad has worn these stories so many times I can almost picture the holes ripped in the knees, and the tattered fray ends of the legs. I can't begin to describe what the stories are about, or the person they center around. I wasn't born when they took place and I've never met the key player. I can tell you they involved my father's back and forth relationship with this single person. The times he went to jail for this person. The adventures they went on together. The people who my dad has almost beat almost to death because of something this person's done. I've never met the subject of these stories, but I feel like I've known the person my entire life. Her name is Helen. My father calls her Helen From Hell. In equals measures my dad once loved and hated her, and to hear him tell the tales you can pick up on both of those things by the emotion in his voice. Now...I can't remember the last time I saw my parents in the same room together. I know he talks with my mom on occasion still, mostly to keep up with the news on me that I don't share with the both of them. I know my mother will always have a place in his heart. After 21 years of being divorced the man still talks about her fondly. But my mom was the last person my dad ever loved. After the split he gravitated pretty heavily towards the booze. Women walked into his life and ran out twice as quickly. He swore my mom was going to be the last person to break his heart, and true to his word he's never let another woman have it. My mom was the last person to break his heart, but to have had a last there must always be a first, and that first was Helen. The last time I know for sure that she and my dad ever got together was probably when he was in his mid to late twenties. By that point she'd done more to make his life miserable than any man should have to put up with, so I gather from the way my father tells it at least. By that point they had already dated and broken up two or three times, each one followed by a spit on the ground and a curse towards the other. By that point my dad had sworn to god he was through with the woman who had rightfully earned herself the nickname she's been branded with by my dad and perhaps many others like him. She was the first girl my father ever loved and the first person he ever wanted to kill. Up until the second or third time they called it quits my dad had always found reason, if reason had anything to do with it, to take her back and and put aside the hatred she'd left him with the time before. To say they had a rocky relationship is putting it almost laughably. But the man loved her, and if he hadn't met my mom I'm sure the cycle would have continued until they were either married or one of them was in prison for the murder of the other. I opened my dad's letter today with confusion in my mind. He hadn't mentioned a letter being on the way recently, he wasn't sending me any money that I was aware of. By the thickness of the envelope I could tell there was more than just a hello how are you inside. What was inside however, were three handwritten pages in my father's unmistakable scrawl. If there's one word to describe my dad, it's Storyteller. I've saved many of his letters over the years as prime examples of my dad's way with words. He tells his stories to strangers to make new friends, he tells them to friends to paint vivid memories of the past, and he tells them to me to give advice. That's pretty much the only way it's ever worked up until today. I have in my attic right now a small box of handwritten advice from my dad, probably enough to fashion a book out of by this point. Probably enough to tell his life's story as well. This was no advice. This was the meanderings of a man who's sole purpose two nights ago was to tell a piece of a story, one I've heard countless times before, and one who's supporting cast member I remembered the name of with one part heartfelt laughter and another part absolute horror. I suppose a story doesn't have to be linear to work well. As long as you have a beginning, a middle, and an end it really doesn't matter in what order they're in placed. The story of Helen From Hell was always handed down to me in bits and pieces over the many years since my dad began talking to me more than once every twelve or so months, well after he sobered up, and especially since my son was born. It began with a lengthy and roundabout middle, it touched briefly once on a beginning, and for all my father and I knew or ever expected, some forty years ago it came to an end. I suppose for the full weight of what I'm writing to be felt I'd have to flesh out the entire story of Helen and my dad, but quite honestly I would have no idea where to begin. I've pointed out already the main aspects and given the most important details, so if what I'm saying here doesn't so much as matter to you as it does to me then I'll just have to comfort myself with the fact that I'm not the story teller my dad is, and this story is more for myself anyways than anyone else... Three weeks ago my father was preparing to go to Florida for vacation. Packing his things in his van and hitting the road, he decided to make a stop at my grandfather's house, empty now since my father's dad died last year, and a good jumping off point for a trip to the south. The house is in Monaca, PA, a small area and where my dad's side of the family grew up. It's where most of his stories are based, and it's where he once again, three weeks ago ran into Helen From Hell. I didn't get to hear the entire story behind how, after four decades apart, my father suddenly ran into his first love. I have not a clue why they decided to go to Florida together. I'm not certain how the universe works or what can be blamed entirely on coincidence as opposed to a divine alignment of the stars. All I know is that today I got a letter. And in three pages of handwritten scrawl my dad explained to me how a twenty-one year promise to never again hand out his heart was broken by three weeks in Florida with a woman he'd sworn off one last time all of forty some years ago. In three well thought out pages my dad explained how time has worn the Hell out of Helen, how three weeks in Florida with her was nowhere near enough, and how you just never know what life has in store for you. I'm glad my father's found someone to care for again. I'm sure he's got someone now to tell all of his stories to. I'm certain I'm going to be hearing a lot of new stories about Helen, and maybe even get to meet her for the first time very soon. I'm in utter shock and awe that a tale as long and broken as theirs can find a new chapter long after the end was written. On the back of the third page my dad simply wrote "Hook your sealtbelt".

So there I was, running away from the rabbid russian baby mob when suddenly this crazy rich, and hot nerdy chick comes running towards me, stops with the infamous Wonder Woman pose and says "Come with me if you wish to live". I run with her, a car pulls up, the window rolls down, and Keanue Reeves does his ever famous head turn and says "Get in". The back door mysteriously opens, I look at le Wonder Woman chick and say "Lets do it". Several hours later, after driving through seemingly never ending winding canyon roads, and get to our destination... the WAREHOUSE OF DOOOOOOOM. As we pull around the final corner, the silouette of a van appears, we pull closer and the Mystery Machine shows itself in the headlights... Scooby and those medling kids... fuck it, im going home.

It was the middle of the night when I heard continuous tapping. Slightly, I opened my eyes to see a light in the hallway and noticed that there was a lack of warmth by the side of my bed. My wife, Annie must’ve have been tapping, so I went downstairs to figure the situation out. My eyes were still adjusting to the dim light, but I quickly noticed a grisly shadow. It was an unfamiliar figure, it was a bitter looking intruder, and next to him was my wife, cold on the floor. Then the intruder’s black eyes coldly shot mine, and with his rough hands, he shot me. A gleam of light shines in my eyes and I quickly rise up. I panic, it seems as though I’ve been in deep slumber for a long time. As I rise up, I pulled on something which went into my skin; it was an IV needle which I detached. Unclear to this situation, I look at my surroundings. My IV bag is completely empty, the Hospital is filled with complete silence and the room is faint. My situation doesn’t seem to make sense, as it seems nothing is operating and no one is working. Quickly, the stood up on my feet but felt as though I would fall a second later, but with enough effort I reached the bathroom. In the view of the dark room, I can see myself through the filthy mirror. It reflected an image of a ghostly pale man with a beard. I could not conclude anything just yet, and needed more information about my situation. I barely manage to jog through the hospital’s mysterious hallway with the only sound being my footsteps and my breath. Why was no one here to care for me? Why was I alone? I quickly grew frustrated as my questions only developed. I opened the door at the exit and felt an eerie gust of wind blow at my face. The polluted smell of dead bodies came rushing through my nose, yet I saw no dead bodies. In fact I didn’t see a body in sight, dead or alive. Everything was put at a complete stop. Traffic of cars was abandoned in the middle of streets and a row of stores went unmanaged. Yet I was more abandoned than any car or store as I was completely alone without another human. The cars were kept together by road and stores merged by shared walls. Suddenly, I felt a harsh pressure hit my chest and fell to the ground without much effort. I opened my eyes to look at the empty world. Then, I saw someone. Someone was alive in this desolated place, and she was coming towards me. Once we met, she told me her name was Anne; she looked familiar but seemed to be in dangerous condition. The massive amount of lipstick on her mouth contrasted with paleness. After an aggressive set of dry coughs, I managed to agree to travel with her. Rough Draft is Rough.

The light rain drizzles down on your Kevlar vest, padded pants, and solid metal shoes. As you walk down the street, the 9 foot wall on both sides flash pictures of the recent violence, and forecasts an 85% chance of violence occurring in the nearby area within the day. As you pick up your pace, the aforementioned violence occurs. Another isolated incident of “gang violence.” The thought of the gun fire barely crosses your mind as you step up to the School House, a giant, looming, drab grey fortress, covered in barbed wire, with armed guards and vicious dogs barking on short leashes. When you step in, several guards surround you. “Name?” grunts one “19267” you reply “ID?” You pass him the card that contains all your vital information, from address to your blood type, and he barely looks it over. “Remove the armor and you can enter.” There is a split second of fear as you remove the bulletproof armor and leggings, but you remember your training, “Don’t think about it, and you will be fine.” You step into the next room, and there is dead silence. You know no one, and no one knows you. The intercom buzzes “Please report to first hour. Do not run, and remain calm.” Your first class is defense. Okay class, what are the three rules of safety that you always need to follow?” asks the overweight and ever stoic professor. “Don’t think, and everything will be fine, the violence doesn’t affect us, and we are safe.” Defense class is repeating this phrase over and over again for an hour and a half. The intercom buzzes again. “Please remain calm, there is an intruder in the build…” The intercom cuts off mid sentence. Suddenly all of the lights go out. In the darkness, you can make out the shape of your classmates, and the guards that stand in every classroom. “Remain calm, remember your training,” whispers the professor “everything will be okay.” But you know better. You know why there is an intruder in the building, you know who she is, and you know how far she will go to accomplish her goals. Later that day, the School House is ablaze, with only the students standing outside. All of the students are terrified, and are unable to move, paralyzed by fear, with the blatant lie of their training revealed to them. You are the only student who stands alone, staring into the wreckage of the past world. As an ash falls onto your arm, you overhear an intercom spraying the message “Don’t think, and everything will be fine, the violence doesn’t affect us, and we are safe.” The only thing that you can think of is how wrong that message is.

A small stream feeds a small pool that gradually grows larger. The stream grows until it becomes a river and bystanders come to watch. Two men come forward and try to dam the river, but the flow is out of control. The river’s red waters feed the pool until it spills over a curb and cascades down into a gutter. A lone women walks towards the river’s source and cradles it in her arms. Her face shows no emotion but her hands are a different story. The way they caress the man’s face is similar to that of a lover’s but not quite. There is a maternal quality to them. Those hands once held this man and seek to do the same now. Awkwardly they struggle to recreate something long gone from this moment and their failure only solidifies the fact that change is the only guarantee and who are we to argue with our only guarantee. A man with a stretcher comes forward and attempts to take the body from the women but she resists, slapping at the man’s hands. The man persists. The woman starts screaming, it’s a lonely scream and the bystanders exchange glances, unsure of how to react, they look to the each other for suggestions. Nobody seems to have any so they simply gaze on as if it were a television drama and they were observing from the comfort of their favorite chair. Two policemen approach and try to pry the women from her son’s body. With a superhuman burst of energy she rises, cradling her son in her arms, she makes a wild dash from the policemen. She makes it half way down the block then collapses spilling a body, it tumbles, finding the pavement it stops. They come and take the body. They take it to a room and place it on a large metal tray. They cut at it and poke at it. They take it apart, weighing different pieces and then replacing them. After they are finished others come for the body. They wash the body and dress the body, then paint the body. They put it in a box and then place the box on display. People come to see. Prayers are said, words are exchanged, then they take the box to a hole and bury it. Above the hole they place a stone. The stone is often alone. Sometimes the woman comes to visit the stone. She sits with the stone and together they bathe in memories. She remembers a man and she remembers a boy. She remembers birthdays, smiles, hugs, a wedding. She remembers happiness and she remembers meaning. She remembers being called mother. These memories become an addiction and she visits often. As the time passes the smiles and the hugs are slowly replaced by visions of the stone until one day the stone is all she can remember. She tries and tries to recall just a glimpse of his face or a whisper of his voice, but the stone is a persistent memory. She must remember so she begins digging with her hands. She digs and she digs, snapping off nails. She digs until her hands begin to bleed and then continues. She is covered in dirt when she gets to the box. She opens it. Inside bones stare back at her. She can only return their look. She doesn’t remember this.

I tried to be kind of experimental in the way I wrote it. Please let me know if you think it's silly or good or just meh! It's best read slowly. Anyway enough of that, here it is: It was the year 250,000,000 BC. It was the year 2011 AD. It was the end of the universe. It was every year, all at once. A man tunnels inside a mountain using his pickaxe as a woman bites in to a freshly baked bagel. The mountain fractures apart in to pieces that are sent to the coal power plant. The bagels finish baking and the warm smell fills the kitchen in the bakery. The miner coughs and feels slightly ill. The electricity from the coal plant is sold at a rate of 10.96¢/kW•h. The woman pays for the bagel. The baker paid the electricity bill and the woman’s hunger feels temporarily satisfied. It’s there. The path the energy took. The miner, the coal, the electricity, the bagel, the woman's satisfaction…you see it all. It’s at once obvious and yet mysteriously laden with hidden details. You see beings, human and other, making decisions in their lives based on the way they experience reality. “How imperfect their information. It feels almost shameful, being trapped such a low-dimensional manner like that. Like a prisoner. Or an insect. Or perhaps Pac-Man, controlled by the joystick. How limited.” you think to yourself, as if there were anyone else to think it to. It’s all twisting and folding, wiggling around and too impressive to take in at any one moment. Its pores breathe with life at the biggest and smallest of scales, each scale cooperating with all the others in surprising ways to produce layers upon layers of interwoven complexity. “Oh… if only the beings trapped in this thing could come outside it for a second and see it from this perspective” you think, soaking in the richness of detail available in this oversized fractal. The biggest and smallest sizes have a difference of several hundred orders of magnitude, yet it seemed most humans only used a few of them. Silly humans. You fly around and zoom and expand certain portions of time and space, examining some parts of the 4-dimensional block with more scrutiny. You pass through it and around it like a ghost while occasionally grabbing on to edges to pivot around, floating like an astronaut outside the space ship. Except you were outside the universe. The universe exploded in to existence at the start, you see. And the end showed the last souls blowing out their final breaths, silently giving homage to every being that had ever died before them. Somewhere else, it was a balmy 86 degree day in southern Florida as a few gentlemen went fishing in a boat one of them was still making loan payments on. “A lot of them seem to take the game quite seriously, this game of being.” You look around some more, pinching and grabbing the multi-textured styrofoam-like contours of this crazy 4D thing, romantically grasping as if your hand holds were jacket lapels on the coat of a lover. There’s so much emotion and hurt and suffering and pain, while also harboring unbelievable joy, compassion, beauty, and peace. All more or less self-contained in this one object, what a marvel! You fly to a different place. The United States president gave a long awaited speech to millions of diversely-opinioned citizens while inside their bodies billions of glucose molecules metabolized as they processed the words rolled to them down the social hierarchy from above. The atoms the people were made of seemed to buzz with imprecise possibility, as did their states of minds. The decision was made, and the action was performed by the government. The people had mixed opinions about the results. Then, out of nowhere, there’s a pulling. Away from this thing in a manner that didn’t seem controllable or comprehendible in that moment, like the rug was jerked out from under your feet or the chair accidentally leaned too far back. You were in freefall, away from what was familiar. It had been happening the whole time, but you had only just realized it was going on. You reach out to this thing in desperation, this giant marvelous complicated life-giving thing, and yet the metaphorical lapels slip from your fingers. It’s so pretty you want to look at it forever. The pulling persists. It seems as though you have angered a strange form of gravity. There’s a sense of confusion and slight panic. You cling on to this 4D network of form and ideas and lifestyles and meaning and values. You try so hard to keep it from leaving you. In the last moments you see a human, a specific one. This human was you. Or… you thought it was you. But now you're up here. You are dying. Or you died. You remember now. It’s hard to tell which, causality didn’t seem to have the same meaning here. It seemed to just happen moments ago. There was a strange feeling. “Oh well” you laugh to your ever-changing self. What a farce. What a beautiful farce. The universe leaves your hands and you plummet away from it. At that moment of letting go, you briefly forget you were ever alive to begin with. You began to exist in a new way you’d forgotten was possible. You became it, it became you, and all was forgiven. All love and compassion, no divisions or walls. Not just this marvelously complex life-giving 4D thing either, but all the other things too. *All of them*. “Welcome back!” reality said to itself, to you. You realized you had won the war, whatever that was about. What’s the point in fighting if there is no disagreement? You dissolve in to it like a drop of ink dissolves in to the entire ocean. The coal miner exhaled the last puffs of poisonous carbon monoxide as he passed out from asphyxiation inside the mountain. “That bagel was delicious.” said the woman at another time and place. And she was right, it was delicious.

Woke up again, ten minutes late, hurried out the apartment door, on an empty stomach. The icy cold breeze ripping through my skin as I walked toward the metro station located just around the shopping mall. I always thought how those who were worse off than me felt at times like these, those who can't afford a shelter or even a small meal…I mean the homeless people. You can find them in many places, especially in the metro stations, or under the bridges…you know? Oh well, I hope they at least live a good life, a hollow wish, but it was the best I had at that time. Reaching into my left pocket, I searched for the fare card I purchased last Tuesday, but unfortunately I couldn't find it. "Must've left it at home, in my jeans" I thought to myself. Pulling my wallet out, looking for some cash, "maybe one thousand yen?" I guessed it right and took two giant, 500 yen coins. As I stuffed the wallet back into my left pocket, I picked up the already quickening pace and reached the street with the shopping mall and the metro inside it. The sun rays were beginning to reflect their warmth off of the sky rises of Tokyo.The morning clouds passing overhead like they were being herded somewhere by a fierce sheep dog. Every day of the week, I walked a mile and a half toward the metro to work. So many men and women wake up at 6:30 AM, including me, to catch the 7:00 AM train going to the city of Yokohama that it feels like they've never slept. I used to live in the city of Tokyo, in the small Shinjuku District. A small farm, maybe around 5 acres or more perhaps, was located neatly next to the apartment buildings where I lived with humble folks who only knew the basic necessities of life such as happiness, family, and love. I used to hate that small ditch that was next to the farm though; it was always muddy no matter what the day, time, or weather. After 5 minutes of more walking, I finally came into the metro station, hastily pushing the buttons, the machine then spit out my ticket. I ran toward the platform where my train would soon arrive. “So many people”…I thought to myself, “how are they going to fit into those tiny trains?” It still was a miracle to me how so many young, old, college kids, businessmen/women could be pushed into those trains. Even though I got this job back in December, approximately four months ago, transportation was always a surprisingly cramped every morning and evening. After about 30 mins of riding the train and switching stations, I got off at the Yokohama District Station. I worked at a small seafood restaurant in Yokohama. Every day, it was the same routine in that crazy place. I got off the train, walked about 2 blocks into the restaurant and signed in. First things first, take out the shrimps, the octopuses, the eels and the rest of the sea food out of the room-sized freezers in the back to leave them out for defrosting. They were going to be used up later that night, when the customers would storm the place. So far, the weather refused to change and my hands, even after I had on my work gloves, were sore and cold. Next step in the process was to heat up the ovens and the gigantic pans. Then, pour cooking oil in them and while the oil was getting hot, we had to chop up all the meat that was already defrosted from last night; and that process at least took three hours. At around 9 A.M the customers came. Business men and women, just swinging by for a small taste of deliciously fried fish with soy sauce, the best seller at my work place. Soon the sun was high and gleamed with promising heat through the glass windows, casting shadows of the outside world on the tables full of crumbs and all sorts of microscopic germs and dust specks. The crowds of the customers were getting bigger and louder by the minute, and it seemed as if their stomachs were screaming for the food and not their mouths, because the same people usually ended up being extra polite to you after they finished eating. “CAN I HAVE 5 ORDERS OF DEEP-FRIED TEMPURA PLEASE!!!" yelled one man. "3 SETS OF FRIED SHRIMP WITH SOY SAUCE! OVER HERE!!!" exclaimed one woman. The fun was in the rush-hour during the lunch times, when things really started to rowdy up. Plates after plates could be heard being washed with their clinks and clanks against the other kitchen utensils. A young man worked up a sweat while washing all those dishes, how such a small restaurant could handle such large crowds of people is still a mystery to me. Familiar faces drag in around familiar times, the fisherman who could easily catch his own fish and cook for his own lunch, came in around 3:30 pm. The old farmer, with a century old straw hat who had a vague idea that he is living in the 21st century Japan, came in at 4 P.M. As the sun climbed higher the smell of frying fish and octopus filled the air in and around the restaurant, which was a natural advertisement in itself. Every other day, an old face brought in a new one, and I saw the popularity of the restaurant and its employees, including me, grow with the customers. They started to address me with my name, saying “Hey, Setsuna! Get me couple of fried shrimps with some soy sauce, will ya?” and I would say, “2 orders of fried shrimp, coming right up!” Finally, at about 11:00 P.M, my shift ended and I started to head for home....After I cleaned up the place that is. Some more tuna fish were to be taken out of the freezer for defrosting naturally overnight, that's how I knew tuna was on the menu for tomorrow. The final pots, pans and plates were rushed to the bus-boy, still sweating profusely but working hard to clean up the piles of dishes. The remaining fishery material went inside the freezer again, to be used for anther combo of dish later in the weekdays. Finally, after the whole area was cleaned up, I went into the restroom. While washing my hands in the restroom, I splashed my face with cold water and headed out the door toward the metro. A burst of cold air split right through my skin, and shivered me right to my bones. Lighting up behind me was a panoramic view of the city lights as if it was its time to go to work. There was plenty of light and noise of the city even this late at night that it seemed the city would never sleep. Minutes passed and I came to the metro, bought my ticket back to Tokyo, ran to the platform and waited. Soon the train arrived with the cold gust of wind and the same crowd was packed tight into train again. After around 4 or 5 stops…I can barely remember now, they all blurred together…I got off and came out of the metro and the mall. My eyelids seemed to weigh a ton and I could barely walk straight. It seemed that eventually, I was shaken by the bitterness of the cold and the sharpness of the dry air. I went home and prepared for the same routine that I will keep for years to come. That was my life about 15 years ago, and now, I rest in my wooden chair with those memories still fluttering in my mind as if they happened yesterday. After I saved enough money from that job, I decided to move down to the rural town in the city of Okinawa, near the ocean. The breeze here is fresh enough to wake up the spirits in you; it makes me feel like I am living a new life. Here in Okinawa, I bought a small condo and a reasonable garden and started to just grow vegetables and sell them. The reverberating sound of the cicadas echo like microscopic scooters with loud engines, dominating the afternoons here, and the sun is hotter than ever during the summer. The sales of vegetables that I grow, whether they are potatoes, tomatoes, cabbages, and others, was enough to pay the bills and thus, making life worth living here. Those memories still come back to me sometimes, especially in the early morning when it’s cooler out. Now and again, the echoes of those customers ring in the back of my mind, desperately ordering food to satisfy their bottom-less stomachs. Many times I thought of going back there and working again, but something held me back here in Okinawa. The smell of the ocean, the texture of the soil in the garden, the feel of fresh vegetables when they are plucked from their respective trees, the small groups of customers who come along every once in a while, the sunshine and all the new life that grew from it kept me here. Not anymore was alive my hunger for materialism and money in my heart, just of seeking peace and living it. I figured this must be the life I desired when I was a young adult working at the restaurant in Yokohama, but so clouded and misguided by the materialistic dreams I was that I avoided this haven here. Okinawa became my sanctuary, my refuge from the daily stresses of that life back in Tokyo and Yokohama, and once in a while I felt of going back, but the connection with the down to earth life and simplicity of this place pulled me back. Now, time passing by like the slow moving waves of the ocean, I look over the bright stars as I get older and older, a faint smile confirms my past experiences, and I tell myself, “I've lived a good life.

As Alanna sat on the bed, she thought: *Why is my marriage over? How? What exactly did I do to cause him to walk out?* She felt dejected and sad enough to cry when she felt a heavy, furry thing on her shoulder. She turned and saw Teddy, aka Theodore T. Urso, her imaginary friend from her childhood "Teddy!" she exclaimed. "Alanna," he said to her calmly, the way he always talked with her. "Do you remember when you were five years old?" "I...uh...barely," she said. "Oh, sorry about the pun, Teddy!" "No problem," he said. "Now if you don't remember, I do. Your family had moved into a new house in a new neighborhood across town. Few children in the neighborhood wanted to play with you. Your older sister hated you because you had taken all the attention away from her. Your older brother ignored you. And sometimes your parents didn't pay the best attention to you because they were busy. "I came to you then. I became your friend. I helped you get through those sad, bad times. "I am truly sorry about what happened to your marriage. Now that you need some friendship, I've returned. Because I never left you. I was a part of you. I am a part of you. And I will always be a part of you. And if I helped you through some bad times when you were a girl and knew nothing, I sure can help you now because you're a woman and know more...and better." Alanna put her hand on his paw and sniffled. "Thanks, Teddy. You're a good bear." "You're welcome," the bear said. "And while you get over your ex-husband, I recommend that you get a dog. Love him or her and he or she will love you back. They are truly man's best friend. And I won't be jealous. I'll be happy that my friend has a good buddy.

He had been going to the same coffee shop for nearly a year now. All for her. She was his everything. He thought about her while working. He thought about her while eating. Hell, he even thought about her while thinking about her. To him, she was perfect. And he had never even said so much as a single word to her. He first saw her clearing tables across the restaurant; her tight black skirt giving the perfect outline of her backside. The way she had glanced back as if she could feel his eyes burning holes in the fabric made his heart race. Her raven colored hair and rounded, black eyeglasses made her porcelain skin glow even more. He could remember it like it happened mere seconds ago. A taut white blouse, black skirt, and glossy black sneakers. She always wore the same outfit to work. It was the same attire the others wore, but he never paid enough attention to them to make the connection. When he was in the coffee shop, he only had eyes for her. Each day he went to the coffee shop to see her. He noticed she was quite shy and even when nearing his section, she kept her head down. This never bothered him, so long as she was close by he would take what he could get. He noticed she was being trained to replace an elderly server retiring soon. If only she would come by his table, he would be able to profess his love for her. Then one day, he got his wish. She seemed to glide as she made her way to his table. “I’m Amy. I’ll be your waitress today,” she breathed, as she looked up from the checkered tile floor toward his expectant gaze. Finally, their eyes met. Her beautiful smile was the perfect match to his glowing face. As she brushed her hair softly behind her ear, she slowly pulled her glasses down from her face. In that moment, his heart seemed to burst from his chest, for she had a lazy eye. “Welp, plenty of fish,” he murmured to himself as he exited the shop.

I remember when I was five, and my dad gave me his hat. It was late September, and we were walking through the park together. I guess I had complained one time too many, because he carefully took me off his shoulders to stand in front of him. I looked up at him and repeated, “I’m cold, daddy.” “Here,” he said to me, kneeling, “take this.” He had given me his hat. The candy hat. Red and white striped all the way up to the top, with a big red pom-pom on it. He always said that I looked the happiest I ever had at that exact moment. That was about 7 months before the divorce. It’s january 2009 now, and I haven’t spoken to him in 3 years. I get a call at 4:30 from South Trenton Medical Center. He had gone into cardiac arrest and was in their custody. I was his only contact information. I moved slowly at first, as of I hadn’t heard the news at all. Lazily, I pulled myself out of bed. It hit me. This was my father. He raised me, and I loved him. I began to panic. I quickly scanned my shitty apartment for something clean. I found a sweater, red and white. Striped. The cab ride is short, but seems like an eternity. I’m anxious as hell, and only halfway through notice my fingernails dogging into the leather. I let them. The hospital’s doors were heavy, and the inside was barely warmer than the cold outside. Fourth floor, they had said. 402. I knock. An old doctor comes to the door. Grandmotherly but stern. “I’m sorry.” He was dead. Shit. 3 years we didn’t utter a word to one another. What the fuck Is wrong with me? Where was I? Where am I? As I attempted to run my fingers through my hair, which was now bathed in a cold sweat, I hit upon a familiar feeling. Warm wool, prickly but soft. With a pom-pom on top. I didn’t even remember putting it on. God, I loved him. I miss him. I don’t know what to do with my hands. I’m crying like a child, right there in the hospital hallway. I feel sick. I want to die. I let the tears come as they may, choking back sobs. I want to die. Shit. I’m lost. Lost in grief, lost in anger, lost in the real fucking world. My name is Waldo, and I need to find myself.

She stood lifeless next to the wall at the end of the darkened musty corridor, blood still dripping off of her hand where it had run down her arm from her shoulder. She slowly starts to peak around the edge of the wall when a loud **SHRIEK!** echoes terribly off the moldy ceramic walls. Quickly she jerks her head back in fear of being spotted. Cautiously dropping to her knees and now down on all fours she tries to look again. The long hall is slightly misty from the broken windows and the adjacent forest next to the abandon hospital. About halfway down the passageway, broken beams of moonlight fall upon the blood soaked floors from the previous victims who were brought here that tried to escape. At the far end it appears very deep and dark….her hopes are set on the stairwell that is mirrored to the one she just came from, hoping desperately that it is unobstructed. Minutes pass without as much as a sound from anywhere. The silence is very thick and weighs heavily upon her eardrums. She decides that the time is now! Slowly she starts to stand back up as her knees and ankles crack like twigs. Waiting again for a few more minutes so she doesn’t stir up attention. She begins her trip down the hall, staying close to the walls and underneath the windows of the rooms in the ward. Peeking around the corners of the open doors where the moonlight shines in to making sure the coast is clear and continues to press on. She is more than halfway down the hall now and is coming into the darkest part when she hears movement from behind her…she quickly turns her head to see a zombie flying out of one of the rooms and in full stride, hungry for the scent of fresh blood dripping from her wounds. She runs as hard and as fast as she can into the pure darkness, hands in front of her reaching out to slam in the handle of the stairwell door when she reaches it. “Wham” the door flings open in a *whoosh* and jerks her in with it, losing her balance but only for a moment. She turns and slams the door back closed, just in time to hear the dreadful zombie behind her slam head first into the heavy steel door. *Sigh* she breathes a full chest of air in relief. *“I made it, I made it” * …... **“SHRIEK!”** she spins around just in time to see the putrid mouth of another Zombie lurching at her thin frail neck, as into tears her flesh and veins. Her head is severed off and lays into a pool of her own blood. Her eyes still processing the horrific scene to her brain of the zombie feasting on her fresh corpse.

Jack jerked awake. It was dark, the window was open, a warm breeze blowing through the curtains. Outside the din of city life had quieted to its nocturnal stupor. He could hear a cat scrounging down in the alleyway. Jack reached his arm to the empty space in his bed next to him, forgetting for a moment that Martha was gone. Had it really been 18 months already? Jack reached to his other side under the mattress to feel for his cold steel revolver. That, at least, was in it's place. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and stood up. Groggily wandering around the apartment in his underwear, trying to forget the scent of Martha. She had been his everything, and he had given her everything, including a child. But God was not kind and that night, 18 months ago God took her, and the child, in one fell swoop. One bloody swoop that was no accident. The instrument of this crime was a 6 inch blade, left at the scene. No fingerprints, no suspects, no motive. Jack had been drinking and came home late, only to discover his pregnant wife bloodied and lifeless. The horror had not sunken in immediately. Jack was not particularly cold, but he was calculating. He would unravel the mystery and take his vengeance. His first thoughts were violent ones, but then despair sunk in, and sadness and he wept until the police arrived. The investigation lasted for months. But there were no leads, Martha had no enemies, nor did Jack. He was just a schoolteacher, 11th grade english. Who could have been so brutal and why? That was the question that haunted Jack's mind tonight. He opened the fridge. Condiments. And a half cup of milk. He drank the milk from the carton and tossed it at the trashcan. Jack's mind went to the days before the city, when he and martha would take long walks in the woods and make picnics by the ocean. But Jack didn't have the income to support a child and had to move to this very damn apartment. Since then Jack couldn't stand to look at children. He became obsessed with solving the crime even after the police had given up. Picture's of the scene were etched into his mind. He had to clear his head. Jack dressed and put on a coat and left the apartment. He went trudging down the sidewalk next to brick buildings with only the light of a few sparse lampposts. As Jack walked he came upon a bum, sleeping covered under a blanket. He kicked the bum as he walked, the anger inside of him swelling from frustration. The man did not wake but rolled over like a rag doll. Jack leaned down and shook the man trying to wake him. The blanket fell away from his face and the figure of an old rotting corpse stared back at Jack. Jack dropped the man immediately and took a step back startled. Then a dead hand reached up from under the blanked and grabbed Jack's hand. Jack could feel the icy touch of death as the creature turned to look at him once more. "IT WAS YOU!" the creature moaned, pointing into Jack's heart with his dead fingers. "IT WAS YOUUU!" Jack woke up suddenly and reached to his side. The warm skin of Martha rest on the bed beside him, her swelling belly rising and falling with every breath. Jack reached to his other side under the mattress where he found a 6 inch blade, cold and steel, right in its place.

I'm an odd memory in most minds. Like a harrowing communal conscience of migratory birds or a sea breeze that took a train to the prairies and is seen walking along the street. I suppose I'm a sort of stationary, a figment used to paint a portrait of understanding but this is really strange since I am not at all like a brush or ladle or roller or whatever would make sense to paint something. I've been a transient congested throat in days gone by. I swam from seashores to deep blue waters and sailed away. All in all I think I've had things pretty good up until now. But right now I feel like a bag of squeezed lemons left to rot, like I've gone through a garlic press alongside the garlic, I feel like I can't even like this situation and I really wanted to like it. Let me clarify. I believe in god about as much as I believe in myself. If you get to know me you'll find I don't believe in myself that much. But if you get to know me better you'd know that I've met him. I'm not saying him in that god is male it's just that calling him *it* seems strange and it's a default. With that in mind it was a day just like today with me on a stage but I was in the middle of a wheat field and opera singers dressed as vikings were scattered around looking for cues, lines and presumably marbles in the dirt. It hit me that I shouldn't be there, I was supposed to be somewhere else but I felt if I left now to I would likely be eaten or worse, stood on, read then knocked around by the vikings. It was at this point that god pulled up in a brand new jeep made out of a thunderstorm and waved his arms in a motion that very distinctly triggered a perhaps unbelievable but entirely real sense that he was god and I should get on his thunderstorm-jeep-of-love to ride away to eternal safety and abundance. So I hopped up onto the cloud and into the passenger seat. He looked at me in a way only god could with eyes as deep as artesian wells, with a sort of sisyphean tenure gained only after watching over everything for ten times eternity and then started speaking with a very plain voice. "Would you like to take the wheel?" he asked and I didn't really want to but this was sort of troubling because.... why would anyone turn down an offer from god and he said "It's alright, with the exception of your neighbor nobody has actually wanted to drive the thunderstorm the first time meeting me. In general it is an odd question to ask, isn't it?" I smiled politely. Then he said "Alright here's the deal. You get three questions answered. Anything in the realm of conceivable knowledge of the infinity that is me. Three of them. Just ask whenever and I'll answer but when I answer the last one you will die." "What!? Why?" I blurted out of shock as he looked at me. I looked right back at those constellations within constellations within a walmart parking lot folded over into itself and back out towards the sunrise. I smiled realizing the game was ruined and asked "Are you serious?" Then he laughed, we drove a short while in silence and he dropped me off a block away from home still a little agitated by his interactions with my neighbor the week before. "You can't screw this up by just asking silly off the top of your mind questions. Here is my email address. Send your questions there and I'll have an answer for you written out within a day or two." god said as plainly as before from inside his thunderstorm with the window rolled down while gesturing blindly in the air to make a point or sign what he was saying but it was entirely lost on me. He could tell by my glazed look it was time to go so he simply said "Get a job" and drove off. So now. Slightly but not entirely glazed in circumstance I am struggling with this interaction. I can know anything in the universe via email at the cost of my life. I don't really have a desire to acquire knowledge or a need for something like this... so here I am a bag of lemons staring off at the sky like it is staring back in part of that endless crashing gaze of god wondering what the hell I should do with myself. Aside from getting a job.

The Celebration Sarah slipped out onto the balcony of her loft. From the twelfth floor, Chicago was a Lite-Brite cityscape, each building and monument pegged into the grid. Metered and regular, from what appeared in the streets as a tangle of twisted metal and cement, a careful design emerged. Sarah enjoyed this view of Chicago. It didn't make her nervous. From ground level, the chaos overwhelmed her. Perhaps she just thought about it too much. Leaving the building, into the street, Sarah set out down East 21st, headed toward Michigan Avenue. Her bag held a bottle of wine, a corkscrew, a tube of lipstick, and five crumpled ones. A napkin from Armadillo Red, tucked into her back right pocket, gave directions to park bench six blocks from her building. On a bench in Grant Park, a man sat waiting. He filled out the crossword puzzle from a three-day-old newspaper. He had been troubled for the last two hours by number 27 across. A kitchen gadget, 7 letters. Blender didn't fit, microwave was too long, and he didn't have enough interest in culinary arts to know of any others. Frustrated, he pulled out his watch, noting that the person he was waiting for had three minutes to arrive. Sarah, realizing the time, began to walk more briskly. She turned down Hendricks and kept toward the curb, avoiding those staking out various doorways and dark inlets. She kept her eyes on the sidewalk, except to occasionally glance ahead at those approaching. A man, older, dressed for an evening out, turned the corner half a block ahead. Sarah, startled, pulled the corkscrew from her bag. She glanced up more frequently as they approached. Twenty paces. Now fifteen. Now ten. She gripped the makeshift weapon tightly in her left hand. As they passed each other on the sidewalk, she shifted her body toward the man. Swinging forward, she pushed and twisted in one fluid motion, sinking the metal deeply into his chest. Sarah stepped back and watched him crumple. The man lifted his head. He saw Sarah, but his expression did not change. He pulled the stainless steel from between his ribs, and the blood began to rush from his body. Sarah waited until his eyes were empty, then snapped away from the scene. She was going to be late. Picking up the corkscrew, she stepped around the body and down the sidewalk. As she approached the man on the bench, he suddenly realized that "toaster" was the word he required. Scribbling it in and wedging the paper between the bench slats, he silently congratulated himself, then focused on the matter at hand. Sarah was seething. "Why? Why like that? Why didn't you tell me, bastard!" He replied, "I thought it would be interesting. Besides, it's like ripping off a band-aid. Sometimes it's better when you have to do it quick. Either way, I see that it's been done." Sarah was silent for a moment, and then extended her hand. "Give me the envelope". He handed her a manila folder. Sarah sat down on the grass beside the bench, and spread the contents under a streetlight's glow. Photographs of the man she had just buried her corkscrew in fanned out like a silent film. He was shown leaving various cafes, trailed by a different escort each time. There were snapshots of the man entering Porsches and exiting hired cars. A copy of his passport listed his name as "Victor Bartoshevich", a Belarusian national. A birth certificate, for one Sarah Yurevich, bore his signature. A copy of a wire transfer, made twenty-seven years ago, indicated that $50,000 had been drawn from he and his first late wife's joint checking. The recipient was a hitman who helped facilitate "alternatives to divorce" for those in positions of power and influence. Victor Bartoshevich, a notoriously private man, would have been shocked to see his own paper trail. Victor left the cafe on Hendricks at precisely 2:30am, as had become his routine over the past few months. Rochelle always worked on Tuesdays, and she had better tits than money could ever buy. Victor paid for them by the hour. After a night of indulgence, Victor would stumble the block back home. Aging and "out of the business", he had reconciled with the most hostile of his enemies long ago, and had been enjoying retirement his own way. Namely, walking alone through the streets of Chicago after dark, and ignoring his estranged daughter's attempts at contact. Sarah placed the envelope into her purse, and pulled out the bottle of Merlot. Wiping the corkscrew on the newspaper, she then maneuvered it into the cork, using the same push-twist familiar from thirty minutes prior. Taking a swig from the bottle, she passed it up to the man on the bench. They drank the wine and finished the crossword together. Through the trees they could see the flashing blue lights like fireworks, and imagine the sirens as their parade.

"Shut the fuck up, lets roll!" "Wut!?" "Step away from the crack pipe I mean my drums or we'll be late, dipshit!" "Oh yeah..." ... Bael was the last bicycle allowed across the bridge. The officer crossed the roadway after Bael passed and said to Rael, "Pedestrians aren't allowed on the bridge as the cruiser passes under." "But that's my brother there that you let cross ahead of me." It was nearly a hundred yards before Bael realized Rael wasn't following. He stopped and noticed the officer had crossed the roadway to talk with Rael, then eventually let her pass. As she rode closer she shouted, "We can't be on the bridge when the boat passes." Bael didn't think that they would get such a surreal view of a Navy ship steaming up the Willamette. He thought it was strange to see a military ship. This was new for him, Bael hadn't lived in a Port city before. For the rest of the ride he thought of what it would look like to see war at home. Then snapped out of it and gave thanks to his great friends for hauling his heavy instrument around. Rael usually stood in the center of the room whenever and where ever Bael's band played. She stood in the center of the room at any show. In fact, she just liked being in the center of rooms. At first it was of an OCD nature, where she had to be in the center of the room for some geometrical reason that even she hardly understood. As she grew out of her minor obsessive compulsive tendencies and listened to more live music she found that the center of the room usually sounded the best in her opinion. Occasionally there was an incompetent sound engineer running the sound system. Rael being somewhat obsessive compulsive, and controlling would have to ask if the engineer would lower or raise the sound of an instrument, or adjust the high or low frequency levels. Rael was kind of weirded out by this particular peculiar sound engineer. He had a strange way of staring at her, and when she first noticed, he looked away suddenly then back in her direction but not directly at her as if he hadn't been staring at all. This had been going on since she arrived. He was always staring at her if she looked in his direction. "Bael, tell the sound guy to cut some of the lows when you guys play, it sounds like shit. I would but he's fucking weird." The music was loud and Rael had to lean close to her brothers ear. "Haa!" She just stared at him and Bael realized she was serious, he nodded once. "...ok." He said to himself. Bael went straight to the engineer and without thinking twice leaned in and said. "You see my girl over there?" Rael was watching confused, angered and embarrassed as her brother pointed her out. The engineer sat up straight and stared emotionless at Rael. "She asked me to ask you if you're down to fuck. :D We like you, oh and when my band plays next could you turn down the low frequencies a little?" The engineer turned to Bael with his brow scrunched, confusion and excitement and skepticism wrinkled throughout his face. "Uh what? ...yeah, I mean, really? I can turn down the lows sure... uh are you fucking with me? what, a threesome?" "Thanks, man. Yeah a threesome, dude. You look fun, at least have a drink with us?" The engineer pondered the proposition for nearly a minute, laughing to himself while staring at Rael who was still watching. "Fuck you, I don't believe you. You're fucking with me." He turned towards Rael and laughed, then back towards the sound board. "Nice try." "Sorry, man just messing around, didn't mean to offend you or anything, thanks for running the sound." The engineer nodded and looked back at the stage as Bael turned and walked back to his curious sister. "What the fuck did you say to him, dipshit?" "Just told him I was your manager and you do private dances, wanna make some money tonight?" "I'll fucking stab you!" She lunged at him and started punching his chest and stomach. "Whoa, don't worry lil' sis he doesn't have the cash!" He said while deflecting fists. "You're band is like a bunch of amateurs compared to them." She gestured towards the stage and Bael laughed. He didn't care if it was true, this band was killing it.

Now I will tell you a story about when m&m's and skittles met in glorious battle. So one day the m&m's army was out patrolling throw the forest of color, when out of nowhere the Skittles started raining down rainbows of death upon them. The m&m's immdently fell back into the shade of the trees where the rainbows couldn't reach them. The returned fire with the egg shaped peanut cannon balls. This battle went on for 12 hours! Hundreds of skittles and m&m's lost their delicious lives that day. And as both armies’ thought they had the other beat... THE STARBURST AIR SQUADRON STARTED RAINING DOWN JUICE HELL UPON BOTH ARMY'S!!! Oh the scrumptious humanity!!! No m&m's or skittle survived that now absolutely decedent battle field.

Excerpts’ from “The Journal” This is one of the journal entries from a book called “The Journal”. Let me know what you think........ :: January 10th 7:55 am It’s snowing. Still the first one here. I hate the snow. It took me 2 hours to drive to work and I smoked all my cigarettes. My head hurts. I have had the same head ache for 6 months. It seems to only go away when I am drunk or high. I remember a time in my life when I loved the snow. I was born in February, so snow was always reminded me of my birthday and that was exciting. I hate my birthday now too. I need more cigarettes. I think it is the craziest shit in the world to go to work and pretend to be happy or excited to be there; when you are dying inside. If people acted the way they felt, everyone would fucking hate everybody. I hate the background noise of casual conversation. Who cares about your weekend, you’re probably telling me a lie about what you did anyway; so that you can think that I still respect you. If I told you the truth about what I did this weekend, you would think I’m fucking nuts. I can just imagine that conversation with these Midwest jerkoffs. “Oh, hey Bob, how was your weekend”? “Good, just relaxing, how ‘bout yours”? “Good, you know, the usual, got piss drunk wasted, blew coke in a bar’s bathroom until my nose was clogged and then spent Sunday masturbating in between throwing up”. Fuck these people. We have nothing in common. I am constantly acting. It’s hard not to curse. I love coffee. I love coffee with cigarettes. I sometimes day dream about how awesome it was when you could smoke at your desk and basically anywhere you wanted. I have an old Playboy that shows add for TWA, where the hot stewardess is lighting the business man’s cigarette. That is awesome. But, I still think its ass backwards to smoke indoors. I hate the way you stink the next day after going to a bar that lets you smoke inside. It also seems to bring in the morons. I hate bar games. You can still smoke inside in my home town. I hate my home town. My dogs will probably shit inside my house today; they won’t go in the snow. They are good dogs though. We got them from the pound and they were abused as puppies. They have little scares on their feet from their cages at the puppy mills. What kind of soulless piece of trash do you have to be to abuse a fucking puppy? They were a gift to my fiancé. We are getting married in September and moving to LA the first of the year. This is all I think about. I can’t wait to get out of here. I once planned to move there, but chickened out because I had to do it alone. Pussy. Now I have her and she wants to move there too, so it’s perfect. I don’t care if I have to be a bartender; at least it’s not here. At least there is some fucking culture and life and art and something to do besides, drink yourself to death every fucking weekend. I am excited for every moment of our move; from the house hunting, to packing our shit, the drive, the hotels, the adventure. That is what life is about. Not this day-to-day Midwest bullshit, I suffer through. I am done playing this fucking corporate shit. I am successful, but fuck it, I hate it. People with any talent don't live here. I can’t stand anything about living here. The way people talk, the way people act, the fact that everyone is a grossly obese and no one seems to notice how fucking ridiculous that is. When the fuck did everyone become so fucking fat and stupid. I sometime wish I was stupid. That would be an easier road. Someone just showed up. There goes my morning. fuck this.

And introduce an element of cynicism and darkness into it and just realize that we're all vulnerable. We are humans. There is a finite end to this life and we're all going to face it and a little silliness can help. ~Alan Thicke There, in the large city of New York, on the date July 21st, 2001, sat a man named John Swift. John was at the age of 21, and just beginning to grow the urge to, as a man, enjoy his first drinks inside of a bar. At least, to do it legally. You see, John was never one to think things through. He always did things spontaneously, rather than take the time to understand what had happened. He was average- in all senses of the word. He wore average clothes, average shoes, average shaggy hair, average glasses, and had average intelligence. But what made John completely unique, was in fact, his averageness. Upon entering the bar, he found two of his highschool friends sitting at the desk, though none took notice of John. John wasn’t extraordinary in any way, and so they weren’t able to tell him from the bartender. It was often a joke, in fact, that John could literally go anywhere and become invisible. John sat at the bar, and slowly began to enjoy the beer. It had been a long day at work. John was a factory worker, at which he continuously worked the same machine for hours upon hours. “So, what’s your name?” said a stranger that had strode up to the bar. John was spooked by the mans voice. It was seductively deep, to the point where it made John want to answer. John had absolutely no resistance to the man’s voice, and quickly gave in. “John. John Swift,” he said. The man was strange in all senses. He was tall, wore gigantic glasses that covered a majority of his face, and wore a hat that shadowed the rest of his face that couldn’t be seen. His jacket was soaking wet, but there was no rain outside. His shoes were work boots, covered in slabs of mud, regardless of the fact they were in New York and there wasn’t a puddle of mud to be seen anywhere. He gave off the scent of nature, which only made John wonder all the more where this man came from. “Ah, nice to meet you John. Thought I recognized you from somewhere, where might you work? If I could inquire.” The man’s voice was only becoming stranger and stranger, sort of pulling John into it. “The factory down the street. We produce boxes. I work the hot glue gun.” “Ah, I work nowhere near that,” he claimed as he gave a bellowing laugh. He quickly ordered whisky on rocks, and sat next to John, continuing the conversation. “So what religion are you, John?” John had never been asked that question in his life. Sure, he naturally was a Christian as was most of the other population, but never was asked. This man was now giving off a welcoming aura, and it only made John more interested. “Christian.” “Ah, and do you know why you’re Christian?” John had never even thought about it. “No, not really.” Adam winked, “Isn’t that the mystery, John.” “What’s your name?” John asked, getting just slightly enough courage to ask. “Adam. No last name.” John nodded, and the name Adam brought back memories. None of them were as welcoming as that man. It reminded him of a bully in elementary school, who often shoved John into lockers, pull his hair, and beat him senseless. John shuddered at the thought of that Adam. That Adam never had a last name either. But what that Adam did do was make John stand out, for once in his life. The feeling was elevating, regardless of the pain. It gave him pride, the scars. His parents took notice of him out of his three brothers and sisters. It gave him joy. “I see. I knew an Adam once. Not the greatest fellow, but he did a lot for me. Even if he never knew it.” “Oh, I wouldn’t say he never knew it,” Adam said. John looked curiously up at this Adam, but didn’t say anything. “You’re easy to read John. Maybe too easy.” John realized that, and then nodded. Adam quit bullying him a week later, and his parents quit noticing him. Maybe Adam knew that hurt him more than any pain. Of course, then again, Adam might’ve been doing it because he knew it would help John. John’s mind was flashing with new thoughts that he’d never had before. “So are you in college John?” Adam asked as he took another shot. “No. My parents never had enough money to send me there. I never paticularly wanted to do college anyway,” John said gloomfully. Adam laughed, “John, you’re a fool. Anyone could tell you wanted to go college. You don’t want to be this average bastard you are. You want to be better than that.” John started to say something, then stopped. This Adam man knew an awful lot. “C’mon, John, follow me. I gotta show you something.” John rose from his seat, and followed Adam. A tall stranger, full of mysteries. Yet, he trusted this man more than anyone else in his life. They walked out of the door, and continued down the street. It had gotten dark since he was in the bar. What time was it? Then it got foggy. He couldn’t see anything. Where was he? He heard horns, he saw lights, and then nothing. He layed in the cold darkness, and was lost with his thoughts. He began to think about the world. He began to see the world. He saw himself sitting on a throne- a king. He saw himself on the streets- a peasant. He saw himself everywhere, and nowhere. He was writing a book. The book. He was hung on a piece of wood. He was the world. And the world was him. He finally woke up, in a hospital. A stranger sat next to him, vaguely familiar. “Adam?” John asked, his throat sore and could barely produce a noise. “John? How are you feeling?” “I’m... Perplexed.” John admitted. “I’m sorry, John, I lied to you.” “What do you mean?” John asked. “I mean I lied to you. My name's not Adam. I didn’t recognize you- well I did, but not in the way you are thinking.” “What are you talking about Adam?” John said, still unbelieving of what this man was saying. It seemed like he was telling the truth. “I’m an Angel, John.” “An Angel?” John asked. What was he talking about? “Not the kind of Angel you’re thinking about...” Adam said, in a low voice. “What...?” John asked, but it suddenly hit him. One of the things he saw when he was asleep. “You’re... Satan?” Adam nodded, slowly and sadly. “What are you doing here? Why are you here looking for me?!” John asked, terrified. “Do you know who God is, John?” Satan asked. “Wha- What kind of crazy question is that? Of course I don’t- he’s not on Earth. He’s not a human. I’ve never even met a man aside from you who could possibly be God.” “That’s not true, John. God is on Earth. He is a human. And he’s in this very room.” John opened his mouth, and began gaping. “I’m... God...?” John asked Satan nodded, obviously sad, “I’m so sorry, John. So sorry. You’re God. This is your world. You created this, and then locked yourself into this world. I was put here to free you. To release you from your own mind.” “What... I was never special at all!” John yelled, trying to disprove Satan. “Thats what was so special about you. You would never have known. If I never crossed that bar by accident, if I never beat you as a child, you would have lived your life and died as a human, and you would have kept doing this over and over. Your world is created specifically for these few moments.” “You’re crazy! Get out of my hospital room!” John yelled, but slowly his eyes were opening up. Truly openning up. Satan stood up, and his coat flew off. Wings of bone shot out, his red flesh was there, horns upon his head. “This is all a figment of yourself, John,” he said, and walked out of the room. John saw the world melt around him, and saw sand everywhere. He heard the ocean lapping the ground, he felt the breeze touch his face, he saw the sky above him. He was slowly forgetting the world he created. The average life. The memories. Everything was now just relying on this world. This world was him now. Empty. Alone. *Just a note, I totally stole the idea from Mark Twain- The Mysterious Stranger. I'd like it if people just totally ripped this apart and told me everything I did wrong.

Batman looked out the empty window to see an empty chair in a field full of pansies all up staring up at him with their little faces. Some were a deep dark purple and others were varying shades from sky to royal blue. There were also some yellow and white ones which were only just yellow or white. This year was unseasonably warm but the flowers didn't seem to mind. If they were asked they would say they really enjoyed the warm weather, each others' company and the extra lifespan given that the lawn hadn't been mowed in over two months. Batman simply stared out the window in a typical Batman-grimace way as he was unable to appreciate the pansies. He was actually upset the lawn hadn't been mowed. The pansies didn't mind. The chair probably didn't mind either since it was just a chair and not pansies or Batman or any kind of flower at all. -- I really like pansies. For most of this year I had forgotten what they were called until I asked my mom "What are the ones with the faces?". There was a lot of them in my yard this summer. Then one day my dad came over and mowed the lawn.

I wake up in the morning. I get up, get ready for work. Boots, pants, belt, shirt, mask. I step outside. Immediately, I can’t breathe. I adjust my mask. I can breathe now. The bus ride always seems longer than it is. I always get stares. Not hidden stares like most other people get. Bold, challenging stares. The people don’t know who I am. They have never met me. But they hate me, somehow. I ignore them and try to relax. I step off the bus, walk quickly to my building. I can’t wait to start. Working always calms me, in a strange way. As I walk through the crowds, I again attract the gaze of several people. I’m thankful of my mask. They can’t see my eyes. They will never know how much I hate them back. Finally, I’m here. There’s no offices, no cubicles, no desks, not even other people. Just a cavernous room, entirely white. When I step in, I am alone. Breathe in, breathe out. And repeat. Left foot, right foot. And repeat. I must concentrate. I can’t work if I don’t recognize patterns. My heart beats 173 times in one minute. I blink 17 times. I feel an itch behind my left eye. White becomes black. My heart stops beating. My eyes a permanently open. I no longer need to breathe. Time to start. I love my job. I was born to do it. Literally bred through many generations, to create the perfect worker. I was isolated from birth to my 18th birthday, when I started working. I was trained by automated systems for eighteen years, just to make me as perfect as possible. Just to make me detached as possible. Just to make me ready. I think I have lived up to expectations. Probably exceeded them. I love my job. And I am amazing at it. First assignment. It’s nearby. A simple one, stationary and weak. I get there somehow. Not physically, my body remains in a white chamber. I don’t know what I am right now. I just can’t be seen, except by my clients. I arrive. She sees me. She screams. She gets up, runs. It’s not much of a chase. I immediately catch her. She is still screaming. My mask dissolves. She can’t scream anymore. I am done here. It is an easy work day. Mostly old, sickly, or newborn. I love my job, but it’s more fun when they can fight. When they can run. When I can play with them. I like a challenge. Though it rarely is challenging. I return home. Bathe. Eat. Read. Sleep. The next day will be more of the same, I think. I want the same. I live off of patterns. Wake up. Boots, pants, belt, shirt, mask, bus, white, black. First assignment. Second. Third. All within seconds of each other. I must work fast to finish all my duties. Noon. Night. Home, bathe, eat, read, sleep. And repeat. I have been working for years. I have stopped aging. I don’t know how old I am. I remain in perfect condition for years, until I need to be Replaced. I await that day. I love my job. But I long freedom. Today, I feel… odd. I take the usual steps to work. It’s my fortieth client for today. I am distracted. She is a fighter. Young. Almost as perfect as me. She distracts me. She does not run, as most do. She stands her ground. Looks me in the eyes. Or where my eyes would be, if she could see them. She speaks to me. She speaks words I have heard of, but I do not understand her. I am filled with my usual rage, but something else is creeping in to me. She continues talking. Two words. She starts to repeat two words. “Thank you.” I do not understand. I have been cursed at, told to die, pleaded with, even. Never thanked. I hesitate. That small feeling grows. No. I must complete this task. She grabs my hand. Wraps herself around me. “Thank you.” I can’t. I hate my job. I forget all my other assignments. She must be mine. No. I must behers. No. We must be. Yes. We must be. I lift her. She starts crying. I feel tears against my chest. I lift her, hold her close. I am back in the white. She is with me. We must be. We must escape. They will be after me. I don’t care about me. She must be safe. I know where to hide. Finally, we are here. We are safe. For now. She has stopped crying. I set her down. She is tired. She lays down, closes her eyes. Smiles, and falls asleep. I look around. I have not been here since I started working. My childhood home. My development center. My training grounds. It is the perfect hiding place. Undetectable, and impenetrable by those I do not want in. They won’t be able to get in. I hope. Two days have passed. I have not slept. She has done nothing but. I spend my time staring at her. Exploring her past. She has had a hard life. She is my opposite. She knows of nothing but life. I continue to stare. She awakes. Immediately, she leaps up and clutches me tightly. That growing feeling has almost overwhelmed me. I feel she is hungry. I am lucky. All the machinery still works. A meal is made. Another for me. I don’t know where it comes from. I now it is an infinite supply. We will survive. Weeks have passed. We are still alive. I still fear our capture. I still wear my mask. I cannot take it off. We do not talk. We do not have to. That feeling has grown to take over everything else. I feel different. I love her. I awake. It is dark. She is asleep. I sense something. No. We have been found. No. Not by them. They have sent someone. I have been stupid. I forgot he could get in the same way we did. My Replacement is here. I will miss her. I get up. Walk to another room. This one is a mirror of my workspace. White and huge. I lock the door. I sit in the center. I take off my mask. I wait. I will miss her. Hours pass. Or minutes. Or years. I cannot tell. I sense him drawing nearer. He is cautious. He thinks I will fight. I will not. I will miss her. Finally, he is here. I open my eyes. I see me. No. I see someone who looks like me. I stare at the figure, clothed in all black, with his mask still on. I nod. He nods back. I will miss her. He steps up. Puts a hand on my shoulder. His mask dissolves. Freedom. I will miss her.

I am currently writing a short story (which may one day evolve into it`s own series) about a boy, aged 16, who is tragically anti social, although he does manage to get some normal friends. One day , through some unknown chain of events (obviously i`ll make one), he decides to create an alter ego, J. J is everything that Dean(name?) isn`t. He`s cool calm and collected, he`s well liked, he`s goal oriented, he`s mysterious. He is the talk of all the girls, and the poster boy for all the boys. Dean just wanted to feel a little less alone, but J wanted to be king of the world. So guys any input, suggestions, ideas, advice would be really helpful! I`ve done some writing, but never a project with so much potential for expansion.

"I don't mean to be depressing, but I sometimes feel I have nothing to gain from a meaningful conversation other than the endorphinous rush of mammalian bonding. But then again, I am one lonely bloke." These where the words typd on Fogrowalds frontdoor, if not lonely, he was at the very least odd, at the very least a bit off, but still full of hope, to put it bluntly. Of course you couldn't discern that from the notice on his front door. His reasons for hanging it on that front door were ambigous, he probably didn't know himself. That's not saying much tho, he is very much not the kind of person to know that himself. If asked he would probably respond with a very logical sounding reason. But merely logical doesn't mean it's the true reason now does it? Of course not. And therein lay Fogrowaldes true problem, a nagging disbelief in himself. Not merely a case of the bad selfesteems, but a case of the bad selfesteems founded by shakey newagey science involving receptors and evoloutionary theory. All adding up to some kind of "without abolute knowledge of the physical state of our brain we cant REALLY know what's going on". A philosophy that while fanciful and deepsounding indeed, offered few real insights. Fogleworth was not no misunderstood genius, he merely did not know how to navigate the fragile threads of contemporary society. Of course he had plodded down the anticultural path, but he had quickly realized, thanks to his evoloutionary biologythinking that connection with other humans is so important. And no matter how 'brilliant' you may be, if youre a dick, people will always treat you as a dick. Thusly he had to learn to navigate society. To sing the song of smalltalk, of latenight chatter, of empty meaningless conversation devoid of content. To harmonize to the tune of humans flocking together. To rejoice in being that most sapient of the homos. To be a man. To be a man ultimately amounteed to being a gossipy nonsense talking barfly fuck. No fuck this actually thought Fogleworth, but of course, didnt do nothing about it. He wanted to be happy, not rational. Still the orange streetlights on the walk home shone bright and kindly upon him, their reflections in the river made poetry that no served no purpose to anyone but him, and they made his night worthwhile.

Our story takes place amidst a dreary time, where flies almost conquered the world with their exponential growth and insatiable thirst for blood. But the ingenuity of the plant kingdom ultimately brought the earth a new beginning in a bleak time. An island at war the inhabitants grew hostile towards the tribes over centuries of aggressively opposing religious debates, it ended in an island slaughtered, thousands of island people lay shore to shore of putrefying flesh. For the next several months, the already magnitude of flies became the most vile infestation ever, the island was like a giant pulsating maggot teeming with puss. There was eventually too many flies and the island was not enough to fit them all one atop another, piles of dead flies along the shore and diminished food supply due to increasing demand. With starvation rampant and their demise eminent, the elder flies devised a plan based upon myths of far off utopias abundant in resources, over the water. The swarm would synchronize as a unit and make the grand excursion. The magnitude of flies has grown tremendously at this point, reaching a near thousand fold of the forgotten island itself, now enveloped in decay. The swarm departed from the once oasis and left a rancid sore in the middle of the ocean. For a week the slightly diminished horde of flies battled the waters harsh, salty gusts, feasting upon whatever lofty cadavers they encountered, they saw land and with a sudden burst of vigour they hastily made way. Victims of the oncoming attack had full suspicion something was awry, for the magnificent, sunny day beset by a sudden absence of flooding warm rays, replaced with a distant buzz, ominously looming. The ravenous swarm longed for the taste of flesh and was eager to obtain this. A vicious and most painful practice consisted of engulfing a person in a swarm and sucking draining one’s life force from the soul. Within a fortnight the flies had eradicated all other living creatures, aside from themselves. The heavens obscured with an insurmountable mass of flies that now drape the sky. Flies claimed superiors of the animal kingdom, dominating the others; too vain to admit destroyed any future for themselves and earth. They were now split off in groups scavenging for sustenance. Throughout this entire ordeal, the silent witness were the plants, which were now dying from lack of sunlight. They communicated and decide it was time for action, time to band together and bring the cursed flies reign to an end. After much deliberation they decided to make a trap, something to attract all the flies in order to rid them once and for all. All plant life spliced and fused back together, creating a colossal container rimmed with large barbs. They brought a combination of scents of assorted flora, until it produced a putrid aroma, which aroused flies from all around the world to one region. They drove drown into the trap like a cyclone, as soon as they reached the chamber they all burned in the digestive acids of the newly formed plant. The chemical reaction was so intense the plant erupted, shooting bubbling mess of black viscous liquid, everywhere. From this repugnant scum that veiled the earth arose a new order of creatures, including our unsung hero, the venus fly trap. The world grew back and regained the glory it once was constant battles between natural forces, trying to keep a steady equilibrium.

He was just an ordinary kid at school. Kind of chubby, brown hair, average height, your average middleschooler. Every day, her would go about his schedule, go home, and wait for the next day. But one day, he noticed a very pretty girl. Long, Blonde, Flowing hair. Kind of tall, the kind of person who stands out in a crowd. Every day this boy would just stare at this girl in the hallway. He didn't even know her name. Imagine that. That boy wanted to meet this girl, and get to know her. He approached her the next day. "Uh.. Hi." "Hello.." "I'm Sean.. are you new here?" "Umm.. yeah. I still need to memorize this place, I still get lost." "I could show you around, if you'd like." "I'd like that. I'm Rachel, by the way." "Nice to meet you, Rachel." Every day after that they would talk, study together, and sometimes just.. talk. But one day, Rachel knocked on Sean's door. "Hey Rachel." She appeared to be crying, tears streaming down her face. "Oh Sean.." She said, "Cody cheated on me... I saw him kissing a girl behind the gym!" "That's... horrible. I'm so sorry..." "Please... I need someone to talk to.." "I'm always here." "I'm glad you're my friend.... I wish more guys were like you.." Months past and Rachel was still dating guys, while Sean always comforted her through harsh times. No matter how many boyfriends she had... Sean always loved her. One day, Sean couldn't hold it in anymore. He had to tell Rachel how he felt. He went to her house, and noticed something in her window. Rachel and her ex-boyfriend, the one who cheated on her, was sitting on her couch, kissing her. Sean was heartbroken. He couldn't tell her now! He ran back to his house, and just sat in his room in silence. He continued to admire her, without her knowing his feelings. Years past, and that love still went on strong. No matter what happened, he couldn't get her out of his head.

Peerless was her name, and in every way throughout her short, thirty-three year life, she was a paragon of excellence--just as her name might imply. Valedictorian, Rhodes Scholar, possessing prefect penmanship: everything about Peerless was without flaw, including her exactingly cerulean blue eyes that never saw a moment of bloodshot. Her honey-blonde coif was always neat, with never a hair out of place; and today it was held nicely in French braids, without a fray in view. The stylish shoes she wore were never scuffed; and the seams of her white stockings were always straight as an arrow from her heel up to beneath the neatly pressed skirt that covered areas polite ladies simply do not discuss. In her, perfection was personified; but the problem of perfection is boredom. For Peerless, nothing ever went awry; nothing unfolded in any way that wasn't exactly as it should. Though perfect to external eyes, she dreamed of new discoveries that didn't exist in her world--a world which made her weary. Even now, while sitting on a park bench, contemplating her end, she showed impeccable posture. Try as she might, she simply could not slouch. This was typical Peerless. Even the gun she brought with her was polished to an unearthly sheen. She had only one bullet--after all, she wouldn't need more. Aiming at her chest and pulling the trigger with her thumb she fired, and felt no pain. As she calmly set the gun beside her, she felt the eyes of many upon her, but she was used to that, sadly. Looking down, the perfect rosette of blood formed on her white blouse, and not a single petal of the red unfolded in a manner unbecoming her legacy of exactitude. She had hoped for irreverent chaos, splatters, or gore. Instead she was a picture-perfect soon-to-be corpse as the blood billowed outward in circles; yet not a drop fell on her skirt. "Dammit," she said, "I can't even screw this up." Then she closed her eyes as if going to sleep and breathed her last. Peerless left nothing out of place for the police and paramedics as they rushed in moments too late. In the end she got what she long desired, just not for herself: a chorus of glorious noise surrounded her body as she quickly grew cold. Someplace, wherever it is that spirits go, Peerless found some satisfaction in the mess she finally was able to make.

All criticism is awesome! thanks A Bad Suggestion From the seventh floor balcony, I waited for the stars to rise and fall. Just as soon as they went up, they were greeted by another far away star, and together they would dance in a melancholy stupor until they met at a focal point of blackness, and subsequently collided leaving smolder and hot metal parading the sky. The 7TH floor of the abandoned children’s hospital was an ideal place to watch them, and I remember doing so with my older brother. Sometimes we would cheer for more rising stars, and sometimes we would recognize the stars for what they truly were. Our moods were interchangeable based on how we felt, and often, were just interpretations, for they never lasted. In the end it was the same old story. Genocide had swept our nation like a broom, and its only remaining duty was to sweep the rest of us under the rug. We were of the last ones there; the survivors. We were alone and had nothing to rely on but each other, and our father’s mandatory last advisement: “Trust No one.” This, of course, was months before his last and more imperative words: “Run!” On this particular night the moon was full, and whenever there was a hiatus in the back and forth of gunfire and floating bombs, we could still see our native Africa illuminate from the same light that had guided our ancestors. We got tired of listening to the clamor of bullets ricochet, and bored of watching the flares and missiles illuminate the sky. We were hungry, and had nowhere to sleep. It was time to begin our night’s usual routine of scavenging. My brother nudged me in the shoulder, “Come on, we have to go now.” We turned around from the balcony and sprinted down the concrete stairs of the hospital until we reached the bottom. When we made it out of the hospital stairs, the smell hit us. The stench of death is something that is overwhelming at first, but just like anything if you give it time, it will either take on the droll task of expected repetition or, it will haunt your every dream, and stalk your every move. It was most definitely stalking us and it scared us more than ever. We proceeded to run immediately to our right, through the cold sand, and past the huge tree. Usually, the task of running just on the outskirts of immediate war was enough to urge us to keep running. However, on this particular night, the leafless branches of the tree collided with the silver radiance of the moon in an utmost peculiar way. We stopped and watched the branches sway just for a moment. I don’t know why we stopped. Maybe it was just intuition telling us, but our intuition had been sidetracked for so long, we dared not to think that. Our momentary seconds of splendor were soon over, and we began to run again. The sand whistled beneath our cracked black feet as we ran. I remember the unusual chill in the air, and the warmness that would embrace my face each time a far- away missile would light up the sky, and leave its presence booming in the echoes of the barren desert. As we ran, the village where we used to live approached our immediate right, and just adjacent to them were the black windows and torn rubble that used to be our home. We didn’t dare look, for if we did we might have tried to decipher our home from the others, which of course would just perpetuate the fact that there were no homes left at all. It was important to us that we carry no baggage, we were free of emotion. We were no longer people, and I only say this because we had no characteristics of any normal person. We were too young to generate any logical conclusions on our non-generic personalities, so we just went with the notion that we had none. Our feet kept moving until we reached an old tire factory. The smell of burning rubber was still lingering in the air like a flame from an old wick, as we mechanically hopped over the only part of the fence that was not barb wired. There was a light on in the distance. If somebody was there we would rip them to shreds. We didn’t care who they were or why they were there. Trust no one. That was our motto, and we stuck to it like it was the law. Perhaps it was the sound of our tearing flesh on the rocks beneath us, or, perhaps it was the flickering shadow that left its impression so memorably on the hard dirt path. I don’t know what it was for sure, but somebody inside of that room heard us. We began to run faster as the room beyond us started to rumble with preparation. My brother pulled out a long blade that sparkled in the moonlight. Then, that door opened. He warned us to stop, but we kept on going. We were savages. As we neared, the outline of the man’s skull began to familiarize itself with the images of my mind. I paid no attention. The man pulled out a large assault rifle, and we stopped dead in our tracks. He shot my brother between the eyes and I locked mine with his. My brother was dead on the ground. He was only following the advice that my father had given him: Run, and trust no one. He did well. Then, it became clear to me and my shadowed counterpart just exactly who we were looking at. The man I was staring at was my father. As he dropped down in tears, I glanced at my brother’s bloody corpse, and soon after brought my head up to look at the battles in the distance. I took one hard glance at my father, and then remembered his last pieces of advice to me and my deceased brother. I proceeded to turn around and run as fast as I could.

1 It had only been a few days since we had left the mainland, and only a week since the infection had been first reported. Corpses scattered across war zones, covered with the settled remnants of radioactive dust from chemical weapons had begun reacting... twitching... moving. It was only a day later that the first scientists and reporters became the first victims and the first living humans turned. From there, the destruction and rate of infection had exploded. Within 24 hours of the firsts, reports came in of massive hordes of reanimated corpses occupying major cities... turning all that stood in their way. Several countries tried sending their armies to quell the situation, but that only worsened it. Guns only did so much to zombie armies, hundreds of thousands deep, and with large explosions from tanks and bombs, came even wider contamination due to the chemicals in the corpses being disturbed and pushed higher into the atmosphere. It had become airborne... The only escape was to rural areas, or to the sea. I chose the latter... it was only a matter of time before even the rural areas would not be as safe as people had hoped. "LAAAAAAND!" An island... Those in charge had said that there we would be safe from any sort of infection. We were students and teachers. Soldiers and doctors. Men, women, and children. We were, quite possibly, one of the few hopes for maintaining the species. "Where the hell are we?" Sgt. Reynolds barked at one of the older gentlemen who had been appointed captain of the vessel. The original captain was... well, he didn't make it. Reynolds was a former Drill Instructor and has taken to appointing himself the leader of our group. At least we had someone to tell us what to do... Most of us were so disillusioned with the situation that we could barely talk. There were only a few dozen of us who had made it onto the ship from the harbor. It was a miracle any of us had made it off the mainland alive, and even more so considering the only food we had we were lucky enough to have recovered from the bowels of the ship. It seemed as if the original captain had been preparing to live at sea until he could come up with a plan as to how the hell he could survive in a world full of flesh devouring corpses... But food for one man only goes so far between a group. Zombies. They were fucking zombies. All of the films and stories had done nothing more than make us lower our guard as to how real a possibility the walking dead were. "I have no idea, but we don't have the resources to care right now." Most everyone was on deck, now, staring at the monolithic island before us. Whether we liked it or not, it was our new home, for now anyways. I, for one, was eager to get off the ship. I had always been afraid of the emptiness of the ocean. Funny how little your fear of the unknown matters when you’re faced with fear of something much greater and much more terrifying. Still, it felt great to know I would be able to step off of that heap I considered to be my floating coffin. Staring at the coastline, all I could see was sand, and a thick tree line leading into a lush forest. I was looking at trees I had never seen before that looked like they had been there for far longer than I could imagine. Vines and thick brush started to come into view the closer we got. And then something in the trees... Fruit! Or at least something that resembled the fruit I was familiar with! We were going to be able to survive for at least some time longer. Relief flooded my body. Relief that we were going to be ok. That I wasn't going to die at sea with no hope of survival. Relief that... My eyes locked onto something in the underbrush as we closed in further on the island. Something reflective... but what? The relief turned to panic as I realized what I was staring at. We were being watched. Those were eyes. I glanced around for Reynolds. We needed to be prepared that we might have company when we landed. The undead? Impossible. Not this far out, there was no way. By the time I had looked back, the eyes were no longer visible to me. Maybe I was seeing things... "Start unloading some supplies for a reconnaissance team to check out the island and we'll see if we can find any food, shelter, or signs of intelligence on this rock." Reynolds booming voice effortlessly carried itself. I had convinced myself that I just needed to get off of the boat when a shriek erupted from the forest. A sound like nothing I had ever heard. The sound of a screaming jet engine combined with the emotional tones of something living... something communicating. Birds flew from the canopy of the forest as we all stared silently into the mysterious interior of the island. "It doesn't matter, we can't stay on board," Reynolds projected over the deck, already knowing what we were all silently wondering. "Besides, nothing can really be as bad or as frightening as what we've all already seen and been through..." None of us could have possibly known how wrong he was.

He woke up in a cold and sterile room. Sickly green curtains hung limp over the window, adorned with lilacs and daisies. The room was strangely devoid of personality. There were no clothes to be seen, everything was neat and orderly, and there was no dog-eared journal, yellow and faded with age. "Where is my notebook?" he thought, angrily. He propped himself up in the bed and searched closer. Nothing. He did, however, notice the framed portrait of an old couple on the bedstand. "Oh." He realized where he was, and shakily stood up to get a coffee. As he hobbled down the halls of the nursing home, he looked around at the others in the entertainment rooms. They sat about, some talking, others watching TV, others still merely sitting and watching their lives fade away. The only thing they had in common were their eyes. Each one shared the same look, the same gaze, one of hopelessness and disgust and confusion. "Good morning Edward!" someone called out. He paused, unsure how to react, or to whom. "Good morning to you too!" he eventually responded, to no one in particular. His name was Francis. When Francis finally reached the kitchen, he paused again. Why had he come here? He began to rummage through the various drawers and cabinets. "What are you looking for, Francis?" The voice frightened him. He looked around, starled. One of the nurses stood in the kitchen, watching him quietly. "Oh, just whatever I find." he said, suddenly cheery. She smiled a sad sort of smile and left him to his own devices. The coffee machine gurgled on the counter. "Ah, that's right. Coffee." Francis thought. He pulled a stained blue glass out of the cupboard, and set it brusquely on the table. He shakily grabbed the pot and poured the coffee into the glass, spilling enough to dribble down the sides and onto the wood below. He set the pot back on the machine, and picked up the steaming glass. He cried out in pain as the hot glass burned his hand, and he dropped the glass onto the floor. "I'll get that" said the nurse as she swept up the glass and called for a mop. Francis stood, rooted to the ground, looking very scared, and confused. He didn't understand. The nurse returned with an insulated styrofoam cup, and filled it with coffee for him. "Oh, thank you Agnes." said Francis, with a warm and overlarge smile, as he shuffled out of the room clutching the cup. Her name was Alice.   Francis sat on the cold, hard couch and stared at the cup of coffee. A television played Fox News very loudly in the background, and, at another table, a man sat playing chess with himself. "Francis, your grandson is here to see you!" He looked up, to see a different nurse guiding a man to the couch where he sat. Francis smiled. "Hello Robert!" He said cheerily. "Hi Grandpa" answered Robert, somewhat meekly. "Would you like a coffee?" Francis asked. "The nurse poured me one, but I didn't really want it." "Sure, Grandpa." Robert said, as he grimaced and took a sip. "Thank you." Francis was very pleased. He smiled at Robert for a moment, then asked eagerly "So how is school going? You must be in the 11th grade by now, isn't that right?" Robert paused, unsure how to answer. "I'm in the 14th grade, Grandpa." "Oh." Francis said. "Well, I always liked the 11th grade. That was the year I met your mother!" Robert looked rather uncomfortable. "You mean Grandma?" "Ah yes." Said Francis, ignoring him. "Say, be sure to let your mother and I know if you ever need help paying for college." There was a long pause, and Robert teared up. "Grandpa, Grandma has been dead for 9 months." "No, she hasn't!" Francis said, airily. "She's right here with us! Agnes! Come over here Agnes, Robert has come to visit." The background chatter hushed, and head began to swivel towards the pair. "Agnes? Come on honey, don't you want to visit?" A note of concern began to enter his voice. Robert was crying. "Where have you gone? Get over here you old bat!" Francis stood up, and began to search for his dead wife. He stumbled down the hall, screaming her name, confused and angry, at this, at himself, at everything. Robert still sat on the couch, holding the cold cup of coffee, tears running down his face. Next to him, the spot where his grandfather had once sat was still warm. He was once a brilliant man, an engineer. He lived his live with vigorous pride and determination. He worked hard, retired early, and gained the respect of almost everyone he met. He was happy, and others were happy for him. His life was charmed, it seemed. But now, he hobbled through the halls of the nursing home, yelling at the empty frames on the wall and the empty people that lived there. He screamed and searched for his wife who would never be found. He could no longer understand. His name was Francis.

It is a bright sunny day. The school children are outside playing for recess. The kids are swinging, sliding, running and jumping. All the little ones are playing except for one child, his name is Jason and he is an adventurer, he is an explorer. Jason is off by himself searching. He is tracking down a chirping sound that he is familiar with. He sees the grasshopper sitting on a blade of grass. He carefully inspects the insect trying not to disturb it. The grasshopper is motionless trying to blend in but Jason is not fooled. Jason picks up a stick and touches the bug, the grasshopper jumps high into the air startling Jason, he falls back laughing. This catches the attention of his teacher Mrs. Ratchet. “JASON! Leave that bug alone” she screeches. This catches the adventurer off guard; he stands up and faces her with his head bowed and his hands behind his back. “Wouldn’t you rather play with the other students?” she asks inquisitively. Jason looks over at the other kids playing and then bows his head again. Mrs. Ratchet peers at Jason then glances at her watch. “Play time is over children, line up we are going back to class.” Mrs. Ratchet sits at her desk reading aloud to the children about photosynthesis in a monotone voice. Jason is staring out of the window wondering where the grasshopper went and what it was doing now. “Jason!” Mrs. Ratchet yells, “Pay attention.” The students laugh. Jason turns red with embarrassment and bows his head. Mrs. Ratchet continues reading aloud. Jason picks up his pencil and draws a crude picture of the grasshopper. One of the students sitting behind Jason announces to the teacher and the class “Jason is drawing!” “Jason! Come here. Bring your notebook” Ratchet says furiously. The classroom collectively moans “OH!” Jason bows his head slowly stands up, and walks steadily holding the picture close to his chest so that no one can see it. Mrs. Ratchet grabs the notebook and holds it up so the kids can see his crude drawing, the children giggle. She takes the notebook and slams it on the desk, “Jason, come with me.” Ratchet grabs Jason’s hand and drags him out of the room and down the hall. Jason is silent with tears streaming down his face. Jason is surprised to see Mrs. Ratchet pass the principal’s office; he begins to wonder where they were going. He is confused as she drags him into the nurse’s room. The nurse sitting at her desk looks up with her plump face and with her paper thin lips forms what looks like a smile. “What is the matter with this one?” the nurse says while sizing up Jason. “He is having problems paying attention. I think he has ADD” Ratchet says while cocking her head to the side and folding her arms. “What is wrong with me?” Jason ponders. “Jason, Jason, JASON!” Ratchet shouts. Jason snaps back to consciousness. “See it is the worst case I have ever seen” Ratchet remarks. “I suppose you are right” accesses the nurse, “I will call his mother.” Mrs. Ratchet glances at Jason and leaves the office. The nurse picks up her phone and call Jason’s mother. “Yes Ma’am he has a mental disorder that makes him unable to pay attention” the nurse explains, “you will need to follow up with his doctor; they have medication to fix this kind of thing.” Jason nervously fidgets, the nurse looks up at him, “Jason, your mother is on her way.” Jason sits worrying “what is wrong with me?” His mother arrives and the nurse meets her at the door, they talk in the hall. Jason strains to hear what is being said but cannot decipher the mumblings. Jason’s mother walks into the room eyeballs him and says “come on, let’s go.” Jason stands up and follows his mother to the car, nothing is said. He gets into the car “buckle up” his mother say; she drives him to the doctor in silence. When they arrive Jason finds the courage to ask “Mom is there something wrong with me?” “I don’t know honey, but if there is we will get it fixed.” As they sit in the waiting room Jason is restless. He ponders to himself what was wrong with him. His mom has a pamphlet in her face with the words ADD labeled on the cover. Jason sits fidgeting nervously. His mom peers over her pamphlet at him. “Jason” the receptionist calls out. Jason’s mom takes his hand and leads him into the back where they are taken to a smaller room. Inside of this room is a plastic uncomfortable bed with paper sheet on top. Jason curious as to why anyone would put paper sheets on a bed starts to pick the sheet apart. Jason’s mother cuts her eyes over and moans then grabs the back of her neck as she looks away. Jason pauses and tries to figure out what he had done wrong. The doctor bursts into the room, she stops at the door and looks down at her clip board and looks up and smiles “Hi Jason!” “Hi” he responds shyly. “Hey mom what seems to be the problem with Jason?” “Well I got a call today from the school nurse, she said he is having a hard time paying attention in class, and while sitting in the waiting room he was showing these signs” Jason’s mom points inside the pamphlet. “Ah, restlessness, can’t sit still, not paying attention, these are all classic signs of ADD” the doctor says as she holds her clip board close to her chest, “Well we have a lot of options here, but I prefer to treat ADD with Ritalin.” Now a few weeks have passed and Jason has been cured; he doesn’t play with bugs or wander in the fields. He no longer fidgets or daydreams. He silently stares at his schoolbook as his teacher reads aloud. While sitting in class Jason sees a grasshopper sitting on the classroom window, he yawns and continues reading.

He had tried to fuck his mother’s cat when he was seven. The incident had resulted badly and now his genitals were permanently scarred and the cat dead. Does that seem strange? Well I suppose you could view it that way. He wasn’t really different. But what’s different? At the time trust me there were logical steps to his attempt at rape. Now this all might seem trivial but it is imperative if one is to understand why Billy later did what he did. Billy was aggressive from day one. He used to hit his mother’s friends with his baby bottle whenever they came near him. When his first tooth came in his mother had to give up breastfeeding after he nearly bit off her left teat. She was heartbroken for she saw breastfeeding as a type of bonding with Billy, but Billy always had it his way and when he wanted Precious he got Precious his way. Precious was his mother’s cat. She had Precious before Billy was born but once Billy was born he became Precious and it was only natural that he would eliminate the cat. Precious had been the first for Billy. What followed was a mother’s worst nightmare. Billy became a serial killer of felines. Ms. Griffin had come outside and found her cat hanged from her doorframe. A note attached said I love pussy But Billy, do you really love pussy? Billy came out when he was nineteen. A drunken night with a frat brother had confirmed this. So Billy why do you hate pussy so? Is it because you feel an allegiance to dick? That could be, but I think its deeper than that. I think the secret lies in Precious. It’s important to include what Billy did to Precious. Precious’ attack on his genitals was not the ending to the incident. Billy ended the incident by grabbing Precious’ neck and breaking it. He said it wasn’t really anything, It moved and then it didn’t. Damn Billy. That’s cold, but he got colder. It came to be that all domestic cats stayed inside while the strays were inevitably eliminated by Billy. But no one knew it was Billy. The people talked. Some said it was the postman. Others blamed gangs of vicious stray dogs. But no one ever said Billy. Billy’s mother knew though and Billy knew this and this bothered Billy. It bothered Billy so much that people came to think it was a pack of wild stray dogs that killed Billy’s mom, when really Billy choked her and fed her to the wild dogs before reporting her missing. Ice cold Billy. That’s what they called him, Ice Motherfucking Cold Billy. Nobody fucked with him. He had tattoos of kittens he had murdered across his back, a pet cemetery of sorts. After Billy’s mother met her maker, the maker she made, people started talking. Well, they’d already been talking, but now their talking included Billy’s name. See Billy started slipping a little bit. Maybe cause he was drinking more or maybe cause he had taken up the habit of wearing a cat skin belt. Either way he was on their radar or rather they were on his. He killed them all. Mr. and Mrs. Jones were found naked and crucified in their front yard, their cats crucified on top of them. Ms. Washington got a knife to the head. Between the knife’s handle and her head, her cat. Mr. Thomas was bludgeoned to death with a bag of his cat’s food. His cat was later found in the bag. All the murders were gruesome. The luckiest were suffocated with kittens. After the murders Billy left to travel the world. He had moved on to bigger things, bigger cats. The common house cat didn’t do it for him anymore, but when he was desperate and couldn’t find a lion or tiger to kill, he would return to domestic cats as a means to meet an end. Sometimes when a cat would go missing from a house in whatever remote village Billy was in, the people would start to talk. They would talk about the outsider and his funny belt. Or they would comment about his tattoo and then Billy would just repeat his previous actions and move on. This routine carried on for many years until one day Billy found himself in India fighting a tiger. He was naked (he always fought cats in the nude). He lunged at the tiger with his hunting knife, but he was not as agile as he was in his youth and he tripped and fell on his face. The tiger took Billy by the neck and broke it. Billy moved and then he didn’t. The locals say the cat didn’t devour him, but simply stared at him and then walked away. And that’s the end of Billy’s story, but not ours. We still don’t know why Billy hated cats so much, but we do know it involves Precious. See before the incident Billy loved cats, he loved cats so much that he tried to make love to one. But sadly for him and everyone he later met, Precious didn’t return his love. Instead she mutilated that which Billy tried to love her with, rendering it useless. After that Billy said he was never able to give pleasure, so instead he took it.

I don't want to read about a "veneer" and what's beneath it. I don't want to read about glass and wires and the new noir. It's the way that you think of the concrete in an alleyway, the door that you look at with the blue light buzzing overhead in its wire-caged socket. I mean: I hack away furiously at a keyboard, minding the sirens in the distance —and this time, for the first time, I'm sure that they're for me— and she bursts through the door and slips on the tile for a second, just catching herself. "Shitshitshit! Come the fuck on! Come on!" I jump up, barely catching up to the moment. Her coat is blown by strong gusts from outside. Then I see a blinding white spotlight stream through the doorframe into the room right in front of me, painting her into halves before I hear "zeeowwhap! zeeowwhap!" and she's too shocked to scream as she looks down at the torn fabric and dark spots, all the blood. She looks up at me. She won't make it, and as soon as I realize that, I feel like throwing up. But there's no time. I grab the memfile and I run through the narrow hallway towards the front of the place. There are already people shouting at the back entrance as I make my way onto the street. I slam the door behind me, as if that would somehow separate me from what's coming to get me. As I run down the stairs, I lock eyes with a guy standing right next to my bike. He and I both know what's happening and he widens his stance and squares towards me, taking deliberate steps over the curb, past the parking meter. He's not pulling a gun; he wants me alive. That's even worse... I'm fighting panic, the urge to run. This guy is fucking moving on me. What am I doing? There, in the gutter next to the steps: the vodka bottle. I pick it up and rush him, and he seems to get what's going on, but he's pissed off, like he expected the confrontation to go a lot smoother, like me not surrendering doesn't fit into his schedule. But he doesn't feel what I feel, which is all the unused adrenaline from a docile life (a life that, undoubtably, is past and gone now) surging and spiraling through my veins like bobsleds made of electricity. And rage— rage because they killed her and I didn't even know what she was like, because now she can't be "like" anything anymore, because they want to kill me too and I don't want to be killed. So it proceeds that, as he tries to reach for the bottle to grab it out of my hands, to go on with his plan of subduing me without becoming dead, I yell and swing as hard as I can. His eyes get big. I hit a home run. It's nothing like the movies, the bottle doesn't break. He doubles over and screams because his nose and part of his face are broken. Still yelling, I pull the bottle in an imaginary arc through the side of his head, like driving a golf ball— the sound is sort of the same too, "WHOP-ping!" except it's followed immediately by another scream and the guy is stumbling and falling onto the ground. He is about as angry as someone can get, reaching out desperately with one hand to hook my leg or something. I step back and dart to my bike, turn the key in the ignition. Come on. Thumb the start. Ok. Pull as hard on the throttle as I can. Shit. The other people are bursting out of the front door now, still yelling. "Shit!" From a few hundred feet behind, they're firing at me— I know because I can see lines of air and things spraying sparks and bits of themselves all around me. I'm ducking and turning sharply into the next street. The air is freezing. The night is dark. Streetlights and neon pass by as lines of fire; almost nobody is driving. It's terrifyingly empty. About a half hour later, I'm out of the city. I pull behind an abandoned gas station, cut my engine, step off of my bike, and collapse into the wall. I can't seem to cry or think about what I'll do next. All I can do is stare and think about how fucked it all was, how I want to go back to before it all happened.

It's a science fiction story, I *think* it was written by Arthur C. Clarke. The plot, as far as I remember it, involves humans colonizing a distant planet that's inhabited by an alien race. On the planet, there's evidence of advanced technology - but the aliens have "forgotten" how to use it. The human's colonization is aggressive, and the aliens warn them that if they continue, there will be consequences. The humans shrug it off, though - after all, the aliens have "forgotten" how to do everything. Anyway, in the end, a human spaceship ends up trapped inside some sort of mini-universe by the aliens, and the main character suddenly realizes: "How do you make a fire, [other character's name]? What kind of bark do you use, etc." and the other character responds "I don't know... I've forgotten".

I walked slowly, admiring the eerie yet stunning beauty of this little paradise I found. The trees were all full of green leaves, so many shades from a bright emerald to a dark shimmering green almost black. The trees also boasted an affinity for life, squirrels, birds, bugs, snakes, all creatures coexisting within the same tree, and there were thousands of these trees around. The ground is covered in soft grass, damp and cool from the shade provided by the multitude of trees, Fungus and mushrooms of strange shades and hues burst through the ground at seeming random intervals, shelf fungus along the trunks of the trees make an almost spiral staircase up to the foliage. Luscious yet bizarre fruits decorate the upper branches and suspend themselves like shining gems, each a different color from the one next to it. The breeze and the sound of a distant river provide a soothing ambience along with the sounds of life in this place. I've been to this place quite often, climbed the trees, tasted the fruits, and talked with the multitudes of life, yet I have not seen the river from which this place must grow. I've walked for hours in all directions, the trees and bear no distinguishing marks, and I choose not to make any for fear of upsetting this place. I can always hear the river, never growing stronger or fading, always a constant, as if seeming for me to know it’s there but not to let me see it. I continue to wander, searching, no longer entrapped by the beauty of the trees or their complex eco system, the fruits have all become bitter, this place senses my frustration and changes accordingly. Sometimes when I first enter this place I can still feel the presence of the outside, I think I can see other people walking, as enraptured as I was when I first came here. I think I see them but, they too disappear as this place envelopes me. I am spending more time here now, constantly searching for the water, I don’t know why, but it’s all I care to find. The trees are growing to a constant shimmering black, and the sound of life has almost ceased. Every now and then there are bright places, with new life, snakes, snails, mice, all moving spasmodically in an area, like flashes of light in the surrounding gloom. I hardly notice them anymore. I must find that river, I spend almost all day here now, and I come back every night. The river still eludes me. I need to find it. The leaves have begun falling off the trees, what I can see of the sky is a flat black, it gives neither the illusion of night, but seems to absorb all the light. I've not seen a sun in this place yet. I choose to write this here now, in order to express the full effect, the need and desire to find this river. I don’t know why, or what makes me feel the need to find it. I'm not sure what will happen when I find it, or if I will, but I have to. Today I’m going to find the river. I found another snake, he had the same grin and vibrant colors of the others, I ignored the pleasant aura, I have to find the river. I opened its mouth to find two sharp teeth. As I carried the snake to a tree it began to grow, longer bigger, he grew cold in my hands. It started to hiss and writhe in my hands, I forced its mouth open and dragged the razor teeth across the dead tree. I must find the river. The snake struggled harder as I pushed its face into the tree harder, scouring deep gouges in the wood. The tree started to wail, a loud high pitched keening, its creamed and caught fire, the dead wood and remaining leaves alighting in azure, liquid fire. The burned down to a pool of aqueous blue fire, the surrounding trees caught flame also. I was surrounded by blue flames, purging this place of life and substance, the sound of the river grew stronger. Then I was there, the river raging relentlessly, flowing with the rage of an angry god. Still covered in the liquid blue fires I stepped into this torrent. I start to feel myself dissolve, as the river was made of the same liquid blue fire that burned me, yet as I felt myself burn away, my thoughts continued, my psyche still intact and active. I stopped the flow of azure fire, feeling it bend and give to my will. I opened my mind’s eye and surveyed my life as it was...... and I let go.

Hi, I'm not really a writer. I wrote the below piece and just wanted to see what other people think of it. First reddit post, and I'm hoping it goes well. :) "It had been a particularly cold winter. The white frost blanketed the ground, killing everything that lived, as if Death himself laid down his tattered cloak over the land. I soon forgot what warmth was. The feeling itself frozen and shattered from my memory. There was only the cold left to keep us poor folk warm. It was during that desolate winter that I had the pleasure of meeting Joe, a stoic man who had come from farther up North, seeking a warmth his body didn’t feel and his mind couldn’t remember. When I saw the crystal clear blue of his eyes, I remember thinking that the cold was in him, in those eyes, and he would never escape from it. But I was sillier back then. I was young. A girl alone in the world, left to my own devices on a neglected and deserted ranch. Or at least what was left of it. I sometimes thought to myself I was Jonah, and the dilapidated house around me the dying carcass of that biblical whale. The “farmhouse” I lived in had been falling down around me for the better part of my stay, and showed no signs of slowing. I had found it like this and it had stayed like this, as broken and empty as I was. Most people kept their distance, as I was seen as undesirable. Whether I thought myself worthy of such a distinction or not I did not care. I only cared that they thought I was worthy of distance. Peace of mind was something rarely afforded to most in this world, and as long as I was an unnamed presence meant to be quarantined from the normal folk I was afforded that peace of mind. Until Joe. We met in the cold and it was the cold that sustained us until the frost became too bitter. He had been sleeping in “my” barn, or at least what was left of it. I rarely ventured out of the main house, as it was there I felt the most safe. I sometimes looked out at it from the kitchen window, mostly in passing, to check if it was still there, giving it’s sorry condition. I watched through a spiderweb of cracked and stained glass as he went to and from the barn. I didn’t know where he went, but around dusk he would always stumble back to the shelter that the barn provided. I had been alone for so long by then that his presence wasn’t easily articulated into clear feelings one way or the other. I knew he might be dangerous, but I also knew he was like me. A connection flowed from that kitchen window to the door of that barn. We were both a body without a soul. A life wasted, created in misery, and destined to die with a whimper not a bang. So I decided to speak to him, the first person in a long time I felt connected to on any kind of level worth a damn. How he had been surviving in the barn for this long with it’s missing shingles and barely patched south wall, which had been through absolute hell during tornado season two years past, was a mystery to me. Everyday had found the weather turning colder as if the ranch was turning solid, and the barn wasn’t much protection. I didn’t know how to approach him without scaring him, as I had come to think of him as a solitary fellow, never having seen anyone in his company while he stayed on the ranch. So I knocked. My knuckles meeting the frayed once-red, now pink, wood that covered the brown oak that made up the barn. The sound of my knocks were small, my shivering not only a result of the winter wind, but nevertheless he heard. Joe had been a man slow to talk when we first met, but he opened up as our talks grew. It was around then that I began to realize his eyes were more the blue of the ocean water that I had sometimes dreamed about than frozen ice. We talked of many things, and when I told him of how I felt like Jonah, his laugh brought back something in me, and I laughed along with him. It was the shared laughs more than anything that kept me coming back to that barn for so long. He introduced a warmth that didn’t stretch very far but radiated with an unparalleled intensity between the two of us. We spent a month together on that cold farm, keeping the frost at bay. Eating when we could, sleeping, and most importantly living. He and his watery eyes eventually moved on. But those days I kept with me for a very long time. I can still remember the bitter cold in my old bones, but I also remember the warmth that Joe and I rediscovered, that had been lost to us in the frigid world, until it to was killed off by the frost.

I am a first time poster here and unsure if this sub frowns on linking to my own site. A heads up would be nice. In the mean time. Here is a story I wrote in 2008 about socks. It has been denied publication after sitting in slush piles 10 or 12 times. My website is . The first half is below, the second is the first post as the story is over 10k. Thanks! I looked down to see two drops of blood on the green carpet. They had come from my nose, and there would be more. The clerk, a woman in her 40's, began walking toward me from the counter with a concerned look on her face. It occurred to me that she may find it odd that I was standing in the sock aisle, with a nose bleed, after closing time, at a Boy Scout Store. My love affair with the Boy Scout sock started innocently enough. I had graduated from Cub Scouts into Boy Scouts in the fall of 1990, around the time I turned ten. Reading about the BSA (Boy Scouts of America) now, I can only imagine the amount of angst within its ranks. The membership controversies over sexual abuse, homosexuality, and religion make me wonder if I will let my son join. But my time with the Scouts was nothing but sunny skies and clean, safe times. Well, mostly anyway. There was that one summer camp when my patrol leader ran out of cigarettes and gave us all tea leaves wrapped in parchment paper saying, "Look, it's the same thing, okay?" Or the time that we filled another Scout's bellybutton with tooth paste the first night of a trip. A week later, we watched in horror as the same scout took off his shirt before jumping in the pool. The once green and white toothpaste had turned black and molded into the folds of his overweight... folds. Or the time that we wiped an entire can of catfish bait under another scout's tent at the National Jamboree. The poor kid smelled like a cow pasture for the rest of the week. Even at my wedding a Boy Scout story was told, about earning my wilderness survival merit badge when my best man and I rolled over one another down a hill because we decided to sleep on too sharp an incline. (Many in my family already thought that I may be gay. The story of two boys rolling over one another down a hill didn?t help.) The Boy Scouts was a great experience for me, filled with excitement and adventure. I earned the rank of Life before dropping out and clearly remember the night that I told my scoutmaster I was leaving the troop. I cried and stuttered. I knew I was never going to make Eagle. It wasn't in me. I had been drifting away from Troop 674 for a year. It was my time to leave. I grew out of my uniform. I left the dreams of Eagle behind me. I even started growing my hair to lengths the Beatles would never have gotten away with. But I never took off those socks. When I started with the Scouts, the uniform sock was worn up to the knee, puce green, and had a three-inch red rim that was meant to be folded over. A uniform change in the early 1990's brought the red trim to a logical half inch. That sock was the one I fell in love with. It was called "The Boy Scout Crew Sock," but was changed later to, "Boy Scout Thorlo Hiking Sock." The sturdy socks were made from a blend of acrylic, nylon, and spandex. If you bought them from an official Boy Scout store they were treated with Triclosan, an antibacterial, antifungal agent that stopped odors and athlete's foot dead in its tracks. The sock wicked sweat away from the foot and into the shoe. You could hike all day without an extra pair and never give it a second thought. You never had to wear two pairs to stop blisters. These socks were thick and clung to your foot with the force of super glue. They were, by far, the best sock ever produced. I haven't worn another sock since their release. I wore them to job interviews, funerals, and of course, hiking. I wore them on my first date, wedding, and to the birth of my child. Every year, my mother bought a few more pairs at Christmas, and I waited until they were beyond threadbare to throw them away. I gave serious thought to learning how to darn socks just to make old pairs new. Ask anyone who knows me well about my clothing. Invariably, my socks will come up. But I never learned how to darn socks. I never savored the pairs I owned. Standing in that aisle at the back of the Boy Scout Store, I came to the realization that my sock was not there. After eighteen years, the uniform had changed, and left me in the cold. That's when my nose started to bleed. I was tempted to bolt to my car at the speed of shame, my embarrassment following a few seconds behind. I pictured myself in the car, nursing my nose with an old Wendy's napkin from the glove box for almost a minute before a knock on the window would catch up with me. That's when I saw the woman with the concerned look walking toward me.

2/11/1373, 6/30/1908, 7/7/1997, 11/1/2011, 6/21/2013, 11/18/2013, ? 32492/ 6 = 5415.33 194952/365=534.115 902.55 The Bloop... That’s what it was called at the time, The “Bloop” , because I guess we didn’t have anything better to call it. And to be honest, after reviewing the audio several times, it did kinda sound like a bloop. The kinda noise when a large volume of water is displaced all at once. We were lucky on that one, or unlucky. Maybe if we had recognized it for what it was… I’m getting ahead of myself. I believe it was the Olmecs that first encountered the phenomena around 1831 BCE. There’s this monument, they call it the San Martin Pajapan Monument now, that was carved in approximately that time period. The statue is early example of their artwork, showing a young lord or demi god, holding up a ceremonial bar. The general consensus is that it was a figure meant to be establishing the center of the universe. What little we can translate of their culture and writing, the statue was placed at a location that they viewed as being a place of powerful energy. Maybe they saw something in the hills between those two volcanoes. Something that defied nature. There’s no fossil or archeological evidence, but it just fits, you know? By working backwards with the math? The first recorded incident was February 11th, 1373CE outside of what is modern day Baghdad, Iraq. I say this is the first “recorded” incident for a reason. What happened outside of the recovering city was never properly documented. The Il-Khanids, Mongol rulers of their captured Arabian lands, weren’t too keen on writing down things that didn’t involve the glory of the Mongol empire. What can be gleaned from the entire TWO historical documents concerning the event, was a massive shockwave tipped over several ships on the river, as well as toppling dozens of homes within the city. The writings from the era said that a pressure wave, described by them as “the air punched at our chests as if a forceful man ” , originating from the desert sands east of the city. I calculate the epicenter to have been 1 mile east north east of the cities’ harbor, of approximately 63 kilotons of TNT in strength, somewhat less than the destructive threshold of the atomic warhead dropped on Hiroshima by the United States during World War 2. The effects of being so close to a blast of that magnitude would have been similar to what was described by the accounts. I can consequently see why no one cared. It was not a great era of scientific curiosity. It was written off like any myriad of events during that era. The second recorded event occurred on June 30th, 1908. Centered around 5 miles South South east of Lake Cheko, in Tunguska, Russia. I’m sure you’ve heard of that one, though. What’s more commonly known as, The Tunguska Blast. Up until last month, it was easily attributed to a rogue asteroid or cometoid exploding in mid air over the deserted forest. Official estimates vary, but the explosive force rattled windows 400 miles away. It hammered the Siberian wilds with what we now know was around 2 megatons of explosive force. Speculation was, that had such an event occurred in a populated city in that era, say for instance, Paris, London, or New York City. The death toll would have numbered in hundreds of thousands. We were “lucky” though, it was a deserted location, very few people were injured. Hell it took months for a study team to even venture out into the frozen woodlands to survey the damage back then. Again, No one really cared.

Pale eyes, crewcut after a long stint of length, rounded unabashed nose, strong lips leading to a sag in the very muscle of the face, all pointing to a strong cleft chin, only vaguely hidden by stubble. Eyes of alcohol stained isolation, but not many saw that, only the mirror and those who accompanied him past his strange-focus setup. In all truth, Stockton Miller was a fair and unmoving man, except for sudden outbursts that had seemed to accelerate in occurrence since his final years of high school until a point in life, now twenty-three, where they were on par with his natural and accepted baseline. He was, in all manner speaking, a psychopath (and notably, still is), yet his behaviour was not that prescribed to the word psychopath, and, as his gut told him, was more like a number of other statistics in populations that cast aside the cliche so long-glued to the aura of psychopath and instead chose to live as a productive member of society. An affinity for jeans and blazers, weather permitting, sitting this day aged blue tweed blazer, dark blue cutting through threads of light, blank white T beneath, loosely hanging over thin body, slight rolls in the skin unseen beneath, aged lightblue jeans tight on skin, canvas shoes tightly laced, belt only for purpose, strong stance leaning back against soft fabric couch, dark red against soft blue, legs crossed, hand behind head sorrow eyes looking at the only interest in the room, interest staring back with apprehension, intrigue, thoughts of feelings same as red light running. Freight train conversations rolling through, eyes fixed, depression interest, she glanced back, eye contact unnerving, both taking sips of red wine, pouring more. Melissa Salaway. Thin brown hair, light voice, face pale and clear, eyes ready to receive information, wide wide pupils, lengthy nose but only obvious on studying her face, gaunt jaw, bones like plumbing. Black dress, loose, modest, dark blue cardigan, dull flats. She sat and listened for the most part, glancing occasionally at Stockton, engaged almost completely, clattering tracks of ideas rolled through. Most of brain attached to conversation, small slither analysing, body language, phrases, watching eyes. “Hey uhh… If I die and your hair’s still growing when I do, don’t let anybody pray for me. Tell them to stop it. And uh, if, by this time, you end up saying words about me, that is if you still uh, admire me, by that time enough to say words about me then don’t tell anyone about me, tell them about my ideas. Tell them that I’m just an assortment of well positioned atoms. Tell them about the fact that I’ll only die if my ideas die. Tell them that my ideas will continue whirring as long as people can think them.” By this time Stockton could feel a rush coming on and decided to keep talking, better judgement notwithstanding. “And uh, I think that the time may come quite soon. Not soon as in months or day but soon for a twenty-three year old.I think thirty. Yes, thirty,” The rush gaining strength, vision blending into thought, dragging him down into deep depression, bad energy proving immovable, kept from tears only by constant talking. “Yes, I’m going to die on that lone highway. I saw it the other day, you see. A car, and I don’t even drive. A car, me propped up against the door frame, dirt slightly shaken, legs splayed out in from of me, toes pointing straight up. And then I remembered that I had just been shot in the head, or had I shot myself? It doesn’t really matter. I died there. I tried to talk myself out of it, only half aware that it was the dream, and these things give you the impression of inevitability anyway, real or not. Well yes I tried to talk myself out of it, slowly, then sharp and harsh, not desperate or insulting, but harsh. I felt myself die. I woke up then, slight adrenalin buzz wore off and I felt nothing. This is why today is about death. I’m sorry. I really am. I never talk well to others. I imagine topics so well in my head and they always fail to be of worth in reality. I’m sorry.” Stockton felt that he was more a person to be talked about than talked to, regardless of how many ideas he tried to give away. Rush receding, almost a sense of self accomplishment for having withstood, yet grasping onto the draining force, knowing that it won’t come again with any sensible reason, and as worrisome as it was it felt good, felt being the most important term. Melissa stood up and took another bottle of wine, started pouring in both glasses. “I find that interesting, you seem to be admitting and embracing this death yet, in that exact moment, you tried to talk yourself out it.” “Well that’s put down to the fact that I was twenty-three in my dream. I wasn’t thirty.” “Oh! Well then I suppose it comes down to how far the subconscious is willing to go to make this happen, and subsequently how little your conscious is willing to fight it. Of course I have my own personal response and please re-think this, but I know you well enough to predict that any attempt to convince you otherwise will just strengthen your resolve. So uh, if you do decide to off yourself, do it near me at least.” “I don’t know where this is going to take me but I’ll try. I’ve been missing you for a while, even when I’m talking to you. My guess is that it’ll all fold up into one large crunch, and in a mad rush something will happen. Simply put, things will explode. Whether we’ll be together remains unseen. From what I can guess it’ll be in a few years at least but the way things are going..” Stockton trailed off, eyes focusing on the wine slowly streaming down his throat. “Stockton I wish you wouldn’t talk like that.” “Oh but you know I can’t help it, for, of course, ‘I am a Karamazov!’” “Shut up with all your book stuff.” “They write for their readers, you know.” “You’re not going to die.” “Ah, my dear, I’m sorry. I’m afraid you failed to grasp the summary of your 6 years of studying biology. We all die. I’m just going to finish existing sooner than some other people. You’re lucky you didn’t fall in love with some african aids orphan. At least we fucked.” “Fuck you Stockton. Somedays you’re so fucking vile. Get a fucking grip. You’re wingeing about your fucked up life and doing nothing but drinking yourself to death and deceiving yourself that your writing is worth anything. Clear up your shit. Every night it’s the same thing. Depression or violence or happiness, you only have three. It’s so simple. They’re just a triangle and you hit them each in series. You’re a fucking loser.” Stockton laughed. Windows into other worlds flashed through his head while he made up his mind on what kind of emotion he should put in his response. Whilst he was good at dolling out emotions, he still had a tidbit of trouble knowing which ones were appropriate.

His feverish yelling reverberated around me, bouncing mercilessly from dark surface to dark surface - A primal voice crying out again into the black accompanying his physical efforts. My mind ached as my bloodied ears received the sound. This intolerable pain was increasing immeasurably by the floods of adrenaline that followed the icy jolt of anxiety ripping up through my spine. I cursed my claustrophobia; the room could not have been more than two meters wide, and just over that again in length. In addition to my tight bindings, the shuddering echoes of exhaustion and ragged laughter jumping out from all around me were like cold, violating hands pinching roughly at my clammy slack skin. Most of my tension had left me now. Fatigue and a growing complacency with my situation had led me to be absurdly relaxed under the coming blows - or perhaps I had just started to feel numb with shock - perhaps my brain had just become too occupied with pain. A sudden rush of air came from my right, gushing past my cheek. My head flew back and a muted yet moist 'thach' ricocheted off the walls. Strangely my head began to hurt before my face did. I started feeling a strong urge to vomit, as I used what always seemed to feel like the last few bare threads of my energy to pull my head forwards again. As I did, my eyes feel closed in sync, like a child's toy doll. "I hope you feel that" My eyes snapped open and my brain, which had been teetering on the edge of unconsciousness, was now utterly alert. "I hope you fuckin' feel that" It was the first time he'd spoken - I was so amazed and fearful that the moment might would be lost that I gurgled on my own blood in my excitement to try to engage him. Quickly I tried to clear my throat, but my swollen face and knotted muscles wouldn't comply, so I ended up gnashing and fizzing the blood against my teeth in my derangement. Coagulated blood was forced through the small gaps in my teeth and spat from the slit I had left for a mouth; I heard loud heavy droplets hit the smooth floor in front of me as the blood mingled slobber crept down my chin. Naturally when I first woke here and we started this, I cried and screamed and begged for a reason - or even a response - to the blow after blow. The questions burning in my mind as each skin on skin assault left a smoldering ember of hope in me that, maybe, I could feel even just a small crumb of humanity from my assailant. Some leverage. I started choking - the thick blood in my throat started gushing into my lungs. In my haste I must have opened some internal wound. Every painful quake of my chest, as I desperately clambered for air, seemed to satisfy him. "Fucking good." I was seized with terror as I knew he was closing away again - I tried one last staggered attempt to speak with everything I had left. It tore from my larynx like it was wrapped in sandpaper; "Why" At this point I didn't even know if it was a question. In the gloom I just made out his silhouette. He was standing at 90 degree angle facing away from me, I couldn't tell in what direction. My eyes were almost swollen shut so I could hardly ever decipher his proximity from me; his thickness was the most I could manage. In mid-breath, I felt an overwhelmingly powerful slam to my sternum - so powerful the chair was hurled backwards and I felt the metal legs beneath bend as my propelled weight hurled into them at such an angle. I thought they'd broken off as I tipped pathetically to the ground. Due to the confinement, my skull cracked loudly against the wall first, followed by the quiet slap of my body against the damp concrete of the floor. The pressure in my head was then too much and was released as I convulsed to vomit, violently enough, as fortune had it, to force my solid jaw apart. Just as I started to pass out, I heard a satisfied grunt from the abyss. **EDIT** : Anyone who's taken the time to read this, I'd really appreciate some feedback.

This is a throwaway account for a project I've been working on where once every few weeks, I pick a theme and over the next 5 nights, write 5 short stories about that theme. Each story can't take more than a night. This story was drawn from the theme, "Let me think". =========================== When I was young, I moved. I moved like the ground was being pulled in front of me, and every frantic breath measured a stride. I ran. I lived in a sprint. From outside Atlanta in the sweaty eves to shivering in the awnings at Gare L’est. I am 15, I am 19. A busker with uneven teeth smiles at me and I think she is the world. Jon, my best friend brushes me with his elbow. -Not this one, he says. -Rock, paper, scissors, I joke. Wait, let me think. It was morning, and I am 43. The island sweats. The dog and I run in silence. The sun has risen and the land heats. We spring up the hill, panting and dizzy. Beyond us in the peninsula, the sea beating foam and white against the granite. I measure sides of granite sliding into the ocean in degrees. 37, 49. It was two years ago since we came here. -Come on, I say to him. We cross the end of the of the road and navigate through the boulders and cacti along the path. As we descend, I feel the air thicken. Salt like nettles. Ahead, for some reason, the tide pool is a dark black. I slow, tie the dog to a branch and regard the gleaming layer. For some reason my reflection is nothing more than a dull figurine. The dog whimpers. I reach out with my hand. And then I vanish. I am 19, at a horrible electronic music show. The singer pulls a sheet over his body and shrieks into the microphone. I rattle off my list of four letter words and my friends rescue me. They drag me outside where it’s still light and dump me on a curb. I fumble for a cigarette that reaches my lips before I understand how. The light escapes me and suddenly I burn bright. A face, familiar and new acquiesces my premature death. I think I want to marry her and know instinctively that I will never see her again. She gives me a name that I forget and offers a hand. I reach forward. And then I vanish. Alexandra always regarded me with caution. We are at dinner. I am 28. I know our marriage won’t last I know she is gaining weight. I know my hair is starting to recede. I am not as fast as I used to be. I still stand straight, but my legs carry more than my frame. She and I once met as youngsters. She and I once fell in and out of love. Now in a different age, we have dinner, forget how we used to be and make vague promises. Land to spread out, air to breathe, a literary life. She turned me to Nabokov and Kinglsey Amis. She taught me that Russian beers are numbered to reflect your drunkenness. She excuses herself from the table, and suddenly the room changes. I see visions of myself stumbling in from every door. I am confused, because just one second ago I was here and I saw this. It lead me to that and now here I am. We shake, trying to clear out the fog. The poor bartender opens a few bottles and slides them down the bar. I am a set of ages and lifetimes. We amble, have the same taste in drinks, love the same songs. But no, I am 15. Jeff has just run into the street. We’ve been drinking. His sister bought us beer and a couple friends came over. Tonight is sweltering. July, and the Georgia air that stinks of sweat and mosquitos. We did shots of bad vodka, we swam and goaded the girls to remove their tops before hoping in the pool. The water was warm, and I felt floating through the chlorine and the floodlights that all my senses were deadened. I looked up to see the faint outline of clouds brushing past. Later we lit off fireworks. I remember my trunks still dripping and my feet caked in dirt. The bottle, fully loaded with munitions tips over. Meteors and cannonade stream past me. Jeff is 15 and so am I. He darts into the street hollering. I follow. Two bright stars explode. I pause to think. The universe tells us that all things are permitted, that in some incarnation I am 37 and swerving along a desert road. That give enough time, maybe not me, but a close approximation is staring down the sights of a rifle at a fine looking doe on a chill November morning. I am one ensemble in the sum of possibility and there are others around me, gathered by the void, we snack on tuna and crackers. We bask in the afternoon sun. So imagine if you will this. I am in a room at the end of a long day, struggling through drinks, wary that I’ll fail to stomach dinner. Versions of myself meander about. Some grab snacks, others talk quietly. At first, it was such a shock. Even to hear one’s voice projected in a mass, but now after a couple passes, it seems second nature. I converse with myself, I am 45, 52, primes, divisions of 3, dead, mangled, born again. The maitre d’ announces the first course. We precipitate towards tables, the same habit of crossing left over right and folding the napkin just. But I tarry behind. I think about the time in my youth, a feeling of warmth, sitting on a bed of pine needles. I’ve heard about a distant day from an old friend. About a walk under the Gothic arches of the place I so dearly called home. The creak in my knee is not yet come to pass. The knot in my wrist is only just now begun. I wince at the pinching of nerves and the grinding of joints and the momentary pain awakens me. I feel as if I can’t breathe, trapped here in this dinner party. Bunel was insufferable enough without himself as a guest. Do you think they remember who it was that told that story? She had brown hair, and I could at least never forget her. I wonder if she would recognize my face now. I wonder if she would notice the difference when I step back into that room. Some things can never be made right. Some things can never be made whole. Many of the others have given up, but I believe the next time through I can get it right. Around me. Like version of Judas, we conjure and we exist. We permute and arise, crowding an already suffocating room. We sin and we shuffle. God save us in our disgrace, our possibility. I bound for a door.

This is a throwaway account for a project I've been working on where once every few weeks, I pick a theme and over the next 5 nights, write 5 short stories about that theme. Each story can't take more than a night. This story was drawn from the theme, "Snobbery". ============= **The Monster from Midtown** I’m going to eat you, said the monster. Hmm, what, Cheryl replied. Darling it’s late, can’t we save it until morning. The monster was confused. Rawwwwwwrrrr he screamed. Ughhh, I know, tell me about. I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself. Every weekend. But say, thank you so much for taking me home from Alistair’s, God that man can sure throw a party. The monster had done no such thing. In fact he had abducted her stumbling up from midtown at four in the morning. He raised his claws and bared his fangs. He was hungry. He hadn’t enjoyed a proper human in weeks. Oblivious, Cheryl rummaged through her purse. Say, do you have a Xanax on you? I just can’t bare to be awake any longer. Oh good, here’s one. She crushed the pill up into a little line on the coffee table and snorted it with a twenty. Don’t look, I know it’s disgusting. God I’m sorry we had to meet like this, and I thought things were going so nicely at the bar. Well, this is me. We can talk about it in the morning ok? Promise. She fell backwards onto the couch, catatonic. Within a minute, she was snoring. This was horrible. The monster craved the taste of wriggling human. He prodded her with the tip of his claw. No response. He pounced up and down on the floor of the apartment. He hollered and beat his chest. Nothing. At last, he checked for a heartbeat. Satisfied she was still alive, he went to bed for the night dreaming of a hearty breakfast. He awoke to the sound of a blender. He groaned. Hi sleepy head, Cheryl said from the kitchen. Would it kill you to keep some fresh fruit around? I had to truck it two blocks to find the nearest grocer. Also, you didn’t tell me you lived on East 87th? And in the basement of an abandoned church? Helloo, that is so cool. These floors, my god, I would kill for these floors. The monster rushed into the kitchen. I’m going to eat you, he roared. Oh, Cheryl said, slightly taken aback. Come on, I wasn’t actually going to kill you for this place, although seriously, how’d you land such a nice pad? You must have killed somebody. It’s an absolute crime to have a place like this. She peered at him from over the blender. Huh, she said, I remembered you being cuter. Must have been the lighting. Well look, have a smoothie with me. It’s got B vitamins and dried kelp for the hangover. And then I really must be going. Brunch with the girls today. I have to get down all the way to 11th and 5th Ave. God, can you imagine how long that will take? He took the offered smoothie. It tasted like rotten seaweed. Rawwrrrr, he screamed, heaving the contents across the room. You’re mad at me. Ok, lets talk it out. I’m sorry about last night. Last night was..., well maybe you and I can just pretend last night never happened. Our little secret? Honestly, this is going to be embarrassing, but I can’t even remember your name. I’m Cheryl, and you are? The monster was stunned. No one had asked him for his name in over a hundred years. Frank, he replied. Well pleased to meetcha Frank, she said. You know, you are kinda growing on me. You’re quiet, I like that. Call me up this week? Do you like mussels? I know a great place on 13th st. She placed her card on the counter. Ciao, she said. Before Frank could finish deliberating whether to eat her or not, the door had clicked shut. He sighed. He was so hoping to spend a lazy Saturday, full and happy. He lifted her card. Cheryl Baker. He didn’t recognize the name of her company. A number and note were scribbled on the back. This is my cell. Don’t be shy, it read. Frank let out a dejected bellow. After some time, he called for Chinese. The delivery guy would do in a pinch. ==== He called her up. He wasn’t exactly sure why. Well number one, he was hungry again, but number two, there was something about her. She didn’t seem to mind that he was almost seven feet tall, covered in hair with sharp claws and fangs. It was a hard life being a monster with the torches and the slaying and the what not. Aside from other monsters (and he hated spending time with other monsters), no one had been nice to him in a very long time. I do miss being around someone nice. And, he thought, if things don’t turn out, I can always eat her. They went to the mussels place on 13th st. He gagged on the wine and spit it out all over the table. Hmm, she said, you’re right this wine is absolutely awful. Languedocs can be so hit or miss. She hated the way he dressed, all rags and burlap. Honey, she told him, I know it’s hard, but we’re not film majors at NYU anymore. You might be trying to make a statement, but it’s paralyzing being around you. Can you imagine the stares if I brought you to lunch with dad at the Union Club? He relented. She took him to a tailor by the Park and had him measured for a set of nice suits. Honestly she said one day at brunch with the girls, it feels like I’m dating a monster sometimes. I mean the things he wears? And how he eats? I swear I’ve never seen him chew. Darling, said Elise, he’s just like Bradley. You will not believe what he did. I found him in the kitchen shoving a hot dog down his throat, dribbling mustard all down the front of his shirt. I told him right then and there to cancel our reservation. No need showing up if you’re going to look like you came straight from a baseball game in the Bronx! Cheryl had already moved on in thought. I’m going to see if I can get his hair done, she said aloud. It’s hideously long. Did you not have the heart to tell him Grunge died in the 90s? Rachel mocked. The stylist in SoHo lopped off his mane and insisted he put some smelly oils in the remaining locks. The suit jackets made him feel constricted and itchy. The wines at dinner tasted like spoiled fruit. He absolutely despised frisse salads. Still, he went on with Cheryl. For some reason, he liked her. He liked how she talked incessantly. He liked the shiny bits of metal she wore. He liked going out in public without causing an uproar. When he went out alone, he was a monster. Around Cheryl, he felt, almost human. He began to appreciate the finer things in life. He enrolled in a wine class to refine his palette and slowly graduated from buttery Chardonnays and fruit bomb Cabernets to more nuanced Brunellos and Petite Syrahs. He took up squash with Cheryl’s brother and dominated at the club. He read up on the newest exhibits at the Guggenheim and sharp underground plays opening off Broadway on the Upper West. For the first time in decades, he was enjoying himself. Frank, Cheryl interrupted. They were at a late dinner at Bella’s on West 84th. The restaurant was closing. Only a few other diners remained. We need to talk. I’m all for openness and I think you and I have done a good job of being open with one another so I think it’s healthy if I just clear the air. I’m seeing someone else. Who, Frank growled. A nice guy I met down at a gallery in TriBeCa. You remember, it was that night you blew me off because you said you absolutely had to have some fresh human flesh. You know I’m a vegetarian, well pescetarian really. Anyway, could you blame me? I was disconsolate, I went alone and had a bunch of Sidecars and there he found me by the bar. But why? Frank said. Why? Why? Because it’s suffocating being around you lately Frank. You’ve changed. You used to be interesting, and now I swear, I can’t tell you apart from Dad’s golf buddies. Don’t you blame me now, it’s not like I haven’t tried. I do so much for us, when was the last time you put anything into this relationships? But my hair, my clothes, I did all of this for you. Oh please, I hate it when men are such pushovers. It’s the 21st century, honey you were doing yourself a favor not me. Besides, I liked the way you dressed before, it was so hip. You had style. It was too much for Frank. Something snapped. He snatched Cheryl and crammed her down his throat whole. The waiter screamed, and he ate him too. He devoured the other patrons before lazily munching on the kitchen staff. After picking the restaurant clean, he retired to a table, completely gorged. A long belch escaped from his stomach. The sommelier had been particularly heavy going down. Still, what a fine meal. He poked around the cellar and pulled out a dust covered bottle of Napoleon brandy, just the thing to help him digest.

Sept. 2010: Last month I lived in a shitty room with not a single light or window. I moved out of my parents in a rush. One day, didn't tell them I left. They found out when they realized my bed wasn't there anymore. From then on, I was a bottom-feeder. Took scrapes of friends. Without Jacob bringing me sandwiches from work, I probably would either be dead or dumpster diving. Then I went to finals across the country with my Musical Group. On no money, no phone (it broke), and one pair of socks. Longest ride home. First bus didn't start, second bus broke down in another state.. Cody's lady-the-time gave me and Cory a ride home. I gave Jacob the truck and said "You can use it if you move my stuff while I'm gone". The lease ended while I was out of town. I had no idea where our new place was. I got back at 2am from the journey from hell and discovered none of my stuff had been moved. The next day Jacob came by, showed me the new place, and I moved. No one helped. Let's go to October. Oct. 2010: Jacob's birthday. Lost my virginity to my best friend, Emma. Awkward drive home. I didn't tell anybody. I had no idea how to address it. Me and Kelly went to a Misfits Cover band on Halloween. Cops came. Cool story, right? Nov. 2010: I had been talking to Kelly from downstairs. We got along. She woke me up when she got done with her graveyard shift from work. She helps mental and physical disabled kids. We got along great. At some point we made out one night. First hook-up I really ever had had at that point. Later we discussed being friends-with-benefits. No emotional connection. The end of that comes later. So pretty much at this point, I had gotten laid, was kinda getting laid by a girl I was falling for but she didn't see me as anything more than a friend who can share intimate relations with. Dec. 2010: Pretty uninteresting until about mid-December. Kelly and I had had sex a few times, I was spending a lot of time with her. We went to Boston. Alright time, I wish I had explored more. Met some of her friends. Pretty interesting people. One girl told us a story of how some guy was hasseling her for being gay and she straight up punched him. Broke his jaw, concussion, broken teeth, and a mark of his teeth in her knuckles. She warned him. Good to hang out and have a few drinks with. A few days later she hooked-up with Don (who lived upstairs). She had told me she liked him. It should have come to no surprise to me. But I got mad. I felt betrayed and used. We had a little fight for a minute. "Cleared the air" for a quick second. Then we stopped hanging out all together. Christmas was awful. I never felt so depressed and confused in my life. Jan. 2011: Got a job at Generic Coffee Shop. Good wage, shitty tips but it was worth it. Met some new friends. Friends I wish I still hung out with more often these days. Anyway, this is when I started drinking and smoking weed almost every night. I'm sure I made an ass of myself. I know I destroyed relationships with friends. I was burning a bridge with Kelly. Hanging out with Ethan. I was forgetting who I was. I didn't care. Not being able to think was God's gift to me. I would be hungover almost every day. Everyday became a question if I can get fucked-up that day. This lasted for a few months. As you'll see I won't be able to recall most of what happens in the coming months. Feb. 2011: Nothing significant. I went to a Musical Group rehearsal and played some music only to not return for a few months. I remember drinking as much as I could, smoking as many cigarettes that I could, smoking as much weed as I could. Not remembering as much as I could. I felt weak. Every second awake was another step to falling to my knees. Sorry Mom and Dad, this isn't my finest moment. March 2011: Went to a bar for $1 taps and rails for my bosses birthday. Got a flat tire on the way and got way too drunk. I'm happy I had to get a cab home. Probably drank every night that month. April 2011: I went to Musical Group's rehearsals at this point. Learned as much music as I could. New exercise book. I liked it more than the original. This is when I first started to realize how depressed I really was. I couldn't see an end, couldn't think of the future. I could barely feed myself a meal a day. I couldn't even think of the day. I was working any day I wasn't in the small town where this group is from. Every night was a night I questioned everything I did. Every move, every word, every fucking face gesture. Maybe its because everything slowed down. Consistant scheduling made it easy to fall into a pattern and think more. May 2011: The month of my birthday. My 21st birthday. What did I do? I went to the comedy club and returned to see that Ethan had bought a bottle of Jameson. I sat with Ethan, drank some whiskey, and feel asleep. Most of my friends forgot. Some texted and made plans the following Friday. Those plans didn't happen. In retrospect, I can't be mad or disappointed in them. I was a shitty friend and didn't deserve they're gratitude. Musical Group rehearsals started taking over my life. June 2011: Beginning of the summer. Working at the cube and Generic Coffee Shop. It was a lot of feeling tired. That's what I remember. Drank too much. July 2011: There is a girl named Zoey who lived downstairs. We knew each other, smoked cigarettes together. Didn't really hang out. She had slept with Jayden (roommate) a few times earlier that winter. Near the end of the month we agreed to be friends-with-benefits. I never fucking learn. This time, shit got more real. We were hanging out hours a day. Doing whatever. Basically dating. We slept with each other most nights, open with each other, cooked, watched movies. Yeah, how the fuck did this happen? Ethan went on vacation. He got completely fucked-up on drugs and booze. Hearing some of the stuff made me scared for his well-being. He came home early on account of personal matterss. He hasn't been the same since. August 2011: One month left with the Musical Group. Part of me is happy and excited. The other is disappointed in the fact that I missed my friends and family almost weekend for this. I was questioning how much this is worth it. I stuck through for it. Zoey and I were, in my opinion, the most serious at this point. I remember distinctly at this point when we were watching a movie with Ethan in my apartment. We were sitting next to each other. I had my hand out in a relaxed position, and she grabbed it. I didn't know what was going on? I don't know why I over-analyzed it so much, but what in the fuck is this? Where is this going? Should I start thinking about us in a different way? I like her, she liked me. But she's a graduate student and I'm a fucking delivery boy (this is around the time I got a job delivering for my new job on my bike). I had no idea what to think. September 2011: We won. The Musical Group I'm apart got 1st in our division. I don't remember if I was happy or just relived it was over. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be anywhere but there. About a day later I was. Back in my home town. Tired, exhausted, sore, bruised, sun burnt, and happy to be back home. Greg's 21st birthday. We went on a bike ride and hung out. Everyone was drunk except me and Jacob. It was still a pretty awesome time. October 2011: Jacob's birthday. I dropped the ball. I had no money to spend. I felt like the worst friend in the world. Of course Jacob didn't really care. He's just wanted to hang out with friends like always. Not a big party, just wanted to hear his friends say happy birthday. Later that month, Zoey went and hung out with some friends. She met a guy named Jack. She said that she wasn't interested in him and she doesn't want anything like a relationship. As Halloween neared and she went to the some show with him, I knew she liked him. She admitted it. We talked and decided we should stop what we're doing so we can pursue new things. I wasn't mad, I really wasn't. But I was hurt. We immediately stopped hanging out as much. Communication was pretty much stopped. Understandable, we both needed space. But because the dynamic to the relationship changed. I had no idea what to think. Were we still friends? Did she care (I realize now that she did care, but like me probably didn't know how to approach the situation). While I was with her my drinking and smoking cut down drastically. And, as you probably guessed, after I was drinking way too fucking much. I became uninterested in almost everything. I stopped going to class for about two weeks and called in sick to work more than I wish to admit. This is when I started to think of moving out. I was sick of the name-calling from roommmates, lack of personal space. Lack of respect at work (with Jayden and Brian). I just couldn't think anymore. Every night was a guessing game of what was going to happen. Worse than before. My mind was full of so many negative thoughts. My roommates were bragging about how they haven't paid rent. How they don't care. I'm at my body's limit. I have headaches everyday and can hardly sleep. I have to stick to my guns and fucking skip Dodge. Well there you have it. My life for about the past year. Probably not that descriptive. Don't even know if this qualifies as a short story.

There came a time when silence fell. But before that, there was noise. Explosions and screams and cries for help that were never answered. Grating metal screeches as corporate buildings fell, collapsing under the weight of their own lies. Children of children killing children. Yet, remarkably the sun still came up the next morning and shone down over the cold metallic remains. No cries. No screams. No breaking glass. Just silence and sun and an iron-like tang at the back of the throat. You would be forgiven for thinking that this happened in a different place, at a different time. It didn't. And that's when I awoke. "Hello?" I heard you call. "Hello!" "Where are you?" The voice was faint, thready. "I'm here!" I began to search. "No." A belligerent statement of fact. "No, I'm here. I'd see you if you were too. Don't you know where you are?" But we found each other, eventually. Together, we took off our clothes, and walked 'round our little town. We tore the paper from the walls, the carpet from the floor. We burnt those framed photographs and ripped out the wires. We returned all that oil to far underground, where it belonged. We took it all down, every building, brick by brick, until only scrub-covered ground remained. And then we sat, and compared notes on what it means to exist. And in a thousand years time when the aliens finally discover this lonely blue dot, they'll see us and they'll know that you and I, we didn't destroy ourselves. Or they won't, because we will be gone.

I awoke to a slight peculiarity; a bluebird rat tap tapping on my window. My eyes graced the light and I found myself in a haze as I stared at the creature and greeted it with my yawn. “Hello bluebird.” The bed was warm and I was comforted by a recurrent dream before waking. Every night I would see the blue streams behind my childhood home grace the red Georgia banks and meander into the orange sunlight. I would follow the current for as long as it would take me. It’s a funny thing, dreams. They give you no collateral and yet you feel your world surely busting at its seams; life, in its most primitive light. I would run and get winded and the foliage would blow with the cardinal winds and I was happy. And then, like today, I awaken to find myself alone. My legs sent dust roaring into the air as they swung into the side of the bed. I was up and it was a new day. I walked downstairs to see my caretaker, Susanne, making me coffee and grits. I was hungry. So hungry. My house is far too big and I am beginning to regret accepting this large inheritance. It has been five years since she’s been gone; it has been five long years and I still haven’t collected myself. I remember watching the sun go down with her in my arms; we would sit in my grandmother’s rickety swinging bench in the back woods. The sun would set and we would swing the chair with gentle nudges. Crick. Crick. Crick. The small pond would illuminate and we were happy. Her father was a bloodhound from the locomotive business; although, she had detached herself completely from her family. They were old money and she somehow squeezed enough money out of that old prick to last us a lifetime. At the wedding he walked up to me and said, “Don’t fuck this up.” His smile was gleaming as he turned around and reassured everybody that he was a good and noble man. The entire family blamed me when she died. “Darin, Darin!” Susanne had to yell because I had no hearing out of my right ear. I had seen the bluebird again; it had brought a plump worm to feed its children outside the window sill. “Eat your grits hon, Dr. Chung will be here soon.” I slurped up the grits and walked into the living room and lied down. My head fucking killed. I left my fifth upstairs. I have become accustomed with leaving a bottle close to my bed in case my past meets me in my nightmares.

Tom woke to the sound of blaring music once again, his tired eyes glanced over to his clock “5:00” it read. “What the hell is going on?” Tom decided to go investigate further, he peeked out of his room to discover his roommate Guy and 3 other people getting drunk in the living room. “I can’t do this much longer.” Tom thought, reflecting on the many times Guy has done similar things. “Well, might as well get ready for work.” he murmured, heading to the bathroom. He glanced in his mirror almost not recognizing what he saw before him, his once neat black hair had become greasy and unkempt and his skin was growing more and more pale, his arms growing skinnier. The more hours Tom had to put in at his work as an I.T. Consultant the worse and worse he looked. “Today’s the day.” he said, forcing a smile on his face “Today’s the day.” The day seemed to drag on, seconds felt like hours, minutes like days. Tom had been planning on quitting his job for months now, working up the courage to do so. He was not very confident and rarely acted out on his desires. He was constantly being harassed by his boss George Howard who was a very controlling man and often went the extra mile to make Tom miserable. Tom was on break when he passed George’s office, he knocked on the door. “What!?” George screamed, as if Tom was about to pull his teeth. Tom froze, speechless, he knew what he wanted to say but the words were not coming out. “Quit standing there like a fucking moron and get back to work.” Tom’s face was becoming red as he remembered all the times George had harassed him at work. ”Screw you fat ass.” Tom said immediately regretting what he said. George’s eyes bulged out of his head. “What the hell did you just say to me” George was now stomping closer and closer to Tom. “Fuck, yo-.“ Before Tom could get his word out George’s fist met his face with stunning force. Tom’s body went limp as his head hit the floor with a loud thump. “It’s about time you woke up, you were starting to worry us.” Tom heard as he was opening his eyes. “Where am I?” “St. Josephs Hospital.” She replied. The woman was tall and had long brown hair. “You’re way to hot to be a nurse.” Tom was surprised by his own bluntness. “Thank you Tom” she said, she didn’t seem effected by his comment at all. “What is that?” Tom said referring the green liquid she was putting in his I.V. “Just something to sooth the nerves.” As soon as she injected the liquid Tom felt a Freezing tingling sensation all over his body and was unable to move. “Damn it!” he thought, “What the hell is going on!” His vision began to tunnel as his nurse drew closer. She slipped something around his neck and give him a kiss on the mouth. “Good luck Tom, you’ll need it” He immediately passed out. “Am I stuck in some sort of dream? I can’t be.” He thought as he finally came to. He quickly reached around his neck to reveal what the mystery woman left him. “What the hell?” It was a bight silver key with a ball on the end, Tom examined it further T.K. “Those are my initials, this has got to be a coincidence” Tom didn’t have much time to look at the key before a strange man in a black over coat barged into the hospital. “Where the hell is she!?” he screamed “Where is the key?” Tom’s eyes light up “There is no way he’s talking about this.” He thought. “Where is the woman!?” he kept yelling. Tom overheard a nervous clerk stating they don’t know what he’s talking about. Just then the man pulls out a gun. “Screw this!” Tom said, jumping up head still pounding from the punch. He spotted a door down the hall with an exit sign. As he was stealthily making his way to the door he spotted his clothes on the chair next to him quickly grabbing them as quietly as possible. “What the hell is up with today?” he thought getting closer and closer to the door. The man with the gun was growing more angry, he let out a warning shot sending everyone into panic. Tom had finally reached the door, grabbed the handle and pulled with all his might, the door wouldn’t budge, it was locked. “Can this day get any worse.” he thought. Just then the glimmer from the key caught his eye. “Well it’s worth a try.” He thought as he took it off his neck and cupped it in his hand. “Tom Keen!!” Tom turned around and froze like a deer in the headlights, the man with the gun was now pointing it at him and walking his way. “Give me the God Damn key Tom before people get hurt!” Tom glanced at the key and smiled moving it closer and closer to the door, all Tom could think about was how he wanted to be home in his own bed. “Tom I will shoot you if you don’t hand it over!” Tom thought for a second looked towards the door and back at the man with the gun “Fuck yo-“ Just then the door opened with a bright light that absorbed Tom. Tom woke up in a sweat, looking around he was in his room, blaring music coming from the living room he glanced at the clock as it read “5:00”. Tom was beginning to freak out he immediately look down at his hand to reveal that key still grasp firmly in his fist. “What the hell is happening?” He looked at the key again, He began smiling drawing it close to his bedroom door. “I want to go to Paris.” he said half jokingly. As soon as the key touched the door it flew open with the same bright light and in the blink of an eye Tom was standing only a few feet away from the Eiffel Tower. Tom then grew the biggest smile. “Today’s the day.

Hey guys thought i'd share my short story. I could use some feedback with grammar and formatting and just your thoughts on how it read/flowed etc. Let me know what you think. >Festival Del Abismo The traveler was walking up the ancient cobble stone road, up a hill, towards the ruined castle of Alhambra. Centuries of the Festival Abismo left a permanent frost of wax on the ground, dripped from the thousands of candles the people of the town, twirl, juggle, fight; and any other thing they are struck with inspiration to do with. The layer of wax in the road, which by this time had penetrated every pore in the stone, made it very difficult to walk up the steep hill without slipping. It was in the afternoon, in the middle of July, and the combination on the heat and the coming festival drove most people in the town to their homes; partially to escape the heat, but mostly to prepare themselves for the long night ahead. Sabio however knew nothing about the festival, and walked up the slick road with the sun burning in his face. He wanted to see the old fortress, and found it odd that no one could be found on the only road which led to the most magnificent thing in the small town. Presently he walked, struggling with his footing as he climbed the steep slippery hill, towards the courtyard of the ancient fortress. His frayed jeans were sticking to his legs which were moist with sweat, his long hair was plastered to his forhead and sweat was dripping from his back, which was now soaking wet from the heat, and the backpack which held all of his belongings. Sabio was used to travelling by the time he reached this point in southern Spain. He was struck with inspiration and purpose to leave all of his comfort he had at his home. Although he didn’t know what he was supposed to be looking for, he knew in his heart that by travelling he would find out what this splinter in his mind was. There was something wrong, but he didn’t know what, and though he didn’t know what could possibly be wrong, he knew his answer laid somewhere the road was bound to take him. Once he eventually made it to the castle, he let his backpack drop carelessly from his back. Even though he had been travelling this way for many months, nothing had compared to the intense heat that this region in the world was accustomed to. In his misery he decided to take a break on a deserted bench, in the shade of a large tree, in the middle of the deserted courtyard. “Finally some rest, some fucking relief from this shit sun” he said to himself. The heat had penetrated his otherwise restful resolve and made him loathe the very act of existing in this present state. “Well if it isn’t a foreigner “, a laughing voice said, “People who aren’t from here usually aren’t used to the heat that can come during the summer. But to use such language in the presence of this beautiful palace, now, perhaps that’s a little much.” Sabio was startled to find an old man dressed in what seemed to be a monks brown robe, with a hood so large that the shadow covered most of the old man’s face so that only his chin and his white beard were visible to anyone looking, sitting right next to him on what he thought was a deserted bench. He was also surprised because he was sure that he had merely thought to himself about the heat. “Is it your people’s custom,” stumbled Sabio, “to sneak up on unexpecting travelers like this?” “If you mean that these are my people, then you are mistaken. But no, it is not their custom to sneak up on people, and I hardly believe I have snuck on anyone, as it was you who sat next to me.” “No one was here when I sat down, I would of noticed you, unless the heat is making me not see clearly.” “Perhaps, perhaps its not the heat.” Chuckled the old man, slightly amused with himself. “What do you mean old man?” barked Sabio, the heat had already driven his patience low, and he did not have the time for a crazy old man. Nevertheless his starvation for human interaction and his curiosity got the better of him, despite his lack of patience. “What’s your name, anyways?” “My name? A good question, but it’s not so much fun to just give it to you is it? And besides what’s your name? Or is it just impatient traveler?” “My name is Sabio, and now yours.” “Well like I said it wouldn’t be too much fun to just give you my name, but what if we played a little game, maybe then you will know my name.” “You’re crazy, old man. Just say your name.” sighed Sabio, he now knew that he was locked in a conversation with a insane man, surely homeless, and the heat trapped him in his place, he could think of no way to get out of it.“Forget it” he said “don’t give me your name, and no games, just be quiet and let me enjoy my rest out of the sun.” The old man sighed, and a breeze came through the courtyard. Sabio's sweat started to dry, and he was no longer hot. There they sat in the breezy shade for a great time. As comfort started to mount in Sabio, so did his regret for treating the old man so rude. He took a deep breath, and then said: “Sorry for treating you so rude, I was already impatient and it wasn’t entirely your fault. Now if you forgive me, what is your name?" “Oh so the breeze has given your old nature back to you I see. Well then, like I said before it wouldn’t be much fun to just give you my name. Do you like riddles?” “Fine” said Sabio, who was in no mood to argue, and now was curious to what this old man was up to. “What is this riddle then?” “Well if you can answer the riddle, then you will know my name. Fair enough? You look smart enough to figure it out, and besides, who doesn’t like a riddle?” Said the old man, who now had a mischievous grin. “I am: The prerequisite of practice, The framework for a fact, Enabler of enterprise Ancestor of every act” The old man smiled. “prerequisite of practice…” Sabio mumbled to himself as he was thinking of the riddle. “I have no idea, what’s the answer?” “What’s the point of a riddle if you don’t even try to figure it out” chuckled the old man. “At least try and find an answer, that’s the point of a riddle isn’t it?” Sabio sat there, in the shade. His stomache tighened, and a surge ran through his body. The heat caught his breath, and silently he refused to think. “I can’t think of the answer, will you please just tell me so I don’t have to constantly think about it. This is going to bother me all day.” “Then we will sit here all day. You don’t have an important date tonight do you? Just relax and try to think.” “Just tell me the answer please, im bored of this riddle. And besides it’s not as hot as it was, and I would like to continue on and see the castle. Maybe I’m not too late for a tour.” “There are no tours today, the Festival is today, the whole town is getting ready. Besides, who cares about tours and art anyways? How much value you humans put in visual sensations, it’s very amusing.” Sabio clenched his jaw, the old man's voice was like ice to his teeth. Sabio stared intentley at a bird off in the distance; he laughed. Sabio was now absolutely certain of the insanity of the old man. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news to you old man, but you are as human as anyone else in this town.” “I wonder how you can be so sure, when you don’t even know my name.” Sabio ignored him. The old man chuckled.

”Keep moving,” Melnik said silently, ”the station is just some minutes away!”. The four men kept moving through the dark metro tunnel, walking silently over the dead beasts they had just shot. “Where had they come from?” Oleg said nervously, “this tunnel is supposed to be safe!”, “Stay silent! You know how good they can hear!” Arytom answered. The beasts were as big as dogs, looking like some kind of rats without any hair. With no eyes and sharp teeth, these rats used their ears and nose to track down their prey. The only light in the tunnel came from the flashlights they had taped on the sides of their AK-47s, the light was weak and only lit up a small path ahead. Anything could hide beyond that light, or behind them. After some minutes Anton said “I think we are safe now, if it was anymore of them they would have shown some sign by now”. “Yeah, maybe you are right” Arytom answered. Then they heard it, steps behind them. They turned around quickly, guns ready, pointing into the darkness. “Who`s there? Show yourself!” Melnik said. More steps joined the first, then more, and then the steps turned into running. “Run! They are too many!” Melnik said, firing some shots blindly in the direction of the running. An inhuman shriek where heard, he had hit something. They started to run, hoping the station was not far away. Rats could run faster than humans, everyone knew that. They were closing in, every second they came closer. Melnik could almost hear they breathing, it was terrifying. Nobody will ever know what happened to them, their bodies would be dragged into the smaller side tunnels, where no sane human ventures. Then, in the distance, they could see some light. A red and weak emergency light over a huge metal gate with no opening, blocking the entire metro tunnel. “There it is! Open up! We are humans! Open!” Oleg screamed, and then they reached the gate. Oleg started to knock like a madman on the gate, “open god damn it! We are humans! Open!”. The other three men turned around and started to fire into the darkness, the beasts started to scream, furiously. “Maybe they are not there? Maybe they have left the station?” Oleg said, “Shut up and start to fire!” Melnik said. He turned around and joined the other men, “They are closing!”. The gate made a loud noise and then started to swing slowly inwards. “Get inside!” Melnik shouted, the men threw them self inside while the gate started to close again. You could just see some of the rats coming into the light before the gate slammed shut. The rats slammed into the gate, screaming like monsters before eventually turning silent and disappearing into the darkness once more. “Welcome to Smolenskya!” one of the gate guards said with a huge smile, “the greatest station is Moscow!”, “Fuck you” Anton answered back laughing.

I'm not looking for content feedback (welcomed anyways), but I'd like input from other people who like to put words together. How do mine come across? Any suggestions? Piece: I participated in this... existential lecture series once. It was a multi-stage, focus intensive program that asked us to go over and over the stories we told in our lives. To ourselves, and to each other. It also asked us to to notice the occurrence, in the telling of stories and talking to people in general, of preamble. How often and to what degree we would use it. This first part of the program was really exciting to me. It validated and illuminated a number of esoteric and philosophical things I had been looking into in my life already. When it came time for the next stage of the program (which consisted in part of itemizing in detail the social network of our lives) I, and the people I was participating with, all balked. Each of us at that point said, 'No, we don't want to do this anymore.' The people who were running the program tried for a good hour to convince me otherwise. Much as the people of a later baptist-run group would try to convince me not to leave. What I remember most about that first incident though, was, them asking me to look for what was behind the 'No'. I did look, and there was nothing there. Just the No.

I walked down the street again. I had walked this street so many times, and yet I still called it a street. It was an avenue by trade, but street sounds better. Looking onward I saw a group of people that I thought could have been friends of mine, or at least some of them. I didn’t have that many friends, and even fewer that would stand to talk in a circle like that. So I lowered my expectations accordingly. It turned out to be another of many groups of people that I didn’t mind, but didn’t befriend. I figured that I would stop as I got to the circle, say hi maybe, and then see where the conversation went. It didn’t go so well, after saying hi and then them saying hi back the conversation continued on it seems to be about a group of people I didn’t know, saying things I didn’t hear about. So I left.

Chapter 1: It Lurks.. I awaken from unconsciousness. All that I can remember is a tremor from the jolting impact, and piercing screams. The screams haven't yet subsided. Corpses, and several injured lay scattered on the deck. How could have what happened taken lives? Where is half our crew? ..Where are the limbs of the fresh amputees? Something tells me I shouldn't want to know the answers.. Oak scraps from our ship lay afloat surrounding the great boulder that our bow had met. The silver rock peeks its towering tip through the crystal waters surface. Yet, we are over one of the deepest depths of the ocean.. At its peak I notice some trees swaying their beryl crowns in the wind; there's life on the other side. This stranded boulder is a small isle. Facing the stone wall of the island, the sun beats it's sweltering heat upon our backs. The haze in the sky rapidly glides to the west, towards the bright star. The dark of day is nearing. The ships crew are frozen in shock. In disbelief of what had happened. I cant remember anything since our disembark. I must have hit my head hard. I feel for blood; but I'm relieved to find dryness. I hear talk of a thick fog consuming the air around us, and quickly fading after the crash. The air feels so dry though. What these men had seen could not have been fog. The scent of rotting fish hits our senses hard as in the distance we spot the feasted remains of an enormous whale. Bubbles then begin to surface under a hundred meters and outward away all around us. Many torn apart colossal mammals then pollute the void in all directions. Something bigger than anything known to man has done this. Large half eaten ocean creatures of sorts gradually surface around our wreck. The strong scent of decay hints a near future fate. The gruesome scene paints the water's surface a murky, crimson shade. The crew panics and let's fear take control of action; Loud splashes clap around our vessel as lifeboats collide with the fluctuating waves. I stand back, unable to shout to try to stop them, for I've been mute since birth. Leaving me incapable of warning them that I had just seen something. Enormous, dark, but a great distance away. It submerges back into the skies reflection before anyone else notices. More than sixty men make off in over ten small rowboats. They travel in the direction of the port we sailed from days ago. Toward what I had seen. The breeze completely dies, bringing the raging waves to a complete halt. The screams of the injured are all that is heard now. Along with the faint, in the distance panting of those fleeing. Cries of men I had known for years echo across the still, glazed ocean. The silence behind the painful cries is eerie.. As if the world respites it's rotation. The clouds lay hovering at a standstill. This is the last bit of peace these brave men will temporarily grasp. Not far ahead of the paddling men the calm water's surface erratically ruptures. It's as if a volcano erupted just below the ocean's skin. In complete panic, the men spin their boats. They bolt back toward our shredded ship. As soon at the water calms the unearthly silence returns.. A deafening shriek shreds the dead air. We spin, looking in all directions. Nothing. But I know something is coming, because I can feel Death breathing down my neck. Chapter 2: The Rogue The piercing screech finally withdraws after what felt like the most fearful moment of my life. The direction it came from is still not known. The deafening sound consumed the entire plain and its echo took off in all directions. It was as if it came from exactly where we are. Our ships rippling silhouette stretches west, toward the sun. Minutes ago it was inching its way up the cliff-side. This must just be a nightmare. But my head continues to throb.. The men in the water glare at the boat, terrified. Some, so casually, turn back toward sea. And continue to escape their fate. The others remain, staring in shock. Everyone falls silent. One of the crew members gazing to our skeletal vessel takes off his steel pendant. He angles it to catch the sun's glare and begins reflecting it off the ships sail. He begins covering the necklace with the other hand, and performs some sort of pattern: Quick flash. Long flash. Quick flash. Break. Quick flash.. Morse code. He does the pattern repeatedly, until we notice what he's coding. -Run- Immediately after our realization of the message, a big glare blinding us from looking in that direction consumes the man's boat. We hear the water frantically splashing and the men on the boat wailing out for help. The screams turn into *gurgles*, leading us to believe they were dragged to the abyss. Panic explodes onto each of our faces. Most of the remaining twenty or so crew sprint across the torn apart deck, and towards the rock wall that our ship is crushed into. Three men: Logan, Dante, Captain Rhinestone and I decide to hastily head down into the cabin to gather survival supplies. Just in case this stranded isle becomes our home for a while. That is, if we survive this unknown invasion. Also, a few injured men were brought down into the cabin while I was unconscious. Two of which I've known since childhood. I'm not stepping off this ship without them. I lead the way. Halfway down the ladder a billow of smoke seeps up and forces my choke. I get struck with the smell of burnt lumber, and flesh. As I reach the unsteady floorboards a blaze of fire bleeds through the wall across from me. Our lanterns must have smashed. But when? Men had been down here since the crash.. Dante leaps off of the second last step of the unsteady ladder and almost hurls from the scent. His tall, broad form shakes planks beneath our feet. "Sorry I've kinda been mockin' yer disability since the crash, brother", he grunts. "Hadn't been able to find the words to say about any of this.. Shock, y'know?" His grammar bothers me even in the most critical situations. "We gotta hurry, the other two scared bastards are waitin' up top the ladder. We'll throw them up the shit we need. Oh, and let me know if you find a barrel." I wish I could tell him to shut the hell up and get his ass moving. "Those fatasses are so lazy". He splurts, bent over, heaving to find some fresh air. Speak for yourself. It's too bad this idiot isn't mute. Is he deaf and blind, though? Does he not notice what's going on? My best friend and I make the perfect scavenging team.. I disregard his order and race to the bunks in the back of the ship's cabin. Where the bodies of the injured would of been resides a huge hole in the floor. Blood-soaked water rushes in. 'We gotta move, James. I'm sorry 'bout 'em but the ship is capsizin'!" I nod, and then scurry around the floor for supplies where a tipped shelf lies. What's been happening doesn't fully hit me until these crushing losses. I've known these two longer than I have known anyone else in my life. Luke and Cayan. Identical twin brothers. But their personalities were the complete opposite. They helped me through the loss of my parents at age 12. Guided me through the difficult times in school. We had spend almost every waking hour together during our childhood. But I will selfishly save this mourning until I'm safe. I gather up lots of food, flint, and a few small jugs of water and toss them into an old potato sack. Dante stumbles towards the ladder. Coughing, trying to keep below the smoke. In his hands, a large barrel of ale. What is wrong with him?! I'll just let the captain deal with him.. Pft. Actually, the fat drunk'll probably pat him on the back for the courageous rescue of his brew. "Those selfish pricks!" Dante exclaims. "They took off without us!" He begins calling for them. No response. But continues, any ways. He's clueless. Something's wrong. I haul the sack over my shoulder and race over to and up the ladder. I gaze to the island; Logan and Rhinestone are already a quarter of the way up the 50 meter vertical incline. Climbing surprisingly fast for big bellied drunks. Those selfish pricks.. The rest of the crew stand up top. Staring at me, shouting something, pointing fiercely towards the ocean. Before I turn, I already notice the horrific scene out of the corner of my eye. An enormous wall of water approaches the stone wall. Approaches the remains of our ship. Some people call them tidal rogues. Towering masses of water jolting through the oceans. No one has ever gotten close enough to one and lived to tell about it. It's about two miles away. Within it I notice something.. Some sort of huge silhouette. Distorted due to the white caps of the wave. It's no trick being played on my eyes.. There's something in the rogue. I turn to Dante and frantically jester him with my arms to get the hell up here. The fool gives me a funny look, as if he thinks I'm trying to frighten him. He slowly makes his way up. Drop the barrel, you stupid fool! I start panicking. Punching the deck to get his attention. Leaving smeared blood streaks, but in too much of a rage to notice any pain. "Yeah, yeah. Nice try." *SNAP* The weight of him and the barrel between his arm combined breaks the wooden ladders rung and he plummets back into the cabin. He splashes into knee-deep water. "Damnit, my ass! Yeah better not be laughing!!" He looks up at me with a snarly look upon his face. I'm grin-less, wide eyed. "What?! Don't freak me out, man!" he says, nervously, "The water'll raise me up in a few minutes." But we don't have a few minutes.

All at once your anger dissipates, so fast as to be smoke from a fire. You look and me and smile, a twisted line drawn across a clown's face. "Wanna see something cool?" You ask me, knowing how eager I would be to agree. You walk to the window and chirp, a bird like whistle that has me leaning in, fascinated. A bird, a robin with eyes brighter than the midday sun and wings like pointed razor blades hops closer, seemingly compelled to follow you. Closer, closer and closer still until it crosses the boundary, enters our world through the portal of a window frame. You reach out a hand, so slowly you are barely moving. And, to my surprise, it lets you. "Beautiful," I say, barely more than a breath. You continue reaching, until, at last, you finger brushes its wing. At once, it hops backwards, soaring straight for the window, but you get there first and slam it shut. The bird flies straight into it, chirping angrily; showing true terror in every action. You turn to me. "This is what they do to us" You say, expression blank, angry. "That's not beautiful, that's cruelty." And, despite the hurt done, I learnt more in that conversation than in all my years of schooling.

“There was a time when our rights were protected and guarant—“ “'Once upon’ need not imply 'ever after,' Mr. Wordsworth. This is not the place for those trite diatribes and flippant reproaches. The tongues of your forefathers have long been deserted and so too their ideals. Their doctrines are fancies that delighted only derelict minds: the simple, the dull, the bitter; those who have rendered themselves inept and unfortunate. A man of your stature undoubtedly knows better. This is a new age, Mr. Wordsworth -- one unsullied by those literal interpretations of that sputum, and one with complexities far beyond the scope of any ill-conceived grandiose forerunning notion-- no matter how savory and ‘just’... I digress. Good trick. Now to the crux of our engagement, do tell me Mr. Wordsworth, how does it feel to betray the trust of an innocent?” “Would you stop that?! I have rights! I didn’t do anything to my daughter!” “Let the record reflect that Mr. Wordsworth is impenitent and regards rape as his ‘right’. This hearing is-- “ “That’s not what I meant!” “You’re admitting to a falsifying your own testimony? None too wise. You have the gall to criticize the High Office and now the audacity to mislead me, Mr. Wordsworth?” “What? No!” “These are very serious charges, Mr. Wordsworth. Perjury, sedition…” “Sedition?” “Sed-it-ion, Mr. Wordsworth.” “Yes, I understand th—“ “You understand the charges. Good! Mr. Wordsworth, you are hereby--” “No!” “‘No’, Mr. Wordsworth? From where does a condemned man summon such impudence?” “I know what sedition is.” “Indeed, and quite intimately it seems. What else may we call your adherence to atavistic ideals? Your point on the matter, Mr. Wordsworth?” “I subscribe to the maxims that have defined The Homeland in the past but I have not engaged in treason of any sort.” “I fail to see your point Mr. Wordsworth.” “A simple belief does not necessitate malice.” “Oh, Mr. Wordsworth?” “So, may I go?” “Surely you jest, Mr. Wordsworth. I have yet to see your point. Your argument is muddled and rife with contradictions.” “Contradictions?” “I should hope you aren’t being deliberately provocative, Mr. Wordsworth; the consequences of intellectual crimes are grave.” “Intellecu—“ “I grow weary of this. It’s simple; implicit in you familiarity with a concept is your having knowledge of it. Knowledge is preceded by contemplation, Mr. Wordsworth. Contemplation precedes action.” “And?” “And, Mr. Wordsworth? Evident in your general ardor for abandoned archetypes is the fact that you have contemplated—at great length—treasonous acts. You are familiar with the work of The Founders, you are complicit in subversive schemes. A loyalist to his home and countrymen would never even consider--“ “That’s nonsense!” “Quite the contrary, Mr. Wordsworth. Certainly you are a conspirator in a plot to bring harm unto the insignia that so proudly adorns your vest! Conspiring to….” “I have done no such thing!” “The High Office does not look lightly upon traitors found in their midst, Mr. Wordsworth.” “These allegations are baseless!” “These ‘allegations’ are nothing to scoff at, Mr. Wordsworth.” “You are holding me without cause! My house was raided and seized without warrant!” “I have had enough of this flailing defense and your brazen impishness, Mr. Wordsworth. Naiveté and ignorance will not prevail here. “ “Defense? I have been afforded no such opportunity. “ “Mr. Wordsworth, these past five minutes have been an exercise in tedium. Either you comply now or you shoulder the full brunt of your actions. Where were you on the evening of June 12?” “At my house. Being arrested.” “A sharp criticism, Mr. Wordsworth. Shall I add sardonic wit to the list of charges?” “That’s r—“ “Silence. Your daughter, Mr. Wordsworth?” “If I must…Every Thursday my ex-wife goes out of town on business. She hires a baby-sitter to watch over m—our daughter. I pay the sitter four times her going rate to not show up until a half hour before my wife gets back…“ “Bribery, Mr. Wordsworth.” “…you know, make the place look lived in, put my daughter to sleep when I bring her back.” “Kidnapping, Mr. Wordsworth.” “As you and your agents know, I was with my daughter on the evening of June 12. “ “So your alibi is that you indeed were with your daughter at the time you were raping your daughter, Mr. Wordsworth?” “She never lets me see her…” “With good reason, Mr. Wordsworth!” “…I just love her so much.” “If you call it that: probably too much, Mr. Wordsworth!” “Stop that!” “Let me stop you, Mr. Wordsworth. This is a unique -albeit misguided- defense; quite nuanced. So I ask again Mr. Wordsworth, am I to understand that you have admitted to being with your daughter at the time you raped her?” “I was with her, but I would never rape her!” “Semantics, Mr. Wordsworth.” “Hardly! What is it that you want from me? I’ve told you everything I can. I’ve done nothing wrong!” “I see, Mr. Wordsworth. Rape is just a polite unmentionable done in the privacy of a man’s home with his kidnapped daughter forcibly held captive.” “End the charade. What is this really about?” “Have you been completely absent minded? I should have presumed as much from your nonsensical offerings. Mr. Wordsworth, it’s nice to finally meet you! Have a seat. Drink some tea at my expense. Mock the High Office with unapologetic insolence! Lie to me! Implicate yourself in conspiracies to dishonor your post and compatriots! Admit to bribery! Confess to kidnapping! I hear you have an incest fetish? Do tell!” “Neglect of a child.” “Secretary?” “Mr. Wordsworth stated in explicit terms ‘…I would never touch her’ in reference to his daughter. Brazen neglect.” “Excellent, Secretary! Append that to his sentencing form. Now, Mr. Wordsworth, you have one final opportunity. Do you wish to comply in these proceedings?” “Absolutely not.” “Only indifference is enunciated with words unspoken, Mr. Wordsworth. Do you not wish to defend yourself?” “This is a kangaroo court! No matter what I—“ “Are you not roused by the beckoning calls of fate, Mr. Wordsworth?” “Absolutely not.” “So you are without fear, Mr. Wordsworth?” “Yes.” “Then you have been deemed an unfit subject for this program.” “Program?” “Freedom, Mr. Wordsworth. Freedom. You are dismissed. All charges set forth against you hitherto are dropped. An innocent verdict has been rendered.” “So I am free?” “In due time, Mr. Wordsworth” “I’d like to see my dau--” “You have a tendency to misinterpret, Mr. Wordsworth. Freedom: a government without impediments--one unhindered by dissenters. Your death awaits you.” “You cant…“ “Your ignorance and inaction justify it all. Thank you for your time, Mr. Wordsworth, your service has been duly noted. Exit.

So I basically add to this whenever I'm feeling tired and whimsical. Let me know what you think of the first little bit (I realize it's bizarre and arguably horrible): *Svenson O’Shaunnessy: A Hero’s Journey* Svenson O’Shaunnessy: oh, how to describe so wondrous a man in so few words! Such an undertaking would be a feat of such difficulty second only to that faced by the man himself, an odyssey so breathtaking that asthmatics must not dream of approaching it, and so dangerous that a seatbelt, helmet and athletic cup are recommended for those with the bravado, or indeed the foolishness to continue in their reading. Svenson O’Shaunnessy was born in the Maldives, the last true member of a seafaring people who were dying out all too fast. His people were of the sort who had been embraced by the Earth for millennia, and had embraced the Earth in turn so as to come to know her intimately. However, intimate as Mother Nature can be, she can also be as harsh as the hailstorm that O’Shaunnessy would be trapped in years later, armed with nothing but a bear trap, three samosas and a disgraced Sherpa who he knew only as Gustav. But I digress. Intimate as Mother Nature can be, she can also be as harsh as the hailstorm that O’Shaunnessy would be trapped in years later. O’Shaunnessy was orphaned at a mere six months of age when both his mother and father were engulfed by a sinkhole the size of the Colisseum of Rome. O’Shaunnessy, by this time, was fortunately an adept sprinter. He covered the four-mile goat trail back to his village in only eleven minutes and six seconds (a personal best! Alas, in his angst and desperation O’Shaunnessy would never know this. Nor would he surpass this speed until years later, deep in the catacombs of Paris while chasing a man dressed as an arsonist, who had just kidnapped an extraordinarily valuable colony of yeast). But I digress. O’Shaunnessy, by this time, was fortunately an adept sprinter. He covered the four-mile trail back to his village in only eleven minutes and six seconds. Upon returning to the village, O’Shaunnessy made a beeline for the abode of a certain Mistress Stiletto, a witch doctor who was just finishing her treatment of the shortest of a set of witch triplets with a particularly nasty case of the Gout. O’Shaunnessy cried out to Mistress Stiletto urgently, using the complex series of clucks, grunts, and nose-whistles that his people used to signal distress. In fact, O’Shaunnessy would not learn the second of his eventual nineteen languages until he was eight years of age, when a wily old seamstress from the slums of Peru would teach him Ebonics. Soon after this encounter, O’Shaunnessy would learn to read, write, and speak Braille from the seamstress’s one-eared mongrel of a husband, who was a cobbler by day and a passionate Crimean War re-enactor by night. But I digress. O’Shaunnessy cried out to Mistress Stiletto urgently, using the series of clucks, grunts, and nose-whistles that his people used to signal distress. Mistress Stiletto looked up at once, her mismatched eyes gleaming in anticipation of imminent danger. Her green eye quivered back and forth in agitation, frantically searching for the source of the call. Her red eye swiveled upwards more slowly and deliberately; it always knew, with unwavering accuracy, exactly where to look next.

Well, the time has come to say goodbye to my baby and move on to greater things… I guess. From ditching class to the first time I had sex with Rachael; I’ve had so many memories in my sky blue ’78 Coupe Deville. So when I got a phone call this morning that some strange old lady wanted to take a look at my baby, I couldn’t ask anything besides what time she’d be here. All I could hope for is either she doesn’t show up, or it’s too “hip” for her to use when she picks up her groceries, goes to her knitting class, or whatever she does as a hobby. It’s 3 p.m. and there’s no sign of this lady. I might actually be able to hold on to my baby a little longer. What the fuck is that squealing? I got up and peaked my head through the lacey white curtains my mother proudly bought at Goodwill. I pressed my right cheek against the window to get a better view of the broken pavement we call a street. I see a red- I think it’s red- dirt-covered ‘86 Honda Civic with the front bumper held together by a thin wire hanger. Please God, don’t let this be her. I shuffled my feet to the wood-framed screen door and slowly pushed it open; just hoping this ragged car passes by. I’d rather this be a drive-by than the new owner of my Caddy. As I stepped out onto my mom’s porch I get an intense smell of the local steel mills that employ more than half the city. While my eyes scan the scenery of the decomposing fenced-in yards and barred up windows, I hear a sound of a car backfiring. The car’s gray exhaust billowed up behind it as it pulled into the one car driveway and slowed to a stop nearly putting another dent into my mom’s car. The doors opened with a loud creak as if the bolts were going to fly off. Two people emerged from the smoky confines of the car. The driver was a man in his fifties and rough around the edges. He took two steps to his left to slam the door, leaned back, and pulled a cigarette from his ear and a lighter from his pocket. The lady pulled herself and took a bit longer to get out of the car. I caught a glimpse of her cloudy white hair peaking over the top of the car. She then took a few steps back, and drew a feeble old cane from the backseat. Are you kidding me? “How are ya,” I ask looked at the man, but he stared down the street, puffing his cigarette. “We’re fine, thank you,” the lady responded. “You must be Jay.” “Yeap.” “Well let’s see this car of yours.” I waved for them to follow me into the garage- where I keep my baby away from prying eyes. I bent over and rolled the numbers in the correct sequence on the lock and popped it open. I looked back to see the man still leaning on the Honda- halfway through his cigarette. The garage door swung up, as if the spring had no tension left, and revealed my baby. The air stood still as my eyes hit the bright blue details on the hood of that gorgeous beast. My chest felt heavy when I stared into the headlight; reminding me of the first time I looked into Rachael’s eyes. “Oh, she’s a beauty.” What do you know, lady? It took my entire body to bring my fixed eyes over to the woman. It took my entire soul to form a smile as I took a few steps into the garage that held my life. In the far back near the chipped door that led into the kitchen was an old cracked homemade wood shelf where my high school basketball trophies lived. Next to the shelf was a tool-bench I found decaying in an alleyway. I remember seeing it out of the corner of my eye as I drove by with Rachael on a humid summer day when the alley was overrun in a jungle of weeds. My tools were still spread out over the workbench with the grease soaking into the warped wood. The sun from the window on the other side of the garage was shining on my tools- reflecting the light and glaring into me. My heart started to sink into my stomach. The frigid old lady stared blankly at my car smacking her lips together as if she was swallowing her tongue. Her weary eyes spiked right through the front seat and into the ground beneath. She doesn’t deserve to even be in my sanctuary. She doesn’t even deserve to breath in the aroma of the wet, heavy air. I swung my head angrily around in the direction of the woman. Behind her the man threw his cigarette to the ground and, with a stomp of his boots, he drove the cigarette into my driveway like it was a cockroach in his kitchen. He reached for his jean pocket and pulled out a blue pouch. He began to roll a second cigarette; not once glancing over to see what my baby looks like. “Can I see under the hood?” the old lady asked, followed by coughing like she was trying to clear the years from her throat. “Sure, one second.” I passed in front of her, separating her from the car. I reached for the door and the cold, crisp handle sent shivers up my spine. After a moment of hesitation I snapped the handle up and gently swung the door open. I bent over and pulled the lever and the hood released with the sound like a can of pop opening. I felt myself blush from the thought of revealing my baby’s under parts. I closed my eyes tight and clenched my teeth. But I pulled myself together and opened my eyes to the old lady smiling and staring expectantly back at me. I casually strolled over to her and turned, positioning my shoulder next to her. I reached my hand through the one-inch crack between the hood and the grill of the car. What takes people a few fumbling seconds, took me only a moment to find the lever and release the hood. With two shaky hands, I lift the hood all the way open. The maze of the engine made the lady mumble, “Hmmm…” What’s does she know anyway? I checked back to see if the man’s attention had shifted over to the car- or at least to the lady. His presence started making me suspicious of the whole encounter. I’ve shown so much to them already. Did he see the combination for my lock? I should just tell them to fuck off. I don’t need their money. I don’t want to see them ever again. Suddenly, the door to the kitchen slammed open and standing there was Rachael. She stood with a wide smile and soft eyes, analyzing the situation. My anger and paranoia dwindled at the sight of her smooth, glowing skin. I felt my muscles relax and my eyes start to feel lighter. “Hi, I’m Rachael.” “Hello,” the old lady grinned. “How’s everything look to you?” “I think we were about to talk price,” the lady looked back at the man for a quick glimpse. “How much were you asking?” “Nine thousand.” I stated through my teeth. “I was thinking, uhm, seven.” That rage I had started creeping back into my throat. I squinted my eyes and gave him a quick glare, and then threw my attention at the man, hoping he would understand my point of view. My anger uncontrollably rolled in the direction of Rachael and I noticed she had moved from the stairs of the door to the passenger side of my Deville. My eyes drifted down from her shoulder to her hand rubbing her belly. My eyes focused over the hood to the round mass under her shirt that she had been caressing. The edge of my lip twitched into a smirk as I looked back at the lady, “Eight thousand.” “Deal.

At 2:00am I had to go to the bathroom so I got out of bed. The bathroom light was already on and standing inside was my brother, casting a dreary brown gaze into the mirror, razorblade in hand, slicing off chunks of long bristly hairs from under his chin. Earlier in the night, during dinner, Mom and Dad had appraised his unkempt look. “You’re not helping your chances.” Dad said. “Why do you keep it?” Mom asked. My brother hadn’t shaved since he moved back in. Striding past him across the hall and down the stairs I could hear the fragile knocking of rain atop the roof and against the windows. Before I stepped into the downstairs bathroom I flicked on the floodlight out back to take a look. It must have been coming down for a while because I could see two small puddles that had pooled themselves in a little depression on the far side of our yard. In their reflections I caught glimpses of the woods that lay past our home. The leaves were gone now. It was getting cold. All there was to see were barren brown branches and ashen tree trunks. Those puddles looked so trapped and dreary all wadded-down in that little depression. “Don’t worry little puddles, It’s not gunna rain forever. Things’ll dry up.” After I finished in the bathroom I walked back up the stairs and past my brother again. This time he had his beard trimmed down and there was shaving cream over his face and around his lips and he was making short choppy strokes at his cheeks with a disposable razor. I stopped in the doorway for only a moment. I wasn't used to him again. His petrified self-stare: a pillar of salt. By morning the rain had stopped and as my parents and I were leaving for work we could hear my brother in his bedroom getting ready for his interview. “Did you shave?” Dad asked. “Yeah.” My parents smiled at each other. “Good luck!” Mom wished as she stepped out with Dad. I reached for my keys from the counter and my brother came out of his room. He had cuff-linked his wrists, had a tie wrapped around his neck, and was sporting a terribly fuzzy mustache that crawled over his lip. I gave him a smirk as I grabbed my keys and he lilted his eyebrows at me like he used to do when we were younger, before he moved away. He almost looked happy. I walked out to my car and as I pulled away I wondered if those sad little puddles had any chance to escape, before they froze.

I send my apologies to the lady bugs. For years I have watched them die in great numbers without raising so much as a finger for their cause. I watched them drop from my window to the windowsill below, tumbling hopelessly until their winged backs hit, sending them bouncing away. Even now I watch them as I shower, swimming through puddles on the edge of the bath tub. They climb onto the stomachs of their fallen comrades, seeking refuge from the ocean below. They can only stay until a wave throws them off, forcing them into the sea to drown. Once they drown, their bodies linger, giving me time to inspect their smooth dark underbellies, with their legs peacefully clinging to their bodies. Some flow down the sides of the bathtub, through my legs, to be sucked down the drain never to be seen again. One particular morning I spent a little too long watching the lady bugs, because the next thing I knew my sister was banging on the door telling me to hurry up. It was the first day of school, the day when the relaxed monotony of the summer became the dull monotony of the school year. The same commute, the same classes and the same people. This is followed by the same football practice, the same homework and the same late nights that should’ve ended hours before. The worst part though, was the people. The same damn people taking their sweet time in between classes, talking about their great experiences over the summer embellishing each point to make sure their story and summer was better than the next guy’s. To me, school is nothing more than a duty, carried out in the most consistently miserable way. All this and more was part of the conversation I had with my sister as she drove me to school. She is two years older than me and we were both in the same high school. “I just really don’t see the point in being better than any of those fools. Why do people even bother? Who even cares?” “Anyone on the right?” With a quick glance to the right I made sure no car was approaching. “No. Now answer my question,” I said impatiently as I started to think more and more about what was to come at school. Our ’98 Volkswagen Golf sputtered along as I watched my sister’s expression as she both mulled over my question and concentrated on the early morning traffic. “I don’t know, I think everybody’s guilty of being jealous at some point or another, especially in high school. No matter how small the reason.” As she spoke she put her right hand on the steering wheel and slowed the car down a bit. She was always a safe driver since her car accident. Maybe the better term is paranoid. Her eyes constantly darted between the road and the rear view mirror, worried someone would rear end us. Her accident happened the summer before when she was a relatively new driver. It wasn’t an extraordinary crash, but it shook her up quite a bit. It was a hot summer day. One of those days where the few clouds in the sky quickly become more interesting than whatever was happening on the road. A pickup truck was following at a safe distance and its driver was busy making out shapes in the clouds when traffic came to a quick stop due to construction further along the highway. Of course, the pickup did not stop until it hit the Audi A4 my sister was driving, throwing it into the car in front of her. The front and back ends of the car successfully crumpled and my sister was left with just whiplash. Whenever I ask her about the crash she just shudders and says she doesn’t remember anything. This day, she was more jittery than usual and I noticed she was holding the steering wheel way too tightly and her knuckles were white and glistening with sweat. I couldn’t help but think about the lady bugs looking for a dry spot or another lady bug to climb on. “What’s up? You’re shaking.” “You know what today is,” she whispered this with a hint of malice as if I purposefully forgot. I immediately knew what she was referring to. It was August 23rd, and on this day 7 years ago our father had shot himself. I’ve chosen to ignore this fact, and whenever it came up I feigned indifference. My sister on the other hand, even though she said she understood his decision and forgave him for it, took it especially hard. I took it upon myself to take care of my sister and mother, acting hardened and uncaring about my dad’s suicide. Of course at the time I was devastated, but I learned to hate him for what he did. This made handling the situation much easier so I’ve stuck with it to this day. “So what?” I made sure to look away from her but I could feel her sharp glances hit the back of my head. I was too busy following the rooftops of the houses along the road to care. “He was our dad.” Her voice was noticeably shaky as if she was about to cry. I closed my eyes and thought back to the day he died and the scattering of his ashes in a West Virginia river near where he grew up. As my mom let his ashes go there was no pain in her eyes and no sorrow, but rather, forgiveness. That was the worst part. They had both forgiven him. “He left us,” I muttered, barely audible. “He left us and I hate him for that.” “He had to. He—“. “How can you say that?” I spun my head around to look at her. “He didn’t have to do anything. He chose to leave us.” “He was sick and he couldn’t go on. He wasn’t happy.” She was still talking in hushed shaky tones. “He gave up. He gave up on himself, he gave up on mom and he gave up on us.” This was followed by a long silence except for the occasional sniffle and audible shudder from my sister. I thought back to the times right before he killed himself. I had to admit he had been slowly deteriorating. Of course, he tried not to show it and didn’t want to talk to anybody about it. He was as stubborn as I am. I haven’t always been that way, but meeting certain people and having certain experiences has made me realize how god awful the world can be. I’ve learned to hate people just by looking at them and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Today was no different. I was dreading the people I would meet today. The only friends I had went to a different school and were just as phony as the rest of them. “He loved us,” she said. Something in her tone struck me and I realized I wanted to hear more from her. She finally continued after a few more sniffles. “You’ve always been too focused on yourself to see that. He didn’t want to hurt any of us, that’s why he left us. He didn’t want to replace the memories we already had. He knew he couldn’t give us anything more out of life and wanted to leave us while he was ahead. I don’t know if this makes any sense to you at all, or if you’re even listening to me, but what I’m trying to say is I think we should look at where we are and realize that maybe it was for the better. Who knows what would’ve happened to him, he was suffering and didn’t want to make us deal with the long term pain. Please realize anything he did, no matter how ridiculous it might seem, he did because he loved us. And he’d want us to take him for what he was before what happened.” I thought back to the ladybugs. Desperately clinging to each other for survival, and the whole time I knew it was hopeless. I felt sick thinking about it. All these years all I could do was watch them die. We were pulling into our school’s student lot, and I found myself watching other students starting their phony conversations with each other. I still had the lady bugs in my head, though, and all I could do was think back to the times they would flow between my legs right down the drain. We pulled into a spot, my sister turned the engine off, and we sat in our seats silently. Without saying a word, she got out of the car, grabbed her bag and started to walk to the school building. I sat for a minute, almost numb, before I took my dad’s handgun out of my bag. After weighing it in my hand for a few moments, I took the magazine out and emptied it into my hands. After juggling the bullets in my hand, I took my lunch out of its paper bag, put the gun and bullets into the bag, and stepped out of the car with my backpack. I took a deep breath of the cool early morning air and threw the bag into the nearest trash can and headed to school.

First things first- I've never seen The Birds. This story is influenced solely by the final scenes within Stephen King's *The Dark Half*. If you have read it, I hope you appreciate my take/twist on it. If you haven't, enjoy anyway. ... The crows outside his window grew in number every night. He first noticed them with the arrival of what they called the “storm of the century.” Exaggeration or not, it certainly was a powerful storm by anyone’s standards. He, as he always was during these kinds of events, was sitting by his window watching the lightning dance and leap across the glowing sky. Storms had caught his love early in life. He had regularly stood by his front door with his father searching for signs of trouble in the sky while the rest of his family sought shelter in the closet. That’s what confused him most: The skies themselves took the opportunity to communicate with the ground below; why ignore them? They were destructive, yes, but they were beautiful. This destructive beauty was all around him: The winds swept up a miniature twister of dead leaves, whipped the rain to nearly horizontal angles, shook the trees until they cried out in protest, and then shook them some more. He thought he even heard Ms. Lear’s old oak succumb to the stress, though he couldn’t be sure over the explosions of thunder. The intensity of the storm almost made it seem calmer than it actually was. The glimpses of the outside world illuminated by the flashes of lightning were more frequent than not; it was almost as if it was midday and there were flashes of nighttime instead. Caught in this light was a gnarled dead tree. Its bark was long gone; its leaves he’d never seen. He almost imagined that, with them, its branches had been like ragged hands, grasping at whatever ventured near them, waving to people in the breeze. Perhaps it used to walk the Earth, finally settling down here to wither away and die. That tree always bothered him; he didn’t exactly know why. It wasn’t like he’d ever had reason to distrust it, that is, if one could call what he felt toward it distrust. All that it’d ever really done was stand there, gently swaying, branches slowly tracing their fingers through the air. Nevertheless, he’d done his best to avoid going near it whenever possible. The lightning seemed to have begun to die down. The lapses into darkness between the strikes became longer, but, as if to reaffirm its might, a bolt with the brightness of a star’s filament of flame suddenly lit up the sky. He slammed his eyelids shut yet the light burned through. He summoned the strength to open them no more than a hair’s breadth and, his face contorted in the light’s overwhelming intensity, collapsed to the floor with his face buried between his knees when the blast of thunder came. His house shook from the force: photos crashed off their spots on the wall and his collection of odds and ends he’d picked up over the years jumped off its resting place on his desk onto the floor as if in search of shelter. He feared his roof would collapse: luckily, it held. Whoever said that it was the lightning to fear, not the thunder, obviously never experienced such an explosion. Instinctive fear and deep respect reverberated through him. After the last echoes passed, he slowly raised his head and focused his eyes back out the window onto the grey tree. What he saw there on one of the spindly branches stunned him more than the storm did. A lone crow sat there, its eyes met with his. Its gaze never wavered; it seemed completely oblivious to the tempest around it even as the branch it was perched on shook violently. He sat there staring for what felt like eons. He felt powerless to break his gaze until, without warning, the bird opened its beak (he didn’t know whether or not it cawed; he could hardly hear anything but the sound of the deluge bombarding the ground) and, with a sudden leap, took flight and disappeared in another flash of lightning. Equally without warning, a wave of lightheadedness overcame him and he toppled over. The rain had yet to drain out of the yard by the next evening. Leaves and other debris floated lifelessly on the unnaturally still water, giving them the appearance of resting upon giant mirrors. The sky was a dead grey and still; the winds had ceased completely. A dense fog carpeted the ground: He could hardly see beyond what he guessed to be thirty feet. The dead tree was just within the reach of this fog; it was the only thing assuring him that the ground still existed below the mist. He was leaned back in his recliner, *The Dark Half* in hand. Thad Beaumont and Alexis Machine were about to face off; the battle between good and evil was nigh. Shame I don’t have any sparrows on hand, he thought with a slight chuckle. He was about to flip pages when the sound of rustling feathers broke the silence. A feeling not unlike a trickle of cold water inched its way up his spine as he slowly closed his book. Setting it down, he rose, head slightly cocked, and approached his window. Outside, sitting in the tree’s open hands, were crows. Nineteen crows, all perched on the dead tree’s limbs, all facing directly at him. They shuffled their feet, their wings, but not an eye moved from him. He knew not the purpose of their gathering and was highly unnerved; he dared not move but, betraying his will, blinked once. As if the spell was broken, one of the birds on the tree’s left let out a cry. The rest of the group silently took flight and disappeared into the low clouds. He watched them quickly disappear into the fog. It was as if they vanished: One second they were churning up the air, the next it was as if they were never there. He hoped never to see them again, that this was their last visit to him. It wasn't.

Passion Fruit It was the finest orange I had seen in months. It was right in front of me in a tall, blue trash bin. I looked around in all directions to make sure no one else had seen it, and was thrilled to find that my eyes and my eyes only gazed at the luscious fruit before me. The afternoon sun danced across the porous surface, highlighting its beautiful features. The prize was mine. I hoisted my bag over my shoulder, not caring about the various objects that spilled over, and shuffled my tired feet towards the trash bin. I put on my best angry face in case any passerby’s in the park decided they wanted it for themselves. Just a couple feet from the trash bin, a young boy got too close. I lashed out at him, showing my rotting teeth as angrily as I knew how. The boy screamed and nearly fell as he made his escape on his bike. The incident made me cackle, and I moved ever closer to the orange. Within reach, I stretched my hand outward, admiring my filthy fingernails as I did so. I curled my bony fingers around the orange and quickly plucked it from the bin. I held it to my chest tightly and looked around again. Mine! All mine! I made my way eagerly towards a nearby bench. A young couple on the bench saw me approaching and moved away in a hurry. It made me truly appreciate my power. My smile only got bigger as I sat and admired my prize. All mine! I tossed my bag aside, my attention never leaving the orange. I rubbed my hands all around it, enjoying the textures, its perfections and imperfections. I gave it a light squeeze, testing its durability. It was just how I liked it, not too soft or too firm. It was cool in my palm and my dry, putrid mouth began to water. Overwhelmed with anticipation, I pressed my thumb down hard onto the peel. With a soft pop, I broke through the surface and shook with joy as juice flowed from the opening. I quivered as my thumb made contact with the soft, wet innards of the orange. I considered leaving my thumb in a while longer, but decided against it. I knew my satisfaction could not be achieved by touch alone. My mouth ached with desire as I inspected the orange one last time. With my thumb still plunged deep inside, I tightened my grip and started to peel my prize. Mine! All mine! My hand was soaked with lovely juices as I removed the last bit of skin. Finally the orange was stripped clean and I stared at it intensely. At last I could indulge; I could leave this troubled world behind for a moment and occupy myself with this pure, beautiful creation. I lifted the orange to my cracked lips and took a hungry bite. Fresh juices sprayed from my mouth as I slowly chewed my first chunk. I savored every moment until the last bite. I held the sloppy piece before me, wishing, hoping, praying that somehow it would be whole again. I closed my eyes hoping to find a new orange in my hand when I opened them, but the same piece remained. I became overwhelmed with sadness and was surprised when a tear rolled down my cheek. I crushed the last bite of orange in my hand, sending pulp and juice all around me, and I threw the pathetic nibble to the ground. I let out a decrepit scream, startling those who walked by. The orange betrayed me! The bastard made me cry! My enormous desire for the fruit had now turned to boiling anger. Revenge! I only wanted revenge. I was thinking about exactly what I wanted revenge for when I saw her. She was walking along a concrete path in the park. Her hair flowed in the breeze like a blonde sea. She was wearing a red tank top, revealing an impressive bust. My eyes lingered there a moment. It was the finest bosom I had seen in months. Her white shirt, littered with red roses, moved gracefully as she walked, and I enjoyed the pitter-patter of her white flip-flops. She held a tan purse with her right arm, and carried a grocery bag with her left. I stood up, almost in awe at the site before me. I looked around in all directions to make sure no one else had seen her. The park was crowded and no one paid much attention to anyone else. I was thrilled. I picked up my tattered and dirty bag and started along the concrete path. The same path my new prize was already on. I was about forty feet behind her and struggled to keep up. My tired feet protested, but I moved on. Mine! All mine! We walked for some time, eventually leaving the park. I was thirty feet behind now, getting closer and closer. She continued confidently, never stopping or looking behind her. She looked to be in her twenties, but difficult to tell from this distance. It didn’t matter; she would be mine soon either way. Still gaining on her, I followed her into a residential area with houses all around. I was careful to make sure no one else saw my prize. I didn’t want anyone to try taking her from me, not at all. Finally she turned into a driveway and I was filled with excitement. I nearly had her in my grasp, I was so close. By the time I reached the driveway, I could hear her opening the front door. I hurried in to reach the door, but my bag proved to be a burden. By the time I was at the entrance, she was already inside. I cursed and felt my prize slipping away. I stared at the door knob for a couple of minutes. I saw my hideous reflection in the gleaming brass and smiled, pleased with myself. I reached for the door knob and was thrilled to discover that the door was unlocked. Mine! All mine! I slowly pushed the door open and peeked my head inside. The front room was bright and cheery, tidy and well organized. I could hear my prize somewhere inside; she was humming a familiar tune. I moved all the way inside and carefully shut the door behind me. The air inside was cool and pleasant, a welcome change from the hot summer temperature. I eased my way closer to where I heard her sweet voice. I made my way down a hallway, taking a moment to admire some family photos on the way. My prize was a beautiful one to be sure. I almost couldn’t believe that I would soon have my hands on her. I turned the corner leading into the kitchen and came face to face with my prize. I gave my biggest smile and she froze in place. She was quite a bit shorter than myself and had a wonderful shape. I raised my arm and reached out at her, ready to claim my prize. Just then she let out a wild scream, startling me. She was to be mine, my prize, yet she screamed and screamed. She looked at me with disgust and turned to run. “Mine! All mine!” I shouted. I swung my bag as hard as my gangly arms would allow and struck her in the back. The impact caused her to fall face first onto the tile floor. I heard a crack and a grunt and watched her try to get up. She was obviously shaken, and she was definitely hurt. She turned over on her back, her eyes were flooded with tears, her nose soaked in blood. “Help! Please… Please help! Please don’t hurt me!” Her screams and cries were music to my ears. She sobbed hysterically as I closed in on her. The prize was mine at last. I crouched down beside her and studied her wonderful features, highlighted by the dancing sunlight coming from outside. I reached hungrily for her luscious breasts, eager to test their durability. She let out another scream, and I smiled. “Mine… All Mine…” Just then, I felt a burning pain radiating from my chest, accompanied by a thunderous bang. I felt suddenly weak and my prize blurred before me. A single tear rolled down my left cheek. And then there was darkness. I awoke some time later in a hospital bed. I frantically looked about for my prize, but she was gone. I was immediately blinded by rage and confusion. Outside the hospital door I saw one police officer talking to another. “Hell of a shot, Rob. Probably saved that girls life,” he said. And then I saw it. Across the hall was a young boy in a hospital bed. At his side, on a small table, sat a single red apple. It was beautiful. It was the finest apple I had seen in months. …Mine…All Mine….

I’m nervous. My hands are autonomously fidgeting with my dress, my heart is all but beating through my exposed chest and my stomach is twisting and turning with the opposition of the decision to even be here. The only decision I am thrilled with is my blatant refusal of lunch. Between the unyielding force of the corset beneath my gown and the virtually absurd anxiety, the food would have been gone long before my grand entrance. I am, at the very least, relieved to know that the other guests cannot see the blushing and self-conscious little girl beneath the solid coat of white makeup and the glittery feathered mask. The person I was previous to this evening is not remotely comparable to who I appear to be. So, why am I so afraid? There is not a soul here who could know who I am. To them, I am the Queen of Hearts. “Are you ready?” I turn, startled by a voice that was unexpectedly coming from outside my own mind. My sister is standing in the doorway, flashing impatient blue eyes in my direction. She is ravishing, as always, dressed in same ensemble as I, only in opposite colors. I am white with red hearts, where she is red with white hearts. I don’t envy her appearance, though I know others do. There are girls who make an effort to hurt her with malicious words as a consequence of their own jealousy and self repugnance, but I would never. I do, however, envy her extraordinary self-confidence. “Are you ready?” No. “Yes. Let’s get this over with”, I reply. I know she is beyond ready just as well as she knows I will never be. “You’re beautiful, little sister”, she says. I peek at her through my mask with the same expression I always offer when she compliments me. I think she knows I don’t believe her. “Just remember who you are and you’ll be fine.” She smiles. I attempt to do the same. Remember who I am? Tonight, I am the Queen of Hearts. I am the Queen of Hearts. I am.

Bodies. Some more aesthetically pleasing than others. Merely a dingy basement on weekdays, the lower level of the “Fiji” house had been transformed into the place to be on a Friday night. Apparently nothing more than a black light, a tapped keg, and several large speakers were needed to create the ultimate party scene from a grimy cellar. With each stair I descended, a distinct smell engulfed me, choking me for a moment in its intensity until I was greeted by the next unmistakable smell. Beer. Cologne. Sweat. And yes, vomit. This frat party had crossed the threshold, the one of revered intimacy; the one where boys were no longer men and girls were no longer ladies, but rather, bodies were bodies. The male bodies scrambled to find a dance partner, someone to grope on the uneven cement surface that passed as a dance floor. Anyone with a vagina would do; cleavage was a plus. The female bodies remained in close-knit groups, forming tight circles to shut out unwanted advances. They held their drinks in one hand and raised the other to the beat of the music; they gyrated their hips and bit their lips, among other things, to appear sexy yet nonchalant. Yes. The threshold had been crossed that night. Bodies were bodies. I felt a tap on my shoulder. Ava and Sam were standing across from me and they both raised their eyebrows upon seeing the boy behind me. Ava shrugged her shoulders, as if to say, ‘He’ll do. Go for it,’ and continued shaking her hips to the music. I turned around to find a tall, dark stranger, red cup in one hand, the other placed precociously on my hip. He smiled and motioned for me to turn back around. He pushed up against me, not before giving my ass a hearty squeeze, and we started grinding. He wasn’t the most attractive guy I had ever seen. But he was there. And so was I. I was just going through the motions until I saw something that made my stomach turn. There was Jacen, across the room, with his arms around Emma. They were facing each other, an instant indicator that he was completely engrossed with her. That kind of grinding was reserved only for couples, or friends who knew each other very well. Strangers did not face each other when they were grinding; eye contact was far too awkward. And then, as if he knew I was watching, they started kissing; drunk, sloppy slobbers, the epitome of tonsil hockey. My eyes welled up and I suddenly felt a lump rising in my throat. That was supposed to me. He was supposed to be embracing me, kissing me, getting a boner from my ass pushed up against his junk, not Emma’s. And just last week that had been me. But in six days things had gone terribly, terribly wrong. I reached behind me with my free hand and began rubbing Mr. Stranger’s thigh. The words ‘Oooh yeah,’ escaped his mouth in a single, warm, beer-scented breath, and landed directly in my ear. I suddenly felt disgusted with myself. But I did not stop. Because neither had Jacen.

It wasn’t the way he moved his wrists. No, that was always elegantly trashy and it turned me on. It also wasn’t the way he would never take off his long, black socks; he was afraid that his feet smelled. I found all of his irritating habits to be endearing after I have my coffee. It couldn’t have been the way he danced in his dog-bitten-hole-in-front-of-his-dick-pouch underwear in the morning to Bowie, singing into my blue toothbrush. Maybe it was the way he would make love to me. Pushing himself against me and pounding away like a jackhammer, rolling over and falling asleep. I would run my aching hands between his soft chest hair and wonder what stars taste like in my mouth. I loved all of it. I remember the hours lost underneath the sheets, sunlight dancing between our pirouetted fingers. The texture of his redone tattoos against my exploring hands. Our tiny nightstand we stole from a dumpster at 3am. He sanded it down with utmost precision and detail and I wildly sprayed it black and the drawer red (now the red will have flecked off). Or the smell of coffee I had every morning to wake up to. So strong. I know what it is. The moment that shattered us. That scattered our lengthy dreams and quiet hopes. I came home and shook off the rain from my black umbrella. I shucked off my shoes and ran to get out of my dripping clothes. I noticed it. No, it wasn’t his cock in someone else’s body. It wasn’t even another lover. It was just his green, matted, wet towel lying on top of our bed.

"Coffee". "What?" "Coffee." "Yeah. So where do you want to go?" "I dunno, Kaka?" "Sure, like, why not?" "Let's go." "Wait." "What?" "Look, about last night." "Forget about it." "I... yeah." "What?" "Nothing." "Come on, spit it out." "No I just, wanted to say... that it was good." "Yeah." "So now what?" "Coffee." "No I mean now what, I mean what are we?" "I don't know." "No I mean, are we together now?" "I don't know." "You want to be... together." "I don't know." "Well say something!" "I think I love you." "What?" "Yeah." "Well, I... this is... I mean... Well..." "I said I love you." "I know what you said." "So...?" "So what...?" "Maybe I made a mistake saying it." "NO! No... I'm sorry. I just don't want to ruin our friendship." "I'm sorry then. I'll go." "No wait, don't go. I don't want you to go. I want to be with you. I want to spend this morning with you and you alone. I want us to be, together." "So do I." "Okay then." "What?" "Coffee?" "Yeah.

Just a conversation between two lovers i thought up. Maybe it will become something more later on Sex in dark places No one ever goes to the movies these days david, we all just stay home and download so we can have all the sex and violence we want, onscreen and off. That’s a fairly depressing viewpoint, I mean if that’s really true… well we've degraded down to a species that- To a species that has figured out what is most enjoyable in its little biological existence. Come on you don't believe that, you can't. There are so many things out there that are so beautiful and pure- Sex is pure, pure intimacy and pleasure- You know what I mean. I mean the higher pleasures, the ones that separate man from the beasts. I'm talking about the books and stories that really draw you into thought and complexity. There is something there which is precious and unfathomably superior to… to fucking eachother while watching the ultimate fighters bludgeon eachothers bodies into submission. You're cheating me david, ha, you are cheating me. I know you are better at philosophizing than I am but even I can recognize what you've done there, even if I can't put into words. And what have I done? You… you… you just took what I was saying and you made it smaller than it is Smaller? Worse, you made it worse Explain to me how it's better than what I said then It's just that sex and violence are the pinnacle. I don't just mean violence like the fist smashing ogres who climb into the octagon. I mean the turmoil of life where everything happens in a rush, where the parts of the present are cast into a torrential future, an uncertain future. Then there's sex, I mean how can you deny the strength of that great beating heart which is screaming for you to grab and fight until you've had everything in reach. When you balance that out with our social restraint and the mixture of passion, frustration, anticipation, longing, and finally burning intense satisfaction. It's the most incredible part of being human David and it is complex and wonderful. Well maybe I did put a bit of spin on my shot but I think your exaggerating it a little bit. Violence is all well and good and I understand the excitement. The same is true of sex, it's fantastic in all of the ways you described. What I think your wonderful description lacked though was the blinding clarity that comes about with resolution. The feeling that comes after a long night out filled with fighting and drinking and probably a good amount of sex. When you wake up and that morning light comes in between your blackout curtains and you can really see what came out of all that wild passion and violence and sex, when that happens, that feeling is enough to make you feel so empty and pointless that you just want to cling on to anything. I know the feeling and it sucks, it does. You wake up in bed with a stranger and the light shows all the hair and sweat you either didn't see or didn't want to see last night. You remember the yelling, the stealing, the fighting and you remember every shot every pill and powder you've ever had and wonder what the fuck you've done to yourself… more than that you wonder what you've done to your life. What I've always thought though is that that feeling is inescapable if you really examine your life. We are an amazing level of intellect caught up in this flighty and insignificant little biological organism that wants to get fat and make more of itself unendingly. It's always going to be tragic no matter what you do with your life. Well if that’s how you feel why do you bother with all the violence and sex and stuff? It's not the easiest way to while a life away. If you're going to hate you're life every time you wake up why not do something easier? That's what I've been trying to say all along about the movie theaters and the drive ins and all of that. People don't want to live in that light. They just want to sit in the dark and fuck each other because they know it’s the best they can do. Even if we are grossly over equipped mentally it's still the best we can do. The best we can do is live in a storm of passion and pleasure and try and stay out of the dark, the best we can accomplish is sex in dark places.

When you were nine, your mother shot you in the chest. At school, they called you Voodoo Boy, but as your dad, I couldn’t see the wood for the trees. I see it now. Clear as sheets of gelatine. And the way you sculpted me... well, it makes the analogy all the more appropriate I suppose. When you fell and tore your knees, you didn’t cry like other kids. You were transfixed by the leaky, tasty goo that came out; running down your shins, and coating your fingertips. Dabbling and savouring and swallowing the copper liquid, with a grin on your face and a flutter in your concrete heart. Your teachers would write notes in your workbook. Not pleasant ‘Well done Nicholas’es as I would’ve wanted, but ‘See me’s and red detention slips. All the time. Stabbing with pencils, painting curses on walls. You held a girl down, and stapled her tongue to her lip, Nick. We took you out of school after that. And your mother, she looked at you in shame, disgust. Loathing. She couldn’t understand – and this is a direct quote – why you were so fucking evil. I couldn’t bring myself to hate you. I made you, and I wanted to make your life liveable. That was my duty. The strangest things would fascinate you; ordinarily exciting things were dashed with mundane and just discarded, like they weren’t worth the effort. You liked eyes. You drew them. You touched them and pushed them inwards to see how long it took for your vision to fog over. Once, your mother stopped you from popping it back into your skull. We need to be clear on this; it wasn’t because she didn’t want it to happen. She almost certainly did. She simply couldn’t stomach it. And when yours weren’t interesting anymore, the growing brown tedium of your irises, you looked to experiment elsewhere. Not on me, mine were brown too. What you told me after pressing your own was that you wanted to see inside. You asked me what was there, and I said I didn’t know. Blood or something probably. It was around eight o’clock, sometime in November. Your mother had fallen asleep on the sofa, and you were drawing, cutting and sticking. You heard her snore; ‘Mean Old Mum’, and you felt like an experiment. Mother’s pearly blues. You tried to see inside her eyes. I think you believed me about the contents, but you were very much about finding things out for yourself, for certain. Her eyes were loosely closed. The one on the left, the top eyelid. You snipped it right up the middle to get a closer look at the cornea, the iris, the pupil. White fluid, red fluid, and screaming, cursing, flailing mother. She said that we had to disown you, that you were a fucked up child. I couldn’t leave you, and she left me after that. I still loved her and trusted her, and she still popped by from time to time – to cry, to talk – but she never acknowledged you again. One day, she came by, drunk. Very drunk. All slurred words and vocal gesticulations. She had a service revolver, her Dad’s I think. When you were nine, your mother shot you in the chest. When you were nine, your mother shot herself in the head, upwards, through the roof of her mouth. She collapsed backwards, into the table by the front door – the one we kept the keys on, and the post – an assortment of thumping noises, and gurgling noises trickling from the hole in her head. I loved you Nick. And for all your faults, I still love you. But I’m done now. Everyone gives me the look. The one that says ‘like Father like son’. And I don’t want to be thought of like that. I’m a good man. I have a good heart. But they’ve gone to waste. I guess I’m trying to say that I hope all this has changed you, and I’ll see you soon. Love you Nick, Dad.

There was a tall man with a short hat sitting on top of a lamp post. A breeze blew by and the hat fell off, but the man continued to sit still, afraid that he would fall. He finally braced himself to look down at the landing place of his hat. The hat had pierced through the horn of a boar that snored below him. Furious about his now ruined hat, the man kicked his shoe towards the boar in an attempt to wake him. The shoe caught the breeze, landed in the boar’s yawning mouth and was quickly digested. A rumbling crept from the boar’s stomach (boars don’t react well to a specific type of rubber sole) and the beast kicked back his hoof in frustration, rattling the lamp post side to side. The tall man rattled about until his equilibrium was compromised, sending him towards the ugly pig. The man reached his lanky arms outward and grasped onto the boar’s wisp of a tail. Without a proper brace for his fall, he crushed down onto his right knee yelping with pain, but the boar continued to sleep. Curious, thought the man, but he took his hat and wobbled down the walk towards a local drug store. *I’ll take my usual* he demanded to the ethnic shop keep. Before the boy could grab the man a pack of Winstons and a stick of beef jerky the door hammered open. In walked the boar with sleep in his eyes. *Nice day* he snorted, grabbing a tin of antacids with three teeth and placing them on the counter. *Yes. Nice day*. Said the man, counting the floor tiles. *Why were you resting on top of that lamp post?* Asked the boar. *I’m a very tall man and benches rest too low to the ground*. He continued, rocking onto his socked foot, *Why didn’t you wake up when I dropped my hat, when you swallowed my shoe or when I pulled your tail*? The boar took a moment to wiggle his snout, *I take a lot of vicodin*.

Paul sat at the table in his living room scribbling down a few last sentences on his scratch piece of paper. The words started out neatly written, but as your eyes travelled down the page they became smeared and unrecognizable. As he folded up his work, Jack came stumbling down the stairs into the living room. He was in a hurry trying to get to work. As Jack grabbed a half-eaten sandwich from the fridge he yelled: “Hey bud! Look I know you’ve been in a rut for the past few months but after I’m done with work today you and I are gonna hit the bars, find a hot piece of ass, and get you laid! You’ll be in a better mood in no time!” “Yeah, okay dude. Hope work-” “Alright see ya man!” Jack walked out the front door scarfing down the sandwich. The car outside made a terrible noise then the engine roared to life. Paul picked up the gun on the table in front of him and shot himself in the head. Blood ran over the note on the table. Even the perfectly crafted words at the top of the page became defiled and tarnished.

This isn't my first short story, and I hope to post more at some point, I just wanted to share this. You’re sitting, a cup of warm pomegranate tea is lightly steaming on the small table next to the chair you’ve chosen as your morning sitting area. Your bare feet rest upon the warm wood of the patio. You run your fingers through your hair, admiring the job that your barber did yesterday. You take a sip of the tea, a bit of steam caressing your nose as the warm liquid intensifies on your taste buds. Seems like you made the tea rather strong today. Oh, no bother. You place the glass down, swallowing the last bit of tea. A light “clink” as the glass of the tea cup strikes the glass top of the table. A light breeze flits through the patio, as if it were the wind under a robin’s wings. You look around at your surroundings. The cool green grass has just hit its peak, and it’s reflecting the sun’s light beautifully; it waves in the breeze, creating a soft green sea. Looking down at the watch you received for your birthday, you see it’s just about half passed 11 in the morning. The sun is lightly perched in the middle of the sky, clouds drift past, creating some quiet shadows to compliment the sunlight. The sun is refracting off the white bricks your small, humble, but cozy home are made from. The sun warms your skin as it shines down from the heavens above you. It’s a nice warm, very soft and defined. You grab the collar of your favorite shirt, and take a little whiff of it. It smells like her. You know that scent immediately, and it brings a light smile to your face. You look down at the bracelet she made you, the colors all meaning something more than anyone else needs to know. You hear the creak of the patio door opening, and she steps out, still in her pajamas. “Good morning, baby” she says with a quiet smile, a twinkle in her eye, and a graceful step through the doorway. “You’re up early,” she says, sitting down next to you. “It’s a nice morning. Here, I made you some tea” you say to her, smiling, “I know it’s your favorite. Care to enjoy the quiet for a little while?” you say. A smooth white flash brings you out of your daze. It’s only 3 AM, and you’re alone in the cold darkness of night. You already miss her. *Sometimes my dreams are too vivid even for me.* Downvote it to hell, I don't care. I just had to get this out. Thanks for reading, if you did.

Ken Hagen dreamt of tumors and dull cutlery. In his nightmares a woman lays on an operating table surrounded by surgeons and nurses, a mass of sick tissue slowly choking her to death. The doctor, with the cool collected tones of an airline pilot announcing the altitude says “scalpel”. A nervous resident, probably only a couple weeks out of med school quickly hands him the instrument. The key. The key that opens the door to her salvation. The surgeon skillfully lines up the scalpel to make the incision, his hands steady, a nurse wipes his brow. As he places the blade to her skin, he realizes something is wrong, it won’t cut the flesh. He presses harder. Nothing. He grabs another scalpel, to no avail, it just won’t cut. From seemingly nowhere he grabs a large butcher knife and plunges it down with deadly force, only to have it bounce from her rubbery flesh without leaving a mark. “I need something sharp!”, he screams. But he is alone. “Dammit isn’t anything around here fucking SHARP?”. The woman’s breathing becomes ragged as the surgeon dashes from the room in a panic, the sound of shattering glass is heard and the man returns, but he is no longer a surgeon, he is Ron Popeil. Ron Popeil with an axe. He raises the axe above his head like a demented lumberjack, like Paul Bunyan about to fell a mighty pine with one swing. The woman flatlines. “This oughtta do it”, Popeil says. He swings the axe down with all his might. SLAM! Ken Hagen awoke in a cold clammy sweat, he was having the dream again. “Fucking Ron Popeil” he muttered to himself. The night was cold and Ken had only slept in fits, the tattered sleeping bag his only source of warmth. The squeals and click-clacking of the train told him it was time to move. Ken was a drifter, he traveled from place to place by boxcar, riding the rails like a ghost. He floated through towns an apparition, once he was gone no one was really sure if he had existed at all. He went by many names: Kenneth Hague, Kent Higgins, Kimbo Von Hindquarters to name a few. His breast pocket bulged with writing utensils. He had a pen for every occasion, blue ink, black ink, red ink, ball point, felt, permanent, semi-permanent and even an antique quill pen just in case. He carried a number two pencil, and kept it deadly sharp. He wore a feather in his cap, and he carried a small kit. This kit allowed Ken to do the two things he did best, the two things he was born to do. Sharpen knives and cure cancer. Curing cancer was of course his primary concern but he needed something to get his foot into people’s doors, and knife sharpening was his ticket. In fact, over the years Ken had gotten pretty damn good at sharpening things, he even considered settling down a few times when he came upon a sleepy town filled with fetching women and dull edges. But something always pressed him on. His destiny, he had come to realize was to kill cancer. Cancer had nearly killed Ken once upon a time, he was so sick and in so much pain that he attempted to take his own life by drinking a mixture of jet fuel, shark cartilage, lentil soup, tabasco sauce, Pert Plus shampoo, and Steel Reserve. He awoke on the floor of his garage eighteen hours later and realized two things: His cancer was gone, and he had pooped his pants. A clean pair of shorts later Ken realized that he had stumbled upon an elixir with amazing curative properties. A true nectar of the gods. Over the next few weeks Ken perfected the mixture and soon he was ready to begin his quest. “No one’s gonna believe me”, he said to no one in particular. He pulled a cucumber out of the refrigerator to slice up for a salad. His knife wouldn’t cut it, it was too dull. The faint sound of a train whistle could be heard miles away. So much time had passed since then, it seemed like another life, like his life before the elixir was only a fever dream and his life since all too real. Ken darted from the train as it grunted to a stop, dashing into the bushes before anyone saw. He walked through a wooded area and wondered aloud “Do squirrels get cancer?”, they probably did he answered himself, they were just too primitive to understand it. Lucky them. Lucky, Indiana was little more than a crossroads and a post office. The kind of town you could miss if you blinked, but Ken Hagen never blinked. Not very often anyway. He came here because of his list, the list of every person in America that had cancer. How he got the list is so secret that not even the person who invented Ken Hagen knows how he got it. He just got it. Now he was checking his list like Santa, if only Ken could travel the world in a single night like Old St. Nick he could cure cancer in a day. “Fat Bastard”, Ken muttered to himself, the next person on his list was not far from here. Betsy LaRue was her name. Ken tapped a familiar rhythm “Shave and a haircut, two bits”, he mumbled to himself. He wondered about the origins of that phrase, and if two bits was a quarter then what was one bit? Twelve and a half cents? It didn’t matter, Ken didn’t even have that much. And what about. . . The door opened revealing Ms. LaRue, a gaunt skeletal shell of a woman, a bandana covering her bald chemotherapy ravaged scalp. Death would soon be knocking at her door, luckily Ken Hagen got there first. “Hello Ms. LaRue, my name is Charlie Lininger”, Ken said, pulling the fake name out of his ass. “Might I interest you in my utensil and cutlery sharpening services?” a smile crossed her lips and Ken realized that she had once been beautiful, and still was in a way. “Sure”, she said, “I’m going to die in three months anyways and I might as well have sharp utensils the rest of the way.” That’s what they all say. She showed Ken to the kitchen, it was filled with slicers, dicers, choppers, and knife sets all sold by Ron Popeil. Ken hated Ron Popeil. His products were all bullshit, Popeil claims his blades stay sharp for life which is only true if you’re talking about the life of a fruit fly. Ken often daydreamed while riding the rails about slicing Ron Popeil’s throat with one of his own knives while whispering into his ear as he gurgled his last breath “Set it and forget it, dick”. But sharpening these substandard knives was not what he was here to do. “Ms. LaRue, I know you’re sick”, Ken said “And I can help you”. Betsy took a step back, “I thought you were here to sharpen my knives”, she said. “I am, but I can also take away your cancer, I can fix you, if you’ll let me”. She slowly reached for the 32 piece RonCo knife set on the counter and said. “You’re crazy, get out of my house!”. Ken could only smile as he said “Ma’am, we both know that those knives are so dull they couldn’t cut Jell-O, now just hear me out, please”. “How can you possibly help me? I’ve got terminal cancer of the liver”, she said with tears forming at the corners of her eyes. “I have an elixir that will rid your body of cancer, I know it sounds crazy but what do you have to lose? If it doesn’t work, then you’ll still die but if it works. ..”. “I could live”, she said. Her hand withdrew from the knife set. Ken slowly poured the elixir into a mug with a picture of Snoopy on it, he was laying on top of his doghouse and that stupid little yellow bird was saying something to him but Ken didn’t bother to read it. “Now Ms. LaRue, drink the mixture down quickly.” She sniffed the liquid, her upper lip curling at the acrid smell, “Are you sure this will work Mr. Lininger?” she asked. Ken placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder, “It worked on me”, he said. Without another thought she downed the entire mug and promptly slumped over in her chair. Ken gingerly lifted her up and carried her to the couch where she could rest comfortably. He pulled out his list, selected the proper pen from his wide assortment and crossed her name off. He then sharpened every one of her piece of shit Ron Popeil knives, helped himself to a sandwich and a beer from the fridge, took a hot shower and left unceremoniously. He had a train to catch, and a hell of a lot more names on his list. Betsy LaRue woke up eighteen hours later and she realized two things: Her cancer was gone, and she had pooped her pants. She vaguely remembered a man knocking at her door. But she couldn’t remember his name. The faint sound of a train whistle could be heard miles away.

Tad’s first summer at Wiki-Wak found him quite worried who his tent-mates might be. He opened the flap warily and peered inside. The smell of musty canvas hit him in a wave. He squinted his eyes and caught sight of something in the darkness. A smallish boy with black hair and horn rimmed glasses peered back at him grinning. As his retinas acclimated Tad observed that he appeared to be tinkering on some sort of disassembled gadgetry. “Greetings!” said the boy congenially. “The name’s Kip Keegan” he stated proudly, holding out a grimy hand. Tad shook it anyway to be polite, and then wiped his own on his trousers. “Tad Hollerith” “Hollerith. The name rings a bell. Goodness, what happened to your hands?” “Oh….” Said Tad embarrassed, pulling down his jacket sleeves. “Quick” he thought “make a joke of it.” “I got into a fight with a furnace” “Ha!” said Kip, looking at Tad with an expression of disbelief. Tad quickly changed the subject. “Have any of the other Bunk Mates shown up?” “Brewster came and went awhile ago. Should be back soon. He’s something else, I tell ya. We met here last year. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of the other fellow yet, though. Hope he’s not one of those Meat-heads from the Rugby Squad.” Tad was warming up to him already. Any hater of those idiots was automatically friend material as far as he was concerned. Kip sat back down on his cot and continued working on the small contraption. Tad was officially intrigued. “What is that pray tell?” “Oh, this ole thing? It’s supposed to be a mini-transistor radio. I built it last year with various parts I nicked from the engineering dept. Been awhile since it worked though. I stumbled upon it in my desk while packing. Thought it might be worth a shot if I could get it receiving again.” Tad had heard about this new fangled technology called radio, but his knowledge about it was minimal. He had seen one at the Dungleburg fair once, paying a penny for the privilege of joining an audience of awed spectators who gathered around a hulking machine to listen to it play a staticy rendition of “Stars and Stripes Forever”. He was never quite sure how it worked though. Something about invisible wavelengths of energy plucked right from the ether by means of antennae receivers.” “Incredible.” Kip laughed. “You should see the Transatlantic Receiver I’m building back at Dun. When I finally get together enough scratch to mail order the parts, I’m going to be talking to chaps in France! Wouldn’t that be bully? Now where’d I put my watchmaker’s kit?” he said, digging around in his trunk. “Aha!” “How does it work?” (Kip goes on to give an elementary explanation of Radio Science) “Remarkable” “I think so at least. Good to meet someone as amazed by it as I.” Just then the tent flap flew open with a flourish. In burst a tall, lanky lad with flush face. It appeared as if he had been in a hurry. “Kip, Worthington’s got a full carton of Sassafras Doodles, we gotta shit and get while the…” His voice dropped off suddenly upon catching sight of Tad. “Oh, blast…” “It’s OK Brewster,” explained Kip “this here’s our new Tent-mate Tad Hollerith. He seems on the level. Tad, meet Brewster McNutridge, alchemist extraordinaire.” “What have I told you about referring to me with that term. I’m not trying to turn shit to gold here! It’s chemistry kip, chemistry! Not alchemy.” “As you wish Nicolas Flammel” said Kip mischievously. “Why I oughta….” said Brewster, shaking his fist in Kip’s face jokingly. “Tad Hollerith huh? Is this your first year at Shitty-Shak?” “Pardon?” “Is this your first instance of attending camp?” “Yes” Brewster shot a sideways glance at Kip. “Oh boy…” “What?” implored Tad nervously. “Uhh, nothing, you’ll find out soon enough.” Tad’s brow furrowed. Kip immediately attempted to assuage his anxiety. “Don’t fret chum, we’ll stick with ya. Camp can be rather rough on the average neophyte, but your fellow tent-mates will be there every step of the way.” Tad had met few boys his age so friendly. Most teased or bullied him for his physical weakness and delicate personality. To meet someone so congenial was quite a relief. Kip eventually abandoned hope on the transistor, and the 3 boys began unpacking and tidying the tent for opening inspection. While they organized and swept, Brewster told several dirty jokes, one of which caused Tad to laugh out loud, something he did very seldom. He was beginning to consider how lucky he was to have such tent-mates, when the boys heard a terrible commotion outside. “Let me go!” screeched the voice of a young boy. “Stand up you little whelp, or I will be forced to thrash you again!” bellowed the voice of a man. “If you so much as come near me with that switch I will notify my parents immediately, you…you insufferable brute!” Suddenly came the sickening sound of flexible twig striking yielding flesh. The boy wailed in agony. The 3 boys in the tent could hear footsteps crunching toward their tent. “Get in there!” snarled the counselor, shoving the boy through the flap violently. “Perhaps next time you shall know your place!” and with that he stomped off in a huff. Tad and the others gathered round the wounded boy. Kip put out a hand to help, but the frightened creature swatted it away. “No! Don’t touch me!” “It’s OK chum, I’m not going to hurt you. Is this your assigned tent?” “Guess so…” mumbled the sniffling boy. As he looked up at them with teary eyes the others could see a bloody, diagonal slice traveling from his left eyebrow, across his nose, and all the way down to his right jawbone. His left eye was already beginning to swell shut. “Merciful heavens,” said Tad aghast. “Did that counselor just do that to you?” “No” said the boy sarcastically “I ran into a rosebush” “Here” said Brewster, handing the boy a dampened washcloth. “Put some pressure on that, its still bleeding”. The boy took the rag and pressed it up against his wound. “Thank you” he croaked “What happened?” asked Kip, in genuine concern. “Oh, it was nothing.” “I say a switch to the face is much more than nothing” “Jeez, would you lay off. I got into a tiff with one of those brutes out there. I told them over and over that I am not supposed to be here, but damned if they’d listen. Incredulous wretches! Once I’m able to successfully contact my father, he’ll have their jobs, every last one of them!” Brewster shot another knowing glance Kip’s way. “Come now,” he said “let’s get you off the floor. Tad, can you lend a hand?” Tad assisted his new tent-mate to his feet and over to the empty cot. They removed his boots and propped him up with extra pillows. “Uhhnnn….those fiends….those miserable bastards…how dare they?” “Here, have a swig of this” said Kip, brandishing a large glass phial. “It’s medicine. It will help you feel better.” The injured lad took a big swig and nearly spit it out. “Dear god, what is that swill?” “It’s Doctor Farmington’s Patented Nerve Tonic. It has a bit of opium in it. I got it last year when I had whooping cough. Never used it much but I thought it might come in handy.” “Say…” said Brewster. “How’s about letting yer ole pal Brewst get a tug of that?” “Not today.” A few minutes later the wound stopped seeping. The boy’s breath grew deeper, and he seemed a bit more calm, considering the circumstances. Just as he was about to nod off Brewster whispered a query. “Hey kid…psst…” The boy looked up at him with his one good eye. “What’s your name?” “Dewey. Dewey Gillespie. Heir to the Great Gillespie Fortune.” And with that he fell headlong into sweet slumber.

I slowly drift off into space, blackness, nothing. The sweet embrace of nothingness, it hugs me ever so gently, caresses my skin ever so softly. The comfort of the feeling is unmatched by anything, more passionate than a lovers embrace, but yet more gentle than a mother holding her new born baby. I am clear; it is an escape from the hustle and bustle of the everyday, the ups and downs, ins and outs, the busy that we all deal with every day. I am floating on a cloud of joy. White and fluffy, I float through the sky with the greatest of ease. It dances and prances through the endless blue, no destination in sight no nothing around. The soft cotton form of the cloud brushes me lulling me into a state of relaxation, the feeling of a warm towel on a cold winter’s day. The dew drops drip down draining away all my daily dilemmas as I slip from consciousness to the world of the unknown where anything is possible and everything is alright. Still I am on my cloud, floating free through the sky. But I begin to sink towards the earth away from the warmth of the sun. As I descend the dew drops that dripped away my problems grow cold. The warm towel is gone and along with it the relaxation has disappeared. I am cold. As the cloud deepens in its descent the dew drops drip more and more and they turn into rain. The cloud I am on is no longer alone. Grey ominous clouds surround me on all sides, up, down, left, right, front, back all around. There is no seeing where I am going. What lies ahead? My soft white cloud begins to shrink and fade into the background of the grey storm clouds. It grows smaller and smaller and I am no longer caressed by its beauty, but frightened by its disappearance as I continue to fall into the grey abyss. My cloud is gone, but I am not falling. I am standing. It’s solid ground. Green grass grows around my bare feet. It is unkempt, filled with weeds and gravel that scratch the bare bottoms of my feet. I am compelled to walk; up a gently sloping hill and with no destination in sight. The storm clouds that surround me open up and the heavens rain down. Still I continue up this hill as my tattered clothes become saturated. The grass is dying, dying, dead. Only the weeds remain, through the mud and the gravel that cut my now bloody feet. I continue up the hill as my feet bleed and are rubbed raw. All around me are tombstones and I continue up the hill. First one, two, three, four, five. I loose count. They are all around me on this hill, tombstones for no one. No names, no faces, dates, empty. They belong to the masses, the nondescript, unoriginal people, who have all died their own individually common horrible death. And I continue on my march. I fall to my hands and knees and they both begin to bleed as the gravel rubs them to a state of ground beef, but still I march. My destination is close, although I still do not know what it is. The tombstones grow, what was once small headstones no higher than my knee grow to tower over me like skyscrapers. They look down upon me with their blank nameless faces. Watching me struggle up the hill as my clothes become more tattered and my shirt soaks with blood and rain. Death is watching. I find him, my father near the top of the hill, but not quite at the peak. He is not an old man, but not young either. He is how I know him to be, of good health and middle aged. The sides of his hair are white, but on top there remain some black remnants of his youth. He is laying down holding his stomach. Grasping, clutching, pulling at his stomach. I want to run to him, but can’t. I continue slowly up the hill. Falling, scraping my forearms, then my elbows and up my arms until I finally fall on my face only to arise a bloody mess at my father’s side. I see now what he is holding. He looks worse than I. His hands, feet, knees, face, everything is filthy; covered in a combination of both mud and blood. The filth washes down his body until it reaches his hands. His mangled hands that have seen the work of a thousand men. Bent, shaking, cold. His hands hold, grasp, clutch at his stomach. His black shirt torn open below the navel. His hands cover something and I move closer to see. He is not holding his stomach, but holding it in. Where am cut with tiny scratches that bleed with the rain he has one stretching from side to side and through pour his entrails. Green, purple, orange, red with blood they pour out as he tries to hold them in. I cradle my father. His head in my right arm as my left hand works with his to keep his intestines inside, but they pour out. And I see my hand it is just as mangled as his. Cut, twisted warped into all shapes; broken one thousand times over; it shivers too much to hold anything and they slip out through our mangled fingers. Slowly and painfully through the hands of my father and I they slip out. Pouring onto the filth that now surrounds us they slip out. My father does not make a sound. He is staring straight into my eyes, looking up at me, his only son, holding him as he approaches death in this graveyard of nameless men. There are no words, only the sound of my father taking his last dying breath. And I wake up, just like every night, crying, alone in the dark.

The sand was blowing so hard it was difficult to see anything. Even the tanks parked just a few feet away seemed insubstantial. The goggles I wore did little to keep the sand out. I felt filthy. My eyes ached and felt as if they could produce no more tears. My hands and all other exposed skin were raw and tender from the biting sand. I huddled in as close as I could to my battle buddy, Mike. Outer discomfort was only part of the reason we kept so close to each other. Fear dictated most of our actions. The need to hold on to something familiar. Mark and I had become good friends during our training. Our shared struggles in infantry and airborne schools had developed a trust that only deepened when we both washed out of the Ranger Indoctrination Program. Our faith in each other had become the only stable thing we had. Training was over and we were going to war. We stood in that storm for what felt like hours before a wiry man stepped up to us and shouted in our ears to be heard over the wind “you fags follow me!” Unquestioningly, Mark and I did as we were told and were lead through the sandblaster to a small tent where we could wait out the storm. As the storm failed we found that a meal and some water had been left for us. We had not had anything to eat or drink since landing in Kuwait at least sixteen hours prior to arriving at our little tent. Our hunger and thirst helped make short work of the food and water, but as we finished a wave of nausea washed over me and I ran outside to purge myself in the sand. “Why do I always throw up when I’m nervous?” I asked Mark after rinsing the bile from my mouth. “I don’t know” he shrugged. “That’s just the faggot coming out of you” barked a deep nasally voice with a hint of a southern drawl. Mark and I both turned to the speaker ready to throw insults back in return. Fortunately for us, our eyes were quicker than our tongues, and our words never quite reached the air. We both snapped-to upon seeing the same wiry soldier who had shown us to our tent. Without the sand swirling between us we could clearly see the stripes on his collar. “You privates want to say something?” he asked. “No, First Sargeant.” we replied in unison. “Good” said the First Sargeant. “You two see that group of vehicles circled up about four yards to your twelve o’clock?” “Roger, First Sargeant” “Then double time over there and report to Lieutenant Black.” “And for fuck sake don’t salute” he yelled at our backs as we hurried off to follow his instructions. We found Lieutenant Black playing spades in the back of a Bradley. He did not acknowledge our presence until he and the other soldiers with him had finished their hand. When he finally did look up he pointed at Mark and said “you first.” “PFC Mark Strunk reporting for duty, sir” Mark replied. “Sound like stump” grunted one of the soldiers who had been playing cards. “Where you from Strunk” asked the Lieutenant “Denver, Colorado, Sir.” “Good. And who is this turd with you?” Barely recognizing my cue, I stumbled over both my feet and my words and said “PFC Brandon McNair reporting for duty, sir. “Alright, listen close Stumpy and Mcturd.” Said Lieutenant Black “The president is going to declare war any day now. We are currently sitting less than a mile from the border. When he does declare war we are to be the point of the spear going into Iraq. You two are a liability to me. We don’t have time to train you up on unit SOP and I won’t have you getting someone killed by being in the way. So what that means to you is stay on the hip of the team leader I assign to you, keep your head down, and do what you are told.” To be continued...

Waves lapped against our little home for the month. A dim light illuminated the effervescent sea. I watched, from my hammock strung between the mast and jib, the sunrise, one that I’d seen many times before. It’s Tuesday, June 16th, the weather is still rather spring-like, for summer hasn’t hit the east coast yet. An occasional groan resounded from the cabin, as well as the deck near the stern. It seemed like the crew was stirring from the bit of movement caused by the waves. I had laid out overnight, not able to sleep. I remember watching the stars fill the sky, like extraterrestrial lightning bugs. The Milky Way had conquered the entire sky last night; a beautiful sight in all its natural beauty. Some stars had twinkled, as if they were about to burst or go out. I remember watching light bulbs before they would extinguish. A flicker, a tremble. Then suddenly, a burst of heat, of pure white – if not for a split second – then, darkness enveloped. It seemed as if the darkness became a being of its own, and it would overtake one’s very heart if he were not careful enough. I blinked a few times to clear my blurry eyes. I spent the entire night thinking about what it would be like to be back on land. The sun was just breaking the horizon, and I had a front row seat for its beautiful dawn. The sky erupted with dark oranges, reds. I pulled my water bottle from the pocket in my hammock and took a sip of the cool liquid. It stung my throat, for my throat was completely devoid of normal clean moisture. I had been breathing only salty air the entire night, and my thirst had finally taken the best of me. The piercing ferocity of the silence that pervaded around me deafened my senses. I could only hear it, the dark dismal silence that one only hears when he is truly alone, alone in his mind, and alone physically. My crew didn’t take much to me, for I was simply a twenty-something captain. Typically, teenagers don’t want to listen to me. However, they volunteered. It’s saddening to think that even one’s closest friends seem the furthest away when he has to keep his mind to himself and simply give orders. The sun’s crown broke the surface of the sea; it blinded me for a second. I had forgotten to look away – the beauty of its rise had captivated me. The colors of the sky quickly faded in hue from the brilliant color of which they began to stale blues and yellows. The sun had finally risen. Yesterday, our ship lost her course and we had to anchor in a small cove off the Coast of Tangier Island. Some of the crew had taken one of the two canoes on the stern and filled them with their camping gear and canoed out to the island, staying on dry land for the night. Their fire still had a bit of smoke trailing up from it. Good to know they wanted the island to keep from burning last night. A light breeze continuously graced our ship with its presence. She ebbed and flowed with the current, with the waves. I could taste the salt in the air, and sometimes I questioned the quality of the air I was breathing. Footsteps. Someone was awake. I clambered out of my hammock and squandered my way down to the cabin; after all, I was supposed to check the maps and GPS. Michael, the first up every morning, was rolling up his blanket and pillow to throw in the storage bay so we’d have more room in the cabin once we set sail in a little while. “Mornin’, Captain,” he said with a slight smile. “Mornin’, sleep well?” I asked. “’bout as well as I can on the floor of a sailboat’s cabin, sir,” he replied rather sarcastically. “I feel ya’, man,” I said monotonously, “ready for another day of sailing?” “Gimme about ten minutes, and yeah, I should be,” he replied. “Great. Would you mind waking the others?” I asked, “I have some business map-wise to tend to.” “Yes sir, I will,” he said. “Thanks, Michael – knew I could count on ya’.” With that, he began rustling the others. I sat down and tended to the maps and plotted our course. I knew we had to be in Urbanna by Thursday, which was an easy task because it was a straight shot from Tangier. Straight ‘cross the Chesapeake, and sail for another three hours upriver and it should be port side, if I remember correctly. The voyage to that little city was quick and simple, but there was the issue with the sunken Bay Chaser wreck just off Stingray Point that had to be worried about. The wreck was rather new, and another ship in our fleet, the Kristen Marie, had already struck her keel on the mast of the wreck. Apparently her propeller had also gotten caught up in the rigging. However, I was on a trip with the captain of the Kristen Marie when she sunk, so I remember rather vividly where she is, and what position she’s in. Sadly, though, the deepest part of bay is right by Stingray Point, and either side of the channel below is surrounded by 70 feet of sheer rock cliffs. With only 7 feet of water on either side, we had to sail straight through. “Sir,” a voice rang out, “sir!” I broke out of the daze I was in. “Oh! Adam, mornin’ m’boy,” I said. “Mornin’ captain – I was wondering when we’d be shoving off?” Shoving off – I hadn’t heard that term since I was under Captain Rob way back when I was a teenager. “Not sure, are the boys on the island up?” I asked. “There are guys on the island?” He replied obliviously. “Yes – I’ll take that as a ‘no.’” “Let me go up on deck and see, most likely not though,” Adam stated. “If they’re not up, I’ve got an idea,” I said, slightly maniacally. “Oh boy,” a few of the guys in the crew said sarcastically, laughing a little. “Captain, seems like they’re still sound asleep,” Adam said coming down the ladder from the helm. “Great,” I said, “someone retrieve me a pen, I seem to have lost mine,” I said. Brett, a hyper one of the bunch, pulled a pen from his bag. “Thanks, now, give me one moment,” I said. I pulled a small piece of paper and an envelope from my desk. Writing a simple little note to the boys on the island, signed, sealed, and to be delivered. “What’s the note say, captain?” Brett asked. “In time, in time,” I replied philosophically. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He asked, slightly angered. “Cool it, stupid,” David said, emerging from the bathroom. “Guys, calm down – you’ll all see this little plan I’ve hatched, now, someone, take this letter, get in one of the canoes, and deliver this letter to them – don’t wake them though,” I said, smiling. “I’ll do it,” Adam said. So, off he went. I waited to hear the canoe hit the water to begin telling the crew what I was doing. “You see, I have kids like this occasionally who like to spend the night on Tangier, and they always get up late, regardless of what I tell them. So! We’re going to leave them a little letter, which says: Boys, we decided to leave you guys on the island. There’s a small cache of food near the beach, it should look like a .50 caliber ammo box, and there should be two of them. They’ll keep you fed for a few days. We’ll be back at some point. Get up early next time. Signed – Captain. “Now, when Adam gets back aboard, we’ll set out. Since the beach here is rather deep, we’ll be able to motor our way out-“ “You’re insane!” Brett shouted. “I don’t think so – we’re just sailing around the cove. Did you seriously think I’d leave them behind?” I replied. “Oh…” he said, trailing off. About 10 minutes passed before Adam climbed back on board. Everybody watched him tentatively as he climbed down from the deck. “Letter in place?” Michael asked. “That it is, my friend,” he replied. “Great then, let’s head out,” I stated. *To be continued...

Whilst out on a joyride last week, I was struck by how ineffective and inaccurate many of our road signs are. Take “Blind Person Area”, for example: The sign is there to warn drivers that there may be a pedestrian in the area that is unable to see traffic as it passes, and care should be taken. The implication seems to be that, without the sign, I would simply run over any pedestrians I found wandering in the path of my car. I assure the authority for the erection of road signs, whoever they may be, that I have always operated under the assumption that I needed to stop for any and all individuals attempting to occupy the space soon to be filled by my automobile. Road signs can not only be unhelpful, but they can be downright confusing. Apparently whatever factory is in charge of churning out these signs does not, in the year 2011, have the ability to spray paint a comma or period on to any of their works of art. While out driving I am sometimes warned that I am entering an area with “SLOW CHILDREN AT PLAY.” I presume that these slow moving children present more of an obstacle than their faster moving counterparts. I don’t know about other drivers, but when I’m warned of this situation I get out of the area as quickly as I can. We also have the new favorite of hyper-vigilant parents everywhere: the small plastic man holding an orange flag. Sometimes this strange little creature will be holding a sign that warns drivers to “Drive 25 to Keep Our Kids Alive”. These disturbing little messengers may do a good job alerting drivers to the presence of children but I must warn you, dear reader, they are nearly impossible to remove from a wheel well. In my part of the country drivers are presented with signs bearing the ominous warning of “LOW FLYING AIRCRAFT” and “FALLING ROCK ZONE.” In either case I am uncertain what I, as a responsible driver, should be doing to avoid these bringers of certain death from above. I always roll down my window, lean my head outside the car, and keep a watchful eye on the sky for any signs of tumbling chunks of granite or crop dusters attempting to land on my ragtop. I have not decided what it is I am to do in the case of either but immediate panic and violent thrashing seems to be my most likely response. The number of road signs has precipitously increased in the last ten or twenty years, and I imagine the sign painting industry must be a growth market. If I am not being warned that my “Speed is Checked by Aircraft”, I am being informed by an ominous blue eye that the area is a “Neighborhood Watch Zone.” I must say aesthetically I miss the less-cluttered look of the roadways of yore. There were two signs, “Yield” (whatever that means) and the trusty old “STOP”, an instruction directed at locals.

White. The color white was what I awoke to. The red that I had familiarized myself for years and years was gone. My eyes peered in front of me to see, once again, white. Bland and colorless it's contrast is lost without it's compliments. I tried to remember doing this but was at a loss. The colors had seemed to have leaked themselves off of the world. Moving to the windowsill, trying to understand what had happened, I looked out in shock to see more white. This white was everywhere and consumed everything. Every brick, speck of dirt, or bug was all white. The people moving among the streets were all eerily similar. They were a conglomeration of white suits, polos, pants, socks, shoes, make-up, hats, and all assortments of everything. I quickly dressed myself in my new white ensemble and descended to the lobby. As the streets welcomed me I found it impossible to move anywhere. Everything blended and blurred together so perfectly I could not tell where the sidewalk ended or began. The people themselves were no better; colorless people leading colorless lives. Their eyes looked forward staring into nothingness perhaps only because that's all they could stare at. They walked aimlessly. Some ducked into a shop emerging with the same bag and as I watched I noticed the same food as well, a plain bagel with cream cheese. My mind began reeling trying to find a reasonable explanation for what had happened. The change was so swift and without a moment’s notice. I wandered the streets for hours dazed, confused, and lost. Upon realizing the amount of light didn't change at all through the course of the day it occurred to me I had no idea how long I had been walking. I tried to get back to my apartment hoping sleep could remedy the insanity that had been thrust upon me. The building, looking as familiar as anything could at this point, gleamed at me as I walked in and ascended the staircase. I threw myself on my bed hoping sleep would come to me as easily as the confusion had. Staring at my white pillow I was terrified to turn around and see what was going to greet me. Time passed, and slowly but surely my curiosity overpowered my fear granting me the courage to look up. Red. Red, like my room, my real room. A sense of calm came over me as I gradually grasp a dream is what carried me away to that odd place. In an instant, I hurriedly ran over to the windowsill and looked out onto the town to see swaths of people coming and going. A sudden urge to join them overcame me. Before I knew it my feet were carrying me down the staircase, through the lobby, and to the door in more than a timely manner. The colors demanded my attention. My eyes glossed over all the buildings. I took in every red brick and their simplest features such as a hint of green starting to grow across the brick's worn surface. It felt as if all the objects in front of me had been painted. Truly a world filled with vibrancy and substance unlike what had haunted me last night. Everyone had a story as defined as their fingerprints and no one cared to even ask. I couldn't understand how all these people were just walking by one another. An unlimited number of things could be learned and yet they walked by without a flicker of interest or if there was a flicker, it was of a more malicious kind. As I stood there and surveyed my surroundings it donned on me that all the misunderstandings in the world could be solved on this block. If these people just chose to wash themselves of their ignorance and shake a hand of a stranger a war could stop. Instead, a man in a business suit just walked by someone in a burqa and snickered. As I looked around it seemed people were only as good as how they thought of and treated other people. As my mind wandered in bliss of my realizations a man approached me and politely asked what I was smiling about. I stuck my hand and as he reluctantly accepted it I said you.

I don’t remember how I got there or where it started. So, in a way, it started off like most dreams do. I was running. But not in solidarity; with a group. I wasn’t exactly sure who they were, I just felt a deep camaraderie with them as if they were close to me. It’s hard to explain. None the less, we trekked on. The barren, gray landscape made me feel empty and thirsty inside, like I knew something better than this was out there somewhere. Or was it somewhere in the past? Was this the aftermath of a dispute between our territory’s leader with another? Regardless, I knew that there was something better than this. It was eating at me. We ran for what seemed like hours, passing abandoned houses, ransacked for their valuables. Finally, we stopped in a small neighborhood. Three houses stood there seemingly untouched by the madness of what the earth was now. It was a comforting feeling to be back home. We set down our valuables and watched the sun slowly make its dissent over the orange horizon. We felt closer than we ever have before to each other. Quickly afterwards, we all wished each other good night. I lied in my bed wishing for this to be over. Whatever “this” was, I don’t know. The next morning, I awoke with a kick of my own leg. This seems to happen every time I die in a dream. The rest of my group awoke, and we packed up again. This time though, we carried only the necessities as if we would come back. Maybe I could call this place home again. It’s been so long since I could. I kept that from the others. I found it difficult to show much weakness to them. Not now. One must be callused and strong in these times. The morning sun was beautiful, it was the only thing that gave me hope, as we marched onward. We didn’t talk about the past much, but when we did, It was certainly a touchy subject. You can only joke and play around for so long before conversion turns serious. It’s what we needed to keep sane, none the less, as we walked on this abandoned interstate. The hours were long, but I felt as if we were coming up to something big..something worth our while. Just then, our leader, average in height with a weathered face and wrinkly brow, raised his binoculars that hung around his neck. He trembled as he said, “There! Over there! Something… miraculous!”. Every one of us immediately perked up at the thought and made a mad dash towards the undiscovered locale. We stopped and gazed in awe of what we saw, a large neighborhood of houses. What struck them as odd though was their toy-like appearance. The orange and green houses looked almost gelatin-like. Maybe they were? Relishing at the thought, I was the first one down the steep hill that separated me and this mysterious village, but before I could make it, a married couple from my group had already beaten me there and had sunken into the gelatin-made streets. It was the most peculiar thing we had all ever seen, but at the same instant, it was beautiful. We laughed, and we became children again. I didn’t look back or even think of the home that I left behind. At that very moment, my leg kicked. I awoke in my bedroom; It was all a dream. **Note:** I am in high school and a very amateur writer, and I'm sure that is apparent by my grammar. I would love to hear some feedback though.

I read through my senior yearbook tonight. The pages between the ends didn't matter, it's filled with students I don't know, or don't care for. What I read through were all the messages and signatures signed on the first and last two pages along with the inside covers. I found lies. Or what I think are lies compared to the current state. I graduated in May 2011, it is now January 2012. My friend Ben signed the first page. He told me how great a friend I was, and how I influenced him in a lot of different media. He included staying in touch, which we did, until a few weeks ago. I get this feeling he doesn’t want to talk to me, as if I get on his nerves. All I want is to do something -- anything! Games, talk, make you not bored like you always seem to be. I guess I can let that go, when you want to do something call me. The next person is someone who I have really enjoyed talking to over the last year, Cheri. She told me to go shove a microscope down my throat and die. It was a nice way to start off a yearbook message, then she had to ruin it by saying just kidding, kinda. I had the privilege to continue seeing her after high school. I ran into her at the mall where she gave me the biggest hug which was nice because I thought Cheri was a great person and I hadn't seen anyone from school yet. Then I was able to get into an English class with her along with my friend Priscila (but more on her later.) My best memories from my first semester of college come from that class. Cheri is such a great sport when it comes to jokes and she has one of the most interesting personalities of any person I had ever met. She must've deleted her Facebook because I cannot access it anymore, which is a disappointment because that was the only way I communicated with her. Explaining Cheri's story isn't a somber one, it is one that just reminds me how much I miss her craziness. This girl named Alyssa wrote under Cheri's message. She called me irritating, which was an honest thing. I was quite proud that she wrote that. Then she called me hilarious. Strike number one! That was one of the lies I was mentioning earlier. She went on to call me a good Winter Ball date. Strike number two! No I wasn't, don't kid yourself. I didn't want to eat at dinner because of a long time stomach problem, and I danced like cardboard cutout. The best I did was awkwardly rubbing my dick on your ass as you grinded right on it. She ended it with you're a great guy! Strike number three! Thanks for playing The Game of Yearbook! Oh how I wish I could tell you I had feelings for you and you'd say you did too, but you now are a lesbian with a girlfriend. Go me. I skipped quite a few people who just signed to sign. Telling me I'm funny. Keep being me. Don't lose touch. I never talk to them anymore. But it seems to be that way with pretty much everyone that signed my yearbook. I wanted to conclude with the two biggest signers. My two best friends of last year. Two people that in January of 2011 were inseparable from me. If you wanted one of us, you'd get the whole package, that was how we were. The two people that I truly loved, one more in a feelings way, but both loved. Two people that in January of 2012 I don't even talk to. I liked this girl. I really liked this girl. I actually became great friends with this girl. I never thought I would ever be there with this girl. This girl. This crazy funny amazing incredible girl. This girl I feel like I abandoned. This girl named Megan. She says, we went from not talking at all to becoming the bestest friends in one year and I'm so glad we've gotten so close. I was too and still am. I got to experience who she was for a full year. I had feelings for her and we were good friends, it was at least an acceptable combo. Then after the last day of school in May 2011, I never saw her again. My feelings got in the way. Feelings she never had for more. When she started dating another friend, I was saddened. I let her go, along with those feelings. When I let her go, our friendship went with it. Which makes the next part of her yearbook message heartbreaking. She said, well we are going to remain best buds because I will force a friendship on you forever. Which is something she never did. Which is a lie she wrote down. Which is something she should do now. Find me and force me to be friends, to get back to how we were a year ago. She wouldn't need to force me. She wouldn't even be able to ask before I would shout out that I want us to be friends. I want her back. I want to know that Megan is someone I can always talk to. That time may have passed though. It might be too late to do anything about it. If it is, one day I can look back into my yearbook and realize I could've had the greatest friendship ever, but I ruined it much too soon. The last signature is from a good friend. Someone who used to be a good friend. I actually don't know where we stand anymore. Her name is Priscila. She starts with I love you so much. Probably true, then. She continues with, you are the brother I never had and I will never forget you. Just give that some time, I'm sure you're less than a month away from saying Kevin who? She said, oh and this summer we have to make videos and play video games before we start another year of disappointment. We never did any of that at all. We met roughly six times over the course of summer and that was it until school. I guess I can blame her job because that kept her occupied all the time. That might have been our downfall. Maybe we're still friends but I feel like that will die soon enough. She doesn't text me, and when I tried messaging her on Facebook it was brief before she stopped messaging and went to do other things on Facebook. I guess that is what you get for telling someone you miss them. One can say I'm reacting too strongly to the situation, but they don't know how I feel. The times where I know I want to spend the rest of my life with her. The times where I undoubtedly have complete feelings for her, despite knowing I have to think of her as a sister. The times where I can imagine us happy together but knowing that can never happen. Then again, let it burn. Move far from where we were to where we are now and beyond. Let us find new people and new friendships, preferably ones that work better. Because in the end, I assume it is going to end up that way. While looking back over my yearbook I found sadness, regret, emptiness, and lots of ink. I saw a friendship that will probably end. Someone I wish I could still chat with. A girl I had feelings for but never her. Another girl I really liked, who was my best friend, and I don't talk to her anymore. A girl I now like, my other best friend, someone who's friendship is also fading. In my yearbook I found emptiness, well, it made me find the emptiness in my life. I am left completely alone. This is not the way I preferred it, but it is the way it is. Maybe thirty years from now I can look back at the yearbook and only remember those memories. The ones written on the pages, none of the memories after them. I hope for a day like that in the future. For now, I have to live remembering all of it. I'm just counting down the days until I can forget.

He walked down the street, head held high. His plastic laser sword hung loosely on the belt around the end of his tan tunic, its artificial hilt hiding pure, imaginary death. He owned the world. His home made boots carried him in a confident stride. His broad steps, left then right then left again, ever forward, never lingering. He nodded at his comrades that passed by, sealing their knowledge of a world few could recount. Black vests with blood striped trousers, long flowing robes of brown, giant, long haired creatures, and men as white as ghosts with faces of death. But here he knew no fear, here there was only love. Many corpulent fellows had their slaves in bondage as they laughed, their green, almost slug like bodies undulated, while the few fierce warriors donned the armor of their ancestors. Their t-shaped visors, imbedded in their helmets, glistened an eerie black, as if it glimpsed into their souls, and found nothing. As he strode past his fellow disciples, he looked down his nose at the the few dressed in blue, with impish ears and cold demeanors, and the ridge headed ones with armors of brown and black leather. But he need not quarrel here for he knew his superiority. He saw partitions where the mightiest of the Heroes sat, reduced to mere mortals, whose only charge in life was to inscribe their own names on likenesses of themselves. As for the fallen Heroes, their cardboard visages stood as a stark reminder the few who dared to depart from the path of light. So, dark and full of evil, he saw a man who was no longer a man, but an amalgam of fiberglass and malevolence. He knew deep down the true relationship between him and this wicked being. He knew of the prophecies and what they foretold, bt he also knew this was neither the time or the place for such actions. The sounds and smells were almost overpowering. Everywhere he looked, there were beings from far off lands in the garbs of the bygone era. Suits and uniforms not worn for decades, brought into the light once again in all their splendor. Here he was at peace, for he knew, these were his people, his companions, his alliance. He sat, with eyes closed, listening to the murmur of a thousand different tongues, each one different and interesting in its own right. as soon as he picked up on one conversation, he was immediately engrossed in another. Listening to the guttoral grunts od the ridge headed ones, he smiled and chuckled to himself. Their sheer audacity humored him so. To think, they thought they had the right and privilege to be in his presence. But someday they would learn. He turned his attention to the small ones in their brown cloaks and with their blackened faces and amber eyes, dealing in trade and salvage with the local merchants. As the sun slowly set in the far off clouds, he knew his time here was coming to a close. He watched as the spice miners slowly left in their vessels. He witnessed his fellow masters leave, never to be seen by him again, and the Heroes, hurried off by their guards, went back to their palaces of wealth and despair. Even though he was over filled with joy, he could still not help felling a bit of despair and sadness, for he knew it would be a full solar cycle before he could return again. And with him would come even more masters and Heroes, eager and excited for a new journey. As he walked out into the early dusk, he stopped to gaze upon an approaching vessel. It was a Ford. As the window rolled down, a man held his head out and screamed "NERD!" as he pelted the unsuspecting master with what appeared to be a Mountain Dew. "Oh well," he though, sticky and drenched with something that definitely was not soda, "there's always next year." And with that he walked towards the parking lot and his Pinto with the saran wrap windshield and the busted tail light.

Dear Employer; In the interview for this position I said I didn’t care about money. Money is not as important as experience and growth. Gainful employment is nowhere near meaningful employment. It is with this that after a lot of deliberation, counseling, youthful abandon and reveries of adventure I’ve decided to give my formal notification that I am resigning from {Company X} as a Software Analyst. I am willing to work two business weeks further to help make sure everything is in order before I go. For {Company X} I was willing to drink the punch. I was willing to make sacrifices for the company. The tasteless metaphor for cultic suicide pushed on us by leadership was something I was willing to look past. Ultimately though, when it came down to it, punch was not served and for some reason I was left disappointed. This company has made promises but has not delivered. We’ve been led along with a carrot on a stick. Whether through indirect lies surrounding corporate bonuses, lottery sized stock options or fantastical tropical holiday packages. This is a prevalent theme throughout my entire time with company and it speaks directly to poor leadership. Offer something real, something tangible and then show it don’t just talk about it. In terms of our day to day with clients we’ve been far too reactionary and not responsive. We’re less about providing something meaningful, something with real value and more about satisfying the noise. The whole industry seems more about “flashy marketing facades of perceived value” than real value. It with this that I came to the conclusion that our product isn’t {business solutions}. Our product is sales. This isn’t something I can get behind. This isn’t something I can believe in. Despite corporate folly and the disillusioning mantras I love the people I work with. Each and everyone here is awesome and I’m lucky to have had an opportunity to work here. My favorite time of year is during peer reviews. Being able to write extensively about the strengths and the actions people here have made on the periphery to make a difference. That being said, it really bothered me to see people not being recognized for the work they’re doing. At one point our most talented and innovative junior programmer was relegated to creative arrest by corporate policy. “That isn’t your job” and “You’re not even a real programmer” could be heard ringing through the halls. A lack of insight let him go and now we’re stuck with dead code. Incredible potential products left to rot essentially. All his close friends here were left damaged at his mistreatment. This is just one example but there are lots of others. Considering work is a place to spend a third of each weekday. Hours afterwards musing over at home. Something that permeates my hopes and dreams. I’d rather be somewhere other than here. Anywhere else in fact. If I can suggest anything to help this company it would be that every leader here spend a day or two working with client services taking tech support calls from the elderly, doing chat support for a group of brides to be, testing a survey with over a dozen pre-launch revisions, or try managing a project with one of {Sales Person #3547}'s clients (that’s a joke.. her clients are mostly alright). See what we’re really providing our clients. I still believe this company is awesome and has potential to do very well in the market. For me personally I need to move onto other opportunities and adventures. Feeling depressed and trapped is not something I'd wish on my worst enemy so I don't know why I willed it onto myself for so long. Thank you so much for everything.

Just a man with his thoughts. Should I drink? No. Should I smoke? No. But at the end of the day it’s who I am. It’s as short walk, one I have made more times than I can count, but in my mind the steps seem infinite. Where did I go wrong? So much potential they said. So much promise they said; and honestly it’s so much easier to sit on the other side of the table and judge than to experience the true gravity of it all. To sling unjust judgment towards this life, a future that is currently being written and all the while already wrote. I see those flashing lights, I see them night in and night out guiding me home with no true direction. I know where the perceived home is, I know where my lover sleeps, but it is not home. Home only exists in an idea, a place where I once was but will never find again. I stop by the local pub and shoot the same arduous shit I always do. Sports. Politics. Economy. Pseudo intellectual bullshit that happens with a frequency that i could likely have both sides of it with myself. I need to stop coming here, never again, never more. “Quoth the raven never more.” I smirk, a smile I can only feel knowing that the pedantic idiocy of the yokels know not of this reference and it falls on ill-bred ears. I stand superior to the masses in my mind; their self perceived god ruling an empire of ignorance. I step back into the cold, longing for the brothers that once stood with me years ago. We may talk, we may lament, we may feel. Feel something that once was and will never be again. We have changed. Not necessarily to the people we should be, but to the people we now are. And yet I walk. Walk home to a love out of convenience. A love that happened at the right place at the right time. Not that childish love of youth, the truest kind love that will only exist in a flash, a blink of time only to be perused and never obtained. No this is a different love, one out of a mutual comfort, a comfort of not having to die alone. I burn another one, my only solace in the desolate wasteland that I have chosen. I stand as man who has forsaken my family, forsaken all those who have judge me [those who could judge me.] I will never be their man. I will never be the coattails upon which they hoped to ride. My parents will die old and alone as I cannot give the life they strived for me to feed them. I am cold. Cold with the realization that I am destined to be among the desolate; I fucking hate the cold. I remember, as I will never forget, the times that I saw life on the silver platter. The times that my family gifted an existence that I could have obtained but never wanted. I will embrace the darkness. I will live the heart ache as if it was written to be mine and mine alone. My own selfishness feelings are the crushing weight of the infinite as though it is the only love I have ever known. I arrive “home.” One. Two. Three. Four. I know what waits for me on the other side of this lead laden door. A woman who desires only my embrace, but at the same time stands on the edge of the travesty that is our existence, fully accepting the misery I have brought upon her. I light up number three…or is it number four…who gives a shit. I would rather die at 30 than live to see myself broken down to nothing. I quietly open the door. The comforting smell of familiarity makes me sick. I hate my comfort, I hate my strife, I hate the obligatory relief I am expected to feel in this dump. I brush off the snow, climb the steps to my every day. It is so set in stone. Fifteen steps towards the love of my life. I chuckle whilst I brush my teeth. Love. What a childish idea that was crushed long ago. Smashed upon the rocks of reality. I pet the dog, I lock the door, I embrace suburbia with the heartache of a man that was destined for more. I could have embraced the shallow 9-5 and all the predetermined dialogue that lies within. I curl up next to the physical embodiment of our failures. “Tomorrow,” I say, “tomorrow it will be different.” Knowing full well in my heart that tomorrow I will feel the biting cold once again. I find solace in the trivial; solace in the fact that today is but a few brief hours from tomorrow. The day that holds nothing but possibilities but offers the same cold, hopeless walk. I drift off into slumber hoping for better days, all the while with the knowledge that what has been written has been, and always will be written in stone. “Tomorrow,” I say, “that is the day that I will finally come to fruition.

as i was walking down the road i heard the squeal of tires stopping, then the noise of a van door sliding open. hands came out and grabbed for me viciously. instantly a bag went over my head. before my heart could start to race with andrealine going throught it i was knocked unconcious. when i came to i was in an empty room. no furniture, just tan walls, hard wood floors, a window, and a door. my hands were bound behind my back and my feet were tied together. the door burst open with a thunderous boom. a balding man with a scraggly beard came into view. i tried to move o a corner but he closed in and grabbed the collar of my shirt. it started with a punch to the face. as he kept hitting me he grew more angry and fierce. eventually he stopped, and just left with out a word. i noticed the window was open.i wiggled over and weasled my way out. i didnt know what floor i was on or what was waiting for me on the ground. i some hoe untied my legs and just started running. my face battered and bruised and bloodied to a point beyond recognition. a couple yards down the road there was a wal-mart. i ran to it, in hopes my kidnapper would never find me again. as i was walking through the store begginf people untie my hands or call the police, i realised no one was paying attention to me. it was like i was a ghost. then this sinking feeling hit me. i could sense his presence. i finally understood how an antelope felt when it was being stalked by a cheetah. not knowing where to go or what to do i ran. to where i dont know. i just ran. i saw one of my friends. i ran over to him. thank god he could see me. he untied my hands and asked "what happened?" i replied "i dont knowbut i got to get out of here." i ran and hid in a pile of clothes that needed to be hung up. then i woke up. happy it was over i went back to bed.

Warm ginger ale and a cold body. Good times. The day started out relatively normal. Alarm went off at five am. Punched the snooze button. Broke the fourth alarm clock this week. Slept in until eight. Woke up for real, looked at the bashed clock, looked at my watch, let loose a string of choice words. Tried to shave and put on pants at the same time. Got caught and nicked my ear. Opened my fridge, no food; only a sock. What the hell? Normally, I woulda got in my car, broken three speed limits on my way to the local deli, and gotten a sandwich. Instead, I got in my car, looked over to my passenger seat, threw up, and stumbled out of my car, now rancid with the smell of upchucked Pad Thai from last night, and a dead body. My first call to 911 ever happened that day as well. I had to call in a fire. I went to work like normal that day, except my commute involved a bike and a pissed off crossing guard. I was looking forward to spending an entire day of lying through my teeth to make sure some sorry bastard got twenty-five years instead of forty in the state penitentiary. Of course, it’s a little hard to make witnesses sweat when you keep thinking about the clean up job you’ll have to do on your car. I guess I won that day. Of course, society lost fifteen years of not having deal with some sociopath arsonist. I think his name was Noah. Heh. I wasn’t looking forward to going to my house that day. Can’t imagine why. Regardless, I stopped by the local grocery store to pick up some melons. She slapped me and stormed off, but at least I killed some time. The distinct smell of freshly cut grass hit my nose as I biked down a residential street. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shirtless man on his rider lawnmower. And this is supposed to be a residential area. I suppose his glistening d-cups were the ultimate sign of laziness. Sickening. After mentally flipping off Mr. Landscaper-Gone-Wild, I decided to stop by an old friend’s house. Jack and I go way back. Mr. Daniels has always been halfway decent to me, always cheering me up and getting me some great stories to tell his other patrons. I’d have had a great conversation with him too, but his doorman insisted I pay my tab. So much for boozing up. As I lit the torch, I sipped on the only drink I managed to get off the guy. I set my ginger ale aside, and watched as the first glimmers of the fire began to pop. I stood back, and savored the yells and smoke. Bellua would be pleased. I smirked as my fingers flew to pocket, pulled out my crap phone, and dialed 911. I breathed in, and reported the fire in the most civilian way I could. After getting to my house, I downed the rest of the drink. I’m sure the bartender wasn’t worried about the glass. I donned my latex gloves and surgical mask, and slowly pulled on the body’s arm. It came off. Dammit Bellua. I thought better of my initial plan, threw the arm back into the car, and shoved the body’s head down. I got into the driver’s seat. Bad idea. I got back out, got reacquainted with my lunch from that afternoon, and covered my nose with a section of fabric. The drive to the bog was one of the most refreshing drives I’d ever had. I began conversing with the body. It’s nice to have someone to listen, even if that someone was turning a nasty shade of green. I’m sure it wasn’t because of my story though. As I dumped the body, I noticed a perfectly square piece of skin missing from the back of the body’s head. Bellua’s rituals always creep me out. I stopped myself from befouling the interior of my car any further, and drove back to my house. After a long day’s work, I was ready to turn in. But I have work to do. I popped open the secret compartment of my car’s trunk, I reminisced about the first time I met Bellua. I used to be a mess, but Bellua gave me a purpose. Clean up his dirty work, and in return he would do the same for me. In exchange for getting stacks of green for reducing felons’ sentences, Bellua required that I dispose of his victims. What Bellua didn’t know at the time was that I’m more fucked up than he is. Bellua has a warped sense of justice. He thinks that by killing off the corrupt government officials, he can fix the system. I don’t give a shit about the system. I just wanna see it burn. That’s why I’ll play along with Bellua, until I have the resources to pull off my master plan. I was running low on accelerant. I took comfort in the fact that Bellua still hadn’t discovered my tools, but it was curious how I blew through a month’s worth is a week. No, I realized, it’s me. My fires are getting bigger.

My scalpel sliced neatly through, completing the first incision. As I gently lifted the flap of skin back, I admired the fragility and solidity of the skull. How could something so dull possibly reveal the beautiful secrets of the organ it housed? I stood aside as the secondary surgeon drilled through the skull. “Which hemisphere did you say I was supposed to remove?” I joked. One of the interns laughed too hard. Ass kisser. “The hemispherectomy went well enough,” I told the parents. “If all goes well, little Tyler should be able to walk and talk a little in about a week.” The look of joy on the parents’ faces should have warmed my heart. Any other surgeon would have succumbed and allowed themselves a grin. I know how I’m supposed to act, and so I feigned a smile, then turned and returned to my office. I reviewed the logs and tape from the surgery, before packing it up and handing it to an intern to give to the dean. As I drove home, I wondered if Noah had received the body. I thought back to when I first met Noah. The psycho had been at a bar, where I had only gone to have one drink before going home. He had started ranting about how he was going to burn the entire world down one day. The bartender then made the biggest mistake a bartender can make, and cut the poor bastard off. Noah then had started to bawl his eyes out, and started apologizing to thin air. Something about “why’d I help ‘em?” The bartender said he was going to call a taxi, but Noah had mumbled something about not having any cash. Before the bartender said anything else, I volunteered to take him home. That sentence seemed to aggravate Noah even more. “Fuck homes!” he had yelled. I asked him whether he had a place to stay. “Yeah, but that shithole’ll never be a fucking home” he growled. “Does this shithole have an address?” I remember saying. Over the course of the following week, Noah and I became closer. “So Doc,” he would say, “I got this fucking twinge in my neck, ya think ya could check it out?” I would gently remind his that I was a neurosurgeon. I discovered Noah’s “little secret” two weeks after the night in the bar. Noah had come to the hospital with a broken arm, and it was my day for clinic rounds. I remember sitting awkwardly in the room with Noah for a minute before Noah chuckled and said, “That file probably has it all in there right?” Seeing the confused look on my face, he said, “Why don’t I just tell ya, I’d rather ya hear it from me.” He then proceeded to tell me everything. About how he posed as a lawyer to seem normal, but how he was actually a murderer and an arsonist And about how he spent all his money on booze and accelerant. “Well actually, Bellua’s the murderer, I just burn shit,” he clarified. I had no idea who this “Bellua” was, but I didn’t care anymore. This was just too messed up. Yes, technically I’m a murderer, but not to this psycho’s extent. I’ve only ever killed for other people’s benefit. There was the time I prescribed a double dosage of Luvox to a patient who I knew had been skimming money from the school district, and that other time when I had tampered with the drill before surgery to kill a corrupt judge on the table; but these had all been for the good of society. I didn’t tell Noah any of this, I simply pretended he was joking, although I knew he wasn’t, and proceeded to call a nurse in to set his arm. Later, I called Noah and told him how I was a murderer too. I realized Noah had provided a golden opportunity to kill and not risk being caught at work. I proposed that I kill, and Noah dispose of the body’s. Noah agreed, and said that whenever I kill something, I should bring it to his house, and leave it somewhere no one else would see it, he would find it. This had been my first kill I was going to share with Noah. I had sliced a corrupt policeman across the throat, and let him bleed out on Noah lawn. Then, I covered the body with a hot tub cover, and left.

The last two days had been very strange for me. I killed a man on a psycho’s lawn, and the next day, the psycho came into my office and asked if I would like to eat lunch with him. He seemed to be acting perfectly normal. I noticed his speech pattern had changed as well. He wasn’t saying “ya” or swearing anymore. Something was off. Or maybe Noah had just realized how messed what we had done was. I put it out of my mind, and started to enjoy myself. Noah was actually very intelligent and funny. He must have been intelligent from the start, I concluded, he is a lawyer after all. He was probably just drunk for the last week. I chuckled at the thought. We finished up our lunch, and headed out to my car. Noah said he had left his phone at my office, so I offered to take him there before I took him home. He thanked me in an uncharacteristically gratuitous way. However, I didn’t sense anything was amiss, and we got in. Big mistake. The minute I got in the car, Noah pulled out what looked like an ingot, and bashed me across the head with it. I woke up in a small, cramped room that I recognized as the interior of Noah’s shed. “Took you long enough,” said Noah in a cold voice. “What the fuck?” I demanded. “I can’t have another murderer taking advantage of Noah, now can I,” he said in that cold voice, “No, I’m going to have to kill you I suppose.” “What? No! Noah, you don’t have to do this. I’m not going to tell anybody, you can let me go.” I knew he wasn’t going to. “Noah’s not here right now. If you’d like to leave a message, please don’t. I screen his calls.” Noah had finally snapped. The bastard was crazy. I tried to reason with him, “C’mon Noah. You know you don’t have to do this!” “I TOLD YOU I’M NOT NOAH!” “If you’re not Noah, who are you then?” “BELLUA.” No. It couldn’t be. Noah had talked about Bellua so much, but always acted as Bellua was a friend or something. I finally put the pieces together. “Yes, I can see the truth has finally dawned on you,” Noah/Bellua drawled, “Frankly, I don’t see how an idiot like you became a neurosurgeon. Let me explain it to you. I’m the original Noah. The Noah you know is simply a second personality of mine. Noah was born after I was caught in an explosion. That’s why he is so fixated on fire. I’ve been this way for as long as I can remember, but now that I have the Other Noah, it is so much easier for me to cleanse this disgusting society. The Other Noah agrees. He doesn’t have my capacity, so he uses fire as his tool. It’s crude but it works. Why, just recently he managed to rid society of a bartender who was a serial rapist. I’m much more dedicated however. I take out the real sickos. Like you. And Other Noah will dispose of your body. You pretend to kill only bad people, but what about the little girl who you kidnapped and did unspeakable things to? What about the man you decapitated for fun? ANSWER ME? Why’d did you do it? Did you have any reason? NO! I may be a monster, but I know that! People like you, who pretend to be infallible, make me sick!” My cheeks were so cold. I couldn’t believe it. How did he know all this? I knew I was going to die. I began to say an Our Father. “YES. This reaction. I love it!” Noah/Bellua bellowed, “The ‘prayer,’ as if pretending to repent to an entity you’ve never believed in will make it all better. Using religion as a fair-weather friendship with God, I love it! But why bother praying to God now? I control your life now: I am your God. Pray to me!” I said nothing. Noah/Bellua began to pace, muttering something under his breath. “What?” I said. “Squares!” He murmured a little louder, I realized what he was doing: getting ready to kill me. Finally, I closed my eyes, went limp, and gave up. But he wouldn’t let me do that. He yanked up into a sitting position forcefully, and suddenly I felt metal being pressed down, then a sharp pain in the back of my neck. He wouldn’t stop. It felt like he was cutting something out. When he finished, he showed me what he had done. The square piece of my skin he had cut out was dripping with my blood. “And now, I must bid you adieu,” Noah/Bellua whispered into my ear. And all was dark.

"I'm stressed," he finally exclaimed, slicing through the silent air that threatened to suffocate him. Ther room was adorned with plain, unpainted walls and occupied only by a television, a video game system which sat on standby, a bed, a dresser, and two teenage boys. They carried all the self-assurance that two scrawny sixteen-year-olds could muster. One, he who had spoken, bespectacled and mop-headed, fell onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling, his eyes tracing the elliptical orbit of the ceiling fan blades ad infinitum. "I've got too much work." He said out loud, looking at nothing and yet seeming to notice everything. "It's not like I can't keep up with it all. That's not what's wrong. I just--I have no time, anymore. I wake up late. I rush to get ready for school. I relax for five minutes and eat breakfast. I'm dragged through my school day because of this stupid seven-period schedule. Then I get out, help you with your math work, go home, get my three hours of computer time--sometimes I get a chance to mess around, sometimes I don't even finish all my assignments--oh, and I haven't even mentioned the stress from virtual school--then I study until I pass out from exhaustion and the cycle begins again." The other boy, a quiet, short curly-haired lad with forlorn eyes, looked over at his friend. "I think a lot of students deal with that kind of stuff. The good ones, anyway. And you've got straight A's, right? So what's the problem?" The bespectacled boy rose to sit on the edge of the bed such that he could make eye contact with the other one. "It's not like I don't understand a B is good--you're a B student and you do pretty well--but, I mean, I'm a good student. B's are like failing to me. I've got college to think about, soon, and I'll never get in with the GPA I have right now. It's a three point two. A three point two! All because of that crap I had to deal with in middle school that ended up getting me stuck taking all virtual classes freshman year. And now I have to do all this just to get into a decent college. On top of that, I barely know what I want to do when I'm growing up. This... this is it, pal. We're almost out and we need to make the best of the time we have left." "We've got time," the other reminded him, breaking eye contact and glancing at the enticing patterns in the carpet. "Not enough! They always tell you every year that this is the most important school year if you want to get anywhere. You need to finish school with a twelve point oh and then graduate from a top college and get a high-paying job in order to be happy and if you misstep once you're utterly screwed!" The boy's voice had transformed from bitter mockery to flooding desperation. He fell back and a loud thud accompanied his descent as his head crashed into the wall behind him. "You okay?" the other boy asked in reaction to the noise. "Fine," he answered through clenched teeth, making no attempt to hide his teary eyes. There was a long, uncomfortable silence. The two sat there observing their respective mediums--the bespectacled boy the ceiling and the quiet boy the carpet. Finally, after a few moments, they both opened their mouths at the same time and a garbled combination of syllables escaped. "What was that?" the quiet one asked. "Just more of the same," the stressed one answered. "Yours?" After a few more moments of expectant emptiness, words began to fill the void. "I knew this kid in middle school--a prodigy, a genius. They all said he was as smart as Einstein, or... something. The mistake he made was," he paused, pensive, for a moment, "forgetting to be a kid. He was so focused on the future and getting good grades that he let it become his life. All the other kids at the school would always bully him and he didn't really have any friends except for himself. He was so focused on his work all the time that he forgot. He forgot to live life and just relax once in a while. He was in my gym class. He always came in every day and had some excuse note signed by his parents--he always had a sore throat or a bad cold or something. And the teacher would just wave him over to the sidelines and he would sit on the bench all class, playing his Game Boy or doing homework. I remember this one day he did bad on a test or something--I think that was it, he got a C--and his parents exploded on him. They wouldn't let him out of the house for a few days and he had a lot of work to make up when he finally came back to school." There was a pause in the story. The bespectacled boy's mind was whirring, trying to assimilate the tale into his own situation. Then the other child continued. "I guess the stress was just too much for him. One day, while his parents were out, he went into his mom's room. I guess he knew just where to look. He removed the shoe box from under the bed and he pulled out a gun and he killed himself." The silence, this time, was dreadful. "He got a small article in the paper. They never made an announcement at school or anything. They never even mentioned his name in the obituary, I think." The fan blades, their centrifuge slightly askew, and the cranking of the gears in the boys' minds reverberated throughout the room. "What was his name?" The quiet boy looked up as the question pierced his eardrum, seeming to have not expected that. He struggled to pull a name from his memory but finally responded dismally. "I... can't remember." The other boy nodded. The silence, returning, enveloped them, caressed them. "What do you think happens when you die?" the quiet one inquired, finally, his eyes directed at the wall, staring through them into the realms beyond. "I don't really know. I don't think we, as humans, are meant to know something like that. What about you?" He sat in trance for a moment. Finally, he spoke. "I think... I think, whether you were shot in the heart with a pistol, or poisoned by an enemy, or--or offed by old age, when they mention your name and nobody can remember you--your face, your voice, your words, your actions--that... is when you are truly dead." "What if you remember his actions but not his name?" "Screw you.

-An Introduction- We set out at around five pm. It was a Saturday. We drifted out with no general direction, no destination to cap off what was sure to be, as Darren often stated, “one hell of a road trip, bitch!” In those early days we contemplated the “great western gap”, (“Great Western Vag”, Yaemon often quoted when bored), otherwise known as Grand Canyon. Hell, it looked cool in Into The Wild (2007), and some stuntdriver hopped it back in the 90’s or something. And Thelma n Louise (1991) had their famous lesbo burn out there as well, (earning many brownie points with Meg n Margaret, who where known to sometimes dabble in a little sumin summin every now and then, a secret burden they would keep to their grave.) Somewhere in New Mexico we inevitably fell astray of our possible destination, instead winding up at the chicken restaurant featured in Breaking Bad(2008-2012), and making fools of ourselves by going on a 15 minute photo spree, re-enacting bits of the show for all to see, uploaded to all the facebooks and twitters of the world, as if in defiance, boldly stating “WE ARE GRADUATES AND WE’RE STILL RELEVANT!, MOTHERFUCKERS!”. In retrospect it was a foolish, good ol’ reddit style meta-circle-jerk, living in the flesh; Internet meme mythos consolidated in the subconscious mind of the Millennial’s of the world, and asserting itself on some primordial level in the modern world. Yeamon Milo (23) Was definitely Pedobear. A closet creeper that hid behind the mask of stupidity to consummate his horrific fantasies, but we didn’t catch on until it was too late. I guess you could argue he turned into Insanity Wolf towards the end there, a real fucking monster, but more on that later. Darren Wolodarsky (19) was a definite Conspiracy Keanu. Always smelling of reefer and speaking in hushed, harsh tones in public. Only in the seclusion of hot boxed garages and smoked out pads of middle America suburbia, safe haven of the “lazy stoners”, did he reveal his true knack of comedic timing and brilliant wordplay he’d learned specifically to perform to this small, private audience. I guess you could call him a bit of a Jekyll n Hyde of Socially Awkward/Awesome penguin, of meme fame. Pancho “Peter” Vasquez (21) was a Good Guy Greg for sure, blunt and all. Always a pleasant person to be around, he saved our asses back during the Great Drug Scare of ’12, something we never really were able to pay him back for before it all came crashing down. A smart theologian who always questioned what exactly spirituality meant to him. A most honest man. Meg Blanco (17) was still legally a minor, and not even a high school graduate, but she was eventually accepted as the Naïve College Girl. After the tragic incidents that befell us at Death Mountain, her bass playing skills had become the stuff of legends, and the simple 3 track demo tape she released online (“Dark Heart Melodies”, May 3, 2009) for free all those years ago got a post-mortem revival which eventually catapulted the track “Blue Dream” (5/5 on Pitchfork) , to the no.1 top billboard spot for a record breaking 20 weeks. I guess she could also be referred to as a “Marlene” (of Adventure Time fame). Margaret Thatcher (20 and yes, ironically named) The closest one you could consider to be a “hipster”, whatever that vague blanket term means. Arts and crafts. Thick rimmed glasses. Long blonde hair. Into the Beatles, but only if it was on vinyl. Hit up the arthouse scene from time to time , dabbling in it every now and then, some would say for street cred, others not so much. So as I was saying before, this motley crew of various graduates and collegiate level students all got packed into Wolodarsky’s Mystery Van and spent the better part of the day laying on the shag carpet in the back, a personal party room on four wheels, all of us just lying face up to get a better view of the rainbow fractals drifting across the ceiling,. Oh, the van was also blacklight equipped. After visiting the Breaking Bad set, we decided to wander our way up to the frigid northern region to find the fabled mass E.T. (Atari, 1982) burial sites. We all had agreed that this was a sound venture to embark upon, and so it went! Actually, we should stop at this point of the trip, and observe a few things, because the shit that goes down here eventually causes a fucking hurricane later down the road. Planted the seeds of destruction, if you will. It all went back to the incident we went through one night that freaked us out for a few months, but we cant start there, no, far too dark and dreary. We’ll start here instead, an earlier memory from the final days of blissful; solace, before deterioration.

My grandfather is a big strapping man. 6'5” and 200+ pounds. 75 years and still solid muscle. He is one of my favourite people in the world to talk to. He used to be a wild man. He used to drink a lot. He still is a wild man. He no longer drinks. His stories are unforgettable. **The Fence** When my Dad was a kid, my Grandpa used to take him hunting for whatever was in season. On this outing they were going out for deer. Back then, they were hunting because they needed the meat to feed themselves. My grandparents didn't have much money and had many mouths to feed. So my Dad and my Grandpa drive an hour out of the city to one of the places that they used to frequently hunt. They get there, wander around the woods for 8+ hours trying to scare up some deer and when it is dusk they reluctantly give up. They throw their guns in the backseat, get in the car and start heading home. Not far from where they were hunting they drive past a large cattle farm. Without saying a word my Grandpa slows down, and turns the car towards the cow pasture illuminating it with his headlights. He quickly scans the field and spots a small calf with it's mother. Throwing the car in park he reaches into the backseat, grabs a gun and raises it up. He aims at the baby calf and boom; the animal drops and the rest of the herd scatters. My Grandpa throws the gun in the back. Shuts the car off and runs around to the rear of it and opens the trunk. He runs by my Dad sitting in the passenger seat, and asks him what he is waiting for. My Dad exits the car and runs to the field to catch up to my Grandpa. There is a barbed wire fence that is about 30 feet off the road. My Dad holds down the barbed wire and long-legged Grandpa easily steps over it. As my Grandpa gets over the fence, the outside lights of the farmhouse light up 1000ft away. A door slams and a man's voice echoes out from the house. “Hey, what are you doing out there?” My Grandfather ignores this and runs over to the downed calf. He quickly scoops it up and slings it over his shoulder and begins to run back over to the fence where my Dad is waiting. A shotgun blast rings out from the farmhouse as my Grandpa nears the fence, causing him to throw the calf at my Dad rather than handing it to him. They struggle with getting it over the barbed wire fence as it's fur gets caught in the barbs. Another shotgun blast rings out a little closer this time and now my Grandpa decides that he needs to get over that fence more than he needs the calf. He instructs my Dad to just drop the calf and help him back over the fence. My Grandpa gets back over the fence and both him and my Dad scramble back to the car slam the trunk, and take off. Once inside the vehicle, my Dad can see that my Grandpa is pretty cut up. At this point my Grandpa informs my Dad that they won't be going home, but that they will go park somewhere for an hour or two and return for their kill when the farmer goes back to sleep. Time passes and they head back to the farm to check out the situation. As they approach, they can see flashing lights in front of the farm. They drive by without stopping as there are three or four Police cruisers and even more officers. My Grandpa sighs, looks over at my Dad and tells him not to tell his mother what happened. When they got home it was well past midnight. My Grandpa's clothes were soaked in blood and he was still bleeding from his run in with the fence. So as not to alert my Grandma, he woke up my two aunts (who were maybe 5-10 at the time) and had them tend to his many wounds with peroxide and cotton swabs. He told the girls the same thing he told my Dad and when they were finished they just went back to sleep. I still don't know if my Grandma ever found out or not.

I feel it might be a bit cumbersome, anyway- any advice/critiques would be greatly appreciated. ———-He would then make his journey, wearing a shirt that featured a sloppy graphic of Paris, Texas’s own Eiffel Tower front and center. This Eiffel Tower was crowned with a fucking cowboy hat. Speaking of- I should tell you about those two-brothers, they were identical twins- one of which went by the moniker Cowboy, who in a very cowboy-esque manner heroically busted into our protagonist’s house at 3 a.m. and used brazen force to grab a sofa that was engulfed in flames to toss it out into the front-yard with a grunt. Apparently, cushion serves as no buffer to an old MGM limp-wristed ashing out of a cigarette. Our protagonist thanked him with hare-like murmurs once he awoke from the kitchen-floor that red wine and continually shouting ‘I am no senator’s son’ had lulled him to sleep on. He would always tell me that Cowboy had certain vigilant inclinations that usurped the mental disorder that made him dependent on the state of Texas and it’s few victuals of financial empathy. “If he didn’t get those checks, well, I would have probably burned alive.” Our protagonist would gleefully say over bites of the singular nougat-heavy candy bars that used to provide his only source of nutrition for the day outside of what he got when he traveled to Hunt county, which was wet and eager to trade it’s poison for quarters and the tawdry idioms thrown into over-the-counter service to feign something fetchingly personal. I was force-fed too much iconography to be concerned with finding out the other brother’s name. The two-brothers would watch the same recorded episodes of Wheel of Fortune on VHS so that they could consistently be correct with their answers. Pat Sajak had become an administration of consistent validation. The two-brothers would pepper in caveats of convoluted logic to the neighborhood kids “Don’t count your toes in spring-time, just don’t do it” before offering them a tuna sandwich or licorice that lost all malleability to time. They would go the local donut-shop and offer up arm wrestling contests in which the prize was a Spudnut with coconut shavings; rumor has it that they never lost, so the forfeiture to come of their hypothetical defeat was never addressed. I always wondered. Everyone saw a litany of misdirected allegory, bicycle baskets and matching pique polos from the thrift-store on Booker road. They saw a life without the dregs. Life without rancor towards the swath of simple southern fate. Everyone responded to them with subtle indifference. They were patronizers, but they did it out of envy. He swore it. Our protagonist saw the enchanting whiteness and front-faced conscious that the (what social arbiters have deemed as the-) ‘mentally-challenged’ bared. More times than not, he was certain that they were only people within the ‘low-end’ part of town that weren’t nauseated by the smell of sulfur. He’d invite them over to play on his impromptu front yard golf-course, which was comprised of holes that he’d stuck old coffee tins in and a croquet set he got for fifty cents. He’d conceptualized it on a raucous Tuesday night. I think he genuinely loved the two-brothers. In retrospect, we all should have. The protagonist, my father, attended their funeral in the spring of 1999. He wore the only suit he had. It was an awful onyx grey. It had masted a decade of convival and powder. It had seen its fair share. The pant hems provided slightly splayed pedals of fabric, relics of either dancing or running in The Big D (Our protagonist would say they are actions that operate in tandem.) He counted his toes for what seemed like decades. We didn’t watch Wheel of Fortune that night.

Hey guys, I wrote this 2 weeks ago in my 9th grade English class. I would appreciate some feedback and possible title suggestions :) The sun was shining gently over the field, with the wind ever so slightly rustling the leaves of the great yew tree that shaded her family. She was wearing her finest white dress, her grandmother’s pearl necklace delicately wrapped around her neck. Her father walks with her down the red carpet, perfectly lain out in the grass. He cups her hand in his, warming it. He has tears in his eyes as he looks down at her, threatening to breach. They neared the end of the carpet. Where her fiance stood, waiting, with roses littering his feet. Her favourite flower. As they approached, her father tightly squeezed her hand, forcing a quick, brief smile at the relatives who stood by their sides. There they were. Her father hugged her fiance, gave her a hard kiss on the forehead, and walked away without looking back. Her fiance looked down at her. ‘Hey darling’, he says, managing a trembling smile. He leaned down and softly kissed her lips. He held his lips on hers for a long time. He rose, and gently nudged a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Bye darling’, he says, with his tears softly hitting the rose petals littered around the polished oak box. He straightens to his full height, turns around, and walks away. They closed the lid, and slowly lowered her into the soft, warm brown soil. Edit: Changed a word from past tense to present.

I wonder if you remember as fondly as I do the time we walked down the road, creeping giddily through the mild patches of woods, the creek to our left, until we reached the subtle meadow, soft grass and tender flowers soothing to the underside of our bare, calloused feet. We danced and span around until we collapsed to the lush greenery beneath us, our heads spinning in newfound clarity. It was a clarity known only to us, a clarity only attainable through a certain mixture of incense, candles, flowing clothing, knee length dresses and bare feet, mind altering combinations of drugs and spices, and rebellion to modern technology via lighting our midnight adventures with cheap candles and turning off our phones to absorb that perfect shade of summer evening into our summer darkened skin. I wonder if you remember in the same way I do coming home from being nowhere- and strangely, everywhere at once through the psychological doors that we opened through substance and wandering- to sit in the basement and write music for hours, working until slumber carried us away on the gentle wings of early morning.

*By ColdChemical* The sun beat down on the dry land, blazing brilliantly against a perfect blue sky. The earth was dead and flat―every weed and insect choked with death by the toxic dust that had settled over the land. The air was hot and stagnant. A long time passed. Eventually a far, distant sound emerged. This sound slowly grew until it became a muffled roar―carried from miles away across the infinite flatness. This sound was shortly accompanied by a black speck on the horizon, a long cloud of dust billowing in its wake. Jedediah shifted uncomfortably in his seat and flicked his cigarette butt out the window of the jeep. His eyes, shaded from the blinding light by a pair of dark red sunglasses, drifted lazily across the wasteland before him. There wasn’t much to see. There never was. After three years, Jedediah was beginning to reconsider the job offer that he had jumped at just a few short years ago. What had promised adventure and danger had become merely one long and tedious journey after another, and they were only getting longer. At 26, he had already seen more than most members of the commune would in their entire lives. Not that they were missing much, as far as Jedediah was concerned. It was just wasteland as far as you cared to go. Still, he couldn’t deny that he treasured this freedom. It was boring as hell, sure, but out in the wastes there wasn’t nobody to tell him what to do, none of them narrow-eyed shopkeepers or stupid old men with their stupid talk. The wastes alone were his master. The long empty miles gave him a sense of momentum in his life, even though he was really no freer than the rest of the commune and was doomed to die just like the rest of them. Deep down Jedediah realized this, and unconsciously he hated himself for it. He longed for a life that he could never imagine, a life that did not exist and had not existed for many long spans of time. Yet it was this distant and long-forgotten past that the people of the commune were utterly and completely dependent upon. Scattered throughout the wastes were isolated vaults buried within the earth. Their dark steel depths betrayed little about their unknown creators, and all were identical in shape and mystery. Upon entering, one would be overwhelmed by the staggering immensity of their age, and the power and sophistication surely wielded by their creators. They defied the land, plunging indiscriminately into the bowels of the earth through soil and stone without any heed for the natural order. How unlike the communes above, which clung desperately to every rock and stone and were subject to all the violent whims of earth and sky. The survivors of the wastes, lacking any other defining feature upon which to settle, inevitably grew their towns upon the ancient relics which protruded from the surrounding plain. Shapaw, the easternmost commune, was where Jedediah lived. Hajiik was to the west and Guln in the north. The two southern communes, Apette and Illicagh, were rumored to have starved or fallen to some other similarly horrific fate, as no news had reached Shapaw of either in quite some time. Even Shapaw, the largest of the communes, contained less than five hundred residents. Some of the others contained scarcely enough people to merit a name at all. More than once some crazy band of fools had gone and tried to live inside one of the vaults, but the dampness and the creeping blackness inevitably drove anyone inside to madness. Most of the vaults, however, had not been touched by human hands for a long, long time. Their dark tomb-like caverns were usually braved by only the most fearless and curious of souls, who were invariably rewarded with a treasure-trove of strange and useful relics, the most valuable of which was a tiny blue pill. This pill alone kept the communes alive, for without the medicine within them, the people of the wastes―should they breath so much as a mote of the toxic dust―would be writhing on the ground in minutes. It was a violent and agonizing death. All efforts to learn the secrets of the blue pills had failed, and the people had resigned themselves to a life dependent upon them. As plentiful as the pills were, they would not last forever. After a time, the supply beneath the streets of Shapaw had been exhausted, and so it became necessary to send someone out into the wastes to gather more. These men became responsible for the resupplying of the pills by way of finding and raiding the surrounding vaults which had not already been robbed of their contents. Jedediah checked his compass, then craned his head back to gauge the position of the sun. Sixteen degrees southwest and just about high noon. He scowled. At this rate he’d have to spend the night in the back seat of the jeep. The wastes were scorched and burned by day, but the nights were sickly cold, and the back of a beat-up old jeep wasn't Jedediah’s idea of a good night’s sleep. He drove on. Eventually his thoughts turned to other things: the girl at Begunn’s who was always smiling, his busted generator, the price of the replacement part to fix the damn thing, the― Jedediah suddenly sat up and squinted. He threw off his sunglasses and rummaged around in the sack on the passenger seat, pulling out a pair of binoculars. “About time.” The grey disk that poked out above the earth could mean only one thing: a vault. As he drew nearer, the smooth, familiar features of the structure became visible. It looked the same as every other vault he’d ever seen, but then again, why shouldn’t it? He decelerated to a crawl, then braked and cut the engine. Double-checking the contents of the sack, he then slung it over his shoulder, and walked towards the embankment which descended towards the entryway. The ground crunched beneath his boots. Now that he wasn’t speeding along at 130mph he could smell once more the subtle sickly aroma of the poisonous dust kicked up beneath his feet. Jedediah slid down the embankment and came to a halt just before the imposing metal hatchway. He gripped the hot metal handle and pulled. After several minutes of strenuous effort, a loud clunk came from within, and the lock fell open. Jedediah braced his shoulder against the door, and pushed. The hatchway swung inward with an eerie quietness into the dark chamber within. Jedediah took out his torch and lit it. He stepped inside. Immediately he sensed that something was different; something was not right. Although his eyes could see nothing in the darkness, he was overwhelmed by a sensation of immense space. It was as though he had stepped into the center of a massive subterranean cave, rather than the usual maze of rectangular passageways which he had learned to navigate. Jedediah scowled and tightened his grip on the torch. His right hand moved cautiously to his knife-sheathe, where it stayed, tense. Glancing out the hatchway, he set off into the dark. His footsteps made no sound as he moved onward into the chamber. Nothing but blackness emerged out of the dark, and eventually the open hatchway was nothing more than a pinprick of light in the distance behind him. Jedediah stopped. “HELLO?” he shouted. A faint echo reverberated around him. He waited. Silence. Suddenly, from above, came a tiny mechanical clinking. After a moment, it stopped. Jedediah stood very still. “Hello.” cooed a soft metallic voice. “Shit!” Jedediah leaped backward, starring wide-eyed into the black abyss above him. “Who's there? Just who the hell are you?” he demanded. “I am a Long-Term-Data-Preservation unit. I have no name.” Its voice was cool and friendly, yet disturbingly inhuman. “Who are you?” He glared at the darkness. “Jedediah Ackerson.” “Hello Jedediah. I have waited a long time to meet you. I have much to show you." The surrounding air slowly became alive with a deep, almost inaudible humming. Suddenly, the entire chamber exploded with blinding light, and Jedediah slammed his eyelids shut. After several minutes, his eyes began to adjust to the throbbing brightness. He cautiously blinked open his eyes, and the sight that met his gaze paralyzed him. His entire body became frozen in shock, as though he had been turned to stone. In all of Jedediah’s short life, nothing―not even his most radical fantasies―could have prepared him for this sight. The breeze―warm and sweet―played across his cheeks. The blue horizon sparkled in the brilliant sunlight, and seemed to breathe in and out as it leapt up the sandy stretch below his feet, only to slink back upon itself. Jedediah blinked. He stared and blinked and thought no thoughts: a man overcome by the most beautiful thing he would ever see. "This," said the disembodied voice, "is an ocean.

The Scorching “I remember one day of winter,” my grandfather looked mistily out the twelve inch synthesized window. He’s one of the few in our colony that knows of winter first hand. I have brought him to the observation point on the western end of The Dome at his request. This is his response to my request to tell us of how life felt in the days before artificial air and extreme heats of the wastelands. “The wind whisked down my neighborhood just as I stepped out into the white blanket on my porch. A chill ran up my legs but I hardly noticed, my friends were already playing across the street. Hmpff, I couldn’t have been taller than I am now.” He looks to me with a smile. “We spent the entire day by the hill behind Wilson’s house. We took sleds and lids down that hill, trying to guide it down to an alley so we could go the farthest. We didn’t stop till we saw a couple girls from school cutting through the alley. Linda Mould and Susan P. Cole,” He turns to me with a special grin. Susan P. Cole was my grandmother. “I jumped line when I saw them, knew it was a special one the second I started. The boys whopped and hollered behind me, they knew it too. Susan and Linda had to leap from my way just as I flew by and crashed right into the Ralman’s garbage cans. Didn’t think about how I’d stop, never do at that age. No one did in those days.” Something in his voice changes. The mist in his eyes is more of a water haze now, he points to the empty horizon. “I use to see homes, grass, animals, and clouds. I never new that hope for the future was artificial till the mechanics of the world were stripped from us. It didn’t matter what we did to try and stop it neither.” I can see him slipping into more painful memories so I request him to point out when exactly he noticed the world changing first hand. “Changes? Well them happen often and often.” (He means to say changes happen a great deal and always.) “Well, the first time I realized the talk was true was I woke up in some pain, not a good deal, but enough to shake you to. Round the time I was leaving college I suppose. I looked around my bed for whoever woke me, Susan hadn’t been over that night so I couldn’t figure out who’d hurt my arm. It was near midday and I had spent the better half of the morning sleeping off the night before. I wanted to sleep some more but the sun was slipping between my blinds and onto the side of my bed. I got up to close the drapes, but first to peak outside. I was looking for anyone of note when I noticed warmth and a near instant sting all over my face. I leapt back and closed the drapes. I felt relief right away. I knew it, right then, I knew it. The sun was burning like they said it was, hot and fast. My first thought was to call Susan and see if she was feeling it too.” It’s not long after that our history lessons pick up, reminding those of us who weren’t yet here that the earth was becoming barren. My grandfather was one the first selected to one of the science division domes. The structures we all have been raised were in fact substitutes for an atmosphere we never knew, so we could have a life we never could have hoped for. “I broke through as a design engineer. Interning for the great Doctor Kepling. Now that man could work, spend entire months ruining chalk boards and burrowing floors with his pacing. I nearly didn’t sleep in my time there trying to keep up with him and the three kids at home. No one really knows his name anymore, yet his design saved what’s left of us.” His sigh holds a lot of weight out of his chest. I decide its time to broche a subject that has been refrained from in my family for years now. I ask him as gently as possible, what happened in the evacuation. There is a long pause and silence before he can gather the breath to speak. The gruffness I had grown up knowing is back, he is the old man in the recliner I know again. “We…We only got the news of The Flare just as it started. I was at home sleeping in as I had the day off and Susan…Susan should have been shopping. The phone call came and the doctor himself was frazzled. I could tell before he said anything it was happening. I was to stunned to really hear him after that, he said he just wanted to make sure I made it and hung up. I forced myself out of bed and put these packs of necessities and valuables we had made in case it did come. I heard the kids downstairs playing, I yelled for them to get up and get there stuff ready. They knew what I meant but I don’t think they truly new what it meant.” My father swears it was all too quick to remember. One day your breathing humid air, the next day it’s artificial. Kids his age hardly caught on to the significance of things as they went. “Once we were all packed I rushed the kids out to the car. It was so bright out I could hardly see my way to the car, still I had to find Susan. I had lugged her bag to car with mine. I was going to drive strait to the market to find her. I’ve sweat often before and since then, but I doubt any compared to that day. We got there and I can remember my sprint to the door seeming to last far to long to be a couple dozen feet. I burst through the door and screamed for her, Susan! Susan!” His outcry catches me off guard, “I ran back and forth through the aisles still she is not there. I looked to my watch, If I was to save my children I couldn’t wait any longer. I’d have to hope she received the message and caught the follow up busses to one of the others. When I returned to car and began to head for my designated dome, it was clear the word was out. People we rushing all about in a frenzy. I don’t ever think I’ve seen such horror on so many men and women’s faces as on that day. I told the kids to duck down so they wouldn’t see. I speed out from our town into the dessert sands towards the dome. I think I was one of the last through, they closed those giant glass doors a little after we passed through.” After this he holds his head in his hands in silent hiding of his face. My Aunt recalls him braking down and crying over the wheel till some nice man came to get them from the back seat. They didn’t see him again for a week. My grandmother was never found, nor has our family ever discussed her final whereabouts. From there the rest of the word documents well our methods to survival. Two generations of struggle-less survival, made us able to be complacent again. We should stay vigilant in pursuit of the solution; we should never allow ourselves to simply survive, but also to live. Even if it is only our grandchildren who will truly be unscathed. Never may we forget what great human loss we suffered in the Scorching.

I was drinking. I’d just started a new job. Door to door salesman ripping people off, working for Australian Gas and Electricity. I’d only been in training for two days. I was living alone, and I’d been drinking for a long while searching for jobs. Applying online. I found this one with some smokescreen description of what it was that I would actually be doing. The most meaning I found was some vague hint about ‘marketing’. So after two days of training and getting the shakes, even with a pissy little flask of 300 mls of bourbon, it was saturday. I invited people over. Bought a case of beer, a 4.5 litre cask of wine & a bottle of bourbon with the money I’d just withdrawn after closing my second bank account. I almost broke my back carrying it the 2 k’s home. They turned up. I was still sober, I’d gone through a bottle of wine and maybe 8 beers, waiting for them to turn up. Henry came in, looking worse than he smelt, holding a cigarette in his hands which didn’t smoke for at least a half hour, pulled out 2 grams of weed which I bought and put away for later. I grabbed another beer. We drank for 4 hours and then people started showing up. It was fun, I wasn’t drunk but I was feeling alright, and from I could see everyone was already well oiled, I could smell the vodka on their breath through the bourbon and beer on mine. After that I started having fun. Some of the girls got drunk and tried on my clothes. Alex, breasts jutting into my paisley t-shirt and jeans tight on her, twirling infront of me. I would’ve fucked her if her boyfriend Rhodia wasn’t there. I guess I must have been tipsy by then because I don’t really do that normally. She put on some standup comedy and we all watched; I just sipped beer watching everybody else get drunk. It was vaguely interesting. The show ended and we ended up in the kitchen. I made a salad and cooked sausages. By this time everyone except me and Rhodia were drunk, I took a break from cooking to talk to Alex, grabbed her about 10 centimetres above of a table corner, then Beth tried to get me to drink vodka, shoved a cup in my face and forgot to let me know she was doing it, went up my nose and in my eyes, coughing painful fleghm for 5 minutes, then drank another beer. Rhodia then said he had a present for me, gave me some nice looking sunglasses. I said thanks, trying to act surprised even though Alex had told me 15 minutes earlier. I was starting to get drunk and I was enjoying the show. Beth was very drunk, slurring and staggering, I found her 15 minutes after I left her, asleep on my bed. On her side of it. I liked that. She was my neighbour so I picked her up and carried her home, down my shitty back steps and next door. She woke up a bit and went off to vomit. I said call me if you help and left. I got back up the steps and opened the door to Alice lying on a foldout bed drunker than I’ve ever seen her. She had my dog in a griplock, tan arms against white fur, she was kissing him and he was trying not to bite her. I laughed, grabbed a beer, talked to Rhodia for a bit, he was vaguely drunk. Alex was dancing; I laughed and sat down. I downed a fair bit of bourbon. I got the camera. From the videos I was fine; I just don’t remember it. Alice was writhing on the bed and then staggering her way around the house when she wasn’t. Rhodia and I were talking. He had to work the next day so he went to bed, taking Alex with him. I was in love with Alex then. Had been for three years, but I guess even the most basic things have to have outstanding moments every once in a while. I drank more. Started on the wine. It was just me, Henry, Alice and Lilly. Lilly was sober, playing the role of carer while Alice decided between slurring on the bed or in a chair. It was 5.30 am. Alice was still awake somehow and Lilly didn’t want to sleep. They left. I went to sleep. I woke up on sunday and left my house with Henry at 1 pm. I bought 2 new pairs of pants, 3 shirts and 2 ties, brand new, for my future career. I quit two days later. The first day I was nervous as hell, and the two days of training weren’t worth anything. I spent my day with a guy called Niall. He made 3 sales. The entire sales pitch was a lie. I got the shakes and had a beer at 2.30. I went home as soon as I could. It was a horrible job. You could legally work door to door from 9 till 6. Then you had to get back to the office, a half hour minimum trip, then an hour’s worth of debriefing and then I got to enjoy the 40 minute ride back home. Then look after myself. By then I had the fear and shakes pretty bad. I’d get maybe 3 or 5 glasses of wine into me and that would quiet me down. I’d feed my dog and then sleep with more wine. My plan for all of those days was to drink maybe 3 glasses of wine and a beer before work, then eat as many breath mints as possible before I got there. I never felt happy. Then the next day I started doing sales pitches. I was lying through my teeth. I remember my last sale, it was a Ghana woman, who didn’t have much clue as to even her property number. There was a problem with one of the electrical codes because she had no clue which one she even used, let alone was supposed to give to us. I closed the sale. It went through, I got the verification code, put it into the contract and now she’s with an energy supplier for 3 years that will cost her a lot of money. I’d only had a tiny bit of bourbon that day, maybe 2 shots, and I was getting the shakes. I went to a chicken shop, bought a can of Pepsi because I was shaking too much to grab anything that wasn’t infront of me, paid the buck, then grabbed the flask out of my bag and poured about a half of it into the can. The two guys in the booth across from me smiled at me and after I’d downed most of the can I smiled back. I bought another and poured the rest of my flask into the new can. Niall came around as I was standing outside of the chicken shop. He lit a smoke and then said ‘I’ll finish that for you.’ I smiled at him without happiness or worry and gave the can to him. He coughed for about two minutes and then muttered something about me drinking and whiskey at this hour. I ignored him calling me an alcoholic with a smile and a laugh because I knew it was true. We caught the train back, 45 minutes of uninteresting talk with a sales team of uninteresting people. All I wanted to do was write or drink or go home. All three. We went back to the office. I bullshitted my way through a performance review, walked to Central station, caught the train home. 2 stops past the interchange I realised I was on the wrong train. Jumped off, spent the next 40 minutes catching trains in a direction that vaguely resembled home. I felt like crying. Not from something that I could identify, just a vague feeling of hawks circling. My dog being more excited to see me than I’d seen him in a long while because I got home very late. That was probably it. I rolled a joint, poured wine, beer and a bourbon and lay down on the foldout bed. I filled up the dogs waterbowl, gave him the steak I didn’t eat the night before and put on a sitcom. I liked it, I laughed for the first time that day that I meant. I went to sleep that night about 1 am. I woke up at 5 and decided my gameplan. I was quitting. There was no way I wasn’t. I looked up TAFE courses for my area, I was going to tell them all about the welding course I had been late-offered. I walked in early, told the receptionist I wanted to see the boss, thinking he’d be hurt that I was quitting. The conversation was minimal: ‘I’m sorry to say that I have to quit.’ ‘Okay here’s the form.’ ‘I’ve just got offered a course in welding and - oh okay thanks.’ ‘Our receptionist Michelle will sort this out with you.’ I left within half an hour. I said goodbye to about 10 people. I don’t think anyone cared. I wandered round the city for a bit, thinking about buying breakfast but I didn’t know anywhere you could buy one that wasn’t bad or expensive. I caught the train home, bought 2 bottles of wine and a bottle of bourbon. I walked the 5 minutes up the street from the liquor store, my dog didn’t seem that excited to see me and that made me feel great. I walked in, lit a joint and poured a glass of wine, started chopping some potatoes, carrots, onions, chucked them into a pot with some chicken stock and curry paste, put it on simmer and lay down on the foldout. I smiled then, first time since Saturday. And then I started laughing. I plugged my iphone into the audio jack, put on some Mountain Goats, downed a glass of red, stuck the rest of the joint in my mouth and lay in bed smiling as my dog curled up against me. He was shivering and I realised his back was playing up again. Shivering in pain, he tried to get as close to me as he could. I let him lie in my armpit and he had a few sips of my wine. He relaxed and I ate my soup. I switched from music to sitcoms. As the wine wore out I started drinking bourbon out of a red stained wine glass. I could have made a grand that day and not felt as good as that. Simplicity, I realised, is the best reward. I fell asleep and woke up to a glass of bourbon already poured and a smile on my face. I felt great. The TV even had a motion sensor and turned itself off. My dog was free of pain and the back door was open so a cool breeze was coming through. Sleeping naked and waking to a drink before alcoholism gets to bear its teeth, looking at all the books piled in the living room with hope instead of depression, I felt good. I don’t have enough money for much longer but I figure I’ll get a job that at least is benevolent. Or has toilets where I can drink. Either way. Breath mints and wine lips. The liquor store clerks all know me by my real name.

Kurt was taking his time walking down the street, his feet moving him ever forward as small droplets of water fell down from the sky, splashing all across the city. Everyone around him was rushing, with umbrellas, hoods, newspapers covering their heads. Kurt's sweatshirt had a hood, but he didn't think of placing it over his head. The cold orbs of water felt nice running down his shaggy brown hair, dropping off of curls in front of his face, onto his nose and then down to the ground with a “plop.” The water had just started to fall from the sky, but, unlike most times it rains, it did not start off slowly. There was no build up toward the release. One moment, no rain, the next, it felt like the massage setting on a shower head. Kurt forgot where it was he was going, but continued walking anyway, to get his feet wet. As people ran by, they looked at him oddly, as if he was insane to act as he did. After about thirty seconds, Kurt's clothes were soaked through. His hair was dripping completely, it looked as if head been in a shower for a few minutes. His sweatshirt clung to his body, dark gray from the moisture. In the pockets of his jeans his cell phone had short-circuited, the water had soaked into the electronics and caused too much energy to be placed on the motherboard, killing it forever. Kurt didn't care. He didn't notice that fact until a day later, when he went to clean up, and the phone fell from his pocket to the floor. His feet kept leading him down the street, which was growing increasingly familiar to Kurt, as he looked around him. He still did not know where he was going, but let his feet lead him. After five minutes of walking in the rain, his feet brought him in front of the door to an apartment building. The building he recalled knowing, but he did not know where from. Water still dripped down his brow to his nose, and off to make a “plop” in the puddle created under his feet. It was still raining, but a canopy provided relief. Kurt's right hand made its way to his pocket, where it found cold metal, damp from the cloth around it. The metal fit into the door in front of him, and his feet pulled him into the stair well, and up the stairs in front of him. He left a trail of water as his feet trotted up the steps, one by one. Everything around him he knew well, but Kurt could not figure out why. His feet had brought him in front of a door now. On the door were the numbers four, zero, and seven. His right hand lifted up, and knocked twice. The sound of flesh on wood was thick and loud, echoing down the hall. The water dripping off of Kurt soaked a floor mat that read “Welcome!” Kurt heard some shuffling inside, and the door opened. Standing there, staring at Kurt was a woman. Kurt remembered her. She stood in the doorway, wearing gray sweat pants and a t-shirt much too big for her. Her auburn hair was tied above her head in a ponytail that reached down past her shoulders. Her eyes were puffed and red. Inside the room, Kurt could see tissues and an open bottle of wine on the coffee table. He looked at her and said quietly, “Angela... You're beautiful. Marry me.” “Fuck off.” Water went “plop” on the now-soaked floor mat. The door slammed shut, followed by the sound of metal clinking with metal. Kurt turned, and started walking back down the stairs. As he got to the bottom, he realized that it looked brighter outside. When he walked out of the apartment, he looked up into the clouds. They were thinner. Water dripped from his nose and went “plop.” His eyes were red and puffy.

November 27th, 1933 a sweet little girl with red hair and curls was born in County Cavan, Ireland. With the face of a cherub, this little girl had brothers and sisters and strong willed parents with a beautiful and interesting history following behind her. Born not only into a prominent family history, but money as well, this sweet little red headed girl with curls like ringlets went off to boarding school where the Nuns would teach her right from wrong, how to be a lady and where she would ask questions they would deem inappropriate. Running around with friends causing mayhem, this little girl would grow up with hands often touched by a ruler’s edge, and permanently scared knees due to kneeling on raw rice. As this tiny little girl began to grow into a woman, she began to experience changes-both emotionally, and physically-this was all under the wide umbrella of topics deemed inappropriate to discuss with anyone according to the Nun’s, so the little girl turning into a young lady remained silent. She remained silent for many moons, until one night on a train back from a field trip she went to use the train lavatory and ran out screaming and crying. She was bleeding to death. She was going to die. She wouldn’t make it home to see her family again. By now, a dear, lovely Nun found it impertinent to intervene and clear the matter up as efficiently as possible without going into too much detail about the inappropriate topic of womanhood. “My dear little child, what are you screaming about?,” said the Nun. “Oh Sister! I need you to give me my last rights! I’m bleeding to death!” said the young lady. “You are? Where?” “I’m bleeding…I’m bleeding from…” the young lady began to blush and could not finish her sentence without stumbling over her words. “Yes child? I need you to tell me. Where are you bleeding from? “I…I’m bleeding from…my genitals sister. I’m bleeding to death!” At this, the young girl began to sob with her face in her hands, and shoulders shaking profusely. “Oh my child. You are not dying. But I do believe it is time we have a long talk. Come with me” And that was the day this little girl, became a young lady. Years later and this same young woman was carving a path for herself all through Europe, leaving a trail of blazing fire wherever she went. Full of life and love and adventures ready to be had she made her way to London at the very ripe age of 18. There may have been bad times happening, but my god she was not going to let that bring her down. With a wealthy family along side her, she was trailing through London leaving a string of broken hearted young men behind her. Until the day this fresh faced 18 year old beautiful woman met an American man here in the American Air force. It was a quick romance before, with the support of her family, this young and handsome couple decided to be joined in holy matrimony. A few very short months later, the newly wedded couple was expecting their first child, but alas, the young husband had to fly home to America for his military and family duties. The young, pregnant wife was to follow shortly. At 8 months pregnant, she did. She missed her family and home in Europe already, but she was ready to join her husband and begin their American life together with their new baby. It was a future full of promises.

I am the captain of my ship and my ship is called destiny I steer the destiny with the helm-wheel of fate Battling the waves of life and death Searching for hopes light that will guide me home The days catch flung to the watery depths, a cruel injustice ~~~~ To the love of my woman and the joy of our children But there is only darkness now, the storm rages on No light to be seen. The moon, the stars blotted in tempest ink The inundation of deaths icy shards fall mercilessly upon me Destiny coated with glassy refraction, sheen of terrifying beauty ~~~~ My thoughts reflect black the inferno cold The heavens chariots quake the air Where is hopes lighthouse? I am lost. “Damn, Fowl Tempest, Gods be damned!” I proclaim Haunting, ghostly torrential purgatory is their only reply. ~~~~ Deaths icy claws shackle me to fate. Cruel tempest And so bellowed is my defiance to the Bermudan sea “You will not have me!” And with the ferocity of the storms power in my lungs I state my consternation's triumph “My name is Ahabe!” “I am the Captain of Destiny and the Master of Fate, and you will not have me!” ~~~~ Blinded, A flash of light strikes the sky in two, The cracking whip of heavens charioteer lashes the air My hands break free of their icy shackles, stark horror revealed The wheel of fate spins effortlessly, destiny glides listless My fate now clear, Destiny no longer mine ~~~~ Behold, revealed in the instant of stricken light, Doom approaches. Deaths watery tombstone rises before destiny, a captive black swan A rogue wave of death inescapable howling ever louder in its approach Piercing my ears, the words from deaths cresting hulk "Hello, Ahabe, master of fate, captain of destiny.” “I am Death, and no one escapes me.

I just spit this out and it could potentially be longer; lemme me know if you think it's too weird and rambly or if you would read more. It's rough... Thanks so much! Popping a crisp, clear pop, the egg-yolk sun announced the new day like a Sprite can snapping open in the quietest section of the library. The egg-yolk too broke open with a sizzle and ran down the length of the high-desert valley, catching the attention of a dozing cactus that probably could have used a few more minutes of sleep. A dazed lizard rolled over and punched his alarm clock, grabbing his slippers he rose just long enough to bop the ‘pre-heat’ button on the desert thermostat preparing the desert oven for another scorching, hot day. This lizard had been in charge of turning on heating the desert for years and couldn’t remember a day when they just left it off, slept in, and skipped the 117 degrees; but who was he to argue with tradition? Humming past Mr. Saguaro and Mr. Gecko exchanging familiar glances, Lauren drank in the languid air of the pre-heating desert and snapped his gloved hand back a little further awakening the emptiness in his stomach and sending his bike careening through the adobe colored valley just a bit too fast for the warmth to keep up. This is the story of a man with a woman’s name and a woman with a woman’s name. They are both average people, with nothing in particular to separate them from the proverbial crowd; at least that is what the movie poster would have you believe, if there was a movie poster for this story. However no film will be made about these two people and even if it was, they sure wouldn’t go see it! But I still can’t help but dream of the poster, a huge slab of inked up tree bark, hung in a crowded mall surrounded by thick glass with tiny light bulbs twinkling around the edge. On said poster an uglied-up Johnny Depp would be crouched over a 1980 Honda CX 500 and a deliciously humble-looking Reese Witherspoon seated on the back of this sputtering bike. With her arms wrapped around him, she hopes he knows where he’s going and wonders if this thing has breaks. The cactus, Mr. Saguaro, in the desert background that they appear to be speeding though, casts a smokey shadow across the poster and leading toward the title, written in the same muted grey color (TITLE OF SAID FILM) As he pulled into a Denny’s, the sun catching up to him now, he turned the key and yanked it from the ignition, swung his leg over the bike, and knocked the kickstand down with the grace of a man who had driven through the desert for most of the night. You see, while this story is begun with an image of a man careening through the desert on an ancient motorcycle searching for his place in the world, having read a few too many pages of ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’; just an average man with an average name, for a woman, he is not the who this story is about. He sought a catalyst to break him into greatness and he is a great candidate for a great American coming-of-age novel. This story however is really is more about a girl by the name of Amber. An extremely predictable girl by all appearances, she is an even better candidate for a story; primarily because she is not at all suited to be a main character. She really was quite beige-average, though more attractive than most, and never went above herself to make any lasting effect on anyone. However humble, Amber did have one particular quality that I began to sense more and more as I created her: though moderately predictable, she walked a cliff in her mind; most of us do. But she occupied this rift day in and day out, she had even invested in a yellow lawn chair during a clearance sale and set up camp next to this psychological crevice, complete with ice-chest and umbrella, periodically peeking over to see if the bottom was any clearer. Everyone has one, a cliff that is, a piece of them that if looked at deep enough and long enough will send them inching closer and closer toward the edge, brimming with fascination; most of us don't do this. Amber did. Ever since she was a little girl she had teetered on this edge, a grassy canyon's edge that dropped off onto a bottom far, far below, that she could barely catch sight of. Today was the day though, and as an unsuspecting Lauren walked into the desert diner, with a tinkle of a bell and a thud of the door, he shocked poor Amber over the edge. Leafing through a David Foster Wallace book, she wasn’t reading so much as noticing that, for the first time in her life, the conditions in her mind were translucent enough to make out most of the ledge down below she thought as she leaned further than she could ever remember. Startled by the man’s “hello,” his simple greeting finally sent her toppling over, though she wouldn’t realize this until much later on the back of a motorcycle on its way toward San Francisco. And after all those years of wondering what was down there, she began to have second thoughts. But in the spirit of a good story, we won’t ruin that part for her without a good explanation as to how she got there. It was in fact such an anti-climatic moment that, had the movie opened with this scene, Johnny Depp and Reese Whitherspoon would have been scouring the streets for work, looking rather humble themselves. But this scene wasn’t a movie yet, it was taking place in real time and real space, and these two things have a way of making even the most mediocre moments pop, and as we know, they too have a way of sending girls toppling over the edges of cliffs. “Hi..,” spoke Lauren, wondering whether it was entirely necessary to tear this young waitress from her book, or if maybe he could just slip past her and ask the cook to crack a couple eggs for him as he poured his own coffee. “Oh! Hello, sorry I was a bit absorbed...we don’t usually get customers this early,” she said with a sleepy smile. “If you want to come right this way I can seat you in a booth right over here. Is it okay if I put you next to the kitchen?” He nodded. “I suppose I should have asked if it was just you today or if someone else will be joining you,” though they both knew the answer to that question. She handed him a laminated menu and guessed that he wanted a cup of coffee, smiling. He looked up and cracked a similar, tired smile sighing, “a whole pot might be a better idea.” “I’ll see what we can do about that,” she perked up. Lauren noticed arresting stare and her focused, knowing eyes. “By the way, my name is Amber and I’ll be in charge of you this morning.” “Amber”, he thought. If it wasn’t enough that she held his gaze like a tired seal holds an ice shelf, even her name screamed a breezy calm, “buy me a taco at El Palomar and hustle me over to the Santa Cruz lighthouse and sit next to me as the Wednesday lunch rush packs itself into a van and guzzles off, leaving us alone with the waves and the gulls waiting for their share of this tortilla.

It is the summer of 1999 and I am young and I am alive. My sister and I are racing outside now, our bare and naked feet fly across the hardwood floor and onto our tired deck. My prescient mother, resting in a green plastic chair, is already waiting for the two of us to dart into the nightly confines of our very Philadelphian backyard. She’s looking at the pair of us, her smile the starting pistol to an evening of adventure. I’m grabbing a glass jar and tossing one to my younger sister now. Her and I now dash down the few steps of our porch and step onto our playing field. I can see them all, now. The lightning bugs. They dot our lawn like incandescent snowflakes, occasionally lifting off to find a new temporary resting place. I can almost hear the beat of a thousand tiny wings right now. There must be hundreds here. They paint our yard now, never satisfied with their place on the canvas. But this wonder is nothing new to my sister and I. We have done this as far as my memory will stretch. We’re dashing off in different directions now, as to cover the most ground. There isn’t a second to waste, not a moment to spare—I’m not sure how much longer the fireflies will glow for us. Now that I’m over by the big tree at the edge of the lawn, I can begin my work. A particularly gleaming bug is drifting past my eyes right now. I’m going to turn my jar to the side, very carefully now, and… *got him*. Quickly I’m screwing the lid back on my jar. I eye my twinkling prize. It’s crawling on the side of my jar now, exploring his new home, I’m sure. I can’t think of a name for him quite yet, but there will be time for formalities later. Right now I need to continue the hunt. Bending down now I scoop up a bug at my feet. I’m feeling the minuscule legs of the thing tickle my palm now. I’m assessing my catch. This one is too small. It simply will not do. It needs to grow and mature before I could even consider capturing this luminous soul. I’m going to let it go. I open my palm and it flits away from me, surely rejoining his glowing brethren but this time with a story to tell. My baby sister and I are darting across our lawn, back and forth now, for what has seemed like only a few moments. We’re laughing, enthralled in the beauty and wonderment of the scene. “Hey, Dea, I found a really big one right here!” I’m exclaiming to my sister now. “Fabio, Fabio, I see a really bright one! Come here!” She’s yelling back. It hasn’t been long but our game is over now. We’re saying good night to the fireflies now and sprinting back up to our wood deck, exhausted from the chase but running on an adrenaline high. I briefly and proudly show my mom the night’s catch and before she can say ‘Oh, wow,’ I’ve already begun staring at my jar, full of little lightning bugs. It’s glowing bright, my suburban lantern. My usual request to bring the jar inside has been denied again, per usual. Now it’s time for me to make this glass jar for my lightning bugs a home. I’m poking tiny holes in the top of the jar using a pen now so they can breath. I’m going to place some grass in too so they have food. What a nice home I’ve made for Steven, Ross, Fireman, Lightdude, Ember, Doug, Nick, and Eric. *I’m going to say good night to you now, little guys. I’ll see you in the morning!* Morning is here now and I’m running outside to check on my prized jar. Only one of my fireflies is alive now. He’s slowly crawling across the bottom of the glass, navigating through the bodies of his mothers, brothers, sisters, aunts. His belly is smoldering ever so dimly now, barely casting a light in this hot morning sun. I don’t think they liked the grass I gave them, either. “Mom, why do my bugs always die in the morning? I even gave them grass this time.” I’m asking my poor mother now. “Because…” She begins. “Because their light only burns for a night. They burn bright and hot, some more bright than others. Their bellies are big and glow at night but it will only last for so long. In the morning their lightbulb burns out and they die. Their lightbulb burns out, that’s all.” Shaking my now lifeless and lightless jar out into the yard now, I’m wondering how bright my lightbulb will burn.